Evidence of meeting #41 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Do you also have a breakdown of the participants in the recreational fishery when it comes to the commercial recreational fisheries and, say, the food fishery—people who are out fishing for their table versus businesses taking tourists out in a boat to catch a few fish?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
The only information I have there is that in 2011 DFO published a short report on their web page and it said that 60% of the total recreational halibut harvest could be attributed to the fishing lodges and charter vessels sector.
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Finally, in Newfoundland and Labrador jigging a cod for your table or your freezer is seen by many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, even so many years after the commercial moratorium, as God-given right.
This committee is not able to travel to B.C. It would be nice to be able to look into people's faces and ask them these types of questions, but how do people on the ground in B.C. see the halibut fishery? Is it a God-given right? Do they look at it as their absolute right to go out to fish for their table?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
I think there are people from the recreational sector who would say that it is their right to go out to fish for halibut, or any species for that matter. I don't think anyone in the commercial fishery would dispute that. Many commercial fishermen fish recreationally. It's just that this resource needs to be managed in a way that makes sense and that is sustainable. There is room for everybody, but when the catches are down as they are now, we all have to take cuts, and then when the resource rebounds, we'll all benefit.
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
But are the cuts proportional? Is the recreational crowd taking the same type of proportional cut as the commercial fishermen are?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
They would have if the allocation had remained the same and had not been changed in 2012, but now commercial fishermen, because they now have a smaller share, are bearing a larger burden of conservation. They're paying a greater cost for conservation.
Conservative
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Sporer, for taking the time to be with us today.
Let me begin by saying that I fully agree with your comments about the way the commercial halibut fishery is managed on B.C.'s coast. I was involved in the decision, back in the day, to implement the integrated groundfish fishery. I can tell you from this side that it was a pretty difficult decision, and I imagine it was probably at least as difficult or more difficult for the commercial sector to accept what was really being created by them but in a very cooperative and collaborative way. I really think it is one of the best in the world, so congratulations to all who have been part of that.
I think it hasn't been without its difficulties as well, but I don't want to talk about those today.
In your presentation, you mentioned the numbers. Just to clarify, you say a small number of British Columbians participate, and I suppose percentage-wise one might view it that way, but it's not an insignificant number. For recreational fishing, in British Columbia and around the country as well, if there are, say, between 300,000 and 400,000 British Columbians who fish recreationally, that really isn't insignificant.
Just to clarify on the halibut, you've given some numbers but I think your numbers are about recreational fishing for all species, not just for halibut. I think it is pretty clear that the interest in recreational fishing for halibut has actually increased over the years. Is that accurate or not?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
Well, for example, in the past four years the average number of licence sales to Canadians has been about 260,000 tidal water recreational licences. That's about 0.74% of the Canadian population.
With respect to the increase in interest in halibut, if you look at the DFO national survey on recreational angling in Canada for 2005 and for 2010, I think you will see that in 2005 the total of fishing for days fished was about 9.5% of the total days fished, and it was about 11% in 2010, so there has been a slight increase. But if you look at the numbers, you see that what really drives the recreational fishery in B.C. is salmon, particularly chinook and coho.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
I would agree with that, although I think it's clear that there is a significant growth in interest for fishing recreationally for halibut, which you may not have seen in 1990, say, compared to 2010.
My colleague Mr. Cleary has raised this, but for what your presentation called the “commercial recreational sector”, as I know many refer to it, or the lodge and charter sector, what are you proposing there in terms of greater involvement? I guess I'm talking about what the federal government can do, because there may be other things the provincial government can do. What are you proposing in terms of more monitoring and so on and, I guess, more accountability?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
The first thing is that there is no licensing of that sector, so DFO really has no understanding of how many charter vessel operations there are or how many fishing lodge operations there are. They have an idea.
If you license those operations, for example, and make it a no-fee licence—that way you avoid any complications with the User Fees Act—once you have a licence, you can place licence conditions on them. Then, just as you do in the commercial fishery, under those licence conditions, you can specify what the monitoring requirements are.
I don't think I have the answer here. I think there are a lot of good lessons from the commercial fishery, but I think those are the types of things.... As you pointed out correctly earlier, the way the groundfish fisheries are managed now was worked out collaboratively by both the industry and DFO in trying to find ways to address their objectives. That's the type of thing that needs to happen for the commercial recreational sector as well.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
That might provide some answers in terms of what is caught by people going to a lodge or using a guide, or in some kind of charter operation, but what about the private fisherman who goes out and is that “tin boat angler”, as they are sometimes referred to? Do you have any proposals on how to better monitor that fishery?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
That one's a little more complicated, but at the same time, right now the only way to get a tidal water recreational licence is through the Internet, through the DFO licensing system, so right there you have one point where you can access everybody. Again, it's similar to what you do in the commercial fishery, and we've heard from the recreational sector that they're willing to pay more in licence fees or in fees to improve the monitoring of their fishery, but they're having trouble getting around the User Fees Act.
Well, why not just make it a condition of licence that before you go online and get your licence, you need to register with a service provider for $10 or $20 or whatever the dollar amount is? You go online, you register there, and you get a code. You then come back onto the DFO thing, sign in, and get your recreational licence, and you have monitoring requirements, just like in the commercial fishery. It could be that you need to just hail-in to your service provider, saying when you're going fishing and where, and they can make arrangements to come to sample you at the dock.
Again, I think it's one of these things where you don't need to sample everybody. You just need to make sure that you're doing a representative sample in a peer-reviewed process to determine what is an acceptable level of monitoring. But right now there's a bottleneck. Everyone's getting their licence through the Internet, so there's a way to use that.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
I have one final question. You speak very positively about what I think is technically called the “halibut experimental recreational fishery program”, or the ability for the recreational sector to purchase commercial allocation. It has been described for us by another witness as a failure. Can you comment on that?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
The program started in 2011. In 2011, 68 licences were issued. In 2012, there were 61. In 2013, there were 103. In 2014, there were 107. There's a significant amount of quota being transferred there. You can compare the numbers. For instance, Alaska started a similar program in 2014, and our numbers are comparable with what you see in Alaska, but in terms of participation in southeast Alaska, for example, there were 92 licences issued, while in central Alaska, there were 19 licences issued.
I think that shows one thing. Just because there is not a lot of participation, or what may seem to be not a lot of participation, it doesn't mean that the program is a failure. It can mean (a) that recreational anglers don't need or want any more access and are comfortable with what they have, or (b) they don't value it as much as the seafood consumer does on the commercial side, because it's the seafood consumer, the end user of the product, who ultimately determines the landed price paid to commercial fishermen.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to welcome Mr. Sporer to the committee.
In terms of the recreational fishery, does DFO know how much the recreational fishery, let's say the lodges, takes out of the halibut fishery?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
DFO in 2011 estimated it to be about 60% of the total recreational halibut harvest.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
[Technical difficulty--Editor]...and how would you impose this?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
I'm sorry, you broke up there, Mr. MacAulay. I couldn't hear you.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
On the monitoring, you say it's about 60% of the quota. It is not exactly monitored. How would you recommend to this committee that this be monitored so that we would know what's taken out?
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
First of all, I think there are lessons from the commercial fishery and that you would need two components, catch monitoring and catch reporting. There needs to be mandatory catch reporting. It needs to be done in a way that is efficient and not costly for government. For example, with all kinds of technology out there now, information can be entered directly into the computer over the Internet.
At the same time, though, there needs to be a catch monitoring function, an auditing function that can come in and audit that this catch reporting is effective. We use camera technology in the commercial fisheries. You could have that camera technology, not necessarily on fishing charter vessels and on boats—although you possibly could on some—but on the docks where those fish come in, and have requirements that the fish.... When they're cleaning the fish and putting them down, you could take a picture. There are all kinds of ways that technology today can make it very cost-effective and a very effective way to produce and improve catch monitoring of virtually any fishery.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
To my understanding, Mr. Sporer, most of the monitoring is paid for by the people involved in the fishery.
You also indicated that the quota for the recreational fishery in 2012 was increased from 12% to 15%. Then you also indicated that part of it was leased back by the commercial fishery.
Looking at that, would you have any recommendation to the committee in terms of how there always seems to be a tug-of-war between what the commercial fishery needs and what the recreational fishery needs? As you said, you leased it back. Is there a way there could be a program put in place that would satisfy both, in leasing or paying for quota or whatever? I'd just like you to comment on that area.
Executive Manager, Pacific Halibut Management Association of British Columbia
Just to clarify, when the commercial sector leased the recreation allocation, that was in 2004 and 2005. So that was earlier on.
With respect to my comment about how this could be done, there's a mechanism in place right now with the recreational experimental program that allows recreational stakeholders to access and acquire commercial halibut quota via the market. That's already in place.
With respect to if the recreational harvest is being underutilized, DFO replied to us in a letter last year, as I quoted in footnote 10, and basically said that they don't feel the catch estimates right now are good enough on the recreational side to make what is perceived to be any unused allocation available to the commercial fishery. But there are mechanisms to do it.
