Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to address the issue of the availability of financing for small business which would otherwise not have access to financing.
The reason I am pleased to speak to the issue is that it gives me an opportunity to advance the notion, as my colleagues have done, that the problem facing business today is not so much the availability of financing as it is the management of business and the high taxes that businesses must endure.
I will give an example of what I mean to talk about. About a year ago I received a phone call from a fisherman back home, a gentleman whom I did not know at that time. He had been a long time participant in the fishing industry but was concerned about his ability to pay his bills that year, especially the mortgage on his boat. He had suffered from a poor catch and poor prices in the 1997 season. To his knowledge he had tried every opportunity or every avenue for financing that he could. Some help was needed. He wanted to know if I had any advice for him.
I gave him some directions on some of the lenders of last resort I know, some of which were government agencies. I suggested that he try his luck at finding alternate financing for his vessel. He phoned me back a few weeks later and said that he had been successful. He had managed to renegotiate a loan and felt that he would be off the hook and able to survive another year. He was quite pleased with that.
I obtained a call from that same gentleman a couple of months ago after the conclusion of the 1998 fishing season, which was a disaster in British Columbia. Again the request from this individual was for help. He needed alternate financing for his vessel. Otherwise he would lose it. I told him that I had given him the best information last year. If he cannot survive on that there is not much I can do. The problem is not in the fishery itself but in the management of the fishery.
Let us take a look at what happened last summer and consider some of the causes for the concern of the gentleman. On June 19, 1998 the Department of Fisheries and Oceans issued a backgrounder on the management of the fishery in British Columbia.
The problem last year which the minister expressed endlessly and with some accuracy was a concern about the viability of coho salmon, in particular coho salmon on the upper Skeena River and on the Thompson River. In an effort to minimize catch opportunities, the minister proposed dividing the coast into yellow zones and red zones. I will just read what he said on yellow zones in the backgrounder:
In the yellow zones, recreational fishing will proceed as usual except all coho must be released.... Barbless hooks must be used when salmon fishing.
Fishing opportunities will be available in the areas they gave.
Red zones were described as areas where there would be no fishing. Let me read what he said about red zones:
—red zones are areas where upper Skeena and Thompson coho are expected to be prevalent.
In red zone areas salmon fishing will be restricted but opportunities will remain for all other finfish and shellfish harvesting. Within the red zone small nearshore areas will be open to carefully monitor fishing salmon in order to determine if selective fishing for salmon other than coho can be conducted with the objective of zero mortality for the stocks of concern. Monitoring by independent observers will be employed to evaluate the ability to avoid encounters of coho. If coho are encountered in these small experimental areas, the fishery will be moved or closed. The location and times of experimental fisheries were set out.
The backgrounder went on to identify area one on the north coast including offshore areas. From June 16 to August 26 the waters of area one were closed to salmon fishing except for the nearshore areas from the entrance of Masset Inlet to Langara Island and a three-quarter mile ribbon around the island.
According to the original documents presented by DFO scientists that whole area on the north coast was considered a red zone. It is an area where coho were prevalent.
In fact, in one area just off the northern part of the Queen Charlotte Islands there is a point called Coho Point. That point was not named because of a lack of coho. It was called Coho Point because that was an area of some coho prevalence when the fish were running. That area in the rejigged management scheme allowed for sport fishing only. It is an area, interestingly enough, where the Oak Bay Marine Group operates a large fishing lodge. There are a couple of other lodges that operate in that area as well.
It seems to me and it seems to many other people that the big problem here was not a matter of trying to protect coho, but a matter of trying to provide some sport fishing opportunity for those people who are rich enough to be able to afford to attend these lodges. It had nothing to do with protecting fish.
This preference did not stop there. The department decided that it would promote sport fishing in that area. It says in this same release that Fisheries and Oceans Canada is working with the Canadian Tourism Commission, the Sport Fishing Institute and Tourism B.C. to develop tourism and a marketing campaign aimed at encouraging recreational fishermen to come to British Columbia. It says that the CTC, the Canadian Tourism Commission, has already committed funding of $350,000 for this project and further federal support is expected shortly. That further federal support did come and it was in the amount of several million dollars.
In a sense we should not complain too much. It is federal money that is designed to help promote British Columbia business. But let us go back a minute. How is that money going to help the small boat owner who came to me in 1997 and said he could not afford to make the mortgage payments on his boat? How is it going to help that fellow one year later when he came to me and said “Can you help me? Can you find funding for me again?” It will not to do him any good.
The fishing records in that area show that the interception of coho by the commercial fleet in 1997 was minimal. It was something like 1,000 fish for the whole season. But we have on record that day after day probably close to 900 coho were killed in this barbless hook sport fishery in that area. To me that is a great problem.
It points to another shortcoming of the federal government. The British Columbia job protection commissioner, in talking about the problems facing the commercial industry, recommended to fisheries management that some effort be made to promote the marketing of B.C. salmon. That is most appropriate because this fall there were opportunities to fish chum salmon, but there were no buyers. Fishermen were prepared to go fishing, but nobody was prepared to buy the fish. That is pretty sad because that is a top quality food product which was allowed to go unharvested because there were no markets.
In fact the federal government has made no effort to market commercially caught salmon in British Columbia. That has to be seen as a huge problem for the fishing industry and it is one problem that is not going to be addressed simply by making more loans available. Making more loans available in the commercial industry at this time is only going to drive people into the poorhouse further and faster.