By Barry Stagg
April 1995
TOBIN SENDS THE NAVY
March 1995 was a month when Canadian fisheries minister Brian Tobin sent the Canadian Navy onto the Grand Banks and the Canadian continental shelf to fend off the Portuguese and Spanish fishing boats that were raping the last remaining stocks of turbot. This military belligerence has been a long time coming. It is like a rite of passage for nationhood and Canada has passed with flying colours.
Our British ancestors have been doing this sort of thing for centuries. It is no big deal for a European nation to mobilize its navy to defend both its borders, its territory and its offshore resources. Fish wars between the British and French on one side and the Spanish on the other have gone on for years with respect to such contentious fishing grounds as the Irish Sea and areas of the English Channel and the North Sea. Simply put the Spanish, with a terrible reputation for pillaging the fishing grounds have been ruled persona non grata in the vital Irish Sea fishing grounds ever since the European Union admitted the Spanish a few short years ago. Thus when Brian Tobin put his career on the line and sought and obtained the approval of the Prime Minister for this military action, he was not only doing the right thing, he was doing what any self respecting maritime nation would have done a decade ago if this maritime fishing crisis had occurred on the other side of the Atlantic.
I attribute Brian Tobin's nerve and daring not so much to his Canadian political experience but more so to his Newfoundland origins where he grew up in close proximity to the American military bases at Stephenville and Goose Bay. The practical uses of the military, the military ethos of using force where necessary and straight forward American practicality were virtues that many a young Newfoundlander absorbed in the twenty-five years that the Americans were a cultural and industrial presence in Western Newfoundland and Labrador. Every intuitive bone in a Newfoundlanders body tells him that the American nation that ran the Ernest Harmon air force base in Stephenville would not have tolerated for a moment any of the foreign plundering that Canada put up with for twenty years on the Grand Banks. Brian Tobin and others of his post-World War II generation in Newfoundland know full well that passive and feeble finger waving will do nothing unless a full tilt punch in the diplomatic face is there to back it up.
It is this type of aggressive, controlled belligerence that Brian Tobin as fisheries minister has brought to the international debate over deep sea fishing stocks. Let one thing be clear to any nation that challenges Canada authority to protect this resource. Canada's citizens, once properly informed and motivated, will not tolerate any insulting assault upon its authority and upon its right to preserve its offshore resources. Canada's navy, ably crewed by many Newfoundlanders will be an eager participant if there is to be an act of fish war in the North Atlantic. Let the post-modern pacifists like Globe and Mail columnist Michael Valpy wring their hands over Tobin's pugnacity. The rest of us will applaud and wish only that prior federal governments had the courage and the foresight to take similar action in the 1980's when it would have meant so much more for the preservation of the national treasure that is the Grand Banks.
Tobin is a political veteran and recently passed his fifteenth anniversary of his February 1980 election to the House of Commons. The blustery winter day in February 1980 that saw his victory and the defeat of sitting NDP member Fonse Faour is a lifetime away from the equally blustery and intimidating March 1995 day when the fisheries minister orchestrated the pursuit and armed boarding of the Spanish fishing vessel Estai. The expectations and aspirations of Newfoundlanders have ebbed and flowed with more emphasis on ebbing than flowing in the past fifteen years. More than a little of the retreat of the Newfoundland economy can be attributed to indifference by successive Liberal and Conservative governments that gave away Newfoundland's fishing resources like cheap diplomatic candy. Tobin has put a stop to this nonsense. While many difficult and very unromantic recovery actions remain for the Newfoundland fishery nevertheless it is certain that the position of Canada and the position of Newfoundlanders has been forever changed in the international arena as a result of his military adventure.
The Downhomer and its writers are sometimes reluctant to sing their own praises but it is worthwhile to point out that military action of this type has been advocated vigorously and regularly in these pages dating back to 1991. The wishes of the common citizen of Newfoundland as expressed in this publication have now been expressed politically by a Canadian government galvanized into action by an aggressive Newfoundland cabinet minister and an overwhelming public ground swell of support for taking military control of the Canadian continental shelf.
Let there be no mistake, Canada's military control over its share of the North Atlantic will continue and there may be blood shed in its defence of its territory. That is a possibility in all true military action. Let us scorn any hand wringing apology for Canada's act of nationhood. In Brian Tobin's own words "we will not talk while the last fish is caught".