Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to speak. If I may ask the indulgence of the House, I would like to thank the Tory caucus staff and the New Democratic caucus staff for holding a wonderful birthday party on the sixth floor and I will say happy birthday to the hon. member whose birthday was celebrated.
On a more serious note, talking about committees, I would like to ask the hon. member from Calgary a question in regard to the effectiveness of a committee. One thing I feel very proud of is my work on the fisheries and oceans committee from 1997 to 2000. Out of that committee we produced 13 reports, 8 of them unanimous. The one I am most proud of is the east coast report. As we all know there was a crisis in the cod fishery and the ground fishery on the east coast. That report cost Canadian taxpayers $182,000. We travelled extensively throughout Atlantic Canada.
All five parties unanimously agreed to every single word of the report. When we moved consensus of that report in the House of Commons through a vote, guess what happened? The same Liberals who signed the report and agreed to every single word voted against it.
My question, then, is this: what are we telling the people we spoke to? We spent an awful lot of their money listening to them. We spent an awful lot of their money travelling in helicopters and on hotels and for meals, et cetera. Those people spent a considerable amount of their energies and efforts coming to the committee to listen, to talk to us and to pour out their stories. One man near Pouch Cove poured out his heart about the fact that he only had 18 cents left in his bank account because he was running out of TAGS money.
The Liberals were there. They heard the stories. The parliamentary secretary heard them. We made a report. It was unanimous. We sent it on to the House for consent and the same Liberals that worked on that report then voted against their own report.
I am very proud of committee work. It is essential to what we do as parliamentarians.
My question, then, is very clear. When this happens in Canada, does that not send a very negative message to Canadians? We are saying we will listen to them, do a unanimous report, bring it to the House and then the government side will ignore it.