Good afternoon, Chair and committee members.
The Indo-Pacific area represents an important market for Canadian fish and seafood, with exports totalling nearly $2 billion in 2022. While the majority of Canada's seafood exports to the region go to China—$1.29 billion—Canada is party to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement with several countries in the region, and Canadian exporters have an interest in expanding access to major economies in the region, such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore, as well as growing markets like Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.
The Indo-Pacific region also includes nearly two-thirds of the world's oceans, and is home to more than half of the world's fishing fleets, which compete for increasingly scarce marine resources. When security, biodiversity loss and climate challenges overlap, they aggravate and amplify each other.
With that in mind, Canada’s Indo-Pacific strategy established a new shared ocean fund, investing $84.3 million over five years to combat illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing and improve the health of marine ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific. IUU fishing is a broad term that covers a wide variety of fishing activity. This is a major contributor to declining fish stocks and marine habitat destruction and may be associated with organized crime. Building on Canada’s existing efforts to promote healthy and sustainably managed oceans, both internationally and in this region, this fund will advance efforts to strengthen and enforce the rules-based order to better regulate fisheries and fishing activity, protect fish stocks and advance ecosystem conservation.
To accomplish this, DFO is taking a three-pronged approach to enhance governance, enforcement and partnerships.
The shared ocean fund supports enhanced multilateral engagement at regional fisheries management organizations where the Department of Fisheries and Oceans negotiates legally-binding and science-based measures for the sustainable management of high seas fisheries, and to counter illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
In August 2023, Canada successfully championed adoption of a full harvest strategy for North Pacific albacore tuna, to keep fish stocks healthy. At the annual meetings of three pacific regional fisheries management organizations, Canada also led the development and adoption of measures to protect sharks.
This work is further reinforced through the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Agreement on Port State Measures, which prevents vessels engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing from using other countries' ports to land their catches, therefore keeping these fishing products out of national and international markets. Through the shared ocean fund, Canada will seek opportunities to advance implementation of that agreement, through training and capacity building in developing and high-risk states.
Canada is active in several international forums to achieve complementary outcomes that address challenges impacting the state of global fish stocks and ocean resources. For example, Canada's implementation of international agreements, such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna, is an important part of our global effort to ensure trade does not undermine the sustainability of aquatic species.
Canada was also an early ratifier of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies achieved in 2022 and continues to be actively engaged in negotiations.
Building on decades-long efforts to combat illegal fishing and protect Canadian interests in the North Pacific, in July 2023, Canada led its first dedicated high-seas vessel patrol and fisheries enforcement mission, in collaboration with the U.S. and Japan, to combat IUU fishing in the North Pacific. Additional aerial surveillance patrols were conducted in the region throughout 2023. DFO’s officers documented 58 fisheries violations, including the detection of 3,000 illegally harvested shark fins, during foreign vessel boardings and aerial surveillance missions.
In October 2023, Canada began a new initiative with the Philippines, via an MOU, which provides their maritime authorities with access to our dark vessel detection space-based surveillance platform, using satellites to track illegal fishing vessels and support maritime security efforts within their sovereign waters. DVD has been deployed since 2021, when Canada first launched efforts to remotely monitor distant water fleets that surround the Galapagos Islands.
DFO works with our international partners to develop and strengthen the fisheries management and compliance measures that regulate high-seas fishing activity and combat illegal fishing with a robust monitoring, control and surveillance presence. For example, in September 2023, the Prime Minister announced a $6.5-million contribution to the joint analytical cell, an organization designed to harness complementary information-gathering and analytical capabilities, fisheries intelligence tools and databases, and international partnerships to fight against IUU fishing and associated crimes.