Too Many Workers? Too Few Workers? For Fish Farms

Fish farm companies like to say they bring jobs and revenue by opening up fish farms. The problem is that it isn't true. And the post I put up on the issue recently pointed out that fish farm jobs are down 32% in Atlantic Canada, and in BC, down 5.2% over the past twenty years.

Here is the post, and the paper by Milewsky is the best single document I have ever read. Do read it. Find the link here: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/07/fish-farm-problems-on-global-scale-inka.html. 

At the bottom of the post, the link points out that Norway produces ten times the salmon as all of Canada, and with only 2 times the people  - because of all the automation brought to the industry, they don't need people any more. As in no jobs, the main feature they sell to government to get themselves in the water.  The bottom line figure of jobs is this:

"The above stats suggest that if Canada's output is about 10% of Norway, that 10% of Norway's job numbers is all it will take to farm in Canada, or about 630 jobs. Even if you believe the 3,205 number of Canadian jobs, what would be left would be less than 20% of the current job numbers (630/3205 = 19.6%)."

So, here is another take on jobs in Atlantic Canada, that fish farm jobs are not taken and the area has trouble filling other jobs, even though higher paid: 

 Living in an upside down (seafood) employment world ….

          

Those who live in rural communities in coastal Atlantic Canada might  have noticed a rather curious dichotomy. Governments and Aquaculture Companies always talk about plan to create jobs, whereas we near the water are constantly looking for able bodied employees. We have many more jobs than workers to fill them, whereas Government is convinced we have many more workers than jobs for certain. Someone is missing the boat here, if you will forgive the phrase, and this upside down seafood world should finally be addressed and more honestly revealed ….

A former Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture in Nova Scotia liked to say with a fair bit of relish that: “ this isn’t your Grandfather’s lobster fishery ”. He was absolutely right. If he were in office today he might broaden it to say: “ This isn’t your Grandfather’s wild fishery sector either ” !  Circumstances have changed so dramatically in the last five years in Atlantic Canada.  The world has become much smaller with the growth of the internet and social media , Nova Scotia wild caught seafood has officially been ‘discovered’ by a protein hungry market throughout Asia, and America and China are in a fight to the death trade war which gives Canada a substantial tariff advantage from a privileged seafood platform. All of which means job creation in the wild caught seafood sector has stabilized and even grown at the very time our coastal communities are aging and shrinking generally. Surprise, surprise, The Ivany Report could see it all coming…. 

The somewhat inconvenient truth is that wild caught seafood companies in Atlantic Canada may be 5% short of optimal employee levels right now on a daily basis. This is a new reality we are struggling to cope with. We deal with positions that cannot be easily filled, whereas Government talks about employees who cannot easily find work. Needless to say, it is a frustrating and fundamental disconnect.
 

           Provincial and Federal Governments have been on a mission lately to promote aquaculture, most particularly that of the open net pen variety. Let’s for the moment ignore the environmental impacts, the food safety impacts, the escaped species impacts and the pollution impacts. Let’s give open net pen a pass on all these dubious fronts, and let’s instead say that when open net pen fish farms come to town, they must somehow recruit employees for the jobs they hope to create. Okay, so they are seasonal fish farm jobs generally, and a bit dangerous working at the pens waterside, but they are jobs none the less. Where will the open net pen recruiters find workers when they are paying not much better than minimum wages? Are these aquaculture companies able to match the wages of the traditional wild fisheries processing and export companies? 

The grim truth is that Glen Cooke himself, of Cooke Aquaculture , suggested his company was increasingly dependent upon the contributions of foreign workers long ago. Atlantic born workers at the time weren’t coming back from the oil and gas sector in Alberta to work on a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm operation. And if they come back now, those same trades people are more likely to be employed in an Irving ship building enterprise…. 

For those who want to look back over the decades, the growth in Employment Insurance reliance has surely been an issue. Our region may have the highest % of unemployment officially, and the greatest shortage of full employment placements simultaneously. We have so many Atlantic Canadians completely unwilling to take the jobs that now exist. How on earth is that possible?  Well, thanks to the flexibility of employment insurance mostly …but that is surely a topic for another day. 

Right now, we need to determine once and for all who is right and who is sadly mistaken. Do we have a shortage of work, or do we have a shortage of employees in coastal communities? That is the $ 18/hour question. If we can answer this singular matter honestly and accurately, I dare say many of the other concerns unravel themselves rather easily … 

                  Stewart Lamont

                  Managing Director, Tangier Lobster Company.