This was posted before but bares repeating:
You have to wonder who the Brain Surgeon was who came up with the plan to gift quota to commercial interests and the lack of requirements attached to that gift. It would appear the idea was to create some stability for small Mom and Pop fishing operations making it easier for them to continue living the lifestyle of small business owners. Sadly for the most part that was a complete and utter failure as is evidenced in the number of these people who no longer fish and instead lease out the original gift to large operations. In essence an Annuity in Perpetuity, a life long gift from the people of Canada that can be willed to their children when they pass on. Very generous of us is it not?
Why there was no finite time limit on this gift,or a caveat that if not fished by the original recipient and that at the very least, on their passing, it would revert back to DFO is mind boggling. So now we have a government who has for decades essentially paid a chunk of cash to people to sit at home (familiar refrain?) and a group of people who have learned to live with the "gift that just keeps giving".
So what are the options.
1) Inform quota holders that unless they fish, the quota is gone, suspend leasing and redistribute through DFO to new commercial and rec fishermen.
2) Begin a process for non fishers whereby the quota is reduced annually by a set percentage and redistributed,to let them get used to working for their money
3) On the death of original holder, quota reverts back to DFO
4) All quota regardless of whether fished or not is leased for a set period of time, after which time it may reduced, renewed or canceled by DFO
I suspect 1, the outright cancellation will never happen and is perhaps harsh now that people are used to this extra income. But to be fair the government has clawed back benefits from its own retirees , raised retirement age and don't get me started on the private sector, all of who contributed to their retirement,so an adjustment of a gift annuity isn't unreasonable.