Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in this debate. I find the motion interesting. I am sure there must have been a lot of discussion in the Tory party caucus in trying to write this resolution. Sprinkled throughout it there are references to the fishing industry. It talks about Canada's food industry, but it primarily focuses on agriculture, as would be seen in some of the responses.
However, because of the very few number of seats the Tories have in the maritimes, I am sure there was a battle suggesting that they had better not just talk about agriculture and focus on western Canada. I believe yesterday the results in Saskatchewan would show that the Conservative Party is hardly on what any one might call a comeback. I believe it came in fourth. The Liberals did well in three other ridings, one in Ontario and two in Quebec, so we know that the people are generally satisfied with the programs.
I would like to discuss from the point of view of the fisheries a bit of the nonsense about the failure to provide leadership and the failure of the Conservative Party to seize this opportunity to actually say something important about what has happened to our fishing industry.
I recommend to all members a book they should read called Lament for an Ocean .
Far be it for me to quote too much from a book written by a journalist, one who is not necessarily supportive of Liberals or the government, and the name Mike Harris comes to mind. He is not the premier of Ontario but rather the journalist who wrote the book. I must give him credit because when one reads the book and the research that was done one can see a pattern that was developed. Frankly, it was developed under the leadership of Conservative governments and a minister. It is unfortunate to have to criticize someone who is not in this place any more to defend himself, but I am sure he is quite capable of defending himself, as we have seen, and that minister was John Crosbie.
The programs in place in the maritimes were such that they totally had blinkers on and allowed foreign freezer vessels to come in, rape the ocean, particularly off the coast of Newfoundland, and destroy the fishery. Why not take this opportunity with this small gathering of Conservatives from the maritimes to ask the government to do something that would actually help restore the cod fisheries? I do not see any mention of that. The motion mentions solutions for Canada's fishery, but it focuses fundamentally on agriculture.
On the agricultural side of it, we know that there have been what I would have to carefully call some flip-flops by some hon. members. The sponsor of the motion, the hon. member for Brandon—Souris, actually said in Hansard “The U.S. government provided $8.7 billion” in farm aid. He went on to ask “When will the minister use his influence to put forward similar resources?” Just seven days later, he was quoted as saying that he had never asked for more money to be added to the pot. I guess we misunderstood that. That was in reference to the money in the AIDA program.
We all know that the government has responded by increasing the funding for AIDA. It is never enough to satisfy members opposite but it is a response. The minister of agriculture, in a responsible way, has topped up that program. Notwithstanding the complaints I have heard about the bureaucracy and red tape, that money is flowing into the hands of Canadian farmers.
Because this is about food in the country, let me go back to the fishery. Our new minister has just announced a $600,000 program to fund new aquaculture programs. That is not a lot of money but it is recognition of the importance of aquaculture, particularly given the damage caused to our natural fisheries throughout the east coast. There is a commitment there. I would like to see more of it.
My colleague, the hon. member for Sudbury, has a program where they want to raise Arctic char in an abandoned mine pit. Apparently all the science and research shows that the Arctic char that comes out of this technology is absolutely spectacular. A small investment at the local community level is needed to make that kind of thing work. Why would members opposite not call for the government to invest in something like that? It seems to me that is a productive thing, something that we could look at and something that should be supported.
I am also surprised that the member opposite did not take the opportunity to address something that I think is one of the great sins of our time, the reduction in the quotas and at one time the banning of the seal hunt. It is really bizarre if we look at why the cod is down. As my hon. friend from the east coast, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, would say “seals eat fish”. It is amazing.
Why not look at the fact that there was a recent report to the committee on the situation with the seals? Let me just read about how seals are predators. The report states:
One of the most controversial aspects of the debate on seals is whether predation by harp seals is impeding the recovery of cod stocks.
Imagine anyone asking that question. If we want to create more food and more fish in the country, why do we not look at the fact that there are over five million seals in the population? I believe that figure is three or four years old. The population is probably over six or seven million. They are destroying not only a fishery and a species but a way of life.
The committee went on to state:
None of the witnesses who appeared before the committee claimed that seals were the cause of the collapse of cod stocks, which they clearly attributed to both foreign and domestic overfishing.
The committee puts on blinders and says that even though it has restricted the catch by foreign fishing companies, by freezer trawlers, and even though it has taken the steps to correct the mistakes of former Tory governments in that area, it continues to refuse to believe that the seals are in fact predators that are destroying the cod fishery.
The committee goes on to state:
However, it was noted by the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council in their April 1999 report “that the single cod stock in the Northwest Atlantic considered recovered, namely, the southern Newfoundland/St-Pierre Bank stock, is the only stock that does not have a large number of seals occurring within its stock range”.
That is pretty clear evidence to me. It basically states that the cod in that part of the world has recovered in terms of its population and size—and the size of the cod is a key factor—because they are not facing the predators in terms of the seals.
I have some other statistics. Do we want to find a way to support Canada's food industry, Canada's fishery? This says that grey seals are consuming between 5,400 and 22,000 tonnes annually of eastern Scotian shelf cod; harp seals may be consuming as much as 140,000 tonnes annually of northern cod; seals in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence may have consumed as much as 68,000 tonnes of cod in 1996 alone; and, seals in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence may be consuming over 10,000 tonnes annually of cod. That is a lot of fish.
Why is it that we somehow feel the need to protect the seals to the tune where they are literally crawling across highways in Newfoundland, for goodness sake, coming right out of the water?
In 1997, the NAFO science community reported clearly that the seals consumed 108,000 tonnes of juvenile northern cod, those less than 40 centimetres, which represents 300 million fish. If we want to do something to help the fishery we should support the report of this council which says that the seal hunt should be increased by 50%? That may be drastic, but in reality that is a step that will allow the cod to recover, that will allow the fishery on the east coast to recover and that will allow the families in that part of the world to get back on the water to make a living so that they generate food for the rest of Canada.
I would have thought that would be the kind of policy that the Conservative Party would be interested in seeing so it could resolve the mess that it caused in its time in office.