Madam Speaker, again it is no surprise that the issue is the overfishing on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish cap. Unfortunately it will not matter what I say at this stage because the parliamentary secretary will stand and read a prepared text. Whatever avenue I take, I will get the same answer, which is unfortunate.
As times change and the more information we get on this issue, not only the hon. House but people across the country are starting to realize that there is a province called Newfoundland and Labrador. One of the major industries in that province is the fishery. Over the last 10 years, the province has been practically devastated because of abuses to that very resource that has kept the province alive since John Cabot rediscovered it in 1497.
Blatant abuses regularly occur on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and on the Flemish cap. For those who do not know what I am talking about when I talk about the nose and tail and the Flemish cap, off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador we have a continental shelf. When the limit was increased to 200 miles, unfortunately some of the continental shelf extended beyond that 200 mile limit.
We have two projections referred to as the nose and the tail of the Grand Bank area, right in the heart of the most lucrative fishing grounds in the world. Slightly outside of that area there is a shelf known as the Flemish cap, also a prolific fishing area. It used to be a great cod fishing area and in recent years has become a tremendous fishing ground for shrimp. Shrimp did not exist there some years ago. However some people think that because of increased activity in the north, the shrimp has been driven by way of ocean currents to the Flemish cap.
Blatant abuses are taking place and we are doing very little about it. We are letting NAFO, the regulatory body, the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization, administer the area. It is not doing a good job. We pay 50% of the cost of NAFO. We are the main beneficiaries of the resource but apparently we have absolutely no say. NAFO has no teeth.
When we found some vessels to be erring in their ways, we could not do a thing with them. We had to send them home hoping the ownership countries would administer some form of punishment. Sometimes they do, sometimes they do not.
Our own surveillance, which was the issue I used, is very slight. We have one patrol vessel. We have great aerial surveillance with provincial airlines, which are state of the art, but they only cover certain areas at certain times. It is on the fishing grounds that we need actual on the ground surveillance where we can board vessels and issue citations. We do not know what is happening because the Department of Fisheries and Oceans will not release that kind of information. We do know that one boat is sometimes in the area and that that is the only protection we have.
