Mr. Speaker, Canada and France have just successfully concluded a new fisheries agreement which, as it turns out, is a good deal for Canada, for Newfoundland, particularly for the Burin Peninsula, and for the town of Grand Bank especially. It gives south coast Newfoundland fishermen secure access for at least 10 years to lucrative scallops in French waters and it provides a stable
management regime to prevent the kind of overfishing by the French that we saw in the late 1980s.
It secures more than 100 jobs in the town of Grand Bank alone at a very difficult time, given the disastrous unemployment rate and the loss of the Hibernia work recently. It is not the answer to every woe, but it does put an end to a long festering conflict between the two countries and does mark the beginning of an era of co-operation between France and Canada on fisheries as well as on aquaculture, tourism, environmental protection and transportation.
I congratulate my friends, the secretary of state for fisheries and the minister of fisheries on bringing this about.
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