Madam Speaker, it is certainly nice to see you in the chair. I think this is the first time I have had the opportunity to speak while you are in the chair. I want to make a few comments, most of them with regard to the fishing industry in my riding of Charlotte. Of course, that is the one I am concerned about.
What really appalls me are the licensing fees and the changes this government has brought in in the last number of years. There are lobster fishermen in my riding whose licensing fees have gone from $17 to $3,000 in a single year.
How could any fisherman in any jurisdiction in any country in this hemisphere survive those kinds of charges? Nobody can. It is forcing individual fishermen out of the business.
They have done the same thing with our scallop fishermen. Small fishermen now are being required in the riding of Charlotte to put monitors on board. In some cases it costs up to $350 a day to put a monitor on board just so matters can be checked. It is like the big eye of government looking down on a small fishermen who can hardly afford to put fuel in his boat.
The most discouraging thing is that the laws, the rules and the regulations for these fishermen are applied differently, depending on what side of the bay they live on. Some of the restrictions do not apply to fishermen, for example, that are lucky enough to live in some parts of Nova Scotia. It is ridiculous. I have no quarrel with fishermen in Nova Scotia, but if the government is going to apply a policy to fishermen it should be applied evenly across the board. The government is putting fishermen in my riding at a tremendous disadvantage to people 40 miles across the water. It is absolutely insane.
The same applies to wharves and the reconstruction of wharves. New Brunswick does not have enough money in the budget, for goodness sakes, to buy 50 pounds of spikes for the number of wharves that are in the riding. This is absolutely ridiculous.
We pretend we have a multimillion dollar fishery, and we do, but how can fishermen survive? The government is actually forcing fishermen who are making the meagrest of all livings, to take money out of their back pocket at the end of the day to repair the very wharves for which the Government of Canada should be responsible. How in the name of goodness can the fishermen, under those set of circumstances, survive? The answer is very clear. They cannot survive under those kinds of circumstances.
That is not the end of it. The fisheries department entered into agreements with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs to bring natives into the fishery, which is fine. We want to see that happen. However, there is no co-ordination between the two departments. Neither department knows what is going on. They have no long term strategy. Again, it is throwing money at a problem with no vision for the future.
People are at a tremendous disadvantage now because of that lack of co-ordination. Fishermen in my riding are being sacrificed because neither of those two departments, fisheries nor Indian and northern affairs, want to take responsibility for their actions. We cannot continue. The fisheries in Atlantic Canada are on the rails and this government wants to simply abdicate its responsibilities.
This type of motion should be on the floor of the House every single day for the next year so that Canadians can get the message that the fisheries are in tough shape. It is time that the government took responsibility for the very fishermen who it is supposed to be representing.