To the editor:
If there’s anything approaching mission impossible in British
Columbia’s fisheries management scenario today it has to be keeping up
with the barrage of organizations and processes now involved when it comes to the Skeena and its steelhead.
We’re told there are three governments to deal with. The federal government,
typically the target of accusations of mismanagement, is the simplest of
the three. It’s represented by a single fisheries agency, the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans. The federally sponsored group of stakeholders, known as the Sport Fish Advisory
Board, is the go-to assemblage DFO claims is it’s guiding light on
recreational fisheries.
Next we have the Province of BC whose leaders in fisheries
management have been re-organized and bounced back and forth
between at least a half dozen different ministries, just in this century.
Whereas the political figurehead is housed in the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource
Stewardship (WLRS), that is only one of several ministries with
overlapping and competing mandates (e.g. Agriculture and Food,
Forests, Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation). Beyond that there’s
the province’s Wild Salmon Advisory Council headed by BC’s
Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Aquaculture.
The third level of government is obviously First Nations. With particular
reference to the Skeena, I make it at six primaries. Beginning at the coast and proceeding inland we have
Tsimshian, Kitsumkalum, Gitanyow, Gitxsan, Wet’suwet’en and Lake
Babine. Within each of those primaries there are various components.
For example, the Gitxsan organization includes Huwilps, Wilp, Pdeeks,
hereditary chiefs, elected chiefs, etc. whose interactions and
responsibilities I don’t pretend to understand or try to explain here.
The point is each of the six First Nations is a separate government the
courts and government policy and regulations have set up as being the
last voice on anything that is proposed or contemplated in their
traditional territory.
Decisions stemming from such process are achieved
government to government, behind closed doors. The general public is
not involved until announcements are made.
Beyond the individual First Nation governments there are a number of
independent FN groups with major influence on all that transpires
between indigenous people and, especially, the provincial government.
A point to note here is the overall First Nations perception with respect
to recreational steelhead fishing in their territories. We’ve already seen
multiple iterations of the Gitxsan declaration that the recreational
steelhead fishery supported by the province is forbidden in all those
blue-ribbon rivers in their territory. The Mexican standoff continues.
Catch and release is always emphasized as playing with their food.
There are even more non-government, non-indigenous organizations
engaged in Skeena fisheries issues one way or another than there are
indigenous.
Overriding all that may transpire between the two elected governments
responsible for various aspects of fisheries in British Columbia we have
the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People or
UNDRIP.
The most significant theme is the now legal requirement
for “free, prior, informed consent” for virtually anything that happens on
First Nations territory. Suffice to say there isn’t much of British
Columbia worth talking about, especially from a fisheries perspective,
that isn’t traditional FN territory.
Now, what is the take home message here? Given the multitude of
governments and groups, almost none of which show evidence of
connection or consistency of messaging and with a growing cloud of
uncertainty evolving from UNDRIP and the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, the latter driven by
endless propaganda about residential schools which, in turn, fuels the
juggernaut of reconciliation, what does anyone paying attention think
the future of recreational steelhead fishing opportunity will look like?
Even if climate and environments are sufficiently steelhead-friendly to
stabilize or magically reverse trends in abundance, what are the odds this
guy’s children will ever see a fraction of the access and opportunity his
parents and multiple generations before had?
Bob Hooton,
Parksville, B.C.
