The House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met to continue its study on the review of the Fisheries Act, hearing from eight witnesses representing legal, industry, academic, and environmental perspectives.
Andrew Campbell, a lawyer from Cox and Palmer, testified that regulatory amendments made in April 2021 intended to allow inshore fishers to use corporate structures called inshore family fishing corporations (IFFCs) for succession planning and tax purposes, but that subsection 19(1) of the Atlantic fisheries regulations only allows licences to be issued to an individual fisher or a wholly owned corporation, not an IFFC. He recommended adding the words “an approved inshore fishing family corporation” to subsection 19(1) to give fishers the full benefit of the legislative amendments, arguing the current wording creates conflicts with the Income Tax Act and impedes financing and succession planning.
Alastair O'Rielly, executive director of the Northern Coalition Corporation, and Garry Best, a board member, testified that northern and indigenous communities in Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and southern Labrador receive less than 50% of the northern shrimp resource and only about two-thirds of the Greenland halibut quota in their adjacent waters, despite almost 50 years of participation in these fisheries. They recommended amending section 2.5 of the Fisheries Act to make the principles of adjacency, historical dependency, and economic benefits mandatory legislative considerations in all access and allocation decisions, with a requirement for the minister to report on how these principles were applied, arguing this would improve transparency without fettering ministerial discretion. O'Rielly disagreed with proposals to manage all fisheries exclusively in the healthy zone, stating such arbitrary rules would be unduly restrictive and harm coastal communities.
Normand Déraspe, vice president of the Rassemblement des pêcheurs et pêcheuses des côtes des Îles, testified that Fisheries and Oceans Canada's enforcement of acts and regulations is not equitable across regions, citing differences in lobster licence costs between the Gaspésie and the Îles de la Madeleine, inconsistent requirements for electronic logbooks, and the allowance of fall cod fishing in Newfoundland but not in Quebec. He recommended standardizing regulations across regions, increasing the number of replacement traps allowed on vessels during the recovery period for lost gear, establishing defined quotas for commercial fishers versus recreational or food fisheries, and adapting right whale gear regulations to specific regional environments and fishing seasons.
Véronique Chadillon-Farinacci, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Moncton, testified that fishery officers have major discretionary powers but lack a binding code of conduct enforced by an independent entity, and that her research indicates officers sometimes fear their superiors and fail to respond to reports of illegal fishing. She recommended creating a code of conduct for fishery officers to clarify their roles and responsibilities, protect the public, and support officers in their duties, as well as clarifying the rules around offences that involve both the Criminal Code and the Fisheries Act, implementing an effective reporting mechanism, and tailoring sanctions for species vulnerable to illegal markets.
Jason McLinton, president of the Fisheries Council of Canada, and Colin McMillan, council chair, testified that the Fisheries Council of Canada does not recommend reopening the Fisheries Act at this time, arguing that new legislative and regulatory requirements would add administrative burdens when the industry is already adapting to global market uncertainties and tariffs. Instead, they recommended that the government prioritize the efficient use of existing regulatory and policy tools to address stability of access and allocation, take socio-economic considerations into equal account in marine conservation decisions, and conduct robust core fisheries science, noting that a lack of science has led to lost market certifications.
Kim Elmslie, senior campaign director for Oceana Canada, testified that only one-third of Canada's fish stocks are considered healthy and that the fish stock provisions added to the Fisheries Act in 2019 have not been fully implemented, with the law currently applying to only 30 of approximately 200 major commercial stocks. She recommended amending section 6.1 to require that fish stocks be managed in the healthy zone to end overfishing, setting a firm date to list all stocks under the rebuilding provisions, requiring an annual report to Parliament on the status and trends of all federally managed fish stocks, and authorizing the minister to support the pairing of indigenous knowledge systems with western-based science in co-management agreements with indigenous governments.
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