Here is a great editorial by, Averill Baker, who describes herself as a "live and die" Newfoundlander. It's clear she is genuinely (and rightly) flabbergasted by her government's position on bottom trawling. It starts off:
Not one fisherman alive, or dead for that matter, agrees, or would have agreed, with the position taken by our politicians, and others, concerning bottom trawling on the high seas.
In a separate editorial Baker sheds some light on how the Canadian politicians are spinning the bottom trawling (dragging) debate:
The scoundrels are in this case our politicians, and other so-called fisheries experts, who declared publicly they support bottom dragging on the high seas.
These scoundrels now include our MPs, and even some of our own cabinet ministers in this province, who displayed their ignorance in public pronouncements that if the United Nations banned bottom dragging on the high seas Canada would then be forced to ban it inside 200 miles.
What a stretch. What a display of unmitigated stupidity!
... snip ...
There are 17 foreign nations out there bottom dragging, and Canada is not one of them, ripping the daylights out of the spawning grounds of our groundfish on our Continental Shelf outside 200 miles. And we have a bunch of people in power who think more about those foreigners than they do their own people.
The editorials are a lovely rant and makes a lot of good points. Even if you're a Canadian, in fact especially if you're a Canadian, tell the Canadian government to change its shameful position.
Go on Canada. Less than a month to go, but there's still time to be the hero.