Madam Speaker, may I remind my colleagues as to what happened for instance to the exploitation of the herring in the North Sea or to the exploitation of the Peruvian anchoveta which has completely disappeared. Human exploitation tends to be overdone over time to the point of eliminating some species from the face of the Earth.
It is important to recall what was reported in the Canadian media a year and a half ago on the occasion of a convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science which was held in Boston in February 2002. Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia said that over the past 50 years the catch of popular species such as cod, haddock, flounder, tuna and hake has halved although the fishing fleet has tripled. There is evidently a problem being identified by Dr. Pauly, namely that the fishing fleets are increasing the potential considerably.
Having made the observation that we need fish to make fish, he noted that the only way to save the east coast fishery was to introduce a number of sweeping measures including a substantial reduction of fishing fleets, the abolition of subsidies to industrial fisheries and the establishment of a network of large no take marine reserves.
Reg Watson, another UBC researcher, was quoted as saying that the collapse of the North Atlantic fishery is having a ripple effect around the world. He noted that the large fish now found in markets in Canada and the United States come from West Africa and Southeast Asia and they will soon be facing problems similar to those of the east coast. Dr. Watson is quoted as saying that we are paying other fishers in other oceans to grind down their marine ecosystems for our consumption. This is a serious concern for global food security. This is another important observation.
An intervention by a Dr. Peter Tyedmers of Dalhousie University in Halifax also must be of interest to my colleague across the aisle. He said that an economic analysis conducted as part of a project revealed that almost $2.5 billion U.S. in taxpayers' money is spent each year subsidizing north Atlantic fishing fleets. Of that, Canada spends something like $520 million.
Dr. Rosenberg, the dean of fisheries science at the University of New Hampshire said that the study he conducted demonstrated “a fishery by fishery approach does not work and that such government policies have probably exacerbated the crisis”. The solution does not seem to be at least according to this scientist a fishery by fishery approach. He went on to say “You can't fix this problem one fishery at a time because--