As both consumers and producers face the reality that the ocean is not an inexhaustible source of fish and seafood, the demand for sustainability has become more urgent. Within the movement for sustainable fisheries in Canada, the two main actors are the federal government and the fisheries themselves. However, due to increasing market pressures, private transnational organizations are taking a more prominent role in establishing sustainable fisheries. Eco-labelling organizations help build a more sustainable fishing industry by performing impartial third-party environmental performance certifications on products and fisheries. As eco-labelling organizations gained more economic power, the federal government and these organizations have become more intertwined, weakening the impartiality with which they are meant to function.

One of the most prominent private transnational actors is the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a non-profit international organization that offers a sustainable seafood certification program. A rising demand for sustainable seafood has popularized eco-labelling and certification among consumers, pressuring fisheries and seafood distributors to improve their sustainable practices. This appeal for stronger sustainability practices has pressured governments to revise their regulations in order to maintain their region's market share. The industry considers the MSC certification as the "gold standard" for evaluating sustainability practices. During the certification process, an audit team examines the commonalities that the  local fishery industry and the fishery seeking the certification have, such as fish stocks, regulatory regimes, and catching methods as well as private standards and procedures that a fishery has. If a fishery passes these standards, it will receive a certification from the MSC for five years. However, if a fishery meets the “acceptable minimum limit”, the fishery would need to improve their conditions within the five year certification period. The MSC would perform annual audits on the fishery to ensure they are progressing on their conditions of certification. As of 2019, 300 fisheries around the world are MSC certified compared to four in the early 2000s. The rapid increase in MSC certified fisheries show the increased interest that fisheries have in eco-labelling. 

The third MSC certification principle, effective management of fisheries, examines the existing regulations and frameworks used to implement the first and second principles required for certification. Therefore, one of the criteria assessed by the MSC is the management practices of the federal and provincial governments. By auditing and assessing the government policies and institutions, the MSC becomes a player in local and federal politics. If a government regulation doesn’t pass the MSC standard, then it can undermine the legitimacy of the existing government management frameworks. For example, the chum salmon fisheries in British Columbia were unable to show that there was sufficient information on the contribution of 'enhanced' fish to the fishery harvest to the MSC standard. The enhancement of salmon is a highly touted federal program that fails to meet MSC standards. In this case, the MSC standard can be highly effective in assessing the effectiveness of government programs. However, this example also shows how there needs to be government cooperation to show the effectiveness of their sustainability programs in order to meet MSC standards. Furthermore, the yearly audits and certification process must be separate from government processes in order to maintain impartiality of the MSC certification process. However, within the Northern Atlantic shrimp fishery certification process, the twenty-nine member audit team consists of nine Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials, two government representatives of Newfoundland and Labrador, and other seafood industry, academic and NGO representatives. Thus, in actuality, an impartial third party does not exist because the assessment teams audit the regulating organizations that their own members belong to. Furthermore, MSC certification depends on government-produced data and self-evaluations which further blurs the line of neutrality. Factors such as a limited budget, politics surrounding fish populations, and economic pressure to preserve a local industry may skew the government produced data and self-evaluations. Overall, the separation between the state and the market disappears during the processes of audits and certifications, as the line is continually blurred between what is public and private. 

Even with the increasing popularity of MSC certifications used by seafood and fishery landings as the sustainability standard, the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre criticized the MSC for having lax standards towards sustainability. For example, under MSC standards, fisheries that interfere with the recovery of endangered species can still qualify for the sustainable certification, regardless of whether that species is the target of the fishery. The certification of fisheries that cause harm to other endangered species can damage the whole ecosystem through bycatch and non-discriminatory catch methods. Furthermore, conditionally certified fisheries that fail to meet their required conditions in the five-year certification deadline can still receive an MSC recertification. Despite this criticism, regional and federal governments eventually facilitated the MSC certification process. Other countries created domestic eco-labelling programmes and promoted Food and Agricultural Organization programmes instead. However, Canada’s desire to improve the competitiveness of its fishing industry can explain the government’s willingness to facilitate the MSC certification. For example, Unilever, an international consumer goods company and backer of MSC, announced that they would only source from MSC-certified fisheries. This would have a considerable impact on B.C. salmon sales since it was a major product for Unilever. This was later compounded by a US Alaskan salmon fishery, a direct competitor of B.C. salmon fisheries, getting MSC certified and Sainsbury’s, the second largest U. K. supermarket chain, making a similar announcement to support MSC certified salmon. After increasing domestic market pressure on local fisheries to ensure Canadian salmon maintained export destinations such as the United Kingdom, the MSC gave one of its more controversial certifications to British Columbia salmon. In July 2010, a B.C. salmon fishery was first certified by the MSC on a conditional basis. Critics believe that B. C. salmon fisheries did not meet the ecological standard that the MSC espouses. This criticism later rang true because, based on the yearly audits, the MSC noted that progress was so limited that the conditions of certifications would be incomplete on the five-year timeline given. By 2019, the B.C. salmon withdrew from the MSC certification process due to the lack of sufficient progress towards completing the conditions. The use of minimum conditions and full conditions to certify fisheries by the MSC can lead to a misuse of MSC certifications as different sustainability standards are used to award the same certificate. This weakens the overall meaning of MSC’s eco-labelling system. Furthermore, the failed certification of B.C. salmon and the possible risk of losing major seafood retailers in Europe and the United States demonstrates Canada’s weak ability and desire to improve its fishery management. This shows the bleak reality of fisheries in Canada where sustainability standards held at the absolute minimum are still too difficult to reach. 

The introduction of private non-governmental organizations into the movement for sustainable fisheries can be limited, since it undeniably needs the cooperation of governments to create and enforce better fishery management policies and regulations. In Canada, the effects of the Marine Stewardship Council clearly show how market pressures are able to incentivize fisheries to improve sustainability. The certification of Newfoundland’s shrimp landings helped fill the local export market that was previously occupied by cod. While this did not necessarily work in B.C. salmon fisheries, Alaskan salmon fisheries were able to capitalize on the lack of MSC-certified B.C. salmon to fill this niche in the export market. However, the lack of neutrality in assessment processes and the failure to meet the already low standards set by MSC demonstrates that there still needs to be more done for sustainable fisheries. The problem that the MSC faces is the delicate balance of maintaining impartiality to avoid biased assessments of government regulations while also needing government data and support to facilitate these assessments.  

Ultimately, competing interests between the MSC, the government, and fisheries have led to fishery management policies that fail to balance economic sustainability and ecological sustainability. These policies, such as awarding conditional certifications to fisheries that fail to meet MSC standards, undermine the effectiveness and credibility of these actors’ commitment to sustainability. Both MSC and government regulators share a common goal: ensuring that fish stocks are healthy enough to sustain commercial fishing, as both actors gain credibility and support from the existing framework that tries to marry ecological and economic sustainability. The need to maintain economic profit and long-term economic sustainability of the fishing industry drives the MSC and the government to better ecological sustainability practices so that fish stocks can be a long-term source of profit. Along with rescinding conditional certification, the MSC needs to enforce higher standards of sustainability that consider the impact of fishing on the whole ecosystem, rather than just the targeted species, in order to ensure long-term ecological sustainability.