Treaty will surrender our future
NO responsible Canadian believes that Canada and the United States can co-exist without a salmon interception agreement. We must have a treaty that protects Canada's salmon for this generation and those to come. But the proposed agreement achieved in Lynnwood last month fails to meet that basic objective because it has not been negotiated on a basis of equality. The fundamental principle that Canadians will harvest Canadian salmon has been thrown out.
Some will argue that while this is not a perfect treaty for Canada, it is better than the alleged alternative of no agreement at all. This is a frightening endorsement when we examine the stakes on the Fraser River alone. Putting the agreement in its best possible light, we find that it guarantees the U.S. 2.24 million Fraser sockeye in perpetuity.
That is one-third of the record 6.5 million that returned in 1979. It is 2.24 million Canadian salmon a year that Canadians will conserve, husband and enhance but never catch, pack to a plant, process or sell.
Since negotiations began in earnest in 1971, U.S. interceptions have more than doubled. Because the proposed agreement does not end interceptions but actually guarantees them, it will not limit the steady growth in U.S. catch. A bilateral commission managing Fraser stocks wherever they are caught must guarantee an annual U.S. share and will be subject to the same leverage and pressure the U.S. has exerted to increase its advantage during the last decade. It is wrong to say that this agreement is better than nothing. With this agreement or without it, U.S. interceptions of Canadian salmon will continue at a rate we can never match.
This agreement must be opposed by every Canadian as a betrayal of our national
I'd be out of business if it wasn't for you guys!'
interest. We can defeat this agreement and come out ahead if we can force the Liberal government to the realization that nothing less than a truly equitable agreement will do.
Since these negotiations began, we have been in a fish war our government has refused to fight. American interceptions of our fish have increased while we meekly accepted expulsion of our troll fleet from U.S. waters, persistent U.S. violations of Fraser River convention closures and increased interceptions of our northern stocks. Yet as recently as July, fisheries minister Romeo LeBlanc refused to mount a Canadian interception fishery on Alaska-bound pinks to avoid disrupting treaty negotiations.
We have the ability, if the government
wishes, to answer U.S. pressures with fisheries of our own in San Juan, on the trans-boundary rivers and on U.S.-bound pinks in the north. The government can do more than that. It can link treaty agreement to other matters of joint concern between the two nations.
The harder we fight this agreement, the better our chances of winning improvements to minimize interceptions and to ensure that Canadians harvest all Canadian salmon soon, not at some undetermined date in the twenty-first century, if ever.
The UFAWU urges rejection of the interception treaty. It is not good enough. It is worse than nothing. It is the surrender of our future.
Fish and Ships
HE is described as "relentless in his efforts to encourage fishermen to organize and achieve a strong voice in the management of his own affairs." His colleagues say his "goal has been to ensure the industry can provide its participants with a respectable living and security and to guarantee that never again would being a fisherman be considered a second class occupation."
We are told that this superman has such "vision and commitment" that he has "gone a long way in the revitalization of the Canadian fishing industry and the pride now so evident in its participants."
Who is it? Can it be Homer Stevens, or Newfoundland union organizer Richard Cashin? No, friends, it is fisheries minister Romeo LeBlanc as seen through the eyes of his former parliamentary secretary Jim Fleming, a Toronto Liberal MP.
Fleming was singing LeBlanc's praises during debate in the House of Commons on the motion by NDP MP Ted Miller condemning Liberal mismanagement of the industry. It's strange how Liberals sitting in Ottawa see everything backwards.
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The piscine football in the picture at the top of this column is none other than a smooth lumpsucker, taken by the crew of the Alke 2 last July while seining near Boston Rocks. With a body like an inflatable toy and the face of a gargoyle, it is a fairly common feature of B.C. waters, we are told, but rarely taken in a seine. Crewman John Clark says the lump-sucker looked peeved at its plight and was thrown back.
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Former Fisherman editor Hal Griffin is not a candidate for first Canadian in space, as the accompanying photo of
4/THE FISHERMAN — NOVEMBER 7,
• LUMPSUCKER
him at the cosmonaut training centre in Zvezdny, north of Moscow, would suggest. He was in fact touring the centre with director Col. Alexei Gubarev (right) as part of a five-week trip to the USSR to research a book on the country's regional development. Griffin dropped in last week to pronounce the trip exhausting but exhilarating and he is hard at work on a first draft.
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The latest industry report available from the fisheries department is the Timing of Herring Spawnings in British Columbia, 1942-1979, by A. S. Hour-ston. Fishermen who want to test their pet theories can get the document — mostly computer-generated tables — from the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo.
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Fresh herring, evidently from a test boat, is on sale at Billingsgate for 49 cents a pound, about $980 a ton and a far
1980
cry from the $153 minimum fishermen have been able to negotiate with the Fisheries Association. There's profit in the food fishery, all right, but fishermen aren't seeing any of it.
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Bob Bygdnes phoned the other day to tell us we erred in our.obituary on his father, Carl Magne Bygdnes, who died Sept. 3. His father did not become a deckhand after an illness in his early years, as we had been informed, but remained an active skipper on many boats like the B.C.Producer and the San Juan 2. His first boat was the Gulvik and his second the Robert B, which he sold in the early 1950s. He was active in the fishing industry aboard fish boats until he was 63, when he took over a fisheries patrol vessel until his retirement. He was 75 when he died.
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Before our credibility in Prince Rupert goes completely to the dogs, we should
rectify some errors in recent issues. Mike Darnell's article on the Babine fence was illustrated with photographs by David and Cindy Cunliffe, residents of Terrace who have nothing to do with the fisheries department, as we suggested in a photo cutline. And labor candidates for civic office in Prince Rupert, in addition to Darnell, are Dan Millar (not Bill) and Jan Thorsen (not Joy). Please vote for them.
The sorry-looking but still graceful wooden vessel on the ways at Stirling these days is the Thomas F. Bayard, the last of the B.C. sealing schooners and one-time Fraser River lightship. Stirling manager Jack Ballard tells us his crew is too busy repairing vessels bruised in the Nitinat fishery to make any progress on the Bayard, which is headed for the Maritime Museum in Vancouver.
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GRIFFIN AND COLONEL
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