Ideas Matter 5

Who Should Own the Sea? AIMS' latest Ideas Matter examines the pressing policy issues facing the fishery and aquaculture.

  It’s been 10 years since AIMS published Taking Ownership: Property rights and fishery management on the Atlantic Coast. At the time the question was whether it mattered who owns the fish off the east coast of North America. The answer is just as important today as it was then. 

At present, fish stocks are a common property resource; they are owned by no one, but the Constitution grants jurisdiction over them to the Government of Canada. The government regulator grants access through a regulatory system based on licensing. A licence to fish is not a property right, but rather a kind of permit allowing its possessor to join the harvesting effort within regulatory limits that dictate when, where, and with what equipment one may fish.

There is vigorous intellectual and practical debate surrounding public policy in fishery management in Canada and abroad, and over the 10 years since its early foray into fisheries and aquaculture, AIMS has published close to 20 papers, books and commentaries on the topic. It has held three major conferences that have brought together national and international experts, and it has generated dozens of newspaper articles.

AIMS has also published extensively on the aquaculture industry. Whether it was being the keynote speaker at an international conference in New Zealand, or publishing a paper with the very clear title It is FARMING, not Fishing the institute has accumulated some of the most comprehensive work on the topic.

This edition of Ideas Matter, published with the Canadian Aquaculture Institute (CAI), highlights AIMS work on the fisheries, with a special section dedicated to aquaculture.

Follow this link to read the special section on aquaculture. 

To read the complete publication, click here.