Conservatives turn to recreational anglers for conservation projects

The newly created Conservative hunting and angling caucus is pushing for better recreational fish habitat across Canada, using the expertise and ideas of established angling groups and organizations to present solutions.

The caucus convinced government policy-makers to create the Recreational Fisheries Conservation Partnerships Program, a $10-million program that provides funding for recreational fisheries projects in Canada.

Under the program, proposals sent by organizations, companies and conservation groups are examined by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The applicants have to match the amount of funding that they ask for, though this can take the form of equivalent volunteer hours and equipment donated. The project must also clearly benefit a fish population that is important to recreational fishing.

The program started in June of last year and completed its second round of funding this past December.

"We took the case to the powers that be, that there was a group of people, the anglers of Canada, who are very well organized, [and] technically very competent," said Robert Sopuck, Conservative MP for the riding of Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette in Manitoba.

Sopuck, a fisheries biologist by training, is the chair of the new caucus. He along with more than 30 other Conservative MPs and senators meet to discuss issues brought forward by constituents in the angling community.

"It's a group that federal governments of all stripes have not paid a lot of attention to," Sopuck said, speaking of anglers.

Applicants were given only a short window of time to apply for the first round, beginning on June 21, 2013 and ending three weeks later on July 12.

"It was pretty tight to get the application done," said Holly Urban, project manager for Swan Valley Sport Fishing Enhancement Inc., a sport fishing non-profit that successfully applied for $25,000 from the program to create a spawning area for walleye in Beaver Lake.

The lake was originally stocked with trout, but it had been decided that walleye were a better fit, said Urban.

The Swan Valley group had recently completed a year and a half of studies through the Fisheries Enhancement Fund that concluded that the walleye were not spawning successfully, since the lakes tributaries were blocked by beavers.

The group decided to create a gravel shoal which the walleye could use to spawn. "We had our background information on why we wanted to do it," said Urban. However, they still needed funds to start the project.

It was Sopuck, the MP for the area, who told them about the program, Urban said. Recreational angling is very important to the community’s economy, Urban said. There are a number of angling lodges near Beaver Lake that are dependent on good fishing in the surrounding waterways.

In the initial three-week application period, the program received 135 proposals, 100 of which were approved, Sopuck said. "It was a very gratifying response," he said.

The provinces with the greatest number of successful applications were British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, he said.

Part of the recent Conservative strategy on the environment has been to highlight their "Parks Canada strategy" of opening up new parks, said Paul Saurette, associate professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa. The government continues that narrative by "selling themselves as stewards of hunting and fishing lands," he said.

But most of the criticism directed at the Conservative government over the environment has been about process, Sopuck said, not actual on-the-ground programs.

"The people who criticize us, they criticize the changes we've made to environmental approval processes, and completely ignore the kinds of millions of dollars we've put into actual on-the-ground environmental improvement projects."

"The preference for this government is for on-the-ground conservation work," Sopuck said. "That's not just political spin, it’s a very deliberate direction of this government."

Cullen Bird is a 4th-year journalism student at Carleton University in Ottawa. This story is part of a project by the Carleton School of Journalism on federal spending announcements in 2013.