Premier Andrew Furey is making no commitments yet, but says government will be consulting with stakeholders in the fishery over the summer on ways to prevent another stalemate in the crab fishery.

The snow crab industry was at a standstill for the better part of two months as the Association of Seafood Producers and the FFAW couldn’t agree on a price for crab. With intervention from the top, a deal was reached last Friday.

Furey says they are committed to reviewing the process for setting the price of crab—though it was not a stipulation of last Friday’s agreement.

Furey notes that government wanted to change the process last year but both the ASP and FFAW declined.

Furey says the process was put in place to prevent a standoff, and clearly it didn’t work this year. Therefore, Furey says it is their responsibility to “improve the instrument, create a new instrument, or get rid of instruments all together.” He says it is important for both sides to honour the terms of the new process put in place.

FFAW President Greg Pretty says he’s pleased that the premier has committed to changes to the process.

He says even though the system was tweaked last year, it “still needs a lot of work.”

The Association of Seafood Producers says the delay in the crab fishery could have been shortened had discussions been allowed to continue uninterrupted.

Executive Director Jeff Loder says with government bringing the two sides together last week, they were able to have productive discussions around the price of crab with agreements reached on some incremental bumps.

However, Loder says these discussions surrounding the formula were consistent with conversations had back in March that were interrupted by rallying members of the FFAW.

He says while not the only reason, protests by harvesters delayed discussions by at least a full week.