MEDIA RELEASE: PERT Recommendations Fail to Grasp Basics of Inshore Fishery

October 5, 2021

ST. JOHN’S, NL – Today, the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour’s working group, A Fair Reset, released its response to fishery recommendations proposed under the Premier’s Economic Recovery Team (PERT) Report, raising the alarm on the report’s complete lack of understanding and misinformation surrounding the inshore fishery.

“The PERT report is an insult to hard-working Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who live and work in in our coastal communities. These recommendations were developed without a basic understanding how the inshore fishery functions, with several points noted in the report having been proven categorically false,” explains Keith Sullivan, FFAW-Unifor President.

Incorrect claims surrounding the province’s largest fishery, no mention of any landed values and a focus on increasing corporate concentration at the expense of local jobs were the main themes of the Report put together by Dame Moya Greene. For example, the PERT report claimed that snow crab stocks were in decline when in fact, catches increased 29% between 2020 and 2021. Moreover, the report specifically targets collective bargaining as a weakness yet fails to acknowledge the power imbalance between owner-operators and large multinational companies.

“Anti-worker and anti-union sentiments abound, if the recommendations in this report were to be implemented it would lead to certain destruction of our inshore fishery and the coastal communities that rely on it,” Sullivan warns.

Read the full response to the fishery recommendations here.

###

‘A Fair Reset’ blog will be released weekly starting August 10, 2021 until the week before the scheduled resumption of the Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly on October 18.

For media inquiries, please contact Courtney Glode, FFAW-Unifor Communications, at cglode@ffaw.ca or call/text 709-743-4445.