My family lived on the north shore of Trinity Bay since the 1600s. This ‘Canada’ stuff is pretty recent history, but it’s painfully clear now that in 1949 when Canada said they’d manage our resources for the benefit of Newfoundlanders they didn’t say which Newfoundlanders or how many.
Which Newfoundlanders resources are we talking about? If it’s fish, as a BCer, I understand that they are pretty terrible at managing fish resources.
But as an environmental science grad I also understand why it’s an impossible scenario to manage.
You can either manage for a sustainable fisheries ecosystem or for fisheries-based economy but not both without sacrificing a lot from both of them and no one from either side will be happy.
Newfoundland’s fisheries came under the management of DFO when NL joined Canada in 1949. In the subsequent decades the number of trawlers increased and local fishermen complained to the government that this was impacting stocks.
By the late 60s super-trawlers were bringing in many times the yearly catch than was possible before.
In the 70s Canada declared foreign vessels couldn’t fish within 200 nautical miles. DFO then set quotas that were too high, and American and Canadian vessels picked up where the foreign vessels left off, further depleting the stock. Newfoundlanders, including members of my own family, wrote the government of the day to warn them it was unsustainable.
In the 80s, scientists agreed and said that the fishery should should be cut in half. It wasn’t.
In the 90s it collapsed.
This is basically how Canada and the Canadian province of Newfoundland mismanaged just one of Newfoundlands resources, not for the benefit of Newfoundlanders but for the short term benefit of whatever American or Canadian corporation could afford the biggest trawler. Basically, a few decades of shareholder return at the expense of a fishery that had been sustained for 500 years. O, Canada!
Of course, it should come as no surprise when the primary purpose of the government of Canada is to facilitate resource extraction, coast to coast to coast!
