On this eel-legal fishery, I said, “An elver is a baby eel.”
The department asked me to actually explain this to the minister—the officials. I'm not sure what all the paycheques and bonuses they're getting paid are for, when little old me had to explain to the fisheries minister what an elver was, but I did. That's part of this issue of good relationships in this ministerial accountability letter with the opposition critics.
I tried. I said, “Look, I'm not going to raise this in Parliament. I'm going to give you a chance to fix it.” That's the way I operate. There's the stuff that we have to do in Parliament, but this one is so important. “Please, Minister, will you look at this? Will you look into this? We have poachers from all over the place. In fact, I wish you could see this.”
I had a text today that came from Digby County, from the fishing community, with a picture of a truck arriving from the United States. Digby County is in Nova Scotia, in the riding of West Nova. Digby scallops are the best scallops in the world, by the way.
The picture that was sent to me was from one of the big spokespeople for a big fishing alliance. He sent me this picture. I'm sure you can't see it. I don't know whether I should block this out, but there is a licence plate number of a Maine truck that has just arrived in Digby County.
Do you know where he's located? He's located at the local hardware store. Why would a truck from Maine be at a hardware store in Digby, Nova Scotia? I'm sure everybody was asking that.
They were going in to buy nets, to buy anchors for those nets and to buy bubblers. What's a bubbler for? You put a bubbler in the water, like with a fish tank. They keep oxygen going, because all fish need oxygen. This fellow, whom we know and have reported many times to DFO, has been illegally poaching elvers at $5,000 a kilogram, and he is still here, from the United States, and doing it, unabandoned.
In this search for Freeland...I think five days in the House of Commons a month is actually more frequent than DFO enforcement showing up at the rivers with thousands of poachers.
The minister said to me, “I don't know what an elver is,” so I explained it to her. I gave her the chance. For months, I waited. It was like Waiting for Godot. You know that old movie. I waited. Please. I'm hoping the minister was earnest.
In her mandate letter.... Let me be sure. So that you know and everybody watching knows, this requirement in the Minister of Finance's mandate letter from the Prime Minister is that they maintain “constructive relationships” with their critic.
Guess what? When I looked at the Minister of Fisheries's mandate letter, it has a similar paragraph. In fact, if I turn it over and don't see who it's addressed to, it's identical. The final page, page 2, says this says this to the Minister of Fisheries. This will sound familiar, because I just read it in the other one:
The success of this Parliament will require Parliamentarians—