Mr. Speaker, I hear the hon. member for Halifax saying she invites me there. She may be aware that I just came back from there. I talked to a number of fishermen in the Halifax area, the Dartmouth area and Central Nova. I went down to the wharfs and talked to the small guys with the small boats, not the big guys. I heard what they had to say about this fee increase.
It is interesting to see the parliamentary secretary over there defending what the government is doing when it flies in the face of what I heard back in Atlantic Canada. I would suggest to the hon. member for Halifax that maybe she wants to go and spend a little bit of time talking to some of the fishermen in her riding, because she might get a different point of view from what she is getting from the parliamentary secretary.
I ran into one old fellow and asked him how he was making out in the fishery this year. He said: "Well, it is pretty tough. My fingernails are all wore out trying to hang on." This is the kind of attitude the parliamentary secretary displays to these fishermen who are having a very difficult time surviving from year to year.
The parliamentary secretary defends the increased fees and says it is a public resource and the fishermen ought to be paying a suitable fee for access to that resource. I do not think anybody in Canada would disagree with that, but is a 400 per cent increase in one lump sum reasonable? Regardless of one's income for the year, the person pays it up front in one lump sum. Is that reasonable? I do not think most Canadians would find that reasonable.