Clyde River group wants to abandon the BFC

A group of Clyde River residents has just formed a company to lead their community out of the Baffin Fisheries Coalition and into a community-based fishery that would catch stocks in waters adjacent to Clyde River

Called the Mammaqtulirijiit Fisheries Corp., the company is seeking a lawyer to help them incorporate and money to help them develop a business plan.

“The corporation will be totally 100 per cent Inuit privately owned. We are tired of seeing high unemployment in our community, and the territorial government leaving us out entirely [in] the decentralization of Nunavut government,” said Nick Illauq, a Clyde River hamlet councillor who is a member of the company’s board of directors.

Illauq said in an email that he and others in Clyde River believe the Baffin Fisheries Coalition is not serving their community’s best interests

“In three years that BFC have had the quota of Clyde River, they have made $7.3 million near the shores of Clyde River and they only gave the Clyde River HTO $100,000,” Illauq said.

The Clyde River hunters and trappers organization is still a member of the BFC. During its first three years, the BFC did not return profits to its member organizations, and instead reinvested the money in research, training and a vessel acquisition fund.

The BFC did, however, distribute royalty cheques to its member groups earlier this year.

Illauq said that Clyde River should get quota in area 0A near their community, and not the Baffin-wide BFC.

“I want Clyde River to completely monopolize a big chunk of sea near the northern central Baffin region. Since we’re left out of everything, we should get this fishery started,” Illauq said.

This means that community is now not of one mind on the question of whether it should continue to participate in the BFC.

The hunters and trappers organization recently agreed to have the BFC, of which it is a member, catch a 50-tonne inshore turbot allocation inside the 12-mile limit.
But members of other elected community groups, such as the hamlet and the housing association, appear to support the idea of splitting from the BFC and developing a community-based fishery.