[Newsbot]

Title: Nunavut shrimp interests say Thailand slave-labour stock 'taints' entire industry
Category: Business
Posted By: andyt
Date: 2015-12-18 07:16:24
Canadian

[andyt]

$1:

"Not a lot of shrimp from Nunavut will be going anywhere in Canada," said Jerry Ward, chair of the Nunavut Offshore Allocation Holders Association, which represents Nunavut's offshore fishing industry.

Canada is the largest producer of cold-water shrimp in the world. Nunavut harvests about 10,000 tonnes of shrimp per year, mostly from large offshore factory-freezer vessels.

MV Sivullik
Crew of the MV Sivullik lounge in the dining area. These shrimp fishers are subject to Canada's labour standards, unlike their counterparts allegedly working as slaves in Thailand. (BFC)

"The vast majority of the product is sold into Asian countries and to some of the shrimp plants in some of the Scandinavian countries, or even Greenland," said Ward.

With no ports in the territory, Arctic shrimp is offloaded in Greenland or Newfoundland, and shipped directly to Europe or Asia. Some crews fly to those ports to get on and off the boats.

Typical Canada. We ship our shrimp to Asia while importing slave labor shrimp from Asia. Sounds like our oil policy.

[BartSimpson]

Instead of writing a bunch of welfare cheques to people in Nunavut then how about using some of that same money to build a decent port in Nunavut where the same people who'd be on support could enjoy even better paying jobs?

[andyt]

If you try to employ everybody in Nunavut in the shrimp industry they'll be gone in no time.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

If you try to employ everybody in Nunavut in the shrimp industry they'll be gone in no time.

Not everybody will get a job in the shrimp industry. Some will and then they'll have money to buy more groceries, to buy a nice snowmobile, to pay some more taxes, and they'll be able to afford to send their kids to college. All things that will help employ yet other people in Nunavut.

And so what if people leave for a better life somewhere else? Inevitably that will open up opportunities for people from elsewhere to pursue a better life in Nunavut.

[andyt]

Some already have, as the article makes clear.

We'd better hope for more climate change if we want to build a decent port in Nunavut. And I'm not sure the economics of building a port just for shrimp make sense. But if the shrimp can be shipped to Newfoundland, as they are now, they can then be shipped to the rest of Canada as easily as to Asia. And what about Churchill?

And the article does make suggestions on how Canada could invest in this industry. As long as it doesn't turn into another boondoggle. The main problem will be price, doubt it will ever competed with slave labor shrimp, so we need an advertising campaign to get people to demand the better shrimp and be willing to pay more for it.