Tobin's Fish Wars - Gunboat Diplomacy, acrylic with gloss luster, mixed media on canvas, 84" x 71", 1996 $5000

 [On Friday, March 3, 1995, after the EU lodged its objection with NAFO, [Fisheries Minister Brian] Tobin announced that the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act regulations had been expanded to make it an offence for Spanish and Portuguese vessels to fish for turbot on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks. [Prime Minister Jean] Chrétien sent a letter to Jacques Santer, the President of the European Commission, to explain the action and to propose a 60-day fishing moratorium for Canadian and European vessels to allow negotiations to take place.

On Monday, March 6, the EU’s reply came in the form of a strongly worded message from the Foreign Affairs Council, which defended the EU’s right to use the objection procedure, restated its commitment to conservation, and condemned the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act as a violation of international law. Spain announced that it would send a naval vessel to protect its vessels. Tobin warned that fisheries enforcement officers would begin seizing Spanish trawlers within 24 hours if they did not stop fishing. The Newfoundland government and the fishing industry were solidly behind the minister.

An immediate confrontation was averted when the Spanish vessels withdrew eastwards, but an EU spokesman affirmed that they were free to continue fishing. On Wednesday, March 8, the trawlers returned and resumed operations. Tobin met with Chrétien and other senior officials to make the case for arresting a Spanish vessel, using force if necessary. André Ouellet [the Minister of Foreign Affairs] and David Collenette, the Minister of National Defence, were “extremely reluctant” to back Tobin’s plan. Gordon Smith, Ouellet’s deputy minister and former ambassador to the EU; James Bartleman, Chretien’s foreign policy advisor; Eddie Goldenberg, his senior policy advisor; and Jocelyne Bourgon, the Clerk of the Privy Council, who “had already had several heated exchanges with Tobin,” all urged the prime minister not to provoke the EU. Chrétien recalls that he “listened to both sides, made up my own mind, and decided to back Tobin” subject to a final diplomatic effort, adding that he kept the minister “in check when I felt he was trying to go too fa

Canadian officials had been keeping a close eye on the Estai, one of several Spanish trawlers fishing on the Nose of the Grand Banks, which had been cited for fishing violations the previous year. Late in the afternoon of March 9, fisheries and RCMP officers seized the Estai after a high seas chase that began when the vessel repelled earlier boarding attempts and cut its net in an effort to escape. The chase ended four hours later when a Canadian fisheries patrol boat, on orders from Ottawa, fired warning shots across its bow. In announcing the arrest, Tobin declared that the government was imposing a moratorium on turbot fishing inside and outside the 200-mile limit. However, Chrétien agreed with a suggestion from the French ambassador, whose country held the presidency of the EU at the time, “to send a negotiating team immediately to Brussels, even if uninvited, to make the Canadian case on the ground and mitigate the pressure for European Union retaliatory action on Monday morning.” On Friday afternoon, March 10, a high-level delegation, consisting of Smith, Bartleman, and William Rowat, the Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, quietly departed for Brussels ready to begin discussions with European Commission officials.

Although a Canadian examination of the Estai found evidence of serious fishing violations, including use of an illegal fishing net, Canada decided to release the vessel allowing negotiations to get underway. But defiant Spanish trawlers resumed fishing, accompanied by a naval patrol vessel with orders to use “deadly force” to protect them. Brian Tobin revealed that Canadian fisheries patrol ships had been fitted with warp cutters designed to sever the steel cables that attach trawlers’ fishing nets.]