BFC corrects fishy CBC story

The CEO of the Baffin Fisheries Coalition, Gerry Ward, says a CBC news story broadcast earlier this week – alleging that “a foreign government” is gaining access to Arctic fish stocks – is inaccurate on virtually every point.

The story, produced by CBC St. John’s and aired on national radio and television newscasts this past Tuesday and Wednesday, reports that there is “debate over a new plan by Ottawa to subsidize a deal giving a foreign government access to fish stocks inside Canadian waters.”

The story goes on to claim that the Baffin Fisheries Coalition is getting $6 million from the federal government to bring in a vessel that’s partly owned by the Danish-owned Royal Greenland firm to fish turbot in Canadian waters this summer.

Ward says, however, that he has never talked to anyone at Royal Greenland about chartering a vessel to fish the BFC’s 4,000 metric-tonne turbot quota in the northern Davis Strait.

He said that for the 2004 and 2005 fishing seasons, the BFC has chartered a factory-freezer trawler from a company called Nataanaq Fisheries Inc. of St. John’s. The vessel, foreign-owned at one time, has been brought into compliance with Canadian standards, and now sails under a Canadian flag.

Under the deal, the BFC has an option to buy the vessel at the end of the two-year charter period. Ward said that during that time, the BFC will gather and record information about the costs of operating the vessel, to refine its business plan.

The acquisition of a factory-freezer trawler for Nunavut, to give Nunavummiut better control of their fishery, is one of the BFC’s main long-term goals. To pay for it, they’ll partly use royalty money they earn by hiring outside vessels to fish their turbot quota.

As for the $6 million “subsidy,” Ward says that’s actually a Nunavut-wide training grant application that the BFC submitted to Human Resources Development Canada in 2003, to get money for use in training Nunavummiut for fisheries jobs. Ward says the HRDC grant proposal has nothing to do with the trawler they’ve chartered to fish their quota this year.

“We’re here to build a Nunavut fishery, period,” Ward said.

Some of the information in the CBC story is attributed to Gus Etchegary, a former executive with Fisheries Products International who is now a well-known fisheries activist in Newfoundland.

Known derisively as “Captain Canada,” Etchegary is best known for his long and loud denunciations of foreign fishing vessels which operate just outside the 200-mile zone that Canada controls.

Ward says he believes the CBC story was planted by fishing interests in Newfoundland who don’t like Ottawa’s decision to award 100 per cent of the turbot quota in northern Davis Strait (divison 0A), to Nunavut.