Tag Archives: Canadian Fishing Co
Fish feud: ITQ’s – Will changes to the West Coast salmon industry hurt or help independent fishermen?
The B.C. salmon fishery keeps resisting a market-based management system. Critics accuse the feds of pitting independent fishermen against corporate giants, but what if this new approach gives the little guy some much-needed financial clout?,,, Thorkelson gets furious thinking about how fishing rights and control, thanks to what she considers a concerted effort by the DFO to impose ITQs, have migrated up the food chain to the likes of Canadian Fishing Co. Part of the Jim Pattison Group, Canfisco is a vertically integrated company that owns licences, quota and fishing vessels in most fisheries on the coast, plus processing facilities in B.C. and Alaska that together handle some 20,000 tonnes of salmon annually. click here to read the story 09:03
Debate over closing of B.C. salmon cannery goes to federal committee
The debate over the closing of B.C.’s last salmon-canning operation shifted to Ottawa this month, where a federal committee heard sharply differing opinions on the issue. While the union representing plant workers decried changes at the Oceanside Cannery in Prince Rupert and called for new policies in response, the plant’s owner maintained relatively few jobs would be affected and that no policy changes are required. The committee also heard consumer tastes are shifting to fresh and frozen fish over the canned product that was once a mainstay on the B.C. coast. “Maintaining a large plant with many canning lines for limited production was not viable,” Rob Morley, vice-president of Canadian Fishing Co., told the standing committee on fisheries and oceans earlier this month. Read the story here 14:04
Fish plant workers: stop gutting West Coast fishery
Specifically, United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union, were lobbying the parliamentary standing committee on fisheries and oceans to break what they describe as a monopoly held by Jim Pattison and his Canadian Fishing Co. (Canfisco) on fishing fleets, quotas and licences. They also want the government to restrict the practice of sending fish caught in B.C. for secondary processing to the U.S. or China. “The processing of fish that is owned by the people of Canada should benefit the people of Canada,” Arnie Nagey, a Haida citizen who worked as a millwright in Canfisco’s Prince Rupert cannery, told the committee June 7. “The boats should be owned by the people who fish them, not the company.” North coast fish plant workers want adjacency rules, which would require fish caught in Canadian waters to be processed in Canada. But that would likely trigger challenges under the North American Free Trade Agreement, said Rob Morley, Canfisco’s vice-president of product and corporate development. Read the rest here 13:37
