II. Trends in management
The federal government manages Atlantic fisheries, under authority of the
Constitution, the Fisheries Act, and other legislation. Provincial
governments control land-based processing; and the Northwest Atlantic
Fisheries Organization (NAFO) and other international bodies bring some
order to fisheries beyond Canada's 200-mile zone.
Historically, the federal government mostly avoided seeking out a broad
industrial policy, trying rather to do what seemed logical under the
circumstances and to adjust in the best direction depending on needs. But
as fishing power increased, government's role has become more intensive,
for the stated purpose of protecting fish stocks and balancing competing
demands.
Confederation to the First World War
Little active fishery management in the modern sense existed before
Confederation. Between 1867 and the First World War, the Department of
Marine and Fisheries set up a corps of fishery officers. Travelling royal
commissions wrote regulations for scores of fisheries, and government set
up a Fisheries Research Board.
Managers first concentrated on the river fisheries, dealing with closed
seasons, gear restrictions, and the like. The first Commissioner of
Fisheries touted the idea of leases and licences for salmon rivers, on
the grounds that this would avoid destructive over-competition, and that
those holding the privilege would take better care of the resource. This
idea faded under pressure of circumstances.
Regulations soon moved into deeper water. As the lobster industry built
hundreds of small canneries on the Atlantic coast, government set seasons,
size limits, and trap regulations for conservation purposes. The herring
industry was also growing. But the fisheries department banned Canadians
from using the powerful purse-seine technology for herring, because of
alarm about the effects of American seiners fishing mackerel.
Motor boats were common by the First World War, and trawlers -- powerful
motor vessels towing large nets -- were becoming a major factor in the
groundfish fishery, hitherto dominated by hook and line. To protect
inshore fisheries, managers made larger trawlers (or "draggers") stay
twelve miles offshore.
Sporadic attempts took place to develop new fisheries, or to improve
product quality. Government sponsored dozens of hatcheries for salmon
and many other species, with fishery managers convincing themselves that
these efforts were increasing the harvest. This initiative faded by the
1930s; hatcheries remained mainly to stock rivers for sport fisheries.
The First World War to the Second
The First World War brought a huge boom in groundfish and other fisheries.
Soon after, the scallop fishery became important, as did the fresh fish
trade. Diesel engines became common on larger vessels.
The Depression struck early for the fishing industry. As Europeans
recovered from the war and built up their salt and fresh fish trade,
Newfoundland lost overseas markets and began competing with the Maritime
salt fish trade. This caused a price decline that forced fishermen into
other fisheries, only to see the price drop again in a ricochet effect.
During the Depression, hardship was commonplace in the Maritimes and even
worse in Newfoundland, which faced financial collapse in the early 1930s.
The "oldest colony," as it was often called, lost parliamentary self-rule
when it could not pay its public debt. The British government stepped in,
and a Commission of Government ran its affairs from 1934 until after the
Second World War.
For the Maritimes, a Royal Commission in the late 1920s led to a virtual
ban on trawlers, largely to protect inshore markets. The fisheries
department sponsored the renowned priest Moses Coady to set up fishery
co-operatives, especially along the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore.
Further scientific work also took place. But overall, the interwar period
offered few innovations in fisheries management.
Second World War to 1968: the age of development
The Second World War brought another boom in demand for Canadian-caught
fish, and a new emphasis on productivity. Nylon nets, hydraulics, radio,
radar, and sonar became common. The frozen-fish trade concentrated in
groundfish grew enormously.
The federal government did away with the trawler ban (it had already
lifted the Atlantic purse-seine ban in the late 1930s), and after the
war began granting boat-building subsidies, coupled with a Fisheries Loan
programme. A vessel-insurance programme also came into being. The
fisheries inspection programme took on new strength and encouraged better
quality. The Fisheries Research Board, working with an industrial
development arm of the fisheries department, encouraged new gear and
burgeoning fisheries such as swordfish and offshore scallops.
The provinces encouraged the building of new processing plants. In
Newfoundland, Premier Smallwood combined resettlement of small communities
with the development of "growth centres" such as Trepassey.
Foreign fleets using the new factory-freezer trawler technology in the
1950s began fishing more intensively in the Northwest Atlantic, exploiting
many stocks that Canadian investigators had explored. Through the
International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, Canada
worked with other nations to regulate the fishery, mainly by controlling
the mesh size of trawls to let small fish escape. But concerns about
overfishing were minimal. The emphasis was on catching the Maximum
Sustainable Yield (MSY).
Development was typified by the rapid growth of the offshore trawler fleet
and of the smaller but significant herring purse-seine fleet, which spread
from the Bay of Fundy to much of the Atlantic. The scallop fleet of
medium-size vessels also grew.
Lobster remained a small-boat fishery. Limits came into place on the
number of traps that fishermen could use, and some lobstermen pushed
for limits on the total number of licences. Coming into place around
1968, the lobster controls marked the beginning of the end for open-access
fisheries.
1968 to 1984: foundation of the current system
The groundfish industry had for years known sporadic crises, usually
caused by market fluctuations. In 1974 a bigger crisis emerged, largely
because of severe resource scarcity. Both the Canadian and foreign fleets
had multiplied; the latter got most of the blame for overfishing. A huge
agitation took place for a 200-mile limit, which skilful Canadian
diplomacy, allied with other coastal states, brought into place on
January 1, 1977. A full United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
came into effect in 1982.
By now several major fisheries were suffering from over-crowding and
over-competition, amplifying the chronic problems of low incomes and
instability. Bigger boats and better technology had multiplied fishing
power, often harming fish stocks and fishermen's earnings. People raced
for fish that would otherwise be caught by a competitor. Recognition
spread that open-access, loosely-controlled fisheries tended to attract
more fishing capacity and effort than they could properly support.
In the late l960s and the 1970s the federal government took a much more
interventionist approach, and set up the modern system of fishery
management. The aim was to tailor the fleet to the resource, improve
volume, value, and stability, and give fishermen and processors a
stronger voice in management.
Major moves included:
- Setting up the 200-mile zone.
- Creating a stand-alone Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in
1979, responsible for fisheries management, fisheries research,
oceanography, hydrography, and small craft harbours. (In the 1990s DFO
again expanded by merging with the Canadian Coast Guard.)
- Strongly increasing science and enforcement.
- Using conservation quotas for major finfish fisheries, set by scientific
methods to favour an Optimum Sustainable Yield rather than the larger
quantity under a Maximum Sustainable Yield policy.
- Limiting the size and capacity of boats.
- Imposing "limited entry" by putting a ceiling on the number of boats
and species licences (there was no direct control on the number of
fishermen, which soon increased). No longer could anyone who wanted buy
a boat and go fishing, at the cost of destructive over-competition.
Controlling the number, it was thought, would aid both conservation and
average incomes.
- Using fleet quotas and zones to divide up the fishery, so the inshore,
midshore, offshore, and all their subdivisions would each have fish they
could count on. In addition, the "owner-operator policy" aimed to prevent
corporate control of boats less than 65 feet in length.
- Introducing individual quotas (IQs) in many fisheries, notably
groundfish and herring, on both conservationist and economic grounds.
The idea was that instead of building bigger, more expensive boats to
race for the best share of an overall quota, fishermen could pace their
fishing to their own needs and the market's requirements. They would have
more of a sense of ownership, and therefore be more conservationist.
- In a further development, adding individual transferrable quotas (ITQs)
for certain fisheries. The thinking was that by transferring quotas back
and forth, fishermen could operate in a more market-oriented manner.
Guidelines would prevent excessive accumulation of quotas.
- Creating industry advisory committees for every major fishery. More
than 100 advisory committees now operate on the Atlantic coast.
- Encouraging fishermen's organizations to form and expand.
In 1976, a change in federal regulations made it easier for self-employed
fishermen to get Unemployment Insurance benefits for longer periods, like
the rest of the work force. This was seen largely as a social assistance
measure, which was expected to become unnecessary as the fishery became
more viable.
Groundfish catches soon rebounded. Growth and prosperity marked the late
1970s. The crab, shrimp, and herring fisheries developed strongly in
various areas. Major companies raced to build new boats and plants.
While the federal fisheries department called for caution and abandoned
most of its industrial development work in fishing and processing,
provincial governments encouraged expansion. Indeed, despite the fisheries
department's conservation rules and anti-expansion rhetoric, federal
authorities themselves sometimes loosened the rules on limited entry,
or helped subsidize new plants.
As well, fishermen sought ways around the regulations. Although rules
controlled vessel length, fishermen built bulkier vessels with greater
fishing power and carrying capacity. Modern electronics boosted
fish-finding ability. The number of registered fishermen increased
sharply, with some part-timers using the fishery as a means to obtain UI.
Despite optimism and seeming progress, the four major groundfish companies
on the Atlantic coast, which controlled the offshore trawler fleet and
strongly influenced many other fisheries, faced business failure in
1981. Cost and market price factors coupled with overexpansion had eroded
profits.
The federal government in the early 1980s invested hundreds of millions
of dollars in a restructuring that saw the four major companies merge
into two. A federal Task Force on the Atlantic Fishery resulted in
various reforms, although attempts to improve marketing were inconclusive.
The Task Force gave further impetus to Individual Transferrable Quotas,
which have remained a contentious issue. And it stated broad goals for
fishery policy: economic viability, maximum employment, and
Canadianization (this in a period when Canada still had co-operative
arrangements allowing some foreign fishing within the 200-mile zone).
1984-1992: searching for stability
The groundfish industry seemed to settle out after the 1981-82 crisis.
The fishery was achieving record values. Canada was leading the world
in export value of fish.
Scientists expected abundant cod, while warning of possible declines in
lobster. Overall, the new system was still promising volume, value,
stability, and more power for fishermen. But this vision was to suffer
major setbacks.
Over the next decade, the federal government dropped boat-building
subsidies, the Fisheries Loan Programme, and the Fishing Vessel Insurance
Programme, as people looked forward to a self-supporting industry. In
the 1990s DFO transferred fish inspection responsibilities to the Canadian
Food Inspection Agency (partly as a government cost-cutting move).
Aquaculture became a major force, especially for salmon in southwestern
New Brunswick, and for mussels in many areas.
Individual quotas (also known as Enterprise Allocations when held by
larger corporations) and Individual Transferrable Quotas continued to
spread to new areas. Fisheries of these types now account for more than
half the landed value.
The new advisory system proved highly useful; but it sometimes bogged
down in conflicts, particularly in groundfish, where inshore, midshore,
and offshore interests in all their varying gear types lobbied fiercely
against one another.
The northern cod fishery was supposed to be the major beneficiary of the
200-mile limit and the foremost fish producer. But by the late 1980s,
inshore fishermen were complaining of scarcity. By mid-1992, DFO had to
put northern cod fishing under a moratorium which continues today. Many
other groundfish closures followed. Total groundfish catches sank from
734,000 tonnes in 1988 to 96,000 tonnes in 1995. The Atlantic fishing
industry, including harvesters and processors, suffered the largest
layoff in Canadian history.
1992-2000: the moratorium and beyond
The federal fishing closures were linked to assistance programmes for
groundfish fishermen and processors, and with new measures to reduce
the fleet. The number of vessels dropped by about one-third, and that
of registered fishermen from 64,000 in 1990 to about 43,000 in 1999.
Meanwhile, shellfish catches generally increased. During the 1990s the
federal government authorized, at least temporarily, a major expansion
of licences for shrimp and crab, and processing companies built new
plants. This has aroused fears in some quarters of a future boom and
bust, this time in shellfish.
What went wrong in groundfish? In April 2000 Fisheries and Oceans
Minister Herb Dhaliwal had this to say:
No one has nailed it down in detail, but we know the general picture. And
I am not making excuses for my department when I say that environmental
changes did some of the damage.
We did the rest -- not just my department, but the whole fishing society.
As a department, we knew less than we thought. On top of that, fishermen
often provided false or incomplete catch information, and dumped or
misreported fish.
Too often everybody lobbied for higher quotas, and took whatever they
could get. People fought for themselves; the fish lost; and we all paid
the price.
The codfish collapse wasn't just an Act of God or an Act of Parliament.
It was the actions of people, in government, in industry, and in coastal
communities, failing to work closely enough to protect the fish on which
we all depend.
The system put in place in the 1970s, though seemingly comprehensive, had
in its results revealed many failings, both technical and human. In some
respects the department had bitten off more than it could chew. Since the
cod collapse, government has essentially been trying to make the system
work as it was originally intended -- particularly by working more closely
with industry.
In 1993 DFO created the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, which
brings together government scientists and officials, fisheries
representatives, and academics. This body recommends overall quotas for
fish stocks, and the Minister almost always accepts the recommendations.
This has reduced some of the lobbying which used to take place by industry
groups for higher quotas.
DFO scientists tried to work more directly with fishermen in research and
in stock assessments. And fisheries managers encouraged "co-management,"
a term covering a variety of arrangements with fishermen. The advisory
system has become more elaborate, especially in developing seasonal fishing
plans. Progress has taken place in these areas, although gaps remain.
Despite the groundfish troubles, many fishermen today are doing fairly
well, and some are doing excellently. In some areas there is a more
entrepreneurial attitude than ever. One can even make a case that the
average fisherman who is still in the industry today is better off than
in previous eras, with better boats, better incomes, and more organization
and voice.
But many in the industry have gone through very difficult times. And
government too has been chastened by events.
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