THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 14, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 6:33 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, a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador, and I have the pleasure of chairing this committee. Today we are conducting a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
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Before we begin our meeting, I would like to take a few moments to allow the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator Cuzner: Rodger Cuzner, Nova Scotia.
Senator Surette: Allister Surette, Nova Scotia.
Senator Greenwood: Margo Greenwood, British Columbia. I am here for Senator Ravalia.
Senator Busson: My name is Bev Busson from British Columbia. Welcome.
The Chair: On November 18, 2025, the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans was authorized to examine and report on the commercial fisheries licensing regime on Canada’s Pacific coast. Today, under this mandate, the committee will be hearing from the following individuals: Russell Cameron, Member of the General Executive Board, United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union, UNIFOR, and a fisherman himself; Sonia Strobel, Co-Founder and CEO, Skipper Otto Community Supported Fishery.
On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for joining us here this evening. I understand that you both have some opening remarks. I will ask Ms. Strobel to go first, and following your remarks, our senators will have some questions for you. The floor is yours.
Sonia Strobel, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Skipper Otto Community Supported Fishery: Thank you all for the opportunity to be here for this important study. My name is Sonia Strobel and, as you said, I’m the co-founder and CEO of Skipper Otto Community Supported Fishery based in Vancouver.
We work with over 40 independent fishing families across B.C., connecting them directly with thousands of Canadians who pre-purchase their catch before the fishing season. We’ve grown a successful business for the last 18 years that’s protecting a fishing way of life in our coastal and Indigenous communities, and building a robust food system by Canadians, for Canadians.
I also come from a fishing family. My father-in-law is Skipper Otto, and my husband and my son are also commercial salmon fishermen. We built this business to solve a very simple and very real problem: Fishing families were not earning a fair living from the fish they were catching.
What I’m sharing today comes directly from that lived experience — working at the intersection of harvesters, markets and coastal communities. The core issue is this: The value of fish has increased, but the share going to the people who harvest it has decreased.
We are seeing is that licence and quota lease rates are taking up to 80% of the landed value of the fish caught in B.C., declining harvester incomes while costs continue to rise, major barriers for new entrants to the fishery and economic activity leaving coastal communities.
Right now, the system is functioning exactly as it’s designed. It’s designed to concentrate the wealth away from the people doing the work. This is not a failure of the industry; it is the predictable result of policy design. This doesn’t just affect harvesters; it affects Canadians.
We are in a moment where food affordability is a major concern across the country. When such a large share of the value of a fish is going to investors just so that harvesters can access the resource, that cost is carried through the entire system. So we should be asking this: What would the price of seafood look like for Canadians if more of that value stayed with the people catching it instead of being extracted before it even reaches the docks?
Through our work, we see the human consequences of this every day: Fishing families who take on the full risk of fishing invest in vessels, gear and safety, but they don’t have secure access to what they harvest.
You’ve heard testimony from many people I know already. You’ve heard testimony from First Nations about how the current system is impacting their ability to access and benefit from the fishery. Critically, we are seeing the next generation unable to enter, not because they don’t want to fish, but because the economics no longer support a viable livelihood.
Many who do remain are effectively operating as contractors in their own industry, often struggling just to cover their costs. Skipper Otto was created to try to address part of this. We’ve built a direct-market model so that more of the value flows back to fishing families. We’ve proven that consumers care, they will pay for transparency and they want to support coastal communities. But what we’ve also learned is that market innovation can’t overcome structural policy barriers. If harvesters don’t have fair and secure access to licences and quotas, the value is extracted before it ever reaches them.
We already have a clear example in Canada of how this can work. On the East Coast, fleet separation and owner-operator policies keep the value with the harvesters, support middle-class incomes and sustain coastal communities. In British Columbia, the absence of those policies has led to the opposite outcomes.
So the question is no longer whether change is needed; the question is how to implement it. Parliament has studied it. Experts have analyzed it. Harvesters and First Nations have been raising this for over a decade. What’s missing is not more analysis; it’s a clear decision to move forward and a process designed to implement that decision. Without that, conversations stay stuck in “whether” instead of moving on to “how.”
From what I’ve seen, this level of structural reform is going to require a process that is clearly mandated, adequately resourced and designed to carry decisions through to implementation. Without that, we risk continuing to study the issue without achieving the outcomes we’re all aiming for.
I understand there are concerns about unintended consequences, including the impacts to existing businesses in the sector. From my work supporting community-supported fisheries across the U.S., through programs at the University of Maine, and from time spent in places like Alaska and California, I’ve seen firsthand that owner-operator systems can and do support thriving, profitable fishing industries, including successful processors and strong coastal economies.
Ensuring that shoreside businesses up and down the supply chain thrive within a fleet-separated, owner-operated fishery can be addressed. They are not a reason to delay the decision. They are a reason to be clear about the objectives and then design the transition carefully.
My humble request to this committee is that you use your voice and your report to do two things:
First, clearly recommend that the minister commit to transitioning to a made-in-B.C. owner-operator and fleet separation framework; second, that this be paired with a time-bound implementation process, one that is explicitly tasked with designing how that transition is carried out in practice.
Without that signal, we risk continuing down the current path for another decade. In that decade, I am concerned there won’t be a community-based fishing fleet in B.C. left to protect.
We have a real opportunity to rebuild a fishery that works for harvesters, First Nations, coastal communities and Canadians.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Strobel.
Mr. Cameron?
Russell Cameron, Member of General Executive Board and Fisherman, United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union: I’m Russell Cameron, a commercial halibut fisherman from Pender Harbour, B.C. I’m a fourth generation in the fishing industry there. My whole working life, I’ve been a proud member of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union.
A large portion of the value in our West Coast fisheries is captured by non-fishing licences and quota holders. For instance, up to 80% of the landed value of halibut goes out in lease costs to the quota owner.
In my case last year, we paid 59% of the landed value of our catch for the quota we leased. In real numbers, we landed $375,376 worth of halibut, but $205,201 was paid off the top for access. That is probably the best-case scenario. Imagine if that went into our local economies, and every other fishing enterprise was the same. This virtual robbery makes every other problem we have that much worse.
For fishermen and women, for me, what we do is catch food for the world. That gives us a sense of purpose and pride in our livelihood. What money we earn multiplies in our communities. That’s not the case for non-fishing licence and quota holders, the investor class. They want dollars, and much less of that flows into our coastal communities.
This is not a problem on Canada’s East Coast, as East Coast fishermen’s organizations have kept access to fishing licences and quota in the hands of working fishermen. This shows in the comparative economics of our industries on both coasts over a number of decades.
Fleet separation and owner-operator rules are the basis for the Atlantic fleet’s success. The underlying policy contained in the reasoning outlined in the 2020 regulations amending the Atlantic fisheries regulations is as follows:
The Government of Canada’s policy objective is for this wealth to remain in the hands of those individuals that actively fish and for the wealth accumulated to be reinvested and spent in coastal communities rather than have it concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy corporations in larger urban centres.
It goes on to talk about vertical integration and other topics. But this policy is specific to the Atlantic provinces and Quebec, not British Columbia. Again, not B.C.
We need this policy to be applied in B.C., proclaimed loudly, in essence, as the B.C. fleet separation and owner-operator policy. Establish a comprehensive beneficial ownership registry for fishing licences and quotas. There, that is the destination. Destination, set. Set a time frame of not too long, and now clear the decks and let us fishermen and women get to work figuring out how to make that transition.
You don’t need to worry about the processors and fish buyers, as it is in our interests as fish harvesters that the processors are strong and healthy. The current system puts processors in the middle between quota owners and fishermen, and that is an uncomfortable position.
The fish buyers I fish and pack for are smart, good people who will continue to buy and process at a profit under rules that give fishermen full value and, through us, our communities.
In conclusion, we have been 35 years getting to this mess since the start of individual transferable quotas, and it will take some time to unravel. But we need concrete steps to start now.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Cameron. Certainly, no doubt, you have generated some questions.
Senator Busson: I wish to thank both of you for taking the time to be here in person. It is so much more useful when we are face to face, especially talking about such important issues as the West Coast fishery.
I think I am talking for all of my colleagues here on this committee. We were actually quite aghast at the difference between the Pacific and the Atlantic fishery. We understand a little of the history around that, how, at one time, they weren’t as different, and that they went in different directions. I won’t ask you to give us a history of that because I think it is a political history.
We are certainly concerned about the way it has turned out in British Columbia.
Recently, you referred to the point that we have had other witnesses. We had Melanie Sonnenberg here — you probably know her — talking about the exact same thing, and how it would be so helpful to reinstate the owner-operator/licence-holder regime that exists on the East Coast.
You intimated, Ms. Strobel, that there are a few negative impacts. But other than the one you talked about in your presentation, what would the barriers be to making that happen if we were to make recommendations to do it? What would the barriers be, and, perhaps, what would the next steps be to make it happen and the barriers that people would throw up that would tell us that we shouldn’t or couldn’t do this?
Ms. Strobel: As far as next steps, I think that what is so important is to have a stated very clear and direct policy objective, which is to say that the objective that applies to the East Coast also applies to the West Coast. It is already written. We do not have to rewrite it. Russell read out from some of it. I have the complete piece here as well. That is the first step.
The position that we are in is that without that objective or direction — this is where we are going; this is what we want it to look like — studies and work that are happening right now are aimless.
We all know from ship metaphors, if you are steering a ship and you do not know where you are going, it is going to take you a lot longer to get there. I think that is what is happening.
What happens is that we get distracted by edge cases, worries and concerns. We say, well, if we look at the lobster fishery in this one particular area, and if you tried to apply that to crab in this specific area, here is why it would not work. This is missing the point.
The point is this: What are the outcome and objective that we are trying to do?
We are trying to achieve that the value of the fishery stays in the hands of working harvesters in coastal communities. Then we will go fishery by fishery and determine which are the tools that we can use to apply. There are so many wonderful examples.
But without that end point — this is where we are going — we continually get lost in these edge cases. And the pushback that comes is because, naturally, businesses that are designed around the existing system are worried. They are worried that, if there are changes, their businesses might not be viable.
As I referenced in my remarks, there are so many excellent examples of fishing communities in Alaska, California and on the East Coast where we have these thriving — I was just in a small town, Cordova, Alaska, a thriving fishing community, a very small community. I actually met with processors when I was there to ask them this: How does this owner-operator regime that you operate here; how does it affect you? Does it inhibit you from operating a successful business? They almost didn’t understand the question. They said, “It is not our business to own the access. We provide a service. Fish harvesters will sell their catch to us when we provide a service of value. We do not need to extract wealth by owning the access.” It was almost incomprehensible to them.
I found the same thing in California in small communities there where they are exclusively owner-operator. All of us have no problem paying for the services and value that are brought for offload, for all of those services — wholesale, distribution, export, processing — all of these things are real things that the industry pays for in every fishing community. In all of those fishing communities, those businesses are not propped up by leasing access to the fisheries.
Senator Busson: I am hearing from you that there is a bit of urgency in this. I’m not surprised, given that 80% of the profit is already tagged for the investors, that there are enough people left that it is salvageable. Am I putting words in your mouth? Is there an urgency to this?
Ms. Strobel: It’s incredibly urgent. Every day, I hear about people who are leaving the fishery and about young people who wish they could fish and they aren’t. My son is one of them. He is 18, and having started Skipper Otto meant that he could grow up fishing. He would like to continue to fish, but he looks at the future of that and thinks: How? How can I make a living in an industry where those are the economics? It doesn’t make any business sense as a businessperson. How can I recommend someone get into a business that has such uncertainty, such high costs and the money is just not there?
The urgency is very real. I really am not exaggerating when I fear that there won’t be an industry left to protect. The multigenerational knowledge that’s passed down by my son fishing with his grandfather and his father on the boat, there is no other mechanism for him to learn that. He can’t go to the technical institute to learn that knowledge. When that is not passed down, I don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re not going to have an industry to protect.
Senator Busson: Thank you very much.
Senator Dhillon: Thank you, folks, for being here today and for sharing with us not only the concerns that you bring but also concerns that we have already heard.
Ms. Strobel, you spoke about that we need to have an edict with respect to where we want to get to, an objective. Until that is in place, we’re sort of flailing in the wind talking about other things that are simply getting in the way of our final outcome. You also spoke about having a runway of 10 years. Can you speak more about what you think is going to happen in 10 years if we don’t achieve the goals that we set out for?
Ms. Strobel: Yes. If we don’t do something drastic now, in 10 years, we will just continue to see the consolidation of the ownership of licences. We hear that licence brokers have been issued blank cheques by investors who will buy any licence that comes across their desk. As fish harvesters who still do own licences retire, their children can’t afford to buy those licences. And for those fishermen who had that as their retirement plan, can’t afford to not sell them.
We’re just going to see the further and further consolidation of those licences also into unknown hands because we don’t have a registry; we don’t know who owns the fish in our waters in perpetuity. We don’t know who owns that, and we won’t be able to get that back. That’s going to be a much harder case to get that access back when it’s gone. Within 10 years, there will be very little left of any kind of an independent fleet.
We know that the small-scale and the community-based fleet have very different environmental and economic outcomes than what they are often replaced with. They are often replaced with larger-scale factory vessels. If we’re talking about using less diesel and using less fuel, we’re going to lose those small boats that are more efficient and that are not only bringing the food back to the shores but also all of those social, cultural and economic values.
It is bleak. I do fear that it is almost too late. When I first started talking about this about eight or nine years ago, at that time, we said it was too late, and it was hard to see how we could continue.
Senator Dhillon: Mr. Cameron, do you want to add to that?
Mr. Cameron: It is bleak, and you feel bleak, but we’re always hopeful. It won’t be my son; he’s going to do something else, but I’ve got lots of nephews and others that could get into this industry with changes, but it is not worth doing right now.
For me, I’m 65, and I want to get out in the next five years, but I don’t want my licence and the access that I have to go to investors and to perpetuate this system. I recognize that licence values will have to come down for the transfer to be real, at least in halibut. But that is something that has to happen because the licence value isn’t reflected in what you can make fishing. I don’t know how it got to that, but that’s the way it is.
As a fisherman, I have to lease. I have some, because I’ve been in it a long time, but you don’t have security. I have more security because I have some quota that I can say that I will sell to you if you can broker some for me. But there are guys who have invested in boats and gear who don’t have anything. They could only take the price that is given to them or not.
Prawns this year are looking better. The lease prices are probably around $40,000 just to go out fishing, where last year they were $70,000 to $100,000. That is the low end probably. But last year, almost nobody made any money on prawns on the fishing end, and so nobody was willing to go. So that dropped, but it is still way too much. Guys have invested in $300,000 or $400,000 boats. I bet they are double that; I don’t know. But I’m looking at them from the outside and the fishing gear.
It is a matter of insecurity in the industry and a matter of the value going out and our communities becoming retirement homes for people from the city. Anyway, thank you.
The Chair: Before we go on, why do you think that the lease prices went down?
Mr. Cameron: In prawns last year, the season was shorter. They were so high because the year before that more money was made. It gets to be a bidding war, and you already have investments and things, and so you need to fish. And we’re too darn optimistic, saying, “Oh, no, we can do that.” So you take that on because you don’t have to pay that money up front. Somebody has fronted that for you. You pay for your bait, fuel, whatever, get your crew together, fix your gear up and then go fishing.
Then, at the end of the season, you either — it didn’t make sense last year. I mean, it was backwards for some, break even, but it was really high last year because the year before that it was lower, and so more guys wanted to get in. So it just goes up and down. Prawns are an open fishery as well. So you can hope that you will be the high liner and catch the most prawns, and then you would make money.
But if you made the average amount of prawns last year, you were break-even with the average number of prawns caught over the number of licences or underwater. So this year, people were saying no to those leases. So they stood around a little longer and the licence holders or those who brokered them had to come down to the point where it will start. Prawn season opens in early May, so those things are sort of in play now.
Senator Dhillon: So any time I hear of a lack of transparency and blank cheques, all of these things are flags to me.
We heard from DFO that has a memorandum of understanding with FINTRAC and the CRA and that suspected illicit transactions in fisheries are being referred through FINTRACs poaching and fishing program. There are some enforcement actions in British Columbia suggesting that this neural network is beginning to connect.
From your perspective and your experience and what you’re seeing on the ground, do you know if this referral-based system actually is identifying and disrupting money laundering, illicit financing or organized criminal activity in the fisheries area?
Mr. Cameron: Personally, I’m not familiar with that. I just look at the value of the halibut quotas compared to what you could make, and think there is a disconnect. Sonia has better insight into that.
Ms. Strobel: Similar to you, I don’t have deep, inside knowledge. I don’t understand it. But it certainly — as you say, Senator Dhillon — looks suspicious when the kind of money that can be thrown around for this access. I run a business where we buy and sell fish. I cannot imagine how that can be economical. How does one run a business with those kinds of dollars and cents?
I think there are global economic factors at play. There are global markets that I don’t play into and so I don’t understand. I certainly hear that, that, oh, we have an insatiable market in Japan for prawns this year, for example. So they will buy them all at any price. That may be true.
Certainly, we’ve had fish harvesters who have leased a licence and gotten three quarters through the season and had the licence owner come back and say, we would like to claw back some of that access because we have a higher bidder now. So a fisherman who was selling to us, who leased that licence, we paid up front for him to access that quota, lost the remaining quarter of it towards the end of the year and couldn’t fish. He had already paid all of his costs.
Of course, we had markets for our catch, but we couldn’t access that quota. So those kinds of things make me wonder what could be going on; how is this allowed?
Senator C. Deacon: I’m wondering if you can help me on something a little bit more basic.
B.C. has gone in a very different direction than the East Coast. The East Coast has some troubling elements to it as well. But is there any justification for things to be run differently on the West Coast than the East Coast? I haven’t heard anything yet.
But is there any rationale that you’re aware of that says, oh, we need a totally different way of running the system out West on the Pacific coast than on the Atlantic coast?
Ms. Strobel: I think it is totally unconscionable. I do hear that argument that, oh, well, it is a completely different fishery, but I don’t see any evidence of that.
I don’t see any evidence that there are fundamental differences to fisheries in the Pacific region that make it impossible to run owner-operated fleet-separated fisheries. I don’t see any evidence of that.
Mr. Cameron: I certainly don’t see any evidence of that. It’s just catching fish. Part of it is the timing. When this was strengthening on the West Coast was when our salmon really failed and things were collapsing through the 1990s. So you weren’t paying attention to that.
The quota systems had just started after a long fight by fishermen to gain some. It just seemed to be the timing. Then that got entrenched, and it just carried on.
Since 2000, we’ve been pushing against it more. It just carries on. The entrenched licensing system and cost — it’s sort of that. That’s where you’ll get the pushback. That pushback will come, from my view, as a made-in-B.C. solution. When you hear that, it often means don’t do anything.
It’s like we’ll talk a whole bunch more. We’ll consult, and we’ll do a lot. When I first started hearing “made in B.C.,” that’s where it came from. I like to use it here because I like to use it here in a positive sense.
It won’t be the same thing for the Pacific as it is in the Atlantic. But it’s not the same for every portion of the Atlantic or every fishery. They have different rules all through it. It’s not a stamp it with a cookie cutter and it is done. But that is the feeling I get of the people that don’t want change there.
Senator C. Deacon: The principles that should underlie how we run our fishery should be identical on the Atlantic coast as they are on the Pacific coast. There can be, obviously, changes in order to fulfill those principles in different situations. So there’s no justification that you’re aware of.
In terms of not having a beneficial ownership registry, now Canadian corporations are supposed to be building the beneficial ownership registry federally and in the provinces.
What is the justification, other than privacy? I don’t know how anybody justifies it saying “privacy.” But have you heard any rationale as to why that should be something that is kept private?
Ms. Strobel: Yes, the argument is privacy. But I don’t think what any of us are arguing for is that we should have a public list of the first and last names of all people who own licences and how much they’re worth. I don’t think anyone is arguing for that.
I think that we’re saying that the Government of Canada should know who the beneficial owners of the fish in our waters are. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. When that was initially undertaken, the survey — there was a survey that you probably have heard about — was a beneficial ownership survey, but it was incorrectly worded. It asked who the licence holder was. The way that was filled out was it was people who had leased a licence.
The results said some 90% of the licences were held by harvesters. It was faulty because it didn’t ask who was the beneficial owner; it asked who was holding the licence.
Folks have stopped talking about that study because they’ve also accepted that, yes, there was some fault to that.
But one of the other problems was that, although it was said that it was mandatory, there were no teeth to mandatory. To me, it seems quite simple. If you have a survey that says who is the beneficial owner — not a numbered company, but who are the beneficial owners of this licence — and a condition of the renewal of that licence for this year is filling it out.
It seems quite simple. If it’s not filled out, the licence is not renewed. We’ve done this in many things. But that was implemented for this. So I simply don’t understand how we can defend that.
Senator C. Deacon: The last is offshore ownership. Can you think of a justification why Canada should give away the rights to our offshore fisheries to someone outside of the country? Is there something we can’t do in Canada that we’re not capable of delivering value on? Has anybody given you any rationale for that?
Ms. Strobel: It has also been explained that the only rationale was a concern around the appearance of a trade war with the U.S. to say if there were U.S. companies that held licences — and if it appeared that Canada was now saying that the U.S. could not own licences — there may be some political pushback there.
Actually, somebody in the fall — I’ve forgotten who it was — said that they had looked into that and the U.S. also has a cap. I think it was something like 75% of U.S. licences and fisheries have to be owned by U.S. entities. So they do have a cap. I think there would be no worries about saying, well, Canada would like to mirror the same sort of thing.
Other than that, I’ve heard no reason why we would need to have that sort of level of foreign ownership or foreign ownership of our fisheries.
The Chair: Before we go to the next senator, I’m throwing a few questions out myself.
With regard to corporate ownership of the licences, if the government decided tomorrow to move to the system of owner-operator fleet separation, would they have to purchase back those quotas from the corporate interests that own them now? I’m just wondering. If they decided as a government policy to do that, what process do you guys envision for how that would happen?
Ms. Strobel: I think there have been processes like this on the East Coast where a seven-year timeline was announced. That seven-year timeline was very intentionally chosen because if someone had purchased a licence on the last day possible before the owner-operator, that seven years would allow them the time to earn back not only what they spent on the licence but kind of double their money. It was some figure like that that was worked out.
Yes, if an owner-operator or fleet separation transition is announced with a timeline — something like seven years — then the value of those licences will gradually come down because now your market obviously is smaller. Those owners have the opportunity to sell those licences at some point in there. They have seven years to comply.
We’ve also seen other jurisdictions where folks who were formerly active harvesters who are now retired individuals were allowed to hold on to their licences until they pass away, but they can’t pass them on to other non-fishing family members. We’ve seen many examples in different jurisdictions where, once the date was set, we now have the separated fleet with an owner-operator and these licences, and, of course, that fleet separation could mean that the offshore trawl fleet is not included because it is a highly financialized fishery that requires a lot of capital.
You can come up with what those guidelines are, but you can say that this fishery by this date will now be owner-operated, and we have this time to transition. That has worked, and in all the other jurisdictions it has worked, and those investors have been able to get their money out.
Senator Surette: I’m from the southern part of Nova Scotia, and a large part of my family is in the fishing business. So I understand owner-operator very clearly. I’m kind of surprised what’s happening on the Pacific coast. I hadn’t been paying too much attention to it.
I would like to go back to how to transition. You mentioned that maybe we shouldn’t look at specific fisheries moving forward, but I’m just wondering if it’s just too big of a chunk to have a blanket statement. I say that because even at home we have owner-operator, but certain fisheries are more pronounced than others. If you look at the lobster fishery in Nova Scotia, there are thousands of boats, independent fishers and small businesses, and the economic impact on all our coastal communities is significant. So there is no argument there. You’ve used the term “made in B.C.” We’ve also heard about the West Coast Commercial Fisheries Modernization initiative. We’ve heard that an independent commission should be created to move this forward.
I’m just wondering if you’ve been involved in any of those, especially the modernization. The independent commission is just a concept. Have you been involved in the modernization, and is it moving forward? Is it going in the right direction?
Mr. Cameron: It seems to be a stalling tactic, or, at least, it is getting nowhere. We were given some promises that they would pick out two prawns and crab this year, get a group of active fishermen together on each and that much got done. But then no meetings were held, or none beyond setting up the committee. Now we’re hearing that there will also be processors, licence holders and others going into those committees, which will make that not a workable thing because you have to be able, as a fisherman, to speak your mind there without worrying about the people from whom you’re going to be asking to lease the quota next month to have that sort of hammer over your head. So I think it could, and there is hope for that thing, but it needs to get some backbone from the minister to say, “Get on with it. Get some concrete changes happening now.”
Ms. Strobel: Yes. I would say the same thing. Your question was also about what the steps really are. I wouldn’t ever argue that it’s simple or that it’s just a blanket statement that all fisheries should now be this way. There certainly needs to be some work to define a few definitions, such as what an active harvester or a bona fide harvester is, which is the term used on the East Coast. What does that mean in British Columbia? What is British Columbia’s equivalent of inshore and offshore? Maybe it’s not so simple as vessel length, and we know that has been problematic with climate change and those types of things. Vessel length is not an exact thing. There is some work to define what an inshore fleet is and what fisheries fall under this. I don’t think that requires an extraordinary amount of studying to come up with that, and the minister can then make an announcement that we have defined these fisheries as those that will fall under it, and this is the next step, charging the department with the task of designing the process fishery by fishery once we know where we’re going with it. We’re missing the step that needs to happen.
Senator Surette: I have a follow-up question so I’m following you. When I first heard of the public registry, I just thought this was foreign because I thought what they were looking for in the public registry to figure out who had the quota so that fishers could approach these people to negotiate with them. Is that the case with the public registry? Or is this a tool to move forward as well? There are two different concepts, according to me.
If you want to continue playing the game of purchasing quota and fishing that quota, that’s one thing, and the public registry I can fully understand how that could be utilized. But if you’re moving toward an owner-operator fleet separation, is the public registry that important at that stage?
Ms. Strobel: In my opinion, no. That’s not that important. I think we have sufficient evidence that a sufficient number of those licences are not owned by active harvesters, and that’s sufficient evidence to proceed with the transition that needs to happen.
Mr. Cameron: I agree. We need the registry because this process will take some time, and we don’t know whom we’re dealing with. I think that’s where it comes in, and it just seems to me the privilege of being able to fish is something that should be public as to who owns it, and so I can’t see, as a fisherman and a licence holder, how that could be private information. There is a sign on the road coming into our house that tells us who lives there.
Senator Surette: Is information truly transparent? In other words, could I have my name on a licence that would show up on the public registry, but I’m financed by somebody who has a controlling agreement on me?
Mr. Cameron: We keep saying beneficial, and I don’t know how we can come to there, but that’s why “beneficial” always comes into it because we want to know who has control. I don’t know how that would work.
Senator Surette: Thank you.
Senator Cuzner: I just have two comments and then a question. We started out doing a study on the East Coast fishery and owner-operator with the fear that there were pressures on that system. Then we evolved into the West Coast, and it has really given us a sense of urgency that we can’t take anything for granted on the East Coast either as we look at the example of the West Coast. The other comment is that I think we’re still not in bad shape in Atlantic Canada with getting new, young fishers in because they see the opportunity not just to make a decent living but to build equity in their enterprise, and that’s something that doesn’t provide that opportunity on the West Coast.
We appreciate your concerns.
Some of the testimony that we’ve heard has been really troubling, with the intimidation or the fear of people speaking out. You sort of alluded to, Mr. Cameron, the concern that people don’t want to speak out against the current system for fear of losing access to that privilege. Has that been the experience of the people that you represent in the halibut sector as well?
Mr. Cameron: Yes, that is definitely a worry for people. If you don’t have your own quota, which I got from being a fisherman when it came in, you don’t have very much to play with there. So you can’t say a lot or you’re worried about saying a lot. I definitely think that’s the case.
Ms. Strobel: It is absolutely the case. We have fish harvesters who have experienced this personally because they work with us at Skipper Otto’s community supported fishery and because I’m vocal and I speak about this. They have experienced that backlash because they are associated with me. We have experienced the backlash as well.
Senator Cuzner: What kind of form do the threats take? Do they say, shut your yap or you’re going to be digging clams next year?
Ms. Strobel: I mean, yes, essentially. Many folks are told that if they want to keep leasing their licence, then they won’t speak out against this sort of thing. Also, they’re told that this speaking in favour of owner-operator is going to harm them because they’re going to have to come up with $1 million or $2 million to buy these licences. “You don’t want that, do you?” That kind of “you need us to do this,” and they’ll outline all the problems. They’re not true from the Atlantic examples or California or Alaska or other places. It doesn’t have to be so hard for fisher harvesters; it would be so much better.
Yes, there is definitely that sort of narrative. So I do want to be careful what I say because I recognize that the industry is built on the hard work of lots of different businesses that all play important roles, but certainly no one should feel intimidated and not able to speak truthfully, especially in a situation like this, to speak to our own government about what the realities are on the fishing grounds. Certainly, for harvesters, this is a well-known situation, and it’s why the West Coast modernization process has been plagued by problems because when harvesters have been in the same room with other licence owners/investors, they can’t speak freely. We’ve heard from the folks who were hosting those that they have learned that. They see that what they hear in private is completely different from what they hear in those rooms because they can’t speak freely.
Senator Cuzner: Does the bulk of the group, do they understand — Jim Pattison holds a significant — is there an association of the licence holders as well?
Mr. Cameron: In the BC Seafood Alliance, most of the licence holders and the different groups — like in halibut, there is a management association; they’re members of that. That seems to be the body that at least I see publicly fronting the argument that things are pretty good, and a B.C.-made solution to do nothing is what I hear from them.
Senator Cuzner: Thank you.
Senator Greenwood: Thank you for coming. My questions are really basic because I haven’t been at all of the meetings. Maybe I’ll just ask them, and both of you can respond.
In part, my colleagues here have touched on them. I want to ask how much of the fishing industry on the B.C. coast is owned by investors. Now, if you don’t have a public registry which would identify who actually holds it but who is investing in it, then you don’t have the baseline data that you need to bring that forward. But you did say that there is enough knowledge that you know.
I would like to know, is it 80% of the industry that is held by investors? Is it 50%? When you’re thinking about transition and change, that’s really hard to do if this group of people hold a lot of power. It’s like a commercial lobby because they’re going to influence.
That took me to the question: What is the role of Fisheries and Oceans? If you’re looking for policy or legislative change, then what is their role in this whole complex issue that’s unfolding or has unfolded? I don’t know the history so I could be asking questions that are —
Senator Surette: You can ask Senator Deacon about DFO.
The Chair: Not this evening.
Senator Greenwood: The intimidation that happens will continue until you have transparency, and when you have transparency, then you can push on government and reveal.
So where are you in all of this? I’m really curious to know how much of the fisheries are really actually owned by investors.
Ms. Strobel: We would all like to know that.
Senator Greenwood: Okay. What’s your best guess?
Ms. Strobel: Certainly, I know of an example where Ecotrust Canada did a forensic dig just to track one licence, and the amount of resources that went through to try to track who was the actual beneficial owner of that licence was huge. That’s why I bring that up. I don’t know that it makes sense for this government to dedicate the kind of resources that it would take to do that level of forensic analysis to understand who’s behind every numbered company all the way back to trace the dollars and who is actually benefiting from that, to simply know that without some kind of policy that says we must know who that is and the condition of the licence is you must be a bona fide fish harvester. Short of that, I don’t know how you’re going to get that information.
Senator Greenwood: Does the individual owner know that? If you’re a fisherman, do you know who invested if you took an investment into your fishing?
Ms. Strobel: Do you mean who we’re leasing from? If you were going to lease a licence, do you know who owns it?
Mr. Cameron: No, I don’t know. It comes through the fish company. They don’t own it either or, at least, in most cases, they don’t own it. They have the contacts, and they put the money up, pay the licence holder the amount of dollars at the start of the season, and then they can give me the licence later. I also own quota, and a lot of fishermen own quota and a lot of past fishermen, but for all that quota, in halibut, there is a big lease cost, and it is 50% or more than for at least even a little.
So even the best-case scenario is that 50% is coming out of the pockets of the crew and the boat before it’s settled. So we need the change to push back against that.
The Chair: I’m from Newfoundland and Labrador, and I thought we had some issues. You mentioned in your opening remarks that your revenue last year was $300,000. So 59% of that, if memory serves me correctly, you said you paid for the lease, which was over $200,000.
Mr. Cameron: It didn’t work out to 59% because there was a lot of quota that went in there at 50%, which was quota owned. But for any one trip, it was a full 59%; overall, it worked out to 53%. Out of the 150 different boats that go out, that is one of the lower ones as far as I know.
The Chair: Just so I’m clear, you go to a processor — I guess there is a broker involved, whoever owns the licence — and the licence is leased to you. The processor pays up front to the licence holder, whoever that is. Then when you catch your product, what he paid to the lease owner is deducted from your revenue, which brings up to around 50% plus?
Mr. Cameron: Yes, well plus of 50%.
The Chair: It’s beyond me how you’re in business.
Mr. Cameron: Halibut is healthier only because of the value of halibut right now, but that has fluctuated over the years. In 1998, the price of halibut was about $2.25 a pound. Leases of halibut quota were $1.85. There was an expectation that the halibut price would be over $3.50 or $4.00. I forget what the problem was in 1998. I just remember there were guys going out fishing for a quarter, and they went out — the ones that did — because they were going to be in the industry next year; and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t get halibut that year or they would have less access to fish.
Senator Boudreau: Thank you to the witnesses for being here. I’m Victor Boudreau, a senator from New Brunswick. I apologize for showing up late and missing your introductory remarks.
To follow up on my colleague Senator Cuzner’s question. We started this discussion as a committee. We wanted to look at the Atlantic fisheries. I think we’re all big fans of the owner-operator fleet separation program, but then realized there are issues with it.
Then the suggestion was made to look at the Pacific coast as well. I want to talk about both. My question will lead there.
When we are talking about some of the challenges that we’re having on the Atlantic coast, whether it be controlling agreements, unreported sales, organized crime and those types of things, everybody says just follow the money. Follow the money and then you are going to be able to figure out the answers to all of these questions.
The Pacific coast, I would say, is more of a mess than the Atlantic coast. It still boggles my mind that there is nobody in government who can produce this registry.
I know you mentioned that in your mind that wasn’t necessarily worth the effort, but, again, wouldn’t the same kind of follow-the-money approach answer a lot of questions?
This registry, if you follow the money, are you going to eventually find out who is benefiting from it at the end of the day? To me, that should be priority number one. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t see it that way.
Ms. Strobel: If I could wave a magic wand and have that appear tomorrow, I would absolutely want to see that. My skepticism is that it will never happen, that the costs it would take and the time it would take to achieve that would drag this out for another decade. If it could be done this year, you have my full support. I would love to see that happen. It is just my worry that we’ll get hung up. I’ve seen this happen before; we get hung up on things. First, we’ll study this. When we have the answer to this, we’ll take another look at it. Then there is an election, a new minister, this and that changes and we’re still sitting here, holding the bag. These are desperate times. We cannot wait for that.
Senator Boudreau: If the government tomorrow morning said, okay, we’re going to take the owner-operator fleet separation policy we have in Atlantic Canada and apply it to the Pacific coast, the first thing we need to figure out is whom are we going to be buying these licences from to be able to transfer them to owner-operator fishers? It seems to me that it is inevitable that this registry needs to materialize at some point, even if we did want to take that policy and apply it to the Pacific coast. Otherwise, we don’t know whom we are dealing or negotiating with.
Ms. Strobel: I don’t think that the government negotiates to get those licences back. The way this happens is that you define what a bona fide fish harvester is. In some provinces, there has been a professionalization that says, okay, this is what you do to prove that you are an active fish harvester, and that is what is done to renew your licence, and if you want to renew your licence, you have to —
Senator Boudreau: There have been licence buybacks on the Atlantic coast as well as a part of the solution, but, yes.
Mr. Cameron: It is making the conditions that licences have to be sold and the pool that buys them is active commercial fishermen. Those values have to come down. And they will come down. There need to be loan guarantees. There needs to be a lot of backup to that. I think that what we’re saying is that, first, we have to point in the direction and ensure that people believe that’s happening so they start thinking about that and making their investments. If you can stop the sales to non-Canadian and to processors, at least the problem stays in one place. It doesn’t get worse while we’re carrying on.
Senator Boudreau: Thank you.
Senator Busson: Thank you very much. I’m probably repeating the obvious. I think we’re all a little gobsmacked about some of the things that you are saying about the registry, et cetera. It may be a poor analogy, but the Canadian fisheries on the East Coast and the West Coast are Canadian assets as far as I’m concerned. They belong to Canadians. The analogy for me is that if all of a sudden we weren’t allowed to know who was pumping oil out of Alberta or who was putting in wells in Newfoundland and Labrador, and we weren’t allowed to know anything more than it is big money, we would be out of our minds. Yet we have this industry, an important Canadian asset, and reading between the lines on this registry, the pushback on that is because it is big business.
This is perhaps a bit of a leap, but in any other industry where these kinds of billions of dollars exchange hands, it is rife for money laundering and those kinds of things. I’m just venting about how frustrated we all are in this room. I think I speak for everybody.
Am I right in using those kinds of analogies as to how misappropriated our Canadian asset has become?
Ms. Strobel: Yes, 100%. This is the same analogy that I often make. Whenever I explain this situation, everyone is gobsmacked. Canadians are horrified when they realize that this is possible in this industry. They think that this would never happen in Canada.
Senator Busson: Other large companies get fined for fixing the price of bread.
Ms. Strobel: Right.
Senator Busson: I’m sorry, I cut you off.
Ms. Strobel: You are absolutely right. Everything you have said is true. I think we have felt really lonely out in the Pacific region feeling like no one realizes. They say, yes, we have to work on enforcing our owner operator, too, and we’re like, no, no, you do not understand. We do not have that. It has been frustrating and isolating, as I say. For eight or nine years, we have been coming out to Ottawa, talking to the House of Commons. This is not my job. I’m not a lobbyist. I’m not paid to do this. But it needs to be known. People need to know this is what we are living with. It does not align with Canadian values and how we govern our resources, which are the public resources and the property of all Canadians. It doesn’t align.
Senator Busson: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. Gobsmacked is an understatement.
Senator C. Deacon: I would love Senator Surette to go ahead of me. He is smarter than I am.
Senator Surette: I will not be that long. Am I right to say that in some fisheries it would be easier than others to figure out who owns the quota, i.e., from my understanding, the herring fishery, one person, one group, owns 80%? That would be an easy one to attack, correct?
Mr. Cameron: There are many licences held by fishermen and other groups, but, largely, it shouldn’t be hard. They are listed. It shouldn’t be hard to figure this out. You might not get to the deepest thing on the corporation that you are talking about there, the Canadian Fishing Company, I’m assuming.
But even without all of the beneficial details, just the people who own them are not enough. But that says a lot.
Senator Surette: My question was to you, Ms. Strobel. The reason why you created what I think is referred to as a community-supported fishery back in 2008, if I read that properly, was you are representing 40 independent fishers I think you have mentioned. I am assuming that none of them are owner-operators and so they are all buying quotas.
Ms. Strobel: It is a mix. Some of them own their licences or quotas. Some own a part but, like Russell, some own some licence or some quota, but it is not enough to make their business work for the year so they are leasing. Some are Indigenous, First Nations, and they are leasing from their band. Some of our fisher harvesters are Indigenous economic opportunity fishers, and so being a member of their nation allows them to fish during a commercial fishery for their nation and to sell that commercially. We have quite a mix. Really, as I said, our business is a workaround to the policy situation that we’re in.
Canadians want to buy traceable, local Canadian seafood, and that is very difficult. So we are working within a policy framework that makes it very hard to do this, but we’re creative, and for 18 years, we have been finding ways to work within that.
Senator Surette: So are you a marketing board? Do you have any processors onside as well? Do you process your fish, or are you more like a —
Ms. Strobel: We process. We use custom processors, so we pay a custom processing company to process our fish for customers. Yes. So we have —
Senator Surette: So your members are actually fishers, right?
Ms. Strobel: No. Our members are home cooks, people who eat fish at home. Those home cooks will say, “I would like to eat $500 worth of fish. Here’s my $500.” So that money comes into our business, Skipper Otto. We have our 40 or 45 fishing families. We say, “Right, this is how much fish we’re going to need this year. What are you fishing for? What will be abundant, sustainable? What can we can get?” As that fish comes in, it goes onto the store for the members, and they can pick and choose whatever they want, and it comes off of their credit, almost like a gift card. They have invested ahead of time and said, “We are going to eat what you are able to catch.”
Senator Surette: This is why you mentioned it is a prepurchase. That is an interesting concept.
Ms. Strobel: Thank you.
Senator Surette: Is that original to you?
Ms. Strobel: Yes. We were the first community-supported fishery in Canada. Probably one of the very first in the world. It’s a model that has really taken off in the U.S., where there is a lot of owner-operator protection, and so there are small-scale fleets. I run a mentorship program through the University of Maine where I mentor other community-supported fisheries in the U.S. I also started a network in Canada called Local Catch Network to help other community-based fish harvesters who want to access local markets to develop innovative business solutions.
Senator Surette: My last quick question. There’s no real benefit to you, the owner-operator, because your business operates either way, but you are just saying the importance of what it could bring to the community.
Ms. Strobel: Correct. We run a business within this framework, but we see the injustice of it, and our members care deeply about this level of injustice. Really, I’m here on behalf of our 8,000 members, as Canadians, who say, “This is just not right.”
The Chair: It is intriguing and very impressive. Your whole setup is a learning experience here.
Senator C. Deacon: After all of this, I want to say thank you to both of you for your testimony and your vision about what is possible. We have been sitting here, struggling with the question of how on earth we unravel this mess and get Canadian control over a Canadian asset again in a way that benefits communities. I think that you have given us a lot of really good ideas. I wanted to say thank you very much for your excellent testimony. They are very actionable ideas.
The Chair: For sure. I am sure Senator Deacon speaks for all of us in thanking you for joining us here this evening and certainly giving us a whole new, I guess, window into how things are operating in British Columbia.
I find it difficult as a Canadian to — we live in one country, and it is like apples and oranges on the East Coast versus the West Coast, and I struggle with the fact that we cannot seem to find a way to straighten this out. At the same time, we put four people on the other side of the moon. As Mr. Cameron said, it can’t be that complicated.
I want to thank you. If there is anything, after you finish here this evening, that you think of like, “Oh, I wish I had said that or let the committee know that,” feel free to send it to our clerk or our analysts, because as we go forward and learn more and try to put this together in a type of report with recommendations, it is people like yourselves that we depend on for insight into those recommendations.
Certainly, I want to thank you for your time here this evening.
To the committee members, we are going to shut it down in a minute, but I want you to stay around for a little private chat afterwards, so do not run away. Thank you again.
(The committee adjourned.)