In my response to Mr. Stoffer, where we couldn't get into all sides of the bottom trawling...I might have been a little more pointed than I would have liked to be or should be. Don't think for a minute that bottom trawling doesn't disturb us; it does, absolutely. However, if you look at--and again I can use any problem--Nova Scotia, the west coast, certainly Newfoundland and Labrador, many of our fishermen presently use some form of bottom trawling.
If today we banned bottom trawling, Mr. Byrne's riding would be practically wiped out because of the shrimp fishery, Mr. Matthews' because of the ground fishery, and parts of Mr. Stoffer's area on both, Even P.E.I., which has shrimp...I don't think they fish it themselves, but they would be affected, and certainly on the west coast...many of our methods of fishing.
Does that mean we shouldn't improve the technology? We should be. In fact, as we speak, there are companies in this country, companies in our own province, that have major advances in developing less harmful technology in the fishery. That's one way we have to go.
Are there areas where we are presently dragging, where we probably shouldn't? There probably are, and if there are, we should deal with that. But we just can't go out overnight and wipe out an industry, which means you wipe out communities. So somewhere in between, we move forward to doing what's right.
In relation to the coast guard, the extra money I mentioned, $45 million in operations.... You're not hearing about coast guard boats being tied up this year because they don't have fuel: we put money where it's needed. We have extra surveillance in all our areas: the north, the west, and on the east coast. We've added tremendously to our fleet. You yourself talked about being at the christening of the Cape MacKay, and I want to make sure our members don't think we're naming our boats after our parliamentarians--we're not, we're naming them after geographic capes throughout the country, and the ones on the west coast are named after capes.