The stakes are high for Canada as our negotiators meet their American counterparts this week in Vancouver to kickstart the Pacific Salmon Treaty renewal process. This re-negotiation presents a pivotal opportunity to ensure the survival of the wild salmon that are so vital to cultures, economies and wildlife in both our nations.
Link to Editorial in the Vancouver Sun
With the treaty’s 2028 renewal set to occur during the Donald Trump administration, there will be no room for a timid approach to negotiations if Canada wants to fix the treaty’s glaring problems. History and current events show that President-elect Trump interprets compromise as weakness, and hesitation as an invitation to demand more. We risk being steamrolled by the U.S. if we approach these discussions with anything less than full confidence and resolve.
Established in 1985, the Pacific Salmon Treaty aims to ensure the equitable sharing and sustainable management of salmon stocks that migrate between Canadian and U.S. waters. While the treaty has provided substantial benefits, longstanding problems remain, particularly the ongoing damage being inflicted by Alaska’s interception fisheries on Canadian-origin salmon populations. The treaty is also failing to keep up with other growing threats to Pacific salmon, especially climate change.
Alaska’s irresponsible fishery management practices are undermining measures taken in B.C. (and Oregon and Washington) to lower the pressure on salmon. Just across B.C.’s northwest border, southeast Alaska’s interception fisheries target salmon returning to Canadian rivers and routinely overfish key populations, including some that are already endangered. We don’t know the full extent of the damage, however, as Alaska does not collect or share the necessary genetic information or properly count and report how many B.C. salmon and steelhead die in their fisheries.
These data are crucial for understanding the full impact of interception fisheries and for making informed management decisions. It’s time for the treaty to level the playing field with modern, transparent management practices that are good for salmon.
Pacific salmon are a cornerstone of our cultural and ecological heritage, supporting everything from Indigenous food security to coastal economies and our vast ecosystems. This gives us an obligation and a right to make strong, unequivocal demands. Our negotiators must abandon their tendency to seek incremental change and make it clear that we can no longer allow an inadequate treaty to jeopardize the future of our fish and the communities that depend on them.
As the Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon are in a similar position regarding Alaska, we may not have to do this alone. Alongside Washington and Oregon, Canada has massively scaled back the large-scale mixed-stock fisheries that so drastically reduced the abundance of wild Pacific Salmon. In B.C., we have bought back licences, made our fishing practices more selective, improved our catch monitoring and, unlike Alaska, we require the immediate release of non-target salmon species in order to boost their survival. We have done these things not because the treaty requires them, but because they are needed to restore wild salmon abundance.
Canada could compensate the U.S. for closing Alaska’s most egregious fisheries, just as the U.S. agreed in 2008 to compensate Canada for reducing our troll fisheries off Vancouver Island’s west coast to protect Washington- and Oregon-bound salmon. We can also do our part by protecting vital salmon habitat in our shared transboundary watersheds that flow from B.C. into Alaska.
Transparency and collaboration are fundamental to the success of any international agreement. Our two nations have harnessed those qualities many times in the past to achieve more than we could working alone. That we sometimes squabble and exchange trade blows, yet still come to understandings we can all live with, is the envy of the world. But in this new trade era, where our previous notions of bilateralism may no longer apply, failing to take a firm stance will have devastating consequences.
Canada has a unique opportunity to rectify decades of imbalance and secure a fairer Treaty. Our elected leaders must give our negotiators the mandate and support they need to stand strong for our nation and the future of our wild salmon.
Aaron Hill is executive director of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society. Greg Knox is executive-director of the SkeenaWild Conservation Trust.
