No Final Payments for Commercial Fishers

No Final Payments for Commercial Fishers

Friday, November 05, 2004 at 15:46

For the first time in 30 years, commercial fishers in northern Saskatchewan will not be getting a final payment this year.

Usually, fishers get hundreds — or thousands — of dollars at this time of year for the fish they catch and sell to the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation.

But the FFMC says the wildly fluctuating increase in the exchange rate between the Canadian and U.S. dollars in the past year-and-a-half cost the corporation six million dollars in the last year.

Spokesman Stephen Kendall says it also caused the first operating loss for the corporation in recent memory.

Kendall admits this will be quite a blow to fishers in a year where many of them saw reduced initial payments for their fish.

Saskatchewan Commercial Fisheries president John Carriere says many fishers say they’ve never seen a year as bad as this.

Kendall also says the FFMC can’t subsidize fishers in a year the corporation takes a loss because it doesn’t get government funding.