Prince. — Fishery Administration in Canada 169 



eral. The Federal act is entitled "An Act for the Regulation 

 of Fishing and the Protection of Fisheries." Section 24, the 

 last section of chapter 60 in the 31st year of the reign of Her 

 Majesty Queen Victoria, declared that it should be known and 

 cited as the fisheries act. With it was associated chapter 61, 

 31 Victoria, "An Act respecting Fishing by Foreign Vessels." 



Federal Act Incorporated Existing Laws. — The vari- 

 ous Provinces had anticipated that federal fishery legislation 

 would probably be based upon much of the existing legislation 

 in Upper and Lower Canada, and in New Brunswick and Nova 

 Scotia. One Nova Scotia authority, Mr. T. F. Knight, in a 

 report on the fisheries approved by the provincial govern- 

 ment, said that "Under the act of confederation, the Canadas. 

 New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the fisheries are consigned 

 to a special bureau, and * * * ^-j^g assimilation of the 

 laws relating to them will be one of the most delicate tasks 

 the Government will undertake." As a matter of fact, the 

 first federal fisheries act was largely such an assimilation of 

 existing laws, and whole clauses were bodily transferred, and 

 remained there unchanged for nearly twenty years. Many 

 of these local provisions, no doubt suitable enough in early 

 days of colonial settlement, seemed too petty and detailed to 

 stand in a federal act; but most of them still remained in the 

 well-known act of 1886, known as chapter 95, though modified 

 in part by Orders in Council, passed from time to time down 

 to 1906, when chapter 45, revised statutes, supplanted chapter 

 95 (1886). The statutes of 1910, 1911 and 1912, referring 

 to fisheries need not be dwelt upon, but further changes were 

 embodied in chapter 8, 4-5 King George V (act of 1914), and 

 amending acts of 1917 (chapter 16) and 1918 (chapter 22). 



Some Features in First Act. — The twenty-two clauses 

 of the first fishery act contained much that was unwieldy, of 

 an unnecessarily detailed character, and, as already stated, 

 mainly transferred from the early provincial acts. But some 

 parts of the act are so important that a brief reference seems 

 necessary to certain of them : ( 1 ) A staff of federal fishery 



