Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker noted that no one was responsible when the fishery on the east coast collapsed. That is simply not true.
The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is responsible. The beauty of the old act is that somebody was responsible. Under these new partnering agreements he is talking about, all that will happen is that we will have some sort of a collective to manage the fisheries resource. When things do not go right and we start looking around
to pin the blame, there will not be anybody because there will be a committee and it will always be the next guy who is responsible.
The department is admitting in this act that it did not have a solution to the problems and it is looking elsewhere. It wants to delegate that authority to somebody else rather than asking what went wrong and what it could do about it.
For example, it was recently noted that there were over 400 violations of the forestry act in central British Columbia which resulted in degradation of salmon habitat. The fisheries official responsible for the area and habitat made representation to the provincial government.
"There's a problem here. If I can help, let me know". The province never got back to him. The real issue is not that the province did not get back to him, it is why did the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the minister not enforce the act?
The minister has the authority under the old act to do something about habitat degradation. Why was the act not enforced? The hon. member who just spoke does not have to answer in the specific on this but in general. When habitat is degraded as it was in this instance why is the minister not live up to his constitutional responsibility under the old act and doing something about it?
Second, the new act does not give the minister any more authority. In fact, it just takes away authority. How does the member think that will improve the situation?