In 1992, federal Fisheries Minister John Crosbie shut down the northern cod fishery — putting more than 20,000 people out of work in one of the largest industrial layoffs in Canadian history — as cod catches dwindled and harvesters were alarmed by the sight of smaller and smaller fish.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Thirty-two years after the federal government announced a moratorium that shut down Newfoundland and Labrador’s cod industry, Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier said Wednesday that it is reopening.
But what the federal government described in a statement as the “historic return of the commercial northern cod fishery” will amount to just a small increase in fishing activity that had been allowed during the recent years of the moratorium.
Fisheries union leader Greg Pretty blasted the Liberal government for an announcement that he said “completely and utterly failed our province,” with a strategy that favours private companies over individual harvesters.
“Today is yet another blow in a long string of Liberal government failures to protect coastal communities while they prop up their corporate buddies,” Pretty, president of Fish, Food & Allied Workers-Unifor, said in a statement.
“We’re hoping now with more confidence in the stock we would see a reopening of a commercial cod fishery,” Alberto Wareham, president and CEO of Icewater Seafoods in Arnold’s Cove, told CBC News in April.
Lebouthillier also announced the department intends to eliminate catch-and-release for tour boat operations in the recreational fishery and introduce tagging in 2025.
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