Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is the 13th day of a different city every day, but I wanted to cast my mind back. I first knew Mr. McCurdy from his heroic work with the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union in trying to protect the north Atlantic cod from destruction.
This was first put in my mind earlier today when Greg Malone was testifying. I have been doing a few scribbles and trying to figure out if there is really a link between the MPs we had in the House at the critical period that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was operating in a way that was guaranteed to lead to the extermination of our commercial cod stocks and the voices in Parliament at the time.
I've just looked at the 34th Parliament, which was in session during the critical years from 1988 to 1993, and we had a very powerful Progressive Conservative who was in charge of that file: John Crosbie. We had another Progressive Conservative and the rest were Liberals. There were no New Democratic Party voices at that time in Parliament.
I'm looking at when you lose the diversity of voices, and there weren't voices inside Parliament as I recall at the time. I was at the Sierra Club of Canada, and I was working with inshore fishermen and others trying to get DFO to reduce the quota so that the cod stocks wouldn't be eradicated.
I don't remember any Newfoundland MPs who were particularly active trying to help us. You have a better memory for this. You were right here at the time. Is it a stretch to think we would have had potentially a different result if there had been more diversity of voices in Parliament in that period, or is that a non-effective concern?