The federal government’s fisheries file needs attention.
B.C. and its beleaguered commercial fishing sector do not have to look far offshore for evidence of that.
The province’s wild salmon fishery appears headed for increasingly shorter openings on the way to permanent closure.
Last year’s Fraser River sockeye returns were the lowest on record, and this year the federal government closed 60% of B.C.’s salmon harvesting to commercial fishing.
Meanwhile, the federal government’s decision to curtail open-net salmon farming in B.C. threatens to kill off another ocean industry revenue stream for the province.
Decisions from Ottawa regarding B.C. fisheries might be easier to swallow if Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO) resource management was effective. But it isn’t.
Oceana Canada’s recently released Fishery Audit confirms that. The fifth annual instalment of the report from the ocean conservation advocacy group notes that fewer than one-third of the country’s fisheries are considered healthy, and there are no stock rebuilding plans for 80% of the fish populations considered most at risk.
While Oceana Canada points out that the federal government has improved fisheries management transparency and provided new funding for ocean science, neither has yielded any measurable results or improved the lot of wild fish stocks.
Those mediocre outcomes coupled with the dire state of commercial fisheries on the West Coast beg the question: why are B.C. ocean resources being managed by bureaucrats so far from fishing grounds and so far removed from resource extraction realities?
Accountability for distant DFO decisions is slim to none. The protests of B.C. commercial fishermen, whose livelihoods are increasingly in jeopardy, continue to fall on deaf ears.
That needs to change if the province’s rich fishing tradition is to survive.
Moving management decisions, responsibility and accountability to the West Coast from Ottawa would be a good first step.
