Thank you for allowing me to speak today on foreign ownership and corporate concentration.
My name is Brad Mirau. I'm the president and CEO of Aero Trading, a fish-processing company in B.C. that was established in 1978. We have a plant in Vancouver and one on the north coast near Prince Rupert. I appreciate being able to speak on this, because we are a Canadian company that happens to be foreign-owned, and we also happen to own multiple fishing licences and quotas.
We operate primarily within the small and medium-sized fishing fleets. To give you some idea of the size of our company, we have dealings with as many as 300 independent Canadian fishermen in any given year. Over my 35-year career doing this, I have developed a level of expertise in licensing and quota transactions that has allowed me to help or advise individual fishermen and first nations organizations, as well as some of the industry advisory bodies.
I've seen the industry change immensely over these decades. I should point out that there are very few remaining processing facilities on the B.C. coast, and that many over the last three or four decades have ultimately failed or been consolidated into other existing companies. In Prince Rupert, for example, Aero Trading—we're in Port Edward, actually—is the only remaining full-fledged fish-processing facility that's left. Other people just operate off-loading facilities.
We own a variety of licences and quotas that I feel are integral to our being able to maintain the operation of our processing plants year-round, and we've made these necessary investments not just in licences, but in equipment. We've also always provided financial assistance to some of our fishermen in order for them to be able to buy licences or upgrade their vessels, as traditional banking arrangements are not always available to them.
The “licence bank” we have created, as it's called, or a “licence pool”, benefits all of our stakeholders, including fishermen, and we think it's a sustainable model, which we are very proud of. In fact, many of our retiring fishermen leave their licences in this pool for us to manage for the other fishermen who still fish for us.
At the plant we operate in the north, where most of our acquiring happens, we also off-load for competitors, many first nations fishermen and the first nations partners we have in the various communities.
I think over the last two or three decades of the industry, the decline of the salmon and herring fisheries sped up the consolidation of processing companies, which is why there is some corporate concentration in these two licence categories, especially herring and salmon. But I think there are some narratives—which I've heard—that also exist around our industry that all fisheries have excessive corporate concentration, and I do not believe this to be the case. I'm happy that studies like the beneficial licence ownership survey are at least starting to get some true aspect of who owns what.
I'm not going to take the position that there shouldn't be any changes to the status quo, but I would hope that while considering any change we use good data and evidence and meaningful consultation with all the affected parties, so that any changes won't continue to harm the various participant groups in the Pacific region.
The main thing I'd like to say is that the licensing system in B.C. has become so complicated and so interconnected—so much more complicated than most people think—that any changes will most certainly require lots of planning and will have significant impacts on many.
I don't profess to know what the threshold for corporate concentration is, but if you look at some of the licence categories, I don't believe there is more than 5% or 10% corporate concentration in a lot of these fisheries. The landscape of licence ownership is changing rapidly. Through PICFI, the first nations community is now becoming one of the larger licence owners in many licence categories. It's important to realize that a lot of these first nations groups are operating through normal, legal companies and have joint ventures with companies such as ours and individual fishermen, so any changes made to the licensing system would have impacts on all parties, including first nations fisheries.
I would be cautious about changes before we know all the impacts, and I would love to be a part of those discussions, because I think I have a lot of information to offer.
Thank you.