“There’s one problem. We all know what it is: Fishermen aren’t getting paid,” MacKinley said.
“We’ve got to get more money out of the marketplace.”
“The day of coming in to the shore with a boatload of lobsters and saying, ‘Here’s my lobsters. What are you going to pay me?” is not working,” emphasized the Fisheries minister and veteran MLA.
“It’s ridiculous. When I got elected first, in 1985, they were paying $4 (per pound) for shore price. You know where costs have gone sine then.”
He said government is working to help develop markets in China and Europe, and he wants to start moving more fresh-cooked product to Western Canada where many Atlantic Canadians who already have a good appetite for lobster and oysters, are living and working.
MacKinley told of an initiative, which resulted in 100 tonne of lobster being shipped to China in 2010. That grew to 1,000 tonne in 2011.
But he suggested more can be accomplished.
“We’ve got to get into our own niche, specialty market. That’s one of the reasons why the provincial government will be establishing a Seafood Development Marketing Agency, with fishers, processors and government representatives, to develop and promote seafood products,” he told fishers.
“We need a sound business plan there, and that’s what our premier is committed to, and our cabinet and our MLAs.”
“The only way I can see of ever getting the price up, is we’ve got to find new markets,” MacKinley added in a phone interview.
If the American economy were to improve and the U.S. dollar rose, he said, many of the problems would be resolved. He said the agency is still in discussion stage, but he would like to have it running this year.
“It’s an idea that we want to fulfill,” he said.
MacKinley told the PCFA that government is looking into establishing more holding capacity, so lobsters landed in the spring can be held over until July when demand is higher.
He put his support behind the Future Fisher program and said the low-interest loan program will be re-opened for fishers impacted by lower prices and rising costs.
maybe they could use the money from the rural fund,but mackinley and ghiz decided to give that to charlettown. if the fisherman thought leclair was no good this fellow is just going to mouth and do nothing because he knows the fisherman are not in his district and can not vote him out like neil .