Mr. Speaker, I am gratified to hear the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans talking about erring on the side of caution and of his concern for conservation. I share those goals very much.
I would like to ask the minister two or three questions in that regard.
I live in an area on the upper Fraser River. Not much fishing takes place there, but a lot of fish spawn there. There have been a lot of problems in that area for a good period of time. For example, why was a young rancher charged with disrupting a fish habitat when he cleared out a beaver dam to make stale, stagnant water fresh so that the fish could live there again? Why was another person who wished to rescue young fry from the back waters that had begun to dry up told he could be charged if those fish were rescued and put into an environment where they could live instead of becoming bird food? That person was told it was simply nature's way and the birds need food too.
The real questions I want to ask are with regard to the Likely hatchery. That hatchery was cut back from a production of about two million fish to about 200,000 fish and then shut down because it was uneconomic. Now local volunteers are raising about $1,500 a month to feed the fish that they strip and put into spawning channels and care for throughout the year. Why will there be no assistance to these people in the conservation of the chinook salmon?
This fall the spawning channels in the Horsefly River have been left closed so that the sockeye salmon cannot spawn there. These salmon are destroying the natural spawning of the riverbed because there is no room for them. Yet these spawning channels have remained closed. It is a large run this year and the devastation of that fish stock is evident to everyone who has been there.
The people of Cariboo—Chilcotin hold the conservation of these fish stocks to be a very high priority. Yet we have had no co-operation from the Conservative government, from Mr. Tobin when he was the minister and now from this minister.
I would like the minister to answer these questions on the basis of his concern for caution and conservation.