Mr. Speaker, as regards the first part of the statement made by my colleague from Gaspé, I would like to inform the members of this House that, despite everything that happened in July in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, if the minister decides in the coming hours to take a real stand on ice fishing in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, because the flooding caused river banks to shift, this activity cannot continue without the permission of the minister of fisheries. I therefore invite the hon. members of this House to come and visit us and take part in this winter activity, thus giving the region a much needed boost in light of everything it went through. We are therefore promoting winter tourism.
As for his comment on the bill itself, I would simply like to say there are three problems the bill does not resolve. It maintains the status quo as regards the problem of overcapacity. Only the industry and the provinces concerned can decide what quotas the industry can absorb and the resource can tolerate. This must be decided not by federal standards and in high places, but by those who are close to the people earning their living from it.
To my way of thinking, this bill represents the status quo. The Bloc Quebecois wants to encourage the growth of a more independent and cost effective fishing industry-which is important for the people living off this resource-and especially one that is free of the many subsidies, which do not please everyone. We want to get rid of this sort of thing.
People want to work, they want to earn a living from this resource. They want to develop it into something that is cost effective. So let us give these investors-small or big-all the means they need to draw reasonable incomes from this industry.
I am sure, as it is a regular occurrence, that we will not be seeing people exerting pressure on the ministers any more in an attempt to remedy things. Why not correct everything when we have the opportunity? We could do it, if the current minister of fisheries went back to the drawing board.