Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for St. John's West for bringing forward this item for discussion tonight. I have carefully read his letter and note that he is inclined to blame foreign overfishing in the Atlantic Canada region as the cause for the shortages of the resource.
I will try in the limited time available to put this discussion within the framework of sustainable development. It seems to me it is a classic item for discussion under the general heading of sustainable development.
It is interesting that in 2002 we are discussing something that is not new. This item has been raised in various reports over the last decade at least. It is an item about which not much new can really be said. It is interesting to note that while the member for St. John's West chooses foreign overfishing as the reason for this debate tonight, back in 1997 the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council already had expressed a major concern in its report. I will quote from the report:
A major concern is the management of fishing activities because some gear types are capable of making large catches in a short time irrespective of location, biological behaviour of the fish and season of the year.
The report goes on to say:
This translates into great concern about the excess capacity of the existing Canadian groundfish fleets and the constant improvements in efficiency of harvesting operations, in terms of how effective the operations are in finding fish and catching them.
Evidently the conservation council is not pointing at foreigners. It is pointing at ourselves. I wonder perhaps if it would not be more appropriate and fair to engage in a debate of this kind also with an analysis of our own performance in our own harvest of the resource.
Let me put on record a fact which is very well known to many of us here tonight. In the case of cod, in the 1970s and throughout the whole decade we were catching something like 650,000 tonnes a year. That level of 650,000 tonnes fell in the 1980s to something like 250,000 tonnes a year. In the 1980s the majority of the fleet was Canadian, unlike in the 1970s.
We can see from that comparison a jump from 650,000 tonnes down to 250,000 tonnes. That was a great indication that there was something wrong in the resource. The resource was not as abundant as in the previous decade.
Then all of a sudden by 1990-91 we saw a decline to 41,000 tonnes, if I remember correctly in 1991. In 1992 the moratorium was called and the cod fishery was suspended all of a sudden.
What is the point in blaming the foreign fishery if we ourselves are also part of the problem? It is an issue that we have to keep in mind. Over the centuries there has been the tendency vis-à-vis our natural resources for humans to take out more than the resources can offer. We find a similar pattern also in forests.
Sticking to the fishery, we can read the accounts of those who discovered North America four or five centuries ago. They wrote of an unbelievable abundance of fish. Apparently a person could almost catch fish by the tail, compared to what is happening today. This issue has to be examined and discussed over the decades and possibly over the centuries. Over time there has been a very serious and alarming decline.
I do not know whether it helps to get excited when there is a foreign boat overfishing because that is just a symptom of a much larger problem.
It is interesting to note that in the September 1996 fisheries and oceans department report there is an analysis of groundfish. It states at a certain point:
In the early 1990s the catches dropped rapidly. In 1995 it reached the lowest level recorded in recent decades.
We were already warned in September 1996 about this pattern.
Scientists all over the world from Iceland to Canada to the U.K. who have examined the behaviour of fisheries have been quite clear in their warnings about the necessity for producing measures of conservation, reducing fleets and suggesting that perhaps the fisheries should become community oriented rather than industry oriented so as to sustain villages rather than the large scale multinationals and so forth. We are unable somehow to put into practice the suggestions that are being given to us by those who are studying these patterns over a longer period of time.
I would like to bring to everyone's attention a study entitled “Beyond crisis in the fisheries: A prospective for community based ecological fisheries management” written by David Coon and Janice Harvey of the conservation council of New Brunswick. They attempted in 1997 to come forward with some policy recommendations in order to ensure sustainability, to reduce these devastatingly heavy harvest patterns. They suggested to shift the benefit of the resource away from the multinational activities on large scales and to bring the resource closer for the livelihood and survival of the local communities. They already said five years ago that we must undergo some radical changes in the way we treat this particular resource.
Another example is the April 1997 announcement by the then Minister of Natural Resources that the cod stock would be reopened in the famous 3P area, which everyone knows the location of, for a total allowable catch level of 10,000 tonnes. This is the very same area where we used to catch something like 60 times as much 20 years earlier. What is going on? Can we blame this on foreign fleets? Let us be realistic about this.
In tackling this particular issue, which is certainly not an easy one, it is important that we first, start from the premise of whether or not we can put into place a policy that will make the sustainability of the resource a priority over the long term. Second, whether we have reached the point of such low levels in the fishery that we must think of the livelihood of the survival of the community at the expense of large scale international operations which may be extremely productive and lucrative. Nevertheless, it takes out more from the ocean than the ocean can replenish.
There may be other policy suggestions which I hope will emerge in this debate. However for heaven's sake let us stop pointing the finger at foreign fleets. Let us stop the practice of gun boat diplomacy because it does not get us anywhere. It gets us into trouble over the long term with our potential allies who we want to bring around to our way of thinking, and I am talking now of the Europeans.
Let us use level-headed thinking about the method because the long term perspective that we have seen over the past two decades is the exploitation of the resource. We euphemistically call it harvesting but it is really taking out of the oceans.
We have taken out more than the resource can replenish and reproduce, and there is a deficit here. Somehow we are unable to deal with the deficit unless it comes to a moment of crisis, as it did with the moratorium on the cod fishery. The cod fishery is a classic lesson from which we must learn how to handle the other resources in the ocean if we are to prevent further sad experiences.