Mr. Speaker, it is getting late in the evening and it looks as if I may be the last speaker on this very valuable debate.
I want to thank the Conservative Party's House leader for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for bringing forward this issue for a take note debate. It is too bad it is not an emergency debate. I also wish to thank the government for allowing us this take note debate. Unfortunately it is just a take note debate. I hope the government is doing more than just taking notes. I hope the it is understanding the very serious nature of this issue.
My colleague from New Brunswick mentioned that this is not just about lobsters. This is about every single fish species that we have, not only in Atlantic Canada but clearly right across the country.
Aboriginal people in our prairie provinces are looking at the Marshall decision to see what it means to their role at the FFMC that they have in Winnipeg. They have great problems with that. Aboriginal people on the west coast are looking at this decision in terms of what they believe are their timber rights and their fishing rights. People across the country are very seriously concerned about what this decision means in their lives. It is not just about lobsters.
We are talking about the lobster issue right now because tomorrow morning area 35, the Bay of Fundy region in Nova Scotia—New Brunswick, will be opening up to the commercial fishery which normally opens up this time of year.
Those men and women will be putting out their boats and going out to catch lobsters. We have still not heard a word from the government on how it plans to incorporate the Marshall decision with the aboriginal people to get them into this fishery.
We have heard from people like Mr. Arthur Bull of the Coastal Community Network of Digby who said they have been working overtime, literally day and night since this decision, to come up with reasonable compromises so that both sides, the aboriginal and the non-aboriginal people, can work together. Unfortunately there is nothing but silence from the minister's department and the government.
We must bear in mind, for those who do not know it, that the minister was recently appointed to his position at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The people he has around him are fairly new to the portfolio as well. Therein lies the problem. Obviously the minister is getting his advice from what I consider to be very elderly and tired people on the east coast in terms of DFO, people I have had many concerns about in terms of their management policies. They are the policies of this government and previous governments. It is interesting to hear the Conservatives talk about concerns when the Conservative government from 1984 to 1993 did absolutely nothing to deal with the issue. The Liberal government from 1993 to 1999 has done absolutely nothing.
The attitudes of the Conservative government and the Liberal government toward aboriginal people in the nation have been very much paternalistic. They have told the aboriginal people time and time again that they refuse to negotiate and refuse to legislate. In fact they are telling them to spend taxpayers dollars and go to court.
That is exactly what the aboriginal people have done. They have gone to court and now the court has rendered its decision. Whether or not we like it, it is the legal opinion of the country. The supreme court has ordered it. It is not parliament's obligation and it is not the right of parliamentarians to tell the supreme court that we do not like the decision so it should be stayed, got rid of, changed or whatever. If we start doing that to the Supreme Court of Canada within our constitution we are opening up a bigger can of worms than opposition members or anyone else who is claiming that would be the solution.
I am going to give the minister four very concrete points on how he could come up with a short term solution. One is to immediately reconvene the all party standing committee of fisheries and oceans down in the maritime region. The minister and his department obviously refuse to go down there on a long term basis to deal with the issue. Perception is everyone's reality. They cannot be seen to be making decisions from Ottawa for Atlantic Canada. They must be in Atlantic Canada to put the human and financial resources on the table.
The grassroots people who work the resource know the resource better than the minister and most politicians in this room. They know what the short and long term solutions are. The minister must commit the human and financial resources for them to carry on their work.
Second, the minister must consider a voluntary buyout package and a transfer of the licences over to the Mi'kmaq nation to include them in the fishery. There are about 6,300 licences in the maritime region right now. Roughly 10% of those people would be willing to sell their licences tomorrow morning. The government must find out exactly how many licences would be required on the short term to bring the aboriginal people into the fishery. This is very important because conservation is the key. Everybody must fish under the same conservation guidelines. I do not think there is any debate on that.
The auditor general said last April that lobster stocks, and in fact all shellfish stocks, were in trouble in Atlantic Canada. Many people criticize the auditor general and me for espousing those views. The fact is the auditor general was absolutely correct. Last April he said that the management policies which caused the cod collapse in 1992 were the same policies in place to handle the groundfish stocks.
Let us not forget that in the spring the Mi'kmaq asked the Government of Canada to sit at the table to come up with solutions for the short term because they suspected that the Marshall decision would go in their favour. They came with an open hand to government asking it to come up with solutions so we can evade the problems that are happening now.
My colleague from South Shore and my colleague from West Nova are absolutely correct when they say they have never felt the tensions greater than they are now. They are absolutely correct when they say that.
The fact is that the government by sitting back in Ottawa trying to come up with some solution it can grab out of the sky or grab out of the air will not solve the problems. Government members have to go down there and talk directly to the people involved. They must do that in order to add calm to the equation of the argument that is happening right now.
Another thing that has happened within DFO is severe budget cuts to the department itself. The department does not have the human or financial resources to monitor enforcement policies, so it calls upon the RCMP to help. However, that department's resources were cut as well. The fact is that we do not even have the proper resources allocated right now in order to protect the stock. That is the most important thing. It is not just lobster stock but all other shellfish species out there as well. If the auditor general was correct and they do collapse, it will make the cod prices look like a drop in the bucket. Again, the responsibility falls upon this government.
Every single member in this argument today, my colleagues in the Conservative Party, the Reform Party, the Bloc Quebecois and ourselves, has asked for and demanded leadership on this issue. It is imperative that the minister show leadership. He should get down there and start talking to these people. He should not do it from Ottawa. This is very important. While he is down there discussing this issue, he should seriously consider a community based allocation of these stocks.
Mr. Arthur Bull of Digby has asked many, many times of the Coastal Community Network of Atlantic Canada and those in western Canada as well to get away from the corporatization of our fish stocks which have concentrated the wealth of the fish stocks in very few hands. It is time to start looking at a community based strategy so that all people, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, can work together for the long term benefit of this resource.
We also have to include what the corporate sector is saying right now. The one thing missing in this debate right now is what Clearwater, Highliner Foods and Donna Rae Limited are saying. What are these big corporations that have huge access to fish resources saying in this debate? They have been very, very silent. We have all been working very hard trying to concentrate on protecting the interests of the inshore fishermen.
What is needed now is leadership from this government. This government should not be an ostrich and put its head in the sand and hope the problem goes away. Government members must get down there and work with the people toward immediate short term solutions that have been presented by all members of the House today. They must incorporate those ideas so that we can have a calm fishery. We will all benefit in the long term.