Mr.Speaker, I move that the first report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans presented on Monday, March 23, be concurred in.
I must admit I have been waiting an entire year and a half in this House in order to debate the east coast report and to move concurrence on what I consider to be an outstanding and fabulous report.
The first thing that has to be remembered is that this report does not come from the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. We tabled it in the House but the report is actually a reflection of all the witnesses and all the people by the thousands who came to all the meetings in November 1997 in Newfoundland, Quebec, the New Brunswick region, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. This is an outstanding report that five political parties in this House can agree to.
Prior to the election and the campaign in June 1997 the reporters, the pundits and even ourselves were calling it possibly a pizza parliament. If a pizza parliament can put together what I consider an excellent report, then so be it.
What was the government's response in September 1998 to this east coast report? Absolutely scandalous. The government completely whitewashed the report and ignored the recommendations of nine of its own members. Absolutely scandalous.
I will go on to specific details within the report. When the east coast report came through, committee members got together and said they cannot be in Ottawa making recommendations or conclusions on what to do with the thousands of lives of the people on the east coast. They decided to go to these communities and talk to the people and write down what they were told, put it in a report and table it. For the first time in a long time the standing committee actually agreed unanimously to put this report together.
This report is a triumph of east coast fishermen, plant workers and their families over the adversities and policies of the current DFO and the past DFO.
We have had 16 ministers in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in the last 11 years. Everybody knows they use this department as a revolving door to move forward on to other grounds.