Does Canada’s New Fisheries Act Leave Some Arctic Fish or Habitats Behind?

Canada, internationally praised for its natural beauty and strong environmental legislation to protect its terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems, is undergoing a legislative makeover. With extraction of natural resources in Canada’s North becoming more and more economically viable, the current Government of Canada has expressly committed to responsible resource development. Recent changes to the Fisheries Act (henceforth, “the Act”), expressly aimed at unleashing Canada’s natural resources, came into effect on 25 November 2013, and focus now on commercial, recreational, and Aboriginal (CRA) fisheries (Government of Canada, 2013). The changes to the Act were contested by contributors to the careful maturation of the Act (Langer, 2012) and in court by First Nations (Ecojustice, 2013). Opposition and concerns have been expressed by scientists (de Kerckhove et al., 2013; Hutchings and Post, 2013), as the implications of these changes remain vastly untested (Walton, 2013). Fish communities in Canadian Arctic environments are particularly valuable to Arctic peoples and vulnerable to stressors such as climate change and resource development. Baseline information on Arctic oceans, lakes, and rivers and their ecology is sparse, with local indigenous ecological knowledg