Proceedings of the Special Committee on Sealing and Fisheries in Pacific Waters, 1934

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Excerpt from Proceedings of the Special Committee on Sealing and Fisheries in Pacific Waters, 1934: 5th Session, 17th Parliament, 25 George V, 1934My request-for the appointment of this committee was inspired by perusal of the annual report of the Fisheries Department for 1932-33. This department unfortunately has been again orphaned, and subjected to absent treatment for which, I would say at once, the stepfather of the moment has had no more responsibility than that of any other Member of Parliament. I am frank to say, however, that in my opinion the fishery interests of Canada have suffered and are menaced through the lack of a qualified permanent head whose main concern as a minister of the crown would be the promotion of fishery interests.The reference to this committee is confined to three great subjects of moment to British Columbia. The record in respect to these is, not summed up, but certainly in¿uenced, by the official finding that the returns from the fisheries of British Columbia have shrunk from twenty-seven million dollars in 1928 to ten million dollars in 1932. This committee has been set up to deal wit-h three main items affecting this. Appalling shrinkage. As to the first of these counts, we have endowed the United States with out sealing rights, by a treaty continuing far beyond its natural term without any word of attention on the part of our Fisheries Department. Meanwhile, vessels of the Canadian fleets continue to shepherd the known million of surplus seals accompanying and preying upon the schools of salmon on their passage through the Pacific. This passage is at potential cost per day, to the salmon fishery, of no less than ninety thousand cases, if it be presumed that on those intimate journeys to and from the breeding grounds each seal can succeed in capturing per day even one of the salmon that are the favorite food of the seal species. Our department, meanwhile, has wondered where those missing salmon - a million dollars' worth for any one day - have gone, though now the wonderers have from their colleagues of the Biological Branch' information which I have not seen recorded in any of the publications of the department but which will be laid before you in due course. This official report naively remarks that There has apparently been no published account of the food of the fur seal since and significantly proceeds, with shocking but convincing wealth of detail, to record that the chief food item of these seals was thus herring with salmon, pilchards and squid constituting the other main items. It is evident that schoolinor species form the bulk of the food because of abundance and resulting ease of capture. Incidently, it may be noted here that about the time this report was being written the Fisheries Depart ment casually printed in its News Bulletin the item that pilchards - the estimated value of which is nearly a million dollars a year - had entirely disappeared through a whole season. Again, the department helplessly wondered why.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.