First, I will say thank you for allowing me to be a witness to the parliamentary committee on this very important topic.
As you said, my name is Roger Paquette. I am appearing today as a representative from Hub City Fisheries, which is a fish company that has been operating on the west coast for the past 40 years. I have personally owned and managed this business over the years and have seen many changes in our west coast fishery. I have been closely involved with the fishermen over these years in helping to decide the best way to invest in the future of the fishing industry.
With the introduction of the Mifflin plan in the early 1990s, the mandate was to reduce the size of the fleet so as to increase the viability and sustainability of the remaining fleet. A lot of decisions were made by fishermen based on the government's guidance and planning to accomplish these better results for the industry. Since then, this has not happened and only has had the exact opposite results for the fishing industry.
Fishing vessels had multiple species of fish on each vessel, which enabled them to be diversified enough to have the ability to sustain their livelihood. Over the years, these different licences that were held by fishermen were eventually reduced to single fisheries. With the different changes that came about with the introduction of quota fisheries, fishermen were forced to either purchase more quotas or lease quotas on an annual basis, or merely volunteer to leave the industry.
Some of these fishermen who left the industry had no option, as they could not afford to pay for the ever-climbing values of these quotas or could not secure stable leasing arrangements.
At the present time, after years of various changes, there remain a limited number of fishermen participating in each separate fishery on our coast, still with many financial challenges. With the quota regime in place, it has allowed a smaller number of fishermen owning these quotas to control the larger number of fishermen, who are forced to pay unfair lease fees to continue fishing each season.
One could argue that they are not forced to pay these, but without an opportunity to fish, they have no possible way to make the living that they know and to maintain self-respect for themselves, their families and fellow fishermen.
The people—some fishermen, some corporate entities and some foreign investors—controlling the licences have the ability to ask for sometimes very unfair lease fees, sometimes as high as 80%.
Hub City Fisheries and I have full involvement in every aspect of the industry, and it is clear to see, in my opinion and that of many others, that there is a serious flaw in how the resource is managed and how the value of the fishery is shared. This is not a realistic share arrangement and has placed many fishermen in financial hardship, while quota licence-holders have done well.
It is important to have a true balance of fishermen and coastal communities that are able to earn a respectable income. That will allow these boats to share their catch dollars in terms of the survival of these coastal communities that are struggling for incomes and struggling to maintain the infrastructure necessary to serve both the fishing fleet and their communities. It is critical to maintain owner-operators through our fishery to allow the fleet size that will support both the families of these fishermen and those of the coastal communities, for both the self-respect and the integrity of the west coast fish people. From a fish-processing point of view, having a viable group of fishing vessels that are diversified in all fisheries keeps up the year-round activity for fish plant workers, truckers and all the integrated aspects that are involved and that allow it to function.
The west coast troll fishery has reached a critical benchmark at the present time, with an unfair sharing of the resource. I have also been an area G west coast troll harvest committee member for the past 20 plus years and have watched the share for these fishermen go from 80% of the catch to the commercial fishermen in 2005, down in this year of 2019 to a season allocation of 10% to 12%, with the majority of this total allowable catch going to the sport industry for 2019.
Going back a bit, there was a sport priority policy implemented in 1999 for five years, which was at that time approximately 20% of the total allowable catch.
There was never any mention of allowing this to become a runaway train, destined to bankrupt this troll fishery in 2019. This fishery needs immediate, serious attention before it is too late.
We have met with senior management: Rebecca Reid, Jeff Grout and Andrew Thomson. Since the meeting, they've shown very little regard for this devastating situation, saying only that this fishery is in the second or third spot in the sports priority policy. That ended in 2004, according to the agreement I read. It got extended along the way somehow, but I'm not sure how.
The Government of Canada is in possession of approximately $17 million from the 2009 Pacific Salmon Treaty. Area G has been the sole user group that has had in excess of $40 million of loss over the last 10 years in this treaty. We in area G had been promised that there would be a fair consultation on the use of these funds. We are in doubt that we will ever have a timely and fair solution, and we respectfully ask for the intervention of the standing committee.
With these reduced volumes of fish catches, particularly salmon, the Government of Canada has neglected to allow for much needed dollars for the enhancement of salmon from fish hatcheries, which would help to return the salmon to the plentiful levels of past years.
Predation is also a problem. It has been a serious problem for 20 plus years, with no regard or attention from any level of government. The numbers of these predators have increased by astronomical proportions, while stocks of many fish species have declined drastically. It is time that they act responsibly, before it is too late, and put measures in place to deal with this out-of-balance predation situation. The seal and sea lion numbers are out of balance and out of proportion. They place our fish stocks in grave danger for most of our commercial fisheries.
In closing, I'll say that since 1990, DFO and the Government of Canada have not accomplished any significant improvements in our west coast fishery. We have decreased our returns on sockeye by 50% over the past three Adams River cycles of 2010, 2014 and 2018, which is alarming, and there are no solutions in place from DFO.
I am asking the standing committee to please consider my input on the real-time problems that we are dealing with, and not to allow many of the issues to continue on with political agendas and without serious input from the fishing community.
I'm appreciative that I had this opportunity to voice my points of concern. For that, I say thank you.