As the older generation of fisheries workers in Atlantic Canada approach retirement age, many of their younger counterparts are leaving for the greener pastures of Alberta, leading to a looming worker shortage in the fishing industry, some fear.
At the same time, those who were hoping a new federal-provincial plan to revitalize the industry would include an early retirement program were disappointed.
"When you hear processors here wondering where they're going to get workers, I don't think early retirement is something that's a priority," Federal fisheries minister Loyola Hearn told reporters at a news conference.
The Fishing Industry Renewal Initiative also didn't include a plan to buy back licences—something many in the industry were hoping for, as it would serve to address the problem of overcapacity. The provincial government controls the processing sector of the fishery, while the federal government determines fish quotas and control fishing licences.
President of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union, Earle McCurdy, says that even though a worker shortage will not occur in the immediate future, many of the people who are now ready for retirement are from the baby boom generation.
"There are no skilled workers who will be able to replace them when the time comes," says McCurdy. "Instead, the young people come and when the fishing can't sustain them financially they end up leaving—this is the situation that's currently taking place in the fishing industry."
Fisheries employees live on unemployment insurance for the majority of the year, and because of the short work season and low pay in the fish plants young people are making the choice to move to provinces where they can make a better living.
"On the plant side, young workers don't come in because they grew up watching generation of Newfoundlanders work in the plants for meagre incomes," says Derek Butler, executive director of the Association for Seafood Producers, the industry trade association for the majority of production in the Newfoundland fishery.
"Young workers are not coming in, and our workers are getting older and older; the labour crunch is coming and it is going to get progressively worse until we address the amount of work available."
To combat this, Roy Russell, Director, Resource Manager for Fisheries and Oceans Canada said that harvesters will be able to "rationalize harvesting capacity through combining of enterprises," which would "remove excess harvesting capacity and reduce the number of enterprises in the fisheries"—in other words, less boats and less plants.
But many believe harvesters won't quit the fishery without incentives such as an early retirement program or a plan to buy out licences. As for the processing plants, Newfoundland and Labrador fisheries minister Tom Rideout has said that their fate will be left to market forces.
Faced with similar problems, fishing industries in other regions have scaled back vessel size and the number of people in the industry. The federal government is working on new harvesting rules that will allow more flexibility on vessel size, and both levels of government said they will help people obtain financing for vessels, according to a CBC News report.
Butler adds that fisheries in Alaska and parts of Europe are bringing in migrant workers, similar to what they do in California for the agricultural trade, who work for the season and are then laid off. While this hasn't yet happened in Newfoundland, the Prince Edward Island fishery has started using migrant workers.
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