THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, June 9, 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; and, in camera, to examine and report on the independence of commercial inshore fisheries in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, and the policies and legislative tools used by the Government of Canada to preserve it, such as the Owner-Operator Policy; and, in camera, 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: My name is Fabian Manning. I’m a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador, and I have the honour of chairing this committee. Today we are conducting a meeting of the 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 earpiece away from all microphones at all times. Do not touch the microphone. It 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 on your ear or place it on the designated sticker.
Thank you all for your cooperation.
Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to me or the clerk. We will work to resolve your issue.
Before we begin, I would like to take a few moments to allow the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator Dhillon: Good evening. Thank you for being here. Senator Baltej Dhillon from British Columbia.
Senator Ravalia: Good evening and welcome. Senator Mohamed Ravalia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Prosper: Good evening. PJ Prosper, senator from Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki territory.
[Translation]
Senator Boudreau: Good evening. Victor Boudreau from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Surette: Allister Surette, Nova Scotia.
Senator Busson: Welcome. I’m Bev Busson from British Columbia.
The Chair: Thank you, senators.
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: Mr. Guy Johnston, Secretary-Treasurer of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union; and Mr. Rick Williams, President of Praxis Research & Consulting Inc. and Policy Advisor for Ecotrust Canada.
On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank both gentlemen for joining us here today. I understand that you have some opening remarks. Following your remarks, I’m sure our senators will have some questions for you.
Guy Johnston, Secretary-Treasurer and Fisherman, United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union: First, thanks very much for giving me the opportunity to speak to the Senate committee on fisheries.
My name is Guy Johnston. I have been an active commercial fishers for over 50 years. I’m here representing the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union, or Unifor. I am here to speak to the challenges fishers, First Nations and coastal communities are facing as well as the solutions.
First, as someone who has fished his whole life, I want to say thank you to Canada. My family and I have earned a good livelihood from the fishery. I have fished all my working life, and the earnings I made as a deckhand on a seine boat when I was young are what I used to buy my first vessels and licences.
We did well because the crew and I share in the full value of the fish that we catch. I have the money to maintain my vessel, to pay my crew well and invest in my business because I’m not paying most of my profits out to investors just to have the ability to go catch fish.
I would like to talk to our strengths out in B.C. We have many fisheries on the West Coast that are vibrant and biologically and economically sustainable. Fishermen feed people here in Canada and around the world. Our harvests are a sustainable source of high-quality protein and an important part of Canada’s food security and sovereignty. A viable fishing industry on the West Coast is crucial to reconciliation with First Nations.
There is a solid base for a healthy fishery in British Columbia. When DFO designed the licensing system that we operate under, it was developed to make sure that the resources would be harvested in a sustainable manner and that the benefits would flow to harvesters and their communities. It was not designed to shift most of the benefits to licence holders and just leave fishers with all the risks, but that is exactly what is happening. There is a crisis in the B.C. fishing industry, but it is not primarily a crisis due to the shortage of fish.
If I can explain, anyone in British Columbia can buy a fishing licence; investors in fish companies are buying them up. Working fishers and First Nations do not have the resources to outbid fish companies and money launderers.
In B.C., not only can anyone own a licence, but they can turn around and lease them out to fishers and make a good living, making 10% or more on their money without ever stepping on deck of a vessel. Fishing companies are buying up licences to enable them to control fish prices and fishers. This is not allowed where you have owner-operators, like in Atlantic Canada or Alaska, yet fishing companies are doing fine in both those places.
As I said, I have been an owner-operator for most of my life; 95% of the fishers in B.C. used to be owner-operators. Now we’re the real exception.
Nowadays, younger fishers in my community are sharecropper fishers. They have to lease their licences to access fish from fish companies and investors. That lease cost takes most or, in some cases, all the profits from a sharecropper fisher.
That profit is what you need to maintain your vessel and keep it safe, to expand your business and to be a stable part of your community.
I have to ask: Why are Pacific Coast harvesters being turned into sharecroppers, and is that really good public policy?
Right now, DFO is running a process to review the licensing policy. Everyone acknowledges there are real problems there. Those who benefit from the present licensing system, fish companies and investors, are dominating this process. If you’re a sharecropper fisher, you cannot speak openly when the person sitting across the table from you decides whether you go fishing or you’re tied to the wharf with your vessel, unable to fish.
These same investors have not been willing to discuss any changes that reduce their benefits. They have turned the process into an endless discussion of “if” — “if” we should change the system. The discussion needs to be focused on “how”: How do we change the system so that the licensing system benefits and is centred on working harvesters and their communities?
My union has three recommendations. First, the minister needs to put in place an owner-operator policy designed by active fishers in British Columbia. Second, only active harvesters and First Nations should be able to buy fishing licences, starting now. Third, we need a public licence registry that shows who the beneficial owner of a licence is. Without this understanding, we can’t fully implement the changes that are needed.
So, in closing, I would say that, to build a strong economy for Canada, young fishers must see that they have a place in that economy where they can prosper. We owe that to the next generation. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Johnston.
Rick Williams, President, Praxis Research & Consulting Inc. and Policy Advisor, Ecotrust Canada, as an individual: Thank you to the committee for inviting me. I am a fisheries consultant based in Nova Scotia. I have worked in research and policy development in fisheries for over 30 years. For the past 10 years, I’ve been an adviser to Ecotrust Canada in their work to support fish harvester organizations and fishing communities in addressing these licensing policy challenges.
I’ve watched with great interest the video transcripts of your hearings. I want to use my introductory comments to address two basic things that seem to have come up here quite a bit.
One is to respond to or, in fact, rebut some of the defences that you’ve heard for the status quo — what is wrong about those arguments, in my view. The second part is to address questions that have come up quite often about how one would change this.
I distributed notes with many more details, so I’ll go fairly quickly. We can pick things up in the discussion if you’re interested.
The first argument for defending the status quo that we’ve heard so often — ad nauseam — is that you can’t unscramble the omelette. It’s a complex fishery and is too far down the road. It can’t be fixed.
My direct answer to that is that, yes, you can unscramble it. DFO exists to unscramble omelettes. I started making a list of all of the big changes that have taken place in the fishery in the past 20 years, and I keep adding more and more things to the list. You can start with the Marshall decision, reconciliation, the cod collapse on the East Coast and the salmon on the West Coast, as well as the downsizing of the industry.
Every year, the minister makes decisions to reallocate resources from one group to the other — the elver fishery in the Maritimes or the crab fishery in B.C. Every year, the minister makes decisions to shut down whole fisheries, like mackerel and herring, for conservation reasons. Every year, the “omelette” has to figure out a way to get on with it and reshape itself to the conditions.
So it’s simply not the case that big, complex changes can’t be rectified.
In the larger scheme of things, the B.C. fishery is very small. We’re talking $400 million in landed value and 2,500 enterprises. It’s not a whole lot bigger than Prince Edward Island in terms of a fishery — not huge numbers of people or enterprises to deal with it. It’s a manageable challenge.
It comes down to whether you care enough to want to solve this problem. Do you have the motivation?
The second argument is that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The defenders of the status quo will say that it’s a very successful fishery. As Guy has outlined, for people like Guy, it is very successful, but he now represents a small proportion of the people who do the fishing, and the people who benefit from the fishery — the majority — are not working fishers at all.
I’ve provided a lot of details, tables and things that describe, in macroeconomic terms, a failing industry: declining employment, declining export values, declining overall landed value, shrinking incomes, an inability to compete for new labour supply, et cetera. My area of specialization has been human resources, labour supply and demographics in my research, and I think it’s predictable that, 10 years from now, there won’t be a fishery in B.C. that looks anything like the current one because the industry can’t compete for labour supply. It can’t deal with intergenerational succession when the price of licences is dictated not by the profits in a fishing enterprise but by competitive investor interests from outside the industry.
It’s a failing industry, not a success story.
The third argument that you’ve heard or will hear is that the industry doesn’t want to change and that most of the significant stakeholders are quite satisfied with it the way it is. As Guy and others have discussed with you, this recent consultation engagement process — the West Coast modernization — was a process that was completely dominated by the non-fishing interest groups. You haven’t heard from the boots on the deck. You’ve heard from some, but you’ve not heard from enough. Again, as Guy has described very aptly, the young people in the industry are ever so desperately involved in trying to stay in the industry and fishing, and it’s incredibly hard. Also, their staying in the industry depends upon the beneficence of the people who control access to the resource so they’re not contesting.
I’ll transition very quickly to what a workable transition process might look like. We have put in a lot of work. We are going to present to this committee, probably in September, because we’re waiting for a whole bunch of fresh data from StatCan, a fairly substantial brief on this, which will go into a lot of details.
There are basically three steps to be made in a transition. The first one is deciding what parts of the fishery are going to be covered, starting from the idea of a made-in-B.C. owner-operator licensing model. The first step is to decide which elements of the B.C. fishery would come under that policy framework. In Atlantic Canada, 95% of the value of the Atlantic fisheries is produced by owner-operator small-boat fleets under 65 feet. It’s similar in B.C.
So, over 90% of the B.C. fishery could be constructed of working fishers on their owner-operator vessels if there were a strong fleet separation owner-operator licensing system there in place.
Decide which fleet. There is only one substantial fleet in B.C. for which it wouldn’t work, and that’s the industrial offshore trawler fleet that fishes redfish and hake out in the deep ocean. Everything else would work, in our view — save maybe a few large seiners.
Second, the minister has to commit to harmonizing licensing policy objectives on the East Coast and West Coast. The objective of licensing policy on the East Coast today is to support independent owner-operator fishing harvesters and fishing communities. That is where a significant part of the wealth of the sea should first have an impact. Harmonize and make an announcement that this is going to happen.
A workable, politically sustainable process that treats people fairly is based on the Policy for Preserving the Independence of the Inshore Fleet in Canada’s Atlantic Fisheries, PIIFCAF, model in Atlantic Canada. It gave people and companies who had taken control of licences under the table seven years to return those licences to fish harvester control or else those licences would be cancelled.
That started in 2007. We never heard a word about it, since because it just happened; all those licences changed hands. In order for fishers to be able to afford them, the prices had to come down to what fishers could afford, not outside investors.
The third part is the hard work over a long period of time, which is to work out how, in each fleet and each fishery, they’re going to apply it. So we can go into some of that detail in the discussion, perhaps.
I’ve laid out multiple steps. I won’t go into the details on that here, but treating people fairly, allowing the current non-fishers who own the licences to escape financially whole after transition — that’s the PIIFCAF model — and treating retired fishers who depend on leasing their licences for retirement income fairly is another important thing. A registry of licence ownership would establish total transparency as to who owns beneficial control, et cetera. The list is there.
I want to conclude by saying that when people who don’t know about the fishery think of a licensing system, they think of it like a car licence or a driver’s licence or something, just something you go to the government and get. No. In industries where there is intense competition for access to a public resource, the licensing system is the foundation that structures those industries. It decides who has access and how they gain access. It really has a huge impact on what the cost of access is going to be and so on.
The B.C. licence system, compared to the East Coast, is a failed model. It has created a structure that is unsustainable. As Guy says, the fish are there. There are a lot of issues, up-and-down stocks and so on, but there is the resource base for a strong medium-sized industry — like the East Coast — providing careers and middle-class incomes for working people. However, the model in place in B.C. is destroying that possibility.
In Atlantic Canada, a fishing licence is a licence to catch fish. In British Columbia, it’s a licence to control fish prices and to make big profits, renting out the privilege at exorbitant rates to the people who do the fishing. I’ll stop there. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you to both of you. Our first question is from our deputy chair, Senator Busson.
Senator Busson: Thank you both for being here. I’m from British Columbia and live in the interior but spend a lot of time around Prince Rupert and on the West Coast. My son-in-law lives in Sooke, so I am fairly familiar with what the ports and fishing areas look like and who comes and goes from these places. I’m not the only senator in the room scratching their heads about the difference between the East Coast and West Coast, where on one coast it’s considered almost sacred, the way policy runs and the enforcement around that policy of owner-operator. There are some quirks and problems, but on the West Coast, it’s almost like the baby and the bathwater have been thrown out for a long time for huge profits and big business.
Could you give us a little bit of a background to how this system came to be so upside down on the West Coast?
Mr. Williams, there was an article written where you were quoted and talking about how these companies were favoured. The quota system and licences were favouring big business and big companies. Can you offer us any kind of explanation of how DFO, which is responsible for the whole country, from sea to sea to sea, has such differing policies and how that has come to be?
Mr. Johnston: I mean, it started when I was young. You used to have executives from B.C. packers go over and work as high-level managers in the Department of Fisheries. There seemed to be an unusual level of back and forth going on there. You had the Pearse report and a variety of other reports all pushing toward a need to privatize the resource — to take it away from what it was when I was a young person and turn it into a commodity. By and large, that’s the direction that fish companies and others have pushed it, and that’s the direction it has gone.
We find it astounding that we live in the same country. We often meet with our fellow fishers on the East Coast and just shake our heads. Why we’re fishing under this system while the young people in my community — no one on my wharf under 50 owns their licence. There are two other older fishers and I who still own our licences. You can’t run an industry where there is no real place for young people. That’s unsustainable.
Senator Busson: Mr. Williams, you mentioned that approximately 95% of the fishers on the East Coast are owner-operators. Mr. Johnston, you gave some dismal commentary, but do you know the percentage who are owner-operators on the West Coast?
Mr. Johnston: When I was young, it was 95%. It’s around 10% or 15% now. So it’s a tiny portion. As I say, there are three boats at my wharf where we’re owner-operators and we own our licences. Other than Cowichan tribes, who have their vessels and their fishers fishing their boats, vessels are not owner-operator. Some of them don’t even own the boat. Some own a boat but don’t own the licence.
Mr. Williams: If I may, the really important thing to understand about the Canadian fishery is that it’s small boats that produce wealth. We don’t have a big industrial fishery like the Spanish do or the other countries in Europe and so on; 95% of the landed value in Atlantic fisheries is produced by vessels 65 feet and under, which are owner-operators, and 95% percent of the vessels fishing in British Columbia are owner-operator vessels. It’s just the licensing system that has separated the access — the licences and quota — from the vessel’s owner. So it’s still small boats and small businesses that produce fish, but it’s the economic value.
You talk to DFO policy staff, particularly those from the Pacific region DFO, about why their licensing system the way it is — they used to have fleet separation and owner-operator and they just let it slide in the 1990s and stopped enforcing it altogether. Why did that happen? They will say over and over again — I’m not sure, but they may have said this to you — that we have overcapacity: too many fishers, not enough fish. We’ve had to reduce.
This will be in our big brief, but the Atlantic region, from 1990 until today, has cut itself in half. There has been a 50% reduction in the number of people employed in the industry and a 50% reduction in vessels. In B.C., it’s 60%, so more.
The DFO officials will say they’re doing that in order to produce a sustainable, viable fleet and a sustainable resource. Well, compare the East Coast and West Coast fisheries. On the East Coast, we have 10,000 very viable operations providing middle-class incomes and careers in all these hundreds of communities, et cetera. All of that reduction in size capacity was done under owner-operator fleet separation. You didn’t have to do away with or privatize or open it up to anyone to buy in order to reduce.
Senator Busson: So it’s apples and oranges, really, and one doesn’t explain the other.
Mr. Williams: They have reduced the size of the fishery, but in the process they have reduced the viability of the fishing industry. It’s not working. It’s a failure.
Mr. Johnston: We get sent around the docks is when you would strip out licence ownership from the community, you also strip out most of the benefits. What’s left? On my street, there used to be six fishers living there who had their own homes and lived well. Now most of the young guys do not live in Cowichan Bay. They rent in Duncan or elsewhere. They are not making a living to be able to really support themselves, their families or their crews.
Senator Surette: Thank you for being here this evening and for your presentations. Further to the last part of the first question from Senator Busson, you’ve mentioned in your presentation as well that you went from 95% owner-operator to 10% to 15%.
That raises the question for me: How did you survive? What were the circumstances that allowed you to keep your licence and boat and make what you mentioned was a very good living in the fishery, while others around you couldn’t do the same thing?
Mr. Johnston: There are two things, and it’s not because I’m the best fisherman by any stretch.
First, it is how old I am. When I came in and when I was a crewman, I received the full value of the fish, and we made a good living as crew members on big seine boats. Then, throughout my whole life, as I said, I have made the full value of the fish that I caught.
Second, I was always a multi-species fisher. Many people focused on one fishery back in those days. I always fished many. That’s the way I was brought up, so that also made a difference.
Senator Surette: What didn’t allow some of the other people to do the same thing? If you have best practices or a good business plan, I guess —
Mr. Johnston: To me, it is age. The younger people, the crew members growing up as time went on, started paying 80% cost to lease halibut, and there was very little money left to actually pay your crew. The crew doesn’t the money that I did when I was young, which would allow them to actually be able to buy a vessel.
Here’s a good example: On the West Coast, you go from Seattle all the way to the top end of southeast Alaska. Basically, it is one ecosystem. A prawn in B.C. is the same as a prawn in Alaska. A prawn licence in B.C. is worth $1 million. A prawn licence in southeast Alaska is worth $60,000. Why? It’s the same prawns. In B.C., I can lease that licence out for $100,000 a season. In Alaska, it is owner-operator, and you have to fish that licence. They make good money, but it is a system supporting active fishers.
Senator Surette: To make it work for yourself, if I understand properly, the licence does not mean there’s a quota with it. So for you, did you have your own quota and then you had to lease quota as well or it —
Mr. Johnston: It varies from fishery to fishery. In prawns, there’s no quota. You get a set number of traps and you catch what you catch within an overall total allowable catch, or TAC, which is controlled on a daily testing system. On some of my salmon fisheries, I have a quota, and on some, I don’t. Some quota I have had to buy, and for some, there is not a quota attached to it.
Senator Surette: We have heard from a few from your coast that, in leasing quota, some of the bigger companies said that they either gave the quota and made sure that they sold the fish to them for very little, or —
Mr. Johnston: I have heard that.
Senator Surette: Others had to pay 70% or 80% of their landed value in quota. What was the case for you?
Mr. Johnston: I never had to lease. I always owned all my own licences, and that’s why, for me and my family, we had a different situation. Many of the fishers, for example, Russell Cameron, another union member who was here earlier, also had a good livelihood.
However, the next generation coming up, they became crew members under this system of quotas, big lease costs and everything else, and some of them have shifted slightly from being on deck to being the skipper. They own a boat, but the boat is the worst thing to own. It is that piece of paper that lets you fish, not the boat. The boat is just to throw more money at.
Senator Surette: What’s the average cost of a lease quota?
Mr. Johnston: For prawns, to lease, it is going to vary from year to year —
Senator Surette: But what is the percentage of what you would pay for leasing quota?
Mr. Johnston: Oh. Well, in halibut, it is going to be 70% to 80%. In prawns, we don’t think of it that way. We think of it more in terms of that you are going to pay somewhere from $60,000 to $100,000. You don’t know what you are getting paid for your fish when you go fishing. I have had young guys who told me they didn’t make $1 until the last week of the season. Everything prior to that was going to pay off the lease cost. It’s pretty frustrating if you are a young guy to realize you only get to keep the money from seven days and you still must pay for your fuel, crew and all those other costs. It is not a viable system.
Mike from Canfisco is a nice guy, but I thought his ears were a little red when he was talking sometimes.
Senator Dhillon: Thank you both for being here. I think it is an important topic, and we have had testimony, as you’ve shared, that has swung in different directions and probably left us with more confusion than clarity.
I’m grateful for some of what you are sharing here today. You answered some of my questions through Senator Busson’s and Senator Surette’s. I think you said because you were not paying investors your profit, you were able to afford a good life. I think that said it all, and that those who are not able to have to pay investors first, and in the last seven days, they try to make ends meet.
Mr. Williams, you shared something at the end there about a brief. Of course, this report is coming as well, but you said there was a brief that’s coming in September and that it will have a lot of details and provide significant information. I’m asking for our committee: Should we be waiting for that brief and that information so we can include it in our report to ensure that it is complete?
Mr. Williams: I understand that you will be producing a report in the fall, so we were hoping we would get ours done in time. Our problem is that the most useful data on the socio-economic side of the fishery is the Statistics Canada tax filer data. It is extremely expensive to get because they have to produce it just to cover fishers. We have been tracking it since 2000, and we have been watching this divergence in socio‑economic benefits on the two coasts. We wanted to update that. We only have it to 2019 because we didn’t bother during COVID because everything went scrambled in COVID, and we didn’t think that data would be representative. We are waiting for the 2024 data that is only now becoming available from Statistics Canada. We have an order to get the data, and when we get it, it will be a few weeks to analyze it and so on. A big part of the report in the fall will be more evidence on the failure of the West Coast model as a sustainable economic model.
Senator Dhillon: That was my question. For this committee, what will be the value of that report? You shared some of that right now, but could you expand on that as far as painting a picture? We’re talking about a divergence of economic viability between the coasts. Could you speak to those pieces of information, data and factual evidence that would enhance all the work that we’re doing?
Mr. Williams: What we have been tracking since 2000 is average fishing incomes and the extent to which people rely on their fishing income to live on as opposed to having to do other things. That’s the extent to which you have a professional fishery in which people can be full-time fishers and so on, so we’re able to track that in terms of income sources, as well as dependence on EI and things like that. We look at sources of income and demographics, like gender and age. I put a little of that in my notes here.
Just up to 2019, British Columbia had the second-oldest fishing workforce — the one in Newfoundland and Labrador was a bit older — but in 2019, 40% of its employed fishers were at or beyond retirement age, including significant numbers of people fishing in their 60s and 70s. We tracked the demographics.
It gives us a very clear picture of whether people can make a living. The average fishing income in B.C. in 2019 was, I think, $23,000 to $24,000. In Newfoundland, it had doubled over that same period. In Nova Scotia and the Maritimes, just the fishing alone was a family income, on average.
Senator Dhillon: Would you be able to make a direct link from that data and the divergence to the fact that there is a difference in the owner-operator model between the East Coast and West Coast?
Mr. Williams: If I made the statement that there is a direct link, there would be people saying, “No, there isn’t.” The thing you often hear on the Atlantic coast is that the lobster fishery is so rich that it pumps — and they don’t have a lobster fishery in B.C. With halibut in B.C., the landed value per kilogram of that is higher than it is in the Atlantic region. The landed value for crab and prawns is higher than crab on the Atlantic coast. In terms of the value of the actual products of the fishery, the value is there in the West Coast fishery; it is just not coming through into fishers’ incomes.
It would be an argument as to why that is. Our argument would be because by the time most enterprises have paid for their access leasing costs — it suppresses the wages provided. That’s an argument; we would love to see a lot more research. However, a lot of fishers don’t like to talk about it very much.
Senator Dhillon: Thank you for that, Mr. Williams.
Mr. Johnston, you spoke about foreign investment, and you mentioned money laundering.
Mr. Johnston: There have been two provincial reports that have pointed to the fact that, with the present opaque system we have, where it is very unclear who the beneficial owner of a licence is, this is an ideal place to stick money in and wash it.
Sometimes, when people come not from the fishery and pay prices beyond what anybody who actually works in the fishery can pay for licences, you go, “That’s unusual. Where did that come from?” Obviously, it is done in a way where they try not to draw attention to themselves, but they do. None of the working fishers can compete with that.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you, both, for being here and for sharing your testimony.
Mr. Williams, if we are going to revive and resuscitate the West Coast fishery through an owner-operator model similar to what is happening in Atlantic Canada, what would the cost of that be? How do we get these large groups — the investors and processing companies — out of the fishery? What would the cost of licences then be for owner-operators? Is there a way of rebuilding that type of model without placing an excessive financial burden upon people trying to enter the fishery?
Mr. Williams: We put quite a lot of work into trying to scope out what the costs would be, and the PIIFCAF model gives the illegitimate owners of licences seven years to sell those licences to working fishers. That, in itself, would bring prices down to what working fishers could afford.
If you did that in B.C., given the large number of fishers involved and the enterprises involved, and given the current state of the income levels of working fishers and the state of their businesses, that, by itself, wouldn’t work. We have put forward ideas for a fisheries loan board that would either — the ideal way to do it would be for the Farm Credit Canada — a farm loan board model, which is very proactive in supporting young people in getting access to affordable credit for intergenerational succession. It provides training around business management and managing debt levels. It is a very proactive, progressive program to support this transition taking place in agriculture.
We think it is going to take the same scale of initiative in the fishery.
On paper, it might pay for itself over time in terms of it still being a loan program. Over time, people will pay off their loans if they are in viable businesses. We haven’t done sufficient in‑depth economic analyses to find out if that would be enough or whether it would need to be some kind of an investment by government.
We’re raising this with the provincial government. Federal and provincial governments are not in the mood right now for taking on very large new investments unless it is in the oil industry, I guess.
That’s a real challenge as to how this is going to be managed financially. That’s what we call the third phase of the project: Until you have decided to go down this road, you don’t find a way to go down. That’s when the decision has to be made.
Senator Ravalia: In the event that this transition were to occur, how complicated would it be to monitor the ongoing owner-operator policy against the vulnerability of bigger corporations, et cetera, getting back into the business?
Mr. Williams: If you talk to industry people and DFO on the East Coast, they will say that even under the owner-operator system on the East Coast, it is a real challenge to do it. People are always finding workarounds and so on. We were meeting with DFO’s licence policy people today, and there is a new set of regulations in the works right now to toughen up the East Coast model. That largely has to do with reporting requirements; people who receive a licence have to produce legal documents certifying who the beneficial owner is. Then, if there is an audit at a later point — spot audits, et cetera — it may be possible. That’s how the East Coast system is going to work. So, we would assume it would require something similar on the West Coast.
Senator Ravalia: Mr. Johnston, regarding if and when you consider retirement, have you been approached by investors and others about purchasing and taking over your business?
Mr. Johnston: Yes, but I have said no.
Senator Ravalia: You don’t have to answer.
Mr. Johnston: No. It is fine. Most older fishers like me who own all their own licences are approached about whether we will sell to a company. I have been approached a number of times. At this point, I’m still fishing. My intention is to sell to another owner-operator. My wish is that we start to make this transition — that the minister makes that clear decision.
Just like several levels of government have done around housing, trying to tamp down the market and the number of investors in housing, I think you could do the same thing in fishing. It is going to start to send that signal and change values.
I made my living by catching fish. I don’t expect to make a huge profit from selling my licence. We have done well from catching fish, and that’s my reward.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you.
Senator Boudreau: Thank you to our witnesses for being here this evening. I have one question for each of you, but if either of you wants to respond to any of the questions, that’s fine.
First, you both called for a public registry, and we have heard talk about that a lot. Some people felt it was necessary, while other people felt it would be an impossible task, would take too long or would be too difficult to try to put together. I would argue that we’re talking about public natural resources, and it should be fairly easy for DFO to produce a registry of who owns all these licences and quotas because somebody has to be tracking this somewhere within DFO.
Mr. Williams, just because of your background as a consultant who has no doubt dealt with similar files right across the country, in your opinion, would DFO have sufficient data and information currently to produce this registry if they choose to?
Mr. Williams: They have told us that they have limited abilities to impose transparency on numbered companies that are registered provincially. It would require a federal-provincial partnership to be able to have true transparency around who actually controls a company or who actually is a numbered company, et cetera. It would be a challenging task.
I have tried to push the idea that, whenever a licence is issued, there are conditions of licence, so why isn’t it a condition of licence that you have to list on your application for the licence each year who you are and who owns that licence? The answer I get from DFO is that they have never used the conditions of licence for that purpose before. It is not used for legal purposes. It is used for directing fisheries.
The one hesitation I have about the registry is we may hear it come forward from DFO as something we need to do first. You are absolutely right that it would be a big project and would take a lot of time. Our point of view is it is a second step. After you decided to make this change in the licence policy, then building the registry is one of the building blocks. However, it doesn’t have to come first before you can do the other things.
Mr. Johnston: Once you start that registry, it is not going to be perfect as it starts but you have turned the tide. You have turned the corner, and that’s what we need to look at. We are not looking for perfection. We are looking to turn that corner so we can say to our young people, yes, there are realistic chances that things are moving in a direction where they will have a place in this fishery.
Senator Boudreau: Thank you.
Mr. Johnston, when you talked about the three things that needed to be done to try to improve the overall situation, on your second point, you said that only harvesters or members of First Nations communities should be able to buy a licence from a set date forward, let’s say. However, we have also heard that the price of those licences is through the roof. Even if tomorrow morning, DFO said, from now on, only harvesters or members of First Nations communities can buy a licence, how are they going to be able to afford to buy the licences at the current prices?
Mr. Johnston: We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We look to the East Coast. There was a seven-year period. Some licences traded right away. With some, it took time before that happened. That’s what would happen in this case. As I said, that would start to tamp the value and the price of licences down. There are also other tax measures that could be done around income earned from leasing licences out that could also have an impact on whether it is worth still holding a licence.
You have got to start down that road. I’m going to retire at some point, and the one fisherman is 80 years old and still fishing and owns his own licence. All the young guys, if we don’t change direction, they will be where they are now. As I said, the number who are in and out — they drive for a couple years, they give up, and then they go to work for BC Ferries or do something else because it is not viable.
Senator Boudreau: Your thought process is that, by excluding commercial interests, prices will come back down to a more reasonable level over time?
Mr. Johnston: Yes.
Senator Boudreau: All right. Thank you.
Senator Prosper: Thank you to the witnesses here. I have a question for each of you. Mr. Williams, thank you for providing your evidence and opening remarks. You get into what transition looks like. I think you outlined three steps.
What I am curious about is more specifically when we’re talking about a shift or a transition to owner-operator. Are there any unique differences with respect to a basic owner-operator versus First Nations prioritizing First Nations ownership control? Are there considerations from a First Nations perspective that are unique in and of themselves from a typical owner-operator situation? I’m curious about when we are thinking about implementation and transition.
Mr. Johnston, I noted that you have a position paper that I think the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union published back in 2022. There are a number of requirements outlined within that position paper. It references a House of Commons Fisheries Committee report back in 2019 and some of the things to be met there. But I’m curious about how much traction, if any, that position paper has had in relation to a transition. Could you highlight a bit about what you experienced in relation to this proposed transition and what kinds of roadblocks you have been facing from DFO? Maybe, Mr. Johnston, we will begin with you and then shift to Mr. Williams.
Mr. Johnston: I will try to give you some answers. From DFO, we have had three ministers in a row say that we need to move toward owner-operator and that this is an important thing, but in the Pacific region, when we talk with the managers there, we aren’t met with actual action moving things toward making that change. This has been going on for a long time, and we have not seen a concrete change from that.
I’ll be honest: There was a group of young fishers that came here back in 2018. None of them are young fishers anymore. Time has gone on, and a number of them have said they don’t think change is going to happen. They give up and pack it in. It is really unfortunate. They were an important part of our community, but at a certain point, if you don’t see change — I can understand them saying that they are going to try something else. But they can’t make it under this present system. I hope that answers what you were asking.
Senator Prosper: It does. Thank you. Mr. Williams?
Mr. Williams: On both coasts, reconciliation is a bumpy road, and there are areas where it is quite obvious that there are tensions between Native and non-Native fishing interests. What is quite remarkable in the B.C. situation, unlike the Maritimes — when the Marshall decision came down in 1999, there were only four or five Native people in all of Atlantic Canada who owned licences. In B.C., the First Nations were a huge part of the fishery and had been for 100 years. Some of the strongest and biggest fishing enterprises — not communal enterprises, but individuals — were Indigenous fishers. Then, when the salmon collapse happened in the 1990s, that pulled the rug out from underneath. Then everyone was competing to get other licences because the salmon wasn’t there anymore.
They had lived together reasonably, constructively and peacefully for a long time. However, since the 1990s, with this fight for access and so on, a lot of non-Native fishers perceive that it is First Nations that are driving up licence prices. The largest First Nations coastal group, Coastal First Nations Great Bear Initiative, have endorsed that paper that you were referring to and taken a strong policy position supporting the transition to owner-operator. In their case, if they acquire new licences, they would be communally owned, not owner-operator, but they support it because it would bring down licence prices to what working fishers and communities can afford. They think it’s so important that they are prepared to join with non-Native organizations to advance this argument in favour. Other areas have tensions, like marine protected areas, or MPAs, and so on, but on this one there is agreement.
We’re aware, because of people who are involved in our coalition, that there is a lot going on within First Nations as well because many of them have acquired licences and quotas, but they lost their own fishing workforce. A generation has gone by since the salmon collapse. In effect, they’re like another company leasing out licences; yet people in the community don’t have jobs, don’t have access and can’t afford it for the reasons that Guy has outlined.
The Coastal First Nations alliance has a fairly significant initiative to develop community fisheries similar to what some First Nations in Nova Scotia have done, or Elsipogtog in New Brunswick. Elsipogtog has over 80 lobster and crab boats with captains and crew in that community. Similar things are happening in Cape Breton and so on. I’m not sure on the mainland so much.
Building back a fisheries labour force and having the jobs in the community and all those things are a big part of it. Once there is more access to licences and they’re affordable and so on, we’ll see that happening in First Nations communities.
Mr. Johnston: There is a real difference. The president of our union, James Lawson, is Heiltsuk from Bella Bella and comes from a long family line of fishers. They still own their own seine boat. Some First Nations fishers were able to survive through the 1990s. A lot of the guys I know, because they lived on-reserve, they couldn’t mortgage their house, so they couldn’t buy those other licences that I was able to buy. My first job herring fishing on a big seine boat was with Leo Sevander, who is a First Nations fisher from Alert Bay. There is a different history, and, for sure, there’s tension. I’m not trying to say there isn’t, but we also know each other. We went to school with each other, and I think there are positive ways forward that we can take. What the central coast has done is really meaningful for the rest of the fishing industry and greatly appreciated.
Senator Busson: I’ll go back to you, Mr. Williams, if I can. You described again in your interview how, of course, we have been hearing that individual fishers can’t afford licences or quota, so they’re getting them from the processors. In return, the processors dictate the price of fish. I didn’t take note of who said that sometimes they don’t know what they’re going to be paid when they come back. It’s literally — I don’t know what — a blind market or black market where they don’t know.
Mr. Johnston, you say you have your own licences and everything. Where do you sell your fish?
Mr. Johnston: I sell my fish to fish companies, like others. Often, I get paid more because they need me to come fish for them, so I get paid more than the young fellow down at the other end of the wharf. He’s going to get a buck or two a pound less because they control that licence. Sometimes the company doesn’t own it, but they control how it gets to that young fisher. They say, “This is what we’re paying you. What we’re paying Guy is something else and none of your business,” and obviously we talk.
Senator Busson: Has anyone ever refused to buy your fish for malicious reasons?
Mr. Johnston: No.
Senator Busson: I just wanted clarification around that.
It’s getting late, and we’re holding you folks up, but you talked about the modernization initiative. It sounds to me as if there’s no such thing.
Mr. Johnston: I wouldn’t argue with you.
Senator Busson: Is it now close to almost a pipe dream, a lost dream or something that never really got legs?
Mr. Williams: Very quickly, we had long discussions with the DFO and the minister’s office folks today. They are determined to find ways, they say, to improve fishers’ incomes, but we don’t know what that means. Does that mean licences?
Senator Busson: There is no initiative.
Mr. Williams: They are carrying on the engagement process, but they are doing it fishery by fishery. They will include the companies and the fishers at the same table, but they are aware that many fishers are not comfortable with that, so they will provide other avenues — “You can write us a letter,” et cetera. They’re making an effort. They are aware of the problems with the process so far, but they’re going to carry on with it.
The real question for us is whether it’s just a smokescreen or whether we are getting somewhere. What’s the objective? They still haven’t said what they want to end up with.
Mr. Johnston: It will take a real push from the minister to make this happen. The situation right now is treading water. I’m sorry, but I don’t accept that if I’m a guy who has to lease a licence — even if I don’t say anything in front of the guy, he’s seeing me here, and if I’m not saying the right things that he wants me to say, I’ll be paying for that. It’s very naive, or whatever you want to call it, to say that you can have those two groups of people sitting at the same table and have real discussions. That’s not what’s going to happen.
Senator Busson: I didn’t do it, but I think if you look up the word “initiative” in the dictionary, it connotes something to do with moving forward and leaning into some goals and objectives. I’m not hearing that. Am I right about that?
Senator Surette: I have two quick questions. Mr. Johnston, you recommended that they look at owner-operator but only for active harvesters and First Nations; the second subject was the public registry.
If the minister decides to go with owner-operator, do we still need the registry?
Mr. Johnston: Yes, you do, to really be able to know who is benefiting.
Senator Surette: If you’re moving forward with the new regime now with only owner-operators — they can own their boat and licence — why would you still need the registry?
Mr. Johnston: I can give an example using myself. I didn’t fish one of my licences for a number of years, so I sold it to a buddy of mine because he and his kids wanted to catch the spring salmon, and I wasn’t going out fishing in those years. It stayed on my boat and never left the vessel that it was on, but we had a separate agreement, a controlling agreement, that he would get all those fish. By all appearances, I’m still the owner and the operator and everything else; yet I had a legal piece of paper. He was my friend, so it wasn’t meaningful in that way, but those same agreements are drawn up all the time by fish companies and investors, and he was the one who controlled where those fish went. I had to do what I was told to do by him.
Mr. Williams: All the Atlantic fishers’ organizations are pushing really hard for the registry because of all the under-the-table stuff.
Senator Surette: My second question is for you, Mr. Williams. It has to do with your transitional plan. It seems clear here, but it seems to me that there’s a step missing prior to the designation. If your report, Mr. Johnston, didn’t get any traction, it seems like you were having difficulties getting through to the minister to go in this direction here. Unless there is a crisis, a collapse in the industry — sometimes governments act quickly or through a consultation process — it seems to be the modernization doesn’t seem to be working. The only piece I caught that could influence the minister would be your report coming out on the economic analysis. Is there another strategy for how you would bring the minister and the department to move to this designation?
Mr. Williams: We have had tremendous support from the House of Commons Fisheries and Oceans Committee.
We are looking forward to hearing what you have to say. That’s one pressure point to keep moving forward.
The changes that have taken place in strengthening owner-operator and fleet separation policies and getting the new Fisheries Act and the new regulations on the East Coast happened because all the fishers on the East Coast have strong organizations. They have professional staff and lobbyists. On the West Coast, the union is one of the few focused on fisheries policy and management issues, but it has a limited membership because the industry is so fragmented and economically stressed. There isn’t the pressure coming from the wharf, and that’s why this process is so important. At least people here in Ottawa hear what’s going on because the fishers themselves are not, it’s fair to say, able to fight this fight.
Mr. Johnston: On the East Coast, it’s done in different ways province by province. Fishers need to belong to our organization. We’ve asked for that, but when I was young, my local in east Vancouver had 1,000 members in that one local alone. The industry has changed dramatically since then and fragmented.
When I was young, I would go fishing in March and be back in November. The young guys now go fishing a couple of days after Christmas, and they’re back just before Christmas. They have to fish more because they’re paying dramatically higher lease costs than I did when I was young.
Senator Ravalia: Mr. Johnston, if we’re down now to between 5% and 15% of owner-operators on the Pacific Coast and we’re talking about a transition that could take seven or eight years, how vulnerable are you in terms of losing the value of your licences as these seven years unfold? Also, at this stage, would you or some of your colleagues be tempted to sell those licences to the larger corporations while the price median is probably at its peak?
Mr. Johnston: There is certainly going to be that pressure, and some people are going to make the choice to do that, but they’re not all going to sell. If the companies are over that seven‑year period, they have to start to sell those licences. You’re going to start to have a market that represents more of what a person who is making a living in fishing is able to afford. If, at the end of those seven years, they have to be out of the hands of investors and others, they’re going to be moved back out.
I think it has to be fair for people who are retiring, but, as with housing, no one guarantees that your house is going to stay at that peak price. Sometimes, the bubble bursts and it crashes. I think the plan for housing seems to be to tamp that down slowly over time. People will adjust. It will work out economically. I think a similar thing would happen with fishing licences.
Senator Ravalia: Are you concerned that your licence values will decline?
Mr. Johnston: As I said, I made my living by fishing. That’s where I made my money. We bought our house, and we did all those things. I’m not going to argue with the money I will make when I do sell my licence. However, that’s not where my security comes from.
Senator Prosper: I was struck, Mr. Johnston, by your comments with respect to certain fishers stepping out of the fishery for a variety of reasons — that for many, it seemed it was not a viable way to live. I’ve heard from previous testimony, especially on the West Coast, that the numbers aren’t quite there for young fishers. There are young fishers, but not to the extent there should be.
What does it mean when you have people stepping out with that knowledge and with that understanding of having fished for so long? What does that do to an industry and what does that do to a community?
Mr. Johnston: It really cripples a community. All that knowledge is something you want to pass on. It’s something that the next generation wants to build on, and that’s what is being lost. You see that in some First Nations communities, where they got totally wiped out and now they’re building again. A number of them are making that commitment. They’re making that investment, but that’s a long, hard road. That is a different thing if you fished all your life and you’ve built up that knowledge and experience. It’s a real tragedy to just throw that away.
The Chair: Thank you, senators, for your questions.
I want to thank the witnesses for the very interesting conversation. We look forward to the fall and receiving any additional information and briefs that you would like to send to us as we work toward our final reports and our recommendations. Some of the things you touched on here this evening may be incorporated into those recommendations if our committee agrees to do so, but don’t hesitate to send us anything that you think would add to our work here.
Once again, on behalf of the committee, thank you for your time this evening.
(The committee continued in camera.)