Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments. It is always nice to get praise in the House. I appreciate his comments.
I explained that there are major problems in the Atlantic provinces. I understand what Newfoundlanders are going through. Just this morning, I received calls from people back home who told me that three fish processing plants would not reopen.
We talked about groundfish, but we should also mention crab, for which quotas are down to 12,000 metric tons. Two years ago, these quotas were set at 20,000 metric tons. Can you imagine the difference in the amount of work when quotas suddenly drop from 20,000 to 12,000 metric tons? It is almost a 50% drop from two years ago. This means that the crab industry alone is already experiencing twice as many problems.
The same goes for the lobster industry. In past years, quotas were set. In fact, they were not quotas but total allowable catches. Some lobster fishers could catch 20,000 or 25,000 pounds of lobster. Today, they harvest about 6,000 or 7,000 pounds. It is not easy.
This is why I say that the fisheries minister should get involved. In 1997, I issued a challenge to the other side of the House, and I was prepared to get involved. I suggested that the federal government come to our region, with people who could make decisions, and organize a conference with members of Parliament, the federal and provincial fisheries ministers, fishers, and plant workers and owners, to try to come up with ideas and solutions together. We can sit down, discuss intelligently and figure out what we can do for our community.
Whether it is in Ottawa, Toronto or Montreal, people enjoy going out to eat some nice fish or lobster, but it takes fishers to catch that fish or lobster. It takes plant workers to process it. Lobster and crab taste so good, but it takes people to harvest them.
That is why I say something can be done. I have a number of suggestions regarding, for instance, secondary and tertiary processing. Why take our fish and ship it abroad without first turning it into a finished product? The government keeps saying that it is not its responsibility to create jobs; it is however its responsibility to develop the infrastructure required to do so. I think that together we can succeed.
This is unfortunate for the people in our regions. I have meetings scheduled for the weekend with people in my region to discuss the three fish plants that had to close down and try to find solutions. Hopefully, the answer will not be the one the fisheries minister gave us last week when he said that the fisheries plan would be forthcoming.
Did he check with the people in Montreal, Quebec City, Rivière-du-Loup, Edmundston or Bathurst? In any case, he has not hit the Acadian peninsula yet. He should give us our fisheries plan so that we can put our people to work, because they want to work. He should take positive action instead of giving answers that do not make any sense.