Thank you.
I'm really happy for the invitation to be here. Thank you for that.
The topic is timely and important. It relates to urgent questions that we've been hearing about already on who benefits from the culturally significant, nutritious and economically valuable fish in our exclusive economic zone.
I spoke to FOPO in 2019 about my west coast research. Today I'm going to give an overview of some relevant points from that work that do indeed point to concentration. I'm going to use the last couple of minutes to summarize some arguments from scholarly literature about why fisheries access and benefits ought to be systematically considered by state-led management systems, like the one we have in Canada.
With respect to the west coast research, the starting point—which is now a review at this point, as you heard from folks in the first session—is that fish harvesting operations can register and hold numerous licences and different types of quota. In turn, they can participate in a range of fisheries or earn revenue by leasing out some or all of their licences and quota to others. These licences and quota can get very expensive.
The research I have led counted all west coast licences registered in 2019—so within a single year—noting who held what and how many. Licence-holding and identification information came from a publicly available spreadsheet. My research is exclusively focused on publicly available information. The spreadsheet can be downloaded. It's very complicated. There are hundreds of thousands of lines in the spreadsheet, and many columns. We used a computer code to basically extract and match identifying information across licences and fisheries.
In 2019 we counted 6,563 licences registered by 2,377 unique holders. There were, indeed, a small number of holders—38, in fact—that had 20 or more licences, and six that had 50 or more. Together, these 38 holding entities—the individuals, companies and so on—controlled 26% of all west coast licences in 2019. There were 1,357 with one licence only and 499 with two licences only. These together accounted for 36% of all licences.
As you've now heard a number of times, in contrast to the Atlantic region policy, which defines and supports an inshore owner-operator fleet, no such distinction exists in the Pacific region. There are no limits on what a holding entity can hold, be they fishermen, processors, or speculative investors,. Licence holdings, leasing arrangements and other types of economic arrangements do not get considered in the context of fisheries evaluation, and they're not considered against any type of socio-economic objective. In this sense, access and the distribution of benefits to Pacific fisheries are left to market forces.
In the last minute or two of my time, I want to relay fisheries science and marine policy research relevant to Canada, as well as other countries that have similar fisheries management systems. These points are pertinent beyond the Pacific region and in the contemplation of foreign and speculative investment.
The first point is that foreign financing and ownership shape industrial fisheries and seafood value chains. In 2016, a meta-study was published that documented the disproportionate size and international reach of a small handful of private transnational corporations. They estimated that 13 transnationals controlled 11% to 13% of all marine catch and 19% to 40% of catch from the largest and most valuable stocks. These firms owned and operated subsidiaries. About six of the transnationals owned 100 or more subsidiaries. The authors of this study observed that the firms are large and powerful. Their business activities usually encompass numerous nodes across seafood value chains, and they frequently pursue “strategic mergers with major market or quota holders via direct acquisitions”.
To conclude, the second message from the literature is optimistic. Fisheries science tells us it is entirely possible to rebuild fish stock such that year-after-year yields stabilize and grow. The science-based benchmarking approach plays a critical role. The 2019 amendments to the federal Fisheries Act helped to make the rebuilding, monitoring and benchmarking that's built into DFO's integrated fisheries management plan framework.
This committee knows that rebuilding fish stocks requires a lot of work. It's intensive and expensive. Indigenous and non-indigenous communities throughout coastal Canada have put and continue to put their hands up to lead, support and invest in this work, especially in the work of supporting ecosystem health and function.
The federal government also plays a leadership role through funding, science and the costs of management. We as a country are investing and will continue to invest in fisheries rebuilding. This is the right course of action. Science tells us that investment pays off for ecosystems, people and pocketbooks. The question of this study is, whose pocketbooks?
That question is still an open policy question. For this reason, access and benefits must be seen to be squarely under the purview of fisheries management policy and not left entirely to market forces.