FEATURE

_ The crisis in our salmon —

By JIM RUSHTON
Dr. Peter Pearse, a defeated
Liberal candidate and a man com-
pletely identified with the policies
Of the federal department of

- fisheries and oceans, has been ap-

Pointed to head a commission of
Inquiry into the west coast salmon
Tesource. Wide latitude has been
given him to make recommenda-
tions to the federal government on

the future of the commercial

Salmon fishery, the Native food
fishery and the sports fishery.

Obviously federal minister of
fisheries and oceans Romeo
LeBlanc hoped that the: Pearse In-
quiry would deflect the growing
Mass protest against his policies.
But'this has not been the case, for
€ven while Pearse begins his hear-
ings, the protest against LeBlanc’s
Tesource policy and measures
directed against the fishing com-
munity has grown.

Thousands have joined the
Nishga Indians ‘in their battle to
Stop the Amax corporation from:
destroying Alice Arm and the
Native food fishery. All sections of
the commercial fleet have been
Protesting massive closures of ma-

jor fishing areas and mass

demonstrations have been held on
the Fraser River, in Nanaimo, —
Ucluelet, Campbell River and Vic-
toria, where the harbor was
blockaded by angry trollers. The
Pearse Inquiry has become another
forum for this protest movement.

What is the state of the resource
which Pearse in investigating?.No
one can deny that the salmon
resource is in deep trouble. The
salmon fishery, has, been hovering
around one million landed pounds
for several years, a one third to one
half decline from its historic

average.

Increasing. pressure on the
salmon resource has been produc-
ed by government policy which
spurred a tremendous investment
program to build bigger and better
equipped vessels. The capitaliza-
tion in vessels has gone from $65
Million in 1968-1969 to approx-
imately $750 million in 1981. While
the vastly increased efficiency of
the fleet put pressure on stocks, the
high capitalization costs pressed
fishermen into acquiring huge —

Mortgages.

For several years the obvious
decline in stock was hidden by a
distortion of the market which ar-
tificially pushed up prices. Salmon

' .Prices had soared because of the
‘temporary diversion of salmon

away from canned markets to the
Japanese fresh frozen market.

Prices for other fish stocks were.

also up because of the Japanese
market. But the ‘“‘bonanza”’ of the
late 1970s was only an illusion of. °
Prosperity. In 1980 fish prices col-
lapsed, leaving fishermen with big
Mortgage payments and decimated |
fish stocks:

If the bonanza was an illusion
for industry workers, it was real for
the major processors. As prices

ad soared upwards, price wars
had forced small companies out of
the market. At the same time
fishermen had become increasingly. .
indebted to the major companies.

Thére are now only two major
peporate organizations in the in-

dustry, B.C. Packers, controlled

by the Weston empire, increased its

dominance in the industry year
after year until in 1980 it bought all

Significant assets of its largest com-

Petitor, The Canadian Bane:

Company. Second place in the in-
dustry now belongs to the

Marebeni Corporation of Japan
which has gradually taken control
of most medium sized companies,
establishing a formidable network
of processing facilities all along the
coast. It was following the con-
solidation of Marebeni and B.C.
Packers that fish prices were slash-
ed.

These two giants have used their
monopoly control of the industry
to step up the exploitation of
workers in the processing sector of |
the industry as well. B.C. Packers, &
which controls about 60 percent of §
the canned salmon market, is in- 2

troducing new technology and & »
closing at least three major plants o

which will displace hundreds of
workers: Now plant closures and
layoffs are being used as a lever to
keep wages down in negotiations
between processors and the United

~ Fishermen and Allied Workers

Union.

Marabeni, on the other hand, are
using every tactic to prevent the
unionization of their plants. They
want to maintain their processing
facilities non-union in order. to
operate during strikes.

This is the story that unionized
fishermen will be bringing to the
Pearse Inquiry. It is a story of
growing exploitation and profit on
the part of the few giant
monopolies which own the in-
dustry, and the relative im-

~ poverishment of those who work in

the industry. Average annual take
home pay for ‘fishermen and
shoreworkers alike is below
$10,000 per year, and despite the
old line of “‘supply and demand”’
as the supply of fish has dwindled,
so too has the price paid to
fishermen.

Organized fishing industry
workers will also ask Pearse to face
up to the real causes for.declining
salmon stocks and to recommend
new policies to reverse the trend.

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PETER PEARSE . _ heads in-

quiry. c

Of.the three main users of the
salmon resource, the commercial
fishing industry, the Native Indian
food fishery, and the sports and
recreation industry, most attention
is- focused on the commercial
fishery as being the source of the
problem for the salmon resource.

The commercial salmon fishery
in B.C. has a 110 year history; it
was the first modern industry to
harvest and process aresource. To-
day 25,000 people are directly
employed i in the industry.

Certainly today’s commercial
fleet has a staggering ability to
harvest salmon. There are too
many boats and too much capital
chasing a declining stock.

_ But the commercial fleet
operates within the conditions set
by the federal department of
fisheries and oceans (DFO). It is
government policy responsible for
the overcapitalization in the in-
dustry and the DFO has attempted

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by Cara Coad

Fishermen demonstrate at Fisheries Department offices, Feb. 1975, to protest salmon Saat with U.S.

‘to make up for its mistakes by.

drastically cutting back on the
fishing time and fishing areas for
the commercial fishermen. That
has only made the problem worse
because the highly mobile and effi-
cient fleet has been forced to con-
centrate in small areas and fish
fewer runs of salmon. Consequent-
ly the strongest salmon runs are

~ now also in jeopardy. And none of

the other runs have been rebuilt
during all the cutbacks in the name
of conservation.

The salmon resource has
historically also been the centre
piece of Native life on the west
coast. The Native economy and
culture has been based on salmon
and to think that salmon is not the
mainstay of life in the Native com-
munities any longer is completely
wrong.

Although the Native food
fishery is supposed to be a right
guaranteed by the federal govern-
ment, this fishery as well has been
greatly curtailed by the DFO and
the right of Native to fish for food
is under constant attack.

The newest user group to exploit
salmon in a big way is the sports
fishery, estimated to involve bet-
ween 350,000 and 500,000 people.
The sports fishery itself is made up
of two kinds 6f users, local coastal
residents who fish. for recreation
and pleasure, and the much larger
and growing sports fishery based
on the tourist industry-and exclus-
ive charter boat operations. The
provincial government is determin-
ed to make tourism B.C.’s second
industry and it has joined with the
tourist industry to lobby Ottawa
against any controls on the fishery,
even though there are now an esti-
mated 1,100 charter boats operat-
ing on the coast and another large
fleet of professionally guided pleas-
ure craft owned by hotels, marinas
and supported by the provincial
government. The larger charter
vessels have canning operations
aboard and fly groups of business-
men in and out by float plane.

However, attempts to place even
minor restrictions on the sports
fishery this year were dropped by
the DFO under pressure of the
recreation and tourism lobby. The
DFO’s bending to political
pressure undermines its claim that
its so-called conservation measures
directed against commercial
fishermen are scientifically
necessary.

All three groups of users are
presently before the Pearse Inquiry
arguing their case for greater
fishing privileges. The problem is
that each group want to harvest
fish which in the short run can only

come from one of the other two
groups.

In fact, the real cause of the crisis
in the salmon resource lies outside
of the fishery. It is the political and
resource policy of the federal and
provincial governments which has
allowed. natural resource in-
dustries, particularly the forest in-
dustry, to devastate the salmon
habitat.

Nearly every coastal watershed
has been logged with no regard for
environmental protection. The last
untouched watershed on Van-
couver Island, the Tsitika Schoen,
is today being logged in much the
same manner as in the past. Pulp
mills, smelters and mining opera-
tions have been allowed to use
rivers and coastal waters as toilets
for their toxic wastes. The Amax
operation at Alice Arm is the latest
example of this. Hydroelectric
dams on salmon producing rivers
have also had their impact, and to-
day B.C. Hydro is determined to

- build the province’s largest hydro
power complex on the Stikine
River. In addition to all of this new
coal ports are being planned for the
mouths of the largest salmon
rivers, the Fraser and Skeena,
surveys for off shore oil explora-
tion are already underway off
Prince Rupert and a natural gas ter-

minal is also planned for the coast.

The salmon fishery finds itself
on the front line of a battle to stop
this massive exploitation of our
resources, to protect our environ-
‘ment and ensure a sane policy of
resource development in the in-
terests of the people.

The minister of fisheries and the
DFO, rather than being the guar-
dian of our salmon resource, are
apparently part of the sellout.

Skeena NDP MP Jim Fulton last

September exposed a DFO docu-
ment titled, ‘The Road to 1995: A
Blueprint for Western Fisheries
Development.’’ Essentially this

document says that fisheries can ©

not be allowed to be a hinderance
to ‘‘development.”’ It proposes to
accomplish this by allowing the
destruction of the commercial
fishery as we now know it and its
replacement by ‘‘mariculture”’ and
‘aquaculture.’ In-short it means
fish farming which possibly could
provide fish to processers, but it
would spell ruin for the working
people who depend on the salmon
resource for their livelihood.
The federal government is also
responsible for allowing foreign
deep sea fleets to attack our salmon
resource. U.S. fishermen intercept
five million more Canadian salmon
than we take from U.S. rivers, and
this amounts to about one-quarter

of the-entire B.C. salmon catch.
Still the U.S. won’t sign a new sal-
mon interception treaty because it
thinks it can get more from our
weak government. Dr. Pearse can’t
realistically discuss the salmon re-
source without dealing with these
facts of international relations.

If the Pearse Inquiry is to have
any relevance it must lay the
ground for a new policy direction
on the part of the federal govern-
ment which will address the pro-
blem of monopoly control, the
resource and environmental
policies of both the federal and
provincial governments, and
Canada’s weak kneed foreign
policy. Failing this he will only have
followed in the footsteps of many
before who postured before the
public to deal with the crucial pro-
blems only to betray their vital in-

terests.
Pearse will also be called upon to

address the issue of allocation of
the salmon resource. This must in-
volve fundamental changes in the
attitude of the-government, in-
dustry and users if the resource is to

’ be saved.

Clearly a new licensing system is
needed coupled with strong conser-
vation measures by both the com-
mercial and sport fishery. However
any measures must not victimize
those directly reliant on the re-
source. The corporations and the
government must bear the costs of
any necessary dislocation, includ-
ing compensation, involved’ in a
program to rebuild the resource.

In addition, all user groups must
recognize each other and reach an
agreement which will take into ac-
count the historical use of the
resource, the degree of reliance that
each has, and then set a clear priori-
ty of access. First, the inalienable
right of the Native Peoples to their
food fishery must be guaranteed.
Second, the well being of the
thousands of people who work in
the commercial fishing industry
must be protected. Third, the sport
fishery must also be given an
allocation.

If the Pearse Inquiry is to help
solve our problems it must become
a rallying point to unite the Native
Peoples, commercial fishing in-
dustry workers, sport fishermen,
environmentalists and all working
people for a fundamental change in
government policy. The extent to
which these groups come together
at the Pearse Inquiry and in
popular struggles will determine
the future of the salmon resource.

Jim Rushton is an executive
board member of the United Fish-
ermen and Allied Workers Union.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 5, 1981— Page 3