Full-time fishing, definitions

To be considered as a fulltime fisherman in Newfoundland and Labrador, you have to fish full-time during the fishing season (May 1 to Oct. 1), with at least 75 per cent of your income coming from fishing during that period.

That doesn't mean a full-time fisherman can't hold another job in the offseason, said Mark Dolimont, executive director of the Professional Fish Harvesters Certification Board (PFHCB).

“From September or October, to the following April, you could go to the moon and make a billion dollars (in another job) and there's no restrictions (to being a fulltime fisherman),” Dolimont told Saltwire Network in a recent interview.

When the oil industry was booming in Western Canada, many fish harvesters did just that. They fished in the summer and spent their winters working in the oil camps in northern Alberta.

Dolimont acknowledged that created some backlash.

“That's one of the frustrations of my job. Sometimes I pick up the phone and someone is giving me an earful because our criteria is too rigid and we should be allowing more people in the fishery, and then another caller might say, 'How in the name of Joe Jesus did Fred, who is in Alberta all winter, get access to a core fishing enterprise?'” Dolimont's answer? “We can't force people to stay home from September to April on unemployment insurance if they have the skills, the ability and the will to go and earn income somewhere else. That's everybody's right.

“I can assure you, and the Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters have done a very large study on this, right across the country. This whole business of occupational pluralism is key to the future of all seasonal work.

“Canada's economy was founded on all seasonal work — fishing, forestry, mining — and the fishing industry in this province, at best, is a five- to six-month season. And for some small-boat operators it's a three- to fourmonth season,” Dolimont said.

“So for us, a provincial certification board, to suggest that people can't work outside the fishing season, to me, that would be lunacy. Basically, what we'd be saying is that you've got no choice but to stay home all winter on unemployment insurance until the (fishing season) starts again.

“My God, that's not something we would ever have entertained.”

Fishing seasons vary from province to province.

In P.E.I., where lobster is the mainstay for many, the season lasts for about two months.

The criteria for continuing to hold a fishing licence in that province is not dependent on proof of income during the fishing season.

Once the lobster fishery is over, licence holders and crew members who want to can seek employment somewhere else.

The same applies in Nova Scotia.

Newfoundland and Labrador is the only province in Atlantic Canada with the income rule for fish harvesters.