Buried reports are like buried democracy in my world. Way to go Canada. Can only imagine other buried reports like the ones on our health care. Anyway should be out fishing not reading
Most oppose native fishery: poll
Maureen Gulyas
Now Contributor
A buried federal poll shows the majority of British Columbians disagree with a separate commercial fishery for natives.
Out of 1,000 English respondents, 76 per cent said commercial fishermen, whether they are First Nations or not, "should be subject to the same rules and should be treated equally by the law."
The Privy Council, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans commissioned Pollara to conduct the poll last July. The timing was important.
It was commissioned just 11 days after Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrote to a Calgary newspaper stating he opposed a racially divided fishery in B.C. Within a week, the bureaucrats raised $22,600 to pay for the poll, and came up with several questions about the controversial native commercial fishery on the West Coast.
Delta-Richmond East MP John Cummins said bureaucrats were striving to get a particular answer to prove to the prime minister he was out of touch with the Canadian public. The results show those efforts backfired, the longtime MP said.
Two of the poll questions asked respondents directly if they recalled reading or hearing about Harper's comments on July 7.
Cummins was made aware of the poll by fishermen who received it by accident in an Access to Information request.
Phil Eidsvik, executive director of the B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition, obtained the poll as well as a flurry of insider e-mails. Those e-mails show while the bureaucrats came up with the questions, they asked the polling company to review them. Pollara told the civil servants their questions were "leading," showed "bias" and were "double-barreled."
The questions were adjusted, but Cummins said they were still biased in favour of the native commercial fishing agenda.
"In spite of asking these leading questions, the public saw through it and said, 'We don't agree,' so the bureaucrats buried the poll. I'm sure that poll was never shown to the PM," Cummins said.
Since the Department of Fisheries and Oceans started the pilot sales fishery for natives in the early 1990s, Eidsvik's group has been polling B.C. residents on the issue.
"These numbers are similar to what we found over 15 years," he said.
Native rights to food and ceremonial fishing are enshrined in the constitution but not the right to sell their fish. Up until the native pilot sales fishery began on the Fraser River in 1993, native and non-native fishermen held commercial licences in one fishery. About 35 per cent of the commercial fishery licences belonged to natives.
Since the separate commercial fishing policy was established, the issue has become highly charged because DFO assigns a higher number of economic openings to native fishermen than non-natives on the Fraser.
published on 05/25/2007
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