Pangnirtung fisheries interests want too much

There has been a lot of hoopla lately about the reported charter of a “foreign” fishing vessel by the Baffin Fisheries Coalition. Well, the f-word label has been demonstrated to be unfounded, and the vessel is indeed Canadianized under DFO rules.

It is now common knowledge that Newfoundland developed its own offshore fishery with the use of foreign vessel charters (real ones, not Canadianized ones) and much of today’s Atlantic fishing industry still has majority foreign investment.

Even Newfoundland’s John Efford came out to endorse the BFC charter arrangement, and Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik boarded the MV Inuksuk on its ceremonial visit to Iqaluit to demonstrate solidarity with the BFC’s incremental investment approach. The issue is beginning to settle.

But the spotlight is now shining on the Pangnirtung fisheries mafia (Pangnirtung Fisheries Ltd. and Cumberland Sound Fisheries Ltd.), who want out of BFC, and with half of BFC’s – i.e. other Baffin communities – total quota in hand.

It is the Pangnirtung fisheries interests who have stirred up the self-interested Newfoundland fishers and politicians, and who wound up Senator Willie Adams in his attack upon the BFC. A groundswell of animosity towards the BFC charter vessel was really crafty orchestration by Pangnirtung folks, who want most of the quota from a scuttled BFC and who oppose more fish plants in Baffin – knowing fish plants are really about getting more quota and subsidies and dividends, and not really about creating local employment.

The BFC has given Pangnirtung a fortune in free fish landed at the Pang plant in recent years, which fish Pang has sent to market with no further processing to further boost its own revenues. In fact, Pang learned long ago that the money made on offshore fish is not landing it in Pang, at great expense and with troublesome labour problems, but in landing it in Newfoundland and getting that easy cheque in the mail… they just want more of it.

That half-million dollar filleting machine they bought was not in the interests of local employment either – they could have cost-effectively supported a plant daycare service to ease the mostly female plant labour problem. It was just another tool to get more quota to reflect the new capacity – or to feed the monster.

While Cumberland Fisheries brings in more than $1 million a year, their corporate entity, Pangnirtung Fisheries Ltd., conveniently loses money and keeps them in the government subsidy gravy train, and supports their position to keep other fish plants out.

Cumberland Sound Fisheries pays its shareholders dividends from offshore revenues – fish not landed in Pang – while government pays the subsidies and the losses tied to the plant.

(Name withheld by request)
Iqaluit

(Editor’s note: Pangnirtung Fisheries Ltd. is the company that owns and operates the fish processing plant in Panniqtuuq. Pangnirtung Fisheries Ltd. is owned 51 per cent by the Nunavut Development Corporation (a GN Crown corporation), while Cumberland Sound Fisheries Ltd. (a group of local Inuit), own the other 49 per cent. The writer wants his name withheld for fear of retribution.)