The fact the Ghiz government is now finally admitting the former Ocean Choice fish plant will not reopen in Souris is of little comfort to the 300 employees facing termination of unemployment benefits in a matter of weeks.
The admission should come as no surprise. There is no doubting the Ghiz government hoped the plant would reopen. Hope doesn’t create jobs or sell product. The reality of the fishing industry spoke differently. It’s a reality the hollow words that elected Liberal politicians ignored for the past year.
But the closure of the Ocean Choice plant is as much a reflection of Ghiz government ideology as any downward pressure on the industry. For purely political reasons it refused to deal with the company because for years the premier took every opportunity to vilify OCI’s deal with the previous Tory administration. That ideology meant there was never any substantive discussion about ways to improve fishing industry profitability, such as increased storage capacity, which would allow lobster to be sold at times that command better prices.
Government is promising a ‘comprehensive’ package to further prop up displaced workers. It is a Band-Aid that refuses to deal with the real issues.
Many fishermen operate under the delusion that processors are in collusion to drive the price down.
Many wrongly believe there is a direct connection between the price on the wharf and the price paid by a customer in a white tablecloth restaurant. There is no connection.
Enough time has passed from the economic collapse of 2008 to realize that a fundamental change in the pricing of lobster has occurred. Four years ago it was considered a premium product. Now consumers balk if it’s more than $5.50 out of the back of a truck or $7.99 in a major grocery store. They simply will not pay more.
That is a reality the fishing industry must come to grips with. And the only way to do it is to engage all lobster fishermen in Nova Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick and even Maine. We need to invest in storage. We need to control the flow of lobster into the market. We need to redouble our efforts at developing value added products.
The PEI government has initiated none of these discussions because the structure of our government does not easily allow for regional co-operation, even if it is in the best interests of our provincial economy.
We would rather create tiny political fiefdoms. Our politicians would rather stand in Souris and brag, like Fisheries and Rural Development Minister Ron MacKinley did recently, that a new road or senior’s manor is somehow economic development.
It’s plain silly. The victims of this political game are people like the former workers of OCI who now face a very uncertain future. Government may throw a few pebbles to temporarily offset their circumstances, but the core issues our rural communities face will remain unchallenged.
Many more rural residents will be forced to leave.
PEI needs a real discussion about rural economic development. We need to talk about our growing demographic challenge, how we attract Islanders home, how we attract and keep immigrants in rural PEI, the potential economic benefit of free post secondary education, how do we diversify the rural economy, how we do maximize farm and fishing revenue, what is the correlation between the quality of local health care services and the ability to entice development, and how do we strengthen the rural voice through the merging of local governments?
So many difficult questions and so little leadership. It’s a losing combination.

Paul MacNeill is Publisher of Island Press Limited. He can be contacted at paul@peicanada.com