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Fisheries committee Thank you very much for the invitation to speak to you today. I come to you from my home in Sidney, on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples on Vancouver Island. I wear several fisheries hats, including the secretariat of the B.C. COVID-19 Active Fishermen's Com
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee I would say no—no prior knowledge of this and no consultation prior to the change being made.
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee I have just one comment. I've been made aware there has been some enforcement action on exactly this with the recreational sector recently in the last six months. I'm not sure if that is behind this. It was for a recreational fisherman who had frozen his prawns in tubs. I don't
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee We worked with the region for a couple of months trying to get some kind of resolution with them and some kind of means for compliance on that. Not seeing that, we reached out to the minister's office. They came back and said, basically, that it would be pretty much status quo fo
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee Do you want me to answer that?
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee From what I laid out there, it's pretty obvious that harvesters make more money when they can sell direct and shorten the supply chain. It's significant, there's no doubt about that. In this case here, it's at least 50% less by selling through a processor. That's obvious. That b
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee I think exactly the same. We have had an opportunity to question the department on this and their answers have been lacking. They have not clarified what made them reinterpret this regulation in such a way that 50 years of practice has gone out the window. We do not understand th
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee Yes. If you're a small operator, you make investments, you build a business plan around your fishery. Part of that business plan might be putting a freezer onto your boat; that's $50,000, $60,000 or $70,000. The intention is to go to the central coast and tub prawns and market th
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee Yes, it has that potential of spreading across multiple species. We don't understand exactly what they're seeing here and the implications of this. Hake, here on this coast, is frozen in totes at sea. What does that mean—put that offline? They're telling us not.... You fill a ho
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee Yes, and for no apparent good reason, as well. You just heard from James about the impact it has on his business. He has to devalue his business. There are other harvesters out there that have bank agreements that specify how many tubs they are actually going to produce. Now, y
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee I haven't spoken with other harvesters, specifically, regarding their concerns about this being implemented—actually some, yes. There is concern, but there hasn't been any kind of direct change, that I know of, targeted on another fishery right now.
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee Yes, that's correct.
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee That's correct. Yes.
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee That's correct. Yes. On the IUU component, which a couple of your members asked questions about, one of the other fisheries identified as having some kind of radical changes recently is the clam fishery. There's an estimate that about two to three times the actual commercial la
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac
Fisheries committee One of the first comments the department made to us on this whole issue was that the onus was on the harvester to comply with the regulations. If you ask what the regulations mean and what the issues are, and we don't get a clear answer, it becomes very, very difficult to compl
May 3rd, 2021Committee meeting
Jim McIsaac