Mr. Speaker, Group No. 3 comprises Motions 4 and 7.
Motion No. 4 is made for concordance purposes. The purpose of Motion No. 7 is to ensure that MPs have a right to review when the minister wishes to enter into other treaties or when the minister or the governor in council wishes to apply something different.
I am not speaking here of restricting the power of the minister, but of allowing us as parliamentarians, since we are asked to participate in the ratification and implementation of the UNFA, to have a say in it subsequently.
Ratification of an international treaty does not require the creation of Canadian legislation. At the very least, out of simple politeness, they could have simply tabled a notice of motion. We would have treated this like a motion, exactly as they did in the case of the motion on distinct society. It was fine to use that approach for distinct society, but not for Bill C-27, while all their legal experts tell us that they could have signed and ratified this agreement without asking us.
Since I have the microphone at this time and we are still on the air, allow me to point out that the purpose of Motion No. 7 is to introduce two new subsections. First, subsection (2) reads as follows:
(2) No regulations shall be made under paragraph 6( e ) or ( f ) unless the Minister has laid before the House of Commons a draft of the regulations that are to be made at least 120 days before the regulations are made.
One hundred and twenty days, or four months, is not all that long. It allows the parties time to learn the contents of the regulations, to sound out those who will have to live with application of these regulations, or in other words the fishers, and to get back to the House, to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, to make comments. This could not help but improve any regulations the minister would be tempted to make.
Once again, this would allow us, as parliamentarians, to have a say in the matter. We are the ones who are accountable to the public—public servants are accountable to their minister—but we should also be given the opportunity to have a say.
Motion No. 7 proposes to add subsection (3), which reads as follows:
(3) No regulations made under paragraph 6( e ) or ( f ) of this Act shall come into force unless they have been approved by the committee of the House of Commons that normally considers matters relating to fisheries and oceans.
Again, this only makes sense. If the House of Commons says that it needs a standing committee on fisheries to clarify and understand marine-related issues, it would be appropriate for the department and the minister himself to respect the wishes of the House regarding anything that may concern the implementation agreement, and have the issue come back before that committee.
This motion is based on common sense. I will sum things up by saying that parliamentarians must have a look at the issue. This is very important.
I want to go back to the motions we discussed earlier. Since I am the sponsor of the motions included in the first three groups, I was the first one to speak, but I have not yet had the opportunity to comment on remarks made by hon. members.
I did mention that the fisheries agreement could be ratified and signed without the approval of this House. I would like members opposite to realize what we are really trying to do.
We are talking about the way to protect our stocks at the Canadian level—the hon. member from Newfoundland wished we would go further—but we already have Bill C-29 for that. We have the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act to protect what is in our waters. As for straddling stocks, we already have Bill C-29, which allowed us to behave the way we did with the Estai . The international community understands that. The important thing is to make the international community understand.
The subtleties of language are very important in international diplomacy. If a word is used in French or English, the people who have to live with the French expression provided by the government are perhaps better qualified to say care should be used in that regard.
I am not claiming to be the best linguist Quebec or the francophone community ever produced. Sometimes I murder my own mother tongue. But God knows I want to try to improve it.
When we ask that care be used in choosing the words, it is because we feel, perhaps with our Latin blood, that it is important for the countries we will be inviting to sign the agreement. I think that is what counts at the moment. We want a UN fisheries agreement.
With this umbrella, we can try to add a little more bite and make sure people understand the same thing, but if to increase the bite we frighten potential signatories, we will miss the boat. So we must choose our words carefully.
The Bloc Quebecois knows a good thing when it sees it. In this case, is that not getting the largest possible number of signatories to the agreement? I think that is the aim. Or does it lie in protecting fish stocks?
The Bloc Quebecois has already helped do this in the absence of international law. We worked with the government to move Bill C-29 through all three stages in a single day. We have shown common sense and co-operation because we believe that our stocks must be protected.
With Bill C-29, Canada has already done its part. The important thing is to get the maximum number of countries on board. The Bloc Quebecois is holding out its hand precisely so that the House will be careful.
I do not know whether I will be allowed to table the document. I will not hold it up right now, but it is here on my desk. It is a press release dated March 11 issued by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans when it took part in an FAO forum in Rome. There was a question about this earlier during Oral Question Period.
This press release is very eloquent. The fifth paragraph reads as follows:
In Rome today, Canada called on all nations that have not already done so to ratify and fully implement key international agreements, in particular the UNFA, before the end of 2000. For its part, Canada has already introduced legislation in Parliament with the objective of ratifying UNFA by the end of the year.
The key word in this paragraph is not something I made up. It is the representative of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans addressing all countries of the world in Rome and calling on them to fully implement key international agreements.
When I ask that some provisions of the UNFA, like article 5 of part II, be included as general interpretation and management principles, I am not being mean. I did not write them, they are in the agreement. Now I am told “This is not necessary. DFO already applies these principles in the measures it is taking”, but a measure and legislation are two very different things.
One can change a measure like one changes one's shirt—some people change shirts every day. I have the feeling DFO sometimes changes its mind two to three times a day.
It is important to know that DFO recommends integral measures. I think the minor amendments we put forward to ensure that Canada can get the most people possible to sign the agreement are laudable efforts and I urge all my hon. colleagues to weigh all of this very carefully.
I remind the House that the Bloc supports the UNFA, but has some difficulty accepting the way the government is using Bill C-27 to pick and choose the parts of the agreement that suit it. We could miss the boat here.