The real conflict of interest

Last March, MPs sitting on the House of Commons standing committee on fisheries and oceans heard a serious allegation about one of the two men who run the Baffin Fisheries Coalition.

The allegation is that Ben Kovic, the BFC’s president, created a perception of conflict of interest when he accepted that job soon after serving as chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board. That’s because the NWMB makes recommendations on whether fish and shrimp quotas should go to the BFC and other companies. Since those recommmendations are usually rubbber-stamped by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, that puts a lot of power into the hands of the NWMB: the power to effectively decide who will make money from Nunavut’s total allowable catch of the offshore fishery, and who won’t.

The evidence available to us so far, however, suggests that this allegation is unfounded. The NWMB’s 2004 fish quota recommendations were made in the early part of the year, recommendations that happened to favour the BFC. But the job competition that Kovic eventually won was not advertised until August of that year. When he expressed interest in the BFC job, Kovic was not, as chair of the NWMB, dealing with BFC issues.

But that, however, does not get the NWMB off the hook.

That’s because, since at least 2001, the NWMB has been involved in a much more serious conflict of interest of a different kind, but a conflict of interest that raises questions about its impartiality as an environmental regulator.

Since about 2000, the NWMB has participated in an informal committee called “the fisheries working group.” The other participants are the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. They did this because, in 2000, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans ordered that Nunavut interests would receive 100 per cent of the turbot quota in a new exploratory fishing zone in northern Davis Strait called “0A.”

To their credit, GN and NTI officials wanted to ensure that Nunavut make the best of this new opportunity. Along with the NWMB, they fostered the creation of the Baffin Fisheries Coalition.

The BFC is structured as a not-for-profit corporation, with its own board of directors and so on. But it’s obviously a political creation, an instrument for carrying out Nunavut government policy, and NTI policy.

It was, nevertheless, a good idea then and it’s still a good idea now. Before the BFC, individual HTOs and a few small fishing companies active in the Baffin fishery each had to settle for a few small pieces of a very small pie. After the BFC, the same organizations now get to share in a much bigger pie. Using their combined strength, they can do things they couldn’t do before, such as the $5.1 million training plan announced earlier this year, and the impending purchase of a Nunavut-owned fishing vessel.

There’s just one problem with all of this. The Nunavut Wildlife Management Board had no business being part of this process. The NWMB is an environmental regulator, not an economic development agency. The public interest demands that environmental boards should not participate in the creation of commercial enterprises, especially enterprises they will be involved in regulating.

So by participating as a member of the Nunavut fisheries working group, a de facto economic development body, the NWMB, as an organization, is in a conflict of interest. They’ve signaled that in any quota allocation issue involving the BFC’s interests, it’s highly unlikely that they will be impartial. And even if they do act impartially, the public will believe that they are not.

If any other environmental board were to put itself into such a position, the public wouldn’t tolerate it for a second. Just imagine, for example, what might happen if the Nunavut Impact Review Board were to participate in the creation of a mining company – and then involve itself in an environmental review of the very same company.

But that, in effect, is what the NWMB has done to itself. Given that other groups in Nunavut outside the BFC, such as the Nattivak HTO of Qikiqtarjuaq, have already applied, and been turned down, for turbot quota now controlled by the BFC, this has led to endless conflict and lingering suspicions.

To restore public confidence in its impartiality, the NWMB must withdraw from the Nunavut fisheries working group, and stay away from the creation of new businesses and the formation of economic development policy. The GN and NTI are more than capable of doing that work on their own. JB