Question Period Note: Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported Fishing

• Our government recognizes the global challenge of illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing, which is so devastating to ecosystems and economies around the world.
• Canada’s participation in the international Port State Measures Agreement effectively closes our ports and markets to illicit products, and provides us with additional enforcement authorities to deal with vessels engaged in IUU fishing.
• To achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal 14.6 as soon as possible, Canada is seeking an ambitious outcome at the World Trade Organization (WTO) fisheries subsidies negotiations to address harmful subsidies that contribute to IUU fishing, overfishing and overcapacity.
• Additionally, through the G7 Charlevoix Blueprint for Healthy Oceans, Canada has committed nearly $12 million to build capacity worldwide to combat IUU fishing by developing new surveillance technologies and improving information and intelligence sharing, particularly with vulnerable developing states.

• IUU fishing is estimated to account for up to 30 per cent of fish landings worldwide and remove as much as $30 B from the world’s economy annually. It is increasingly linked to crimes of convergence such as drug trafficking and human slavery.
• Oceana Canada, in a recent report entitled “Untraceable”, is critical of Canada’s seafood supply chain, particularly controls on traceability and labelling.
• The report highlights an Oceana study which found 47 per cent of seafood samples from Canadian grocery stores were mislabeled. It connects a lack of seafood traceability to the risk of seafood being sourced from illegal, unregulated or unreported fishing activity. It outlines the differences between Canada’s traceability requirements to those of the European Union.
• Canada’s economy (75,000 jobs in the primary fishing and aquaculture sector) and natural resources (especially straddling and highly migratory fish stocks) are put at serious risk by IUU fishing.
• Canada is actively involved in ongoing negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.6) – i.e., by 2020, eliminate subsidies that contribute to IUU fishing and prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, while recognizing the need for appropriate and effective special and differential treatment (S&DT) for developing and least developed countries. Although the 2020 deadline under SDG 14.6 was not met, negotiations among the 164 members of the WTO continue to intensify with a view to concluding as soon as possible.
• Fisheries and Oceans is implementing the G7 Charlevoix Blueprint for Health Oceans, which included $11.6M in funding for developing new satellite based technologies to track illegal fishing, funding to develop an intelligence sharing network, and work with NGO’s to combat IUU fishing.
• Canada ratified the Port State Measures Agreement in 2019, which has as its objective, preventing IUU fishing vessels from landing their catches in the ports of member states.

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