No proof of illegal salmon sales by Natives, but feds believe they're guilty
Fisheries authorities don’t have proof of the alleged illegal sale of salmon by aboriginal fishers.
Scott Coultish, regional chief of intelligence and investigation services for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, made this admission at the afternoon hearing on Wednesday (May 18) of a federal inquiry looking into the depletion of salmon stocks in the Fraser River.
However, Coultish maintained that fisheries authorities believe that most of the salmon caught for food, social, and ceremonial purposes by First Nations groups from the Fraser in the 2005 fishery season were sold commercially.
This assertion that the salmon may have been illegally sold was backed by Randy Nelson, regional director of conservation and protection, at the same hearing by the Cohen commission.
Both Coultish and Nelson appeared before the commission the previous day (May 17).
Among the exhibits included in the May 17 hearing were two Fisheries and Oceans Canada reports about fish intended for food, social, and ceremonial use by Natives.
The first was a memorandum addressed to the department’s deputy minister and dated June 6, 2006. The document noted that at the end of the fishing season in September 2005, there were about 1.9 million pounds or approximately 345,000 pieces of food, social, and ceremonial salmon in 110 cold storage plants throughout the Lower Mainland.
The paper further reported that 60 to 70 percent of the fish “have now been removed from cold storage”.
The second document, an intelligent assessment paper about a department operation code-named Project Ice Storm, stated that food, social, and ceremonial salmon was being laundered into commercial markets.
The document dated November 27, 2006, talked about door-to-door sales, as well as back door sales to restaurants and fish establishments.
Coultish and Nelson testified that fisheries authorities hold the belief that most of the stocks in cold storage were intended for sale in the commercial market but there was no evidence to back this up.
Comments
16 Comments
J R Day
May 20, 2011 at 2:19pm
The 'Chief Investigator' knows about many of the details but can't prove it. So why is he the 'Chief' of anything??
monty/that's me
May 21, 2011 at 8:41am
Someone should contact that Fundamentalist Christian John Cummins as he had a great deal to say about this topic at a Council meeting in Delta a few years ago. He named companies involved in this activity.
Archie Bunker
May 21, 2011 at 9:15am
Come out to the reservation in Pitt Meadows and watch them openly sell the fish as fast as they can catch it.
devils advocate
May 21, 2011 at 9:20am
usually food fish are in grannies freezer not some commercial cold storage facility. If natives are so poor they need to catch fish to survive how can they afford to pay freezer costs?
put 2 and 2 together and you get laundering of FSC fish plain and simple...and Gail Sparrows concerns just magnify this problem....
miguel
May 22, 2011 at 10:30am
Tsk Tsk. Natives behaving like white people. It's almost as if they're human.
Miguel
Angler
May 22, 2011 at 2:20pm
- Non-native people in BC have always "believed" that natives were poaching salmon (and not in the cooking sense). But then, there are people who "believed" that the world would end yesterday. "Belief" is a poor substitute for rational thought.
- There is absolutely no doubt that some native people do illegally sell salmon. But then, if you go to a flea market on any given weekend, you will see many people (non-native mostly) illegally selling everything from stolen goods to cheap counterfeit products.
- Simple enforcement would control the illegal sale of salmon, just as it does the illegal sale of other products. But our governments seem to stupidly believe that they can introduce laws and regulations without enforcement. This produces a situation where everyone "knows" that the law is a joke.
- Natives didn't steal and sell 9 million sockeye. Even in the worst-case scenario presented by a government agency desperate to defend its mismanagement, illegal sales represented a small percentage of the "Missing Run". Instead of focussing on the easy target, perhaps we need to ask: What happened to the other 95%?
Same as it ever was ...
(PS - The entire notion that native people should be prohibited from trading in salmon - i.e. selling them - is beyond stupid. But that's a topic for another day.)
Ernie Crey
May 22, 2011 at 6:32pm
Let me see, DFO starts an investigation 6 or 7 years ago, runs out of money so they can't complete the sleuthing and then brings up the failed investgation all these years later in a bid to get more funding to do more of the same? Makes sense.
Salty one
May 22, 2011 at 8:09pm
I think it's safe to say that these particular fish cops weren't from SEAL Team 6.
Taxpayers R Us
May 23, 2011 at 1:46am
If the fishery is open, it should be not be limited along racist lines.
Having said that, I'd rather have them selling salmon than crack pipes.
R U Kiddingme
May 24, 2011 at 12:21pm
Look, to square it all up, all you have to do is realize that "Ceremonial Purposes" includes the famous "Selling Whole Sockeye From Freezer In Back of Pickup Truck In Corner Of Powell River WalMart Parking Lot Ceremony." I have been an avid participant in this ceremony many times and find that it has added a lot of culture to my life.