Mr. Speaker, abalone harvesting licence holders on the west coast remain second class citizens. Unlike other licence holders in other fisheries who have been disenfranchised from their livelihood due to closures, the federal government has never initiated a buyback program for owners of now useless abalone licences.
The government's approach to disenfranchised abalone licence holders was to set up an advisory body to discuss the issue with the native fishery and coastal communities affected by the closure. This is nothing but an attempt to bury the issue in a bureaucratic maze, hoping the real disenfranchised, the abalone licence holders, would forget about the whole thing.
A year ago I asked the minister of fisheries for a meeting to discuss the issue and to date I have not been accorded the courtesy of a response to my letter. When will I get a response from the minister? When will abalone licence holders get what they deserve? When will the minister realize he is from British Columbia? These people are suffering.
I heard why do I not ask the parliamentary secretary, that he should know what the minister is doing if he is doing his job. They are not answering these questions. They should answer them and do something immediately.