RATIONALIZING THE SALMON AND ROE-HERRING FISHERIES 113 



Government's Responsibilities in Fleet Reduction 



Recommendations in my Preliminary' Report for a 

 major fleet-reduction program involving purchase of 

 excess capacity by the government have been widely sup- 

 ported within the fishing industr>'; but others have 

 expressed reservations about such government interven- 

 tion, and the government itself has hesitated to endorse 

 the proposal. I infer that some of the reservations are 

 based on misunderstandings about the government's 

 proper responsibilities in this matter. So those responsi- 

 bilities should be clearly defined. 



That confusion should surround this issue is not sur- 

 prising: to propose that government should deliberately 

 set out to reduce excess productive capacity in private 

 industry is unusual, and the need arises from a unique 

 and complicated problem. 



The essential point is that the government should issue 

 no more licences to harvest fish than the resources can 

 reasonably support, and if it issues too many licences, it 

 has a responsibility to reduce them. !n other words, the 

 government must accept responsibility for reducing 

 fishing privileges when they are patently excessive. This 

 responsibility rests on statutes and innumerable support- 

 ing documents that explicitly state that the federal gov- 

 ernment is responsible for conserving and managing fish 

 resources, and on the fact that fishing fleets can (and 

 undoubtedly do) impair its ability to do so. Moreover, 

 federal fisheries policy has historically, and especially in 

 recent years, been committed to the "orderly develop- 

 ment of the fisheries. . . .'"* This obviously implies that it 

 is responsible for promoting economic performance, 

 which is impeded as fleet capacity is excessive. 



If a govenmient issued rights to cut timber, or to take 

 water from a stream, or to use forage on a range, and it 

 later became obvious that it had issued too many for the 

 resource to sustain, we would certainly expect the govern- 

 ment to cut back on the number and size of the privi- 

 leges. The present circumstances in our fisheries are par- 

 allel: the government every year issues far ttx) many 

 fishing licences for a healthy industry. It must therefore 

 reduce the number of fishing privileges now outstanding. 



Alternatives 



The question now is how the government can reduce 

 fishing privileges in the present circumstances. Some 

 commentators advocate simply leaving fishermen to go 

 broke if the resources cannot sustain them. I cannot sup- 

 port this position. Quite apart from the unacceptability of 

 a government leaving an industry to flounder after hav- 

 ing, in eflect, invited too many to share in a limited 

 resource, this proposal confuses bankruptcy with elimi- 

 nating licensed fishing capacity. When a vesselowner can 

 no longer meet his financial obligations, his creditor may 



foreclose and lay claim to his vessel. It is then typically 

 sold for whatever it will bring. But the vessel will not 

 disappear, and the licence will not evaporate; it will end 

 up in someone else's hands, as those involved in the busi- 

 ness of fishing know from long experience: 



Unless some form of buyback or other 

 method to remove fishing power is found, the 

 vicious circle will continue. Some fishermen 

 will go broke and either the bank or the 

 fishermen will sell the vessel to another fisher- 

 man who will go back out and put more pres- 

 sure on the resource, taking some fish out of 

 other fishermens' nets in the process.'" 



In short, it is naive to expect that market forces can be 

 depended upon to eliminate fishing privileges or the 

 excess capacity of the licensed fleet. 



The most appealing solution is for the government to 

 establish licensing arrangements that will enable the 

 industry to rationalize itself This can be done in some 

 circumstances through a system of transferable quotas, as 

 I suggest in the next chapter. But that solution is imprac- 

 tical at present for the salmon and roe-herring fleets. 

 Thus, we are driven inexorably to the conclusion that the 

 government must reduce the number of salmon and roe- 

 herring licences, and the most equitable means of doing 

 so is through compensating licensees for voluntarily relin- 

 quishing their licences. 



Compensation Policy 



In the course of my public hearings, mixed opinions 

 were expressed about the efl^ectiveness of fleet-reduction 

 efl'orts. Many were critical of the previous buy-back pro- 

 grams, usually on the grounds that the vessels purchased 

 were usually small, old and decrepit, and had accounted 

 for only a small portion of the catch. Hence, their 

 removal from the fleet did not significantly improve the 

 performance of the remaimng vessels. My investigations 

 indicate that this criticism is unjustified: the vessels pur- 

 chased in each gear class had recorded very close to aver- 

 age landings in that class. In any event, the concern 

 seems to reflect some misunderstanding. The main point 

 is that the licences were eliminated: they could (and 

 almost certainly would by now) have been transferred to 

 new vessels with much greater fishing power. Indeed, pur- 

 chases of older and less costly vessels probably enabled 

 more licensed tonnage to be removed for the money 

 expended. 



Support for a buy-back is usually qualified; different 

 groups have different views about who should bear the 

 cost, which sectors of the fleet should be reduced most, 

 who should administer the program and so on. However, 

 I can report that, since the publication of my Preliminary 

 Report with its review of this problem and specific pro- 



