Fisheries Committee on Feb. 4th, 2019

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Pardon me?

[Christina Burridge]

It's politics, Mr. Arnold.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Christina Burridge]

You have people asking for licences who have found that they did have history in the fishery. The department is in a difficult situation. It doesn't want to say no, so it issues too many licences and then generally expects that the industry will self-rationalize, particularly as catches go down.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Okay. You said, “as catches go down”.

Is anybody under the impression that declining stocks are part of the problem?

[Christina Burridge]

I wouldn't say that it's entirely declining stocks. I would say that it is a more conservative approach to how we fish. If I take salmon as an example, we used to fish at an 80% across-the-board harvest rate, as Alaska still does. We now fish at less than half that harvest rate—around 30% to 40%—because we have elected to protect weak stocks. When you do that, you change the fundamental nature of the fishery.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

The other thing that came up is the decreasing value of the catch. Can you describe a little more how that has come about?

[Christina Burridge]

I'll have a go at that.

If the volumes of salmon harvests have declined by 66% over the last 25 years, the value has actually declined by 78%. That is because of the rise of the global business of farmed salmon. Back 25 years ago or a little more, B.C. accounted for 12% of world salmon supply, wild and farmed. We are now at less than half of 1%, so we're operating in a quite different world.

If you look at roe herring, the value has declined even more sharply—by some 80%—and that is because in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the bubble economy in Japan, people paid ludicrously high prices for herring roe, and now they don't. If you look, say, at groundfish—

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Could I move on to someone else in the recreational sector?

[Martin Paish]

From a recreational fishery perspective, the value of our fishery continues to grow. We are simply constrained by our access to quota. It's as simple as that.

We operate an extremely valuable fishery that has impacts on coastal communities up and down the coast of B.C. We do operate out of the small coastal communities, yet we are constrained to 15% of the total quota. It's as simple as that.

From a capacity perspective, we manage that through the use of slot limits and the use of season length and that type of stuff, all of which put constraints on the fishery. An example would be our competitiveness with other jurisdictions.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Sporer.

[Chris Sporer]

If I could just add to that from the groundfish perspective, in the halibut fishery, for instance, even though the quota is probably less than half of what it was 10 to 15 years ago, we're able to get more value out for higher prices.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Okay. It's not every species that is decreasing in value. It varies. Thank you.

Someone mentioned the word “competitiveness”. That was one of the words that I had written down. What is required from each of the sectors in order to be competitive? Are world pricing and the world market affecting the pricing on all sectors? Are we competing at that level? Or is it within local communities or nationally?

Mr. Cook.

[Chief Chris Cook]

Were you talking about the prices for salmon, for instance, or the prices in the market? I've been fishing all these years. Forty years ago, I was getting 30¢ for pinks. I'm getting 30¢ for pinks 40 years later. I have no control over what I'm going to get paid because I'm sitting here and talking. I don't know if I can say this, but with the sport for us as first nations, they got a million pounds of halibut. We first nations got nothing.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Okay.

Mr. Paquette, did you have a comment you wanted to add?

[Roger Paquette]

In our world of gillnetters, trollers and sanders, we do very good quality control and we've been able to increase our prices in the world market. Over the last 10 years, there's less volume, so we handle the product with extreme care. We upsell our products in the market. We've done well with that. Volumes are lower, but the prices are higher. So I think we've taken it to a higher level with the volumes of all the species we do.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

We'll go now to the NDP.

Mr. Donnelly, you have seven minutes or less, please.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for being here and providing your testimony on this important study.

I wanted to give a bit of an overview. I think everyone is familiar that the committee is doing a study on the west coast fisheries license system, and then the recommendations from the report will go forward to the government. The government will then have to choose whether or not they implement any or all of the recommendations. I also have to inform you, but I'm sure you know, this is an election year, so the government has only a few months to implement these recommendations.

If I were to summarize what I've heard today from the presentations at this committee session, it's complicated. We've developed a very complicated system. It doesn't seem to be working, and we're hearing from different sectors, from different fish harvesters and representatives, that it's not representing the needs of the future.

Last week when we had DFO officials here, I asked about their vision, based on some of these problems and how complicated it is going forward. I want to start there, with Canfisco because Canfisco is a significant player in the British Columbia economy. There's no question about that.

I'm wondering, Mr. Young, if you could start. Given that it is complicated, that things are changing and your comments about the nature of a couple of decades of change, does your company have a vision of the way forward in being competitive? What will work for you and your company?

[Phil Young]

I did talk about a few of the things. One of the things we try to do is sell our salmon fresh. We have one of the largest smokers in Canada right now in our Delta plant. We fill that with U.S. fish. So we sell our high-priced Canadian fish, buy on the world market and smoke U.S. fish in that plant. We can still employ the people, do the things, keep that plant running, but it's done with raw material from outside because we want to make the most we can, pay our fishermen the most we can.

We continue to look at groundfish as a sustainability issue. We do have a very strong fishery. It's very sustainable. As mentioned, the David Suzuki Foundation likes it. But we don't have marine stewardship council for that fishery, and the U.S. northwest does. And that needs some stock assessment work. We're sure we can get it if we can do that stock assessment.

We do need some help from government to do some of those things. And I will concede a changing social aspect. I don't have the answer for that. I look at what we put out. Up in Prince Rupert we spend about $300,000 to $400,000 before a plant ever puts a fish through it. Just getting the boilers, the WorkSafe, the Ministry of Environment, doing all our permitting, getting everything ready. And that's before we put a fish through there. It's very costly now to have a good, secure food source for Canadians and around the world. It has meant plants are consolidating in the Lower Mainland.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

There are two points I want to touch on that you've talked about. You mentioned sustainable harvest levels. Let's talk about salmon and herring. You painted a picture for the committee that over the past couple of decades, harvest levels have dramatically decreased.

In terms of the ITQ system, the Mifflin plan that came in, you probably would agree there's been an efficiency of effort. Is this working for fish harvesters?

We heard from Mr. Cook how it's not working for many of his members in the brotherhood, for first nations and for coastal communities. You mentioned social licence. That's a difficult thing.

How are we going to look at the distribution of wealth and equity in a shrinking harvest?

[Phil Young]

On salmon, we did a report a couple of weeks ago. Over the last four-year cycle, 80% of the salmon in B.C was caught in competitive fisheries. Only 20% was ITQ fisheries. There are still boats sticking around for those 80% of the fisheries. Are they making money? The answer is no, with the amounts they're putting in. That's why you're seeing fewer boats. Guys cannot make it work. If you can't put a couple of hundred thousand dollars into your boat—and Mr. Cook will tell you—you can't keep your boat afloat, serviced and ready to go. Lack of fish is making a big difference to us on that side.

Herring is different. It's very well managed. The industry has very rarely said anything about the lowered harvest on that side. We have a few instances where we could be harvesting and we're not due to other constraints. For the most part, it's very well managed. We live by the science and if the science tells us we can't fish, we don't fish.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Turning to the Sport Fishing Institute, could either Mr. Bird or Mr. Paish talk about your vision going forward? You painted a pretty strong picture about the ITQ system not working for the rec and sport fishers.

What's the vision you'd like to see or the recommendations you'd like to put forward to this committee?

[Owen Bird]

I'd like to add a little bit of context with regard to the values of the recreational fishery. They are not solely based on harvest, and require reliability and opportunity. That's the driving force behind looking at a vision for the future of recreational fisheries. Harvest is important, but reliability and opportunity are equally important. Access is key.

The simple answer for a vision moving forward would be to eliminate the XRQ. It's confusing and confounding to the recreational fishery and the public access to a public property resource, and to maintain priority access to chinook and coho, thereby allowing that all-important reliability and opportunity.

[The Chair]

Thank you.

Mr. Rogers, for seven minutes.