Is the Baffin Fisheries Coalition ignoring Inuit interests?

I have read with interest your recent coverage regarding the Baffin Fisheries Coalition.

I would like to put forward my comments about the BFC as I have come to know BFC from my dealings with it and its CEO, Mr. Jerry Ward, over the past three years.

In 2001 after it was determined that there was sufficient biomass of turbot in the Davis Strait, DFO allocated a quota of 2,500 metric tonnes (mt) to the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and entrusted the NWMB to, in turn, allocate this quota to Nunavut fishing interests.

The NWMB allocated the entire quota in 2001 to BFC, since BFC with its 11 members (HTOs and others), represented the entire Inuit fishing interest in Nunavut at the time. As this quota is so far north and as there are no fish plants on Baffin Island (except the plant in Pangnirtung) to land fresh fish for processing, the quota had to be caught by freezer fishing vessels.

BFC then called for proposals from Canadian fishing vessel owners to fish this quota, in return for paying BFC a royalty (fee per tonne) for every tonne caught. When BFC realized in the fall that the Canadian vessels would not catch all of this quota, BFC approached us and asked if we could help.

We did and arranged for three foreign trawlers to fish this quota and we were successful in catching 70 per cent of the quota caught that year. In addition we paid the BFC over $500,000 in royalties.

In 2002 we made a proposal to harvest turbot in this same area (0A), again using foreign trawlers, but were told by BFC that no foreign vessels would be allowed to fish in these Canadian waters in 2002 and future years.

We were also told that BFC had attracted enough Canadian vessels to catch the entire quota (4,000 mt in 2002). We advised BFC through Mr. Ward that we intended to incorporate a Nunavut company and purchase a trawler (one of the foreign vessels that fished so successfully in 2001) and bring the vessel into Canada and fully Canadianize it and register it in Iqaluit, for the explicit purpose of catching part of this quota each year.

We advised that we expected to have our Iqaluit vessel ready to fish by late 2002. In the fall of 2002, when BFC realized that the Canadian vessels were again not going to catch the entire quota, BFC asked for and received permission from DFO to bring in three foreign fishing vessels to help catch the quota.

BFC did not contact us even though we were then a Nunavut company, to ask if our vessel (still then foreign-registered, but in the process of being Canadianized and a vessel with a sucessful history of fishing turbot in area 0A) was available.

Instead BFC arranged the foreign vessels through another Newfoundland company.

BFC through Mr. Ward called for proposals for the 2003 fishing season by advertising in Newfoundland newspapers… he did not advertise in Nunavut newspapers, and when I asked him why he did not advertise his Call for Proposals in Nunavut publications, his reply was: “nobody down there (Nunavut) would be interested in submitting a proposal.”

We again made a proposal to Mr. Ward of BFC for 2003 but this time our proposal included using our newly acquired Iqaluit-registered Canadian trawler “Tuktu.”

Mr. Ward did not even respond to our proposal… we can only presume that he threw it in the waste basket. Again BFC entered agreements with southern companies and foreign companies, with foreign vessels, arranged by this same southern company. Again DFO approved the use of these foreign vessels when DFO knew, full well, that our Iqaluit vessel was ready and available.

Note that more importantly, in 2003, other Inuit interests applied for quota and their applications were ignored as well.

As we understand it, it is the mandate of the coalition’s CEO, Mr. Ward to get the best deal (most royalty revenue) for BFC.

Why then did BFC not respond to our proposal? Why did they refuse to negotiate with us? We might have been willing to pay BFC a higher royalty then the others he choose to deal with!

On February 7, 2004 BFC again called for proposals (for turbot in 0A) and again we submitted a proposal. Again it was ignored, in that BFC has not to this point come back to us with their indication to negotiate our proposal.

Now the 2004 fishing season is almost upon us and we have heard through the grapevine that BFC has entered into three separate long-term agreements with this same Newfoundland company (Newfound Resources Ltd.), whereby Newfound Resources will be involved in all three companies with which BFC has entered into agreement, for the entire 4,000 mt. quota of turbot in area 0A.

Again Inuit fishing interests have been ignored and non-Inuit Nunavut companies have been ignored… all in favour of a southern company. “Something is rotten in Denmark!”

What is also troubling is the fact (as I understand it today) that all of the HTOs (except Pond Inlet) have given notice that they are pulling out of BFC later this month (May).

The NWMB is aware of this, yet they still are assigning the entire 4,000 mt. quota to BFC, which now no longer represents the Inuit fishing interests of Nunavut. So now the Inuit interests are being ignored in favour of BFC, which no longer represents all Inuit fishing interests, and the BFC has indicated that it intends to assign the entire quota to southern interests, in return to royalties and a few token jobs on board the southern fishing vessels.

In summary, NWMB, through BFC, are denying Inuit fishing interests access to their own resource. Secondly, the NWMB, through BFC, is denying non-Inuit Nunavut companies access to a Nunavut resource. But the NWMB, through the BFC, is allowing access to this Nunavut resource to southern fishing companies and foreign fishing companies.

I understand that Mr. Ward is quoted as saying something to the effect that “we must stop the control of Nunavut’s fishery by colonial southern interests.” Mr. Ward appears to be the greatest colonial interest of all!

Where is the justice here for the Inuit of Nunavut and the non-Inuit Nunavut interests which have invested heavily in the fishing industry, with the objective of participating in the harvesting of this Nunavut natural resource?

What is more astounding to me is that these very non-transparent arrangements between BFC and a Newfoundland company are allowed to continue, unchecked. This appears to me to have similarities to the sponsorship scandal… in that the federal government assigns resources (money or fish quotas) to a supposedly trusted group and then does not follow-up and oversee the workings and the implementation of their assigned resource.

By such an arrangement the process is possibly quite open to abuse.

Because of the Senate’s concern about the fishery in Nunavut, the Senate recently appointed a committee and launched an investigation to specifically determine the benefits of these quotas to the Inuit people and the communities of Nunavut.

The committee discovered and concluded that this Inuit resource is not benefitting the Inuit of Nunavut as it should be and the Inuit’s own resource is being transferred from one organization (BFC), to another (southern) without check and without proper tender procedures and without taking Inuit concerns into consideration.

Will the people of Nunavut and their representatives allow this to continue? Only time will tell.

John Andrews
Arctic Harvesters Inc.
St. John’s, Nfld.

Editor’s note: Readers may find a copy of the Senate fisheries committee’s recent report on the Nunavut fishery at this URL. The recommendations are controversial, and not everyone in Nunavut agrees with them: http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/3/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/fish-e/rep-e/01apr04-e.pdf