Again, as I alluded to in my opening statement, we were not satisfied with the decisions that were made by the Canadian delegation at the negotiating table, or the NAFO table—whatever you want to refer to—in the current year at Bergen.
There are a couple of them. One is the Greenland halibut or the turbot. There's a 15-year plan and we're five years into it. Because it's a recovering stock, the plan was to reduce each year, as the years went on. Canada went in, and the position they put on the table immediately was a rollover, which then got away from the plan, against scientific advice. Of course, that worried us, to have a nation go in and again ignore scientific advice.
But the 3M cod is worrisome for us because it's the first year off moratorium. We have northern cod, which is under moratorium as well, and some scientists are telling us that it is coming back. I think the Europeans are getting a whiff of that as well. I think this was a first test of Canada.
At the table, again, the scientists indicated that they wanted to be very precautionary. It was a stock coming back from a moratorium. They suggested that it would be—I don't have the figures in front of me—somewhere around 4,000 tonnes. They had some dissenting people around the table, some nations. The United States and Norway voted to stick with science and the Scientific Council, which gave the advice. The European countries went for the bigger quota. Suprisingly, as we have an interest of probably 1% of that stock, Canada, against scientific advice, said and voted with the Europeans to increase the quota. It might not seem like a lot, 5,000 tonnes or whatever, but it's just the fact that our country had a chance around the table to make a statement that when our northern cod comes up we're going to be precautionary, but it ignored that.
So those were two incidents, and there are some others that I won't belabour. But again, it was disappointing.
It was not our position, by the way, as a province, because we certainly indicated to the minister prior to going over there what our positions were. It was to reduce the halibut, to basically stick with scientific advice.