Madam Speaker, the future of the fishery depends on the protection of the marine environment. When our rivers and coastal waters cease being a safe place for fish, we will no longer have healthy and abundant wild stocks.
Bill C-48 would do for the marine environment what parks have done for the buffalo: save a few. Perhaps it was never realistic to expect buffalo to continue to roam the western prairie in vast numbers to survive in the face of settlement, agriculture, mass hunting and the railway.
Today our fish stocks are facing the same pressures the buffalo faced a century ago. Cod stocks on the east coast collapsed nearly a decade ago due to the mismanagement of the fishery by the department of fisheries, corporate greed and the development of new fishing methods that allowed our fishermen to catch literally the last fish. When northern cod stocks were devastated, my friend, the member for Gander—Grand Falls, demanded that those who failed to protect Newfoundland's most valuable resource be held to account. My friend no longer chairs the fisheries committee. Apparently it is okay to call for the creation of marine parks but it is considered threatening to those charged with protecting those fish stocks and their marine environment if we seek to hold them to account.
Salmon stocks on both coasts faced similar devastation to that suffered by the cod. Salmon stocks on the east coast have already been devastated. The Saint John River in New Brunswick has three hydroelectric dams on its stem and one on a key tributary. Migrating salmon are blocked. On the west coast, the federal and provincial governments have allowed hydroelectric dams, poor agriculture and forest practices and industrial pollution to threaten the once mighty Fraser River and its tributaries as well as rivers and streams on Vancouver Island.
Recently the Ottawa Citizen and the Saint John Telegraph Journal reported on a study by scientists at the University of Ottawa. That study reveals hydroelectric dams are silent killers of our rivers. The study finds that dams stand accused of being the principal stressors on rivers. Such findings are not a surprise to fishermen and environmentalists on the west coast where the department of fisheries and its minister sold out to Alcan and those who would dam the Fraser. Although it claims to be a protector of the fishery, the Government of British Columbia has a long history of being seduced by those who would build dams. There is no doubt the province's current agreement with Alcan on Kemano does not adequately protect fish habitat. Marine parks will not halt the devastation to marine life caused by hydroelectric dams.
The Toronto Star recently carried a report on the possible threat to wild fish stocks from fish farms on the Bay of Fundy:
The salmon slipped into vacuum sealed bags for shipment from this brand new processing plant are manufactured, not caught. They are a genetically manipulated species that is born in a plastic tray, vaccinated, often treated with antibiotics, fed red dye and doused with powerful pesticides before they go to market.
Disease is at the heart of the controversy over fish farming in Canada. Environmentalists say the periodic epidemics that sweep through the farms are clear evidence the industry is not healthy. They worry the antibiotics and pesticides used to treat diseases and parasites in fish farms are getting into the food chain.
The story also quotes University of British Columbia infectious diseases specialist, William Bowie:
The idea of pouring potent anti-infectives into the ocean strikes terror into those who see patients we can't treat because they have caught bugs we can't treat.
Another Toronto Star story summarized the disaster that has befallen wild salmon in Scotland. The story quotes Scottish fishermen who blame the disaster on fish farms that produce multitudes of sea lice, parasites that live on the farmed fish and kill salmon when they swim by.
It is thought that the infestation of sea lice in New Brunswick had its origin in Norway or Scotland.
There is now a fear that these diseases or similar diseases will spread to the west coast. Marine parks will not protect our wild salmon from such threats. Rather than turning our federal and provincial departments of fisheries into centres for aquaculture promotion, their main focus must be to continue the protection of the marine environment for wild fish. That does not mean the end of fish farms. There is lots of room for aquaculture operations which respect the marine environment.
In the end, a marine environment that is not safe for fish is one that is not safe for humans.
A department of fisheries report catalogued the effect that poorly planned urbanization and destructive agricultural and forest practices have had on the salmon-bearing streams in the Lower Fraser.
Of the 779 Lower Fraser Valley streams examined, 117 no longer exist, 375 are considered endangered, 181 are considered threatened and only 106 have retained their wild status.
Bill C-48 will not preserve the streams on the Fraser between Abbotsford and Hope. The study classified 58 of those streams as being threatened.
The future of fish stocks and fish habitat depend not on the Minister of Canadian Heritage, no matter how well intentioned she is. The future of the fishery and fish stocks depend on the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans making fish stocks his number one priority, enforcing the habitat protection provisions of the Fisheries Act and the avoidance of overriding the advice of scientists in favour of the private profits of friends of the minister.