REPORT
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fraser River Sockeye
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Sockeye report nets cautious support
n March 7 the long-awaited Fraser Sockeye Public Review Board report was released. Surprisingly, it was received by virtually all fisheries interest groups as a positive step toward ensuring the future survival of our salmon resources.
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While far from perfect in either its analysis or its recommendations, the report as a whole closely reflects the conservation and management ethics of by the UFAWU.
The strongest feature of the report is its firm conviction that conservation must be the absolute and unassailable focus of the DFO.
While the report is 101 pages long and broad in its scope, a few key themes deserve a brief overview.
ROLE OFTHEAFS
The report is a stinging indictment of the Tory era, when a line of ineffectual fisheries ministers allowed senior bureaucrats like Bruce Raw-son and Maryantonett Flumi-an to dismantle the previously centralized DFO management authority. The situation was exacerbated by an accompanying directive to reorganize and cut enforcement levels.
The disastrous results were first evident in 1992, the inaugural year of the controversial Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy (AFS). Under the AFS, fish previously allocated to Native groups for food, social and ceremonial purposes were for the first time commercialized.
These "pilot" sales projects were an ill-conceived and basically hypocritical attempt by an anti-aboriginal Tory government to appear to be advancing Native rights in the field of self governance.
When review board chair
John Fraser commented on this subject at the press conference he said: "The Sparrow decision dealt with the food fishery and did not give the authority to sell. Some people in DFO took the view that the Supreme Court would eventually do it, so they decided, "Let us move ahead of the law and establish this right to sell.' I cannot say if this was right or wrong — all I can say is it did not work and that it is still not the law today."
Sadly, this failed social experiment by DFO had disastrous consequences for the resource and ironically may well have set back the long term legitimate right to self-determination for Native people.
Combined with the cuts in enforcement was the transfer of millions of dollars from the DFO budget to an aboriginal guardian program that lacked adequate training and direction.
The result was a staggering increase in fishing effort along with diminished control and wholesale demoralization within the DFO enforcement ranks.
DFO 'SERENELY UNAWARE'
Throughout the crisis, senior DFO officials remained "serenely unaware," according to Fraser. Instead of assuming their constitutional responsibility to protect the migrating salmon, senior DFO officials in Ottawa and the Pacific Region under-
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FRASER RIVER SOCKEYE REVIEW BOARD REPORT
Dennis Brown
mined their enforcement personnel with their infamous dictate only to "observe, record and report."
To quote Fraser, a state of "attitudinal anarchy" prevailed which served as a smokescreen for poaching by Natives and non-Natives alike.
Much of what occurred under the AFS in 1992 was repeated again in 1994. As a result, Fraser made it very clear that the "pilot' sales program should not be expanded.
In addition, he recommended that the aboriginal guardian programs should not only include better training requirements, but should also be placed under DFO authority.
The report calls for mandatory landing sites for all AFS catches as well as a stringent "paper trail" to ensure accurate catch estimation.
To eliminate the opportunity to "launder" fish caught under Native permits into the commercial fishery, Fraser has endorsed a long-standing recommendation by commercial fishermen to separate Native and commercial fisheries by an adequate length of time.
Finally, Fraser concurs with the positive alternative to the pilot sales agreements that was put forward by the commercial user groups. That alternative calls for the voluntary transfer of boats and licences from the non-Native sector to aboriginal people.
CHANGING MANAGEMENT
If the Fraser report has a flaw it was that in part it tended to reflect some of the "doomsday" rhetoric that seems to be fashionable in current media reports about the West Coast fishery.
The executive summary of
the report states that the 1994 "aggressive fishing strategy...did contribute to a grab-all attitude in the Canadian commercial fleet, and a corresponding removal of any moral responsibility for conservation on the U.S. side. These difficult circumstances helped create the '12 hours from disaster' scenario."
Last year, in the absence of an agreement with the U.S., Canada was forced to adopt a stand-alone fishing plan. The intention was to harvest surplus Canadian salmon while at the same time ensuring that escapement levels and obligations to the aboriginal and recreational sectors would be met. It was this sort of an approach and not an all-out "fish war" as the media so often characterizes it, that occurred in 1994.
While it is true that substantially greater fishing time was permitted in the southern approach route in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, very few fish were actually harvested in Area 20 due to an unusually high diversion through Johnstone Strait.
In the strait itself, where the greatest volume of fish was harvested, there were only 3.25 fishing days permitted for seiners and 19 days for gillnets. This was the lowest number of fishing days permitted in Johnstone Strait on this cycle on record and hardly constitutes a "grab-all" approach as the Fraser Panel alleges.
In 1994, the U.S. catch of Fraser sockeye reached an inequitable level of 1.8 million pieces. Despite attempts by DFO managers to ensure an adequate "pass-through" via one Johnstone Strait area, at least 500,000 to 600,000 more sockeye were taken by the U.S. Point Roberts fishery.
THE U.S. OVER-HARVEST
Any analysis of the alleged 1.3 million missing fish that does not take this very glaring issue of Canadian sovereignty into account is doomed to failure.
What was the Fraser Panel perspective? Instead of doing the right thing and pointing out the fallacy of increasing U.S. demands on the Fraser River stocks and condemning the U.S. overharvest, the panel did the opposite. Page 44 of the report makes the following statement:
"When informed at the last minute that no more fishing should take place in order to achieve escapement goals, those U.S. fishers reluctantly ceased fishing, disturbed by the lack of prior notice..it is important to note that the U.S. fishers were not obliged to stop fishing (italics mine) and it should not be assumed that they would cease fishing voluntarily the next time."
No effort to properly conserve fish stocks can be complete without Canada's ability to ensure that sovereignty over those stocks is certain. In the absence of an agreement the U.S. had absolutely no claim to any Canadian salmon in 1994.
It is a pity that the review board's otherwise excellent report is marred by this oversight. Sadly, had there been any control over the U.S. fishery a good portion of the deficit on escapements in 1994 could have been prevented.
Nevertheless, from a management point of view, the report offers several positive recommendations. Institutionally, he recommends that the authority of the Canadian section of the Pacific Salmon Commission Fraser river panel be extended so that Fraser salmon wherever
8 • THE FISHERMAN / MARCH 20,1995