Gerry Byrne says a commercial fishery needs to be at least 50,000 metric tonnes.
The newly minted Fisheries Minister says you cannot have a commercial cod fishery with only 18,000 tonnes. Gerry Byrne says it’s a big mistake by Ottawa. He says last year’s quota was just under 13,000 metric tonnes and this year is 18,000 but if you spread that around to all fishers it’s still not a commercial fishery. Byrne says it also allows foreign freezer trawlers into our fishery. He says a commercial fishery needs to be at least 50,000 metric tonnes and this is why government is calling for Joint Management with Ottawa, something which all provinces and territories premiers recently committed to at this summer meeting in Nova Scotia.