Liberals’ Newfoundland man defends Nunavut fishery

The Liberal government’s political minister for Newfoundland, John Efford, this week defended the Baffin Fisheries Coalition and how it plans to develop Nunavut’s 100 per cent turbot allocation in northern Davis Strait, saying “absolutely false information” lies behind recent allegations that the BFC is giving Canadian fish to foreigners.

“I want to see the people adjacent to the resource benefit from the resource,” Efford said at a scrum organized for reporters in Iqaluit this past Monday.

The Liberal MP for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception, Efford is also Canada’s minister of natural resources and the federal Liberal party’s political boss for Newfoundland. He co-chaired this week’s energy and mines meeting at Inuksuk High School.

Efford said he took time out that morning for an interview on CBC radio in St. John’s — with Nunavut MP Nancy Karetak-Lindell — to clarify a CBC St. John’s story that aired last week alleging the BFC is giving Canadian fish to a Greenlandic company.

“What’s happening here with the Baffin Fisheries Coalition is they are moving towards two things: number one, catching their own fish with their own ship, and with the proper type of conservation gear — hook and line,” Efford said.

Karetak-Lindell said the controversy is being created by people who object to Nunavut getting 100 per cent control of the new fishery in northern Davis Strait.

“Sometimes when we start to spread our wings some people don’t like it, because that makes us too independent. I think this is one of those cases where we’re starting to really show that we can muscle our way in and take control over things,” Karetak-Lindell said.

She said that in the past, vessels from Newfoundland and other Atlantic provinces chartered to fish in Nunavut’s adjacent waters hired only low numbers of Inuit to work on board.

“Now’s the time that I think we’ve grown enough to do our own developing, because with the Canadianized vessel, they can train up to 14 of our Inuit fishermen, which I think is a tremendous opportunity for our guys,” she said.

The BFC received the right to fish turbot in northern Davis Strait, or division “0A,” from the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in 2001. The BFC’s strategy has been to avoid what happened 15 years ago when southern Davis Strait, or division “0B,” was divvied up by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans — and Nunavut ended up with only 26 per cent of the 0B turbot allocation.

Earlier this year, the BFC chartered a large factory-freezer vessel equipped for two essential capabilities: onboard freezing and processing, and environmentally-friendly hook-and-line fishing.

Hook-and-line fishing, sometimes called “longlining,” uses long lines attached with a series of shorter lines carrying baited hooks. At regular intervals, they’re dropped into the sea, often with weights attached to keep the line of hooks stretched along the sea bottom, and then hauled up again to have the catch taken aboard and for the hooks to be re-baited.

Hook-and-line techniques are considered much less damaging to fish stocks, and to the ocean floor, than bottom-dragging trawlers. Bottom draggers use wide nets held down with steel beams or chains. Boats drag them across the sea-floor to scoop up bottom-dwelling groundfish such as turbot and cod.

Environmental damage done by huge dragger-trawlers operated in the 1980s by east-coast firms such as Fisheries Products International, as well as fishing fleets from Europe, have been blamed by many for the extirpation of northern cod stocks off Newfoundland.

“I’ve been a strong promoter of hook-and-line fishery for a lot of years, to get away from those big nets, get away from the gill nets and go with quality conservation using hook-and-line,” Efford said.

The BFC has sought a Canadian-owned factory-freezer vessel with hook-and-line capabilities since 2002, but has been unable to find one that’s big enough. So for the past two years, the DDFO has given them permission to charter foreign-owned vessels.

But the BFC’s long-term goal is to use the royalty money they earn from chartered vessels every year to help buy Nunavut’s first factory-freezer vessel.

To that end, they’ve struck a two-year deal to use a vessel once owned by the Royal Greenland Company, with an option to buy it after the end of the 2005 fishing season.

Now christened the MV Inuksuk, the vessel has been “Canadianized” and flies a Canadian flag under the ownership of a newly-created firm called Nataanaq Fisheries Inc. of St. John’s.

That deal prompted Gus Etchegary, a former FPI executive, to allege on CBC radio and television last week that Canadian fish stocks are being put under the control of a “foreign government.”

Peter Stoffer, an NDP member of Parliament from Nova Scotia, also jumped onto the anti-BFC bandwagon, as well as Nunavut Senator Willie Adams, who said on CBC that the BFC’s use of the former Greenlandic vessel is “against the land claim.”

But Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board have both said that comment “does not make sense,” and that they fully support the BFC’s plans.

NTI, the NWMB, and the Government of Nunavut are all members of the Nunavut fisheries working group, an informal committee that gave birth to the BFC in 2001.

The working group is now attempting to resolve a conflict between the BFC and two of its 11 members: Cumberland Sound Fisheries and Pangnirtung Fisheries Ltd. Those firms are partners with the GN’s Nunavut Development Corp. in the operation of Pangnirtung’s fish processing plant.