OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
I can go back over many years of association with the fisheries management business in British Columbia without ever witnessing a more significant announcement than this:
From: RDG Pacific Region / RDG Région du Pacifique (DFO/MPO) <PacificRegion.RDG@dfo-mpo.gc.ca>
Sent: April 8, 2019 8:55 AM
To: RDG Pacific Region / RDG Région du Pacifique (DFO/MPO) <PacificRegion.RDG@dfo-mpo.gc.ca>
Subject: Pacific Region Reconciliation and Partnerships Branch
In direct response to Budget 2019 commitments to support our capacity to work with Indigenous groups and advance reconciliation, I am reaching out to you to share some news about planned organizational changes that we are making at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Pacific Region, to help position us to build on our established relationships with Indigenous communities and organizations across the Region.
I am pleased to share with you that we are moving forward to create a new team in Pacific Region dedicated to work across our diverse departmental branches to advance reconciliation. The name of this new team -- Reconciliation and Partnerships (R&P) Branch -- reflects the outcomes we want to achieve. My hope is that R&P will provide the Region with strategic support as we continue our work of strengthening our relationships and translating the Government’s high-level reconciliation priorities into specific, concrete and coordinated actions in our day-to-day work.
“Partnerships” in the branch title name highlights the need not only to create partnerships with Indigenous communities to achieve our reconciliation objectives but also to work closely with our industry and recreational partners to ensure that these objectives are realized. Achieving reconciliation will require strong relationships between the Department and industry, governmental and non-governmental organizations and other bodies interested in resource management, all of whom play a role at helping to realize reconciliation.
In the upcoming months, our new Regional Director of R&P, David Didluck, will be seeking opportunities to meet sector advisory and management groups to discuss his work. Rest assured that your key DFO program contacts will not change. I look forward to building on our relationship through further engagement to advance reconciliation and partnerships through fisheries and aquatic management.
Rebecca Reid
Regional Director General
Pacific Region
The distribution mechanics here are just a bit troublesome. DFO’s Regional Director General issues a blockbuster announcement to an unknown distribution list on April 8. A full week later that message is relayed to DFO’s select group of sport fishery advisors who, in turn distribute it to some of their friends in the recreational fishery community. No news release, no mention by Minister Wilkinson as he trumpets chinook conservation measures from the podium at precisely the same time, no idea of the credentials or resume of the leader of the new organization that will lead us to fisheries bliss…………nada!
I note that exchanges of correspondence between myself and RDG Reid in recent days have instructed me that if I wish to bring forward questions to her staff about steelhead related issues I consider to be significant (simple stuff like the reported catch of steelhead by Skeena First Nations in 2018) I have to do that through the DFO’s carefully constructed Sport Fish Advisory Board processes. Those marching orders make it clear "public input" is non-existent.
Good luck to anyone who thinks they are going to have unfiltered access to Mr. Didluck and his mission. Ah, but we’re told our key DFO program contacts will not change. Bless me, can anyone begin to recall how many times the deck chairs on the DFO Titanic have been re-arranged in the past few years?
Dear Ms Reid, just what are “Government’s high level reconciliation priorities“? Surely such monumentally important undertakings with fish as the primary currency warrant slightly more profile and clarification on what lies ahead. Surely you are not so utterly anaesthetized to the realities of reconciliation out there on the salmon and steelhead producing waters of British Columbia that you believe more high level, confidential discussions and decision making between DFO representatives and First Nations is palatable to those of us who pay your salary.
