Imagine that Newfoundland and Labrador

Is it Scotland's Oil and Gas offshore?

Answer: The vast majority of oil and gas in the UK comes from the Scottish Continental Shelf and will be in Scotland after independence.

Analysis by academics at Aberdeen University tells us that in excess of 90 per cent of the oil and gas revenues are from fields in Scottish waters (based on well-established principles of international law).

DFO destroying Fisheries Science Documents

So where are we on this bit of news? Please read below a News Release by The Green Party of Canada.

Have we lost any research from our waters?

Is Minister Keith Hutchings all over this?

Green Party condemns destruction of world-renowned Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries

On Tuesday, December 10th, 2013 in

The dismantling of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans library system has taken a dramatic turn, with thousands of valuable books and scientific documents, some dating back to the 19th century, being sent to the dumpster over the past week.
The Green Party of Canada today voiced its condemnation of this reckless destruction of scientific resources. “Consistent with their policy of muzzling scientists, the Conservatives have now moved on to trashing libraries,” said Elizabeth May, Green Leader and MP for Saanich–Gulf Islands. “This administration seems to be deliberately undermining our ability to make good policy decisions by limiting access to scientific evidence.”
Some 40,000 documents from the now-defunct Eric Marshall Aquatic Research Library at the University of Manitoba are currently being relocated to a federal library in the Green Leader’s own riding. “Some of the library’s materials won’t be destroyed, but it is impossible to say just how much we’ve lost,” said May.
“This is the latest in the methodical destruction of fisheries and marine ecosystem intellectual resources,” said Janice Harvey, Fisheries Critic for the Green Party. “The same thing happened last year at the St. Andrews Biological Station, the oldest federal research facility in Canada.”
In addition to a state-of-the-art library facility with thousands of scientific documents, The St. Andrews Biological Station lost its ecotoxicology unit, whose scientists were at the forefront of research into the ecosystem effects of toxic chemicals used in the farmed salmon industry in the Bay of Fundy.
To date, the Harper administration has already shut down or consolidated an additional twelve library systems, serving departments ranging from Natural Resources to Parks Canada.

Define Moratorium

Moratorium - A SUSPENSION of Activity

So that's where we are? A suspension of activity?

This suspension of activity has caused the loss of over 40,000 people from our province.
This suspension of activity has caused the death or near-death of some rural communities.
This suspension of activity has caused the loss of relationships and breakup of families.
This suspension of activity has caused the closure of secondary related business and industry.

Moratorium sounds so - clinical - and in some ways hopeful.

This word is not appropriate for the loss of our cod fishery/ground stocks.
This word does not do justice in defining the catastrophic damage caused due to "suspension" of activity.

Somehow Canada - Ottawa - the Feds - have convinced many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians that it's our fault or at the least we are partially to blame.

Listening to Canada - or federal politicians from other provinces make this claim - is - what I can expect. Listening to our own politicians and experts making the same claim is sickening.

So how did Canadian and Newfoundland and Labrador politicians get away with the largest socio/enviro mess ever seen in this country?

1. Announce a moratorium in 1992 and claim that stocks will recover - should have been fixed by 2002. (DID NOT HAPPEN)

2. Announce programs to bridge the gap for fishermen, plantworkers, and communities (DID NOT begin to COVER LOSS)

3. Increase Fisheries Science (DID NOT HAPPEN)

4. Retirement Packages (DID NOT HAPPEN)

5. Then they slowly got us used to words like rationalization, down-sizing, and right-sizing - carefully explaining to us that the fishery was never meant to handle that many people. (BUNK)

6. From there we went to dumping FPI and eliminating marketing.

7. They closed one plant - most other plants and workers shut-up - they feared they would be next.

8. They have and continue to pit one community against another.

9. Downloading federal fishery support services to the province.

10. Pit offshore against inshore - recreational against commercial.

11. Use municipal politicians by offering pavement, arenas, tourism dollars, and water/sewer.

12. Commit to one study after another to delay any real action.

13. Pit urban residents against rural residents.

14. Promote and focus on non-renewable oil assets.

15. Above all - convince us - we were greedy, we took all the fish, and we destroyed ourselves.

16. Marginalize people like Gus Etchegary and Phil Earle.

17. Eliminate the people left with EI changes.

18. Give all fish to kingpins.

19. Over utilization of other stocks.

All of this while the FACT remains that management was the responsibility of the federal government. They were negligent. As a result we were harmed. Therefore we need compensation. 1 billion a year until the stocks return.

The Ministers of Fishery we have had federal and provincial are too gutless, ignorant, or complicit to do what is needed.

Go American all the way Harper, Toews, and MacKay

Vic, Peter, and Stephen want to be treated like Canadians - while they treat Canadian citizens like Americans. Not On!

Tell Vic Toews Everything was a social media revolt opposed to the Minister's proposed bill to give a free reign of investigation to law enforcement on ordinary Canadian Citizens. The online surveillance bill contained things that even the Minister was not aware of.

Putting aside for a moment that Toews should have resigned his portfolio based on his ignorance - Toews should have been prepared to come under extreme scrutiny by ordinary Canadians not used to this type of police state power.

So Toews, Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper are pushing an American agenda down our throats - the only problem is they don't want American back at them.

Toews was offended at his opponents taking cracks at his personal life and making public information - so public.

MacKay was offended by Canadians who questioned his privileged vacation flight from the Gander river - courtesy of Search and Rescue.

Harper is never really offended by anything - his steely blue lyin eyes reveal that his is a purpose of delivering the goods.

MacKay is a traitor - straight up - lied and almost single-handedly delivered the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to the Reformers. He either is a straight-up liar or he was purchased to pay off debts accumulated during his campaign to lead the federal PC`s.

Toews and his public temper tantrum over the public release of public information is laughable - and I will tell you why. Mr. Toews and his gun slinging government are looking to breach the privacy of law abiding Canadians without so much as a warrant. At the same time they have killed the gun registry and are seeking to put more people in jail (tough on crime). What follows from here is in Stephen Harper's private little world - where his buddies seek to establish private prisons to be filled with non-violent offenders. Yes you and I will pay for the maximum security detail and the "entrepreneurs" will take the rest. Problem is they don't know if they have enough to fill their proposed private jails.Easy fix - put everybody in jail for a joint of weed.

So Mr. Toews, Mr. MacKay, and Mr. Harper - you want us to treat you like Canadians. Stay out of your private lives - be polite and not talk about your little indiscretions - while you get to treat us like Americans. Sorry - that's not how it works.

From now on I want to see ten years of your tax returns, I want the full deal on Toews and any others the same way the American people got to do the job on John Edwards. Let me see now John had affair with a household staffer and broke elections rules - fair game from now on Mr. Toews - you got the Canadian beat right out of me.

Peter Mackay - I want to know all about you and all the other girls every detail and I'd like to see what would happen to you in the USA if you let's say betrayed the Republicans and merged with the Libertarians. As for Harper - he is much more American that Michael Ignatieff ever was or could be and he will pay the piper.

In the Prime Minister's case we get to know about his last colonoscopy and whether or not he has polyps. what type of treatment he received, how the operation went - and the prognosis.

You people are a joke - you want to shove the stars and stripes down our maple leaf throats then be prepared for absolute scrutiny of every aspect of your personal lives. 

And while we are going American - please allow the American naval fleet to deal with foreign fishing trawlers. They'd be willing to call a war on that issue.

Dr. Phil Earle responds to Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield

Below please find a response to Federal Fisheries Minister - Keith Ashfield from Dr. Phil Earle

 

Dear Minister Ashfield, March 1/2012

Part 1  

I would like to respond to your letter in a step wise manner, and I would like for you to answer my comments for the people of this province.

First what does “..we are time and again being out-performed by smaller countries with less access to the resource” refer to? Are you talking about NAFO countries that fish on our shelf, such as Spain? If it is, the answer is Spain has one of the largest fishing fleets in the world which is subsidized nearly a billion dollars a year by the EU to fish around the world.

Further if you and the DFO are inferring that we should therefore increase our efforts to catch more fish it would be a totally wrong conclusion. Our ground fish stocks have never recovered and are at an all-time low of less than 10% of historic healthy levels. We need to stop the fishing destruction that is occurring at present so the stocks can be allowed to recover. That includes the fishing inside our 200 mile EEZ and that of NAFO fleets fishing on the nose and tail of the grand banks.

Quote, “everyone is demanding change in how we manage the resource.” This is a non-specific remark that can be taken in a range all the way from more of the disastrous federal government’s mismanagement that has, and is destroying the resource to reducing government involvement in management while letting more influence in management from improved, prudent, scientific input like is done in other successful countries like Norway and Iceland.

 
“Canadian fishermen remain among the lowest earners in Canada.’ This is because the bulk of our resource and its profits are in the hands of a few powerful, wealthy people who own processing operations, and own quotas which your government gave to them. They operate factory freezer trawlers which have taken thousands of jobs away from inshore fishers while they send unprocessed fish away from our shore planets, giving jobs to foreign nation. Many harvesters’ licences are owned or contorted by corporations so that fishers working at sea have been squeezed out of their incomes by the need of companies to increase their profits.

 
There are people, such as doctors and dentists and the like, living on the main land who have never stepped on the deck of a boat who own fish quota’s, they receive millions of dollars a year from royalties on fish being caught. There is only so much profit that can be taken out of each season of fishing, if large percentages of this limited profit is taken by such ‘outsiders’ there is less and less for our fishers and plant workers.

 
Consider that in 1992, the year of the moratorium, our NL fishery was worth some $350 million and today it is near $900 million but yet our situation is worst then in 92 as we are losing more jobs and plants, fishers and coastal communities. So it’s easy to understand why our fishers are among the lowest earners in Canada, it is just economics 101. You can understand that can’t you?

“Canada’s fishery is becoming a smaller and smaller player on the world stage. We are no longer seeing the abundance of fish that our country enjoyed in the past, so we can no longer rely on the quantity of this renewable resource to create economic prosperity; better management practices are required. Our government has been making strides in helping the fishery.’

Our fishery is smaller because the bio mass of our fish is at an all-time low, the stocks have been destroyed are not allowed to recover because of mismanagement of the federal government. Your government wants to create economic prosperity for the elite few who now control the fishery.

Part 2  

Continuing the same practices that you have created in the past for giant corporations that has destroyed, and is, and will totally destroy the rest of the resource in the future if you continue in the manner you are implying in this letter.

 
The only way you can create further economic prosperity for anyone from our depleted, dying resource is for less and less peoples and corporations to take more and more of the less and less fish. You know what that means don’t you. In 10 years there will be no fishers, no plant workers, no comminutes in coastal NL and lastly no fishing corporations..because there will be no more fish.

Your government has been making strides in one direction, not in the direction of helping the fishery, but in the direct of destroying it, destroying our treasured heritage and our coastal communities, our maritime culture and our family structure. That is a Fact!

In 62 years of confederation you have taken away our spirit fish, by giving it indifferently to foreign countries, denied its access from our coastal people, and allowed cooperate greed to privatize and garbage can our legacy. You and you alone, the federal government of Canada, have destroyed the spirit of my people, whose ancestors were once the greatest fishermen in the world, the greatest sea people that ever lived.

”We must find ways to make the fishery more valuable, profitable and respectful of the resource for future generations.” If by value you mean the economic success of a few large processing companies there will be no respect of the resource, the fish stocks that god gave us, and in a few short years it will be no more. Your concern for “future generations” in that case is not just hollow, political, empty words they are the insensitive, thoughtless comments from a government who conducts themselves with absolute power, that have corrupted it absolutely.

Your corruption of power and ego is so complete that not only will it destroy the opportunities of our “future generations” of children; it would destroy that of your own children. Take a bow to the world Mr. Ashfield; take one for Canada to the world!

And as for the World Bank suggesting what we should do with our fishery for more money, they have a great record of being concerned for the global economy and the plight of the world starving peoples, who are in the 100's of millions. Their 100's of billions in profits and 100's of millions of dollars for salaries to their CEO’s really show how concerned they are for incomes of subsistence fisheries and laborers all over the world. They are concerned because it’s off the backs of labor industries that they cream off their billions, all on the backs of the struggling poor. Take another bow to the world Mr. Minister, for figuring out that you can squeeze out a few more million for the rich by abusing the lives of the fisher people.

All this ”.. means more jobs and more economic growth in our coastal and rural regions.”
The audaciousness of this remark is beyond my ability to express. How dare you write a letter and say such a thing about our fishery and to my people, and put it in our paper the telegram. You talk about more jobs and more economic growth in our coastal communities when you and the federal government are directly responsible in 20 years for destroying our families, fishers and fisheries jobs by the 10's of thousands. 

Part 3  

What you, and the federal government, are advocating in this letter will destroy our coastal way of life. Our NL soldiers fought in the great wars for Canada and the free world. Fought to protect their children’s, and their children’s children democratic rights as written in Canada’s ‘Chartered Bill of Rights’. If there is an ounce of decency anywhere in the halls of parliament or in the hearts of any person or member who works there I ask for it to be used to do the duty they have sworn to do. Administer to the costal people of NL, and their fishery, the principles so outlined in our bill of rights. Save us from the impending future genocide of our coastal way of life.

You asked for my engagement in this letter, of how we can better manage our Fishery for the future and how our coastal people can improve and save their lives. I have given you my honest answer to the best of my ability, so help me god.

Will you answer these questions for my people? The fisher people, the sea people of NL?

Philip Earle
B.Sc., M.Sc., M.D

Choo Choo - Confederation a locomotive of Destruction

Where is the train?

Where are the fish?

Where is the forestry industry?

Where is our population?

Where is the ship building?

Where is the hydro-power?

Where are the minerals?

Where is the industry?

Just as soon as the last drop of oil is gone - a have not province will sound good.

Systematic destruction of our country, her people, and future.

At least the electronic time capsules might be available to generations after we are long gone - maybe.

Iceland toSecure Rights on Continental Shelf (News Bytes)

Read the story in the Iceland Review HERE


Here's a couple of paragraphs to get you started...

In less than two years Iceland has to submit a report to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), which will then estimate reports from all nations claiming rights to the continental shelf in question and propose how it should be divided.

Iceland automatically has the rights to an area of the continental shelf limited by 200 nautical miles around the island, but can, under certain natural circumstances, claim rights to other parts of the continental shelf as well.