Mr. Speaker, quite frankly I am surprised at the attitude of the hon. member, given his previous experience with the fishery.
The fact of the matter is the Government of Canada is not reducing the groundfish sector. The Government of Canada is not shutting down the groundfish sector. The hard truth rather than the easy rhetoric is that the groundfish sector today is closed. There are 14 moratoriums in place. People in the groundfish sector are not working today and a great many, the majority, have not worked for two years.
The issue is not whether or not we are going to shut the sector down, but how much of the sector we can reopen, how much of the capacity we can employ based on the ability of the resource to sustain that sector.
We are taking the hard and difficult choices but the honest choices to work with communities, fishermen and plant workers to restore as much of the industry as possible and, where that is not possible, to give them the truth so they can make the decisions to rebuild their lives.
Does the member want us to do something different? If he does, we will not.