Hi. I get six minutes to wrap up 30 years' worth of fisheries management, fisheries marketing, buying. I am president of the area G trollers, which are not trawlers. They're the guys who run the single lines through the water, with hooks on them, in different places.
The fleet that I manage, which I have been proud to be a member and president of for 22 years, is a salmon fishery, predominantly chinook, coho and sockeye. We are the equity fishery with the U.S., so our catch is predominantly American. The Alaska fleet takes Canadian fish; we take American fish. We're the equity fleet. We harvest very little Canadian stocks, and that's very important because our impact on Canadian stocks of concern is marginal at best, and at times just about nothing.
The fleet is a small-boat fleet, ma-and-pa operations predominantly, and family operations, fishing five to 25 miles offshore. Over one-third of our fleet is, at the present time, first nations. We fish side by side with the first nations, and we have worked very closely over the years to develop different fisheries regimes and programs.
I think it's important to recognize that when we talk about the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, it is the Department of Fisheries, not just fish. Right now it feels like it's the department of forgone opportunities in fisheries. We have economic opportunities that are being forgone because the department is not managing fisheries as their primary mandate; it is more about juggling who gets to fish. We often hear the statement that there are too many boats catching too few fish.
No doubt about it, we have massive conservation problems. We have climate change, habitat inland that's not being addressed and not being invested in, and salmon enhancement programs that have been gutted. We know all of those things. On top of that, there are still existing opportunities that would enable us to maintain a somewhat viable fishery; but the juggling of who gets access to those fish, and the fact that decisions are not being based on what is absolutely critical in fisheries management—first and foremost, science and biology—is a major issue. Basically it is the department of forgone opportunities, and I can speak directly to that.
This year, with our fishery, our fleet would be having incomes of $80,000 to $100,000, had we been able to move forward with the COVID plan that we presented in April. Instead, guys are sitting on the water right now, not making enough income, because the department has put in a lure restriction that basically means that everybody else in British Columbia can use the lures that are catching fish, but we have to use the lures that aren't at this present time.
If we are looking at solutions to moving forward, the first thing to do is to recognize that the situation in British Columbia is a disaster, and we need that disaster relief. We need somebody to call it for what it is, and it is a disaster: 90% of the fleet is not going to survive; they're being forced into bankruptcy. I think, in this situation, we need that disaster relief and recognition because then we can start to address the real problem.
The other thing we need to recognize is that salmon are not caught on the east coast. This is a four-year cycle. This is something that can be rebuilt and can have a future. What we need, rather than lip service from the ministry and the department, is an actual sense of leadership and governance that is...to manage fisheries, and to try to do their best.
In the Pacific region that governance model, as Dan says, needs to be addressed. The senior management of the Pacific region do not believe in ocean fisheries. Yet everything we hear, and every piece of documentation and every response that you get to your recommendations from the minister, talk about economically viable and sustainable fisheries. There is no impetus and no sense of interest from senior management in moving forward on those opportunities.
Years ago we had a new government come in and say that they were going to allow the unmuzzling of our scientists. Well, they may have unmuzzled them, but now senior management are giving directives to the biology staff to not do very critical pieces of work that are absolutely essential to managing fisheries. We cannot have access to the biological staff and stock assessment staff. For example, this year, when we put in a fishing plan in the first week of April and only had a fishing plan at the end of July, with absolutely no background or conversations with stock assessment staff. Here we are, in season, trying to deal with that.
We need a department that is based on principles, some of which need to be fair and equitable, and on a transfer mechanism that is actually being used, because otherwise we are pitting user groups against each other to basically fight over the crumbs of what is left for opportunities.
There is an unlicensed expansion in the charter boat fishery, which is not a public fishery. These are people with a lot of money who can fly in and fly back out. They've been given priority. In our region, they harvest more fish than my first nations fleets and my commercial fleets combined in any given year, yet they don't live in the area and don't provide jobs for our local community.
Social scientists have taken over and are now running the department, without any guidance from the federal government as to what the vision of a fishery looks like. Are there too many boats, not enough fish? Absolutely. However, it's not too many boats in the commercial fishing industry directly. It's too many interest groups, which have competing interests, that cannot all be satisfied to the level the department is trying to satisfy them.
The department is in a conflict of interest. They are managing buybacks at the same time as managing opportunities, which means, basically, that you bankrupt a fleet and then offer them the lowest amount of money they're willing to take because they're forced into bankruptcy.
Transfer mechanisms, such as PICFI and ATP, are being ignored at this point, and fish are being removed from existing stakeholders. That's not reconciliation. Reconciliation is not borne on the backs of individual families and fishermen who are neighbours to the people they're trying to reconcile with. As Dan says, this is causing an emergency situation within our communities.
As we—