Cooke Receives Cash for Training

The money, part of a C$263 Fisheries Technology and New Opportunities Programme will help send Cooke employees from Harbour Breton to New Brunswick for processing training, and for the trained staff to help increase training at Harbour Breton.

Nell Halse, the director of communications with Cooke Aquaculture, told The Coaster community newspaper the company realised when officials made a deal with the community and the union to become involved with a work-share program that more workers would have to be trained, which would be an extra cost to the company.

"The provincial government, at that time, said that they would use the Fisheries Technology and New Opportunities Program to assist us in bearing some of that training cost. The government money, however, will only cover about one-third of what it will actually cost the company to train more people in the specific skills required for our operation at the Harbour Breton plant in processing salmon," Mrs. Halse told The Coaster.

She added that the salmon company could also employ a few more people in Gaultois, where it employs 12 people in its grow-out sites.