After weeks of deafening silence over allegations that it is doing too little to enforce illegal and out-of-season lobster fishing in the Maritimes, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has finally found its voice.
In an unsigned letter to The Chronicle Herald, DFO said it is deploying a “suite of assets” to monitor indigenous fishing off southwestern Nova Scotia, where the commercial lobster season does not open until November.
The letter also denied allegations that it is ignoring illegal lobster fishing by Americans fishing in Canadian waters, saying it has seized 140 traps set from US vessels. This was accomplished despite work action by fisheries enforcement officers, whose leadership has said they will not put to sea until steps are taken to safeguard their safety.
The DFO letter is a baby step forward. Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier also has a duty to answer industry critics, talk to reporters, and tell Canadians what her department is doing to enforce regulations and protect stock health in the $1 billion plus Maritime lobster industry, Canada’s most valuable export fishery.
All Ms. Lebouthillier has offered so far are vague assurances about maintaining “peace on the water” as a volatile situation worsens at sea and at wharves in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. She also threw fuel on the simmering dispute between DFO and its enforcement officers, by announcing an external investigation into an incident in which patrol officers were said to have abandoned two unshod indigenous fishermen at a gas station in rural Nova Scotia.
Did this single event really warrant a comprehensive investigation announced in language stating the Minister was determined to “eradicate” the potential for “systemic bias or racism” among fishery patrol officers? The Minister’s announcement sounded, to beleaguered fisheries officers, like it both assigned guilt to them and declared war on them.
From our watch in CrowsNest, we believe Ms. Lebouthillier can best promote the “peace on the water” she craves by first conceding that enforcing Canadian fisheries regulations is indeed a dangerous job. After all, her own department simply closed the elver fishery to all harvesters this year – including licence holders – because it couldn’t deal with massive unlicensed fishing on Nova Scotia rivers, sometimes conducted by men carrying guns.
If anything warrants a full external investigation in the Maritime fishery, it might best focus on DFO’s capability to safely enforce its own rules and regulations to protect fish habitat and stock health. The department workers closest to the action, patrol officers, say that capability is seriously compromised. Their views should be respected.
Finally, the Minister should abandon her vow of silence and communicate what her department is doing to address issues in the Maritime fishery. By doing so, she would not only be answering her critics; she would also be defending her own staff inside DFO, many of them working hard to promote a safe, legal, and sustainable fishery.
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