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I am the president of Maison Beausoleil,
as well as of Aquaculture acadienne,
an oyster farm on the east coast of New Brunswick, at Richibucto.
I have been involved in oyster farming for 25 years.
My name is Amédée Savoie.
I am the executive director of Maison Beausoleil
and president of Scène Aquaculture,
a production company in Neguac.
I’ve been involved in the industry for about 15 years;
we’ve been working in the oyster industry for 15 years.
Aquaculture operations–suspended oyster culture
began some 20 years ago,
after we made several trips abroad.
We went to visit culture operations in France and Japan
and brought European and Japanese methods to Canada.
We learned how to manage oyster bags
under the ice and how to retrieve them in winter.
In New Brunswick, although we have our own oyster farming companies,
we buy from other growers as well,
so we have about 15 employees working in our plant.
And in the partnership, between Maurice and myself,
there are about 40 employees,
plus all the other regional operations.
One of the raisons d’être of Maison Beausoleil
is to ensure product supply so we can develop new markets.
As far as product supply goes,
we realized that we would have to get people on board,
and that’s how things got started.
The benefit is that this has created a new source of income
for local communities, a fairly significant source of income.
We “employ” people for eight months
of the year in the regions,
whereas in the past they only had work for maybe 10 weeks.
That is the other benefit that the industry provides.
Also, in the early years,
production totalled just 15 metric tonnes.
Today, we produce some 500 metric tonnes,
and the plant is open year-round,
so we provide permanent jobs.