DFO says commercial elver fishers won’t be compensated under new quota plan

A national connection that would redistribute the wide quota for catching highly lucrative baby eels to idiosyncratic fishers volition not compensate commercialized licence-holders who employment those workers, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) says, leaving owners feeling betrayed by the government.

The section archetypal informed Maritime commercialized groups and fishermen of the projected aviator task successful a missive successful mid-October, designed to combat unlicensed sportfishing of the babe eels, known arsenic elvers, and violent confrontations that person unopen down the past 2 seasons.

The missive of intent said consultations would beryllium held and asked for feedback connected the proposal.

At the time, the section told elver fishers the quota redistribution programme sought to “broaden the organisation of benefits” and “would not beryllium accompanied by fiscal assistance oregon compensation to existing licence holders,” according to the letter.

More than a period later, a DFO spokesperson told Global News the section is inactive not considering compensation.

“Fisheries and Oceans Canada is presently conducting consultations connected the reallocation of elver quota, without compensation,” the spokesperson said successful an emailed connection Friday.

“Given the important increases in elver value and comparatively debased input costs, the commercial elver fishery presents a unsocial accidental to broaden the organisation of the prosperity that tin beryllium generated among assorted types of harvesters, perchance including young harvesters, employees of existing commercialized licence holders, and harvesters who enactment successful co-operative commercialized enterprises.”

Commercial licence-holders successful Nova Scotia and New Brunswick accidental the connection would not lone further harm their bottommost enactment but besides upset the manufacture arsenic a whole.

“It’s decidedly going to beryllium hard to support employees on,” Stanley King, a commercialized licence-holder with Atlantic Elver Fishery and spokesperson for the Canadian Committee for a Sustainable Eel Fishery, told Global News.

The DFO connection would connection 120 fishers presently employed by the 9 commercialized licence-holders their ain tiny elver licences for adjacent year’s season, and would besides connection elver licences to 30 fishers presently licensed to drawback big eels. The aviator would past for 3 years and travel caller regulatory changes to the elver fishery the DFO is moving to enactment successful spot for 2025.

The caller redistribution strategy would beryllium connected apical of an earlier connection successful June that would redistribute 50 per cent of the wide quota to section Indigenous groups to admit their court-approved close to marque a mean surviving from hunting, gathering and fishing.

Combined, King said that could mean 75 per cent of the wide quota — which hasn’t changed since 2005 — volition beryllium redistributed distant from commercialized licensees.

The section told Global News successful an earlier connection past week that it volition acceptable the wide quota earlier the play opens successful the spring. In its October missive of intent, the DFO said it sought to redistribute the quota “without expanding sportfishing unit connected the stock.”

The DFO said past week that consultations connected the projected redistribution programme would question comments on “the imaginable impacts a aviator mightiness person connected existing licence holders’ operations.”

The Fisheries Council of Canada wrote to the DFO earlier this period expressing “strong concerns” astir the proposal, which it said is “disruptive, lacks a thoughtful argumentation foundation, and seems driven by objectives that bash not see the afloat ramifications for the industry.”

A gathering held betwixt DFO officials and Nova Scotia elver fishers successful precocious October astir the connection — a signaling of which was reviewed by Global News — grew heated arsenic fishers angrily accused the authorities of putting their livelihoods astatine risk.

“It’s frustrating to person DFO continually say, ‘We recognize what your sentiment is, we perceive you, and we’re going to spell up and bash it anyway,” King said.

Elvers are fished astatine nighttime from coastal rivers successful Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Maine.

They are harvested successful the springtime arsenic they instrumentality to the rivers from their water spawning areas. They tin beryllium harvested utilizing minimal equipment, often with a bucket and a good funnel-shaped nett called a fyke nett oregon a dip net, making introduction into the lucrative marketplace easy.

The national authorities closed the commercialized babe eel fishery connected March 11 after unit and intimidation plagued past year’s sportfishing season successful Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

The 2020 play was besides unopen down for akin reasons.

At highest value, elvers person sold astatine astir $5,000 per kilogram, according to DFO — much than lobsters, scallops oregon salmon — making them the astir invaluable food by value successful Canada. King and different commercialized fishers accidental the existent worth is good beneath that and fluctuates twelvemonth to twelvemonth and wrong seasons.

But the imaginable for sky-high prices has made the fishery highly susceptible to poaching and atrocious actors from abroad. China is the ascendant marketplace for elvers, and immoderate buyers volition some under-pay connected the achromatic marketplace and overpay for licensed catches, driving retired morganatic Chinese buyers, King said.

The fearfulness among commercialized groups is that idiosyncratic fishers volition merchantability to the highest bidder alternatively than resisting the encroachment of atrocious actors.

“The authorities is going down a way that not lone volition destruct the incumbent businesses and their futures, but it’s going to fundamentally pb to a concern wherever the full scenery of the Canadian solid eel fishery is going to beryllium dominated by numbered companies,” said Mitchell Feigenbaum, an eel exporter and commercialized elver licence holder who runs South Shore Trading successful Port Elgin, N.B.

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In May, national officers seized a shipment of implicit 100 kilograms of elvers astatine Toronto Pearson International Airport they said was destined for overseas, valued betwixt $400,000 and $500,000.

King said that seizure was “a driblet successful the bucket” and that wide enforcement of amerciable sportfishing and exporting is astir non-existent, peculiarly on the rivers wherever elvers are really caught.

He said idiosyncratic licences volition marque fishers much susceptible not conscionable to the atrocious actors buying the product, but besides the imaginable of losing full catches if idiosyncratic retention and proscription instrumentality fails. Smaller quotas volition besides mean little salaries than what ample companies person been capable to wage those aforesaid workers.

“What the authorities has done with these employees is they person accrued their hazard dramatically,” King said.

Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier defended the quota redistribution connection astatine a House of Commons fisheries committee gathering successful October, telling MPs successful French that licences “should beryllium expanded to alteration economical prosperity.”

Conservative MP Rick Perkins compared the projected aviator programme to the authorities telling a Tim Hortons franchisee, “‘Well, I deliberation it’s unfair that you marque a batch of wealth from that franchise, truthful I volition instrumentality three-quarters of that concern and springiness it to your employees. It’s excessively atrocious you invested each this successful the concern — truthful bittersweet — but I’m going to marque it much equitable,’ successful immoderate unusual socialist world.”

Lebouthillier said Perkins’ analogy was “not existent astatine all” and that “young people, the adjacent generation, volition person entree to the resource” nether the caller program.

“She thinks she’s playing Robin Hood, and successful actuality, she’s putting these fishermen successful a worse-off concern than they presently are,” King said.

Perkins besides suggested astatine the committee gathering the summation successful licensees volition marque it harder for the authorities to enforce the instrumentality and halt atrocious actors, to which the curate promised caller regulations that volition code the issue.

King said Lebouthillier has refused to conscionable with the elver manufacture contempt aggregate requests.

Feigenbaum said connection letters for idiosyncratic licences are being sent to his recent, part-time declaration workers, alternatively than to the vocation employees who person worked for him for decades.

“How bash I adjacent explicate this to DFO?” helium said. “I fired a feline (for cause use) and helium got a letter… I’ve got 25-year employees that are getting ignored.

“In 2024 we mislaid each our income; 100 per cent of our net was destroyed. And successful the twelvemonth 2023, we mislaid similar 75 per cent of our earnings. So aft 2 years successful a enactment of this benignant of treatment, we fundamentally had to destruct our payroll. We mothballed a batch of our facilities. We’re moving connected a skeleton staff.”

Commercial fishers accidental they person tried to enactment with the DFO connected solutions to the elver fishery for years, but person seen their proposals — which see collaboration with First Nations — unopen down by the government.

“We deliberation there’s thing precise stinky going on,” Feigenbaum said.

—With files from Global’s Heidi Petracek and The Canadian Press