By Robert Freeman
Black Press - Posted on BC: Maple Ridge News
Jul 21 2007
Can the federal Conservative government plan to create one fishery in B.C. appease both commercial and aboriginal fishermen and finally bring peace to the fractious Fraser River?
"What we're trying to do will increase First Nation participation in the commercial fishery," Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon MP Chuck Strahl said Monday after announcing the plan in Vancouver with Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn.
And it will eventually replace the aboriginal fishing strategy, a program critics – including Prime Minister Stephen Harper – have called a race-based commercial fishery with a "shared fishery" based on one set of rules.
"If we can assure fishermen of all kinds that everybody's playing by the rules ... then I think we'll be on the path to getting people to buy in," Strahl said about the plan's chances for success.
Sto:lo Grand Chief Doug Kelly said he's "encouraged" by the plan's call for a "common standard" for reporting the number of salmon caught by all fishermen and for "cooperative management" of the resource.
But the plan doesn't go far enough, in his view.
"It's a small step," he said. "It's a good step, but it doesn't go far enough."
Part of the $175 million the government is providing to implement the plan over the next five years will go to buying existing commercial licences, boats, and fishing gear from fishermen who want out of the industry.
But fishing gear and licences is not what aboriginal fishermen want, Kelly said.
"What we want is the catch that's associated with that licence, those nets and that gear," he said. "We need more fish to harvest, more economic benefits."
"We do have one fishery," he said. "The problem we've got is there's incredible conflict over who gets what."
Kelly also said he was "a bit troubled" by the government's implication that the constitutionally-protected aboriginal right to fish "somehow doesn't have an economic component."
"We don't buy that argument," he said, because earlier court cases have shown "a very strong case" for an aboriginal right to fish for economic trade, as well as for food and ceremonial reasons.
The AFS was created in 1992 by the Tory government under Brian Mulroney in response to the 1990 Sparrow court decision that established the aboriginal right to fish for food and ceremonial reasons, second only to conservation.
Strahl said conservation still gets top priority under the new plan.
And the commercial fishery with one set of rules would be "completely separate" from aboriginal food fisheries so it "wouldn't be easy to abuse" by fishermen selling their catch from food fisheries, he said.
Commercial fishing based on allocations rather than timed openings, he added, would result in a "more rational fishery" and ensure enough fish make it back to spawning grounds to sustain the resource.
The plan calls for "enhanced" monitoring, catch reporting and enforcement, including a new "traceability" system to improve Canada's position in global seafood markets.
But Cheam fisherman Ernie Crey said salmon caught in the AFS fishery must already be counted when they are landed, counted again by the buyers and then all the data reported to federal fisheries.
"On top of that there are DFO audits and spot checks by DFO officers," he said. "There is no comparable system of catch counting in the commercial fishery."
Strahl said the plan still needs "lots of consultations" with all the user groups starting this summer and fall "to flesh out the details."
"(But) what we've got now is a framework of how it should work going forward," he said.
Ron Kadowaki, the DFO's lead director on Pacific fisheries reform, agreed a peaceful fishery on the Fraser River is one of the plan's goals, and that talks with user groups will start next week.
Kelly said it also appears the Tory government is no longer talking about holding a judicial inquiry into the Fraser River fishery.
Harper outraged First Nations leaders a year ago when he wrote a letter to the Calgary Herald vowing to end "racially divided" fisheries programs and to hold a judicial inquiry into the collapse of the Fraser River salmon fishery.