The federal government’s intention to sell the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation to a private entity continues to raise concern from a Lake Winnipeg commercial fisher about what could be in store for the future of Manitoba’s fishing industry.
Robert T. Kristjanson who is 90 and still fishes, said competition is healthy but the marketing corporation – which currently competes with private fish buyers – has protected Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northwest Territories’ fishers for 55 years from the vagaries of unscrupulous fish dealers and lowball fish pricing, and has guaranteed them access to international fish markets.
Commercial fishers on Lake Winnipeg – a lake that supplies the highest volume of fish to FFMC than any other lake in Manitoba – could be rocked by instability should all the benefits offered by the corporation go under with its sale, he said. For example, FFMC’s mandate to buy all fishers’ catches and buy a variety of different fish – not just highly valued pickerel and whitefish – might change.
Kristjanson said there’s no reason free enterprise can’t continue to exist alongside FFMC.
“It’s nice to be able to sell your fish to different companies, but you have to understand that when we lose our marketing board, we lose our protection,” he said. “It’s nice to have competition out there – don’t get me wrong – but look at what happened to farmers when they lost the [Canadian] Wheat Board through privatization; there’s no one in their corner to protect them now with good, stable prices and no one to do the marketing work for them.”
The federal government announced in February this year that it intended to move forward on the “transformation” of the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation through its sale to a private entity. The sale process, which is being overseen by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), has two main stages.
The first stage entailed inviting expressions of interest whereby interested parties let the government know they’re interested in buying FFMC. The second entails a yet-to-come competitive process whereby the government will solicit bids from the interested parties.
In 2017 DFO had engaged commercial fishers and other stakeholders on the future of FFMC after some fishers raised concerns about the way the corporation was being managed and Manitoba’s then Conservative government opted out of the federal Freshwater Fish Marketing Act to create an open market in the province. DFO had established a panel to examine new governance and ownership models for FFMC and stated it wanted to promote reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
Kristjanson has fished long enough to remember what it was like for fishers before the federal government created FFMC in 1969 to protect them from unstable pricing, he said. The privatization of FFMC may see a return to some of the more unsavoury aspects of the fishing industry as a whole, notably private buyers ripping off fishers and perhaps FFMC refusing to buy less valued fish from Lake Winnipeg’s fishers as well as other commercial fishers. Some private fish buyers currently only buy one or two species of fish. That can stress the “natural balance” of any waterbody, especially Lake Winnipeg where anglers love to target pickerel.
“Commercial fishers have done very well with our marketing board,” said Kristjanson. “I’m not saying other fish buyers haven’t gone a few cents one way or another, but by having the government own FFMC, we’ve got the ear of the government, we got a powerful representative for our industry. This is something very important that we could be losing in Manitoba,” he said. “It’s always the little fishermen that will be kicked in the shins. They’re going to have to run from place [fish buyer] to place because they think they’ll be getting so much more money. But I’ve lived through those times before the marketing board and I see that we’re now going around in a circle again, right back to that time when it was so hard for fishermen to make a living.”
Depending on how the sale of FFMC unfolds and how the company will operate in the future, Kristjanson said consumers could feel a pinch at the cash register when they buy Manitoba-caught fish.
“If we lose the marketing board and we lose our only fish-processing plant in Manitoba (in Winnipeg), we could possibly see our fish being sent to Ontario for processing then shipped back to Manitoba to sell in the supermarkets. People will see a price difference then.”
In order to get an estimate of how reliant commercial fishers are on FFMC, the Express asked the provincial department of fisheries – which keeps statistics on the fishing industry – for a breakdown of how much Manitoba-caught fish (in pounds or kilograms) goes to institutional buyers (e.g., FFMC, which is a licensed fish dealer) and how much goes to private fish-buying companies. The paper asked for numbers from the commercial 2023 fall and winter season and the spring 2024 season.
The department didn’t provide that information.
A spokesperson for the department said: “Total commercial net fishing production in Manitoba was 10.5 million kilograms in 2022-23 and 10.1 million kilograms in 2023-24. Approximately 95 per cent of Manitoba’s commercial fish is purchased by licensed fish dealers, and approximately five per cent is sold locally through private sales.”
The Express reached out to the federal government for an update in mid-September on the sale of FFMC.
DFO’s media relations spokesperson Craig Macartney said that the expressions of interest (EOI) part of the process opened on Feb. 19 and closed April 5, but parties that did not participate in the EOI can still submit their interest to DFO.
Submitting an EOI does not require any interested party to subsequently submit a bid.
DFO cannot release to the public the names of parties that have already submitted an EOI.
“DFO received 11 expressions of interest through the solicitation. Parties who submitted an expression of interest were asked for consent to share their names with others who participated in the solicitation of interest process, with the intent to facilitate potential future partnerships,” said Macartney. “Consent was not provided to share their names with the public.”
The government has yet to issue a call for proposals (bids). When it does, a deadline to submit that information will be provided.
Interested parties who did not participate in the expressions of interest can still do so by contacting the department by email: DFO.freshwater-eaudouce.MPO@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
