Coming out of the December convention held in Prince Rupert, UFAWU-Unifor has put the focus for 2018 on a number of concerns expressed by the membership at the Prince Rupert sessions, with the labour organization putting them forward for public review and seeking the input of North Coast residents on potential solutions.
As a follow up to the convention which elected Joy Thorkelson to the post of President for UFAWU/Unifor, the union has been making use of a blog in the union publication The Fisherman to provide some background on the key areas of concern for those working in the fishing industry,
Among the issues that local fish workers and their counterparts along the coast have highlighted are:
Low Prices - Return to Active Fishermen is down
Corporate - Control over Our Resources
Capacity - to deal with different policy forums
Lack of Resources
Restrictions to areas/Single fishery licences
Other User Groups dictating how our fisheries are prosecuted
Compliance rates - Different rules for different fisheries: DFO changes regarding monitoring/compliance/traceability
Public is not educated on fish matters - economic, social and biological -- How to counter misinformation
Difficulty to work together with other sectors when we are always under attack
Enforcement of regulations - Habitat/Threat Control
All Fisheries need better resource management
DFO is negotiating treaty provisions with some First Nations and is not allowing the Commercial Fleet to fish during the negotiations
First Nations and Commercial Fish Harvesters need to work together to benefit all commercial fisheries
Fishermen are not united - There are Few strong Fish Harvester ogranizations
Active Fishermen are not represented. Investors are represented who may have different goals than active fishermen
Licences and quotas are increasingly being owned by foreign corporations
Young people are not seeing fishing as a career, retiring fishermen cannot sell licenses/quotas at a reasonable return
Commercial Fishermen need access to more fish
The Problem/Solutions project is available for local workers and interested observers through The Fishermen, it provides the forum for those in the fishing industry to weigh in, with a number of potentials solutions for some of the issues listed above already listed.
You can review the full project and make your contribution to it here.
The issue of the North Coast fishery was one of the feature items for Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen's year end notes for local TV station CFTK.
The MP noted that there is a need for fishery reform in Canada, with some of the measures he is looking towards could offer some relief for the struggling sector on the North Coast.
You can explore some of his concerns and commentary on the issues here.
For more items related to the fishery on the North Coast and beyond, see our archive page here.
Cross posted from the North Coast Review
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