This post was originally published to The Fisherman website. More archived The Fisherman blog posts can be found on our Archive Page.
Problem:
Licenses and Quotas are increasingly owned by large corporations.
Solutions:
- Lobby Provincial and Federal governments to prevent this from going ahead
- Mandatory disclosure on who owns licenses/quotas – no ‘corporate veil’
- Education – license should be owned by Canadians only
- Food security – fish is food
- Canadian taxpayer pays for management but value goes out of Canada
- Jobs are lost – shore sector and communities suffer
- Draw parallels with housing ownership in Vancouver
- Call on federal and provincial governments to increase % of community owned quota (GDA authority over Groundfish Development Quota)
- Province must represent communities and BC residents
- Owner-operator – investors can’t own
- Fleet separation – no processors can own licenses
- Need to develop method to compensate investors who have already bought quota/licenses
- A transition fund to permit those fishers who have invested in quota to transition to compensate them for their investments
- PIICAF gave 7 years to divest yourself of quota that was leased out
- Lose 10%/year of quota if leased out. The 10% goes into a pool for others