Indigenous Marine Servicing Initiative

This initiative has been developed to increase Indigenous participation in the marine industry supply chain, which supports Indigenous communities and commercial fishing enterprises (CFEs) that want to expand and diversify into Indigenous marine-related service industries. 

Through the funding of marine service-related projects, the initiative aims to create more opportunity and benefits in terms of:

• employment
• revenue
• community impact

Objectives

Projects under the initiative will work alongside existing capacity building activities under commercial fisheries development efforts in the region. These regional initiatives are the:

• Pacific Integrated Commercial Fisheries Initiative
• Atlantic Integrated Commercial Fisheries Initiative
• Northern Integrated Commercial Fisheries Initiative

The initiative will help to fill a gap in the programming that assists Indigenous communities with diversifying their commercial fishing enterprises. It aims to expand their business management skills to include marine servicing by building local capacity through training and supporting participation in the marine servicing industry.

Expected results

Funding will assist communities and commercial fisheries enterprises ready to pursue opportunities in the marine servicing industry. This will encourage projects to cover national, regional and local needs and market opportunities in areas such as:

• Vessel repair, maintenance and fleet services for the wild fishery, aquaculture and recreational boaters fiberglass and steal repair; ship design, engineering services, boat building, vessel construction and structural components;
• Vessel electronics and ocean technology sales, installation and repair ship supply, chandlery, offloading/landing site and moorage of vessels;
• Marina services (e.g. boat launch, offloading/landing sites, haul-out, storage and moorage of vessels);
• Repair, maintenance and associated work on offshore oil and gas structures; and
• Vessel decommissioning/ship breaking.

For more information

For more information on this program, please contact:

Richard Norrena, Manager – Indigenous Commercial Programs
Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation Directorate (IARD)
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
300 Laurier Ave. West
Ottawa ON, K1A 0R5

Email: richard.norrena@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
Telephone: (613) 404-3690