Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the words of the hon. member for Sherbrooke. It is true that he is not all that bothered because things did not go any better for the fishers of Gaspé when his party was in power. The fishers tell us now it was a fiasco. It started in their time but it seems that the hon. member is repenting a bit, and that is all for the better. He wants to help the government, but he ought to have helped his own at that time.
I, however, agree with him on two points. When he says decisions are made in Ottawa, that is true. In my former riding we had the Institut Maurice-Lamontagne, whose opinion is respected throughout the world. Its highly competent researchers have carried out studies in the Gaspé, the St. Lawrence, the Atlantic Ocean. The federal public servants have now come up with another study, and of course the study by the federal public servants takes precedence over the one by our own public servants, who are independent.
I would ask my colleague from Sherbrooke what he himself would do, if he were the government, for these little fishers in Gaspé who will go on unemployment this winter, if they have enough “stamps”. Yet these fishers are hard-working and want to work but, because of their profession—nearly all the cod quotas have been cut—they end up with nothing, or next to nothing. What would he do?