Fisheries committee  Thank you for the opportunity to chat today. My name is Josh Laughren, and I'm the executive director of Oceana Canada. With me is Dr. Bob Rangeley, who is the director of science for Oceana Canada. We were established in 2015 as an independent charity and as part of the large

Fisheries committee  Save the easy one for me. I don't think that's a great investment of our political will at the moment. I think the control over NAFO in particular has gotten better, but not without issue. It has gotten a lot better over the last 10 or 15 years, due to the leadership of Canada,

Fisheries committee  I'll stop there. No, I think we should be focused on applying policy as we have it in Canada

Fisheries committee  No.

Fisheries committee  Sure. First, I'll point to the FAO report, which we can send over to you. When they analyzed stocks that had been rebuilt, there were a few commonalities. In the majority of cases, the difference between stocks that were rebuilt and those that weren't was where there was a legal

Fisheries committee  I'm just going to go where Dr. Hutchings went at the end. I mean, when we do it badly, we pit science against the knowledge of the people in the industry.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  It's not a great spot. When we do it well, we integrate information from the users into our science model, so the science is better, and that's where Dr. Hutchings was going at the end. I shouldn't put words in his mouth. That seems to me the way out: to find better and better w

Fisheries committee  I think the U.S. has all sorts of problems with its fisheries too. There are things that are going well and things going badly, but the one thing they have a better record on is rebuilding stocks that have—

Fisheries committee  I have not spent much.

Fisheries committee  I quote good scientists like Dr. Hutchings and the work of DFO that says it's at one third of what's been established as that limit reference point. It's some 90-plus percent from depleted in a historical sense. I think that's a fair characterization in anyone's mind.

Fisheries committee  That's a great question. Certainly, a fair bit of it relies on co-operation between countries. It depends. If the vessel is within your own waters, I think you have much more that you can do, obviously, than if it's outside your waters. We do increasingly have tools. Using AIS

Fisheries committee  This isn't my area of expertise, but I'm sure there are plenty of good models. I like what Dr. Hutchings said. The question of how many fish are out there is a science question. The question of what is the effect on the population of different levels of harvest is a science que

Fisheries committee  Absolutely, and I think DFO is getting better at that too. I'm going to look to my colleagues here to see if anyone has a good example to point to exactly that.

Fisheries committee  Sure. Bob helped me on this. In our science report, we pointed to a number of case studies, such as the Atlantic sea scallops in the U.S., which recovered quite quickly. Georges Bank haddock is another one that comes to mind, which recovered very quickly once a rebuilding plan wa