Thank you for the invite. I'm happy to be here.
My name is Arthur Black Sr., and I'm here with my son Arthur Black Jr. We're both Namgis First Nation members. I've been a commercial fisherman with my previous and present family, right down to my grandchildren—they actually fish with us. I have been a small business owner-operator in the commercial fishing industry for over 40 years. I've also commercially fished in Alaska with my family, and we've been down to Washington and Oregon, fishing commercially there also.
I believe that a policy needs to be put in place to protect commercial fishermen, native and non-native. It needs to be a top priority. We need to be looked after in the same way as fishermen are on the east coast and in Alaska. They look after their fishermen. They actually care about them.
Fleet separation needs to be another policy that has some enforcement bite to it. We don't need to have fish buyers, plants, stakeholders, investors, smart money, foreign ownership and so on. They are not commercial fishermen; they're nothing but landlords.
The number of licences that a party or parties can own and control really needs to be looked at, especially at some of the bigger fisheries—salmon, dragging...herring, and right into halibut. The reduced-fee native salmon licences that were for salmon and herring, which was part of a program many years ago, along with the present PICFI program, in my opinion should get a failing grade. PICFI is not helping independent commercial fishers like me and my son, and others, as you've already heard. The licences that were intended to be owned and operated and financially beneficial to their native owner-operators are now being wrongfully held. They're being held by control contracts, leaving the beneficiaries of those entitled licences to people who don't belong with them. A safeguard policy needs to be put in place to protect native fishermen and non-native fishermen with regard to the licensing.
Personally speaking, getting back to this PICFI program, we have in our family a single licence, an old boat. It's 91 years old; it's in reasonably good shape. We have a northern licence, and we've been applying for over four years to the PICFI program, at multiple levels, and it's not working. It's plain and simply not working. Licences are going to the highest bidder and to people who already have licences, and they are leaving us on the beach like they did last summer. We sat on the beach and never caught a fish, watched people fish in our territorial area. I had applied at multiple levels, at multiple places, and given it my best effort. I'm happy to be here to speak about it.
In regard to the quota fisheries that are in place, if they are to remain in place after this review, they need to be going to the individual fishermen. They should be non-transferable, and they should be made to be fished by the person who's on the quota... with their own vessels—not a stick boat. Stick boats aren't doing anything for our industry.
Basically, for stick boats, their only means that I can see.... And I've been doing this. I grew up on the boats, just like my two grandchildren in the two pictures I sent around. One of them is my namesake, the youngest one of the two. The other one is actively fishing with me.
These stick boats are only a means to hold and control the industry for the select few that the holders choose to allow to go forward. My opinion is that owner-operator, plain and simple, is the only way this is going to get sorted out so that future generations will actually have a fishery and some sort of security.
We should be looking at what the east coast is doing, or what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is doing; they are trying to help look after the east coast. Why is it that we're not being looked after on the west coast? Having fished in Alaska—and we did five seasons up there—I'm quite aware of how well they look after their fishermen. They would not tolerate what's going on in our province. It would not be tolerated, plain and simple.
In closing, please don't reward the people who put us into this predicament. They don't need four years to sort out a licence and then benefit from the next cycle run. It should not be more than two years for them to relinquish what they shouldn't be owning.
The only thing I can say is that my own son is now five and I don't want to tell him he can't go fishing anymore because it's unaffordable. I'm the sixth generation of commercial fishers and I don't want it to end there.
Thank you for listening.