Over the past six months, the SFI and the other members of the BC Sportfishing Coalition have been pulling out all the stops to put halibut on the political agenda in the 2011 election. It started tentatively at the 2010 Sport Fishing Industry Policy Conference, gathered steam over the Christmas break and culminated in a series of unprecedented town hall meetings up and down Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland.
The results of this effort are perhaps best summed up by reporter Rod Mickleburg's recent story in the Globe and Mail:
Why would Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper, on the Saturday of a long Easter weekend, journey all the way from Etobicoke to Campbell River on the northern reaches of Vancouver Island? After all, the Tory incumbent John Duncan is a cabinet minister and winner of five of the past six elections. What's his worry? In a word: Halibut.
Reporter Mark Hume of the Globe and Mail also took note. On April 17th he wrote:
While Ms. Morton has been busy trying to get salmon on the election agenda, other fish activists have been urging voters to think about halibut when they go to the polls. The focus of that campaign is an unpopular decision, made earlier this year by federal Conservative Fisheries Minister Gail Shea, which maintained a policy that splits the halibut allocation, giving the commercial sector 88 per cent of the catch, and sports anglers 12 per cent.
Nathan Cullen, the NDP incumbent in Skeena-Bulkley Valley, said that he's run into the halibut lobby, and has taken notice. "I think they are the most organized guys in the election. They have great lists ... and I really believe halibut could determine three or four seats," he said. The halibut gang, he said, are focusing on a few ridings where the race is tight, including his.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Cullen and Ronna-Rae Leonard, the NDP candidate in Vancouver Island North, recently released a joint statement making it clear they side with sports anglers in the fight over halibut quotas. Given the closeness of some B.C. races, coming down on the side of halibut anglers or embracing Ms. Morton's salmon campaign may mean candidates won't later have to lament the one that got away.
All that hard work, all those countless hours of volunteer time and travel, all that planning, writing, phoning and cajoling have paid off. The collective efforts of recreational anglers have managed to make halibut a bona fide election issue in the riding of Vancouver Island North, and may well be the question that decides the political fate of incumbent Conservative MP and Cabinet Minister John Duncan.
And everyone in North Island is talking about it.