Making Waves

It's been a while since I posted. I think I am now over my viral infection (personal, not computer) and have more energy. Today's short blog is the first of a series on the fisheries crisis in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Making Waves

I attended this discussion last night, organised by Ryan Cleary, NDP MP for St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.  Ryan started the evening with a 20 minute presentation concerning his attempts to have an official inquiry (parliamentary? Judicial? He did not make that clear) into the state of the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Some of the history of the collapse of the northern cod fishery I was familiar with.  Since my involvement with Michael Cook’s prophetic play “Head Guts and Sound-bone Dance” in 1972, I had been paying attention to the fishing industry, following the Fisherman’s Broadcast on CBC almost very day. So my background to last night’s discussion was fairly broad, if not detailed.

Ryan had identified some 160 recommendations from 21 years of reports of various kinds. He had boiled them down to 20, and then selected 5 to present to last night’s audience. They were:

1.     Clarify objectives for the industry and develp a policy framework.

2.     Fisheries and Oceans need to develop sustainable conservation quotas for straddling stocks

3.     FaO should prepare an annual report as outline in the 1996 Oceans Act.

4.     FaO should adequately fund research and make it public.

5.     NAFO should be replaced.

From my perspective the first four dealt with parliamentary/bureaucratic problems. Recommendations for action have been made in how the Department at the federal level should have been managed for at least 20 years. The lack of action, and at times deliberate political interference, have resulted in FaO becoming dysfunctional. Scientific research has been consistently underfunded; scientists, in a by now familiar scenario, are being muzzled. Not only can they not speak out about their research, they cannot publish their results in respectable journals, nor even attend scientific conferences.

More on this tomorrow.