Fisheries committee  Thank you. I'm going first, but we are sharing the time. Hello, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee once again. I am sharing the time with Martin Paish so we can provide information about B.C.'s public fishing industry, the effects of COVID-19 on t

Fisheries committee  I think I provided a bit of a theory to explain what is behind that, and that's the predisposition of the department to serve and manage commercial fisheries. I understand that this is the design of Fisheries, but to an observer and participant in all of the fisheries, it is quit

Fisheries committee  I'd like to add a little bit of context with regard to the values of the recreational fishery. They are not solely based on harvest, and require reliability and opportunity. That's the driving force behind looking at a vision for the future of recreational fisheries. Harvest is i

Fisheries committee  I will hand it off to Martin, but I'll begin. Hello, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee once again. My name is Owen Bird and my colleague is Martin Paish. We're here to talk about the study of the regulation of the west coast fisheries, and we bot

Fisheries committee  I feel we're under attack, or we're meat in the so-called sandwich. There has been opportunity to consult. However, in the first round of consultation, our input was basically ignored, and the additional consultation opportunities almost seemed strategically poorly timed for us

Fisheries committee  All right. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Owen Bird and my colleague is Martin Paish. We are here to talk about southern resident killer whales, or SRKW. We both represent the Sport Fishing lnstitute of Bri

Fisheries committee  Yes, that's a good characterization: it's a challenge.

Fisheries committee  It may not be insurmountable, but it has to be considered.

Fisheries committee  It's tempting to consider the RCAs as the small areas and then think what happens around those areas, but if you think about another species or another model of access, then a larger area might be the way to go. Otherwise, you end up having a refuge and you potentially impact the

Fisheries committee  I think it's a general statement. When you have such a large and diverse country and a tremendous number of species available for sportfishing and commercial fishing and otherwise, it's quite a sweeping and broad statement. Certainly, on the B.C. coast, which I am most familiar w

Fisheries committee  I wouldn't really have anything else to add. Gerry has captured it.

Fisheries committee  Yes, consultation has occurred. The thing is that we are moving forward. It appears that I gave the example of the provincial map process, where the appropriate kind of consultation did not occur with all the stakeholder groups. We're sensitive to that and believe that the federa

Fisheries committee  I don't know that I would say that at all, but it seems like quite a lot of areas of the B.C. coast are already dedicated to MPAs. If we're looking at it in a pan-Canadian way, it seems that there's a considerable amount of the Pacific coast already dedicated to those areas. Then

Fisheries committee  I'll admit I'm not exactly sure what that number refers to. I'm not sure if that's RCAs or the sponge reefs, or what that is and what that 65% relates to.

Fisheries committee  Again, with migratory species, and even to a lesser degree non-migratory species, it seems as though the impacts of the recreational fishery are such that.... I can say, with regulations and proper management, there should be no reason why that can't be sustainable access. Again,