Thank you very much. I apologize for getting on late.
I'll talk about how this fishery developed over time, and my age is showing on the screen. It took me a while to coordinate with the people at the House of Commons to get the technology right, so I do apologize for being late.
As I said and as my biography points out, I started working in the fishery in 1980 and continued working through my career, ending up as vice-president of a major fishing company in British Columbia and responsible for buying all their salmon and other products from both British Columbia and Alaska.
As such, I spent a good deal of my career in Alaska purchasing fish in the areas we're speaking of. Many of you may have seen the TV show Deadliest Catch. I used to hire those tenders to go out there and catch fish and buy fish from the same boats that are operating in that area and pack that fish back to Prince Rupert, where we unloaded it and processed it.
Besides doing that, I spent a lot of time in an airplane out in those fisheries. I've seen those fisheries in operation. I've seen the fish being delivered, and I've seen them go through our plant. I understand that fishery intimately.
What Aaron and Greg are telling you and the data they are giving you, I can back up from personal experience. This fishery is not sustainable, and it certainly does not match what Canada put in place.
Canada, back in the 1990s, under the leadership of both a Conservative and a Liberal, John Fraser, who sadly just passed, and Mr. Anderson, reduced interception fisheries in British Columbia because they saw the decline in our populations on the north and central coast. Many of the fisheries that were in place when the fishery was signed were eliminated under their mandates.
Canada does not catch Alaskan fish anymore. In fact, it's massively reduced its own interception fisheries on its own populations. Meanwhile, Alaska has maintained their fisheries and refuses to take the same kinds of steps. We have to make clear that no one's asking Alaska not to catch their fish. We're just asking them not to operate in areas that have high interception rates.
The area that we mostly talk about is on the outside of the panhandle in district 104. That area doesn't have any Alaskan pink or chum salmon runs or any other type of salmon runs out there. This is a pure interception fishery. The boats that operate out there have permits to fish anywhere else in southeast Alaska. This is a dramatic choice by Alaska to fish in that area.
If these were Alaskan populations, it would literally be unconstitutional for Alaska to maintain those fisheries. They are required to ensure that escapement targets are met for their stocks. They're choosing to ignore what's mandated in their own constitution in the management and operation of their fisheries intercepting Canadian fish.
As Greg pointed out, in 1985, when the treaty was signed and we were balancing harvest benefits, maybe it made sense, but it does not make sense in a time of climate change. We're seeing rapid declines in our own populations, and we have interception fisheries, fisheries that Canada eliminated, continue in the U.S., and it's not sustainable. It has to be changed.
One of the more interesting things that happened this week was that Brian Riddell, eminent scientist and once commissioner on the Pacific Salmon Treaty, said in writing that the treaty is broken. The treaty will not lead us to any answers. We have to look at other alternatives, whether that be having other negotiations with Alaska, buying out those few boats—remember, only a small number of boats fish out in the offending area—getting them to move or some other approach to encourage Alaska to do what's right. We have to look at moving those interception fisheries and changing the fishery to match what Canada does in terms of building sustainable salmon fisheries so that we can protect our populations going forward.
Thank you.