Yes, the Tory leader has a selective memory.
That is four or five disasters. Let's go to another one. It is what we commonly refer to on the east coast as the Greenland halibut disaster.
When the codfish were disappearing the Government of Canada came into this chamber and announced the great find of the century. It was called an underutilized species. It was identified as a Greenland halibut. The government announced that there was so much of this Greenland halibut that it was going to allow foreigners to catch it.
The fishermen in the maritimes and Quebec were wondering what the Greenland halibut was until they saw a picture of it. The picture showed a flat fish called Greenland halibut, commonly referred to as blue halibut in Britain, black halibut in Germany, and a hellefisk in Denmark. Here it was with one of the eyes up this way and the other eye halfway around looking like a Cyclops and the fishermen said “Ah, that is a Newfoundland turbot”.
That turbot that was classified in 1991 by the very government of the leader of the Tory party became the catch-all for foreign nations. That fish was, it just so happens, the mainstay of the fishermen of eastern Canada.
In the early spring all of our fishermen would go out in the trap boat fishery for cod and then in the summer they would switch to turbot. And the great Canadian government here in Ottawa made the decision that there was so much of this species that now foreign nations could catch it. That was the year 1991.
Was it the Liberals who were in power in 1991? Who was in power in 1991? The Tories were in power, the very party that has moved this motion before the House of Commons today. The mistakes continued until the year 1992. It is a great thing that in 1993 the Liberal Party was elected so that we could try to clean up the mess.