I've read what I could get of the meetings.
Yes, to a certain extent they are, in the sense of jeopardizing our sovereignty. It's not going to happen. It won't happen and can't happen, because of the protections involved.
They made two or three points, but I won't get into them because it would use up all your time. When I mentioned the Leafs playing in the Olympics, I was referring somewhat to the group.
NAFO has changed completely. As NAFO operates today, it's mainly dealing with an ecosystem approach rather than with specific species. It's dealing with consensus rather than voting. In that system there was yes and no, and if we didn't have enough votes, we had to buy them by giving away fish.
Let me ask you something. You say these are credible individuals, and I have absolutely no doubt that they are. They all come from responsible positions. We had people representing us at NAFO in 2006 and 2007, the two years that we're dealing with here in relation to the convention. Mr. Etchegary says that DFO has no involvement in NAFO, that it's all done by Foreign Affairs, that those who go are only on the subcommittee, and that type of thing.
Our people from DFO were the people who were directly involved. We have very little dealings with DFAIT, except the courtesy thing internationally. Our people call the shots.
Was the minister's office involved directly? We were on the phone directly at the NAFO meetings, telling them that if we didn't get what we were after, to come home. It got down to that on the last Friday morning. Because of my visit to Belgium--well, actually, I met Mr. Borg in France--a commitment had been made to me that they would support us in what we wanted to do with cleaning up and bringing in an enforcement regime that would take the boats out of the fishery and punish them for the negative work they were doing or for any rules they were breaking, and when we weren't getting that, we told our crowd to go in and tell them to deliver on their promises or to come home. Did they deliver? They cooperated with us.
I'll name a few people we had at that meeting. You're talking about these four experts; we had our own experts, just as good, just as high-ranking--higher-ranking, in some cases--and just as credible, but they were a whole lot more tuned in to what's going on than any of these people you had in front of you.
We had David Bevan, who I think you will agree is the best head that's been around for quite some time in relation to fisheries, whether local, national, or international. We had Earle McCurdy. We had Ray Andrews, who was a deputy minister of fisheries from Newfoundland and worked in the federal system with Crosbie for quite some time. We had the head of the delegation, David Bevan. His co-partner in fighting for our reforms was the regional minister, Wayne Follett, a Newfoundlander, and not one of the bureaucrats who had been representing us before. We had Earle McCurdy, Ray Andrews.... We also had Bruce Chapman there. We had Lorne Wheeler representing my office. If you don't know him, anybody who knows him will never question his integrity. These people are all from Newfoundland. They're not just good Canadian reps, but from Newfoundland. They were looking after Newfoundland's interests because they wanted it, number one, and because they were given direction to do it, number two.
If you're going to say that these people are saying one thing, well, the people who were directly involved were just as high-ranking and were more involved. David Bevan was actually the chair of NAFO for a couple of years, as you know. If you want to talk about rank in any way at all, these are the people who are working in today's game. They know who the players are. They know what the moves are. They know the changes that have been made and have adapted with them.
We spent hours and hours and hours discussing this. I know I'm long-winded, but this is the crux of it all, Peter, and that is why when I hear people saying, “These experts say...”, well, we have another bunch of experts.
Earle McCurdy represents every fisherman in Newfoundland and Labrador, and others besides, and you know him well. He's not out there saying what he's saying because he likes me or the government or anything else. Earle has been pretty independent through it all. He sees the benefit of this to the fishermen and to the fishery, especially in Newfoundland and Labrador, and so does every other industry rep.
So who's wrong here--a bunch of people who have been out of it and who are talking about how these changes would have played in their game years ago, or the people who are currently playing and the people directly affected?
To me, look, it's a no-brainer. And that's what really concerns me when I hear some of the stuff that's thrown out.