Mr. Speaker, current negotiations between Canada and the United States over Canadian complaints that the United States is violating the conservation norms of the Pacific salmon treaty of 1985 have seen a breakthrough in traditional diplomatic methods. There is direct involvement in the negotiations of the actual stakeholders, the active fisher people in both countries who have the most to lose from any violation of the treaty norms.
In a series of direct meetings whose consensus is reported back to the two governments, the Canadian and U.S. fisher people bring both practical experience and also human concerns to a traditionally rather abstract technical bureaucratic process. Why not? It is the new pluralism. It balances the new co-operative federalism, which the federal government is now seeking to pursue with the Government of British Columbia, in implementing the Fryer commission's
unanimous report on solutions to west coast fisheries problems and in seeking to establish permanent federal-B.C. partnership at the fisheries administration level.
