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Commercial fishing in Canada dates back nearly 500 years. Fishing occurs in ocean waters, inland lakes, and rivers, and though the industry has declined as the number of fish has decreased, Canada remains one of the world’s largest exporters of fish and seafood. Canada’s fish catch in 2004 was 1.32 million metric tons. Over 75 percent of the catch is exported, which is just over 1 percent of the total value of goods exported. Canadian fish and seafood are sold to many countries, but the primary markets are the United States, Japan, and the European Union. In 2003 exports of Canadian fish to the United States accounted for 72 percent of total fish exported. Cod, herring, crab, lobster, and scallops have been the most important exports from the Atlantic coast, and halibut and salmon from the Pacific coast. There is also a commercial freshwater fishery in Ontario, focused on Lake Erie. Commercial sport fishing industries have been developed throughout Canada. Fisheries were a mainstay of economic life in Atlantic Canada. By 1992 the total value of Canada’s Atlantic fisheries reached C$984 million annually. In 1993, however, the Canadian government imposed an unprecedented two-year ban on the commercial fishing of cod in the northern fishery, extending from southern Labrador to the northern Grand Banks, because of a drastic decline in fish stocks. This was formerly one of the richest areas on the Atlantic coast. The fishing ban later was extended indefinitely because of the near-extinction of the fish. Initially the federal government provided emergency assistance payments, in addition to unemployment compensation, to fishers, processing workers, and boat owners. A more comprehensive compensation plan, a voluntary job retraining program, and a regional development program followed. The causes of the near-extinction of cod have been much debated. Some blame environmental factors. The Canadian government, however, points to the increasing use of larger, more sophisticated boats and foreign intrusion on the fishery. In the century before 1950, fishers worked in small boats using hand-operated equipment and took about 250,000 metric tons a year from the Atlantic waters off Newfoundland and Labrador. After 1950 Canadians increased their catching capacity by using larger, longer-range vessels with new nets, power equipment, and electronic navigation. Modern European vessels also moved in. In 1968 the northern cod catch peaked at 800,000 metric tons. In 1977 Canada extended its fishing zone to 200 nautical miles (230 mi/370 km) to protect stocks, and for a few years scientists believed that the cod stocks were recovering. However, foreign boats, especially Spanish and Portuguese, began fishing just outside the zone limit in 1986, and by 1991 they accounted for more than a quarter of the cod caught in the region. In 1989 scientists realized that the foreign boats were depleting the northern cod stocks. By 1992 the Canadian government introduced new conservation measures and stricter enforcement to protect small fish and spawning stocks. These measures proved insufficient, however, leading to a total collapse of the fishery and the imposition of the ban. It has yet to recover. The British Columbia fishery on the Pacific coast is an important economic contributor. Five species of salmon are the mainstay of the fishery. Other fishes caught in Pacific waters are herring, halibut, cod, sole, and a variety of shellfish. In British Columbia and Yukon Territory, indigenous Canadians are eligible to fish as part of their aboriginal rights—rights they retain as the original owners of the land. Some indigenous people also fish in the commercial industry, and what they take there is in addition to what they are allocated under aboriginal rights. Canada and the United States share the Pacific salmon resource under the 1980 Pacific Salmon Treaty, which took 15 years to negotiate. The treaty’s goals are to conserve stocks and to distribute salmon equitably. Each country is allowed a catch proportional to the share of salmon spawning in its rivers. These proportions are sometimes the subject of disputes between the Canadian and U.S. fishing industries.
In many ways, the fur industry created Canada. Much of pre-Confederation history revolves around the competition between the French and British for control of the profitable fur trade. But by the late 20th century demand for fur had declined, and the income of indigenous trappers had suffered severely. Canada’s remaining fur farms are mainly concentrated in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Québec, and British Columbia. Trapping is carried on primarily in northern Canada; Ontario, Québec, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are the main producers of wildlife pelts. See also Fur Trade in North America.
Mining in Canada has a long history of exploration and development. The country is one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of minerals such as uranium, zinc, potash, nickel, elemental sulfur, asbestos, cadmium, platinum, gypsum, copper, lead, cobalt, titanium, and molybdenum. Much exploration and development activity in Canada is now devoted to diamond mining, especially in the Northwest Territories, the Prairie provinces, and the Canadian Shield. Fuel minerals—oil and natural gas—are also important to Canada’s mining industry. In 2004, 842 million barrels of crude oil and 183 billion cu m (6.5 trillion cu ft) of natural gas were produced, much of which was exported. Oil and gas production is centered mainly in Alberta. Pipelines transport Alberta’s crude oil and natural gas to the industrial centers of eastern Canada, to British Columbia, and to the northwestern and midwestern United States. In addition, oil and gas are shipped to refining centers throughout Canada and to the United States. Environmental and social concerns have caused uncertainty for the mining industry. The degradation of water quality by mine wastes, in particular, has led federal and provincial governments to regulate mine operations. In 1992 the Mining Association of Canada responded by establishing the Whitehorse Mining Initiative, a broad agreement to increase the level of environmental responsibility in the industry. The initiative was developed together with indigenous groups, environmentalists, and representatives of labor unions and government. Another source of uncertainty in the industry is the denial of access to lands where mining claims are staked, or where bodies of ore are known to be located. For example, in British Columbia the creation of new parks, such as Tatshenshini-Alsek near Alaska, has closed large areas to mining. The land issues raised by the indigenous peoples have held up mining operations for years while ownership of the rights is being negotiated or litigated.
Manufacturing is a key component of the Canadian economy, employing about 15 percent of the country’s workforce and accounting for 17 percent of the GDP and around 75 percent of goods exported. Manufacturing supports many other sectors of the economy by purchasing their outputs and supplying them with products. Manufacturing is highly sensitive to broader economic trends, especially changes in the level of consumer spending. Early manufacturing in Canada, before the mid-19th century, was localized and was in support of resource production. Boats were built in Atlantic Canada, for example, and farm machinery in southern Ontario. Modern industrialization, in the form of mass production, began on a small scale in mid-19th-century Montréal and gathered momentum in the 1870s. Canadian manufacturing was spurred by rapidly increasing resource production, the introduction of electrical generating capacity, population expansion, and the two world wars. The greatest growth in facilities and output, however, occurred after World War II (1939-1945) as consumer spending increased and most countries reduced their tariffs. By the beginning of the 21st century, Canada’s manufacturing sector was in the midst of profound technological change. Investment in high-tech machinery and equipment had become essential for businesses to compete in the rapidly changing world economy. The introduction of new, more advanced machines was expected to improve productivity and reduce the number of workers in the manufacturing sector.
Canada’s chief manufacturing industry is transportation equipment, especially automobiles and auto parts. This sector makes up almost one-quarter of the total value of the country’s manufacturing output. In recent decades, the transportation equipment industry has evolved toward a single continental market in North America. This is due primarily to Canada’s smaller market, which makes Canadian branch plants inefficient. In the 1960s the governments of Canada and the United States, together with executives of the automobile industry, negotiated the Canada-United States Automotive Products Agreement, which removed Canadian import tariffs as long as automakers produced as many cars in Canada as they sold in Canada. The signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the mid-1990s further unified the market. The result of these pacts has been a continental integration of auto production, where particular models are built in local plants and distributed throughout North America. This integration has led to a more efficient industry but has also meant that events that occur in one part of the North American auto industry affect the entire continent. A protracted strike at a parts plant in Ontario, for example, can cause the closure of assembly plants in Ohio, and vice versa.
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