Fisheries committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, committee. I worked at DFO in the international relations field for more than 23 years, 15 of which were at the senior executive level. I also spent more than three years in Brussels in the early 1990s as the Canadian fisheries

Fisheries committee  I did, and in fact I worked very closely with Minister Crosbie. I recall very well Minister Crosbie's view that he was the minister for the fish. Someone had to stand up to protect and conserve the fish. I find this current agreement to be for the fishing industry so it can maxim

Fisheries committee  It's even more specific than that. First of all, many of the fish stocks in the northeast Atlantic swim through the coastal state waters of more than one coastal state. They may swim through the waters of Norway, Iceland, and on the high seas, for example. So you have two coast

Fisheries committee  I don't find it surprising; that's always been the European Union's objective. What I do find surprising is why we let them. The consequence is that the person who is the chair and has the pen produces the chairman's report—produces the report on a discussion—and they can put i

Fisheries committee  I think you partially answered it. When parties don't want the stocks to go down, they're going to resist the conservation measures that would be put in place to protect those stocks. If you require more parties to vote for the conservation measures, you're going to have a greate

Fisheries committee  It's a good point, because there are actually two sections of the NAFO amendments, sections 14 and 15. Section 14 deals with the objection procedures. It sets up a panel to review objections. Section 15 deals with dispute settlement. Section 15 reflects or basically refers what a

Fisheries committee  The objection procedure wouldn't last two, three, or four years. That would be a dispute settlement process, a separate one. If they objected in October or November when they have the first chance to do it, then there's a 60-day waiting period. A whole bunch of steps are built in

Fisheries committee  This can get a little technical. I'll try not to get too technical. We have been asking for three years for the government to do a thorough clause-by-clause analysis of the NAFO Convention, the new amendment, to see where the subtle little changes have come in. There are a lot o

Fisheries committee  The status quo isn't perfect. As we said in our letter to the Prime Minister, we think the agreement should be renegotiated. We think it needs significant amendments. It's long been identified that the major problems were the objection procedure, and there was a need for a bindi

Fisheries committee  Our meeting with Premier Williams was at his request. We have not sought meetings with any other premiers or any other government.

Fisheries committee  The letter we sent to the Prime Minister was copied to all of the provincial premiers in Atlantic Canada.

Fisheries committee  When you talk about silence, I haven't heard anything. But what they've said to Premier Williams, what they've said to the federal government, I don't know. Their interests obviously are different. When we talk about Canada being the coastal state of the fish stocks on the nose a

Fisheries committee  Thank you. One of your questions is why is Canada doing this, and what is Canada getting out of this. I don't know. I can say, though, that I do know that there is a view now that standing up for Canada's rights, being forceful, has been perceived as not being effective. The way

Fisheries committee  I don't want to say that because there may have been people who made a decision that we don't want to have fights any more; we want to have peace. We want to move together positively, and if we show trust, we expect them to show trust. Whether that's delivered on the other side o

Fisheries committee  Correct.