I oppose the new proposed…

I oppose the new proposed legislation on “Bait review policy” that will rezone the movement of bait in Ontario. I have been in the business for over 30 years, both as a harvester and a retail operator. My operation is off HWY 11, between Cobalt and Haileybury. I have supplied customers with bait year round. This is going to affect my business drastically with an estimated 30% loss. My zone is Zone D and the north borders are HWY 65 E and W, which is within a 10 minute drive. It will exclude a large portion of customers from buying my bait when they travel to fish past the Hwy 65 E and W border. My customers come from:

1.Timmins,

2.Earlton

3.Englehart

4.Temiskaming Shores(New Liskeard,Haileybury,Dymond)

5.Cobalt

6.Latchford

7.Temagami

8.North Bay

9.Muskoka Area

10.Toronto

11.Areas south of Toronto also

12.United States

And they go to the Blanche River (small portion is in Zone D), Long Lake, Abitibi, and places north of the 65 border. Having the customer carry around a receipt for his bait might work if he only buys a dozen minnows/leeches. Most buy more and with my bait generally lasting longer than two weeks, what is the customer to do when he throws the receipt away and still has bait left over. What are you going to do? How is he going to prove the bait is purchased? Many tourist camp operators and outfitters don’t even know some of the rules that are in place now in regards to the shiners, and what can be brought into Canada. How are you going to educate them, when it seems you have left them out of the equation? It seems that you could not control the line that you put in place when it was realized that emerald shiners were infected. People were bringing shiners across the line. How do you think you can control the lines now? This area has only two conservation officers and they do not have time to stop drivers to find out if they have bait. So unless you can allot more money for conservations officers this zone business will be just like the emerald shiners, a joke. With using roads as boundary lines, it becomes difficult since some of the boundary lines go thru towns or close to towns. I am sure that there are harvesters/bait dealer who live in one zone where he has a bait shop and harvests his bait in another zone. What is he going to do? Or a bait shop owner who’s customer fish north of his shop, even across the highway, which in some cases do apply. I don’t think this system will work the way the MNRF thinks it will. I can see the loopholes and the unwillingness of customers to go elsewhere to get bait, when they have been going to the same shop for a very long time. Another solution would be to draw a line across Ontario somewhere away from towns or cities. That line would say any bait caught south stays south, and any bait north stays north. It is not an ideal solution, but is a simple and less complicated one. It will of course affect some bait harvesters and bait dealers. OR

To completely abandon the Draft Policy and do some more extensive testing to see what invasive species are where and how far north. Instead of trying to see into the future ten or twenty years from now. I hope that you take a long look at the Draft Policy again and this time make sure that you discuss with all of the Harvesters and Dealers, those that have been in the business for a very long time along with all the many fishing enthusiasts. They can give you insight in how to manage the fishing and bait industry... I have petition with 13 pages of signatures. This was only from May 18th to June 24st 2017.

Kathaleen Hopper, Owner/Operator

J & K Enterprises

Cobalt, Ontario P0J 1C0

If you require the petition please let me know as I could not download the sheets to this forum.

[Original Comment ID: 209904]