Thank you, Mr. Chair and distinguished members.

I would like to acknowledge, with appreciation, my co-panellists appearing today as witnesses.

It is a sincere pleasure for me to return to this table. This time, however, it will be at the other end of the committee room. As some of you may know, I had the privilege of serving on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for several years, and I believe we did important work back then, as you continue to do now.

I have been witness to every aspect of the rise and fall of our northern cod resource as well as the pain and suffering surrounding its slow and difficult rebuilding.

In 1994, as a much younger man, I was asked to serve as the special adviser to the then-minister of fisheries and oceans. This was just after the two-year moratorium had been already declared by then-minister John Crosbie in 1992.

In 1994, the two-year moratorium became a moratorium of indefinite duration.

In 1996, I was honoured to be asked to serve in public life as the member of Parliament for Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte. I served in the House for just shy of 20 years, including in the cabinet of Mr. Chrétien.

In 2015, for some of the very reasons we sit together today at this table, I took a decision to seek office in the provincial legislature, where I currently serve as Minister of Fisheries.

Prior to my parliamentary career, I worked briefly in marine ecosystem research in northern Newfoundland, having trained at Dalhousie University.

My perspectives on the past and ongoing failures of northern cod management are both professional and personal. In these difficult times, the one thing I believe we, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, need to be able to rely on is that this committee will serve the interests of a better fishery and a better future for those who have been waiting in hope for its return. Now is not the time for partisan loyalties or entrenchments.

In my time here, if there was one committee on Parliament Hill that rightfully cultivated the reputation of being beyond politics and in service to our coastal communities, it is, indeed, this committee. I can't ever remember any member of this committee looking to join so they could be a shill for their party, nor can I remember dissenting minority reports being the norm, as it is with other committees. This committee always came together to speak truth to power. Keep hold of that.

With that said, it was disturbing to have learned through internal DFO documents that the 32-year moratorium was somehow over by virtue of a switch of a single word and in defiance of scientific advice. The legal and political consequences of relying on a single word—commercial over sentinel—to generate a false hope are offensive. Talking points don't change 32 years of loss, the anxiety of cultural separation or the economic and social upheaval that this brings forth. It doesn't change the past, but, unfortunately, that single word, as we have discovered, does have a material effect on our future.

For anybody to think that the decisions around the 2024 harvesting plan, or CHP, for northern cod would result in street parades or songs and poems being written in celebration of the weight of the past 32 years being somehow lifted exposes the fact that the magnitude of this decision was never understood by DFO. It wasn't understood in 1992 and clearly still isn't understood to this day. There was no political win deserving to anyone here.

The only political win that can ever be created is from a fishery that has been honestly rebuilt on a foundation of sustainability, with windows and doors to allow transparency and a protective roof made up of informed decision-making, with fishermen and scientists working together towards an informed joint decision-making process. This is the kind of house we need to build to have a future. This was, and is, too much for Newfoundland and Labrador to ask, apparently.

I don't know exactly what to say to that, but over the next 90 minutes, if you were to ask me what I knew about the long-standing Government of Canada allocation policy of the first 115,000 metric tons of harvestable quota, I would tell you.

If you were to ask me what has been the long-standing position of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador on the inshore-offshore allocation split, I would tell you.

If you were to ask me what I think of the supposed necessity of Canada's having no choice but to recognize the fishery as being commercial, with all of its legal implications within NAFO, I would tell you why this was untrue and defeatist.

If you ask me what I feel about the risks of foreign distant-water fishing fleets, foreign bottoms, entering the fishery under the current NAFO convention and its system of voluntary rule, I will tell you what I think there.

If you ask me if there are other Atlantic fisheries that demonstrate just or even more clearly how far off track DFO is from understanding the past and learning from it to make better conservation decisions in the future, I will point directly to what is happening today with redfish in unit 1, Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Most importantly, if you ask me how all of this was able to occur in such a vacuum here in Ottawa, with no one offering honest, pragmatic advice to the emperor about the clothes they think they are fashioning, I will tell you. It's time now to speak truth to power. I will explain why joint management's time has come.

Mr. Chair, I look forward to the questions to come forward.