Thank you, Mr. Chair and esteemed members of the committee, for the opportunity to address you today on behalf of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union.

As president of the FFAW, I'm here today on behalf of the over 13,000 fisheries workers our union represents in Newfoundland and Labrador. From owner-operators to crew members to processing plant workers, our union has dedicated the last five decades to fighting for the preservation of community-based fisheries. These are inshore fisheries. They are the lifeblood of our coastal communities.

There are the over 3,000 under-65-foot vessels, which are owned, operated and crewed by over 10,000 professional fish harvesters, who fish sustainably and support over 500 rural coastal communities. This dependence cannot be understated, and I beg each of you here today to consider the effect that recent decisions have had on continued sustainability within our coastal communities. Our union fully supports the comments of our colleague and partner, Carl Allen, and the work of the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters Federation.

I'll focus on two key areas today: number one, protecting the owner-operator from controlling agreements; and number two, adjacency and socio-economic considerations in ministerial decision-making.

Corporate entities—multinational processing companies—have a long and clearly documented history of subverting owner-operator and fleet separation. They illegally buy up inshore licenses, take advantage of financially vulnerable individuals and take control of the resources and industry, one small vessel at a time. In 2007, PIIFCAF was announced because controlling agreements were recognized as a threat to the viability of the inshore. PIIFCAF had no teeth, and controlling agreements continued to proliferate. That led to 2019, when Bill C-68was passed successfully through the House of Commons, providing important modernizations and improvements to the act.

The legislation officially came into effect in 2021, but very little has been done by the DFO to utilize these new provisions. It's clear that additional strengthening is desperately needed. The owner-operator policy is the backbone of our coastal communities and the foundation of a sustainable, equitable fishing industry. It ensures that the benefits of our resources flow directly to the hard-working fishers and their communities, rather than being concentrated in the hands of large corporations or absentee owners.

We strongly recommend adopting recommended improvements to the wording around owner-operator to ensure a more robust legal framework to protect independent fish harvesters and to prevent the corporatization of our fisheries. To ensure compliance, we also propose increasing penalties for violations of the owner-operator policy, allocating more resources for monitoring and enforcement, and implementing a transparent reporting process for infractions. We also urge the committee to reinforce fleet separation within the act, explicitly prohibiting vertical integration of harvesting and processing sectors in the inshore fishery.

Honourable members, we ask that you enshrine the principle of adjacency directly in the act, ensuring that coastal communities have priority access to nearby fish stocks. While this may seem obvious, the ministerial practice in recent years has been quite the contrary. Specifically, Minister Lebouthillier has defied adjacency and socio-economic considerations by allocating primary shares to corporate dragger fleets in the new redfish fishery, meaning that the owner-operator fleet, which depended on that transition, is now facing bankruptcy.

Similarly, Minister Lebouthillier and her Liberal colleagues were pleased to break a 40-year commitment to our province by allowing domestic and international dragger fleets back into a struggling northern cod fishery. This decision not only harms the owner-operators who rely on that fishery but also directly threatens the continued rebuilding of that historical stock, and it was contrary to advice provided to the minister by DFO science.

The federal Fisheries Act must protect Canadians from these kinds of ministerial blunders that threaten the very future of our economic sustainability. When ministers are permitted to bend to lobby groups and corporate interests in the name of votes and international clout, something else must be done. We cannot let our community-based fisheries be destroyed by unethical decision-makers and political agendas. The Fisheries Act must be amended to include references to adjacency and to the socio-economic considerations of those adjacent economies.

While we advocate for these changes, we also recognize the importance of maintaining certain aspects of the current act. The consultation processes with stakeholders, including fish harvesters and indigenous groups, should be preserved and protected from the inclusion of extremist environmental groups as stakeholders. The review of the Fisheries Act presents a crucial opportunity to strengthen the foundation of our industry. By protecting and enhancing the owner-operator policy and by making adjacency a part of the act, we can ensure a sustainable, prosperous future for our coastal communities and the next generation of fish harvesters and plant workers.

We at FFAW-Unifor stand ready to work with this committee to craft legislation that will serve the best interests of our fishery, our communities and our marine resources for generations.

Thank you again for your time. I welcome any questions you might have.

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