AIMS // Atlantic Institute for Market Studies

You heard it here first. Fifteen years ago, in AIMS' infancy, it published a series of research papers and books on the commercial fishery proposing a move to property ownership to save the industry. This article in The Economist shows other leading research is finally catching up.

The prestigious Economist magazine may call it a new way to save the fishery, but it's a policy proposal AIMS made more than a decade ago. Property ownership in the fishery made sense to AIMS back then, and now more research supports that position today.

The executive director of the Association of Seafood Producers of Newfoundland & Labrador asks whether Canada has the nerve to fix the fishery.

How the rationalization of the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery is the key to its future.

It's just days from the federal election, days of political promises and political finger-pointing. In this series of commentaries, AIMS lays out the public policy issues that will mean make a difference in Atlantic Canada. It is not a wish list for handouts or preferential treatment. Collectively they are a request that whoever forms the new government thoroughly scrutinize and quantify the actual effects of existing policies. We believe that such an examination will lead to the same conclusions that many authors published by AIMS have arrived at over the past several years.

Don McIver, Director of Research AIMS presentation to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance

October 4th, 2003 at an International Coference in New Zealand, Brian Lee Crowley gave a talk entitled “Who should own the sea and why it matters” outlining how the benefits of individual quotas or property rights will result in sustainable fisheries. In conjunction with this speech. Dr. Crowley took the opportunity to release AIMS major paper on aquaculture completed in cooperation with the Canadian Aquaculture Institute.

AIMS President and CEO Charles Cirtwill says people’s expectations for the shipbuilding contract are overblown. As soon as the announcement was made, those expecting to cash in on the fallout had already spent the actual profits many times over in their imagination.

The shipbuilding contract is being painted as a golden goose for Nova Scotia, but AIMS President and CEO Charles Cirtwill says that on its own, the shipbuilding contract won't mean any significant change in several parts of the province.

It sounds implausible but Canadian aquaculturists have actually been arrested by government officials for "illegal fishing" while harvesting fish that exist chiefly because of the culturing efforts of their owners. The police have refused to lay theft charges against people who rustle aquaculturists' fish stocks because their property rights are so muddy, it is not at all clear that they own what has been stolen.

Dans sa chronique régulière dans La Presse, le plus grand quotidien de langue française de l’Amérique du Nord, le président de AIMS, Brian Lee Crowley observe que, dans les faits, l'aquaculture canadienne est contrôlée par une bureaucratie inepte et lourde, ne voyant que le développement économique à court terme et disposant d'un pouvoir discrétionnaire qui plie volontiers devant la force politique d'intérêts établis. Si la discrétion administrative peut s'exercer de manière si ample en matière d'aquaculture, c'est en partie parce qu'il n'existe pas de statuts fédéraux ou provinciaux au Canada touchant cette pratique.

Re-thinking how we view Canada’s aquaculture industry

AIMS paper argues industry lorded over by “feudal bureaucracy”

Compelling evidence from BC that giving fishermen ownership over the fish stocks improves economic and ecological sustainability of the fishery: author Laura Jones

Author Laura Jones explains how the adoption of Individual Transferable Quotas revolutionised fisheries in British Columbia

AIMS brings together leading national and international experts to clarify both the strengths and weaknesses of aquaculture, and to lay down the basis for a sensible public policy framework to govern the industry.

An invitation to lunch with urban visionary Mayor John Norquist of Milwaukee, lessons from the west coast's experience with property rights in the fishery and Brian Lee Crowley on how Employment Insurance causes unemployment.

An invitation to hear Edmonton Superintendent of Schools to speak at an AIMS event, the debate over nationalized auto insurance and Brian Lee Crowley on the future of work in Nova Scotia.