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Amplify Canada is an initiative created by Pattison Media designed to celebrate and elevate small businesses, the backbone of our economy. Thousands of small businesses, groups, family organizations and individuals are showcased on Pattison Media radio stations from Winnipeg to Vancouver throughout the year. Every month we go deeper and share the incredible journey of a few that have made an impact on their community. Some have flourished, others may need a little extra love and support. These are their stories…welcome to Amplify Canada.
Amplify Canada is a Pattison Media initiative, celebrating and elevating small businesses, the backbone of our economy. When the world changed in 2020, Amplify Canada highlighted the strength, determination, and generosity of small businesses across the country. Through uncertainty, closures, supply chain disruptions, and unprecedented challenges, these business owners found ways to adapt, support their communities, and keep moving forward.
In this third season of Amplify Canada, we return to the businesses and entrepreneurs whose stories inspired Canadians during the pandemic and go deeper into the economic pressures facing small businesses and the country today. In this episode, we're digging into something that is essential to Canadians every day. From farming to producing products, vineyards to sustainable fishing, we're looking at the people who grow, harvest, and sell.
What ends up on our plates in our homes? And before we look at the big picture, I want to ground this in where Amplify Canada began with small businesses.
Seaweed grows in the ocean. We're actually planting seaweed, so it is the most sustainable crop on the planet.
Canadian people really enjoy their own wine. They are really proud of it.
World food security really does depend on food from the ocean.
These were entrepreneurs who found new ways to grow, farm, and fish what feeds this country, and who are still adapting years later to different pressures.
Canada's agriculture and agri-food system touches every community in this country, generating 149.2 billion in GDP and supporting one in nine jobs nationwide. It's a sector recognized worldwide for quality and food safety, with roughly half of everything we grow and produce sold beyond our borders. But will tariffs and the overall economic climate shift that we are an agricultural superpower, yet for most Canadians. It doesn't feel like that at the checkout counter. Grocery prices are up nearly 35 percent since 2019. And today the average Canadian family spends about $10,000 a year on groceries or $800 a month. Canada is launching our first national food security strategy.
Pressure on fuel, fertilizer, and other agriculture costs. It expects that to continue to be passed along to consumers. In May, overall inflation hit 3.2%, while food inflation was 4.3%. In its latest outlook, the central bank forecasts that headline inflation will gradually slow over the coming months and reach its target of 2% by early next year.
But somehow we can truck it to the states, raw product, and truck it back. You don't seem very happy about that at all. I it's terrible. Some Ontario cucumbers go a long way to US plants before you can buy them from your local grocery store as pickles. But can the federal government spur a change and make those pickles here at home?
From Prime Minister Carney's optimism to the reality of inflation to understanding why we're not producing more in Canada.
Canada's food system is resilient and innovative. It sustains our environment and supports our economy. Today, that same industry is up against a new set of pressures as we see more tariffs, labor shortages, climate volatility, and a consumer whose habits keep shifting. So before we go back to the entrepreneurs who first told us the story, we wanted to understand the bigger picture. So we connected with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois to set the framework.
Now Sylvain is director of the Agri Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University and one of Canada's leading voices on food distribution and policy. For 25 years, he's tracked the forces shaping what Canadians pay at the grocery store, advising governments from coast to coast along the way. I started with the big question. Looking at Canada's food and agriculture sector today, how would you describe its overall health? I just think that right now we're
In a heightened awareness mode, if you will. COVID, Ukraine, and of course now with the Strait of Hormuz and energy costs, we're just seeing symptoms of a much broader problem. And I don't think we appreciated how incapable our food systems are in terms of absorbing all sorts of
Massive shocks, geopolitical shocks, climate shocks. The infrastructure that we have to support our food systems is just inadequate. If you look at what has happened in the last 18 months, we have a new tenant in the White House and we actually have a new prime minister. And if you look at the performance of food processing in both countries, the data actually points to a much more productive food manufacturing sector in the United States. If you look at GDP per hour worked in food processing in the United States, it's gone up 2%, while in Canada it's gone down minus 5.8% in 18 months. We're just suffering. We're just absorbing and coping. I think the biggest thing we need to realize is that we need a paradigm shift instead of just growing stuff and figure out a market for it, we need to start focusing on demand chain management, which is exactly what the American companies are doing. They're just focusing on where the consumer is going, what the consumer wants, and then they actually build a business model based on that. We're starting to get there, but it's been very, very slow. Canada does very well at the farm gate when it comes to plant science, food science.
Soil science, animal science, I mean all of the hard sciences to support farming, Canada's really doing incredibly well. So not AgTech, but really when you look at processing and you have to really look at scalability, you have to look at capital, access to capital, and the training and embracing AI. There are hopes.
In some places in Canada, you can still see that food processing is really undermined, whereas others people get it. I feel more positive about the future of food, to be honest, because I look at the data and I do think that there's going to be potential. I think we need to make sure that we don't damage anything permanently. Our growth, our economic growth, especially in food, will continue to ever rely on what goes on in the United States.
We start where the original episode did, off Vancouver Island, with a company that turned kelp into food. Founded in 2019, Cascadia Seaweed grew into the largest cultivator of kelp in Canada, farming in partnership with First Nations communities along the coast. Here's Desiree Dupuis, founding partner back when Cove Ocean Foods was just getting started.
Yeah, knowledge, oneness, vitality, and excellence. The knowledge part is in reference and honoring our First Nations partners. Each one of our seaweed farms, we partner with a First Nation band and we work with them for their knowledge and experience and know-how. Oneness. We are all one. Everything that we do, we receive in return. And then vitality, of course, is just harnessing the power of seaweed. And then excellence, of course, is the highest standard that we achieve to be. Seaweed grows in the ocean. We're actually planting seaweed.
We're not taking from existing kelp beds, which are starting to disappear. There's no fertilizers, we don't have to cut down trees, we don't have to water seaweed, and so it is the most sustainable crop on the planet.
The story for Desiree didn't stay the same. But before we catch up with her, this is a perfect place to give a shout out to Cascadia. Cascadia Seaweed was about a dream of building a sustainable business from nothing, in a space that no one knew anything about. It started to help farmers defend their crops from climate change, to restore ocean ecosystems, and strengthen coastal communities that have seen jobs disappear for decades. Again and again, they were at the brink. But because people believed, they are now the biggest seaweed farmers and processors in North America. That's resilience, and that is what Amplify Canada is all about. Small businesses, persevering, and making a difference.
So when we caught up with Desiree this time, she was on a cruise to Alaska. And the business she'd built with seaweed is in the past. And she's moving in a new creative direction. Desiree, thank you for jumping on with us, even though you're on vacation. Where are you right now?
We are at the Dawes Glacier in Endicott Bay. And I'm really proud and excited to be chatting with you, Linda, on this Amplify Canada podcast. When we last connected, you were turning seaweed into food.
Where did things go after we last spoke?
Now I'm full time in my next venture, which is also very sustainable material and sustainably focused in terms of luxury vegan footwear.
You've moved into something really fascinating to me and it's turning a food adjacent material into shoes that people wear. So what was the through line for you between those two projects when you look at what you did with the seaweed venture to now what you're doing with this footwear?
A sustainable endeavor was always a part of my values. My values being number one, obviously sustainability, doing something that is beneficial and not taking away from the planet. And with seaweed, it was like nothing more sustainable than taking a crop that's growing naturally in the ocean that gives back. And actually, I had already had my brand Vose, which is V O E S, which stands for vegan shoes. I had come up with this concept in 2016. And that was already my passion project. And in January of 2020, I had sent a purchase order for my first prototype of a boot made with cactus leather to New York. And so we all know what happened. New York was one of the first places to shut down only a month later. And so Vose was already born, but it was basically parked because of COVID.
I received the prototype for my first Chelsea boot for Vose made with cactus leather, and that was in July of 2020. So both projects were kind of being born at the same time, but Vose was put on the back burner as I focused on the seaweed brand. Really, what I feel is one of my biggest purposes and missions on this planet and with this lifetime is to build this footwear brand. So yeah, that's the through line you could say.
You've created something really cool here, and I'm super intrigued in Cactus leather. So how does a cactus become a shoe or a boot?
We do not make the cactus leather. I just want to be very upfront about that. We use a supplier. Their name is Deserto from Mexico. So Deserto takes the nopal cactus plant, which is a very regenerative plant because they actually cut the mature leaves off of the plant and the plant will regenerate itself so they can continue to use the same plant up to eight different times. And it grows on a cactus ranch, the nopal cactus plant ranch. As we know, cactus doesn't require water, so it just requires rainwater to grow. And it also has a capability of capturing carbon. So the guys at Deserto, they're cutting off the mature leaves of the nopal cactus plant. They are converting that into a pulp. And then there is some bio Polymers that are used to create it into a durable material and there's coloring and dyes, but essentially it's revolutionary what we're able to do with plants. And cactus is not the only plant leather. So this is what we call next generation plant-based materials. People are making leather in South America with gerba. And now we're even progressing even further to find materials that are made from fibers and agriculture waste that are actually completely plastic free. So that's really exciting to see the direction of these next generation materials and where they're developing and where we're gonna be going in the next few years.
It's super exciting to think that food crops can become a very sustainable and environmentally friendly product that can be put into footwear, clothing, all those types of things. What is your message to people?
So as consumers, we kind of have to do that gut check, right? Like if we say we value sustainability and and we're mindful and conscious of our values, then a lot of times I consider it an investment. So yeah, maybe you might be paying a higher cost, but it's like anything that's novel over time, when we invest in that innovation, then the more people that invest in it, then the more we're able to scale it and the more and faster that that price will actually be able to come down and and be more accessible and sustainable. People have to understand even that these materials exist and do some education and learn about the water and and the carbon footprint and we have to walk the walk. And again, I think it's conscious consumerism.
You talked a little bit already about some of the barriers. There are so many innovative, unbelievable creative ways to use natural materials that are popping up. But why is it taking so long for us to adapt this? I'm sure it comes back to consumer demand.
You nailed it. It's consumer demand. I say this till I'm blue in the face. We literally vote with our dollars. Every time you buy something, you are reconfirming to the company that is making that thing that it's valuable in the marketplace. And so of course they're going to keep producing that item. And so we have to become more mindful with our purchases. Take a beat, take a minute before you purchase something.
Do you think that we're just scratching the surface on farming for other purposes? And that we will see growth in this area, even though it feels like it's a bit stagnant right now?
I do think so. I think as we see the power shift to the Gen Z, the alpha generation, and that money starts to change hands, because those generations they grew up feeling like, are we even gonna have a planet to live on? They will be the ones that will really help to drive change. In terms of your question about farming and regenerative farming, absolutely. I think finding ways to use innovation to create materials that are from nature. There's this huge swing towards organic cotton and natural fibers that are breathable because we all know that plastic is one of the biggest epidemics in our lives, not just for the planet, but also with our health. I believe again optimistically that I think that we are going to see more innovation and a more of a way to connect back to the land.
I wanna ask you before we wrap up, because I do want you to get back and enjoy your wonderful Alaskan cruise, what do you say to other businesses, other entrepreneurs in Canada and your hope for Canadian small business overall?
Small business is the heart of our economy. And so I think if something is planted in your heart, if you have a seed of a dream, just take the next best thing, the next first step forward in pursuing that idea and that dream. I know it can be overwhelming because you see like the whole entire staircase and you don't know where to start. So I just encourage anybody to start.
Do what you can to follow through and keep moving forward one step at a time.
Fabulous. It was really wonderful to connect with you again. Desiree, you're amazing. One entrepreneur and footwear based on a bold bet on cactus leather. But her story isn't happening in isolation. It's playing out against a much bigger picture of what's happening to Canada's food and agriculture economy right now. So let's pull out and look at understanding the forces shaping every small business we've profiled this season. We'll go back to our conversation with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, and one of the country's leading voices on food policy and distribution.
Success is a funny thing in Canada. And we have an entrepreneurial drought. The King Federation of Independent Business has actually outlined Canada's Entrepreneurial drought. We have fewer businesses in Canada. We have fewer entrepreneurs. And you're seeing the same thing in the food space. I do think that the mindset in Canada overall about success, failure, and entrepreneurship needs to change in order for us to really embrace the moment and make our food systems much more resilient. I think we're starting to realize what the problems are, but we're just starting to make changes and changes are not happening fast enough. Last year in Mississauga, I toured a donut plant. A donut plant that actually makes two billion donuts a year. They were still flipping donuts by hand in oil in 2025. And that really is an example of how we're not embracing the moment as much. I just visited in Quebec City a brand new waffle facility, they actually make 16,000 waffles a day. And their waffles are sold across North America. It's amazing. And they only actually use six people to make all of those waffles. And that's why I think right now geopolitically we feel so threatened by the US because they have massive companies. And if we were to have like a stronger food system, instead of being infatuated with marketing boards and there's a lot of talk about supply management and instead of being vulnerable and be very protective about everything really and if we actually build a more competitive food system, I don't think we would feel as vulnerable and threatened as we do now.
From donuts flipped by hand to waffles made by six people a day, the gap between old habits and new competitiveness runs through every corner of Canada's food system. And the same question of what it takes to build something resilient led us back to the vineyards and to the harvest itself. So, what constitutes farming? According to a new Deloitte white paper commissioned by Wine Growers Canada, the country's wine industry and its broader ecosystem now contributes 10.1 billion to Canada's GDP and sustains nearly 100,000 jobs a year, spanning six wine-producing provinces from coast to coast. The wine industry itself directly contributes $3.2 billion of that total, with the remaining $6.9 billion flowing through tourism, hospitality, and other connected sectors. Every bottle of 100% Canadian wine generates roughly $88.50 in economic activity, and the industry says removing interprovincial trade barriers could unlock nearly four billion more. We first met Caroline Schaller in the Okanagan, not long after she arrived from France.
As you can hear, I have a big accent. I came here in 2017 to work for French company who own a winery here. I'm winemaker since about 20 years. It's not only ice wine. We can produce really really good heavy full-body red, really nice white. We have a bunch of different terroir. Yeah, Okanagan wines are really good, but that's not the end of the travel, you know. Wine is like a new gear every year.
You are working with mother nature, so she's always first.
Two wineries, and eight years later, Caroline is now winemaking at Culmina, and she's watching the Okanagan’s' biggest challenge shift from something economic to something climatic. And boy, did you ever come in at an interesting time? You had a few years before we got hit with that wonderful worldwide pandemic, of course. And lots of things changed. Take us on the journey of where you were and then what you're doing now.
First I came to Canada with Oceos La Rose, which is a winery owned by French people. Then I moved to Rainmaker. And just after the pandemic, I moved again in 25 to Culmina. The some change. In the sense of the pandemic, did it have much of an overall impact as we went through it and then coming out of it for the winemaking industry in Canada? Because we are agricultural, it was not that difficult because we were allowed to work. The main problem was being able to find workers, but with or without the pandemic, it's still the same issue here. It's always a little bit difficult here to find people to work in this industry.
It's interesting when we think about labor and labor shortages. It seems certain sectors are affected it seems to be a very ongoing situation for industries like yours.
It's always a challenge to find seasonal people and people who are still interested in by the wine industry.
What about some of the pressures now coming out of the pandemic? A lot of industries did well, and then some of them slumped a little bit and then did well again. And now we're sitting here with the situation that's happened south of the border with tariffs, with labor shortages, as you've mentioned, supply chain issues. How is that impacting the wine industry in this country? Is it helping or has it also been challenging?
No, I think wine industry is challenging anyway. First you work with nature, so that's the main challenge anytime. Then yes, we have political or industry challenge that we can control but we have to deal with. So I guess because we deal with nature, we are already to deal with more constant issues. The Canadian people really want to support their own industry. So in one way that's really interesting to see that. We welcome people. We are very happy to have them here. So that's something really helpful. And after tariff or something as well we have to deal with, but I mean, we are ready with nature, so as a winemaker is my main concern. And a couple of days before harvest we are really looking that way, like what's nature's gonna do with us. Yeah, and it's something that I don't think we often think about when we're pouring our glass of wine is the work that goes through and happens on the other end of things.
We've seen so many changes with temperature, with amounts of rain, even, and of course the threat of forest fires. What is your main concern when it comes to those environmental changes? Well, heat is important, but we have to be prepared sometime for more heat in a way and more cold, maybe in other in another way. I think the Okanagan is the place where the grape are growing with the huge temperature range between winter and summer. We can go from minus 20 to 40 in the summer. So the vine really have to be resilient and prepare as well to survive here. We saw the last couple of years some kind of issue with the cold snap. And I have to say at the beginning we couldn't imagine that the vine would be so resilient. So it's a good thing as well. The vine is here. The vines wants to stay here. So we are happy to have grapes. And for 2026, we saw on TV a lot of fire in BC. Wildfire that can affect us. So we know now since a couple of years that there's some kind of solution to help the winemaking area with a wildfire. We now have process to follow and to see if we're gonna be affected by that kind of problem. It's good to know we have grapes and we're gonna be harvesting in about two weeks now, I think, or something like that. So we will be ready to this new challenge. We're looking more towards what we're producing in this country.
And do you see that as a trend that will continue moving forward, the changes, the creativity? I mean there's some pretty amazing wines coming out of this country.
Yeah, I think it's really growing. I think cold snap or pandemic won't stop us, that's for sure. People are really passionate by this industry, the wine industry. It's something also very important in the agricultural view. Having producers, you know, it's also helping to set up the safety in the area. Like it's good to have product from the growers. And people are more and more interesting to buy local now.
I would think too that one of the most important things, because it's not just in the wine industry, it's in a lot of industries in this country when it comes especially to farming crops. We're gonna have to look at different ways to do these things to protect crops from fires, to protect them from cold, from floods, all those things. Is there a bigger conversation happening that you're aware of or part of? Or is this something that we even as consumers need to start pushing to make sure our governments are paying attention.
You know, there's a lot of research, so depending on the area. And for that kind of thing, we can also look worldwide because every kind of wine area they have the same kind of concern now, like some area they have heat and they don't have access to water. We are lucky here, we have access to water, but to stay sustainable we also have to improve our growing process. Every company has to work that way. Every government has to work that way as well because it's a main concern for everybody. Are we gonna be able to grow what we need to feed everybody?
It's not only wine, it's for every growers to see how we can adapt to the heat to the cold. And there's some creativity that's for sure. And it helps also to select the grapes you can have in the area because certain grapes are more sensible to heat or to cold, then you can adapt this. Yeah, it's very important to stay focused and to stay also open to all the possibility we can find. Other countries are having the same kind of problem. Australia is having it. There's some fire in France as well, with some issue on the grapes, same thing. So we are on the same ship all together. So we really have to work on that. Every country. Really well put the fact that this is worldwide. It's not just happening in Canada. It's happening worldwide. Now it's harvest, so that's gonna be the biggest challenge doing great wine, focusing on the harvest and the parameter to have a nice crop and to do nice wine for 2026.
And is there anything that we didn't cover today that you want to express to people about the industry itself, about the winery that you're working with now, and just overall the importance of shopping and buying local Canadian?
Just open BC wine and enjoy it. Think about the growers, think about nature, the growers, and just enjoy the wine that you are drinking. And remember where it came from. Exactly. I love these conversations because it makes it real and it shows the people that are doing the work to ensure that we have a wine industry here in Canada because not only is it important for the country, but it employs people, it's good. And we do have an incredible area throughout the country to grow. So it's wonderful to see. Thank you.
Caroline sees climate as the bigger threat to her business than any economic headwind. A warning she's watching play out in real time. But according to an Ipsys poll, Canadians continue to rank inflation and the cost of living as their top concern. And a big part of that is putting food on the table. To understand what is affecting the cost of food across the country, we go back to Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.
What's reassuring to me is that we're starting to talk more because I mean you see the headlines. This infatuation towards grocers and the oligopoly and the power that they have is ridiculously misleading because that's not where the problem is. Are grocers bullies? Are grocers unreasonable? Of course they are, but not towards consumers. They're unreasonable towards processors. So they're gouging processors. They're not gouging consumers because margins are the same. It's just up the food chain. The slaughtering that I see between grocers and processors has just been damaging, especially Ontario. Food manufacturing is the largest manufacturing sector in the province. People think it's cars. It's not. It's food. I think it's important for governments to play a role as a catalyst for investment. So you want the government to lay out a path, but you want the private sector to take over. And right now, the biggest problem we have in Canada versus other G20 countries is that the government is doing all the heavy lifting. But we have a deficit, we have a huge debt. You need the private sector to really start doing the heavy lifting. So will they step up? That's the thing. And so in order for the private sector to step up, you need to enable conditions in order for the private sector to see Canada as a great place to invest. The good news is that we're expecting things to calm down. We are expecting general headline inflation to be basically at par with food inflation, which is actually gonna help. And frankly, the decision to pause on the gas tax, a good idea because now we're dealing with a trade dispute with the US.
We're applying counter tariffs. Many food ingredients will be impacted. Scalability is a problem in Canada. If you buy ingredient A from the US and it comes into Canada and that's counter-tariff now, as of September 8th, you're too small to pivot and find a new supplier and find the same ingredient at the same or lower price. That's what Americans can do. We cannot do that. So counter tariffs are more damaging to the Canadian food economy. Then tariffs on Canadian goods going to the US because of that. So I think that really Ottawa, compared to last year, has done its homework to understand that some policy, some decision at the border will absolutely impact the grocery bill. And so last year I was incredibly nervous. That was under then Prime Minister Trudeau when he actually applied counter tariffs. We saw food inflation go up by 0.5% within six months. But also, as a government, you need to be aware that it will affect people. It is affecting people, lives, and food security in Canada. This time around, I think that the approach is much more surgical and rational. Now not saying it, but I see that they absolutely understand how hurtful counterterrorists can be to Canadians.
Pressure, ingredient costs, border policy all lands on the grocery bill. But not every corner of the food economy is feeling the same squeeze. Canada's fishing industry is charting its own course, and one small operation on the West Coast shows what that can look like up close. A fishing company making a sustainable difference based out of False Creek in Vancouver. Good fish is run by fishermen who've spent nearly two decades on BC's coastal waters.
After a bunch of years of kind of growing and developing the fishing side of the business, Samuel and I started the idea for Good Fish. We've been selling at farmers markets since twenty twenty, but just kinda getting ready to start selling retail and wholesale as well now. World food security really does depend on food from the ocean.
Seafood provides protein for like three billion people. So I think wild capture fisheries are still and should be, as long as they're managed and fished appropriately, are the best.
Six years later, we caught up with Fraser McDonald.
We're about a hundred miles offshore from Vancouver Island. We're out on the tuna grounds fishing albacore tuna, which a season runs from mid-July, early July till the end of September every year. So spend a few months of our year offshore here every summer chasing tuna around.
So last time we connected, we were in the middle of the pandemic and things had changed and people were trying to deal with everything that the world was dealing us. How did you fare? Yeah, we were fairly fortunate in our industry during the pandemic because we worked pretty isolated. So because we were deemed essential service, we got to go to work as normal. Definitely with most of BC's seed food is traditionally exported and those export markets collapsed. And so that gave us an opportunity to sell more of our stuff locally. So that gave us the opportunity to start Good Fish. I think the biggest things that are affecting our industry right now are the tariffs with China and the threat of tariffs on seafood going down to the US. When you see that type of change and shift, are there ways that you're able to put some pressure both locally, provincially, and federally when it comes to government supporting and making sure that those changes can actually swing back again to the favor of businesses like yourself? Yeah. We have quite an active association. We do a ton of work with our MPs locally on our MLA's work with Ministry of Agriculture here in DC and then multiple trips to Ottawa each year, talking to members from the standing committee and bureaucrats within DFO and really try to get across how much of an impact it's having. Fishing in the big context of the Canadian economy is quite small, especially on the West Coast. But we're hoping that continued pressure on all levels of government will help us eventually and gotta get your voice out there and let the government people know how much it's affecting us.
Are you able to find the balance between staying affordable for everyday customers against the real cost of sustainably caught seafood?
Yeah, it's a challenge for sure. And it's a spectrum, right? We have some really, really high end seafood products that have really high input costs like halibut and spot prons and a few of these other ones where the cost of harvesting has gone up double or more in the last five years. And so when people kind of get that sticker shot at the price of what that costs, there's definitely a disconnect between, I think, most of the population that goes to the grocery store and sees the prices going up and don't understand why. Two good fish. We try to make sure that we're offering wild caught, sustainable fish that's also affordable. It might not necessarily be a nice piece of halibut, it might be a piece of rockfish. But what we know is that actually that piece of rockfish can be just as delicious and, you know, packed with nutrients as well. But yeah, it's just a matter of informing people what their options are.
There's been a lot of conversation around some of the labor shortages in this country and or the lack of jobs available, depending on which side you look at. What is it like for you?
Most people say we have a labor shortage of people wanting to get into our industry. It is hard work. Like this tuna trip we're on right now will be offshore for three weeks and working fifteen to seventeen hour days. It's long and it's hard and you're away from home and so there is not that many young people that are interested in taking it on. For us in particular, I think we've been pretty fortunate based on where we are, but definitely industry wide, there's
Let's talk a little bit about sustainability, being sustainable in practice within your business. How would you describe sustainable fishing? And have you noticed a difference over the last few years in how that sits with?
The industry as well as consumers. Sustainability, like as a fisherman beyond the water the last couple of decades, you see the changes in stocks and in migration routes and all that kind of stuff. So you really do see things changing. I think we've done a really good job in BC of achieving truly sustainable fisheries. The real problem with sustainability is marine protected area network that's going in because Oceans Canada and Parks Canada are the ones that are doing the marine planning and the actual fisheries management side of it is not really being consulted. They're kind of like two different hands. They're not talking to each other's. And what we're saying to our fisheries manager and saying to the marine planners is what is the government's plan to reduce effort? Because if you reduce the fishable area and reduce the amount of harvest, you keep the same amount of traps in the water. You're kind of setting us up for failure. And there's no really good answer for that. But we've been asking since twenty nineteen, like what the plan is. And there doesn't seem to be a plan, or if there is one, we don't know about it yet. So if they're gonna reduce our fishing access, they're also gonna reduce the fishing effort because it needs to happen.
Such important conversations. Let's just shift for a second and talk about one thing that you wish customers and we touched a little bit upon it during the conversation, but what do you wish customers understood about what goes into getting fish from the water to their table?
Yeah, I think the biggest thing we always try to explain to people is that it is just really, really expensive to go and get this fish. One thing about wild caught protein is that you really have to go out into the wild to find it and it's costly and it's time consuming. And then the work, even when you're catching fish, the work is really, really hard. And so when people see higher prices, you know, sometimes people wonder, like, you guys must be making more money. It's like, absolutely not. We're just making a living and we're doing this because we're passionate about it. A lot of fishermen joke it's like if you're fishing to get rich, you're in the wrong business. So
just know that like the cost that you guys are paying as consumers for like high quality and sustainably caught protein is like what it needs to be for us to actually go out and do it. And most fishermen are fishermen because they really enjoy what they do and it's quite a special rear. But yeah, as expenses go up, fish prices have gone up a little bit. And it's just sort of the reality, unfortunately, of everything as everything gets sort of inflated.
What, you're not getting filthy rich off of what you do, Fraser?
It's crazy. Actually, fuel prices have been going up. For years, right? Like maybe 10 years ago, we were paying maybe like 80 cents a liter for marine diesel. It's been slowly creeping up. You know, last year maybe paying like a dollar sixty a liter, but this year we've been paying upwards of two thirty, two forty, two fifty a liter for marine diesel. And you really notice it like all of a sudden you go out for a trip and your fuel bills that used to be five thousand dollars are like fourteen thousand dollars. You really notice that at the end when you look at the bottom line of what everyone makes from a fishing trip and you start taking off those increased fuel prices, it makes a big difference.
Yeah, that's incredible. Man, when you put the math together like that, ouch, like let's open up the Strait of Hormuz, right?
Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. Straight of Hormuz has been a very inconvenient global proper quest this year. What gives you that optimism about where the industry is headed or where you hope it will go? I really hope that we can find the balance with marine protected areas. I spoke at FOPO in Ottawa last spring and I said, listen, like the uncertainty that's been caused by the Marine Protected Area Plan and a few of the other things that have been going on has really been dissuading younger people from staying in the industry. And so I hope if we can solve some of these problems and just have some certainty whether that is just knowing what the future looks like from like a regulation perspective, at least we as an industry kind of know what we have to look forward to. And then people can start planning and decide whether this is a business they want to be in. But I think the foundation of it is that we still have really abundant stocks in a lot of our fisheries. And that the baseline that's what you need to have a successful industry. And I hope young people can see that. And I hope we can keep moving this thing forward because it'd be a real shame to lose even more of what we've built historically on this coast in terms of like a commercial fishing industry and local knowledge about the life that goes on out on the ocean. So we always try to explain that to our customers. We spend six months a year at sea and we know it in and out and we care about it. And that's kind of why we're able to have the industry that we have. And so hopefully enough young people want to keep that going. And to do that, we just need the government to work with us and make sure that we have opportunity to go to work and feed people.
And I think those of you who are fishing, farming, producing food for this country and around the world should be some of the highest paid people because we kind of need food to live.
For sure. Yeah.
Can you tell us a little bit about your business before we wrap up? And I'm talking about good fish and how people can get a hold of you and what you're all about. Yeah. So good fish is all seafood that's caught here in BC. We don't import anything or sell anything that we don't fish.
We're based in Vancouver. You can find us on our website, goodfish.co. Follow us along on social media. We try to share on our social media a bunch of what goes on behind the scenes and what it's kind of like to live out at sea and work on the ocean. If you don't live in the southern BC or Vancouver Island, we do ship our seafood all over the country and we'd be happy to try to get you some. Check us out, even if you don't eat seafood, but you just want to know what it's like to work out on the water. Give us a follow and we'll share our life with you.
I don't know how you do it. I admire those that love fishing and want to do this and can manage the three weeks at sea. Anything else you want to add before we wrap up today, Fraser?
Just thanks for your time today and for your interest. Yeah, appreciate it again to speech with you again.
Well, thank you so much for sharing your voice. It is a good one and this is such a great story. Fraser has spent nearly two decades on the water watching stocks shift, fuel costs climb, and export markets swing with every new trade dispute. It's a hard business built on hard won knowledge. So we asked Dr. Sylvain Charlebois how the fishing industry actually stacks up across the country right now.
I think it's doing great. When you look at some of the numbers, it's one of the fastest growing sectors. In fact, actually in a couple of weeks, I'm meeting with the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance, and their numbers are pretty good for the East Coast. The one part that is not doing as well in Canada is aquaculture. So farm fishing. Canadians don't realize that 85% of the fish that they buy at the grocery store is farmed. It's not wild. And of course, we know that Ottawa last 10 years they've actually decided to close many, many open pens, especially in BC. And now we're importing more salmon from Norway and Chile. I'm not sure if that's more sustainable or not. In fact, actually, if you look at food prices, the one item this summer that has gone up the most is salmon. And we were expecting that because salmon comes from abroad. We shut down so many farms here that we're now importing more. People will listen to the news, will focus on what's written. Our job is to look at the data and the data is kind of reassuring. My only concern right now is this dispute that we have with the number one economy in the history of the world. I mean, that's just the way it is. It's been rough, it's been tough. I can appreciate that, but we need to really make sure that we understand that I've been to California, Louisiana, Texas, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. They all want to do business with us. And they don't care about the White House care much less about the White House than us, I can tell you that. And so all they care about is to make money and innovate and provide good food to people. I think that's what we need to care about.
From a kelp farm turned shoe brand to a vineyard adapting to a changing climate to a boat a hundred miles offshore. The story at ground level is the same one we heard in tourism. Costs are up, labor is scarce, and the people growing and catching our food are rebuilding around it, not waiting for it to go back to normal.
Eat more fish.
Maybe that's the answer.
A special thank you to Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Sylvain is director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax and one of Canada's leading experts in food distribution and policy. He spent 25 years studying the field with previous posts at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Guelph before joining Dalhousie a decade ago. Through the lab he founded, Sylvain leads a team of researchers focused on forecasting. From beef and vegetable prices to broader food inflation trends, drawing on proprietary data and machine learning to track what's happening in Canadian grocery stores in near real time. He's advised nearly every provincial government in Canada, along with the federal government, the Bank of Canada, the Auditor General of Canada, and the Competition Bureau, and has testified before Parliament close to 30 times.
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