Toronto council voted Thursday to call for a federal ban on the import of shark fins, as applause rang out from the council chamber where late Toronto filmmaker Rob Stewart’s family sat watching.

Councillors voted 38-4 for a motion by Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam to support a federal bill introduced earlier this month by Conservative Senator Michael MacDonald, which seeks to create a law prohibiting the importation of shark fins to Canada.

“Shark finning” in Canadian waters has been illegal since 1994, but the sale and importation of shark fins is not.

The practice involves cutting the fins off living sharks and then throwing the animals back into the ocean. Unable to swim, the sharks sink to the bottom of the ocean where they are eaten alive or die of suffocation.

Stewart’s father Brian, joined at city hall Thursday by Rob’s mother Sandy and sister Alexandra, said the biggest city in the country passing this motion sends the right message to Ottawa.

“Rob’s passion was to create a world where we’re an army with nature. This is his legacy,” he said. “Rob’s belief was he had to show people the beauty of the ocean.

“He had to show them that this is worth fighting for and worth saving, and in his case, worth dying for.”

“We’re thrilled, and we knew Rob would’ve been thrilled as well,” Sandy added.

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Stewart died while diving off the coast of Islamorada, Fla. in January. The 37-year-old was filming a sequel to his 2006 documentary Sharkwater, which aimed to draw attention to the practice of “finning” sharks for soup and its impact on the ocean’s ecosystem.

“Since Rob’s first film Sharkwater, over a billion sharks have been killed,” Brian said. “If we allow sharks to disappear from our oceans, we’re taking the key ingredient that’s been around for 450 million years. That balance would be gone. (If) the balance is gone, the oceans will die. If the oceans die, mankind goes with it, so this is not just about saving sharks.”

Wong-Tam’s motion, seconded by Coun. Glenn De Baeremaeker, also asked the premier to consider a provincial ban on the sale of shark fins should the federal bill fail.

In 2011, Toronto council voted to ban the possession, sale and consumption of shark fin by the same 38-4 margin.

“My heart has all the warm butterflies inside,” Rob Stewart said following the vote. “I couldn’t feel better.”

An Ontario Superior Court judge later overturned the ban, calling it “highly intrusive” and ruling the city overstepped its powers because the bylaw banned consumption by Torontonians in their own homes.

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Chinese-Canadian merchants and restaurateurs had protested the ban, arguing shark fin soup was a delicacy in Chinese restaurants, and the ban would cause them to lose significant business.

But Wong-Tam said shark finning is a quickly fading Chinese cultural practice.

“It’s not cultural in any way, and if it was to be categorized as cultural, I can tell you there’s certain things that we would do culturally that we don’t do anymore,” she said. “We no longer bind women’s feet in Chinese culture. We also don’t have multiple wives and that is not part of what Chinese culture is today.”

Wong-Tam noted that 17 Canadian municipalities have already banned sale of shark fin and related products, including London, Newmarket, Oakville, Brantford and Pickering.

De Baeremaeker said an estimated 280 million sharks have been killed in the last four years since Toronto’s ban was overturned.

“This slaughter, happening in every ocean on this planet is happening because we, Canadians and others around the world, eat shark-fin soup,” said De Baeremaeker, arguing it has no nutritional value, doesn’t taste good and is overpriced. “This slaughter can stop if we simply stop eating shark-fin soup.”

Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, who also joined the Stewart family Thursday morning, said Canada is responsible for two per cent of shark fin consumption around the world.

“It’s no different from the ivory trade. It’s as cruel as it is wasteful,” Erskine-Smith said.

He noted this was the third attempt to ban the import of shark fins at the federal level, following his own efforts and those of NDP MP Fin Donnelly which were both defeated. Erskine-Smith said he was confident MacDonald’s bill would be successful because of its support among all three major parties this time.

“It is a non-partisan issue,” he said.