He has been gone so long that I have a hard job remembering his name. Why are we talking about John Crosbie? Why do we not go back to Roméo LeBlanc, Pierre DeBané and Brian Tobin, all of them?
The parliamentary secretary raised the issue of the foreign fishing and the driving out of the foreign fleets. I have to be careful what I say. I noticed the parliamentary secretary did not elaborate too much on the Estai affair either, I guess for good reasons that we will all know about before too long.
Then we re-evaluate Premier Tobin's involvement in the foreign fishing effort and what the costs will be to Canadians and the Canadian government.
Conservation has to be key, for there are still too many unanswered questions, too many unknowns, about the health of our fish stocks. There are too many unknowns about fish biomass, too many unknowns about the effect of different gear types on our fish stocks, too many unknowns about the impact of seals, too many unknowns about the effects of harvesting certain fish stocks on the food chain.
At a time when we need more financial support for research and scientific effort, this government has decreased the amount of funding for science and research in DFO to a limit that is unacceptable. If we are serious about understanding the fishery, about conservation, about a fishery of the future, about protecting our coastal communities, now is the time to beef up the research and science effort of DFO, not take away from it.
I say to the parliamentary secretary that yes, the government has made some good decisions. The government continues to make some bad decisions. But if we are serious about rebuilding our fish stocks, if we are serious about a regeneration, if we are serious about a fishery of the future, now is not the time to decrease the spending efforts of DFO in research and science. They should be increased so that we reduce the number of unknowns about the fishing industry, the unknowns about fish biomass and the unknowns about the food chain.
I say to the parliamentary secretary to go to the minister of fisheries, go to cabinet ministers and beg them to restore the funding for DFO science and research because we are at a critical time in our history where we really need to understand the ocean, the environment and we need to understand the various fish species and the biomass.
I want to conclude by saying to the fisheries critic for the New Democratic Party from Sackville—Eastern Shore that I will be supporting his motion.