Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to this legislation. I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Davenport.
This legislation, an act respecting fisheries, is of great importance to the fishers throughout this country. I can speak in particular for the fishers and the organizations that they represent and the organizations that they have formed in the areas of my constituency of Cape Breton Highlands-Canso.
Over the last several years that I have represented this area I have worked directly with the fishers of Atlantic Canada. I have discovered the depth of their commitment to the management and the proper stewardship of this resource. They have learned through interaction with the government, some good, some bad, that if the resource is to be properly managed, if the resource is to be properly conserved, the stakeholders, those who are directly involved in drawing their livelihood from the resource, have to be intimately involved as partners in the stewardship and in the management of this resource. That is what I understand to be the fundamental principle behind this legislation.
I also welcome the fact that Bill C-62 has gone through such extensive consultation under the new fisheries minister since it was introduced in the previous Parliament as Bill C-115. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has undertaken extensive consultations both through his officials and through the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans during the course of the passage of this legislation. That is vitally important.
If this approach to fisheries management, which is the correct and modern one, is to work, if it is to ensure the protection and survival of the species and the ecosystem on which the livelihoods of so many Canadians depend, then those people who are going to be involved as partners with the government need to have a comfort level, need to have their questions answered and need to understand that they are truly partners in the management of this resource.
This legislation signals a major shift in the philosophy by which the federal government manages the fisheries in Canada. Canada's fishing industry has indicated the need to get government out of the day to day management of the fishery. There is a need to redesign our past approach, which has been viewed as paternalistic in
nature. This has resulted, for the most part, in exclusive government decision making in the way the fishery is managed.
These amendments represent a major shift in the fisheries management activities of fisheries and oceans. The department will shift away from the business of managing fishers to managing fish. The department will take a more focused approach to the management of the fisheries resource, concentrating on conservation and sustainable utilization.
The legislation will support this shift in several ways. The aspect that I would particularly like to emphasize is that of allowing commercial fishers, aboriginal groups and other stakeholders to participate in the shared management, shared discussions and shared results of the fishery, and also to participate in the cost sharing of services such as data collection and licence administration.
The legislation will allow for new legally binding agreements between the federal government and fisher groups. It will provide harvesters with a greater role and responsibility in managing the fishery.
The government wants to work with stakeholders to develop the type of partnering agreements that will benefit all parties concerned and enhance the conservation of fisheries resources. However, the minister will retain, as he must, responsibility for conservation and protection of the resource at all times.
New powers in the Fisheries Act will allow the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to share decision making and develop more efficient management strategies with groups within the fishery and to do so through long term partnering agreements.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada and any representative organization could enter into such agreements on several aspects of fisheries management. A typical partnering agreement would clearly set out the harvesting limits and other conservation management measures for a fishery, the number of licences to be issued, the fees payable for licence issuance and licence administration, the obligations and responsibilities of each party, the funding arrangements with respect to the management of the fishery, and conservation and management programs for the fishery.
Stakeholders will assume responsibility in choosing programs and services which will best meet their business needs.
As I emphasized earlier, the responsibility and the legal authority for conservation and protection of the resource will remain with the minister. Specifically, the setting of allowable harvesting levels, the ability to close fisheries and to ensure conservation and protection is not compromised and enforcement of the responsibilities and legal authorities will all remain with the minister.
I will introduce a short example of what this legislation will make possible and what it has already started. In my constituency in the Gulf of St. Lawrence a number of groups representing fishermen have worked out over the last two years new ways of engaging in partnerships to jointly manage and share the resource of the snow crab fishery in the gulf. This is quite a lucrative fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and has caused a great deal of tension in that part of Atlantic Canada. With the collapse of many of the groundfish stocks in the gulf, many fishermen have looked with some envy at those fortunate fishers who were able to draw substantial incomes from limited access to the snow crab fishery.
Through a process of sometimes difficult negotiation we are starting to work out proper partnering agreements that will not only ensure the snow crab resource is properly managed but also that the groups of fishermen who are stakeholders and form companies that harvest the resource will share that resource for the benefit of all those in their communities.
I commend the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and his predecessor for showing the flexibility of movement that has allowed for a better sharing of that resource. That is an example in concrete terms of what the notion of partnering and of moving forward by involving the fishermen and other stakeholders in the management of this resource is all about.
I will not be able to deal with all the aspects of this legislation, but if we allow the fishermen to take responsibility for the resource, for harvesting it in the appropriate way or assuming more of a share in the responsibility for the benefits that flow from that resource, we will find their good sense will prevail and will be demonstrated in a more sound fishery.
One of the problems we have had in the past, tragedies in some areas, that has led to the virtual collapse of many fisheries is that nobody took real responsibility for the fishery. The fishermen had no real responsibility because the government took it all. In the end when mistakes were made in calculating harvest levels nobody was there to take the responsibility and as a result we had tragic overfishing.
We have to stop this and I think the direction the government is taking with this legislation is the right one.