Mr. Speaker, it is getting late. It is 11.25 p.m. here and it is 12.25 a.m. in my riding. However, knowing that there are quite a few night owls among Acadians, I am sure some of them are listening to me right now.
It is a pleasure for me to say a few words tonight about the decision handed down by the supreme court in the Marshall case. This decision has been taken seriously by all Canadians, and we have been hearing about it for several weeks.
The peace treaty was signed in 1760 and, 250 years later, we have to interpret what happened. We must not forget that, in those 250 years, the Conservatives were often in office, including for a period of nine years mostly in the 1980s. They cannot stand up and blame the Liberals, because problems occurred when both parties formed the government.
But, tonight, we can blame everybody. One thing we know is that there was a treaty. We can say that governments did not respond to the requests made by aboriginal people after the treaty. Today, we have to deal with a decision which was brought about by the inaction of governments.
Burnt Church is very close to my riding of Acadie—Bathurst, which means that people in my riding are also deeply affected by this decision.
Fishers from my riding have contacted me to tell me that they are willing to recognize the rights of native fishers, but that we must negotiate.
The more we wait, the harder these negotiations will be and the more it will hurt. An aboriginal woman from Burnt Church was quoted last week as saying that native-white relations had been developing in the right direction over the past hundred years. Today it seems to her that everything has to be started all over again.
We have some responsibility in all that. When the decision was released, I recall that my colleague, the fisheries critic, sent a letter to the minister asking him to summon the all-party standing committee to a meeting in Ottawa in order to discuss the situation.
Last week, I myself sent a letter to the minister, with no reply. He is asking us all to work together. Even today, as we speak, the all-party committee has not yet been called together to discuss the situation.
The only thing, then, is that violence is a possibility. All sorts of things can happen, but in the end it is negotiation that will solve these problems.
Therefore, I am calling upon the people in my riding, as well as those in the neighbouring riding of Miramichi, to take things calmly, and to enter into negotiations in order to solve the problem. That is the only means to settlement.
Judging from my labour union experience, regardless of what conflicts have taken place, regardless of whether it took three months to settle them, or six, the only place there was a settlement was at the negotiating table.
This invitation must therefore be responded to. The two groups, native and non-native, must be invited to the negotiating table, and it must be done as soon as possible. Not a week from today. Let the invitation go out tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning the two groups need to sit down at the table: the aboriginal people and the unions representing the coastal fishers.
I will go even farther. I will tell you that I have concerns. You know why? The people at home tell us, for example, that crab fishers are now beginning to be concerned.
Are we going to wait yet again to have a crisis in the lobster industry and after that another crisis in the crab industry? And after that we will respond to that crisis and then we will have another one in the herring industry and after that we will respond to the crisis in the herring industry.
I say no. I say the industry must be brought to the bargaining table. This applies to all of the fishing industries, be it herring, groundfish or crab.
We must find a solution together. We must find a solution for everyone. Otherwise, we will end up with the violence that has been going on in recent weeks, and this is unacceptable in 1999.
The government is capable of choosing an approach the fishers would agree to. Some fishers might be ready to sell their license. Some people who have reached the age of 55 or 60 would be prepared to retire. So the government could become involved in buying back their licenses and make these licenses available to the native bands in order to resolve this problem that has gone on unresolved for 250 years. We have a 250 year old treaty, with all the lawyers we have in Canada. They are intelligent enough to be in the House of Commons?
I am happy today not to be a lawyer. I am also happy that the minister is not a lawyer. So, perhaps we can solve the problem today.
It took 250 years to interpret a peace treaty signed with the aboriginals. Today, we are all panicking and we are not prepared to react after 250 years. We should be ashamed of our governments.
This is why I urge you not to wait for a week. We cannot wait until people fight with one another. We cannot wait until violence erupts. People are concerned. They want to sit down, negotiate and find a solution.
It takes leadership to achieve that. When a party steps forward and says it wants to form the government, that means that it has leadership and that it is capable of leading the country. It should be able to manage the crises that we are facing today. There are crises everywhere these days. There is a problem with the airlines. There are two airlines in Canada, Canadian Airlines and Air Canada, and the government does not even know how to deal with this issue. There is a problem with the immigrants arriving in the Vancouver area. Again, the government does not know how to deal with this issue.
There are problems everywhere. It is time to act before we lose control of our country. The federal government and the Liberals have that responsibility that Canadians have given them.
The government waits for weeks on end, but the aboriginal people have been saying for years that they want a solution to their problems.
When the Conservatives signed the free trade agreement, it did not take them long to adjust the whole Canadian program to free trade. It did not take them years to do that.
It seems as if the issue between aboriginal and white peoples could take a year or two to solve. This is not true. We cannot have such an attitude. We must settle the issue now. We must not wait a year to do that. We must sit with these people and solve the problem. There are solutions.
I am convinced that when fishers, aboriginals and a government that shows leadership sit together at the table, solutions will be found.
I urge the government, I urge the minister, who just got the job, to make a name for himself by being a good Minister of Fisheries and solving the problems we are facing in Canada. This is what I ask him to do.