Canadian resource governance against territories: resource regimes and local conflicts in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence provinces

This paper presents an analysis of fisheries and forestry governance in the Canadian provinces surrounding the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. It serves two purposes. The first is to produce a portrait of the trends challenging the hypothesis of a shrinking natural resources economy in these territories, in order to underline both the complexity of the struggles taking place around their ressourcist vocation, and the political tensions shaping the recasting of the extractivist model of development. The second, more theoretical and methodological contribution, is a reflection on the conceptual framework developed here: it aims to show the scope and utility of a combination of (1) a sectoral governance analysis and (2) a territorialized analysis of collective action around resource governance. This combination offers an interesting insight into the struggles and political tensions surrounding the tentative restructuring of the Canadian extractivist model. To do so, we examine the two sectoral trajectories showing signs of indecisiveness and adopt a territorial approach which reveals the numerous and various pressures on territories. A disconnection is thus observed between the sectoral and territorial levels: major frames of reference are gradually opening to encompass social and environmental issues, but this relative opening is not being directly and efficiently translated into practices, despite various innovations and indications of openness in governance processes. This fault line leads us to question the power relationships and power imbalances at work within these governance mechanisms and see how these scenes of struggle provide insights into the ambivalence of the current development trajectory.