Madam Speaker, it is the first time I have spoken from the left side of my chair instead of the right side and perhaps my left leaning ideology may come out a little stronger in this speech than it has in the last speeches I have made in the Chamber.
I hope the bill finds a very broad degree of support by members on all sides of the House. It clearly establishes the framework of a piece of legislation, a commitment given by the government as espoused by no less than the Prime Minister to get a focus in government on the development and management of oceans and ocean policy.
The bill has been a long time in coming and has been awaited with much anticipation by many individuals and organizations dealing with the marine environment. The Canadian Wildlife Fund and many other organizations have pushed for many years for the government to come in with a piece of legislation that would consolidate the administration of all governmental activities related to oceans as well as ensure the number one prerogative and prerequisite of this policy be conservation.
If measures taken by governments respecting management of oceans and oceans policy did not pass the fundamental test of being environmentally sound, they would not be passed.
The bill affirms the commitment of the government to a new approach to oceans management. The preamble clearly outlines the government's commitment to manage the oceans in a sustainable, environmental and ecologically sound fashion.
The bill consolidates and gives impact and full effect to the laws of Canada, not just marine laws but environmental laws in our 200-mile limit. It goes through a whole bunch of definitions of the contiguous zone, the coastal zone, the 200-mile economic zone and all of those things.
In essence it puts in a single piece of legislation the regulatory legislative framework for us to act in the best interests of those who rely on our marine resource for a living. It directs government as to how it should deal with the marine environment.
Part II of the act tries to consolidate a lot of governmental activity with respect to the oceans. I have been critical about the way the government has handled the oceans generally. I have been critical for fairly good reason.
Over the years governments have come to see the ocean as a place to exploit a resource called fish. We can see this very clearly by the difficulties we have on both coasts, more poignantly perhaps on the east coast with the collapse of the ground fishery and over 100,000 people without employment. Coastal communities are dying and a way of life unique to that part of Canada is perhaps facing extinction.
It is all because governments have not been able to deal comprehensively in policy with that ocean resource. Current legislation almost ignores that there is an interrelationship between various policy arms of the government with respect to the health of the ocean resource.
It also ignores that there is an ecology within the ocean that deals with living and non-living organisms. In the last number of years Canada has worked aggressively at the United Nations. It has been one of the states that has promoted to a great extent and has perhaps been the lead nation on some of the major conservation efforts with the United Nations law of the sea.
Canada has talked a lot about the need for some international regimes to deal with oceans, to deal with those fringe areas, straddling stocks, highly migratory stocks. However, there are other issues in the law of the sea convention that Canada had some difficulty with, deep ocean bed mining, for example.
How do we reconcile ourselves as a state to that? Whose resource is this to manage? When we get on to the continental shelf there are laws dealing with our proprietary right and our management responsibilities in the water column. Perhaps they are less clear about which level of government has jurisdiction or whether
the Canadian government has any legal jurisdiction for the sea bed for minerals or deep ocean mining.
There has been much debate in the last year with the Americans about sedentary species when dealing with the continental shelf. Who has management rights of those species? Who has the right of first exploitation and who has the responsibility to manage? The act seeks to consolidate in a fairly substantial way all the various issues, programs and legislation.
I am pleased with the direction the bill has taken. I am pleased that it gives primary responsibility for co-ordination of the application of these pieces of legislation and regulations to the minister of fisheries. However, I am from Missouri, I am yet to be convinced the bill goes as far as it should to ensure a sharp edge to the sword in the management and policy development dealing with our marine resources.
I am a bit confused that in the bill we give the minister of fisheries primary responsibility for co-ordination. I would rather see a direct line of accountability for the administration of some of the acts which still fall under the purview of other departments and other ministers.
I think back to the dispute we had not long ago when two ministers worked very well together in dealing with the turbot dispute with the European Union, more particularly and poignantly with the Spanish fleet decimating a straddling stock. We almost saw another stock going into the record book as being extinct as a commercial and viable stock on our east coast.
We had the good fortune at that time to have the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans working together on a co-ordinated and combined approach to resolve and put together the Canadian position, making sure the Canadian position was put to the international community very strongly and firmly and that it was accepted by the international community. As a result of that close working relationship, sharing the same goals, we were able to save a species and defuse a difficult international situation that had arisen with respect to the turbot allocation on the east coast.
I am extremely pleased the bill is going to committee. As chairman of the committee, I want the committee to look at whether there are some pieces of legislation currently outside the direct jurisdiction of the minister, although the minister may have the responsibility for co-ordination, where we possibly can make a case that those pieces of legislation and programs should be more properly moved over to the minister of fisheries.
When we talk about downsizing and government and operational review we must look at what makes sense. The policy as stated in the preamble of the bill is one I heartily support and I hope it will be supported by all members of the House.
Part III of the bill talks about the minister of fisheries having primary responsibility for ocean research. It is an absolute given. There is more than fish in our oceans. There is more benefit than exploiting the stocks in our oceans. Ocean science in itself is a generator of wealth and employment which can be exported on our east and west coasts and in the labs of central Canada.
I want to make sure that when the bill is passed the minister of fisheries, as stated in part III, has the tools at his disposal to ensure there is proper direction and proper resources applied to the whole area of marine and ocean science.
In my riding of Dartmouth I am lucky to have the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, a world class centre for oceans research. In excess of 12,000 people produce good products. There is partnering by the scientific community employed by the government and the scientific community in the Halifax-Dartmouth area. Some of that technology is being exported around the world.
In that facility the geological survey is doing incredible work. The work of the labs on the east and west coasts is leading science around the world. People from educational and academic institutions and other governments around the world come to see how we do our research in Canada.
I get concerned, however, that lab is not under the direction of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. It is under the direction of the Minister of Natural Resources. It is not the primary objective or job of that department to ensure that deep ocean science has a pre-eminent position when you deal with where your resources go inside a department.
At the same time, we have provisions dealing with deep ocean dumping, which seems to me should more likely be over with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. Currently, although there would be a requirement in this act to see the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans as the lead, it does not hand that particular responsibility over to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
We have a chance through committee to show two things. One is that the committee can work. I have an incredibly good committee, and I am very proud as chairman to say that most of the work we do is non-partisan. Sometimes we fall prey to the fact that we are practitioners of the political profession and sometimes we become partisan.
As a chair of a committee I want to let everybody in this place know that I believe there is a proper role for a committee to play with respect to examining legislation. I am hoping that when this bill passes second reading and gets to the committee we in the committee will do a fairly exhaustive review of this bill and will be
able to come back with a bill that is true to the principles and if necessary strengthens the hand of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.