Fish are dying. Almost 36 percent of global fish stocks are overfished, meaning one in three is being harvested beyond sustainable limits. This is an ecological disaster in the making. It is also a looming socioeconomic one. Across Canada, the seafood industry directly and indirectly supports more than $8 billion in GDP and nearly 67,000 jobs in roughly 1,500 coastal and rural communities. Given Canada’s geography, coastal provinces will bear the brunt of the damage. 

In Atlantic Canada alone, the seafood industry accounts for $5.68 billion in GDP and 47,770 jobs. Seafood is also an important source of nutrition: one study found that nearly one-fifth of Canadians consume seafood on any given day, and another found that 87 percent of Canadians eat seafood regularly. All of this is at risk if fish stocks continue to decline—not to mention our moral obligation to safeguard this common heritage for future generations. 

The world’s leaders recognized the urgency in 2015, when the United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, devoted to conserving and sustainably using the oceans, seas, and marine resources. Progress since then has been deeply disappointing. In 1974, only 10 percent of assessed fish stocks were below biologically sustainable levels. By 2015, when the UN adopted the SDGs, that figure had risen to more than 31 percent. Today, at almost 36 percent, the trend is still moving in the wrong direction.

Subsidizing to Empty the Ocean

One reason for this decline is that governments at every level still subsidize overcapacity and overfishing. In other words, public money is helping deplete fish stocks—at an estimated US $22.2 billion worldwide. That fiscal absurdity should anger budget-constrained taxpayers everywhere. That is also why target 6 of SDG 14 calls for prohibiting subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, as well as subsidies that support illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. 

The harm does not stop at the treasury. Subsidized IUU fishing and overfishing hollow out the very stocks that coastal economies depend on, so taxpayers pay twice: once to fund the subsidy, and again when fish catches decline, processing plants close, and communities that rely on the fishery, as many in Atlantic Canada, British Columbia, and the North do, are left to absorb the loss. The damage to Canada’s marine biodiversity compounds with every season of overharvest.   

The SDG deadline was 2020. We missed it, but a deal remains within reach. As a country stretching from coast to coast to coast while providing relatively little in subsidies to its fisheries sector, Canada is uniquely placed—and has a clear interest—to help push the negotiations across the finish line.

The UN tasked the World........

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