Pierre Brien

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals and Firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Bloc Quebecois will be voting no on this motion.

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals and Firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Bloc Quebecois will be voting no on this motion.

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals and Firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Bloc Quebecois will be voting in favour of Motions Nos. 7 and 8.

[Softwood Lumber, April 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the softwood lumber situation has a direct impact on thousands of workers throughout Quebec and Canada.

Does the minister realize that his responsibilities require him to come up with meaningful proposals, such as those put forward by the Bloc Quebecois to help the three groups directly affected by the crisis—large companies, small companies, and workers?

[Softwood Lumber, April 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, on March 22, the U.S. Department of Commerce set countervailing duties and anti-dumping duties for Canadian softwood lumber at 29%. These measures are having a devastating impact on the Quebec and Canadian softwood lumber industries. After consultation, the Bloc Quebecois has introduced a plan that would help the industry through the current crisis.

Is the Minister for International Trade aware of the urgent need for such a plan of assistance, which the provinces, the industry and workers are all calling for?

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

There are members on the other side who are still very vocal at this late hour, and I hope that we will be hearing from them.

I thank the members of the Progressive Conservative Party/Democratic Representative Caucus Coalition for raising this issue. They should carry on with the important work they are doing here. There is still a lot to be done. Judging by the attitude shown by the government, I think that the battle is far from over.

I hope that they can take action and meet public expectations. It has been a pleasure for me to take part in this debate tonight.

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, with all that I am hearing from the other side of the House, I am surprised that no one else is asking to be recognized. So many are speaking all at once. This reminds me of the days when I used to visit my uncle's farm. In the henhouse, we could hear all the hens cackling away. We are hearing the same thing coming from the other side. They are really noisy.

If they have things to say, let them rise in their place and speak. Now is the time to have a debate. There will be a good 35 minutes left this evening. I am convinced that, given the Chair's open-mindedness, they could even ask for an extension and they would get it with the unanimous consent of the House. We would agree to that, if that is what they want, because then we would hear what they have to say.

In conclusion, some people need those whom they elected to assume their responsibilities. And this entails acting, acting for those members of local communities who rely on resources.

This evening, we heard a plea from Atlantic Canada. The same has happened regarding other issues, including softwood lumber. This is affecting other communities. It is high time that it became a government priority and be acted on.

There is one thing I want to add. Problems are being neglected. Whether we are talking about the aboriginal issue or the fisheries issue, waiting will not make the problems go away. These problems will stay with us for years and years if we do not address them right away.

Moreover, the aboriginal issue and the fisheries issue are closely related. We do not have to deal with them so much in Quebec, but we do have to deal with the issue of how communities interact with one another within our territory. We have a very interesting agreement with the Cree for the development of northern Quebec. This agreement is very important for the future.

In areas such as fisheries, we must be able to address these situations and to avoid the problems that we have experienced until now.

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

Not in the least, it is not out of context. I invite them to look it up—

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

I would ask the Liberal members to be silent. In any case, that is what you do best. Keep on doing that. It will not change anything. You are used to that. Do not change anything.

I am happy to join all those who are standing up for their communities. It is our fundamental role as members of parliament. We have to represent the people of our communities. That is what they expect from us.

I was among those who were not too keen on staying here late tonight, but as I listened to the debate, I realized how important it was for these people.

When people voted in elections for members from this side of the House—and it is not just for members of the Bloc Quebecois, but for Conservative members, for members of the Coalition, and New Democrat members, like the one who spoke earlier as well as those from the Canadian Alliance, but especially those from the Progressive Conservative Party/Democratic Representative Caucus Coalition—they did so because it was important for their communities.

People expected that when the member they elected got here, in Ottawa, he or she would raise issues that are important to them. It is a shame that on the other side of the House, they try to ridicule issues that are important to people, that they are concerned about all kinds of accessory things, like, for example, the fact that some of them will be missing their Thursday evening reception. Fine, that is their problem.

Once again, it is high time that they sit up and listen, that they hear the message, the cry for help from communities that live in areas with resource based economies. Quite often, it is the entire industry. Employment in a given region depends entirely upon the resource. In the case of the fishery, many people have lived off this resource, and depended on it for generations.

Today's debate may be secondary for some, but not for these people. I hope that there will be enough pressure put on the people across the way to embarass them into action. The bar is high though, because the parallel is one of their predecessors, the former and ambitious Minister of Industry, at one time, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, who at least fought a bit harder. Perhaps he only appeared to make an effort, but he always did make a bit of an effort. Now, there is nary a one of them on the other side that lifts a finger or makes an effort. It is quite despicable.

Mr. Speaker, you granted an emergency debate and it was up to you whether or not to agree to this request. You decided that it was an important issue that should be debated in the House, out of respect for the Chair, for the institution and for those elected to sit here. I hope that the government members, those who are not necessarily here, but who may be following the debate, and those who read the transcripts or a report of what happened here, will say, “This is an alarm sounding. Certain communities need us, need us to act”.

Furthermore, parliament will not be sitting for two weeks. They have the time to act. When we come back to the House, I hope they will announce that they intend to take action. Of course, we all know that these problems are not simple. However, it is not by waiting for years and years that the problem will be solved.

It is high time that this government to made good on its claim of being influential and to sat down to find a solution. Everybody knows, of course, that the resource is rare because of bad management of stocks earlier on; stocks that are not inexhaustible were overfished.

Fortunately, for a few years now, people have been raising our awareness about the environment and the protection of our environmental assets. They are not unlimited and we must manage them carefully. It is extremely important and it has become part of our habits, our behaviour and our planning. People accept that.

Those who earn their living in the fishing industry have made majaor sacrifices because of the dwindling the stocks, in recent years.

Even if we believed in theory that we would lose jobs in some areas but create some in others--and I was among those who strongly supported free trade, international trade and so on--the fact is that it takes more than just a few years for those who so far had made a living from fishing to train for other jobs and find work. Transition is much more complex and takes a lot longer than that. Resistance to change and adaptation problems always occur. Sometimes, we, on the outside, are not aware of the development potential of the more traditional industries.

In the last few decades, or the last decade, all we have talked about was the new economy, the high tech industries, and we focused all our efforts and energy on these important activities.

In the meantime, a lot of people behind the scenes, within the government and the public service, too often were heard saying something like “the industries in our resource regions are fully developed; our future is elsewhere”, but that is not true at all. Opportunities abound.

Take Abitibi—Témiscamingue and northern Quebec as an example. Very often people think that the mining potential has been wholly developed. In reality, however, there is still major potential left. Some people are not aware of these realities, do not experience them, are not open to them. I would invite them not only to be open to foreign markets, but also open to learning about our own society. There are too many MPs from urban ridings who are oblivious to what is going on in the regions.

I will, moreover, cite one of the colleagues on the other side. He said the Minister of Finance was going to have to learn to differentiate between rural areas and major urban centres. Last week, the member for Abitibi--Baie-James--Nunavik said “In Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the Minister of Finance is going to have to learn to make this distinction”. Imagine, a member of the Liberal caucus stating publicly, in a region, that the Minister of Finance cannot make this differentiation. This is cause for concern.

I can understand the people in all the remote communities that are mainly centred on development—

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

It is too bad we cannot have a more interactive debate. I feel like a dozen members are talking to me, all at the same time. But I am pleased to see, at such a late hour, so many Liberal members listening to us, which is seldom the case during the day. I see that you are agreeing with what I am saying, Mr. Speaker.

Indeed, what do we hear from the other side of the House except hubbub while we speak? It is silence, or almost. Nobody has anything to say for the moment. Where are the Liberal members representing those communities? What are they doing in practical terms to put pressure on their government after they went around during the election campaign, saying, “Elect us and you will see that we will get things moving”? Afterwards, they find themselves in their ridings justifying or defending the federal government. But here they do not rock the boat.

That issue is not a major issue in our area, but those who are raising the issue are the members from the Coalition and the Tories. Why are the Liberals saying nothing, or next to nothing, and why are they not very active? This is extremely disturbing.

Members of the Bloc Quebecois do not want to sit here for years and years, but I do not wish those who will be sitting in this House many years from now to have the same kind of debate we are having tonight. Mr. Speaker, I am convinced you will be in the chair for a very long time, and that you do not wish to have to preside over an emergency debate on the same subject matter four or five years from now.

One thing has struck me since I came here. I thought Canada was an important player internationally, but it is extremely disappointing to realize that its influence is very limited. Why is it that with this issue, we seem to be unable to take the leadership in order to find a solution? Why is it that fishers in Atlantic communities are once more in such a desperate situation that they have to beg the federal government to help, to take action and do something meaningful to bring about a settlement?

I made a comparison a little earlier. The same thing is happening with a lot of issues. Very often, the communities involved are rural communities. Right here, all we have is slick books and documents on the defence of rural life, but it does not mean much for the government.

In my own area, for example, during the election campaign over a year ago, a whole bunch of ministers came and visited us. We had never seen so many of them is such a short period of time. They kept telling us how important resource regions are. The Liberal candidate in the riding next to mine won the election, fortunately or unfortunately for him, by promising investments of $300 million in a resource region like Abitibi--Témiscamingue and northern Quebec. They have yet to materialize.

What promises were made to Atlantic communities and people who earn a living in the fisheries? What kind of expectations were created then and not met, so that people are is such a situation today?

The level of inactivity here is appalling when it comes to dealing with the problems of primary resource regions. The people across the way lecture the provinces that are having a hard time managing certain responsibilities. Let the federal government manage properly in its own jurisdictions before it tells the provinces what to do.

The fishery issue is a good example of the federal government's dismal failure. It has been a total fiasco from the beginning to the end. The situation might have been better many years ago, but since I have been here in parliament and since I have taken an interest in politics, the federal government's record on fisheries management has always been disastrous. We have seen it in Quebec in the Lower St. Lawrence, the Gaspé Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands.

At the time, the member for Bonaventure--Gaspé--Îles-de-la-Madeleine, who was doing a tremendous job on fisheries, had to fight constantly to ensure that the government would raise the issue and deal with it, a little. But now, his successor is nowhere to be seen. We never hear about him. I hope that the people from this region will soon realize the trickery or see that they were deluded into believing that a Liberal MP could help them to move this whole issue forward.

I see that I still have a little time and I have to admit that, with such a large audience, it is tempting to use all the time alloted.