FOPO Committee Report

CPC Supplementary Opinion

Canada’s fisheries are public resources belonging to Canadians who have historically been able to achieve livelihoods supporting their coastal communities with economic benefits of their labours and investments in commercial marine fisheries. Today, fewer and fewer independent Canadian fish harvesters can have viable access to commercial marine fisheries because failed federal management and regulation of commercial marine fisheries have allowed foreign ownership and corporate concentration to push Canadian harvesters out of the fisheries.

The Government of Canada holds authority and responsibility for management and regulation of commercial marine fisheries.[1] Beyond the objective of conserving and sustaining fisheries resources to ensure their biological perpetuity, the Government is also supposed to manage these public resources to sustain the economic benefits that Canadians may draw from them.

In 2002, the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) decision in Ward v. Canada stated that “federal power over fisheries is not confined to conserving fish stocks, but extends to the management of the fisheries as a public resource. This resource has many aspects, one of which is to yield economic benefits to its participants and more generally to all Canadians.”[2]

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) publicly presents their mandate as including management of Canada’s fisheries by “working with fishers, coastal and Indigenous communities to enable their continued prosperity from fish and seafood.”[3]

Despite the SCC’s statement on economic benefits from fisheries and the DFO’s mandate to promote continued prosperity from fisheries, failures of the Government and the DFO to enforce laws and regulations and deliver commitments made to Canadians years ago have only pushed economic benefits and prosperity of fisheries further out of reach for many harvesters and the coastal and Indigenous communities they support.

Despite 2019 changes to the federal Fisheries Act and resulting 2021 amendments to regulations, both meant to preserve and protect the independence of licence holders in commercial inshore fisheries in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, harvesters in those regions continue to have their independence and benefits repressed by corporate concentration and foreign ownership that the 2019 and 2021 changes were supposed to eliminate.

Witness testimony described how despite new federal regulations, corporate control is increasing and depressing competitive prices at wharves for harvesters, limiting the ability of harvesters to seek new buyers and forcing labour relations into a binding system of arbitration that favours processors.[4] Testimony stated that corporate concentration inflates costs of licences to the points where inshore harvesters cannot afford them or access such levels of financing.[5]

Witness testimony detailed the effects of increasing foreign ownership stating that “coastal economies are suffering visible economic drain as those benefits instead go increasingly and unchecked to offshore investors.”[6]

Testimony likewise stated that a corporation owned by a foreign government has been allowed to conclude agreements in Atlantic Canada that include conditions giving the corporation broad control in the fishery, including guaranteeing their subsidiaries have privileged access to quotas or landings despite such practices being prohibited by the federal regulations.[7] The Committee was told federal regulations are circumvented by this foreign corporation’s creation of a form of vertical integration established through acquisition of contracts that deliver the corporation control of harvester licences- control prohibited by federal laws and regulations.[8]

Conservative Members are very concerned by such circumstances and illegal practices described by witnesses that are the result of failures of the Government and the DFO to enforce the very laws and regulations specifically designed to prevent such practices that disadvantage Canadian harvesters and coastal communities. Since the 2021 regulations came into force, the Committee was told, the DFO has initiated at least 30 investigations of noncompliance but, but no charges have been laid as the DFO has rather elected to “gently guide corporations back to compliance.”[9]

While the 2019 Fisheries Act changes and ensuing new regulations of 2021 were undertaken to preserve and protect the independence of harvesters in commercial inshore fisheries in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, the Government has provided no such protection for harvesters and coastal communities in British Columbia.

In 2019, the Committee tabled its report titled “West Coast Fisheries: Sharing Risks and Benefits” that presented 20 recommendations for the Government to initiate protections for B.C. harvesters and coastal communities comparable to those established in Atlantic Canada and Quebec.[10] The Government response to this report failed to reflect the urgency expressed by the Committee in its report and recommendations. The response stated the Government had performed some assessment of the recommendations and, where feasible, had begun collecting information and data to inform their next steps, and would be consulting with the Government of British Columbia, Indigenous groups, harvesters, and others.[11] 

Two recommendations in the Committee’s 2019 report touched on concepts of a fisheries loan board and program in British Columbia to support existing and new entrant harvesters in their abilities to buy licenses, quotas, and contend with expenses related to fishing vessels. In the course of the Committee’s current study, witnesses spoke of the benefits that could be afforded by a federal loan financing mechanism and one witness stated that such a proposal should be modelled on Farm Credit Canada that operates as a Crown corporation and reports to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.[12]

On June 5, 2023, DFO officials provided the Committee a briefing to update Members on the Government’s response to the 2019 report on B.C. licensing. Prior to this update, the Committee received testimony describing DFO’s limited capacity for progressing the Government’s supposed response to the 2019 report and that the department had botched a survey intended to identify the domestic and foreign entities that are benefiting directly or indirectly from commercial fishing licences and quotas.[13] At the June 5, 2023 update briefing, DFO’s Regional Director was asked how many of the 2019 report recommendations that DFO had completed and he did not identify a single recommendation.[14]

Summary

The Government of Canada and DFO are failing to enforce regulations meant to protect Canadian harvesters and coastal communities in Quebec and Atlantic Canada while they also fail to progress the development of comparable protections for the harvesters and coastal communities of British Columbia. In the four years since the Committee tabled its report and recommendations aimed at confronting increasing foreign ownership and corporate concentration on the West Coast, the Government and DFO have failed to complete one of the report’s 20 recommendations.

The apparent absence of allocated resources for enforcement in Atlantic and Quebec and development of protections for British Columbia is a clear dereliction of duty on the part of the Government of Canada and Department of Fisheries and Oceans who continue to fail to ensure that the economic benefits and prosperity available in the public resources of Canadian fisheries are available to Canadians and the coastal communities they support.

Recommendations

1) That the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard start work immediately with provincial and territorial counterparts to create a financing mechanism with sufficient risk tolerance to finance or re-finance existing fishers and new entrants, in all provinces and territories to replace fish processors as co-signees in existing and new financing arrangements and that this mechanism be implemented expeditiously.

2) That the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard immediately direct her departmental officials to prioritize actions and align resources required to enable identification of beneficial owners of commercial licenses and quota in east and west coast fisheries.

3) That the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard immediately initiate development of two strategies for commercial marine fisheries, one for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ Quebec, Gulf, Maritimes, and Newfoundland & Labrador Regions and one for Pacific Region, for the purposes of conserving and increasing beneficial ownership of commercial licenses and quotas for independent Canadian fish harvesters.