Quota Management and “People Problems”: A Case History of Canadian Lake Erie Fisheries

Abstract

A new management plan was drawn up for Ontarioˈs commercial fisheries in 1982 after 2 years of negotiations between the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ontario Council of Commercial Fisheries, which represents the fishing industry. Implementation of the plan began in 1984 with individual harvest quotas for Lake Erie. Government-industry agreement on the principle of quotas was relatively easy to achieve, but the allocation of individual quotas was more problematic, partly because of errors made in rushing decisions rather than going through the due political process to arrive at a compromise. A workable plan, with some dissent remaining, was nevertheless achieved in 2–3 years, following the initial socioeconomic dislocations, through a process of negotiation, adaptation, joint decision making (comanagement), and cooperation in enforcing regulations. Political and social considerations (equity) were relatively more important to fishermen than were economic efficiency objectives. The case study suggests a number of elements of a pragmatic resource planning protocol: baseline biological and statistical data have to be accompanied by suitable socioeconomic and cultural information on fishermen; new regulations need to take into account any existing self-regulation; proposed reductions in fishing effort need to be reconciled with equity concerns of the fishermen and with broader sociopolitical goals such as employment; and specific objectives of any new management plan should be framed so that they can serve as criteria for program evaluation.