Mr. Speaker, I want to return to a question I asked on October 27 last year. Since I asked my question on the sustainability and environment commissioner's report on salmon stocks, habitat and aquaculture, the government has released its long awaited wild salmon policy, and I mean long awaited.
On the Pacific coast, many of the fisheries are facing problems. The top problem is the push towards privatization of the resource by the government's system of licensing and quotas.
Many of the fishing communities along the coast have seen the wealth of their resource transferred out of the community into the hands of armchair fishermen. These are investors who can afford the high cost of buying a licence, who then lease out that licence to real fishers in communities.
It has led to a situation on our coast that the Native Brotherhood of B.C. and the United Fishers and Allied Workers' Union--CAW, detailed in their report “A Rich Fishery or A Fishery for the Rich?”. I will quote from that report. It states:
It would turn a formerly rich fishery into a fishery for the rich, a forced and dictatorial transformation that is against democracy, against communities, and against the national interest in a great and historic resource, on a coast that fishermen helped to build.
Licensing and quota systems also remove the decision-making about the resource from the communities that depend on a sustainable fishery.
The wild salmon policy does talk about socio-economic benefits and that the first nations, fisheries and community interests in salmon stock need to be involved in management actions. However, there is no commitment to stop the changes in ownership of quotas and licences to enable those communities to regain control over their fishing stocks.
Without that community control and interest in salmon stock, the DFO's plan to increase research and monitoring will fail because it depends on local partnerships to collect information instead of trained research staff based in communities. That has already led to gaps in the scientific knowledge of salmon runs. That means a lack of planning and a lack of follow through. The 2004 Fraser sockeye run is a case in point.
DFO officials were very surprised by the amount of salmon returning to the mouth of the Fraser and then they were surprised by how few salmon actually reached the spawning grounds.
As the commissioner's report states, in 2002 users were critical of the data available to manage that year's Fraser River sockeye fishery. There were concerns whether in season estimates of abundance, migration timing and route, stock composition and catch reporting were timely, adequate or accurate.
The wild salmon policy depends on increased monitoring, but funding for fisheries enforcement officers has dropped significantly since the mid-1990s. There are currently only 170 enforcement officers for all of B.C. and Yukon. This is a shameful state of affairs. Meanwhile, there have been calls both in the fisheries committee here in Ottawa and in the communities in B.C. for staff to be moved to the coasts where the resources are located. I think somebody has asked how many wild salmon are in Ottawa.
The NDP will not let the Pacific fishery be taken for granted. Will the minister explain how he will improve staff levels so we can get credible information on salmon stocks, habitats and harvest? Will he commit to increasing the number of fisheries officers on the coast so communities have reliable, accurate and adequate information on all salmon runs from the river mouth right to the spawning grounds?