GN fisheries strategy to be released soon

I read with great interest Jim Bell’s editorial on April 16th entitled “Decolonizing Nunavut’s fishery.” The article makes a number of good comments particularly as it relates to the historical development of the fishery, the importance of the Baffin Fisheries Coalition, as well as the misguided reporting of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

However, where this article falls off track is in its unjustified criticism of the Government of Nunavut. First, it suggests that Nunavut does nothing more than complain to Ottawa about unfair quota allocations. We do indeed take every opportunity to highlight the fact that we have a meagre 34 per cent of our adjacent fishery resources in light of comparisons to other jurisdictions. There appears to be little use in throwing around numbers like $98.5 million when in fact we only have access to 34 per cent of this value.

The GN has done far more than to just highlight the inequitable sharing arrangements in our adjacent fisheries. In 2001, we spearheaded, along with our partners at NTI and the NWMB, the formation and development of the Baffin Fisheries Coalition.

The key purpose of the BFC was and continues to be to build the critical mass necessary for true fisheries development in our offshore fisheries as well as to ensure royalty revenues from the fishery are reinvested into fisheries development in Nunavut.

Further, in 2002, the GN implemented a new program entitled the Fisheries Development and Diversification Program. With core funding of $350,000, this program was initiated to support community-based fisheries development and diversification activities such as test-fisheries, feasibility studies, etc.

During this past fiscal year, we used these funds to leverage more than a million dollars from other sources, and funded more than 20 projects throughout the territory, focused primarily on inshore fisheries development.

The editorial also suggests that the GN does not know what kind of fishery it wants for Nunavut and that we have no strategy or approach to move forward with. Had the editor contacted our department he would have been informed that we indeed have a vision for both offshore and inshore fisheries development.

We have recently completed a Strategic Framework Document for Nunavut Fisheries, and the feedback received from this will be used to finalize a Nunavut Fisheries Strategy that is consistent with the priorities of the current Nunavut Economic Development Strategy.

There is little doubt that in time Nunavut will develop both a capital-intensive large-scale offshore fishery as well as a community-based small-boat inshore fishery. We have, and are continuing to develop programs and support structures to support both of these sectors. The key will be to ensure that these fisheries are developed in the best interests of Nunavut and not that of southern interests who claim to be acting in the interests of Nunavut.

If you want to address the real problems facing fisheries development in Nunavut, then you need to look at the basic support structures that exist in other established fisheries throughout Canada and around the world. These include basic infrastructure support such as harbour and port facilities and marine service centers; core science programs; fisheries diversification programs; as well as an equitable distribution of resource allocations. For the most part all of the above support structures are non-existent in Nunavut.

Federal support through the key initiatives identified above is what opened up the Labrador coastal fishery in the 1970’s and beyond, and this is what it will take to open up Nunavut’s fishery. DFO in particular has the ability to provide that support to Nunavut through its existing programs such as its Small Craft Harbours program, Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy funding, and its core science budget as well as other recently released Aboriginal fisheries funding programs. The problem is that not one penny from these programs has yet to be spent in Nunavut, and, in fact, DFO uses the Nunavut land claims agreement as a tool to continue to exclude us from most of them.

Until we see a significant shift in federal policy in the above-noted areas, it will be extremely difficult to see the development, for example, of a community-based small boat inshore fishery.

Carey Bonnell
Acting Assistant Deputy Minister
Department of Environment, Nunavut