Merci.
Thank you both for your very helpful observations.
Mr. Andrews, if I can summarize, I think you said that this seems to be an improved convention. The objection procedure has improved. The MCS backs that up. There are raised expectations of prosecution by the home state. It's not going to be perfect. You're never going to get everything you want out of 12 countries, but it's better than it was before.
I want to get back to Mr. Byrne's objection. I think that in any convention, you have a host of terms and conditions. There are going to be some you like. I bet even Mr. Byrne likes some of them. Then there are some you really don't like. The one he doesn't like is on this issue of sovereignty. It would trouble me as well, unless I understand it the way you're portraying it.
As I understand it, and I'm quoting from the DFO website: “The high seas is the area beyond the EEZ. No state has sovereignty or jurisdiction over the high seas” and “no state may claim sovereignty”. So as I understand international law, we couldn't have gotten sovereignty beyond 200 miles, even if we had negotiated for it. NAFO couldn't give it. Nobody could give it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if we couldn't get it, then there's no point in asking why we didn't bargain for it. The flip side he's concerned about is the intrusion on our sovereignty and that we may have given something up. I've heard you both say, well, without the consent of Canada--and it's unlikely to happen--we could have given up our fish stock management before NAFO anyway, so we haven't really given anything away.
The two parts to the question are whether we could have gotten more outside 200 miles if we had bargained for it, and really, whether we have given anything up within our 200-mile limit.