Many Yukoners rely on the harvest from the land for their main staples for the table. I moved here about 20 years ago, and I very quickly became involved with the Yukon Fish and Game Association. Many people, like me, rely on hunting and fishing as their main sources of food with the cost of living in the Yukon.
What we've seen more recently is there has been a shift to more store-bought food, including salmon, without the ability to fish salmon. In my time in the Yukon, I don't remember when we could fish for salmon on the Yukon River. I've heard stories that they had them when I first got here, but unfortunately, I was unable to take part in that.
Again, many Yukoners, like me, don't have the ability to go back to the same historical fish levels so that we could go down and catch them. We saw demonstrations by the Canadian Wildlife Federation at its AGM last year in Whitehorse. We have also had the same types of presentations from the DFO at the Fish and Game Association. The fish that were in those presentations were larger than I could have imagined during my time.