Mr. Speaker, I barely got started on my speech on the fisheries act about two or three weeks ago so I would like to resume. For those watching, if they wish to look back in Hansard , they will get the first part where I was dealing basically with the aboriginal fishery and what Bill C-62 is all about.
This bill is about power: power for the minister and power for the bureaucracy. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans already has all the power and strength it needs to manage the fishery. The difficulty is that my colleague from Delta challenged the minister's authority and right to an aboriginal commercial fishery, not an aboriginal food fishery. Nobody disputes that. It is the right of aboriginals to fish commercially with other fishers not being allowed to fish that is being challenged. There is no equality in the fishery. That is what this bill is about.
Talk about overkill, the bill will extinguish the public right to fish. I have fished in the Alberni Canal for the past 15 years. That has been my right as a Canadian and this bill will overturn that. The only way that I or anyone in this House can go fishing will be with a decree or some kind of ministerial authority and that is absolutely wrong.
In a nutshell that is what is wrong with DFO. It manages from the top down. I have worked in the industry with the people at the bottom and they are a hard working and dedicated bunch. But it is the top end. As the member for Skeena has often said, why is it that DFO, a couple of blocks from the House of Parliament, has to have an office with 1,000 people? It is a two-hour plane ride to the nearest fish. The problem with DFO is that it is a top down bureaucracy.
This bill would give the minister complete discretion to manage the fishery through ministerial decrees and that is absolutely wrong. As well, within the bill there is absolutely no detail as to how this will be carried out. How are we as members in this House supposed to look at the bill and deal with the bill when there are absolutely no details on how it is going to be enforced? It will all be done through regulations at a later stage.
The Fraser River fishery has almost been eliminated. There has been practically no non-native commercial fishery on the Fraser River and that is this government's action. What happened to the equality of all fishers?
In British Columbia native fishers form 40 per cent of the fishery. They are already well represented in the fishery yet this bill will give them exclusive rights. This is not a slam against native fishers. What this country is about is equality of all Canadians. All Canadians regardless of their origin should have the right to that fishery and the minister wants to overturn that.
This is not just hearsay, it has been shown in the courts and it is law. Only commercial fishers have the right to sell fish. This has been shown in the Van der Peet, the NTC Smokehouse Limited and Gladstone supreme court decisions. The court ruled that aboriginals have no right to an exclusive commercial fishery yet this bill will overturn that. Bill C-62 is the minister's attempt to work his way around the law to give exclusive rights to specific groups which is absolutely wrong.
I do not believe the minister understands the bill, but do his bureaucrats? Absolutely. They are right on. This bill is coming from the bureaucrats, not from the minister. This is a classic example of a minister being run by his own bureaucrats.
This minister has shown his incompetence on the west coast through the lighthouse issue, the coast guard issue and now on the fisheries issue. He does not understand and does not care to look into what is going on on the B.C. coast. He is bungling once again by fundamentally taking away our public right to fish.
Let me quote the Liberal red book: "Conservation and rebuilding of fish stocks will be the top priority of Liberal fisheries policy, a policy that will also encompass broader ecological and environmental decisions. A Liberal government will implement effective conservation measures immediately, because if remaining stocks are not conserved now, there will be no fisheries industry left on which to build sustainable development".
One of the very first actions of this new minister was to close down a substantial number of hatcheries on the west coast. Clearly that is not conservation. The government continues to ignore the fact that the fishing industry is in serious danger from declining stocks. There are problems with the Americans mainly in Alaska. We need strict enforcement of the conservation measures.
The Liberal red book states: "A Liberal government will deal with foreign fishing outside the 200-mile limit and scrutinize foreign quotas within the 200-mile limit". This has not happened under this minister.
The west coast fishery is being ignored by this government. British Columbia has 12.9 per cent of the population. We have over 3.8 million people. We are a cash cow to the government and we are tired of being ignored by the government.
Earlier I mentioned issues that the minister has ignored, for example, lighthouses. The former minister and the present minister have taken the people out of the lighthouses. The cost is very small, about $3.5 million.
They say that automated lighthouses will cover the fishers and aircraft but they do not. People are needed to tell them about the fog. A person needs to tell them about the size of the waves. During the last storm in British Columbia a significant number of the automated lighthouses went down. They did not report the weather at a time when the aircraft and the fishers needed that information.
The B.C. coast is one of the most dangerous coasts in the world because of the topography, the weather and the all-round climate. It is not a nice place for flying in the fall or winter, nor for taking fishing vessels through the inlets and coves. We need those lighthouses; we need those people. Yet the government has decided to trim them out at a paltry savings of $3.5 million. But the largesse is fine when the government gives Bombardier $87 million as a gift because it happens to be in Montreal. What happened to east and west? This is what happens to the west coast time and time again.
The same issue arises with the coast guard. The coast guard and the fisheries were amalgamated. A number of bases have been shut down. Search and rescue on the west coast is extremely important. Timing is important. Yet the safety of people on the west coast does not seem to have any effect or impact on the government.
I could go on at length on what the government has not done for the west coast.
This bill is significant to all Canadians. The public right to fish is a right which we have had in common law since Confederation, yet the minister and the government want to extinguish it. They want to
put the right to fish under ministerial decree. That is absolutely wrong. It is a signal of where the government is going.
In conclusion, Bill C-62 only deals with the government's official problems. It does nothing else. It does not deal with the issues. There is no reason to support it. Therefore, I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "That" and substituting the following therefor:
"Bill C-62, an act respecting fisheries, be not now read a second time, but that the order be discharged, the bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans".