Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour for me to rise today to talk about this particular issue. As my hon. colleague has pointed out, this issue has been going on for quite some time, for the past two years, since the agreement took place in 2007.
I would like to start by congratulating the individuals who first brought this to our attention, the four retired individuals who my colleague from Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte mentioned earlier, people such as Bob Applebaum, Scott Parsons and of course, Gus Etchegary, in Newfoundland and Labrador, and their committee.
Over the past two years this has become a simmering debate that has now come to a head right in this House, which is where it should be. I think the House will cast its judgment on this. I hope the government will realize in this particular situation that it should seriously consider the amendments that are put forward in this House.
Certain countries have already looked favourably toward it. One has ratified it, in the form of Norway. Other countries are currently going through this process. For us, it is a situation where we have our country straddling some very precious fishing grounds, spawning grounds, the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, in particular. What we have here is a situation where it goes beyond our allotted 200-mile limit which was established for us in the late 1970s.
I think of two individuals in particular I would love to hear from in this debate. Unfortunately, they have departed and may God rest their souls. The two individuals I speak of would be the late Hon. Don Jamieson and the late Right Hon. Roméo LeBlanc. They fought so hard and so well for an issue that meant so much for the east coast of this country, and certainly for my province when they established that 200-mile zone off the coast. It is certainly to their honour that we speak of this issue today, whether one is for or against this subject.
Now we talk about NAFO, founded in 1979, on the tail of what was the International Commission of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, more commonly known as ICNAF. The NAFO website states, and this is very interesting:
NAFO's overall objective is to contribute through consultation and cooperation to the optimum utilization, rational management and conservation of the fishery resources of the Convention Area.
When I say “convention area”, I mean the northwest Atlantic.
To say that we have had our problems with this particular convention is perhaps a mild understatement.
Just a few days ago, we heard testimony from former federal fisheries minister Loyola Hearn. I can safely say that he was one of NAFO's most vociferous opponents. Whenever this House would talk about NAFO reform in earnest, the former fisheries minister and, by extension, the Conservative Party at the time, spoke so badly against NAFO that we were led to believe it is the worst thing that happened to the industry on the east coast of this country.
Is that part of the debate today? No, it is not. However, let us keep in mind that all of a sudden, this particular government is now pushing the virtues of what is NAFO. It is doing it by saddling up to an agreement that, in essence, I feel, gets it off the hook, as it were. Here is what I mean by that.
In 2006, that particular party, now the government, decided it wanted to extend the 200 miles. In its literature, the Conservative Party told the people of this country, and it certainly told the people of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, that it was about to extend 200 nautical miles, therefore becoming a complete, exclusive Canadian jurisdiction. In return, what we got was a deal whereby it figured that it had achieved, through some kind of nuance, just that. But now, all of a sudden, we find ourselves in a situation where, after two years of compiling evidence, many of us realize that it has done just the opposite. By trying to extend a management zone beyond the 200 nautical miles, what it has done is relinquished its own sovereignty within that particular 200 nautical miles. In other words, it wanted to push the door open but, unfortunately, the door came back in.
For a government that prides itself, as my hon. colleague pointed out, on exclusive rights, sovereignty over the north and the Northwest Passage, this is a hard pill for it to swallow in this particular situation.
That is why we rise here in the House today. That is why we express the concerns we have in this debate here in the House, and now go forward with a vote so that the will of the people can be heard and certainly the will of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The government states that it cannot see any situation in which it would invite NAFO to come inside the 200-mile EEZ, or the exclusive economic zone. If that is the case, why have Canada's negotiators agreed to this clause in the NAFO amendments? They defend this particular measure in the new amendments by saying that it can happen only by invitation, which begs the question why it is there.
I have a theory. I think it goes back to several years ago when the European Union decided that because of the situation in the North Sea and other parts of northeastern Europe, in which several states are bordering each other and things get confusing when the 200 nautical-mile rule is used, they have come up with a common management regime. The European Union has taken this common management regime and applied it to us, and the mistake we made was saying yes to that. That was the mistake. It is not the same situation. We are bordering the high seas here.
This is a situation in which boats from member states of the European Union, such as Spain and Portugal, are over here in the Northwest Atlantic. We are talking about Canada and the high seas. This is not the same management regime. They are trying to force that upon us, and the government has accepted it. The government wanted to say to this country that it did what it said it would do. Promise made, promise kept was its slogan, and in essence, it has given up far more than what it could have imagined itself.
The...Minister called this “improved decision-making” and stated that this will provide some protection for Canada's current allocation percentages.
In the short term, it is questionable.
The cost to conservation is, apparently, an acceptable casualty to improve our chances of maintaining our allocation percentages. Canada could have demanded both, a 2/3 system to protect the existing quota shares, and a simple majority system to promote conservation, but this did not happen.
At a time when Canada is trying to protect, as I mentioned earlier, the sovereignty of the north, we must consider that the sovereignty of the Atlantic coast is something that is paramount here and something that we feel is being threatened. Hopefully this House will pass judgment on that.
This is very important for us and for Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as for the east coast of Quebec. It is very important for the whole country.
For Canada and for ourselves, we must say to the entire region, to the entire international community, not just the people associated with NAFO but the entire community, that there is a move afoot around the world to go toward more international management regimes. We are seeing it in many jurisdictions around the world, through the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Bear in mind, however, that the issue of sovereignty has to be maintained for that one individual state, and this is what we are trying to do today.
They have made the straight giveaway of management within this jurisdiction that was so sacrosanct and that fought so hard for the past 30 or 40 years. We find ourselves in this situation today, and I hope that following this debate, changes will be made, certainly that an attempt will be made.
Just recently, last week, I attended the Bonavista fisheries symposium, and we talked about how there are certain things that just do not add up in this particular situation off the east coast. Only so much shrimp is being landed and brought to shore in the east coast of this province, and yet only a fraction of that is being processed. People are asking why. A lot of people have questions.
A lot of people need the answers. Today I hope that we are going to provide enlightenment in this debate and provide people with the opportunity to see what is happening with these NAFO amendments, why we should debate them and why we should cast our opinion to vote this down.