One year after the new Fisheries Act, Canada has yet to act on troubled fisheries

Unless decision-makers—from the minister of fisheries and oceans and her office to managers of individual fisheries—are all on the same page, with marching orders to do the right thing, our water bodies will continue to be emptied of fish, our coastal communities will become less and less resilient, and our work to strengthen the legal foundations of fisheries management will be meaningless.

Canada's federal Fisheries and Oceans Minister Bernadette Jordan , pictured in this file photograph on the Hill. But despite the new Fisheries Act, we have yet to see long-term needs win out over what’s politically convenient in the short term. Public trust can only be restored if there are clear decisions, often hard ones, made in the interests of a future in Canada that includes fish, write Trevor Taylor and Susanna Fuller.The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY TREVOR TAYLOR AND SUSANNA FULLER

June 10, 2020

“A disaster of biblical proportions.” That’s what Richard Cashin, then-president of the Fish Food and Allied Workers Union, said in 1992 when a fishing moratorium was announced on Newfoundland and Labrador’s once-great northern cod stock. Some 20,000 people were suddenly out of work, and wit...

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