Cod harvesters from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, recently disrupted a meeting of federal and provincial environment ministers in protest of a recent decision on cod quotas.
Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) recently reopened the Northern cod 2J3KL fishery, located off the coast of Newfoundland, after a 32-year moratorium. The department set an 18,000-metric-ton (MT) quota distributed between inshore, Indigenous, and offshore vessels.
The quota distribution has been a sticking point for members of the Fish, Food, and Allied Workers (FFAW) Union, which has called for the DFO to follow through on a longstanding commitment to grant inshore harvesters the first 115,000 MT of a reopened cod fishery.
According to the FFAW, the Canadian government first committed to giving the inshore fleet the quota in 1982, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reaffirmed that commitment in writing in 2015.
Despite that, FFAW said during a meeting between it and DFO Deputy Minister Annette Gibbons, the department stood by the decision – a move that caused the union to walk out of the meeting.
“Yesterday afternoon, we presented a 1,300-page document to DFO, to Members of Parliament, and to the Prime Minister of Canada. This submission is a detailed record of the federal government’s commitment to Newfoundland and Labrador and to inshore fish harvesters,” FFAW President Greg Pretty said in release. “The amount of evidence is absolutely staggering at this point, and the fact that these elected representatives and bureaucrats can sit there, look us in the eye, and tell us that they have made the right decision for our province – it’s absolutely sickening.”
After the meeting failed to change the DFO’s decision, FFAW members demonstrated at a news conference of federal and provincial environment ministers.
“Yesterday’s demonstration at the federal provincial news conference was a success in that we got our message out there to more Canadians. But, don’t think for a second that’s where it ends,” Pretty said. “Our members are ready and willing to do what needs to be done so that our message is heard loud and clear.”
Pretty said that the union plans to keep fighting to secure the quota it was promised.
“The evidence is overwhelmingly in our favor, and we have the public’s support to keep draggers out of our Northern cod fishery,” Pretty said. “We will not let this go, and we will hold our federal government, as well as all of our Newfoundland and Labrador MPs, to account.”
