ABORIGINAL TREATY NEGOTIATIONS – FISHERIES COMPONENT (2005)

 

British Columbians want to see progress on treaties.  Negotiations between Canada, BC and Aboriginal groups are currently underway at 45 separate tables.  Four tables have agreements in principle (AIPs) in place and are in negotiations to finalize treaties; several others are close to this point.  Virtually all the tables will include provisions for fisheries.  Yet this one of the thorniest components with widespread opposition to harvest agreements and treaty protected sale of fish that result in special and separate commercial fisheries specific to each treaty group.

 

Despite this opposition, the commercial fishing sector understands and accepts that there will be increased access to fisheries by Aboriginal groups both through the treaty process and outside it.  The challenge is to move forward in an equitable way, assuring a level playing field so that no one group of commercial participants has a competitive advantage over another with fair compensation to the existing commercial sector for the cost of settling treaties through increased access to fish. 

 

The federal and provincial governments set up a Joint Task Group with Dr. Peter Pearse and Dr. Don McRae to look at the fisheries component of treaty negotiations.  The Pearse/McRae Joint Task Group report offers recommendations for reform that would encourage progress on treaties, enable the fishery to meet new conservation challenges, improve its long-term economic performance, and begin to reverse the decline of the salmon fishery.  Its prescription for reform is based on seven key changes:

 

·  an integrated commercial fishery with all participants fishing under the same rules and priority

·  a more responsive management regime

·  greater co-management and accountability for both stakeholders and managers

·  enhanced security of tenure (25 year evergreen licences)

·  enhanced certainty of harvest share through defined allocations (IQs)

·  transitional arrangements to accelerate Aboriginal groups’ access to commercial fisheries

·  legislative change to provide authority for reform and to depoliticize decision-making

 

These principles are widely accepted in the commercial sector and should form the basis for progress in the fisheries component of treaty negotiations. 

 

Shortly after the release of the Pearse/McRae report, the Aboriginal groups Summit and the BC Aboriginal Fisheries Commission released a parallel report, Our Place at the Table: Aboriginal groups in the BC Fishery, prepared by a group of aboriginal fisheries experts. Like Pearse/McRae, this report proposes solutions intended to bring a high degree of certainty to aboriginal and non-aboriginal interests alike while ensuring the conservation of the fisheries resource.  

 

Governments could make an important first step to bridging the gaps between the two reports and making significant progress on the fisheries component of land claims if they moved immediately to create an independent crown agency with a significant base capital fund to acquire licences in various fisheries for present AIP arrangements or for interim agreements to provide economic benefits to Aboriginal groups until comprehensive agreements are complete.  While this process is underway, these licences could be leased back to the existing commercial industry to generate additional revenue to supplement the original investment.

 

THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS

 

That the federal and provincial governments:

 

1. implement the above seven key changes recommended in the Joint Task Group report to guide both fisheries management and ensure that all fisheries components of treaties are consistent with these seven recommendations.  This includes equal treatment for treaty and non-treaty commercial fisheries;

 

2. formally declare that they will fairly compensate established harvesters for the transfer of allocation to Aboriginal groups to ensure that the costs of treaty settlements are borne equitably by all Canadians; and

 

3. immediately create an independent crown agency with a significant base capital fund to acquire licences in various fisheries for present AIP arrangements or for interim agreements to provide economic benefits to Aboriginal groups until comprehensive agreements are complete.