I'm quite confident I won't be able to get through what I want to do in that time, but I'll do the best I can.
A few common themes have arisen that help us understand COVID impacts on the public fishery. These are the importance of the fishery to British Columbians as a healthy outdoor activity, a means for Canadians to harvest seafood that is a common property resource, and that the public fishery represents the most significant fishery-related source of employment and economic activity in B.C., which is the cornerstone of the economy of many small coastal communities.
Chinook are the driver of the B.C. tidal waters public fishery, and the 2019 non-retention regime was devastating to us. To allow the fishery to survive, the SFAB has submitted a series of proposals to DFO that allow for additional retention of chinook.
By using 30 years of stock assessment data based on coded wire tags and DNA analysis, we were able to identify 11 separate areas on the southern B.C. coast that will allow for retention of chinook while having virtually no impact on the stocks of concern. We can be confident of this statement because the data tells us that they historically aren't caught there, because they simply don't go there. It's important to note that all of this was undertaken in close collaboration with DFO stock assessment and science staff.
While we're grateful to the provincial government for taking the bold and necessary step to declare angling an essential activity in British Columbia, DFO has done nothing to help with the COVID challenges faced by our sector other than schedule conference calls where we update DFO officials of COVID impacts—