“DFO is threatening long-term viability of communities.”

Giving Nunavut a bigger stake in its fishery would boost Canadian claims of sovereignty over the Arctic, Environment Minister Olayuk Akesuk said June 2.

Speaking to a meeting of the Senate's standing committee on fisheries and oceans, Akesuk said Canada's claim to the Arctic is based on the presence of Inuit, who need jobs.

He said recent decisions by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to allow transfers of Nunavut turbot quota between southern fishing companies "runs very much counter to Canada's sovereignty strategy.

"By blocking development of Nunavut's fishery, which for several of our communities is pretty much the sole economic base apart from government, DFO is threatening the long-term viability of those communities, and thereby the underpinning of Canada's sovereignty strategy," Akesuk said.

Last week, the Government of Nunavut ministers supported a boat burning by the Baffin Fisheries Coalition protesting the quota transfers.

A May 9 decision by fisheries minister Loyola Hearn to transfer 600 tonnes of turbot quota adjacent to Nunavut to a group of southern fisheries companies enraged BFC. The company and GN both claim Nunavut is being robbed of its natural resources.

DFO, for its part, says the deal simply means the southern companies no longer compete for the 600 tonnes, but instead divide and share the quota, reducing the chance of overfishing. The department said the quota never actually changed ownership.

Akesuk told senators that Nunavut fishing interests control 42 per cent of the turbot quota off its coast, compared with 75 per cent or more for British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces. That difference amounts to $56 million worth of fish, he said.

At least one senator seemed to be won over by Akesuk's pleas.

"We are ready to do anything we can to support you," said Fernand Robichaud, a Liberal senator from New Brunswick.

Akesuk also blasted the federal government's decision to build only one small craft harbour in Pangnirtung, despite a GN report calling for docks in seven communities.

"Southern Canada has over 1,100, all paid for by the federal government," he said.

What Akesuk didn't say is that Ottawa has been privatizing fishing wharves since the mid-1990s.

And Akesuk railed against bill C-32, proposed legislation that would allow the federal fisheries minister greater powers to allocate fishing quotas.

But it doesn't give Nunavut a greater chance to wrestle quotas away from southern fishers, which Akesuk told senators is discriminatory.

"The act's provisions would merely entrench existing allocations and put Nunavut's achievements of parity with the rest of Canada even further out of reach," he said.

The senators were in Iqaluit last week for the first of two public hearings on Arctic marine issues. They visited six other Baffin communities on a fact-finding mission.

Bill Rompkey, the committee's chair, said findings from the trip will form the basis of a report that will go to the Conservative government.