Ottawa has launched its awaited fisheries licence buyback program to protect plummeting Pacific salmon stocks on the West Coast.
Looking to fix the problem of too many boats chasing too few fish, on Wednesday, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) unveiled details on its voluntary commercial licence retirement (LRP) program that will pay salmon harvesters to exit the industry.
However, the union for commercial fishers says first impressions suggest the plan is “deeply disappointing” and designed to drive down the value of licences being bought out.
“It just picks off the most desperate people who need the money and have no other choice,” said James Lawson, president of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union (UFAWU).
DFO says fish harvesters will get market value for their retired licences based on publicly available assessments prior to 2021 (nearly 60 per cent of commercial salmon fisheries were shuttered that year).
The buyback program will use a reverse bid system where commercial licence-holders suggest a price for the retirement of their licence and the DFO will decide which bids to accept.
However, fish harvesters involved in DFO consultations about the program expressly rejected a reverse bid process, Lawson said, adding it will result in a race to the bottom for the industry as a whole.
Fishers left in the worst financial straits after the commercial salmon sector’s long decline will need to offer the lowest bid, undercutting everyone else to ensure they get some small piece of the funding pie, Lawson said.
“I don’t know why DFO is talking about providing ‘market price’ when it's the opposite,” Lawson said, who is also a commercial fisher based out of Campbell River.
UFAWU had recommended DFO come up with uniform offers based on the number and type of licence, he added.
DFO is allocating $123 million from its Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative for the licence buyback and two additional future programs.
One is a program to dispose of derelict vessels and gear in an environmentally safe way for commercial fish harvesters who receive a licence buyback. The other is a plan — still in development — for First Nations with a communal salmon commercial licence to exchange it for funding tied to market value to purchase commercial licences for other fish species, such as halibut.
An additional $8.36 million is still available under the Pacific Salmon Treaty mitigation program targeted on retiring eligible commercial salmon troll licences, DFO said.
Approximately 1,300 individual commercial salmon licences are eligible immediately for buyback, according to DFO. But it’s not clear yet how many licence-holders will opt to retire their licence.
Approximately 30 to 50 per cent of the commercial salmon fleet hasn’t been participating in the fishery over the past five years, and licence-holders from this group are likely to be the most interested in leaving the sector, according to DFO.
How much money each program will get is flexible and based on the amount of interest from applicants, the department said. The LRP program starts immediately and will run until March 2026, subject to remaining funds.
However, Lawson said $123 million spread across three programs is far short of what’s needed to help the number of struggling fish harvesters.
It also appears there won’t be significant compensation for fishers’ investments into gear and vessels, which are very expensive.
Some nets can cost up to $10,000, while a large seine fishing boat may go for $1.5 million, Lawson said.
There also isn’t assistance for crew members without work once a licence is retired, he said.
“So many people are relying on these programs,” he said. “It’s really just a token buyout.”
Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
- Rochelle Baker
- Journalist
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“I don’t know why DFO is
“I don’t know why DFO is talking about providing ‘market price’ when it's the opposite,”
"Market price" is what the market will bear. That's why there's been higher gas prices.
When the "market" is government, it's what government will pay.
If the number of fishing licences decreases, the value of what's left will increase ...
Not having spent time to think it through, what I immediately find troubling is the separation of multiple licenses with a single owner: it seems to me a process that'll shut out the little guys, and give the advantage to bigger operations (who are in turn more likely to sell to international markets rather than the domestic one, kind of parallel to what's happened with Big Ag.
What we seem to have here is
What we seem to have here is the law of diminishing returns playing out - with consequences that perhaps have not been thought through for decades. As previously noted - the end game seems to be concentration which freezes out the independent local industry and enriches the corporate entities which in turn ensures that only the deep pocketed will have the money to seek out the diminishing stocks, with predatory capitalism's inherent inability to think long term and its well honed ability to bamboozle the forces of regulation and conservation. In short, destroying that upon which all depend.
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