Fisheries Act must include legal duty to rebuild stocks: Oceana Canada

iPolitics
By Holly Lake

For the first time since the Fisheries Act was created in 1868, there are provisions within it that focus on the rebuilding of fish stocks. But as they’re currently worded, they fall short of what international experience has shown is required to actually help a stock rebuild.

Simply, they must mandate that the federal government respond, not just consider responding.
That was the word from Josh Laughren, executive director of Oceana Canada, at the House fisheries committee earlier today. He said the language contained in Bill C-68 will also have to go further if it’s going to fulfil Canada’s international agreements and ensure this country’s laws are commensurate with other nations. 

“C-68 only requires the minister to consider whether there are some unspecified measures to rebuild stocks that, in his or her opinion are in the critical zone when making management decisions,” he said. “Let’s pause on that: consider whether there is some measure in place, once the stocks are already at or below levels which the government’s own policies explicitly state that they are never to reach.”

Laughren said some say they shouldn’t worry about this, as requirements will be set out in regulations, but he said the Act ought to provide clear guidance to those responsible for drafting the regulations and to stakeholders and rights holders on the intent of those regulations.

“What constitutes a ‘rebuilding measure’? If there are not measures to rebuild stocks, what then? And rebuild to what? To Maximum Sustainable Yield? To the Upper Reference Point? Or just back to the edge of the critical zone? In what time frame?”

He cited examples from European Union, New Zealand and Japan, where the word “shall” features prominently in the language around managing stocks. In the United States, the national standards for fishery conservation and management read: “Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.”

Further: “Any fishery management plan, with respect to any fishery, shall … contain the conservation and management measures … necessary and appropriate … to prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks.

“In each case, the intent of the legislation is clear,” Laughren said. “When stocks are in trouble, governments must respond – not consider responding.”

He said the need to rebuild fisheries has never been greater. Canada’s marine fish populations have declined by 55 per cent since 1970, and according to DFO’s most recently published numbers, there are only three rebuilding plans for the 21 stocks confirmed to be in the critical zone. 

That includes Northern cod, which despite the federal moratorium put in place in 1992 that devastated communities in Newfoundland, still has no rebuilding plan. DFO continues to allow directed fishing on the stock — and others — that fall within the critical zone.

“Nonetheless management decisions have continued to allow fishing levels to steadily increase on this fragile stock giving it the dubious privilege of being the largest groundfish fishery in Atlantic Canada, while under a moratorium,” Laughren said. 

DFO’s latest cod stock survey, which was announced in March, shows that the small improvement reported in recent years is already on the decline.

“It is our view that this historical lack of priority on rebuilding, despite policy commitments to implement rebuilding plans for depleted stocks, and to reducing fishing effort on stocks in the critical zone to as little as possible, is directly attributable to the lack of legislative guidance and legal duty,” he said. “This committee has the opportunity to fix that.”

In Europe, cod stocks were as collapsed as they are here. But unlike here, they’ve recovered in the North Sea in Norway and in the Barents Sea, Laughren noted.

The difference? A legal duty to act and create rebuilding plans work — and they can make a big impact, he said. Since the United States legally required the rebuilding of depleted fish stocks, 44 stocks have been classified as rebuilt since 2000, generating on average 50 per cent more revenue than when they were overfished. That’s why Oceana Canada is calling for a legal requirement to develop rebuilding plans when stocks have fallen into the critical zone to be included in the Fisheries Act, as well as targets and timelines for rebuilding.

“Countries that have this positive legal duty to act have healthier, more stable fisheries than those that do not. Surely, that’s what we all want,” he said.

Liberal MP Ken McDonald, who represents the riding of Avalon in Newfoundland, said talk of the moratorium hits hard when you’re from the province.

“The fishery is so important, economically and socially to some 500 communities in Newfoundland alone, what do you say to those people who depend on the bit of quota they do have to be a make or break year, cod being in the critical state that it is. Do we cut it off completely? How do you balance that with the community and the survival of the stock?”

Laughren said overfishing of stocks including cod has done far more to hurt communities than any conservation has.

“These are tough decisions. The idea of developing a proper plan and setting your goals in advance actually means you need to have that discussion. It’s a tough one, but have it before, not after you reach these thresholds.”

Right now, all involved are awaiting word from Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc on the fishery in the face of the 30 per cent stock decline.

“No one has any sense of where he’s going to go on it because there’s complete and utter discretion on it. There’s no plan to guide us,” he said. “Twenty-six years after the collapse and we still don’t have agreement on where we’re trying to go with the stock or at what levels we will start to allow fishing. Those are tough discussions and we ought to have them before we get to this stage.

Conservative MP Todd Doherty said over the years and with multiple Parliaments, the committee has heard promises from DFO of doing better and getting fish stocks beyond the critical level — and yet nothing ever changes.

“What is the issue we seem to have? Is it an institutional issue or strictly a management issue within DFO?”

Laughren said it’s gone on too long to be simply a management issue within the department.

“When you see the same thing happening over a generation or more, you start to look at fundamental drivers. It’s lack of guidance, it’s lack of a framework for making these decisions. And we’re all complicit,” he said.

“On stocks there are a lot of voices for them to be re-opened before they should be or for quotas to be set higher, to push the quota to the upper level of what the scientific advice is. Those voices come from outside the department too.”

That’s not to say there haven’t been success stories. He pointed to the bounce back of halibut.
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“When you take the pressure off stocks and let them recover, in almost all cases, they do,” Laughren said. “Give them the time and let nature take its course.”

READ MORE: ​https://ipolitics.ca/2018/05/01/fisheries-act-must-include-legal-duty-to-rebuild-stocks-oceana-canada/