Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the parliamentary secretary asking about solutions. We are talking about a national policy for a sustainable fisheries.
Can we imagine being minister of fisheries and oceans and trying to make management decisions about fisheries on either coast without adequate research and adequate science? Therein lies a big problem. The government has gutted the research and science budgets of DFO. The solution is to get money back into the research and science budgets and to get research and science activities operating on both coasts to determine exactly what fish are there and what environmental problems are being experienced.
We hear talk on the east coast about the effects of cold water, the effects of seals and the effects of foreign overfishing. We are now talking about a fishery of the future without in essence a budget for science and research.
I ask the parliamentary secretary and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans how they can make any management decisions. How can we ever hope to have a sustainable fisheries if we do not have proper and adequate research and science? Excuse the pun, but we have been floundering around too long.
It was indicated at the parliamentary committee this morning that a former minister of fisheries set a total allowable catch of double what the scientific community recommended. That is bad enough. We can blame that on the minister. However, to be making management decisions when they do not have anything to base them on and then trying to shift the blame on to people in those regions of the country for all they have done—