The B.C. Salmon Fishery: A Consideration of the Effects of Licensing

Abstract

The British Columbia commercial salmon fishery, since its beginning in the late 186os as a commercial canning industry, has been the province's single most important fishery. In terms of its economic value, it has always outranked all other fisheries combined, and in the decade from 1968 to 1978 its average earnings accounted for 70 percent of the wholesale value of the total fishery. For this reason, of all the Pacific coast fisheries, salmon has historically received the most attention from legislators, labour organizers, and of course fishermen. This paper briefly outlines some of the historical developments in the industry and then considers the consequences of the federal government's licence limitation program instituted in 1968, after 45 years of open access to the commercial salmon fishery. Unlike the early Canadian staple industries of trapping, logging and grain production, salmon did not have the commercial potential to become a staple resource industry until the introduction of the canning process. This technique allowed the product to be preserved indefinitely and thus became suitable for export to the markets of Europe. Once the canning process was adopted the growth of this industry burgeoned. From a single cannery on the Fraser River in 1865, which in four years packed some 1,300 cases of salmon, by 1901 the industry was supporting seventy-three canneries along the B.C. coast and canned a million and a quarter cases. It was because of this successful growth that there became established a commercial salmon fishery which could grow beyond the extremely limited local market for fresh salmon at that time.