Bill C-52 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (terms and conditions of permissions, leases and licences)

This enactment amends the Fisheries Act to expressly provide that a breach of a term or condition of a permission referred to in section 4 of the Act or of a lease or licence issued under the Act is an offence.

Ontario Fishery Regulations, 1989

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the report tabled by the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations.

First, let me thank the committee for its diligence on behalf of Canadians in overseeing the regulations that govern this country. I have served on that committee. I know that although the work can be tedious at times, it is very important.

Earlier this month the standing joint committee tabled a report that included a resolution to disallow subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations under the Fisheries Act. The subsection in question states that:

No holder of a commercial fishing licence shall violate any of the terms or conditions of the licence.

The committee's view is that the Fisheries Act does not provide the authority to set out in a regulation the requirement to comply with licence conditions. The government is of the view that it does.

This has been a long standing issue between the government and the standing joint committee. Governments, long before ours, have always maintained that subsection 36(2) falls within the regulation making authority under section 43 of the Fisheries Act, that it is legally sound and that it is supported by court decisions.

Section 43 of the Fisheries Act is broad enough to include the requirement to comply with licence conditions. Among other things, section 43 provides the authority to make regulations: “for the proper management and control of the sea-coast and inland fisheries”.

It also provides authority to make regulations:

(b) respecting the conservation and protection of fish;

(f) respecting the issue, suspension and cancellation of licences and leases;

(g) respecting the terms and conditions under which a licence and lease may be issued;

The Ontario fishery regulations provide clear guidance as to the conditions that could be attached to a commercial fishing licence in that province. Similar regulations exist for other fisheries. These conditions include the species, size and quantity of fish that may be taken, where and when fishing can occur, and the type of gear that may be used.

Fishing licences, their attached conditions and the requirement to comply with them, are fundamental to the proper management and control of the fishery. They are crucial to protecting and conserving our fishery resources.

In fact, in a fairly recent development, one of which the committee may not have been aware, Ontario is using licence conditions to address a significant threat to its $2.3 billion recreational fishery. The province has placed certain restrictions on the movement of bait fish to control the spread of viral hemorrhagic septicemia. VHS has been implicated in killing a large number of sport fish in the province.

Clearly, compliance with these conditions as required by subsection 36(2) is critical for the sake of Ontario's sport fishing industry.

Let me add that individuals who participate in the commercial fishery know they must comply with licence conditions or face consequences. The government has always argued that in addition to the authority to suspend or cancel licences, Parliament did make it an offence to contravene the Fisheries Act or regulations under it in section 78 of the act.

The courts have agreed with the government's position. They have ruled that regulations made under the Fisheries Act that require compliance with licence conditions fall within the scope of the act's regulation-making authority, and they found that contravening this requirement is an offence under section 78 of the act.

So, from a legal perspective, in my opinion, subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations is on firm footing.

However, I would be the first to say that we are not asking for the status quo. We believe that in most cases the potential for jail time is not an appropriate penalty for such contraventions. Fortunately, the courts have imposed fines in cases involving contravention of subsection 36(2) rather than imprisonment, but I do agree that greater clarity could be provided for the requirement to comply with licence conditions.

We are doing something about that. It comes to us in Bill C-45, which the minister tabled in December. The bill resolves the standing joint committee's regulatory concern with subsection 36(2) and does much more.

Revoking subsection 36(2) is not the right course of action, given that a bill has been tabled that addresses the committee's concern. That is why the minister filed the motion before us today to oppose the committee's resolution for disallowance.

Disallowing subsection 36(2) would create a serious legal gap in Ontario's ability to enforce licence conditions on some 500 commercial fishing licences and about 1,400 commercial bait fish licences.

Furthermore, the standing joint committee has indicated that if its resolution to disallow is supported, the committee would expect similar provisions in other fisheries regulations to be revoked. This would create an enforcement vacuum that would threaten these natural resources in virtually all of Canada's fisheries. During this vacuum, all that would be left to punish lack of compliance with license conditions would be suspension or cancellation of licenses, and the courts have made that process very difficult indeed.

Disallowing this regulation would then compel our government to draw up a quick fix bill to plug this regulatory gap and then get it passed through both Houses. This is something that has not worked on no less than three occasions in the past, Bill C-33 in 2003; Bill C-43 in 2004, which died on the order paper; as did Bill C-52 in 2005.

In fact, I did not support Bill C-52 as a solution when I sat on the other side of the House because I believed then, as I do now, that we have much more to offer Canada's fishers.

As tempting as it may be to try to pass a simpler minor amendment to deal with the committee's issue, we owe Canadians that and much more. We owe them a renewed Fisheries Act, one that would resolve this regulatory issue and provide for more collaborative, accountable and transparent fisheries management, which is exactly what Bill C-45 does. It resolves the standing joint committee's concern with subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations by clarifying that compliance with fishing license conditions is a requirement of the act.

As I mentioned, the new Fisheries Act does much more. It puts forth a new licensing framework and an administrative sanctioning regime for most breaches of license conditions instead of relying on the courts. It introduces an arm's-length fisheries tribunal to handle violations of the act or its regulations.

The standing joint committee has also expressed concern that because license conditions are administrative decisions, non-compliance with them should not carry potential jail time for violators. Bill C-45 address this concern.

In the sanctions regime, as mandated in the new act, penalties for contravening the requirement to comply with license conditions would no longer include the possibility of jail time. The bill also responds to issues the committee has raised in the past with variation orders, and I will not get into that at this time.

The new Fisheries Act also includes measures for shared stewardship of our fisheries. It allows those with a stake in the fishery to have a say and take a hand in how the resource is managed.

Bill C-45 would also put in place a clearer and more accountable framework for stable access to the fishery and allocation of fish shares.

The new act also clearly spells out the considerations that the minister must take into account when making licensing and allocation decisions, and those which he or she may choose to consider. In other words, all the cards are now on the table.

Protecting fish habitat and preventing pollution are inextricably linked to sound stewardship of our fishery resources. Bill C-45 would compel everyone who administers the act to consider principles of sustainable development, and take an ecosystems-based and precautionary approach to conserving and protecting fish and habitat.

Speaking of principles, passage of Bill C-45 would, for the first time, set out management principles for fisheries and fish habitat right in the act.

In short, Bill C-45 would remedy the standing joint committee's immediate concern with subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations and it does so much more on behalf of Canadians who depend on the fishery.

We have an opportunity here to make a lasting difference in better managing our fisheries and oceans by providing Canadians with a modern and more effective Fisheries Act, an act that would help deliver the ultimate sustainable value to the public from Canada's fish and ocean resources for generations to come.

I believe that concentrating the House's efforts on passing Bill C-45 is the right approach. I oppose disallowance of subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations and will be voting to return the report to the committee so it can ensure that its concerns are addressed in Bill C-45. I encourage all members to do likewise.

I again thank the committee for its thorough scrutiny of this country's regulations. I think its work in respect to subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations highlights the importance of passing Bill C-45 through Parliament as quickly as possible. I hope members of the House will agree that the time for change in the fishery has come.

Business of the House

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I see the hon. member across the way is displaying his charm once more.

I also think the hon. member understands clearly that the call for the election and, ultimately, if there is an election caused, it will be the opposition members who will have to take responsibility since they will be voting to dissolve Parliament and we will be voting to sustain Parliament in order to continue the work that I will now lay out.

This afternoon we will continue with the opposition motion.

On Friday we will call consideration of the Senate amendments to Bill C-37, the do not call bill; report stage and third reading of Bill S-36 respecting rough diamonds; report stage and third reading of Bill C-63, respecting the Canada Elections Act; and second reading of Bill C-44, the transport legislation.

We will return to this work on Monday, adding to the list the reference before second reading of Bill C-76, the citizenship and adoption bill; and second reading of Bill C-75, the public health agency legislation.

Tuesday and Thursday of next week shall be allotted days. There are some three dozen bills before the House or in committee on which the House I am sure will want to make progress in the next period of time. They will include the bill introduced yesterday to implement the 2005 tax cuts announced on November 14; Bill C-68, the Pacific gateway bill; Bill C-67, the surplus legislation; Bill C-61, the marine bill; Bill C-72, the DNA legislation; Bill C-46, the correctional services bill; Bill C-77, the citizenship prohibitions bill; Bill C-60, the copyright legislation; Bill C-73, the Telecom bill; Bill C-60 respecting drug impaired driving; Bill C-19, the competition legislation; Bill C-50 respecting cruelty to animals; Bill C-51, the judges legislation; Bill C-52, the fisheries bill; Bill C-59 respecting Investment Canada; Bills C-64 and C-65 amending the Criminal Code.

In addition, there are the supplementary estimates introduced in October that provide spending authority for a wide variety of services to the Canadian public and we the government would certainly like to see this passed.

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I find the last part of that question a little puzzling, given that the hon. member was at the meeting where I in fact outlined the opposition days. They will begin the week of November 14 and will go right to December 8. We are meeting our commitment and our obligation to provide seven opposition days during this supply period.

We will continue this afternoon with the second reading debate of Bill C-65, the street racing bill, followed by Bill C-64, the vehicle identification legislation, Bill S-37, respecting the Hague convention, Bill S-36, the rough diamonds bill, and reference to committee before second reading of Bill C-50, respecting cruelty to animals.

Tomorrow, we will start with any bills not completed today. As time permits, we will turn to second reading of Bill C-44, the transportation bill, and reference to committee before second reading of Bill C-46, the correctional services legislation. This will be followed by second reading of Bill C-52, respecting fisheries.

I expect that these bills will keep the House occupied into next week.

On Monday we will start with third reading of Bill C-37, the do not call legislation. I also hope to begin consideration of Bill C-66, the energy legislation, by midweek. We will follow this with Bill C-67, the surpluses bill.

Some time ago the House leaders agreed to hold a take note debate on the softwood lumber issue on the evening of Tuesday, October 25.

We also agreed on an urgent basis to have such a debate on the issue of the U.S. western hemisphere travel initiative on the evening of Monday, October 24.

Accordingly, pursuant to Standing Order 53.1(1), I move:

That debates pursuant to Standing Order 53.1 take place as follows:

(1) on Monday, October 24, 2005, on the impact on Canada of the United States western hemisphere travel initiative;

(2) on Tuesday, October 25, 2005, on softwood lumber.

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to lay out the business for the next week.

We will continue this afternoon with Bill C-55, which is the wage earner protection program. Then we will proceed to the second reading of Bill C-57, the financial institutions bill, followed by second reading of Bill C-54, which is the first nations oil and gas and moneys management act.

Tomorrow we will consider report stage and, if possible, third reading of Bill C-25 respecting Radarsat. I understand as well that there are some ongoing discussions about the disposal of Bill C-63, amending the Canada Elections Act. We would also like to deal with Bill S-38 respecting the spirits trade and Bill S-31 respecting autoroute 30.

On Monday we propose to commence report stage of Bill C-11, which is the whistleblower bill. We would like to give this bill priority all week in the hope of completing all of the remaining stages.

We would then return to any business left over from this week and, if there is time, begin consideration of Bill C-44, the transport bill; Bill C-28, the food and drug legislation; Bill S-37, respecting the Hague convention; Bill S-36, the diamonds bill; and Bill C-52, the fisheries bill.

With respect to the business of supply during the present period, Mr. Speaker, I will reconfirm that you confirmed to the House that there will be seven allotted days during this period. In response directly to the opposition House leader's question, as per our discussion at the House leader's meeting this past Tuesday, we understood we would schedule the supply days after the Thanksgiving break.

In any event, it will be a topic that I look forward to discussing with House leaders at our meeting this coming Tuesday, so that we can in fact schedule all the required opposition days.

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, our principal legislative objectives continue to be Bill C-43, the third reading vote of which will take place after question period, and Bill C-48. The government believes these bills reflect public interest and the enactment of both of these bills is required before the House adjourns for the summer. As the hon. member mentioned, if the House does not pass Bill C-48, we will be here in July and August. Consequently, we will continue to give these bills priority until they are disposed of.

We will then consider report stage of Bill C-38, the civil marriage bill; Bill C-25; Bill C-28; Bill C-52, the Fisheries Act; Bill C-47; Bill C-53; Bill C-55, the bankruptcy bill; and Bill C-37, the do not call legislation.

Fisheries Act

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Delta—Richmond East gave a very useful and interesting speech.

Would he agree with me from the tone and from the content of the speeches we have heard that the most worrisome thing about Bill C-52 and I think the reason the Conservatives put forward amendments is the whole thing seems to be shrouded in falsehoods and misinformation? My colleague cited the Ontario hunters and anglers who have been led to believe things that simply are not true in order to push forward the world view of the Liberal management of the fisheries.

Would the member expand a little on how the Ontario hunters and anglers and even the Sport Fishing Advisory Board and others seem to have been misled or sold a bill of goods about the impact of action or inaction regarding Bill C-52?

[Inky Mark, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to take part in the debate on Bill C-52. I listened carefully to my colleague from British Columbia on the whole issue of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I can certainly echo similar experiences in my riding of Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette of actions of the bureaucrats at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Unfortunately, too many of these regulations force the department to operate in a manner that is unaccountable to anyone except itself. The people in my riding understand that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a relevant role to play in terms of environment enhancement to ensure that the fisheries remain intact in the future. There are huge bodies of water in my riding and fish are very important to the people who live there.

Unfortunately, because of the way the regulations operate they make a lot of people angry, sometimes because they do not understand the history of the riding and how real things happen. For example, the installation of culverts and ditches is always a sore point with the rural municipalities. Fisheries officers from who knows where, possibly from academia, usually inform the municipalities that they have to take the culverts out. They are not allowed to install them without studies, which incur costs. The same thing happens when bridges are being built. Engineering studies have to be done. It increases the costs for the rural municipalities.

We know that regulations tend to get out of hand. With Bill C-52 perhaps we need to look at less regulation and do away with some of the regulations that exist in the current legislation rather than add to the regulations. I would like to hear the comments of my colleague from the west coast.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to address this particular issue again tonight. It is an issue of considerable concern back home. One of the difficulties we have had in British Columbia is the whole notion that somehow or another the management of the fishery was out of our control, that decisions were being made on which people did not have the ability to make proper comment and that decisions being made were simply onerous and at times expensive for the fishermen involved.

Let me give the House an example. Our problem today is with the ability of the government to put conditions on a licence and then to impose sanctions on that condition. The sanctions, as we have suggested, could involve fairly substantial fines, time in jail or the seizure of the vessel and fishing equipment. Those are all significant penalties for breach of a licence condition. The problem with licence conditions is that we fail to provide the proper scrutiny for those regulations.

I just want to walk through the process. The Fisheries Act is the big Kahuna of the management of the fisheries. It is the body of law from which all the other authority derives. It advises the minister of his responsibilities and obligations and so on. It limits the responsibilities the minister has and it defines them very clearly. For example, in section 43 of the Fisheries Act, it states:

The Governor in Council may make regulations for carrying out the purposes and provisions of this Act and in particular, but without restricting the generality of the foregoing, may make regulations--

It then goes on to list a whole host of regulations:

(a) for the proper management and control of the sea-coast and inland fisheries;

(b) respecting the conservation and protection of fish;

(c) respecting the catching, loading, landing, handling, transporting, possession and disposal of fish;

(d) respecting the operation of fishing vessels;

(e) respecting the use of fishing gear and equipment;

The list goes on. It is fairly precise and yet at the same time it is open-ended and it does give the minister a fair amount of latitude to operate.

However, once that is said, in making the regulations that will apply to the fishery, the minister has certain steps to follow. To begin with, he has to provide a committee of cabinet with those proposed regulations which would then be subject to some scrutiny. That scrutiny is fairly well outlined in the Statutory Instruments Act.

For example, in the Statutory Instruments Act it suggests that there must be an examination of the proposed regulations. It states that the regulations must be presented in the usual way in both official languages and so on and then it states:

3.(2) On receipt by the Clerk of the Privy Council...the Clerk of the Privy Council, in consultation with the Deputy Minister of Justice, shall examine the proposed regulation to ensure that

(a) it is authorized by the statute pursuant to which it is to be made;

(b) it does not constitute an unusual or unexpected use of the authority pursuant to which it is to be made;

(c) it does not trespass unduly on existing rights and freedoms and is not, in any case, inconsistent with the purposes and provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights;

and (d) the form and draftsmanship of the proposed regulation are in accordance with established standards.

It is fairly onerous, if we will, as regards the kinds of oversight that are carried out before that regulation comes into effect.

If the bill is acceptable by cabinet, what happens next is that the bill is gazetted, printed and then comments are invited from the public.

I have an example from October 1, 1998 of regulations amending the fishery general regulations. It lists the regulations. As we go down through the document, we come to a regulatory impact analysis statement. The minister is required to provide this regulatory impact analysis statement. It first describes the regulations and then goes on to suggest what alternatives may be in order. It talks about the benefits and costs of the particular regulations that will be there so that this thing is not just thrown out without those safeguards. It then talks about the consultation that took place, the compliance and enforcement that would be required and that would include the fines. It then gives the contact person in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Let me give an example of when we simply have licence conditions attached to a licence.

All of these requirements under the statutory regulations and, in particular, this regulatory impact analysis statement are foregone. They are not part of the process.

For example, on the gillnet fishery on the west coast, gillnetters are required by law to have a revival tank on the vessel. The purpose of the revival tank in the Fraser River fishery, for example, is if any coho are caught the coho, which we are not supposed to capture, are to be put into the revival tank and maintained there until they are fit to be put back in the water and then their survival would be ensured. That is the purpose of the revival tank. That, on the surface, makes sense.

However the government has done this by licence conditions and it really has not looked at the impact of this. These revival tanks cost somewhat better than $1,000 for the average tank. For a fisherman who last year only fished 39 hours and maybe only made $3,000 or $4,000 with his licence, $1,000 is a lot of money. The worst part of it is that fishermen are required to have that revival tank on their vessel in July and August when there are no coho in the river.

We have a case in British Columbia now where a fisherman was charged for not having a revival tank on his vessel in July simply out of spite. The bureaucrats were upset with this fellow because he had been protesting some of the actions of the department and was not satisfied with it so the bureaucrats used this section. They told the fisherman that because he did not have his revival tank in operation they were going to take him to court and march him through the process. They told him that under the terms and conditions of the licence he had to have the tank in operation whether it was needed or not therefore he would have to pay.

That is the kind of outrageous authority that I do not think we should be giving these bureaucrats. I do not think that is what is called for and I do not think it is what Canadians want or expect.

I think the Ontario minister and, unfortunately, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters were in receipt of communications from the federal minister about this particular bill. The minister put the fear of God into not only the Ontario minister but the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and all but told them that if these regulations were not in place and the committee's disallowance report went ahead, the government would not be able to manage the fishery and it would to be over. It would have to shut the fishery down because it would be impossible to manage without being able to attach conditions to a licence. The government said that in the absence of licence conditions the commercial fleet would be unmanageable, it would not be able to control the species taken, the amount taken, the gear used, the time for fishing and the location of fishing.

In fact, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters said, “otherwise the protection currently in place through regulation for the $7 billion a year sport fishing industry will be unable to address the species of fish taken, the amount taken, the type of gear used and the timeframe and location of that activity”.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. For example, the Ontario fishing regulations talks about restrictions. No. 16 states:

No person shall engage in angling within 25 m of a cage in which fish are held for culture or a pound net.

No. 17(2) states:

A person who is angling from a boat may use two lines in the waters of Lake Erie, except in Rondeau Bay and the Inner Bay of Long Point Bay.

The Ontario minister is under the impression that the fishery cannot be managed without licence conditions. Well they do it in the regulations in Ontario already. That is just one example.

In No. 17(5) it states:

A person who is angling by trailing lures or baits behind a fishing vessel that is in constant forward motion created by muscle, motor or sail power may use two lines in the following waters:

(a) the waters of the St. Marys River west of 83°45'W. in Division 17; and

(b) the waters of Division 23, excluding

It goes on to list some exclusions.

In No. 18(1) it states:

--no person shall engage in angling through the ice with more than two lines.

In No. 18(3) it states:

No person shall engage in angling through the ice with more than one line in the waters set out in the table to this subsection.

The table is extensive. They are all doing things in the regulations which the minister in Ontario tells us that if Bill C-52 is not passed, they will not be able to do. Well they are doing it. It is just that these guys do not want to be bothered with open government and accountability.

The bureaucrats do not want to answer for the licence conditions that they put forward. Somehow they think it is okay for bureaucrats to put in place licence conditions which can result in imprisonment, large fines or the seizure of fishing vessels or fishing lodges if one is a sports fisherman, and I find that to be particularly reprehensible.

I responded to the Ontario minister of fisheries in a letter on July 8 in response to letter he sent to our fisheries critic on June 7. My friend, the parliamentary secretary for natural resources, read a good part of the Ontario minister's letter into the record. My letter read:

With respect, your response indicates that your office may not understand the objections of the Committee. The objection is not whether your Department’s objective is wise from a policy perspective. Its sole concern must be whether s. 36(2) of the Ontario Fishing Regulations is authorized by the Fisheries Act.

That of course is the issue. I also told the Ontario minister in my letter:

Furthermore, you seek to have Parliament amend the Fisheries Act to give your Department the ability to launch such criminal proceedings against fishermen who might breach a term or condition established by your officials.

I went on to say that the scrutiny of regulations committee has already refused to endorse such a course of action. On April 14, 2004 it warned:

Our acknowledgement that the amendments...would resolve the Committee's objections to the legality of the relevant regulatory provisions does not imply an endorsement of those amendments.

Particularly as regards the proposed section 10(1), which would impose a legal duty to comply with the terms and conditions of a license, we can conceive that some Parliamentarians might object to subjecting such non-compliance to penal sanctions that include imprisonment. To deprive a citizen of his liberty on the ground that the citizen has failed to abide by a requirement imposed by a public official in the exercise of administrative power, such as a term or condition of licence, could be thought undesirable as a matter of legislative policy.

I do not know of anyone on this side of the House who does not subscribe to that point of view. It is highly inappropriate for someone to end up in jail because he or she was not in compliance with a regulation that was put in place by a fisheries bureaucrat as opposed to a regulation which was authorized by this place.

The fisheries minister in Ontario is simply asking Parliament for an authority that it has never granted to departmental officials. It is worth underscoring that this authority that is being asked for is one that simply has not been allowed in other places. As I said earlier, the Library of Parliament could find only two instances where regulatory schemes or conditions to a licence would be sanctioned by someone other than Parliament and without parliamentary scrutiny. They were in the airline industry and in the nuclear industry, but there are public regulatory bodies that are overseeing those industries, and in fact, there is full public disclosure.

The parliamentary secretary was suggesting that parliamentary scrutiny would still be available, but section 10(2) contained in clause 1 of Bill C-52 makes it very clear that the regulations referenced in section 10(1) will not be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. That is a deep concern.

I suggested to the minister in Ontario that he has two options available to protect the fishery in Ontario. He could continue to impose terms and conditions on a licence and employ licence sanctions as an effective means of censure. In other words, he could withdraw the licence for a day or two days, or simply suspend the licence if that is his wish. That course certainly would be available to him, or he could develop and seek passage of regulations to replace existing licence conditions.

Certainly that is the route I would prefer to see, regulations to replace these existing licence conditions. We have this public process in place to oversee those regulations, to get public input and to ensure that not just the special interest groups are heard, and those special interest groups may simply be the commercial fishing industry or the sport fishing industry or some such other body, but to ensure that the public at large has the ability to respond. That is important.

Quite often, as my friends down the way have been suggesting, on these fisheries issues the public at large has a very real interest in protecting the fishery because of the historical and cultural significance that maintaining a sustainable fisheries has.

Although the bill may be very small and does not quite fill a page, it is of huge significance. It is one that we certainly should not be supporting.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver Island North has given us a very knowledgeable speech on this subject and on the Bill C-52 subamendment, which I believe is what we are talking about now.

I know that my colleague actually comes from the industry. I often wonder what it would be like if we actually had a minister of fisheries who was in fact a fisherman. What a novel concept that would be. What a refreshing change it would be to have somebody with that personal experience actually running DFO.

I took note of the comments my colleague was making on the subamendment to Bill C-52. He both introduced it and summarized it by saying that it was about enforcement in a primary way. I believe that was his opening remark.

I can share with my colleague that I once built a house for a scientist who worked at the Pacific biological research station at Nanaimo. He was studying groundfish and the aging of groundfish. I asked him why. He said it was so that we know what age is the right time to harvest them and what would be too young and should be thrown back.

I said to him that it was 1985 and he was just then studying the appropriate age of groundfish and what time we should be harvesting them, and I asked where they had been for the last 50 years when we were talking about enforcement. That was just basic science that they were doing; it was elementary level science. As a lay person not in the field, I was shocked to learn that.

My question is about another project. I am a carpenter by trade. Another project I worked on was up in Alice Arm in Kitsault, B.C., where we were building a new molybdenum mine. We built all the houses for that new mine.

We talk about lack of enforcement, but I can personally attest to what it was like the day that mine opened up and the effluent and the tailings started dumping into Alice Arm. We could see the cloud, the plume in the water. As we flew over, we could literally watch that plume of effluent drive all the life out of that very narrow fjord-like inlet to the sea 80 miles down. It literally sterilized Alice Arm. The mine is now closed. I do not think Alice Arm has ever recovered.

I have a question for my colleague. If this is all about enforcement, in his experience where has the enforcement been? Where has the responsibility been over all these years when travesties like the experience at Alice Arm were taking place in his own general region of the country?

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the subamendment to Bill C-52. I have enjoyed the debate in a way that I have not enjoyed some other debates recently. Whenever we start talking about fish, people's emotions very often come into it. Even though we have had some people with a background in the legal fraternity who have become quite involved in the debate tonight, I find it very satisfying to be sitting between two people with a legal background and two away from our fisheries critic from Newfoundland and Labrador. Being from British Columbia, I have a riding with a very strong fisheries component and influence.

This has been a great debate. We have learned quite a bit. One thing we have learned is that the government in this legislation specifically is trying to put a very bad patch on a flat tire. If it succeeds in what it is attempting to do, it only will have a blow out again. This is not the way to create a regime where we ask people to enforce a licence, to fine people or put them in jail on the basis of no statutory authority and we do it by declaring that the words in the bill do not constitute part of the Statutory Instruments Act.

This is the worst kind of an ad hoc emergency, short term, evasive, unprincipled way to approach this issue. Unfortunately, this has become a philosophical way of life for some of the senior management at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It exhibits itself in the way they manage the department.

If we go to the crux of the issue, it is all about enforcement of the fishery. How do we enforce the fishery? Presumably we do it through the act and then we do it through regulation. Administratively, we do it through the licence process.

We know the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has been remiss in its enforcement of areas where it has a very clear responsibility and authority. I will only talk about British Columbia because that is what I know the best for the purposes of example.

We had a Fraser River sockeye fishery that was being prosecuted by people, with no enforcement being carried on portions of the river. That was a deliberate decision by some people in the bureaucracy. There was no political will to give it what they really needed, which was police backup because of the fact that it felt threatened. This is all a matter of public record. We know that enforcement did not occur. This contributed in a major way to the collapse of that fishery.

While that very lack of enforcement was happening, we had enforcement officers in Johnson Strait boarding boats and fining them because they did not have the log filled out for that day. This is the kind of lack of appropriate priority setting that we see over and over from the department. This comes from a department which controls virtually every aspect of the livelihood of the commercial sector of the fishery.

That direct control requires parliamentary scrutiny and parliamentary approval if we are going to avoid the pitfalls of having the bureaucracy or junior officials carry out vendettas. It would put recipients of licences at the mercy of some entity that is not palatable. This already happens to some extent and is very problematical. There are no end of things that could be scrutinized in the system.

Recently, a fisherman who had been part of developing a new fishery, what is called an emerging fishery. Because he had been partaking in the experimental end of it, everything on the form that he filled out to indicate that he was eligible for a licence in this new regime of licensing, everything pointed to him being eligible. An employee of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans accepted the fee and it was only several weeks later that the applicant learned that there had been a judgment that the boat did not have a certain kind of licence in a certain timeframe and therefore did not qualify. That was based on the way the form was filled out and not the actuality. The judgment was that the form was controlling everything despite the fact that when the form was accepted, it all looked okay.

Here is an individual who is now not licensed in a fishery he helped develop through no fault of his own. One would assume that there would be a fairness test and an appeal, and that this would be a very easy thing to overcome. It just so happens that an emerging fishery is not eligible for appeal to a tribunal. The rules are not clear that there is any appeal and so presumably it could be ruled either way that there is an appeal or there is not an appeal.

I have certainly made my representations and to date it has been quite a few weeks without a response. In the meantime, time marches on and fishing seasons come and go, so this is probably becoming an academic question. These questions are not academic when somebody's livelihood is at stake. Over and over again, every aspect of fisheries policies, fisheries regulations, and fisheries licensing has everything to do with whether a person is able to make a living or not in the commercial sector.

We must ensure that what we are doing is appropriate and in the long term interests of the fishery, not just to ensure that our commercial harvesters are treated appropriately but to ensure that conservation and every other aspect of the fishery is being considered under a system that is open to scrutiny and has parliamentary oversight when appropriate.

We have had a real problem with the priorities of the fisheries department. We have witnessed the collapse of the Fraser River fishery and this was not the first time for the sockeye runs. We have seen places like Smith Inlet where we have had runs decimated. There is no longer any real attempt to even monitor what is truly going up the rivers and what is happening there. It was a major salmon resource in the mid-coast of British Columbia that for a generation or more has now been largely left to its own devices and abandoned, and it is not doing well at all.

We have seen extinctions of runs with no explanation. We have seen a lack of commitment from this administration on what really gets many people involved in the fishery which is salmon enhancement and our whole approach to habitat improvement and our hatchery system.

We have had over a $4 million cut to that program in British Columbia and Yukon. This is a program that enlists thousands of volunteers. I am not sure what the latest number is but I read that it is in the tens of thousands of people who volunteer their time on the west coast of Canada to do work in this area. A small program that has not risen in cost to the government is now being cut back because of so-called overspending some years ago, making many people very unhappy. There has never been a satisfactory explanation.

We know that the fisheries department is now divided between those who support these expenditures and those who are trying to grab part of that budget for their own because they are so stretched for funds. The sharp pencils in Ottawa are quite happy to let that game play itself out because in the meantime they are controlling the agenda. We have a situation where the public expectation of what the department should be doing and could be doing is quite different from the reality.

What happened in this latest round on the Fraser River is a perfect example. The fisheries office in the Fraser Valley was responsible for much of the enforcement in that area, but it was not happening. The people in the Fraser Valley were not hoodwinked in any way. They knew that the department lost its will, its ability or desire to enforce the rules on the Fraser River, and so they were not under any misunderstanding at all. That is consistent with the sort of elusive and ad hoc, unprincipled approach that the department was taking as to how it conducted business.

I started off by talking about the importance of this whole enforcement regime. The government can change the words. It is only trying to put a patch on a flat tire, but it is also trying to find a way to make its enforcement band-aid even easier from an academic, theoretical standpoint. It all means nothing if one is not prepared to do any of the enforcement.

We had cuts to the number of enforcement people on the west coast and we had a huge move to put enforcement people in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. That was several years ago. We are now at the point where that experiment turned out to be a bad idea. They really frustrated landowners in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba with this overzealous behaviour that rocked generations-old practices, carried out a whole bunch of counterproductive things, and attacked the basic premise that people who own private property had some say over how they were going to cultivate their land and so on.

Now we have the government retrenching those very people who they shipped out, but it is not translating itself into an improvement on enforcement efforts on the coast. We are still not getting the resources. This essentially means that once again what many view as a priority activity of government becomes an activity of government that government sees as non-essential and one that it can easily and largely dispose of, so this is not a happy time.

We have first level fisheries personnel who deeply care about the resource. They involve themselves in the community. They involve themselves with the people who are users of the resource. They provide an interface with the public and they are not governed by a clock. They deeply care about the resource.

We have members of the public in the very same category. I talked about the thousands of people who volunteer. We have school children with a deep appreciation of the wonders of the fisheries resource. They take school days, and go out and see what is going on. We have rural communities with a deep attachment and sometimes this is very much an economic question as well.

We have some of our coastal communities that have become quite dependent on the commercial recreational sector that occurs in the summer time. Those communities are feeling quite vulnerable to the actions of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans as well because if they choose to suddenly cut the activities of the local hatchery, this can have a devastating effect.

We have deep concerns being expressed by all of the communities on northern Vancouver Island within my riding regarding the behaviour of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

This has also been expressed through the aboriginal fishing groups in my riding, sometimes as an association. Sometimes on a personal level I have been approached. It is easier for them to talk to me; I can be the bearer rather than them.

What we have with this bill is a political and bureaucratic situation that is a failure of the public interest. I welcome any questions.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Winnipeg Centre for sharing his time with me.

This is an extremely important issue, not so much the amendments that I will read into the record shortly, but the whole issue of the fisheries across the country, including in my province of British Columbia. What we have seen is the systematic mismanagement of our fisheries which has had huge repercussions on communities throughout British Columbia, up the coast of British Columbia and up the Fraser River as well.

I would like to touch briefly on what Bill C-52 does. My colleague from Winnipeg Centre was very clear about the fact that it is just another sign of the mismanagement by the Liberal government when it found that it did not have the ability to assure statutory compliance with the terms and conditions in the Fisheries Act.

Bill C-52 adds the following new section 10, entitled “Compliance with terms and conditions”:

(1) Every one acting under the authority of a permission referred to in section 4 or of a lease or licence issued under this Act shall comply with its terms and conditions.

(2) For greater certainty, those permissions, leases and licences--including their terms and conditions--are not statutory instruments for the purposes of the Statutory Instruments Act.

As my colleague from Winnipeg Centre mentioned, very clearly this is another side of the mismanagement in the fisheries that we have seen with the Liberal government.

I would like to talk about the fact that this is what we are considering in the House when there are so many other extremely important issues to deal with as a result of the Liberal government's inability to deal with fisheries issues and to take into consideration the impact of fisheries in places like British Columbia and all across the country.

The commercial fishery in British Columbia is responsible for maintaining about 15,000 jobs in communities throughout the province. Revenues across the province were about $358 million in 2002. We are talking about a significant industry in British Columbia, but what have we seen from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans? What kind of effective management have we seen?

I would like to read into the record portions from two reports that recall the mismanagement of the Liberal government with respect to fisheries. The first is the 2004 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. This is what was said:

Overall, we are not satisfied with the progress made by Fisheries and Oceans Canada in responding to the recommendations we made in the three previous audits in 1997, 1999, and 2000. While many stocks are abundant, some Atlantic and Pacific salmon stocks are in trouble. We continued to identify significant gaps in managing risks.

The Department has not finalized the Wild Salmon Policy, which would set out clear objectives and guiding principles. The policy would also bring together biological, economic and social factors--for fisheries and resource management, habitat protection and salmon enhancement.

There are shortcomings in information on salmon stocks and habitat and scientific knowledge on the potential environmental effects of salmon aquaculture and aquatic ecosystems.

There are weaknesses in regulatory approvals, enforcement, and monitoring of salmon aquacultural operations. This includes approving aquaculture site applications, assessing cumulative effects, and monitoring salmon aquaculture operations to prevent harmful destruction of habitat.

There has been inadequate coordination between federal and provincial governments in managing fish habitat, undertaking research, approving aquaculture site applications, and sharing information.

I would like to read into the record comments made by the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council:

The federal government's capacity to conserve and scientifically manage the Pacific salmon fisheries continues to be eroded.

This was according to the annual report of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. The report notes that Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been focused on dealing with budget cuts when it should be directing its attention toward managing this valuable resource. It questions the government's capacity to do an effective job in areas of enforcement, habitat protection and restoration, salmon enhancement, research and stock assessment. It also calls for the department to open its management to public scrutiny about the effectiveness of its choices.

The issue is we effectively have report after report that condemns the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for its mismanagement, in this case of Pacific salmon stocks. Very clearly the issue of the mismanagement of the fisheries has not been adequately addressed by the government.

We have a couple of paragraphs in Bill C-52 that are, in a sense, the government's initiative on fisheries. At the same time, communities along the coast in British Columbia and in the river areas are being sorely impacted by the mismanagement of the government.

The B.C. NDP caucus, my colleagues, including the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, the member for Burnaby—Douglas and the member for Vancouver East have been standing front and centre on these issues. We have been fighting to ensure that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans plays an active role in fighting to ensure our fisheries can recover from the years of Liberal mismanagement.

I would like to mention two key points in the last few months. First, in mid-December both my colleagues from Burnaby—Douglas and Skeena—Bulkley Valley called for a judicial inquiry into the collapsing sockeye salmon stocks in the B.C. Fraser River.

Of the two million Fraser sockeye that were expected to reach their spawning ground in the spawning period last fall, fewer than 500,000 returned. In a very real sense, what we are seeing is a catastrophic fall in spawning. We anticipated two million Fraser sockeye and instead we saw fewer than 500,000. That is why the members for Burnaby—Douglas and Skeena—Bulkley Valley called for the judicial inquiry to absolutely ensure that we were aware of the fall in the stocks and of the catastrophic implication of Liberal mismanagement in the fisheries.

Another initiative the British Columbia members of the NDP caucus undertook last month was to call for a release of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans report on the results of sea lice tests that were conducted in the Broughton Archipelago. That is a very well known area north of Vancouver Island, an exceedingly beautiful area of British Columbia and of the country.

The sea lice tests that were undertaken on wild salmon in this area were not released prior to the provincial election. British Columbians had the right to have all the information in hand. Instead, to the shame of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, that the information on the impact of that culture on wild salmon in the Broughton Archipelago was not released.

We have some clear issues on which we have stood front and centre, issues that we have raised in the House. We are exceedingly concerned about the mismanagement by the Liberal government of fisheries, particularly the Pacific salmon fisheries in British Columbia. The impact on communities across British Columbia is enormous. When our resources are not effectively managed, it has an impact on communities throughout the coastal region.

What concerns me most about the debate this evening is the issues that are not being brought forward by the Liberal government. Resource allocation is not being addressed. The mismanagement of the fisheries is not being addressed.

British Columbia members of the New Democratic Party caucus as well as our fisheries critic, the member for Sackville--Eastern Shore, will continue to stand in the House and fight to ensure that our resources, our fisheries, are better managed and that we do justice to communities throughout British Columbia.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, those are very useful questions. It was helpful to me to learn some of the tests that exist with the creation of regulations. I fully agree that any new regulatory regime should meet those basic standards.

I would be very concerned that Bill C-52 seeks to bypass that methodology, those tests that were put in place for very real and important reasons. This is another example of how we are encouraging the arbitrary authority of unelected individuals instead of meeting the tests of scrutiny, by the scrutiny of regulations committee at least.

I am also very concerned to learn that the bill contemplates vesting this authority in bureaucrats to set conditions of licensing. This is not a matter for unelected officers, especially when penalties are associated with violation of the conditions of these licences. This goes far beyond the ordinary and acceptable scope of any bureaucrat. Frankly, as a member of that bureaucracy, I would not want that authority or that responsibility that comes with it. That should be vested in the legislative branch of government and not the administrative branch of government.

Bill C-52 is riddled with flaws. It is a continuation of a disturbing trend that we have noticed, a motif that we have recognized to be the characteristics of the Liberal government, a disrespect for Parliament and a penchant for vesting ministers with absolute arbitrary authorities. It is a worrisome trend that we should discourage every time we can.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I fully support the comments of the member opposite on the Devils Lake issue. What we have is a government which is prepared to get tough on fishermen in a very arbitrary way, yet refuses to get tough on our neighbour to the south when our watersheds are going to be devastated by environmentally irresponsible actions on the part of the U.S. That has to be troubling for us all. I can assure my friend across the way that he certainly has the support of members of the Conservative caucus on steps that could be taken to address that most important issue.

I would like to get my friend's comments on a couple of items with regard to Bill C-52. The first is that we asked the Library of Parliament if it would investigate whether there was another area where government had used regulations or statutes in the same way as it is doing with Bill C-52. In fact, it was only able to find two other statutes where there were similar provisions. One was with regard to regulating nuclear facilities and the other was airlines. In both of those instances, the industries are governed by public regulatory tribunals and not by secret regulation, so they do not apply.

The Library of Parliament, in essence, was not able to find similar statutes where bureaucrats are allowed to add terms and conditions to a licence that could lead to jail time or forfeiture of fishing equipment and so on. I am wondering if my friend is aware of any.

The second point to which I would like to draw my friend's attention is something that he addressed in his interventions. I found that very intriguing. In the process of developing regulations, under the Statutory Instruments Act, the cabinet at committee is presented with a review of the proposed regulation. The regulation must be examined to ensure that it is authorized by the statute pursuant to which it is to be made; that it does not constitute an unusual or unexpected use of the authority pursuant to which it is to be made; that it does not trespass unduly on existing rights and freedoms, in other words, that it is not in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; and that the form and draftsmanship of the proposed regulation are consistent with what is expected.

There is some real scrutiny on any regulations that proceed under the normal process, a process which Bill C-52 intends to ignore.

I wonder if my friend would like to comment on the process involved in the Statutory Instruments Act, as well as the inability of Parliament to find similar situations.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to join the debate on Bill C-52 on behalf of my NDP caucus colleagues and the people of Winnipeg Centre.

Mr. Speaker, I intend to split my time with my colleague from Burnaby--New Westminster.

Bill C-52 found its origin when the scrutiny of regulations committee virtually stumbled across the fact that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans had been setting regulatory conditions of licensing without any statutory authority to do so. It begs the question: Is this the way the government has been running the DFO for the last decade or more? If that is true, it explains the absolute mess the fishery is in from one coast to the other.

A number of speakers who have spoken tonight have listed a myriad of grievances about the mismanagement of the fisheries from one end of the country to the other and the middle in the great freshwater fisheries such as we enjoy in my home province of Manitoba.

Lake Winnipeg is the fifth largest lake in North America and is home to the largest surviving freshwater fishery in North America and is valued at almost $30 million American per year. I am very concerned that inaction on the part of our federal Liberal government may sound the death knell for that important economic engine for the province of Manitoba.

As of July 1 of this year, the United States intends to divert, by inter-basin transfer of water, the dirty polluted water from Devils Lake, North Dakota into the Cheyenne River, into the Red River and flowing north into Lake Winnipeg. If Bill C-52 were to grant regulatory authority to the minister, I hope he would use whatever authority he might have to intervene on behalf of the people of Manitoba to counter this egregious breach of Canadian sovereignty, an environmentally disastrous move of the wholesale inter-basin transfer of water from polluted Devils Lake, North Dakota ultimately into Lake Winnipeg.

Let me explain some of the frustration that Manitobans feel. Not only is this a catastrophic move environmentally, but as far as diplomatic relations between Canada and the United States are concerned, this single unilateral action by the United States could be the death knell of the boundary waters treaty of 1909, an international instrument that has proven critically important in protecting the interests of both signatories to that treaty from the unilateral actions of the other.

The International Joint Commission, of which the House I am sure is familiar, deals with complaints regarding the boundary waters treaty. Both parties have to refer an issue to the International Joint Commission and the Americans have refused to do so. It is a diplomatic slap in the face to have them say that they will solve their flooding problems in Devils Lake by cutting a channel and diverting all that water into Lake Winnipeg.

One of the serious problems that comes to mind with this is the invasive species aspect. At least one well-known parasite exists in Devils Lake called the gyrodactylus hoffmani which is a flat worm that parasitically attaches itself to the gills of channel catfish, minnows, et cetera. No environmental assessment has done on the Devils Lake diversion and so the scope and magnitude of this invasion by this species is unknown.

The scale of the spread of it is unknown because we are talking an inter-basin transfer here and the drainage basin that flows into Lake Winnipeg is most of western Canada. It is from the Rocky Mountains to Hudson's Bay essentially. This drains into all of Saskatchewan and most of Alberta. A great deal of the northern country in Nunavut directly to our north flows down and toward Lake Winnipeg. That same parasitic invasion could flow the other way and infect vast regions.

Not only that, in recent years the Americans, as do Canadian prairie farmers, have been overloading their fields with chemicals and pesticides to such a degree, and the wetlands have been drained, that a lot of this runoff goes into Devils Lake.

By the cruelest of ironies, the Americans have chosen Canada Day to turn the tap on for this diversion of water into Canada and when they do, an extra 40,000 pounds of phosphorous water a year will be going into Lake Winnipeg. It is bad enough that we already have our own agricultural contaminants going into Lake Winnipeg from Canada but we also have mercury, sulphates, nitrogen, diammonium phosphate, some of the popular fertilizers. All of these nutrients will be flowing into Lake Winnipeg seriously compounding the algae problem that exists there already with floating algae beds that are acres in size. The U.S. army corps of engineers has ignored the well-being of Canada in digging this diversion.

We had a similar problem in 1977, called the Garrison diversion, where the Americans again wanted to solve their water drainage problems by diverting through Garrison. They had a plan to divert their water north into Canada to follow the drainage into Lake Winnipeg. With a great deal of protest we managed to stop that.

We have tried everything this time. I personally went down with Lloyd Axworthy when he was the minister of foreign affairs to meet with senators and congressmen in Washington, D.C. and implore them to reconsider the disastrous and catastrophic idea of the inter-basin transfer of water. They simply accepted our representations to them, acknowledged that it was a serious environmental threat and then said, “If it ever comes down to doing what is best for North Dakota and what is best for Canada, we will do what is best for North Dakota. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out”. Essentially, that was all they would do for us.

Now we are desperately urging Canada to use every diplomatic measure possible to appeal to the Americans to block this catastrophic move. Our Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has a role to play. Surely there is a joint interest, an international element to the Department of Fisheries. There always has been, whether it is offshore with our fishing limits or, in this case, the interprovincial and international flow of water that can have a devastating effect.

However one of the most frustrating things is that reason and logic do not seem to penetrate this barrier we are getting from the Americans. Even their own research shows that by diverting this water they will lower Devils Lake by 1.5 inches per year. It has risen three feet in 10 years. They will devastate the largest freshwater fishery in Canada, possibly, all for the sake of making their water levels static and dropping it by 1.5 inches per year. At what cost?

Some day we have to start looking at ourselves as global citizens. We cannot let this arbitrary 49th parallel be the place where reason stops. That is simply not progressive thought and there is no future in that way of thinking.

When I see Bill C-52 and I think of the pattern of unilateral and arbitrary powers that the government likes to give ministers and the lack of respect for Parliament when it squirrels things away, it reminds me of a saying that the devil is in the details of any piece of legislation.

The government has put all the details into the regulations and very little of the specifics into the legislation. We rarely get to debate all the facts surrounding a piece of legislation in this House of Commons. We end up debating the shell or the outline of a bill but the regulatory changes, where the real meat and potatoes are, remain the exclusive domain of the minister to introduce at a later date.

In this case, we are appealing to the government to become seized of the issue of the crisis that is looming in the Devils Lake diversion and use whatever arbitrary powers that it has granted this minister to intervene on our behalf.

We are at the eleventh hour. The clock is ticking. July 1 is almost here. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is about to turn on the faucet and flood Lake Winnipeg with a bunch of invasive species and chemicals that we do not want or need. It will be the end of an era for Manitoba tourism and fisheries. It will be the death knell for Lake Winnipeg.

I urge my colleagues to please help us address this issue. I certainly implore the government to use whatever is in its power to help us save Lake Winnipeg.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague from York—Simcoe on his criticisms of this government's very hastily crafted and ill-conceived bill, and more particularly, on how this government has failed to address the real problem facing fisheries across Canada, such as those in Manitoba and Ontario, that is, the degradation of the watersheds and the Great Lakes due to the decline in water quality and the invasive species.

Ontario is home to the greatest freshwater fishery in the world. The Great Lakes are home to some of the best freshwater fisheries anywhere on the planet. The government has done absolutely nothing over the last 12 years to address ever increasing declines in water quality and the threats to native species such as those posed by invasive species.

There are heritage rivers in York region, Simcoe County and Wellington County, all across southern Ontario: the Grand River, the Maitland River, the Saugeen River, the Thames River, the Don River, the Credit River and the Humber River. In northern Ontario, there are the French and Spanish Rivers. All these rivers and their watersheds and all of the Great Lakes that these river watersheds feed into are under threat. I include in that Lake Simcoe.

There is a lack of resources in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Ontario to address some of the problems facing our watersheds. We do this with very short-sighted vision, because these watersheds provide the drinking water for 13 million Ontarians. The damage to these watersheds, which is a direct result of lack of attention from this government, is absolutely unfathomable to Ontarians.

Yet the government can rush through a flawed bill such as Bill C-52 just like that. I cannot understand why the government would have the resources and the political will to rush through a bill like Bill C-52 without addressing the real problems facing Ontario's watersheds and watersheds across the country.

My question for my colleague from York—Simcoe about Bill C-52 concerns why this government is putting forth such a flawed piece of legislation. Why is the government allowing regulations that would be created under Bill C-52 to be exempt from parliamentary oversight and the Statutory Instruments Act? It seems to me to be a tack very similar to the one the government has taken with the $9 billion in foundations. Those too are not subject to parliamentary oversight or to scrutiny by the Auditor General.

In much the same way, the government is exempting itself from scrutiny under the Statutory Instruments Act with this bill. It is another example of the command and control style of executive management best typified by the government instead of Parliament being allowed the legislative and parliamentary oversight. Could my hon. colleague comment?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, there may be some confusion regarding exactly what we are talking about. Although it is a minimal change, it is about what the shift in power is. In fact, it may be exactly the opposite of what some of the members opposite believe.

The basic issue is that fishing licences have to be enforced. I do not think anyone would disagree with that. Fishing licences have to be enforced so that we can protect the fishery. If commercial or other fishermen did not have to live up to their fishing licences, there would be chaos in the fishery. The fishermen and the fisheries organizations have made that quite clear to us.

The parliamentary committee for the scrutiny of regulations has said that this enforcement cannot be in the regulation because it leads to penalties and there cannot be penalties in a regulation. It could at any time eliminate that ability of the enforcement and it would be totally justified. It is a proper parliamentary procedure. The fact is that people have to follow their licences. Otherwise there would be chaos. This is what fishermen and anglers are so worried about and it is why they want us to make this change.

There is the jeopardy of losing control over enforcing licences. The way it has to be done legally is to put it in the act. As members know, the act comes under the scrutiny of Parliament. Regulations are determined by cabinet and acts are determined by Parliament. Parliament actually has more control with this change.

The hunters and anglers and the anglers' associations are very worried because of this parliamentary procedure and that this particular enforcement is in the regulation where it is not valid, as opposed to being in the act. There could be chaos in the fishery and they are urging us to move ahead on this issue.

I will quote some letters. The first one is from the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. Members from Ontario will know how huge that organization is and its expertise and how long it has worked on protecting the fisheries. It states:

On behalf of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (O.F.A.H.), our 78,500 members and 640 member clubs across Ontario, I am writing to express our strong support for Bill C-52, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (terms and conditions of permissions, leases and licences)--

The bill appears to be a straightforward attempt to deal with a procedural issue raised by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, and once passed, will ensure that the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources continues to have the authority to enforce the regulations applying to commercial fishing licences. For the over one million licensed anglers in Ontario, it is critically important that the regulations and the enforcement of these same regulations by provincial authorities, is supported and allowed to stand. Otherwise, the current protections for the $2.5 billion a year sport fishing industry in Ontario will be useless, and render the Province impotent in terms of being able to govern the species of fish taken, the amount taken, the type of gear used, and the time frame and location of that activity. This in turn will also jeopardize the work of thousands of individual anglers and angling clubs who have invested a huge number of person hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars in running hatchery and stocking programs on the Great Lakes and inland waters.

We urge you in the strongest possible terms to quickly move forward with the legislation, and trust that your colleagues on both sides of the House will recognize the importance of the bill and vote accordingly.

I am hoping that those members connected to the industry and who understand how it works and know the importance of it will see that there is a legal remedy to enforce fishing licences. I hope that members, such as the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, will step up and make sure that this case is made and that the concerns of people in the fisheries are heard. This is the simple change of the locus of the regulation which says that fisher people have to follow their licences. It moves it from a regulation where it is not legally valid because it includes penalties into the act where people will definitely have to enforce it. Of course it is still under the scrutiny of Parliament because all acts are under the scrutiny of Parliament. That can be changed at any time.

The second document I want to quote from is a letter from the Ontario minister of natural resources to a number of Conservative MPs, putting these principles on the table again, a simple change, to make it is legal to enforce fishing licences and to ensure it stays legal so there is no chaos in the fishery. It will still be under the scrutiny of Parliament because it is an act of Parliament.

He states:

Further to the debate that took place in the House of Commons on June 6, 2005, regarding Bill C-52, An Act to Amend the Fisheries Act, I would like to take this opportunity to address some of the issues that I understand you and your colleagues raised during that debate.

I understand that during the debate, it was implied that I did not understand the nature of subsection 36(2) of the Ontario Fishery Regulations, 1989, since I mentioned in my letter of April 14, 2005 to [the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans] that disallowance of section 36(2) would impair the ability to impose terms and conditions of licence. I would like to point out that the intent of my April 14 letter was to indicate that, while conditions can indeed be specified in fishing licences, without the ability to enforce the requirement to comply with these conditions of licence through prosecutions, the enforcement tools at our disposal would be inadequate. Conservation of the resource and proper conduct of the fishery requires a broad range of adaptable enforcement tools that include prosecution.

I understand that it was also suggested in the debate that civil servants could impose any kind of conditions without restriction. Conditions are an integral part of the licence and a vital component of the management of the fishery. However, subsection 36(1) of the Ontario Fishery Regulations, 1989 specifies the conditions that may be imposed in a licence.

The conditions are only a very limited number to start with, and are set by officials under any circumstances before or after the act goes through.

He goes on to say:

These include such matters as the waters from which fish may be taken; the species, size and quantity of fish that may be taken; and the fishing gear that may be used. These conditions all relate to the management and control of the fishery and the conservation and protection of fish.

We require compliance with licence conditions to ensure conservation of the resource and proper conduct of the fishery. While in principle it may appear that cancellation of a licence can be used as the only tool to enforce compliance, in practice it is inadequate. It would be analogous to trying to enforce highway speeding infractions only through cancellation or suspension of a driver's licence. In addition, under Ontario's process a commercial fishing licence cannot be suspended or cancelled until after a hearing before a hearing officer who makes a recommendation that I must consider. The current process can take time and the licence can only be suspended or cancelled for the remainder of its term.

Under a prosecution for a violation of a condition of a commercial fishing licence, there is the flexibility to seek a penalty appropriate to the circumstances. For example, one might seek a lesser penalty for a first time offender than a repeat offender. The size of fines can vary. Other penalties, such as forfeiture are also available. The cancellation of licences is not a flexible tool. The cancellation cannot be tailored to the infraction. It would mean that a person committing a minor infraction could see his or her licence cancelled. That remedy could threaten their livelihood and so must be used only in appropriate circumstances.

As the Minister, I take my responsibility for conservation of the fishery resource in Ontario very seriously. My ability to enforce compliance with licence conditions solely through suspension or cancellation of a licence is unrealistic from an operational perspective. Failure to maintain the ability to enforce terms and conditions on commercial fishing licences could very well put this significant resource at risk.

In summary, the minister who deals with fisheries and the anglers and hunters associations that are well versed in fisheries simply want to ensure that licences can be enforced. An all party committee has determined that it is not legal to have them enforced the way they are right now. It is in jeopardy because it is in a regulation. To be legal, it just has to be put into the act.

Acts are under the scrutiny of Parliament so there is no more authority for the minister. Perhaps there is less because Parliament can scrutinize that regulation. Remember, we are talking about is a regulation that says one has to abide by one's fishing licence.

Whether it is in an act that Parliament can change or in a regulation that cabinet enforces, I do not think it makes a lot of difference. Everyone agrees with it. It will be under the scrutiny of Parliament but it will protect the fishery which I am sure every member of Parliament wants to do. I am sure every parliamentarian wants fishing licences to be enforced.

It was determined that this technical change was needed, to the credit of the an all party committee of this Parliament. It recommends that we make it legal to enforce the fishing licence. It would be removed from a regulation where it is not valid, because we cannot have penalties in a regulation, and it would be moved into the act where it would be valid. Nothing will change, but it will legally continue to protect the fishery as everyone would like and it will not be at jeopardy.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the opportunity to ask my colleague some questions about his speech.

Would the member agree with me that it is a worrisome trend in this Parliament and in the previous Parliaments under the auspices of the Liberal government, a pattern or we could even call it a trademark motif of the government, that virtually every piece of legislation it puts in place grows and adds to the arbitrary authority of the minister? The arbitrary powers of the minister are almost always enhanced by a bill. We never see those powers limited by any legislation.

In this case, Bill C-52 was made necessary because it became known that the minister had been setting regulations for years as it pertained to the fisheries in Ontario with no statutory authority whatsoever. We could view the bill as a way to further augment and enhance the powers of the minister to make it at least legal that he does set regulations.

I would ask the member to comment on two worrisome trends. The first one is the urgency and, seemingly, the goal of the Liberal government to enhance the arbitrary unilateral powers of ministers. The second one is the regulatory regime, setting regulations, leaving the details out of legislation and leaving it in regulations where they can be arbitrarily and unilaterally introduced by the minister.

Do either of those trends ring familiar with the member and is he concerned by those trends?

[Greg Thompson, Conservative, St. Croix—Belleisle, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to hearing my colleagues as the evening goes on in terms of the bill before us. We have heard some interesting arguments.

When everything is considered, Bill C-52 is a bill that has been around this place on at least a couple of other occasions. It was first introduced as Bill C-33 in the 37th Parliament.

The minister likes to suggest that the bill is only a technical amendment and, in one sense, it is a technical amendment. It is a very short bill with only a couple of paragraphs in it. It is a technical bill in nature but it would grant the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans the power to make decisions concerning terms and conditions of licences and permissions without the need for consultation of any kind.

My colleagues are absolutely correct when they talk about circumventing Parliament without any parliamentary oversight. The bill would give the minister powers that we are a little bit concerned about.

It would give the minister sole discretion without the checks and balances that we would normally expect in a bill. In other words, Parliament, basically, would lose control. All the control would be exercised by the minister and we know what happens in government when ministers are allowed a free rein in terms of what they do and how their department behaves. For that very reason we are proposing amendments to the bill and we would only support the bill if these amendments were approved by the House.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans could be doing many things but it is not. We have heard some of that here as well. We do not have to look very far in any of our constituencies across the country that have a fisheries component in them to recognize the difficulties in our fisheries.

Today, for example, a story came off the CBC network about the red tide in the shellfish market. In other words, we are talking about a red tide that creates a toxic algae, a difficulty that makes it almost impossible for harvesters of clams to make a living. The shellfish industry is in difficulty and we know this a recurring phenomenon just about each and every summer. It is now occurring in New Brunswick and in other parts of North America as well.

If the department wants to do something, we are suggesting that it take some action to support some of our clam diggers where a little bit of money could make the difference in terms of compensation for fisheries that are shut down through no fault of the fishermen, in this case, clam diggers.

One of the points raised today in the media is that the state of Massachusetts, which is also suffering because of the red tide, in other words shutting down its shellfish industry, has come up with money for those fishermen. They are down at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of the pecking order in the eyes of the present government.

One might argue that if the government wanted to do something it should assistance of some of those fishermen who need help, much as we did in the cod fishery. We came in a little too late. The industry was in a state of collapse so the government had no option but to do something to help out those fishing families. I am suggesting it should do the same thing with our clam fishers.

The other point I want to make is that the government has done a number of things right in the fishery. I was pleased when the minister announced funding for some wharves in New Brunswick Southwest of about $5 million in the last few weeks on some much needed work on infrastructure. Our fishermen absolutely need wharves to do their work, in other words, to fish.

This is not all negative but, as members know, there is always more to do and more work has to be done and we are encouraging the government to do some of that. If we are going to spend resources, let us spend it on the fishermen and in a way that would be beneficial to them, not in a way that would give the minister an arbitrary power in terms of the actions that he can take against fishermen in terms of their licences and the responsibilities of those licence holders.

That issue was brought out in a weekly newspaper back home, the St. Croix Courier Weekend edition by Dick Wilbur who writes the Fisheries File, the article he writes every week in that paper. He was talking to the member for Delta--Richmond East. When the member for Delta--Richmond was speaking to this particular reporter this is what he had to say about Bill C-52:

--the bill would empower bureaucrats to attach terms and conditions to fishing licenses having the force of law would have the effect of undermining the accountability provisions in the Fisheries Act legislation that has stood the test of time.

That pretty well sums it up in terms of what it would do.

In all fairness, Mr. Wilbur went to department officials to get their take on the issue. Of course when one is speaking to a senior official in the Department of Fisheries, one can only expect one thing, for them to support the legislation and they do. They dismiss what our member for Delta--Richmond East had to say but the interesting thing is that the member for Delta--Richmond East is a fisherman and when he speaks in this House on those types of issues he knows what he is talking about. He is not talking as a lawyer or as a journalist. He is talking as a fisherman, someone who has witnessed the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and how it can, from time to time, overstep its jurisdiction. In this particular case, we will be giving the department more authority to do that without any parliamentary overview.

Another area I want to touch on in terms of enforcement is the need for enforcement when enforcement is required. None of us would dismiss that and, as some of the members mentioned, we have a Fisheries Act that is over 130 years old and it has to be updated, but it has to be updated in a responsible manner and in a manner that respects the rights of individual fishermen.

Some members in the House will probably remember a bill I introduced two or three Parliaments ago entitled the fisherman bill of rights. It was a private member's bill that came to this floor and received quite a bit of support on both sides of the House but, unfortunately, it was never passed.

What we do not want to see impeded are the so-called rights that fishermen enjoy, rights that are not legislated, such as the right to get in their vessels and catch fish. We do not want to see those rights restricted by the fisheries department.

When we really take a look at the department on both coasts, one of the difficulties in terms of enforcement is simply the lack of resources to do enforcement. In some parts of the country the department does not have moneys in its budget to put fuel in its boats to enforce what it is supposed to be enforcing.

We also do not have enough fisheries officers to do the job. We witnessed it on the west coast and have seen that happen time and time again with some of the off shore fishing that we see. There is a lack of enforcement because there is a lack of resources for the department.

If the minister is arguing that he has to strengthen the act and give himself more powers, we would argue that the minister should simply have the money to do the job the act entitles him to do now. Again, he needs the money to do that and we need the fisheries officers to do their jobs. Unfortunately, that is not happening. It is not a case of us picking on individual fisheries officers. That is not the point at all because they have a job to do and, in most cases, they do it very well, but they need the resources to do it. If we do not have enough manpower in the field the job cannot get done. A change in the regulations or a change in the act will not do that.

I will leave it at that and maybe my colleagues have some questions. The bottom line in all of this is that it is a power grab by the minister and we believe the fishermen and the industry would not be well served by it. It is a bill that we cannot support.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, whatever time I do not use, I will share with my colleague from South Shore—St. Margaret's.

In speaking to Bill C-52, I support fisheries conservation. My riding of Wellington—Halton Hills has the Credit River and the Grand River, two of Ontario's heritage rivers running through it. The Grand River is world famous for its fly fishing. The Grand River Conservation Authority has done much in recent years to rehabilitate the river and ensure its use for future generations.

I also take the opportunity at every chance I get to go up to Algonquin Park and fish. Two summers ago I went down the Nipissing River. I made sure I purchased my Ontario outdoors card first and caught some brook trout in that river. Therefore, I am a big supporter of fisheries conservation.

However, Bill C-52, an act to amend the Fisheries Act, is a short bill hiding a major flaw and a major problem for the government. There is a bit of a historical perspective.

Before 1950, regulations did not come under parliamentary scrutiny. At the time, the size of the government was such that it was not required. However by 1950 the growth of regulation and the growth of government required legislation to be brought in place to ensure that the regulations had some oversight and in 1950 the regulations Act was introduced.

However, a flaw with that was the act did not provide for executive accountability and for ministry accountability back to Parliament for the regulations that were put in place.

Subsequent to that, in 1970 the government introduced the Statutory Instruments Act. This act provided for Parliamentary oversight of the regulations that the ministry or the executive had put in place.

Subsequent to that, in 1978 the statute regulations act was introduce which covered those parts of the consolidated regulations and those regulations enacted prior to 1971, I believe, to also fall under parliamentary oversight.

As I said initially, Parliament has oversight for regulations. However, Bill C-52 circumvents that. This is not about the fish or the fishery. There is a bigger principle at play here. This is about the improper use of delegated powers of the government to create offences that have not been approved by Parliament. Conviction for these offences could result in large fines or even imprisonment.

The problems of the bill are about the reluctance of the government to bring forward new legislation and a new Fisheries Act in this minority Parliament.

The problems of Bill C-52 came as a result of the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations that examined regulation 36(2). It did so in its second report which was presented to the House on May 9, and it recommended the revocation of this regulation on the grounds that the regulation created an offence that exceeded the authority found in the Fisheries Act.

The committee found that this regulation violated three principles or three criteria that it had set out.

First, the regulation is not authorized by the terms of the enabling legislation, in this case the Fisheries Act, and it has not complied with any conditions set forth in the legislation.

The second criteria it violated was that this regulation imposed a fine, imprisonment or penalty without express authority of having been provided for in the enabling legislation.

The third criteria it violated was that the regulation amounts to the exercise of substantive legislative power properly the subject of direct parliamentary enactment.

For these three reasons, the committee rejected regulation 36 in its report tabled in the House on May 9.

As a result, the government had to react, and react quickly, to ensure that it had its way. The government, in an attempt to block the revocation of regulation 36, produced Bill C-52.

Before I go into my critique of Bill C-52, let me quote from one more finding in the report presented by the committee on May 9 to this House. It concerns the regulation that the committee recommended be revoked. This is the heart of the matter, both in the regulation that was going to be revoked and in the bill that this government has introduced. The report stated:

To summarize, the purpose of section 36(2) of the Regulations is to make it an offence to contravene the terms and conditions of a licence. In section 78 of the Act, Parliament has provided that only contraventions of the Act and the regulations are to constitute offences. If Parliament had wished contraventions of licence conditions to constitute offences, it could, and no doubt would, have so enacted. Section 36(2) is nothing more than an attempt to treat contraventions of licence conditions, which are administrative requirements, as if they were contraventions of legislative requirements. Regardless of whether this is characterized as creating an offence or not, the requisite clear and explicit enabling authority for such a provision cannot [be] found in the Fisheries Act.

As I mentioned, in response to the committee's finding, this government very quickly introduced Bill C-52, which, I might add, is an extremely short bill that contains only two clauses. The first clause allows the government the authority to enforce compliance with a licence under section 4 of the Fisheries Act. The second part of the bill allows this government to not undergo parliamentary oversight. The second clause in this bill exempts this bill from oversight under the Statutory Instruments Act. This a roundabout way for this government to circumvent parliamentary oversight.

This bill does not address what is fundamentally at heart here, that is, the inadequacies of the Fisheries Act. Indeed, this bill will simply prolong the life of this legislation, the life of a statute that is badly in need of revision. It keeps major reforms out of this minority Parliament.

I have read and heard of concerns from certain people about the revocation of regulation 36 and this bill. In particular, the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources expressed concern about his ability to enforce the sustainable fishery. We too share these concerns. I share these concerns. However, this is not to be addressed in Bill C-52, not in a very poorly crafted bill that circumvents parliamentary oversight by not allowing the Statutory Instruments Act a purview over this amended section of the Fisheries Act.

This government has failed to introduce modern fisheries legislation and this bill is far too vague and far too encompassing and sweeping for us to support. With Bill C-52, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is trying to slide through Parliament an amendment to the Fisheries Act that would allow the jailing of fishers who might fail to meet a condition attached to a licence created by the department.

In principle, we are not against toughening penalties or fines for those who are found in violation of fisheries legislation. Indeed, I am not against jail terms for those caught polluting or damaging our fisheries or our environment. However, I believe that this should be done through legislation. It should not be done through regulation. The big principle here is that Parliament should be making these decisions concerning fines, penalties or imprisonment, not the minister through orders in council.

In conclusion, let me note that I find it highly ironic that while this Prime Minister has talked about the democratic deficit it is exactly legislation like Bill C-52 that circumvents the democratic will of Parliament. While many people who are watching this or who will read about this later may find the points nuanced and may find these points to be finer, I do believe that this is at the heart of the problem. That is, the democratic will of Parliament, the democratically elected members in the House, not only should have oversight of the regulations but should have a say in crafting legislation that would enforce penalties, fines and imprisonment. It should not be the minister through regulation and orders in council who does it.

I would like to move a subamendment to the motion. The member for Calgary Centre-North will second my motion. I move:

That the amendment be amended by adding the word “unelected” after the word “permitting” and before the word “public”.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak to Bill C-52, an act to amend the Fisheries Act. I would like to state that I will be splitting my time with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. The member has always had a great interest in the fishery and will bring some very vigorous and intelligent comments to this debate, to which I am sure the government will be looking forward. It has been some time since it has had much vigorous and intelligent debate of its own.

This is an important and serious bill. I think the government expected that we would look the other way, that the bill it would enter through the back door, be approved and give the present minister of the day and future ministers quite responsible powers, powers that they have not had in the past. They would receive these powers without a comprehensive and introspective study of the Fisheries Act. It would allow the government to perhaps open the door to an abuse of the process and an abuse of the power of the minister.

The bill deals with section 19.1(6) of the Statutory Instruments Act and with Government Motion No. 15, which the Minister of Fisheries brought it in on June 3. It needs to be read into the record:

That, given the importance of the fisheries in Ontario and the introduction of Bill C-52, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (terms and conditions of permissions, leases and licenses) by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans which addresses the concerns of the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations, and pursuant to Standing Order 124 and subsection 19.1(5) of the Statutory Instruments Act, the resolution of the Standing Joint Committee providing that subsection 36(2) of the Ontario Fishery Regulations, 1989 be revoked, presented to this House on May 9, 2005 in its Second Report (Report No. 75 – Disallowance), not be adopted, and that this matter be referred back to the Standing Joint Committee for further study.

Had the motion passed, we would have given the minister the right to lay criminal charges with the idea that there would be a little clause of change that would need to be made for the minister of natural resources in Ontario.

Members of Parliament were misled, if I could go that far, that this was a little housekeeping job simply to address the importance of regulatory change in Ontario. That is not the case. It changes the Fisheries Act across the country, from coast to coast to coast. It gives the minister powers to lay criminal charges that the minister did not have prior to this.

We understand the importance in any regulatory regime of enforcement, of being allowed to lay charges. We also understand we have an act that is 137 years old. It desperately needs revision and renewal and we have nothing to do that.

I would plead with the government side and with the Minister of Fisheries and reasonable people to review the Fisheries Act, to dust off those dusty pages which no one has looked at for over 100 years and be prepared to bring constructive change. Let us look at a regulatory regime with the ability to lay charges. However, do not do it under the guise that somehow we have this little problem in Ontario with the minister of natural resources and it needs to be addressed.

Frankly, that is not the way to seek consensus. It is not the way to come to opposition parties and work in a progressive and comprehensive way toward making regulatory change. It was an excuse, “Let's just fix this little thing and don't pay attention to the details”. Frankly, there are a number of us in the House who are paying attention to the details.

Therefore, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the “That” and substituting the following:

“this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-52, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (terms and conditions of permissions, leases and licences), because the principle of the Bill is flawed in that it violates the principles of law by permitting public officials of the Government to create a regime which could result in severe fines or imprisonment or seizure of property that have not been specifically authorized by an Act of Parliament.”

I would hope all my colleagues would realize that when we talk about a regime which results in severe fines, imprisonment and penalties that should be authorized by an act of Parliament. The amendment clearly speaks to the difficulty we have with the bill, the fines, imprisonment and the enforcement.

Business of the House

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will continue with the opposition motion. I wish to designate Tuesday, June 14 as an allotted day, which means that the main estimates shall be dealt with that day.

Tomorrow we will begin report stage of Bill C-43, which is the first budget bill. This bill will be our priority until it is disposed of. When Bill C-48, the second budget bill, is reported from committee, it, too, shall be given our top priority.

There are discussions among the parties concerning the early disposal of Bill C-2, the child protection legislation; Bill C-53, the bill respecting proceeds of crime; and possibly Bill C-56, the Labrador-Inuit legislation.

The other pieces of legislation that we can anticipate debating in the next week are: Bill C-26, the border services bill; Bill S-18, the census legislation; Bill C-25, RADARSAT; Bill C-52, the Fisheries Act amendment; Bill C-28, the Food and Drugs Act amendments; Bill C-37, the do not call legislation; Bill C-44, the transport legislation; and Bill C-47, the Air Canada bill.

Fisheries

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-52 addresses the standing joint committee's concerns. It is supported by, among others, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, which I understand has written to members of the opposition urging them, in the strongest possible terms, to support the bill.

I urge all members to do the right thing, support the $500 million a year Ontario fishery and support Bill C-52 and the government's motion to oppose disallowance.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on Monday the House debated Bill C-52, a bill to correct legal defects in the enforcement provisions for the regulation and management of the Ontario fishery and brought to the attention of the House by the Standing Joint Committee for Scrutiny of Regulations.

It now appears that the Conservative opposition is refusing to allow quick passage of this one line bill in a situation where orderly management of the Ontario fishery could be put at risk.

Could the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans advise the House of his position and that of the Ontario government on this situation?

Delegated Legislation

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will take just a moment to indicate first of all the work of the committee dealing with this matter, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, of which I am a member. I am very proud to serve on this committee. It is a new committee for me and it has been a most enlightening experience, as is this debate today, a very rare debate in the history of the life of Parliament, and one that is being held today for a very good reason.

I want to remind the members of the House and the public who may be somewhat confused by the technicality of the debate at present that there is a fundamental issue at stake here. It has to do with the primacy of Parliament. It has to do with the right of Parliament, through statutes, to ensure that the laws of the land are upheld.

In this case, we have had a blatant violation of the provisions of this House and the legislative process in terms of allowing for regulations to do that which must be done through statute. It is as simple as that. It is about violations of fishing licences that must be dealt with through laws, through the law of the land, not by regulations which are not under the direct purview of Parliament. Nor have they gone through the rigorous process that legislation has.

It is clear that the committee on the scrutiny of regulations has done its job. This matter could have been handled very quickly if all parties had agreed, with a unanimous voice, to Bill C-52. The matter would have been dealt with. Unfortunately, the Conservatives blocked it. We are now at a point where we must proceed to rethink the disallowance report with the hope that this matter can be dealt with as expeditiously as possible.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Dewdney—Alouette, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise to debate Motion No. 15. I will begin by reminding my colleagues that it is Motion No. 15, not Bill C-52, that we are debating this afternoon.

We are debating the motion of the government that the resolution of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations revoking subsection 36(2) of the Ontario Fishery Regulations not be adopted.

That regulation simply states:

No holder of a commercial fishing licence shall violate any of the terms or conditions of the licence.

It seems to me that the question before us is pretty simple. Considering its legislative mandate, is the conclusion of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations right? The committee concluded that:

--this provision not only lacks legal authority, but trespasses unduly on rights and liberties and represents an unusual and unexpected use of the enabling authority.

The committee concluded that it should be revoked.

Is the committee's conclusion right? If the answer to that question is no, then we need to support the motion of the government. If the answer is yes, then we need to vote against the motion. I think that is the only question before us this afternoon. The question is not “is this regulation useful?” or “is this regulation helpful?” or even “does this regulation work?”

The question is also not the following: would there be any negative consequences without this regulation?

Those are the points made by both the Ontario government and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and even by some of my colleagues here. In fact, as has been quoted already, the Minister of Natural Resources from Ontario has written two passionate letters on the matter before us, one to the minister and one to Conservative members.

For example, he stated:

I am extremely concerned about the serious impacts on Ontario's ability to manage and ensure the conservation of fisheries should the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations table a Report of Disallowance regarding subsection 36(2) of the Ontario Fishery Regulations.

Without this provision, Ontario would literally have its hands tied with respect to enforcement of the commercial fishery.

It is entirely likely that a revocation of subsection 36(2) would result in chaos in the sector and threaten the sustainability of our fisheries resources.

These comments are interesting, even compelling, but with all due respect to the Ontario minister and to some of my colleagues here today, they are not answering the fundamental question before us, that is, is this regulation legal? His comments might be relevant to the debate on Bill C-52, but they are not relevant to the question before us.

Is the standing joint committee right when it says the following? It states:

--this provision not only lacks legal authority, but trespasses unduly on rights and liberties and represents an unusual and unexpected use of the enabling authority.

Is the committee right when it says it should be revoked?

Are the committee members right? Is this regulation legal or not? To answer that question, we need to briefly consider the mandate of the standing joint committee. It is covered in the Statutory Instruments Act in sections 19 and 19.1. Section 19 states that every statutory instrument:

--shall stand permanently referred to any Committee of the House of Commons, of the Senate or of both Houses of Parliament that may be established for the purpose of reviewing and scrutinizing statutory instruments.

Section 19.1 states that once this is done, when the committee reviews a regulation it can make a report to the Senate and the House of Commons “containing...a resolution that all or any portion of a regulation...be revoked”. That is why we are here today.

The Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, which I also serve on, as well as serving on the fisheries and oceans committee, fleshes out that mandate a little more in its first report of October 21, 2004. It applies certain tests. The committee members are looking to see whether any regulation:

1. is not authorized by the terms of the enabling legislation or has not complied with any condition set forth in the legislation;...

2. imposes a fine, imprisonment or other penalty without express authority having been provided for in the enabling legislation;...

3. trespasses unduly on rights and liberties;

4. makes the rights and liberties of the person unduly dependent on administrative discretion or is not consistent with the rules of natural justice;...

5. amounts to the exercise of a substantive legislative power properly the subject of direct parliamentary enactment;...

For almost all those criteria, the standing joint committee for years has felt that regulation 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations violates those criteria.

The terms or conditions of a licence is not a provision of the act or the regulation, so the violation of a term or condition does not constitute a contravention of the act. Therefore, the offence and punishment section of the Fisheries Act, section 78, does not apply.

But this provision was created with a view to making a contravention of terms and conditions a violation of the act. That is its whole reason for being there. The committee stated:

In effect, the purpose of this regulatory provision is to do indirectly what could not be done directly, namely to impose criminal liability for the breach of a term or condition of a licence.

It should seem clear to us that this is not authorized by the Fisheries Act. The committee stated:

The only purpose of section 36(2) of the Regulations is to make the non-observance of the terms and conditions of a licence, which are not legislative requirements, punishable as if they were.

Now whether we want it to be that way, the act does not allow it to be that way: “It is beyond dispute that Parliament must authorize regulations imposing sanctions or creating offences”.

The Fisheries Act does not. In fact, it does the opposite. It lists in the act those offences that are considered offences as set out in the act. The act also confers the power to make regulations providing for the suspension and cancellation of licences if someone violates the terms and conditions of a licence. That is the sanction the act currently allows the ministry to enforce.

The purpose of the regulation is to treat contraventions of licence conditions, which are administrative requirements, as if they were violations of legislative requirements. The clear and explicit enabling authority for such a provision cannot be found in the Fisheries Act in its current form.

Parliament is left with no alternative but to follow the advice of the standing joint committee and revoke this regulation. The government's motion that the standing joint committee's advice be rejected should be defeated.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Scarborough Southwest for his remarks. I agree with all that he has said. I want to point out that he has served on the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations for an uninterrupted 16 years. I do not know whether that is a record, but I challenge anyone to improve on it. It is certainly worth a medal.

In any event, today's matter is serious. The standing joint committee has done its work. It has found a regulation to be ultra vires, essentially illegal, and it did so for good reasons, as explained earlier. Simply stated, this House, Parliament, cannot let the public service create offences unless they have authority from Parliament to do so. Our citizens would not allow us to do this and would not want us to do this. This is the situation that has existed for historic reasons.

The fishery in Ontario and in other parts of Canada has relied on this infrastructure of enforcement, which, in the view of our committee, is not properly founded. The minister and the ministry have taken steps recently to correct that by passing legislation. In fact, the bill to correct this problem, as before the House now, has only one section in it and all it does is put into statute form what was in regulation, thereby correcting the problem the committee found.

What is not comprehensible to me is why, when the source of the problem is technical but real and the bill put forward by the minister and the ministry to correct it is technical but real, the House would not pass this bill on an expedited basis. It seems as though there are some members in the House who wish to debate the bill in a bit lengthier fashion in a way that would not allow quick passage. The net result of disallowing a regulation, which will happen within 30 days of the debate here today if we do not adopt the minister's motion, and of not getting a correcting bill in, is that the enforcement regime in the Ontario portion of the Canadian fishery would be put in jeopardy.

It is not like there cannot be terms and conditions attached to licences after this, but the enforcement regime, as it exists there now, is based on enforcement of terms and conditions of licences in an offence regime. I do not think that we in this House should be disallowing a regulation if it is going to give rise to that type of public interest problem. Only in extreme circumstances should we do that, where rights and liberties are clearly at risk.

In this case, although I stand firmly behind the report of the committee, as does my friend who spoke prior to me, and as other members of the committee would stand behind the report, we see the public interest reason in this case in referring that report back to the committee. That would have the effect of stopping the disallowance, or postponing it, I suppose, depending on what the committee chooses to do, but it would achieve the public interest objective in causing the government to fix the problem.

The fix is not in the report. The fix is in the statute, Bill C-52, which is before this House. I urge members opposite and those on this side of the House too, who may differ with me, to endorse quick passage of Bill C-52. That would solve the problem for the committee and solve the problem for the House. The government has already committed, prior to this, to undertake a comprehensive review of the Fisheries Act and its infrastructure.

I also endorse the comments of the member for Sackville--Eastern Shore on some of the bells and whistles attached to that public policy issue.

I also want to note the historic nature of the debate today. It is the first time in history that this House has debated the disallowance of a regulation under the terms in the Standing Orders and in the statute. I trust we will deal with it appropriately. I intend to support the motion, but I do not intend to put the file away forever. I am sure the minister will act in good faith to have that bill passed and I encourage members in the House to please consider that option.

[Tom Wappel, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise not only as chair of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans but also as a member of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.

I want to bring to the attention of the House the fact that we are having a very historic debate. This is the first time that we have come up with this kind of situation. That is why the House of Commons convened one hour earlier than it normally would. That is why we are going to be voting on this subject matter this evening: because of the provisions of the Standing Orders and certain sections of the Statutory Instruments Act.

This procedure has been put into place to in fact empower members of Parliament, I believe, and I think it will be demonstrated how that has come about.

The report of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations was unanimous. That committee is composed of members of all parties of the House of Commons. It is chaired by an official opposition member and a Liberal senator. There are Liberal and Conservative senators on the committee. The committee issued a unanimous report, which was presented in both Houses of Parliament.

I want to read a few excerpts from the committee report. First of all, in a nutshell, the report stated the following:

--the Joint Committee resolves that subsection 36(2) of the Ontario Fishery Regulations, 1989, as enacted by SOR./89-93, be revoked.

The committee recommended unanimously that this particular section of the Ontario regulations be revoked. Subsection 36(2) is very simple. It states:

No holder of a commercial fishing licence shall violate any of the terms or conditions of the licence.

That is a provision in a regulation, not a statute.

The joint committee stated as follows:

This provision was enacted with a view to making the contravention of a term or condition of a licence an offence under the Fisheries Act...

The committee went on to state:

It is accepted that regulations imposing sanctions or creating offences must be authorized by Parliament expressly or by necessary implication. Nowhere in the Fisheries Act is the making of regulations creating offences expressly authorized, nor can the existence of such a power be said to be necessarily implied.

Members have made reference to the letter from the Ontario minister in charge of fisheries. The committee was also apprised of the minister's views and dealt with them in the report which was filed with the House. I want to briefly reference what the committee said about that letter. The committee stated in regard to the proposal of the minister:

To the extent this comment suggests that disallowance of section 36(2) would impair the ability to impose terms and conditions of licences, it does not reflect a clear understanding of the nature of section 36(2). Disallowance of that section may change the manner of enforcing compliance with terms and conditions of licences, but would certainly not affect in any way the ability to impose such terms and conditions.

The committee concluded:

While your Committee understands that the federal and provincial Ministers favour the enforcement of terms and conditions of licences through fines and imprisonment rather than licence suspensions or cancellations, the Committee would be remiss in its statutory responsibility if it allowed this policy preference to override the principle that the Executive may not create offences punishable by criminal sanctions without clear authority granted by Parliament. It is the responsibility of the Executive to ask the Houses for that authority.

I agree 100% with what the committee has said.

Bill C-52 is the minister's response. It is the request of the executive to this House to give power to do what the executive wishes to do. In that way, Bill C-52 is responding to the report.

Unfortunately, a deadline has passed and if the minister's motion is not supported today, then a countdown begins, or may begin, to deem this regulation revoked, in which case there would be no regulation. This would have serious ramifications for the fishery in Ontario in the summer.

I am running out of time, but I just want to say that because of this deadline we face I am going to support the minister's motion to refer this matter back to the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, because if the minister and the government then do not proceed with Bill C-52, the committee can bring back another report identical to this one and then not budge.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to debate the concerns of Bill C-52. At the outset, we in the NDP Party will be supporting Bill C-52, getting it back to the SJC committee for further debate.

The Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations has been at this since 1987. I remind my Conservative colleagues that from 1987 to 1993, they were the government and they failed to do anything about this. The Liberals have continued that failure.

One of the concerns of course expressed by people is the sudden rush to get this done. One thing that cannot be accepted is the failure of government to enact concerns addressed to it by a committee, especially a joint Senate-House and standing committee.

We should not be in the pickle we are in now. The Ontario minister of natural resources, David Ramsay, should not have had to write the following words when he wrote to the Minister of Fisheries:

Without this provision, Ontario would literally have its hands tied with respect to the enforcement of a commercial fishery. It is entirely likely that the revocation of subsection 36(2) would result in chaos in this sector and threaten the sustainability of our fisheries resources.

The annual sale of commercial fishery in Ontario is estimated to be anywhere from $40 million to $50 million.

The Government of Ontario, the fishermen of Ontario and especially the resource of Ontario should not be under this type of pressure. It is unacceptable. I encourage my colleagues on all sides of the House to take a bit of a break and move on this issue very quickly so fishermen in Ontario and across the country can get on with it.

It is important to note that the NDP takes credence to this important matter. The particular bill will not provide the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans with any new powers. It will not change the way the fishery is administered or enforced in Canada.

We find this to be very important. When look at the enforcement of our fisheries regulations, to say that DFO is doing a good job in terms of enforcing the regulations across the country would be ludicrous. The reality is DFO does not do a good job of enforcing the regulations. To allow something with an unregulated fishery, as the minister has said, would put great strain on the resource and would allow rampant illegal fishing to go on with no scrutiny or enforcement. We simply cannot accept that.

As the vice-chair of the Standing Committee of Fisheries and Oceans, I find it rather incredible that the Conservative Party stands up and shows concern about enforcement, when report after report it has supported the Liberals, the Bloc and the NDP. It has screamed and yelled for more enforcement. We have said that we have to put more money and people on the ground, on the rivers, lakes and oceans and we have to enforce the Fisheries Act to protect the resource.

We have screamed and yelled for that since 1997, when I came to this place. Report after report, most of them unanimous, have screamed at four different fisheries ministers, “You have to get tougher actions on the water. You have to be stronger in enforcing the Fisheries Act”. Because of a technicality or whatever, they cannot now say that they no longer support that initiative. We find this amazing.

The ability to enforce the licence conditions is a key part of management. We agree DFO is not doing a good job of that now. However, we absolutely agree that we have to enforce the conditions of the licence set forth by the government when a commercial or aboriginal fisherman is allowed to fish under certain parameters. Our fish stocks are at an all time dangerous low in many cases. We need proper conservation measures for sustainability and economic opportunities in the future. What is most important is that the government do its job and enforce the regulations.

I could not help but notice that the Ontario Federation of Anglers & Hunters have pleaded with parliamentarians, including myself and others, to quickly pass Bill C-52 so they can get on with the job of enjoying the opportunities in recreational and commercial fishery, not only in the province of Ontario but I am sure in many provinces across the country.

I am pleased that the Bloc Québécois, although accused many times of being just a separatist party, has paid very close attention to this matter and has agreed that it should go back to the committee for further study.

I agree with my hon. colleague when she indicated that the ministers of Ontario should appear before the committee as soon as possible in order to achieve this goal.

I impress upon the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and on future ministers again to not ignore various committees. That is why we are in this situation today. That is why the House had to open a little earlier today in order to debate this and get it through. Again, no one should have to face this pressure.

We effectively agree with Bill C-52. We know that it has to get back to the SJG for further consultation. As vice-chair of the committee, I would encourage my colleagues in the House of Commons on the fisheries committee to do what the minister has asked us to do, which is a complete review and study of the Fisheries Act. This is probably one of the few things on which I agree with him.

The act is almost 138 years old. It contains many flaws and many concerns. I agree with many of my colleagues on the committee who are very upset with the way DFO does its business. In fact, a lot of people say that the DFO is the department for oil, playing around with the acronym in that regard.

I agree that the next time the committee gets together, probably in the fall, it should review the entire act from top to bottom. That will be a very big job for the committee to do. I encourage my Conservative, Bloc and Liberal colleagues to support that. We in the NDP definitely support a complete review of the act, to overhaul it, to modernize it and to give it some teeth. I always say we should have a dentist appear before the committee so we can have more teeth in the legislation and to ensure that the government has the enforcement and financial capabilities to do its job.

We will support Bill C-52 going back to the committee. However, we want to remind the government that the NDP and I am sure others are not amused at the way business is done within DFO. We want to ensure that the regulatory acts are enforced. We want to ensure that when the government announces a particular plan or program, that there is teeth behind it, that there is resources and people power to enforce the regulations that we have.

If we do not protect the fish stocks and we do not enact the legislation that we have now to protect those stocks for future generations, it will be a very sad day in Canada indeed.

[Loyola Hearn, Conservative, St. John's South, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the one thing I can agree with the minister on is his remarks in relation to the tremendous job done by the pages on O Canada. It was a rendition of O Canada, the likes of which we certainly have not heard in this place. I do not want to run down the singing abilities of my colleagues but today's version certainly was the best I have ever heard. I congratulate the pages. That would be my final point of agreement with the minister.

When we debated Bill C-52 a few days ago I thought the minister had received such a trouncing on it from all parties, not just from the Bloc and ourselves, but also from the NDP. What happened of course is that they pulled it right off the legislative agenda. I do not know why we are even debating the motion today.

However, having said that, instead of my wandering way of dealing with this, I will read some stuff into the record that might educate the minister as to exactly what is happening here.

The Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations, the minister says, expressed a real concern, but it also gave a fair amount of comfort to the fact that the concerns raised by the minister from Ontario and brought forth here by the minister, although I am not sure who went to whom first, were certainly not valid. The committee stated:

In closing, the Committee wishes to briefly address the statement by the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources that:

Terms and conditions [of licences] are currently the only mechanisms by which Ontario can establish allowable quota, areas where fishing can occur, designates who can take fish under a licence, reporting for commercial fishing licences.

To the extent this comment suggests that disallowance of section 36(2) would impair the ability to impose terms and conditions of licences, it does not reflect a clear understanding of the nature of section 36(2). Disallowance of that section may change the manner of enforcing compliance with terms and conditions of licences, but would certainly not affect in any way the ability to impose such terms and conditions.

In the same letter, the Minister goes so far as to suggest that the disallowance of section 36(2) would “threaten the sustainability of our fisheries resources”.

And this is the point upon which the minister hinges his argument. The committee goes on to state:

Whether or not section 36(2) remains in the Regulations, the authority to issue licences and to impose terms and conditions on the licence would remain unimpaired, as would the ability to enforce observance of those terms and conditions. The imposition of a fine or a jail term for breach of a licence condition, as opposed to suspending or cancelling the same licence, has nothing to do with the sustainability of the fishery resource.

While your Committee understands that the federal and provincial Ministers favour the enforcement of terms and conditions of licences through fines and imprisonment rather than licence suspensions or cancellations, the Committee would be remiss in its statutory responsibility if it allowed this policy preference to override the principle that the Executive may not create offences punishable by criminal sanctions without clear authority granted by Parliament. It is the responsibility of the Executive to ask the Houses for that authority.

Parliament has a duty to examine regulations to determine that they do not exceed the authority delegated under the law.

Since 1987, 18 years of dealing with this very issue, the joint committee has drawn attention to the improper character of subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fisheries regulations. In March 2000, the joint committee reported in part:

Section 36(2) of the Regulations provides that:

36.(2) No holder of a commercial fishing licence shall violate any of the terms or conditions of the licence.

This provision was created with a view to making a contravention of a term or condition of a licence an offence under the Fisheries Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. F-14.

Section 78 of the act provides as follows:

1. Except as otherwise provided in this Act, every person who contravenes this Act or the regulations is guilty of

(a) an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable, for a first offence, to a fine not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars and, for any subsequent offence, to a fine not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year, or to both; or

(b) an indictable offence and liable, for a first offence, to a fine not exceeding five hundred thousand dollars and, for any subsequent offence, to a fine not exceeding five hundred thousand dollars or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or to both.

A term or condition of a licence is not a provision of the act or the regulations, and a violation of such a term or condition does not constitute a contravention of the act or regulations within its meaning. The enactment of a general prohibition against contravention of a term or condition of a licence as part of the Ontario fishery regulations, 1989 is designed to attract the application of section 78 of the act.

While the person contravening the licence term or condition is not liable to the penalties set out in the Fisheries Act, following the enactment of subsection 36(2) of the regulations, that person would be liable for a breach of subsection 36(2) of the regulations. Subsection 36(2) then is intended merely to bridge the gap between a contravention of a term or condition of licence and the penalties provided for in the statute. In effect, this regulatory provision is intended to do indirectly what could not be done directly, namely to impose a criminal liability for the breach of a term or condition of a licence.

There is not a commercial fisherman in the country who, if he understood what was happening here, would agree with the minister in imposing such a rule.

We can go on with technicalities but as my time is running out I will just make a few other points. This issue has been with us for 18 years, not since 3 days ago when the minister tabled a bill without giving anyone any information about it and hoped to ram it through the House because it was supposed to be a minuscule bill. We see how minuscule it with the outcry that we have seen across the country.

However since no corrective action has been taken by the Department of Fisheries in the past 18 years, the Joint Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations has presented a report that regulations should be repealed. The government says that Bill C-52 would fix the problem. We disagree. Bill C-52 is a power grab by the department to give itself sweeping authority to create imprisonable offences within licences and to remove those licences from the scrutiny of regulations committee.

Licences are not examined by the cabinet and are not passed by Parliament and yet people could be imprisoned for violating a licence.

The government has known for 18 years it was acting without authority. The Liberal government now asks Parliament to ignore its failures and to allow the regulations to stand. It asks Parliament to say that Canadians should be fined up to half a million dollars and imprisoned for two years less a day, without the authority of law, only on the basis of a violation of a licence.

Bill C-52 has not passed the House, may never pass and we probably will not see it again, and yet the Liberal government wants to continue with its illegal regime because it has introduced the bill.

The rule of law and the rights of Canadians to be subject to laws passed by Parliament are at stake. That is the big question. The rule of law is what we are trying to contravene. The Liberal government knows that the regulation is illicit. It knows it has not passed enabling legislation and it knows it has had over a decade to fix the problem.

Parliament should report the rule of law, protect the rights of Canadians and tell the department and government that they have run out of time. The regulations should be repealed. It dishonours the Crown. The rule of law should trump government inaction.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I see that members on all sides appear to agree with me on that.

I appreciate the opportunity to rise in the House today to respond to this disallowance motion tabled by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. I would like to thank members of the committee for the important role they play in closely examining Canada's legislation and regulations.

The government places a high value on what they have to say and that is why I take their concerns about the Ontario Fishery Regulations very seriously. The committee feels that greater clarity and certainty are needed on matters of legislative authority with respect to certain Ontario Fishery Regulations. Specifically, its concern lies with the requirement for compliance with fishing licence terms and conditions. The government is of the opinion that the provision in question is legally sound and within the authority of the Fisheries Act.

Fishing licences are, in many regards, the key fisheries management tools in Canada. They regulate fishing activities by setting the following terms and conditions: total allowable catch, authorized fishing gear, timeframe and areas where fishing can occur.

These conditions are crucial for conservation and orderly management of not only Ontario's fisheries but of fisheries throughout the country.

The fishery is a highly regulated industry. This high level of regulation is necessary. A valuable natural resource like fish needs to be managed carefully, with an eye to the future. Mechanisms must be in place to ensure conservation and that rules of the fishery are being followed. Fishing licences provide this mechanism. The conditions that they provide are key elements in proper management and control of the fishery, as well as for the conservation and protection of fish on behalf of all Canadians.

The Government of Canada has a clear legislative power to ensure conservation and protection of fish stocks, and the issuance of fishing licences is a demonstration of this power. The Ontario Fishery Regulations require that the holder of a commercial licence comply with licence terms and conditions. The government continues to maintain that this provision is in fact legally sound.

Having said that, I agree that greater certainty and clarity could be provided for the requirement to comply with the terms and conditions of fishing licences, and that is why I introduced Bill C-52 in the House last week.

The bill includes an amendment that would add a new section to the Fisheries Act dealing with compliance with terms and conditions of fishing licences. Specifically, the amendment would clarify that it is a requirement of the act to comply with fishing licence terms and conditions. We believe the amendment would provide a measure of certainty and clarity, the kind of measure sought by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.

As members know, Bill C-52 was debated at second reading on Monday. Regrettably, the Conservatives and the Bloc indicated they do not support a bill that addresses the concerns identified by their own colleagues on the standing joint committee. After two days to consider the bill, I hope they have reconsidered because enacting Bill C-52 would certainly be a preferred approach to dealing with the committee's concerns rather than adopting the disallowance resolution.

If the disallowance resolution is adopted, subsection 36(2) of the Ontario Fishery Regulations would be revoked. This would create a serious legal gap in Ontario's ability to enforce licence conditions and to manage the fishery on behalf of all Ontarians. Ontario's fishery would be put in considerable risk. It would send a dangerous signal that Parliament is not supportive of requiring licence holders to abide by their licence conditions. Imagine what a terrible signal that would be.

This is a great concern to many groups in Ontario, including the Ontario Federation of Anglers & Hunters, who have written several members in this House over the past two days urging them in the strongest possible way to support this issue.

Each year the province issues some 500 commercial licences and 1,400 commercial bait fishery licences. Ontario's commercial fisheries represent an annual landed value of over $40 million. They contribute anywhere between $250 million and $500 million to the economies of both Ontario and Canada. Economics aside, disallowing the provision in question would also jeopardize conservation.

As we can see, compliance with licence terms and conditions is essential to ensure that fishing practices are coordinated and focussed on conservation. All the provinces—that is, Ontario and the others—rely on compliance with the rules and need an efficient regime to deal with instances of non-compliance.

I should add that Ontario's minister of natural resources has written to me asking that the Government of Canada do everything in its power to protect the provision in question. In his letter he stated:

Without this provision, Ontario would literally have its hands tied with respect to enforcement of commercial fishery. It is entirely likely that the revocation of subsection 36(2) would result in chaos in this sector and threaten the sustainability of our fishery resources.

The conservation and orderly management of the fisheries are vital components of a strong, viable fishing industry. The Ontario fishery regulations help ensure that these components are in place.

I should also point out that the passage of Bill C-52 will not change existing practices on the ground. Allow me to be clear on this. The requirement to comply with licence conditions remains. Bill C-52 would move that requirement from the regulations into the act. That is all it does. As I stated Monday, this bill stands as an effective transitional measure to a broader initiative to review the Fisheries Act, as I hope my colleagues will want to do in the near future.

On May 17, I met with the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans to reiterate that I am very serious about updating the act. This 137-year-old legislation needs to be modernized. Canada's fisheries have changed and evolved over the years and I have asked the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans a number of times for its input on how they should be reformed. I look forward to receiving it, I hope, before too long. I look forward to it taking an interest and my colleagues across the way showing an interest in reforming of the act.

In particular, I requested input in four areas: allocation, co-management, compliance and sanctions. Sanctions, of course, is an area of particular interest in the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations and really what we are talking about here today.

I plan to move forward with a broad reform as quickly as possible and I hope to have support from members across the way for that. In the meantime, Bill C-52 would address the standing joint committee's concerns and make disallowance unnecessary. It would ensure that the Province of Ontario has the certainty it needs as it manages and conserves its fisheries on behalf of its citizens and it will provide an effective transitional measure as we examine more comprehensive changes to the Fisheries Act.

That is why I filed a motion that the committee's resolution not be adopted but referred back to it for further consideration.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

moved:

That, given the importance of the fisheries in Ontario and the introduction of Bill C-52, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (terms and conditions of permissions, leases and licenses) by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans which addresses the concerns of the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations, and pursuant to Standing Order 124 and subsection 19.1(5) of the Statutory Instruments Act, the resolution of the Standing Joint Committee providing that subsection 36(2) of the Ontario Fishery Regulations, 1989 be revoked, presented to this House on May 9, 2005 in its Second Report (Report No. 75 – Disallowance), not be adopted, and that this matter be referred back to the Standing Joint Committee for further study.

Mr. Speaker, may I say at the outset that while the House has many strong and mellifluous voices, I do not think we have ever heard O Canada sung quite so well.

Fisheries Act

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a little late in the day on this but we asked the Library of Parliament to see if it could find similar provisions to what the government is proposing in Bill C-52. It found similar provisions in only two other statutes, one regulating nuclear facilities and the other regulating airlines. Both have regulations by public regulatory tribunals, not secret regulation abilities by federal bureaucrats.

This particular bill is away out there when it comes to anything that has ever been passed by the House. The House has never given that sort of authority to anyone.

I know it is late in the day and I am springing it on my good friend but I wonder if he would care to comment on that. As I said, there are only two similar statutes and both of those have public regulatory tribunals governing them.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Dewdney—Alouette, BC]

Madam Speaker, there is a lot of shooting going on here, but let me take this opportunity to debate Bill C-52, an act to amend the Fisheries Act.

As has already been mentioned, the bill would add the following section after section 9:

Every one acting under the authority of a permission referred to in section 4 or of a lease or licence issued under this Act shall comply with its terms and conditions.

It goes on as well to add the clarification:

For greater certainty, those permissions, leases and licences — including their terms and conditions — are not statutory instruments for the purposes of the Statutory Instruments Act.

On the surface this seems to be a benign addition to the Fisheries Act. What could be wrong with stating that someone who is issued a licence, for example, is expected to comply with the licence's terms and conditions? It would appear to be the government's position that this is little more than a housekeeping measure. I am well aware of the fact that the government made every effort to try to get this passed at all stages.

In the few minutes that I have I will explain why in my opinion this is not benign, and why Parliament should proceed very carefully. In order to do that let me begin by providing a little important background.

Although it is true that the legislation has been presented with little or no advance notice, its genesis has been actually several years in the making. I will attempt to make a long story short.

The Ontario fishery regulations contain a regulation in section 36(2) that provides the following:

No holder of a commercial fishing licence shall violate any of the terms or conditions of the licence.

Although it is stated negatively, one will notice that it is similar in substance to the bill that is before us today. As has already been pointed out, this regulation has troubled the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations for some time. In fact, this provision was dealt with by the committee in its second report in the second session of the 36th Parliament in 2000. It concluded:

The regulation not only lacks legal authority, but trespasses unduly on rights and liberties, and represents an unusual and unexpected use of the enabling authority.

Put simply, it was and is the position of the committee that regulations imposing sanctions or creating offences must be expressly authorized by Parliament. It is important to understand that because it is the same principle in play with the legislation before us today. Without this measure, a term or condition of a licence is not considered a provision of the act, so the violation of such a term or condition does not constitute a contravention of the act or regulations. However, the regulation in question in Bill C-52 makes it a legal responsibility to abide by the terms and conditions of a licence. It follows then that any contravention of those terms becomes a violation of the act and attracts the offence and punishment section of the Fisheries Act, section 78. The sanctions in that section are considerable so let me read them into the record:

an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable, for a first offence, to a fine not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars and, for any subsequent offence, to a fine not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year, or to both; or

an indictable offence and liable, for a first offence, to a fine not exceeding five hundred thousand dollars and, for any subsequent offence, to a fine not exceeding five hundred thousand dollars or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or to both.

Those are pretty significant penalties, so we ought to be very careful here.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has continued to maintain that the questionable regulation is valid in spite of the continued disagreement of the scrutiny of regulations committee. It has argued in the past, for example, that the regulation merely imposes a standard of conduct or a requirement. The scrutiny of regulations committee concluded that the argument is best characterized as disingenuous.

In spite of the belief that the regulation was valid, the minister twice introduced a bill in the 37th Parliament that was intended to provide a legislative solution. Both died on the order paper.

To finally make a long story short, the scrutiny of regulations committee lost patience with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. On May 9 it issued a disallowance report to send a clear message that the offence-creating regulation was not authorized by the act and the process to have it revoked was started. That appeared to catch the attention of the minister and he finally introduced the bill that is before us today.

An obvious question is, does this solve the legal problems highlighted by the scrutiny of regulations committee? In fact, the committee was asked that very question when similar legislation was introduced in the last Parliament. The committee answered unequivocally, “We are pleased to confirm that the proposed amendments would, if adopted, remove the basis for the joint committee's objections”.

That is the good news. I do not think anyone disagrees that this bill will solve the minister's legal problems. However, and this is the crucial point, that does not mean Bill C-52 is good legislation. In fact, the standing joint committee recognized that other important issues need to be addressed. In that same letter from which I just quoted, the committee went on to add:

Our acknowledgment that amendments included in Bill C-43 --

--the bill number in the last Parliament--

--would resolve the Committee's objections to the legality of the relevant regulatory provisions does not imply an endorsement of those amendments. Particularly as regards the proposed section 10(1), which would impose a legal duty to comply with the terms and conditions of the licence, we can conceive that some parliamentarians might object to subjecting such non-compliance to penal sanctions that include imprisonment. To deprive a citizen of his liberty on the ground that the citizen has failed to abide by a requirement imposed by a public official in the exercise of administrative power, such as a term or condition of a licence, could be thought undesirable as a matter of legislative policy.

In fact, that is the question before us. As parliamentarians, do we object, do we find it undesirable that non-compliance of a requirement imposed by a public employee in the exercise of an administrative power can result in penal sanctions that could include imprisonment? I do not know about you, Madam Speaker, but when I go to jail, I prefer it to be for violating a law that has been passed by a parliament or for contravening a regulation that has been subjected to thorough scrutiny.

I am one of those parliamentarians that objects to putting this kind of arbitrary power in the hands of a public official.

Let me mention as well that I have the duty of being on both the fisheries committee and the scrutiny of regulations committee. Contrary to the way the member for Scarborough—Rouge River has recalled it, yes, we agreed that if this bill was passed it would address the concern of the committee regarding the legality. I did not hear any agreement to revoking that regulation.

Even in our last meeting we expressed the problems that were addressed in this letter. Yes, this solves the minister's legal problems and we know he knows that he has a problem. We still have a legislative policy issue that we need to resolve.

The government appears to be quite committed to getting this bill passed. The Liberals must believe it is important. In fact, as has been quoted already, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans sent a letter to the joint chairs of the scrutiny of regulations committee on April 19. In the letter he referred to a letter that he had received from the Ontario minister of natural resources. In that letter the minister sent to the committee he said:

As you will see in Minister Ramsay's letter, revoking subsection 36(2) of the OFR [Ontario fisheries regulations] would have severe negative implications on Ontario's commercial fishery and threaten sustainability of Ontario's fisheries resources.In transmitting Minister Ramsay's letter I would like to impress upon the committee that revoking subsection 36(2) of the OFR would have serious negative effects on fisheries conservation and management in Ontario. I would also like to re-emphasize my intention to carry out a broader renewal --

The letter from Minister Ramsay went on to state:

Terms and conditions are currently the only mechanisms by which Ontario can establish allowable quota, areas where fishing can occur, designates who can take fish under a licence, reporting for commercial fishing licences. Without this provision, Ontario would literally have its hands tied with respect to enforcement of the commercial fishery. It is entirely likely that the revocation of subsection 36(2) would result in chaos in this sector and threaten the sustainability of our fisheries resources.

Of course, this is the threat the minister wants to leave before us. He will probably tell us on Wednesday that if we revoke the regulation and defeat the legislation we will be left with chaos in Ontario and, maybe by extension, elsewhere in the country. That, I think, is to misunderstand the situation a little.

The scrutiny of regulations committee responded to that in its most recent report. It states:

In closing, the Committee wishes to briefly address the statement by the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources that:

I just quoted that statement. The report goes on to say:

To the extent this comment suggests that disallowance of section 36(2) would impair the ability to impose terms and conditions of licences, it does not reflect a clear understanding of the nature of section 36(2). Disallowance of that section may change the manner of enforcing compliance with terms and conditions of licences, but would certainly not affect in any way the ability to impose such terms and conditions.

We need to ask and answer what remedies would be left to the government if the legislation is defeated, as I think it should be. As the letter has pointed out, the mechanism of imposing those terms and conditions is still there. It is another question whether the department should have that ability to impose those but it still does under the current Fisheries Act.

The government would still have the ability to impose these terms and conditions but what will the mechanisms be to enforce those? Under the act it still has the power to revoke or cancel a licence. I understand that the minister does not like that option but that is an option left open to him.

Another option, which has been mentioned in more detail by my colleague from Delta—Richmond East, is that we could expect the ministry, if it wants to regulate the industry, to put forth its regulations. It should go through the process, those things that are subject to the Statutory Instruments Act and gazette them. It should tell fishermen what they can expect if they sign on to these licences, what the terms and conditions will be and what they can expect if they violate these conditions.

This appears to me to be flawed legislation. The unintended consequences could be enormous. If I were a fisherman, I would be very concerned about this and I know many of them are. On behalf of many fishermen in my riding of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, I will be voting against this.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Madam Speaker, one would have thought that members on the government side would have been eager to now stand in their allotted time and defend their bill, but apparently that is not the case. To be quite honest, I can certainly understand why the members opposite do not want to stand to defend this particular bill.

Let us look at the bill. Bill C-52 amends the Fisheries Act to “provide that a breach of a term or condition of a permission” granted under section 4 of the act, “or of a licence or lease” under the act is an offence. This amendment is meant to make it easier for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to enforce the act, so the department says.

The issue here is that Bill C-52 was before this House as Bill C-33 in the third session of the 37th Parliament, and as Bill C-43, again in the 37th Parliament. Both of these bills died on the order paper. In a sense, it does not really take a whole of thought to understand why.

At the introduction of Bill C-52, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans suggested that the bill comes about because the Senate and House of Commons Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations tabled a disallowance report, and the government failed to respond to that disallowance report with substantive legislation.

There is a problem there. If we look at the backgrounder document that the government distributed to members of the opposition and others, we will see that it states that this bill adds a clause to the Fisheries Act requiring licence holders to obey conditions of their licence, effectively moving the regulation in question into the act and thereby obtaining permission from Parliament for such a requirement.

That particular phrase rather clouds the issue, because it does not really tell the story of what this bill would do. The government says it would like to have passed the bill in all its splendour this afternoon and alluded to the fact that it is “hurry up” and that if the bill is not passed the Ontario minister will be unable to manage the fishery.

It should be noted today that the scrutiny of regulations committee first advised the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in 2000 that the governing Ontario fisheries regulations were illegal, which means that five years ago the government was advised that these regulations were illegal.

The regulations governing the Fisheries Act and the act itself actually make up quite a good document. It is 137 years old, as some members opposite suggested today, and to be quite honest I think it is still quite a good bill. The bill itself makes very clear what the minister's powers are and it makes very clear what the minister's obligations are when it comes to protecting the resource.

On the offence side, sections 181 through to 184 make clear the procedures that government must follow if it is going to enforce the act, and I think those procedures are laid out in a very clear fashion for everyone to understand. The regulations that flow from that act are scrutinized by the joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons to ensure that the regulations are in fact consistent with the obligations as set out in this particular act.

Therefore, I do not have a problem with the Fisheries Act and neither does the Senate and House of Commons Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, which makes it very clear that within the act itself the government has the authority to manage the fisheries.

If Bill C-52 is not passed today, it does not mean the end of the world, as the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources suggests. It simply means that perhaps a little more work is going to have to be done by the bureaucrats to put in place appropriate regulations to ensure that those regulations are in compliance with the Fisheries Act and meet the demands of the act. That should not be too difficult for government to do. In fact, that should be the obligation.

I would like to now turn the clock back a little. My friend from Winnipeg will probably remember this issue better than most. I am referring back to March 6, 1986, and a speech in the House by the Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn, who was the President of the Privy Council at that time and the minister responsible for regulatory affairs. At that time he introduced in the House the citizens' code of regulatory fairness. He stated that it was a unique initiative based on the principle that Canadians are entitled to know in as much detail as possible exactly how government regulations are to carry out responsibilities. Citizens have a right to know the rules of the game and know that they will be fair.

That is what the citizens' code of regulatory fairness was all about. I will quote from the guiding principle of this regulatory policy. Principle No. 6 notes, “Regulation is legislation and, as such, will be brought more fully under the control of elected government representatives and subjected to more effective review by Parliament”.

Principle No. 7 of the regulatory policy stated that “the public has an important role to play in the development of regulation and the government will increase public access to and participation in the regulatory process while simplifying procedures and restricting legalities to the minimum”.

Is that not interesting? Back in 1986, almost 20 years ago, introduced in the House was a document which in fact I think speaks very clearly about what the government is not doing today and what it should be doing, the document being, of course, this citizens' code of regulatory fairness.

According to the policies and the guiding principles of this piece of legislation from 1986, it required public participation in the regulatory process and input from the public to ensure that the public fully understood the regulatory process that they were to be governed by and guided by, and that they had input. “Anything but” is the case today.

The code's purpose, as Mr. Hnatyshyn stated, was “to provide a high set of standards for ensuring regulatory fair play”. He said, “The code also provides an explicit basis for judging the performance of regulators. In this way, the code is intended to regulate the regulators”.

There is no regulation of the regulators in this particular bill. In fact, what the bill does is give the departmental bureaucrats, who visited upon the country the cod crisis of 1992 and who visited upon fisheries on the west coast the disaster of 2004, the ability to make regulations on the fly without public input and without the scrutiny of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. It gives them carte blanche to do what they want and to establish regulations as they see fit without any scrutiny whatsoever. For me, that goes beyond the pale.

I do not want to give the minister the power to have bureaucrats create regulatory offences without some safeguards; I am not prepared to simply turn over to fisheries bureaucrats the ability to make regulations governing the fishery without the appropriate scrutiny. I think that is wrong and I think that for this place to allow this to go forward is just outrageous. It is beyond the pale that the government would bring in a bill of this sort.

The citizens' code of regulatory fairness addresses this issue as well in point 6 of the code. It states that “the rules, sanctions, processes and actions of regulatory authorities will be securely founded in law”.

If a bureaucrat can make regulations on the fly, where is the guarantee that those regulations would be securely founded in law? Where is it? Where is the scrutiny to see that in fact the regulations the bureaucrat is putting in place are regulations that were envisioned by this place when the Fisheries Act and its amendments were passed? It is not there.

Point 7 of the code states that “the government will ensure that officials responsible for developing, implementing or enforcing regulations are held accountable for their advice and actions”.

Accountable? When have we ever held officials in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans accountable? Can anybody name one official in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who was held accountable during the cod collapse on the east coast or during what went on last year on the west coast? The crisis last year was about the fourth we have had since 1992 and nobody has ever been held to account.

In fact, let us look at one of the latest newspaper headlines: “Ottawa pays officials $32-million in bonuses”. There is also a graph showing us that 223 of 237 executives at the fisheries and oceans department received bonuses totalling $1.7 million. Those bonuses went to officials and executives of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans last year when those boys last year cost the economy of British Columbia probably $70 or $80 million, at a modest estimate, and maybe even as much as $150 million, also a modest estimate, because of lost opportunities in the next cycle of the 2004 fishery. In other words, in 2008 the loss to the economy of British Columbia could total $150 million, yet those guys received bonuses this year.

Where is the accountability? The citizens' code of regulatory fairness says that these bureaucrats should be held accountable. I do not see any accountability in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, none whatsoever. What I do see with Bill C-52 is the transference of this regulation making authority from the minister or from this place to a bureaucrat, without any scrutiny whatsoever, none, zero.

Nobody is standing there saying that this particular licence condition does not meet the demands or the expectations of the act. It simply says that the bureaucrat can put in place a condition and nobody has any right to challenge it.

If the issue is brought to court, the court would simply acknowledge that Parliament put that regulation in place and it gave that bureaucrat the authority to make that particular condition that is attached to the licence and nobody can do anything about it. The court will simply acknowledge that the bureaucrat has the authority and it will do absolutely nothing to protect the fisherman who is hurt.

As I said to my colleague earlier, if a fisherman who is hurt by that particular piece of legislation comes to a member of Parliament, there is essentially nothing that we could do short of trying to obtain some change to the act to rein the authority of the bureaucrat, but nothing else could be done.

Not one member in this place should find any solace in this bill, nor should there be support for it. It is beyond the pale and my wildest imagination why anyone would want to give this authority to the bureaucrats who caused the destruction of the 2004 Fraser River sockeye run or who were directly responsible, in many ways, for failing to serve notice at the very least to government that there was a crisis in the cod fishery on the east coast before it was too late. Why would we want to give these bureaucrats authority to continue to act with licence? I do not know. I just plain do not understand it.

Bill C-52 would make it a criminal offence to break an unpublished secret law written by unaccountable bureaucrats.

Bill C-52 would put no limits on the nature and scope of the terms and conditions that can be imposed on fishermen.

Bill C-52 would put no limits on the penalty, the breach of every secret term or condition that is punishable by imprisonment. The penalty is not tailored to fit the crime.

Bill C-52 would remove the requirements to publish or make public the regulations.

There is no requirement in Bill C-52 that everyone in a fishery should face the same set of licence conditions. There is no requirement that every fisherman would face the same sets of terms and conditions to fish, so that the fishery then could be tailored and there could be different rules for different people.

Regulations under the Fisheries Act make those who write regulations accountable to Parliament as a whole and in particular the scrutiny for regulations committee, as well as the fisheries committee. In Bill C-52 neither the scrutiny for regulations committee nor the fisheries committee would ever see this new form of regulation. This is not a scheme of regulations that was ever intended by the Fisheries Act.

The Fisheries Act provides for open, public and accountable regulations. Bill C-52 would remove that. These amendments would undermine that scheme of open, public accountability that is built into the Fisheries Act. When regulations are created under the Fisheries Act, they are published prior to going into effect so that members of the public can comment on them.

That will not happen with these terms and conditions. When regulations are created under the Fisheries Act, a publicly available regulatory impact statement is a legal requirement. There is no such requirement for a term or condition as proposed under Bill C-52.

Bill C-52 is simply a way for the minister and the bureaucrats to regulate the fishery outside the requirements of the Citizen's Code of Regulatory Fairness. It would substitute the regulation of the fishery through public accountable regulations grounded in law and would substitute instead a scheme of regulations by unaccountable bureaucrats, all done behind closed doors.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member and I are singing from the same song sheet on this issue. The issue is that under the Fisheries Act the government has the ability to put in place a regulation.

If we look at section 184 of Bill C-62, the Fisheries Act, introduced in Parliament in 1996, it talks about offences under the act to which section 181 applies and the manner in which those offences may be described in tickets. It talks about classes of offences referred to in paragraph (d) and the amount of the fine for each class.

Basically, section 184 details sections under the act or it gives an overview of the regulations under the act, the government's ability to respond to violations and the manner in which it will respond to violations. As we indicated earlier, the joint committee provides the scrutiny to ensure that those regulations meet with the intentions of Parliament.

Bill C-52 gives that regulation making authority, although it talks about licensed conditions, to bureaucrats. It gives those bureaucrats the unfettered ability to put in place their own form of regulation to govern the fishery, to give access to quotas to friends of the government and to discriminate between groups of fishermen.

The question then becomes what recourse do fishermen have to challenge these conditions that have been attached to their licence? They will not be able to challenge offensive regulations in court because Parliament will have given bureaucrats the authority to make those regulations. The fishermen will not have the ability to come to us as members of Parliament and ask of how we can help them on an issue because Parliament will have given the bureaucrats the authority to act. In order to challenge a bureaucrat, we would have to change the law.

That is the problem with this legislation. It puts the fishermen in a very vulnerable position. It gives the bureaucrats the authority that one might expect the minister to have, but even the minister's authority is held in check by Parliament.

These bureaucrats will have more authority than Parliament even dreamt of giving the fisheries minister. That is why this bill is so offensive.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Madam Speaker, my friend opposite in her remarks said that she would welcome more public scrutiny into the fishery and I do not think anybody on this side of the House would disagree with that comment.

The issue today is whether Bill C-52 would allow more public scrutiny of the Fisheries Act. That is the issue before us.

Let me just lay the terms out of what Bill C-52 means to me and then I would like to know if she concurs with my assessment.

Bill C-52 takes away the regulatory authority, the scrutiny that Parliament enjoys over regulations that are put forward by the government, and gives that regulatory making ability to a public servant, a civil servant or a bureaucrat. In doing that, it removes the oversight of the regulatory making procedures from Parliament. Currently under the Fisheries Act if a regulation is put in place, that regulation will be examined by the scrutiny or regulations committee, the joint committee of the Senate and House of Commons, to determine if that regulation fulfills the intention that Parliament declared in the act.

If the bureaucrat is attaching conditions to a licence, that oversight ability of the joint committee is removed and there is less public scrutiny, certainly less scrutiny by the House, on that regulation authority making by the bureaucrat. That is my take on it. Is that what the member opposite is saying.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Madam Speaker, some of my colleagues from the Conservatives and the Bloc have raised some important issues regarding Bill C-52. We are hearing that there is a need to act expeditiously; however, this bill it seems has had little thought. We have heard that there are some concerns that if this bill is not passed that it is going to seriously jeopardize the management of the fisheries in Ontario.

In fact, some of the literature that has come out of the department talks about the fact that the need for this bill is a key part of proper management and control of the fishery as well as conservation and protection of fish.

It seems to me that if we are that concerned about protection and management of the fisheries, and that if we are prepared to act in such a rapid fashion over an issue that is impacting on Ontario fishers, that surely after years and years of concern that has being raised in other fisheries, that we could be acting as expeditiously as possible.

Part of the challenge is that many of us do not have faith in what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, more commonly referred to as DFO, is doing with the management and protection of fisheries that many Canadians are asking for.

I come from the west coast constituency of Nanaimo—Cowichan and we have a longstanding history around management of fisheries. This is not the first time that we have raised issues around the health and safety of our fisheries. I need only to go back to the 2004 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. I will read a couple of points out of that report because there have been years of concerns raised and still we do not have policies in place. The report stated:

Overall, we are not satisfied with the progress made by Fisheries and Oceans Canada in responding to the recommendations we made in the three previous audits in 1997, 1999 and 2000. While many stocks are abundant, some Atlantic and Pacific salmon stocks are in trouble. We continue to identify significant gaps in managing risks. - The department has not finalized the Wild Salmon Policy, which would set out clear objectives and guiding principles. The policy would also bring together biological, economic and social factors- for fisheries and resource management, habitat protection and salmon enhancement. - There are shortcomings in information on salmon stocks and habitat and scientific knowledge on the potential environmental effects of salmon aquaculture and aquatic ecosystems. - There are weaknesses in regulatory approvals, enforcement and monitoring of salmon aquacultural operations. This includes approving aquaculture site applications, assessing cumulative effects and monitoring salmon aquaculture operations to prevent harmful destruction of habitats. - There has been inadequate co-ordination between federal and provincial governments in managing fish habitat, undertaking research, approving aquaculture site applications, and sharing information.

The report goes on to talk about the three previous audits regarding the salmon stocks on the Pacific coast indicating that they were under stress. In 1999 they found that Pacific salmon fisheries were in trouble, that the long term sustainability of the fisheries was at risk because of overfishing, habitat loss and other factors.

I only have to point back to previous stories that came from the west coast. It is legend, but the Cowichan elders in my riding talk about the fact that they used to be able to walk across the backs of the salmon to get from one side of the river to the other. They talk about the fact that fish were so plentiful that they would jump into the net. Today we are in serious trouble. Today we are lucky if we can even see a fish on the Cowichan River

Recently under Canada Reads, one of the books was called Rockbound . It is a wonderful story of Newfoundland at the beginning of the last century. The story talks about the very hard life that fishers have, but it also talks about how plentiful fish were at that point.

The minister spoke about the need for the modernization of the Fisheries Act and a comprehensive review and reform. Yet we continue to wait for this to happen. We have heard some of my colleagues across the floor say that we have had a Fisheries Act in place for 137 years and that act has failed to keep pace with the changes happening in Canada.

I want to talk about the current DFO wild salmon policy. At the time the commissioner for sustainability issued her report, the wild salmon policy was still to come. In December 2004 the wild salmon policy was issued for review. It has been in the public domain for a number of months and in April a new draft was to be available. Apparently it is available. One cannot get it online. One must send an email to get a copy of the current wild salmon policy.

My understanding, although not really clear, is that the next stage is the development of operational guidelines. When I look at the Fisheries and Oceans Canada website and its information sheet from February 15, it talks about what is new in the policy. I thought this was a really interesting statement. It talks about the state of disarray in the ministry. It states:

The Wild Salmon Policy proposes a fundamental transformation in the way Pacific salmon, their habitats, and dependent ecosystems are managed.

Many of us would say that it is about time and ask how many more times we need to hear that. It goes on to state:

The WSP is a commitment to restore and maintain biodiversity in Pacific salmon (including their habitats and related ecosystems). The policy formalizes a gradual evolution in salmon management that has happened over the last 20 years. While management in the past was focused on the major stocks and fisheries, today attention has turned to the protection of biodiversity and a broader array of benefits from Pacific salmon.

That is great. How many salmon have been saved by this gradual evolution? What we have seen with this gradual evolution of policy is a Pacific wild salmon stock that is under ever increasing threat. We do not want a gradual evolution policy. We want a policy that can be implemented immediately and one that is actually going to do something about enhancing the health and vitality of our salmon stocks.

The salmon stocks are absolutely critical, and I am talking wild salmon, to the health of British Columbia fisheries. I am speaking more specifically, because that is where I come from, around the coastal communities.

The Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council talked about the fact that the fishery is not just about economics. It is also about social, cultural and environmental issues. In its May 5 release it stated:

The federal government’s capacity to conserve and scientifically manage the Pacific salmon fisheries continues to be eroded, according to the annual report of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council (PFRCC).

The report, issued today, notes that Fisheries & Oceans Canada has been focused on dealing with budget cuts when it should be directing its attention towards managing this valuable resource. It questions the government’s capacity to do an effective job in areas of enforcement, habitat protection and restoration, salmon enhancement, research and stock assessment, and also calls for the Department to open its management to public scrutiny about the effectiveness of its choices.

I would welcome more public scrutiny of how this department is managing our fisheries. This has been an ongoing saga. When we start looking at the value of the fisheries, we talk about the fact that the fishery stock has actually been contributing substantial amounts of money to the B.C. economy.

In a paper that was prepared in May 2004 by the T. Buck Suzuki Foundation, it talked about the value of the commercial fishery to British Columbia. This was a submission to the public review of the federal moratorium on offshore oil and gas in May 2004. In its executive summary, it stated:

The commercial fishing industry still generates revenues in excess of one-third of a billion dollars ($358 million in 2002) and contributes $170 million to BC’s Gross Domestic Product. Between 10,000 to 15,000 people earn a living from fishing or working in fish processing plants, a variable number because of a variable fishery."

Much more is at stake, however, if one looks at the magnitude of the entire marine sector in B.C., including marine tourism, the sportsfishing industry and aquaculture. According to a study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, B.C. marine-based industries employ over 20,000 and contribute a total GDP over $600 million and revenues far in excess of $2 billion. The importance of the commercial fishery to smaller coastal communities and First Nations is far more significant than the simple economics would suggest, as in many cases, fishing is the major or one of the major job producers in many communities. Generations of First Nations people and non-native fishermen have relied on the fisheries for their livelihoods.

One only needs to look at communities like Sointula to see what is happening to some of our coastal communities. As the fisheries become increasingly threatened, and increasingly concentrated I might add, there has been much talk about the ITQs in terms of how it affects coastal communities, not only the fishers but also suppliers, the marine repair sector, and as this paper points out, tourism and sports fishing. It is very important that we have an integrated, comprehensive strategy that looks at the vitality of our fisheries.

I have spoken in the House in the past around community economic development. One of the underlying principles of community economic development is that we have local control over local resources. I have heard many of the fishers from the east coast say that it is the local fishers, not the big corporate, business fishers, who understand what is happening on the ground. When there is local control over local resources, we end up with communities that have an inherent interest in preserving that resource.

This is a vital part for which many fishers are asking. They are asking for a different look at the way communities are included in the conversations around these fisheries.

In 2002 the Pacific Salmon Foundation did an analysis on where money was going in fisheries. I do not have much hope that the situation has changed. It talked about the fact that $44.5 million per annum had been cut back from salmon restoration programs by the government. It then goes on to do a detailed analysis.

However, the foundation also talks about the fact, as others have alluded, that fisheries is a very complex field to manage. We not only have a very important federal government role in it, but we also have a provincial government role. It talks about the fact that although the federal government has responsibility for fisheries, salmon and salmon habitat, most of the impact that affect salmon and salmon habitat are the responsibility of the provincial government. It talks about hydro generation, agriculture, mining, forestry, water and urban development. It talks about how critical it is that both levels of government be involved in coming up with solutions, which leads me back to the current bill.

On the one hand we hear that this is an absolutely essential piece to protect Ontario fishers. On the other hand there are concerns about how this legislation would affect fishing communities from coast to coast to coast. Here we have an example where we have one provincial government at the table with one small piece of a bill, yet we have, as far as I can see, no consideration of how other provincial governments may be impacted by the legislation.

The bill is being touted as a technical piece of housekeeping that is required to clean up some anomalies in the regulations and that it is an important piece for us to look at so we do not impact Ontario fishers. I would encourage the government to move forward on looking at the overall fisheries in Canada. Instead of just talking about the need to modernize the act and to have comprehensive reform, we get on with doing it before the west coast ends up in the same position as the east coast, with a cod moratorium that does not look like it is going to be lifted in any kind of timeframe. We do not want to see the wild salmon stocks in British Columbia end up in that same position.

Those salmon stocks are not only important for the culture of first nations, the economy and environment, they are also an integral part of our entire ecosystem. Many of our other critters depend upon fish, whether they grizzly bears or whatever. It is important that we ensure we are not doing something unintended with legislation. It is important that we step back and take a look at the overall fisheries and get on with ensuring that we have a fishery for our children and our grandchildren.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. friend for his accurate depiction of just what Bill C-52 is all about and also for his clear understanding of the fishery.

Over the past couple of years the member has travelled to British Columbia with the committee. He made a valuable contribution to the discussion on the fishery on the Fraser River and the government's inadequacies in that regard. The information that he received on that trip is evident in his comments today.

The issue that bothers me and one which I think bothers the member is the whole notion in Bill C-52 of transferring Parliament's authority to make laws, which can be enforced by fine or jail time, to a fisheries department bureaucrat. I find that particularly odious. I find it so because the individual subject to the fines would not have the ability to challenge the particular law in court because a bureaucrat would have the authority to make the law.

If a fisherman was charged under a law flowing out of Bill C-52, the courts would not provide any remedy. The scrutiny of regulations committee would certainly not be able to find any remedy because it would have been pushed aside. Whether or not that regulation would reflect the will of the Fisheries Act would not matter and the scrutiny of regulations committee would not be able act because there would be no room for it in Bill C-52. If fishermen were to come to members of Parliament, there is nothing they could do short of changing the act to remedy their difficulties.

I want to ask the member if the view that I have expressed on Bill C-52 accurately depicts what he fears if the bill goes ahead? The Fisheries Act, as old as it is, holds the minister accountable and allows the regulations to pass scrutiny under the joint committee for the scrutiny of regulations. It offers protection to fishermen. During my time in this place, the government has brought forward two bills to renew the Fisheries Act and neither one of them afforded that sort of protection to fishermen. I wonder if my friend shares those concerns.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Madam Speaker, the riding's name may not be Pearl Harbor, as my friend from Newfoundland pointed out earlier, but as far as I am concerned today's debate is a total aberration.

I was listening to my colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River, who said that we had no choice but to pass the bill in question, because acting otherwise might jeopardize Ontario's commercial fishery. What is surprising to me in such a statement is that we are not talking about a new problem; it has been around for years. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans had the opportunity to review the legislation but chose not to.

To put all this into context, I will remind the House that eight years ago, in 1997, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations criticized the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for making regulations which it described as ultra vires. In other words, the department was making regulations without being expressly permitted to do so by law. The committee, with which some members are very familiar, denounced the Aboriginal Communal Fishing Licences Regulations, among others.

We can go on with the historical overview. Bill C-43 was introduced during the second session of the 37th Parliament. This goes to show that the problem is not new. The bill was to amend the legislation so that the Aboriginal Communal Fishing Licences Regulations could be implemented. Once again, the committee reacted, and gave its opinion: it was opposed. The Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations did notice that Bill C-43 was fixing the problem, but it denounced its subsection 10(1), which has now made its way into the current Bill C-52.

In my opinion, this is a dispute that has been going on for many years and that cannot be resolved with Bill C-52. We will recall that Bill C-43, the predecessor of Bill C-52, was never passed. Now, Bill C-52 only retains subsection 10(1), precisely the subsection challenged by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. I cannot conceive how one can put such a bill before the House today and expect the House to adopt it.

What is the aim of Bill C-52? It has only one, which bears mentioning to all the fishers, be they on the west coast, east coast or in Ontario. It aims to expressly provide that a breach of a term or condition of a permission referred to in section 4 of the act, or of a lease or licence issued under the act, particularly for the purposes of stocking or artificial breeding or for scientific purposes, is an offence. As if scientific research were an offence under the legislation or the regulations. This bill contains a very significant incongruity, in our opinion.

Under section 78 of the Fisheries Act, only violations of this act or the regulations constitute an offence liable to a fine or imprisonment. This is extremely important. This is why we clearly cannot support this bill. Violations of the legislation or its regulations constitute an offence solely under section 78 of the Fisheries Act.

However, the conditions of a permission are not statutory provisions or regulations, and the violation of such a condition does not constitute a violation of the act or its regulations within the meaning of section 78 of the act itself.

So, the breach of the terms and conditions of permissions, leases or licences is governed by section 9 of the act, which provides that the minister may suspend or cancel a licence, lease, etc. That section alone has the effect of penalizing a citizen. This is extremely important, because it concerns all fishers. Indeed, the bill will not only apply to residents of Ontario, as mentioned by my colleagues earlier, but to all fishers from coast to coast.

The only effect of this bill will be to deprive a citizen of his freedom, on the grounds that he may not have complied with a requirement imposed by a public official exercising an administrative power. As our colleagues pointed out earlier, it is extremely important to understand that only the House of Commons has the authority to pass legislation and to impose fines or prison terms. This power cannot be given to a public official from the administrative sector, but this is precisely what Bill C-52 does.

The Bloc Québécois does not agree with the bill before us.

Earlier, the hon. member for Scarborough—Rouge River told us that the department had some problems amending the Fisheries Act. For various reasons and motives the department had not yet been able to propose changes to the Fisheries Act. I have news for the hon. member. The Fisheries Act has been in existence for 137 years. During that period, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans had ample time to sit down and propose gradual changes to the act, so as to adapt it to today's world.

I do not buy the claim that, over a period of 137 years, the department did not have time to look at the act and see what amendments should be made. To make such a statement is really not being very serious. Moreover, they are coming up with Bill C-52 at the very last minute. Yet, we have known since 1997 about the problem, about the fact that the act would have to be amended and adapted to modern day fishing conditions.

At the present time, of course, the Fisheries Act can indeed cause problems. Still, as several of my colleagues have just pointed out, the legislation is not what has ended us up in major disasters, nor what has done away with our resources. Nor is it the act that led us to one moratorium in the east in the early 1990s and a second in the early 2000s. It is not the Fisheries Act that has brought the situation to where it is. It is poor resource management that has deprived us of the resource.

Precautionary principles should have been applied to managing the resource. The ability to do so was there and the means were there. If these precautionary principles had been applied, we would still have an abundant resource.

We can talk about what is going on at present. The standing committee has just tabled its umpteenth report on the Fraser River salmon. Once again we realize that Fisheries and Oceans has learned nothing from the past. Hon. members will recall that, back in 1994, there was a similar crisis to last year's. This generated several reports, particularly the one by Mr. Fraser, former Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and former Speaker of this House. Having stated the problem, he proposed a broad range of recommendations which made it possible to remedy the situation.

It is as if the department has not learned or retained anything of what it was told in the past, everything submitted to it by the various people whom DFO itself commissioned to carry out studies and make the necessary checks. It has not implemented the regulations. The way the resource has been managed has nothing to do with Bill C-52. Management of the resource has been poorly planned and poorly handled by Fisheries and Oceans, and by the Government of Canada in general, ever since Confederation.

In recent years, fishing practices have clearly changed. The issues of fishing have changed and, overall, everything has changed. The pressure on the resource was therefore greater. However, they could manage that pressure and adapt as time went on to new fishing techniques and practices.

As regards the Fisheries Act, I read, among other things, a report released in April 2004 by Donald McRae and Peter H. Pearse. It mentioned of course that the Fisheries Act was out of date and that it should be amended. However, it is not by amending it piecemeal, in tiny bits, from time to time, that they will resolve the problem. On the contrary, they run the risk of creating a problem bigger than the one they are trying to solve.

Indeed, if tomorrow morning the public service were given almost carte blanche power—almost the power to imprison—Parliament would be deprived of one of its main functions, that of passing legislation making it possible to impose penalties.

I note that, despite what our colleagues in government have told us, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations never agreed to subclause 10(1), which the government is tying to impose today under Bill C-52. Never did the committee agree to the clause moving forward through a bill. There was never any question of that. The committee has always withheld its approval. A notice of disallowance is in fact before the House, which should be examined in the coming days.

Obviously, we are going to oppose Bill C-52 for the reasons I have just cited.

We want a total reform of the Fisheries Act. However, an overhaul of the Fisheries Act does not mean the government will better manage resources. It would take real political will to protect them. The primary function of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is, in fact, to protect and safeguard resources for now and for the future, in other words, for those fishing today and for those who would like to fish in the future.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to point out to my friend that in a letter to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans on April 14 of this year, the committee noted that the proposals in Bill C-52 were essentially the same proposals that were included in Bill C-43 a year ago.

The committee made it clear in that letter, when it said:

To deprive a citizen of his liberty on the ground that the citizen has failed to abide by requirement imposed by a public official in the exercise of an administrative power, such as a term or condition of licence, could be thought undesirable as a matter of legislative policy.

The committee then made it quite clear that penalizing someone and putting someone in jail based on violating a policy that was put forward by a bureaucrat as opposed to Parliament was rather unseemly and unprecedented. The committee unanimously sent that letter to the minister. Now the member seems to think that this is okay.

As well, the minister himself quoted from a letter from the Ontario minister of natural resources. I will not read the quote again, but the response of the committee was:

To the extent this comment suggests that disallowance of section 36(2) would impair the ability to impose terms and conditions of licences, it does not reflect a clear understanding of the nature of section 36(2). Disallowance of that section may change the manner of enforcing compliance with terms and conditions of licences, but would certainly not affect in any way the ability to impose such terms and conditions.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the premise of the minister's remarks is simply incorrect. The minister suggests that the fishery would be impossible to manage if Bill C-52 were not passed.

That is simply incorrect. If the minister would look at the last couple of pages of the report of the scrutiny of regulations committee, he would find that the committee makes it quite clear that in fact it is possible to manage the fishery without the benefit Bill C-52.

In fact, until the government, the ministry and the department started using this notion of attaching conditions to a licence about 10 years ago, the fishery was quite well managed. Let me rephrase that somewhat. The ability to manage the fishery was certainly there. Whether it was well managed or not is another question when one considers the problem with the North Atlantic cod, not to mention the problems on the Fraser River over the last year.

Why would the minister suggest that it is impossible to manage the fishery when the scrutiny of regulations committee, which is the expert on regulations that are proposed by this House, makes it quite clear that it is possible to manage the fishery?

Second, why does the minister think it is appropriate that fisheries managers, the same bureaucrats who brought us the disaster on the Fraser River this past summer, be given unfettered licence to put in place conditions of licence to manage the fishery without the scrutiny of Parliament? If the minister does think that is appropriate, then he is the only person I know who would support that notion.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

moved that Bill C-52, an act to amend the Fisheries Act (terms and conditions of permissions, leases and licences), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Scarborough--Rouge River.

I appreciate the opportunity to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-52, a bill to amend the Fisheries Act. The amendment that the bill contains clarifies that it is a requirement of the act to comply with fishing licence terms and conditions. In particular, the amendment is designed to address a very specific issue which has been raised by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.

I wish to thank the committee for its diligence. I really value its work, and I appreciate its continued interest in the Fisheries Act.

On March 15--

Business of the House

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, before I get to the weekly business statement, I said at that time that I would begin to schedule opposition days before the end of May and that is exactly what I have done. There are a number more to schedule.

Today and tomorrow, of course, are allotted days. I also wish to designate next Tuesday and next Thursday as allotted days.

When the budget bills, Bill C-43 and Bill C-48 are reported from committee, they will certainly become our highest priority.

In the meantime, we will proceed with third reading of Bill C-22, the social development bill; report stage and third reading of Bill C-26, the border services legislation; second reading of Bill S-18, respecting the census; and Bill C-52, the Fisheries Act amendment.

We will then turn to report stage and third reading of bills that have been or are soon to be reported from committee. These include Bill C-25 respecting RADARSAT; Bill C-37, the do not call bill; Bill C-28, the food and drug legislation; and Bill C-38, the civil marriage bill. If there is time during the next three weeks, we will also start to debate the legislation that has been introduced during the last few weeks.

Fisheries Act

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-52, an act to amend the Fisheries Act (terms and conditions of permissions, leases and licences).

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Paramedics

[Wajid Khan, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our paramedics play a vital and integral part in looking after the health of Canadians. Their timely response in times of emergency and the stresses of their everyday working environment merit more than a degree of respect. Working closely with police officers and firefighters, they are there when we need them most.

This is why I would urge the Government of Canada to show how much it and we respect our paramedics by revisiting the current rules for pension plans pursuant to Bill C-52 and adding paramedics to the list of public safety occupations.

Including paramedics in this definition would not only pay tribute to the realities of their profession, but also enable them to achieve parity with other emergency personnel, including firefighters and police, when negotiating unreduced early retirement at the age of 55.