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*The petition letter Scientific Forced Labor One of the most difficult challenges facing small boat commercial fishermen on the Pacific Coast is the brutally high cost of video and dockside monitoring. Though groundfish operations bear most of the burden at present, DFO sees these extreme charges as necessary in any fishery run on a quota system. So salmon fishermen need to be just as concerned. DFO's rationale for forcing us to operate under these heavy fees, is based on what they say is a demand by the public for “better science and accountability” regarding rockfish by-catch. Most fishermen understand the importance of this and are willing to do the considerable on-site data logging that enables the country of Canada to operate a fishery on the West Coast. What fishermen do not want to do, and should never have been asked to do, is pay out of their own thin pockets for all the employees, machinery, and data analysis as well as provide a profit for the private company that collects it. The fishery gives us no guarantee of a profit. The terms of union signed when BC joined Canada clearly state in term 5(E) that “Canada will assume and defray the charges for the protection and encouragement of the fishery”. This makes it pretty clear who is responsible for picking up the tab for science necessary to operate a fishery. DFO seems to try and deflect focus away from this fundamental agreement by saying that resource users should pay for the resource. Since fish caught in these fisheries are unloaded, trucked, traded, cooked, processed, sold and eaten all over this vast country, it's pretty obvious fishermen aren't the only users. DFO often conveys the message that fishermen's advisory groups have created these costly monitoring schemes. It's important to understand that the refusal of the Canadian Gov't to fund the science leaves the fleet with no choice. Although DFO had originally withdrawn all support for monitoring in 2009, they have now taken the positive step of restoring funding to 2008 levels. This will reduce the cost burden, however it still leaves fishermen paying the balance of the monitoring and paying for all the expensive equipment. Another move from DFO that must be encouraged is a review of monitoring charges on both coasts. Our brother fishermen working out of Newfoundland were smart enough to keep dockside monitoring out of the hands of private enterprise. They land cod for 2cents a lb and mixed groundfish for ½ cent a lb. A forty foot longliner, will pay around $700 to$1050 a year to land 40,000lbs of fish, with observer coverage and dockside monitoring. That's about 10% of what it would cost here in the lingcod fishery. This brings up another old but basic point of canadian law. As pointed out in a recent court case involving farmed salmon, “ The inclusion of fisheries in section 91(12) of the Constitution Act, 1867 was a recognition that Fisheries as a national resource, require uniformity of legislation.” Which means we should get the same treatment on both coasts. In these times when governments are talking about bailing out General Motors, what are they doing bankrupting fishermen in order to cut science budgets they are likely legally obligated to pay? ComfishAction.

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