A new owner for the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation (FFMC) was selected by the federal department of fisheries and oceans last year, but the government is unable to reveal who that is at this time.
The department issued a statement from minister Joanne Thompson in December 2025 announcing that a “preferred bidder” has been identified and that negotiations will get underway to negotiate a binding agreement.
Indigenous organizations that have faced barriers to accessing capital had been provided an opportunity to access “capacity funding to facilitate their participation in the competitive bidding process to provide a more level playing field with private sector interests,” the statement says.
The federal government sought to divest itself of FFMC, a Crown corporation, after meetings with commercial fishers and other stakeholders over the past several years. In 2017 the department had met with fishers to discuss the future of FFMC, fishers’ discontent with financial returns, market availability and management of the corporation. The government then struck an advisory panel to explore new governance and ownership models.
The department is calling the divestiture of FFMC a “transformation.” It invited expressions of interests and a request for proposals in 2024. The transformation is intended to promote economic reconciliation with Indigenous fishers. The government is also consulting with Indigenous communities about the “historic or traditional use of FFMC lands.”
Thus far, the department has provided little detail on how FFMC under a new owner will continue to meet the needs of all inland commercial fishers who still currently sell fish to the corporation, including those across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northwest Territories, as well as how it will facilitate market access for those in rural, remote and isolated areas.
The marketing corporation was created by the federal government in 1969 to protect commercial fishers from exploitation by fish buyers. It bought fish from inland fishers in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories.
Lake Winnipeg commercial fisher and analyst Bill Buckels said there’s a bit of “fear” among commercial fishers in Gimli and the south basin that a new FFMC owner may not be there to support their needs, and that the equity each commercial fisher put into the corporation over the decades will be forfeited.
“No commercial fisher wants to lose the equity they put into FFMC. The people around here in Gimli and the south basin put a lot of money into that place,” said Buckels. “The primary issue is if the federal government is going to sell it from under us, we fishers — the 160 or so in Gimli — want our money back before the chosen recipient takes over.”
Over the decades, DFO has used the corporation’s revenue — derived from the commercial catch — to invest in infrastructure, including fish-processing equipment at FFMC’s fish-processing plant in Winnipeg, barges, ramps and other systems to improve the inland fishing industry rather than rely on the federal government for infrastructure support.
Buckels said fishers’ earnings were also used to support management’s marketing “ideas” and “people like Donald Salkeld who didn’t know a damn thing,” and the government has to realize it has an “obligation” to all commercial fishers before it offloads the corporation. Salkeld served in a leadership role with the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation in Winnipeg during a period when the corporation handled the marketing and distribution of freshwater fish from inland Canadian fisheries, including Manitoba.
Robert T. Kristjanson, who’s in his 90s, has been fishing on Lake Winnipeg since he was eight years old.
Before the corporation comes under the control of a private entity, commercial fishers should “get something back” to compensate them for the money they put into the corporation, he said.
“We put lots of money into the marketing corporation. A percentage of whatever fish we sold to the marketing board — and there are records from Day 1 — is how we should be compensated,” said Kristjanson, who sat on FFMC’s board for about five years before stepping down in 2016. “We cannot hand over a multimillion-dollar corporation and a processing plant for nothing. Fishers in Gimli and around this lake all supported FFMC to build it up over the decades.”
The inland commercial fishery in Manitoba — Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba, Lake Winnipegosis and other freshwater lakes — contributed to the province’s economy and “helped grow Manitoba,” he added. His grandfather took up fishing when he arrived in Gimli from Iceland in 1891 to help support his family and the local economy.
“Millions of fish went south to the United States, to the big markets in New York and Chicago. We were freezing in the [fish] camps along Lake Winnipeg when I was young. We lived in the bush so we could earn a few dollars so that when we came back we could build up our houses or start farms. That’s how the commercial fishing industry started here,” said Kristjanson.
“All that exported fish and the money we made went back into Manitoba’s economy. It supported jobs. It established FFMC’s fish plant. At my age, I can say that what we’ve done here is made this industry what it is. And we don’t seem to be getting any recognition from the federal government during this transition process. They think we’re a bunch of dumb fishers.”
FFMC lost several million dollars over the past few years, according to its annual report. In 2024 FFMC had losses of $7.2 million, and in 2025 it had losses of $7.6 million. It attributed those losses primarily to open-market competition.
Successive governments such as Ontario (in 2011), Saskatchewan (in 2012) and Manitoba (in 2017) withdrew from the federal Freshwater Fish Marketing Act to create open-market competition in the inland fishery. Alberta closed its inland fishery but remains a signatory to the act. The Northwest Territories is the only participating jurisdiction currently under the act.
A representative from the NWT government spoke before the senate’s standing committee on fisheries and oceans in early February, implying that FFMC’s transformation marks the end of a relationship with NWT’s commercial fishers, and the territorial government is hoping to mitigate any impacts from the transformation with its own fish plant.
Joel Holder, director of economic diversification in NWT’s department of industry, tourism and investment, said his government is concerned about maintaining stability for fishers in northern communities and those who form the “backbone” of the NWT fishery.
Its recently built fish-processing plant in Hay River, on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, is currently operated by FFMC.
“We knew Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation might not be around forever, and such is the case now with the divestiture. We now hold the future in our own hands as far as providing an opportunity to Great Slave Lake fishers,” said Holder. “The fish plant itself can provide an opportunity where they can sell their fish, and these fish can then be sold for secondary processing and products and distributed within the Northwest Territories or southern markets in Alberta or British Columbia.”
They’re still interested in what FFMC is doing, he added, and what the “future of that industry is” as NWT is still a signatory under federal legislation and has been involved with FFMC for decades.
But with FFMC “no longer being able to assist us” on the operating side of things, Holder said they’re looking for a “northern entity,” Indigenous or otherwise, to take over the Hay River plant.
“We’re interested in the transformation and how fishers will handle the transformation between FFMC and the new fish plant in Hay River,” said Holder.
DFO media relations spokesperson Mike Campbell said the department cannot disclose information about the “preferred bidder” at this time and other details.
“Due to the confidential nature of ongoing negotiations, Fisheries and Oceans Canada cannot release the name of the preferred bidder,” said Campbell. “Exclusive confidential negotiations with the preferred bidder are ongoing and a definitive transition date cannot be provided at this time.”
