Open the doors

Outside buyers - it's a toughy.

Fisheries Minister Clyde Jackman would rather stay away from angering the province's plant workers.

Allowing out of province fish buyers to come in and purchase raw material directly from fishermen, then ship it past closed plants makes for hard times. Plant workers have homes, payments and children in school too. On the Northern Peninsula, many of their spouses are fishermen.

Yep, it would be a hard call to make.

But Mr. Jackman ran for office and accepted this province's most important cabinet position based on the claim that he's a leader. If he's not a leader, then he is obligated to pass the reigns to someone who is.

Leaders lead.

And we need a leader.

Why would plant owners be against outside buyers? An out of province buyer has to ship the material farther to their plant, while keeping it fresh and losing some to spoilage. If they can afford to do that and still pay more than local processors are offering, then there are a few possibilities:

Newfoundland plants need to become more efficient.

Processors can afford to pay more than they're letting on.

Labour costs, taxes and regulations in this province are higher than in other jurisdictions.

There are inefficiencies in how we get fish from sea to dinner plate.

Outside buyers wouldn't be able to pay more and changing the regulations wouldn't make a difference.

Labour costs are higher here than in China and we don't want all our raw material going there.

A 65 footer, a first glance, isn't the most efficient way to catch shrimp - it burns more fuel and takes more man hours per pound than a factory freezer trawler. From a purely dollars and cents perspective that's true. But if we put value on raising children in communities where doors are left unlocked, on independent families owning their destiny and rural Newfoundland keepings it's resources out of soft foreign hands, then we may take another view.

A few factory freezer trawlers, owned by people who aren't our neighbours, could catch it all. They could also process most of it at sea.

So we could be faced with protecting harvesters or plant workers and if the fisheries minister doesn't chose, we could lose both. One thing is for certain, however, that without an inshore shrimp and crab fleet, there won't be a need for fish plants.

Private industry gets a lot of criticism, most of it unfair, for wanting to make a profit. We chose a capitalist system for a reason - when everyone works for government, not much gets done.

So we should have some faith in the processors' ability to compete. Though if we let in outside buyers, we may need to make sacrifices or changes to the structure of our industry, to help them.

As fisheries minister Trevor Taylor tried to lead with the Raw Materials Sharing (RMS) - whether it would have worked, we don't know, because so many rose in protest against it.

The resource and its jobs are the birthright of rural Newfoundland - if the inshore fleet dies, the quotas won't disappear, they'll end up in the holds of big boats that never tie up in places like Conche, Port au Choix, Black Duck Cove or Anchor Point.

We need a leader to make a painful decision and Obama doesn't seem to know much about the fishery.

So Mr. Jackman, the puck's on your stick - make a move or get off the ice.