Madam Speaker, I rise today again on a question I asked regarding the exploratory seismic licences that were given to the company Corridor Resources from the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board.
I raise this concern because those seismic drilling exploration leases, which we have now found out are six months delayed so they could be done in the wintertime, are right in the heart of the lobster spawning grounds off the coast of Cape Breton, on the inside coast in the gulf and around P.E.I. where the member for Malpeque is from, as well as in the New Brunswick area.
If this company is allowed to have the exploratory licence to do its seismic drilling, it will expand the drilling throughout the entire gulf. This means that the province of Quebec and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador will be incorporated in this concern as well.
The reason I am speaking on this today is that over 2,000 lobster fishermen in Cape Breton, New Brunswick and P.E.I. have very serious concerns about their livelihood.
Since the downturn of the groundfish fishery a lot of fishermen have turned to lobster or shellfish as their main livelihood in order to live in their coastal communities and look after their families. They do not make very much money doing this.
If we allow this to go forward we are risking the possible long term environmental damage of a very sustainable stock. In Newfoundland, in fact in all Atlantic Canada and Quebec it is an over half a billion dollar industry. The government only spends about $330,000 a year on experiments and the science and study of the lobster itself.
I would ask the government to be very cautious and prudent in its environmental assessment of the project to ensure that there will be no damage in the short term or the long term to the lobster stocks, scallop stocks, crab stocks or whatever shellfish is out there.
There are indications that the groundfish breed out there as well. We must be very cautious to protect those species so that in turn we can protect the livelihood of thousands of people and their families in coastal communities in Atlantic Canada.
This begs another question. Why did the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council along with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans not immediately put a halt to this lease before all environmental assessments were done in the long term? We cannot do a proper assessment in six months. It is 1999 and we are still in the embryonic stage of wondering if seismic oil and gas drilling definitely affects the lobsters. There are a lot of indications from the fishermen that indeed they do. The DFO spends very little money on science in this regard.
I ask the government again that the FRCC, the DFO's advisory board and the DFO itself, the department responsible for management of the habitat area and the fish stocks as well, be extremely prudent and cautious in their efforts in order to protect the livelihood of thousands of people in Atlantic Canada.