Mr. Speaker, I rise today to question the government's ability and ingenuity on the post-TAGS adjustment program, the one that was recently announced.
This may sound different but I have to give credit to the government for at least having some form of initiative in a post-TAGS adjustment program when all the indications out there were that it would not do anything at all.
The unfortunate part is that the new program falls extremely short of assisting those people who have been seriously affected by the downturn of the fishery as well as DFO government policies. There is no question at all that when the new TAGS adjustment program was announced, thousands and thousands of the fishermen and plant workers on the east coast of Atlantic Canada and in Quebec were shut out of the new system.
Basically what they have done is apply one set of fishing groups against another. During committee consideration in early May and June I begged the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to announce the program while the House was in session so that we could debate the issue here and not through the media.
He had said at that time that he would take it under consideration but could not offer any guarantees. Unfortunately that wish went by the boards, and they announced the program in Newfoundland which unfortunately turned into a bit of a shouting match between displaced fishers and representatives of the government who were there to announce the program.
The real essence of this entire equation is that fishermen and plant workers do not want the damn TAGS. They do not want it. They just want to work.
A classic example is that today I announced in a statement in the House that the town of Canso which was a viable fishing community with over 400 years of self-sufficiency will now announce at the beginning of January that it will have to claim civic bankruptcy because of the direct policies of DFO.
The fact of the matter is that a lot of fishermen and plant workers throughout the Atlantic coast and Quebec were shut out of any adjustment program. Another aspect to the adjustment program is the licence buyback. It falls extremely far short and is absolutely criminal of what the government has done to these people who invested their entire lives in historical attachment to the fishery to get crumbs from this federal government.
In conclusion we do not have an agreement with the United States on Pacific salmon because the minister himself said “the United States is a very powerful nation and we have to tread carefully in negotiations with them”.
I have on my desk the fact that the very mighty and powerful nation of the Faroe Islands has convinced Canada that we have to open up the Flemish Cap which is just outside the 200 mile limit. We have to give it additional access to shrimp. This shrimp allocation should have gone to those Canadians in Canso and in Mulgrave. Unfortunately now hundreds of people will be losing their jobs because we capitulated to that great powerful nation, the Faroe Islands.
It is absolutely scandalous that thousands of Canadians in this country can be so seriously let down by this government.