Mr. Speaker, it is always refreshing to hear the Liberal Party talk about public safety. The member for Ottawa Centre actually admitted in the House of Commons that they were responsible for the depletion of the fish stocks. The member said “we destroyed the fish stocks”. A Liberal member said that. I wanted to reiterate it for the record.
My question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans will be on the coast guard. The parliamentary secretary was in the meeting of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans when we asked the acting commander at that time, Michael Turner, of the coast guard a few pointed questions about the serious cuts and erosion of morale at the coast guard. Referring to the coast guard Mr. Turner said:
We are undergoing a period right now where we're having to re-examine some of our present operations. We are under considerable pressure funding wise, the whole department is. It is true that yes we have transferred a fair amount of money over the last few years from the coast guard to the rest of DFO.
That figure is $200 million of coast guard money which was sent to DFO. As we all know the DFO does not have a good track record when it comes to handling money. He continued:
There will be some additional changes in the maritimes but I can confirm the $55 million figure mentioned mentioned in yesterday's paper is not correct. Not at all, nowhere near correct. We are simply looking at a few percent that have to be adjusted.
I will speed up the clock a bit. Neil Bellefontaine, regional director of DFO in Atlantic Canada, said that his department was forced to cut its national operating budget by 5% or $45 million. We are almost there. We are almost reaching the cuts.
After the Swissair disaster off Peggy's Cove the brave men and women of the Mary Hichens , the first coast guard ship that arrived, received a letter weeks later from the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans indicating how proud he was. I give the minister credit for indicating how proud he and the government were that these people went through their own private little torture chambers after seeing what they saw in the waters that night and throughout the following weeks. However, it is an absolute disgrace that in the same envelope they received from the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans was another letter saying that the ship they were on would be tied up and they would be laid off.
We cannot say to these people that they did a great job under horrific circumstances and then turn around in another letter and say they are to be laid off. What a wonderful Christmas present that was. It was a major slap in the face.
The Daily News , a great paper in my riding in Nova Scotia, asked a question the other day of their readers saying “Given the importance of the service to the Atlantic region, should the federal government have left the coast guard alone and found the money from another source?” Seventy-one out of seventy-two callers said absolutely yes. The people in Atlantic Canada know the value of a good coast guard.
Who will guard the coast? Who will look after our three coastlines from coast to coast to coast and our inland waters of Lake Winnipeg and the Great Lakes, for example? The cuts to the coast guard have been absolutely devastating. We heard recently here about the cuts to the RCMP. We heard recently about the cuts to the military. Yet government members stand up and say that public safety will not be compromised. It will be compromised.
I would just love for the parliamentary secretary to come back with an answer to those remarks.