The provincial government is taking steps to reduce corporate concentration in the snow crab fishery, essentially allowing harvesters to acquire processing licences and sell to themselves.

That means a group of harvesters with at least 4.5 million pounds of quota in total could get together, form a company, and apply for a processing licence.

Fisheries Minister Gerry Byrne says there are many empty and under-utilized plants that could be used for processing. He says when harvesters don’t work, nobody in the industry works.

“There can be no dispute over what the market price should be because right now the process is filled with acrimony,” said Byrne. “This is an option that groups of harvesters have if they want to take advantage of it.”

Those who work the boats lobbied government during protests at Confederation Building last year for permission to sell their product out of province.

However, Byrne says it was the processors who took advantage of that option, citing one on the west coast, as well as Quinlan Brothers and others.

“They shipped crab out of the province for processing elsewhere. Now, more plant workers will have jobs, where they would not have had them before, because outside buyers were actually inside buyers.”