THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, February 24, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met by videoconference this day at 6:36 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on the commercial fisheries licensing regime on Canada’s Pacific Coast; and, in camera, to consider a draft agenda (future business).
Senator Bev Busson (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Good evening. My name is Bev Busson, senator from British Columbia.
Today, we are conducting a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
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Before we begin, I would like to take a few moments to allow the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator Dhillon: Baltej Dhillon, British Columbia.
Senator C. Deacon: Colin Deacon, Nova Scotia.
Senator Poirier: Welcome. Rose-May Poirier, from New Brunswick.
Senator Prosper: Paul Prosper, Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki territory.
Senator Greenwood: Margo Greenwood, British Columbia, and I’m sitting here for Senator Ravalia this evening.
Senator Boudreau: Victor Boudreau, senator for New Brunswick.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
On November 18, 2025, the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans was authorized to examine and report on the commercial fishery licensing regime on Canada’s Pacific coast.
Today, under this mandate, the committee is pleased to be hearing from the following individuals: by video conference, Daniel Edwards, fisher; and, in person, Rebekah Pesicka, a commercial fisher, also from the West Coast.
On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for being here. I understand that you may have opening remarks. Following your remarks, members of the committee will have questions for you.
Mr. Edwards, you have the floor.
Daniel Edwards, Fisherman, as an individual: Thank you, honourable senators, for the opportunity to speak today on the modernization of fishery licensing in British Columbia.
The Canadian licensing regime for commercial fisheries has evolved over several decades. In the late 1970s, former minister of fisheries and oceans Roméo LeBlanc created the policy of fleet separation to stop control of licences in small boat, inshore fisheries in Atlantic Canada from falling into the hands of non‑fishermen, primarily processing companies. Mr. LeBlanc did not enact a similar policy for the Pacific Region. There was a large and economically strong owner-operator fishing fleet in B.C. then, and he did not see the same need for a new policy to protect it. His deputy minister at the time told Atlantic fishermen they should look to the B.C. fishery as a model to emulate.
The situation has now completely reversed, with Atlantic inshore fisheries providing stable careers and middle-class incomes for working harvesters and the B.C. small boat fishery in crisis and decline. I have submitted to you several articles and letters I have written over the years describing the daunting challenges B.C.’s working harvesters now face.
There are many actions the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada should take to support a made-in-B.C. owner-operator fleet separation policy, but I will focus here on the commitment the minister made on February 4 to establish a public quota and licence registry for the B.C. fishery. This was recommended by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans in its 2019 West Coast Fisheries: Sharing Risks and Benefits report. If done correctly, such a registry would be the essential first step for a future move toward owner-operator licensing in B.C.
Fishing licences provide access to exploit a public resource. In contrast to the Atlantic licensing regime, in the Pacific Region, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, or DFO, policies have allowed licences and fish quotas to become tradeable financial assets with highly inflated values in an unregulated market, decoupled entirely from fishing vessels and working fishermen. There is, at present, no transparent, publicly accessible way to know who controls beneficial ownership of these assets, so the public can have no say in their allocation.
In practical terms, we know who holds a licence — whose name is on the paper — but for a high proportion of licences, we do not know who controls its use and its economic benefits.
A few years ago, a DFO official stated before the House of Commons Fisheries Committee that you had to be a Canadian citizen to hold a fishing licence, not clarifying that this rule applies only for the Personal Fisher Registration, or PFR, licence that every fisher must have to work on a fishing vessel. To get a PFR, you must be a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident or hold a work permit, and these are non-transferable licences that do not confer any right to fish any particular species. For that, you need a commercial fishing licence in a particular fishery, such as a halibut licence or a ZN rockfish licence.
Anyone, from anywhere in the world, can own or control beneficial ownership of one of these licences. There are no restrictions, and there is no transparency. We know whose name is on the licence but not who actually purchased it and controls the economic benefits derived from it.
One of the most practical modernization steps available to the DFO minister is the creation of a quota and licence registry that includes disclosure of verified beneficial ownership. This is not a radical proposal. It is a standard transparency mechanism already used in banking, securities and corporate registries.
I want to be clear: This is not about restricting lawful investment. It is about ensuring that Canadian regulators, policy‑makers, commercial fishermen and the public understand who ultimately controls access to publicly owned fishery resources.
A properly built public quota and licence registry will make possible the following advances in modernizing and improving fairness and enterprise viability in B.C. commercial fisheries: first, facilitation of transitions to made-in-B.C. fleet separation and owner-operator licensing policies; second, putting meaningful restrictions on anti-competitive consolidation; third, tracking and putting limits on foreign ownership; fourth, tracking and improving value chain compliance with anti‑dumping and price-fixing regulations; fifth, exposing and countering money-laundering operations; sixth, facilitating the negotiation of fair sharing agreements; and seventh, enhancing real-time access to available quotas for owner-operator fishermen.
Modernizing the licensing system without a beneficial ownership licence and quota registry will leave a critical gap unaddressed.
If the DFO minister is serious about supporting independent owner-operators in British Columbia, as is clearly a high priority on the Atlantic coast, a public quota and licence registry is a foundational starting point.
Thank you for your time.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Edwards. We will move to Ms. Pesicka, and then we will allow our colleagues to ask questions. Thank you very much.
Rebekah Pesicka, Commercial Fisher, as an individual: Thank you. Hello, honourable senators. My name is Rebekah Pesicka. I am a second-generation commercial prawn fisher in B.C. I have been fishing prawns for 40 years, and my status First Nations daughter Morgan fishes with me.
I want to share with you the gravity of the current situation of the commercial prawn fishery in B.C.
The local plant processors have a retail export market for prawns that is very valuable and attracts foreign investment. These processors offer unsustainably high lease prices to licence owners that are not operators and often know little about the fishery. The majority of the licences are now owned by First Nations bands and managed by people in administration.
The more licences a processor controls, the bigger their profit.
The processor is not actually responsible for paying the lease price that is agreed on. The cost of the lease price is passed on to the fisherman. Some processors are also offering First Nations prawn fishermen the opportunity to reduce their licence lease cost by doing food fisheries for the processor, who then uses the food fish to sweeten the lease prices offered to the bands for their licences.
To be clear, this food fish is being offered out to any band that has a desirable licence.
This situation has really spiralled out of control in the past three years. In some heavily fished areas, this is causing the prawn resource to be fished down before the commercial opening. This is causing frustration within the industry.
I know this first-hand. One of my relatives was jumped and beaten severely by multiple people last summer for confronting fishermen who were doing this illegal type of food fishery.
In 2022, I sold my licence and began fishing with a leased licence; I sold my prawn licence. At that time, lease prices sat steadily around $35,000 to $55,000 a year for the lease. My average gross fishing income is around $200,000.
In 2024, I began leasing my daughter’s band’s licence. It seemed like a blessing at the time. It was an opportunity for us to foster a connection with Morgan’s band, and the licence matched the length of my boat according to DFO regulation. No other member of her band had fished that licence before.
Morgan and I went to meet the licence manager. We were welcomed into the band office, and Morgan was well received. But the band’s lease price was $100,000 — double what I had calculated could be sustainable for me.
They told me that was the industry standard price that year, and they couldn’t lease it for less or they would get in trouble with their directors for not getting market value for the licence. However, the licence manager assured me that if I had any struggles, they would help me out because Morgan was a band member. As part of my lease agreement, I was asked to do a food fishery for them. They offered to pay a day rate for my efforts and costs.
That year, the price dropped, and after the season, I did not get any relief on the lease price when I asked. I was unable to afford any improvements on my boat and started the next year $30,000 in debt. I did not go food fishing because where I fish is far away from Morgan’s traditional territory.
In 2025, I was told the lease price would be lower because of the previous poor year. As the time for leasing the licence got closer, I was advised to put an open bid on the lease because others were bidding on it. I did so and offered to mentor a second member as well. The band ended up accepting my open bid at $70,000 and did not connect me with a second member, so we missed out on an opportunity to connect with other members of Morgan’s band.
In 2025, I, again, moved backward financially. After the season, I tried again to set up a traditional food fishery so Morgan could have the opportunity to practise skippering the boat without the pressure of the commercial season. Fishing outside her territory was still too complicated.
Then, I received a call from the boss of the licence manager I had been dealing with. He threatened legal action if I did not provide 800 pounds of frozen prawn tails free of charge as part of the lease price for 2025 because that was what he had got for his other prawn licence, leased to a processor who was using the illegal food fish harvesting system. This man — the man managing the licences — is related to my daughter. We had a long discussion. I told him there is no way any fisherman can carry these lease prices. I asked him how he could expect members of his band to succeed when they are in direct bidding competition with processing companies that have foreign investors and are doing illegal activities. He said that the licence I was leasing was being used as a profit-generating business investment and that it was not intended to be given to a member of the band as a priority.
In this current situation, I’m going broke and being disconnected from my family members due to industry pressures. This industry now feels threatening and unsafe. Fleet separation and owner-operator policy could change that.
Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. We have some interested senators who would like to ask both of you questions.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you very much, Mr. Edwards and Ms. Pesicka. I would love to know how DFO has responded to your, I think, entirely achievable and reasonable request. The stories you tell are beyond troubling. How are they responding to this request to have a beneficial ownership and a “licensing” registry? It sounds like a basic request to manage activities appropriately. We have our challenges with DFO, but I’m interested in why they haven’t embraced this. Why would the policy-makers not be on top of this? Have you been given a reason? Maybe we can start with Mr. Edwards.
Mr. Edwards: It is a good question. Actually, the call from the industry for having this registry has been happening since, I think, 2002. This is not a new request. When the minister met with a lot of fishermen in Campbell River on July 28 of last year, she said she was going to enact this registry, but like everything else with this modernization, nothing has happened yet. In fact, almost nothing from the 2019 Standing House of Commons Committee on Fisheries and Oceans report has happened.
I also represent a number of fishermen in the groundfish industry, and a lot of them were having trouble in September finding the quota — because there is no way to find the quota other than through connections you might have with processors, et cetera.
I wrote a letter to the minister, asked them to please put this registry in place and told them that it is really important for many reasons, which I stipulated, not the least being that it is needed for active fishermen in small boats who need to find quotas to go fishing.
At that point, in September, 60% of the yelloweye quota was in the water, but the people who needed it couldn’t find it anywhere. I started writing letters. We set up a meeting with Neil Davis, who is the Pacific Region policy coordinator, to talk about these issues. We asked that they please move forward with it. He suggested there were some concerns with the national program and that they needed to identify a way to coordinate nationally, which is interesting considering the massive discrepancy between the Pacific and Atlantic regions on policy. He also cited privacy concerns that get in the way of making this public.
Those are the two things that we heard. We know from experience, and I have been through this on a number of issues with halibut and other fisheries, that the privacy concerns they cite are not actually there at all. There is no reason why they can’t release this information publicly. DFO has a lot of the information on where the quota is being held, but they refuse to release it.
The same thing is being used, apparently, to stop the overall transparency needed around beneficial ownership. It is a real problem, as mentioned in the points I made, and not just in this industry. It is a Canadian problem in a number of industries.
Senator C. Deacon: Just to be clear, they are citing a privacy issue and a nationally coordinated strategy, theoretically. Those are the two things I heard.
Mr. Edwards: Yes. That’s right.
Senator C. Deacon: That is filibustering at its worst. Ms. Pesicka, what have you heard about the pushback?
Ms. Pesicka: I haven’t heard any clarity. I’m here because I’m struggling with a lack of clarity in the industry and a lack of definition. What I just read to you is my experience in the past two years. When I say things have become worse in the past three years, they are getting worse quickly. In my opinion, it is all due to the fact that there are a lot of things changing right now with reconciliation, the different types of fishing happening, environmental considerations and food processing. I hold six licences in order to harvest my prawns — a Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, licence; an export licence; a personal licence; a W licence and a WorkSafe licence.
There are all these responsibilities we are now being asked to carry as fishermen. It has changed a lot from what it was like 30 or 40 years ago. The prawn licence I sold — I sold it for $700,000. My father paid $50 for it. Everything has shifted, but there is no umbrella of structure to support the changes that are being asked of us — and these are really important changes. This is Canada. We are being asked to reconcile. We are being asked to take care of our environment and provide a sustainable fishery. There is no framework to support that, and DFO is not responding with any changes.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you very much.
Senator Prosper: Thank you to both of our witnesses. Ms. Pesicka, thank you for sharing your story and your perseverance. I relate to your daughter Morgan, who is status. I’m from a community in Nova Scotia and status as well. The food fishery is something that I grew up learning about.
There was a decision, the Denny, Paul and Sylliboy case, that was relied upon in the Sparrow decision at the Supreme Court that provided that mechanism for a food, social and ceremonial fishery nationally, so it is disheartening when I hear — and you get to hear certain things, no matter where you are, when it involves fishing, and certainly within First Nations communities.
I would just love to understand a bit more about how the food fishery is being used. I think, at one point, you mentioned it used to sweeten —
Ms. Pesicka: The lease prices.
Senator Prosper: — the lease prices, and how that is being characterized as an illegal fishery from your perspective.
Ms. Pesicka: From my experience, how it’s being used is that when people are bidding on licences — it’s a competition. At least in my first-hand experience with my daughter’s band, they open the bid up for their licence at the beginning of March, and the fishery begins at the beginning of May. That’s why I did an open bid last year, because I’m bidding on a licence and don’t know what the other bids will be, and I do know that other bidders are fish processors. It’s not common for a fisherman to be bidding directly with a band. I would say it’s less common now than it was maybe five years ago. The fish processors have been very involved.
At the same time, somehow, this offer of food fish has come into play. I don’t know the beginning of this. I do know that, in the case of my own buyer, he’s offered to supply seafood as part of his lease prices to a band, and I think the initial interest was that some bands just really wanted seafood for their Elders. That’s what I was hearing. The bands wanted seafood for their Elders and their members. For some of the processors, maybe it was easier for them to provide fish in order to get access to a licence. I think that’s how this process started.
Now what I’ve heard is that, in some situations, there are processors that are allowing or encouraging — this is actually my perception of it. That is not first-hand, but I do know first‑hand that there are First Nations fishermen who do food fishing and the seafood that they catch is being used in trade to reduce their lease price, and then that seafood is being used by a processor and offered out to other bands for licences.
Senator Prosper: Thank you.
Ms. Pesicka: You’re welcome. I hope that was clear enough for you.
Senator Prosper: It was. It sort of gives an indication.
Ms. Pesicka: How it becomes illegal, I think, is through the fact it’s a trade and done in large quantities. I think maybe 10 years ago, or when food fishing started, it was for food and ceremonial purposes. However, when there are hundreds of traps involved, it’s being fished in mass quantities, it’s being frozen and that product is not going directly back to members — specifically, to the band or the people who are fishing — then it starts to become a little questionable as to what is going on.
Senator Prosper: As a follow-up to that, the image being painted in my mind here is one of a lack of transparency and a lack of reporting. So I guess it’s questionable, how much goes back to the community and where the remainder may go. It is unaccounted for.
You mentioned an element of potential money laundering — or was that you, Mr. Edwards?
Ms. Pesicka: It was Mr. Edwards.
Senator Prosper: Maybe I’ll shift to you, Mr. Edwards, if you can provide further clarity for my purposes on that aspect of money laundering.
Mr. Edwards: I cited that as one of the elements that a quota registry would help to identify. There was a report done by the Province of British Columbia that followed the issue of money laundering in the casinos in the province, and it actually mentioned that the fishing industry had been involved in money laundering.
It wasn’t specific to prawns or any other particular fisheries, from what I remember. It was just generally the use of laundered money to buy up licences, et cetera. Again, no transparency — and this was mentioned in the report — it makes it easier for that to occur, for dirty money to be laundered through any business or any kind of framework where that money could be dumped. That report was specifically around the casinos, but it also mentioned the real estate businesses in British Columbia being affected by this, as well as the fishing industry.
One point I was making is that if you had a public registry and were tracking that money through that registry — who owned what and where the beneficial ownership was — that laundering would become much less possible to perform.
Senator Prosper: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Mr. Edwards.
Senator Poirier: Thank you both for being here and for sharing your concerns on this. I have a few questions, and the questions are for both of you.
From my understanding, there were two major policies put in place in Atlantic Canada, way back — as I think Mr. Edwards mentioned — in the 1970s. At the time, the Pacific coast didn’t feel there was a need for that.
At what point in time did you start seeing a major shift and that things were not going as well as they should have been? I know you probably did from some of the comments, but at that point, did you make contact with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to see if they would be willing to open up or look at how it was working in Atlantic Canada, and if that could be done in the Pacific Region?
I’d welcome both of you, if you could say something.
Ms. Pesicka: I’ll go first. I feel like my history and experience are a little bit more limited and very specific to prawns. I would say that things really started to shift when the buyback started from DFO — buying prawn licences to be used for reconciliation. The licences were going to the bands, and that’s when, if there were a registry of licences, it just really made things start to get more chaotic because those licences were being bought up and shifted to the bands. Processors still wanted that resource, or wanted to use access to the resource, so then they were stepping in and basically creating hired skippers to run boats, and the processor was accessing those licences. That created a totally different dynamic in the types of fishermen on the water — and a difference in accountability, because they’re not owner-operators.
I sold my licence because there was a change in regulation. I was starting to feel like, with marine protected areas, or MPAs, coming into place, it seemed a little scary to own a licence worth that much. But I would say that shift started about 10 years ago with prawns. I started to really notice it then, to answer your question.
As for approaching DFO, yes, I’ve been to and participated in meetings on and off for 10 years. I haven’t seen any specific response to that.
Mr. Edwards: Thanks for the question.
I used to be the vice-president of the Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters, from about 2001 to 2017. It’s a national organization. We worked closely with the groups on the Atlantic coast.
We were well aware, even in the 1990s, of the benefits of having owner-operators on the East Coast too, the small boat owner-operators, and how that maintained communities and small boat enterprises.
But in 2011, the government of the day put out a modernization program, which Atlantic Canada saw as a thinly veiled attempt to get rid of owner-operator and fleets separation. They formed the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters’ Federation, whose expressed agenda was to maintain and strengthen owner-operator fleet separation because it was being eroded, from their perspective, by that modernization process and moving more toward a corporatized fishery along the lines of what had happened in British Columbia.
I fished salmon for 40 years. I fished groundfish for the last 20 years. We’ve watched a serious and steady decline of the small boat fleets in our communities.
I live in Ucluelet, a small fishing community on the west coast of Vancouver Island. I did a story just recently about the last salmon troller living, a small boat guy, in Ucluelet. There is one guy left. We used to be the third-largest trawling community in British Columbia. There are a lot of issues around that.
However, there is also a recognition of how important it is that owner-operators be a policy and that fleet separation be a policy.
I fished halibut and black cod, and 70% to 80% of my revenue from 2006 to 2019 — when we had to finally sell the boat for next to nothing — went into the lease costs of people. We had no idea who owned the quota or where it was coming from. It was much like what Rebekah is saying about prawns. It’s controlled through the processing sector with very little transparency.
Senator Poirier: Can you please let me know or describe to me how the current licensing regime affects the ability for fishers to enter or remain in the commercial fisheries? Are new young harvesters realistically able to enter the industry under the current regime?
Ms. Pesicka: One aspect I find impactful in prawns is that the licences are limited by foot. I forget what year it was, but back in the 1990s, there was a shift in the prawn industry. DFO made this shift where the licence became limited to the length that it was on.
My dad had a 24-foot licence, for example, or a 24-foot boat. He fished prawns. His licence became a 24-foot licence. I don’t know exactly if the policy was all clearly made at that time, but I know that, now, the situation is that licence, for example, that I sold was still 24 feet. When I sold it for $700,000, it had to fit with a 24-foot boat. I think there’s only a six-inch allowance as far as whether it can be bigger.
Interestingly enough, it can become smaller. So you could put that licence on a 20-foot boat and that licence will shrink down to 20 feet. When it is resold, it will become a 20-foot licence. Overall, that’s been a big problem in prawns, because now we also have to find lease licences that fit our boats.
I sold my 24-foot boat. Now I’m fishing a 40-foot boat. I have to find a licence that fits my boat. Not only do I not know who has the licences, but I need to know who has the licence that fits my boat.
To answer your question, as far as how feasible it is to get involved, well, we have a fleet of old boats on the B.C. coast. There are not many new fishing vessels being built. Those old boats have to find licences that fit them.
Also, the actual value of the licence is about $1 million. So, no, there’s very little opportunity. And that’s just for a prawn licence. It’s $1 million to $1.5 million for a prawn licence when there are any available, and there aren’t any available to buy now. It’s not accessible.
Senator Poirier: Does either one of you know if the same thing is happening in Atlantic Canada? Is that specific to the Pacific coast?
Ms. Pesicka: As far as I know, the lobster licences are worth even more, around $3 million.
Senator Poirier: I mean with respect to the size of the boats — the licence going with the size of the boats.
Ms. Pesicka: I believe they have the same issue.
Senator Poirier: It is the same thing. Okay.
Ms. Pesicka: And it is an issue. No one is really happy with this.
Senator Poirier: I don’t know if Mr. Edwards has anything to add on.
Mr. Edwards: I do have a quick add-on.
My daughter did her PhD on the halibut fishery, the owner-operators and opportunities for the next generations. The situation has become very difficult. Some of the issues that Rebekah mentioned are part of that.
But the reality is that, because of the high lease fees, people who own a boat but have to lease fish in an opaque situation tried to get fish-sharing agreements with the department through their helping to police it. If something is not done to change that, then newer entrants will go bankrupt. They cannot maintain boats when 70% to 80% of the revenue they make from selling fish goes into lease fees, and we have no idea who owns them.
I mentioned that in my remarks around fair sharing agreements. Something that could be made possible by enacting that quota registry is showing who owns what. Then you can start negotiating some kind of a fair sharing agreement for the young fisherman coming in. Until you have that, there’s no way to do it.
Senator Surette: I come from southwestern Nova Scotia. My father was involved in the fishery as well and, somewhat like you, in the lobster fishery, in this case fishing from a skiff. He sold his licence back in the day for $3,000 to $5,000. That same licence today is worth $1 million, at least. It is kind of similar that way.
I’ve heard the word “lease” here many times before. In my village, yes, there are many owner-operators. If that disappears, it will be a disaster for southwestern Nova Scotia, for sure. But there are also individual transferable quotas, or ITQs, there.
I’m curious why you’re talking about leases so much. Many of my friends were fishing groundfish back in the day. They were hailing to DFO. Then DFO — I don’t remember the dates, but I believe it was in the 1970s — came up with the ITQ system.
These same people now have their quota. They don’t have to lease a quota. It’s their quota. I understand the owner-operator, but on the ITQ side, why don’t people own their own quota? Why do you need the registry? You don’t know who they are.
Where I’m from, we know who the quota is from. They are the owners. They’re corporate owners. They have boats. They fish the groundfish and process it.
Why didn’t it go that way on the West Coast so that someone like you, Mr. Edwards, would have a quota yourself?
Mr. Edwards: Yes, it didn’t happen that way. There was no owner-operator, so anybody could own a quota. It wasn’t regulated at all toward owner-operators at all.
Anybody in the world right now can buy up sablefish quotas or halibut quotas — anybody can buy up a licence of any kind — and you will not know who that is because there’s no transparency or registry. There’s no transparency whatsoever.
I have, right now, 300,000 pounds of dogfish. The dogfish fishery was closed down for the next 75 years, but I had a halibut licence, and it was 500 pounds of halibut. When I was fishing halibut or sablefish, I had to go find somebody willing to lease me the quota I need — I might need 50,000 pounds of halibut quota or 100,000 pounds of sablefish quota. The person I used to lease quotas from several years ago sold the entire package of quotas that he had — he was the biggest holder of quotas — to some company somewhere in the world. We tried to find who that was, but we could never track it. It’s not there; the information is not there.
Senator Surette: So, in terms of the environment and controlling the amount of fish that’s being caught, DFO must have a total allowable catch per species for the Pacific coast. That total allowable catch should be divided into individual transferable quotas, I assume. Do you know what the total allowable catch is?
Mr. Edwards: Absolutely; every year, it’s negotiated. The halibut fishery quota was just negotiated in January — the U.S.‑Canada quota arrangement — and that total allowable catch, or TAC, is there. It’s distributed among the people who have the quota, and it goes to individual boats.
You know at the beginning where that is. You don’t know who owns it — the beneficial owners — but it’s on a boat somewhere. DFO has that information. But almost immediately when that happens, the quota is moved off that boat and leased out — and you don’t know who owns the boats either. That’s the problem. If you can have some kind of registry that showed who the beneficial owner was and who actually owns that quota, then you could get somewhere with this question. You can’t until you get that. That’s why we need it.
Senator Surette: I’m trying to understand the situation better.
Is the total quota caught — is the TAC caught — every year?
Mr. Edwards: It’s mostly caught in halibut and almost all caught in sablefish some years. All the other fish available — several different species of groundfish — almost all of that is not caught. It’s some percentage of it — 50% to 70% sometimes — but only the quota for halibut and sablefish in the groundfish industry. There are quotas in some of the salmon fisheries, but they’re variable depending on the returns.
Senator Surette: If it’s all caught, how can you even buy a quota? If it’s already all caught by boats, how would a registry help you?
Mr. Edwards: The registry makes it available to know. One of the issues I mentioned is that we tried to find a yelloweye quota, which is one of the quotas not caught every year. Because there’s no registry, the fishermen who were fishing halibut and sablefish wanted to find yelloweye quotas. They couldn’t find them. The only way you can find one is if you happen to know a processor or somebody who has a quota somewhere. DFO has the original amount of quota on a particular vessel at the beginning of the season, but even with that vessel, the actual ownership is not transparent. If you get a hold of somebody who has beneficial ownership, you can try to get that licence or that quota. But last September, people couldn’t find the quota anywhere. They beat the bushes in a non-transparent way with processes, friends and other fishermen to try to find out where it was. They couldn’t find it because there’s no framework for doing that.
The Deputy Chair: Ms. Pesicka, would you like to address that with regard to the prawn fishery?
Ms. Pesicka: Could you repeat the question?
Senator Surette: I don’t know if it applies to you; it might. My question was this: Is there a total allowable catch for prawns in this case? I asked the question for groundfish. It seemed as if you had more of an issue with the First Nations and Indigenous communities than you had with the traditional commercial fishery, if I understood you correctly.
Ms. Pesicka: Yes and no. My first-hand experience speaks clearly to the relationship I have with my daughter’s band. However, I would say that the biggest issue I have in prawns is the involvement of the processors between the owners of the licence and the fishermen. The processors are really bringing in this aspect of being willing and wanting to provide more money for access to the licence and then passing the burden of that cost to the fishermen, so the processors are totally unaccountable.
To answer your question, there is no limit to how much we catch in prawns; there’s no quota. We are managed according to a system that, I think, is pretty good. We have a management company that samples how many prawns we catch throughout the season. If our catch drops too low, the whole B.C. coast is divided into sub-areas that are fairly small, and those areas can be closed down. There’s not a limit as to how much we can catch.
I feel as if I’m not clearly answering your question, but I’m giving you some more information.
Senator Surette: I’m trying to understand the Pacific coast.
So, the processor has the licence; he could have his own boats and have his own crews on the boats.
Ms. Pesicka: Yes. In some cases, the processor owns licences or he can access the band’s. Actually, as far as I know, there’s a list of the licences that the bands own that I can access through — I forget the term for it, but there is a way for me to find out. As a commercial fisherman, if I want to approach a band to lease a licence, I have access to that information. However, I do not have access to knowledge of what licences are owned by processors or anyone else. Only the band licences are visible.
Senator Surette: So you sold your licence because you couldn’t make a go at it. I know it’s expensive for new people to get into the business; it’s expensive to get into the lobster business at home as well; it’s $1 million for the licence and at least $1 million for the boat. But there’s some return on investment in that people are still buying. There are still ways to get around it, but, in your case, is there just not a business case?
Ms. Pesicka: I gross around $200,000, and I have fished for 40 years. I know where to catch prawns. When my dad started fishing prawns, it took him four days to catch half a bucket — whatever that would be — 10 pounds of prawns. It’s pretty hard.
When I’m fishing on my grounds, I see boats go by, and I know these boats. There are probably about eight of them. Going back 15 years, I knew the boats I would see were owner-operators. Now I know they are hired skippers — all of those boats. I don’t fish around a single other boat that is owner-operator now. That’s a really big shift. Those skippers are putting their fuel on charge accounts at the local ports, and I don’t know if they own their boats. Well, I actually know that some of them own their boats and some of them don’t. They’re not new boats.
Senator Dhillon: Thank you for your testimony here today.
I’m not a fisher; I don’t have any experience in this world, so I ask for your patience as I craft my questions. I’m also going to ask for patience from my friends and colleagues from First Nations as I craft my questions, as I may use some terms that might be sensational or controversial. I welcome admonishment after if I say things in a way that brings about any insult.
I understand the importance of food fishing to First Nations and Indigenous communities, but when you were describing it — and from my background and experience — it sounded like you were saying that this was a bribe.
Ms. Pesicka: It is, in some cases, though it is not really a bribe. It is more a hidden cost, I would say.
When I was asked to provide 800 pounds of prawns in addition to my $70,000 lease, if I were to not sell those 800 pounds of prawns, I would be out another $20,000.
Senator Dhillon: That is what it is worth?
Ms. Pesicka: Yes, 800 pounds of prawn tails. So it is about 1,600 pounds of prawns. It is quite valuable. So it’s more like a hidden cost.
Senator Dhillon: Sorry. That’s what I was trying to get to: that end benefit for you to have that lease. And, again, I used the term “bribe,” and you said that it’s not a bribe. So what is it?
Ms. Pesicka: Honestly, I’m not sure if it could be called a bribe or a hidden cost. It can be both. It is something that is being offered in addition to the lease that is being written on paper as, I would say, an added offering and not a bribe.
Say the licence is open to bids. One person offers $80,000. One person offers $70,000. One person offers $70,000 plus 800 pounds of tails. Another person offers $70,000 plus they will take a member out. The band can then just look at which offer they would prefer. So it’s not —
Senator Dhillon: It’s starting to sound a lot like a bribe. I’m just saying.
Ms. Pesicka: Well —
Senator Dhillon: You don’t need to say it.
Ms. Pesicka: A bribe or a bid? I mean, that’s a bid too. The question of whether the bid is fully legal as far as where the sources are coming from, I think, is a separate thing. I honestly wouldn’t call it a bribe. I would call it a bid.
Senator Dhillon: Okay. You used the term “sweeten the deal,” so that is what caught my ear.
Ms. Pesicka: No, I would say it’s just a better bid. If seafood comes from a legitimate place, it can legitimately be added in to sweeten the deal — offering the higher price is what I meant. Making the better offer — just to be clear in that way.
Senator Dhillon: I appreciate that.
Mr. Edwards, you referred to money laundering as well, and you spoke of the Cullen report, which mentioned dirty money. It was Assistant Commissioner — I forgot his name.
The Deputy Chair: Peter German.
Senator Dhillon: Peter German did the report and was a key witness on that. When it comes to money laundering, there is usually some level of involvement of organized crime. In your experience, Mr. Edwards, have you seen that involvement of organized crime. If so, what does that look like for you?
Mr. Edwards: I can’t actually say first-hand that I have seen organized crime in the fishery industry. I’m going by that report and what it said. The recognition in Canada that money is being used for illegal activities and then being distributed through different avenues to become clean — which was recognized as happening with the casinos and the real estate business. The fishing industry was also recognized as potentially being that way. My understanding is that the non-transparent nature of the fishing industry made it more amenable for that kind of activity.
If we actually had the public registry and had to identify beneficial ownership, that would help strengthen the framework around investment and illegal investment.
However, I can’t say I have seen specific laundering of money in the industry. I’m going by the reports and what I know from what that report did and said.
Senator Dhillon: Thank you.
Senator Boudreau: Thank you to the witnesses for being here this evening. I’m also from the East Coast, so I’m trying to wrap my head around how things work on the West Coast in regard to fisheries. I’m listening to both of you. I want to understand the scope of the issue here. I’m wondering if either of you can give me an idea, maybe percentage-wise, of how much of the overall fishery on the West Coast is still local, independent fishers or owner-operators versus the percentage that are now kind of corporate entities. Is it a 50-50 issue? Is it 25-75? Is it 5-95? I am trying to understand the scope of the issue, as well as if it applies to all species and all regions of the West Coast. Are there certain pockets or certain species that are different? Maybe I will start with that, and then I might have a follow-up question based on the answers.
Ms. Pesicka: The number I have heard thrown around — and I would have to agree with what I have seen — is 10% is owner-operator. So, as I said, when I’m fishing, I know that none of those boats that I see around me — mine included now — are owner-operator.
Senator Boudreau: Okay. So you are just familiar with the one —
Ms. Pesicka: Yes. I am really just familiar with prawns.
Senator Boudreau: What about Mr. Edwards? Would you agree with the 10% estimate, and would that apply to the other species that you fish as well?
Mr. Edwards: It is hard to get an exact number on that because there is no actual policy on owner-operator in B.C.
My daughter’s thesis — and I sent that to the Senate to be translated, along with a smaller overview of the situation with the groundfish. I was an owner-operator for years. I owned my own fishing vessel, for instance. So you say, “I’m an owner-operator,” but I’m actually not in the B.C. context because I didn’t own the groundfish quota that I needed in order to make a living. I owned very small parts of it. I was reliant on a system where other people had to lease me those fish. That’s where the issue of transparency comes in for owner-operators: They have to then go to other people in order to get the quota.
That’s where the problem arose, because what happens is there is no control over or transparency around that. We ended up, in the past nine years of our fishing enterprises, paying 70% to 80% of our revenue. You would catch 2 million pounds of groundfish, and you would get 300,000 back to the boat, then 1.7 million would be used in the quota. That went to the people who owned the quota but sat back and didn’t do any fishing.
That’s one of the fundamental problems of having no transparency around who actually owns it and who is able to lease it.
On the East Coast, the fundamental difference is you have to be an owner and an operator in order to own and to fish those fish. That is not the reality in the Pacific Region and has not been since 1979.
Senator Boudreau: I would have thought we live in one country. Although we have two coasts, I thought we’d have similar rules and regulations on both coasts. That is clearly not the case, and that is unfortunate for some decisions that might have been taken in the past.
So if 80% or 90% of the quotas, the licences, the boats and the gear are owned by commercial entities, how do we turn back the clock and bring an owner-operator and fleet separation policy in on the Pacific coast?
These commercial entities are not just going to give this back to the government to then reallocate to owner-operators. I’m trying to understand. It appears maybe some bad decisions were made in the past and we have now ended up in the situation we are in, but how do we turn back the clock? How do we revert to an owner-operator system if all these commercial entities are now in charge?
Does it mean major buybacks from the federal government? I don’t know what the total value of the Pacific industry is, but I’m sure it’s a lot of money — hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions. How do you revert back? Are there any ideas or opinions on that?
Ms. Pesicka: With the prawns, I would suggest the idea of doing a transition over time. I would prefer to think of it as not reverting back but going forward and clarifying where there has been a huge lack of clarity.
I don’t think worrying about how the details play out is the most important issue. We have been dealing with the details, and they have played out in the way they have already because of a lack of framework.
In order to succeed, everybody in the industry really needs some continuity and stability, which would be provided by a framework. We could have a transitional time for things to adjust.
I did want to clarify something: When I say 10% of the fleet is owner-operators, I wanted to clarify that that would be owner-operators as in owning the licence, owning the boat and operating.
Probably about 50% of the people I see fishing around me own their boats, but they don’t own their licence — just like me. I own my boat but don’t own my licence. It’s not 10% in that way. There are still a lot of people out there committed to what they’re doing and to continuing to do it.
Senator Boudreau: Thank you.
Mr. Edwards: I would like to echo what Rebekah said about not reverting back but going forward. That’s why I made my presentation the way I did. There are some fundamental things that need to happen. The first is to learn who these people who own everything are because that is not known right now. That’s what a registry would do.
The next step would be to start working on the same kind of framework you saw on the Atlantic coast, where you saw all sorts of controlling agreements put in place.
In 2011, the fightback against that kind of framework was that we were going to have so many years in order to get rid of those controlling agreements, as well as find ways to get reinvestment into the industry so the owner-operators would be the ones in control of the finances.
There are still some issues around that in Atlantic Canada, and we realize that, but the first step is to get the registry in place.
The second step is a commitment by the minister to maintain and support an owner-operator fleet in British Columbia. There are still a lot of small boat owner-operators in this province, though not nearly as many as there used to be. But there are still fishermen and people in the communities and on the coast who want to maintain that independent fleet. Then, start building the framework for the owner-operator fleet separation in a made‑in‑B.C. way.
Dominic LeBlanc said, “You can’t unscramble the omelette.” That kind of relates to the question you asked. However, there are many ways to do that, but you have to start from square one. You have to get the registry in place. You have to find out who the owners are and then find ways to revitalize the people on the water so that the majority of those getting the benefit are in the communities and on the fishing vessels, the fishermen and the workers on the vessels, which is what you’ve done in Atlantic Canada.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Greenwood: My question was very similar to what Senator Boudreau just asked. I will ask it anyway in case there’s something more. I’m not a fisherman. I’m a landlocked person. I’ll just put it out there so you know.
What policy, legislation or strategies do you envision to bring back the owner-operators? That’s what I was going to ask you both.
I just read your article Two coasts, two standards. I’m looking at your arguments in here. I’m wondering what we should do. Are there policies we can put in place? Are there regulations? Is there legislation that needs to happen to move you down this path — to not go back but forward? Is there anything either of you would like to add?
Mr. Edwards: It’s a good question. I appreciate it. There are ways to move forward, for sure.
The fundamental thing we need in British Columbia is for the Minister of Fisheries to treat the Pacific coast exactly as she’s treating the Atlantic coast, where they have a policy that recognizes having the owner-operators on the vessels, in control of the finances, in control of the markets and all that. That kind of process has stabilized, I think, over 10,000 small boat owner-operators in the Atlantic provinces.
All we’re asking for is the same kind of commitment from the minister for the Pacific Region. If it recognizes a policy that stabilizes rural communities and provides an equitable distribution of the benefits of that resource to the people doing the work in that resource, and in their communities, that’s what we need. We need that commitment from the minister.
It’s one country. Why is it considered all right to have that kind of policy support and to promote and keep communities in a stable economic framework in Atlantic Canada but not in British Columbia? It’s not different. We are all one country.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Greenwood: Maybe everyone here knows this, especially you folks from the Atlantic, but is this treatment of Atlantic fishermen a matter of policy or of legislation? I think that’s a really important piece.
Ms. Pesicka: I thought it was policy. Do you know, Dan?
Mr. Edwards: It was policy, and that’s where it was being eroded from — in policy. That’s why, since 2011, when the federal government started putting a modernization process in place, they have seen that policy being eroded and have become a corporatist fishery, a vertically integrated fishery. That’s where the fightback occurred.
It is now being put into regulation and legislation in Atlantic Canada because of the nature of policy; it can be eroded where legislation and regulation cannot.
The Deputy Chair: We have a second round and a couple of people who want to ask a couple more questions if I can get our guests to indulge us.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you, again, Ms. Pesicka and Mr. Edwards. We knew there were differences, but I’m absolutely shocked by them.
I want to go back to the non-responsive behaviour of DFO. Sadly, I have experienced that a lot in my short time on this committee. We don’t seem to get direct answers to direct policy suggestions.
Transparency, foreign ownership, the dominant position of processors, hidden costs — all of these things can fester into a bad market. They are the indicators of a market that is not functioning and that allows bad actors to thrive.
I don’t care where they come from; I look at this and wonder why we can’t put a sunset on foreign ownership — period. Just start a sunset on foreign ownership.
Impose transparency. We have a beneficial ownership registry for small businesses in this country. This is solely federal jurisdiction. I don’t understand why that couldn’t happen. The privacy issue is BS. This is ownership of a public resource.
I have a tough time with DFO. I think my colleagues know that. They may have picked up on it.
The Deputy Chair: What is your question?
Senator C. Deacon: My question is this: Do I have the right issues here? We must have transparency. There is nothing preventing transparency. This is not an issue of privacy. This is an issue of ownership of a public resource. This issue of foreign ownership without transparency is deeply troubling. We are giving away our intellectual property; we are giving away a natural resource; we are giving away the work of Canadians. The fact that processors have the ability to abuse their dominance in the supply chain and that there is non-taxable income being transferred as part of the cost — that’s the way I’m viewing what you described to us: $20,000 of non-taxable income.
Have I captured it? That’s my question.
Ms. Pesicka: Yes —
Senator C. Deacon: Where did I get it wrong?
Ms. Pesicka: I think you pretty much summed it up. I was at a beautiful meeting a couple of weeks ago here with the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters’ Federation, which involves the East Coast and West Coast commercial industries. Everybody there says that the B.C. commercial fishery is being held up as everything not to do and everything that can go wrong. That’s where we are now.
You are right about DFO, from my experience. I find that their responses are extremely evasive and don’t hold any clear content.
Mr. Edwards: Yes, I think you hit the nail on the head, to be blunt — absolutely. I have been in the politics of fish for 40 years, and I have gone through a 59-day hunger strike, been to endless meetings and tried to find ways to get this department to be more responsive to the needs of my fellow fishermen and the community in which I live — and they have failed.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you both very much for your testimony.
Senator Surette: My original question was this: How do you turn the clock back? But that has already been asked once or twice. I still find it a tall order to turn the clock back, understanding where you are at now. I don’t know if you already answered this, but are you involved in the modernization initiative that is taking place right now? If my opinion, if you want to turn the clock back, it is going to take goodwill from DFO and the federal government to start with and a good process for how to get this done — because it is a complicated issue at present, if you put all the fisheries together.
Do you have any confidence in the process that is being put into place to modernize this or move this forward? Are you part of the modernization initiative?
Mr. Edwards: I have been retired for five years, but I’m still an adviser for fisheries. Through that advisory process, I have been heavily involved in the modernization process, and I attended all the meetings and met with the department to go through many of the same things I have said to you here today.
It is not a matter of turning the clock back. It is a matter of moving it forward so there is a place for active owner-operator fishermen in British Columbia. There is a place to do that, and there is still an opportunity to do that.
For years, I have been a part of things like the Commercial Industry Caucus here in British Columbia, where we sat down and figured out how to do a framework for sharing fish in order to keep small boats and big boats alive on the West Coast. We can do the process. Fishermen are smart. They have to be in order to survive. They know how to sit down in meetings and work through problems. We need leadership from our minister to give teeth to the process, so that there is actual commitment. We don’t have that right now, and we need it desperately.
Senator Surette: Isn’t there also a capacity issue here in terms of the number of boats that remain owned by fishers, as well as in terms of the size of those boats? On the East Coast, we cannot lump them all together either. We have smaller boats — lobster boats are 45-foot max, in most cases. Then we have herring boats that are over 100 feet, and we have scallopers that are big boats. We would have to approach each fishery in a different way, I would assume.
The Deputy Chair: Mr. Edwards?
Mr. Edwards: I wasn’t sure if Rebekah wanted to answer that. There are all kinds of opportunities here. If actual revenue were put back in the hands of these fishermen right now, which is not going back into their hands, they could start rebuilding their fleets and rebuilding their boats. I had a 97-year-old wooden vessel that I fished with for 22 years. Eventually, it was no good. I put over $250,000 into that vessel in the last seven years that I fished with it. I sold it for $8,000.
If there is no commitment to having a future, and there isn’t right now on the B.C. coast for owner-operators, there will be no revenue to do that. If there is a commitment by the minister, there will be; there will be opportunities for those remaining to make a good living and then to reinvest in the industry, absolutely.
Senator Surette: Thank you.
Ms. Pesicka: I wanted to say something to that. Basically, we cannot function when the situation is what it is, and it is what it is because there isn’t a clear framework that we can work with from the minister, from government policy. We are dealing with fish processors that are making unreasonable bids, such as foreign investment, and all these aspects that are very hard to compete against; it is just not going to work. If it were to make some changes and have some clarity in the whole situation, fishermen would figure it out for sure.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Prosper: This is a fascinating discussion. I am learning a lot. Previously, I had the honour of being a Chief within a community, and every time fishery season came around, it was an interesting experience for me. These are communal commercial licences. You try to instill an element of ownership because with that comes pride and effort. It is amazing, that life of fishing. You mentioned your dad maybe fishing for four days and getting half a bucket, and then you spending over 40 years within a particular fishery and wanting to instill that within your daughter.
Mr. Edwards, you talked about revitalizing people on the water. The more I sit at this table and learn about this subject, the more I come to realize that it is essential for the continuity of communities that fishers have a sustained way of life, a continuity that is owned publicly, that is transparent and where people benefit and communities thrive.
Both of you have seen an evolution take place from the way things were to where they are right now. I get it: You can’t unscramble the omelette. It’s done, but you provided some really good insights.
Could you, through your own experience, describe how things were before? If things don’t change now, what is the inevitable response that you see in the not-too-distant future?
Ms. Pesicka: What comes up for me is that, in the past, when I started fishing, I saw a lot of the days of mass harvesting of natural resources, sort of — the booming free-for-all.
I was born in 1975, and I came in toward when that was dwindling. As a young person, I saw a lot of people who weren’t particularly responsible on their boats, whether it was drinking a lot or overloading their boats and not showing a lot of real concern about the resource. It was more just harvesting as much as they could in the openings. It wasn’t just my perception; I definitely saw this.
Then, through the 1990s, we started needing to get certified, and there were different aspects that started to get more powerful. WorkSafe came forward and said we had to have lifejackets and stability courses to ensure that the boats stay stable. This was after there had been many boats rolling over, and people were dying. Now we have to be certified in these safety courses.
We need to know how to properly operate a VHF radio and make calls. We need to ensure that our crew members know how to operate the radios and how to get in and out of the survival suits. They need to know how to operate the boat in case the skipper isn’t able to. All these things with respect to safety came into place.
Then, at the same time, we were being asked to manage our fishery. In my case, if I’m harvesting prawns and there are prawns with eggs or that are very small, I need to throw them back. I know fishermen are being asked to let go of fish; there are some fish they’re not supposed to retain. There’s this concept of being responsible for the resource, and this is a public natural resource that belongs to Canada; it’s not just individual. Those aspects of the fishery made me proud. It felt professional.
However, really great developments have occurred during my career, in those 40 years. At the same time, there hasn’t been that framework, though we’ve had different frameworks. I have a Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, licence. I understand how to ensure that my product stays clean, and I’m not going to be passing on food that’s going to make anybody sick. I understand how to stay safe. I understand how to do my best to manage the resource in a sustainable way.
But on the level of policy, nothing has changed. Nothing has been done, and that’s where we’re at right now. That is the good and the bad.
Mr. Edwards: I really appreciate the way you put that question to us. It’s a critical point on healthy communities — how to stabilize them, how to have a vision for the future and how to work toward that vision.
I spent 10 years in the 1990s building a governance board for the west coast of Vancouver Island with four levels of government: the Nuu-chah-nulth, federal, provincial and regional governments, as well as stakeholders. The whole process was to draw up a framework for envisioning a future that had stable fishermen making decent livelihoods and working within the communities. We put that board in place in 2001, and it lasted for 24 years until DFO finally killed it.
We tried for years to find ways to maintain and stabilize the fisheries in our communities. We’re working against an agenda that has basically said, “We don’t want you,” and that we are too much trouble to manage with these small boats. Instead, they want a few big boats or one or two companies. That works fine for the government and the bureaucrats because it’s easy to manage.
I have 26 fishermen. I volunteer as an executive director for a small group of 26 salmon fishermen who are left on the West Coast, working with the five Nations group, which has a protected right under the courts to have a fishery for salmon. We’re working together to try to stabilize both communities in our small communities. Those 26 are all that’s left.
You asked how it was in the past, and there used to be 1,500 of these vessels out here. We can’t sustain that amount; however, last year, I asked for small changes so that those 26 could avoid leaving over $8 million in revenue in the water from their TACs, and the department still refused to give them 15 extra days on the water.
There are all kinds of ways you can work on this issue, but unless there’s some framework in place, which is what we’re seeing here, the erosion of the last owner-operators on this coast will be inevitable, and that’s really sad.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you for that. I have three more people who want to ask questions in second round. I will ask each of you to be brief because we have a very small but important in camera item to discuss as well.
Senator Boudreau: This is more of an observation than a question anyway. Senator C. Deacon summarized the three issues; he mentioned transparency, foreign ownership and industry dominance. Regarding transparency, I have a hard time believing there isn’t a registry somewhere. DFO has to be keeping track of who is getting quotas and who is getting licences.
Maybe they don’t want to be transparent about it because of the foreign ownership, as that would get people up in arms, knowing that the majority of our natural resources are being fished and owned by foreign ownership. That would be a concern to me.
On the industry dominance piece, I would ask Mr. Edwards for a reaction, where he’s been involved with various associations for a number of years. Someone on the East Coast told me that DFO officials favour the Pacific fishery, the way it’s set up, because they would rather deal with a few dozen corporations than with hundreds of owner-operators or hundreds of independent fishers.
Would you agree with that?
Mr. Edwards: I had a fisheries manager tell me in 1996 that they were trying to get rid of us. They said they’re going to have quotas and they’re going to have a few millionaires that own all this — because it’s a lot easier to manage a few millionaires than a whole bunch of independent owner-operators.
That was a fisheries manager saying that to me in a meeting in 1996. Yes.
Senator Boudreau: That’s the issue right there. Thank you.
Senator Surette: I have a quick question. It goes in the same direction of “fewer players in, easier to manage,” but it doesn’t seem quite clear on the Pacific coast with leasing licences and so on. If you own your quota and have to fish your quota, I see that as being easier to manage. In this case, it seems as if you’re leasing quotas all over the place.
We didn’t mention conservation or enforcement too much tonight. I don’t know if that’s an issue on the West Coast, but on the East Coast, we talk a lot about enforcement — and how the lack of enforcement contributes to a lack of conservation and so on.
Is this an issue on the Pacific coast?
Ms. Pesicka: Yes, definitely. With the prawns, we are definitely seeing an issue with enforcement in conservation. This is where the concept of managing a few millionaires kind of runs into problems. What happens is that if the fishing industry is owned by a few millionaires, the other people who are actually doing the fishing, they’re still the ones doing the fishing. So if they’re not fully accountable — and that’s what we’re seeing now — then it’s harder to manage them.
I’m running into issues with that for sure. As far as what I’m hearing from the management companies that are going on board boats to sample, it’s really tricky for them now, dealing with some of the fishermen who are hired skippers.
As far as conservation goes, yeah, there are definitely problems.
Mr. Edwards: And from the point of view of groundfish, I was part of a process from 2003 to 2006 where we put cameras on every vessel. Every groundfish vessel in B.C. — the trollers right down to the smallest vessel — has cameras, as well as auditing on the dock and auditing of the camera systems, so there’s been all kinds of work. Rebekah mentioned how much more responsive and responsible we have become over the years. Well, we have, and it’s very costly, but we recognize the need to ensure that we’re responsible in doing that when we’re commercial fishing and catching a public resource.
Senator Surette: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. We’ve come to the end of our time and the questions that everybody wanted to ask. I want to thank the witnesses for spending some extra time with us. You might have noticed that we were intently listening and learning a lot from you. We really appreciate you taking the extra time to enlighten us because we’ve learned so much today.
Thank you for appearing before us and for being so candid and helpful in our research on this very important topic.
I’m going to ask that we proceed to in camera. Does anybody disagree to a small but interesting in camera moment?
(The committee continued in camera.)