Canada Threatens Action Against U.S. Fishing Another Attempt To Renew Pacific Salmon Treaty Collapses

Canada threatened to act against U.S. fishing boats Wednesday after another attempt to renew the Pacific Salmon Treaty between the United States and Canada collapsed.

A statement issued by the Canadian government said existing regulations that govern all foreign vessels in Canadian waters would be enforced against U.S. fishing boats, including those from Washington state that use the Inside Passage between Vancouver Island and the mainland to reach the waters off the Alaska panhandle.

One regulation requires that foreign vessels contact Canadian authorities as they pass through Canadian waters.

“Depending on the circumstances, vessels that violate the regulations can be inspected, required to go to a Canadian port or face arrest. Inspections could be conducted randomly,” the statement said.

The statement made no mention of charging fees for passing through Canadian waters, a central feature of the “salmon war” that followed the collapse of treaty renewal talks in 1994.

No further talks are scheduled.

“There’s been no deal,” Ian Todd, executive secretary of the Pacific Salmon Commission, said in a telephone interview this morning. “I have no idea what the next steps are.”

The commission, a bilateral organization based in Vancouver, British Columbia, administers the treaty when its terms are in force. The treaty has not been renewed since 1994.

Yves Fortier, the chief Canadian negotiator, said negotiations stalled Tuesday evening when his U.S. counterpart, Mary Beth West, revealed that she lacked the power to compromise over a critical issue involving two salmon stocks - U.S.-bound coho migrating past Vancouver Island and sockeye swimming through U.S. waters south of the island to the Fraser River in Canada.

West had left her hotel this morning and could not be contacted.

In an attempt to break the logjam, tribal biologists and others with a stake in the fisheries participated in direct talks four months ago. Four panels were chosen, two from each country to represent interests in the southern and northern sectors of the treaty area.

The diplomatic negotiations were then supposed to iron out the last details and resolve the most sticky disagreements.

“We were flabbergasted on the Canadian side to learn, in one important area, that the U.S. negotiator had no authority to negotiate or the authority to strike a deal,” Fortier said.

He said he and his superiors saw no further point in talks with “someone who didn’t have the mandate to strike a deal.”

West’s superior in the State Department in Washington, D.C., Eileen Claussen, assistant secretary for oceans, environment and science, said the Canadians had long known that tradeoffs involving U.S. coho and Fraser sockeye would be subject to approval by Washington state and treaty Indians.

Both were represented in the latest talks and thus were likely to accept any deal, Claussen said.

“I think that’s rubbish,” she said of Todd’s comments. “We had every authority to work out an agreement… “They’re using that as an excuse to scuttle the talks.”

Claussen said the Canadians torpedoed the talks to avoid risking a loss of support for Prime Minister Jean Chretien in Canadian elections June 2.

“My sense is that we could have reached an agreement if there were the political will,” she said.

About 65 people were assembled for the talks, which began Tuesday morning at a hotel near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. About a dozen people were at the table with West and Fortier.

The issue on which the talks foundered was somewhat of a surprise. In the past, Canada has complained mostly about the catch of Canadian-bound fish off southeast Alaska.

Both sides said progress was made earlier Tuesday but neither would give any figures on fishing tradeoffs under discussion when the snag developed.

Fishing interests in Washington and Oregon have long sought to cut the Canadian catch of severely depleted U.S. runs of coho, also known as silver salmon, off the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Salmon activists in British Columbia, in turn, have demanded reductions in the U.S. catch of sockeye returning through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and around the San Juan Islands to the Fraser, the most productive salmon stream on the continent south of Alaska.