Our fisheries don't feel nimble. We don't feel that the Fisheries Act allows for rapid enough change to address climate change and changes in abundance.
We don't feel on the west coast that there are mechanisms for west coast harvesters to feel heard. We don't feel that those mechanisms are there. On the knowledge of fish harvesters and the people based in communities, there isn't a mechanism to share knowledge or for knowledge to be respected. We hear harvesters all the time commenting that fish are returning to one river or another, but there are no officers monitoring those rivers anymore. That knowledge isn't even getting back.
We feel the Fisheries Act was written at a time, initially, before British Columbia was even part of Canada. Really, considerations aren't in place to recognize the knowledge of the people on the ground and to feed that back to decision-makers to have quick decisions made.
We'll continue to see those changes. As water is warm, we will have species coming up from California and have no fisheries for them because we're not acting in a way that's nimble enough. The act needs to be reconsidered at a high level in light of respect for the knowledge in fishing communities from harvesters and from people who are on the ground.