Quote:
Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus
I'm sure he was mostly a fine guy but didn't Mulroney kill the fisheries in the Maritimes? I seem to remember something like 80,000 jobs lost to cutting back cod fishing only to see the Americans and Portuguese park 10 miles out and take the fish anyway.
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Overfishing for decades leading up to the 1990s killed the cod fishery. Foreign vessels were a huge problem prior, but their take of the cod haul decreased rapidly in the '70s after Canada exerted an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 200 nm off the coast. Canada's own haul more than doubled from the mid-'70s to mid-'80s, while the haul from foreigners fell by more than half.
We could argue the government should have taken stronger action to prevent foreign vessels from taking cod, but frankly if the DFO didn't put a moratorium on cod fishing the species likely would have gone extinct by the end of the '90s. 30+ years later the population still hasn't recovered.