Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and speak on this very important bill in Parliament today. I am very privileged to have the opportunity to do so.
I will very quickly cover the purposes of the bill as I see it. I will make a few comments with respect to the concern this party has for the people of the region that is most closely identified on the east coast with the ocean itself.
To begin, the bill is an excellent piece of work. It does what experts on the sea have been talking about. It should have been done a long time ago. Even before I get into the main objectives of the bill, it has to be looked at against the backdrop of the kind of country Canada is.
There is no question Canada is a maritime nation. We have three seas as our main borders. We have the longest navigable coastline in the world. We have the longest non-navigable coastline in the world.
If one adds up the water space not including the Great Lakes which themselves comprise a large percentage of the fresh water in the world, it is a pretty large piece of territory if one extends out to the 200-mile economic zone and follows the coast all along and includes the Arctic waters.
The responsibility for the management of that piece of property, sea property and the resources beneath, is tremendous. It involves close co-ordination to ensure we are getting the most effective management we can.
Canada has had many departments involved with the management of the seas. We have the Canadian forces, with the navy; the solicitor general with the marine aspects of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; the old DFO as it was before this bill was conceived. Environment Canada has been doing surveys off the coast. The coast guard has been responsible for navigation and safety and keeping the sea routes open. Other departments have had peripheral concerns and interests.
The main purpose of this bill is to establish a framework to support the new oceans management regime for Canada and to consolidate the federal responsibility for Canada's oceans. The key word here is consolidation.
The other aspect of this bill that is very important is that it recognizes in domestic law Canada's jurisdiction over its maritime zones. That has been a very long time in coming.
Without wanting to sound partisan about this, the actions that were taken by the government with respect to the extension of jurisdiction beyond the 200-mile limit out to the nose and tail of the bank, which was not ours by accident of geography, is now in effect ours. Bill C-29 was passed in the House last year very quickly with the unanimous support of all parties, passed quickly by the Senate and subsequently recognized in the United Nations as being right, valid and proper.
One other thing the bill does is develop a new approach to managing the oceans and their resources. In that regard I want to pick one example. On the east coast of Newfoundland, Memorial University has what is considered by all those in the field of oceanography and marine sciences not just in Canada, not just in North America but throughout the world as being truly a centre of excellence.
It has scientific laboratories. It has the venue, the Logy Bay Research Station, the sea tunnel to test various sea foils, excellence again not just in Canada but throughout the world. It is one of the few resources of that nature that exists. It contains the pilotage training simulator which I had the opportunity, with some of the members of the defence committee, to witness. Certainly the reality factor was so high that one would find it difficult not believing one was not at sea.
These are a few examples of the elements of the Centres of Excellence that exist at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. I am very proud to have been associated with that over the years with some of my other colleagues and would hopefully continue to do so.
I want to address another aspect of this which is under the purview of ocean management and is certainly very much involved. This has to do with a statement made earlier by the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster, I think half in jest but I know with an element of seriousness. Because of that I felt constrained to respond to the concerns he raised in all seriousness.
I remind the House that in 1992 the cod fishery, after a bad year in 1991 because of ice that persisted all year, essentially had to be declared a failure. The previous government implemented a program called the northern cod assistance and recovery program to last for two years from 1992 with the hope that the northern cod stock would return. Regrettably, as we all know in the House, this has not happened.
This is a matter of fact. It is generally not known that the previous government-I make this point to make another point-had made no allowance for a replacement for that program in the
event the northern cod had not recovered and said so. The minister of the day in St. John's indicated to the Evening Telegram that the government could not really be expected to continue to provide the kind of compensation that was involved should the NCARP program not succeed.
When we became government we found that the budget and the books did not account for any money in the program to look after the failure of that program should the northern code not return. It was through the compassion of this government and the work of many of us in Atlantic Canada, spearheaded by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and many of his colleagues in cabinet that only new money was found in the first budget: $1.9 billion for the Atlantic strategy program, TAGS, as it is referred to. That program is not a perfect program but there are 39,000 people who depend on TAGS in the hopes the cod fishery will return.