The Atlantic model is neither simple nor ideal. My father (RIP) was a commercial fisherman.
Mi'kmaw (local first nations) decided fishing for food & ceremonial fishing wasn't enough so they pushed to feds to give them "communal licences" to be used by any member of the band. I'm not sure I understand the difference between that and a food & ceremonial licence but I digress.
My family has native heritage but my father objected to this as he figured it would cause more problems than it solved. And he was right. The gubbermint gave them what they wanted.
Then the FN asked for commercial fishing licences. And, of course, the gubbermint capitulated without giving it a moment of thought. When the commercial fishermen pointed out licencing was done to protect the fish stocks, the gubbermint stopped issuing new licences and created for existing commercial fishermen who wanted to sell their licences back to the gubbermint for the purposes of conversion to native commercial fishing licences.
Now comes the bitter truth part... most of those FNs pushing for commercial fishing licences lacked the equipment and skills to do commercial fishing. So the gubbermint paid for boats and gear. One cannot however buy skills.
So most of the FN commercial licence holders "lease" their licence to non-FN commerical fishermen to do the actual work.
If that sounds much like the west coast fisheries, go figure.
Now for the capper... a coalition of Mi'kmaw bands and BC based Premium Brand Holdings spent $1billion to buy up Clearwater Seafoods Inc, a multinational vertically integrated fish buyer & processing company. I'm not sure whether Premium Brand Holdings got their half but the local FNs laughed about how the gubbermint gave them $250m for the up front cost and the rest is a long term loan being paid by revenues of the company being operated by Premium.
If that sounds like a great deal for the taxpayers to you, I'd like to offer you a special deal on ocean front property in Saskatchewan.
Thanks for the details that only an insider can know.
I have been a recreational fisher on the west coast. The relationships between ordinary commercial and FN commercial fishermen is not settled, to put it politely.
The FNs continue to push for more control of the management of the resource, which also gets the recreational fishers and the significant related touristic businesses very concerned.
Why the hell do we have 2 license regimes? The Atlantic model, for all it's problems, makes more sense to me. This is worse than taxi licenses in Toronto being held by a few corporate owners.
I pulled the House committee's own glossary on this. The Atlantic side isn't one policy, it's three, stacked since 1979: Fleet Separation, then Owner-Operator in 1989, then PIIFCAF in 2007, a policy meant to stop processors from quietly controlling licences through side agreements. Each one exists to keep a licence with the person actually fishing it. BC never got any version of the three. That's why the same federal department runs an owner-operator coast and an open-market coast at once. Forty years of policy choices, not an accident.
The end result is that BC, outside of the Vancouver Victoria bubble, is treated as a resource colony. Fishing, forestry or mining, the profits are extracted until the resource is depleted, primarily for the benefit of corporations controlled from far away. Forestry…
The Atlantic model is neither simple nor ideal. My father (RIP) was a commercial fisherman.
Mi'kmaw (local first nations) decided fishing for food & ceremonial fishing wasn't enough so they pushed to feds to give them "communal licences" to be used by any member of the band. I'm not sure I understand the difference between that and a food & ceremonial licence but I digress.
My family has native heritage but my father objected to this as he figured it would cause more problems than it solved. And he was right. The gubbermint gave them what they wanted.
Then the FN asked for commercial fishing licences. And, of course, the gubbermint capitulated without giving it a moment of thought. When the commercial fishermen pointed out licencing was done to protect the fish stocks, the gubbermint stopped issuing new licences and created for existing commercial fishermen who wanted to sell their licences back to the gubbermint for the purposes of conversion to native commercial fishing licences.
Now comes the bitter truth part... most of those FNs pushing for commercial fishing licences lacked the equipment and skills to do commercial fishing. So the gubbermint paid for boats and gear. One cannot however buy skills.
So most of the FN commercial licence holders "lease" their licence to non-FN commerical fishermen to do the actual work.
If that sounds much like the west coast fisheries, go figure.
Now for the capper... a coalition of Mi'kmaw bands and BC based Premium Brand Holdings spent $1billion to buy up Clearwater Seafoods Inc, a multinational vertically integrated fish buyer & processing company. I'm not sure whether Premium Brand Holdings got their half but the local FNs laughed about how the gubbermint gave them $250m for the up front cost and the rest is a long term loan being paid by revenues of the company being operated by Premium.
If that sounds like a great deal for the taxpayers to you, I'd like to offer you a special deal on ocean front property in Saskatchewan.
Thanks for the details that only an insider can know.
I have been a recreational fisher on the west coast. The relationships between ordinary commercial and FN commercial fishermen is not settled, to put it politely.
The FNs continue to push for more control of the management of the resource, which also gets the recreational fishers and the significant related touristic businesses very concerned.
Confisco is a company owned by the Jim Pattison Group and is reportedly the owner of many of these fishing licenses.
*Canfisco
Why the hell do we have 2 license regimes? The Atlantic model, for all it's problems, makes more sense to me. This is worse than taxi licenses in Toronto being held by a few corporate owners.
I pulled the House committee's own glossary on this. The Atlantic side isn't one policy, it's three, stacked since 1979: Fleet Separation, then Owner-Operator in 1989, then PIIFCAF in 2007, a policy meant to stop processors from quietly controlling licences through side agreements. Each one exists to keep a licence with the person actually fishing it. BC never got any version of the three. That's why the same federal department runs an owner-operator coast and an open-market coast at once. Forty years of policy choices, not an accident.
never thought it was an accident. just wondering why it was not applied equally on both coasts.
The end result is that BC, outside of the Vancouver Victoria bubble, is treated as a resource colony. Fishing, forestry or mining, the profits are extracted until the resource is depleted, primarily for the benefit of corporations controlled from far away. Forestry…