Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago I raised a question about overfishing and it has been followed up on several occasions since then. We drew to the attention of the House and the minister the fact that we have a severe problem, which has existed for years, but, with the exception of an intervention every now and then by the government, very little has been done. However an awareness has been created.
Let me thank the member, who I perhaps insulted a few moments ago, the chair of the fisheries committee, for his tremendous work in helping to educate the House, the members of his committee and, I would say, a lot of Canadians generally about the pillage that has taken place off the east coast of Newfoundland.
The member not only held hearings on the issue of overfishing, he also agreed to bring his committee to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador where we heard from everyone involved in the industry, from the towns that have been affected as a result of the destruction of our resource and also from interested parties. It was an education.
The members of the committee came back and, without exception, stood and spoke strongly on this issue during the debate that we had here in the House.
However, during that time a Russian vessel called the Olga came into St. John's and, by accident, someone--not the department because when I raised the issue with the minister he admitted that he did not know about it--discovered that the boat contained 49 tonnes of large, breathing codfish, a species that is under moratorium, a species we are not allowed to catch, a species that has been wiped out over the years by seal herds, by foreign overfishing and undoubtedly by our own interventions into the harvesting of the resource, but for whatever reasons a resource that has led, by its demise, to the closure of several fish plants and the displacement of several workers throughout the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and Canada generally.
I asked the minister what he was going to do about the contents of the boat. I asked him further about a sister ship which, on the same day, was supposed to land in St. John's and transfer its catch, as these boats do, back to the home country. When the word got out that cod had been discovered on boat number one, boat number two suddenly discovered it had a leak in the steering tube and headed off for Iceland. Undoubtedly that boat also contained product which it was not supposed to have.
I asked the minister if he would stop the boat and check it out to see if that was the case. I did not receive an answer to that question at all and I did not get much of an answer to what would be done with the first one.
Perhaps the parliamentary secretary, or whoever will answer, will educate me as to what the government has done so I can go home tonight feeling great about the interventions.