Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity this evening to speak in the continuation of this debate, a debate which was shut down the other day by the government for some mysterious reason. I guess it did not want the people listening to it to hear the full debate on the issue of the ratification of the amendments to the NAFO convention.
We are in a concurrence debate. In other words, a motion from the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans is before the House. The committee recommends that the government not ratify these amendments to the NAFO agreement and that it notify NAFO of its objection to the amendments, as per an article of the convention. That would effectively shut down these changes, which are regarded by most people in Newfoundland and Labrador, and many others who appeared before not only the fisheries and oceans committee but also before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, it being an international convention, as wrong. The objections brought forward were substantial and important.
At the outset, this is a very sad story. We are dealing with is an example of a failure and an unwillingness by Canada, as a nation, to take decisive action in an international area for the sake of conservation and protection of our fish stocks and, indeed, a continuation of our own sovereignty. This goes back to the operation of NAFO over many years.
There was an attempt to control outside of the 200 mile limit the action of nations and to protect the fish stocks and have a regime that offered the protection of the stocks but, at the same time, an enforcement of the rules among the nations. It was highly unsuccessful to the point there was continuous overfishing, there was a failure to report catches, there were bycatches being caught on more species under moratorium, essentially, directed fishing of moratorium species under the guise of bycatch.
Some will remember, and those in Newfoundland and Labrador certainly will remember, the turbot war of the mid-1990s and the arrest of the Estai by the Government of Canada, which led to an international incident, the bringing of the ship into Canada and the arrest of that ship and charges. That eventually led to some changes in NAFO, but the changes came at a cost because Canada had to give up turbot quota in order to get greater enforcement mechanisms. That has been the story of NAFO over the years.
Canada is a coastal state, the one that suffers the most from many activities that go on, particularly overfishing in the offshore. Yet in order for us to build a regime that protects the stocks, we end up having to give away quota.
The response to all of the negative things in NAFO was the development of a concept called custodial management. That was debated for a number of years, starting in Newfoundland and Labrador, but later adopted unanimously, in 2005, by the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans of the House, which travelled all over the Atlantic and heard from a large number of witnesses, and came back with a unanimous report to the House.
My colleague, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore, was a member of the committee. I believe the member for Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte was a member of the committee as well. In fact, the former minister of fisheries, Loyola Hearn, was a member of the committee. They came forth with the unanimous recommendation that we should have custodial management.
This was a part of the plan and promises of the Conservative Party when it sought to be elected and then was elected in 2006.
The expectation then was that Canada would proceed to develop the concept of custodial management, which I think is a very simple concept. The custodial state, Canada, would manage the stock for the benefit of the stock itself and for all parties that had an historical interest in that stock. That would respect the rights of other nations. At the same time, it would put in place a regime, and this is an advancement of international law.
Those who are rather conservative in their thinking would say that we cannot do things like that, but we actually can. International law is something that changes and advances with time, particularly in areas such as environmental protection and conservation, and Canada should have pursued that course.
Instead, what the government and the minister did was pursue the old notion of incremental changes to NAFO. If all they did was break another promise, fail to take decisive and significant action, that would be sad enough, but they have gone the other way and in fact made things worse. That is the opinion not just of me, but of many people who testified before the committee and were active in the industry.
I have, for example, a letter from Ray Johnson, the chairperson of the Community Linkages Concept Committee. He who wrote the minister recently complaining about the amendments and asking the government not to support them.
We heard from the Fisheries Community Alliance, a group from Newfoundland and Labrador, headed by Gus Etchegary and others who have very strong views and a lot of knowledge and experience in the fisheries. They are very forceful in their objections to this treaty.
We know the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has stated strong objections having heard the arguments at a certain point. This is true to say. I see the parliamentary secretary looking through his papers to find a letter to read out in a few minutes. There was a point when the Newfoundland government supported the negotiations, but not after hearing the arguments, in particular the arguments made by the very senior former officials.
It is almost unheard of for officials to say that they think this is a backward step for Canada, conservation and the whole approach to fisheries management on the offshore. A former deputy minister, a former assistant deputy minister of fisheries and oceans with 20 years experience, two directors general for international affairs, one who negotiated the original NAFO, are extremely senior people. It is almost unheard of for them to actively participate in an objection process such as this.
The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador said in a press release in September:
I am convinced that the proposed amendments could be detrimental to the ability of our country to protect and conserve our fishery resources inside of our own 200-mile limit...Despite assurances by the Federal Government that the amendment proposed would never be used, we simply cannot as a sovereign nation agree to any wording that opens the door for such action. I am at a loss to understand why Canada would agree to an amendment that was drafted by EU officials to be allowed to proceed. Particularly in these times when Canada is dealing with issues of Arctic sovereignty, we cannot as a country in any way allow for the potential of other nations to make decisions about what happens inside of our 200-mile limit.
We heard from officials from Newfoundland and Labrador, former minister of fisheries, Tom Hedderson, who was recently replaced by Clyde Jackman. He has since written the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans in the last few days reiterating opposition to these amendments.
There are two most objectionable things. The first is the one that allows NAFO nations to make decisions about what goes on inside the 200 mile limit and carry out enforcement. That is with the request and consent of Canada. That is the provision. Nevertheless, it allows for this eventuality. The second provision is where they changed the voting pattern from 50% plus one up to two-thirds in order to make changes. This could include amendments to the convention itself, particularly quotas.
In the post-negotiated period, one of the first actions was the countries voted, including Canada, to reject the scientific evidence and for a quota larger than that which was recommended for strict conservation purposes. We are concerned about this because it is a backward step, one that will be very difficult to fix.
As has been said by the objectors, we will have to live for decades with the consequences of this. One witness said that it would take perhaps 20 or 30 years to try to undo the damage that is being done here. This is an opportunity to reject the ratification of this treaty.
The ratification process is very straightforward. Countries negotiate an agreement and then they have an opportunity to ratify it or not. What is this ratification process for? It is for the country as a whole and for its parliament to have what might be called sober second thought, to look at what was negotiated, to see whether it fits the desires and aspirations of that country, and decide whether to ratify it or not.
We have the right to object. If we object, the amendments are dead. It is as simple as that. We are seeking to have the government exercise that power, to go back to the drawing board, and try to get something better.
Why is it there? Let me put it hypothetically. Many people are interested in the Arctic, including the Europeans. European countries do not have any space in the Arctic. They are very interested as well. What if Canada had sent negotiators off to talk about Arctic sovereignty and negotiate with other people interested in the Arctic, and in some kind of global love-in, decided that we should have a global view of the Arctic, and not only that, that there be a provision that if Canada so desired, the Northwest Passage, which Canada claims to be its own, could be managed by a group of countries under the guidance of some new circumpolar convention?
If those negotiators came back to Canada with that deal, what would the reaction be? I would suggest that any government of Canada would send those negotiators packing as quickly as possible, probably even this government. It would say, “No, we cannot have that. We are not prepared to do it. This is a longstanding position of Canada that we have sovereignty over the Arctic waters and the Northwest Passage. It is not an international passage. It is part of Canada's internal waters”. The negotiators would be rejected. That treaty would never be ratified and that is what we are suggesting here.
How did it get there? Someone said it was in another treaty so we put it in this one. Who suggested it? It was not Canada. It was the EU that suggested it and Canada eventually agreed. It agreed to do something that was a backward step when it comes to custodial management.
Bob Applebaum suggested that if they had even done it the other way and suggested that if the other nations agreed, Canada could manage the stocks outside of the 200-mile limit in the interests of all the parties because we are a coastal state. That would be a step toward custodial management. That would lay the groundwork for Canada to be the protector of these fish stocks because we are the ones with the biggest interest in protecting them and we would be in a position then to take positive steps, but that is not what happened. In fact, we have taken a backward step.
Other people who testified before the committee included Les Dean, a former deputy minister of fisheries and aquaculture for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and David Vardy, another former deputy minister of fisheries and aquaculture for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. These were very compelling and persuasive witnesses who have a storehouse of knowledge about what has happened in NAFO and how it has affected Newfoundland and Labrador in particular. They gave a lot of evidence about the nature of custodial management and how it would work. They are very distinguished public servants from Newfoundland and Labrador.
We did have witnesses on the other side. There is no question about that. The government negotiators came forward. The committee had people from the Department of Justice talk about this, and Foreign Affairs in particular, but their arguments were these father knows best arguments, I would call them, that “Everything is all right. Just because that provision is there about interfering with our sovereignty, we would never use it. We just put it in there. These countries are now changed. The whole world has changed”.
Between 2003 and 2008, the quotas for turbot were exceeded by an average of 30% each and every year, and now all of a sudden these countries have changed and there is now a much greater interest in conservation.
I do not know who got saved or who got religion about this because it was not happening two, three or four years ago, and the provisions for enforcement here are really no greater than they were before. If parties object to a quota being set, they still have the ability to continue to fish the quota set by themselves until the end of that fishing season, and there is really no significant penalty for anybody failing to abide by the provisions and the quotas that are set by NAFO.
This is a pretty important treaty when it comes to the interests of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is a treaty which can hurt over the next number of years by failing to ensure that we have the kind of regime that we need. We will not have the means and the mechanisms any more to insist on the proper protection of the stocks. We are not going to have the kind of protection that we actually need.
Let me read from a letter to the Prime Minister from these four individuals: Bill Rowat, Scott Parsons, Bob Applebaum and Earl Wiseman, the officials in question. It says:
We agree the existing NAFO Convention is out of date and should be amended to strengthen its provisions to make the organization more effective in achieving its conservation objections and to reflect current international law. However, we believe the current set of amendments fall far short in this respect, while creating substantial new problems which will, in fact, weaken the organization and also undermine Canada's ability to maintain sole control over fisheries management in the Canadian 200-mile zone.
They say further on in the letter:
We agree with Premier Williams that the proposed amendments are flawed. Further, in the long run they will not only weaken Canada's position in NAFO but more importantly Canada's position in any future arbitration or in any future reference to the Law of the Sea Tribunal.
That is an extremely important point because the provisions that are in the NAFO treaty will override other more liberal provisions that would protect Canada and allow Canada to act under the Law of the Sea with the NAFO convention with its more restrictive provisions prevailing.
What we have seen is a government that set out with good intentions. I will grant that. The promises that were made were ones that we supported in Newfoundland and Labrador. They reflected the all-party consensus in the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans before 2005. There was some very positive feeling in Newfoundland and Labrador that at long last Canada was taking this issue seriously and someone was going to take the bull by the horns and act in the interests of Canadian sovereignty, in the interests of international stocks off our coast, and to provide some protection instead of having the stocks depleted continuously.
We know what the experience of that is in Newfoundland and Labrador. Since 1992, there has been a moratorium on one of the largest, hugest biomasses in the world in terms of the codfish. The protein that was able to be produced on an ongoing sustainable basis from that biomass of cod was a gift to the world, a world that is starving for protein. That was destroyed by a failure to properly manage it. We see the same concerns being raised about what is happening outside the 200-mile limit.
This was an opportunity for Canada to take some leadership in the international field and act to protect those stocks, to act in the interests of Newfoundland and Labrador and Canada to ensure that there was a possibility for these communities, that for hundreds and hundreds of years not only in Newfoundland and Labrador but as we have heard in Îles de la Madeleine, eastern Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, to continue their rural existence to fish and to continue that way of life.
That is put at risk. We ask and urge the government to reject this treaty. We will wait for a vote in the House and hope it will succeed, and that the government will listen to the will of the House and reject this treaty, file an objection, go back to the drawing board, and see if we can get a better deal.
