Dear Faldage,
Welcome to the biggest point of contention in Newfoundland. Here, Canada's sovereignty extends to the so-called "200-mile limit". Unfortunately, that does not include the "nose and tail" of the Grand Banks (you need a map for that one). The Grand Banks is where all the fish live (relatively shallow water - 100m to 200m deep - rich in life). Therefore, foreign fleets come in and trawl beyond our 200-mile limit, and catch all the fish. There is a moratorium on cod fishing on the Grand Banks, because of the collapse of the cod stocks, but it doesn't count past the 200-mile limit. So basically cod stocks (and Newfoundland's economy) will never recover, thanks to the Europeans fishing the hell out of them beyond the 200-mile limit. Unless we extend our sovereignty to include that region. Which looks doubtful. Add to that the furore created by environmental nuts about the seal hunt, and you have a cod stock that will never recover. Real research (not just fishermens' theories based on anecdotal evdience) seems to have shown that there are too many seals to allow the cod stocks to recover. (And no, no one clubs baby seals to death. Blame that misconception on good marketing by the environmental nuts.)
Recently the government has decided to ban ships from countries accused of overfishing (or fishing protected stocks) from docking at any port in Canada. So far they've banned a couple of countries (not sure which ones). I doubt it will do any good.
I used to be skeptical of the claims that Newfoundland was being screwed around by the rest of Canada, but now I'm not so sure. For example, the collapse of the BC logging industry due to the tariff imposed by the US on softwood was the cause for much concern here. However, the EU has a 20% tariff on Canadian (mostly Newfoundland) shrimp and no one in Ottawa much cares. The foreign overfishing thing is just more of the same.
Edit: point of this? I think I see what stales is getting at.
