Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In an article published in 2014 in Le Devoir, the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, published the following statements via a press release:
[...] illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing has escalated over the past 20 years, especially in the high seas [...]
This echoes the concerns of my colleague Mr. Cleary. The article goes on to say:
[...] and is now estimated to amount to 11 to 26 million tonnes of fish harvested illicitly each year, worth between $10 and $23 billion.
That is enormous. The article continues as follows:
The various available estimates indicate that at least 25% of world fishery is illegal or unreported. According to the FAO, this practice “jeopardizes the livelihoods of people around the world, threatens valuable marine resources and undermines the credibility and efforts of fisheries management measures.”
A major problem was identified by the FAO in this file, and the article says this about the issue:
Flag states are already required to maintain a record of their registered vessels together with information on their authorization to fish [...] However, many fishing vessels engaged in illegal activities circumvent such control measures by “flag hopping”—repeatedly registering with new flag states to dodge detection, which undermines anti-IUU efforts.
Will Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act allow us to fight, if only to some extent, major problems of this type? If not, what intelligent measures could we take in some future bill to attack the source of the real problem that threatens fishery stocks in Canada and everywhere in the world?