THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, March 24, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 6:34 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on the commercial fisheries licensing regime on Canada’s Pacific Coast.
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good evening. My name is Fabian Manning. I’m a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador. I am pleased to chair this committee.
Today, we are conducting a meeting of Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
I would like to ask all senators and other in-person participants to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. Please make sure to keep your earpieces away from all microphones at all times. Do not touch the microphones. They will be turned on and off by the console operator. Please avoid handling your earpiece while your microphone is on. You may either keep it in your ear or place it on the designated sticker. I thank you for your cooperation.
Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to me or to the clerk, and we will work to resolve the issue for you.
Before we begin, I would like to take a few moments to allow the committee members to introduce themselves.
Senator Dhillon: Good evening. Baltej Dhillon, British Columbia.
Senator M. Deacon: Marty Deacon, Ontario. Welcome.
Senator C. Deacon: Colin Deacon, Nova Scotia.
Senator Ravalia: Welcome. Mohamed Ravalia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Prosper: Paul Prosper, Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki territory.
Senator Surette: Allister Surette, Nova Scotia.
Senator Cuzner: Rodger Cuzner, Nova Scotia.
The Chair: On November 18, 2025, the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans was authorized to examine and report on the commercial fishing licensing regime on Canada’s Pacific Coast.
Today, under this mandate, the committee will hear from the following individuals: Melanie Sonnenberg — good to see you again, Melanie — president of the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters’ Federation; and James McIsaac, executive director of the BC Shrimp Trawlers’ Association. Thank you for taking the time to join us. I realize our meetings have been moved around a bit, cancelled, postponed, and so on and so forth, so I thank you for your patience.
I understand that you have some opening remarks, so I will give the floor first to Ms. Sonnenberg, and then there will be questions from senators. The floor is yours.
Melanie Sonnenberg, President, Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters’ Federation: Honourable senators, thank you for the opportunity to address this committee tonight. My name is Melanie Sonnenberg, and I represent the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters’ Federation. We are appearing today because the current commercial licensing regime in British Columbia is failing the independent harvesters and coastal communities who actually harvest the resource.
While the Atlantic Coast has benefited from owner-operator and fleet separation policies, the Pacific Coast remains a stark outlier. We are witnessing a generational squeeze, where the wealth generated by our oceans is siphoned away from coastal regions and into the hands of armchair harvesters, processing conglomerates, corporate owners and foreign investment firms.
In the Pacific region, fishing licences and quotas have evolved into tradable commodities rather than a right to harvest Canada’s ocean resources. This shift has created prohibitive entry costs, with the market value of licences and individual transferable quotas now so high that young, independent harvesters are effectively priced out of our industry.
Consequently, active harvesters are increasingly forced to lease the right to fish from non-active owners, often surrendering 50% to 80% of their landed value just for the privilege of leaving the dock. This creates a significant economic hollow-out. When a licence is owned by a distant corporation or an overseas investor, the profits never return to communities like Prince Rupert, Campbell River or Tofino. Instead, this wealth leaves the coast and, frequently, the country.
The solution is a made-in-B.C. version of the owner-operator policy, requiring the licence holder to be present on the vessel during operations, a principle often described as “boots on the boat.” Implementing this transition would foster socio-economic resilience by ensuring landed value stays with the harvester to be reinvested in local gear shops, boatyards, grocery stores, local community charities and so much more.
Furthermore, it promotes superior environmental stewardship. While an “armchair captain” may view fish stock as a mere entry on a balance sheet, an active owner-operator views it as their children’s future. This model also ensures a direct line of accountability for safety standards and regulatory compliance when the licence holder is physically on the water.
In the federation, we have been bold enough to suggest recommendations to the committee. We urge your committee to recommend that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans implement the following measures: First, implement a made-in-B.C. owner-operator rule. Phase in a requirement for licence holders to be active harvesters, mirroring the protections codified in the 2019 Fisheries Act. This should include an immediate freeze on licence transfers to anyone other than active fish harvesters and First Nations while clear rules are developed. A transition period similar to the Policy for Preserving the Independence of the Inshore Fleet in Canada’s Atlantic Fisheries, or PIIFCAF, introduced in Atlantic Canada in 2007, would allow current holders to adjust without destabilizing the industry.
Second, establish transparency in beneficial ownership. Create a public registry to identify who truly profits from Pacific licences and quotas. Additionally, it must become mandatory for fishing companies to register with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, as previously recommended by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans in 2023.
Third, support loan guarantees for new entrants and stable loan programs for existing harvesters. This means facilitating the transfer of licences from retiring “armchair” owners back to local harvesters through low-interest federal loan programs. This requires a dedicated structure, similar to Farm Credit Canada, tailored to provide the fishing industry with secure and reasonable access to capital. A body such as this could also provide stable borrowing programs for those already in the industry needing assistance.
The challenge of transition is adopting an owner-operator model and will not be without its hurdles. Critics will point to the legal complexities of disentangling existing trust agreements and arrangements and the potential for temporary market volatility as licence values adjust to reflect their true productive value rather than the speculative one. However, we must not mistake the difficulty of the task for a reason to delay it.
In 2023, the House of Commons Fisheries Committee recognized the severity of this issue, going so far as to recommend that all licence transactions involving lawyer trust accounts be subject to FINTRAC oversight to curb money laundering and anonymous foreign investment.
While the administrative shift requires a carefully managed plot path, perhaps seven years, as seen in the Atlantic, the cost of inaction is far higher. Without this change, we are essentially presiding over the managed decline of our coastal heritage in favour of an untraceable corporate-led monopoly.
In conclusion, the Pacific fishery should be more than an investment portfolio for the wealthy. It is a public resource belonging to all Canadians. The beneficial interest of a licence must remain with the harvester to protect the integrity of the resource, the people who work in it and their communities.
The situation has gone unchecked in British Columbia for far too long. Despite previous attempts to initiate change, the industry and its communities continue to erode. The soul of a coastal community is its fleet. If we lose the owner-operator, we lose the fleet. If we lose the fleet, we lose the community. We are certainly seeing that in British Columbia.
To conclude, I want to leave you with one fundamental question: Who is the Pacific fishery for? If it is merely an investment vehicle for capital to accumulate in urban centres or overseas tax havens, then the current system is working perfectly. But if the fishery is meant to be the lifeblood of our coastal communities, if it is meant to provide a middle-class living for the next generation of Canadians, then the current system has failed.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Sonnenberg.
Mr. McIsaac.
James McIsaac, Executive Director, BC Shrimp Trawlers’ Association: Thank you, chair and honourable senators, for the invitation to speak here today.
I have great respect for the work of the Senate. While helping fishermen retrain in the 1990s, a Senate document entitled In Training, Only Work Works was a strategic guide for our efforts.
I have also experienced the power of the designation. Senator Pat Carney stopped by our fisheries office to discuss the restructuring of our fishery. Before she got on the ferry to Saturna, she called the national press and told them that B.C. fishermen were being treated so poorly that B.C. should separate. She made national headlines the next morning. I was mentioned in the article and awoken by the minister’s office at 4:30 a.m. I wore the fallout of that for years to come. Your words carry great power.
The BC Shrimpers’ Association is made up of small-scale, independent trawl fishermen. They run either a beam trawl or an otter trawl. All their trawl nets are under 65 feet wide, fitted with bycatch reduction grates and LED lights to further reduce bycatch. They are, by far, the cleanest shrimp fishery on the planet. Unfortunately, Canada treats our small beam and otter trawl nets with the same or higher standards as super trawlers with nets that are 1,000 feet wide.
Our fishermen have not benefited from the “protection or promotion” clause in our modernized Fisheries Act. Atlantic fishermen have. We recommend changing this.
Shrimp is one of Canada’s favourite seafoods. We eat some 50,000 tons of shrimp annually. With the longest coastline in the world and one of the largest Exclusive Economic Zones, or EEZs, you’d think most of this comes from home. Not so. Over 80% of it is imported, as is the case with most of the seafood we eat. If we do not get wild seafood from our ecosystems, we get it from much less pristine ecosystems, usually farmed.
Currently, our B.C. shrimp fishery is regulated so rigidly that less than 0.02% of the total allowable catch, or TAC, is caught. This is so unfortunate. Another “rich by resource, poor by policy” story for Canada.
Inside our linked socio-ecological systems, there are three core components needed for a sustainable fishery: fishermen with ecosystem knowledge, technology such as vessels and gear and the legal access to fish. In Canada, like most developed countries, the legal access to fish involves government-issued and regulated licences, permits and quotas. This study is about this last component: licences in B.C.’s fisheries.
When government issues licences, there are a series of regulations that apply: most importantly, if the licence can be sold, transferred or leased, who can buy it, who can fish it and where it resides. These rules determine if there is a market value for the licence.
In most B.C. fisheries, this is totally open. Along with fishermen, licences can be held by investors, multinational corporations and processors. The holder can sell, transfer or lease the licence with no requirement that the holder fishes or even own a vessel or fishing gear. There is no requirement to disclose a sale or a price or report large cash transactions. Licence transfers attract money laundering.
An opposite governance system is the Maine lobster and crab fishery, where licence trading is totally closed. There is no market value. A licence is granted to a fisherman for life. They cannot sell or lease the licence. They have to fish it or lose it. When they retire, they can either transfer the licence to a qualified family member, or turn it back to the government to reissue it. There is zero market value.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying we need to move to a Maine model in B.C.
The Atlantic inshore fishery is somewhere in the middle. It allows limited market value. The licences can be transferred, but the new holder must be a qualified fisherman, an owner-operator, and may be required to reside in his own or an adjacent province.
Alaska has much tighter “boots on the deck” regulations, where those that try to sidestep the regulations not only lose the licence but can go to jail. It is the processors that inform regulators of licence ownership irregularities. Licence control gives that much marketplace advantage. They are very serious about protecting fishermen in Alaska.
There is no doubt about the economic benefits of owner-operator fisheries. The Maritime Fishermen’s Union, or MFU, provided you with a report last November. Indeed, along with the economic benefits, there are very important social, cultural and environmental benefits. Fisheries and Oceans Canada, or DFO, has repeatedly turned a “blind eye” to these important objectives.
In 1992, B.C. fishermen and 100 coastal communities put forward a comprehensive vision for our B.C. fisheries, The Fisherman’s Report. At the heart of this vision was a 100% owner-operator fishery with a 3% royalty back to Canada. At the time, 88% of our fishermen were owner-operators. DFO not only ignored these recommendations from fishermen, they dropped the 12% limit on corporate ownership put in place in the 1960s. Now less than 10% of our fishermen are owner-operators.
Our recommendation is to establish an independent commission to protect and promote independent harvesters in B.C., specifically their access to licences, permits and quotas.
Thank you for your attention. Hopefully, this has been useful, and I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you to both our witnesses for your opening remarks.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you very much to our witnesses.
I would like to start with you, Ms. Sonnenberg. Could you outline the concerns with respect to foreign ownership in the West Coast fishery, including the establishment of complex corporate structures?
Ms. Sonnenberg: I think that is easy. One of the reasons that the federation formed back in 2012 was because we could see what was happening in British Columbia or what had happened in a lot of cases with the corporate takeover of the fishery. They were allowed, as Mr. McIsaac said in his opening remarks, to start acquiring more and more of the fishery.
I can remember going to a meeting in Vancouver and hearing about doctors and dentists owning the fishery, and then it snowballed from there into corporations. We’re seeing that on the East Coast.
But, really, one of the reasons that the federation has stayed together is because those corporate structures that you’re referencing have taken the wealth out of these communities. They are sucking it out. Nobody wants that. Independent harvesters want to continue contributing to their communities and be able to have a generational transfer to their grandkids and kids, but corporate structure is not allowing that.
We just heard that less than 10% of harvesters in British Columbia are truly independent. That is a shocking number, given the fact that the resource in Canada — not just in British Columbia — belongs to the people of Canada, and they are not able to access it. That is a problem when you have a corporate entity taking that money out. We don’t even know in British Columbia — well, we don’t necessarily know on the East Coast either — where some of that money goes because we know that it is not staying in Canada. We know that some of the product is being taken out of our waters and then processed in the United States, for example, in British Columbia. I’m sure that my colleague can expand on that.
Is that what we want for our fishery? No. I think the answer is no.
Senator Ravalia: In your dialogue with DFO, do you feel like you are making any kind of headway with the concerns that you are expressing, or are we at a point of no return on the West Coast fishery?
Ms. Sonnenberg: I don’t think we are ever at a point of no return, but it isn’t going be to the Department of Fisheries that carries this forward. I started to be involved in this discussion in 2016. I’ve made several trips to British Columbia to talk to the bureaucrats. I don’t think — I can only speculate — that the will is not there nor is the political power to push this.
As Jim mentioned, having a commission that’s independent from the department take this on is the only way this is going to go forward. The department has had recommendation after recommendation from the fisheries committee at the House. They have done very little, if not nothing, with those recommendations. You cannot say after seven years the report in 2019 that came out of the House, there were 27 —
Mr. McIsaac: Twenty.
Ms. Sonnenberg: — twenty recommendations in that report. There has been nothing completed. That is not because it is too difficult; that’s a simple choice. To take that and make the policy continue on as it has in British Columbia must be because there is no will inside the government or that department to make it happen.
Senator Surette: Great presentations, thank you.
My question is going to go to the West Coast Commercial Fisheries Modernization initiative, which I am assuming you are aware of. My first question is this: It sounds like they are in a targeted consultation phase at the present time, but they stated at least two objectives up to this point. One is to support working harvesters to have more control over their fishing activities to keep a greater share of the benefits from their fishing efforts. The second one is to modernize the licensing regime to support harvesters in pursuing their business objectives and adapting to change.
You have made reference, Ms. Sonnenberg, to a made-in-BC. owner-operator. They are all words that sound good, and they are comfort words. I’m curious as to what your thoughts are, first, on the initiative; and, second, if you are moving forward to this B.C. owner-operator or other regime, how do you bring that to a strategy and operationalize that to make it work on the ground?
Ms. Sonnenberg: I’m not an expert, but I certainly think you have to take action. Paralysis comes from overanalysis. Everybody knows that expression.
We have seen over a decade — that I’m familiar with myself — of doing that. So at some point, do we just keep talking about it and talking about it? Or do we actually take a bold step and try something? That requires action, and that is going to require some bold initiatives.
Yes, I’m very aware of the initiative in British Columbia, but at the end of the day, a lot of this has been discussed and discussed ad nauseam, if I may say so. But somebody has to take the first step. Every journey begins with a single step. If we don’t take it, then we go nowhere. We’re back to inaction, and we’re allowing it to happen by not forcing some sort of movement on this file, which is why we’re here today, to hopefully gain the support of the Senate and be able to make some more statements through this venue.
Mr. McIsaac: I sat in on a number of consultation meetings that DFO has had on modernization. I would say that the fishermen whom I have talked to who have been a part of that are completely confused by what they are trying to do. You just said pretty clearly what you think their objectives are. They have not said that to B.C. fishermen; that is not what they’ve said. They are sitting in a room with not just harvesters but investors, processors and multinational corporations, and those are the people who are telling them that we don’t need to talk about the ownership of access. What do you think the results of those conversations are going to be?
Senator Surette: To pursue this further, it seems like they picked the crab and prawn fisheries as their first fisheries. Why would they have picked those two types of fisheries?
Mr. McIsaac: My recommendation is to move forward, to promote and protect. That is not what they are doing. They are discussing this. They are questioning their first premise: whether harvesters should be the ones who have access. If that is where they are starting and they’ve been told these recommendations pretty clearly. The recommendation I pulled up there is basically Recommendation 15 from the 2019 study, which was an independent commission to implement this. They are not capable of doing that.
Senator Surette: So they are better off listening to your recommendations and looking to the Fisheries Act and the policy of the department rather than this initiative — if I follow you properly?
Mr. McIsaac: This initiative, to me, is going nowhere.
Senator Surette: One last question is this: How does the public registry play into all of this? I don’t understand that piece other than a public registry is where you can see where you can go lease quotas. Is that a strategy to move forward with a B.C. owner-operator strategy?
Mr. McIsaac: It allows harvesters to see who holds a limited amount of quota. When there is a pinch species, you need to know that. Right now, it is not transparent. So when there is a pinch species, one that you need to stay on the water — the entire groundfish fishery is managed that way — you need to see that, and you can’t currently see that. There was a recommendation, I think, from Dan Edwards to you about that. Yes.
Senator Dhillon: Thank you, folks, for your comments and your information here today, and also for being direct on some of this. That is what we need. It is being direct about some of the information that we’ve received, and what you, on the ground, are seeing that is actually counterintuitive and not getting us to where we want to be.
To that end, if I can bring you to the issue of money laundering. The committee has heard from DFO that it has an MOU with FINTRAC and the Nofima Centre for Recirculation in Aquaculture, or NCRA, that suspected illicit transactions in fisheries can be referred through FINTRAC’s poaching and fishing program. We were also told that some enforcement actions in British Columbia suggest this so-called neural network is beginning to connect.
From your experience, your inspection of that and the perspective of your members, is this referral-based system actually identifying and disrupting money laundering, illicit financing or organized criminal activity in the Pacific fisheries? Are harvesters seeing meaningful deterrence on the ground, or do concerns remain that financial wrongdoing continues largely unchecked despite these arrangements?
I will say this and put it on the record that, as we speak about money laundering, it is absolutely one that ties into so many other harms to public safety. We talk about fentanyl harm. We talk about organized crime and we talk about violence. So that money that is a profit from all of those illicit enterprises has to go somewhere. If we have created an industry where that money and that illicit income are going to, then that liability is to the public safety of the citizens of the province and also Canadians. What are your thoughts?
Mr. McIsaac: Definitely, if there is no requirement to report a licensed transfer, then the government has no way of knowing if a large cash transaction is legitimate or not. I don’t know what rules they’ve put in place to change that, but the requirements for control agreements are happening, and they have been happening for at least 30 or 40 years.
We have A-I licences in our province and have had them for at least 30 years. They are salmon Indigenous licences, and those are under control agreements, most of them. They’re held by processors or investors, and they’re still sitting in the name of the First Nation person. Yet, we’re going through a buyback of A-I licences right now and A-I licences are being sold into it. The processors are getting rid of them.
It’s well documented what’s going on there, and DFO is allowing that to happen; the target for those are Indigenous fishermen. It’s ridiculous.
Ms. Sonnenberg: I think the FINTRAC registry — if you were to ask, there was a report done by the House Committee, and Peter German testified at that time. He had done some work in casinos in British Columbia and money laundering, but he talked about the wide-open spaces for the fishery to launder money and recommended very strongly — which comes out in those recommendations — that FINTRAC is a proper use in the fishery.
The way he described it is just as Jim says: It’s just such an easy way when large sums of money are moving and there are some cash sales, and it’s questionable. Sometimes it is not, but a lot of times it is, and that needs to be reined in. I wasn’t aware that there was an MOU with the department and FINTRAC. This is news to me, so it must be fairly recent. They’re keeping that a secret, and I’ll leave it at that.
Senator Dhillon: Interesting. Mr. McIsaac, you spoke about the current 10% of owner operators. How do we reverse that and bring the 90% back? What’s the plan?
Mr. McIsaac: You’ve got to protect what’s there, and you’ve got to promote harvester ownership of access. Those two have an independent commission to protect and promote them. There are a lot of different ways you can do that. The Policy for Preserving the Independence of the Inshore Fleet in Canada’s Atlantic Fisheries, or PIFPAF, approach here in Atlantic Canada to protect ownership was done pretty much cost-free, driving licences back into the hands of harvesters. Although it was challenged, there were court cases.
There are other examples of how to do it. In Norway, they target 15% of quota transfers to go to certain areas of their country to push it to remote coastal communities. So any time there is a transfer, 15% comes off the top, and it goes to those remote communities. That drives fishermen into those remote communities and the fishery there.
There are cost-free ways to do this for the government.
Senator C. Deacon: Senator Deacon and I are not related. We get along because we’re not related. I don’t know how you handle your blood pressure. I honestly don’t. How does DFO defend the lack of transparency? How does DFO defend the lack of basic governance? It’s beyond me. The fact that we allow this natural resource that’s owned by Canadians to be sold to foreign entities and we’re not tracking that — if you’re not tracking the money, you know bad stuff is happening. It’s a basic fact in life.
How is it that it has been so different on the B.C. and Atlantic coasts? Has anybody given any justification ever for that difference? To me, everything I hear is completely indefensible, and lives and communities are being harmed.
What arguments are we hearing against it, or they’re just ignoring everything. Is that what it is?
Ms. Sonnenberg: From my perspective, senator, they’ve managed to ignore it. I have been in a few meetings where I’ve actually heard the bureaucrats say that a direct order from the minister was given to the department, and a senior civil servant said, “I don’t work for the minister.” I think that says it all.
Senator C. Deacon: It seems to operate in that manner in the experience I’ve had on this committee.
Ms. Sonnenberg: In the case of this situation that we’re talking about here tonight, that would certainly be the case, and I wouldn’t paint everybody in the department that way. There are people with genuine interests to try to help us advance things. But in the case of some of the seniors, they’re not interested in making this go forward, and that’s quite clear from the recommendations that have been given time and time again in different reports, in different directions from different ministers, and nothing happens.
Senator C. Deacon: Help me to understand. When we were hearing from our witnesses at the last meeting, it seemed that the processors were well engrained in the ecosystem in ways that, again, were troubling from my standpoint. Backroom deals were being done, and you rent your gear at the old company store and the company’s employer. You’re running your fleet to go fish and renting the licence from the same person you’re selling the fish back to.
How do we address that issue? That wasn’t part of what you spoke about. I missed it if it was. I ask because that must be part of this ecosystem problem.
Ms. Sonnenberg: There are many problems in the ecosystem, but I think we’re back to the commission. To go back to your first question, you’ve got to take it away from the place where there’s been so much inaction. The commission is the first step, and then start to peel the layers back on the onion. It isn’t going to take a long time — it doesn’t take a long time to peel an onion — and get into how we get forward.
Some of the issues that I find is that the harvesters that are independent are petrified — that’s the word I would use — to come forward in a group like this or anywhere because of the retaliation they expect and the repercussions that come from telling the story honestly. They need safe spaces to come into and know they can tell it without being identified. That commission, I think, can allow a forum for that. That starts to get you on a path to some rectification of what has gone on here for far too long.
Senator C. Deacon: I can’t think of another industry or situation where an ownership registry does not exist in some way, shape or form. Private ownership, we’re building the beneficial ownership registry. If we don’t have a beneficial ownership registry here, I don’t know what else to say. It’s just deeply unsettling.
The Chair: For a moment, I thought I had left you speechless, but I was wrong again.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you both for being here. Your frustration and your waning patience are very palpable. I’m a guest on this committee, so I don’t have the background, but I certainly have the appreciation and the empathy from the wait.
Ms. Sonnenberg, first of all, you have talked about — I think your words were, “Start somewhere; do something; stop talking.”
What would you do? What are those first steps or two that would be quick wins, good wins that would make you feel — because that’s a big part of this. There is a psychology to this, too, like, “Okay, we’re doing a little bit. Oh, we’re moving forward.”
What would that next step be, that first step?
Ms. Sonnenberg: Some of the harvesters think a freeze would be a first step. In my opening remarks, I said, let’s just freeze licence transfers, and when they’re moving, the only place they can move is to somebody who can demonstrate they are an owner-operator with the proper tools to carry out the execution of fishing, as we know it, with boots on the boat. They are the boots on the boat, and the First Nations communities in British Columbia are included in that to allow for a first step.
I hear that quite often with the groups that I work with in British Columbia. I’m assuming that Mr. McIsaac would say the same thing.
It’s not easy. There is nothing easy about this because everybody is going to make it as complicated as they can, but putting a licence freeze on is going to start to control some of the narrative.
Senator M. Deacon: I listened to your opening. In spite of no action or no centralized support, there is not a natural desire within to start to do that anyway. You need that regulation. You need that push to have boots on the ground and owner-operators active on each boat.
Ms. Sonnenberg: No. Sadly, across the country, on both the East Coast and the West Coast, that’s not the natural course of action inside government. We see it on the East Coast. We have been here to talk to the Senate about that. It’s just something that is bewildering to me, because the fish stocks belong to Canada. They don’t belong to a company that is owned in a foreign country, which we have on the East Coast, and we have it on the West Coast. It is just mind-boggling for me as a Canadian citizen to think that this is how our resource is being managed.
To take that first step is going to be brave, and it is going to be a bit scary for everybody, but you have to start somewhere, and we have waited and waited.
The people in British Columbia, in my opinion, are so dejected, feel helpless and are without assistance. That’s the part that really bothers me: They cannot get assistance for what is going on with our public resource, which they should be entitled to be harvesting in a way that’s sustainable and makes for longevity in our coastal communities, which is something that I talk about constantly in this position. The life of our coastal communities relies on a successful fishery, and without government’s assistance, we don’t have that.
Mr. McIsaac: Just to follow up on that, about four years ago, there was a court case that gave Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations on the West Coast of Vancouver Island access to a bunch of fishery resources. One of those was crabs.
We begged the department to put a freeze on the transfer of crab licences to anybody other than exactly what Melanie asked for: fishermen, active fishermen or First Nations.
The department refused. Three licences went on the market. The department said that they’re too expensive for the department to buy, so they didn’t buy them. They were bought up by corporate entities. Then they had to wait for the next year to go after licences, and they were more expensive the next year.
It’s crazy what the department is doing. It’s absolutely crazy.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you for that.
That was one comment that was made earlier, and the other one from you, Mr. McIsaac, was that this owner-operator fisherman is a big issue. What we need is a commission.
So there is no structure like that right now?
Mr. McIsaac: There is no independent commission.
Senator M. Deacon: There is no independent commission, so then how challenging would it be to get that up and running?
Mr. McIsaac: It would need some resources. It would need the will of the minister to do it, but it can be done.
Five years ago, the government allocated $648 million to restructure the salmon fishery and gave it to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, or DFO. If the direction had been at that point — there was a licence retirement in there. There are 2,000 licences in there. If the direction had been, “Make sure that whatever comes out of there is an owner-operator, boots-on-the-deck fishery,” then that’s where we would be here in the salmon fishery. But it wasn’t.
It continued the corporate — I mean we’ve spent $648 million, so they need some hard direction.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.
Senator Cuzner: Thanks very much. Good to see you again, Melanie.
The fishermen’s report that you referenced earlier, do we have a copy of that? I don’t know if you have seen it, but I think it would be helpful if we could get a copy of that.
You talked about repercussions for people coming. I’m reading through the material, and I’m seeing the modernization, which is a positive thing. You take it as a positive thing, but if it’s only that they’re going through the motions, and if they are not really getting at the nub of the issues, then it’s just window dressing or appeasement.
You mentioned that there are repercussions if individuals come forward to plead their case. What types of repercussions are we talking about?
Mr. McIsaac: Blacklisting, so you’re —
Senator Cuzner: By the processors?
Mr. McIsaac: Your living depends on having a licence or a quota, and if Melanie is leasing me a licence, and we’re sitting in the same room, and I complain about the ownership structure, she just might not lend it to me or lease it to me this coming year.
I’ve seen a whole room of active fishermen shut up when one person walks in the room.
Ms. Sonnenberg: We know that has happened. That is not something that is a fallacy. That’s a reality.
Senator Cuzner: Does DFO know this is happening as well, do you think? No, I’m being serious, because it’s easy to criticize DFO, and somebody has made an art out of it.
I know that in Atlantic Canada, with the crab management plan that we came out with in 2005, the minister said, “Okay, there is going to be a sharing of the resource,” and our First Nations were very much involved. But core adjacent and core non-adjacent, they were all engaged. When the plan came forward, there was very little turmoil on the water in the Atlantic. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it’s because those engaged were at the table or at least saw themselves reflected in the plan.
So is DFO turning a blind eye to this type of behaviour with repercussions, and they don’t acknowledge that at all? Is that what you’re saying?
Mr. McIsaac: I sat in advisory meetings on fisheries where processors are talking about their investments and the like, and it’s going right over the heads of DFO. They just shut off to it, I think. Some of the stuff that was said makes it pretty clear what’s going on — the economics of it.
Senator Cuzner: The other thread that has gone through everybody’s testimony is the money laundering. It seems to be prevalent.
How many investigations would typically take place a year with money laundering? How many convictions are there, typically?
Mr. McIsaac: I don’t know how much money laundering is going on in the industry; it lends itself to it because of the large value of assets and the fact that there is no checking.
With regard to FINTRAC checking, it’s the first that I’ve heard of it — or it’s actually the second time I’ve heard of it. I didn’t know that they are doing FINTRAC checking. I don’t even know how they can do that on control agreements. I mean, control agreements are blind.
You see some of the control agreements that are on the West Coast; harvesters are not even allowed to talk about it. They can’t come and say anything to you because it’s written right in the agreement: “You cannot disclose this to anybody other than your lawyer.”
Senator Cuzner: If licences do come up, that core harvesters have the opportunity to prove that they’re able to, and the other piece of that is to have the support in place so they have access to capital, low or no interest over a period of time, that’s essential to that success of that operation as well?
Ms. Sonnenberg: It’s set up for failure if you don’t have a place to go because then we’re back to — and we know this from the east — predatory lending, which is very prevalent. Then you’re forcing people into what I actually prefer to call “loan‑sharking.” Then that’s the option.
Whereas, if you have a structure that’s government regulated, like we see with Farm Credit Canada, it gives people an honest opportunity, and then you don’t have corporations competing amongst themselves to try to get access with their deep pockets. It starts to bring that temperature down through appropriate venues because you’re not going to get all the money at the bank.
Senator Cuzner: You are not beholden to a processor to sell your catch at a dictated price.
Ms. Sonnenberg: Precisely. We often hear about the supply. They need supply agreements and so on. There is always going to be supply.
At the Competition Bureau, they call it — well, you can call it “collusion” if you like, in some instances — the “use of dominance in the marketplace.” That’s a more general term, but it has some serious consequences. Of course, that’s what happens: They want to control pricing. They want to control all the product, how it comes out and how it’s marketed.
That’s why we need the separation between that and the harvesting side, which is the vision we saw with Roméo LeBlanc when he came out in 1976 and said, “We need this; here’s why.” If you read his speech from then, I always go back to this because it was so prophetic, what he said and how he talked about the communities. Everything he was striving for, British Columbia is not.
If your researchers can get you a copy of the speech, it’s like taking a trip back in time to see the vision but to see what has happened over the course of time, over something that was supposed to be managed by the department — we’re back to that — our public resource to be protected from this sort of action. We’re so far away from it in British Columbia, you can’t even recognize — well, and the 12%, of course, that they started with in the 1960s. You don’t even have 12% probably now that isn’t owned.
Mr. McIsaac: No, it’s less than that. It’s less than 10%, yes.
So here’s the comparison: If you go to southeast Alaska, Ketchikan or Sitka, they’ve got these thriving communities that are based on a fishery.
We’re fishing the same ecosystem, and you go to our communities there and they are dead. What is it? What’s the difference? Boots on the deck is the difference. It’s very simple.
Senator Prosper: Thank you for being here and sharing your testimony and views. I admire your life’s work here.
I can only imagine those situations where you have some fishers in a room and an owner walks in and there is complete silence. It is all the more important in terms of what we’re hearing from you.
I certainly — and many of us here — see the value and logic of a fishery being the lifeblood of a local community, the benefits of that and the comparative between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
My question is within the context of owner-operator, and being Indigenous, Mi’kmaq, I want to hear a bit of the landscape. I know there are probably the good things and maybe not‑so‑good things about components like the Indigenous commercial communal access within the context of owner-operator, the Indigenous food fishery within the context of owner-operator and that commercial quota system.
Can you share that prospect or that idea of a harmonious integration between that? What are some of the things you think need to be focused upon to really — I see you gearing up there, Mr. McIsaac, please?
Mr. McIsaac: My history in the industry, my best friend is First Nations, so I grew up fishing out of a First Nations community. I’ve had a lot of experience in that and seen a lot.
I’m devastated by what has happened over my lifetime and what has happened on our coast to the First Nations communities and the non-First Nations communities because of access on our coast.
You see communities that had thriving fleets in both the First Nations and non-First Nations on our coast, and they no longer do.
First Nations have fishermen. They need to be accessing the resource just like non-First Nations.
You’re talking about communal rights and the right to fish for food, social and ceremonial, or FSC, purposes. I’ve gone out and fished for FSC fish and provided it to the community, but not just to the First Nations community — sorry, DFO — but to the non-First Nations community as well. I have been there. There is subsistence on both sides of the remote communities on our coast.
The one big challenge, I would say, for First Nations with what’s going on right now is what you call on the East Coast royalty charters, getting access for licences, quota and everything like that, and then turning around and handing it over to the corporate entity to go and fish it instead of having your own fishermen.
We have that in spades on the West Coast, where First Nations, the A, A-I and H-I licences have been in control agreements for a long time. They’re no longer being fished by First Nations or owned by a First Nation. The value of the licence has been sucked out by the processor so the community is not getting the whole benefit that Ms. Sonnenberg has talked about. The whole value of the fishery has been lost.
What is landing in Sitka and Ketchikan is not landing in our communities because they are no longer fishing it. That is the sore point. You need to have those boots on the deck, the hands in the water and the fish flowing through your community to benefit that larger value of the fishery coming through.
Ms. Sonnenberg: We use the term “royalty charter” in the east, but we’re moving to controlling agreements because that’s what they are now. Let’s not put a name on it to make ourselves feel good. It is definitely a controlling agreement, and I think we talk about beneficial interests from a licence. That beneficial interest, as Jim says, is not going to those communities. We spoke about this last November when we were here.
What was intended has not happened. In the case of the Pacific, it is not happening. That is a tragedy. It is not promoted, but it is being allowed by the government that should be protecting these communities to allow them to prosper, and they are not.
Senator Prosper: Are there any nuances to this perspectively when you talk about a commission? Do you think that would be able to do that integration or harmonization more effectively than such with DFO right now?
Mr. McIsaac: Harmonization in which regard?
Senator Prosper: To the two fisheries with respect to the communal, commercial First Nations fisheries, food, social and ceremonial fisheries, looking at the quota regime or within the context of that?
Mr. McIsaac: I think it is a big chore that you are asking a commission to do. There are big challenges there, and there are many different opinions inside of the First Nations as to which way it should go. It is better to keep it as a separate commission to protect and promote independent harvesters, but keep it open to all independent harvesters.
There are Indigenous harvesters who are commercial and who have licences. That is the history of our coast. It has been like that. There are more than 100 years of that kind of history on our coast.
Senator Prosper: Thank you.
Senator Surette: There is no question that we understand the impacts to our coastal communities of owner-operator and boots on the deck. The big question is how we get there, especially on the West Coast.
Up to this point, we have just talked about the fishery. From what we see on the West Coast, like the East Coast, there are groundfish, salmon, herring, shrimp, prawns and crabs.
Are we talking about one fishery in particular when you are talking here now? I am assuming, Mr. McIsaac, you are talking about the shrimp fishery largely, but are we generalizing?
When you say that there is less than 10% owner-operator, is that the shrimp fishery or overall?
When we mentioned the free zone licence transfers, we don’t have a public register. We don’t know how many licences are out there. We know it for some industries. From what I understand, in the herring industry, 80% of it is owned by one company, so we are talking about 20% there that is probably available for transfers. Put all of that together, and I wonder whether there are specific fisheries that are easier and other fisheries that are going to go the corporate way anyway.
Mr. McIsaac: There are 25 different fisheries in British Columbia.
There’s only one that I would say that you can leave with corporate ownership, and that is the hake fishery, the groundfish trawl fishery, although some groundfish trawl fishermen would not like that. There are some independents there, but 33% of the quota is held by an American company, and 22% is held by Jimmy Pattison. That is a lot. They are running super trawlers to catch that fish.
Senator Surette: If we go to your industry and your members, what percentage of your members are owner-operators?
Mr. McIsaac: The majority.
Senator Surette: The majority.
Mr. McIsaac: Of the shrimp fleet, yes.
Senator Surette: Are there some that lease quotas?
Mr. McIsaac: The shrimp fishery is actually an open fishery; there is no individual transferable quota, or ITQ, program in it.
Senator Surette: None whatsoever?
Mr. McIsaac: No.
Senator Surette: So you have an owner-operator in your industry.
Mr. McIsaac: That is not true, no. The department has allowed the sale of licences to processors, so there are processors who own licences and foreign entities that own licences in the shrimp trawl.
Senator Surette: There is a large difference there. You fish shrimp for yourself, and you run your own business; whereas others are like the ITQ that we know on the East Coast, where there are corporate businesses, not large, but they operate their own boats, do they?
Mr. McIsaac: Yes, they do: They own their own vessels. They hire skippers. They own their own processing plants. Some of them are not inside the country. They ship the unprocessed shrimp to their processing plant. It is very hard for local processing to compete with global entities like that.
Senator Surette: That is why the DFO is probably identifying prawns, shrimp and crab for their first initiative.
Which fishery are we talking about that needs the most attention at the present time?
Ms. Sonnenberg: My immediate answer is all of them because I do not think that you are going to be able to successfully piecemeal your way out of this. You are either going to have to take a big step and the opportunity to have the licence freeze across the board. While there’s clarity brought to the situation, whether it be the Indigenous portion of this or whether it be the commercial side of it, I do not think that you can do it in stages or pieces. That is why we’re in the mess we’re in. It’s because nobody wants to take that big step. But without it, there’s going to be no ability. As I said, I’m no expert on B.C., but I feel passionate about it. I feel like the industry has been ripped off because of mismanagement.
Never have I seen a group in the industry that needs more help and support than the group of independent harvesters left in that province. We need to protect our resources, coastal communities and, by extension, all of the things that come with it.
Senator Surette: The only commonality amongst all the fisheries is the ITQ. No?
Mr. McIsaac: They’re not all ITQ. What you want to protect is the independent harvester. You want to protect and promote the independent harvester on all fisheries, across the spectrum on the West Coast.
That’s the mantra you go into this with: How can we help you secure your access? What do we have to do? And then do it. Whether it is on leasing licences, allocating 15% of a lease that goes into the ownership for harvesters, going forward. That changes the dynamic. It gives them a foot in the door, right? It allows motion.
Senator C. Deacon: I’m going to offer to sign you up for module 1 of my course, Roger.
We have heard about the abuse of dominance and collusion from multiple folks as well as the risk of money laundering. The conditions for successful money laundering seem to exist — that would be the way that I would put it.
I want to dive into other witnesses we need to hear from. Who are the people who want to maintain the status quo that we could invite and hear their reasoning as to why this is working?
Reflect on it if you have ideas. It sounds like Pattison Food Group is one of them. We should hear from them.
Ms. Sonnenberg: BC Seafood Alliance. You need to hear from them. They are a big advocate of the system staying the way that it is.
Senator C. Deacon: I want to think more about what this Pacific Coast fisheries commission might look like as a separate body. What I have in my head is the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. It is managing the challenges in the Great Lakes because there wasn’t another body that could do it. Right now, clearly, there is not a body that can manage the fishery on the B.C. coast.
Talk to us a little bit about how that would function. I can see us asking for devolution of some authority to a commission and the resources to run that commission from DFO.
When you lie awake at night thinking about a solution here, to the extent that you are willing to chat about it on the record, what might that look like, hypothetically? You have given us a list of items that need to be based on boots on the boat. You said transparency of ownership. Freeze licence transfers and getting a way to start buying them. I think they could only be bought by those who have boots on the boat. That will drop the price right away, which is a good thing. It should never have had that.
Eliminating royalty trusts is another. You have given us a number of different things that would be part of it. Those are the conditions. How do you see it being run so that we make sure we have a governance structure that will be strong enough and be able to have a good enough nose to smell the problems that will keep rising up as people fight against this. Do you have any thoughts you could offer us?
Ms. Sonnenberg: The commission composition would be people in British Columbia who can give sound advice from an owner-operator perspective. Many of those people could come in. But there are also people in the east who have experience. You would have a makeup of what I would call experts on owner-operator to come in and take the bull by the horns, if I might say that, and start to work through with the industry what it looks like.
There are all kinds of papers and studies and work that have been done. It is not like you will have to write a new encyclopedia. A lot of work has already been done.
Senator C. Deacon: Can you make sure we have those so that we don’t miss them?
Ms. Sonnenberg: Sure. You have already heard some of them.
Senator C. Deacon: Are there any others that you think we should see?
Ms. Sonnenberg: A lot of the work that I’m referencing is work that’s been done over at FOPO, the House of Commons fisheries committee, and they have recommendations. I might say that even the work that was done in 2019, in which the Senate was very involved at the time, included changes to the Fisheries Act. “Protection” and “promotion” are clearly laid out in the act. It doesn’t say, “. . . except for British Columbia.” It says, “protection” and “promotion,” the end.
How do we see that? A commission can take that and act if they are given some authority to say, “Okay, we have got to right this. We have got to make this right.” It’s because it’s there; it’s in the act. The people of British Columbia have been discriminated against because they’re not receiving the benefit of that act and of the words that are in that act.
For the commission, it should be relatively easy to bring people together. I don’t think that’s the hardest part of this, by any stretch. Once you have a group of people who are knowledgeable, it starts to take care of itself.
Senator C. Deacon: The reality is that we need the commission to be following the act, which DFO is refusing to do on the B.C. coast. Thank you.
The Chair: I want to follow up. I sit back and listen to the conversation here. Growing up in Newfoundland and Labrador and understanding the fishery as I do in Atlantic Canada, I find it amazing that we’re talking about one country. When we sit down and hear what you have to say here this evening, versus the knowledge I have of how the fishery operates in Atlantic Canada, it’s mind-boggling to think about it.
In order to implement any new policy, there’s always a concern raised in relation to economic harm that might evolve from the implementation of that new policy.
I wonder if we will ever reach a point where the policy that you are requesting would be part of the government’s plan. One of the arguments that will come, I’m sure, would be that it would cause some kind of economic harm to the industry as it is today.
I want to give you an opportunity, if you would, to talk about that and give your thoughts on that. I’m sure it will be part of the discussion if we ever get to the point of trying to implement a new policy.
Ms. Sonnenberg: I said it in my opening remarks, and I will say it again. If PIIFCAF gave a seven-year runway for people to clear up any problems under owner-operator, to allow that transition to happen without completely upending the industry, if there were a structure — and it’s not going to be exactly the same. I’m not naive enough to think that a B.C. perspective can look exactly like what we did in 2007. That was not a total success either. But we have the hindsight to look back and ask why it wasn’t. Where did we go wrong? What could we have done better?
We have a whole laundry list of things that could have happened or should have happened. Again, we’re back to the management of a program that was instituted and not necessarily looked after that well.
The transition period allows for the stability that’s required to make sure you’re not upending the ecosystem as it is today, and that you allow a chance for an orderly transition into this new system.
This could be done. I feel very confident it could be done.
Mr. McIsaac: Yes. Ms. Sonnenberg is right. It totally can be done in an orderly way, and we would benefit as a whole. Our communities would benefit; the regions would benefit; the province of B.C. would benefit with more economic activity happening on our coast than what’s happening now.
It might not happen outside of our country. Is it the concern that, all of a sudden, a multinational processor is not getting the raw product for the United States or China or somewhere else? Then that is a different discussion.
We have the opportunity. It is a public resource here, and we’re wasting it.
The Chair: Most decisions in this town, in my experience, are made when there is a public outcry, a public concern or it becomes a major political issue.
Do you feel there is an appetite in that industry in British Columbia to make the changes and to implement the new policy that you’re seeking? I go back again to my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is difficult sometimes to get the people in the boats to agree on how to go forward on any particular issue. When we have a good fight on the go, everyone comes together, but sometimes it’s difficult to get everyone sailing out in one boat — pardon the pun.
In your experience, Mr. McIsaac and Ms. Sonnenberg, do you feel there is an appetite in the industry in British Columbia today for this new policy or to shape a new policy to come into effect?
Mr. McIsaac: No. The number of fishermen in British Columbia in the last 30 years has gone from over 20,000 to less than 4,000. The owner-operator access from harvesters is less than 10.
People are beat down. Our coastal communities are beat down. The economics of it on our coast — it’s tragic to see the difference.
To go on a boat between Prince Rupert and Sitka and see the difference between what used to be a thriving northern port in British Columbia — it is decimated. It’s the same ecosystem across the border. They are pretty beat down.
So, yes, we can let it die unless there’s support from the senators. It is pretty much on its last breath.
Ms. Sonnenberg: I would say, Senator Manning, the people who are left are not going to come here and be totally forthright with you because they can’t. If they are going to continue to at least exist, which is basically what it boils down to, how can they come here and tell you the whole truth and say, “Rah, rah. Let’s turn this over,” because what if it doesn’t? You are talking about people’s livelihoods.
I do not think that Jim and I would be here tonight if we did not feel that we had the support of the people who are left, but their voices have been stifled. People such as ourselves who are a little removed from it, although passionate about it, have the opportunity to be a voice for them, for those who cannot.
The Chair: Thank you. It has been an enlightening conversation, and troubling is an understatement in regards to what we are dealing with, but we thank you.
If there is anything that you believe we should be aware of, whether it is a report or a study, anything from the history you have been involved in and you think it would be beneficial to us as a part of our work on this particular piece of legislation or policy, please feel free to send it along so we can share it with our senators.
We have known in the past that this has been tried before. Whether we’re going to spin our wheels in the mud is yet to be determined, but there is definitely something that needs to be done here. We look forward to trying to put a few pieces back in the puzzle if we can.
(The committee continued in camera.)