NAFO amendments bad for province

A panel at a fisheries forum in St. John's Thursday outlined why it thinks amendments to the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) convention, drafted in 2007, are a bad move for Canada.

But not everyone agrees.

The panel made up of four former high-ranking officials with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) also expressed concerns in an interview with The Telegram earlier this week.

They say the NAFO reforms do not accomplish their original goal - custodial management for Canada over fish stocks on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap.

Instead, they say, the reforms could give European Union members, such as Spain, Portugal and the U.K., a say in fisheries management inside Canada's 200-mile limit.

The amendments were tabled in Ottawa in June, but do not require a vote in Parliament.

The federal cabinet can ratify them with NAFO when ever it wants.

The arguments made - to five members of Parliament, the province's fisheries minister and dozens of others interested in the fishery - were compelling and had most singing the panel's praises as whistleblowers on an important issue.

Provincial Fisheries Minister Tom Hedderson told reporters after the forum Ottawa has to take the province's fishery more seriously.

"It is a convention that the province has some great difficulty with," Hedderson said of the NAFO amendments. "It simply doesn't cut the mustard."

Hedderson said anything that compromises the province's ability to manage fish stocks is a problem.

Liberal MP Gerry Byrne called the proposed amendments horrendous.

"My vote is, this is a bad deal for Canada," he said.
"There's no reason why Canada should be hasty in ratifying this."

Byrne and NDP MP Jack Harris both said they will try and work together through a motion in Parliament to try to convince the federal government not to ratify the deal, at least not before the next federal election, which could happen within months.

"This is another example of a failure of the government of Canada to act in the best interest of Newfoundland and Labrador and also an example of basically giving up on a promise that they made," said Harris.

He agrees with the panel that the Canadian delegation to NAFO in 2007 claimed it had won custodial management, when in fact it didn't come close.

That's something the president of the Fish Food and Allied Workers' union (FFAW) agrees with.

"I think (former federal fisheries minister) Loyola Hearn really did a disservice when he claimed that the proposed amendments to the NAFO convention amounted to custodial management, because that's absolute hogwash," said Earle McCurdy.

But McCurdy doesn't agree with other assertions made by the panel.

"The current NAFO regime has been a disaster to this province and our members," he said.

"I don't agree that the proposed changes are worse than the current regime."

McCurdy was an adviser to the Canadian delegation in 2007 and said it made the best of a bad situation.

He's agreeable to more debate on the proposed amendments and would prefer not to have the amendment which could allow Canada to let NAFO help manage waters inside the 200-mile limit.

But McCurdy contends Ottawa has allowed NAFO countries access to a large amount of Canadian fish stocks, in Canadian waters, in the past, so that's nothing new.

McCurdy said he believes another amendment, while flawed, at least provides a binding arbitration process to force countries to comply with NAFO regulations.
That didn't exist before and McCurdy acknowledges the process is still too cumbersome.

The members of the panel disagree with McCurdy's assertion that the new amendments are binding and say they can be ignored as easily as the previous NAFO policy of objecting to and then ignoring NAFO quotas.