Fisheries Committee on Feb. 6th, 2019

[The Chair, Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying the regulation of west coast fisheries.

Ken Hardie is here, but I don't know where he is. We have to start.

Again in this time frame, for the first hour of the session, we have witnesses presenting. By video conference, we have Mr. Dave Moore, a fisher from Vancouver, British Columbia. We also have here in person, as fishermen—or fisher people, I guess—Ryan Edwards and James Lawson. From Marlson Industries Ltd., we have Arthur Black Sr., owner, and Arthur Black Jr., fisher.

Gentlemen, we'll start with testimony. It's limited to seven minutes or less.

We'll start with Mr. Dave Moore. We do have his presentation. Members all have a copy.

Go ahead, Mr. Moore.

[Dave Moore, Fisher, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, committee members.

I have a presentation that was delivered to the Steelhead Society of British Columbia last Saturday, and I'm going to be presenting a much abbreviated version of it. I'd ask you to be patient. I'm only going to point you to certain slides within the deck. Is that all right?

[The Chair]

Yes, you're good to go.

[Dave Moore]

All right. The presentation is about licensing as it relates to the recovery of salmon, Pacific salmon at risk, and improved economic performance through licensing.

This is informed by about 15 years of research in the Fraser River and other major salmon rivers in British Columbia. I've also provided as evidence a document called “River to Plate”, co-authored with a lady from the University of British Columbia about 10 years ago.

The first page refers to the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat's recommendations to COSEWIC regarding declining stocks of Interior Fraser steelhead, an anadromous form or a sea-run form of rainbow trout that is ubiquitous throughout the major rivers and lakes in British Columbia. The stocks are under serious threat of extirpation. They're following a long line of similar Pacific salmon problems we've had, particularly in the Fraser River but elsewhere as well, with Interior Fraser coho, Cultus Lake sockeye and, most recently, chinook salmon. This pattern has been repeated in industrialized fisheries around the world. The problem with these declining stocks or weaker stocks is that they're choking off our marine mixed-stock fisheries, creating financial liabilities, social disruption and industrial chaos for sure.

I'm going to refer you further into the deck. In the middle of the deck there's a page called “Observations of a Steelhead Technician”. I've spent 40 years as a certified fisheries technician working with Pacific salmon throughout British Columbia. I'm zeroing in now on Thompson River, and here are your Fraser River steelhead. These are summer steelhead. They arrive from September through December. Their historic timing is believed to be fished out. They were a victim of bycatch in gillnet sockeye fisheries off the mouth of the Fraser River as these steelhead were returning to spawn.

After the sockeye populations declined, our commercial fisheries shifted to chum and pink salmon, and as the emphasis shifted to chum and pink, so did the bycatch impacts on the remaining populations of interior Fraser steelhead.

We've moved to selective known stock fisheries in rivers so we can release steelhead, coho and chinook salmon that aren't productive or endangered, and we found those most effective in allowing us to get enough fish on the spawning grounds. We've had more difficulty in the marine mixed-stock fisheries because we simply can't tell which river they're going to, which stock they belong to.

I've observed significant Thompson River steelhead and Interior Fraser steelhead, in the purse seine fisheries in Johnstone Strait, as they're moving down the coast of British Columbia heading to the Fraser River and their spawning grounds. I was seeing 100 plus fish in the holds of the purse seiners. This was followed up by one of the certified third party observers, J. O. Thomas, who does observing for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. He also observed significant Thompson River steelhead in these chum seiners. He also reported 30% to 90% plus non-reporting, with the fishery either not reported or sold as coho.

We've tried hatchery augmentation in the past, back in the eighties. We just found that the natural populations were seeding the habitats that were available, and we weren't getting anywhere with hatchery augmentation. It just didn't help to restore the stocks.

I'm going to refer you further into the deck now to an overlay graph of the catch and escapements of Interior Fraser steelhead contrasted with those for the chum salmon fisheries where steelhead have been found as bycatches in the last 25 years.

The blue line that you see across the top of the graph is the catch and escapement of Thompson River steelhead. The bar graphs along the bottom are the catch and escapement of chum salmon. The green circles point to where the years of low chum fisheries were getting sufficient or more steelhead returning to the spawning grounds. The red circles show that during peak mixed-stock fisheries of chum salmon, we're getting less Thompson River steelhead to the spawning grounds.

What's particularly interesting about this graph is that, as you look towards the end of the term on the table, you can see that the orange line is the aboriginal fishery in the lower Fraser River. There were concerns expressed in the late 80s and early 90s about the aboriginal bycatch of steelhead in these chum fisheries, but because of the aboriginal fisheries strategy, the Sto:lo nation and lower Fraser first nations that were killing these fish in their gillnet fisheries were pushed into using beach seines. You can see that the orange line at the bottom right-hand corner of the graph is almost flat—less than 100 fish in the last 10 years. That's because they were using selective beach seines and releasing the steelhead.

Interestingly enough, you can see during that same time frame that the number of steelheads started to recover for a while, and you can see that the sport fishing catch increased.

The problems with Thompson River steelhead are complex, but we have to learn how to reduce our fishing impacts if we really want to recover these stocks. The licencing of in-river fisheries is helping us to reduce that impact while still having economic opportunities from these fish.

I'm now going to refer you to a cartoon further on in the deck entitled “Growing Selective Known-stock Fisheries”. These kinds of fisheries have been practised for more than 25 years, and they're becoming an active part of our modern commercial fisheries. It's very difficult to target the strong stocks and avoid the weak stocks when you don't know what stocks you're catching. Under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Pacific integrated commercial fisheries initiative, we've voluntarily bought out and transferred licences in river, and we're able to then target the stocks of fish that are productive and avoid the ones that are less productive.

The next page is entitled “Economics of Surviving Climate Change”. The species and life history diversity of Fraser River Pacific salmon and steelhead—that is, the local populations—protects the vitality of Pacific salmon so that it can survive climate change.

It's much like Canada geese. We have 12 different races of Canada geese that breed in the Arctic, all the way down into southern British Columbia and the Prairies. They're all different races. In the Fraser River, there are more than 30 distinct life history traits or races of pacific sockeye salmon, and we currently only manage for four because it's too difficult manage—

[The Chair]

Mr. Moore, I'm going to have to end it there. We've gone more than a minute over the allotted time. I hope that during the questioning you can get more information out.

[Dave Moore]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

We'll move to Mr. Lawson for seven minutes or less, please.

[James Lawson, Fisher, As an Individual]

Honourable Chair and members, thank you for having me here to listen to my story.

For those of you who don't know me, I am James Lawson, and I'm a career fisherman. I come from the Heiltsuk, Tsimshian, Nisga'a, Haisla, and Gitxsan nations. I sit on the area B salmon area harvest committee, and the Wild Salmon Advisory Council for the Province of British Columbia. I've worked in 10 different fisheries from nets, to diving, to traps, and I've also participated in FSC fisheries, and charters monitoring the central coast herring stocks.

I've constantly been told to get out of fishing because the future looks bleak. I have pursued other options. I have a Bachelor of Science, and I'm a certified commercial diver, but I have no intention of quitting fishing. It is the way of my people, and this unbroken chain of tradition goes directly through my parents and grandparents all the way back to time immemorial.

The act of deriving wealth from the sea is a cornerstone of our culture. Heiltsuks say that when the tide goes out, the table is set. Right now, however, the table is slanted away from us commercial fisherman. This is the era of the leaseholder. Fish harvesters are paying more than ever for access, resulting in low value for them and their vessels.

Over the past 14 months, across eight different fisheries, every vessel I have worked on had a lease agreement. When I was diving for sea cucumbers in the winter, our landed value was $8 at the dock, but $5 went directly to the leaseholder, and another dollar went to monitoring and activation fees of the license. This left $2 to be split between the boat and the crew, after the other expenses associated with fishing, such a food, fuel and physical costs, were paid.

Fishing is the deadliest occupation in British Columbia, but it also takes its toll on the living. This lowered wage has ramifications. It makes it hard to find experienced crew and to maintain the vessel, compromising the safety of the operation.

When the margins are so thin, there are very real risks of not earning anything. Even getting to the point where you can accept that risk will likely involve being tied to a processor that paid the lease fee upfront on your behalf. This puts them in control of the price, where and when you can fish or offload, and gives them a mechanism to maintain a steady supply of fish instead of harvester oriented strategies, like good prices and service.

If you're wealthy enough to be able to afford your own lease costs, you still have to find the quota in a system with no transparency. If you can't, you might wind up in the aforementioned scenario since you'll have to lease from a processor.

The reason so much access is held by non-harvesters is the prohibitive prices of licences and quota. Speculative investors, both domestic and foreign, are realizing a safe return on investment since the harvesters are bearing all the risks and have no other means of attaining access in many cases. Compounding this problem is the influx of government money and the market by the PICFI program. Willing buyer and willing seller is a part of how the program is run, and willing seller often meant PICFI buying at very high prices.

High prices led to high lease rates and high lease rates lead to struggling harvesters. Struggling harvesters cannot afford to purchase quota or licences. The PICFI program was designed to increase first nations' access to commercial fisheries through a buy-back program, but in current market conditions even they have trouble competing for purchase. Many of the licences they do purchase go back to the open market to the highest bidder, creating revenue for a program or first nations band without having any band members fish it.

Without a rigid set of rules to enforce, CFE directors are in a tough position, having to answer to people who want to fish and people who want to use the licences as revenue streams. This geoduck season, I found myself out of a job because a company paid the lease fees upfront to secure quota from the CFE that services my band. They never found an opportunity to get me out on the grounds. It was left late and spread to other boats without first nations harvesters on it, in an attempt to get it out of the water before the season's end so they would not lose their upfront payment.

Having these licence banks for first nations is important to enhance our access, but it's not the only entry point for us. Shifting toward owner-operator policies will be a direct line to increasing first nations' access to commercial fisheries. We already make up a large proportion of the harvesting fleet and have the skills and knowledge to be successful after buy-in.

A labour shortage is on the horizon. New entrance points to replace the greying fleet cannot afford to buy in, except for exceptions such as family-oriented succession plans. If nothing is done to make fisheries viable for them, B.C. is going to lose its ability to get fish out of the water because there will be nobody left. British Columbia isn't going to be able to reap benefits from its own resource unless we take in hired help from outside the province and lease our benefits in a different manner than we currently are.

Even if we did regain skilled fishers in the future, it would be difficult from the loss of intergenerational knowledge. First nations will acutely feel this loss of knowledge in the FSC fisheries, which are often fished by the same commercial fishers. We need to define a transition plan, an endgame, now and set timelines that will force action to avoid this fate. I'm wary of using the current advisory boards in place for consultation processes since they are controlled solely by harvesters.

My own experience on the area B salmon area harvest committee illustrates how it may not be an effective vehicle for consulting harvesters in this transition. On this board, we hold our meetings in the Canadian fish building in Vancouver. Every potential member needs to be nominated by a licence holder and nominees are then voted on by those same licence holders. I got on the board by acclamation, since the same licence holders in the seine fleet did not nominate enough people to warrant a vote.

In light of all this, I have some key points about the transition plan going forward. One, every fishery needs its own plan made in partnership with DFO, licence and quota holders and active harvesters. Two, every fishery needs its own self-produced vision of how the fishery should look after this transition. It must be made through consultation between active harvesters and DFO. Three, fair-sharing agreements must be made between active harvesters and licence and quota holders for the duration of this transition and it must be enforceable. I support percentage-based shares after expense, so everyone shares in the risk and reward. Four, licences should no longer be forced into marriage to help affordability and increase capacity to lure in new entrants. Five, licence length restrictions should slacken to afford more flexibility and diversification. This could also be considered a safety measure. Six, a public and transparent licence and quota registry should be created so we have a grasp of what's happening going forward. Seven, hard dates must be set for every objective to force action.

This will get us on the right path, but there need to be defined goals of the transition plans and these goals may include, first, enacting owner-operator policies, which would result in Canadians holding access to the resource, food sovereignty and the distribution of wealth to where fisheries take place. Second, the transferability of choke species should be dealt with effectively. An open market among harvesters of choke species, but owner-operator policies for target species, is an option. Third, every fisher from each fleet has to join an organization that has the harvesters' interest in mind. Fourth, a loan board should be set up once systemic problems are fixed by transition. Fifth, we need effective domestic marketing of local seafood to capitalize on the food sovereignty associated with this plan.

Enacting this would result in B.C. capitalizing on its wealth from the seas and halt the economic leakage currently taking place. These leaks occur when investors take the lion's share of the wealth—sometimes all the way to foreign soil—from communities that support fisheries. DFO has a responsibility to ensure that the wealth from our common resource goes to B.C., and not elsewhere. Even one leak of wealth outside the province is too many.

The proper distribution of wealth isn't just about money; it's also about the social and cultural aspects attached to fishing. Fishermen serve many spinoff economies, such as food, fuel, vessel service and gear merchants. The government is already heavily invested in us through harbours management, monitoring and enforcement, habitat, and processing. It seems folly to let this money go elsewhere.

Freeing up the licences for B.C. harvesters using the aforementioned strategies will create good jobs. Getting full value for catch will mean that every boat needs less access, and others can partake in the fishing life. This is a tall task, but it is not just policy change; it's also capacity-building for the future. Be our champions and keep us viable and we will be champions in taking care of the small coastal communities. After all, fishing is not just the physical act of harvesting fish. What we have is worth protecting, as it is part of our identity as a province. We do not wish to have our knowledge, values or jobs extinguished, but that is the path we are on. Upholding us upholds food security, culture and other intangibles that make communities tick.

We Heiltsuk feel as though a piece of us is dying, and I'm certain other communities feel the same. Some people might feel that the transition is a tough pill to swallow. I would invite them to come and endure the conditions we do and know that they will collect only 20% of the value of their harvest. Losing entire fishing fleets is a very real danger.

We want it kept simple. When it comes to paying people for catching fish, pay the people in the gumboots out there catching fish. This will give us the tools we need to take care of our communities.

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Lawson.

We will now go to Mr. Edwards for seven minutes or less, please.

[Ryan Edwards, Fisher, As an Individual]

Hello. I'd like to thank the standing committee for the opportunity to speak about the issues in the west coast fisheries. I've come to ask for your help.

My name is Ryan Edwards, and I'm a fourth-generation fisherman from the small coastal community of Ucluelet on Vancouver Island.

I started fishing with my father and uncle when I was six years old. I remember my dad talking to my mother to see if it was possible to miss the first week of grade 1. She said no.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Ryan Edwards]

I always knew I would work as hard as I could to make my living from the sea. Fishing isn't just a living; it's a way of life, and it's a profession I was born to do.

In the last 30 years, the Pacific coast fishing fleets have been decimated. Where we once would see boats as far as the eye could see, it is not uncommon to go days without seeing another fishing boat. Some will say that our fishing fleets were rationalized due to the conservation issue—too many boats catching too few fish. Others will point to the sports priority and the move toward tourism-based businesses, or even to the region-backed fish farms, which dropped the price of wild salmon and drove the largest processor to get the salmon as cheap as possible, as they own the majority of the seine fleet.

At any rate, we had our fair share of enemies in the early 1990s. My family relied on salmon for the majority of our income, but we also prosecuted several other fisheries. As salmon fishing collapsed under the Mifflin plan, we were diverse enough to switch to dogfish and survive the initial storm when most did not. In 1998 my father and I purchased a retired packer and converted it back into what it once was—a longliner. Our vessel had already fished a lifetime. It was built in Prince Rupert in 1927, and was built to fish halibut. Our salmon trawler was retired, as it wasn't big enough. Dogfish is a volume fishery, requiring us to catch large amounts to be profitable.

We lived under extreme duress, constantly fearing that every year would be our last. As the world changed, the need to be accountable for our bycatch became a reality. The fisheries on the west coast are in many ways the gold standard. Every fish we catch in the hook-and-line groundfishery has to be recorded and accounted for. Although we can discard juvenile fish, we have 100% retention of all rockfish. This has led to very specialized fishing. The days of getting bait, ice, grub and fuel and going out fishing without knowing exactly what you were doing is a thing of the past. Everything we catch is on camera, and is reviewed every trip to ensure accuracy in our reporting.

This meant that our vessel, which up to this point had brought in just dogfish, had to bring in all fish. Even though that meant we now were able to land our catch of more valuable species, which should have made our business more profitable, that wasn't the case. We had to find and lease quota for the fish we caught. We didn't have the access to capital to lease quota ourselves at the beginning of the season. The company we sold dogfish to tried to find access, and struggled mightily and failed. After that, we were forced to find another company to deal with the bycatch.

The end result of this was that our fleet of 15 to 20 active dogfish vessels, mostly smaller boats, couldn't make it work. With fishers in Massachusetts ramping up their dogfish fishery at the same time, that spelled the end of our fishery in 2011.

We shifted our efforts to halibut. As we were the top dogfish boat for 10 years, our reputation enabled us to stay in business. We also got access to a sablefish licence, which we leased for three years until, worried about access, once again we borrowed heavily, partnered with our processor, and bought a sablefish licence. Even though we'd improved our situation, working 20-hour days and fishing 200 days a year, it didn't become more profitable; now, being leveraged to the max, we were too vulnerable. We had managed to get our foot in the door buying licences, but we still didn't own any quota.

With the price of quota being what it is, there is no way for us to ever buy quota in any amount. With quota holders holding all the cards, we are facing the loss of our business. Both the fishermen and the processors who don't own quota are being blackmailed by the armchair investors. If they don't get maximum price in the market, they simply threaten to pull their quota the coming year.

The major flaw in this management plan is the fact that we have failed to protect the fishers who harvest the resource. In Alaska and on the east coast, they have owner-operator. In order to get our fisheries back on track, I believe we must work toward this goal. This will not be easy. It will take some time. But after talking to fishermen from the east coast and comparing notes, I am not afraid to say that I was envious to hear about their loan programs and their thriving boat-building industries as compared with our coast, where the only new boats, with a few exceptions, are the factory trawlers brought in from European countries, which are now over here. Does that make sense?

As we go into the future, what will our B.C. fisheries look like with fewer and fewer entrants? As of right now, finding young people to come into the workplace is getting harder and harder. They know that they have almost no chance of buying their own boat or licences. Who wants to do such tough mental and physical work if it's not worth your while or if you know there's no chance of advancing into the captain's chair?

It doesn't have to be this way. By forcing fishers to sell at the end of their careers and keeping the fish in the hands of the fishermen, rather than some nameless, faceless corporation, we will ensure not just the health of our seas but also give fishermen the responsibility of being the stewards of the resource, protecting their livelihood.

Food security is becoming more and more important, and with the world facing extreme challenges with climate change and ocean acidification, we should be looking for better management of a public resource rather than letting it be sold to the highest bidder. We should look to our past for the road to the future and learn from their mistakes.

Please help us get our industry back on the right track to ensure that future generations can have access not just to delicious seafood, but also to thrive.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Edwards.

We'll go now to Marlson Industries Ltd. I believe Mr. Black Sr. is going to do the talking.

When you're ready, sir, you have seven minutes or less.

[Arthur Black Sr., Owner, Marlson Industries Ltd.]

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.

[The Chair]

Thank you, all of you, for your presentations.

Before we get into the questions round, I would like to welcome Chandra Arya, the MP from Nepean, and Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country. That's a long riding name.

Welcome to FOPO.

Now for the rounds of questioning, we start with the government side for seven minutes or less, Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Her business cards are as long as a decent-sized chinook.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

James, I want to talk about sea urchins and sea cucumber. I heard some stories offline about the gap between what fishers are getting at the dockside and what these things are actually selling for further down, after processing and hitting the market.

Do you have any data on that?

[James Lawson]

I know I've looked it up on the Internet before because the main market is in Asia, so I can't really walk down to the market and check it out, but I've seen uni selling for over $100 over there.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Is that $100 a pound?

[James Lawson]

Yes.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

And what do the fishers get at the dock?

[James Lawson]

For green sea urchins, it's been a pretty good year: we're getting around $3 a pound, and for reds we're getting $1.60.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Is that a quota fishery?

[James Lawson]

It is—untransferable though.