The Nova Scotia Liberal Party is promising to launch a public inquiry into illegal fishing if elected to govern on November 26.

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill released a statement Friday saying his party would also introduce a minimum fine policy for those buying illegally caught lobster.

There is already a maximum fine of $1 million for illegal fishing, but Churchill said more needed to be done. “We will establish a minimum fine to ensure that everyone who buys illegal lobsters pays for putting the industry at risk,” he said.

Churchill, whose Liberals are trying to unseat the Progressive Conservatives led by Tim Houston, also pledged to create a dedicated fisheries enforcement unit and a separate commercial fisheries office.

“The lobster industry is a major economic driver in Nova Scotia,” Churchill said. “We are prepared to act with a zero-tolerance policy that will revoke the licenses of repeat offenders and ensure sanctions for those who break the law.”

Illegal lobster fishing is a hot topic in southwest Nova Scotia, where Churchill was campaigning Friday in his home riding of Yarmouth.

The region is also home to Canada’s most lucrative lobster fishery, where the fishing season will open later this month amid widespread concern over illegal fishing.

Last month, a labor investigator ruled in favor of federal fisheries officials who said heavily armed criminals posed a threat to their lives. The investigator determined that the police officers’ protective equipment was not up to standard. The report followed Department of Fisheries enforcement officers filing refusal-to-work requests under provisions of the Canada Labor Code.

The investigator found that fisheries officers in the Maritimes region regularly face armed people, people linked to outlaw motorcycle gangs and fishermen convicted of violent crimes.

Some officers were threatened and others “came under fire” while inspecting fishing gear, the report said.

It’s unclear how many officers refused to work due to unsafe conditions, but they have since returned to active duty.

While Churchill was on the campaign trail in southwest Nova Scotia, NDP Leader Claudia Chender was in the Halifax area, where she promised to help protect the province’s coastline from the effects of change climate change by reintroducing the shelved Coastal Protection Act.

When first introduced in 2019, the law received cross-party support, but previous Liberal and Conservative governments chose not to make it law.

WATCH | Reports of illegal fishing persist in southwest Nova Scotia:

Reports of illegal fishing persist in southwest Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia Fisheries Minister Kent Smith has renewed his call for his federal counterparts to help eradicate illegal lobster fishing in the Clare region of Nova Scotia.

The law would have provided protection to coastal areas, dunes and salt marshes, as well as restricted development along parts of the 13,000 kilometers of coastline at risk of significant erosion.

Chender said the Progressive Conservatives’ decision to put oversight of coastal protection up to landowners and municipalities will be ineffective. Without provincial legislation, private developers and wealthy landowners will continue to build stone seawalls too close to the ocean, which will only shift erosion to neighboring properties, she said.

“Versions of this are happening in communities all over this province, where people’s beloved trailheads, coves and beaches… have disappeared due to erosion caused by deep-pocketed landowners,” said the NDP leader during a campaign stop near Dartmouth Cove.

The Halifax-based Ecology Action Center said the Conservative government’s approach has left municipalities “holding the bag” while Nova Scotians face an “incomprehensible patchwork” of municipal rules.

The government’s alternative to the Coastal Protection Act includes 15 measures, including one giving property owners and municipalities access to an online hazard map showing the worst-case scenario of sea level rise along the the coast in 2100. The province also provides financial support. for a Coastal Protection Coordinator within the Federation of Nova Scotia Municipalities.

Meanwhile, PC Leader Tim Houston was scheduled to campaign in Cape Breton on Friday, where he was not expected to make any announcements.