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12/10/2010 2010 halibut season in peril

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2010 halibut season in peril

Rob Allcock, President, Sport Fishing Institute of BC, Special to Courier-Islander

Published: Friday, December 10, 2010

In 2011, recreational halibut anglers could face the very real prospect of having their fishery end mid-summer.

I'm not kidding.

Indeed if DFO insists on holding the recreational sector to a 12% share of Canada's allocation under the current halibut

treaty, anglers had better not plan on going fishing later than July.

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Ironically, this won't be because there is any shortage of halibut. It is because the recreational sector will have been held

to an arbitrary 12% share in order to protect the other 88% which, government has given for free to 436 commercial

quota holders.

What is infuriating is that most of the "gifted" quota holders never set foot on a fishing boat. They are "Slipper Skippers";

Fishlords, with the power to make everyone else sharecroppers. In 2010 of the 436 quota holders, only 140 or so boat

fished. The rest of the Slipper Skippers sat comfortably at home and leased their quota, (the quota they got for free) for

great profits. They will do the same thing next year. I mean heck, why would you want to work for a living when the

Canadian Government hands you a public resource for free.

When commercial halibut quota fisheries were established in 1991, a share of the annual harvest was parcelled out to 43

licence holders and their 436 boats. At that point, all the quota holders were active fishers and the shares were based on

 past performance. The quota system ended the annual "gold rush" approach to the fishery and contributed to greater 

safety for the harvesters and better prices for their fish. It seems perverse that having accomplished its original objectives

the quota system is now undermining the economic basis of both the commercial and recreational sectors.

What is even more infuriating is the Conservative government's inability or unwillingness to do anything to remedy this

colossal imbalance. Remember, the original 88/12 allocation decision was made by Liberal Fisheries Minister Robert

Thibault in the final years of the Chretien Government. Yet despite that fact, successive Conservative fisheries ministers

insist on supporting the policy.

And while I know East Coast Fisheries Ministers Loyola Hearn and Gail Shea do not understand the importance of the

recreational halibut fishery to British Columbians and to the B.C. economy, I cannot understand why North Island MP

John Duncan is so willing to sacrifice the interests of a 100,000 recreational halibut anglers in order to support 436commercial quota holders?

Duncan's stance is even more troubling because he served as a special adviser to Fisheries Minister Hearn when the

Conservatives were elected in 2006 and had an early opportunity to overturn the Liberal policy. But actions speak loud

than words and it seems clear that Duncan feels that the recreational halibut fishery is unimportant to his constituents both

as a social pursuit and as a significant employer on Northern Vancouver Island.

There is a solution. Recreational anglers who are told that they can't go halibut fishing next year because the sport share

has been exhausted might want to remind Mr. Duncan that the problem could be solved in a minute if Shea would simply

exercise her much acclaimed absolute discretion under the Fisheries Act. She could make a lot of people happy in both

the recreational and commercial sectors if she simply reallocated some of the "Slipper Skipper" quota to the sport fisher

and the remainder to the active commercial fleet. I doubt there would be any public outcry about the fact that a bunch o

"Fish Lords" were losing something most of them got for nothing in the first place.

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