B.C. Premier Glen Clark is reported via aides to "regret" that an American ferry with 300 passengers aboard has been held captive since the weekend by a blockade of Canadian fishing boats. As well he should: whatever complaints the fishermen may have, this is no protest. It is a hostage-taking. That such excursions into criminality have become as common as traffic jams in Canada -- from the everyday hooliganism of the picket line to the attempted storming of the Ontario legislature, from native bands to environmental groups to the utter confusion of blockades and counter- blockades now cluttering the B.C. forests -- does not make them any less shocking. Nor does the apparent unwillingness of the police to enforce the law in these events confer any more dignity on what is the essence of mob rule.

But the premier cannot escape his own share of responsibility for the current escapade. It is Clark who has done his best to whip up local hostilities over the salmon fishery, picking fights with first the Americans, then the federal government, indulging in every kind of provocative tactic, cranking up the rhetoric to more hysterical heights with each passing week. Should he now be surprised to find that others are ready to pick up where he leaves off?

That both Clark and the fishermen are willing to go to such lengths does not prove their case. Indeed, where such extreme tactics are employed, one usually finds they are in inverse relation to the legitimacy of the cause: in the heat of the immediate conflict, it is easy to divert attention from the real interests at stake. In the present example, we are asked almost to go to war over the alleged overfishing of Alaskan fishermen: they are said to have taken 500,000 salmon bound for B.C. rivers, nearly three times their historic highs. The excess works out to about 1 per cent of the annual catch in the west coast fishery, which is itself worth about 4 per cent of the province's GDP.

The dispute seems all the more overblown when you consider that the variety of salmon the Americans are accused of overfishing, the sockeye, are not in fact in scarce supply. Conservation authorities estimate more than 18 million sockeye will make the Fraser River run this year, the biggest sockeye run since 1913. While all sides protest that conservation is first, last and always in their hearts, the dispute, which began earlier this year with the failure to agree on an allocation of the catch under the Pacific Salmon Treaty, more closely resembles a clash of stake-jumpers in a gold rush.

At the very moment that the government of B.C. was placing ads in U.S.

newspapers protesting at American overfishing of the Early Stuart sockeye, "one of the most fragile and valuable" of Fraser River stocks, gill-netters at the mouth of the Fraser were reporting twice the expected catch. Fisheries officials now estimate the Early Stuart run at 1.4-million, up 40 per cent from initial forecasts.

But if the sockeye are not endangered just yet, Clark's grandstanding may still do the trick. In response to the Alaskan outrage in the north, the premier is attempting to organize an armada of Canadian vessels to scoop every fish they can find from southern waters -- perhaps 1.5-million in all. With any luck, Clark boasts, "we can inflict some serious harm on the U.S. catch." It is not only American tourists who will be held hostage, then: it is the fish stocks themselves.

Part of the armada would be made up of northern fishermen, the same ones who are now blockading the ferry in Prince Rupert, who would be sent south to singe the Yankees' beard. This would be in direct violation of federal conservation policy, known as the Mifflin plan, which restricts fishermen to fish one part of the coast or another. Which perhaps suggests what is really going on here. The northern fishermen have never really accepted the Mifflin plan -- indeed, until the Alaskan matter blew up, seemed distinctly unconcerned about overfishing in general.

You see how useful the Americans can be. By taking the ferry, the fishermen put the screws to Ottawa over a matter that has nothing to do with American fishing, and everything to do with federal fisheries policy. And by participating in Clark's armada, the northerners get to haul in as many fish as they like, all in the name of conservation! No wonder Clark is winning such popularity points.

At some point, before this spins completely out of control, the feds will have to do something to rein in the Clark government, whatever the cost to their own political fortunes. Will they have the courage? Or is the government of Canada held hostage, too?