Management Alternatives and Strategic Planning for Canada's Fisheries

Abstract

The evils of operating Canada's commercial and recreational fisheries under open-access conditions were known before Confederation. Early recognition of these ills did not lead to an understanding of the basic problems nor to long-term solutions. In the early 1950s the first economic model was developed that articulated the underlying causes of excess capacity and the tendency of overexploitation in open-access fisheries. This was followed by a number of studies that explored the relationship between the biological reproductive capacity of a fishery and the economic consequences of managing publicly owned resources under open-access conditions. This early work provides a general framework from which a number of fisheries management alternatives emerge. Each of six management alternatives, which are implicit in policy for Canada's commercial fisheries, are assessed in terms of political acceptability, administrative feasibility, and effectiveness. It is emphasized that the responsibility of a government fisheries agency is to manage fisheries resources in the best interest of the owners of the resource – the nation's taxpayers. A properly implemented license control system would dissipate, rather than perpetuate, social and economic hardship among fishermen. This misplaced concern for unproven social problems often leads fisheries managers to support programs that sacrifice all the benefits that could be generated from the resource and the resource itself. A management scheme is recommended that encompasses a simple licensing system, a tax or a royalty on catch, and a limited variation of the "Grandfather System." The combination of these three incorporates the main advantages of most management alternatives while avoiding most of their main shortcomings. A carefully implemented program that accounts for economic and biological considerations would improve the efficiency of the industry, improve fishermen's incomes, minimize social disruptions, help to instill an environmental conscience, protect the resource, and induce less, rather than more, government intervention into the free operation of the fishing industry. Probably more important, the program would generate an economic return for the people of Canada. Key words: overcapitalization, open-access fisheries, fisheries economics, fisheries management, fisheries policy, fish licensing, license limitation, fish royalties, tax on fish landings