FOPO Committee Report

CPC Supplementary Report for FOPO Report on

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing

September 2024

Shared Public Fisheries Resources Entrusted to the Government and Minister

Canada’s fisheries are shared public resources belonging to the citizens of Canada and the Government of Canada is responsible for conserving, managing, and regulating fisheries through federal laws and regulations flowing from statutes such as the Fisheries Act.

Section 91 of the Constitutional Act, 1867[1] assigns the Parliament of Canada exclusive legislative authority in all matters pertaining to fisheries. In 1976, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) reaffirmed in its Interprovincial Co-Operatives Ltd. v. The Queen decision that the federal fisheries power “is concerned with the protection and preservation of fisheries as a public resource.”[2]

In 2002, objectives of Parliament’s authority over fisheries were further affirmed and defined in the SCC’s decision in the Ward v. Canada case that stated “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.”[3]

Fisheries resources in Canadian waters belong to Canadians who depend on the Government of Canada’s Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (the Minister) to exercise constitutional and Parliamentary authority in leading the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in the effective management, regulation, and conservation of fisheries to ensure fisheries are sustained to yield economic benefits to harvesters, and more generally to all Canadians, in perpetuity.

On January 18, 2022, Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Bob Zimmer introduced a motion for the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans (FOPO) to study the “scope and effects of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) on Canada's fisheries resources and the degradation of those resources caused by illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.”[4] Conservatives supported this motion as they supported a similar motion for study from the Honourable Ed Fast in the previous 43^rd Parliament.[5]

We wanted FOPO to study IUU because we recognized that illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing was being allowed to persist in Canadian waters despite efforts of authorized harvesters, Conservative MPs, and citizens-at-large to draw the Minister’s attention to IUU fishing so that the Minister and DFO could confront IUU fishing for the benefit of conservation, but such responses were inadequate.

Disproportionate Overseas Focus and Protection

Federal government resources and political will for fighting IUU have increasingly been focused outside, rather than inside, Canada’s jurisdiction. Despite signing international agreements and other multilateral instruments pledging to protect biodiversity and fight IUU in the world’s oceans, successive Ministers have failed to lead the DFO in confronting, let alone eliminating, well documented and obvious IUU fishing in Canadian waters.

In 2016, Minister Tootoo signed such an agreement with the European Union[6] while the 2018 Charlevoix G7 Summit hosted by Government of Canada produced a blueprint[7] that expanded Canada’s commitments to fighting IUU in far-off waters while failing to expand any commitment to counter IUU here at home in our own waters.

The most senior DFO official who appeared for FOPO’s study of IUU cited the definition of IUU used by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) that defines IUU as being “conducted by national or foreign vessels in waters under the jurisdiction of a State, without the permission of that State, or in contravention of its laws and regulations” and is “in violation of national laws or international obligations, including those undertaken by cooperating States to a relevant regional fisheries management organization.”[8]

Although this FAO definition of IUU cited by the DFO official applies to illegal, unreported and unregulated harvests in Canadians waters, the same official told the committee that the DFO uses “the term to describe violations of international obligations on the high seas and foreign vessel incursions into the 200‑mile exclusive economic zones.” So, the Government of Canada chooses to operate the DFO with a partial application of the very definition of IUU that supposedly forms the basis for their approach to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. This was further reflected in testimony of other witnesses that reflected the government’s focus and commitments to fighting IUU overseas, and not in Canadian waters.

Witness testimony also illuminated the government’s prioritized allocations of funding and resources for fighting IUU overseas while Canadian fisheries are damaged by IUU fishing.  A senior DFO official described how the government committed $84 million over five years through its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) to establish the Shared Ocean Fund and the Joint Analytical Cell described as “a group of non-governmental organizations that will work together to deliver high-quality fisheries intelligence, data analysis and capacity support alongside authorities in developing countries.”[9]

A senior DFO official also testified that “Canada has implemented its dark vessel detection [DVD] platform and state-of-the-art satellite surveillance system to support vulnerable developing states in the detection and tracking of potential IUU fishing vessels. The DVD platform is currently helping protect the Galápagos Islands in partnership with Ecuador, and is deployed to support 15 Pacific island states.”

The absence of any mention in this testimony of the DVD platform being deployed to fight IUU in Canadian waters motivated Conservatives to ask Dr. Minda Suchan, Vice President of the Geointelligence Division of MDA, a principal contractor for the DVD platform, whether MDA’s dark vessel detection technology used in the DVD platform overseas is used to counter IUU domestically.

MP Small asked Dr. Suchan whether MDA’s services were being used by DFO to counter illegal harvest in the Atlantic elver fishery, out of season lobster fishing in Nova Scotia and suspicious salmon fishing in BC’s Fraser River, and Sucha responded that she was not sure and would double-check[10], but the Committee was not provided a written response on this specific question.

MP Perkins asked Dr. Sucha whether MDA provides DFO with photographic evidence or other evidence of such areas as St. Marys Bay and southwestern and southern Nova Scotia, where lobster fishing has occurred out of season.

In a written response to Perkins’ question provided by Leslie Swartman of MDA, the committee was informed that MDA had “not been tasked to monitor lobster fishing areas within Atlantic Canada at this time. MDA is under contract to the DFO for use of the Dark Vessel Detection (DVD) capability and we are responsive to DFO for all satellite tasking requests. We are able to provide information on maritime areas both domestically within Canada’s Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ) and internationally. We are certainly open to the possibility of monitoring these types of areas in the future, and open to providing a quick assessment as to the value that radar satellite imagery could provide in these regions.”[11]

MDA can provide the DFO intelligence and data for fighting IUU in Canada’s fisheries, but the government has elected to contract these services with a focus on overseas activities while many harvests occurring without the DFO’s authorization and outside of the DFO’s seasons persist in Canadian waters with sparse political will or resources to confront them. Considering the duties and responsibilities that the Constitution, the Fisheries Act and other statutes assign to the government and Minister to conserve, manage, and regulate Canada’s fisheries, it is concerning that the government continues to allocate significant resources to fight IUU overseas while IUU fishing persists in Canadian waters.

Persisting Gaps in Capability and Enforcement

While the government continues to commit funding for fisheries enforcement and conservation in far-off waters, the Canadian Coast Guard’s (CCG) Director General of Fleet and Maritime Services testified how the CCG has reduced the number of patrols by CCG ships in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Regulatory Area in Atlantic Canada over the last two years.[12] Figures from the CCG provided in writing to the committee showing NAFO patrol day figures spanning 2015 to 2024 showed the coast guard performing an average 36.6 patrol days in 2015-2016 compared to a year-to-date average of 14.4 patrol days per month in 2023-2024.[13] This reduction of enforcement patrols, the Director General stated, was the result of coast guard vessels having to be refurbished for vessel life extension while new vessels are awaited.[14]

This concerning testimony from the CCG follows the alarming 2023 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development that examined DFO’s monitoring of commercial marine fisheries and concluded the department fails to collect adequate catch data.[15] DFO’s failure to collect this data directly undermines the government’s ability to determine legality of harvests, verify reported catches, and properly manage and conserve fisheries.

The Minister’s sudden cancellation in March of the 2024 commercial elver fishery in Atlantic Canada was the direct result of her failures, and those of her predecessors, to establish adequate enforcement by DFO’s Conservation and Enforcement (C&P) branch and coordinate enforcement of other agencies and departments to ensure a safe and legal elver fishery for the benefit of harvesters licensed by the DFO and the communities they support.

The Minister’s cancellation of the 2024 elver season sets a dangerous precedent of the government responsible for protecting fisheries acquiescing to poachers and criminal organizations that the government has tacitly allowed to proliferate and exert greater control than the government over the resource.

IUU fishing in Canada leads to unreported removals of fish that create a blind spot weakening the department’s calculations for managing fisheries. Conservative MP Mel Arnold asked a senior DFO official whether DFO factors an estimate of how much is removed from a fishery resource by IUU and how those calculations are made specific to fish stocks, especially Pacific coast salmon stocks, and how those calculations go into calculating legal allowable harvests.  The written response provided to the Committee by the department did not confirm that removals of fish resulting from IUU fishing are factored by the DFO’s fisheries management processes.[16]  

The committee heard extensive testimony describing “a massive illegal fishery taking place in the coastal bays of the Maritimes” that is a “full-scale commercial fishery on one of the most important lobster spawning grounds in the world”[17] that persists outside of DFO-regulated seasons. DFO’s lobster season dates are informed by science and are meant to ensure that reproductive cycles of lobster stocks are allowed to occur, unimpeded by harvest activities.

Conservatives denounce the Liberal government’s dereliction of responsibilities in the Atlantic lobster and all fisheries where illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing repeatedly occurs on a large scale. The Liberal government’s tacit complicity in these assaults on the shared resources of Canada’s fisheries are a disservice to all Canadians, especially those who depend on fisheries to exercise their rights, achieve food security, and make a living. 

Supply Chains and Trade of IUU-Caught Fish and Seafood

In addition to damaging fisheries and biodiversity, destabilizing livelihoods of those who depend on fisheries, and confounding fisheries management of governments, the Committee also heard testimony describing how IUU also fuels global illicit trade of fish and seafood that involves supply chains in which serious human rights concerns and “sea slavery” exist.[18]

Despite issuing a promise in 2019 to establish a “boat-to-plate” traceability program for fish and seafood,[19] the governing Liberal government has failed to establish such a system of traceability to ensure that fish and seafood in Canada is harvested, processed, and imported legally in supply chains free of human rights abuses and slavery.

Such a system of traceability was studied by FOPO and our report tabled in June 2022 provided the government with multiple recommendations of finally establishing traceability, but the government has failed to move their own promise and FOPO recommendations to fruition. The government could have established traceability in Canada by acting on our Committee’s recommendations and learning from the models and experiences used by Canada’s partners.

Five years after fish and seafood traceability was promised, Canadians still do not have confidence that fish and seafood in our stores is legally and ethically harvested, processed and imported- free of supply chains anchored to IUU fishing.

Ambiguity of Fishery Authorizations

Conservatives are concerned that the ambiguity of who is governing and regulating fisheries resources and apparent absence of coordination undermine the DFO’s core objective of conservation. This vulnerability must not be ignored because failures to protect, manage, and regulate shared resources of Canadian fisheries jeopardizes Indigenous rights, culture, food security, and livelihoods of Canadians.

In the case of the Atlantic elver fishery, it is abundantly clear that federal government departments and agencies are failing to cooperate, communicate, and take responsibility for their mandated functions and the resulting silos that they work in impede the effective enforcement of laws and regulations necessary to effectively manage, regulate and conserve fisheries to ensure they are sustained to yield economic benefits to harvesters, and more generally to all Canadians, in perpetuity

When asked whether rights and reconciliation agreements signed by the federal government require all harvest and fish management regulated by an Indigenous authority be recorded and reported to DFO, a DFO Assistant Deputy Minister stated that such reporting of catch data is not uniformly required in such agreements.[20] The same official described the role that harvest data plays in informing other DFO activities, including science, and this raises serious concerns of how the Minister and department are able to manage fisheries where there is little or no harvest data.

The resulting absence of clarity of who is governing and regulating fisheries and granting authorizations to harvesters has created tensions that are unnecessary. The government has put the DFO’s C&P officials in the very difficult position of having to explain inconsistent enforcement of the Fisheries Act and regulations such as season dates to all harvesters. This has directly undermined conservation of fisheries and damaged reconciliation that all sides are trying to support.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous witnesses provided testimony touching on the intersection of Indigenous rights related to fisheries and the government’s responsibility to conserve, manage, and regulate fishery resources. Conservatives are encouraged that all witnesses who discussed Indigenous reconciliation not only supported reconciliation, but also wanted to play a role in progressing reconciliation and Indigenous participation in fisheries.

Conclusion

Management of Canada’s fisheries is ultimately the responsibility of the Government of Canada and the Minister of Fisheries, but successive Ministers have failed to provide the political will and resources needed to fully address IUU fishing in Canadian fisheries through adequate monitoring and enforcement. Stock management requires effective fisheries monitoring of all harvest and bycatch (waste) which can support the DFO’s estimations of what is removed from fisheries illegally which in turn can enable enforcement and prosecution of offences.

DFO’s monitoring and enforcement capacities are limited by capability gaps while the government has increased commitments to fighting IUU overseas. Conservatives are not opposed to Canada contributing to the global fight against IUU but do believe that we must ensure that the fight against IUU starts in our own waters.

As the values of species have increased and illegal harvests have proliferated in some fisheries, penalties for fisheries offences have not kept pace raising questions of whether penalties set years ago possess the deterrence required today.

Recommendations

Recommendation 1

That Fisheries and Oceans Canada take action to improve the enforcement of the Fisheries Act; ensuring the illegal poaching of species such as bluefin tuna, lobster, elvers, salmon, etc., is effectively deterred which can help protect aquatic ecosystems and the people who legally harvest them.

Recommendation 2

That Fisheries and Oceans Canada work with Indigenous and non-Indigenous harvester and fisheries management organizations to optimize DFO’s collection of fish harvest data for all species in order to reduce the unknowns of unreported harvest and increase accuracy of DFO’s calculation of harvests and allocations.

Recommendation 3

That Fisheries and Oceans Canada increase their dockside monitoring and enforcement efforts to more effectively combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and have an increased understanding of how much of each species is being caught.

Recommendation 4

That the DFO assess its systems used for monitoring fisheries harvests with the purpose of defining how the systems need to change and be resourced to effectively monitor all harvest, including bycatch.

Recommendation 5

That the DFO assess and implement changes to its monitoring systems to better detect and measure illegal harvests so that such data can inform and improve fisheries management decisions.

Recommendation 6

That the Government of Canada work with the DFO to assess and where necessary increase penalties for fisheries offences to ensure penalties are significant enough to be adequate deterrence.