UNION TAKES LICENCE ISSUE TO OTTAWA
A delegation to Ottawa led by union president John Radosevic last month told MPs about licensing problems in B.C. where a few are getting wealthy at the expense of working fishers.
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ALL SECTIONS HURT BY BIG Ul CHANGES
UFAWU big-boat organizer Bruce Logan writes that major changes planned for unemployment insurance will raise the minimum entrance requirement for fishermen and cut benefits to everybody on Ul.
CENTRAL COAST FISH FARMS NOT ACCEPTED
Following a massive protest from the UFAWU, union members and many others, seven salmon farm applications for Rivers and Smith Inlets have been denied, but four may still go ahead.
UFAWU SAYS KEEP PROCESSING HERE
The UFAWU has urged the government task force studying fish processing in B.C to recommend to Victoria that fish caught in B.C. stays in the province for processing.
The TSherman
Vol. 59. No. 5
Vancouver, B.C
May 23,1994
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SCIENTISTS IGNORED IN 1987 AGREEMENT
Hearings into Alcan's Kemano II project continue in Vancouver as evidence mounts to prove that Tom Siddon, the Minister of Fisheries in 1987 agreed to Alcan's water reduction in the Nechako River against all the best scientific evidence of DFO's own experts.
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NORTH COAST GETS NET FISHING DEAL
Gillnetters will get early openings on chinook in areas 3 and 4, will have a chance to fish "aggressively" through the third week of July, but will be cut back in August to let steelnead through.
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MARY SHAK, KAM SUITONG, WAI CHAN AND KAM CHUN WONG (I to r) working on herring roe-popping machine lines at Canadian Fish May 12. With widespread introduction of machines across the industry job security will be a key point in 1994 bargaining (see markets and bargaining pages 6 and 7).
Fleet put into fish war readiness
The federal government this month began marshalling its forces in preparation for a fish war with the U.S. as Washington continued to refuse to offer anything on the crucial issue of equity in the Pacific Salmon Treaty.
Up and down the coast, Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin's tough stand was given a solid welcome. But as DFO representatives began convening advisors' meeting to discuss the treaty, fishers made it clear they won't want to see the commercial fishing industry — and long established domestic allocations—torn apart in the crossfire.
Negotiations on the Treaty so far this year have been an echo of talks in 1993 which reached an impasse last April when U.S. negotiators refused to acknowledge U.S. catches of Canadian-
bound sockeye off Southeast Alaska while they continued to demand increases in Fraser sockeye and a curb on Canadian catches of coho and chinook off the West Coast.
Canadian negotiators finally cut a deal for a one-year extension of the expired annexes of the Treaty in June, 1993. But the price for the agreement was additional Fraser sockeye to the U.S. without any recognition of the U.S. catch of Canadian salmon in SE Alaska. The Canadian government also agreed to reduce catches of U.S.-bound chinook and coho.
Since that time, a Treaty working group has been looking at the issue of equity — the basic principle that states that each country is entitled to receive benefits equal to the production from its rivers. In the eight years since the Treaty was signed, the imbalance in interceptions has grown to five million fish, worth about $65 annually, in favour of the U.S.
But the talks have produced nothing. During negotiations in 1994, when all of the provisions of the Treaty are up for renewal, the U.S.
continues to refuse to address the imbalance, Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin told a coastal communities conference in Prince Rupert April 29.
"The U.S. wants to catch more Canadian salmon from the Fraser River," Tobin told delegates. "It see KEEP page 3
Check out can labels, union tells consumers
More and more U.S. canned salmon is being sold in Canadian retail stores under familiar Canadian brand labels — and the UFAWU wants consumers to look closely at what they're buying.
The union called a news conference May 10 to alert the public to the flood of U.S. imports and to press the provincial government to take steps to ensure that its "B.C. Product" labelling campaign isn't being misused to promote U.S. canned salmon.
UFAWU president John Radosevic also reiterated the UFAWU's call for legislation to curb exports of
unprocessed salmon from the province to ensure that B.C. fish doesn't end up in U.S. cans that are then imported into the province for retail sale.
Using cans of salmon to illustrate the point, Radosevic and UFAWU research director Sean Griffin told reporters that U.S. canned sockeye and pink salmon under B.C. Packers' Clover Leaf label and the Ocean's label is showing up with increasing frequency in retail stores. Often cans of U.S. fish appear in the same display bin or side by side with Canadian fish, both with labels that see U.S., B.C. page 10