Mr. Speaker, something happened yesterday in the House of Commons that should not be allowed to happen again.
The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced, in private, with a deliberate leak to a small group of Atlantic Liberal members of Parliament, that the fishery could possibly be shut down. His own department and Atlantic Liberal members of Parliament leaked the information. They came out of the meeting, spilled their guts to the media, whined and cried, threw up their arms in the air and asked what they could possibly do in such a situation.
Maybe the minister should have asked what he was going to do with the overfishing on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap. What are we going to do about a foreign fleet that has been uncontrolled and our lack of representation at NAFO? What will the minister do, not just in the Gulf of St. Lawrence but in zone 4x, his own doorstep, where the cod stocks are not endangered?