France hasn’t issued crab licence off Newfoundland, despite surprising pledge: Ottawa

ST. JOHN’S – Canada’s fisheries minister says France has not issued a new snow crab licence off Newfoundland, despite a surprising promise last month by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Joanne Thompson said Friday evening that the Canadian government has been in contact with French officials to confirm they had not issued a new license, after news outlets including franceinfo and Radio-Canada reported Macron had pledged to grant an exploratory snow crab licence along Canada’s continental shelf to a fishing company in St-Pierre-Miquelon, a small French archipelago off the southeast coast of Newfoundland.

Macron’s promise appeared to catch Canadian officials off guard, especially as it was reported a day after Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Macron in the French islands, marking the first official visit to St-Pierre-Miquelon by a Canadian prime minister.

“Canada affirms our claim to the extension of Canada’s continental shelf, which includes all snow crab in this area,” Thompson said in a statement. “Canada does not agree with any foreign snow crab fishing in this area.”

Any licensing matters would be discussed by the countries through formal, well-established processes, and no such talks have taken place, she added.

The countries have been jockeying for territory in the Atlantic for decades and it appears Macron was hoping to revive some of those discussions. According to footage published by franceinfo, he told fishers during his visit in St-Pierre-Miquelon he hoped to initiate “calm but constructive debates” with Canada about the continental shelf.

Fishing is a main economic driver of St-Pierre-Miquelon, which is home to roughly 5,800 people.

Both Canada and France are signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, says coastal states have sovereign rights over the natural resources of the seabed extending from a country’s coastline and into the ocean basin.

If this seabed area, called the continental margin, extends beyond 200 nautical miles from a country’s coasts, that country can make a submission to the United Nations’ Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to claim rights over that extended area.

Canada made such a submission for the area around its Atlantic coast, including Newfoundland, in 2013. France made a submission for the area around St-Pierre-Miquelon in 2014, saying the area had overlap with Canada’s claim, particularly in a region off Nova Scotia. Under the commission’s rules, the two countries would need to come to an agreement, France said.

In the meantime, a separate ruling from 1992 gave the French islands a 24-nautical-mile zone and added a narrow 10.5-mile strip, known as the French Baguette, which extends south and stops short of Canada’s 200-nautical-mile limit.

Canada responded to France’s 2014 submission to the United Nations, saying it rejected any French claims to maritime areas outside of the 1992 decision.

The area in which Macron reportedly promised a snow crab licence to a French company is beyond Canada’s 200 nautical-mile-limit, but within its extended continental shelf, said Kevin Anderson, head of the School of Fisheries at the Marine Institute of Memorial University in St. John’s, N.L.

And though France and Canada’s continental shelf submissions to the United Nations are unresolved, Canada still has a strong claim to Macron’s proposed French fishing area, he said.

“Canada has been fishing these crab in this area for a long time,” Anderson said in an interview, adding that past court cases have established Canada’s jurisdiction over the snow crab in the region.

“We have the legal structure, we have history, and I think, generally speaking, the precedent,” he added. “That’s the Canadian confidence, I think, that this is ours.”

It is also helpful that snow crab live on the sea bed, which is precisely what the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf deals with, he said.

In her statement Friday, Thompson said Newfoundland and Labrador and Saint-Pierre-Miquelon have been close partners and she hopes that will continue.

However, she said, “Canada will always defend the interests of the harvesters, families, and communities in Newfoundland and Labrador who count on the snow crab fishery.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2026.