Imagine it’s early May and the new fishing season is officially underway. You head to your local tackle shop to pick up everything you need for a day out on the lake. While the cashier scans your tackle, they regretfully share the news that they’re unable to issue angling licenses.
That’s the case at Pokey’s Tackle Shop in Regina, where, of two years ago, they stopped selling fishing licenses to its customers.
“The younger people are getting used to it, but they’re young. The old people are still having difficulties with it because they got to get a computer, and then they got to do all their stuff, and then they got to print it off,” says Greg Prokopetz, owner of Pokey’s Tackle Shop.
In April 2013, the Government of Saskatchewan turned the hunting and fishing license issuing process over to an American company. The government’s intention was to make it easier to track licenses by using an online personal identification number. That way, they can monitor violations. As well, hunters and anglers can now purchase their licenses at home.
The new system, which affects hunting, trapping, and angling (HAL), can be costly for businesses like Pokey’s, and scraps the old process of issuing licenses by hand.
“I have to spend $1600 on a computer. Then I got to get the internet and the hook up. Then I got to buy the paper, the ink, and all that stuff,” explains Prokopetz.
“If you’re an SGI dealer, you get your computer, your printer, your paper, and your internet access covered. But why are we any different than them? They’re issuing licenses and so are we.”
Prokopetz says his son, who is a business graduate, estimates the total value of the new system in his shop will be more than $5,000.
Trent Wotherspoon, local NDP deputy leader, says the answer to the expensive program is to keep it Saskatchewan based.
“[We need] to find a solution that works directly with Saskatchewan people, that allows our money and our jobs to remain within Saskatchewan, and in the desire to shift to an online type format for some of these things, there has to be consideration to ensuring there is the ability for the smaller retailers, the smaller outfitters to interface directly with that system,” says Wotherspoon.
Chuck Lees, provincial wildlife manager with the government, says there is no intention to make the program more inexpensive at the present time.
“We have heard from couple of issuers in that regard, but there are no immediate plans, at least. We’ll continue to monitor that feedback,” says Lees.
For Wotherspoon, who is an avid hunter and angler, the implications of the online system also go beyond the dollar signs and politics.
“The discussion that goes on in a small retailer or small shop is sometimes a really special one,” says Wotherspoon.
“I think of going into Pokey’s Tackle Shop and it’s a discussion that also gets into what are [the fish] biting on, what portion or place on the lake, and how deep. There’s a nice dialogue and a nice little forum of information being shared. In many ways, it’s too bad to shut down that sort of a forum, as well.”
