Mr. Speaker, I stand to speak on Bill C-62, the new fisheries act.
A strange thing is happening in this bill. It contains provisions in clauses 17 to 22 designed to abrogate the public right of access to the fishery. This seems strange. This right for the public has been around since the Magna Carta in 1215. The bill will empower the minister, the crown, without notice to the public, to grant the private right to fish for commercial or sport purposes to any group currently in political favour.
This is something that cannot be done legally under the present Fisheries Act. The present act is based on the premise that the fishery is a public resource to which all Canadians, not just a select few Canadians, are entitled to equal access.
I have to wonder if the minister and the members opposite understand what equal access means. I look at many decisions the government has brought down in the last little while. The government claims they are for the benefit of all citizens. As we go through these decisions, we see it is very select group who benefits. Bill C-62 is one example.
Let us take British Columbia as an example. I know firsthand what the government decided for the fishing industry there. I know the Liberals like to say that they do all this fancy consulting. I sometimes wonder if they are talking to their fathers and grandparents in order to get an okay on some of these things that are passed in the House. Let us take a look at what is happening on the Adams River which happens to be in my constituency. It is well known around the world for the spawning runs that used to happen in the Adams River.
The government in its ultimate wisdom-I would say in its ultimate stupidity I guess-decided that the best thing it could do for the people in B.C. and in the constituency of Okanagan-Shuswap was to shut down the fish hatchery. The government has proceeded to shut down most of the inland hatcheries on the west coast after consultation. I would like to know who was consulted. The government never talked with any of the mayors or any of the people in my constituency, not one. It just decided to shut them down.
The reason? It said that it was not making enough profit there. This hatchery has not been open long enough. Anybody with a little knowledge of hatcheries knows that it takes approximately nine years to see a decent stock return. The government decided that four and a half or five years was good enough for the hatcheries on the west coast.
It makes many people wonder how the Liberals can shut down what was a basic part of the food chain. Millions had already been spent putting the hatcheries in place. I asked the minister that if the department was having trouble with salmon, we could certainly turn it into a trout hatchery. Believe it or not, the minister's argument was that it might interfere with the wild stock. Does this make any sense to anybody?
We could tag these fish, send them on their way and then put a moratorium for a certain period of time on catching the wild stock until they are brought back up to a healthy number for fishing. But this seemed to have been lost to the minister. He could not fathom this idea. He seemed to be bent-as he still is-on seeing the west coast go the same way Newfoundland has gone.
Do members in the House understand what has happened in Newfoundland through the inaction, the absolute non-action, and the silly decisions that have been made by governments? Do they
realize that now the people are suffering through silly things like this?
The only thing fishy in Newfoundland is the red book. There is absolutely no doubt about it. It reminds me of out west where we have a saying that government is a group called politickitis. A tick is a little bug that gets on human beings and sucks their blood. It is far worse than a mosquito. It can create a great disease.
Politickitis is a two-legged bug that sits in government. Nine times out of ten it sits on the front benches. It then latches on to the taxpayers and sucks the lifeblood right out of them. Unfortunately we only have one cure for this disease so far: the ballot. But we are only allowed to use that remedy once every four or five years at the whim of the insect that is causing the problem. It seems kind of strange but that is what we have to put up with here when we get bills like this coming before the House.
These bills come from a government that has thrown more people out of work in this country than any other government in the history of Canada. Government members stand here every day and basically misrepresent everything they can in regard to all opposition parties. They are masters of deceit.
If we look at what has happened we will find that we have largest bankruptcy rate that has ever happened. They like to talk about the G-7 countries. They like to say how well we are doing compared to the other G-7 countries. That is the most fishy thing about it all.
The Liberals have brought this awful piece of garbage before the House. They have told us how well they are doing. We have the highest bankruptcy rate of the G-7 countries. We have more unemployed and under-employed. We have the best dictatorship there is in the free world as we know it today.
Clauses 17 through 22 of the bill demonstrate this. They will empower a minister of the crown, without public notice, to grant private rights to fish. It is totally unacceptable.