Fisheries committee  Hi. I get six minutes to wrap up 30 years' worth of fisheries management, fisheries marketing, buying. I am president of the area G trollers, which are not trawlers. They're the guys who run the single lines through the water, with hooks on them, in different places. The fleet

Fisheries committee  I can go if you want. Basically, there is no real consultation. I think that's across all sectors that have been mentioned. We actually had an emergency meeting with the first nations in our region yesterday. Dan was involved and we discussed the fact that the aquatic managemen

Fisheries committee  With regard to this year as an example, the science is not being done. We used to have the science. We have a wealth of information within the department. We don't need to create our own science branch within fisheries. If we have access to that information, we can justify fishe

Fisheries committee  No. Don't misinterpret it. There is a massive decline in salmon and it is a disaster.

Fisheries committee  There are small pockets of opportunity for the remaining commercial sector, but I'm going to say this. We had 1,800 trollers originally fishing the west coast of Vancouver Island. This week, I have 25 to 35 trollers. When I say there's opportunity for the commercial sector, I'm t

Fisheries committee  I will follow up with that question, actually, because it does follow up on Ken Hardie's question, are there a lot of fish out there? There are not a lot of fish out there, but there are also very few commercial fishermen. The forgone opportunities are for the remaining small num

Fisheries committee  I think the first thing is to declare what it is, which is a disaster. That follows up on how there is not enough salmon to go around for all of the increased participants that the federal government has added over the last number of years, the increased charter business, the inc

Fisheries committee  Absolutely. I can't see how you could avoid doing that. Between Big Bar and all of the other elements that we face, and the conflicting interests among user groups, if you don't declare it an emergency, you're basically just pitting the last of the users out here against each oth

Fisheries committee  Well, I would like to see enough funds, first and foremost, to help the fishermen and the infrastructure that we need to support the industry into the future. We need a discussion on what the goal in managing fisheries on the west coast is, which has some guiding principles and

Fisheries committee  Well, the catch reduction was that rather than reduce the catch in Alaska completely or pull more dams on the Columbia, Canada took a catch reduction to accommodate the U.S., and in exchange, they provided $30 million U.S. to mitigate the impacts. There was only one fleet that

Fisheries committee  I think they've made it a priority and they've made the investment. They're removing dams on the Columbia. They put money into enhancement and mass hatchery programs in Alaska. Salmon has been recognized as a social and cultural driver and has taken priority over many other inter

Fisheries committee  Yes, absolutely. There's no doubt about it. COVID has an impact on everyone. It has an impact on our industry. It has an impact on how we can fish, how we can deliver fish and where we move fish to. Our buyers are not wanting to deliver to the States if they don't have to, and

Fisheries committee  I don't think I could really comment. There is no foreign ownership in the existing fleet. As for whether there are illegal fleets within the 200-mile limit, I would tend to think that we probably have decent enforcement. What we have seen in the last 20 years is a massive incre

Fisheries committee  The fish go from Alaska down to Washington, Oregon and California. Those are the stocks that we're harvesting. We're not harvesting Alaskan fish. Alaskans are harvesting Canadian fish that would come to us within our area, so we reciprocate and harvest some of theirs as they go b

Fisheries committee  The simple answer is no. Even at this present time, when I talk about forgone opportunity, we're not allowed to retain coho on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Even though biological staff over the years have said there is an opportunity, with a very marginal impact on Canadi