A Culturally Correct Proposal to Privatize the British Columbia Salmon Fishery

Abstract:     
Canada now faces two looming policy crises that have come to a head in British Columbia. The first is long-term depletion of the Pacific salmon fishery by mobile commercial ocean fishermen racing to intercept salmon under the rule of capture. The second is an unsettling series of native land claims resulting from Canadian Supreme Court case law recognizing and affirming "the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada." This essay relies on the economics of property rights to propose a privatization auction of the salmon fishery while promoting the Canadian commonwealth and respecting the tribes' distinctive aboriginal culture.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 49

JEL Classification: K00, K22, Q22, Q28

working papers series