That is right. The minister truly believes that he is as interested in sustainable development as we all are, but from what I have heard in the House on the issue the facts bear that this is nonsense.
I will tell the House what has been happening on both coasts, particularly the west coast where we are trying to avert the disaster that occurred on the east coast. I have repeatedly warned the minister of the devastating poaching that is taking place on the west coast. We have seen very little being done about it. The proof is in the pudding. All we need to do is look at the catchments that have come back this year in so many different fish species to see the devastation that has been wracked on our west coast fish species. There is a lot of poaching going on. I will give some examples.
In Mill Bay in my riding there was a three-day salmon derby which 300 fishermen attended and caught seven salmon. On Hornby Island just a couple of months ago there was another salmon derby. The third prize winning fish was a dogfish because nobody caught any salmon. That is what is happening in the west coast salmon fishery.
It is affecting groundfish and other species. One could not catch a ling cod if one's life depended on it. Shellfish are being decimated. The abalone fishery was closed in 1989 on the west coast. Yet there is widespread poaching of abalone all over the west coast. Just recently the ex-head of the Vancouver aquarium said that a large population of Asian individuals are pillaging the shellfish off Stanley Park.
I invite the minister and the parliamentary secretary to come to Vancouver Island to see the decimation of the shellfish stocks. A number of Vietnamese individuals on Vancouver Island have been pillaging shellfish all over the island. DFO has been unable to deal with the problem. It is a huge problem as our shellfish stocks are being significantly affected. Furthermore the poachers are taking shellfish out of polluted areas.
Seiners are vacuuming the ocean off Vancouver Island. Since 1957 when the seiners first started catching salmon there has been a reproduceable inverse relationship between the intensity of seine fishing, the numbers of spawners that are coming back and the catchment by sports fishermen.
Just a couple of years ago there was a revenge seine fishery to penalize the Americans, yet we decimated our own fish stocks. That is not sustainable management, but that was the decision made by the ministry.
All salmon species are being decimated. All one has to do is go up the Fraser River to see what is happening. There are nets strung from one end to the other. Aboriginal people are stringing nets across the river and are pillaging and raping the fish stocks. The ministry knows that. It should be coming down on individuals who are hiding behind the aboriginal fish strategy to poach fish. They have been unwilling to do that because it is politically incorrect. I strongly advise the ministry that for all people, aboriginal and
non-aboriginal people, it should have one commercial fishing strategy. It should enforce the laws for all people regardless of who they are.
Fish know no bounds. They do not care who is pillaging them, but there are individuals hiding behind their ethnic origins who are doing it, and because it is not politically expedient the DFO is unable and unwilling to deal with it.
I do not blame the officers because they are hamstrung by mid-level bureaucrats that are hamstringing the minister. Part of the problem is in the bureaucracy. When DFO was reorganized it transferred decision making from hardworking DFO officers in the field to mid-level bureaucrats in Ottawa and Vancouver. The number of DFO officers went down.
The result is that decisions are made a distance away from where the actual poaching is taking place. What we see are decisions that do not actually affect the problems in the fisheries. It has also contributed to the decimation of fish stocks on the west coast.
I actually commend the ministry for increasing the numbers of fisheries officers somewhat, but I bring to its attention that it has also increased the bureaucracy. I give the example of what happened in my riding in Sooke where they closed the only fisheries office and increased the bureaucracy in Victoria.
The result has been greatly increased pressure from poachers within Vancouver Island and poachers coming across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from America. They know full well they cannot fish in their own waters because of the decimation of the stocks. Therefore they come to good old Canada and decimate our stocks. They know they will not be penalized because fisheries officers are unprepared to deal with them.
I bring to the attention of the ministry that the morale of DFO officers is at an all time low because mid-level bureaucrats have hamstrung them. They have made it unable for them to do their job or to acquire the means to do their job. The ministry needs to investigate the loss of morale. It is losing a lot of good people who have historically done a great job in fisheries.
Another aspect is that groundfish are being decimated. We find that trollers are decimating the reefs all over the west coast in an effort to extract whatever fish are there. These delicate reefs are being smashed to pieces.
We need one commercial fishing strategy. We also need to decrease the number of nets in the water. There are simply too many nets right now to make the extraction of species sustainable. We also need to decrease seiner activity and have a release program for adult Chinook salmon, which is possible if the weather is co-operative.
We should try to preserve sports fishing capability, the reason being that sports fishing injects on a per fish basis much more than the commercial fishery, in fact about $37 per fish.
We should enforce the law we have right now. I implore the ministry to enforce the laws we have. It has not been doing it. The poachers are aware of it and taking full advantage of the situation.
There should be commercial fishing strategy for all people. We should not allow poachers to hide behind the aboriginal fishing strategy for their own personal financial gain, at the expense of all honest fishermen from all walks of life.
We need to push for an extension of our jurisdiction beyond our 200-mile zone. There is a doughnut in the Pacific Ocean where immature salmon go to fatten up. International poachers are pillaging that doughnut of fish which normally come back to us. The issue was investigated years ago. For a number of reasons the investigation was quashed internally. We need to try to enforce through international agreement the preservation of that area so we can ensure that a reasonable number of fish will come back to us.
We also have to deal with the dumping of toxins that is occurring not only in our country but in others because they wind up in our ecosystem. I remind everyone of who is at the pinnacle of that ecosystem. The number one predator is man. This is what happens. Toxins are accumulated in an individual. The higher up one is in the predatory system, the more the toxins become concentrated and the greater chance they have of becoming carcinogenic and teratogenic.
I strongly advise the minister to work with science research and development in the Department of the Environment rather than have the department work in isolation. There are many very talented and skilled scientists in the Ministry of the Environment who are doing a lot of incredible work on the issue of sustainable development with respect to the oceans. I suggest they tap into that resource for the benefit of the fishery.
I also suggest co-operative effort between other ministries and a leadership role for DFO. I know it can play this role because it has many very talented people. We are looking for somebody to take a leadership role among the ministries and we have it within our capabilities.
The minister claims, as I have said before, that he is very much in favour of sustainable management of our resources. Yet in British Columbia he is closing down hatcheries left, right and centre. They closed the hatchery down in Sooke. If we did not have those hatcheries we would not have a fishery. That is the cold hard reality. If we do not have them the number of spawners coming back are negligible.
I propose the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans should start up a sustainable hatchery in my riding near Sooke. The start-up costs are $1 million with a quarter million dollars per year. It could be self-financing in four years. I ask him to look at the proposal. It could inject over $90 million into Vancouver Island. Furthermore it would be self-financing. We just need some co-operation from the ministry to do it.
I would also like to look at the area of aquaculture. We were a leader in aquaculture a few years ago. However, because of mismanagement and a lack of support from governments, Chile has now taken over from us in the aquaculture industry. We as a country can play a leadership role internationally in aquaculture.
Some very good work is being done in a vet college on Prince Edward Island and at the University of Prince Edward Island on research in aquaculture that could enable Canada to garner a niche in aquaculture and become a leader in the area. The economic spinoff benefits for the west coast would be huge.
I hope the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans will look into the matter and work in co-operation with the University of Prince Edward Island, and other universities that are similarly doing other exciting work, for the benefit of the people of the area and for the benefit of the resource.
The minister also claimed that he was interested in looking at protecting spawning sites. I completely agree. Yet we do not have adequate data on the spawning sites as they exist. We need to acquire them.
There is another aspect. There are other fisheries involving sea cucumbers, sea urchins and geoducks for which there is an open fishery. That would be absolutely fine except for the fact that we have absolutely no idea what stocks there are in these areas. We need to establish what the stocks are before we move ahead and cull a sustainable number of these species, to maintain a sustainable resource in these other shellfish species for the future.
Bill C-98 has a lot of good intentions. Unfortunately it falls far short of what it was meant to be. I hope the ministry can ask for the opinions of people in the areas that are being affected by the fishery. I hope and pray we will not have an east coast disaster on the west coast. As we stand here now, poaching is widespread through virtually every species we can imagine. The only people who are going to be hurt are future Canadians.
I would implore the minister once again to enforce the law for all people regardless of who they happen to be. It is not politically incorrect to enforce the law because the people who are poaching are of an immigrant population or are aboriginal people. It does not serve those people within those groups or any other group who are honest individuals within the industry and are working within the legal framework of that industry to have any group of people within their population poaching the fish and other fish species.
We need a sustainable fishery in this country. We can have a sustainable fishery in this country but we can only have it if the Department of Fisheries and Oceans shows the leadership it is obligated to show. I and my colleagues in the Reform Party would be more than happy to help the government to work toward that end. It just takes the political will, strength and courage to do that.