The Fisherman’s Lament

By Kevin Lacey, BA, History, Dalhousie University

On any wharf in Atlantic Canada you can still hear people talking about the October day in 1993 when John Crosbie announced the end of the northern offshore cod fishery. For fishermen like Junior Therault, this closure and the changes in fishery policy in its aftermath would end a family fishing tradition that began in 1647 and continued for 13 generations thereafter. Forced out of the fishery, Junior Therault runs a whale watching business in Digby, Nova Scotia and now he, like many other fishermen in similar positions, has time to reflect on an Atlantic fishery with too many problems and too few solutions.

It’s hard for those from “away” to understand what fishing means to Atlantic Canadians. Atlantic Canada’s dependence on the ocean has created a truly distinct culture on Canada’s east coast, one manifested in our song and traditions. Our seafaring history has given us a strong sense of family represented by huge family-based industries such as the Irvings, McCains and Baxters. Celtic and Acadian music which has survived for generations still serve as an important element in our society. Fishing, you see, is not just an industry like auto making or computer programming. Fishing in Atlantic Canada is our way of life, and an identity that we all share.

Despite the importance of the Atlantic fishing industry, the debate over what to do about its problems has been unimaginative and uninspiring. Local fishermen and their unions, angry over the dwindling fish supply, have responded by attacking the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and local politicians like John Crosbie. They place blame on politicians for allowing fishermen to catch too many fish, thus driving down the value of their catch and reducing the amount of fish on once-plentiful fishing grounds. They have been joined by editorial writers and central Canadians, who say that the decline of the Northern Cod was the result of poor decisions by a number of different Ministers on the advice of staff at the DFO.

But hindsight, they say, is 20/20. This may have no better application than in the management of the fishing industry in Atlantic Canada. Knowing what we know today, it is easy for us to say that cuts to the number of fish allowed to be caught on the open seas should have been made long before the fisheries closures in 1993. The irony is that the fishermen today who are criticizing the DFO for allowing over-fishing in the past were the same people who were protesting cuts to the quota and demanding more fish before the moratorium.

The problems in the Atlantic fisheries have nothing to do with weak fisheries ministers, or the DFO. The problem lies in the Atlantic Canadian political culture that rewards politicians who can bring home federal government contracts and higher fish quotas. There was never any incentive for politicians to save the fish stocks. If they had tried to cut back on fish quotas, politicians knew that their party would be punished in the next election. The federal Liberal party, which won every seat in Atlantic Canada except for one in 1993, proceeded to lose almost every seat in 1996 because of changes to the Employment Insurance program and regulations imposed on the fishing industry. It was once said that “the public gets the governments they deserve,” and in Atlantic Canada we have to take some responsibility for our own undoing.

In order to save the fish stocks, Atlantic Canada needs an entirely new regulatory regime that will change the current ideology from a belief in collective ownership of the fisheries to a system of private property rights.

Private property rights would de-politicize the setting of catch allowances by shifting them away from the politicians and into the hands of the people who live off the ocean. It would also give companies or individual fishermen a chance to prosecute foreign fishing boats in Canadian waters. If fishermen or a company had exclusive property over fish, anyone taking those fish would be stealing from that company or person, and would be dealt with under the legal system.

The transition from a system of common property to private property rights will not be easy. It will mean fewer fishermen, and fewer employees in our fish processing plants. The consequences of not changing our current thinking, however, could be even more catastrophic, and may consequently lead to the end of the fisheries and a way of life forever.

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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 20, 1999.