INTERNATIONAL OCEANS POLICYMAKING IN CANADA: AMBITIOUS VISION, PAROCHIAL POLITICS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 OTTAWA 000333



SIPDIS



SIPDIS



STATE FOR OES AND WHA/CAN



COMMERCE FOR NMFS



E.O. 12958: N/A

TAGS: EFIS, EWWT, PHSA, SENV, CA

SUBJ: INTERNATIONAL OCEANS POLICYMAKING IN CANADA:

AMBITIOUS VISION, PAROCHIAL POLITICS



REF: OTTAWA 0094 (notal)



1. (U) This message is sensitive, but unclassified. Not for

distribution outside USG channels.



2. (SBU) SUMMARY/INTRODUCTION: As they envision a global role,

Canada's policymakers in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans

(DFO) draw heavily upon Canadians' popular self-image as being

active multilateralists, international consensus brokers, and (at

least aspiring) leaders in resource stewardship. DFO brings some

important strengths to the international table, including

respectable scientific and operating capabilities, many

international linkages, and (more or less) a single federal

government ministry overseeing policy in this area (which

facilitates decisions, though it may reduce their quality).



3. (SBU) At the same time, DFO suffers from some severe weaknesses

as a policy-making department. DFO has yet to live down the blame

for the collapse of the once-immense Northwest Atlantic groundfish

(cod) resource in the early 1990s, nor the blame for its leading

role during the preceding decade in Canada's mismanagement of the

labor and industries that relied on fisheries. DFO's policy-making

and fish management machinery appears to have remained largely

unreformed since the cod collapse. Bureaucratically, DFO is

horizontally disintegrated, with weak links to other departments,

and large, semi-autonomous regional branches.



4. (SBU) Finally and most seriously, the political-electoral context

in which DFO Ministers operate makes them highly responsive to

parochial pressures in a few coastal regions (particularly

Newfoundland and Nova Scotia),and leaves them with few or no

incentives to consider the broad national interest, nor

international matters (except possibly as a source of external

enemies and scapegoats). There may yet be good results from

Canada's global oceans policy vision, but in our view, such results

would have to be realized in spite of, rather than due to, DFO's

Ministers, the DFO Department, and Canadians' own experience. END

SUMMARY/INTRODUCTION.



BACKGROUND

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5. (SBU) Since the collapse of the Northwest Atlantic groundfish

resource in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the bitterly

reluctant cessation of cod fishing in 1993, Canada's Department of

Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has been living down its role in that

collapse. Most outside experts view Canada's governments, led by

DFO with the complicity of other federal and provincial departments,

as having caused the destruction not only of the resource but also

of the East Coast maritime economy.



6. (SBU) The beginning of the end is generally held to have been

1977, when the extension of Canada's exclusive economic zone (EEZ)

to 200 nautical miles inaugurated a rush to exploit newly staked

offshore resources. As the story is usually told, DFO and other

government agencies facilitated the overexpansion of the fishery for

more than a decade through a complex of mistaken policies:

Qmore than a decade through a complex of mistaken policies:

subsidizing the acquisition of boats and gear, building fish

processing infrastructure in as many locations as possible,

enriching income support programs (notably unemployment insurance)

that caused young workers to choose the fishery over schooling or

alternate occupations, expanding fishing quotas while biasing or

ignoring scientific advice, and under-investing in enforcement.



7. (U) Groundfish catches fell steeply in the early 1990s until the

government introduced a moratorium on cod fishing in 1993, with the

hope that the stocks would begin to recover in a year or two. This

did not occur. While federal and provincial government programs

were adapted to suit the new circumstances, they continued to keep

people attached to the fishery and to maintain capacity. Some fish



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catching and processing capacity was mothballed, but much effort was

redirected to shellfish and previously "under-utilized" species.

These have largely turned out to be high-value and have yielded good

incomes. So far these species seem to have avoided the fate of the

cod, though observers suggest this is due to their shorter life

cycles and higher reproductive rates, rather than to implementation

of "lessons learned" in fish management.





8. (U) DFO tried for some years to attribute the cod collapse to

environmental or other factors (temperature change, seals),and one

Minister (Brian Tobin) attained folk-hero status by dramatically

highlighting the culpability of foreign long-distance fleets.

However, most independent observers (and many within the GOC) saw

GOC policies, and particularly DFO fish management practices over

the long run, as having been primarily responsible, with strong

encouragement from successive provincial governments, particularly

in Newfoundland-Labrador.



BOLD VISION

--------------

9. (U) In 1997 Canada passed a law called the "Oceans Act" which it

presented as a model for the future. DFO created a new Oceans

Directorate, and the Act mandated DFO to develop an "overall

strategic approach to oceans management" based on sustainable

development, integrated management, and the precautionary approach.

This led DFO into a decade of policy and "strategy" development

exercises. In 2005, funds were allocated to implement the first

phase of an Oceans Action Plan, and significant progress has been

made toward creating Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).



10. (U) Cynics could say that DFO eventually came to terms with the

cod collapse by describing it as part of a "global problem with many

underlying causes." DFO's approach to overfishing is now expressed

in its "International Fisheries and Oceans Governance Strategy," or

IFOGS. According to IFOGS, a "holistic approach" is needed to

combat global overfishing, including monitoring and surveillance,

diplomacy, better governance of regional fisheries management

organizations, and greater scientific understanding (particularly of

straddling and highly migratory stocks).



11. (SBU) While these "strategic policy" exercises no doubt reflect

a sincere effort by DFO to learn from the past and broaden its view,

there is no perception among Canadians that the system that

mismanaged the cod through the 1980s has been reformed, or that DFO

has admitted the magnitude of its responsibility. DFO remains more

or less solely responsible for managing Canada's marine fisheries,

under the same political calculus and using more or less the same

systems that have prevailed for decades. An update to the

140-year-old fisheries law is currently before Parliament, and this

partly reflects an effort to de-politicize fish management.

Nevertheless, DFO officials downplay the legislation - billing it as

"just trying to catch up and codify what present practice is"

Q"just trying to catch up and codify what present practice is"

(reftel) - reinforcing the impression that little has really

changed.



IMPORTANT STRENGTHS - AND WEAKNESSES

--------------



12. (U) As a policy-making organization, DFO has some important

real or at least potential strengths, yet on examination, these tend

not to be utilized. Examples include the following:



13. (U) SCIENCE - DFO has a large, diverse scientific establishment

which is relatively autonomous and is located in institutes and

field offices far from Ottawa. The problems of managing this

establishment are not unique to DFO, rather they are common to most

research organizations (succession planning, knowledge management,

long-term budgeting). More problematic is whether and how DFO



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policymakers have based their decisions on the knowledge generated

by this establishment. It is now widely believed that, at least in

the years around the collapse of the cod stocks, much scientific

advice about fish management was distorted and/or ignored, and

scientists were pressured not to complain publicly about this.

While these practices may have been reformed, there is no such

perception among other stakeholders. As a result, while DFO has

strong scientific assets, its credibility does not benefit

accordingly.



14. (U) INTERNATIONAL LINKAGES - DFO offices, and particularly its

operational and scientific staff, have strong and diverse

international connections. A study at the end of 2006 found the

department's employees had some 400 recent or ongoing international

activities, which could be classed into navigation/safety/security

(30%),science and hydrography (28%),policy, trade and development

(22%) and fisheries and conservation (20%). (More than half of

these 400 international activities involved the United States, and

this measurement did not capture a significant amount of additional

informal contact). As with operational and scientific knowledge,

these international linkages appear to offer rich source data for

DFO to develop international policy, but this data was scattered,

hard to collect, and not being utilized.



15. (U) SINGLE POLICY SHOP - DFO international policy staff proudly

note that they run Canada's "single policy shop" on international

fisheries and oceans issues, in that the Department shares very

little of its jurisdiction with provincial governments or other

federal departments. (The Department of Foreign Affairs and

International Trade (DFAIT) substantially cedes international

fisheries and oceans policy to DFO). Unfortunately, there is a flip

side to this coin: policy may lack the robustness that can be

conferred by inter-agency process. DFO's links to other departments

and agencies appear to be surprisingly weak (in the case of Foreign

Affairs or Environment Canada) or non-existent (in the case of the

Canadian International Development Agency). Even the Canadian Coast

Guard and the Canadian Hydrographic Service - two significant

agencies which formally report to the Minister of Fisheries and

Oceans - are protective of their separate identities, and seem to

play down their links to the department.



16. (U) OPERATIONAL CAPACITY - For a Canadian government

organization, a remarkably high proportion of DFO's personnel are

"boots on the ground" (or on the wharf, on deck, or in the chart

room) who work out of regional and local offices and serve in

operational roles such as the Coast Guard, the Hydrographic Service,

small harbor management and construction, navigational systems,

fisheries management and enforcement, and fish habitat protection -

not to mention science (below).



17. (SBU) Though the policymaking function must compete against all

Q17. (SBU) Though the policymaking function must compete against all

these operational concerns for the attention of the Minister and

Deputy Minister, policymaking can also draw upon a very large number

of contacts with reality, and the Department has a direct and

visible role in stakeholder communities which should give it a

useful "voter constituency." Unfortunately, these potential

strengths are not fully realized; too many of those in policy

development roles have virtually never been on a ship and are

unlikely to stay long in the Department, while DFO's presence in

communities can merely cause its decisions to be skewed by local

electoral concerns.



THE FATAL FLAW: REGIONAL POLITICS

--------------





18. (SBU) Which brings us to what, in Embassy Ottawa's view, is the

most serious challenge to Canadian fisheries and oceans

policymaking: regional electoral politics. All of the weaknesses



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mentioned so far could arguably be overcome or mitigated by reform.

It is much harder to see what can be done about the decisive

concentration of fishery-related votes in certain provinces of

Canada.



19. (SBU) In Newfoundland-Labrador, Prince Edward Island (PEI),the

territory of Nunavut, and parts of Nova Scotia (NS),New Brunswick

(NB),Quebec and British Columbia (BC),marine-based economic

activity is a principal economic driver, so that fishery votes

really matter to electoral outcomes. (This contrasts sharply with,

for example, the States of Washington, Massachusetts, Florida and

California, where fishery-related issues are tiny compared with

other industries and concerns in those diverse, wealthy regional

economies). Indeed, in Newfoundland and Labrador, issues like the

governance/reform of a regional fishery management organization like

the North Atlantic Fishery Organization (NAFO),or the denial of

port privileges to foreign long-distance fishing fleets - questions

which might seem obscure in other jurisdictions - draw intense voter

attention.



20. (SBU) In Canadian general elections, where it takes as little as

100-120 seats to win federal power, ten or more seats in Atlantic

Canada can easily tilt on fishing issues: three to seven in

Newfoundland-Labrador, and two or three in each of NS, NB, PEI and

Quebec. Normally, the top political concern of Canada's Minister of

Fisheries and Oceans, a mid-level cabinet minister who more often

than not holds one of these seats, is to deliver as many of them as

possible to candidates for his/her political party. (The current

Minister, Loyola Hearn, represents a riding in

Newfoundland-Labrador.) International policymaking is guaranteed to

be subordinate in the Minister's calculations, if it figures at all.

This narrow focus is likely to tighten even further in the next

federal election as the Minister will have to overcome regional

hostility over an ongoing dispute between Ottawa and the Atlantic

provinces concerning Ottawa's treatment of natural resource

revenue.



CONCLUSION/COMMENT

--------------



21. (SBU) Our conclusion is that too much of the crafting of

Canada's international fisheries and oceans policy positions, and

too much of the diplomatic work, falls to a few senior DFO officials

without the benefit of an interagency process or ministerial

engagement. But solution of these institutional-bureaucratic

problems is at least a possibility (though the companies and fishers

that currently influence DFO would likely resist). Even so, that

would leave policymakers with the constraints of regional electoral

politics. While offshore oil development has wrought some change in

eastern Newfoundland, and economic growth and resource developments

have amazing power to transform "have-nots" into "haves," there

seems little current prospect that such fishing-reliant

constituencies will develop enough dramatic new economic drivers to

Qconstituencies will develop enough dramatic new economic drivers to

dilute the power of the "fish vote."



WILKINS