It’s not a question of “Balls”, it’s a question of money, the kind of money you can fill a tractor trailer with. Even if you have the money and the years for a lawsuit and win, governments have the nasty habit of changing the rules/laws to allow them to continue to do what they want. If you have the resources, go for it but there is another way.
Political action can be comparatively cheap and effective. 400,000 sports fishermen their families and friends and those making a living directly and indirectly off sport fishing is a lot of votes. For starters that’s not a bad little poster that Miller Time came up with. It would be nice to see thousands of copies posted all over the province, on boats, trucks, marinas, motels and at commercial outlets that sell tackle, boats, supplies, trucks and most certainly salt water fishing licences. The goal is to make the politicians feel the heat, so that they begin to realize that they need to take the wishes of sport fishermen seriously. Never miss an opportunity to comment on related newspaper stories, call talk shows and columnist etc. and call or drop in to the constituency offices in your riding. Talk to your fellow fishermen and those you give your money to in support of sport fishing. How many of you have bought a $50,000 truck to tow you boat? Let the dealer know it will be the last one you will be buying as the federal government no longer supports sport fishing or wild salmon.
It use to be that the Federal Liberals had no need of votes beyond the Ontario border and the Federal Conservatives had so many votes in the west they could care less about the wishes of anyone except for their party donors. That has changed and federal elections will be tightly contested for the foreseeable future and minority governments are possible, In short, every riding counts now.
To send a message you need to send it to the party in power, trust me the other parties will notice. There are a number of federal conservatives in coastal BC ridings. Gary Lunn in Saanich-Gulf Island and James Lunney in Nanaimo Alberni come to mind. Discuss you sportfishing issues with their offices and tell them if they are not addressed you will not only not be voting for them, you will actively work against them – then do it.
We don’t have to limit our political activism to the misuse of the Fishing License salmon stamp money. Speak to whatever other issues effecting sport fishing and wild salmon get you worked up.
For me it’s: the waste of my tax dollars used to support and provide propaganda for fish farms, the lack of habitant enhancement and clean up, lack of protection for our spawning rivers and streams, the removal of spawning gravel, the unbalanced application of restrictions on the sport sector such as the slot extension, the lack of effective monitoring and action to limit the lower Fraser net fishery which in my opinion is destroying the Chinook and moved far beyond a food fishery to that of a large scale commercial fishery, the unfair allocation of halibut between the sport and commercial sectors, the removal of salmon food (herring etc), the lack of adequate support for and expansion of our hatcheries and most recently that DFO has apparently ordered hatcheries to not clip salmon fry – all hatchery fish should be clipped and DFO should provide the funds to do it.
We tend to rant about DFO , myself included, but really they are just bureaucrats trying to keep the heat off the politicians, keep their jobs, collect their pensions and maybe get a nice fat consulting contract with the First Nations or the fish farms when they retire. If we want favourable decisions out of DFO, we need to impact their political masters, or we can all chip in $10,000 or so to start the lawsuits.
