Organized crime has infiltrated the West Coast fishing industry, with criminal groups using lucrative fishing licences and quotas to launder money and hide illicit profits, a former RCMP deputy commissioner warned senators this week.Peter German, former RCMP deputy commissioner and current president of the University of British Columbia’s International Centre for Criminal Law Reform, told the Senate fisheries committee that criminal organizations are increasingly targeting the Pacific fishery because of the massive financial value attached to licences and quotas.“Organized crime is not a distant or hypothetical concern,” German testified. “Licences and quotas are financial assets which can store or integrate criminal funds. These are valuable, transferable assets.”German said the West Coast fishing sector has undergone major consolidation in recent years, with ownership increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of individuals and corporations.“We know a large portion of the industry is held by a very few people. We don’t necessarily know who those people are.”Blacklock's Reporter said German pointed specifically to the crab fishery as an example of how organized crime is exploiting weak oversight and light penalties.“A galling example of Canada’s vulnerability comes from our West Coast,” said German. “The illegal harvesting of crabs and sale to processors are a cash business in which profits are great.”.Although authorities have carried out enforcement operations, German said existing fines fail to deter criminal activity.“Fines become the cost of doing business,” he said.German urged senators to require public disclosure of the beneficial owners behind fishing quotas and licences, arguing transparency rules should apply to the fishery the same way they do to real estate ownership.“With real estate, you want to know who owns property,” he said. “Do we have organized crime hiding behind a numbered company or some person who is not the beneficial owner? It is no different in the fishery.”“We cannot simply allow our fishery to be sold to unknown people using unsourced funds,” German added.He also pointed to intelligence gathered by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, known as FINTRAC, along with investigative reporting that flagged suspicious banking activity and unusual patterns involving fishing licences.German warned that fish quotas and boat sales currently fall outside mandatory reporting requirements, creating major blind spots for investigators.Parliament passed Bill C-42 in 2023 requiring disclosure of anyone holding at least 25% ownership in federally registered corporations, with penalties of up to $1 million and five years in prison for violations.However, a Department of Industry briefing note acknowledged the legislation covers only federally incorporated businesses.“Approximately 87% of corporations are incorporated at the provincial and territorial levels,” the department noted.German told senators transparency is critical if governments hope to stop organized crime from embedding itself deeper into Canada’s fishing sector.“If you do not have transparency it goes back to the old adage, we don’t know what we don’t know,” he said. “Certainly with transparency, knowing beneficial owners allows us to make decisions.”
