Fisherman's Road

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met in St. John’s Monday as part of its study on northern cod. But the same committee ALSO did a report on northern cod 11 years ago.   Find the report here. Nothing had changed since then. Direct quotes from the 2005 report: “The Committee has the clear impression that, from DFO’s perspective, cod is no longer a priority. In other words, since the cod have almost vanished, there is no point in studying them anymore.” ••• “We believe that the root cause lies in a lack of vision and long-term planning. Not dealing with foreign overfishing, re-opening of the inshore fishery in 1998 at unsustainable levels, and not recognizing sooner the size of the seal herds each contributed to the lack of recovery of the northern cod stocks.” ••• “While DFO, as the body responsible for managing the fisheries, had the critical role in this disaster, it was often under pressure from fishermen, coastal communities, ...

The following is my address on Monday, Sept. 26th, to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries in Oceans, which met in St. John’s to discuss northern cod.   Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Members of Parliament, welcome to St. John’s.  My name is Ryan Cleary, and I’m the former Member of Parliament for St. John’s South-Mount Pearl. I served in the last Parliament (2011-2015).  And I spent most of that time on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.  We did a fair number of studies, but the committee only travelled once — and that wasn’t to any province in Canada — but to Washington, D.C. as part of a study on closed-containment aquaculture.  You can study a problem to death in an Ottawa boardroom, but you can’t underestimate the impact of being on the ground.  So when I say welcome, I sincerely mean it — hope to see you here often in Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. (MP Scott) Simms (chair of t...

As editor-in-chief of The Independent, a province-wide weekly newspaper (2003-2008), I wrote a weekly column called Fighting Newfoundlander . The following piece was published in the March 7th, 2008 edition.  Yesterday's union  W hen you throw a swing you’ve got to expect a shot back across the bow, but I was mildly surprised with the letter to the editor this week from the fishermen’s union.  Part of me thought the union was dead in the water, although there’s apparently life in the cold fish yet. That said, the mild flapping of union tails could be mistaken for the final jerk and twitch of a drawn-out death throe.  Not the union’s passing, mind you. I’m talking about outport genocide.  The issue has to do with stamp factories.  To simplify, last week’s column, Get a real job , took the union to task for trying to create a stamp factory on Newfoundland’s south coast. I say stamp factory because New Brunswick-based Cook...

As editor-in-chief of The Independent, a province-wide weekly newspaper (2003-2008), I wrote a weekly column called Fighting Newfoundlander . The following piece was published in the March 7th, 2008 edition.  Yesterday's union  W hen you throw a swing you’ve got to expect a shot back across the bow, but I was mildly surprised with the letter to the editor this week from the fishermen’s union.  Part of me thought the union was dead in the water, although there’s apparently life in the cold fish yet. That said, the mild flapping of union tails could be mistaken for the final jerk and twitch of a drawn-out death throe.  Not the union’s passing, mind you. I’m talking about outport genocide.  The issue has to do with stamp factories.  To simplify, last week’s column, Get a real job , took the union to task for trying to create a stamp factory on Newfoundland’s south coast. I say stamp factory because New Brunswick-based Cooke...

The following are my comments at a news conference this morning (Sept. 12th) at the Fishermen's Centre in Petty Harbour. Good morning. Thank you for coming out.  First off, I want to send our condolences to the families of the four fishermen lost last week from Shea Heights.  Such horrendous tragedies are all too common in Newfoundland and Labrador.  We grieve, as the family of Shea Heights grieves, as the entire province grieves.  My name is Ryan Cleary and I called this news conference as a result of growing unrest within the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery. I'm here with Jason Sullivan, a fisherman from Bay Bulls, and Richard and Joyce Gillett, a fishing family from Twillingate.  There’s been unrest in the fishing industry for a generation — since the collapse of the northern cod fishery in 1992, and well before that.  But the unrest today amongst fish harvesters specifically is escalating — today it’s higher and mo...