The hon. member for Skeena said the Japanese. Could that be correct?
What is the quota for Quebec? Thirty-five tonnes of blue fin. The Japanese have a bycatch of 180 tonnes in Canadian waters. A decent sized blue fin is worth $20,000 or $30,000. That is what is paid for one fish.
Historically we have belonged to the International Tuna Commission which involves three countries: the United States, Japan and Canada. Once a year there is a little get-together. They usually decide that Canada will get the lowest quota of the three. The fattest blue fin tuna are the ones chasing the mackerel into the hon. member's riding.
The Japanese have marvellous boats with helicopters on them. They are incredible vessels. The quotas are given according to the number of vessels. That might run into 10 to 14 vessels. By international agreement they have unlimited quotas for skipjack, albacore, yellow fin and all of the different tuna. We cannot catch them. It would be illegal for someone from Canada to catch them. The Japanese have a bycatch of 180 tonnes and a Canadian province only has a quota of 35 tonnes.
On top of that, the feeder boats come in behind them. They load up on yellow fin, albacore, skipjack, all these tuna, a bit of swordfish is permitted as well, 10 per cent bycatch for these others, and then a bycatch of a 180 tonnes of blue fin, then they go back to Japan. Surely we do not need provincial intervention to see the wisdom of cancelling those quotas.
Also chasing the mackerel is the porbeagle shark. Restaurants in Quebec City or Vancouver sell shark fin soup for $200 and $300 a bowl. Those shark fins come from the porbeagle shark off the coast of Newfoundland. As they head in they follow the continental shelf chasing those very mackerel which are going into the hon. member's riding to spawn. The fins are cut off. Five hundred tonnes for a vessel from Denmark, from the Faroe Islands. In fact the vessel's name is the Bakker .
Far more things can be done that do not require the help or even the suggestion of the provinces, that would maintain the federal government as the manager of the entire fishing resource, as many members have pointed out, as the hon. member for Skeena has just said, as part of the ocean's ecosystem. Members of Parliament should be promoting those things in the House every day.