Baffin fisheries group weathers a storm

Beset by external criticism and internal dissatisfaction, Nunavut’s three-year-old experiment in inter-community quota sharing, the Baffin Fisheries Coalition, is still hanging together.

“I’ve been married for 20 years and, hey, I have a fight occasionally. But I also make-up as many times as I have a fight, you know? There’s adjustments to be made in any business, and there’s concerns that people have and they are legitimate concerns. If you don’t talk about them, you can’t solve them,” said Gerry Ward, the organization’s CEO, after the end of BFC board meetings in Iqaluit last week.

The member of understanding that now holds the coalition’s 11 partners together expires at the end of next month, and Ward says a new memorandum-of-understanding will deal with strong concerns made by community hunting and trapping organizations, who want more emphasis on local inshore fisheries.

“They all had some concerns, their concerns were addressed, and we’re working on them,” Ward says.

At least two Baffin hunters and trappers organizations, the Nattivak HTO of Qikiqtarjuaq and the Pangnirtung HTO, have threatened to pull out of the partnership. Other members have been contemplating similar moves.

“Each individual member has their own internal concerns with regard to their participation in the fishery. It’s very difficult to keep everyone together,” said a source close to the BFC who asked not to be identified.

Ward warns, however, that the collapse of the BFC would cause enormous damage to the development of a genuinely Nunavut-based commercial fishing industry. He says only the BFC has the financial clout to re-invest profits in the purchase of a Nunavut-owned factory-freezer trawler, and in training and scientific research.

The BFC, made up of the Qikiqtaaluk Corp., six HTOs and four private companies, is a not-for-profit corporation set up in May of 2001, after the federal minister of Fisheries and Oceans gave 100 per cent of the turbot quota in divison “OA” to Nunavut interests in 2000.

Division OA, which starts just south of Qikiqtarjuaq, hugs the Baffin coast, and stretches north as far as Ellesemere Island. It’s still being called an “exploratory fishery,” not ready for full-blown commercial development.

The Nunavut Wildlife Management Board agreed – with the consent of community HTOs – to give all of zone OA’s turbot quota to the BFC every year – equal to 4,280 tonnes in 2003.

The BFC then uses revenues from that fishery to pay for training and research. It’s been setting aside 30 per cent of revenues towards the purchase of a 60 to 65-metre factory-freezer trawler for Nunavut, capable of fishing both turbot and shrimp. A used vessel of that type could cost up to $20 million, and a new one about $30 to $35 million.

That would be a major step towards creating a large-scale industrial fishery in Nunavut – but it’s that vision that’s drawing criticism from many quarters.

In Ottawa last week, the Senate Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans released a 49-page report on the Nunavut fishery, after getting a series of oral and written presentations from numerous witnesses last fall.

The Senators on the committee found there are “two very different and competing visions for Nunavut’s fishery” – the development of a deep-sea industrial fishery versus the development of a community-based, small-boat fishery.

And the Senators say it’s a small-scale fishery that Nunavut Inuit seem to want.

“Their clear preference was for small-boat, community-based fishing, a completely different strategy than that of purchasing a factory trawler to create employment,” their report says.

But Ward says the Senate committee doesn’t understand the BFC.

“One of the objectives of the BFC was to develop an inshore fishery. We’re supportive of an inshore fishery,” Ward says.

Ward also says the Senate committee paid far too much attention to southern fishing companies who don’t like the fact that Nunavut – and the BFC – now has 100 per cent of the turbot quota in division OA.

“Why wouldn’t they be upset, now that Nunavut is organized through the BFC, and we’re planning to fight for every pound of fish that’s in the water?” Ward says.

The turbot area south of OA, known as division OB, was mostly handed out to southern companies like Seafreez Foods Inc. in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so that Nunavut interests only get 27 per cent of the OB turbot quota.

That’s one reason Nunavut only gets $9 million worth of value from an adjacent offshore fishery worth $98.5 million a year – 90 per cent of which ends up in the South.

“If you look at Seafreez, there’s a company that’s taking 1,900 tonnes of fish in Nunavut’s adjacent waters with no investment up-front and here we are in Nunavut with only 1,500 tonnes [in OB] for all of Nunavut,” Ward says.

Ward even wonders why the Senate committee members even entertained views from such southern firms.

“Would a review of the crab fishery in Newfoundland, or the lobster fishery in P.E.I. look for input from Nunavut? These are all comments from people who have no right to be here, period.”