Fishing Regulations in Canada: Environmental Concerns and Oversight

This report provides a detailed analysis of fishing regulations in Canada, focusing on their environmental impacts and the mechanisms for oversight. The report examines the role of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in managing fisheries, addressing issues such as pollution, habitat destruction, and the need for sustainable practices. It explores both performance-based and prescriptive regulations, discussing their effects on the industry and the environment. The report also covers government enforcement, compliance, and the role of the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service. It highlights the importance of balancing economic needs with environmental sustainability, examining the use of quotas, monitoring systems, and the protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems. The report also touches on the legal gaps and weaknesses within the current framework and suggests the need for improvement in setting quotas and setting discards reduction plans. The report uses multiple sources to support the analysis and includes references to relevant legislation and industry practices.

Running head: FISHING REGULATIONS
Fishing Regulations
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FISHING REGULATIONS
Part 1
The Canadian government has revealed numerous violations of the legislation on fishing,
conservation of aquatic biological resources and their habitats. The area that is on focus in
this paper is pollution of aquatic resources. Everywhere there is a negative impact on the
habitat of aquatic biological resources in the absence of its compensation. This is why there is
need for the sector to be regulated by government and oversight mechanisms be put in place
(Vidas, 2010).
Effects to the Environment
The environment is unregulated in many areas that are purely of benefit to the environment.
The DFO is the management body responsible for the functioning of the fishery complex,
designed to ensure the legal regulation and organization of fisheries.There is an acute need to
support entrepreneurship in fish farming. However, the DFO has not adopted such a program.
The use of fishing grounds on the basis of contracts would oblige users to take additional
measures to preserve the fish habitat (Bailey, 2001). The DFO is obliged to monitor the
development of allocated quotas and compliance with fishing rules, however, it does not deal
with this.
Users of aquatic biological resources do not submit to the DFO on the volumes of quotas that
have been developed. Not fully organized by the DFO and activities to protect aquatic
biological resources. Fishery amelioration of water bodies, cleaning of coastal strips from
garbage, from abandoned fishing gear are not carried out as required.

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The production of cases on administrative offenses established wines of many citizens and
entrepreneurs who have committed pollution of watercourses, water protection zones of
rivers and lakes with oil products, technical waste and untreated wastewater.
The facts of issuing by the department of coordination of economic activities in the absence
of grounds and with violation of the law are widespread. Control over the fulfillment of the
conditions of the already issued approvals is not carried out (Klein, 2008).
Managing negative impact on the environment
fisheries operations affect freshwater and ocean ecosystems. Finding the balance between
what serves Canadian needs and management of environmental impacts is key. In Canada,
DFO evaluates effects of fisheries on various components of the ecosystem. This includes:
targeted fish stock, fish habitat, unique or sensitive bottom habitats and ecosystems. Canada
has put in place some of the most advance fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance
systems. The government uses a variety of tools that are used to monitor and enforce
compliance with DFO rules. This is because it draws interest and attention of the public and it
is a crucial industry for the Canadians.
PART 2
The industry is commercial fish farming in Canada and there are laws and regulations that
have been made so as to control and moderate fishing. It is a multi-billion dollar venture
especially done by the large scale fishermen who supply fish to factories and export it to
international markets (Browder, 2007). The regulations are aimed at streamlining the industry
and making sure that the environment and the markets are not violated.
While regulating, performance based and prescriptive regulations are used to impact or affect
the area. The impact is felt far and wide. The regulations cover the following areas
Government enforcement and compliance

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Fisheries oversight: greater control The body responsible for oversight is the National
Fisheries and Aquaculture Service. A very relevant change to improve the control of the
artisanal sector, in particular of the larger ships, was the requirement to use satellite
positioner and to certify their landings, as well as industrial ship owners who meet these
requirements since 2001 (Capturing the benefits of performance based standards, 2003).
Currently, there are around 1,300 large artisanal craft -10% of the total of artisanal craft that
capture 80% of the artisanal landings. With these new inspection instruments, will be able to
control that they carry out their fishing operations in the region where they are authorized and
that they do not enter the first mile, an area exclusively used by small-scale artisans, and also
verify that the volumes and species captured are those that correspond to their authorizations
and quotas.
Environmental concerns
The first are responsible for defining the ranges of global quotas (binding) within which the
authority defines the specific value. The management committees, meanwhile, are
responsible for developing management plans that set the objectives and deadlines for
carrying or maintaining fisheries at their maximum sustainable yield level. The scientific
committees were established in 2013 and the management committees during 2014 and 2015.
An important weakness of this new process of setting quotas, attributable at least partially to
an inadequate implementation of the Law, is that due to the late constitution of management
committees, the scientific committees have had to fix quotas without counting with a
scratched court (Socio-economic profile of Canada's fishing industry labour force 1994-2006,
2011). The scientific committees have been strict and have recommended significant quota
reductions (without applying criteria of graduality), which entails important economic
consequences for artisanal and industrial fishing actors. Some actors believe that there are
also legal gaps since the institutional relationship between the scientific committees, the

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management committees and the Fisheries Sub secretariat is not clearly explained. Regarding
discards, the new law mandates that reduction plans should be prepared for each fishery. One
of the main instruments is the use of more selective capture methods that minimize the
capture of unwanted species and / or short stature. For the development of these plans, the
execution of research programs is mandated, with 13 of these programs currently underway.
Ship owners must carry scientific observers and install video cameras on board.
In regulating, the role of regulators can be classified as a watchdog over what the industry
does and has. However, some of this regulations are so stringent making fishing especially in
the commercial sector really hard. There are also regulations that may hinder the growth and
development of this particular industry. To cap it all, it is important to note that regulations
and roles of regulators are to set clear laws that allow things to be felt in a proper way.
PART 3
For performance based regulations in the fishing industry, the aim is to improve the
performance of the fishermen in order to increase production efficiency. Production
efficiency increases the volumes which is being produced which leads to more profits and
therefore creation of more jobs. Producing in bulk also increases the ability to make the best
in terms of cost to profit assessment and all that. It also allows for greater innovation in the
industry as fishermen look forward to increasing the productivity by maximizing efficiency.
It also ensures global competitiveness as innovation leads to higher quality production. The
best method of increasing performance is by creating clear regulations outlining the best way
to increase efficiency. Fishing is a big industry and if not well regulated will result to abusing
the environment, the market and the workers who work in the industry. The main aim of

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regulation is to ensure less abuse of the industry, increase profits, and reduce costs and tame
rogue members in the industry. This improves performance in the industry.
The state of fishery resources is very worrying. The existing regulation did not require
periodic assessments of the state of fisheries or mandated the sectoral authority to try to
recover those that were overexploited or collapsed (Kahraman & Baig, 2010). With the
approval of the law, it was required to evaluate the status of the fisheries through the
estimation of the biological reference points, a known and measurable indicator. The new law
incorporated the concept of Maximum Sustainable Performance (MSY) - used in the main
fisheries legislations of the world for the sectoral authority to take or maintain the fisheries
towards that level, based on a management plan that must be developed in conjunction with
the actors, where objectives, goals and deadlines and strategies are defined to achieve it.
The Canadian government extended its territorial boundary to about 200 miles where the
domestic fishery agencies were tasked to be responsible for resource husbandry (Thangavel,
2016). Some of the regulations put in place are boat quotas. There are effort based regulations
that have been included by the government, for example, fish landed size, trip limits and
vessel size limits.
Another relevant area to move towards fisheries sustainability is to protect vulnerable marine
ecosystems (VMEs). The objective is to prevent the fishing operation, in particular that which
can impact the seabed such as trawling, from damaging the VMEs. Areas should be
identified with the presence of seamounts, which corresponds to a type of vulnerable marine
ecosystem, so that bottom or trawling was prohibited there (Baland, Bardhan & Bowles,
2007).
Regarding discards, the new law mandates that reduction plans should be prepared for each
fishery. One of the main instruments is the use of more selective capture methods that

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minimize the capture of unwanted species and / or short stature. For the development of these
plans, the execution of research programs is mandated, with 13 of these programs currently
underway. Ship owners must carry scientific observers and install video cameras on board.
This regulation applies to both industrial and larger craft owners (length of more than 15
meters), given their great fishing capacity (Freedman & Jaggi, 2010). Once these research
programs have been completed, it will be possible to determine which fraction of the discards
is inherent to the fishing activity and which fraction is the responsibility of the owner and,
therefore, it must be sanctioned

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References
Baland, J., Bardhan, P., & Bowles, S. (2007). Inequality, cooperation, and environmental
sustainability. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Bailey, J. (2001). Fishing. New York: Dorling Kindersley Pub.
Browder, G. (2007). Stepping up. Washington (D.C.): World Bank.
Capturing the benefits of performance based standards. (2003). Sydney.
Freedman, M., & Jaggi, B. (2010). Sustainability, environmental performance and
disclosures. Bingley: Emerald.
Kahraman, E., & Baig, A. (2010). Environmentalism. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Klein, A. (2008). Fishing. Edina, Minn.: ABDO Pub. Co.
Kamieniecki, S., Gonzalez, G., & Vos, R. (1997). Flashpoints in environmental
policymaking. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Thangavel, P. (2016). Environmental sustainability. [Place of publication not identified]:
Springer, India, Private.
Socio-economic profile of Canada's fishing industry labour force 1994-2006. (2011). Ottawa,
Ont.
Vidas, D. (2010). Law, technology and science for oceans in globalisation. Leiden: Martinus
Nijhoff.

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