It's six of one, a half dozen of the other. I'm not sure there's a great deal of difference.
One of the things you said toward the end of your comments was that the 1995 implementing agreement, which is attached to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, provides that a coastal state can prosecute. It does not. There's nothing in the 1995 agreement. There's nothing in the 1982 Law of the Sea convention that would provide the opportunity for Canada to prosecute a vessel for breaching a NAFO regulation outside of 200 nautical miles. There's no international law to support that, unless the flag state--there's an exception to every rule--requests it in some way, shape, or form.
So that part of what you've asked is incorrect in the law. There's nothing in the NAFO agreement that does that either, but that's not terribly surprising. Countries are unwilling to give up prosecutorial responsibility for vessels that are on the high sea.
Where your question was dead on is of course that there are provisions in the 1995 agreement, the Law of the Sea fisheries agreement, that in the event of a breach of NAFO regulations--that's the example they use--the inspecting state may, in some situations, bring that vessel to port, and then the vessel can be investigated, etc. But there's not a prosecution authority.
It's my understanding that the current inspection and enforcement arrangements under NAFO are not in the amendment, but that the operating guidelines and the operating principles now being used incorporate most, although perhaps not all, of what is in the 1995 agreement. So I think that all we would get by going back to renegotiate that is to have a provision that the NAFO at some level already has.
The other part of that is that there are no other fisheries agreements in the global community that actually incorporate the kind of detail in terms of fisheries inspection and fisheries enforcement in their constitutive documents. They give that power to the commission or the organization in question, and then that becomes the negotiated arrangement, separate and apart.
So if I've answered your question, it would be that I'm not sure we'd get a whole lot more by going down the 1995 agreement route on the issue of fisheries enforcement than what already is in NAFO, and it's unlikely that we would want to get into that kind of detail anyway in a fisheries constitutive document.
Going back to an earlier point, would this treaty be in place for 30 years? It's hard to tell, and I take your point very much. You don't know. I do know that fisheries organizations like NAFO now are under a consensual review process at the international levels, so if things were to change, I would assume there would be significant pressure to change the NAFO agreement. I forget the UN body that does that, but it keeps an eye.... There's a reporting process now to the UN about how regional fisheries management organizations are working, and if it's not working or there is significant change in the development of international law in the areas of fisheries, then that would be incorporated into a new NAFO.
But I do take your point. It is a very difficult time, and it's very difficult to get these things done. It can take a number of years.