ENFORCEMENT 209 



policies for use in the regions. His responsibilities also 

 include developing fishery officers' career paths and 

 opportunities for promotion within the Department. 



Until March 1981, when it was disbanded, the enforce- 

 ment effort in the Pacific region was supported by a Gen- 

 eral Investigation Unit. It was established in 1975 in 

 response to the need for specialized enforcement staff to 

 carry out detailed investigations of complicated viola- 

 tions in all divisions. The unit expanded to six members 

 in 1 979 and investigated such matters as the illegal trans- 

 port of fish out of British Columbia, the illegal sales of 

 fish locally, the illegal market in herring and salmon roe, 

 and the illegal sale of fish caught by sport fishermen and 

 river poachers. Their investigations resulted in a number 

 of successful prosecutions against some of the more 

 sophisticated offenders in these fisheries. The group was 

 disbanded in 1981 on the grounds that its exp^ense could 

 not be justified in the face of more demanding financial 

 priorities. There were also some concerns within the 

 Department about the safety of the members of the units 

 while they were engaged in covert investigations and the 

 lack of cooperation from local field officers. 



In its absence, the Department calls on the R.C.M.P. 

 and other police forces when fisheries personnel encoun- 

 ter circumstances that could lead to serious confronta- 

 tion. However, this is not entirely satisfactory since the 

 availability of local police varies according to their priori- 

 ties and other demands on their time, and because most 

 are understandably unfamiliar with the intricacies of 

 fisheries law. 



Thus, the Department depends primarily on the 125 

 fishery officers as their front line enforcers, but this 

 approach suffers from serious shortcomings. Because the 

 fishery officers have other demands on their time, they 

 frequently have to use a firefighting approach to enforce- 

 ment, responding to emergency situations as they arise. 

 In addition, some officers put a low priority on enforce- 

 ment. A recent study indicated that only 19 percent of 

 the fishery officers in this region saw themselves primarily 

 as enforcement officers; and almost 50 percent saw them- 

 selves as resource managers.' This might account for 

 almost 25 piercent of fishery officers in the Pacific region 

 laying no charges at all under the Act or regulations in 

 1979. 



There are a number of explanations for the reluctance 

 of so many fishery officers to carry out enforcement 

 duties, even though enforcement is such an important 

 part of protection of the resource. First, most are primar- 

 ily resource managers by training and by inclination. 

 Enforcement to them is viewed as distasteful and some- 

 times hazardous work that interferes with their manage- 

 ment and conservation activities. It is essentially police 

 work requiring specialized training and knowledge of the 

 complexities of the law to be administered, and wilhng- 



ness to get involved in investigations, interrogations and, 

 occasionally, potentially dangerous situations. For those 

 with a resource management orientation all of these 

 activities are unfamiliar and often unpleasant. It may 

 also generate ill will toward them in the communities in 

 which they work and live. Since individual fishery officers 

 themselves are apparently left to determine their own 

 priorities between enforcement and management func- 

 tions, it is enforcement that often suffers. 



Second, headquarters apparently does not require 

 fishery officers to emphasize their enforcement functions. 

 According to testimony at the Commission's hearings, 

 reluctance to perform them has never led to the dismissal 

 of an officer. Even when charges are laid, they often take 

 years to proceed through court; almost a quarter of the 

 charges laid in 1979 are still in limbo. The reasons for 

 these long delays are unclear, but one possible explana- 

 tion is that fishery officers who lay charges are not 

 required to adequately follow them up. 



These considerations have led me to conclude that the 

 Department is operating under a serious misconception 

 in implementing its enforcement policy. It assumes that, 

 because resource management and enforcement share the 

 same goal of resource protection, the management of the 

 resource and the regulation of its users require the same 

 kinds of specialized knowledge and skills. In fact, 

 enforcement demands entirely different sorts of knowl- 

 edge and skills from resource management. If the 

 enforcement efforts of the Department are to be effective, 

 the organization of the Pacific region must reflect this 

 distinction by allocating the responsibilities for these two 

 functions to different groups. 



The idea of separating management and enforcement 

 functions of conservation officers is not new. The Direc- 

 tor of the Alaskan Division of Fish and Wildlife Protec- 

 tion stated the issue as follows: 



Law enforcement is a full-time profession and 

 wildlife law enforcement even to a greater 

 degree because of the greatly diminished pub- 

 lic participation in reporting and the unusual 

 and remote locations where violations occur. 

 Effective enforcement requires planning, it 

 requires a person selected for his sincere 

 interest in enforcement as a profession not as 

 a missionary to save ammals or fish, not as 

 a part-time officer and part-time biologist/ 

 manager. But a real honest to goodness 

 employee that has a sincere desire to become 

 professional within the entire justice system. 

 He must be willing to assume the identity of a 

 police officer as much as the name may 

 bother some managers both physically, mor- 

 ally and philosophically. And he must leave 

 behind the outdated philosophy that ade- 



