M 1 K JNSINCi AND fl.liKr OKVKI.OPMI;NI IMI It N 



vide .1 tbundation on vvtiKh mi>ic ctVcctivc quola licens- 

 ing can be built. 



For the complicated salmon hkI loc-herring tishencs, 

 quota licensing is not fcasihic. at least at (iicscnl. I iticrc- 

 t'ore propose m Chapter ^) iniprovenients to the liniitcd- 

 cntr> licensing system to strengthen control of fishing 

 capacity and to dampen incentives to invest in expansit)ti 

 as well as a program to reduce the excessive size ol the 

 fleets. 



QiMtta Ikx'iKX's Quota licences, through which indi- 

 vidual fishermen are authorized to harvest specific quan- 

 tities of fish, have attracted increasing attention and 

 experimentation in recent years. This technique is similar 

 to that used to regulate the use of other renewable natural 

 resources owned by the Crown, such as timber, water, 

 grazing rights, and so on. The government issues licences 

 that authorize use of specific amounts of the resources, 

 and the total amount licensed is constrained to the total 

 recoverable yields of the resource. 



Vanants of this "stinting" approach have been adopted 

 in some of the smaller fisheries on this coast and, follow- 

 ing recommendations in this Commission's Preliminary 

 Report, it is now being adopted for the halibut fishery. It 

 has been introduced much more widely on Canada's 

 Atlantic coast. While this report was being written the 

 governments of New Zealand and Chile both announced 

 proposals for introducing quota systems in their fisheries, 

 as did the U.S. authorities with respect to the Alaskan 

 halibut fishery (all, incidentally, referring to this Commis- 

 sion's Preliminary Report). 



The outstanding advantage of this approach is that it 

 eliminates the basic cause of overcapacity in the fishing 

 industry by removing the incentives of individual fisher- 

 men to protect and increase their share of the catch. So, 

 rather than encouraging fishermen to competitively and 

 defensively increase their fishing power, it encourages 

 them to adapt their vessels and fishing methods to take 

 their licensed catch at the lowest cost. 



This approach has other advantages as well : 



i) It provides a direct means of controlling the total 

 catch and ensuring that it will be within the sus- 

 tained yield targets set for the stocks. 



ii) It frees the regulatory authorities from many of the 

 problems associated with regulating fishing activity. 

 Some controls on fishing would obviously still be 

 required for the biological reasons noted earlier. But, 

 with the total catch controlled by licences, most of 

 the restrictions on vessels, gear and fishing time that 

 are now used to prevent overfishing would become 

 unnecessary. 



III) It ailds to the security of fishermen and eliminates 

 nuich ol llic risk they otherwise face about then 

 catch. 



IV) h can accommodate changes in economic conditions 

 without tlisruptive effects: notably, if fish prices rise 

 or for other reasons the fishery becomes more 

 profitable, earnings will increa.se, but there will not 

 be an automatic tendency to expand fishing capac- 

 ity. 



v) It lends itself to a variety of methods for raising reve- 

 nues in the form of licence fees and landings charges. 



vi) It is, in principle at least, administratively simple. 

 And because it deals directly with the problem of 

 regulating the catch, once licences are issued the reg- 

 ulatory authorities can concentrate on resource man- 

 agement rather than on regulating the fleet's fishing 

 activities. 



This method does have some disadvantages: to ensure 

 compliance with the quota, reliable information on land- 

 ings is required; if a fishery is based on several stocks that 

 require individual management, separate quotas may 

 have to be issued for each; adjusting quotas in fisheries 

 that depend on stocks that fluctuate widely and 

 unpredictably is difficult. These latter problems preclude 

 adoption of quota licences for the salmon and roe-herring 

 fisheries. 



However, as a means for regulating the catch and pro- 

 moting fleet rationalization, licensing individual fisher- 

 men's quotas holds more promise than any of the other 

 approaches described above. Wherever it has been intro- 

 duced, although there have been various adjustment 

 problems, it has substantially eased problems of resource 

 management and reversed trends toward overcapitaliza- 

 tion. 



I therefore propose in Chapter 10 that quota systems 

 be adopted or improved in all of the developed commer- 

 cial fisheries other than salmon and roe-herring. 



Mariculture leases The progression from unrestricted 

 licensing, to limited-entry licensing, to quota licensing 

 represents successively more clearly defined privileges 

 granted to resource users. A further step in this progres- 

 sion involves issuing rights to individual fishermen or 

 groups to the resources in a prescribed area. The rights 

 take the form of leases; like grazing leases, trapping 

 licences or forest management licences, they confer 

 exclusive rights to fisheries resources over defined areas. 

 The only examples of mariculture leases on the Pacific 

 coast at present are those issued for shellfish by the Prov- 

 ince of British Columbia. 



This approach off'ers all the advantages of quotas noted 

 above, and some additional ones as well. First, if the 



