Dollars floating down the Skeena

In less than seven days the economy in Prince Rupert has lost nearly half a million dollars, that the charge of UFAWU-CAW, the union representing the fishing industry workers in the city. With the local sockeye fishery experiencing an unprecedented run, the harvesting of the run has been stopped by intergovernmental wrangling between DFO and the Ministry of the Environment.

The silly bit of governmental finger pointing has even resulted in the Mayor of the City, Herb Pond heading to Vancouver to sit outside the doors of the DFO office there. Pond was there on Friday morning to remind DFO bureaucrats that there are real lives at stake here, and vows to return on Tuesday to make his point again. (We assume he spent the rest of the weekend at the PNE trying to win the dream home for the city, or taking part in some other touristy things).

There was a weekend fishery granted by DFO for seine boats, but the gill net fleet was to remain tied up at the docks. That seine opening was categorized as nothing but a media trick by Joy Thorkelson of UFAWA-CAW, so it very well be one more day of office door watching for the Mayor in Vancouver.

The Daily News had the full story on the increasingly frustrating state of the fishery on the North coast in its Friday edition.

IT’S OUR TURN TO CATCH SOCKEYE, SAYS UNION
By James Vassallo
The Daily News
Friday, September 1, 2006
Page One

Prince Rupert has lost nearly half a million dollars in less than a week thanks to government dithering.

The local sockeye fishery, experiencing an unprecedented run, has been shut down again because of too much bycatch on steelhead stocks. A request to catch .6 per cent more steelhead as both the provincial Ministry of the Environment and the federal Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) claiming it’s the other agencies decision.

“It’s a real finger-pointing exercise and we sort of wonder who is actually benefiting by the .6 per cent it would have taken to get our fishery going,” said Joy Thorkelson, United Fisherman and Allied Workers’ Union (UFAWU-CAW) northern representative. “Certainly, the local steelheader who wants to gout from Terrace or Smithers isn’t going to see one bit of difference.”

The situation is even more frustrating for commercial fishermen in light of the work they’ve done to conserve the stocks over the last decade.

“That’s what makes fishermen angrier, the fact that we’ve been so selective in the past 10 years. We haven’t even come close to the (24 per cent steelhead cap),” said Thorkelson. “Our average in the last 10 years is not 24 per cent, it’s 605 per cent. We caught one per cent last year and the most we’ve caught (before this) is 12 per cent.

“The commercial fleet has taken only a small percentage of what they have been allowed. To be fair, it should be our turn.

The impact on fishermen has trickled down to the shoreworkers who may be forced onto social assistance this winter. The average hours worked by the top 120 seniority people at the two unionized plants is around 430 hours, however 595 hours are required for employment insurance.

“Every one of these days fishing would have given each one of these shoreworkers another full day of work,” she said. “To let hundreds of thousands of sockeye go to waste over 0.6 per cent is a disgrace. To lose hundreds of thousands of dollars because of government dithering, is a crime.

DFO has announced a weekend fishery for seine boats, however the 130-plus gillnetter fleet will stay at the dock.

“That of course is designed to be a media trick,” said Thorkelson of the announcement. “There’s probably five seine boats left here, and the fish that these boats have been catching because of the behaviour of the run is about 500 fish each.”

Prince Rupert Mayor Herb Pond has also decided to follow through with his desire to have someone from government stare him in the eyes and give him a straight “yes or no” on the issue.

“I’m camped in front of DFO’s office in Vancouver,” said Pond this morning. “I’m just sitting here to remind them there’s real people out there.”

“(DFO’s) so locked into numbers and percentages and political posturing and I just want to remind the employees, and they’re good employees, that there’s a human case here.”

The Mayor said he’ll also be back on Tuesday morning waiting for Fisheries when they return to work after the long weekend.

“I’m just going to stick with this … until they understand the money that could be earned in this fishing would be spent on getting kids back to school and would echo through the community and the small businesses of Prince Rupert from now to Christmas,” he said.