Mr. Speaker, I will take this time to acknowledge the work of the fisheries committee. At this point and in the past it has done an excellent job of doing what committees of the House need to do when dealing with issues and reviewing problems: go to Canadians, listen to them at the source and see the problems they are dealing with.
The fisheries committee has done this on a regular basis. I thank its members for that. I am grateful, especially as someone who has been sitting on a transport committee that has not so much as moved its butt outside Ottawa to listen to Canadians for a number of years. Sitting on that committee has been a rather bad experience.
The fisheries committee has shown what committees ought to be doing. The recommendations before us have come from all members of the committee representing all parties. They went out and listened to Canadians, saw what they were dealing with and recognized the anguish they were going through.
I was in Newfoundland in 1992 when the moratorium came into place. It was my first time in Newfoundland. The friends I was visiting wanted me to partake of that famous Newfoundland tradition: being screeched in. I do not think they are too happy about it now. The toughest job that day was to find a cod so I could be officially screeched in. We had to find alternative routing because no cod were available. The alternative was a puffin's behind. That was the rough spot of the day.
I am not making light of the issue. Since then there has been recognition of the anguish felt by the fishermen and concern about their livelihood. There was willingness among the fishermen to recognize that to sustain a long term fisheries industry they would need to make sacrifices. They did that and have continued to do it for a number of years. Yet the stocks have not improved.
The province's fishermen see foreign fishermen come in pretty much every day and sit outside the fence of where the fish are, so to speak. So members from the prairies can understand, it is like someone sitting outside a fence waiting for animals to cross over, or in this case fish, so they can be caught. The fish stocks are not given the opportunity to fully come back. It has been disheartening for these people, yet the fisheries committee has made recommendations that were totally disregarded by the government.
It is crucial that with respect to the five recommendations regarding this fragile area of Newfoundland and Labrador's economy the government not just do a lot of talking. Committee members need to do more than talk their faces off for the sake of talking. The government needs to respond to their recommendations. For once it should stand up for Canadian fishermen and all the industry people involved in the issue. It should stand up against the foreign countries taking the stocks. It should do so not because Canada wants the stocks for itself. We want them to improve. That is what it is about. It is about fishermen caring for their industry and for the resource. It is about conservation.
I encourage the government not to let it all be for show. Let it not be a bunch of talk. Let us not totally ignore the recommendations again. We are running out of time. The government at some point will need to stand up strongly for Canadians. It must not go to the table for Canadians merely to negotiate on its knees or not at all.
My hon. colleague Nelson Riis who was here previously got on his knees one day in the House and said it was Canada's way of negotiating with the U.S. It was somewhat of a joke then. However as time has gone by I have seen many issues come into the House. Quite frankly, that is the way the government negotiates with the U.S. and numerous foreign countries on issues that relate to the well-being of the Canadian public.
It is time the government remembered it is the government of the people of Canada and should be standing up for them.