Mr. Chair, I would like to make a couple of points before we get into the clause by clause on the bill.
There are two things I want to say. The first is that we had the minister here last week to discuss the budget and this act. I don't think we asked any questions on the act—or we didn't on this side. I felt that was unfortunate because given the number of issues that were in the budget and issues in general with fisheries, be it the oil spill on the west coast or whatever, there was no time to ask questions on this bill.
That leads me to the second point I want to make. I had questions on this bill that haven't been answered, questions like figures on illegally caught fish. We know that illegal fishing inside the 200-mile limit isn't so much of a problem. We know that our Coast Guard and our military keep on top of it, and they are on top of it. But I have concerns about illegal fishing outside the 200-mile limit in the NAFO regulatory area.
This bill is all about illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, but when we asked questions about illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in our waters or on the continental shelf outside the 200-mile limit, we didn't get any figures whatsoever on the extent of illegal fishing outside the 200-mile limit.
We know that's going on because you do see citations issued to foreign vessels. How much of that illegally caught fish may be coming into Canadian ports? We have no figures on that either.
From my perspective, the information on some of the questions I asked were just left hanging. We don't know the extent of the problem and most of the information we got were global figures. They weren't Canadian figures. I have a concern about that and I wanted to make it known to the committee.