Mr. Speaker, I will reverse roles and ask the hon. member a question.
The big problem we have in dealing with international negotiations is not with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. That is the problem with governments and bureaucracies. We all have a certain role to play and we must live within that role. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans cannot take a lead role internationally because he has to kowtow to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
We have had submissions to our committee from the department. I do not know whether other members ever felt like getting up in a meeting and catching somebody, and just throwing them through the window. That is the way committee members felt, especially those representing our province, when we heard people telling us we could interfere with these other countries because we might disrupt some trading relations. We make sure that people in France can sell their wine, and we do not want to disturb that, while people who live around the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador go without because foreigners are destroying our resource.
I ask the member, in light of his involvement, and he has been around federally a lot longer than I have, has he found the same thing, that one department that might be willing to do something has been stymied by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade?