Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Ottawa Centre for his question and for his concern on this topic.
I think it is vital for any part of Canada not to lose its greatest natural resource, that is, the people who live in those areas, including those on the coast of British Columbia who have been displaced because of the decisions taken regarding salmon stocks. They no longer were able to earn a living for themselves. Therefore, they had to sell their licences and move on to something else.
The most devastating part of the mismanagement of any resource is the displacement and uprooting of people, whether it is on the west coast, in the forestry industry or in Atlantic Canada.
What we should keep in mind above all else is that in order to retain the health of our coastal communities the resource has to be in a healthy state to provide a living and work for people so they can stay there, bring up their families and educate their children so they can contribute to the area when they mature.
The diversification issue is something that Atlantic Canada has been grappling with since Confederation. At Confederation the Atlantic provinces had one of the healthiest, most vibrant economies in the new nation. The economy was very diversified.
Through various actions taken by the national government, especially on tariffs, the free trade that we had with a lot of countries in the Caribbean, in the New England states and in Great Britain was diverted into high tariff policies which made our industries very unsustainable.
In order to build up the country, Atlantic Canada had to get into something new and diversify because it was competing on the north-south axis in a very inequitable manner.
It is only now, since the free trade agreements, that we are in a position to restart our economic engines in Atlantic Canada and to renew our connections with the Caribbean, which we had for centuries, with the eastern United States, which have approximately 175 million people, and with western Europe.
With that and with time I think the hopes are great for Atlantic Canada and the future is very bright.