Fisheries Committee on June 7th, 2016

[Joy Thorkelson]

There were two commissions of inquiry, both of which recommended that our fisheries in British Columbia go to ITQ fisheries. One was the Pearse commission report in the 1980s, and the other was the Pearse and...I can't remember the second fellow's name, but Peter Pearse wrote both of the reports. He had other people writing the reports with him, whose names I can't remember. Both of those reports recommended quotas.

The first quota fishery, I believe, was abalone, which was a failure because so much fish was taken out of the water and not accounted for under quotas. Also, probably there were some physical changes in the ocean that affected abalone stocks. I think halibut was the next fishery that went to ITQ. Halibut was the poster child for the fishery, showing how wonderful the halibut fishery was.

Mr. Boyes represents one point of view. If you talk to Art Davidson, who represents the halibut longline association, which most halibut skippers and many halibut quota owners belong to, they'll tell you the exact opposite.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Ms. Thorkelson, and thank you, Mr. Hardie.

Mr. Strahl is next.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to our witnesses.

Ms. Thorkelson, has the cannery in Prince Rupert ever processed fish caught in Alaska?

[Joy Thorkelson]

Yes.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

On average, say, last year, what percentage of the fish processed would have been caught in Alaska?

[Joy Thorkelson]

Last year it would have been probably a greater percentage, because we had very little of our own from British Columbia. I would say that when BC Packers owned the plant, they brought lots of fish down. Canadian Fishing Company has a large cannery in Alaska called Ketchikan, so they bring very little down to Prince Rupert anymore—in some years, none.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

How many hours per year would an average canning line worker have worked on the line last year, or on an average of the last five years?

[Joy Thorkelson]

I'd like to take last year out of the discussion, because last year we had the worst year on the coast. That was the worst year in my whole life.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Let's take the previous four or five years, then.

[Joy Thorkelson]

In the previous four or five years, I would say the average senior shoreworker, somebody of Conrad's stature, would have probably—

Conrad, how many hours did you get last year without banking them—or two years ago?

[Conrad Lewis]

Thanks for saying “without banking them”. In all my years, I've never banked any overtime.

Last year, even though we don't want to talk about last year, I barely made the requirements for EI. The year before that, where Joy wanted to move us to, I barely made EI once again. The only difference between last year and the year before was that they found some fish to process in September. Had they not done that last year, I would have been on welfare. With 39 years' seniority with CFC, I would have been on welfare.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

If we take out last year, how many workers, on average, would be employed on the canning line per season?

[Joy Thorkelson]

Since Canadian Fish bought the plant, there have been 750, and that's—

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Per year?

[Joy Thorkelson]

Yes, every year. That's 750, and when BC Packers had the cannery, we put more fish through and we had a seniority list of 1,100 people.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

What year was the plant built or last upgraded in terms of facilities or capacity?

[Joy Thorkelson]

We've just discovered—maybe the maintenance workers knew—that they've actually been investing in different seaming equipment and other equipment in Alaska. Canadian Fishing Company has done that and has left our seamers to be.... Our seamers are old. All of our equipment in that cannery is old. There's very little new equipment. The new equipment has been in what we call the skinless/boneless line, and they shipped the better equipment in the skinless/boneless line up to Alaska. Now it's being done in Bristol Bay with our equipment.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Okay. Are there any other community capacity issues that might affect the ability of Canfisco to use the Prince Rupert plant for more processing? For instance, what is the cold storage capacity in Prince Rupert now?

[Joy Thorkelson]

BC Packers and Canadian Fish, when they joined together and were called Allied Pacific Processors, tore down Atlin Fisheries, which had a large cold storage. Then Canadian Fishing Company bought Ocean Fisheries, which had a large cold storage and two freezer operations, and they tore that down two years ago. They have a freezer in their plant, but no cold storage.

We've asked the company to.... We offered to lease reefer units to use as cold storage units so that we could process herring—there's a herring season—and they turned us down. The union offered to do that with our new work opportunity money.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

If we want to talk about last year, or certainly the last five, what would you say the average is? How many thousand cases of canned salmon—-

[Joy Thorkelson]

That's a question for Conrad.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Conrad, how many cases of canned salmon would the plant have produced, on average, over the last five years?

[Conrad Lewis]

Thank you, Mr. Strahl. That's almost a Double Jeopardy question.

We had the capability to maintain.... If they did proper maintenance in the facility in our plant, we would have the ability to can 500,000 cases or more. In fact, we've done that. We did it in one specific year, but every year after that we began what was a slow transition to less and less canning.

Consequently, we were the only canning facility that did skinless/boneless, as was referred to by Joy Thorkelson, and then all of a sudden the skinless/boneless operation showed up in Alaska. Then it even multiplied our volume of cans in the Prince Rupert plant and increased the volume of cans in Alaska, because not only were we competing with Alaska canning, but the Jim Pattison Canadian fish cannery is competing with the Jim Pattison Alaska cannery, plain and simple.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

I only have a minute and a half left, so I wanted to ask you this, Mr. Boyes. You mentioned buying and selling vessels' licences and quota. Have those always been done in a willing seller-willing buyer transaction, or is there another process, an extra process, that I might not be aware of there?

[David Boyes]

In effect, it's a willing seller-willing buyer process. In fact, no fisherman can sell his licence to another fisherman. He actually has to petition the minister to retire that licence in his name and reinstate it in another fisherman's name.

That's the theory. The practice is that you can buy and sell licences, and it's a market-based system. That's what the government has been using to buy licences.

For instance, in the case of the halibut fishery, I think 21% of the quota is now beneficially owned by first nations for the purposes of treaty settlements. Some are settled; most aren't. Those licences and the associated quota have been bought out of the commercial fishing.