Mr. Chair and members, thank you for the opportunity to address the committee.
I am a Canadian citizen born in Denmark, where I worked for a decade for the Danish DFO. I spent 10 years with an international research organization, followed by 20 years as a professor at UBC. I'm a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada specializing in ecosystem-based management, notably the combination of ecological, social and economic trade-offs that so often are your headache in FOPO.
I have witnessed the result of a flawed objective for fisheries, which is maximizing economic yield and that fisheries should be managed to maximize profit. On the west coast, DFO has adopted such a policy to make fisheries efficient, leading to easier-to-manage big-scale fleets, to the detriment of local communities. In parallel, management has moved towards individual vessel quotas, which are often made tradeable in the name of efficiency. B.C. is unusual in that there is an almost complete absence of ownership restrictions.
The B.C. halibut fishery has been called the poster child for successful management, but my former Ph.D. student Danielle Edwards documented how processors now control the quota market through leasing and how harvesters now own less than 15% of the quota.
The quota system has enabled investors and corporations to buy more quota, instead of harvesters building new boats and providing livelihood. The system leads to corporate concentration and vertical integration. The price is paid by new generations entering the fishery and by their communities. Many who fish have no choice but to lease quota from a processor, which ties them to selling to that processor at the price offered. Harvesters cannot earn from the fishery to reinvest and maintain their boats. Earnings do not offer a path to quota ownership, nor a path to boat ownership for a crew.
Despite clear socio-economic objectives for fisheries in Canada, there's an almost complete lack of consideration for socio-economic objectives in west coast fisheries. I blame DFO, full stop—not just for the mistakes of the 1990s, but even more for continuing down that road.
The move from owner-operator to corporate dominance has been devastating for fishing communities. Owner-operator fisheries provide livelihood not just for those on board, but for the service industry in coastal communities. It's been argued that seasonal income from fisheries is too low to provide livelihood, but such income is crucial for maintaining coastal communities, where people often have a portfolio of income and do not rely on high income from any one seasonal fishery.
Community-based fisheries serve as magnets for tourism, providing local seafood, jobs and livelihood. That is not considered with policies that make fisheries efficient. Value does not come from exporting raw products or products that can compete with low-cost import, but from value-added processing and marketing. Local value chains provide jobs and income. It really is value-added.
Rural coastal communities are dying throughout B.C. That notably includes first nations losing livelihood and traditional knowledge about fishing. We need to consider fisheries as strategic assets if our rural coastal communities are to survive.
What needs to be done is clear. FOPO pointed the way four years ago in the “West Coast Fisheries” report: Make the owner-operator principle, where only active, independent harvesters are allowed to own licences and quota, a requirement on the west coast, just like it is on the east coast.
It's time to right the ship.
Thank you.