PM warned amendments to Fisheries Act threaten communities, B.C.
Watering down of the law poses a risk to fish and fish habitat
By Peter O'Neil
Edmonton Journal
May 14, 2012
OTTAWA — A new front in the battle against the federal government’s omnibus budget bill opened Monday when B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Cummins sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper warning of major threats to fishing communities and the environment if major Fisheries Act amendments are passed.
Cummins expressed concerns about the weakening of fisheries habitat provisions and warned that commercial and sports fishing communities across Canada could be squeezed out by First Nations fisheries due to new wording in Bill C-38.
Cummins, a former federal Tory MP and commercial fisherman who, like Harper, was elected as a Reformer in 1993, also suggested that British Columbians view the amendments as a way to help remove regulatory burdens on projects like Calgary-based Enbridge Inc.’s $5.5-billion Northern Gateway oilsands pipeline.
“Public perception is that this amendment is being proposed to ease the passage of certain mega-projects through the environmental review process,” Cummins, a supporter of the Enbridge project, wrote in a letter provided to The Vancouver Sun.
He said there is a “consensus” in B.C. fishing communities that a conviction under the Fisheries Act, considered by some organizations to be Canada’s most powerful environmental legislative tool, would be “difficult if not impossible” if Harper’s amendments are passed.
Cummins’ intervention adds to public concerns on the West Coast that extend beyond environmentalists, scientists and left-of-centre parties. Former federal Tory fisheries ministers John Fraser and Tom Siddon have also condemned Harper’s amendments.
In an interview, Cummins, who has positioned himself to the right of Premier Christy Clark’s centre-right Liberal government, said he shares concerns about the environmental implications of the budget’s provisions.
The current law prohibits Canadians from engaging in any activity “that results in the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat.” The proposed new wording is far more narrow and focuses on economic fisheries, banning “serious harm to fish that are part of a commercial, recreational or aboriginal fishery, or to fish that support such a fishery.”
The government defines “serious harm” as “the death of fish or any permanent alteration to, or destruction of, fish habitat.”
The government said the broad wording has meant that municipalities, farmers and other land owners have been hassled by overzealous fisheries bureaucrats.
Cummins acknowledged that fisheries bureaucrats have gone too far in prosecuting minor issues, but he said they have also ignored major highway and dam projects that have caused serious damage to B.C.’s salmon resource.
He said the watering down of the law poses a risk to fish and fish habitat.
“There is that potential for serious damage to the fisheries resource if we move in the way that’s proscribed,” Cummins said Monday.
“I think what is necessary is the use of common sense in the application of the existing legislation which seems to have escaped the department.”
The Cummins’ critique goes further than environmentalists and includes a broad denunciation of several components of the legislation that have received little or no public attention:
— The legislation adds a new component to the federal law’s description of the aboriginal fisheries, which has traditionally been confided to fishing for “food, social and ceremonial” purposes but not for commercial sales. Bill C-38 says fishing for “subsistence” will also be included in the definition of the aboriginal fishery.
“Inserting subsistence into the list will mean that aboriginal fisheries include enough fish to sell for a moderate livelihood; there would be no natural limit,” Cummins wrote.
“In most fisheries there would no fish left for public recreational or commercial fisheries. Almost all Canadians would be excluded from the fishery.”
He cited evidence from federal fisheries officers at the Cohen Inquiry into B.C.’s sockeye salmon fishery stating that 97 per cent of fish caught under food, social and ceremonial licences were illegally sold on the black market.
“Adding the word subsistence to the Supreme Court definition of aboriginal fishing may make the sale of the 97 per cent legal but the perhaps unintended consequences of avoiding the tough job of ending these illegal sales is twofold: first, it probably means that non-aboriginals would be excluded from the fishery and second it has not addressed the failure of the DFO (department of fisheries and oceans) to enforce federal law with regard to native fisheries.”
— Cummins also went after C-38’s provisions allowing the fisheries department to use the sale of fish by licence holders to fund the government’s own scientific and management requirements.
The government has lost several court decisions over its attempt in the past to use proceeds from sales of fish caught by licence holders to fund scientific work and even a make-work project in Atlantic Canada.
“The purpose of these amendments is to subvert the public fishery for the benefit of the department and its friends,” Cummins wrote.
“I expect that there will be justly deserved widespread criticism as the effect of these amendments becomes known in recreational and commercial fishing communities across Canada.”
Cummins urged Harper to await the findings of the federal inquiry into the troubled B.C. sockeye fishery headed by Justice Bruce Cohen, scheduled to be completed by the end of September.
LINK: Edmonton Journal
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