Bill C-45 (Historical)

Fisheries Act, 2007

An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries

This enactment repeals and replaces the Fisheries Act. It seeks to provide for the sustainable development of Canadian fisheries and fish habitat in collaboration with fishers, the provinces, aboriginal groups and other Canadians.
It sets out management principles governing the exercise of responsibilities under the Act, and provides tools and authorities to improve the ability of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to properly manage fisheries and fish habitat.
Part 1 establishes a regime for the proper management and control of fisheries. It allows the Minister to stabilize access and allocation in fisheries, issue fishing licences, conclude agreements with groups that participate in a fishery and issue fisheries management orders.
Part 2 provides for the conservation and protection of fish and fish habitat.
Part 3 provides for the control and management of aquatic invasive species.
Part 4 provides the necessary powers to administer and enforce the Act.
Part 5 establishes the Canada Fisheries Tribunal and sets out a system of licence sanctions for fisheries violations to be administered by that Tribunal, which will also consider appeals of licence decisions.
Part 6 provides for regulations and other related matters required for the administration of the Act.
Part 7 sets out transitional provisions, consequential amendments and coordinating amendments and repeals certain other Acts.

Environment

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the answers are always the same. It is not enough to just listen. Nothing has changed in months. This government needs to change its tune and make a decision to act now. It is time for the government to uphold its commitments and reinstate the necessary measures to protect all our lakes and rivers. The situation is becoming increasingly critical for our waterways and the ecosystems they support. We need to act and fix the problem caused by the previous Conservative government's Bill C-45. Despite their election promise to reinstate the protections that had been taken away, the Liberals are showing yet again that, sadly, their word cannot be trusted.

It is disappointing that the government is ignoring the advice of the environmental assessment expert panel. There is a fundamental and urgent need to protect our waterways. These lakes and rivers are valuable, and water is a precious resource.

I will ask the same question one last time: when will the government finally reinstate the necessary measures to protect all our lakes and rivers?

[David Bevan]

We received many, many comments. We made changes where there was a consensus. As you see from the changes from Bill C-45 to Bill C-32, there weren't a great number, but those were the areas where there had been consensus from the interested parties, stakeholders, etc. The rest of the comments could be diametrically opposed. For example, there are people wanting to have the allocations almost take on the conditions or properties of property, and others don't want that to take place at all. We have differing views from one end of the spectrum to the other. We've reflected the middle view, if you will, in the changes that were made, and we think this is where we do have consensus on the changes from Bill C-45 to Bill C-32.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

One of things touched upon in Bill C-32 to the new and improved version of the Fisheries Act was it addressed some of the issues brought up from when it was Bill C-45. Are you familiar with the changes made to Bill C-32? Can you justify each and every one of the changes that were made?

Fisheries and Oceans

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the current Fisheries Act is a century old. Hon. members will recall that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans introduced Bill C-45, which died on the order paper when the House prorogued.

Now he is introducing a new bill, Bill C-32. In my opinion, it does not make any sense for the government to draft a bill without consulting the fishers, the associations and those who process the fish.

What should happen before the bill reaches third reading, either after first or second reading? There needs to be extensive consultation to ensure that Bill C-32, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries, is effective. The current Fisheries Act, which is 100 years old, is open to too much interpretation.

I want to know whether the hon. member would agree, after first or second reading, to having the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans travel across Canada in order to meet with all the associations, fishers, processing plant representatives, all those concerned in the fishing industry, in order to have a bill that is functional and operational.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, this is about the fisheries bill. This is about a bill that we truly believe is long overdue. The problem is we have to do it responsibly. We have just heard the first version which is kill bill volume one, and I represent kill bill volume two in this particular case. If my hon. colleague from Nova Scotia took exception to that, I meant no disrespect to him.

I wholeheartedly agree in that this is about doing what is right. This is about doing what is responsible. This is a new bill that replaces a 140-year-old act that needs to be addressed for the stakeholders, which include the harvesters, the plant workers, first nations, the environmental groups and the list goes on.

The government brought the legislation to the House first in the form of Bill C-45 and tried to ram it through second reading without any due care. It has tried to introduce a new bill with reckless abandon. Now the government is doing it again, as my colleague pointed out, with Bill C-32.

The government had a full year to engage stakeholders on one issue which is to bring in a new Fisheries Act. There was not one meeting about that particular Fisheries Act. As a matter of fact when we were in power, we made suggestions in four topic areas. The former minister of fisheries suggested four areas and it was turned down by one member of the standing committee because that member did not want to look at a new Fisheries Act. Guess who that member was. The current Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

Why all of a sudden is it so important that the government has to bring in this new bill for second reading? Recently the Nova Scotia fisheries minister claimed that he liked the idea of a new Fisheries Act but I believe he got a letter from that minister which backs up our argument to send it to committee before second reading as opposed to after. Perhaps my hon. colleague can address that particular situation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the first report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, presented on Thursday, December 6, be concurred in.

First, I want to thank my hon. colleague from the Liberal Party from Newfoundland and Labrador for bringing this motion forward through the Standing Committee of Fisheries and Oceans to the House so we can have a proper analysis and a debate in the initial stages of what is called Bill C-32.

First I will give a little history. Bill C-32 is former Bill C-45 from the last session. Bill C-45 was an attempt by the Conservative government to bring forward massive changes to the Fisheries Act of Canada. The Fisheries Act of Canada is the oldest legislation in the country. It has been around since Confederation, in British Columbia time, since 1871, and in Newfoundland and Labrador time, since 1949. We and many people within the industry from coast to coast to coast and within our inland waters had many objections and concerns to BillC-45.

Through the delays and everything else, the House was prorogued and it came back as Bill C-32.

We said to the government then, and we are saying to it again, that we were willing to work with it. We are offering an olive branch, an open hand, to get the bill to the committee prior to second reading so we then can have the consultations from coast to coast to coast, to ensure that the people whose lives are at stake, environmental groups, first nations, fishing communities large and small, the industry, the provinces, the territories and the federal government, can get together and come up with the proper recommendations, changes and amendments to the bill.

Long after we are gone, this act, or whatever derivative comes out of it, will be left behind. We have to ensure we get it right. There is no sense in rushing this. We will assist the government in getting it to our committee before second reading so we can make the changes, the exact same principle and policy that my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley had asked for with the environment act, Bill C-2, which was fine legislation. This is what we aim to do with the fisheries act.

Recently in a press release, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans said that all we wanted were NDP amendments. That is not true. We said very clearly that we wanted fishermen to write the bill, not bureaucrats. In 1992-93 one of the world's greatest collapses of a natural resource happened off the coast of Canada and, more specific, off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. It cost the Canadian taxpayer over $4 billion to readjust the industry for the east coast, and we have not finished counting yet.

Not one person at DFO was ever held responsible, even though we now know the scientific information from DFO science was manipulated at the highest level and changed. Those are the facts, yet there was not one inquiry, not a public inquiry, not a judicial inquiry, nothing. Now we will trust the same department in one of the most vital areas of our industries in Canada, the fishery?

I remind members that sport fishing alone in our country is over $7.5 billion to our industries. Commercial fishing is between $3 billion to $4 billion. It has sustained first nations people since their entry into the North American continent and ever since European contact as well. Many communities along coastal areas, including the north and our inland waters, were sustained by the fishery.

It is our job to ensure that the number one goal of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is the protection of fish and fish habitat. What do we get from the government? Earlier this year, in the minister's province, two vibrant, healthy, fish-bearing lakes, two healthy aquatic lake systems, were being destroyed, to be used as tailing ponds for mining companies. In fact they are becoming cheap waste disposal solutions for the mining companies.

The NDP has nothing against mining. We only want to ensure that it is done to the highest environmental standards. We want to ensure, as other mining companies have, that it has independent, aligned tailing systems so it cannot leach out into water systems. The fisheries department has the authority to protect fish and fish habitat, but it simply has not done it.

After we raised this issue, the department did it again in Nunavut. We found out that two more lakes in Nunavut, which carry various species of fish, were slated for the disposal section of the mining act. The fisheries department allows these mining companies to dump their waste into healthy aquatic systems. Why would the government allow that? Maybe it wants to make it cheaper for the mining companies.

Once the ore is gone, then the fish are gone. If we do it right, the fisheries can be here for our great grandchildren. If we keep destroying the fish habitat, we are not only destroying it for our grandchildren, but we are destroying it for ourselves. That is the long reach we are looking for in this bill.

We also want economic opportunities for fishermen and their families from coast to coast to coast. We want members of Parliament to be able to grab a hook and line and take their children fishing, but in a healthy environment. We want them to have the opportunity to fish. However, a lot of our fish species on the east and west coasts and in the north are being reduced in numbers. In fact, many scientists are saying that the large pelagics on the east coast are down to 90% from what they used to be.

This is all under the watch of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and his department. I am not putting the total blame for all the destruction on the current government. For 13 years the Liberals had the watch and before that the Conservatives and back and forth.

We anticipate that in 2008 the runs up the Fraser may be very low. We know what happened in 2004. We are very concerned about the early Stuart run in the parliamentary secretary's area. He knows very well what I am talking about. There are great concerns about the future of salmon stocks on the west coast.

If we have proper and true consultations with fishermen, their families and their communities, including first nations, we could have an act that would be proactive and desired by everybody. We could move it forward. If the government had listened to us in December of last year, we may have had a new act by now. The government insisted that the bill go to committee after second reading. There was only one reason for that. The government knows very well that we cannot make substantive changes to a bill after second reading. Many of the changes that fishermen would have liked to have seen would be ruled out of order in the amendment process. The government knows that.

I remember very clearly when the current Minister of Fisheries and Oceans was in opposition. In February 2002 he said that the problem with DFO bureaucrats was that they sat around with their corporate fish buddies drinking cognac and ignoring the needs of small fishermen. When he became minister, I asked him about that statement. He jokingly said that he did not drink alcohol so he did not have time for cognac, but his people did great work.

A lot of people in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans mean well and do their best under the circumstances. If Canada is to have a brand new Fisheries Act, it should be written by the people who are most affected by fisheries, and that is the fishermen and their families from coast to coast to coast and those in our inland waters, not by politicians or bureaucrats.

One of the problems, besides the environmental concerns that we have expressed, is there will be a lot of downloading to the provinces. I remind the government that the terms of union in British Columbia for 1871 was the federal government had the financial fiduciary responsibility and management of all fisheries in tidal waters.

We see the government slowly but surely downloading the responsibility for our fisheries to the provinces. What happened a few years ago in the great province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the minister's own province? The government of the day cut the rivers keeper program. It was up to the province to hire 20 more people to keep an eye on the rivers for the protection of the wild Atlantic salmon.

In Prince Edward Island, every year around late spring we hear of another massive fish kill on the Tyne River. It is directly related to pesticide runoffs from the farms. The federal government should work with the provinces to have buffer zones near fish bearing lakes and rivers to ensure pesticides do not flow into the water system.

We cannot keep going and killing off massive amounts of fish for other industries. They can cohabit and they could work together, but we need a comprehensive plan that protects fish and fish habitat and not use it as an afterthought.

One DFO official asked me how far I wanted to go to protect fish. I told him his department received $1.6 billion of Canadian tax dollars to do one thing and one thing only, and that was the protection of fish and fish habitat. It should not be an afterthought.

As I tell DFO officials, fishermen are not a nuisance, they are their job and so are fish. That is what we are asking the Government of Canada, through its Department of Fisheries and Oceans, to do.

When the Minister of Natural Resources was in opposition, I remember he questioned, on many times occasions, what the people in the ivory tower at 200 Kent Street were doing for a living. Anywhere between 1,300 to 1,600 work at 200 Kent Street for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Every morning when I come to work, I walk along the Rideau Canal. I have yet to see a trawler, a seiner, a gill-netter, a lobster pot, a crab pot or recreational fishermen. I never see anybody fishing in the Rideau Canal, yet we have 1,300 to 1,600 people working for the fisheries department in Ottawa. When the Minister of Natural Resources was in opposition, I remember him asking what those people did. I wonder if he ever received an answer on that.

The country requires more habitat officers, more money to science and enforcement and more cooperation between everybody to ensure that fisheries are protected now and in the future. That does not mean downloading federal responsibility to the provinces. We are very concerned about this.

The other issue we are very concerned about is the corporatization of a public resource. We are pleased to see that the government, after saying absolutely the reverse, has inserted the words “common property resource” in Bill C-32. They were not in Bill C-45. We had to push and push to get it in there. However, it is only in the preamble. We would like to see it in the main body of the text to ensure that the fisheries is a common property resource owned by the people of Canada and not the Government of Canada.

It is ironic that today's National Post talks about the Magna Carta. That right was given to us by the Magna Carta. It is the public right to fish and the government must manage the fishery in the public manner to which we should be accustomed, not what happens now.

A public resource being slowly, or whatever way we look at it, privatized makes us ask this. Why does the Jimmy Pattison Group controls most of the salmon and herring stocks on the west coast. How is it that Clearwater control most of the scallop stocks on the east coast? If it is a public resource, how does one entity manage to have control of the vast majority of that public resource?

On trust agreements, again the government is very vague about this in the bill. This is when companies buy up licences and put them in other fishermen's names. Instead of the fishermen becoming independent, they end up working for the company store.

We want to ensure that the owner-operator and fleet separation clauses are intact in the legislation where they cannot have any wiggle room to get around them. If we have that, it would go a long way in protecting the interests of fishermen in the country.

Many times we stand in the House and we thank the fishermen very much. Every morning when I have breakfast I thank the farmers who give us our nutritious food. At the same time we must thank the fishermen. Fishermen risk their lives to give us the opportunity to have nutritious and good, wholesome food. We thank the fishermen for what they do.

It is our parliamentary obligation to ensure that fishermen can maintain their livelihood. Anyone who has been out on a gill netter off Texada Island off the coast of Vancouver Island at 4:30 in the morning and watched the sun come up slowly over the horizon as the fisherman had his second cup of tea while he put his line out has watched God's work at hand.

There is nothing better than to go out at about 3:30 or four o'clock in the morning off the coast of Canso, Nova Scotia with a fisherman to lay his 200 lobster traps in the water. When the job is done at six in the morning and the fisherman comes back, that is a wonderful day.

There are fishermen out there who love to do that work. They love living in their coastal communities. They love being able to earn a living with their own two hands, but consistently, year in and year out, we make it more and more difficult for them to ply their trade. It is simply unacceptable.

What happened in Newfoundland and Labrador after 1992-93 was that over 50,000 people left that province to seek an economic livelihood elsewhere because of the collapse of the fishery. Have we learned anything from that? Absolutely not. Does this act reverse that and ensure that it never happens again? No, it does not.

If the government is so confident that this bill is the way to go, then it should send the bill to committee before second reading. If the government does that, it already has our pledge, and I am sure the government has the pledge of my hon. colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, that we will constructively work with the government to bring a new modern act to this country. We can do it fairly quickly. In fact, that is what we said almost a year ago. If the Conservatives had listened to us then, we would probably have a new act now.

We are asking the government to work in cooperation with the opposition parties. We do not want to kill this bill, but if forced to, we will. If the government brings it to us after second reading knowing full well that fishermen in their communities cannot make major amendments to it, then we will have no choice but to delay and destroy Bill C-32. That is something we do not want to do.

We want to be proactive. We want to be constructive. We want fishermen and their families to have real input into what will affect their lives for many generations to come.

This is the minimum Parliament should be able to give to fishermen. We are not the fishermen. In fact, at the last count I believe there were only two members of Parliament who were commercial fishermen. One is from the Delta area, and I cannot mention his name of course, and the other is from the Kenora area. They are the only two commercial fishermen in this place.

Guess what happened to the Conservative member from the Delta area when he opposed Bill C-45. The government kicked him off the committee. He was the only commercial fisherman that we had and the longest serving member since 1993. He objected to the bill. He was standing up for his constituents. What did the government do? The government removed him from the committee so his concerns would be silenced, but he is not going to be very silent. The reality is we do not want that to happen to anyone else. We want to make sure that fishermen and their families have an opportunity down the road.

As a first nations friend of mine once said to me, we need to think in the seventh generation principle. We need to understand that what we do today will affect seven generations from now. If we do it right and if we protect the fish and the fish habitat, if we ensure an economic livelihood for fishermen and their families from coast to coast to coast and on our inland waters, then that would be a bill we could all be proud of.

I look forward to further debate on this particular issue and any questions or comments that anyone may have.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I think it explains what it is. We've talked about this in certain forms under different subjects about this particular piece of legislation. We always thought that when Bill C-45 came in, the advice given and the input sought was not sufficient if you were going to replace an act that was stretching towards 140 years old.

In light of the great spirit that was shown when Bill C-2 was referred to committee, we thought that Bill C-32 would have the same process, whereby we wouldn't be strapped down by certain rules and procedures that could confine us. Hopefully we can take this from the standing committee and go across the country. I think it's something we need to do, given that we are replacing an act that's close to 140 years old.

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

I really was looking forward to the government's throne speech. The government said when it prorogued the House that it would chart a new course for this country. I expected it to live up to those words. The government prorogued this House. That is a very serious act. That turned back the clock on many bills and motions that had been worked on for months by the members of this House.

I thought that since the government took this step, it would truly have a new direction, a new course, but I was disappointed. Once again the Conservative government looked in the rear-view mirror. It missed an opportunity. It is taking Canada in the wrong direction, the wrong direction on climate change and the wrong direction for seniors, for children, for first nations and for ordinary Canadian families.

The biggest disappointment was the government's complete and utter failure to address climate change. Last spring, my colleague, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, worked hard in an all party committee to improve Bill C-30, the clean air and climate change act, so that Canada could begin to move in the right direction.

All parties agreed that Bill C-30 was going to be a good start, but the government is not even bringing it back. In fact, it is bringing back only a small portion of it even though the majority of the House agreed on the changes to Bill C-30. What arrogance. What contempt for this House the government has. Once again it has broken the trust of ordinary Canadians.

I and many others from my riding and across the country are disappointed in the government's stance on the environment because we are running out of time. Ordinary Canadians are doing their part. They are changing their light bulbs. They are conserving water. They are converting to hybrid cars. However, no matter how many of us change our light bulbs, if the government does not change course all our efforts will be futile.

The government could have made a big difference if it had implemented hard caps on large carbon emitters. That would go a long way to meeting our emission targets. It decided to go with intensity based measures instead. With the expansion of the oil sands looming on the horizon, intensity targets will do nothing to reduce Canada's emissions. When we produce more oil from the oil sands, we also will be producing more greenhouse gases.

Another opportunity was missed by the government when it came to addressing the needs of seniors. My colleague, the member for Hamilton Mountain, introduced the seniors charter last year. It was debated and passed by the House, but the government has never enacted it. The government had an opportunity in this throne speech to implement the priorities of the charter, including primary care, long term care, home care and free pharmacare and dental care. These things would all enhance the quality of life for seniors.

However, once again the government has let seniors and all Canadians down. It is another broken promise. The governmentt said it would act on what was passed by the majority of this House.

When it comes to hope and fairness for ordinary Canadians, the government has done nothing on the issue of affordable housing and homelessness. We have just seen $14 billion in federal surplus. The government has announced that this year's surplus will be twice what it had anticipated. Quelle surprise.

With all that extra money in the coffers and with all the need for housing in my communities, and in fact with nearly two million Canadians across this country who do not have what is deemed to be acceptable housing, why did the government not make it a priority to invest in a national housing strategy?

I have been to many first nations communities in my riding. The housing situation there is even worse. For example, in Port Hardy, the Gwa'Sala-Nakwaxda'xw are in dire need of acceptable shelter. They live in mouldy homes. Sometimes as many as 25 people are living in one house and three families live together in a home built for single family occupation. These are deplorable conditions and they need to be addressed immediately.

The same goes for child care. I have been talking with parents and child care workers in my riding from Port McNeill to Courtenay, and they are telling me that there is a crisis. Failure on the part of the government to address the crisis has resulted in longer wait times for child care space and increasing costs. There is up to a two years wait for a space. That means we have to register our child before it is even born.

Child care centres need reliable, long term funding to provide the kind of access that parents and their children are looking for. That is why the NDP proposed the child care act that will soon be voted on at third reading. That is the kind of solution today's families are looking for, real commitments to child care in this country.

I would like to address two things that are crucial to Vancouver Island North, two things the government mentioned in its throne speech that it would protect. It said it would stand up for forestry and fishing, but on these two files, the government has a very bad track record.

The Conservatives sold out forestry communities and forestry workers in my riding and across this country when they signed the sellout softwood agreement. Because of that agreement, it is not profitable for companies to mill logs in Canada, so they ship raw logs to the U.S. or abroad and we get to buy them back as finished lumber.

The irony is not lost on the constituents of Vancouver Island North. Our communities are surrounded by forests, yet lumber mills are closing from B.C. to Atlantic Canada as more and more raw logs and jobs leave this country. Pulp and paper mills and fibre mills are having a hard time getting fibre because there are very few sawmills left to provide it.

I introduced Motion No. 301 to curtail raw log exports and to encourage value added and manufacturing right here in Canada. The natural resources minister said he recognized that something needed to be done about the situation that is killing our resource based communities, but again, the government has failed to act. I do not call that standing up for an industry, for workers or for our communities.

The other issue that I would like to mention is that the Conservatives said they would stand up for the fishing industry, but again, they are going in the wrong direction. Last spring, they introduced Bill C-45, a new fisheries act, without consultation with fishermen, first nations or anyone from our communities. That bill has gone now because of prorogation, but why did they bring it forward in the first place? No one wanted it.

They also said that they would decentralize the DFO and have more decision making on the coasts of this country. After almost two years there has been no movement on this promise. Instead, I have to ask the government if they are trying to kill our west coast fisheries.

Just a few weeks ago an order came down from on high to cut the Chinook egg take for the entire west coast. When asked why, the Conservatives said it was due to a lack of funds, but I remember last year when I asked the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans about a budget cut, I was told that it had not been cut, so there should have been lots of money there.

Thankfully, the decision to cut this egg take and to kill the Chinook fishery was turned around, but a decision like that should never have been made in the first place.

Also, a recent barge spill in my riding in Robson Bight is causing grave concerns because the fuel tank and vehicles are on the bottom of the ocean continuing to leak oil and diesel to the surface. Environmental groups, local businesses, students and concerned people from around the world donated money to carry out an investigation. We called on the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to also carry out an investigation, but the ministry waited a full two months and finally, after the environmental organizations announced that they would do carry out an investigation, the government was embarrassed and had to come forward and say it would do one too. It finally did the right thing.

These oil spills are having a devastating effect on the waters and on the salmon in the Strait of Georgia. Salmon are the canary in the coal mines of our oceans. They feed whales and people, and are a source of cultural and ceremonial significance to first nations of B.C. The health of salmon is important to the west coast and we are in danger of losing them.

Enhancement must be increased. Monitoring of sport and commercial fishing must be increased if we are to have a clear picture of what is going on off our coast.

There are many reasons not to support the direction in which the government is going. I am speaking for the thousands of Canadians in my riding who oppose this direction. I and they have little confidence--

Motions in Amendment

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have found out that 80,000 passengers have been put at risk over the past five years when planes have come dangerously close to each other in Canadian skies. These findings are based on Transport Canada data. That includes more than 800 incidents between 2001 and mid-2005 in which planes were getting too close to each other. In some cases, they were seconds away from colliding.

What should happen? We are saying that the Transport Canada guidelines will need to make sure devices are put into the planes to ensure there is a system to make sure the planes do not come close to one another.

Why do I raise this? It is because through access to information my office was able to find out that recently in downtown Toronto at the island airport we had an incident on March 13, 2007, I believe, when a Cessna 150, a training school type of plane, was doing circuits around runway 26. There was a Porter Airlines flight, a Dash 8 400, approaching the runway. The plane doing circuits on runway 26 cut off the Dash 8, overshooting, and the two aircraft came within 400 feet vertically or a half a mile horizontally of each other. That is very close. How did I get that information? I obtained it from access to information.

Under clause 7 of this bill, no one, no member of the public, whether it is a member of Parliament, a journalist or a person concerned about airline safety, would be able to get this kind of information. The Toronto Star did a series not long ago, in September 2006, recording all of the problems that various airlines, the industry and the passengers had. What will happen after Bill C-6 passes is that all of this information will not be allowed to become public.

Where is the accountability when there is no transparency and no openness? What is the government afraid of? Why is the government shutting down the public's right to know about airline safety? If the government is not doing that, then we should cancel clause 7 and get rid of it. The bill is very clear. Clause 7 says that we cannot continue to have this information.

Earlier there was a question about Toronto's downtown airport and Porter Airlines. Parts of Bill C-6 say that it is now going to be up to the industry to decide the level of risk that the industry is willing to accept in its operations, rather than it being done through the level of safety established by a minister acting in the public interest. It allows the government to transfer the responsibility from the minister and from government so that the industry itself would set and enforce its own safety standards.

That is not the way to go. Why?

Let me describe Toronto's island airport for members. The island airport is in downtown Toronto. It has a large number of pilot cautions. I will tell members what they are. It is stated that all arriving and departing aircraft are instructed to avoid flights over the CNE and Ontario Place. The wind turbine at the CNE grounds is listed as a hazard. There are two large chimney stacks that are noted as hazards, the Hearn power generating plant and the incinerator on Leslie Street.

Pilots also are instructed not to fly over surrounding neighbourhoods, including the entire Bathurst Quay, the residential condominiums along Queen's Quay, and the island community. There are close to 20,000 residents in that downtown area. There are high-rises, some of which are 40 to 50 storeys high. Some of them are within a few seconds to a few minutes of the airport.

Pilots are also warned about vessels with 120 foot masts in the vicinity of the final approach to all the runways. There is frequent banner-towing activity over the CNE, which is a hazard. The flagpole in Confederation Park is listed as a hazard. As well, pilots are cautioned that a number of new high-rise buildings have been approved around Fort York. Also, a building on Fleet Street is 44 storeys high, so just along Fleet Street there are at least five to eight new high-rise condominiums that have been approved and are going in.

That area is surrounded by large buildings. Also, because it is right by the lake, people have observed that lake fog in the spring and fall sometimes causes poor visibility at the airport. There is severe weather, such as crosswinds, wind sheer and air turbulence, creating difficult landing conditions. In fact, in just the short while that Porter Airlines has been flying into the island airport, there already has been one incident in which the aircraft could not land at the island airport and was told to go to Pearson International Airport.

The aircraft flying into the island airport, the Q400, is certified to operate in crosswinds of up to 60 kilometres per hour. During February 2006, wind gusts of over 60 kilometres per hour were recorded on 11 different days, so in one month alone there were 11 days when the crosswinds were too strong.

There is also another problem at this airport. The runway is incredibly short. The Q400, when fully loaded, requires 1,402 metres for takeoff and landing, which is almost 200 metres more than the longest runway at the island airport. That is how short the runway is. These are the safety requirements at the downtown Toronto Island Airport. Even Bombardier, which manufactures the Q400, has said that 1,400 metres of runway is required only if one of the two engines fails on takeoff.

There are a lot of problems at the downtown island airport. There is also a problem with the large number of birds in that area. There is a bird sanctuary nearby. Occasionally people have to shoot off some guns in order to scare away the birds. Transport Canada statistics show that the shore birds, and gulls in particular, account for the greatest number of bird strikes and that 80% of bird strikes occur during takeoff and landing. There are all sorts of problems.

Also, the island airport is run by a port authority that this year at the annual general meeting declared a loss of $6 million in a $10 million business. It is quite incredible that our government is continuing to subsidize a money-losing business and that this rogue agency continues to run an airport that is not welcomed by the citizens of Toronto and definitely has a lot of safety problems.

We are seeing a pattern in Bill C-6, which deals with airline safety. We have other bills like this before us, such as Bill C-45, the proposed fisheries act, which basically allows corporate polluters to dump toxic substances without fines. The new act allows the minister discretion to give alternate measures to big polluters instead of criminal records as mandated in the old fisheries act. Environmentalists and people who are concerned about the Great Lakes, for example, are appalled. There is a big campaign against the bill because it is seriously flawed. That is one of the patterns.

Other things are happening. Last week we discovered that at least 90,000 toys in Canada have dangerous levels of lead and again the government is asking the industry to determine what the safety level is, just like it is doing for the airline industry. We are asking companies to detect toxins and lead in toys and asking them--

Fisheries Act

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

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition today on behalf of residents of various communities on Vancouver Island and in Kimberley and the surrounding area as well.

The petitioners are expressing their concern about the impact that Bill C-45, the proposed new fisheries act, will have on them. They decry the fact that they were denied input into the drafting of the bill. They are calling upon Parliament to withdraw it and to accept input from recreational and commercial fishermen and others.

[Lee Richardson, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to rise today to present a petition on behalf of concerned fishermen who urge members of Parliament to act now to stop the passage of Bill C-45 and to allow further input from the fishing industry into the new Fisheries Act.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to present a petition today from residents of mostly Cranbrook and the Creston area of British Columbia, sports fishermen who are opposed to the new Fisheries Act. In their view the act was written by bureaucrats for bureaucrats and effectively removes any legal rights that they feel they have as fishermen. They are calling upon the government to scrap Bill C-45.

Opposition Motion--Equalization Program and Atlantic Accords

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague points out, he and I have both worked on the issue of Bill C-45. We have been inundated with questions from all interests, environmental groups, aboriginal groups, fishing groups far and wide. They are wondering what the government is talking about when it refers to broad consultations. There was absolutely no or very little consultation. That is why we have vehemently argued against the Conservatives ramming through Bill C-45. Why do they recklessly continue to do this?

I am glad my hon. colleague pointed this out. Just the other day during debate at second reading our hon. colleague from South Shore—St. Margaret's moved a motion in the House to make sure that no more amendments could be made to the bill. Shameless. Shameful.

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

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague knows the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans probably better than any of us, but the reality is the minister is the individual who represents in cabinet the good people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

We heard his speech in the House which was simply a litany of deception. The fact is he is the same Minister of Fisheries and Oceans who said to us that there was broad consultation with fishermen and their families across the country on the new Fisheries Act, Bill C-45.

I remind my hon. colleague that at the Maritime Fishermen's Union conference the minister stood there and said that exact same thing to all the fishermen in the room, that there was broad consultation. I stood up right after the minister and asked the MFU if any of them in the room had been consulted on the new Fisheries Act before it was tabled on December 13. I asked them to put up their hands. I asked the question twice and not one person put up their hand.

If the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans can mislead a whole group of fishermen at their convention, misleading an entire province is just one rung up the ladder of deception. Would the member not agree?

Fisheries Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition to present to the House today signed by many people from the province of British Columbia.

The petitioners call on the government to withdraw the new Fisheries Act, Bill C-45. The petitioners are requesting this of the government because they feel that there has been insufficient input from both recreational and commercial fishermen. They want this bill withdrawn and rewritten.

The House resumed from May 30 consideration of the motion that Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the last point, we have already addressed that.

However, with regard to the balance of Thursday's statement, I am pleased to respond that today and tomorrow we will continue with Bill C-55, the expanded voting opportunities bill; Bill C-14, the adoption bill; Bill C-57, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act; and Bill C-45, the fisheries act.

In the last Thursday statement, we indicated that we were hoping to have this week as “enhancing the quality of the life of first nations people week” but this was cancelled by the opposition parties when they did not release Bill C-44 from committee, the bill that would give the first nations protection under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Not only is it being held up now but, as early as this morning in this House, the opposition obstructed our efforts to get the bill dealt with forthwith so that first nations people could have the human rights that every other Canadian enjoys. We know that if all parties would agree to proceed with that, as we saw when we sought unanimous consent, it could proceed, but some would prefer to obstruct it.

Next week will be welcome back from committee week, when we welcome business that has been at committee, including some that has been stalled there for some time. We will deal with Bill C-52, the budget implementation bill, which will begin report stage on Monday and, hopefully, we can get third reading wrapped up by Tuesday.

Following the budget bill, we will call for report stage and third reading of Bill C-35, bail reform. After that, we will call Bill C-23, the Criminal Code amendments. I hardly remember when Bill C-23 was sent to the committee by this House. That took place long before I was even House leader 228 days ago.

Thursday, June 7, shall be the last allotted day. There are a number of other bills that we would like to include in our welcome back from committee week. I still hope we can see Bill C-44, the amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act, to which I just referred; Bill C-6, the amendments to the Aeronautics Act; Bill C-27 dealing with dangerous offenders; Bill C-32 dealing with impaired driving; and Bill C-33 dealing with foreign investment, if the opposition parties will release those from committee.

International Trade

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc member said he is tremendously anxious about water quality and the sale of water. Why, then, is the Bloc prepared to support the Conservatives' new fisheries act given that Bill C-45 gives corporate polluters a free hand to dump toxic substances in many of our lakes, rivers and oceans?

The St. Lawrence River, for example, is intimately connected with the Great Lakes, which are under tremendous stress and pressure. This Parliament should strengthen our laws to protect our water, so why is the Bloc supporting any bill that weakens the protection of our water? How can we talk about exporting water when our water might be further polluted or contaminated?

Fisheries Act, 2007

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the amendment of the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-45.

Call in the members.

The House resumed from May 29 consideration of the motion that Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate on Bill C-45. Coming from the landlocked base of Winnipeg Centre, one may think it odd that I would rise to debate the Fisheries Act, but not at all is it unusual for me to be taking an active interest in the well-being of our Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the bill that regulates same. Many MPs would be interested to learn that the great inland sea of Lake Winnipeg is actually the largest freshwater fishery in this country. We do have an interest, of course, in maintaining the integrity of all of our fisheries resources and habitat.

We should always be cognizant of the fact, a point that my colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore reminds us of regularly, that it is not just the Department of Fisheries, it is the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We cannot have one without the other. They are of equal weight. We forget that important aspect sometimes.

I want to thank my colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore for being a consistent champion of the fishery resource and the people who make their living by that resource over the decade that I have known him in the House of Commons. Also other speakers today have made passionate arguments of the importance of what we are doing in the final half hour of this parliamentary day.

As my colleague from Vancouver East pointed out, this act may be 139 years old, but it is the 139 years of mismanagement, of abuse of a precious resource that we are concerned with. It is imperative at this juncture in the history of our resources that we get it right, that we put things back on track. Never has our fish resource been at such a crisis point and when it is gone, it ain't never coming back. As we are reminded when species disappear, they disappear forever. It is shocking to learn that most of the great fish in our oceans are gone. Ninety per cent of the great fish in our oceans are gone. We are harvesting smaller and smaller species. Even they are being taxed beyond limits.

As a carpenter, I built a house one time for a scientist who worked at the biological research centre in Nanaimo. He was a wonderful, interesting guy. He had a beautiful house which I built for him overlooking Departure Bay. As we were building his house, he was telling me about the work that he did. He had a Ph.D. in mathematics. When I asked him what they did, he said that they were trying to age groundfish so that they would know when to best harvest them and when they should be throwing them back to allow them to reproduce.

I said, “Wait a minute. This is 1980, and I am building a house for you and you are just starting to do the research on when we should or should not harvest groundfish? This is appalling”. We must have thought naively that that resource would always be there for us no matter what we did to it, no matter what pollutants we dumped into the streams. It is not. It is a finite resource.

I will tell one more story about my days as a carpenter. I worked building houses in Kitsault, British Columbia, way up Alice Arm, north of Prince Rupert, up in some of the most magnificent country I have ever seen. We built a whole town there for a new molybdenum mine. We flew in and out to build the houses, a rec centre and the mine. The mine was started up and from the air we could see the plume of effluent working its way down Alice Arm into the inside passage between the Queen Charlotte Islands and Prince Rupert, chasing all of the life out of Alice Arm. That one molybdenum mine was shut down 18 months later. The mine was mothballed; the town was mothballed. We built that town and it sits there still as a ghost town. Alice Arm was sterilized from one year of irresponsible mining.

We want to make sure that the new Fisheries Act will respect the sustainable development of Canada's sea coast and inland fishery.

I would be irresponsible if I did not point out another disturbing motif or trend in the management of our fisheries that we have taken note of by the Conservative government. Not only is the Conservative government hellbent and determined to bring an end to the Canadian Wheat Board but it seems to have its eyes on the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation as well.

It seems to have its eye on supply management, period, even though this is a disastrous ideologically driven point of view. There is no business case for abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board and there is no business case for abolishing the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation.

I stand and speak today on behalf of all the fishers on Lake Winnipeg and communities like Gimli, Hnausa and Riverton, and the Icelandic people who came to Manitoba from Iceland, where the largest Icelandic population outside of Iceland lives in the heart of Manitoba, in Gimli. Their tradition and heritage was to make their living from the sea. They had subsistence farming from the land but really their resource was from Lake Winnipeg, what they call their great inland sea.

They chose to market their commodity through a supply management system that now seems to be under attack by this ideological crusade by the Conservative government. I rise to serve notice today that we will not tolerate it. We will not allow it to attack this great prairie institution. It will certainly not do it without a fight from our party.

I made note of some of the comments made by my colleague from Vancouver Island North. She made compelling and compassionate arguments talking about our fishing resources as part of our common wealth. It is a notion we do not entertain often enough in this place, I do not think. We should remind ourselves from time to time that we are blessed as Canadians to enjoy the common wealth of this great country and the resources therein. The access to them is part of our common wealth but with that common wealth comes common responsibility. The buck stops here in terms of responsibility for managing our precious and finite resources.

I am not satisfied and my colleagues are not satisfied. My colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore who sits on the committee for whose opinion I have the utmost of respect is not satisfied that this particular bill in this particular form will protect that national heritage for which we are charged with the responsibility of supervising, not the least of which is reference to the rights of first nations to a share in the land and resource base.

If we are ever going to bridge the poverty gap, the prosperity gap, that exists between the social conditions of first nations and aboriginal people and the mainstream population, we must address a fair interpretation of the treaties that includes a sharing of land and resources.

The Indian Act is a statute that is almost as old as the Fisheries Act. People would be appalled to know that even though tradition, culture and heritage among first nations has it that the fishery and other land resources were a main part of their economy and their culture, there is not only no reference to access to an economic fishery in the Indian Act, it is kept out deliberately.

This is something a lot of people do not realize. The only thing that aboriginal people can use for economic development on their reserve or on their traditional territory is mud, gravel, sand and dirt. If one can make a living out of marketing mud, gravel, sand and dirt, then I suppose one could create a gravel pit. Anything else they have to ask specific permission from the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to even cut down a single tree or catch a single fish above and beyond bear subsistence. Supreme Court rulings have been ruling in their favour, but nowhere is it entrenched in legislation or codified that they will have in fact some equitable share in land resources and fisheries.

My colleagues and I in the NDP are comfortable with our decision to support the hoist motion that would delay entertaining this bill for a six month period while it is given more fulsome study, where some of the legitimate concerns that have been addressed by my colleagues can be reviewed once again, and where true consultation can take place.

I remind my colleagues on the Conservative benches that there is a legal definition of consultation. It does not only mean passing it under the nose of somebody and saying “what do you think of this?” To truly consult we have to accommodate some of the concerns that are raised by the other party. That is consultation, to truly accommodate some of the legitimate issues raised.

I see that I am out of time already. It is a shame because I had a great deal more that I wanted to share with members. Perhaps in the question and comment period I can raise some of those points.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries.

First, I would like to thank our fisheries critic, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore, for doing an excellent job on raising public awareness about the bill. Other members of our caucus, the member for Vancouver Island North, the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan and the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, have all participated in the debate because we are so concerned about what the impact of the bill will be.

However, in particular, I think, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore has really brought to the public's attention what is taking place with the bill. We should put it right on the record that we are dealing with a bill in regard to an act that has been around for a very long time. The existing Fisheries Act has been around for about 139 years.

Therefore, to bring in a new bill and a new act is a very significant move. We would not disagree with that. However, the manner in which that is done, the manner in which consultations take place, is something that very much concerns us. Of course, the substance of the bill itself is something that concerns us as well, so we have two issues with the bill. One is the manner in which it was brought forward. The second is the actual substance of the bill.

In terms of the process, we have heard from members, excepting from the government side, that there has been a lot of concern about the lack of consultation. There is no question that the history of fisheries and oceans in this nation has always generated enormous public debate.

In my own riding of Vancouver East, for example, we have fishers who go back generations. We have women who have worked in the fish packing plants and the canning plants. We have families who have gone out on the boats generation after generation. They have seen this resource, which has been seen as a national value, common property, and a community resource, dwindle and be whittled away, mostly because of mismanagement by DFO. There is a lot of interest in what the bill is about. As for any change that takes place, I will tell members, we will have something to say about it.

It is no surprise to me to hear that over 29 groups across the country wrote a letter to the government in which they told it to take out the bill, saying that there was not adequate consultation. In fact, we know that the amendment we are debating today, called a hoist amendment, is to actually delay the bill for another six months so that adequate consultation can take place.

I have to say that the NDP also has advocated that the bill be sent to a special committee so there could be a very fulsome consultation. That was not agreed to, so now we have the amendment, which we support, to actually hoist the bill and say that it should be put off for six months. We do that with legitimate concerns about what is going to happen to an act that has already been in existence for 139 years and is now to be dramatically changed.

That is not to say that changes are not required. They are, and the NDP would be the first to say that, but we are very concerned about the process that was used. The stakeholders and the people who have invested a huge amount of time into monitoring, analyzing and advocating for fisheries in Canada feel that they have not had a proper consultation. I think that if we are hearing this from people we have a responsibility as parliamentarians to respond to it and to say that we do believe this kind of consultation should take place.

I do think it is ironic, though, that one of the groups that does support the bill, the Mining Association of British Columbia, has as its senior director of policy and communications Byng Giraud, who writes and says that he supports the bill, he welcomes it, et cetera, but he also happens to be on the national council of the Conservative Party of British Columbia. He is obviously very happy with the state of things, but if we stack that up against the other 29 groups across the country that say they have not been heard, then I think we know which side we are on with that question.

Some of the concerns we have about the substance of the bill, and why we will be supporting the amendment, is that we really believe this bill does not adequately maintain the fishery as a public resource, a common property resource. To talk about maintaining a public character really does not go far enough for us. We feel that this will undermine the tradition that we have had in this country.

We are skeptical and suspicious of what the government actually has in mind for privatization, concentration and downloading. One looks at words in a bill very carefully and weighs up what they mean or may not mean. That is one concern.

A second concern we have with the bill is that it does not adequately maintain and strengthen conservation and the protection of fish and fish habitat. This is a huge issue. Often we have public hearings. I know as an urban representative that we often have processes when massive development is coming in. We have had some protection in the past to ensure that fish habitat are protected and there has to be a proper environmental assessment and evaluation.

We are very concerned that in Bill C-45 those provisions will be weakened. They will not be strong enough. When we get down to weighing it up and it becomes the environment and the sustaining of the fishery habitat versus the pressures of development, whether it is urban, mining or resource development, then we have to know that there is an open and transparent process. We have to know that the fishery habitat is going to be both conserved and protected.

We see that as a deficiency in the bill that causes the alarm bells to go off for us. It causes us to not want to support it.

We are also aware that the backdrop to this is cutbacks to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans over the next three years. We can see in the government's own estimates that there are funding cuts for science, conservation and protection programs. Again one has to question if the bill goes through and we marry it up with the cuts that are being planned, what kind of public oversight is there going to be? Who is going to be looking out for the fisheries habitat, conservation and protection? We know that the advocacy groups will be there, but the legislation should be providing those kinds of protections.

A further concern is the downloading that the bill will provide. This is an old story. Even in the 10 years that I have been here, we have seen what we call the devolvement, the downloading from the federal government to the provincial government. We have seen it with immigration, settlement programs, education, social programs and health care. I could go across the whole spectrum. It is Canadians who lose out because we lose the transparency about what is going on.

If we ask any group that is trying to track something, whether it is child care funding, immigrant settlement programs, money for post-secondary education or housing which is another big one, they will tell us that the downloading that takes place means that there is no accountability. This bill would further entrench that kind of process. We think it is alarming and should not be allowed.

I have given some of the reasons that we cannot support this bill. It should be hoisted. It should be sent off for a much longer review. I think there are legitimate concerns. That is why we are standing in the House today to speak about our opposition to the bill, not because the Conservatives brought it in, but we looked at this bill on its merits. We made a decision on its merits and it does not stack up. The bill is not good. It will not be good for the fishery. It will not be good for conservation and protection. It will not be good for first nations. We are here to say no, do not let the bill go ahead.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

It is with regret that I interrupt the member, but the time is up. The debate on Bill C-45 has now lasted more than five hours. From now on for the interventions there will be 10 minutes for speeches and five minutes for questions and comments. The hon. member for Vancouver East has the floor.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

That is almost the first time today.

I disagreed particularly with respect to the notion of consultations. I know those members will never be satisfied on this. There is a long list of people and the consultations that have taken place. We have had this conversation with the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore. If we did not say the right sentence or use the right verb in the sentence and in the right tense, then that was not considered consultation by him.

What we heard in these consultations was that fishermen and other stakeholders wanted a fishery that was sustainable, stable and predictable, in which they had some shared decision making, and a sanctions regime that was actually effective in addressing the problems of those who would not keep the rules. In fact, that is what we tried to do with Bill C-45. I think we accomplished that.

I am a bit confused, though, by the member's comments. I do not know if she is saying there is too much or too little ministerial discretion in this bill. The current act gives absolute discretion. In fact, those words are used in the act. I do not know if she wants to keep that or if she likes the way we have it in the bill.

The member for Vancouver Island North uses the typical NDP buzzword of “corporatization”. In fact, if anything, the licensing principles are to address that. The minister, with cabinet, and then by going through a regulatory process, devises licensing principles and they are put into effect by licensing officers. If a person does not meet the criteria, if a person perhaps violates the owner-operator policy or whatever it might be, then the person does not get a licence. I do not see any other way to address this issue of creeping corporatization, as those members like to call it, unless there is something similar to what is in this proposed fisheries act.

Finally, she said the notion of a public right to fish is a definitive concept. If it is so definitive, I would like her to define it for me.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Yes, probably around the world.

I rise today to speak against the government's proposed fisheries act, Bill C-45.

As members know, my riding of Vancouver Island North has a long history in the fishing industry and, in particular, in the salmon fishery. It has been an integral part of the culture of my riding for thousands of years and a way of life for many first nations for countless generations and, hopefully, will continue into the future, although we are not quite sure.

Bill C-45 would have a negative impact on those fisheries in my riding.

Since I was elected about a year and a half ago, I have talked to fishermen across the riding, from north to south. They have told me that changes are needed in the way that Canada, in particular on the west coast, manages its fishery. Issues of co-management, habitat and species protection and enforcement are front and centre in people's minds and yet most of these people felt that there were problems within DFO itself and did not require a whole new act.

After seeing the act, I can now say that it would do very little to solve all these problems. It is just, plain and simple, bad legislation, just like the softwood lumber deal and the inadequate climate change program. The Conservative government has sold out ordinary Canadians and given to large multinational corporations.

What has angered many people in my communities has been the total lack of consultation with local stakeholders. Time and time again we hear that this House, this government wants to listen to ordinary Canadians but then it goes about and does the exact opposite.

With its climate change plan, it talked to the oil and gas industry rather than consulting ordinary Canadians.

With electoral reform, a subject that is very close to my heart, we saw that the government relied on focus groups in very small pockets. It held one meeting in each province and called that consultation. It would rather do that than hold public meetings and let people know exactly what we are talking about.

It is no different with Bill C-45. There was no consultation. The government may have had meetings around the country on different topics around fisheries. I know in my riding that many meetings were held but there was never any talk or discussion about changing an act and no one was requested for input on a fisheries act. To me, that is not consultation. That is just a meeting to talk about what is going on in the fishery. We have those all the time.

One would think that with such a proposed monumental change in the way Canada manages its fisheries, the government would have talked to fishery workers and gathered their experience and their views in creating this new act. It said it would. In a media release back in December 2006, DFO stated that the new act came from extensive cross-country consultations and discussions but it did not.

There were no direct discussions, consultations or meetings about new ideas and changes within this act. As I said earlier, if one attended a meeting in the last couple of years that was called consultation.

However, ordinary people in the industry know that they were left out. Recreational and sport fishers, local commercial fleets, aboriginal people, environmentalists and conservation groups were not asked about the creation of Bill C-45. In fact, practically every environmental organization on the coast have denounced this bill saying that they were not asked about it and that they saw many flaws within it.

However, the government did listen to one group. It listened to its friends in large corporate fleets. As my colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore pointed out, the government listened to the mining industry. We heard that it was quick off the mark in saying what a wonderful bill this is. After I think only 12 hours it managed to read this lengthy document and come up with a full report.

I wonder if it had insider information on what was in the bill. Maybe it even had a hand in writing it, I do not know. However, the bill definitely reflects the concerns of those organizations. It is almost a wish list for the corporate interests over the public.

I have talked to many ordinary fishermen in my riding. I have gone to the docks, processing plants and fish farms. There are not very many processing plants left on the coast and hatcheries are in a sad state of repair. They have been neglected for so long. I have met with many men and women who work in these places and have listened to their concerns. They are almost unanimous in their opposition to the bill.

The current Fisheries Act has held up well for the past 139 years, adapting and changing with the times, as one would expect of something that is a very large piece of legislation. Most would agree that it is not perfect legislation. It has many strengths and also some weaknesses in the eyes of the front line workers, but it is far better than what is proposed here today.

Again, if the government would have listened to average fisheries workers, to the men and women on the coast in my riding and on the eastern coast, it would know that the problem is not all with the act, there are also many problems with the DFO. Budget cuts and a centralized bureaucracy are what people tell me are the biggest problems facing fisheries management today. For example, while the DFO might say it would like to protect species and habitat, the fact is that it does not have the resources that it needs to do the job. At the current level on the west coast, it is ridiculous to think that these people can effectively protect the entire area.

The other problem is that the DFO is too centralized in Ottawa to understand local concerns and listen to the front line workers. Fishers in my riding feel as though their insights and their concerns are not listened to, especially when it comes to how to manage the fish stocks. A prime example is the collapse of the east coast cod fishery in the late eighties. Local scientists and fishery workers were raising alarm bells for years about the state of the cod fishery, but Ottawa did not listen until it was way too late. Those same alarm bells are ringing in my riding right now and the DFO still seems to be deaf to them.

We all know that buying a new house will not fix a bad marriage, but that is what the government is trying to accomplish. Rather than sitting down and really working on the issue of fisheries management with all the stakeholders, the Conservatives have gone out and bought a new Fisheries Act. However I, as well as those fisheries workers in my riding, know that the core problems still remain.

The lack of consultations were not the only problem with the new act. If passed, the act would go a long way to remove the public nature of the Canadian fishery and place it in the hands of corporate fishing interests. Much of what is in the act, coupled with its weak and ambiguous language, allows for less public control over the fishery and gives more control to the DFO and big business.

Bill C-45 does not acknowledge the fishery as a common property resource. Nor does it recognize the public's right to fish as a key value. In a meeting with sport fishermen in my riding, and this was before the bill was proposed in the House, they said that if the government were ever to change the act, they wanted to ensure that it would entrench the principle of personal use access of ordinary Canadians to a share of the common property fisheries resource. For them, that was fundamental.

They talked very strongly about how we need to maintain the common property resource of the fishery. If these people were asked, they would have presented this to the government, but unfortunately, they were never asked. It is a very important principle. It is the key value of the fishery in Canada, especially on the west coast.

The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that fishing is a right, not a privilege, and that the fishery is a common property resource. The government claims that Bill C-45 confirms this ruling saying, “Nothing in C-45 contradicts this. In fact, C-45 is based on this very premise”. However, the bill in itself says, “Parliament is committed to maintaining the public character of the management of fisheries and fish habitat”. This is an entirely different concept. The public character can mean many different things, whereas the public's right to fish is pretty definitive in its meaning.

We can see the increasing corporate control over the fishery spelled out in the changes to the licensing programs. The government plans not only to change the length of the licence, but also who can give them out and whether fishermen can pass it along to their children or sell it to pay for their retirement.

Most of the fisheries workers who I have talked to believe that 15 year terms of licences are far too long. Longer allocation periods lead to greater corporate control. Large fishing enterprises can have access to the resource for longer periods of time, essentially shutting out other interested individuals, enterprise or community for a whole 15 years. I think it is more than a generation. This extension also does not take into affect the ecological reality of fish stocks and the natural fluctuations in the stock. Fifteen year licences do not make sense for the fish, but it does make sense for business.

While increasing the length of the licences, Bill C-45 also threatens to eliminate the intergenerational transfer of licences and the financial and social security of many independent fishers, their families and their communities. Licences are financial security for many fishermen. It gives them something to hand off to their children or to sell off to provide them with money for their retirement. We all know that most fishermen do not have a pension plan. Not only does this mean that the government can refuse a sale or transfer of a licence, but it can then redistribute it to whomever it wants. Members should not think this will not happen.

One of the other clauses in Bill C-45 allows the minister to designate DFO officials to grant or refuse licences. This gives more control over the handing out and denial of licences to DFO bureaucrats and eliminates the opportunity for politicians to question licence decisions. Others worry that this downloading of power will create a system ripe for abuse, which will mean a relationship with the DFO and connections to the minister will become the preferred means to get a fish allocation instead of simply being a Canadian citizen.

Many of the changes seem to actively work against local and small fishermen in favour of large corporate fleets. Yet the small and local fisheries are the backbone of many communities across Canada. That is especially true in my riding where many small operators are trying to make a living and it is becoming increasingly difficult. By stacking the deck against them, we are not only putting the future of the fishery at risk, but the livelihood of countless small communities dotted along the coast, rivers and inlets.

The bill fails to strengthen conservation and protection measures for fish and fish habitat. What we have here is a bill that is more focused on economics than on ecosystems. There are few guidelines in the legislation. What is there is weak and ambiguous, allowing for loopholes and grey areas. While there are parameters for co-management of the stocks, they are quite flawed and actually have the potential for more creeping corporatization of the resource.

Bill C-45 grants too much discretion to the minister by using the word “may” over “must”. I know about weasel words and that is a weasel word if I ever heard one. The use of this language opens up loopholes that would allow for multiple contradictions and vagaries.

I just spoke about habitat protection and measures for protecting fish habitat. In my riding we have a current issue with the Courtenay River. The Puntledge River Restoration Society is a small group that has been looking after and trying to help with habitat protection and management for more than 10 years. It has been fighting a seal problem in the river. The seal population has been allowed to grow and they are eating the salmon on the way out of the river in the spring and on the way back in the fall.

The DFO was working with the Restoration Society. It said it would help with the seal population, that it would complex the river and take some measures to reduce the population. Ten years ago it did a cull of the seals, which was a sad thing, but in order to save the salmon that was something that happened at the time, and it caused quite a controversy in the community. However, the DFO never did follow through on what it said it would do.

Now 10 years later the seal population is back again. It is causing another problem. The minister says that this small group of volunteers should be looking after things. By this act, it would be these small organizations that would be relied upon to look after fish habitat. All these volunteers have said that they give up. They are tired of raising salmon for the seals when they want to be raising them for fishermen to go out and catch.

While we do not have a problem feeding seals, it is sad to see all one's work go down into their bellies. The seals have no natural predators in this area. Again, the volunteers of these organizations across my riding, and this is just one example, are saying that they are not getting any help from the DFO, that there is a big problem there. If they are going to be left to be the managers of fish habitat without any assistance, they are not going to do it, plain and simple.

With the bill, if they are relying upon these organizations, they are not going to be there. That is a big problem and I cannot see who would take this on. I would hate to see the bill passed in that regard.

Suffice it to say, the bill would favour corporations over the small fishermen, corporations that only look out for their bottom line. We should not expect anything else from them. That is what they are good at, that is what they do and that is okay. However, we cannot privatize fish and fish habitat management to people who only care about making money.

Fish and their habitat are part of an ecosystem that supports all kinds of life, commercially viable or not, and the bill is not one to increase environmental and fish protection. It is designed to download and outsource it. It has no standards or criteria. It is filled with loopholes and contradictions and ways not to protect fish, the ocean and the environment.

All in all, if the bill were to pass, it will be a disaster for the fishery industry.

I end by reinforcing some of the comments that were made by the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore, in saying that the bill should not be passed. It is something on which we have heard from many members of society, and they are all opposed to it.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think anyone disagrees with the principle or the intent behind Bill C-45. No one has spoken against changes to the Fisheries Act. No one has said that we do not need a new act or that we cannot make improvements on something that is 138 years old.

However, the fundamental principle of consultation, of going on the wharves, of accompanying people on the boats, of listening to people in the fish plants, listening to processors, union representatives and aboriginal groups, that principle of listening and then developing a bill that accommodates their needs and aspirations, bearing in mind the principle that the parliamentary secretary just read out, in my opinion there is no disagreement with the principle as he has read it out.

What I have a problem with is the fundamental process in the way that the government has gone about it.

If we have the hoist motion, and I am no expert on parliamentary procedure, but if it effectively kills the bill and we have a postponement period, then we take that postponement period to develop, implement and properly resource an effective consultation process.

It would seem to me that would be tantamount to abiding by the law that exists, particularly when it comes to the Haida decision and aboriginal groups. It would be respectful of all those who have a concern in the industry. Perhaps if we can all agree and we listen to people in the communities, we would not need to go through as long a committee process at the end of it.

We may in fact be shortening the process to some extent if we allow the hoist motion to go forward, put into effect a proper consultation process and then bring back a bill that is more reflective of the needs and aspirations of particularly those in the fishing industry and in the fishery resource itself. We could probably find more agreement among parliamentarians, get it though committee and then we would have something that is better for all of us, not only for today but for many generations to come.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to be in the House today to speak to this particular hoist motion.

For people in the House who might not know about Labrador, it has an area of 112,000 square kilometres, much of it coastline. I grew up in a community of about 45 to 50 people that was and is a fishing community, like so many others dotted along the coast of Labrador.

Our family has fished and continues to fish both commercially and recreationally for food and sustenance, and for hundreds of years now, back to my Inuit ancestors. We know about the sea and how important it is, not only from a personal perspective, but from a cultural perspective as well. We know how important the sea is. We know how important the fishery is to our livelihoods.

Over many hundreds of years, the Métis of Labrador, of which I am one, the Inuit of Labrador and the Innu of Labrador have taken care of the fisheries resources. We have been good stewards of the fisheries resource in our area because we knew it was for our livelihood. We knew it put food on our table. We knew it was there to sustain us day in and day out. That comes from our very strong value system in Labrador and our aboriginal people. That same value system, I would say, is shared by non-aboriginal people in Labrador as well.

We have a history around the fishery. We have a history around the sea. We know what it means to us in an integral way, not just in a political debate, not just to make hay over it, not just to score political points. We know how integral the fishery is to our communities.

When we see the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans introducing such a substantive bill, an omnibus bill, which sort of deals with everything in the Fisheries Act at the one time after 138 years, we have to wonder why he is in such a rush to get it through. Some of us would say that he is just trying to make history, that he wants to be the minister who changed an act that is 138 years old. That is what it seems like to us. It seems like the minister just wants to get himself down in the history books without any care for the people who are going to be impacted, without any care for the people and the communities that are going to have to deal with the changes, and without any care, really, for the fisheries resource itself.

That is one reason that I can see for this sort of swift action on the part of the minister. He is trying to bring the bill into the House and jam it down the throats of politicians and subsequently try to jam it down the throats of fishers and all those stakeholders who depend on the fisheries resource.

The minister and the Conservative Party talk about transparency, accountability and openness. I can safely say that I have been on the wharves and I have talked to people in the fishing industry. I have talked to the fish plant owners and the fish plant workers, all of whom have a say in one way, shape or form. I also have talked to conservation groups, aboriginal groups, commercial fishers and recreational fishers.

I have talked to a whole range of people who are involved in the fishing industry and they knew basically nothing about what was coming down the pipe. They knew there were some policy reviews years ago. They knew that the minister was going around having chats with this group and that group. But they did not know that this bill was coming down with the substantive changes that are in it.

That government over there talks one thing and walks something else. The government does not want to listen. That is evident not only around this particular Fisheries Act, the way it has implemented it, and the substantive changes it has brought before the House, but with other issues as well.

We only got a look a couple of weeks ago at the government's changes to student programs and all the new criteria that nobody knew anything about. The government had to change its mind on that and start approving people and organizations. The Conservatives have made mistakes time and time again. This is certainly one of the mistakes that they have made when it comes to accountability and openness. There has been no openness when it comes to Bill C-45.

The Conservatives talk about consultation. It is hard to find a group out there that will admit that they have been consulted on Bill C-45. My colleagues in the other party have said that they wanted a list. There has been a so-called stakeholders list provided by the government regarding consultations.

If we look through the list, all it says is that a letter has been sent out, a phone call has been made, a letter has been sent, and the government calls that consultation. Sending out a letter and notifying people that the government is bringing in a bill with all of these changes is the government's idea of consultation. The people do not even know what the changes are and how the changes will affect them.

It is unconscionable that the government would talk about consultation, provide some kind of list and all it does is make a phone call, leave a message and send out a letter. There is not even any indication that the people have received the letters, the messages and are responding in any type of substantive way.

From a Labrador perspective, and I would think that this is the same throughout the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and Atlantic Canada that there is hardly a group, a fishing enterprise, a processing company, a union representative, an aboriginal group, a coastal community or any other, that was consulted. They may have been talked to but that is not consultation.

Consultation comes with obligations, time and information. There is a legal duty to consult aboriginal groups, as the minister rightfully knows. From the groups in Labrador, I have heard nothing that would indicate that there has been any effective consultation with the three aboriginal groups, the Labrador Métis Nation, the Labrador Inuit Association which is the Nunatsiavut government, or the Innu Nation, on the proposed changes to the Fisheries Act.

It would seem that this whole issue around consultation that the government purports is a sham. It has not consulted and in fact one of the government members just in the last few minutes admitted as much. He said that we cannot talk to people before the tabling of a bill. Even Conservative members of the House are saying that there has been no consultation on this particular bill. That is what was admitted to by the member from the west coast.

In terms of the bill itself, it talks about downloading responsibility. The act seems to not firm up or strengthen environmental regulations but basically it would weaken them.

Of course we all believe in the principle and concept of conservation. We have to conserve our stocks in whatever form, whether they are in the ocean ecosystem or in inland waters to make sure they are healthy and there for all time to come.

We have seen basically an example within Bill C-45 of the government's disregard for the voice and opinion of those in the fishing sector. Being from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, we saw the row in the province when it came to the sale of FPI. No agreement could be reached. Communities on the island portion of the province were waiting, left out in the cold because the government could not respond regarding the sale of FPI and how the quotas were going to be handled.

The bill talks about cooperating with the province and of downloading some responsibility to the province and that type of thing, but the latest examples from the government show that it cannot even get along when people's livelihoods are at stake in communities like Burgeo, Marystown and the Burin Peninsula. The government talks one thing and does another.

The government says that we could have effective consultation once the bill goes through second reading and ends up in committee, but knows itself that we cannot make substantive changes to the bill once it is in committee. We can basically only talk about what the government has already decided to do and the changes that it has already put into being in this particular bill. The government knows that.

Again, it seems to me that the Conservatives want to use procedure now to not hear the voices of those in the fishing industry and to not hear the voices of those in our communities.

The Conservatives want to basically use a strong-arm tactic to basically say to the people in our communities to take it or leave it, that what the government decides is good for them and that they must accept it. The government is saying the communities have to swallow it hook, line and sinker. I am speaking now for the people of Labrador.

We also have many quotes from the minister. There is one where the minister says “we don't want endless consultation”. Nobody is asking for endless consultation. We only want some type of consultation with people in our industry.

The minister says “people want concrete action and they want it now”. He talks about that in relation to changes to the Fisheries Act and Bill C-45.

I can say to the minister that when people on the coast of Labrador and on the coast of Newfoundland who were stuck in ice during the seal fishery this past spring, who had their boats damaged, who could not get out and get a seal pelt to earn some money to put food on their tables, when all of that was happening and when there is still an ice crisis in the sense that even a fishery that was supposed to open cannot open because of the ice conditions, we called for action. We called for action in this House. We called for action in the committee. There have been calls for action on the open line shows by the union, by the fishers and by the industry itself.

What has the minister done? Nothing. He calls for action. He says, “We want action on Bill C-45”. I would say that fishers back home want action when it comes to some kind of help around ice compensation. People have been going without a cheque now for six and seven weeks. There is no money to pay the bills. There is no money to make the payments that need to be made. We called for action on something that is concrete and on something that means something to the people in our communities, and he has not moved an inch from what we can see.

The minister says he is going to do it. He says he is going to study it. He says he is going to gather information on it. That is what the minister says he is going to do and then he may take some action.

He is better off using that type of rhetoric when it comes to Bill C-45. Go out and gather some information. He should listen to the people, consult with them, understand the implications that this bill is going to have, first of all, for our ecosystem, our fish resources, and then our fishers and those that depend on the resource.

While I am at it I should say to the parliamentary secretary that we would like to see some action on ice compensation. This is what the fishers have asked for and the minister has not done it.

The minister is saying that he wants to see some concrete action on Bill C-45, yet he has gone about it all the wrong way. We cannot get action when we need it from this particular minister.

It was the same thing only a few months ago when my Liberal colleague from P.E.I. had to force the minister to put more money into small craft harbours. The minister was not taking any action on small craft harbours.

The Conservatives felt so ashamed of themselves, so downtrodden, they felt that they needed to do something to make themselves look good so they put some more money in. It was only after my Liberal colleague from P.E.I. shamed them into putting more money into small craft harbours.

The Conservatives seem to want action on Bill C-45 above everything else. When we ask them to take action on something that is concrete and meaningful on specific issues, they only pause and sit there. They pause and sit there while people go hungry, while people are looking for some assistance from this particular minister and this particular government.

It would point to a party and a government that does not understand Atlantic Canada, does not understand the fisheries, and is not willing to respond in an adequate way when it is asked to respond.

It is only appropriate that I and my party support this hoist motion. It is only appropriate that we hear the voices of the fishers and those in our communities who are going to be affected by the changes in Bill C-45, allow them to have a say, to have some input, and to understand the consequences of this particular piece of legislation. Is that too much to ask?

We ask the government, what is the huge urgency in this? What is the huge urgency? The bill has been with us for 138 years. If we are going to make changes, why do we not do it right?

There is urgency when it comes to ice compensation. There is urgency when it comes to small craft harbours. There is urgency when it comes to some kind of regulatory reform and vessel size, which I understand the minister has put some effort into. There is urgency to protect the fish and the ecosystem, but I do not believe there is any urgency to ram through Bill C-45 without due process, without proper process. We certainly do not want the bill to be rammed through with the flaws that we have observed in it.

I call upon the Conservative Party to do the right thing for a change. I say to the Conservatives that for once in the last 15 months of government they should listen to what the people have to say. Listen to what the people have to say because it concerns and affects them.

It is incumbent upon the minister to do so. The minister is from a fishing province, but sometimes he is like a fish out of water when it comes to his own portfolio. He is in some sort of airy, up there type of strata and does not have his feet planted on the wharf. He is not listening to what people are telling him.

I say to the Conservative Party that it should support the hoist motion. It should take the summer, early fall, have effective consultations and come back with a bill that makes sense, that all parties, the fishing industry and communities can support. The hoist motion just makes common sense. It is what the people want and it is time for the Conservative government to listen.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's sea coast and inland fisheries, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is with some concern that I rise to speak about Bill C-45, the new Fisheries Act as proposed by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

I certainly want to acknowledge the courage of the minister. The Fisheries Act is 138 years old. It has not been substantively changed in that period of time. However, as my late father used to say, caution has to be taken when judging actions. There is conventional wisdom that often takes place and one has to wonder whether a decision is taken based on convention or wisdom.

This bill, quite frankly, is quite flawed. All the stakeholders and anyone who has taken an opportunity to review it has come to the determination that it is substantially flawed and would endanger a $4.3 billion annual enterprise to this country, an enterprise that sustains thousands of communities throughout Canada and well over 80,000 individuals and their families.

One of the key points that has to be raised on the floor is the decision that was taken by the minority Conservative government not to have the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans review the legislation prior to second reading to enable the all-party committee to review the legislation, to conduct hearings and hear from Canadians from coast to coast to coast on the impacts of the bill. That decision was taken because there was a reluctance, an absolute denial of any opportunity for change based on good advice.

While the minister has acted with some courage in bringing forth the legislation, I regret he did not complement his courage with wisdom. The bill is flawed for various reasons. I will not, however, throw out the baby with the bathwater. The sanctions process, the ticketing process, quite frankly, is very reasonable. In fact, it is long overdue. The establishment of allowing officers and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to deal with relatively minor infractions of the Fisheries Act instead of through a court proceeding, through a ticket violation or sanctions process is a welcome change. It is welcomed by all fishers.

However, there are other elements to this which have to be viewed from the point of view of the law of unintended consequences. Unintended consequences can arise from the minister's decision to remove what is called his absolute discretion. A cornerstone that the minister brought forward when he tabled this bill is that he lauded the point that the absolute discretion, as was prescribed in the original act, would now be rescinded.

The minister tabled the bill on December 12, 24 hours before the House recessed for Christmas and January, not allowing any review from Parliament whatsoever. He did indicate that he was moving forward with very significant changes.

From my own constituents' point of view, what the minister had said was that the bill would now allow for fishers, industry stakeholders, to have a greater say in their own industry when it comes to management decisions, scientific decisions on allocation and who gets into their fishery.

When we look at it just at that broad brush, any reasonable person looking at that would say, “Imagine fishermen having a say in the management of their own fishery”. Who could argue with something like that on the surface? That is exactly what the minister and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans concluded, that there would be a statutory, obligatory requirement that existing stakeholders would actually have a legally guaranteed role to play in decision making related to the fisheries in which they are directly involved, fishermen managing their own fishery.

I will present to the House a scenario of the law of unintended consequences, and I will use a very specific example. That principle equally applies to industrial stakeholder fishers: dentists from Nova Scotia who happen to own licences in the northern shrimp fishery; other corporations that really never set foot in a boat, that are called slipper skippers simply because they own the enterprise and the licence and basically reap the benefits of it directly with no onshore, no adjacent benefits accruing to communities or to individual fishermen.

A case in point is the northern shrimp fishery. In 1997 there was a decision taken by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to allow inshore interests to participate, to prosecute the northern shrimp fishery. That was the first time ever. Since the late 1970s until 1997 the entire offshore shrimp industry was dominated exclusively by offshore factory freezer trawlers. Seventeen licences were issued, all of which were owned by large corporations or stakeholders that had no relevance to the adjacent communities to the fishery, with the exception of the Labrador Fishermen's Union Shrimp Company Limited.

That is a case in point. Under this bill the minister and the department would now have a legally binding requirement on them to listen to the views of the stakeholders. That would have been the 17 factory freezer licence holders, up until 1997, and those 17 factory freezer licence holders could effectively bar access to every inshore fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador to gain access into this fishery. Why? Because that is exactly what this bill prescribes. As the minister says in the press release, the minister and every person engaged in the administration of this act or regulations must take into account the stakeholder interests. There is a case in point of the law of unintended consequences taking hold.

Another example of the law of unintended consequences that should have been reviewed by the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans to hear expert witness testimony would be the requirement that the minister must take into account the principles of sustainable development and to seek to apply an ecosystem approach in the management of fisheries in the conservation and protection of fish and fish habitat and must--not shall or may--must seek to apply a precautionary approach such that if there is both high scientific uncertainty and a risk of serious harm they will not be engaged in any management decisions that could impact on that.

The key word is “must”, not may, must. It is a complete removal of the absolute discretion of the minister that was applied under the previous act. That is a case in point of the law of unintended consequences.

Say, for example, a particular group wanted to challenge the validity of the minister's decision to maintain the harp seal quota throughout Atlantic Canada and Quebec. If a group came forward with substantial evidence from its point of view, and brought it forward to a federal court in Toronto, that particular NGO could actually challenge the minister's decision to maintain a harp seal fishery and could actually seek recourse through a federal court to actually shut down a particular fishery or challenge the minister's decision relating to quota or any specific management items. That particular court in a place very far away from where the fishery is actually prosecuted, very far away from the adjacent communities, could actually decide how an east coast, west coast, central or Arctic fishery was actually managed.

That is the law of unintended consequences that has to be understood by all members of the House before a formal vote is taken. That is why we asked that the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans review this legislation and hear expert testimony from stakeholders.

The point was brought forward that there were extensive consultations on the act before the bill was brought forward. First off, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans put in a request to the minister and to the department to assist the department and the minister in crafting the bill before it was tabled so that we could bring forward as members key elements of the bill that we wanted to have included and key concerns. That request was denied. It was not acted upon.

On December 12, 2006, 24 hours before the close of the House, a bill was tabled. There were no further discussions for the next eight weeks.

We asked who exactly was consulted and what was the actual consultation that occurred. In my own constituency I found that next to no one was consulted and the few organizations that were were simply sent a letter from an official within the department indicating that a new fisheries act would be tabled soon.

There were no details about the act and no chance for input, with no relevance whatsoever to this act, and that is what has been put before us. It is an act that has been described as having endured extensive consultations when in fact no consultations whatsoever, no substantial consultations, have been conducted.

A third element of this that really gravely concerns me is the fisheries co-management process. Fishermen want to know exactly what that entails. They want to know if additional fees can be placed upon them as a result of a cooperative agreement or a trust arrangement being put in place between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and an umbrella stakeholder group that states or claims it represents the interests of fishermen.

The first party would be the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the second party would be the fishermen themselves, and the third party would be the organization in question. The fishermen want to know if that third party interest can apply for or create levies of additional fees on the fishermen themselves. That is a very important point, but I wish we could have had an opportunity to review this act in committee so that we could have put these facts on the table. This is a very substantial concern.

I appreciate the fact that the sanctions process, the ticketing process on relatively minor infractions, is a better process. It provides a substantial improvement to the current regime. However, there is the law of unintended consequences and possibilities. If there was nothing to fear from the concerns that I raised and that were raised by other members and industry stakeholders, this act should have been placed before committee for review before second reading. Witnesses and evidence should have been presented as to exactly where the act is going.

As well, I have grave concerns about the management process leading to extended terms. The minister will acknowledge that a recent agreement was just put in place with Ocean Choice of Newfoundland and Labrador and High Liner Foods, allowing for greater long term tenure to certain resources based on certain criteria. However, that is one example.

There are other examples that may not be beneficial to the people of Atlantic Canada and to fishermen and fishing communities generally across the board. We want to know exactly where that process is taking us. That is a major concern that has been expressed by my constituents.

Key among this is information about specifically where it is that we are taking the legal and binding right of interest groups that now have a formal and legally binding say in the management of our fishery.

The minister himself will acknowledge that on the northeast coast of Newfoundland there was a decision that was taken in 2J3KL cod, a decision to allow a small commercial scale fishery to fishers there in a resource that, generally speaking, scientists had described as significantly depleted.

Today, as was the case when the minister made the decision, the point of view of very few scientists has changed. Their point of view was that the resource was depleted to the point where any commercial fishery could cause a serious and negative decline in the overall abundance and health of stocks. Biomass would not be allowed to increase and would not be allowed to recuperate. Therefore, science was against that particular decision, or some scientists were, I should say.

If Bill C-45 had been in place at the time of this decision an interest group could have had the capacity or capability of bringing the minister's decision before a federal court for judicial review, because the law specifically states that the minister is no longer capable of making a unilateral decision. He no longer has absolute discretion. He now must adhere to a set of principles that must take into account sustainable development and the scientific information that is available at the time, the scientific information but not the stakeholder information, the information from fishermen themselves.

The minister was proven correct. His decision was a valid one. However, I would remind every resident of the northeast coast of Newfoundland and southern Labrador and the northern peninsula area that I represent that if this act had been in place at the time of that decision, it could very well have been that an organization from outside of the province, outside of the country, could have put forward a judicial action to actually suspend the fishery. That is a very real possibility.

If I am incorrect in what I state, if the minister does not believe it and the department does not believe it, what I can say is that we would have had an opportunity to bring this before a committee and hear expert testimony as to exactly what was happening here. This had to be done. The stakeholders were depending on it. The industry interests were depending on it.

I am concerned about the co-management agreement. I am concerned about the potential for additional fees to be imposed upon fishermen and their communities as a result of the legally binding cooperative agreements that could be put in place between DFO and the stakeholder groups.

I am concerned about the loss of discretion by the minister to act appropriately in ways that he or she knows would be beneficial to the fishery. I use specifically the case of the northeast coast cod as an example that probably would not have happened. I use specifically the case of the seal fishery and all those advocacy groups, the interest groups that are out there that at chomping at the bit for a way to shut down our seal fishery.

This act may provide them with that very possibility or opportunity, in a federal court in a place very far away from this fishery, with evidence or testimony heard by a judge that could result in a decision that the minister did not act in accordance with the act he has tabled. That is a very real possibility.

I have many concerns, but the last major one that I need to speak about in this House is the concern about the exclusion of legitimate fishermen from new fisheries as they emerge or expand.

For example, on the co-management agreement that was reached in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on crab in area 12, would the existing full time fishermen in area 12 have allowed small boat permit fishermen to come into their fishery when the resource skyrocketed in abundance and the price went up? Would they have had an opportunity to boycott or basically veto through a court action the decision of the minister of the day back in the 1990s, not too many years ago, to allow small boat permit entrants into that fishery?

Could the interests of the northern coalition, the large offshore factory freezer trawlers, have prohibited access to inshore fishermen for prosecuting the northern shrimp fishery? After literally decades of dominance by the offshore factory freezer trawlers, could that have been a possibility under this act? The evidence that I am receiving and the input in legal opinions and by industry stakeholders is yes, it definitely could have been. That is why this act should have been presented to committee before second reading before it went any further.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House today to speak to Bill C-45. I want to acknowledge the very good work that my colleague, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore, has done on this. Following his lead, I too will be speaking against the bill.

The bill would amend an act that was first proclaimed in 1868. Many who work on the Hill will understand this comment when I say that I work in West Block, which is just a few years older than the act, and we know the terrible state that building is in after 139 years. We, therefore, agree that we need a new Fisheries Act but the devil truly is in the details.

Although I agree with the premise that the Fisheries Act needs amendment to create a modern act that is responsive to the needs of conservation, habitat enhancement, community control and that accommodates the treaty rights of aboriginal peoples in Canada, this bill does not provide those amendments, which is why the NDP cannot support it.

My colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore has consulted groups from coast to coast to coast on this issue and the overwhelming response has been to oppose this bill. I have consulted with recreational and aboriginal fishers in British Columbia and I would like to share some of their responses with the House today.

Recreational fishing in British Columbia is the largest single fishery in the province. It includes: over 330,000 individuals who purchase saltwater fishing licences; 125 lodges catering to recreational anglers; 500 charter boat operators; and hundreds of businesses and industries that equip and cater to the sportfishing industry, including businesses like the St. Jean's Cannery & Smokehouse in Nanaimo which has created a niche industry canning the salmon caught by recreational anglers.

Coming from the riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan that has a coastline and had a proud tradition of fisheries, I can understand how absolutely important it is, not only to the fishing industry itself, but to all the other spinoff industries that support those fishers. In fact, we actually have a number to quantify that. This means over $600 million in economic activity while catching less than 6% of the annual Pacific salmon harvest and less than 12% of the annual Pacific halibut harvest.

I do not think it is unexpected that such an important fishery would expect some consideration when a wholesale revision of the Fisheries Act is planned. However, sadly, that was not the case.

Bill C-45 does not acknowledge the fishery as a common property resource, nor does it acknowledge the public's right to fish as a key value. Instead, Bill C-45 says that Parliament is committed to maintaining the public character of the management of fisheries and of fish habitat, and that is a distinctly different concept.

The Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed that fishing is a right not a privilege and that the fishery is a common property resource. The premise that the fishery is a common property resource with the public right to fish must be included in any reform of the Fisheries Act. A failure to do so would open the door to greater privatization and the concentration of a public resource.

The Sportfishing Defence Alliance explains it this way:

...we also see an attempt here to usurp the “Right To Fish” held by all Canadians under the Common Law of this land that has existed from time immemorial. The record of this right begins with Roman Emperor Justinian. It was further recognized and affirmed by English King John in the Magna Carta on the fields of Runnymeade in 1215. Since that time there have been many findings by the various Canadian commissions and courts ranging all the way up through the Supreme Court of Canada. ...the majority ruling in Nikal, where Cory J, stated, “It is for the Federal Government to ensure that all users who are entiltled to partake of the salmon harvest have the opportunity to obtain an allotment pursuant to the scheme of priorities set out in Sparrow.” In Comeau's Seafoods, Major J., for the court, stated: “Canada's fisheries are a ‘common property resource’ belonging to all the people of Canada. Under the Fisheries Act it is the Minister's duty to manage, conserve and develop the fishery on behalf of Canadians in the public interest.”

As the NDP's aboriginal affairs critic, I have been coming up against the issue of consultation and how little consultation the government does with groups. In a media release in December 2006, DFO claimed that the new bill stemmed from extensive cross-country consultations and discussions. That is simply not true. Discussions and consultations did not take place across the country, specifically on the new ideas and the changes outlined in Bill C-45.

Rather, Bill C-45 is the outcome of several major public engagement processes on fisheries management and policy that took place over the last several years, including the Pacific new directions and Pearse-McRae report, as well as the aboriginal fisheries strategy and the first nations panel on post-treaty issues.

It is very important to make the distinction that fishermen, commercial fishing groups, aboriginal people and other stakeholders were not consulted directly on the changes proposed in this bill. It is also interesting to note that last fall the provincial and territorial fisheries ministers urged the federal government to table new legislation that recognizes their important role in fisheries management but they also were not consulted on Bill C-45 prior to its release.

All stakeholders, including aboriginal people and fishermen, should have had an opportunity to participate in an extensive consultation process to recommend appropriate changes to a new fisheries act. I know we often talk about consultation in the context of aboriginal rights and I have a couple of papers here that are important to quote from.

In a letter from the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council dated February 12 to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans it talks about the fact that the council was not consulted in any kind of fashion. The letter reads:

Nuu-chah-nulth are also concerned about the timeline that you have set for this initiative given that you have not approached Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations to discuss a proper consultation process.

Later on in the letter it states:

Merely appearing before a Parliamentary Committee with comments on the proposed Fisheries Act is not sufficient to meet the test of full and meaningful consultation and accommodation.

Oftentimes when we are asked what we mean by consultation, I have commented in the House that talk is not consultation and it is not. Simply sitting down and speaking to someone does not constitute consultation. I want to quote what the experts in consultation have outlined what a due consultation process would look like.

A recent report on matrimonial real property, written by Wendy Grant-John, identified the need for full consultation on any amendments to matrimonial property because it would affect aboriginal rights just as any full scale amendment to the Fisheries Act directly affects aboriginal rights.

In a very a deliberative and thoughtful way, Ms. Grant-John and the others who worked with her on this report outlined what a consultation process would look like. I would argue that a consultation process that is suitable for Indian and Northern Affairs would also be suitable for fishery. She outlines the following:

The Department should develop, as soon as possible, specific procedures relating to consultation in order to ensure that future consultation activities can identify and discharge any legal duty to consult while also fulfilling objectives of good governance and public policy by:

1) Ensuring First Nations have relevant information to the issues for decision in a timely manner;

When we are talking about first nations I would argue that we would have any stakeholders involved in fishery also have relevant information to the issues in a timely manner.

Ms. Grant-John continues to state:

2) Providing an opportunity for First Nations to express their concerns and views on potential impacts of the legislative proposal and issues relating to the existence of a duty to consult;

3) Listening to, analyzing and seriously considering the representations and concerns of First Nations in the context of relevant legal and policy principles including their relationship to other constitutional and human rights principles;

4) Ensuring proper analyses by the Department of Justice of section 35 issues relating to any proposed legislative initiative are thoroughly canvassed before, during and after consultations;

5) Seriously considering proposals for mitigating potentially negative impacts on aboriginal and treaty rights or other rights and interests of First Nations and making necessary accommodations by changing the government's proposal;

6) Establishing, in consultation with First Nations, a protocol for the development of legislative proposals.

As members can see from this very thoughtful and lengthy list, consultation is not an ad hoc process. It is a complex process that involves dialogue, that involves taking information and analyzing it, and including those people who are affected in that decision making process.

Consultation also needs to be well thought out and a well communicated plan. As was indicated by the Nuu-chah-nulth council, many people were surprised when Bill C-45, the amendments to the Fisheries Act, was brought forward because their understanding was there would be a process that included some of those key stakeholders.

The other issue is that the government cannot declare previous meetings, which were not specifically focussed on a piece of proposed legislation, as consultation, especially if the people in those meetings were not aware that part of the purpose and intent of those meetings was to develop legislation.

I hardly call it consultation if the people in those meetings did not know the consultation was happening. People were not aware that their involvement in that meeting constituted consultation on this legislation.

Although the piece I read on matrimonial real property is specific to first nations, these considerations should also be in place for consultation with all Canadians on public resources, especially the idea that one cannot declare something was consultation when it happened in the past.

The Assembly of First Nations has examined the bill carefully and has a number of recommendations. I encourage other members to go to its website and look for this paper, “A Scoping of Aboriginal Implications of Renewal of the Fisheries Act 1985”. I will quote one of the priorities for governance issues from that paper because I feel Bill C-45 misses this point completely. It states:

Ensure meaningful references to Aboriginal and treaty rights with linkages to modern treaties, self-government, and the right to manage fisheries

New legislation needs to recognize the special relationship between Canada and First Nations. DFO suggests that language be added to recognize protection of Aboriginal rights and treaties....The purpose of “acknowledging” aboriginal and treaty rights in other legislation seems largely to be to avoid laws being struck down rather than to address Aboriginal and treaty rights. DFO obligations to involve First Nations in fisheries management are more than just good governance practice. The legislation should provide guidance on how regulators and policy makers need to recognize and accommodate Aboriginal and treaty rights and title in management.

As well, self-government is a core First Nations' value that could be supported in a reformed Fisheries Act. Self-government in fisheries may include involvement in decisions on management of First Nation, recreational and commercial fisheries, sharing of fish in a First Nations traditional territory and protection of habitat. First Nations may participate in advisory processes but should have a larger role in decision-making as discussed in the upcoming co-management subsection.

Finally, I will talk about the lack of habitat protection in the bill.

The new bill fails to strengthen conservation and protection measures for fish and fish habitat. There are far too many loopholes in Bill C-45 that would place the fishery and its habitat at risk.

Under the old Fisheries Act, development projects like the Tulsequah Chief mine in British Columbia, which is a large mining project that will impact on the Taku River watershed, were allowed to proceed even though they would have significant impact on fish and fish habitat. Under Bill C-45, these projects would still be given a green light. The new bill simply does not strengthen opportunities to conserve and protect fish and fish habitat, and this must remain our top priority.

I need to mention my own recent experience with DFO and habitat protection. There are some concerns in my community over some contaminated soil being dumped on an industrial site near the Koksilah River by Kelvin Creek, near Duncan.

This is a really important issue in the riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan because the Cowichan River has been designated as a heritage river. The elders from the Cowichan people used to talk about the fact that the Cowichan River was so rich in salmon that people could walk across the backs of the salmon from one side of the river to the other. Sadly, nowadays the river is in trouble. Although certain fish return, they are not nearly in the numbers that they once were. Part of the struggle has been around the protection of the habitat.

We acknowledge the fact that it was a good thing that the river was designated as a heritage river, but the sad reality is it is simply in name only. There are no resources available to look at some of the very serious issues confronting the river. There are many users of the Cowichan River. The first nations people get fish for food and use it for ceremonial purposes. Agricultural lands abut the river. There are important recreational issues on that river. Yet we do not have a good plan in place to look at habitat protection and conservation for fish. I would argue that when we do not protect the river for fish, we do not protect it for any of the other users as well.

I digress slightly from the Koksilah River by Kelvin Creek, but Koksilah is also a fish-bearing stream. An industrial site abuts Kelvin Creek and the Koksilah River. This site allows contaminated soil, which needs an industrial standard, to be trucked from outside the riding and dumped in a gravel pit there.

Everyone will quickly point out that this is a perfectly legal use. It meets the provincial ministry permits. The larger question is this. Is this a suitable site when potential leachate could end up in the Koksilah River and Kelvin Creek? This is a question that nobody has been able to answer.

Part of my responsibility, as the member representing the riding, is to go and find out information and to work with the citizens in the riding who have raised a number of concerns about this site. This is just one example of the need for a stronger habitat protection for fish. I am sure this story is being repeated across the country.

When we started inquiring around who would take some responsibility for this very important salmon bearing stream, we found the proverbial finger pointing where everybody pointed to somebody else who should take responsibility for it. That was very distressing.

When we went to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, commonly referred to as DFO, it indicated that we needed to provide proof that habitat was being destroyed. It took the view that unless there was harm being done, it could not work proactively to protect that fish habitat.

We have something that many of us like to call the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle says that we should think ahead and prove that no harm will be done before we undertake an action that could have some serious impacts and long term consequences.

When we took a look at this, DFO could not do anything until we could demonstrate that the fish habitat was being destroyed. DFO also shares the responsibility with Environment Canada. We got the proverbial very thin wedge that it could do a tiny bit, but somebody else would have to do something else about it.

Although this new act aims to streamline projects that may alter fish habitat by making a distinction between small projects and large scale projects, the aim of these changes is to allow the department to focus on activities with more potential to cause harm. Streamlining projects in a new act could open the door more easily for industries that may pose a risk to fish and fish habitat.

We need to ensure that DFO streamlines projects for the enhancement of fish and fish habitat, not the other way around.

I want to go back again to the situation at Koksilah River and Kelvin Creek. Part of the frustration with this has been there are so many different levels of government involved in this situation. We have regional-municipal, or CVRD. The Cowichan Valley Regional District has responsibility for land use. It does not have in place a soil dumping bylaw.

Then there is the provincial ministry that takes a look at granting logging permits. Some logging is going on next to this river, which could have an impact on fish habitat. The provincial government has responsibility for the transportation and the dumping of soils, which it says meets an industrial standard that is perfectly suitable, but people cannot live on this soil.

Then we have the federal government where Environment Canada is responsible for water quality and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is responsible for fish habitat.

Out of all those levels of government, there was not a coordinated response to the protection of fish habitat.

The bill now before the House does not provide that kind of assurance to Canadians and to the citizens of Nanaimo—Cowichan that fish habitat would be protected and conserved. I therefore I urge the members of the House to vote against the bill. The government should go back to the drawing board and do those meaningful consultations that will result in a Fisheries Act that protects the resource for future generations.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, although I do not have a fishery in my riding, it does border on Lake Ontario where there is a fair bit of recreational fishing going on. I listened to the debate this morning and there obviously is some disagreement among the members with regard to the appropriate process which Bill C-45 should undertake. Let me address a couple of the points that have been raised in debate which deserve some comment.

First of all, the issue of a bill going to committee prior to second reading has been the representation of a number of members with regard to this bill. It has to do with the fact that the bill has not been amended in some 36 years. It has to do with the fact that there are numerous stakeholders. Fisheries in Canada are extremely complex and there are many stakeholders as has been pointed out.

We have heard the argument that the bill should be hoisted and go to committee for some consultations. The allegation is there have not been consultations and it would appear that representations made by various stakeholder groups would tend to support that allegation, that consultations should have taken place. I should note that even in the summary of the bill it is stated:

This enactment repeals and replaces the Fisheries Act. It seeks to provide for the sustainable development of Canadian fisheries and fish habitat in collaboration with fishers, the provinces, aboriginal groups and other Canadians.

I do not know how some members define collaboration, but I would suspect that it does constitute to some extent, maybe a great extent, that there has been ample consultation with regard to a draft text or at least the principal issues.

The question with regard to second reading has to do with once the House has passed a bill at second reading, Parliament has given the bill approval in principle. The bill then goes to committee where witnesses are called. There is an opportunity at committee stage to propose amendments from time to time. Sometimes there are an enormous number of amendments made and many of them are ruled out of order. The reason they would be ruled out of order is that they would be contradictory to the decision of Parliament that the bill had received approval in principle. Effectively committee stage amendments are meant only to correct errors or to make certain modifications which are compatible with the fundamental principles of the bill.

Today in debate members have provided a number of examples of changes they would like to see to the bill as it is right now as we debate it at second reading, which in their view and I suspect in the view of the committee clerk, would be out of order because they are beyond the scope of the bill or amend the fundamental principle of the bill which has been approved by Parliament.

It is a very important question. I wanted to comment on this because the fisheries minister himself rose in the House in posing a question in which he dismissed referring the bill to committee prior to second reading. Subject to checking the record, if I could recall his statement, it was basically that it would be an opportunity for a whole bunch of people and virtually everybody would want to come before committee and hijack the process and we would be subjected to listening to all the input from various stakeholders who might be environmentalists, fisher persons, regulators, jurisdictional representatives from the provinces or whatever.

I have two points to make. The first point is that is consultation. That is listening. That is an important part of the process of making good laws and wise decisions. On my second point, I would refer to what the member who is now the Deputy Speaker said in the House, that delay is an essential part of the legislative process. It is part of democracy to filibuster, to debate fully, to raise as many questions as one may have. To some it may be viewed as disruptive to the flow of business, and apparently the minister views it that way.

When members feel strongly enough about an issue related to a bill, they have tools they can use. They have the tools of debate. They have the tools to make motions. They have the tools to call witnesses. Under our Standing Orders, they have the tools to be very thorough and exhaustive in their attention to a piece of legislation.

The minister has made it clear on the record that he does not want to hear from all the stakeholders in any great detail. This bill was tabled in December 2006 and has been languishing around. I do not know why it did not come up sooner, because it is an important bill. There are a number of outstanding issues and it is very important that they be dealt with. The minister clearly did not want to hear from all of the stakeholders who would have all kinds of questions, ideas and concerns. That is what the legislative process is all about.

I dare say that many members in this place will not have had an opportunity to read Bill C-45 in its totality. It is over 100 pages long. This bill replaces the existing act fully. It repeals the old act. If we are going to do the job properly, we have to go through the bill clause by clause to determine what has changed and to determine whether or not there is an understanding of why it may have changed. It is very difficult. Even in the brief 20 minutes that each member is given to speak at second reading, a member would not get into very much in terms of the essence of some of the details.

The first speaker raised some very important points. One had to do with transferring a licence on retirement. Another was the role of the tribunals. Another one that I thought was quite interesting was the delegation of the minister's responsibilities to DFO officials. This is a whole new regime. There was a suggestion that there have been cases in the past of abusing that authority to grant or to refuse licences.

If we think about it, there is a lot on the table for parliamentarians. There is a hoist motion, which basically asks Parliament to cease this process at second reading and to send the bill to committee for consideration. Interesting enough, when the minister made his argument on why we should not do that because he did not want to hear from all the stakeholders, from the various groups, aboriginals or commercial fishermen or jurisdictional individuals, et cetera, he forgot about bills like Bill C-30.

Bill C-30, when it was first tabled in the House, was the government's alternative to Kyoto. It is the environmental plan. It was leaked to environmental groups so that they could have an opportunity to respond. A week before the bill was even tabled in the House, they critiqued it in its totality and it was unanimous that Bill C-30 was a failure and it was never going to get anywhere. The bill was tabled in the House, but we did not have a debate on it. We have never had a debate on that bill because the government decided to send it to committee before second reading.

As we know, Bill C-30, a very bad bill, the clean air act, was totally rewritten by parliamentarians who heard a plethora of witnesses to make sure the bill was going to deliver in terms of our international commitments, and the appropriate processes and targets for our greenhouse gas emission undertakings.

That bill was totally rewritten by the committee. It was based on expert testimony and the best work possible by the members who were selected by each of the parties to be on this special legislative committee.

If consulting with Canadians on the clean air act is appropriate before second reading because it is complicated, there are a lot of diverging views, there are areas in which it is not overtly clear to members why certain steps have been taken, sending it to committee is the place to do it.

The minister makes his argument about it not going to committee before second reading because the Conservatives do not want to hear from these people and yet the government itself referred another bill to committee before second reading. In fact, that is not the only one. One cannot have it both ways. One either recognizes the circumstances a bill is in or one risks losing the bill and having to find another way to do it.

We cannot afford, quite frankly, to lose this new Fisheries Act because there are many changes that have taken place and many new areas that should be dealt with that are currently not in the existing legislation. One that I happened to notice and something that I have spent a fair bit of time on in my involvement with the International Joint Commission has to do with alien invasive species. In part 3 of this bill it actually refers to aquatic invasive species.

Canadians may be familiar, for instance, with zebra mussels, which are an alien invasive species or what is called an aquatic invasive species. I understand there are some 30 of these species in the Great Lakes system and they destroy the fish habitat. In the work that is being done so far, for every one alien invasive species that is treated, dealt with and gotten rid of, another one appears. How does it appear? There is certainly speculation about how they come in but it has to do with ship ballast. They are brought in by ships that come from abroad.

I noted in this area that it is an offence to transport an aquatic invasive species. I wonder what would happen if a ship coming to Canada has a listed aquatic invasive species that it is not aware of but is discovered. I am going to be very interested in seeing the regulations on how to deal with it. I suppose it could even involve a court case in terms of whether the ship owners knew or ought to have known that in the normal practice of managing the ballast of a ship, they would have probably collected certain species that would be classified as an aquatic invasive species.

There is certainly that area. The International Joint Commission is a group made up of representation from Canada and the United States which share common waterways. It is responsible for conducting studies and making observations to determine what the issues are and to suggest and discuss possible solutions.

The only problem with the IJC though is that it has no authority and no power because half of its members represent the U.S. government and the other half represent the Canadian government. It cannot unilaterally take charge of a situation and do something about it, so it takes a lot more work. I would be very interested to see how the responsibilities and the authorities that the minister has in the bill would be able to dovetail with the responsibilities of the IJC.

In part 3 clause 69.(1) states that: “No person shall export, import or transport any member of a prescribed aquatic invasive species”. When I read further, clause 70 states:

The minister may, subject to the regulations--

And regulations will be made at some future date.

--destroy or authorize any person to destroy, in accordance with any conditions imposed by the Minister, any member of

(a) a prescribed aquatic invasive species; or

(b) any other species that the Minister considers to be an aquatic invasive species as defined in the regulations.

I would think that this may be a problem because when the minister now has the authority to designate any other species to be an aquatic invasive species, we are probably making law through regulations and I am not sure that is going to get by the scrutiny of regulations committee but we will have to see on that.

In any event, even the small section which is only about four clauses in part 3 on aquatic invasive species, I could think of numerous questions that I would have of the IJC, that I would have of those who import and export and have ships using the waterways of Canada.

The other area that I want to comment on has to do with what was raised by one hon. member as an example of what can happen during second reading. As the member had indicated, we had Bill C-257 which was a bill related to replacement workers. It was to be amended at committee. There were some amendments. Ultimately, it came back that in the opinion of the Speaker, in consultation with the clerks, that the amendments made at committee were beyond the scope of the bill. Even though they were certainly directly related but what they did was they touched upon another bill which was not mentioned in Bill C-257.

Therefore, there are even good amendments which do not get incorporated into a bill on technical reasons. This is a very good example. In fact, right now a new bill on the same subject matter related to replacement workers, Bill C-415, has been ruled to be non-votable by a subcommittee of procedure and House affairs for the reasons that it is same or similar.

I can understand the argument that the vast majority of Bill C-415 is identical to Bill C-257 which was defeated by the House. Therefore, we could argue that the majority of that bill has already been defeated by the House and to put the question on those provisions again would be redundant and therefore the bill in the subcommittee's view is not votable.

It has now been appealed and it is still under review, but even something as simple as a reference to another piece of legislation may be enough to undermine the acceptability of changes at the committee stage.

I have to say in my experience of almost 14 years now that it is extremely difficult to get changes made at committee which are substantive. I think the members know that. I think the minister knows that. I think the minister also knows that should we have the kind of consultations that members have been asking for, that changes are going to be required here. He should also know that there is a great deal of support for the vast majority of the bill but there are some areas of weakness and members have raised those.

I believe that in a minority situation, this is a prime example of where the parties should be collaborating on the areas in which the bill can be improved. With that, I will conclude my remarks.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments and for his good work on the fisheries committee as well.

To begin, I wanted to bring to his attention clause 23 of Bill C-45, the new Fisheries Act, which states:

The Governor in Council may delegate, subject to any conditions that the delegation specifies, any or all of the powers conferred on the Minister by sections 15 to 18 or by Parts 1 and 3, or by the regulations made under any of those sections or those Parts, to a minister of a provincial government responsible for fisheries.

The bill specifically mentions Parts 1 and 3. Part 2 of the act, as he will know when he refreshes his memory on this, is the part about habitat, pollution prevention, conservation and so on. That part in the new act cannot be delegated to the provinces, so he should be less concerned about that.

My main question for the member is about something that is still not clear to me. It should be clear by now, because there have been a number of speakers from his party, but it is not. Where we are at this point is that we have had a second reading motion. We have begun debate at second reading on Bill C-45. That was interrupted by a hoist amendment. We are now debating the hoist amendment. It is still not clear to me what those members think we should be doing with this.

If the amendment passes, the bill is dead. If the amendment is defeated, we go forward and we decide what to do at second reading on Bill C-45. The member seems to think the bill should get into committee. Is the member saying we should pass or not pass this hoist amendment? Then what should we do? Should we vote on Bill C-45? Because the bill can get into committee only if this amendment is defeated and the second reading motion is passed.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate today. I think anybody following it can certainly see the theme that is running through it and the concern that is being expressed by the opposition parties today. We are not at odds with the principles or with the understanding that we have to modernize the Fisheries Act. It is the way the government has approached this. It has been wrong-minded and we are here to help.

I think people do not have a great deal of confidence in being told that someone is from the government and is there to help. That is what we want to do with this legislation.

A number of the speakers referred to the work of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. My friend and colleague, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore, is the longest serving member of that committee, and I guess I would be the second. Over the last seven years, I have been on and off that committee.

I have sat on about eight different committees in the House and I am very confident in saying that the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans would be the least partisan. All members work every day. At each meeting and on each issue we undertake, we work in the best interests of those in the fishery. Members from the west coast are just as interested and as knowledgeable about the issues that impact on the people of Atlantic Canada and the members from Atlantic Canada understand a lot of the challenges faced by those in the fishery on the west coast.

It was mentioned in the House before that my colleague worked on 26 different studies done by the committee over his time and 22 of them were presented unanimously. All members on the committee supported those reports going forward.

We just completed a fairly extensive study on the concerns around sealing. It was a unanimous report. We went to Newfoundland and were out on the ice in the southern gulf. We witnessed it and stood together, shoulder to shoulder. When we come and stand behind the minister now, that gives the minister's position even greater strength. Canada and the House speak with a unified voice.

I think there is an opportunity and a willingness to do that with this legislation. The principles are not out of whack, but there is so much concern. My colleague from Sydney—Victoria has mentioned some of the concerns we have.

I am concerned myself. I know in the last Parliament the previous fisheries and oceans minister had corresponded with the standing committee and requested it undertake a full and complete study so when legislation was presented, there would be a body of information from which we could draw on in order to develop the legislation for a new fisheries act.

The steering committee of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans agreed to go forward with it, but the then opposition critic, the current Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, changed his mind, and the study died. He did not want to go forward with a study on the new fisheries act so we pursued another issue.

It was mentioned already in this debate that our colleague, the member for Delta—Richmond East, a commercial fisherman, probably one of the most knowledgeable members in the House on the commercial fishery, is no longer on the committee because he voiced his concern over aspects of the new fisheries act. He was removed from the committee. That is a great disservice not only to the government, but also to the people in the industry from coast to coast to coast.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans said that we were opposing this just for the sake of opposing. That is not what is going on. We approve of many of these things, and I will talk about some of them.

Going forward, we approve so much of this in principle. A number of the ministers in the past government had tried to advance the new Fisheries Act and ran into some opposition, but in principle I think we can come out of this with a much better act should we bring this to committee prior to second reading.

A number of groups have approached us in opposition. Anybody opposed to government legislation were the first to be notified. As my colleague from Sydney—Victoria mentioned, we hosted a round of meetings within the constituency. We met with a group in Sydney River not that long ago and the concerns were broad and deep.

I spoke with a group of fishermen in Canso just last week, representatives of the Guysborough County Inshore Fishermen's Association. Although they supported it, there were still a number of reservations that they wanted to register with me. It is deep.

I want to read from correspondence from the Atlantic Salmon Federation, which has done incredible work for decades on the salmon fishery. I know the minister would like to put himself out as a great supporter of Atlantic salmon. With the release of the Atlantic salmon endowment fund, it now can go forward. When we were in government, we established a $30 million fund that would go toward a number of community initiatives to support Atlantic salmon.

It is funny that when the $30 million were being peeled out and allocated to the endowment fund, the current Minister of Fisheries and Oceans voted against that budget. In fact, he had not supported Atlantic salmon at all. I know when he was ready to receive requests for funding and made that announcement, he pretty much separated his shoulders, patting himself on the back for all the great work that he did on Atlantic salmon. We know that is not the truth.

I know the Atlantic Salmon Federation has registered its concerns about this legislation. I will read from the correspondence. It states, “The Atlantic Salmon Federation is requesting that Bill C-45 be withdrawn and that a meaningful consultation process be put in place that allows the public the time to study changes that are being proposed in the Fisheries Act and provide considered input to the act”.

We understand the importance of Atlantic salmon in our recreational fisheries. We know the price per pound for salmon commercially, but recreationally it is over $300 per pound. When we talk about anglers going into a community, staying overnight or whatever, it is a very substantive component of our tourism industry. For them to voice their concern, the minister has to sit up and take notice.

We have received a great number of interventions by environmental groups. A couple of the members from the NDP had cited a few before. They are calling for us right away to withdraw Bill C-45. These include the Alberta Wilderness Association, BC Federation of Fly Fishers, BC Nature, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Fisheries Recovery Action Committee and Georgia Strait Alliance. These are freshwater fisheries as well as east and west coast fisheries. Other groups are Watershed Watch Salmon Society, Yukon Conservation Society, the David Suzuki Foundation, Sierra Club and Ecology Action Centre. These groups say that the new act has no teeth to protect fish or fish habitat.

It does get a resounding endorsement from the Canadian Mining Association. I think that if I were a fisher and the only endorsement I could really hold in the window was from the Canadian Mining Association that would offer me a little concern.

What we have been getting from the government throughout this is the following: “Leave it with us. Trust us. We're going to look after this. It's not a problem. Don't be scared. We're okay. We're cool with that because we're going to look after it. We're going to look after the best interests of the fishers of this country.”

We have seen what has happened when we leave that trust in the hands of this government. We know how well the government supported its promise on income trusts. As for the Atlantic accord, where the greatest fraud was “a promise not kept”, we know that promise was not kept with regard to the Atlantic accord. We know that deal was torn up and thrown away. We can ask the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and the people of Nova Scotia how much faith they have in this government keeping its word.

I see it personally, too, from people in my riding, people such as Joyce Carter. She is a great lady, a beautiful lady, and the widow of a second world war vet, who was promised by the then leader of the opposition, our current Prime Minister, that the veterans independence program was going to be instituted as soon as the Conservative government took power. We know where that promise went as well. It was just thrown away.

There is no trust in the fishing community that the government can deliver on what it said, which was that the fishing community should leave it with the government and it would look after them. There is no trust there. I think we saw that last night with the election results in Prince Edward Island.

I have just one final point on this, which is about the hilarity of last week and the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development. The students of this country, the young people of this country, left their trust with the government and we saw how 80% of the student funding that was there last year no longer exists. We saw that millions were peeled out of the student summer job placement fund. We saw community groups that for decades have sponsored work opportunities for summer students in this country left stranded and out in the cold.

However, that minister stood here and said that everything was fine, everything was wonderful, and that we could look at the groups that got funding. He said there were five groups in my riding that got funding. If I had asked him seven more questions, and he gave me five groups, that would have covered the entire number of grants issued in my riding. But the minister said that everything was fine, everything was wonderful.

That has to be the playbook of this government.

There is a Conservative candidate in my riding who said the other day said that this new round of funding for the students is just typical second-round funding. There was never any second-round funding, but if the truth does not fit, let us make up an answer. That seems to be the modus operandi for this government, but people are not buying it.

With regard to the act, we have heard a number of great concerns. What we heard from the fishermen and what I have been hearing from the fishermen over the last while is with regard to the position on trust agreements. With DFO, under a past minister, we have just gone through a whole redevelopment of a crab plan in Cape Breton and the Eastern Shore. One of the rulings that came out was that some of the temporary access holders were forced by DFO, by the government of the time, to move toward trust agreements. In order to qualify for a licence, they were to band together and make a trust agreement. It was about two years ago that this provision came forward.

Now we are being told by the government that trust agreements are no more, that trust agreements will not be recognized and we have seven years to get out of them, but all trust agreements are not bad. There are people in the industry who would never have had an opportunity to get into the industry if it were not for trust agreements.

There should be some type of grandfathering. There is now so much uncertainty with regard to what is going on around the trust agreements. I know that we do not want big corporations holding the lion's share of quota allocations. That is not what we want for the industry. We believe in an independent industry.

All trust agreements are not bad. We need more consultation on the trust agreements. We have to find out what is right, what works, and what is best for the industry, and that is done through consultation. We must show the fishers some respect. Let us consult with the fishers.

It is the same for access to capital. My colleague from West Nova talked about that as well. I think that sort of spills right over to the trust agreements.

On B class lobster licence holders, we do not know where they are going to land after the new act comes out.

On tribunals, my colleague from the city of Victoria registered some concerns about the tribunals, so this is where the discussion takes place because I do not think the tribunals are going to be a bad thing.

There is a concern that there is no appeal after a tribunal decision is made, but I think that if we give tribunals the power to address violations in the Fisheries Act, it would make it more expedient. We know that there are people out there who abuse their privileges. They are caught the first, the second and the third time. There are abuses within the fishery, but they are minor.

The number of fishers who abuse their privileges is minor, I would think, but there has to be some kind of recourse. I think these tribunals certainly would be well positioned. I think they would make it a little more expedient. They would cut down on the wait times. They would take some pressure off the courts. However, I believe there should still be some type of appeal process. I hope that we can address this through the committee and through interventions with the committee.

The minister talked about the transfer of responsibility to the provinces. He listed a number of provinces that support this in principle. I really question where the provinces are coming from on this because I would be concerned. I know that the opposition members in those provinces are expressing concern.

Is this more downloading on the provinces, with increased responsibility? If the government is looking at an increased responsibility for provinces in habitat and in enforcement in these particular areas, we see no sign in the estimates of any transfer of money over to the provinces. Where are the provinces going to get the money to deliver on these additional responsibilities? I do not see that in the legislation.

I would think that a little bit of the spillover, as referenced earlier, is in the outcome in P.E.I. There is a fairly substantive fishing community around P.E.I., and I would think that a little bit of the spillover there lies in the lap of the fisheries minister and the federal government in trying to ram this down the throats of the fishers in this country and certainly the fishers in P.E.I. I am concerned about the transfer of those responsibilities to the provinces and the provinces' ability to execute on those responsibilities.

The cost of science has not been mentioned here so far today. I do not think it has been addressed. I think the cost of science and where we are going with the science is going to be a substantive aspect of where the fishery is going in the future, coming out of the Larocque decision. What we are hearing from fishermen, the guys who go out and harvest the resource, is that they are pretty much fed up with it. They bought into this. They know that in order to have a successful and sustainable industry science has to be the basis.

As I have only a minute left, I will try to wrap up with this. We have put so much on the backs of the fishermen. We have expected so much. They bought into it in that the allocations would go toward a portion of paying for the science, but it seems to be the slippery slope. More and more allocation is going toward science. We know now through the Larocque decision that this is not going to hold water any longer. Where are the moneys for that?

I think we should be playing a greater role in helping our fishermen with the provision of science, but I think that has to be addressed through the committee and committee hearings. We would like to see the bill go to committee prior to second reading, so that when we go forward the principles could be maintained, but we could have a fisheries act that serves this industry in a much better way.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I want to speak a little bit about my riding and the problems I have with Bill C-45.

My riding is Sydney--Victoria in Cape Breton. It is substantially a large riding and fisheries is a big industry in my riding. I have what I call two bookend harbours: Pleasant Bay at one end of my riding and at the other end of my riding is New Waterford. There are approximately 300 kilometres of coastline between those two communities and probably 30 communities that rely on the fishery. Those 30 communities along with the fishers are a substantial amount and probably close to 1,000 families rely directly on the fishery.

In those communities we have fish plant workers, people selling supplies to the fishers, truckers, buyers, and even the tourist industry hinges on our fisheries industry in my riding and in Cape Breton. Many people come to Cape Breton Island to see the fishing communities. There are almost $100 million worth of products sold in Cape Breton. This is why the fishing industry is important and why we have to be careful with this bill.

The Liberal Party is not against changes to the Fisheries Act. The act is over 138 years old. The previous minister of fisheries from the Liberal Party said he instigated some changes to the act. He made it very clear in 2005 that he wanted the committee to do a proper job with an assessment of the fishery. He also wanted to make sure that the fishers and all the stakeholders were properly consulted. Problems arise today as they did in the spring of 2007 because consultations were not done. We had no choice but to decide that we had to hoist the bill. That was hoisted, as many know, on February 23.

On the home front, my colleague from Cape Breton—Canso and I received many calls over the winter about the concerns that the fishers were having and what was going to happen. We hosted a town hall meeting in Sydney River which is pretty well in the middle of our two ridings. We had a great turnout for that winter meeting. April 12 is still winter on Cape Breton Island. We had over a hundred fishers and they were very concerned. They were also very upset. They were overwhelmingly against Bill C-45. There was a lot of opposition to the bill.

The people were very concerned about the bill and wanted it shelved. Our constituents at that meeting were very satisfied with what we did in February by hoisting the bill. The people wanted more consultation.

We were told that fisheries and oceans did not include how the fishermen would be impacted with this new act. A new fisheries act would place too much power in the bureaucracy and many fishermen felt the act was already dysfunctional. They were not comfortable with this bill at all from their previous experience.

The fishermen pointed out that the wording in clauses dealing with the transfer of licences was too vague. Fishermen need some assurances that the act will not take away the value of their licence. Sometimes that is all they have at the end of the day is the value of their licence. Many fishermen had no trust in DFO. This is largely a result of this ill-conceived legislation.

I do not want to get off the topic too much, but time and time again we see how this Conservative government puts bills forward in the House. When good bills are put forward and the committee does its work, the government squashes it. I have seen this with Bill C-278.

I will not go into the problems we had with the previous government and dealing with bills. I want to stick to the facts, especially about the meeting we had in Cape Breton on April 12. Many of the people in that room also thought there needed to be changes.

One very eloquent spokesperson for a lot of the fishers, especially the crab fishers, was Josephine Burke-Kennedy. She stated at the meeting that she worried about what the bill would say about transferring licences, as I previously mentioned. She said that in time she wanted her son to be able to take over his father's licence if he wanted to and not have interference. She also took issue with the proposed bill's lack of clarity with trust agreements and the right of the department to refuse a licence based on suspicion in the licence transfer.

This is a very legitimate concern. She spoke on behalf of most of the people at that meeting. They wanted to make sure that fishers have a right to fish. They should also be allowed to sell their licence to whomever they want to. The fisheries minister has no right to take the quota away from anybody.

The new bill has impact. Fishers are concerned about their licences being taken up by large corporations. We can say that they should not fear that, but they do.

Now is not the time for consultation. As many of my colleagues from Atlantic Canada, and even those from the west coast realize, this time of the year many fishers get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and they are lucky to be done before 5 o'clock in the evening. They really have no time for consulting now. They are in a stressful situation and it is dangerous, but they have to make their money in a few months. Now is not the time of course. The time will be in the fall.

We agree that the Fisheries Act needs to be changed because it is over 100 years old.

A lot of things have changed in the fishery over the last 20 years. The fish population has changed dramatically, especially on the Atlantic coast where there used to be a lot of groundfish, but as a result of overfishing and the use of draggers that has changed.

As a result of the diminishing cod stock, which is a predator to shellfish, there is a lot more shellfish in our region, which is good. We want to administer that and regulate it properly because it is the fishing industry's salvation. The window is short when a fisher is in the shellfish business because he probably has to make his money in two months.

A lot of fishers go out west to work in the oil patch in between seasons in order to make ends meet. The business is not as good as people perceive it to be. It is a risky business; prices go up and down. One thing is for sure though and that is that the fishers have a licence. They believe they should keep their licence and it should retain value.

Let us look at the act a bit because it is not all bad. The new act would give fishers a greater say in their quotas and a greater say in conservation. Conservation is one of the key points for fishers involved with maintaining and dealing with the habitat of the fish stocks. This is a good part of the act. We agree that all is not bad here.

The tribunal system has been mentioned here many times today, and that really makes fishers nervous. Who is really going to have a say in dealing with the fish stocks? Who is going to have a say with respect to their fish licence? Are they just going to bring in some person? Fishers have a really major concern with that.

If that is not bad enough, provincial ministers are having a problem with the bill, and that really makes fishing communities nervous. This tribunal is probably one of the biggest concerns because fishers do not understand what the repercussions are going to be. There is too much uncertainty out there now.

There are some good things in the bill, but there are some major problems with it. The Fisheries Act is over 100 years old. Let us stop and think about what we should be doing. Why do we not take another year? Why does the committee not bring this up in the fall, make it a priority? The committee could bring in stakeholders from all around and get to the bottom of it. The committee could talk to fishermen throughout winter. We could have a good piece of legislation for next spring. There is nothing wrong with that. Everybody is comfortable with that. People are still going to fish this year. People are still going to have the same livelihood. Communities will still prosper when the fishing is good. Why not wait a year? That is the whole point here.

We are concerned about the rush job that is happening here. We are concerned about the economy in Atlantic Canada. These communities drive our economy. Whether it is a car dealership or teachers who teach kids, everybody has a connection in our communities.

I think that at the end of the day fishers and fish families want to be more in charge of their destiny. They want to have more say. They want to have a say in who is going to be on these tribunals. They want to have a say on how their stocks are going to be managed so they will continue to have a livelihood many years down the road.

Fishers definitely want their licence because it is a main value to have. Many times when a fisher retires he still owes some money on his boat; he still owes some money on his gear. A fishers licence is value and it is a value he wants to pass on. It is very important.

As members know, my hon. colleague from Cape Breton—Canso and I did our due diligence. We had a meeting in Sydney River and the people spoke. The fishers spoke to us and they told us to get back here and shelve this thing until proper consultations were done, they have a say and are comfortable with it, because we hope this new act can last another 100 years and be an act for the future of our fishing industry.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak in this debate on Bill C-45, but in reality we are on the hoist amendment, and I have less pleasure in speaking to this amendment made on February 23 by the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor. I think it has done a disservice to the lives of fishermen and those who are engaged in the debate.

We find ourselves debating a hoist amendment which, if passed, will have a result that is exactly the opposite of what we want to do here. I think we all want to do what the purpose of the act is and that is to strengthen the fisheries and the sustainability of the fisheries. I do not see us getting there with this amendment. We all understand that it is the opposition's role to oppose, even if it does so just for the sake of opposing, but it seems to me that in this case the member has chosen a poor route.

Let me clarify this for some members, because I think there is some confusion on this score, and certainly for those who may be watching. In fact, to an outsider, the member's motion might be construed as relatively benign. After all, how could a further delay of six months hurt? It could hurt the fishery stakeholders a lot if the majority of hon. members vote in favour of the amendment. We are not talking about a delay in proceedings with the amendment. Rather, hon. members would be killing Bill C-45 in its entirety, period. Those are the facts.

How so? It is very important to fully understand what would happen if this amendment should pass. Allow me to quote from the authoritative House of Commons Compendium of parliamentary procedures, which can be found on our parliamentary website:

The hoist is an amendment that may be moved to a motion for the second or third reading of a bill. It requires no notice, may be debated and may not be amended. A hoist amendment requests that a bill not “now“ be read a second time, but instead that second reading be postponed for three or six months.

A hoist amendment must meet a number of requirements. The purpose of the amendment is to neutralize the word “now” in the motion for reading. It must therefore amend the motion by eliminating all of the words following the word “That” and replacing them with the following proposition: “Bill (number and title)--

In this case, it is Bill C-45:

--be not now read a second...time, but that it be read a second...time this day three months (or six months) hence.

I notice that the hon. member has been very careful with the wording of his amendment to meet those requirements. I commend his research staff for getting that part right. However, what we do not notice in his remarks is the following, and I quote again from the Compendium:

The adoption of a hoist amendment is tantamount to defeating the bill by postponing its consideration. Consequently, the bill disappears from the Order Paper and cannot be introduced again, even after the postponement period has elapsed.

Some might say that a better word for a “hoist” amendment would be “hijack” amendment.

I find it very hard to believe that members in good standing would effectively want to defeat the bill without letting it go through the normal parliamentary channels of debate, second reading, committee debate, clause by clause review and so on, all on a purported pretense that not enough consultation has taken place.

Let me turn to that matter of consultation, which has been raised this morning a couple of times already, and the truth of what has or has not taken place in the last number of months and even years.

During the debate on February 23, 2007, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore, as he said again this morning, said that there is this myth of consultation.

Let me preface my remarks by saying that if certain members are suggesting that stakeholders were not asked to comment on the actual text and specific clauses of Bill C-45 before it was tabled, I would say that of course they were not. In fact, it is parliamentary tradition to present the bill to Parliament for its consideration and it is up to Parliament to consult on draft legislation.

However, if we ask if stakeholders were consulted on the principles, themes and common sense ideas contained in Bill C-45, I can only say yes.

Did interested parties, ranging from unions to aboriginal groups, know in advance the broad tenets of the proposed bill? Did they know it would highlight expanded roles for them in decision making? Did they know that a renewed Fisheries Act would more carefully take into account the conservation and protection of fish and fish habitat when fisheries management decisions were made? Did they know that it would provide for greater stability, transparency and predictability in fishery access and allocation?

Of course they did. It was the stakeholders themselves who put these items on the consultation table and implored us to act accordingly.

Veterans of this place should know that work on a new act has been ongoing for a number of years. Indeed, much of the initial consultative work was carried out under the watch of the previous government. We commend the previous government for that and for the incredibly valuable input from the standing committee over the years.

The fact is that Bill C-45 grew out of hundreds of fisheries renewal consultations and information sessions from coast to coast to coast, all designed to build a modern fisheries management regime that meets the challenges of the 21st century. These consultation efforts included: the Atlantic fisheries policy review, the Pacific new directions report, the Pearse-MacRae report on the future of the Pacific salmon fishery, the aboriginal fisheries strategy review, and the environmental process modernization plan, to name just a few.

Therefore, to say that the minister had an extraordinarily strong basis for proposing changes to the act is really an understatement. Bill C-45 reflects most of the significant findings and policy directions stemming from these and other consultation initiatives.

To talk a little about just two of these initiatives is quite illustrative of my point, so let me talk first of all about the Atlantic fisheries policy review. In fact, it was a huge consultation exercise that lasted over five years and much of it informed the provisions that we now find in Bill C-45.

The review was actually initiated in May 1999 to create a framework for managing east coast fisheries and to build consensus around a renewed vision for the fishery. It was a collaborative process with a broad citizen engagement approach through which advice and feedback were continuously sought from fish harvesters, processors and industry representatives, from the governments of the Atlantic provinces, Quebec and Nunavut, from aboriginal groups, community representatives and environmental groups, and from academics and other interested individuals. This is a very high level overview that I have given of a very comprehensive process that has lasted a long time. Therefore, in the interests of time, I would like to table a document listing in detail the consultations undertaken during the Atlantic fisheries policy review.

In February 2001, DFO released a comprehensive discussion document that served as a springboard for public discussion and debate. The department subsequently sought advice and feedback based on the discussion document during in-depth public consultations in 19 communities across the region. Out of that exercise came the Atlantic fisheries policy framework and it reflects the many voices heard during consultations.

In June of the same year, the independent panel on access criteria was established to review and make recommendations on access criteria for providing new or additional access in increasing Atlantic commercial fisheries. The panel sought input from industry, the Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Nunavut and aboriginal organizations and released its report in April 2002.

The minister of the day responded to the IPAC report in November 2002 and adopted the new access framework to guide all decisions on new or additional access to Atlantic commercial fisheries that have undergone substantial increases in resource abundance or landed value.

DFO has begun implementation of some of the key strategies of the policy framework that I have mentioned. However, it is only through a modernized fisheries act, which we have here before us in Bill C-45, that we can provide the tools and authorities to both DFO and industry to make significant strides in our achieving of the vision in these two policy documents. Here is how.

The objectives of the Atlantic fisheries policy framework address the major fisheries management challenges. They include: threats to conservation, excess participation and impediments to economic viability, ineffectiveness of top-down management, uncertainty in access and allocation, and closed decision making processes.

Legislative proposals in Bill C-45 directly address these fisheries management challenges through a number of specific proposals within the bill. They include provisions concerning conservation and sustainable use, self-reliance and collaboration, shared stewardship, and stable and transparent access and allocation.

However, consultations have also taken place with environmental and conservation NGOs. In fact, the environmental conservation and habitat protection provisions found in Bill C-45 were equally informed by the process with non-fishery stakeholders, as I have mentioned, so I think it would be useful to touch upon NGO engagement in what is known as the environmental process modernization plan, or EPMP. It is an engagement that actually connects the dots back to Bill C-45.

Building on the results of an earlier national habitat blueprint initiative, DFO launched the EPMP in early 2004. It was aimed at making the habitat management program more effective in the conservation and protection of fish and fish habitat, more efficient in the delivery of its services to Canadians, and more integrated with the interests and priorities of partners and stakeholders.

Shortly after launching the EPMP, 13 national or regional conservation and environmental NGOs were invited to a consultation meeting held on June 15, 2004. All participants expressed support for the direction that DFO was taking on the EPMP and made a number of suggestions on how they could help. In September 2004 eight NGOs agreed to establish a steering committee to identify common areas of interest and priorities for fish habitat management and the development of an agreement.

Throughout 2005 and 2006 the steering committee held numerous meetings, prepared discussion papers, and organized and conducted a national workshop. The purpose was to confirm areas of common interest, to set short, medium and long term priorities, and to establish objectives to be addressed through an agreement expected to be signed in 2007.

On October 12, 2005 the department held a session with environmental NGOs on the EPMP and Fisheries Act renewal. The meeting took place in Ottawa and via webcast across the country.

In April 2006 DFO wrote to the Canadian Environmental Network and several prominent ENGOs proposing that a joint committee be established to organize a major national workshop on these and related matters. The joint committee was established and a workshop was held in October 2006 with 25 conservation and environmental NGO representatives from across Canada, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, an observer from the Assembly of First Nations, and staff from DFO's regional offices and national headquarters.

Among other things, and I stress this, the workshop discussed renewal of the Fisheries Act. Following the workshop, an ENGO delegation met with staff from the minister's office and senior DFO officials. The workshop provided a sound base for establishing an important dialogue on habitat management with ENGOs and has resulted in the establishment of a national fish habitat management coordinating committee to pursue its recommendations.

Further, throughout 2006, DFO regional and headquarters staff held sessions on the modernization plans and Fisheries Act renewal across Canada, with municipalities, industry associations, aboriginal groups, federal government departments, provincial agencies, consultants, associations of professionals, community and voluntary groups, and NGOs.

I know that I have gone into what some members might consider tedious detail on such endeavours to outline just how significant and comprehensive the consultation process has been. It is equally clear that broader based consultations have been just as rigorous.

As I reiterated in the debate held on February 23 in this place, between August 2005 and December 2006, DFO officials met over 300 different Canadian stakeholder groups to discuss the modernization initiative. They represented a very substantial cross-section of first nations interests, recreational and commercial fishers and processors, natural resource industries, ENGOs and the public.

Following meetings with provincial and territorial fisheries and aquaculture ministers in March and May 2006, it was evident that there was a strong desire from our provincial and territorial partners to push for changes to the Fisheries Act. As we have said many times already, it is 138 or 139 years old.

Then, at a meeting of the Canadian Council of Fisheries and Aquaculture Ministers in Yellowknife in October 2006, we were urged to introduce changes to the Fisheries Act that would foster enhanced federal, provincial and territorial collaboration and help promote a stable, transparent and predictable decision making environment. So much for the consultation myth.

Further, it is not as if the consultation process ended with the introduction of the bill. Following the tabling of the bill, DFO sent thousands of letters to stakeholders and provided over 100 detailed information sessions to a vast number of groups to help them understand the parliamentary process, details of the bill and how they could provide input. The department has also met with almost all the provinces and territories to provide technical briefings.

DFO headquarters, as well as regional offices, either held telephone conferences or met with about 125 key stakeholders within 48 hours of tabling. These stakeholders included the commercial fishing industry, the recreational fishing industry, ENGOs, resource industries, aboriginal groups, other federal government departments, as well as representatives from provincial and territorial governments. The department continues to hold follow-up information sessions.

The minister himself sent out over 1,000 letters to stakeholders in mid-December, including about half to first nation and aboriginal groups, alerting them to the fact that the bill was tabled and where to find it. Canadians across the country are making their views known now by communicating with their MPs, their minister, myself, the media and so on, which is exactly how the democratic process should work.

In short, we took and are taking extraordinary steps to engage our stakeholders and seek their input into the policy directions on the new legislation.

If the process should be allowed to go forward, formal consultation on Bill C-45 will take place through the parliamentary process. The standing committee may invite individuals and representatives of organizations who have an interest in the legislation to provide comments either in writing or by personal appearance. The public will also have an opportunity for input as the bill goes through a similar process in the Senate.

Once the bill becomes law, stakeholders and anyone who has an interest in the issue will have a further opportunity to provide input and offer views of how the various sections of this legislation should be made operational, that is, through the regulations. This will be done through a transparent and open process.

Under the renewed Fisheries Act, the commitment to encourage the participation of Canadians in the making of decisions that affect the management of the fisheries and the conservation or protection of fish or fish habitat will be a principle that the minister and every person engaged in the administration of the new act will take into account.

In addition to the ongoing engagement of stakeholders, this principle will be made a reality through general power for the minister to establish advisory panels for a wide variety of purposes. We find that in the bill.

Finally, stakeholders now have had more than four months to digest the information and few have indicated that there are elements of the bill that surprise them. They may disagree with some of the details on how certain sections are worded but there is no new policy change in the bill that has not been heard or seen before. Therefore, we strongly believe that it is now up to the parliamentary committee to consult on the wording of the bill after second reading.

Do we pretend that the bill is perfect? Of course not. However, we believe that it is as close to perfect that six years of consultation and compromise will allow.

If this amendment goes through, resulting in the killing of Bill C-45, then the tens of thousands of hours of consultation with stakeholders that have taken place under our watch and under the watch of the previous government will have gone on for nothing. I cannot imagine anything more disrespectful to those stakeholders, not to mention the whole notion of parliamentary procedure, process and democracy.

It is time to move forward now. Fishery stakeholders cannot afford to wait any longer. The fishery has changed, the industry has changed and resource users have changed. The current act no longer gets the job done and Bill C-45 would.

I encourage all hon. members to not let this hoist amendment become a hijack amendment. What is on the line here are six years of intense consultations and the time and trust of stakeholders.

What is ultimately at stake here? Nothing less than the lives and livelihoods of countless thousands of Canadians, as well as the critical measures in the bill that would help preserve and protect our precious rivers, streams and ocean waters.

If we let Bill C-45 die on the order paper, who can predict when another version of the bill will see the light of day? It is time to move forward now. Fishery stakeholders cannot afford to wait any longer and we want to get the job done.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like further clarification from the member. Is he or is he not in favour of the principle that the new bill would follow, which is the minister would be involved in setting principles for licensing criteria and so on? Once those principles are set, then licensing officers would be obligated by law to follow them, rather than getting involved in the political games that have tended to happen over the last many years.

If it were completely up to the discretion of the minister, does he not think the approach of greater accountability and transparency that is built into Bill C-45 would be a much better system?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives and Liberals say that they are tough on crime and yet here they are allowing corporate polluters who commit serious environmental crimes to get off easy, allowing them to have alternative measures agreements rather than guilty pleas and criminal records.

Corporate offenders who put toxic substances into water, which destroys fish habitats, should face stiff fines or even jail time if they are convicted. Canada needs tougher legislation to protect fish habitat and our lakes, rivers and oceans. The fishing industry needs clear standards that are applied equally to every polluter.

We need to protect our coastlines and our aquatic ecosystems. The biological integrity of the Great Lakes is already under stress by the invasive species and climate change.

Why is the Liberal Party not opposing this terrible Bill C-45, the new fisheries act that declares our water and our environment open season for corporate polluters? Where is the Liberal leader who claims that environmental integrity and protection are supremely important? Why is the Liberal Party supporting this bill?

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to discuss Bill C-45. This is a very ambitious bill designed to replace the current Fisheries Act, which has undergone some changes but is more than 136 years old. There is general agreement that the current legislation is flawed and must be amended. However, there are problems associated with amending this sort of legislation.

People in the fishing industry will often say that they do not like the legislation as it stands, but that they can survive nonetheless. They have an industry and are getting by. If this legislation is replaced, it must be replaced with a better bill that will improve the fishery for families, fishers and coastal communities.

This bill contains several provisions to that end, but it also has some weaknesses. I am finding resistance and fear in the fishing communities in my riding and elsewhere. People are asking me to vote against this bill. I think this is unfortunate, because with a few amendments, the bill could be very good for the fishing industry and could bring stability.

But the government is refusing to make those amendments. We are being asked to adopt the bill at second reading in order to introduce the necessary amendments, but we know that they will not be in order. They would be now, but they will not be after second reading, in committee. I think this is unfortunate.

Now, the minister controls the wording of the bill. I believe he should hold consultations on the bill's wording in coastal communities, in fishing communities, with the groups concerned, and make amendments. They are not major amendments. The bill the minister is introducing does not have to be rejected. With minor changes, it would be an excellent bill.

The minister could do that. According to the motion introduced by the Liberal fisheries critic, the minister could make the amendments that have been introduced. I therefore encourage him to do so.

However, what we have here and what we are going to discuss is the bill in its current form. Again, I do not think this is a bad deal. I think it has some weaknesses. I participated, as many others did, in the Atlantic fisheries policy review, a wide-ranging session of consultations with the industry, communities and the provinces, and we came to the acceptance of a document. We accepted the proposals of the review and I see pretty well all of them within this bill.

As for where I have problems with the bill, I am going to talk about two areas. Other colleagues will talk about other areas. I am going to talk about two areas that are problematic. They are not easy to resolve. Now that he has the text of the act, I would encourage the minister to consult, based on the text he received from the communities, on the modifications that would improve that act and that he consider bringing them forward to Parliament, as the committee will not be able to do it at second reading.

One problem is the question of licence ownership. It has been stated by the courts in decisions that a licence is not a property. It is a permit. It is not property. That is understood. It has been understood in jurisprudence. However, in the evolution of our fisheries it has become an asset. It has value. It is often the pension plan of the family participating in that fishery. When the family leaves the fishery, it transfers the right to exercise that licence for a consideration of capital, of money, and that forms the pension plan for that family.

Now the proposed act states directly that the licence is not transferrable. The minister has said in the media, and he probably will say it again in the House, that his intent is that it continue as it was in the past and that people be permitted to transfer or sell their interest, to sell their right to apply for that annual permit. I believe he is sincere in that desire.

What worries me is what a judge will say in 5, 15 or 20 years when he is presented with a case wherein people are objecting to a transfer of a licence. He will be presented with a case and with an act which specifically states that the licence is not transferrable. If an organization, a petitioner to the court, wants a licence to cease existing on the retirement of a fisherman because it thinks cute little crabs should be swimming around the bottom of the ocean forever and should not be harvested, what then would a judge say in that instance? I believe there is some work to be done there.

The other area that I want to discuss is the question of the tribunals. Currently in the act if there is an offence or allegations of an offence under the act, the choice of the department is to charge the fisherman or fisher person or company and take them to court. It is a long, arduous and expensive process that clogs Canadian courts. This proposed act wants to bring back the way it was a while back and which had been successfully challenged in court, that is, the administrative sanctions. It would bring them back in the form of a tribunal, so that rather than going to court, sanctions could be imposed by the department with agreement of the offender or after a trial before the tribunal.

That is all good. I think that is excellent. What is lacking is a method of appeal. I hear concerns in fishing communities that the people on these tribunals are going to be named by the government of the day and are going to be political hacks. I do not have a problem with the government of the day naming the people on the tribunal. As a government is replaced, people will be named by the new government.

What I am concerned about is that the people on the tribunal have the ability and ethical values to do their job properly, that is, that they are able to do it and that they do it properly. The only way we can ensure that is if their decisions can be appealed to a higher instance. If their decisions cannot be appealed, then they stand, whether the decisions are good or bad. Rather than properly exercising their judicial or quasi-judicial responsibilities, their master remains the person who appointed them, the minister. As long as they make the minister and the deputy minister happy, they will continue to be reappointed. I believe there should be an appeal process. It would ensure that their job is done with integrity and transparency.

I want to return to the licensing and give an example of a good principle poorly applied and its negative impact. I want to give an example of the ministerial order given by the minister a few weeks ago with respect to trust agreements.

Trust agreements exist in my part of the world in two areas. They exist in the groundfish industry and the lobster industry.

The minister has stated that it is his intention to legitimize the existing process and permit vertical integration within the groundfish industry. I applaud him for that. That is the direction I was suggesting. It is the direction in which we have been going. I think that is excellent.

In the lobster industry there are 1,000 licences in Digby County, Yarmouth County, Shelburne County and in part of my colleague's riding across the way, South Shore, in St. Margaret's.

Twenty or 30 years ago the cost of getting involved in that industry would have been $20,000 to $100,000. A young person who wanted to enter that fishery would use the old backing system. He would see a lobster broker or buyer and the lobster buyer would sign at the bank or lend the young person $15,000 or $20,000. The young person would have to find another $10,000 and then he would be in. By a gentleman's agreement the harvester would sell his product to that buyer. That buyer would have security of supply. The young person starting in the industry would have a reasonable source of capital. Over time, times were very good in that industry.

The Marshall decision created the government buying lobster licences and other licences which quickly inflated the prices. All of a sudden, with the combination of the Marshall decision implementation and the economic benefits of that industry, licences hit $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000, $600,000 up to $800,000. The vessel and the gear would cost another $300,000 to $600,000.

The gentleman's agreement did not work any more. The person who was going to shell out or guarantee up to $1 million had to have some security. He needed two things. As a broker he needed security of supply; he needed lobster. He was not going to spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars marketing lobster if he could not be guaranteed supply. The other thing is he needed to be sure that if he lent $1 million to somebody that he would get it back.

The lawyers worked behind the scenes and they found ways around the policy and they came to the trust agreement. DFO policy continues to state that the licence must be held by an individual. They did the beneficial use or trust agreements. They were able to integrate in that way. In the beginning it worked fine, but with time there was movement by a few companies toward accumulation of a disproportionate share of the licences. It put fear in the community that no longer would it be an independently held industry contributing its maximum to the economy, creating riches for a lot of people.

There is another type of trust agreement. Of 1,000 licences my estimation would be that there are a couple of hundred in corporate trusts and probably 300 in individual and family trusts.

A lobster fisherman wants to turn over his assets to his son or daughter but it is $1 million and that is his pension plan. He is worried because he has to protect himself in case it does not work out, so he creates a trust and he turns the shares over bit by bit to the second generation and gets his pension. As people retire, a father or mother might want to buy licences in the market for two or three of their children. They will create trusts for those purposes. Those are not seen in the community as being dangerous. They are not seen as undermining the independence of the industry.

The minister, based on the good principle that the independence of the fishery has to be protected, said that only the banks would be able to mortgage and that within seven years all the other corporate trusts would have to be dissolved. The principle is good but what happened with the implementation of that is that the other 300 what I call reasonable trusts got caught in that trap. The average fisherman who was preparing to retire saw his licence value decrease from $600,000 to $300,000 overnight. About $600 million disappeared in capital value of fishing families, people preparing for retirement, in western Nova Scotia.

I have written to the minister asking him to reconsider. I understand there is a question of extending the sellout period or the dissolving period of those trusts to 17 years.

I would ask the minister to go further. I would ask him to look at the underlying causes that created those trusts. How do we change our policies in a way that would promote reasonable economic development of the fishery and maintain as much as possible the independent nature of the fishery? There are four points that I continually raise.

The first is the elimination of the capital gains tax. I congratulate the government for having done that. The government went further with this year's budget than it did with last year's budget and it came to what was in our Liberal policy platform. That was the responsible action to take and I thank the government for doing that.

The second point is access to capital. For an independent fishery to exist, the individual has to be able to compete with anybody else who would be trying to integrate into that fishery.

I should point out that what scares me under the tribunal system is the tribunal could decide who could and could not be a fisherman. That is risky. A fisherman should be a person who can acquire a licence or be entrusted with a licence and leave the wharf. It should be decided like that. It should evolve naturally and normally as it always has. A fisherman needs access to capital. He needs to be able to compete for it.

Then there is the brokerage sector. The brokerage sector, or the lobster buyers as we know them, need security of supply. They need to know they will be able to buy lobster in the future. They should have a reasonable way of competing with everybody else who is trying to do the same. That maximizes the value of lobster. It maximizes the revenue to the fisherman. It maximizes the return to the country and to the community.

I suggest that the licences be under a financial instrument. Because a licence is not property, it is difficult to call it a mortgage so I call it a financial instrument. We should let the banks enter into a financial instrument, or whatever the proper term would be, with the fisherman, so if he does not make repayment, the bank can get the licence, force its sale, and recover that way. The courts have found that to be okay and it is under appeal now.

I would suggest that we go further and let lobster buyers and the marketing industry get into those types of instruments. Then they would not have to do a trust. It would also cost them a lot less money. They would have more financial security as long as the person whose name the licence is in could buy out of the obligation in a reasonable manner as a person would on a mortgage on any other business or real property. That would help a lot.

Families or lobster fishermen should be permitted to create companies and put their licences under companies. Partnerships should be permitted. However, holding more than one lobster licence within a corporation or any individual or corporate entity having shares or interests in more than one of these corporations should not be permitted. Any one of those corporations or any fisherman should not be permitted to have licences in more than one lobster fishery area. We see that now in areas where they do very well. Fishermen use the capital to compete with larger vessels in other fisheries in their off season. That has a huge risk.

Existing trusts could be grandfathered. They should not be stale dated. If ever the fisherman sold his assets of the company holding the trusts, he could not sell those trusts with them. The fisherman could not sell one company to another. Any time those licences were moved, they would have to go under the new rules. I think that the market would level off.

People holding 20 or 30 licences in trust would have $20 million or $30 million tied up and they could not use that asset at the bank. They could not because of their trust agreements, their counter-policy with the department; with the signature on an order, the minister could dissolve the licence so it would have no value at the bank. The person could not use it to negotiate working capital in his corporation, but if the person sold the licences to the captains, if he got a financial instrument with the captains who owned the licences now, with an agreement that they sell their lobster to him at market value, they could buy out the person anytime, but the person would have a reasonable security of supply. The person could go to the bank freed up of the $20 million or $30 million obligation and as he negotiated his working capital, he could tell the bank what he expected in the amount of product he would be selling on the market in the next five years based on those things. Suddenly that business plan makes sense.

That broker has the ability to market Canadian product in the Japanese, oriental and European markets. The independence of the fishery is maintained and there is competition to buy that product from the fisherman maximizing in value.

Those four points, and there can be variations, would take away the underlying circumstances that have forced these trusts. These trusts were not some diabolical plan of people to take over the lobster fishery. If we talked to the people who are the beneficial owners of these trust agreements, they would tell us that they are not efficient at harvesting. The captains would tell us that it is not the most efficient way. The most efficient way is for the captain to own and operate his vessel. He will take care of things. He will fish when the conditions are right. He will take decisions that are appropriate for the safety of his crew and he will bring in the product.

People get involved in these trusts to have that security of supply. Lobster brokers need one thing. They need lobster. That is what they do very well.

As a young man growing up in Comeauville and fishing in the spring, I remember when there were two buyers who would come to Comeauville wharf. Essentially they were selling to two brokers in the U.S. The buyers would buy the lobster at the cheapest price possible. The price would be fixed in the spring and fixed in the fall and they would sell the lobster at a quarter a pound profit on the American market. The broker would make whatever money there was in marketing it on the American side and our fishermen lived in poverty.

Twenty or 30 years ago there started to be competition on the brokerage side. All of a sudden people were paying 15¢ to 20¢ more per pound. There were large fluctuations during the season. Fishermen themselves were brokering, developing lobster holding ponds and the lobster fishermen have done very well. They have very good family revenues. Their children are being well educated. They are contributing greatly to the economy. It is important that we protect that.

I hope the minister will give my reflections some consideration in protecting the retirement assets of these families as they approach the time to leave the fishery, as well as protecting the future of the fishery and the economy of western Nova Scotia.

The House resumed from February 23 consideration of the motion that Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Document for Committee Chairs

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member for Halton wants to continue to heckle, perhaps he can add to the debate after I am done instead of just shouting out his nonsense.

The reality is that this is a similar document that all parties produce to help train their individual members. I note that this internal document, as I say, is not a government document. It is something that was produced by the Conservative Party to assist our chairs.

Since the NDP members are so concerned about this, perhaps they could reveal to us their playbook or explain their tactics when they were delaying and continue to delay Bill C-45, the Fisheries Act; or Bill C-44, the amendments to the Human Rights Act; or their earlier extensive delay in filibustering Bill C-24, the softwood lumber act. In all of those things they employed tactics to delay passage of government legislation.

What about a chapter from their playbook dealing with moving concurrence motions to obstruct government legislation from following the due process and the procedure that we have become accustomed to in passing through the chamber? Instead, they resort, almost daily, to moving concurrence motions to delay that legislation.

I have remarked that the further training of our chairs, our committee members and, indeed, all of our caucus is to ensure that we are well aware of any procedural tools that we might have as a government, recognizing that we are a minority government and that we are outnumbered, not only in the chamber but at each and every standing committee. When we are confronted, as we have been by the opposition parties, which have become increasingly obstructionist, with a lot of legislation, we need to ensure we use every possible tool at our disposal to get our legislation passed through the committees, passed through the chamber and ultimately passed through a Liberal dominated Senate to become law in order that we can keep the promises that we made to the Canadian people in the last election campaign.

I have been noting that the people of Canada did not elect a coalition government of opposition parties. They elected a minority Conservative government and we have been trying to govern as such.

It is certainly my contention that this is an internal party document and that all parties have similar types of documents. It is beyond the pale that we would start out this final week with this bogus question of privilege.

[Larry Murray]

No, it has not yet been done. However, we are working on an agreement between the provinces and the federal government in order to ensure more effective regulations. The new Bill C-45 contains aquaculture provisions, but we do not intend to have a specific piece of legislation solely dedicated to that.

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

I realize that, sir, but he also brought up Bill C-45, which will affect their lives very seriously. The reality is, he's asked his input now. He should have been asked that input before the tabling of the bill. And that's as simple as that.

Sir, on the Maritime Fishermen's Union, you had asked some certain questions. Have you been able to sit down with the executive of the MFU to get some of your questions answered?

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

Merci, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentlemen, very much for your presentation.

Sir, prior to December 13, 2006, the tabling of Bill C-45, were you or your associates--or anybody in your organization--asked for your input prior to the tabling of that bill?

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

When we think about the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the problems with communication, the storm is not out at sea, it is on shore, from one I can see.

The season is often very short. More and more, the price of fuel and labour are increasing, quotas are maintained or are lower, and there are new demands. I am afraid that Bill C-45 may even legalize the decision that went against you. I urge you to pay careful attention to this.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I invite crabbers from New Brunswick, the Acadian Peninsula or elsewhere to share their concerns with us, as our committee will study the issue for Bill C-45. We will also demand that the minister meet with the people affected by the bill. At present, crabbers are not experiencing stormy seas, there are experiencing problems on shore.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

You seem to be in favour of updating the Fisheries Act. In my view, the only problem with the Act is that it is over a hundred year's old. Aren't you afraid that Bill C-45 will contain all of the decisions that went against DFO? I am referring to the decision brought down in the Larocque case, where service and research were being funded with crabbers' money.

Aren't you afraid that Bill C-45 might allow DFO to demand quotas to fund research and development?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

We are to say yes or no in principle. So far, what are your thoughts on Bill C-45?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

On Bill C-45, you said your response is going to be in October. Is that correct?

[Serge Savoie]

Moreover, the minister made a commitment to review the costs in various sectors of the industry and to make them fairer. I am talking about licences, and so on.

Finally, Minister Hearn increased the capital gains exemption which was $250,000 under the Liberals to $750,000, which is huge and which will help mainly crabbers.

After all of these congratulatory remarks to the minister, I would like to tell you that we intend to study Bill C-45, not with a view to demolishing it, but with a view to being constructive. The minister is quite right to amend a piece of legislation that is over 128 years old. In passing, we have received a letter from the minister asking us to provide our input by the end of October. If you want to invite us back, we could discuss the bill with you.

Now, that's enough compliments for the minister. He had promised to come and meet with us at home, on the Acadian Peninsula, where the fishery is under way. He did not keep his promise. At his request, Senator Comeau was to accompany him. He did not keep his promise. We understand that he is very busy. I want to highlight that his staff, at least the people with whom we have had discussions, are excellent people. However, I must add that there is a blatant lack of communication, because many of them are not bilingual. As a result, there is often a lack of communication on both sides.

I think that a good Acadian who knows the fishery could serve this minority Acadian community that has seen so much humiliation. Are we not a founding people, like our aboriginal and anglophone brothers? We have seen enough of the Justin Trudeau of this world.

The snow crab fishery is vital for the economy of New Brunswick and the Acadian Peninsula. The industry is the peninsula's economic driver. It creates a livelihood for thousands of people directly and thousands of others indirectly. The snow crab industry is threatened until 2010. Biologists and scientists alike are predicting a decline in stocks. Quotas will therefore suffer the consequences of that.

Under the Liberal government, even independent studies, that I have here and that I can share with the chairman, like the one conducted by Gardner Pinfold, stress the fact that political pressure was so strong that DFO was accused of mismanaging the fishery. What do you think about the scientific research given to the cod fishers and the fact that the crabber who appealed the decision in court won? I have a copy of that here and I can leave it for the chair.

Our proposals are as follows:

(1) That the remainder of the current area 12 be reserved exclusively for the traditional crabbers from the Acadian Peninsula, Aboriginals, our brothers in the Gaspé Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands, crabbers in Prince Edward Island and the two crabbers in Nova Scotia.

(2) That scientific research be given to traditional crabbers. I believe, given this court decision, that the minister will have to comply.

(3) That there be no sharing with other types of fishers, until 2010.

(4) That there be a public inquiry into resource management by DFO Moncton.

There are 140 traditional fishers. When you add our aboriginal brothers' 80 boats, that makes 240 traditional crabbers in area 12. Today there are more than 400 fishers. Of course, more than 160 of them are non traditional fishers. That cannot continue for 2008, 2009 and 2010. The Acadian Peninsula has paid a very high price...

Yes?

[Larry Murray]

Perhaps I could wade in. It is our opinion, and in the context of the policy framework we'll be taking forward, and in the context of Bill C-45, as currently constructed, that it is something that the minister should do. In other words, we see shared stewardship as being a fundamental underpinning to the conservation of the fishery. It's challenging, as the chair has pointed out, on how you get there, but certainly at the moment the legal advice is “cannot”, and so we're working really hard to figure out how to move forward now and in the immediate future. Certainly it is the current view that some version of shared stewardship, supported by some version of joint project agreements and so on, is a good thing for the fishery.

[Dr. William Doubleday]

Basically, the Federal Court decisions last year said that Parliament has not given you the authority to allocate fish to fund collaborative arrangements. The section in Bill C-45 that you're referring to, if it becomes law, would give us the parliamentary authorization to do so.

[Larry Murray]

If I could leap in, I think the last question is a difficult subject for everybody, including those in the industry. It's challenging in some of these discussions to figure out what somebody said and what somebody heard. I don't want to impugn anybody, and I know you're not either, so we'll answer those on paper.

But I think the last question is really at the heart of this issue. It's the issue of who pays for the fishery. We're engaging in a fundamental policy debate that happens to have been triggered by the Larocque decision, but maybe that policy debate should have been triggered or would have been triggered.

You know, part of the problem is that it's not all apples and apples either. Someone who holds an ITQ quota for sablefish on the west coast is in a different position entirely from somebody fishing in a now less than 39-foot boat in the inshore fishery off Newfoundland, so how do you square that? Our policy framework tries to come to grips with that, but do the 30 million Canadians owe the 48 lucky Canadians who have the sablefish quotas? Is it appropriate that everything gets paid there, the same as it might be for the inshore fishermen in Newfoundland?

I think that's the debate we need to have, and I think this committee needs to play a big role in it, whether it's around the contents of Bill C-45 or whether it's us out there talking to understandably unhappy fisherfolk from coast to coast to coast around this.

But it's a hell of a question, and we need to figure out if we're going to move forward with quota fisheries, which seem to be those where conservation happens. What does that mean, and what does it mean to have a quota, and what about the second generation of those quotas? Should I be sitting in my condo in Hawaii with my sablefish ITQ, leasing it out to someone else, and 30 million Canadians are not only giving me a deal on...?

We are launching a licence fee review as well, because as Mr. Stoffer said, that may be part of the answer here. It seems to be the answer in Iceland. I don't know, but we do need to have a look at this and we need to have the debate, and that question is at the heart of the debate, actually.

[Dr. William Doubleday]

I will answer the first question.

If Bill C-45 survives in its current form, there will be mechanisms to make fishery management agreements involving fish allocations legal. It is up to Parliament. The Bill, as proposed, would allow for such agreements in the future.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Watson-Wright.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have two questions. I will put them to you one after the other and you may answer them in the order you wish.

Will Bill C-45, further to the court's decision in the Larocque case, make something that seems illegal legal? What was said is that they were paying with goods that did not belong to them. Will Bill C-45 straighten out the situation? That is my first question.

Here is my second. You are aware that climate change is the issue of the day. Is there any concern on the part of Fisheries and Oceans Canada with regard to climate change? What is the Department's vision for the future as it pertains to the direct or indirect effects of these changes on species and their habitat?

[Kevin Stringer, Director General, Resource Management Directorate, Fisheries and Aquaculture Management, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

I have a couple of points on that.

As the deputy said, I think the sense is that Bill C-45 would provide some tools to be able to assist with this, but in no way was Bill C-45 specifically drafted in order to deal with the Larocque stuff.

We have arrangements with fisheries groups. We do integrated fisheries management plans. We work as much as we can with fisheries groups. We don't have the legal authority to enter into an arrangement with those groups to really get into co-management. At this point it's consultation and engagement, and as much as possible we go to co-management.

We believe those sections of the proposed Fisheries Act in Bill C-45 would give us more tools to do that and to make these longer-term types of arrangements with groups, with associations. Those sections have been in previous versions. We do think it would give us some tools to address the issue of better engaging fisheries groups in more co-management types of arrangements.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Was Bill C-45 developed under the guise of the Larocque decision and needing to get around that? In other words, does Bill C-45 satisfy the courts with regard to the Larocque decision?

[Larry Murray]

If the context of Bill C-45 dealing with this area is built on the same policy framework as our approach to Larocque--and that is based on our experience that shared stewardship with folks involved in the industry having part of the decision-making authority, having part of the ownership of it, works better in those fisheries--in that context, that same philosophy is captured in Bill C-45. That is obviously subject, as is this policy framework we're moving forward with, to a policy discussion--in the case of Bill C-45, discussion among parliamentarians based on what you hear, and in the case of this framework, a direct conversation with industry from coast to coast in the next few months.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

You touched on Bill C-45 and how this is going to.... Let me ask straight out: is it going to reverse?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

You may have to. I've been last before, and sometimes it's necessary.

First, thank you for coming.

Second, we heard some pretty explosive comments made in our last committee. We'll get to that a bit later. I have a suspicion my honourable colleague down the way might also do that.

I would like my question to concern Bill C-45 and the ramifications of the Larocque decision.

First, Mr. Murray, how much of a shortfall has the Larocque decision been when it comes to management and conservation?

[Dr. William Doubleday, Director General, Economic Analysis and Statistics, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Thank you.

I have a brief presentation on our response to last year's decisions in the Federal Court. I'd like to take you through it. It gives the context and an indication of what our response is.

DFO has a long-standing policy of shared stewardship with the industry. We believe this gives better results, sustainable use of the fish resources, and higher value when those with the most attachment to the resources, the fishers, are involved in its sustainable management and conservation.

DFO, in cooperation with the industry, has entered into joint project arrangements with the industry to agree on incremental activities that benefit both parties. These have been funded directly by the organizations through a cash contribution or through the use of fish. The use of fish means a quota was allocated for the purposes of generating money for the project.

The use of fish policy evolved over the years until the 2006 court decisions. In 2006, the Federal Court of Canada held in the Larocque and APPFA decisions that the minister did not own the fishery resource. DFO can no longer use allocations of fish to finance scientific or fisheries management activities, and DFO cannot issue a licence with an allocation of fish for financing purposes. So the court was not critical of having collaborative arrangements; the court was critical about allocating fish to pay for them.

As a result of those decisions, DFO reviewed existing practices, including collaborative arrangements that had a use of fish component for financing purposes. We came to the conclusion that many arrangements will have to be modified in order to be brought into compliance with the court ruling. DFO will seek to sustain activities essential to conservation and to minimize any disruption.

The minister, through DFO, is responsible for managing a common property owned by the people of Canada on behalf of all Canadians. This involves developing and implementing integrated fisheries management plans based on scientific advice and stakeholder consultation. These result in the creation of private benefits for licence holders authorized to use the common property. DFO pays for conservation and sustainable management of the common property. The purpose of collaborative arrangements was to allow incremental activities to be conducted that would increase the benefit to licence holders.

Our primary objectives and principles in responding to these decisions are that the minister will act within his legislative authority; highest priority will be given to programs for conservation and protection of fish and effective management of fisheries; fishers who benefit from access to public resources should contribute to costs of managing them; we seek operational consistency across the country; we support shared stewardship; and we want to achieve a fair distribution of public financing across fisheries and regions.

Part of the way forward on this is our proposed new Fisheries Act, Bill C-45, which was tabled in December 2006 and has not yet been passed, which would establish modern legislation for sustainable development of seacoast and inland fisheries and would authorize the minister to enter into fisheries management agreements with recognized fishing organizations to further conservation, sustainable development, or participation in fisheries management. Under these fishery management agreements, funding arrangements, including quotas of fish, could be entered into with respect to the management of the fishery.

We also have a new investment in fisheries research. Budget 2007 announced new financing to expand fisheries science to respond to new and emerging pressures, including the court rulings adversely affecting government-industry partnership mechanisms for fisheries science, and new demands for ecosystem-based approaches to support conservation and long-term sustainability.

For the government-industry collaborative arrangements and stock assessment and related research that are consistent with the court decisions, we received $10 million for fiscal year 2007-08, followed by $12 million a year until 2012.

DFO is currently reviewing about 170 collaborative arrangements. There is a large number of them, they're quite diverse, and they're spread across the country. That's a lot to look at. Allocations of fish previously used to fund collaborative arrangements have returned to the fishers.

DFO will assign the highest priority to conservation and effective fisheries management, and ensuring minimal disruption of fisheries. It will assign its resources primarily to avoid the risk of serious or irreversible harm to conservation. Where possible, it will consider providing programs and services that are incremental to those essential to conservation.

Regarding progress to date, we immediately compiled an inventory of arrangements after the court decisions and began an internal review process. A national committee, which I had the pleasure chairing, was established to review the existing approach to collaborative arrangements. We developed an action plan—including a policy guidance framework, which has been distributed to the committee—and a decision-making process. We have a master list of collaborative arrangements, with associated legal risk, and we group those into similar categories to expedite the review and approval process.

We are undertaking a case-by-case review of each arrangement. We will work with industry to find ways to obtain the benefits of those arrangements in a way that's consistent with the court decisions.

We are also rolling out an engagement strategy. I'm travelling with some colleagues to Vancouver next Monday to meet with the B.C. industry, as the first of a series of consultations.

Together with increased science support for ecosystem-based management, this response will maintain an improved DFO scientific research and advisory capacity.

Thank you.

[Michael Anderson]

In terms of practical application on consultation policy, MKIO has put a lot of work into codifying the consultation policy for the application of the Crown consultation process in Manitoba. We began work on it within months of the Sparrow decision in April 1991. I can remember getting instructions from the MKIO executive council to proceed. Now, we are working with the Public Interest Law Centre of Manitoba to put together a workbook on Crown consultations so that first nations can present this workbook when a demand for Crown consultations is made.

The Northlands Denesuline First Nation recently issued a demand to the Government of Manitoba to engage in Crown consultations in respect of mineral exploration licences in their territory and have requested that no further licences be issued until the conclusion of those consultations. In order to give effect to that, a response on the process has to be provided. We're going to provide that.

I would add that on the Crown consultations conducted jointly by Manitoba and Canada on the Waskwatum generating system, MKIO was not part of that consultation process. The first nations that are directly affected were a part of the Crown consultations on Waskwatum. There was a report on that, so the mechanism can be reviewed.

The concept is that representative consultation does not meet the standard of consultation established by the Supreme Court in Sparrow, and Badger in our case, and then in Haida Nation and Taku River. It is a direct consultation with the directly affected first nations. The questions I listed before—is the right affected, is the infringement justified?—are the questions that must be asked.

From the work I do on the national policy advisory group with AFN's fisheries committee, we understand that DFO is awaiting the outcome in respect of Bill C-45. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is awaiting the outcome of work being done jointly between Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and the Department of Justice to develop a national consultation policy for the Government of Canada. We're eagerly waiting for that. We're going to ATIP it, actually, and try to get as much of it as we can right away. The end result is that it is a codified mechanism. It is a reliable process. It is between the Crown and first nations, and there has been a lot of groundwork done. The outcome of the consultation is another matter.

This is my last comment, if I might, Mr. Chair.

The key comment in Sparrow is that the presumption of validity on the part of Parliament is no longer valid. The Crown consultation process is not a matter of listening and then acting. If the Crown is going to take an action or make a decision that will infringe the exercise of a right that is recognized under section 35 of the Constitution Act, it may not do so unless it justifies that infringement. Consultation is part of the justificatory mechanism. The outcome of it would be establishing a valid legislative objective that would cause justification to be a conclusion in the consultative analysis.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for appearing before us today.

One of the terms I've heard on both coasts is the term “fish laundering”, meaning you use fish to pay for your activities that have not been authorized by the crown—in this case, the Treasury Board.

Mr. Gould, you haven't had a chance to speak yet, but your industry is very valuable in your community of Prince Rupert—and Mr. Haché could, if possible, discuss on the east coast. Are there any allegations or concerns post-Larocque that DFO has done a nudge, nudge, wink, wink to various groups and associations that if we could do this, we'll help you? We could wait and pause until we get Bill C-45 to do it, but we need some money in order to do this so you can go and fish.

Is there any evidence of that at all, or any kind of documentation that may be available to show that DFO is indeed contravening the Larocque decision?

[Ron MacDonald]

I think Bill C-45 is here because the department lacked the policy framework to correct Larocque. The Fisheries Act, I think, is here not because it's been well thought out nor because it's had a broad consultative process. There's been no consultation—zero. There's been no consultation. They pulled it off the shelf. It had been a failed bill in the previous government, and they said we need to give the minister the authority to take fish from the public and use it without an appropriation from Parliament to pay for these things. It's the only reason that I can see that a new government would come forward without consulting.

Bill C-45 gives a mechanism for the government to do something that is questionable at best and that Larocque said the minister does not have the authority to do. I don't think we should easily give those authorities to the crown. I think you have to be very cautious when you impinge on the public right to fish; the resource is not a crown resource, but a public resource, and that's vastly different. This bill tries to talk about a whole bunch of other things, but the crux of the bill is to absolutely do that. That is something I'm fundamentally opposed to, and so are most fishermen.

The problem is that they've not only funded science and management through this nefarious process, but they have also funded associations, so we have associations of fishermen out there who now have no mechanism to run their operations. Some in the department are going around trying to get support for Bill C-45 by saying that if you pass it, forget all the bad things, because we can amend it to be good things. As a former chairman of this committee, I think that's an impossibility, but they're saying that if you do it, there would be a mechanism to fund your association. I find that a particularly weak argument to support a bad bill.

The fundamental thing is that in the absence of policy coming out of the government, and in the absence of legislation that I think is supportable, we have a funding shortfall of probably $30 million in a very fragile industry. Some of the weak fisheries will not survive, or, if they do survive, we will be penalized in the marketplace because we will not be able to prove, as Christina said, that we are fishing sustainably.

[Robert Haché]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Asselin. I will try to answer your question, because I am the person who is probably the most familiar with the Larocque decision. I worked on this issue as a consultant with the fishers involved, the crabbers in zone 12. What you say is quite right. Bill C-45 will give the minister all the authority to do exactly that. The problem will remain the same, if not worse, as long as there are no policies or guidelines to cover this practice.

On the other hand, in doing this, would Parliament be giving the government ownership of this resource, which, for years and years, has been considered a public resource, one that belongs to all Canadians, and not to the Government of Canada?

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

The Federal Court of Appeal judge, Mr. Justice Décary, wrote that:

When the Minister decided to pay a contracting party with the proceeds of sale of the snow crab, he was paying with assets that did not belong to him. Paying with the assets of a third party is, to say the very least, an extraordinary act that the Administration could not perform unless so authorized by an act or by duly enacted regulations.

Could Bill C-45, which the minister is preparing to have passed, make a practice legal that is not exactly legal at the moment? Paying with the assets of a third party, unless authorized to do so by law or regulation, means, under Bill C-45 that what I consider a hidden, excessive tax would be imposed to increase funding for scientific research. Bill C-45, would allow the minister to do directly what is being done indirectly at the moment.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

But before you do that I would like to put this in the mix. I understand there's some concern about Bill C-45. Ms. Burridge indicated that perhaps this wasn't part of it, but indeed it is. Do you feel that paying for a review and programs with fish is actually a tax on the fish and the fishing industry itself?

[Christina Burridge, Executive Director, B.C. Seafood Alliance]

Good morning, Monsieur Blais and committee members. Thank you very much for inviting us here.

I'm here for the B.C. Seafood Alliance. I have with me Mike Featherstone, who is the vice-president of the alliance. He's also the president of the Pacific Urchin Harvesters Association, and he's the co-owner of Ocean Master Foods, which is a value-added processing plant in the lower mainland.

I also have Chris Cue. Chris is the senior director of fishing operations for the Canadian Fishing Company, the largest seafood company in B.C., also a significant licence-holder. He's the elected seine representative for areas A and B salmon, and he's the elected seine representative for the Herring Industry Advisory Board. He's also involved in groundfish and halibut.

So between us, you have representatives of most of the fisheries on the west coast. I hope you'll give my colleagues a chance to speak very briefly to the issues in their fisheries.

The B.C. Seafood Alliance is an umbrella organization. Our 17 members represent 90% of commercially harvested seafood in B.C. That's about $750 million in sales annually.

We believe that sustainability and profitability can and should go hand in hand. We advocate for effective, efficient fisheries management that allows our products to be competitive in both the local and the global seafood marketplace. And I should tell you that this is a world where a chum salmon harvested in northern Japan, filleted in China, and sent to Vancouver sells for less than that of a fillet from one our own fish.

In order to be competitive in this world, capture fisheries, which by their nature are uncertain, need stable, ongoing access and we need a predictable, regulatory regime. Without this, harvesters and processors cannot invest to meet the needs of the marketplace and will be unable to attract new entrants to the fishery. In our view, this stability must be founded upon solid science and research, because these are fundamental to the future health, stability, and economic viability of the industry.

In January 2007 we wrote to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans expressing dismay over the lack of information from DFO on how it intended to deal with the implications of the Larocque and APPFA decisions, both in the short term and in the long term. We reminded the minister that we had a conference on co-management in 2002 and that one of the recommendations coming out of that, agreed to by DFO, was that DFO should clarify the governing policies and legalities of co-management funding mechanisms and provide clear direction to managers in the field about their use.

As a result of arbitrary practices on the east coast, we now have a situation on the west coast in which the formal policy of encouraging co-management of fisheries between representative commercial fishing organizations and DFO through various avenues, including using the proceeds from a specified allocation of fish to fund so-called “incremental” research and management activities, has been overturned.

I think you need to understand that this allocation is not free fish; it was agreed to by fishermen that it would be taken out of the commercial TAC. We wouldn't call it the perfect policy—that's why we made those comments in 2002—but it was based on a cooperative approach and it did work reasonably well for most of the last decade.

In our January letter we asked the minister to instruct the department to cover the costs of ensuring that fisheries could operate normally in 2007 while developing a new approach in conjunction with industry that would conform to the law of the land, would be fair to users of the resource, would be achievable over the long term, and would deliver the benefits that Canadians expect and deserve.

This hasn't happened. Instead, what we've had so far this year is a series of last-minute, ad hoc decisions that are patently inconsistent, unfair, and unsustainable. They are decisions that have pitted fishery against fishery, and they've strained everyone's working relationship with the department. This could hardly be otherwise. We understand that the Pacific region estimates the use-of-fish expenditures last year, 2006, at a minimum of $10 million, possibly as high as $15 million. This year they have $3.5 million to contribute to those activities.

The court decisions have put the west coast industry into turmoil. DFO hasn't been able to provide any indication of how it intends to cope or what mechanisms are available to us. We've been told that we might not hear about the new policy framework until July. Well, by then most of our fisheries are either complete or fully under way. Simply from the gap, we find it hard to believe that the policy could be anything but inconsistent and unfair.

Actually, we agree with DFO: DFO does not have the tools or the resources to manage fisheries effectively in the 21st century. I think we would disagree with DFO that Bill C-45 is an acceptable way to provide them, but that's another topic altogether.

I think it's really important that you understand that funding for science and research is already inadequate, even before the court decisions, but the demands on science are only going to grow. There's the Species at Risk Act; there's the trend in fisheries management to ecosystem-based management; and last of all, there's the market demand for independent third-party verification of sustainable management, which will require significant additional resources.

I want to take a quick look at four west coast fisheries. I'll start with roe herring. That fishery contributed in the past about $4 million a year to science and research through agreed-upon voluntary forfeit of catch and was used primarily for a roe quality testing program and for stock assessment. At the last minute—our fishery opened in March—DFO provided $900,000 in funding for both activities, though not all that $900,000 went directly to the two activities previously funded.

We need the roe testing program because it's the only way we can maintain our reputation as the top supplier of roe to Japan, and that's our only market. This year the roe testing program was barely adequate, and the stock assessment was inadequate. Next year we're told that DFO will be unable to fund the roe testing program, and stock assessment will only be partially funded.

Without these two activities, the multi-million-dollar investment funded jointly by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's CAFI program and industry to reposition Canadian roe in a dramatically changing marketplace will be jeopardized. The fishery in recent years has been worth somewhere between $50 million and $100 million, so it's a quite significant fishery that's at risk here. We have 1,550 licence-holders, and that makes DFO's suggestion that this should be funded through voluntary contributions impractical and legally unenforceable.

Since the chairman is telling me that I'm running out of time, I'll very quickly mention hook-and-line dogfish. This is a fishery that has been losing its market, its only market, in the European Union because of attempts by European conservation groups to protect European dogfish. It has to have Marine Stewardship Council certification. In order to do that, it needs a stock assessment, and that's $375,000, which DFO doesn't have, for the first year, and $70,000 after that.

On area A crab, I think Geoff Gould is going to speak to that later. Again we have a situation where the fishery is not able to deliver its full potential because of the shortfall in commitments to fund soft-shell crab sampling.

Very quickly, on salmon, we've had test fishing in place for decades. For the last 20 years or more, it has been paid for through use of fish. The Larocque decision means that cannot be done. We already saw curtailment in test fisheries and harvests last year. We don't know how it will work this year. And as one other example, we have $500,000 that was raised last year through use of fish, and for enhancement and remedial work on Cultus Lake sockeye. That work is essential to increasing the harvest level on late-run sockeye. That money is sitting in the bank. It cannot be used.

Fisheries Act

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I stand to present a petition today signed by well over 200 constituents from Glace Bay, Catalone, Main-à-Dieu and Louisbourg, who have voiced concerns about the forthcoming legislation, the changes in the Fisheries Act, Bill C-45. There is a great deal of concern about provisions in the owner-operator regulations and transfer of licence.

The petitioners call upon the House of Commons to not go forward with debate and call upon the government to go forward with honest and open dialogue with fishing communities and fishers, so that any change in legislation will have the best impacts on those affected.

[Larry Murray]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'll start off and then ask David to say a few words.

Certainly this is an area the committee might like us to come back and talk about, the whole range of announcements. The minister is open to propositions from other fleets around combining and all that kind of stuff. He hasn't closed the door on that at all.

I would also say that the $750,000 capital gains thing is $180,000 or so in the pockets of folks who are wanting to get out of the fishery. In terms of the access to capital, a combination of the capital gains and the changes that are in place we believe will give banks a greater sense of confidence in the industry. That would also have been part of the reason we would argue for Bill C-45, or some version of it. There are elements there that could bring longer-term reassurance to fishermen and bankers and others.

Having said that, it is a challenging scenario. To the extent that it was possible, I think the minister, in a very difficult area, which this committee has been talking to successive ministers about, came up with a solution that tried to walk the fine line between flexibility and moving forward for the majority of the industry.

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

Okay. Is it possible, then, to get the written plan of this, including any possible dredging that may have—? I'm sure that was all looked into, and there must be a report on it. Is it possible to get that report? If it is, you can just say yes, but I have one last question to ask of the minister.

There was no consultation with the province and the city on the moving of these vessels. We go back to the lack of consultation on Bill C-45. You, sir, and I were both at the Maritime Fisherman's Union when I asked them point-blank if anybody in the room was consulted on Bill C-45 prior to the tabling on 13 December, and nobody put up their hands.

I've asked PEIFA. I've asked many, many, many groups and individuals across the country over Bill C-45, and I disagree with you that a hoist amendment would kill the bill. I think by not having a possibility to consult with fishermen—because it is their livelihood we're talking about—in order to put the changes in Bill C-45 before second reading—because you, sir, and I both know that after second reading there are certain amendments that cannot be included in a bill.

We both know that. I think that if we're truly here, on opposite political sides, but here for the fishermen and their families, then we should allow fishermen and their families the opportunity before second reading to debate this issue so that we can put in their concerns and their amendments before it goes to second reading. I disagree with you when you say a hoist amendment would kill the bill because I think the opposite would do just that.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Da Pont and Mr. Hearn, I'd like to offer my personal thanks to the crew of the coast guard who are helping out the trapped sealers on the northern and eastern parts of Newfoundland. I think they're doing a great job looking after everyone. It's amazing there's been no loss of life, which is fantastic.

Mr. Minister, you announced, and Mr. Da Pont verified, the fact that because of the possible $10 million worth of work needed to be done to the BIO wharves, the decision was made to move two vessels from the maritime region into Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Minister, we're in the game of politics. But there's an old saying that if it doesn't pass the smell test, there's something wrong.

The reality is that I spoke to the union, local DFO officials, and the coast guard, and nobody was advised this was happening. The City of Halifax was not advised. The province was not advised. You would think that if you were going to take about 130 full-time equivalent jobs out of a region, two vessels, and the infrastructure attached to it, the province and the municipality should have at least been advised this was coming.

I know that Mr. Williams, the Conservative Premier of Newfoundland, is raving very hard at the Conservatives right now. I can't help but think that one ship going to Mr. Manning's riding and one ship going to your own riding—doesn't it smack of grievous politics? Mr. MInister, I'm sure that if the situation were reversed and you were in the opposition, you would be saying the same thing. That's my concern.

I have a question that's not very often asked on the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. We're hearing different things through the media on dual marketing or keeping it the way it is. Could you expand on that?

My last question for you is this, because time is running short. I believe Mr. John Duncan, who was a former Conservative MP, is now your special advisor on the west coast. Was he advised prior to the tabling of Bill C-45 and consulted on the act before it was tabled on December 13, 2006?

Thank you, sir.

[Loyola Hearn, Conservative, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Again, it's a pleasure to be here. You've already introduced the people with me. We also have some other officials from the department, in the event there are specific technical questions to which you would like answers. We'll try to make sure we can cover all the bases for you.

Since we met last November, our government has made further strides on behalf of Canada's fishers. I'm proud to highlight some of these achievements before taking your questions.

Let me start with this year's budget. We announced a little more than $581 million for initiatives related to DFO and the health of our oceans. Of that, the largest single investment was in the Canadian Coast Guard. It will receive $324 million over 10 years to buy, operate, and maintain six new vessels. This funding brings our government's commitment to coast guard fleet renewal to $750 million so far.

What this means in total is that four new offshore research vessels and twelve new midshore patrol boats will be on the water by 2014. The vessels will be deployed to their respective regions as they become available. I should add that all these boats will be built here in Canada.

Eight of the new midshore patrol vessels will be primarily for conservation and protection in the Maritimes, Quebec, and the Pacific. The other four are new additions to the fleet and will be used for maritime security in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes region. The four offshore research vessels will be state-of-the-art. Three will be for fisheries science in the Pacific, maritime, and Newfoundland regions. The fourth will be for oceanographic science, based in the Maritimes.

Overall, five of the new vessels will be additions to the coast guard fleet and 11 will replace existing vessels nearing the end of their life expectancies. Plans are under way for a high-speed air cushion vehicle in Quebec for search and rescue.

In terms of fleet renewal, we're doing the right thing. We are adding and replacing resources according to where they are needed most. For example, I also announced a redeployment of two coast guard heavy icebreakers, the Terry Fox and the Louis S. St-Laurent, from the Maritimes to Newfoundland and Labrador. This measure will save Canadians about $10 million in additional infrastructure costs that would have been necessary to keep the vessels in Halifax Harbour. These icebreakers operate in the Arctic from June to November and in the gulf during the winter. There is more than enough wharfage in St. John's and Argentia, and both of these harbours are closer to the Arctic, which is their main service area. So there is no operational need to keep the icebreakers in the Maritimes. Building additional facilities there will be a waste of public money, something the Auditor General has already mentioned.

As you may have seen in the national news, the Terry Fox is in Newfoundland right now to free up some 90 vessels trapped in the ice. Clearly, the operational need is there for the vessels.

Canadian fishers also fared well in other areas of this year's budget, including $39 million for fishery science over two years and $20 million over two years for the Atlantic integrated commercial fisheries initiative. DFO has also received $30 million over two years of the $110 million devoted to implementing the Species at Risk Act, and $9 million of the $19 million for a new oceans initiative will also come our way over the next couple of years to help us deliver Canada's oceans action plan.

We increased the lifetime capital gains exemption to $750,000. Credit for this initiative can certainly go to the committee, and particularly the chair. This will help better rationalize the fishing industry by aiding fishers in retiring on their own terms.

I should point out that the main estimates you have seen tell only part of the story concerning funding to my department. I am tabling two decks that go into greater detail. One concerns the main estimates themselves, and the second updates our expected funding this year, including funding from the recent budget. Of course, challenges and operating pressures certainly remain, and as much as we'd like to, we simply can't do everything everyone asks for.

Let me add something else about another item of interest to the committee—the small craft harbours program. I am pleased to highlight that the $20 million in temporary funding, which the past government scheduled to sunset this year, will be permanently added to the budget. With that money and the additional $11 million provided to the program this year, the total program funding will be $96.8 million. This is good news, and it stabilizes the budget at last year's level, but I'm hoping to secure additional funding to maintain these harbours, which are so vital to our coastal communities.

In relation to fisheries renewal, over the past year I've spent a great deal of time talking to fishermen, provincial ministers, and other fishery stakeholders, and what emerged from these discussions and our own research was that Canada's fishery continues to face significant challenges.

With this in mind, I was pleased to recently announce some of the initiatives we're putting in place to better support the fishing industry. From a national perspective, we announced a new integrated approach to fisheries management that has come to be known as “oceans to plate”. This is an approach where we focus on getting the greatest value for fishermen and for all Canadians from that resource.

Much of the work that lies ahead involves restructuring and rationalizing different parts of the fisheries. Our capital gains tax exemption, which I mentioned earlier, will be crucial to enabling this to happen. Fishermen understand that restructuring and rationalization is necessary for the long-term viability of the industry. And we are looking at different market-based approaches to achieve this in various fisheries.

At the same time, fishermen want to ensure that after consolidation, after rationalization takes place, the licences are in the hands of independent fishermen. Given this, I have taken steps to strengthen the owner-operator and fleet separation policies for Atlantic Canada that help to ensure that the wealth, benefits, and control of the fishery remain in the hands of independent fishermen. So I'm ending a practice called “controlling trusts agreements”. Hopefully, this will, as this committee has dictated many times, clean up the fishery. I think these measures will go a long way toward helping fishermen run their own operations.

I also announced our intention to establish a fishery sustainability checklist for Canada's commercial fisheries that will be used to demonstrate to our markets and to others the sustainability of our fisheries. This will help Canadian fish and seafood to better compete on the world stage, as retailers and consumers are demanding more products that have been certified eco-friendly.

We're also pleased to announce a number of financial measures that will help put Canadian fishermen on a firmer footing.

We'll be reviewing licence fees across the country to make sure our approach is a fair one in light of rising costs to doing business in the fishery.

The Department of Human Resources and Social Development will be contributing half a million dollars toward the fishery skills and training strategy. The strategy will be organized by the Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters and will help support our new oceans-to-plate approach within the industry.

For the Quebec fishery, I'm committed to bringing permanence and stability to sharing arrangements there by 2010. I have also committed to establishing geographic fleet shares in certain fisheries, which will provide further stability. As well, we are planning to conduct a viability study for the offshore northern shrimp industry.

We all know that shrimpers in New Brunswick and Quebec are seeking licence fee relief to help mitigate lower shrimp prices and increasing costs of things like fuel, which is having an impact in all parts of the industry. I can tell you that I'm keeping a close eye on the situation, and I should make it clear that shrimp licences will be part of the national fee review.

I'm also confident that other measures we're putting in place will provide a greater opportunity for fishers to manage their businesses more effectively.

In the spirit of self-determination for fishers, I'm pleased to move forward on several other measures under the federal-provincial fishing industry renewal initiative for Newfoundland and Labrador. These initiatives follow significant consultations with fishery stakeholders and much work on the part of the province and my own department.

To help the industry self-rationalize, we've removed a number of regulatory barriers. For example, we will allow fishers to combine fishing enterprises, and we've introduced a new class of vessel size—let people build bigger boats for safety and for sensible reasons. This will give core fishermen the flexibility to use the boat that best fits their needs. And we'll eliminate volume restrictions in the current vessel replacement policy. We will also help to restructure and rationalize the fisheries inshore shrimp fleet by converting temporary inshore licences to regular ones.

Taken together, I believe these investments and initiatives will give Canada's fishers more flexibility and choice in running their businesses. They will help to make the industry more viable and sustainable for those who rely on it today and in the future.

Let me say a brief word on the international front. This past fall Canada was instrumental in helping NAFO reform itself into a more effective fisheries management organization. This year's season is well under way, and I'm very proud of the fact that there hasn't been one citation issued to boats for overfishing or misreporting the catch. They can no longer afford to do so, thanks to the tough sanctions we helped realize. It is real progress.

What lies ahead? The main priority is Bill C-45. Many of the changes it proposes to the Fisheries Act will help support our goal of improving the economic viability of Canada's fishery, and it will help to make fisheries management in Canada more inclusive, accountable, and transparent.

Right now there's a hoist amendment before the House that will effectively kill the bill. It would not buy more time for further consultation, as has been suggested. It takes the bill out of commission completely.

We've been accused of not consulting enough on the bill, when extensive consultations on a renewed Fisheries Act have in fact been ongoing in the department for years. This includes hundreds of fisheries consultations and information sessions from coast to coast. Let me add that the text of the bill has been publicly available since December 13.

Our goal will be to get the bill into committee so that members can review it clause by clause to ensure it will provide the modern legislative framework we need for a sustainable fishery well into the century. Nothing is ever so good that it can't be improved. I'm willing to work with anyone who cares as much about the fishery as I do to improve that key piece of legislation. If we can't have the best piece of legislation, it's nobody's fault but our own.

I again thank the committee for inviting me here today, and I'd certainly be pleased to take your questions.

I hope we've impressed upon you what the government is doing and that we're doing it in the best interests of Canadians. As I've always said, you can do so little alone, but through working with the members of the committee and others interested in the industry, we can do a lot.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

Mr. Speaker, the second petition calls on Parliament to withdraw from Parliament Bill C-45, the proposed new fisheries act, and calls on the minister to engage in open dialogue with fishermen before proceeding.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, folks, and thank you for making the presentations.

First, on your point, Steve, on the new Fisheries Act, although it's not related to this hearing, I do know, having chaired the fisheries committee before, that habitat is a huge issue in B.C. and trying to deal with DFO in that regard. Our position at the moment on the bill--why we put the hoist motion in place--is do we want the bill to go to committee before second reading? The bill clearly was developed by the bureaucracy in Ottawa, which doesn't understand what things are like on the ground. It's a lot easier to change a bill if the consultations are held first, rather than after, so that's why the position is there. So certainly if you want to write the minister and tell him to come to his senses and do some consultations and let it go to committee before second reading, we'd welcome that.

The pressure from imported product, which you also mentioned, is a huge issue that's not directly related to the agricultural policy framework discussion, but it is one we hear about consistently. I was talking to some people the other day in the apple industry, and maybe you can fill me in on what the situation here is. The apple industry in some areas is basically going under because concentrated product is coming in from China. They're adding 80% Canadian water and calling the product a “Product of Canada”. We're going to have to deal with this issue. It's the same with honey from China.

There were a couple of others that I think Tim mentioned as well, such as the difficulty of products coming in here with which our competitors can use a herbicide or pesticide or fungicide that we can't use. We restrict it for safety reasons, yet product grown with the use of that herbicide or pesticide in other countries comes in here just the same. It's an issue we've grappled with for a while. I'd like to know what you propose as a solution on that end, because obviously we haven't found it yet. The Pest Management Regulatory Agency I think has improved in part because this committee demands that they come before us every six months for a progress report. If you have anything in that area, I'd certainly welcome hearing it.

The last question, before I go to answers, is on your point as well, Tim. In fact I dealt with one of the greenhouses out here that is in the process of going under over a pest. The difficulty is with CFIA in that regard to a certain extent. I understand why they have to do what they do, but in the dairy industry or in the cattle industry, if we have a cow with tuberculosis, it's immediately pulled out of the herd, and compensation is right there, right now. Why can't we do the same thing with pests in the horticulture industry?

That's my series of questions to start.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, on the question of Bill C-16, it is obvious that the Liberal House leader is very concerned about having an election and wants to do anything he can to stop it. Having watched the news last night and having seen some numbers, I can understand his sentiments. That is not surprising.

However, I am also not surprised that he could not remember what the bill was about. That is because it has been out of this House for half a year while the Liberal Senate was trying to deal with it. If those members wanted it passed quickly perhaps they could have avoided making amendments to it. However, there are amendments and we have to consult about them. As well, certainly, the information about everyone having consented is very different from the information that has been provided to me by the other parties to this point.

We will continue to pursue that and we hope to move forward on democratic reform. At the same time, as we said earlier, we will invite the other parties to move forward with Bill S-4 in the Senate. If they want to see things move quickly, that would represent good democratic reform. As well, we invite them to indicate their support for Bill C-43.

However, this afternoon we will continue with the list of bills on today's Projected Order of Business.

Tomorrow we will begin debate on the budget implementation bill. When the House returns from the Easter break, it will continue with the budget implementation bill if it is not already completed tomorrow.

Also on the list of bills for that week are: Bill C-33, on income tax; Bill C-40, on the Excise Tax Act; Bill C-10, on mandatory and minimum penalties; the Senate amendment to Bill C-16, fixed dates for elections, if we can get everyone's agreement on that to move quickly; Bill C-27, on dangerous offenders; and Bill C-45, the Fisheries Act, 2007.

Thursday, April 19 shall be the first allotted day in this supply period.

The Liberal House leader continues to make comments about moving quickly today. I wish he had been over there in the Senate talking to his Senate friends for the past six months while we were waiting. Perhaps while he is busying hurrying things up he can go and talk to the senators about Bill S-4.

I have a motion that I would like to make at this time.

There have been consultations, Mr. Speaker, and I believe that you would find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any standing order or usual practices of the House, the remaining debate on the motion to concur in the second report of the Standing Committee on Health be deemed to have taken place and all questions necessary to dispose of the motion be deemed put and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred to Wednesday, April 18, at the end of government orders; and notwithstanding Standing Order 33(2), government orders shall conclude today at 5:30 p.m.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Vancouver Centre.

It was interesting listening to the fisheries minister. It is amazing how people can change their views. He has said in the House and in the media that Premier Danny Williams is wrong, that he is not stating the facts. In a sense he is saying that he is lying, or that he does not understand, that he is not intelligent. I know him to be a very intelligent guy.

The Premier of Nova Scotia is saying exactly what that member said a couple of years ago; that the Atlantic accord has to be above and beyond any other change in programs, any new programs. He said that a decision did not have to be made. He said that premiers do not have to swallow a poisoned pill. The minister now has a different understanding. His mathematics are different.

A change happens in a member when he spends too much time in a Challenger jet. He sees numbers and the facts differently. As a minister, he now understands things in a completely different way than he did when he was a member. He somehow believes that he has a clear insight into the finances of Newfoundland and Labrador from his office in Ottawa, finances that are impossible to see from St. John's, that Premier Williams absolutely cannot understand. He cannot see that less is more.

I will speak about other matters also.

We cannot say that the budget is all bad. Not all the initiatives in the budget are bad. It is theoretically impossible to have the largest spending budget in the history of Canada to not have a few good initiatives in it. I welcome the capital tax exemption for Canadians. The Conservative government had a lot of money with which to work. It had large surpluses that were built up by the Liberal government. It had a lot of potential.

I cannot support the budget because it is a huge lost opportunity, and I regret that. The Prime Minister has not tried to hide the intent of the budget. It is intended to target a group of people in the most populace regions of the most populace provinces who are most likely to change their vote for the Conservatives and force a majority government. That is it. The budget is all about majority building, not nation building.

When we have the ability and the surpluses to build a nation, in my mind and in the minds of all Canadians, we should try to assist those who are most in need. We should try to develop potential when there are problems.

The government had an opportunity to assist Canadians in problem situations. With the proper investments, the government could have helped them out. It could have given them a hand up so they could have full participation in the economy. The government could have helped other regions. What do we see? We see targeted money going to the most populace areas, to the richest provinces. The government is ignoring single seniors and families and children in poverty who are in great need. The government needs to make real investment in innovation and post-secondary education. We do not see that. Money is not targeted for those who need it. It is very simple to send a lot of money to Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta in an attempt to influence those urbanites to vote for the Conservatives. That is all I see.

With respect to the Atlantic accord, Nova Scotia signed an agreement that its natural resources, such as offshore gas, would be used for its benefit and the money would be above and beyond any other funding program in equalization, health, education or infrastructure.

The Premier of Nova Scotia now has to swallow a poisoned pill. If he wants new money in equalization under the new formula, he has to forgo the potential benefits of the Atlantic accord, benefits that would have been there for the next 15 years. He has to sign away the future of Nova Scotia for much needed cash in the short term. This is unfair and it is certainly contrary to the intent of the accord and contrary to the stated intentions of the Prime Minister when he was in opposition. That is unacceptable.

There is no new money for ACOA. We see diminished funding. We see less spending and investments by ACOA. There is a huge opportunity to maintain the principle, but we know the Prime Minister does not like the agency and that it will suffer the death of a thousand cuts over time.

There were some good initiatives for our farmers a couple of weeks ago. There was an opportunity in the budget to assist the regions, to help farmers in Atlantic Canada, particularly in Nova Scotia where we produce less than we consume. We are not part of the problem in overproduction, but our farmers are being starved out of the industry. There is nothing in the budget to help them. The opportunity was there to work with the provincial government, but we do not see that potential.

When we see the attack on the Wheat Board, we know supply management is at risk. Some time ago he called it a glorified communist plot against the free market. I do not remember the exact terms he used, but it is the same type of thinking with which he has been attacking the Wheat Board. When the Prime Minister applies that to supply management, rest assured our supply management sector will be in trouble.

In my part of the country the poultry farmers and producers, egg producers and dairy farmers are the basic building blocks of the community. They are stable and doing quite well, not leaping great riches, but they are supplying jobs and participating in the economy. They need domestic protection to be maintained. A government sponsored price fixing cartel I guess is what he called supply management. We have to be very vigilant and seriously call the government to task on these matters.

I am pleased that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans was in the House to speak. He was on the committee of fisheries and oceans when a report called for more funding for small craft harbours, which I agreed with as a minister. I was minister of ACOA at the time. I was able to get a $100 million investment over five years into small craft harbours. That expired this year.

In our election platform last year we promised to put in even more money, and that is what is needed. What do we see? We see the government letting it expire. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans hypocritically called for more funding when he was in opposition. Now that he is Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, he is calling for less funding. Not only did he let that $20 million a year lapse by not reintroducing the funding next year, but there is less funding for Small Craft Harbours.

I was amazed and amused, but irritated, yesterday when on a question from the Bloc Québécois, he indicated in the House that he would find some money here and there for the wharf in the Bloc member's riding to get his support for Bill C-45. There are good elements to Bill C-45, but there are some very difficult, scary elements for the fishing industry that he does not seem to want to clarify.

I remember the opposition talking about how it was important to invest in the Digby wharf. We do not see that any more. There have been five years of legal wrangling brought about because the member for Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley made some very serious allegations, allegations and questions that I shared, and they had to be answered. The legal process ended up 14 months ago.

We were told that the fault was the contract written by the Department of Transport. Has the Minister of Transport stepped up to the plate? Do we see anything in the budget to get that facility back in the hands of the community? I believe it should be owned by Small Craft Harbours, like the other fishing harbours, and administered by a local harbour authority with the proper funding assistance. We see none of that.

There is the Digby/St. John ferry service. Last year I was pleased that the federal government, with the provincial governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, found a short term two year solution for that ferry service. However, I did not see anything about it in the budget, but I will keep some hope. I understand the bureaucrats within the Department of Transport are working seriously at finding a long term solution. I encourage the minister to take quick action to ensure that we know a good year or year and a half in advance of the termination of the agreement that there will be a long term service there so businesses can make the necessary plans.

The government had a real opportunity to assist working families. What did it give them? In some cases $20 a week. It did nothing for the working poor. We know the federal government does not want to put anything in the second budget or third budget next year. It wants to force an election. It gave away every opportunity it had to help the poor.

If promised next year, there will be another cut in the GST. That is $6 billion. The $6 billion invested in the child tax benefit would bring a million children above the poverty line, and he has given away that potential. We know that next year it will be a very difficult budget. I am afraid we may go back toward deficit financing in the medium to short term with the type of budget introduced this year. We are not helping to build our country or our nation. Nor are we helping those most in need.

I am afraid I cannot support this budget. While I like some initiatives within it, it would be impossible for me to stand in support of a budget that throws away so much opportunity to build a nation.

Fisheries and Oceans

[Loyola Hearn, Conservative, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Speaker, while I thank the hon. member for his question, let me also thank him and the Bloc for coming out publicly and asking the Liberals to move ahead with Bill C-45.

Let me say for the member, who is a very good representative for his fishermen, that we will, not through the budget but through the regulatory process and work already under way, be very shortly announcing positive moves that will help his fishermen and fishermen all across the country.

Fisheries

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Mr. Speaker, fishers in Cardigan and across the country have serious concerns regarding the federal government's proposed new fisheries act, Bill C-45.

The government wants to push this bill through the House of Commons even though it has failed to properly consult with fishermen, the very people who depend on the fishery for their livelihood. The fishery is a common resource property and as such, Canadians from coast to coast deserve to be heard on this new legislation.

The P.E.I. Fishermen's Association supports the Liberal motion to hoist Bill C-45 so that the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans can hold proper hearings across the country.

Fishermen want to be heard. I ask the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to support the Liberal motion so that Bill C-45 can receive proper hearing from the industry and the public itself. Why does the government want to shove this bill down the throats of fishermen without proper consultation?

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I think it was my turn anyway.

As Mr. Pasaribu has mentioned, we have a number of different statutes that affect our fisheries industries and resources. The primary one is our Fisheries Act. It was passed in 1868, 139 years ago. It's the legislation we're trying to modernize through Bill C-45, which was mentioned. Bill C-45 will repeal and replace the old Fisheries Act with a new Fisheries Act. The Fisheries Act that we have has worked quite well over the time we've been a country, although it needs some changes,

I think we could probably have a debate in this group on how effective our enforcement has been. We try hard to enforce the laws and regulations that govern fisheries. I think in general we do a fairly good job, but enforcement costs money. We need fisheries officers, habitat inspectors, and all of those. We probably don't have as much money as we wish we had to be able to enforce it properly.

That's part of the answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I would like to say to our committee group, before I go to Mr. Kamp, that we will, through the chair and the clerk and our researcher, send you a copy of the Fisheries Act, Bill C-45, and the deliberations that will be going on around the act. We will also send you a letter outlining oceans-related legislation from Canada.

“Oceans-related” doesn't translate well.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I apologize. I guess I should have been talking more about what we do instead of what you do. But there are some examples from us that I wouldn't take, if I were you.

We didn't really handle the cod fishery too well here. Everybody likes to blame everybody else.

I think that when you look at the regulations, as the chairman rightly said, we have different departments watching different areas that are involved. For example, with the lobster fishery in our area--and it's a rich fishery for the fishermen--there are rules in place. We have Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials who patrol the area. If you were caught taking in something illegal, you probably would lose two weeks of fishing, which would be thousands and thousands of dollars. This is the kind of thing we do in order to try to preserve our stocks.

If you're interested, and I guess you are, it would be interesting to watch. We have Bill C-45 coming before the House of Commons. That is the new Fisheries Act. Everybody is not in 100% agreement with everything in that, and that will be an interesting display of democracy taking its role through Canada. And I think it's a good thing too; the government probably needs quite a bit of help getting this legislation straightened out. But that's what this committee is here for.

When we put new legislation in place, this is where it comes first, or supposedly does. Often what happens is that the legislation is introduced, and then, perhaps before second reading, the government allows it to come to committee to give the committee time to go across the country and talk to fisher people from coast to coast and to be sure that now they have the input. Sometimes it's after second reading, and that can be a difference of opinion. That's done so that you have the input of the industry.

Everybody is on the same wavelength in this country. We have to protect our resources.

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

Mr. Speaker, everyone in the House will know that nobody has stood up more for the fisheries industry in Newfoundland and Labrador than our current fisheries minister, certainly more than anything that was done in the last 13 years.

If the Liberals really want to support the fishery in Newfoundland, they ought to get behind Bill C-45 and come up with a new Fisheries Act that actually modernizes and supports the industry there.

Aboriginal Affairs

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in three separate cases the Supreme Court of Canada was clear that the federal government had a duty to consult with first nations. Despite these rulings, the government has refused to conduct meaningful consultations. It imposes arbitrary deadlines that prevent real discussions from taking place: Bill C-2; Bill C-44; Bill C-45; nationhood; and now only seven days for consensus building on matrimonial real property.

Why does the government insist on taking such a father knows best attitude?

Opposition Motion—Aerospace Industry

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to the motion. I want to focus on a particular aspect of the motion.

At the end of the motion, it calls on the government “to provide fair regional distribution of economic spin-offs for all future contracts”. That part of the motion is particularly important because I would argue that is what we are looking for from coast to coast to coast, opportunities to have meaningful economic development.

Canada is a resource rich country. We are a country that has a skilled workforce. We are a country that has the know-how to actively participate in a domestic economy and the international economy, yet we are seeing a shedding of manufacturing jobs. In the last couple of weeks we have heard announcements that there are going to be further layoffs in the auto sector in Ontario.

The New Democrats have been calling for national strategies in some key sectors. We have called for a national strategy in forestry. We have called for a national strategy for our shipbuilding industry. We have called for a national strategy for our auto sector. There are other sectors. For example, the garment sector is a big factor in Winnipeg. The member for Winnipeg Centre has been a tireless advocate for the garment workers in Winnipeg and in other parts of the country.

We need a mechanism that looks at economic development and that makes sure that our communities take advantage of the local resources and that we see spinoffs in all of our communities that create meaningful well-paying jobs.

A report that was issued today talked about the prosperity gap. It said that a significant number of people are falling behind. It is very disquieting to see those numbers in this day and age. We are in an economy that is supposed to be so hot, yet there are people who are losing ground. People are working more hours and their buying power just is not there.

There are some key principles regarding community economic development, there are some key principles. In the book Toward Sustainable Communities: Resources for Citizens and their Governments, Professor Mark Roseland from Simon Fraser University talks about the importance of local control over local resources. He indicates that community economic development is defined as:

--a process by which communities can initiate and generate their own solutions to their common economic problems and thereby build long-term community capacity and foster the integration of economic, social, and environmental objectives.

He states:

The main goal of most CED [community economic development] initiatives is individual and community self-reliance through collaborative action, capacity building, and returning control of business enterprises, capital, labor, and other resources from the global marketplace to communities.

He also states:

Local self-reliance does not mean isolation. It means diversification of local economies to support local needs, encourage cohesiveness, reduce waste and enable more sustainable trade practices with other communities.

Today we are speaking specifically about the aerospace industry in Quebec, but I would say that underlying this is the need for communities and provinces from coast to coast to coast to have that kind of self-reliance that is so important for the healthy functioning of our communities. There is a need to take into account the social aspects of our communities, the environmental aspects of our communities, and the economic aspects of our communities. Many people refer to this as the triple bottom line. Many of the decisions that we make do not take into account that triple bottom line.

One very important aspect of the aerospace industry is search and rescue. In British Columbia and many other parts of Canada, the fixed wing search and rescue aircraft are a very important part of how communities function. This is certainly something the Conservative Party has not addressed. There are 40-year-old Buffalo aircraft doing search and rescue. When the issue was brought up with the minister at the defence committee, he said that the process has stalled.

The Government of Canada has been proposing new fixed wing search and rescue planes for years but the last government failed to deliver on this and certainly the current government has failed to deliver on this.

I cannot imagine that members of the House from all parties would not support new search and rescue aircraft. My colleague, the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam, proposed Motion No. 283 in order to allow the House to express its support for new search and rescue planes. The Conservatives have not made search and rescue aircraft or more sovereignty a goal of their procurement strategy. The Conservatives have focused on C-17s which are American built and will be partly American maintained.

In the context of economic development and good paying jobs in Canada, surely we would want to invest in new search and rescue aircraft and we would want to ensure they are built and maintained in Canada.

One of the things many folks talk about is maintaining our economic sovereignty. It is important that when we are talking about economic sovereignty that we are making those strategic investments in Canadian jobs and Canadian industries.

Over the years, many of us have talked about the importance of local economic development. I think many of us can probably cite very successful initiatives in their own ridings. I know the members of the Bloc are passionate advocates of successful economic development in their own ridings.

I want to highlight a particular issue. It is rather timely because we have been talking about Bill C-45, which is a new Fisheries Act. When we talk about economic development, we know that sports and recreational fishers are an important contributor to the British Columbia economy. We have many successful economic initiatives in British Columbia and I will highlight one that is in Nanaimo. St. Jean's Salmon Fish Cannery in Nanaimo made a commitment to the sport fishing industry 40 years ago. I will read from its website where it states:

Armand St. Jean had created a cottage industry smoking oysters and canning clam chowder in the back of his garage. He impressed some American sports fishermen, who suggested he turn his hand to canning salmon. The idea made sense to St. Jean, so he fixed up an old boathouse and got to work. The rest is history. Gerard St. Jean joined his father, constructed a new building to house the expanding business, weathered the economic storm of the early 80's and saw the business expand in '86.

From canning salmon, oysters, and chowder, St. Jean's Cannery & Smokehouse expanded to include products like solid white albacore tuna canned without water or oil, canned wild West Coast chanterelle mushrooms, seafood pates, oyster soup and whole butter clams.

The website goes on to read:

What started as a backyard canning operation in 1961 is now virtually the only full-service processor catering to sport fishermen in British Columbia.

That is an example of successful economic development. When we are talking about the spin-offs in industry or in aerospace, there is something economists refer to as the multiplier effect. For every direct job, whether it be in aerospace, the garment industry, shipbuilding or in forestry, two to seven jobs are often spun off. It depends on the industry as to how many jobs will be spun off but I would argue that local economic development initiatives support other suppliers, the transportation sector and their important initiatives in our communities to keep our communities healthy and vibrant.

I want to turn briefly to softwood lumber. We certainly have had some fundamental differences with the Bloc on the softwood lumber agreement. In British Columbia we have talked about the importance of the softwood lumber agreement around economic spin-offs and around regional importance in our communities.

In a press release entitled, “Softwood Lumber Agreement spells trouble for jobs in BC's forest-dependent communities”, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives stated the following:

The new Canada-US Softwood Lumber Agreement, if it is ratified by the Canadian Parliament--

--and we know it was--

--spells bad news for BC's forest-dependent communities. According to a new Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report, the deal with dampen efforts to move BC's forest industry up the value chain, and will lead to more raw log exports, both of which mean fewer jobs in BC's forest sector.

When we talk about aerospace, the concern people have is not only for the direct jobs but for the spinoff jobs that are so vital. We know the multiplier effect is critical in terms of economic diversity in our communities.

In the same press release, it further states:

The report, Softwood Sellout: How BC Bowed to the US and Got Saddled with the Softwood Lumber Agreement, shows how the BC government made a concerted effort beginning nearly five years ago to fundamentally restructure forest policies in a failed attempt to appease the US softwood lumber lobby. The changes included:

scrapping laws that obligated forest companies to operate certain mills,

scrapping public timber auctions specifically for value-added manufacturers,

scrapping auctions of timber to small, independent mills, and

scrapping prohibitions on wood waste on logging sites.

“These changes and more were made to address US 'perceptions' that BC subsidized its forest industry”, Parfitt says. “None of them were in the public interest. All of them hurt BC communities. Value-added manufacturing is down, raw log exports are up and massive amounts of usable logs are being left on the ground instead of being processed.”

In Nanaimo—Cowichan, we are seeing the impacts of those kinds of policies. Sawmills have closed and pulp and paper mills are in desperate straits because of a lack of access to fibre supply. We are only beginning to see the impacts of this agreement.

We are talking about economic development. We are talking about regional disparities. In British Columbia we are certainly seeing some regional disparities.

The “Softwood Sellout” report made a number of recommendations. I will not be able to cover all of them in the brief time available to me, but one of the things that happened in British Columbia was an end to milling requirements. This was called the impertinency clause and it is particularly important because the impertinency clause talked about the fact that in B.C., a province rich in trees, 95% of the land is crown land. It is owned by the people of B.C. and there was a social contract.

That social contract meant that the trees that were cut down in British Columbia would be milled close to home. It is such an important element. This is a resource owned by the citizens in British Columbia. The citizens of British Columbia absolutely own those trees and therefore the direct benefits should come to our communities.

Instead, what we have seen is a disassembling of that social contract. Raw log exports have increased and the trees are being shipped south of the border to be processed.

Fisheries Act, 2007

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

I am sorry but time has expired. When Bill C-45 comes back for debate in the House, there will be five minutes left for questions and comments with regard to the speech made by the member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine.

It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, these may be fascinating conversations and I might eventually want to join in, but right now I would like the hon. members to be able to hear me and, and some members having louder voices than others, this can be disruptive.

Anyway, these people, these honest citizens, namely the crab fishers and their representatives, say and write that they have not been consulted. Should we believe them? I think so. They have not only said so; they have put it in writing. It is a very important issue, one that was raised as one of the main criticisms in our discussions with department officials about Bill C-45. If the consultations have not been carried out by the department, I pledge—hopefully the members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans will be in agreement—that we will carry out these consultations. It is extremely important that the people in the fishing community, who are directly or indirectly affected by fisheries management, have the right and opportunity to express their opinions on every aspect of this bill.

It is true that the bill is coming to us 137 or 138 years after the existing law was enacted, because it has never been amended in all those years. Also, we have to say that, sadly, the fishing industry is grappling with a host of problems. I can only speak of Quebec, but in Quebec the fishing industry is in crisis, be it in the shrimp,crab, lobster or groundfish sectors, or the cod sector, of course. Another crisis nowadays is the one pitting those who would abolishing seal hunting against the seal hunters.

There is certainly no shortage of crises. When I say that there are crises galore, I am speaking only of Quebec. If I were to talk about the Atlantic provinces, there would be more crises and the problem would only grow bigger. A little further, if I turned to the Great Lakes, I would be talking about another crisis: invasive species. I could also talk about western Canada, where the issue of salmon fisheries in the Fraser River was under consideration for several months. That is yet another crisis.

The bill has arrived in Parliament but it is incomplete from several standpoints. The legislation in question does need to be brought up to date; it was enacted 138 years ago and it needs more teeth. Any offence committed in the fisheries ends up in criminal court. That is the reality: you go to court no matter how minor the offence. This can result in delays and problems. Thus, we can see the creation of an administrative tribunal as a positive step.

Yet, we must be vigilant and have a critical eye and, for this reason, the consultation period is extremely important. I think it is quite proper for people to have the time to review the bill in question in order to express an informed opinion. This would allow parliamentarians to conduct a debate, as we are doing today, and to work in the interests of those involved in the industry once the bill is referred to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

Some people believe that the fisheries are not a big deal and that the issue only comes up on Fridays. I mention Fridays because there used to be a tradition that you ate fish only on that day.

In Canada, this is a $4 billion industry that generates a great deal of revenue in each community. I would like to speak about the Quebec fisheries and everything happening east of Quebec City. But I will speak primarily about the region I am most familiar with, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine

Let us try to figure out the significance of “the fisheries”. The population of the Magdalen Islands is 14,000. In my opinion, we have to respect these people. Of these 14,000 people, 6 out of 10 depend on the fishing industry. It is that clear cut.

In the Gaspé, a little more than 3 people in 10 have fishery related employment. In Quebec, the landed value of the fishery is $150 million. This may not seem like much compared to other figures, but when you consider the overall figures, you realize that thousands of people depend on them.

I am talking just about the landed value of the fish. For regions like ours, it is extremely important. That is why we must look at the fishery from this angle.

In my opinion, it would be proper and respectful toward this population, the fishers, the industries, the people who work in the plants in question and the communities to take the necessary time to look at how changes are made. It is true that there are a number of changes in the bill.

One of the changes that absolutely needs to be made involves the discretionary power of the minister. I have nothing against the person in that position. That is not what I am saying.

Nonetheless, giving the minister full discretionary power over managing the fisheries does not allow us, in my opinion, to go further. Unfortunately, over the past year some questionable decisions, to say the least, have been made. We have spoken out against these decisions.

They say there is a crisis in the shrimp fishery. There are too many shrimp on the market: we are being “invaded” and “attacked” by farmed shrimp. However, the current minister announced an increase in the fished shrimp quota in the gulf areas. But who is benefiting? The fishers in Newfoundland and Labrador are benefiting.

I have nothing against Newfoundland and Labrador. I have no problem with this. However, as far as management is concerned, I do not get the impression that increasing quotas to benefit a certain group is responsible resource management when shrimp ... when the shrimp industry is in crisis. It is not the shrimp that are in crisis. On the contrary, Nordic shrimp are delicious.

Magdalen Island lobster fishers also experienced this adversarial situation with Prince Edward Island lobster fishers.

There again, an arbitrary decision was made by the ministers, supposedly based on a report from a mediator. This mediator was rejected by one of the parties, the Magdalen Islands.

So much for efficiency and effectiveness. That is what the people of the Magdalen Islands said. Anyone who thinks I am wrong about what the people of the Magdalen Islands said should take the time to go and see the islanders.

I repeat: the fishers from the Magdalen Islands said that consultations were held and a mediator was appointed without their consent. I believe what the fishers from the Magdalen Islands say. Anyone who claims otherwise is calling the fishers liars. That is a fact.

Parliamentarians must act responsibly. The Bloc Québécois is committed to doing so, and I am as well. We did so recently when the revocation of legislation concerning the Great Lakes fisheries was being reviewed. In my opinion, the Bloc Québécois acted responsibly on this issue.

Strangely, during the process, it was noticed that the Conservatives, who had introduced the section in question, had voted against that section by mistake. Mistakes happen, certainly. If it had not been for the Bloc Québécois, the whole thing might have fallen through.

The people of the Great Lakes might have found themselves in a legal vacuum. That is why I am calling on all members to work together. At the same time, I am well aware that we will have a great deal of work to do. We will do it responsibly and thoroughly. When the committee receives Bill C-45, if the House so desires, the committee will have to proceed thoroughly and responsibly, taking the time not only to consult, but also to make any amendments it considers appropriate.

It is not just a matter of time, it is also a matter of respect for the industry, fishers, communities and everyone directly or indirectly involved in the fisheries. A number of amendments will be made to this bill, which I feel is a work in progress. I believe that some parts will have to be removed and that we will have to agree on some others. I cannot agree with one of the objectives of Bill C-45, which provides that the department can use the resource to fund its research work. What have we come to? I understand that the resource is public, but it should benefit the people who fish it and live off it. A bill should not make it possible to do indirectly something that we would not want to see done directly: using this money to fund research. If, after 138 years, this is the sort of change that is being proposed, we will have to go back to the drawing board. We will defend this principle tooth and nail. There are others we could elaborate on.

I just want to summarize what I was saying, but I know that I will have an opportunity to come back to this over the course of the debate and possibly in committee if the House chooses that route.

Bill C-45 enhances the co-management of the fish populations by giving fishers more power and more responsibility. It also creates a new tribunal that will have the authority to punish poachers by imposing penalties ranging from fines to revoking fishing permits.

I want to remind hon. members that under the current system, even the most insignificant offences are referred to a criminal court, which can involve a lengthy and costly process.

In addition to having at its disposal an entire arsenal of penalties, this tribunal will consist of individuals who have a good understanding of the fishing industry, and vigilance will be the order of the day.

The bill finally recognizes that some legislation in Quebec and the provinces is equal or superior, and it thereby cuts down on duplication. On that matter, the Bloc Québécois, as a sovereignist party, has another objective. As an aside, if there ever were a sector of the economy in Quebec that could attest to the fact that if we were sovereign we would be better off, it would certainly be the fishery sector.

I know that some people do not necessarily agree with me, but that is the broad consensus in Quebec. We will eventually see this, during a referendum. The fisheries file perfectly illustrates why Quebec needs sovereignty. And, as they say, the sceptics will be confounded.

However, as for the negative points of the bill, obviously, the issue of consultation has been mentioned. In a way, the proposed amendment is relatively interesting. I know that the committee will also work very hard, and respectfully, but above all, very thoroughly. That is how it is done.

I know that the current minister was on the committee. Now he is the minister, wearing a new hat, one might say. I know he worked actively within the committee, just as I did. We face several challenges. Of course, the various crises bear witness to that.

I must also mention that, recently, for example, the sale of licences from one province to the next created the following risk: a crab boat was sold to a P.E.I. business, without a history of a crab quota, meaning that 25 jobs per boat left our region, not including the jobs linked to the plant. This is dangerous. This is what it means for jobs on the boats and in the plants. This is dangerous.

Does the bill address the situation? I do not think so. Should it address the situation? In my opinion, yes, absolutely. Of course, there was a reaction. We found a way to say that perhaps the licence could be attributed to P.E.I. or elsewhere, but not the attached quota. That may be a way to slow things down, but it will not completely prevent such situations.

I will have the opportunity to come back to this over the course of the next few hours or, if necessary, in the weeks and months to come, with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of these people who depend on this industry and who—

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, things should be a lot clearer as to what we are supposed to be doing because, now, there will not be a question and comment period with regard to the speech that the member just made.

I have no problem with having to make my speech now since I cannot question the Chair's decisions.

Regarding Bill C-45, first I would like to state two facts that could be considered anecdotal. What are we eating today in the lobby? Cod fillets. The question is this: where does that cod come from? Where was it harvested? Do you know that the answer to that question is likely to be in Russia or in Asia? That is also part of the situation. In this sense, Bill C-45 is far from addressing that particular problem.

The second element I would like to point out is simply that, in my opinion, Bill C-45 is an unfinished piece of work. We will have an opportunity to talk about this during the debate and also in committee. We will support the principle of the bill because it is indeed an unfinished piece of work. In this sense, I will say right now, as I mentioned earlier, that there is a serious problem with regard to consultation.

It is with great interest that I heard the proposal made by my Liberal colleague, who is a member of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, not to defer, but to suspend the work for six months, thus allowing for a much wider consultation than the one we have now. The evidence is found in the letter that I will read once again, perhaps a little more quietly. I want to take this opportunity because several parliamentarians and, particularly, I suppose, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, are here, since it is his bill that we are discussing today. I will send a copy. The minister has received a copy. This is about a statement made by the parliamentary secretary in relation to Bill C-45.

Having looked at this statement concerning Bill C-45 that was sent to us ... at the very last minute, even though it was known that we, the fishers, would not have time to read it and particularly to understand some wording that appears to have a double meaning, we wish to inform you that we have not been consulted at any time about any change that would affect the new fisheries act and that we categorically oppose any changes that might be made without our being able to discuss them with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

This letter is signed by Marc Couture, president of the Gaspé crab fishers association, and Daniel Desbois, president of the Bay crab fishers association.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order. I do not know what I can say on this issue, but I would invite you to hear this.

I understand that an amendment has been moved. We can discuss it if the Speaker so desires. Once the amendment is disposed of, we normally expect to have a period of questions and comments following the Liberal member's speech. At the end of the normal 10-minute period of questions and comments, it is then my turn to speak to Bill C-45.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order. I do not mind speaking, as you are asking, but I would like to understand where we are at. I appreciate that an amendment was moved, but what is going on? Is the amendment in order or not? I would really like to speak to Bill C-45, but I would like to better understand where we are at.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I thank the member for Random—Burin—St. George's for clarifying that. He was also a member at the time.

If it says in clause 36 that the minister may issue releases for aquaculture purposes, where is the rest? If the minister truly believes, as he did in 2003, about the special rules and regulations around aquaculture and its effect on the environment and all fisheries and all stakeholders, why is it not addressed here? Again, that is another question.

Clause 37 refers to the allocation the minister can make in fisheries “not managed by a province”. The question here goes back to the provisions under clauses 7 and 23 with respect to delegation and whether it is possible that the federal minister, in the wake of agreements or a delegation, would actually have very few fisheries over which to have authority to allocate. Again, the government may have a good answer for that, but yet not vetted through the right people, the stakeholders, and not translated fully.

The provisions in the bill that deal with the tribunal is one that is extremely plausible. We find, for the most part, with a few minor changes, they are certainly acceptable to our country. Unfortunately, what we have here is an omnibus bill that covers everything. Clauses 130 to 133 concern the alternative measures to judicial proceedings. The only concern here is to ensure that those who violate the provisions of the act of a serious nature are dealt with in a manner befitting the degree of frequency of violations. Again, we go back to the tribunal aspect of this act, which we feel is a positive one, but yet the first part of the act with co-management is a major issue.

I would like to bring up a few concerns. The parliamentary secretary in his opening speech said that they consulted a lot of people, that they had a lot people give them feedback. Yesterday the minister said that it was mostly positive. I beg to differ. Herein lies some of the negative stuff. It is not only negative, but it raises questions as well. Everybody wants to know.

For example, Bill C-45 would change all that with clauses 43 to 46. This comes from the Fisherman Life submission by Christopher Harvey who has said that on the fisheries management agreements with any organization, which in his view represents a class of persons, the minister is left with an unfettered discretion. He has problems as well with clause 37, making allocations among any groups.

A letter to me stated, “We also have recently read an article in the Peninsula News about the Liberal caucus position on Bill C-45, and it mentioned you had concerns”.

The stakeholders across Canada are voicing disapproval with the bill.

The common theme here is lack of consultation. After second reading to go to committee is not the proper way to management. Therefore, I move the following amendment:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word 'That' and by substituting the following therefor:

Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's sea coast and inland fisheries, be not now read a second time but that it be read a second time this day six months hence.

Let the stakeholders have their say.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I hope to lower the noise for just a little bit, if I may, in respect of my hon. colleagues.

I am proud to be standing here today to be talking about this significant act, there is no doubt about it. This is something that replaces an act that existed for well over 137 years, so certainly we take this very seriously.

What I would like to do in my allotted is just point out some of the questions that surround this particularly thick piece of legislation. Questions, I am afraid, probably outnumber all of the comments, all of the negativity, and even the positive comments that come from this. That is what is troubling to us.

For the record, we had requested the government to send this to a committee before second reading, to widen the scope and to gain some insight from across this country. This will not be addressed by sending the legislation to committee after second reading. Unfortunately, it was dismissed and here we are finding ourselves today at second reading.

I would like to start, if I may, with the few notes that I have made and delve into the act itself, as the parliamentary secretary did earlier. Some of those I will take some issue with; some I will have some positive comments about.

The provisions of Bill C-45 represent a significant redirection in the role of public policy with respect to the fisheries on our coast and our inland fisheries. Quite significantly, the devolution of authority appears significant enough to ensure a far greater role for the provinces in terms of management and activities associated with the conduct of the fisheries, as well as a new empowered role for fishers, communities and the organizations which either represent them, or more importantly, employ them. As we all know and my colleagues know, this has been going on for many years, the idea of co-management and the idea of a greater say, which leads me back to my first point.

It is unfortunate that here we are, taking the first step toward a regime where we can have more say in the fishery by the stakeholders, but yet this bill itself did not receive the same process. Suffice it to say, we are not off to a positive start when it comes to recommendations, and certainly with the input.

Let me discuss some of the initial recommendations, and again, my speech will be filled with many questions, some doubts, some positive comments, and some negative comments. But mostly clarification, so that hopefully, through the course of this debate, a lot of this clarification can take place. I would also like some clarification on how far the ministry is prepared to go when it goes to committee, if it goes to committee after second reading.

Let me begin with the preamble. When it comes to the preamble, one of the things it says is: “the conservation and protection of fish habitat and the prevention of the pollution of waters frequented by fish.” It also says that: “Parliament intends that Canada’s fisheries be managed sustainably”.

First of all, we have to talk about “managed sustainably”. There is need for more clarification on this issue and to flush out exactly what it is we are talking about here. The act is a little bit loose in many areas and unfortunately, that would be one of them.

It says “Parliament intends”, and there we have to deal with that as a contentious issue. Members will find that a lot of this act contains a lot of intends, wishes, mays, and all the things that sound great but lack a lot of teeth. Therefore, we are hoping that this part of the bill can be changed and amended. Unfortunately, in my opinion, I do not feel that it can be done to our satisfaction by going to committee after second reading, and this troubles me.

The preamble also states:

WHEREAS Parliament intends that this legislative framework be applied in a manner that fosters cooperation with the provinces and with bodies established under land claims agreements--

Therein lies, with some of the application principles, some of the doubts in some of the feedback that we are getting. No doubt about it, we are getting a lot of positive responses from the provinces. We are also getting a few questions, and a lot of provinces are also, in their own departments, still trying to go through the legal framework of this to wrestle with some of the concepts.

Subsection 35(1) of the Constitution Act recognizes and affirms the existence of aboriginal and treaty rights. It also talks about the stable access.

After that, we find that there is a contentious issue in the preamble itself. It states:

WHEREAS Parliament is committed to maintaining the public character of the management of fisheries and fish habitat;

Many people have commented and questioned, and no doubt about it we will hear a lot of comments and questions from my hon. colleague in the NDP about this particular issue, which I am looking forward to hearing, that the public character of the fishery itself has to be addressed and is something that cannot be addressed within the scope of a committee after second reading.

As a matter of fact, it is my understanding that in many instances in Parliament, as well as the standing committees, many of the attempts to fix a preamble cannot be done in committee after second reading. In many cases, it can be ruled out of order or when it comes back to the House, it can be ruled out of order by the Speaker. Therefore, it puts us in a bit of a bind. As my colleague pointed out in his questions and comments, where is the charter decision from a few years back?

There is another issue that is not addressed here and there is ample opportunity to address it within the preamble as one of the guiding principles, so to speak. There is an issue in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador and for Atlantic Canada with regard to fleet separation and, more importantly, trust agreements. I think there is room in the preamble to address this issue, as mentioned to me by many groups.

Vertical integration will scare a lot of fishermen. It has always been the policy whereby what trust agreements do is freeze out the inshore fishermen and, therefore, is the cause of grave concern across this country. Some may like this policy, but for the most part they do not.

That is not addressed in this particular act, as it should be. I would compel the minister to please do this, to provide the standing committee the power to do this and, I go back to my original comment, to do this in committee before second reading would have accomplished this.

I will now go to some of the clauses beyond the preamble itself and again I have grave concerns as to whether the preamble can be fixed in this manner of going to committee after second reading. I would implore the minister to answer this question at some point in his speech. I am assuming he will be speaking during this debate.

There are specific clauses which should be examined. There is need for a very significant strengthening of a number of specific clauses. The following, while attempting to be comprehensive, is not exhaustive given additional concerns of respected clauses, not referred to, will likely arise.

I will begin with clause 3. There is the need to ensure that those participating in the fishery are clearly defined. For example, in clause 3 there is reference to organizations as being licence holders while in clause 43, the minister may enter into fisheries management agreements with an “organization”. Clarification around the term “organization” is certainly necessary within the scope of this bill. It keeps it open ended.

I go back to the theme that I talked about in the beginning. There are a lot of open ended variables involved here that need to be clarified, the scope of which, after second reading, is likely not going to be.

Let me go to clause 6. Under the provisions of clause 6, the application of principles, there is the need to strengthen these provisions which will ensure that the minister will take the strongest possible actions in order to ensure that the fisheries are managed in a manner consistent with sustainable development based on the principles, of course, of conservation. The wording of this clause does not necessarily reflect that priority. Again, it is a major question that needs to be clarified.

The implications of clause 7 require careful examination as well. On the surface, it would appear that the minister will be empowered to enter into agreements with the provinces to further the purpose of the act as contained in clause 2, which effectively will devolve management decisions to the provinces. Therefore, I have no contentious issue with that.

However, a lot of clarification is needed on questions of funding. It is touched on in this act, but what does it imply? Does it mean they must or they may? Again, we go back to that concept. If we look at some of the language that is contained within this bill, we will see that there are a lot of variables surrounding this particular issue. For instance, “The minister may, subject to the regulations, enter into an agreement with a province to further the purpose of this Act, including an agreement with respect to one or more of the following”. Again I go back to the issue of “may”. It facilitates cooperation, that is true, but there needs to be more clarification.

I understand from my hon. colleague that he is getting favourable responses from the provinces, and obviously we are off on a positive step. However, what he refers to takes place prior to the tabling of the bill, and I will touch on that in just a moment. The consultation process that my colleagues talk about in the Bloc as well as the NDP is an extremely contentious issue and one that needs further discussion, far greater than the scope of a committee that follows second reading.

Under the provisions of clauses 11 to 13, the federal government, through the minister, will be able to undertake programs and projects. The scope and range of these programs and projects are widely spread and imply that the federal government will be financially responsible for funding them both. Again, this is a matter which requires careful consideration.

Under the provisions of clause 14, “The Minister may”, and again I stress the word “may” “in order to carry out the purpose of this Act”, strike advisory panels. However, that discretion allows the minister not to strike panels as well. He may do in whatever case that he deems necessary. Therefore, the power, we would think, becomes far more stretched, far more varied, more wielding under the situation of “may”. For example, at the end of this day, I may jump off the House of Commons right into the lake, but I may not. The chances are I will not, but I may. So hon. members will get the point of--

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was originally planning to ask a question about the consultations or so-called consultations on the bill before us today. Following the question of my Liberal colleague from New Brunswick on the Bennett file in Belledune, however, I would like to ask two questions.

With respect to the Bennett file in Belledune, in theory, the minister should be able to act under section 35 of the existing legislation, given that we are effectively finding ourselves in a situation where an incinerator has been built—incidentally, construction was completed—in Belledune, near Chaleur Bay. This raises special concern because of the resource in and around Chaleur Bay.

In fact, lobsters caught around Belledune are not for human consumption; they are cast aside because they are too polluted. With a new incinerator, one can wonder, and I think that concerns are legitimate. I would like to hear the parliamentary secretary on that.

With respect to the consultations, there are people who do not feel they have been consulted at all on Bill C-45. In particular, I will mention Marc Couture, the president of the Association des crabiers gaspésiens, and Daniel Desbois, the president of the Association des crabiers de la Baie, who said the following about Bill C-45, in response to a statement made by the parliamentary secretary in a recent press release about the legislation.

After reading this statement about Bill C-45...which arrived at the last minute like a Christmas present, knowing that we will not have the time to read the bill, let alone make sense of some of its provisions, we fishers inform you that at no time have we been consulted in any way about any change in connection with the Fisheries Act and that we formally oppose any change that could be made to the act without us first being able to discuss the matter with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for his speech.

About Bill C-45, I can say that the protection of fish habitat is very important for Atlantic Canada. There are some facts to consider and if we really want to conserve those habitats, we need legislation that protects them from invasive species and limits pollution risks.

Let me give a quick example. When someone wants to build an incinerator near a body of water, like Chaleur Bay, in my area, it seems that the Fisheries Act of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans offers absolutely no regulations to protect nearby habitats. I do not see in Bill C-45, which we are debating, the improvements that could guarantee the protection of fish habitats.

In spite of that, could the hon. member reassure me in this regard or could he simply say that, all things considered, there is nothing in the act to protect the projects situated near a body of water when new infrastructures are built?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to lead off the debate today on Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's sea coast and inland fisheries.

It is no exaggeration to say that the provisions of the bill represent some of the most sweeping changes made to the Fisheries Act since its inception well over a century ago.

Some of the decisions we will be making about the bill in the weeks and months to come will affect both our aquatic ecosystems and the future of tens of thousands of fellow Canadians in the decades to come.

With such an important piece of legislation before us, I hope my colleagues will indulge me a little if I take a step back and start by looking at the big picture of the fishery in Canada and, in so doing, putting it in context with the measures we are proposing.

Most Canadians know, either intuitively or through first-hand experience, of the importance of the fishery to the social and economic well-being of our nation. Most will know that we are the second largest country in the world, one of the foremost maritime nations on the planet and that we boast the world's longest coastline and the largest freshwater system.

Perhaps fewer know that we have the largest offshore economic zone, a zone equivalent to 37% of our total land mass. With such a maritime geography, it is no wonder our national fishery and aquaculture industries remain key to our economy. They provide over 100,000 direct jobs and substantial spinoff employment. More than $4.2 billion in fish products are exported every year. An estimated four million recreational fishers inject about $7 billion annually into the economy.

Since many Canadians live either on a coast or near freshwater, it is probably fair to say that most of us have or know someone who has some connection to the recreational or commercial fishery.

It is with great pride and pleasure that I stand before the House today with a very substantial piece of legislation in hand, legislation that cannot help but improve the state of the fishery and the lives of those who work in it.

I said at the outset that that enactment of the legislative proposals contained in the bill would make for the most fundamental, most sweeping changes to the Fisheries Act since it was first made law in 1868.

Although it has been subject to numerous reviews, the act has only been revised on a piecemeal basis over the years. Those changes tended to patch up holes for a while but we are in a new century and we need modern tools for a modern era.

Fisheries management is now a far more complex challenge and patchwork solutions will no longer do the job. The long and short of it is that the current act no longer responds to the evolving needs of the resource, nor does it reflect the expectations of those who fish the resource or of Canadians in general.

In our opinion, the act needs a complete modernization, which is exactly what Bill C-45 represents.

Before I get into some of the specifics of the legislation, I would like to acknowledge the hard work and input of our parliamentary oversight bodies on this file, the standing committees from both Houses and, of course, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. From licensing issues to aquatic invasive species and sanctions, three among many issues that these committees have identified as needing legislative action, committee members should quite rightly take great satisfaction in seeing some of their key concerns being addressed in the bill.

Bill C-45 follows on extensive cross country consultations and discussions over the past several years with all provinces and territories, as well as fishing interests, aboriginal groups and stakeholder groups. Through several processes, we have gained support for the broad principles of the bill from fishing stakeholders.

There is no doubt that we are asking a lot of the bill. We are seeking no less than to modernize the management of Canada's fishing industry, to enshrine conservation measures that safeguard the aquatic ecosystems and preserve our proud tradition of fishing on which tens of thousands of licensed fishermen depend, not to mention the survival of those who work in the spinoff jobs that the fishery provides. In the process, we want the new legislation to provide a framework that provides greater stability, transparency and predictability in all aspects of fisheries managements. It is a tall order for a single piece of legislation.

It is always a difficult proposition finding exactly the right balance between competing interests, but it is our job, frankly, to find that balance, one that does not compromise fundamental principles of good stewardship or good economics. I do not believe the two to be mutually exclusive. I think Bill C-45 walks that fine line quite nicely.

For the purposes of our discussion today, we cannot possibly do more than touch the surface of legislation that has over 250 sections. However, it is helpful to note that the current act does not provide direction or guidance to the minister or to DFO on the goals, objectives and management principles that should be the basis of fisheries and fish habitat management. It is that lack of direction and goals that we are correcting in Bill C-45.

The new version includes a preamble, a purpose clause and management principles that do define important values and objectives for fishing and conservation. They speak to such issues as stakeholder and public input in decisions that affect our fisheries; the fostering of cooperation with the provinces; the conservation and protection of fish habitat and its importance; the application of effective deterrents to illegal fishing; the economic viability of the resource and the industry; and managing consistent with existing aboriginal and treaty rights. Those are the major guidelines upon which those 250 sections are subsequently based.

I will start with the matter of accountability. There is no doubt that the system needs to be more open and more accountable. Consequently, we have removed from the act the absolute discretion of the minister but that does not mean the minister is no longer responsible for running the fishery. He or she will remain in charge of making the overall policy decisions and many other decisions. However, the new law says that ministers must answer for their actions and explain why decisions were taken. That is significant because it finally eliminates the perception that ministers can make allocation decisions based solely on politics.

I have heard my colleague, the member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, call on the minister to end the perceived political interference in the system. Bill C-45 would do exactly that.

In addition to wanting more transparent decisions, one of the things fishing groups tell us all the time is that they want the chance to formally sit down with DFO on a more regular basis. It does make sense that local stakeholders would want to take on some responsibility, authority and accountability of their own. The act would strengthen shared stewardship through fisheries management agreements, a very important provision in this new act. It would increase the influence of fishers over matters that affect their livelihood, which is where the establishment of advisory panels will prove useful. As well, members of the public would be given a more active role so that the process of making the rules is more transparent.

The legislation now recognizes in law the existing high level of intergovernmental collaboration by allowing the federal government to sign agreements with provinces and territories to set joint goals and coordinate policies and programs. It formally authorizes governor in council to delegate the appropriate fisheries management powers to a province or territory.

In our opinion, this too makes sense. Our regional counterparts have close ties to the communities and, in several cases, administer freshwater fisheries for us. Of course, jurisdictionally the provinces already play a role in managing the processing sector and aquaculture. It is clearly advantageous that we share information and harmonize our programs where possible.

The new act would create the ability for provincial regulations that protect fish habitat to be deemed equivalent to federal regulations in cases where they meet or beat the national standard. This would eliminate unnecessary duplication of regulation across levels of government and allow the department to focus its resources on projects that pose a higher risk to fish habitat.

I am very pleased to confirm that provincial and territorial governments are openly supportive of the act's overarching principles and proposed concepts. In fact, they unanimously showed their support for new legislation in the final communiqué of the Canadian Council of Fisheries and Aquaculture ministers in their meetings last October.

I do not think it is an overstatement to say that at the heart and soul of the proposed new Fisheries Act are the provisions that will safeguard our aquatic ecosystems.

If we do not succeed in that endeavour, then all other considerations fall by the wayside. They provide the key proactive measures to conserve and protect fish and fish habitat.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it is in the area of habitat protection where we find the most polarized views on the part of stakeholder groups. Environmental organizations, on the one hand, clearly and quite rightly, have concerns about any weakening of the protection offered by the act in its current form. Industry stakeholders, on the other hand, are looking for increased transparency, predictability and efficiency in decision making.

I must say something that is very important. The proposed legislation does not look to change the fundamental elements of the habitat protection provisions. It does seek, however, to make modest changes that would make the administration of these sections more effective in the conservation and protection of fish habitat and more efficient in its application.

A weakness in the current act is that it treats fish habitat protection and pollution prevention as issues separate from fisheries management.

Habitat protection in the new act becomes an integral element of proper fisheries management. This one item alone is probably the single most fundamental change to the current way of doing things. Under the new act, impacts to fish habitat must be considered prior to allocation decisions or issuance of licences. The minister's authority and duty to do this is stated explicitly in this legislation.

The new law would also extend the scope of inspectors' powers to cover any project that could be harmful to fish habitat, in addition to those dealing with the release of deleterious substances, as is now the case.

Inspectors will work with the public to help them better understand the provisions of this act but they will also be able to confirm that conditions of habitat authorizations are being met and, where necessary, give directions to remedy harm to fish habitat. Most important, these new inspector powers will support efforts to monitor the effectiveness of habitat regulatory requirements and allow the department to adapt its requirements based on what it learns.

Of course, fisheries officers will continue to support the habitat program by conducting high risk enforcement activities and supporting prosecutions where necessary.

Those are some of the changes the government is proposing to improve the effectiveness of the habitat protection provisions.

Members will recall that earlier I mentioned that we would allow provincial regulations to be used where they meet or exceed federal ones. However, the legislation, quite rightly, allows us to reinstate federal regulations where provincial ones are not doing the job.

What is also new is the enshrining in law, for the first time, a precautionary approach to conserve aquatic resources and putting in place a science based ecosystem approach to fisheries management. That is very important.

Some other highlights include the provisions concerning aquatic invasive species. We only have to think of the sea lamprey in the Great Lakes to understand the incredible destruction that can be wrought by the wrong species invading the wrong habitat. Clause 69 would ensure, for the first time, that whenever aquatic invasive species are released, transported, imported or exported, such activities may be carried out only in accordance with regulations enacted by the governor in council.

Other new provisions would allow the minister or a designate to authorize the destruction of an invasive species in order to protect native habitats. The regulations would introduce a number of controls to manage invasive species in all Canadian waters.

There are many more features aimed at protecting our aquatic resources but the ones I just outlined should give members a flavour of the new act.

I would like to talk for a moment about enhancing competitiveness. Protecting the resource cannot help but improve the business of the fishery. Secured access and allocations to Canada's oldest industry are essential to the economic prosperity of fishing enterprises, fish processors and hundreds of coastal communities. Predictability is central to keeping the industry thriving and, by extension, those communities. Therein lines the problem.

Industry stakeholders see the current licensing and allocation process as unstable and unpredictable. Consequently, they find it hard to plan, raise capital or make rational business choices and that is why the legislation has specific provisions that improve the business operating environment of resource users. To that end, the new act would provide for stability, greater clarity and fairness.

The criteria and considerations for getting a licence for the first time will be sharply defined in the regulations resulting from the bill. The minister will make policy decisions for police. It will be the job of licence officers to issue licences to individuals based on these regulations.

We believe much peace of mind will be derived from the prospect of long term allocations, potentially up to 15 years, and will ease the burden of business uncertainty for fishing enterprises. It will permit them to plan ahead in greater confidence. Let me highlight that this move will benefit the individual fishers in the boat. Despite alarmist empty rhetoric to the contrary, which we will undoubtedly hear repeated by members in the days to come, this does not open the door to foreign countries to fish in Canadian waters. Let me say that again; this does not open the door for foreign countries to fish in Canadian waters.

In addition, the new act will provide the tools needed to sustainably manage the fisheries from oceans to plate with provincial partners and stakeholders. In effect, this will mean more value, more benefits and more support for Canada's rural coastal communities at a time of great need. On balance, those on the industry side will be very pleased with these changes to help them better plan and manage their activities.

Finally, all stakeholders want a better system to deal with rule breakers. Most involved in the fishing industries are committed to keeping the laws and regulations and are frustrated when they find some who are not and who are not dealt with in an effective way.

The current court based system is inefficient, ineffective and unwieldy. We need more clout to deal with people who step out of line. Currently the minister can only suspend or cancel a licence for breaches of licence conditions, not for breaches of regulations or general prohibitions of the act. All we can do is spend a lot of time and money dragging violators into court where fines are just about the only penalty.

The legislation envisages an arm's length Canada fisheries tribunal that would hear licence appeals and impose sanctions and financial penalties to licensed fishers in coastal fisheries. Minor violations would result in tickets and would only be heard by the tribunal if they were contested, just like a traffic ticket. The system would be fairer, more credible and more efficient. It would also be a more effective deterrent because some penalties would affect the ability of offenders to keep fishing, as well as hit their pocketbook. That is why a sanctions tribunal is so popular within the fishing community.

Other contraventions of the act, such as habitat destruction, infractions in inland fisheries managed by a province, and poaching would continue to be handled by the courts. I like the idea of using the penalty system to support conservation measures.

Before I conclude my remarks, I want to say a few words about aboriginal participation in the fisheries.

The proposed act affirms that Parliament recognizes the importance of the fisheries to many aboriginal communities. Aboriginal groups bring great knowledge and experience to modern fisheries management. The bill provides first nations and other aboriginal groups a more direct role in the management of their harvesting of fish. This would be done through such mechanisms as fisheries management agreements where details on involvement in management and the decision making process could be identified.

The proposed bill also provides for the consideration of traditional knowledge in decision making where such information is available to DFO. In addition, one of the guiding principles in the bill stipulates that those involved in the administration of the act must seek to manage fisheries and conserve and protect fish and fish habitat in a manner that is consistent with the constitutional protection provided for existing aboriginal and treaty rights.

As my allotted time is almost up, I will bring my remarks to a close. As the minister has said many times, his job is to sustainably manage our public fish and oceans resources on behalf of Canadians and for the maximum benefit of Canadians. He does not own the fish, nor does his department or the government as a whole. As Canadians we all own this common property resource and passage of this legislation will help us in this task.

This bill should pass through second reading quickly and move on to committee where it can be improved, if necessary. The time to act is now. The livelihood of too many Canadians rests on our decision to give thoughtful, but reasonably expeditious, passage to this legislation. I look forward to the House passing it.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

moved that Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, today we will continue the debate on the Liberal opposition motion.

Tomorrow morning we will begin debate on the procedural motion relating to the back to work legislation, to which the opposition House leader was referring. Also, we will have Bill C-45, the Fisheries Act, following question period.

On Monday, we would like to conclude the debate on the statutory order regarding the Anti-terrorism Act, which is very important for Canadians for public security reasons. We are also getting down to the deadline when certain provisions of the Anti-terrorism Act will sunset.

I have consulted with the other parties and I will propose a related motion at the end of my business statement.

Next week we will consider the following bills: Bill C-37, financial institutions; Bill C-41, competition; Bill C-11, transport; Bill S-3, defence; Bill C-42, the Quarantine Act; Bill C-36, Canada pension plan and old age security; Bill C-10, mandatory minimum penalties; and depending on developments regarding the railway strike, we may call the procedural motion relating to the back to work legislation.

Thursday, March 1 shall be an allotted day.

As I mentioned earlier, following discussions with the House leaders of the other parties, Mr. Speaker, I believe if you seek it, you would find unanimous consent of the House to adopt the following motion. I move:

Motion

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practices of the House, once the Statutory Order regarding the Anti-terrorism Act is called on Monday, February 26, and when no member rises to speak on debate or at the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders, all questions necessary to dispose of the Statutory Order regarding the Anti-terrorism Act be deemed put, a recorded division deemed demanded and deferred until Tuesday, February 27, at 5:30 p.m.

Ontario Fishery Regulations, 1989

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the occasion to rise in the House today to respond to the disallowance resolution tabled by the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations. I thank the committee for its consideration and its considerable effort in reviewing hundreds of regulations each year and for specifically looking at subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations.

Canada's new government values the insight provided by the committee. However, I must join the minister and the Minister of Natural Resources for the Government of Ontario, the Hon. David Ramsay, in not supporting the committee's resolution to revoke subsection 36(2). Our new government has continuously maintained that the regulation as it stands is legally sound, within the authority of the Fisheries Act, and supported by case law.

This position, I add, is fundamentally the same position that was presented by the previous government. It is with a certain degree of consistency that our new government is supporting a position which is more procedural than it is political, but we do agree that bringing further clarity to compliance with licence terms and conditions as a requirement of the Fisheries Act would be important and useful in managing our fisheries.

We are doing that and more through Bill C-45, which the minister tabled recently, but until such time as Bill C-45 is passed into law and the new fisheries act comes into force, we must keep the regulation in place.

Far be it from me to suggest that politics is playing a role in the actions of the opposition members of the committee in pushing for disallowance. However, I believe it is important to step back and view this matter in context.

I understand the concerns expressed by the committee. However, members of the opposition, when they sat on this side of the House, took the same position as our new government. The apparent flip-flop is what makes average Canadians cynical about the political process.

We have a responsibility as parliamentarians to be accountable for our actions. This includes ensuring that Ontario can continue to conserve and protect its fish stocks and manage its fisheries in an effective manner.

Subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations is crucial to doing so. It makes compliance with licence conditions, which are a part of the rules that protect the fishery, a requirement.

As the minister mentioned, we are talking about 500 commercial licences and some 1,400 commercial bait fishery licences in the province. The landed valued of Ontario's commercial fishery is somewhere around $50 million a year, contributing between $250 million and $400 million to Ontario's and Canada's economies.

Fishing is important in my riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. As a gateway to beautiful Algonquin Park, its residents are concerned about what effect disallowance will have on conservation efforts in Algonquin Park and all parks. They fail to see where unrestricted fishing in our parks will benefit anyone, which could be a result of a vote of disallowance.

I am pleased to confirm that the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters is in total support of our new government and the Government of Ontario in the need to maintain conservation measures to protect the resource.

Our fisheries are valuable and valued resources. Fishing licences, with the terms and conditions they carry, are fundamental to protecting and managing them. They set the rules for and limits on fishing activities to preserve these resources for the future so everyone can have a chance to enjoy and benefit from them.

The provisions of the Fisheries Act and its regulations give the minister the authority not only to issue fishing licences but also to place conditions on them. Fishing licences establish everything from the type and quantity of fish that can be taken to the start and close of particular fisheries, where fishing can take place, and the type of fishing gear that may be used.

Requiring licence holders to comply with the terms and conditions of their licence is one of the most fundamental parts of an enforceable fisheries management regime. Revoking subsection 36(2) would leave Ontario in a state of limbo in enforcing these licence conditions. This could result in potentially dire economic and environmental consequences for Ontario's fishing industry and thousands of Canadians who rely upon it.

Let me share part of a recent letter that was copied to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. It is from the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources to the standing joint committee joint chairs. It reads:

This subsection currently provides Ontario with a suite of adaptable enforcement tools, resulting in an effective deterrent system to ensure the conservation of the resource and proper conduct of the fishery. It also assures us that the deterrent system will be certain, effective, timely and proportional to the severity of the offence.

In the absence of subsection 36(2), we lose the ability to address licence violations, thus imposing unnecessary hardship to fishers for minor offences. In addition, we would also lose the ability to enforce terms and conditions on fishing licences, which would compromise the management of the commercial fishery and jeopardize conservation objectives.

Clearly, the Ontario minister agrees that licence conditions are a key element of proper fisheries management and control in his province. In other words, they are indispensable to protecting and conserving fishery resources.

By applying for and accepting a licence, fishers agree to go about their business in accordance with attached terms and conditions. They know they will be held accountable if they do not. Fortunately, most fishers follow the rules, but let us make no mistake about it, violations do arise. Revocation of subsection 36(2) would be more than an exercise in legislative authority. It would carry very real impacts in terms of enforcement in the Ontario fishery.

Since the year 2000, more than 400 charges have been laid for failure to comply with this subsection, resulting in fines for the offenders, but I should point out, further to the standing joint committee's concerns, that no jail terms have been imposed.

Let me read for members part of another letter, again from the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources, this time to the former Minister of Fisheries and Oceans:

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

Now consider the same prospect were fisheries governed by eight similar regulations. The standing joint committee has indicated that it would expect these regulations to also be revoked, based on the precedent this House could be setting here today. This would impact the management and conservation of virtually all fisheries in Canada.

Our party and our government accept very seriously our responsibility to the environment. The conservation pledge of the OFAH sums up our position completely:

I give my pledge, as a Canadian, to save and faithfully defend from waste, the natural resources of my Country--its soils and minerals, its air, water, forests, and wildlife.

This pledge of the OFAH is something that members should consider if they feel as strongly as I do when it comes to protecting our environment. Let us make no mistake about it: supporting disallowance of subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fisheries regulations will have an adverse effect on the environment.

As we proceed on this matter, I would like the members of this House to bear two things in mind.

First, by voting against disallowance of subsection 36(2) and returning the report to the standing joint committee, we would not be ignoring this regulatory concern. We would simply be taking a different approach and a more fruitful path for Canada's fisheries and the Canadians who benefit from them.

Second, the changes proposed to the Fisheries Act in Bill C-45 fully address the committee's concern with the regulation in question.

Bill C-45 clarifies that it is a requirement of the act to comply with fishing licence terms and conditions, but unlike a minor amendment bill, which the government would be forced to pursue to fill in the gap created by disallowance, Bill C-45 addresses the committee's issue and provides much more.

It will deliver greater predictability, stability and transparency in the sustainable management of Canada's fisheries. The new fisheries act will require ministers to manage the fishery, taking into account the principles of conservation, habitat protection and greater public input into decision making.

It will open the door to greater collaboration with the provinces, territories and resource users, who will work more closely with government in managing the fishery. It puts into place an effective administrative sanctioning system and brings greater stability and predictability to fishery access and sharing arrangements. It better protects fish habitat and provides a clear and more accountable licensing system.

The new licensing system will be more transparent. The minister will provide a context for all licensing decisions. That means licences will be issued according to the regulations made by the minister, but the minister will have no direct involvement in granting the licences to individuals.

Licensing officers will be the ones issuing licences according to these regulations and, under the new act, licensing officers will have the authority to refuse licences under specified circumstances. They can also attach conditions to the licence for the proper management or control of the fishery as well as the conservation or protection of fish and habitat.

However, under Bill C-45, the possibility of jail time as a penalty for contravening the requirement to comply with licence conditions has been removed.

Stakeholder groups in the provinces and territories have shown strong support for comprehensive changes to the 139 year old Fisheries Act. I do not believe it to be in anyone's interest to delay the speedy debate and approval of Bill C-45. We must move forward on this agenda as expeditiously as possible.

I do not support the standing joint committee's resolution to revoke subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations. The better option is to concentrate our efforts on passing Bill C-45. That is why I am asking all members of the House to reject--

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to this matter. I should perhaps summarize the ideas expressed to this point since we are going in different directions. We are presently debating the delegated legislation and discussing Bill C-45 and fisheries management in general.

In its 4th report, the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations asked that a part of the Ontario Fishery Regulations be revoked. Although I do not disagree entirely, the committee's conclusions state that the regulation adopted exceeds the authority set out in the act. That is true; however, we must look at the overall picture. A legal void is unacceptable. Consequently, we will support the government's motion to deal with this situation.

A remedy has been presented. However, I feel that the remedy threatens to give rise to more problems than the solution presently provided. At some point we will find ourselves in a legal vacuum.

Although I am not familiar with the Great Lakes fisheries, I do know that they are an immense expanse of water with commercial fishing activities and, primarily, recreational or sport fishing.

I do not feel it would be responsible to say no and just cause problems for the current government on the pretext that there is a problem. There is a legal problem. We have a duty to act responsibly.

That is what the Bloc Québécois has always done and will continue to do. The Bloc will therefore support the motion we are debating.

Given what has been said by the parliamentary secretary, the minister and my Liberal colleague, I do not believe that Bill C-45 has solutions to all the problems with fisheries management.

In my opinion, here again, we have to act responsibly and describe what is really going on. I do not believe that, in its current form, Bill C-45 is really the answer. That is why we are asking to amend the bill and hold public consultations. By meeting with people, stakeholders, fishers from across Canada and Quebec, we will have a more complete picture of the problems with fisheries management.

I would therefore invite the minister to agree to have the committee look at Bill C-45, not to completely change it, but to improve it in order to address the various crises.

The fishing season is about to begin in Quebec and other parts of Atlantic Canada. There are questions that need answers. I believe that, once amended or improved, Bill C-45 will provide some answers. At most, we are talking about next year. We are not talking about this year.

This year, the minister has responsibilities with regard to the season that will be starting for shrimp, crab, lobster and groundfish fishers. He currently has a responsibility regarding other species.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the government is taking too much time to act. I hope that, in the next few hours, the minister will be able to make announcements that will give shrimp fishers, for example, a good idea of what to expect. Shrimpers from New Brunswick and Quebec were here yesterday. I believe that they will be meeting with the minister today. The message is simple.

Last year, I delivered the very same message about how important it is to be able to take serious, meaningful action to help relieve the burden on shrimp boat operators everywhere, and especially in Quebec. This is basically a matter of survival for fishers, for fish plant workers and for coastal communities.

This all leads up to our position. This is about being as responsible and rigorous as always. We realize that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs came to a certain conclusion. We might agree with that conclusion, but in the end, we do not believe it is the best way to solve the problem. We do not expect to find an ideal solution, but this is not the kind of solution we are looking for.

I would go so far as to say that the proposed cure could be worse than the disease. We would end up in a legal void. Fishers would automatically find themselves in situations where they might commit offences. I do not think they would make that kind of mistake, but offences may occur.

Nevertheless, we would end up in a legal void. That means that the responsible thing to do would be to support the motion before us.

Today, the government has put forward an extraordinary measure that we support. That said, we must not make a bad habit of this over the years.

It seems to me that the new Fisheries Act, which is to be passed shortly, should improve the situation. Nevertheless I would once again urge the minister—I am told he is listening—to accept the invitation of the opposition—the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Québécois, and the Liberal Party—to send it all to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans immediately, not to drag it out, but to act responsibly and broaden the scope.

I believe this situation calls for everyone's cooperation. If we all row together, we will reach our destination and produce good results. I would urge the minister to give it serious consideration.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, contrary to what has been said by federal and provincial authorities, while the disallowance of subsection 36(2) may change the manner of enforcing complaints with terms and conditions of licences, it would not affect the ability to impose them.

The authority to issue licences and impose terms and conditions in the licence would remain, as would the ability to enforce them through licence suspensions or cancellations. The imposition of a fine or 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 or conservation.

It is not unusual for licensing schemes to be established by federal legislation under which suspension or cancellation is the sole means of enforcing licences. While the enactment of new fisheries legislation may resolve this concern, given the substantive nature of the objection as well as the similar section of other regulations, the committee considers a resolution of this issue should not be delayed any further. It has been going on since 1989.

It is not acceptable that the requirements a citizen must obey upon pain of criminal prosecution be determined by a single official who decides what will or will not include the terms and conditions of a licence. That is the issue.

If I can put on my other hat as a member of Parliament and someone who has deep respect for this place, I believe there is time. This matter is very straightforward. The government could bring forward another piece of legislation to put the enabling clause in the existing Fisheries Act. It could come to the House and I am sure it would get unanimous consent to pass all stages at one sitting. The government has the tools to do it.

Bill C-45, even if it is amended to take into account provincial licensing officials, will not happen for a long period of time. In fact, parties are already clamouring for Bill C-45 to be referred to committee before second reading because they have so many problems with it.

After all this time and delay, it is clear the tools are available to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to address this item, which has been illegal under the laws of Canada because the regulation is not enabled in the legislation. That is the legal opinion of the lawyers from the Parliament of Canada who have been assigned to our committee.

The committee's fourth report, which calls for this disallowance, was unanimously approved. This matter must be dealt with because the regulation is illegal. That is our role.

I believe the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations has done its job. It has shown good faith and given the department every opportunity to correct this error, this illegality. The government now shows that it wants more time. We will have another bill which will totally rewrite the Fisheries Act. It will take many months if not years before the bill ever gets through all the stages of the legislative process. We will be back again asking for the same disallowance.

Now is the time. I ask particularly the Bloc Québécois to consider the concerns that have been raised with regard to whether Bill C-45 addresses this matter. It is the opinion of our officials and of the officials of fisheries that Bill C-45 does not address what the committee has brought to the House. I am pleased the committee has taken this important step again.

It is the sixth time this matter has come before Parliament to be resolved. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has not shown good faith over all this period of time. It is time for the House of Commons to vote on this matter to ensure that if it does not take the time to fix it now, the regulation be disallowed.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are debating the motion tabled by the government.

In short, the exercise of an administrative discretion by individual officials is enforced as if it were law.

The government has agreed to amend the Fisheries Act, and indeed tabled Bill C-45. However, as I mentioned in my point of order at the beginning of debate, fisheries officials have confirmed that Bill C-45 does not address the problem, the illegality of subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fisheries regulations, because it empowers federal officials. It does not impact provincial officials.

The problem raised by the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations is that we are talking about provincial officials. The motion is factually incorrect. I believe it is out of order.

However, if the members want to argue—

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Are we speaking to the bill, to the gist, to the thrust of Bill C-45, or are we speaking on debate about the ability of the bill to come to the House? My understanding is we are speaking to the bill.

[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.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

I do not think it is a matter for the Chair to decide whether Bill C-45 addresses the concerns of the standing joint committee. That is a matter for the House to decide. The minister has moved a motion saying so. The Chair does not decide on the truth or otherwise of motions, and I do not think I am going to get into that, despite the argument presented by the hon. member for Mississauga South.

I do think it is a matter for debate, and as he knows, this debate is a special one held under specific provisions with respect to the report from the committee. The committee is always free to submit another report if the hon. member does not like the result that is obtained in the House as a result of the decision on the motion, and of course the motion can be accepted or rejected. It is a matter for the House to decide and I will leave it to the House to do so after a debate on the matter, which we will proceed with now.

Debate on the motion, the hon. member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The motion reads that Bill C-45 in fact addresses the concerns of the standing joint committee.

I would like to advise the House that today the Fisheries and Oceans department officials have confirmed that in fact Bill C-45 does not satisfy the concerns of the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations, and accordingly, if the motion is not factually correct, the motion should be ruled out of order.

Mr. Speaker, should you rule that this is simply a matter of debate, I would then ask the government to immediately contact and confirm with Fisheries and Oceans officials that in fact Bill C-45 does not address the concerns raised by the scrutiny and regulations committee, that the motion be withdrawn, and that the government undertake to come forward with an appropriate bill to deal with this matter with the existing Fisheries Act.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Mr. Speaker, despite allegations to the contrary, Bill C-45 does not privatize or corporatize the fishery or destroy fish and fish habitat. The member keeps talking about that. He has not pointed us to a single section that actually demonstrates this. Rather, this bill means predictable access and allocation, greater transparency and stability, and more direct participation of Canadians in the management of Canada's fisheries.

The new habitat section strikes a careful balance between allowing opportunities for economic development and protecting fish and fish habitat for future generations.

Bill C-45 is all about the sustainable development of Canada's coastal and inland fisheries. Conservation and protection of fish and fish habitat is its cornerstone. A modernized Fisheries Act does indeed reflect the wishes of fishers in this country. I encourage my hon. colleagues to support this act.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have heard this speech before and saying it louder and more often does not make it any more true.

In fact, the proposed act reflects the wishes of fishermen in this country and would ensure that individuals who are licensed to fish will fish the resource for the benefit of their families and all Canadians.

Fishermen have repeatedly told us that they want predictable, stable and transparent decision making and that they want to be involved in decisions that affect their lives. They know that sustainable fisheries for the future means that conservation has to be their first goal. Bill C-45 considers all of these factors.

What Bill C-45 does not do is privatize the resource or corporatize the fishery.

The notion of fisheries as a common property resource is the law of the land as stated by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1997.

In the case of Comeau's Sea Foods Ltd. v. Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada stated:

Canada’s fisheries are a “common property resource”, belonging to all the people of Canada. ...it is the Minister’s duty to manage, conserve and develop the fishery on behalf of Canadians in the public interest.

The concept of a common property resource is spelled out in several sections of Bill C-45 so that the public resource would continue to be managed on behalf of the public by a public authority and in the interest of all Canadians.

In the proposed bill, the preamble declares that, “Parliament is committed to maintaining the public character of the management of fisheries and fish habitat”.

Further evidence that the act would uphold the notion of the fisheries as a public resource is found under the considerations pertaining to access and allocation.

It states that the minister and others who administer the act must encourage the participation of Canadians in the making of fisheries management decisions, as well as decisions around the conservation and protection of fish and fish habitat.

The importance of maintaining the public access to the fishery is explicitly stated as an important consideration in section 25.

The bottom line is that we need to modernize the way we manage fish and fish habitat, and that is what Bill C-45 would do. Unlike the current act, Bill C-45 would require us to consider impacts on habitat from fishing. It would require us to consult with industry when changing the rules of the game. It would give us and the industry the tools to strengthen industry participation in the day to day management of the fisheries.

It would give a formal role to a broad range of stakeholders in determining how fisheries should be managed. It would take the politics out of access and allocation so that industry could focus on making their businesses viable and economically competitive in a modern and global marketplace.

In short, we are modernizing the fisheries management and the Fisheries Act to meet the needs of a modern industry, one that has evolved significantly over the last 20 years, not to mention over the last 139 years, with an absolutely clear commitment to the sustainable use of the fishery resources for present and future generations.

Like everything in life, use of a common property resource requires rules. Similarly, there are obvious boundaries on the public right to fish. It has been a regulated activity since the dawn of Confederation. In fact, there is currently very little fishing in tidal waters that is not completely regulated by federal legislation. That would continue under Bill C-45. Without regulation and appropriate legislation, there would be chaos on the water and the health of fish stocks would be in peril.

Unlike the current act, which makes no reference at all to common property resource or the public right to fish, a renewed Fisheries Act would set in place rules so that Canadians can continue to engage in fishing activities now and in the future.

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

Mr. Speaker, the other day I raised a question in the House regarding Bill C-45, the new fisheries act tabled by the Minister of Fisheries on December 13 of last year.

It is ironic that this very thick bill, almost two and a half times bigger than the previous act, represents a sweeping change to the oldest act of Parliament, the Fisheries Act, which is 138 years old. It is ironic that it was dropped on our desks on December 13. Shortly afterwards, we went on Christmas break.

After carefully reading the bill, I started asking questions of fishermen, their communities and their organizations, various provincial premiers, various aboriginal groups, and environmental groups. In the premise of the preamble and the news releases, it was said that the bill came from “extensive consultations”.

Believing the government to be honest, I started asking who had been consulted with. I am still waiting for the names of the people who were consulted. I asked: “Were you asked to help the government redefine a new Fisheries Act prior to December 13? Were you consulted or were you presented with papers?”

Consultation means to actually seek input from people, not tell them what we are going to do. I know that my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary from British Columbia, is going to answer this question, so I am going to give him a little preamble.

He probably already knows a very fine and learned gentleman, Mr. Christopher Harvey, Q.C., who is a very well spoken, articulate and very informed lawyer from British Columbia. I will quote a paragraph for the hon. member, because I know the hon. member himself is from B.C.

Mr. Harvey talks about the fact that Bill C-45 is a colossal expropriation of fishing rights, which means that it privatizes a public resource. The hon. member knows that in 1997 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the fisheries are a “common property resource” to be managed by the Government of Canada in the public interest. Mr. Harvey, in his dissertation on the act, says:

This is a transparent attempt to download unlimited and unspecified charges onto fishermen. Long ago, in the B.C. Terms of Union of 1871, the federal government agreed to “defray the charges” for protection and encouragement of fisheries.

That is what it said. The parliamentary secretary can say whatever he wants from his departmental notes. That is exactly what happens. This bill will not protect fish and fish habitat. It will privatize a public resource, will further destroy fishing families and their communities across the country, and will eventually divide and conquer first nations and non-aboriginal fishermen and further create a divide that is already there.

We have already said to the minister and his parliamentary secretary that if they truly want to have a new fisheries act, we welcome the debate. We would welcome the opportunity to take this to a special legislative committee before second reading so that we can truly consult with Canadians from coast to coast to coast, and those on our inland waters, in order to develop a new fisheries act that not only protects the habitat but enhances opportunities for commercial and recreational fishermen right across this country.

I have questions for the government.

Why were 31 environmental groups across the country unanimous in their condemnation of this bill the other day?

Why was the UFAW/CAW union in B.C. upset over this act?

Why were Otto Langer and Carl Hunt, two renowned fisheries biologists, one from B.C. and the other from Alberta, so very angry and upset over this bill?

Why was Phil Morlock, head of the CSIA, the association for our $7 billion sport fishing industry in this country, never once consulted on this bill?

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, today we will continue the debate on the Liberal opposition motion.

Tomorrow we will resume debate on Bill C-31, the voter integrity bill, with Bill C-35, the bail reform bill as backup.

Monday we will call Bill C-31, elections, if it is not completed tomorrow; Bill C-44, human rights; Bill C-11, transport; Bill C-33, technical income tax; Bill S-2, hazardous materials; and the statutory order. We have an ambitious agenda there.

Tuesday, February 20, and Thursday, February 22, will be allotted to the business of supply.

On Wednesday we will continue with the business outlined on Monday.

Next Friday, I will consider beginning the debate on Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries.

With respect to the debate on the statutory order regarding the Anti-terrorism Act, if an agreement on debate is not reached before February 28, certain provisions of the Anti-terrorism Act will sunset. It is the government's view that all members should be given the opportunity to decide the fate of these provisions because they involve the safety of people they represent.

Recent events have made us aware that the terrorist threats continue to specifically target Canada, but if the terms of the law are not extended by March 1, the protections that we have in place right now will cease to apply.

If an agreement can be reached, I am prepared to call the motion sooner and sit as long as necessary on that day to bring the debate to a conclusion.

Fisheries and Oceans

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

Mr. Speaker, in 1997 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the fisheries of Canada is a “common property resource” and must be managed in the interests of all Canadians.

The Government of Canada has just released Bill C-45, one of the most sweeping changes to the Fisheries Act we have ever had in this country. It privatizes the fishery, corporatizes the fishery, destroys fish habitat and allows DFO officials to be off the hook for their decisions.

In 1992 the cod collapse cost the Canadian taxpayer $4 billion and nobody was held accountable.

Will the minister now bring in a new act that reflects the real wishes of fishermen in this country?

Fisheries Act, 2007

[Loyola Hearn, Conservative, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries.

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