Mr. Speaker, it really is a pleasure to rise and speak to Bill C-302. I commend the member for New Brunswick Southwest for bringing forth this bill. He is absolutely right in the fact that fishermen need more rights in this country. We only have to look at what government has done in the last 10 years on fisheries.
We have spent $4 billion on fishers. What has that got us? It has got us an east coast fishery that does not work, loads of unemployment and nothing positive in the future that we can see right now. What has it done on the west coast? It closed down coho salmon fishing last year.
Money does not solve the problem but consultation in the fishing industry would solve the problem. With this minister and ministers before him we have not had consultation with the fishermen, whether that has had to do with commercial fisheries or sports fisheries.
Members of the committee travelled all across Canada. If members of this House would read the report, east coast and west coast, they would see that the government has not consulted the fishermen in any part of the country. That is why a bill like this one is a very good bill. I would implore the backbenchers on the other side who have been speaking against this bill to read the reports written by members of the House, including the Liberal side, to see what the recommendations are. Those recommendations are in this bill. More consultation. Not just more money thrown at a problem. That will not solve the problem.
There are two examples of lack of consultation. The first is on the west coast in my own constituency. The minister wiped out coho fishing this year in British Columbia. This put a lot of people out of work. There was a great deal of sadness because we had a great run of coho but nobody was allowed to fish it.
A hatchery in my constituency a couple of years ago put some coho in Porpoise Bay. The minister had to lift the embargo of fishing coho and allow people to fish in Porpoise Bay because there were so many coho. The coho were going to spawn and if there are too many of them they lay eggs one on top of the other and a disease starts which could cause a real problem. There was fishing in Porpoise Bay for coho. That was not good planning by the government. The fishermen told the government the year before that it could not put a ban in that area.
Fishermen were also told that they could not seed the open ocean because, and these are the words of DFO, there are already too many coho out there. DFO said not to put any out there. Then what did DFO do? It banned the fishing because it said that there were not enough. That is the department of fisheries without consultation with the fishermen. This bill gives fishermen rights to consultation.
Another story concerns herring roe on kelp. This was not a native fishery. This was a fishery started by a man and his family who live in Lund, British Columbia. They built it into a fishery where they were getting $40 a pound for herring roe on kelp in Japan. Over the years some of his employees left and started up their own herring roe on kelp business because they had learned the business and wanted their own business. Over the years it dropped down to about $30 a pound, but it was still a very lucrative business. Four companies were doing it and making good money at it.
This government came along and gave one of those four people $2 million to buy the licence back. What did the government do with that $2 million licence? It gave it to an aboriginal group in British Columbia. The government said, “It is not a natural fishery for an aboriginal group but it is a good business so let's get you into it”. Since then the government has given away in excess of a dozen more licences in this area of herring roe on kelp to aboriginal fishermen around the province.
What has happened to the market in Japan? It went from $30 down to $20 down to $10 as the government kept on giving licences away for free.
The other three licence holders wanted to be bought out too. They said, “If you can buy out this other guy for $2 million, why won't you buy us out. There is not going to be any industry if you keep on passing out these licences for free to the different native bands around the province”. But the government said it did not have any money to buy them out.
The sad thing is this lack of planning, lack of consultation. The herring roe fishery is zero because the native bands are shipping it to Japan on consignment and the other people are going out of business. That is the lack of planning in this industry.
If we wonder why people get angry when DFO does not consult, how would any member of this House like to be one of those fishermen with the herring roe on kelp who are now having to compete against people who got their licence for free and can ship it to Japan on consignment? It is not right. It is not proper. We all should be voting for a bill like this one to allow the freedom and the consultation.
As I said, I commend the member for New Brunswick Southwest. His bill says that it endeavours to establish the rights of fishermen so that they are involved in the process of fishery stock assessment, fish conservation, the setting of fishing quotas, fishing licensing and the public right to fish. As well the bill would establish the rights of fishermen to be informed of the decisions affecting fishing as a livelihood in advance.
The example I just gave on the herring roe on kelp is a great example of why people should be advised in advance. These are people who put good money into their industry. They are not being advised.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that fishermen have a problem in this country. What does the government do? It just throws money, $4 billion over the last 10 years. This has not solved one problem.
We need to move DFO out of Ottawa. Put a head office on the east coast for the east coast, and on the west coast for the west coast. We need to get these 1,200 bureaucrats out of the business. There is no fishing in the Rideau Canal. The fishing is on the east and west coasts. There are too many bureaucrats making too much money who have made wrong decisions. This is out of a report written unanimously by all sides of this House. It is being ignored by the minister of fisheries and it is being ignored at the peril of this country's fishermen. It is time for a change. We ask all members of the House to vote for this bill tomorrow.