Fisheries Committee on May 18th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Gentlemen, I think we do have quorum. We have witnesses, and we have a very tight timeline today.

I'd like to invite our witnesses, Mr. John Hughes, president of the Gulf Trollers Association; and Jim Nightingale, director of the Gulf Trollers Association. Welcome, gentlemen.

The clerk informs me I'm supposed to say the orders of the day are, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a study on fisheries management.

Now we're going to welcome our witnesses.

You have 10 minutes. I would ask you to stay within the 10-minute parameter, please. That will allow ample time for questioning. I know it's always a little difficult to keep a 10-minute brief, but we'll assist.

[John Hughes, President, Gulf Trollers Association]

Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for granting us this meeting here today.

My name is John Hughes. I'm the president of the Gulf Trollers Association, and with me is Jim Nightingale, one of our directors.

The commercial salmon fishery on the west coast of Canada is comprised of approximately 540 trollers, 1400 gillnetters, and 280 seiners. The Gulf Trollers, who Jim and I represent, comprise 124 of the licensed vessels within the troll group. We are hook and line fishers who produce a high-value salmon, destined mainly for restaurant markets around the world.

Many of us have spent our lives in this fishery and, until recent times, have made a reasonable living. Unfortunately, the last decade has seen some extremely grim years. If changes are not made quickly to the west coast commercial salmon fishery, we will be drifting into extinction. This is not the result of a lack of fish. It's the result of the way DFO manages the fishery. It was said very clearly in the Pearse-McRae report, “the time for tinkering is past”. We need a major change and we need it now.

We have come through a period during which DFO reallocated our catch. This was done to support the settlement of native land claims, to appease sports fishing interests, and in response to the threat of SARA legislation. DFO's actions may have satisfied those demands, but resulted in the crippling of the fishery. Our fishers can't last much longer unless major change comes to the way this resource is allocated.

In order to become viable, we need three things to happen. In 2006, we need DFO to assign an exploitation rate of 40% on Cultus Lake sockeye stocks. We need this in order to harvest the large numbers of abundant sockeye that will be returning, mixed in with this stock of concern. This is the bumper year of the four-year sockeye cycle. This is the year that the commercial industry normally uses to carry itself through the next couple of years, which are going to be pretty lean. It really is now or never for us; we're on our knees.

In return for granting the 40% exploitation on this stock, the commercial industry will take 100,000 sockeye from their catch to be put back into funding the infrastructure of the Commercial Salmon Advisory Board, plus share in a multi-year plan, fostered by us, to rebuild Cultus Lake stocks. This is a significant amount of money and would be a breakthrough in co-management.

Additionally, before 2007 and into the future, DFO needs to change its allocation practices to ensure that every user group is accountable for its catch. To do this, we need each sector, including the sports and the native, to be assigned a fixed percentage of the total allowable catch, to be held accountable for its share of the catch, and to be assigned a harvest ceiling on the stocks of concern within that catch.

The last step we require in becoming viable again is a new sharing arrangement within the various sectors making up the commercial fishery. A new allocation formula must be developed that's based on pieces or weight, rather than on ex-vessel value. The present allocation formula drives salmon prices down, rewards low quality, and punishes those doing value-added work to the fish on their vessels—clearly the wrong way to use a Canadian resource.

We would like to continue to be commercial fishermen, and we'd like to continue supplying Canada with wild caught salmon. But if, in its wisdom, the Government of Canada has decided they would rather see this salmon resource harvested in a different manner, then we expect Canada to do the proper thing. Reallocation without compensation is not acceptable in any other resource industry. We question why it is being done in the fishing industry.

In closing, what we are asking of your committee is the following. We want support for the 40% exploitation rate on Cultus stocks. We would like support for our proposal that allocation is the key to conservation. Each user group must have a fixed percentage of the allocation pie. It must have a ceiling assigned on stocks of concern, and it must be held accountable for its catch. We also request that you send a letter to DFO requesting support for the Commercial Salmon Advisory Board, in resolving the issue of inter-sectoral allocation. To do that, we need a mediator, and we need DFO to supply us with their technical people to help us resolve this issue.

But most important of all, we need DFO to make a statement. We need them to tell the CSAB that they will support us until the end of the year in resolving our problems with reallocation within the commercial industry. If we are unable to do that by the end of the year, they will force binding arbitration.

Gentlemen, we have supplied two briefs, which are in front of you. In one brief, there's a correction on the second page that's in the works.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I would like to apologize and to interrupt for one second, Messieurs. We were unable to get all of the briefs translated on time. One was translated, and there was another that wasn't.

[John Hughes]

So there will be some changes coming to this brief. While we were in Ottawa, one more document came to our knowledge, and we will also supply this document; this morning it'll be translated. This document more eloquently expresses exactly what we've said here. He's an independent individual and obviously not a fisherman--he could express himself in a much better manner.

I'll close here and take questions, but I'd like to thank you. This morning when I got up and opened the drapes, it looked just like the Queen Charlotte Islands.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Nightingale, did you have anything to add?

[Jim Nightingale, Director, Gulf Trollers Association]

No, I'll participate by taking questions, but I'll leave that as our statement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. MacAulay, you have 10 minutes

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you very much.

Welcome. I'm glad to meet you again.

I'd like you to expand on a number of things. I had the pleasure of sitting down with you for a few minutes a day ago, but I'd like you to explain to the committee the value-added, what happens to the value-added when you add value-added to the fish, and how that affects the quota, and how it affects what amount of pieces or fish that you're about to receive or that you're allocated, and how you feel it should be done. Possibly other sectors in the fishery should be encouraged or something should be done on an equal playing field. If I understand it correctly, you've value-added your fish, and because you've value-added your fish you get fewer pieces. I think it's important the committee hears that.

Also, I understand some species are in trouble. You touched on that slightly in your opening statement, but I'd like you to expand on that because I think the committee needs to hear what you intend to do, or what you will do to help re-establish that species. Of course, that's a great value to the fishery.

Also, I don't believe you mentioned it, but I'd like you to inform the committee as to what difficulties you're having with the sports fishery. We all like sports and this type of thing, but we need to understand what that does to your income and how it affects what you actually make. You're a commercial fisherman, you need to make a living, and it's important the committee and the government understand what takes place when a lot of pieces or allocation goes to the sports fishery.

If you could enlighten the committee on these points, it would be very much appreciated.

[John Hughes]

As far as the value-added process goes, the way the commercial fishery is allocated within the three gear sectors, it's done on value of the fish and it's done with a sockeye equivalence, which can be a little bit complicated, but if you just stick with the value of the fish, how it's allocated within the groups, it will cover the concern here.

Trollers, by the very nature of the fishery, handle each fish individually. The fish is killed, it's bled, it's gutted, and it's individually handled. In some cases it's taken--maybe about half the trollers have freezers at sea and they freeze it and they put out a beautiful product. We get top dollar for that product, and it seems like an excellent piece of business to do.

The net fleets, the seiners, and the gillnetters sell their fish in the raw. They're not bled, and it's just a full package. They're actually processed in the plants. For our fish, in some cases, the only thing they do in the frozen case is maybe put them in a plastic bag and sell them to the retail customer.

What happens the following year is this. You've produced a nice piece of cash from your business, but in the following year allocation is done on value. So the trollers are punished because they've added extra value on the product at ex-vessel. The net fleets get more fish out of the process because they've produced a lower-quality product and they get rewarded by getting more fish given to them to try to balance the earnings. Clearly this is a real concern, because we should be trying to get as much value as we can out of this resource, and each sector should be encouraged to add value.

What we are proposing to change this process is to not use value but to use either pieces or weight to allocate the product. If you use pieces or weight, then every single vessel, every single fisherman, has a vested interest in increasing the value of that fish.

So I hope that answers that one question, and Jim, perhaps you can do Cultus Lake.

[Jim Nightingale]

I'll just finish what John was saying by pointing out that the study that has not been translated yet and has just been submitted is called “Allocation within Commercial Fisheries in Canada” and is on Pacific herring, salmon, and groundfish. This paper, prepared and presented by Gordon Gislason, goes into great detail and explains very clearly sockeye equivalents. When you get that paper, if you were to read it, you'd have a very good explanation of what John is talking about regarding sockeye equivalents, which is quite technical to get into here.

Concerning Cultus Lake, there is a run coming back this year on the Fraser River. There are 18 million sockeye coming back. This is a huge number of fish and this is a run that in the past we would have made a lot of money from, but this year we have a situation with the Cultus Lake stocks. Cultus Lake is a lake very close to Vancouver. It's just a little way up the river and there are a lot of problems in that lake. The sockeye that go in there are in big trouble. Last year we were not allowed to fish at all because of concerns with that run and the timing and the way they came in.

We are allowed to take a certain amount of that run--a certain percentage--as what we call “morts”. To be able to catch any amount of that fish, we think we need to have an allocation of morts on that stock of 40%. This seems like a high number, but we've planned amelioration on that lake. We have a proposal to look after some of the problems, to spend money looking after.... This is a first for fishermen, to tax themselves to do the work to ameliorate the problems in the lake. We have consulted scientists and we have reports that tell us that our work on that lake will be of more benefit to bringing the stock back than cutting back the commercial fishery to a lower rate of harvest, and that it should be able to sustain a 40% harvest rate.

The problem on the lake is that milfoil has been introduced. And the milfoil has created a situation where the pikeminnow, which is a predator of the small salmon, is able to hide in the milfoil and attack the small salmon as they're hatching and going out of the lake. It's a major problem.

The problem isn't so much with the commercial fishing; the problem is in the lake, and this proposal will do much.... If we were to stop the commercial fishing of this stock without looking after the problems in the lake--maybe I'm going on a bit long here--that run would become extinct. We have to look after the problems in the lake.

Go ahead, John.

[John Hughes]

What we have a problem with here is that this run is endangered. Unfortunately, this run also comes in with the 17.5 million sockeye that aren't endangered. They're mixed in and we can't tell them apart, which means that when we catch the stock of abundance, we also catch the stock of concern. It really hamstrings our fishery.

The Commercial Salmon Advisory Board hired a biologist to have a look at the lake and see what we could do. Overfishing in the lake is not the problem, the problem is in the lake itself. We decided to put together a chunk of money and invest in enhancement in that lake to see if we could bring back that lake. Our biologist tells us that if we do this remedial work, we will have a better return in four years than if we don't even fish. So it's a major step forward.

We asked DFO if we could do this last year and we were flatly turned down. We're dusting it off and asking to do it this year. DFO told us last year, “If you can convince the natives on the river to do this, we'll support you; otherwise you're on your own.” This year we went around and talked to all the user groups. All the commercial fishing groups are onside. The Sportfishing Advisory Board is onside. The Native Brotherhood, which represents the 30% of commercial fishermen who are natives within our group, are onside. The ocean natives in Johnstone Strait are onside. The environmentalists wanted to hold us to 11% last year, but we're hearing that they could maybe go for 30% if we did all this remedial work.

The last ones to get onside were the in-river natives. We really didn't have much hope for that. With 97 bands on the Fraser River, it's quite a job. Nonetheless, last week our counterparts met with some native representatives, and they're meeting with them again later this week and next. The natives have questioned our science. We'll be busy next week exploring that science with them some more. They also want some recognition, in trade, that we recognize that they have some economic opportunities with these fish.

We have reluctantly agreed to this, but we have some provisos on it--that the fishery operates similar to our fishery, under the same rules, and that accountability is extremely important. Every fish has to be counted or we're all in trouble.

It looks like we may be able to pull enough support together to make this thing happen this year. It's really an exciting prospect. It must happen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

We'll go on to our second questioner.

Mr. Roy, seven minutes, s'il vous plaît.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was reading your document and listening to you speak about the new management framework. You refer to four options. I would like to know a bit more about your relations with FOC at this time .

A bit further in your brief, you say that it is each year a difficult exercise. If I understand correctly, there is each year a new resource allocation exercise and each year a new negotiation with the department and with all the industry groups, and that would not change with the new system. So, you would like the management framework or resource allocation framework to be changed and to become permanent in other to give some stability to your industry. Am I correct?

[John Hughes]

From my perspective, the major problem with our interchange with DFO and co-management is that the policies we have set in place are all open-ended. There's no finite time on them. There's no requirement to review them. I firmly believe that any policy you put in place should have a mandatory review at some point in time so that you can force changes to happen where they have to happen.

Right now we have a sports priority access that is absolutely killing the commercial fishery. We can't effect any change, because that's the policy. That's what we're told: that's the policy. In terms of the allocation within the commercial sector itself, every single user group admits that it's broken, that it doesn't work, but that's the policy.

We're having great difficulty ourselves, within the commercial sector, changing that policy and agreeing on what it should be. Even though we all agree it's broken, somebody is going to have to give something up to change it, and that's a very difficult thing.

So I think you have to have these things forced upon you at some point in time. The SARA legislation is killing us, but at least when they put it in there they put in a forced review period at the end of five years. Every piece of legislation should have that. Every policy should have that.

I hope that answers your question.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I have some concern with part of your answer to my question. You say to that the department is granting priority access to sports fishermen and that it does not want to review its policy. That is clearly your message. However, if the department wants to review its policy, it will have to discuss with all the user groups.

Is the sports fishing industry willing to compromise? That is probably the main issue since there will have to be negotiations with the various user groups. That might be one of the reasons why the department does not want to review the policy.

[John Hughes]

The sport-fishing industry, and it is an industry, has a very powerful lobby. A lot of people buy sport licences. Politicians respond to a lot of voters. The actual lobby itself is made up extensively of businessmen. There are lodges and there are very large charter vessels that make a great living catching basically the same fish we're after.

As recently as the last five years, this growth has been phenomenal in British Columbia. For instance, five or six years ago, on the north coast, there was a very low catch of chinook salmon, one of our key fisheries as a troller. Last year they took 80,000 pieces--80,000 spring salmon. This year we're assigned 156,000 spring salmon; they're assigned 75,000. On the coho side of the business, they're up to over 100,000 fish a year, a tremendous amount of fish.

They have what's called priority access. A number of years ago, Canada deemed that this fishery was more valuable than ours, so they gave them priority access in years of low abundance so they could run their businesses. Well, that's turned into priority access all the time. The bomb we had dropped on us a week or so ago by Fisheries and Oceans Canada....

By the way folks, if the west coast of Vancouver Island chinook catch goes over 10%, you won't get fish next year. What's going on here is that in the Queen Charlotte Islands we fish chinook, and there are some very healthy runs there. But the west coast of Vancouver Island chinook are endangered. In order to protect them, we're being held to a 6% harvest this year. In other words, 100% of our harvest is looked at, and if it's over 6% of west coast Vancouver Island spring salmon, we're in trouble.

Right now, as we speak, there's a boat out there test fishing. And every two weeks a boat goes out there test fishing, and we're paying for that ourselves, the fishermen. We do DNA testing on that fish, and it establishes the percentage of west coast fish in there. If it's over 6%, we don't go fishing. If it's under 6%, we go out fishing. If it goes over 6% when we're out there, we're moved out of those waters or we're shut down. At the same time, the commercial lodges down the coast are left to fish. In fact, the mobile mother ships can move into those areas with their sport fishermen and fish and catch the very stock we're concerned about.

That would be fine if they had their own level they had to manage to, but what happens is that all of it is put into a pot, and at the end of the year it's looked at, and if it's over 10%, we don't fish the following year, but the sport fishermen do.

What we're saying here, and what we're requesting, is that everybody be put on a level playing field. Give them a piece of the pie, but hold them accountable also to the level of endangered fish.

[Jim Nightingale]

Mr. Keddy, may I comment on this, too?

I'd like to point out that the halibut fishery has also had a problem with the sport catch increasing at its expense, and there's been a 12% cap put on the sport catch of halibut. The same lodges that target spring salmon on the west coast of the Charlottes also target halibut, and they've been given a 12% cap. We've been given a promise by the minister that they'll be held to that, which the halibut fishermen are very happy about. We really need something like this with the sport fishery's allocation.

The trouble is, and John said it in his presentation, without allocation, the different user groups fight over the resource, and they don't look after conservation. And in the case of the commercial sport fishing industry, they have no motivation to be worried about conservation, because they just keep taking away from us. If we are all given a set piece of the pie, then we will be much better at looking after the resource. And we need to look after the resource.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I appreciate that.

We're going to hear our next witness. That's the end of the seven-minute round. We have ten minutes, which will be split between Mr. Cummins and Mr. Kamp, I believe.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you very much for showing here this morning, gentlemen.

What I want to do is go back to this Cultus thing, because I think the Cultus issue is probably going to be the defining issue in the fishery this year. I'd like to walk you through it to make sure everybody around the table understands what we're talking about here.

There are 17 million or 18 million sockeye returning to the Fraser this year. Half of that, roughly, will be the total allowable catch, which will be divided up between the various user groups.

You suggested—and correctly so—that the exploitation rate of those Cultus sockeye was, I think, 11% last year, and that's the number that's on the table now and that's being negotiated. The commercial fleet is saying the exploitation rate should be about 40%. There are some native groups saying zero.

When we're talking about a 12% exploitation rate, we're not talking about very many fish, are we?

[John Hughes]

No, we're not.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

About how many?

[John Hughes]

I don't have a calculator. It's probably about—

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

It's only a matter of a few hundred fish, isn't it?

[John Hughes]

Yes, maybe about 500 fish.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Yes. The issue here, really—and correct me if I'm wrong—is that the department thinks the problem is outside the lake, that they can fix the problem in Cultus Lake if they restrict commercial fishing. That's the big fix. Is that correct?