Fisheries Committee on May 11th, 2023

[Dr. Jennifer Silver]

I think the answer is that ownership information is complicated. There's the licence holder and the licence operator. In some fisheries, the licence is allocated to a vessel. We have the quota that may then be fished on the licence.

These are all fisheries that are managed quite separately. There's an integrated fisheries management plan for salmon. There's an integrated fisheries management plan for herring. For each, there are different groups of folks who are responsible for those plans. Bureaucratically, it's very complicated.

I don't know what the internal systems look like for them. When a licence is registered for the year, you'd like to think there's some way to design a system—I think they are working on this, based on testimony I heard from Monday—so that when a licence is registered each year, it feeds into a database that automatically populates. It's expensive to do that. We need good software engineers. Other jurisdictions do that type of thing.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

I'll go to Mr. Lansbergen now.

Mr. Lansbergen, can you provide any information on the effects of the fish stock assessments, and so on, on the value of licences? Healthy stocks lead to a higher value of licences and lower stocks lead to lower prices. Can you provide anything on that?

[Paul Lansbergen]

I don't have any data to provide on that in particular. The description you gave makes sense to me. The more abundant a particular fish stock is, the more stable the future revenue potential would be, and therefore there would be a greater value of access to that stock.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Good. Thank you.

Mr. Olson, it seems that there's a desire for more access for the people you represent. Is that the case? Do you have individuals wanting to get into the industry? We've heard anecdotal reports of some communities having a hard time finding young people who want to enter the sector. Can you provide any information on that?

[Andrew Olson]

In the communities that I work for, many of them have lots of young people who are interested in engaging in the fishing business and the community fishing enterprises. One of the challenges is the cost of the vessel.

There's also opportunity and the fact that they need to learn and relearn some of these skills, just like they do on the east coast, where they're re-engaging and participating in commercial fisheries. They have done it on a smaller scale locally.

One of the shifts that's happening is the shifting toward more community-based fishing for indigenous people and to the smaller scale, with smaller vessels and multiple species. We've been involved in some of that. In one of the communities I work for, Port Alberni, they have hundreds of fishermen in their community who are from age 15 to 90. They're participating in owner-operator fishing. The nation has the licence access and the community members benefit wholly from the opportunity. The nation doesn't get any revenue from the fishery.

As an example, to Mike's earlier question, you have fishermen in that community who are going to generate $800,000 in a chinook opening in one night in August. That $800,000 is then going to turn into almost $8 million to that community, because those people are going to spend that money around and around and around in that community. They spend it all there. They don't take it somewhere else. They don't live in Vancouver. They live in Port Alberni, a community of 25,000 people, where a shot of $8 million into that economy's arm in one night makes a huge difference.

In those communities, the mayors and all the people understand the wealth that stays there from those fishermen. Those small-scale opportunities are what we need to build on here. That's what we're fighting for here. It's for those fishermen to have an opportunity to keep that money and grow the economy where they live.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold. You went a bit over.

We'll now go to Mr. Hardie to close us out, please.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I was not expecting to be back at it, but I can certainly ask a question here.

Mr. Olson, we also hear that some bands have access to licences and quota, but they'll turn around and lease them out, just like some of the other operators we've been talking about. Should that also be addressed, or would that be a big hit to their revenue, basically, as a band?

[Andrew Olson]

That's a complicated situation. That's a situation that I find myself in, as a person who runs a business that is based on leasing licences to fishermen to drive revenue into an economy for first nations for their bottom line. That's the challenge that I'm up against—providing opportunities for those fishermen who don't own licences and can't afford to buy one. They have to lease them. That's the only way they have an opportunity to participate in the fishing business. They can't afford to buy an $800,000 licence. The return on investment doesn't make sense.

The challenge that—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

If I could, Mr. Olson, I have one more question for Ms. Silver.

The 2019 report, “Sharing Risks and Benefits”, had a lot of recommendations. Have you been able to pick the ones that would actually make the most sense and have the most beneficial impact?

[Dr. Jennifer Silver]

You're stretching the limits of my memory. I mean, we've spoken about the transparency piece and how if DFO made licence holdings searchable, it would make a big difference with respect to transparency and being able to understand and monitor the issue.

I will have to stop there. I don't have the report in front of me and I'm blanking on the recommendations in the report.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

That's not a problem. Maybe you could submit something that would give us a bit of a direction.

[Dr. Jennifer Silver]

Sure.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think we're out of time now, aren't we?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Hardie. We're right on the button for six o'clock, where we have a dead stop.

Of course, I want to thank Dr. Silver, Mr. Lansbergen and Mr. Olson for appearing before our committee today and sharing their valuable information with the committee as we do this report.

I will remind members that next week we will continue receiving testimony from witnesses for this particular study.

I want to thank Mr. Waugh for subbing in for Mr. Bragdon on his exit and thank him for lifting the level of intelligence on that side of the table with the change-out.

Thank you to all the staff for making this meeting possible today. Enjoy your weekend.

The meeting is adjourned.