2019 CAFLP Annual Conference Panel Recap: “Fish Food: Proteins of the Sea”

Photo by Drew Collins on Unsplash

The panel on fisheries and aquaculture was the only one of its kind at the conference this year. “It’s important to think about how fish and agriculture of the sea are included in the food law conversation,” said moderator Sarah Berger Richardson from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. This panel showcased that fisheries have represented a major part of Canada’s food industry, both historically and today.

Jim McIsaac from the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation discussed the challenges facing those working in fisheries, particularly on the west coast. Legal access to fish is one issue, and Jim discussed the impact made on smaller domestic fish harvesters when international companies and food distributors buy up fishing licences. This is important to consider, Jim said, because the benefit created by fisheries is not just the “landed or wholesale value of the fish, but the community value.”

Phillip Saunders from the Marine and Environmental Law Institute at the Schulich School of Law then gave an overview of the history leading up to the recent amendments to the Fisheries Act. Phillip discussed how these amendments represent decades of policy and legal development, and the changes have had a major impact on the nature of licencing for fisher harvesters. The new licensing structure is intended to protect inshore fisheries by ensuring the person buying the licence is actually using it and receiving the benefit from it.

However, not all fisheries in Canada are sea-based, and Pierre Cloutier de Repentigny from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law presented on policy issues regarding aquaculture. “We have a tendency to proceed with industries without knowing all the risk factors first,” said Pierre. Aquaculture has largely been absorbed into fisheries legislation, and regulations have mostly been crafted to encourage this new industry. However, open-net fisheries set up in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans pose issues of disease transfer and interbreeding. Interbreeding can lead to the weakening of genetic viability of wild fish populations, or “genetic replacement,” Pierre said. One way to approach these issues would be to “start from scratch,” said Pierre, and craft regulations from an ecological cultivation perspective. Some new aquaculture projects are trying this method, creating “artificial ecosystems” for their fish populations.

All the panelists noted that fisheries were only briefly included in the recent Food Policy for Canada, and lamented that fish are sometimes considered a commodity rather than food.