Fishing boats are docked at a marina in Bella Bella, B.C., in October, 2022.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
The B.C. government’s newly announced marine strategy includes recommendations that will restrict corporate entities from buying Pacific-coast fishing quotas and licenses, a practice that many blame for pushing local fishers out of business and damaging coastal economies, including First Nations communities.
The B.C. Coastal Marine Strategy, published Thursday, is a broad document that covers a number of themes within marine policy, from ecosystems to climate change to coastal economies. Under coastal economies, the provincial government says it will push for an “owner-operator” fisheries policy. Already in wide practice on the Atlantic coast, this approach is designed to ensure that quota and license holders are active fishers.
“We’re advocating for a more equitable fisheries management policy,” said Kelly Greene, B.C.’s parliamentary secretary for fisheries and aquaculture.
The announcement is the latest in a series of efforts to change how B.C.’s individual transferable quotas (ITQ) system, introduced by Ottawa in 1990, works. The system permit harvesters to a certain amount of fish per species each year; quotas can be inherited, but they can also be brought. In B.C., the quota is open to anyone, including foreign investors and corporate entities.
However, no changes to the system are yet on the horizon, as fishing licensing is the purview of the federal government. In May, B.C. Premier David Eby had sent a letter to the Prime Minister urging Ottawa to reconsider licensing reform. Reports from the House of Commons committee on fisheries and oceans in 2019 and 2023 both recommended the quota system shift to an owner-operator policy.
B.C.’s new strategy is a welcome step forward for small-scale fishers who have long argued that the federal and provincial governments maintain a quota system that allows large corporations and foreign investors to outcompete them, thereby damaging local economies.
“There are so many who want to fish but cannot,” said Sonia Strobel, chief executive of Skipper Otto, a community with 45 fisher families across B.C. and Nunavut, who directly market their product to households from Vancouver to Montreal.
An owner-operator policy “is super important for community-based fishing families and First Nations and will make a big impact for us.”
Under the ITQ system, existing fishers are increasingly tempted to sell to the highest bidder, which is usually a corporation and not an individual, said Anthony Charles, a professor at the Marine Affairs Program at Dalhousie University. Independent fishers can rarely outcompete corporations for these quotas.
Research shows that active fishers now own less than 15 per cent of the halibut quota. The number of fishermen in B.C. has dropped to 5,000 in 2015 from about 20,000 in 1985.
An option for some fishers is to lease the quota from the owner, effectively renting the right to fish. Such corporate concentration hurts fishers, Dr. Charles said.
“It’s a bit like being a landlord,” he said. “The amount you have to pay to the landlord of the quota makes it almost impossible to make money as the actual fishing person.”
The United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union and Coastal First Nations (which represents eight B.C. First Nations) has been lobbying the federal government to change the ITQ system to an owner-operator one.
Provincial governments on the Atlantic coast fought to have the latter system when the federal government implemented the ITQ system in the 1980s, Dr. Charles said.
The regulations in Atlantic Canada led to real economic benefits. Based on data given to The Globe and Mail by Ecotrust Canada, the total income from fish-harvesting employment for all Atlantic fisheries in 2019 represented 37 per cent of the total. In B.C., the proportion was 8 per cent lower.
Coastal First Nation, which represents eight First Nations across B.C., has also been lobbying for an end to the ITQ system. First Nations fishers are allowed to catch for food, social and ceremonial purposes, but these rights do not include commercial operations.
To fish with a federal licence, their fishers lease the quota. This makes fishing unprofitable, said Trevor Russ, director of policy and programs at Coastal First Nations.
“The current structure we have in place is just not attainable to achieve the reconciliation goals that were set out,” he said.
Coastal First Nation would like to see Ottawa propose a phase-out of the current model. Those corporations that hold the quota would have time to pay off costs before selling them back to local fishers.
However, some worry that the changes to the quota system are coming too late.
Dan Edwards, a third-generation fisher in the town of Ucluelet, B.C., has seen his once thriving fishing become a shell of what it used to be. He wonders if changes can bring back a community of local fishers, especially when a generation has been lost.
“There’s guys who are still in the industry who are trying like hell to not get swallowed up by the corporatization of the fishery,” Mr. Edwards said.
“I wish them well and hope like hell that something actually happens to protect that fleet and its place in our communities.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified “Ecotrust Canada” as ‘Eco Justice,” and contained incorrect information regarding federal and provincial jurisdictions over quotas and licences. This version has been corrected.