Madam Speaker, the Minister of Fisheries has unilaterally decided to charge the shipping industry fees for Coast Guard services, including the provision of aids to navigation and ice breaking services. Clauses 41, 47, and 52 of Bill C-26 give the minister the power to charge these fees.
Several amendments to these clauses were put forward by the Bloc Quebecois for the following reasons: to make the fees
principle more equitable and to force the minister to co-operate with the industry and the provinces before fixing or increasing the fees. These changes would prevent the minister from making unilateral decisions without holding public consultations, as he has done for the fees he wants to charge as of June 1996.
In fact, all the witnesses who appeared before the fisheries and oceans committee decried the decision making and consultation process of the Coast Guard, especially the fact that the minister went ahead with the fees without assessing the economic impact on the shipping industry and all the other industries that rely on shipping.
Also, 75 per cent of the witnesses asked the minister for a moratorium on the fees until the impact studies ordered by the Department of Fisheries come out next fall. The witnesses also recommended that the minister cooperate with the shipping industry in carrying out economic impact studies. Lastly, the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes stakeholders reached a clear consensus against the minister's proposal which they, along with the Ontario and Quebec governments, found unacceptable.
Dismissing all these recommendations and objections, the minister is apparently determined to go ahead with this fee structure and does not care about its possibly devastating effect on jobs in the shipping industry, a very important sector of the Quebec economy.
Moreover, several questions on the department's fee structure policy remain unanswered. First of all, this whole policy is based on the regionalization that divides Canada into three regions: the West, the East and the St. Lawrence region. This rather artificial division was advanced by the Coast Guard under pressure by the maritimes and the West. Each new proposal by the Coast Guard means higher fees for boats in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes region.
The minister mentioned fairness and the user-fee principle to justify this regional division. Yet, when we read the proposal, we see that all the regions and especially the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes area will pay part of the marine services to Newfoundland, which is the minister's province, since the boats that go there will get substantial reductions at the expense of boats in other regions. Moreover, according to the minister's policy, the port of Churchill, in Manitoba, will not have to pay for Coast Guard services.
Another major problem is that the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes ports are increasingly less competitive than American ports. On the one hand, boats using the St. Lawrence Seaway to go to the United States without stopping at any Canadian port will not pay for Coast Guard services, thus greatly threatening the competitiveness of the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes ports.
On the other, the user pay principle advocated by the minister is not respected in a number of instances, in particular for the ports of
Sept-Îles and Port-Cartier, which will pay up to $5 million annually for the use of a single buoy.
Finally, the user fees the minister would like to impose are only the tip of the iceberg, since they only include navigational aids such as buoys, lighthouses, and so on. The other services the department intends to charge for are the dredging of Seaway harbours and ice breaking in waterways.
These other fees may turn out to be much higher than those for navigational aids, and there is reason to be concerned about the survival and ability to compete of ports along the St. Lawrence, particularly the port of Montreal and a number of ports in the regions such as those of Matane, Rimouski and Trois-Rivières.
I would like to take this opportunity to comment on the effects of this fee structure in my riding, the riding of Champlain, on pleasure boats, pedal boats and other small craft. These should be exempt from this tax in disguise. The riding of Champlain abounds in hunting spots and lakes and is known as a tourist centre.
This disguised tax, or user fee structure as the government calls it, will harm the tourist industry, which provides the riding with jobs it needs to survive. Imagine the impact of charging user fees for pleasure boats on the economy of a region such as mine. We do not yet have all the details, but there is talk of charging fees for pedal boats and sailboards. I do not know where they will hang the plates, but I am sure they will think of something.
You can imagine what fees on rowboats and canoes will do to the tourist industry in my region. Small and medium sized businesses which depend on the rental of this kind of equipment during the summer season will have to pay these fees. Will they have to be paid annually, every five years, every four years or every three years? I do not yet know how it will work. We could have big surprises. Will these fees be progressive? All that to collect a few million dollars because the finance minister needs money. It is absolutely outrageous!
And think about what it will cost to collect that money. How will the government find all the people who own a pedalboat, a sailboard, a rowboat or a canoe? It is practically impossible and unmanageable. Again, in the end, it will be the small and middle income people who will pay the bill, who will pay the price for the federal government's financial problems. That is why the Bloc Quebecois and myself, who represent the riding of Champlain, will oppose Bill C-26.