Tag Archives: DFO crackdown
DFO crackdown in northern B.C. – “They’re screwing us.”
Commercial fishermen on B.C.’s North Coast are upset by what they’re calling an unprecedented and unfair Fisheries and Oceans Canada crackdown. Chris Peterson, a skipper who has been fishing commercially off the coast of Prince Rupert for 40 years, says the DFO has gone too far. “I have never seen anything like this,” Peterson said of the extra enforcement officers. “There were 17 of them on one boat last week — 17!” Most of the fishermen point to July 27 as the beginning of the conflict. That’s the day Hartley Bay Band Council Chief and fisherman Arnold Clifton was boarded by two DFO officers. “I was in the washroom on the boat when all hell broke loose,” Clifton recalled, describing rude treatment from the officers. He was fined, and then boarded again two days later, this time by even more DFO officials. Read the story here, with audio clip 08:10
