Above: David Greening photo
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) recently held a stakeholder engagement in St. John’s, N.L. related to policy surrounding owner-operator policies, vessel length requirements for the inshore fleet and vessel registration.
Amy Kavanagh-Penney, the senior resource manager for licensing policies with DFO, said that the Newfoundland and Labrador engagement session is to work out the details on what works best for harvesters in the province.
“You just look at the lobster fishery, for instance. The lobster fishery in the Maritimes is a very big-money, primary fishery and it’s all farther from shore,” said Kavanagh-Penney. “The boats are very different. They’re big, 65-foot longliners stacked high with pots and in Newfoundland and Labrador, it’s all shoreline — coastal, small, 20-foot boats for hauling our lobsters. So, we need to have different policies.”
As part of the all-day meeting at the Comfort Inn in St. John’s, DFO discussed “policy engagements in support of the owner-operator.” The department wished to stress that these engagement sessions were not imposing or recommending a one-size-fits-all approach to vessel policies across Atlantic Canada and Québec.
DFO, however, did wish to hear about how to best support the independence of inshore fishermen and whether there are currently regulations in place that might make it more difficult for harvesters to be independent.
Part of the conversation surrounding owner-operator policy and the independence of harvesters centred around vessel registration.
One issue noted by DFO was vessel arrangements with processors and buyers and whether or not these third-party agreements can allow processors and buyers to have influence over license holders. The department also wished for feedback on the 12-month rule for registrations in the under-65-foot fleet, wondering if the durations of vessel registrations could allow third parties to have influence over harvesters by way of renting or leasing vessels.
The buddy-up system was also explored, in which a temporary arrangement authorized by DFO allows two licence holders holding fishing licences for the same species, the same fishing area and the same gear type to operate from the same vessel. Again, questions tied to how these regulations could in any way undermine independence in the inshore fleet.
Discussions took place over the modernization of the substitute operator policy, including a DFO proposal to include both pregnancy and parental leave in the scenarios that would allow for a substitute operator, which would not count toward the five-year career maximum substitute operator timeline currently imposed by regulations.
Engaged stakeholders were also asked to weigh in on the eligibility criteria for the policy, in which the individual using a substitute operator may not be employed outside the fishery or be involved in separate fishery activity, and the substitute operator must possess a valid Professional Level 1 or 2 certification from the Professional Fish Harvesters Certification Board.
DFO also touched on vessel length requirements for vessels under 50 feet in the wake of the announcement that core N.L. harvesters may increase their vessel length from 39 feet 11 inches to 49 feet 11 inches long. They addressed that these policies may have unintended consequences for the safety of harvesters, such as in the case of modifications made to a vessel to region-specific rules.
Among the questions asked regarding the changes in length regulations were whether harvesters were interested in a change to the maximum vessel length and if there were any concerns about allowing longer vessels in the harbours engaged parties currently fish from.
Alongside this, the government wished to know if these regulations should apply to non-core vessels, and whether secondary vessels were still necessary for effected enterprises.
Kavanagh-Penney’s colleagues from Ottawa joined the engagement meeting online to collect information and feedback for data-collecting purposes. According to her, the cornerstone of these engagements is the owner-operator policy and the question of how DFO can best support owner-operators.
“We want to support owner-operators. Everyone in Eastern Canada believes that is the important part of our fishery here, which is different from Western Canada,” said Kavanagh-Penney. “We want to keep owner-operators so the benefit from this public resource goes back to the small communities where the harvesters live and operate.”
