Madam Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest to the member's speech. The facts are quite different from the arguments he made here.
The member is trying to do two things at the same time. His party makes an argument as to why there should be further cuts in every department of government. Then he gets up in his own local interest, decries the government for the cuts it has made in trying to balance the budget and have a streamlined administration of departments, such as fisheries and oceans.
Quite clearly he cannot have it both ways. He cannot have the leader of his party or his finance critic get up day after day in this place and say: "Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut", and then get up during debates in the House of Commons and criticize the government and say: "Do not cut; put more resources in".
I am quite familiar with this diverse view that is shared by members of the Reform Party. As chairman of the committee that examined this bill, I had to live with it almost daily. Members of the Reform Party would sit down and agree with the individuals who came and made submissions. They indicated quite clearly that this bill was long overdue, that it was a courageous act by the minister of fisheries of the day, who is now the premier of Newfoundland, and the Prime Minister of Canada to come forward with such a consolidation.
Each time they would agree with the witness but when it came time to debate the principles and to support what the evidence had told us during the committee hearings, they ran away and scattered. And then they get other members who were not on the committee to stand up in this place and try to have it both ways. That is not going to be the case today.
The member just said that this government and the current minister and the previous minister basically did not have the intestinal fortitude to deal with the issues of the day. I would ask him whether or not his party supported, when we were at committee, the consolidation of programs and legislation inherent in the oceans act.
Did Reform support the efforts of this government to go in and reduce a bloated bureaucracy in many departments, including fisheries and oceans which was reduced by 40 per cent, most of which was at head office? Did Reform support the efforts of the former minister of fisheries and this government in going before
the court of world opinion and saying no to overfishing when it came to Spain and the raiding of our turbot stock on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks?
The member cannot have it both ways. Is he prepared to get up and tell us that yes, in those areas we have been courageous and yes, that what we have done is right, not always what was easy but that we have taken our responsibilities as we should have as a government? If he is, then it is fairly clear to me he is more concerned about playing to a diminishing local audience of supporters in his riding instead of getting up here and engaging in the type of vigorous and knowledgeable debate that is normally the case when bills come before this place.