Fisheries committee  I'm not going to say everything's perfect, but I will say, as I mentioned before, we don't use observers. We are not relying on observers as our key compliance tool. We're relying on Canadian fishery officers and we're spending money, as you're aware, to keep officers in the NAFO regulatory area, and to have two to three vessels....

Fisheries committee  That has been a problem in the past. There's nothing in terms of UNCLOS that would prevent somebody from coming forward and fishing in the NAFO regulatory area, as long as they're cooperating with the organization. Having said that, the presence of NCPs, non-contracting parties, has dropped dramatically over the years as a result of actions taken by Canada, and recently by NAFO and NEAFC, and by Iceland as well.

Fisheries committee  In the past, we've had vessels re-flag, whether it's Spanish, Icelandic, whatever. So they'd re-flag to Belize or to a flag of convenience. Canada spent a lot of time on talking with those countries to make sure there was a connection between the flag and the vessel so that they were going to meet their obligations.

Fisheries committee  In my opinion, NAFO is more effective now. Countries have learned that they need to change their behaviour as far as fisheries management is concerned. In the past, Spain, the other countries and even Canada continued to fish a much too high volume of fish, even if there had been changes in the environment.

Fisheries committee  I've got to be quite frank that we aren't putting much weight on international observer reports at this point. We're relying on data from satellite systems, air surveillance, observed tows by fishery officers, and extrapolation of those tows based on days on ground. We have a very clear idea of where they're fishing, and we know how much their catch per unit effort is, so we have those as a way of estimating catch.

Fisheries committee  There are observers on board.

Fisheries committee  Yes, except Norway hires Canadians, and some of the others are also looking at that, but—

Fisheries committee  One must admit that NAFO failed as far as overfishing of cod in the North is concerned. Unfortunately, the same thing must be said regarding fisheries management in Canada. We had problems with the cod fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as well as in Nova Scotia. That is why we are in the process of changing the way we manage fishery resources.

Fisheries committee  In my opinion, NAFO is becoming more effective, because we have far less a foreign fishery, therefore more compliance with regulations. Also, we have seen an increase in the population of certain species of fish. For example, the populations of yellowtail, cod and redfish are increasing.

Fisheries committee  Are you suggesting that Canada would try to write into an international treaty the right to unilaterally impose anything we want on people outside the 200-mile limit, on the high seas?

Fisheries committee  No, we didn't. That's not what we did.

Fisheries committee  In the NAFO convention. If you're a party to that convention and there's some measure adopted, it applies to you by obligation if you don't object or if you don't go through objection procedures and disputes. If it applies to you, if you accept it, it comes into your management of those high-seas fisheries automatically.

Fisheries committee  I would point out that in the past, prior to the changes at NAFO--in behaviour, at least--that took place back in the 1990s, we won all the votes and lost all the fish. That's a reality. We paid with fish to get the votes, and then when we won the votes, because of the convention people just went fishing anyway.

Fisheries committee  In a sense, that already's in there, because if you look at--

Fisheries committee  I absolutely--