Public policy and ocean management in Canada

U T T E R W O R T H E I N E M A N N

0308-597X(95)00019-4

Marine Policy, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 251-256, 1995 Copyright © 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd

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Public Policy and Ocean Management in Canada

Douglas Day

Douglas Day is Professor of Geography and Chair of the Geography Department at Saint Mary's University, Robie St., Halifax, NS B3H 3C3, Canada.

Canada exercises jurisdiction over very extensive seas in regional settings that differ widely in their physical, economic, political, strategic, and social characteristics. The Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans have all contributed in different ways to the vital role that the marine environment has played in the development of the country. Even so, most of the country's population, together with its major economic and political decision making centres, are located far from the sea. As a result, oceans policy making only occasionally achieves a high priority.

Generally Canadian oceans policy has been developed in an ad hoc fashion by a large number of separate departments and agencies in response to particular events and to meet their own objectives. The only attempt at formulating a national oceans policy was made in 1987, with the publication of an Oceans Policy for Canada by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), the federal agency assigned the lead role in oceans policy development after declaration of a 200 mile exclusive fishing zone (EFZ) in 1977. This policy statement focussed on the economic and technological opportunities that Canada's newly-acquired ocean space presented, together with the need to develop proper management for resource exploitation, but paid little regard to maritime security issues.

In the early 1990s major changes have affected the environment for oceans policy development in Canada: the break-up of the Soviet Union has reduced the military threat in the Arctic, drastic depletion of fish stocks has led to massive unemployment among the fishing population of the east coast, and threats of illegal fishing by foreign vessels and an increase in the illicit movement of goods and people has called for more emphasis on coordinated surveillance, detection, and enforcement efforts in important sea areas. These developments, along with changes in key personnel at the DFO and substantial cuts in the department's size, heralded the demise of the 1987 initiative in oceans policy making and a return within the DFO to its traditional preoccupation with fisheries. After a brief four years of attempting to coordinate policy

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making between 14 federal departments under the Oceans side of the DFO's mandate, the federal government has returned to making policy in reaction to particular events or crises rather than within a rational, coherent, and comprehensive framework.

In May 1994, a conference sponsored by the International Geog- raphical Union's Commission on Marine Geography was held in Hali- fax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The theme was 'Public Policy and Ocean Development ' . Updated versions of four papers presented at a special Conference session on Canadian ocean policy, together with two others on the crisis in Canada's fisheries and one on Canada's Arctic policy, are included in this special issue. The timing of the Conference was fortuitous in that Canada had just amended its Coastal Fisheries Protection Act, under which it assumed the power to arrest and fine certain classes of foreign vessels exploiting straddling fish stocks on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks in contravention of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation's (NAFO) conservation and management measures. This controversial piece of legislation has more recently formed the backdrop to the Canadian-EU dispute in this area.

The first article identifies Canada's concerns about NAFO's management of these stocks in high seas adjacent to its EFZ. Depletion on a grand scale has reduced the size of most of these stocks to the lowest level ever observed, so that Canada and NAFO had placed moratoria on fishing most of them by early 1994. As the two following articles by Lennox Hinds and William Schrank show, Canada's management of the part of these resources inside its E F Z certainly contributed to this depletion. However , as the size of the stocks declined, NAFO's inability to control overfishing by its own members and re-flagged and stateless vessels became more important and urgent issues that Canada's legislation and actions in arresting the Kristina Logos and the Spanish trawler Estai were designed to address. Canada played a lead role in advocating international action on straddling stocks at the U N C E D Conference and has shown similar leadership of a block of coastal states at the current UN Conference on the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, but by the spring of 1994 Canada's recently elected Liberal Government decided that more immediate and unilateral action was needed to prevent further overfishing of these stocks by the international community.

The closure of the once great Northern Cod fishery in July 1992, followed a year later by moratoria on other domestic fisheries based on cod and flatfish stocks, led to large-scale unemployment among both fishers and fish processors on the Atlantic coast. The papers by Hinds and Schrank address this crisis. Hinds' analysis highlights two particularly significant points in the mismanagement of the industry. Canada's constitution divides the responsibility for managing the fishing industry between the federal Government (fish harvesting and resource management) and the provincial Governments (fish processing and marketing). Hinds observes that in the post 1977 period the federal Government used licensing to restrict entry and curtail fishing effort, while the governments of the five eastern provinces were fostering expansion of the industry's capacity by subsidies for vessel construction and processing plants. Unfortunately, this expansion was based on resources that had not recovered from the decimation caused by the large-scale expansion of European fishing in the Northwest Atlantic in the 1960s. The second point is of much wider relevance than Canadian fisheries.

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The fishery management models used by the DFO in the past 20 years have been flawed and scientific assessment of the stocks has been unsound. Fishery scientists misread catch expansion after 1977 as the result of healthier fish stocks based on improved year classes and they underestimated the effect of improved technology on commercial catches. Factors such as misreporting catches, discards, and by-catches, which were also creating problems for NAFO scientists (see the first article), are identified by Hinds as contributing to inaccurate stock assessment. He suggests that a new management framework is needed, based on the Large Marine Ecosystem concept.

Schrank's analysis highlights another potential problem of ocean policy development in a federal country, namely that provincial (or state) government pressure may divert national policy from addressing long-standing concerns. The underlying problems of the east coast groundfish industry - - overemployment and overcapacity - - have been recognised by the federal Government since at least the 1960s but, because of provincial pressure to maintain employment in a region suffering from severe economic disparities, the federal government has not been consistent in addressing these problems. Indeed, Schrank shows that the federal Government must assume its share of the responsibility for the expansion of fishing capacity in the post 1977 period by its subsidies under the Fishing Vessel Assistance Programme and other programmes. Clearly, the DFO has been guilty of, to quote Schrank, "a policy schizophrenia, never being able to determine whether its chief goal is to set and implement policy for the fishery as a viable industry or whether it is to maximise employment and save non-viable rural communities". Distortion of departmental objectives to address what are really regional policy problems has been a characteristic of Canada's federal Government for decades. The collapse of the groundfish industry in 1992-93 is a telling assessment of this kind of policy. The DFO failed miserably in both of its objectives.

An aspect of marine policy that has become of much greater significance to most coastal states in this era of extended jurisdiction is boundary delimitation and the subsequent management of transboundary resources. In the Juan de Fuca Strait and Dixon Inlet on the west coast, Canada's maritime boundaries with the US remain unsettled and fishing disputes demand repeated attention. On the east coast, overlap- ping claims to 200 miles, zones with both the US and France (around St. Pierre and Miquelon) had to be settled by international arbitration. Although the resulting single maritime boundaries have clarified the situation with regard to offshore hydrocarbon exploration and development in both areas, they have also resulted in significant transboundary fisheries management problems.

Glen Herbert illustrates both the nature of the problem and Canada's policy response. Incompatible fisheries management policies on oppo- site sides of the 'Hague Line' in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank, rapid resource depletion on the American side, and resentment at the International Court of Justice decision fostered the growth of illegal fishing by American vessels in Canadian waters. Canada's response, as on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks, has been detailed surveillance, detection, and enforcement of the boundary. Year-round attention to such activities in boundary areas, together with attempts to control domestic fishing on a micro-scale, account for an increasing proportion of the DFO's budget at a time when the fishing

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industry is contracting and Government cutbacks are the order of the day.

Comparison of Herbert's study with the recent disputes on the Grand Banks illustrates another point of significance. Although strong surveillance, detection, and enforcement efforts are essential ingredients of Canada's fisheries management policy, both American enforcement authorities (inadequately staffed with fisheries inspectors) and the EU Fisheries Commission (with no real authority to ensure that its member states comply with NAFO management measures) offered little effec- tive cooperation in, and paid little attention to, these areas of fisheries management until after armed Canadian patrol vessels threatened their illegal fishers. Urged on by the embarrassing prospect of armed conflict, American authorities negotiated a Reciprocal Enforcement Agreement with Canada under which American authorities would increase their surveillance along the Hague Line and strengthen their enforcement against violations of Canadian waters if Canadian authorities would stop their fishing vessels from violating American waters in the Juan de Fuca Strait area. Only after the high profile arrest of the Estai and threats against other Spanish and Portuguese fishing vessels, is the EU seriously turning its attention to international fisheries enforcement issues, the Achilles' heel of NAFO and a Canadian concern since that organisation was formed in 1979. A recent EU-Canada agreement will see the development of a much stronger fisheries enforcement system than in the past.

The management of transboundary marine environments has re- ceived less attention from the federal Government, while regional sea use planning has not been a characteristic of Canada's approach to ocean policy. Given this, the activities of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment present an interesting attempt at a regional approach to marine management as well as to transboundary cooperation. Created in 1989 by the two Canadian provinces and three American states that border the Gulf of Maine, this strictly province/ state initiative defines its region of interest by the watershed on land and at sea. The Council has no authority to regulate the marine part of the region as most of this falls under federal jurisdiction in both countries. Implementation of its Action Plan varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction because of varying local political priorities.

Aldo Chircop, et al., indicate that the Council is a mechanism for building consensus and harmonising domestic environmental law, policy, and management. An important and disturbing, point made by them is that the Council's work still does not recognise key sustainable development principles such as the precautionary approach and the polluter pays. There is also concern over the Council's future approach in light of a recent working conference review of its work. Continuation of the past approach, which focussed mainly on cooperation among the region's bureaucrats, could lead to a loss of community support. There appears to be a possibility that the Council's future Action Plan may spearhead key areas of cooperation in which consensus can be easily reached between governments and with community groups and then using these successes to develop other areas of cooperation. Although a more complex approach, which emphasises sustainable development in a broader approach to environmental and development issues, cannot be ruled out, this would be a much more radical departure from the Council's previous work.

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It was mentioned at the outset that the 1987 Oceans Policy for Canada paid little attention to maritime security. This aspect of marine policy is, however, receiving national government attention as it rethinks its approach to maritime security in the post Cold War era, and in the context of challenges to Canada's national security from illegal resource exploitation, marine pollution, illegal transportation of goods and people, and other diverse threats associated with use of its ocean space. Three points may be highlighted from Rear Admiral (Retired) Frederick Crickard's paper. Canada's policy has shifted recently from defending maritime areas to securing Canada's seas. However , the need to maintain sea control varies spatially and security efforts should be concentrated on key areas which are mostly located off the Atlantic coast. Finally while the vastness of the ocean space that Canada needs to secure and the cost of doing so necessitate regional differentiation of the ocean space, the limited resources at the federal government 's disposal and the diverse nature of the threats to its national security are being met by closer integration and inter-operability of the three, traditionally autonomous federally-controlled fleets and by a continuing dependence on bilateral and regional security arrangements.

The role of the Arctic Ocean has varied considerably in Canada's maritime security policy. In some periods, national policy has been based on a three-ocean national defence strategy: in others, the Arctic has lost importance and a two-ocean emphasis has been adopted. The threat to Canadian security from the US-Soviet polar activity during the Cold War increased national awareness of the northern ocean's importance: the demise of the Soviet Union has allowed Canada to return to more of a two-ocean approach to security issues. Any challenge to Canadian sovereignty over its Arctic region is, however, bound to rejuvenate national determination to defend this region. Rob Huebert ' s paper provides both an excellent example of how a sudden increase in the importance of the Arctic Sea to southern policy makers prompted new measures to assert sovereignty and how Canadian marine policy may derive from a hastily contrived set of policy initiatives in response to a particular event. The 1985 journey of the American icebreaker, the Polar Sea, through the Northwest Passage re-kindled Canadian memor- ies of the 1970 voyage of the Manhattan oil tanker. While the Manhattan voyage resulted in the passage of the Arctic Waters Pollution Preven- tion Act, the Polar Sea voyage brought a further attempt to establish sovereignty through use of the Canadian Law Offshore Application Act to legalise new Arctic baselines and define internal Canadian waters in the region.

Remote as it is from the main centres of Canadian life and policy making and in spite of its varying importance to national defence policy over time, the Arctic has nonetheless had lasting impacts on some aspects of Canadian marine development. One is particularly notable. During the 1950s, the Diefenbaker Government ' s Northern Vision policy turned national attention on the Arctic as development of its resources (including offshore hydrocarbons) was seen as a way to fuel the continued economic growth of southern Canada. To develop its hydrocarbon resources, the federal Government implemented a very generous oil and gas regime for the Arctic, which was designed to offset a short exploration season in the North, the high cost of exploration and development in this remote area, and the great distance from markets. In 1959, when the federal cabinet was asked by Mobil Oil for a permit

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for oil and gas exploration on Sable Island off the east coast, it had not developed an offshore management regime suited to the east coast. In the absence of such a regime, it responded to the event by applying the same set of generous regulations to the east coast as it had developed for its more remote northern seas. These slowed exploration and, as a result, have considerably retarded the development of east coast offshore hydrocarbon resources such as Hibernia and other nearby oilfields and the Sable Island gas fields. It is only now, some 35 years after the first oil and gas permits were issued to the Canadian offshore, that we are approaching production from the first major oil and gas development offshore. Such may be the impact of marine policy formulated hastily in response to events and in the absence of a comprehensive policy framework that takes into account the different physical and human characteristics of Canada's three very distinctive oceanic regions.

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