Mr. Chairman, I wish to thank the hon. government House leader for allowing the debate to take place this evening. It is a debate we do not have very often in the House, in central Canada. The debate is about the serious issue of the Coast Guard which more or less affects the three oceans we have. Many people fail to remember that the Coast Guard is also very effective in the Great Lakes region, Lake Winnipeg and in the Arctic. I wish to thank all members for participating in this debate.
Hopefully through this debate and dialogue we can give support to the minister when he goes to cabinet asking for more resources, because we hope that is what he will be doing. We assume that is what he said in his speech tonight although he did not come out as clear as the Minister of National Defence. We are hoping indeed that he will be doing that.
If we listen to the minister's speech he makes it sound like everything is just great and wonderful. In fact, why are we even having a debate tonight? We should go home, have dinner and be with our families, but the reality is that there are serious concerns within the Coast Guard.
Mr. Mike Wing, the head of the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, Mr. John Fox from Nova Scotia representing the regions, Senator Pat Carney, Senator Mike Forrestall and many members of Parliament would not be holding press conferences and addressing the serious issues of the Coast Guard if everything was just fine. The fact is that it is the absolute opposite. Not only the men and women of the Coast Guard, but coastal communities across and within the country as well as many shippers in cities along the St. Lawrence, for example, have raised serious issues about the Coast Guard, its fee structure and how it collects its fees, as my hon. friend from the Bloc mentioned.
It is not only the opposition who has noticed the deficiencies within the Coast Guard. The member for Beauséjour--Petitcodiac is the son of a former fisheries minister. We were in Prince Edward Island and saw countless numbers of buoys on the ground. They should have been in the water doing the job of a nav-aid, but they were on the ground. The hon. member from the Liberal Party asked what they were doing there. The officials said they simply did not have the budget to take them out. They went on to elaborate that approximately $150,000 worth of nav-aids were lost due to the ice the previous year because they did not have the budget to go out and bring them in. They were just lost. They get damaged and they are gone. That $150,000 is just what we know of from one little visit by the committee to Prince Edward Island.
We were in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. My colleagues behind me will know this very well as will the Liberals. We were there meeting with Coast Guard officials. The coastline of Newfoundland and Labrador is very large. There is lots of oil and gas activity, commercial activity for fishing, and lots of recreation fishing, et cetera. We asked them how many Coast Guard vessels were patrolling the waters of Newfoundland and Labrador at that moment. The reply was that they had one. It was sitting in the harbour. I am not making this up. That came from one of the managers of the Coast Guard in DFO in Newfoundland and Labrador. They had one vessel.
Why do we have thousands of shore birds and sea birds washed up on the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador because of oil spills? Why do we have illegal fishing off our coastlines? Why do we have illegal immigrants coming into the country? Why do we have drugs coming into the country? We are simply not doing the job. The Coast Guard, because of lack of resources and clear direction by the government, is not able to do the job it wants to do.
One would assume that post-9/11 we would have beefed up security, but the reality is that we have lessened security. It is unacceptable that has happened.
Mr. Mike Wing, the head of the union, would not be standing in the House, or anywhere else for that matter, mentioning the serious concerns of morale among the men and women he represents if he did not have facts and clear arguments for his case. This is what is happening. Morale in the Coast Guard is at an all-time low.
Those who talked to Coast Guard officials and DFO officials when the merger took place in 1995 know of the internal battle between the Coast Guard and DFO officials. In many cases that battle still continues as they fight for their share of the pie.
Moving the Coast Guard to DFO sounded fairly good in theory. They both did the same sort of work so maybe it might have worked. When Senator Pat Carney, Senator Mike Forrestall, and the union asked for an inquiry into the Coast Guard, one of the biggest questions they wanted to ask was: How is that merger working? In their opinion it had failed. It was simply not effective.
When I first became fisheries and oceans critic for the NDP a Coast Guard official, the acting director at the time, came to our committee. My colleague from the Alliance was there. I asked him questions about funding. I did not ask him about this in particular but he came out and said that $200 million of the Coast Guard budget was diverted into the regular DFO budget for other purposes.
We know that with downsizing in 1995 a lot of money was cut from the Coast Guard. The minister said we put so much back in. We have not put back what we have taken out already.
We understand there are other spending requirements for the government. We know we need to be fiscally accountable and responsible for taxpayer dollars. An investment in the Coast Guard is an investment in our country. That is a fact. The men and women of the Coast Guard are willing to risk their lives for the protection of our interests. They are willing to go into certain conditions out on the ocean at the worst time of year that you and I would not even dream of, Mr. Speaker. They are proud and they want to do their job. What is most important is that they have the confidence and the support of not only the fisheries minister but the government as well, and for that matter all members of Parliament, that what they do is valuable and important.
One of the most telling things about what was going on in the Coast Guard and how the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing was when we were in Vancouver. I asked Mr. Mike Henderson of the Coast Guard: “How is it going with the resources? How is the money? Is there any problem with money?” He said, “Money is not a problem”. We had to take the man for his word. We were not going to accuse him of something until we got the facts. Then we went to the regions. We went to Victoria, Ucluelet and Tofino. It was a completely different story.
Those who know Vancouver and Victoria know that it is not that far apart. There are phones and, with technology, e-mail. We would assume that the head of the Coast Guard on the west coast would know what the heck is going on in his department. Every single person on the west coast said money was the number one problem. I ask the minister, how can your official, who--