Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to suggest that having three ministers, pleased as we are to have them for an hour, is not an adequate way to properly asses the impacts of this legislation.
Since I have only five minutes to try to deal with these issues, I want to focus on some of the concerns that have been raised about the Fisheries Act changes, including the concerns of two former Conservative fisheries ministers.
One of them, Tom Siddon, said:
This is a covert attempt to gut the Fisheries Act, and it’s appalling that they should be attempting to do this under the radar.
John Fraser, also a Conservative fisheries minister back in 1984, expressed his concern about eliminating appropriate safeguards and a lack of “understanding, intelligence or wisdom”.
Let me start, Minister Ashfield, with the factors to be taken into account to allow activities harmful to fish. Absent from these fundamental environmental principles, such as the precautionary principle and the ecosystem approach...they are removed from the proposed changes. There were changes proposed between 2006 and 2008 that were meant to “modernize” the Fisheries Act. These fundamental principles were included in that.
They're not here. Why is that, Minister? Is it because you now have a majority and you feel you can throw these fundamental principles to the wind? This seems to be something that the scientists and biologists have taken as being extremely important to manage the fisheries and manage habitat. You have removed them. Why?