15. Governability and Its Discontents in the Fishery of Lake Winnipeg Since the Late 1960s: The View from Gimli

A key contention of governability assessment is that fisheries governance problems are wicked: they cannot be addressed definitively through simple technical expedients nor can interventions to address them satisfy all parties equally. Several aspects of wickedness are evident in the case of the fishers operating from Gimli on Lake Winnipeg but in this chapter we emphasize the historical one. Specifically, our chapter looks at how past governance interventions shape present governability in fisheries. A severe social, economic, and ecological crisis resulting from decades of poorly controlled and exploitative resource extraction shook the Lake Winnipeg fishery in the 1960s. That crisis was averted through intervention by the Canadian state that had two central elements: a state marketing board and an individual transferable quota system. The intervention of the state led to a much more governable and sustainable fishery, though not without contradictions that are now leading to some expressions of dissatisfaction amongst fishers. Unlike in the 1960s, however, current institutional shortcomings are irritants rather than threats to the very existence of the fishery. The governability of the fishery remains high. In our chapter, we use a social wellbeing analytical perspective to illuminate fishers’ mixed feelings about current institutional arrangements in the Lake Winnipeg fishery.