Obviously there are many exasperated fishers here, including all the hardworking volunteers of the various organizations. We need all those volunteers and, although many have differing opinions on the best courses of action, all have basically the same goals and we should try to remember that. Unfortunately those goals may be difficult to ever reach because we are negotiating (fighting) with DFO, a government department that answers to only one entity. The heads of DFO must, at the end of the day, satisfy not the public fishery or the ENGOS, etc but they have to do what the federal government wants. Our Liberal government's main concern is getting and maintaining power (votes) and those votes lie principally in eastern Canada. Reconciliation is popular in large urban centers and will continue to be pushed by the Liberals to the detriment of the west coast public fishery. They simply don't care as much about west coast fishers and businesses as they do about garnering votes in Ontario and Quebec. And that's not going to change. It doesn't help either that Justin's dream is to have his portrait hanging in the halls of the U.N. Headquarters. I believe this is another reason for the strong Liberal support for UNDRIP. Whether you favor reconciliation or not, it is obvious that it hurts the goals of the public fishery. Unless things change, we will continue to see recreational fishing closures (under the guise of conservation) while the same salmon that are supposedly being protected are swimming into river gill nets.
While all of this is going on, I can't help wondering why the B.C. Provincial government is so silent and contrite about the issue of BC businesses being hurt by closures. Should they not be reminding the Feds on a constant basis about the billions of dollars that recreational fishing brings into BC?
