Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his intervention, as inflamed as it was. Much of it is rhetoric, but let me comment on one or two things.
He referred to the decision of shrimp on the Flemish Cap. If he looked carefully at what happened in the intersessional meeting, he would see there were actually two votes before NAFO. One was the Canadian position that we should not fish it at all. The other one was from other parties that said there should be a 50% reduction in the fishing.
Both of those went to a vote. As he said, the Canadian vote was defeated. There were actually 10 voting. They were voting with the existing convention voting rules of 50% plus one. We have 10 voters. The Canadian vote was defeated. Then they voted on the second one which is to go to a 50% reduction.
If we had the new voting rules with 10 voting members, and it was actually six versus four in favour of that position, if we had the two-thirds, it would have required seven to pass. We would have been stalemated. It would have required the NAFO commission to figure out how to resolve this difficulty and the debate would have continued.
I think members can see that it really depends on which way the question is asked. What we do know for sure, and industry told us throughout the testimony--and I am surprised that the member is not standing up for the interests of Newfoundland and Labrador--that it does protect the interest of Canada when we come to potentially opening the quota key.
I wonder if the member sees that as well.