Carving the Salmon Pie by Greg Gordon

Carving the Salmon Pie

by Greg Gordon

It's by design that federal fisheries advisors are reconsidering contentious Pacific salmon allocation issues. Stemming from a recommendation from the Pacific Roundtable, an industry driven process, commercial fishers concerned about declining access to chinook and coho stocks appear to be seeking redress.

In December, 1996, Dr. Art May, an independent advisor to the minister of fisheries, released Altering Course, a report on intersectoral allocations of salmon. May is a former fisheries deputy minister with over 30 years of management experience. His report is the result of meetings with stakeholders, workshops, submitted briefs and discussion papers received over the course of nine months.

Since its release, Altering Course has been regarded as a contentious document--particularly by the sports sector. It pursued the subject of monetary compensation for commercial fishers, through a special fund created by doubling sports licence fees, when reallocation was desirable because of predicted low abundance of chinook and coho stocks.

At first glance, such terms seem a reasonable option. Salmon, however, are a commonly held resource--all citizens of Canada, present and future, are owners--therefore what exactly are sport fishers purchasing? Commercial fishers hold no legal right to allocation. Furthermore, it could be argued that if angling licence fees are now undervalued the principals should rightfully be the beneficiaries of any increase.

It seems reasonable too that Canadians should realize the best economic return from salmon harvest after conservation and Section 35 aboriginal food and ceremonial rights are met.

Those benefits were underscored in a 1996 report by ARA Consulting called, The Economic Value of Salmon: Chinook and Coho in B.C. In a comparison of expenditures, that report demonstrated that a sport caught chinook or coho generates $671 per fish as opposed to $26 for the commercial sector. The report also stated that recreational fishing contributed five times the economic value for Canada with a 20 per cent impact on that resource.

In considering some causative reasons behind low salmon abundance--habitat destruction, past overharvest by the commercial sector, fraudulent catch reporting by the industry, overharvest by Alaskan fishers, and unfavourable ocean conditions--it seems the sport sector might be asked to bear more than its share of burden. And as it appears the provincial government has recently come to realize, increasing sport fishing license fees can be much akin to killing the goose who laid the golden egg.

The fisheries minister would do well to consider all implications before instituting a public access fee increase based upon a perceived moral obligation.

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: Greg Gordan; No reprinting without permission from the author.