Geoff Irvine, the Executive Director of the Lobster Council of Canada (LCC), said that the council needs to find a permanent way to fund its activities to promote the Atlantic and Quebec lobster industry.
While the council runs on a year-to-year basis on grants from the five provinces involved, the federal government and from voluntary dues paid by some harvester groups and companies, the council needs major funding to have a serious impact on building a demand for the Canadian brand of lobster.
Irvine said, “We’ll be having high level meetings with government officials to see if there’s any political will to work with the council in bringing in some type of levy that all stakeholders in the industry would pay which would be used to help us brand Canadian lobster.”
Apparently, the state of Maine has legislation in place to give approval to share cost the branding of Maine lobsters on a 50-50 basis between fishermen and buyers in that state.
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