All countries, including Canada, adhere to what is known as ecosystem-based fishing or ecosystem-based fisheries management, but that pays only lip service, because in reality we still have species-by-species management. Imagine we ban cod fishing, but actually we continue to catch cod as codlings as bycatch of the shrimp fishery. DFO does not report this catch because it is discarded. I'm bemused every time I hear, “We ceased to fish cod in 1992 because there was a moratorium.” Actually, we continued to fish cod in the shrimp fishery, but if it is not a targeted fishery, the target being shrimp, the cod that are caught are not reported as being caught. This is totally absurd, but that's the way many, many fisheries management organizations work, especially in the North Atlantic. That has to be reformed, because a fish doesn't care how it is killed, whether it is killed by a targeted fishery or as bycatch. But it is built deep into the bowels of DFO that it reports only on targeted fisheries.
On April 13th, 2017. See this statement in context.