Local 207 attends US Canadian Town Hall Meeting

Minister of Fisheries Finnigan and Virginia Olsen at the US-Canada Lobster Town Hall meeting

The 21st annual US-Canada Lobster Town Hall Meeting was January 21-23 in Moncton, NB. The event brought over 200 industry members that included lobster fishermen, processors, and buyers from Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Atlantic Canadian provinces to discuss issues fishermen face, Market Challenges and Opportunities, Fisheries Management, Science and Collaboration, and Perspectives on Cross-Border Unity. Virginia attended the industry meeting with US and Canadian counterparts before this meeting began and delivered remarks from The Maine Lobstering Union-Local 207, and harvest sector updates. "If we wait for fisheries managers to figure out the grey zone, it will never get fixed. We need to create a bilateral committee of fishermen, processors, dealers, and managers from both sides of the border to sit down and fix the problem." Virginia said. This was the same message delivered to the USITC in Washington D,C, while she presented at the USMCA trade hearing.