Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for New Brunswick Southwest for bringing this bill forward. It is an attempt to bring attention to the terrible situation of the fisheries and fishing families. I would like to bring to the debate a northern perspective.
Most people do not think of Yukon as being a place where there is a fishing industry, but it certainly sustains the first nations fishing industry. The Yukon River starts at Skagway, an American city, and comes up through Whitehorse. This year the salmon did not come. The fish ladder was almost empty by the time the river got to Carmacks. Alma Wrixon, a first nations woman, could not put her fish net in and that is part of what she has done every year for generations to sustain her family.
At Pelly Banks they would catch perhaps three fish in a week if they were fortunate.
We are talking about their winter food. In Dawson City they could not fish. By the time they got to Old Crow there was no fish. The Gwich'in people depend on the fishery and the caribou. They have one caribou herd that is under stress. They could not catch any fish to make it through the winter. That is like their savings account, their money, their potatoes, their way of life to get through winter to the next spring when the birds return.
This bill brings accountability to the department of fisheries. It is another mechanism to make sure the public resource of our water and the fish in our water are available to the people who depend on and need them. It is not necessarily for profit, though profit is an important part of it. It is the benefit of having food to make it through a year.
There are families and towns that depend on fish. Again I stress it is a public resource. It is not anything that is privately owned. They have a right to have a say in how our fishery is managed. So far we have not seen a good record of how our fishery has been managed under the federal government.
To allow this fishers bill of rights would be an important in-road in the bureaucracy so that those who live on fish have a say in how they are distributed. It devolves some powers to those who need it.
Since 1988 the federal government has spent $4 billion to restructure the fishery. What it has meant is a total collapse in our fishing system.
On behalf of the folks who depend on fish but who do not get the limelight, and those who live inland and whose resources are dependent on decisions by people they never see, this would give them an avenue to have a stronger and clearer say in their livelihood.