Terry Glavin: Alaska's salmon bounty coming at B.C.'s expenseBut Canada's foreign affairs department remains clueless
There’s a diplomatic disaster unfolding on the Pacific Coast right now, and don’t be shocked if you haven’t heard anything about it. Joly certainly hasn’t made a fuss, and it’s not clear whether she’s even aware that it’s going on, even though Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray has seemingly handed off the file to Joly.
Last summer was Alaska’s third most productive salmon season in history. A big part of the Alaska catch was chinook salmon. Almost all the chinook caught in Alaska — 90 percent of them — were chinook bound for rivers in B.C., Washington and Oregon.
Fisheries Minister Murray’s primary policy response has been just that — keep B.C. fishermen tied up at dockside to “conserve” the runs the Alaskans are catching, and stop sports fishermen from catching chinook in B.C.’s rivers. And now the Alaskans are planning a fishing season with chinook catches a third higher than last year’s quotas, according to biologists with the Watershed Watch Salmon Society.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/terry-glavin-alaskas-salmon-bounty-coming-at-b-c-s-expense