Canada snookered again

If you hear raucous laughter coming from somewhere in the north Atlantic today, it's probably coming from the Portuguese trawler Brites.

Last week, a Canadian frigate intercepted the ship, which was suspected of overfishing on the "nose and tail" of the Grand Banks, just outside of Canada's 200-mile limit. The Brites cut her nets, but they were recovered by the Coast Guard - and found to be full of fish species protected by an international moratorium. Under the rules of NAFO - the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, a toothless, EU-dominated joke of an organization which supposedly governs fishing just outside of Canadian waters - Canadian officials asked the Portuguese if, pretty please, they could send the Brites into a Canadian port for further inspection.

Yesterday, the Canadians gave up:

Canadian fisheries officials won't have a chance to inspect a Portuguese boat that they say cut a net that was catching endangered cod and flatfish in international waters.

The Portuguese government and the European Union Monday ordered the vessel Brites to return to an unspecified port in Portugal to undergo an inspection.
[...]
But the European Union said Monday that one of its fisheries inspectors will be on board the Brites as it makes its way home and that the decision to send the boat home shows its commitment to conservation.

Under NAFO regulations Canada cannot force a boat from another country to come a Canadian port – and many Newfoundlanders believe this allows European vessels to avoid prosecution for overfishing of scarce cod and flatfish stocks. Federal Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan has said that if NAFO can't stop overfishing, Canadian officials will resort to a United Nations agreement that does allow for seizure of boats that are endangering fish stocks.

If there's a UN agreement that would have allowed us to seize the Brites, why the hell didn't we do it?

One of the most disspiriting experiences of my life was the summer I worked as a research assistant for a political science professor at Memorial University. For a couple of days, I had to slog through the proceedings of NAFO's annual conferences, and every year I found the same thing: Canada would beg the Europeans to reduce their catches, and the Europeans would always say the matter required further study. And by 1992, Newfoundlanders were no longer allowed to fish for cod off their own shores, because there simply wasn't enough left. It wasn't all the foreigners' fault, but it was one of the major factors.

The whole disastrous experience says a lot about how the perenially self-righteous, sophisticated Europeans treat someone else's environment. And it also says a lot about how the federal government has treated what was once Newfoundland's signature resource. Unique among all the provinces, Newfoundland does not have jurisdiction over its major resources (fisheries and offshore oil), and to Ottawa, Newfoundland fish is just a bargaining tool to keep the EU, Russia and Japan buying our wheat.

Admittedly, based on how we've treated what we do have under provincial jurisidction, I'm not sure Newfoundlanders would have done much better. But we'll never know now, will we?

Posted by damian at May 11, 2004 12:39 PM