For twenty years, both Canada and the United States were non-parties to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOS Convention). In 2003, Canada finally ratified the LOS Convention, leaving the United States as the only industrialized state that was not a party to the “constitution of the oceans.” Canada's perspective on the US non-party status involves an equal measure of frustration/disappointment, appreciation/understanding, and ambivalence.

In order to enhance and encourage compliance with obligations in multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), states have agreed to the creation of compliance committees for all of the recent MEAs. Canada has been a strong supporter of the compliance committee experiment and an active participant in the negotiation and operation of numerous MEA compliance committees. This article does three things. First, it examines the international legal nature of the MEA compliance committees. Second, the key issues of the structure of the committees are explored. Finally, the article look at the development and operation of compliance committees pursuant to: the Montreal Protocol; the LRTAP Convention; the Espoo Convention; the Basel Convention; the Cartagena Protocol; the Rotterdam Convention; the Stockholm Convention; and the Protocol to the London Dumping Convention.

Although there have been few international adjudications dealing directly with fishing disputes in the past, all but one of the cases before ITLOS have been fisheries cases. This article first reviews the different ways in which a fisheries dispute can get before ITLOS and considers the disputes that have been on the docket of ITLOS so far. These have resulted in five decisions on requests for prompt release, two decisions on request for provisional measures, but only one decision on the merits of a dispute. The conclusion is that ITLOS has played a useful role in fisheries dispute settlement particularly when contrasted with the history of international dispute settlement for fisheries disputes.

The 1995 Agreement on the Regime for Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks completes one aspect of the work of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea. This article presents a summary of the provisions of the 1995 Agreement and their relationship to the 1982 Convention. The author offers insights into the possible effectiveness of several articles and concludes that the 1995 Agreement offers states the possibility of a stable and predictable dispute resolution mechanism. Whether states will take advantage of this regime is another question.

So mocked the Honorable John Crosbie in the Canadian House of Commons in 1982 before he became the Canadian government minister with responsibility for the Canada-France negotiations respecting St. Pierre and Miquelon.

In the last decade there has been an enormous growth in the literature concerning the law of the sea. This expansion in academic activity parallels the growth in the functional uses of the oceans and the interest in the oceans currently displayed by the nations of the world.