Fisheries committee  My priority would be fleet separation. If this committee would recommend to the government and to the minister to implement a fleet separation and owner-operator provision in British Columbia, I think this would be a very important step toward stemming the tide of the disappearan

Fisheries committee  There is confusion around that language in the beneficial ownership survey. It asks for the licence-holder, and the licence-holder may be a person who is operating that lease, who may be leasing it. Licence-holder is not the same as licence owner. If a large company, for example

Fisheries committee  Sure. I said before that fishing is inherently risky. We export most of our seafood in Canada, so we are at the mercy of global markets, of currency exchange rates, of the wild ecosystem in terms of what's provided. So it is risky. The current system is designed so that those wh

Fisheries committee  I don't have quantifiable numbers. I wish I did. I wish I could have it on a chart that I could easily show. I can say that for the fishing families I know who persist in the fishery through multiple generations and who are able to make a living from fishing and to do well and pu

Fisheries committee  They vary. Some of our harvesters lease quota from their nation, so the nation will have an agreement with them about what percentage of the catch goes to them or what dollar amount. My husband leased from a family friend. They just negotiated between them because the family frie

Fisheries committee  Yes. Fisheries for Communities is a network of harvesters, researchers, academics and NGOs—small businesses as well—that are advocating for a policy reform in the Pacific region that would ensure more of the value of the fishery stays in the hands of coastal communities. I'm ver

Fisheries committee  Thank you so much. Yes, the example I provided around quota ownership was the example I wanted to bring here. Again, if a family owns some quota, it isn't necessarily enough for them to make a living, so they're often scrambling to lease additional quota to make a living for tha

Fisheries committee  It feels very depressing, doesn't it? It feels very discouraging. I agree. I see fishing families like mine disappearing. My son Oliver is here today watching as well. He wants to stay fishing, and it's very difficult for him to stay in the industry. We see that all up and down

Fisheries committee  I don't have figures before me, but I think it would be very interesting to find those.

Fisheries committee  We do get asked that question quite often: Can we give a simple answer to how much more our fishing families get paid? It varies from species to species and year to year. We work individually with the families to figure out what a living wage would be for them that year and wha

Fisheries committee  I don't think there's a really simple, clear answer here. We have learned a lot of lessons on the east coast about supply agreements and how we need to be careful how those can take place under the existing framework on the east coast, which is why we need a made-in-B.C. solution

Fisheries committee  It's uncomfortable to elaborate on repercussions that harvesters face, that our harvesters, the 45 families that fish for Skipper Otto, have experienced. The industry is very much controlled by some big companies that control a lot of quota, licences, off-load facilities, ice p

Fisheries committee  I have heard examples of that, where there is a prescribed maximum percentage of the value of the catch that can go to a licence owner, and I think that would go a long way. I know that, in British Columbia, in many cases, upwards of 75% of the landed value of the catch goes to t

Fisheries committee  I would say the same. No progress has been made.

Fisheries committee  I think fleet separation is an important first step. It was the first step on the east coast as well, to separate processing licences from fishing licences. It boggles my mind that we haven't begun with a fleet separation on the Pacific coast. I think that would be the first step