The status quo isn't perfect.
As we said in our letter to the Prime Minister, we think the agreement should be renegotiated. We think it needs significant amendments. It's long been identified that the major problems were the objection procedure, and there was a need for a binding dispute settlement and a need for real enforcement out there where we could take action on the high seas when appropriate. We failed to meet any of those. Those were, I would say, Canada's primary objectives. When my colleagues and I got involved in this we had hoped to work with the government to try to help them achieve those. The door was slammed in our faces. Nobody wanted to talk to us. We were denied meetings. We went another route going public with our concerns.
The NAFO Convention can still be amended. It can still be strengthened. But the current amendments don't really offer much. The aspects that are touted and the improvements to precautionary approach and ecosystems approach, NAFO has been applying for 10 years. It didn't require a convention change, and the convention doesn't make any obligations to use it anyway. It's just there. The dispute settlement process is the UNFA process, which has always been there.