Newfoundland's French Neighbours

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Apart from the longstanding boundary dispute with Quebec over Labrador, which remains unresolved, Newfoundland has also had problems with two remnants of the once-vast French empire in the Americas.
 

Some 20 kilometres off Newfoundland’s southern coast are the French islands of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, the only part of the old New France still under French control -- in fact, they were returned to France at the Treaty of Paris in 1763, when the rest of New France was transferred to Britain.

Possession of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon passed back and forth between France and Great Britain for the next 38 years; they finally became permanently French in 1815. The islands today are an “overseas collectivity” (collectivité d’outre-mer) and officially part of France.
 

There was a long history of smuggling of liquor from the islands to Canada and the United States, particularly during prohibition. Even today, spirits are cheaper on the islands and there continues to be smuggling of alcohol (and tobacco) from Saint-Pierre et Miquelon to Newfoundland.

More recently, there have been the important issues of fish and oil. In 1972, Canada and France delimited the maritime boundary between Newfoundland and Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, but left open a dispute about the extent of the two countries’ economic exclusion zones. The principal overlap was in the area south of the French islands, extending to the Saint-Pierre Bank, rich in fish and with a potential as well for oil.
 

When Canada tried to reduce the cod fishing around Newfoundland in the 1970s and 1980s, out of fear of seriously damaging the fish population, the French continued to fish in areas that were forbidden to Canadians. Ottawa inspected French fishing trawlers and jailed some fishermen.

It was only solved in 1992, when the International Court of Arbitration awarded the French islands an exclusive economic zone of 12,348 square kilometres to settle the longstanding territorial dispute with Canada, although it represented only 25 per cent of what France had sought.

The zone granted to France consisted of a 38-kilometre extrusion west of Miquelon, and a corridor southward from the islands, only 18 kilometres wide, but 348 kilometres long. The intention was to allow access to Saint-Pierre et Miquelon from the high seas; otherwise, they would have been surrounded by the Canadian exclusion zone. As well, in 1994, France and Canada mutually agreed to reduce the fishing industry in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon.

Offshore oil and gas exploration in both exclusive economic zones continues as well and the French feel they were short-changed by the 1992 agreement. In 2009, France submitted a letter of intent to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf claiming an extended continental shelf for Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. Canada has rejected the demand, which may end up in further arbitration.