RATIONALIZING THE SALMON AND ROE-HERRING FISHERIES 1 1 1 



tive above — will, by the end of 1993, have had 10 years 

 of fishing without the extra annual charges paid by those 

 who acquire fresh licences as a result of their bids. 



Certain other features of this program should be noted: 



i) Licensees will be required to pay no more for new 

 fishing privileges than they are expressly willing to 

 pay. At the same time, the concern that restrictive 

 licensing bestows capital gains on licensees should 

 end: under these proposals licensees will pay to the 

 Crown the value of the rights they acquire. More- 

 over, any subsequent transfers would not provide 

 vendors with opportunities for gains they had not 

 themselves paid for. 



ii) These procedures enable the government to capture 

 the full value of the resources allocated for harvest- 

 ing, as evaluated by the fishermen themselves. This is 

 consistent with the policy objective indicated in my 

 terms of reference. 



iii) The bidding system will ensure that those who place 

 the highest value on fishing will continue to partici- 

 pate. Segregating bidding by fishery and fleet sector 

 should eliminate biases that might otherwise arise 

 from the greater financial strength of certain gear 

 types. And the limits profX)sed in Chapter 8 on the 

 holdings of any single licensee will prevent fishing 

 privileges from becoming unduly concentrated. 



iv) With fixed terms for all licences, licensmg will no 

 longer rest on indefinite government commitments. 

 Immediately, licensees will be granted the security of 

 10-year terms, and beyond that, in the normal course 

 of events, licensees would hold privileges with 

 remaining terms ranging between 1 and 10 years. 



v) Further, with new 10-year licences being allocated 

 every year, newcomers will, after 1993. have the 

 opportunity to enter the fisheries at predictable inter- 

 vals by paying the government for licences rather 

 than paying other licensees through transfers. 



vi) When this fleet-reduction plan is combined with the 

 catch allocation policy recommended earlier, after 

 the initial 10-year transitional period the catch allo- 

 cation among gear sectors will be identical to that at 

 its inception, since each gear sector will have been 

 reduced by the same proportion (50 percent). 



Some fishermen have suggested that open competition 

 for fishing privileges would favour owners of large ves- 

 sels. This is not supported by the evidence. Statistics on 

 salmon landings indicate that the gross earnings per ton 

 of licensed vessel capacity are actually lower for the larg- 

 est vessels in each gear category. (When herring landings 

 are added, the largest boats do almost as well, per 

 licensed ton.) So the system should not discriminate 

 against smaller boatowners; in all categories the owners 



of the most efficiently structured vessels, and with the 

 best skipf)er and crew, will have the competitive advan- 

 tage. 



I propose that Indian licences in the salmon and roe- 

 herring fisheries be included with other licences in deter- 

 mining a target fleet. However, as I explain in Chapter 12. 

 the government has a special responsibility to protect 

 opportunities for Indians in the commercial fisheries, and 

 I endorse an Indian corporation supported by the 

 Department of Indian and Northern Affairs to assist in 

 this. By participating in the bidding for new licences, that 

 corporation would be free to prevent the reduction of 

 and possibly increase, Indian participation. These 

 arrangements are consistent with the general pohcy I 

 have advocated elsewhere in this report: that the fisheries 

 authorities have a responsibility to accommodate pro- 

 grams to deal with special social problems, but that 

 designing and subsidizing such programs should rest with 

 agencies better suited for these purposes. 



The magnitude of fleet reduction I prop»ose here is 

 greater than some estimates of surplus capacity, but 

 many underestimate the potential capacity of the fleet 

 unencumbered by many of the restrictions on time, loca- 

 tion and gear that have been imposed to constrain fishing 

 power. For example, the seine and gillnet sectors are 

 commonly restricted to one day of fishing per week dur- 

 ing the salmon season, and the fishing capacity in the roe- 

 herring fishery is even more exce.ssive. In view of the 

 opportunities for rela.\ing some of the present restrictions 

 on fishing power, and the inevitable progress in fishing 

 technology. I have no doubt that half the present tonnage 

 in these fleets will be capable of harvesting the catch 10 

 years from now. The need for increased escapements in 

 the short term, the possibility of increased catches in the 

 long term through stock rehabilitation and enhancement, 

 and changes in fishing methods and technology, all raise 

 additional uncertainties about the best size and structure 

 of fleets in the future. 



I do not suggest that this target fleet will necessarily be 

 optimal in any techmcal or economic sense. With the 

 information available at present, no one can rehably 

 specify the optimal fleet size and structure (indeed, in the 

 long run the best fishing system may well include land- 

 based wiers for certain salmon stocks). Eight years ago a 

 Minister's advisory committee recommended that — 



The Fisheries and Marine Service should 

 undertake, as a matter of urgency, an assess- 

 ment of the relative potential economic 

 efficiencies of the three major gear types, and 

 of combination units. Reliable information of 

 this type is not now available, and is urgently 

 needed for the guidance of the Buy-Back 

 Committee.* 



