I was talking about overfishing. Many salmon monitoring programs have been cut to the bone, and we shouldn't be fishing if we don't know how many fish we have.
There are tremendous opportunities around habitat restoration. One great place to start is with the 1,500 kilometres of formerly prime salmon habitat that are being needlessly blocked by decrepit flood control structures in the lower Fraser Valley. Restoration projects create good jobs, create salmon habitat and, in this example, make our communities even safer from flooding. We need to do much more. We need to stop destroying habitat to begin with.
We should also protect endangered salmon populations under Canada's Species at Risk Act. That is what it's for, but so far, every single proposed listing has been rejected simply to preserve unsustainable fishing opportunities.
Finally, this government did a great thing by strengthening the Fisheries Act. Now they need to implement their own law and our national sustainable fisheries framework by coming up with recovery targets and rebuilding plans for endangered salmon and steelhead populations.
The bottom line is that we need the government to serve the broad public interest, because masses of people across our province, from across the political spectrum and from all walks of life, want their children and grandchildren to go out and see and catch salmon in their local waters for many years to come.