Canada making poor fishery decisions: report

Harbour Breton — Professor Jeffrey Hutchings, a professor of marine biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, says Canada has a poor record, compared to other countries, for protecting fish stocks.

According to Hutchings, this country has not adopted science-based targets for protecting fisheries, but favours having successive federal fisheries ministers make short-term, "czar-like" decisions on fisheries management.

Hutchings chairs the 10-member Royal Society of Canada panel that concluded, in a report last week, that Canada is failing to live up to its own laws and to international and national obligations outlined in a United Nation's convention.

The panel included professors from Canada's East and West coasts, as well as a research scientist from Laval University, one from Washington State and one from England.

The report is entitled: "Sustaining Canada's Marine Biodiversity: Responding to the Challenges Posed by Climate Change, Fisheries and Aquaculture."

Hutchings said one of the things the panel noted was that other developed fishing nations such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Norway have been making huge strides in advancing their fisheries management with the application of science to fishery management decisions.

"The fact that other countries have been able to respond in an effective manner to fisheries management tells us that it is possible to change," he said in an interview.

"If Canada is not adapting as fast, it must speak to something institutional within the country as to why we're not doing it as fast as other jurisdictions."

Hutchings said the panel identified two points with respect to the minister of Fisheries and Oceans - that any minister enjoys a huge amount of discretionary power which means they are open to short-term, politically based decisions rather than looking at the long-term picture.

The second point is that the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has a regulatory conflict of interest in that one of DFO's objectives is to promote the fishery while on the other hand it is there to protect the marine environment and to protect and sustain fish stocks over the long-term.

"Some people would see these two objectives a conflict of interest," he said, "and that it is very difficult to achieve both objectives at the same time."

The professor said that even after nearly 20 years since the cod moratorium, Canada still does not have a recovery target for Northern Cod.

"Not having a recovery target for this cod stock is indicative of our country not being consistent with responsible fisheries management," he said.

"Other countries have set targets they want stocks to be rebuilt towards. An identified target and a rebuilding timeline means you have rather strict measures but at least everybody knows what the measures are to control the fishery and to allow for rebuilding stocks to take place."

According to Hutchings, target dates and timelines have helped the Norwegians to rebuild the Barents Sea cod stock.

"In the late 1980s, the Barents Sea cod stock was in dire straits.

"Today, the Norwegian cod stock is the largest one in the world, and the Norwegians are catching more cod in a sustainable fashion off their coast than almost ever before.

"This has happened because Norway set targets with harvest control rules that determined what the fish catch should be, depending on how close the fish stock was to the target.

"Canada has had no such plan in place and our fisheries officials are not really accountable to anybody. We are not undertaking fisheries management in a transparent manner," he said.

Hutchings noted the closure of the Northern Cod stock in 1992, its re-opening in 1998, its re-closure in 2003 and its re-opening a few years ago was all done in the absence of any long-term plan by DFO.

These re-openings took place at the discretion of the minister, he said.

They were not based on science; they were not based on an overall recovery plan consistent with our national and international obligations.

Any hope?

So, can anything be done to save Canadian fish stocks like the Norwegians did with the Barents Sea stocks?

Hutchings believes it is "fundamentally important" for current and future federal fisheries ministers to take a long-term view of all ocean and fish management decisions.

"One of the things that would happen by doing this is that we would rebuild stocks under particular plans to levels that would result in higher catches, more people being employed, healthier coastal communities with a greater access to food and protein for Canadians.

"These long-term goals may cause some short-term pain. We need to look at the fishery issue as a Canadian issue instead of being just a Newfoundland issue or an Atlantic Canada problem.

He says one of the key problems in the fishery is that, "at the end of the day, in this country there are little or no political costs to making bad fisheries decisions.

As long as there are no political costs, politicians will continue to do what they've always done.

"In order to have a political cost for bad fisheries management decisions, people need to care enough to talk about it, to contact ministers and members of parliament."