Mr. Chairman, I do not quite know where to begin to respond to that. I do agree that we need a lot more than a take note debate on this issue. We need an inquiry into the functioning and effectiveness of the Coast Guard. We have now had this circumstance for a number of years. Basically from all reports it is not working.
We have had simple things. For the Office of Boating Safety, for example, there is new legislation. Legislation was created where everybody who runs a recreational craft under four metres in length is supposed to be licensed as of September 15.
I live in a part of the country where everybody has a boat and many of them are under four metres in length. What are the audits saying? That the Office of Boating Safety endeavour to operate in basically an unfunded state with few to nil resources. That is no surprise.
The local newspaper stated: “Efforts by The Record to obtain information where local boaters can take this test proved futile. The operator of the local office of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was not available so a call was placed to the Campbell River DFO office. In turn, we were referred to the boating safety hotline, who in turn referred us to a media consultant in Vancouver. This person told us we should be calling the Boating Safety Office in Victoria. Upon calling that number we found there was no one available. A call back to the boating safety hotline to ask for further assistance had us referred to the directory for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. There was no one answering that telephone either”.
This is the kind of behaviour we are getting. We are getting new initiatives that are not funded. We are getting priority activities of the department that are basically being underfunded.
The same thing is happening to the Coast Guard that is happening to our armed forces. It is rust out, it is burnout and it is time that the government made a decision that those are priority activities that it must deliver. It has a constitutional priority to deliver those kinds of programs to the public. It is not happening to the degree it should.
The minister is the one who is responsible to try and effect this change. I hope and wish him well in those endeavours.