Thank you very much, Chair.
I am not going to repeat anything Patrick said. I'm here mostly, I suppose, as a witness to try to address questions, to the extent you have them. I jotted down a few things just as an overview for my own memory.
I started in the fishing industry in 1977, coincident with the extension of the jurisdiction to 200 miles. I suppose I've been covering the NAFO file since the early 1980s. So I've been kicking around the block on NAFO for quite a while, attending virtually all of the meetings.
When I look at the existing convention we have in front of us, I just reflect on the fact—from my observations over the 25 years or so I've been covering NAFO meetings—that we've had four very different phases of NAFO under the same convention.
I guess I'd like to describe the first phase as being from the early to mid-1980s. At the time, there were lots of fish and lots of quota on the go. Mainly based largely on these large amounts of quotas and fish, Canada controlled NAFO very much.
In addition to having lots of cod, which we had difficulty selling at the time—in a viable way, at least—we took some of our surplus cod and had a long-term agreement with the EU. In exchange for fishing rights in Canada, they provided us with reduced tariffs and with market access. In a similar way, we provided codfish to both Spain and Portugal through bilateral agreements. In addition to that, at NAFO and bilaterally—which affected NAFO—we provided underutilized species' quotas to the East Bloc countries.
So with that combination of trading away fish we weren't catching ourselves, we effectively controlled the NAFO environment during the first period of its life. And all was peaceful, more or less, at the NAFO table.
The mid-eighties changed things in a couple of different ways. These fish quota agreements, most of which were for market access, expired. At that time we saw the Germans lodge objections and saw them fishing cod on the nose of the bank—a lot of cod in one year in particular. We saw the EU change their approach at NAFO as well. Spain and Portugal joined NAFO in 1986. The EU very much didn't want Spain and Portugal, with their capacity, fishing in Europe; they wanted to find fishing opportunities for them elsewhere, including in the northwest Atlantic.
So the EU challenged the TAC-setting process and the quota shares. They basically challenged everything that was challengeable. At that time, Canada still had the underutilized species in its mix, and we were still able to secure votes, I suppose, at NAFO and cooperation at the NAFO table through the eastern European countries.
The decisions of NAFO at the table more or less went along well, but on the water we saw increasing problems with enforcement and cheating by fishing captains. It was systematic in the late eighties and early nineties.
Now, in the early nineties, in my view, we had the height of the overfishing problems and turmoil at NAFO. We had rampant use of the objection procedure by the EU, in particular, and we had the so-called discovery of the Greenland halibut or turbot resource at the time. It all led to the fighting over quotas for turbot, culminating in the Estai incident. There was conflict on the high seas.
When that was resolved—more or less around the same time, or in a similar timeframe, as the UN fish agreement came into place—we had a new phase. So in the last 10 years or so, we've moved into more of a détente and almost a cooperative arrangement with many of the former protagonists at the table, in particular the EU. Both Canada and the EU are cooperating on most of the issues at the NAFO table. How well all of this cooperation will continue is really unknown.
There are signs of fish stock recovery. There are signs that some of the countries who don't now have large quotas, notably the United States and Korea, would like to have a bigger share as these fish stocks recover. Canada and the EU have the largest quotas. It's in our interest to have a status quo in the quota-sharing regime.
That is why we support the move to a two-thirds voting system from the current 50% plus one. It helps us to defend our quota shares at the table. That's why we support an effective dispute resolution procedure to deal with objections by countries such as the Faroe Islands, which are setting their own quotas for shrimp in 3L because they disagree with the outcome at the NAFO table.
When you get into these negotiations, the national interests come to the table. It's the international political environment and how it functions at the table, rather than the document itself, that will most influence the future. The document will help, but it won't dictate how long this will take to unfold. It may not be a made-in-Canada document. As in any dispute, you try to enter into negotiations in good faith to come up with a product that meets your basic objectives. In the end, you sit back and decide if it's in your interest or not. In our view, it is in our interest to ratify this new convention.