Fishers in Hay River, N.W.T., questions plans for new fish plant

Hay River, N.W.T's new fish plant is set to open this year and local fishers are not happy with how it's expected to be run.

Jamie Linington is the interim executive director of the Tu Cho Fishers Cooperative which is based in Hay River and is made up of N.W.T. fishers. Most of the fishers have been in the industry for decades and for others, like her, it's generational.

She said according to the territorial government's 2017 strategy for revitalizing the Great Slave Lake fishery, the new fish plant was supposed to strengthen the commercial industry and help increase production numbers.

But six years after the release of that strategy, Linington says they are nowhere near that.

"What was intended to really revitalize the industry and assist an industry sector has turned into something that could have made situations for fishers worse," she said.

The first issue Linington said is the monopoly on fish sales in the N.W.T. The Northwest Territories is the only Canadian province or territory still under the federal Freshwater Fish Marketing Act (FFMA).

The purpose of the Act, passed in 1969, was to buy, process and then sell the fish caught in western and northern Canada and parts of Ontario through the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation (FFMC).

Linington said the fishers only receive a 30 to 40 per cent return from the sale of their fish, while the FFMC absorbs the rest. She also said the fish prices are very low but fishers have no choice but to sell at those prices.

"The Act limits commercial fishers from selling their own fish over the Territories' border," said Linington.

Eventually, every province and territory withdrew from the Act except the Northwest Territories.

"We are 80 to 90 per cent Indigenous industry — that are indentured servants to a Crown corporation that holds a monopoly," she said.

The second issue Linington said is the fish plant is too big, and that fishers have been saying that from the beginning.

"[The fish plant] was intended for fishers and it's not built the way the fishing sector had recommended it be built," she said. "They don't listen."

She said the plant is eventually supposed to pay for its own operating costs through production, but that would require more output than in the previous years.