Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak on Bill C-98, the oceans act, an act to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
I will mention what I agree with and what I disagree with. I will give some constructive suggestions to make our oceans better, to improve our resource management and to ensure we have safe, clean oceans with viable populations of flora and fauna within those oceans for now and forever more.
Unfortunately we will create another level of bureaucracy with this act. There are aspects of it that actually improve, streamline and make the system more efficient, for example with the amalgamation of the coast guard. We completely agree with that. However we have created in the oceans management strategy a whole new level of bureaucracy to monitor people monitoring other people when in effect we should just be acting.
Unfortunately we continually study, report and analyse aspects not only within this ministry but within many others when the actual facts are already there, waiting to be dealt with. Sadly with this bill we see the same situation. Historically we can see the consequences of continuing to act, continuing to report and continuing to study.
We have seen the decimation of our oceans and the fish populations within them. The disaster on the east coast has been a profound tragedy for all people living in the maritimes. On the west coast unfortunately the fish stocks are facing an impending disaster. For years the west coast fisheries of many species have been decimated. The reason is not El Niño, not mackerel, not warm water, although they can have a contributing effect. The primary reason for the decimation of fish stocks on the west coast is poaching, poaching and poaching. That is the cold, hard reality of
what has happened on the west coast. It also happened on the east coast before.
Unfortunately the ministry has been unwilling and unable to deal with it. It is not because DFO officers did not want to enforce the law but because middle management bureaucracy meddled in the ability of the DFO officers to enforce the laws which protect the environment and species for generations to come. These individuals are hiding behind their ethnic origins and using the aboriginal fishing strategy to poach and pillage our fish stock. Those are the facts.
The colour or race of persons do not matter. If they are poachers, they are poachers and they should be dealt with in the same way as other people. This ministry has been unwilling and unable to do that. We see aboriginal people poaching up and down the Fraser River. DFO officers are unwilling to enforce the law because they are afraid of being shot. On Vancouver Island Vietnamese people have been decimating the shellfish stocks in full view of other people and the DFO officers have been unable to deal with it. They have been told by the bureaucratic masters above them that they should leave well enough alone.
There are too many nets in the water. Seiners are going out into the straits of Juan de Fuca and are vacuuming the oceans. The DFO must take a leadership role to decrease the number of nets.
The aboriginal fishing strategy is a disaster. Furthermore it is illegal. Court cases in the B.C. Supreme Court have determined that it is illegal. The Sparrow case my hon. friend mentioned proved there was no legal jurisdiction for the AFS.
We should have one commercial fishing strategy for all people. It does not serve the law-abiding aboriginal people who care about and fish the resource. Nor does it serve anybody else to allow people within their community to hide behind the AFS and poach fish. The ministry has put people who are some of the biggest poachers in British Columbia in charge of the aboriginal fishing strategy. The aboriginal people know that and they are quite angry at the DFO for doing it.
As I said before, there is widespread poaching of shellfish. Widespread poaching of abalone was stopped in 1989, but everyone who lives on Vancouver Island knows that abalone is being poached.
Companies continue to dump their garbage into the oceans on the west coast and on the east coast. The ministry has been unable and unwilling to deal with it. It should be working closely with the Ministry of the Environment to develop a system to identify the people who are polluting our oceans, to enforce the law and to penalize them. Furthermore, so that it does not cost taxpayers money, the government should levy the costs for cleaning up the dumping and the pollution on the shoulders of the groups or companies that are doing it. It should not cost the taxpayer any money whatsoever to do that. The full cost and beyond should be borne by the polluters themselves.
I also encourage the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans to work closely with the Ministry of the Environment and various universities across the country that are doing very interesting research in the oceans. They are also developing systems with strong commercial properties that can be sold internationally.
We as a country can be a leader in areas such as aquaculture, resource management, fisheries and oceans management. All we need to do is have the courage to identify these sectors, promote them and capitalize on them for our economy and our country. We have been far too lame and non-aggressive in this area.
I suggest that we do the following. We should give DFO officers more autonomy and stop letting them be hamstrung by middle management. I strongly encourage the minister to look at what is happening in middle management. Some of them are telling him what he wants to hear, not what is actually occurring.
When the minister went to the west coast he did a very good thing by sitting down with the DFO officers and speaking with them in a forthcoming fashion. I think he found that productive. I know they did. I strongly encourage him to continue the practice.
The sad byproduct of that meeting unfortunately is that some of the DFO officers have been penalized for being forthcoming and as a result have been removed from their positions at great cost to the ministry and at great cost to the fisheries. This is completely unfair.
We must make enforcement a priority. We must allow DFO officers to continue to do their job. We must allow them to enforce the law as it is written and arrest and penalize anybody who poaches regardless of whom they happen to be.
I put forth to the minister about a month and a half ago a new idea by which we can improve our fish stocks and generate funds for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It involved using salmon hatcheries.
A recent study indicated that salmon hatcheries, many of which are inefficient, do not need to exist. I gave the minister a way for the department to pay for the hatcheries and to earn revenues from them. They would become self-sustaining and would not be a lodestone around the taxpayer's neck.
I hope he pays careful attention to it. A model of it will be on the Sooke River in my riding of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. It is a well thought out plan and will make the hatchery self-sustaining in the future.
The hon. minister should look at new ways to manage our oceans and new ways to increase our jurisdiction beyond the 200-mile zone. The reality is that we cannot even manage our oceans in the 2-mile zone, let alone the 200-mile zone. We have to show more courage in this way. I am hoping with the amalgamation of the coast guard we can use the coast guard more effectively to arrest individuals who are poaching.
I warn once again that a lot of people are coming over from the United States of America to poach in B.C. waters because their waters are completely closed to fishing. The DFO has been completely unable to do anything about that.
The officers should also be given the ability to work overtime and the ability to do night patrols and weekend patrols when a lot of poaching occurs.
There are ways in which to generate money from something like this, so it will not cost the ministry more money. I strongly encourage the minister to look at these matters. My colleagues and I would be more than happy to help him in the endeavour to have one fishery for generations to come.