DFO is organized into seven administrative regions which collectively cover all provinces and territories of Canada.
Responsibilities The department's responsibilities were described as follows: Sea-Coast and Inland Fisheries,
Trinity Houses, Trinity Boards, Pilots, Decayed Pilots Funds, Beacons, Buoys, Lights and Lighthouses and their maintenance, Harbours, Ports, Piers, Wharves, Steamers and Vessels belonging to the Government of Canada, except gunboats or other vessels of war, harbour commissioners, harbour masters, classification of vessels, examination and granting of certificates of masters and mates, and others in the merchant service, shipping masters and shipping offices, inspection of steamboats and board of steamboat inspection, enquiries into causes of shipwrecks, establishment, regulation and maintenance of marine and seamen hospitals, and care of distressed seamen, and generally such matters as refer to the marine and navigation of Canada. Responsibility for the construction and operation of
canals was given to the
department of public works at the time of
confederation, with the canals of the
United Province of Canada having been previously operated by that colony's department of public works.
Marine Service of Canada In its early days, one of the department's most active agencies was the operation of the Marine Service of Canada, which became the forerunner to the
Canadian Coast Guard, with vessels dedicated to performing maintenance of buoys and lighthouses. Whereas fisheries management was not as important as it became in the latter part of the 20th century, a major responsibility for the Department of Marine and Fisheries included the provisioning of rescue stations and facilities at the shipwreck sites of
Sable Island and
St. Paul Island off Nova Scotia. The department also had responsibility for overseeing the qualification of apprenticing sailors who desired to become mates or shipping masters, as well as several marine police forces, which attempted to combat illegal
crimping, the trafficking of sailors in human bondage at major ports. The foray into enforcement saw the department operate the "Dominion cruisers" which were armed enforcement vessels operating for the Fisheries Protection Service of Canada, a continuation of the
Provincial Marine enforcement agencies of the
British North American colonies. These ships and other chartered
schooners and the like, would cruise the fishing grounds off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, watching for violations within Canada's
territorial sea, then only three nautical miles (6 km) from shore.
Naval service Prior to the
First World War, Canada had limited naval forces, with the majority of protection having been provided by the enforcement vessels of the Department of Marine and Fisheries (Dominion Cruisers) or Fisheries Protection Service of Canada, and by Britain's
Royal Navy. In 1909–1910, the Department of Marine and Fisheries became linked to efforts to develop a Canadian naval force, when on March 29, 1909, a member of parliament,
George Foster, introduced a resolution in the
House of Commons calling for the establishment of a "Canadian Naval Service". The resolution was not successful; however, on January 12, 1910, the government of
Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier took Foster's resolution and introduced it as the Naval Service Bill. After a third reading, the bill received royal assent on May 4, 1910, and became the
Naval Service Act, administered by the minister of marine and fisheries at the time. The official title of the navy was the "Naval Service of Canada" (also "Canadian Naval Forces"), and the first Director of the Naval Service of Canada was Rear-Admiral
Charles Kingsmill (Royal Navy, retired), who was previously in charge of the marine service of the Department of Marine and Fisheries. The Naval Service of Canada changed its name to "
Royal Canadian Navy" on January 30, 1911, but it was not until August 29, 1911, that the use of "
Royal Canadian Navy" was permitted by
King George V. ==Enforcement==