Mr. Speaker, the town of Burgeo highlights the very seriousness of the situation. Mayor Allister Hann summarized it very well.
Burgeo is still a very proud town and a very well managed town. It has faced dire consequences for the last 10 years. People in that town worked for 12 months. A number of deep sea trawlers were attached to the town. A very vibrant workforce that had been working 12 months a year basically has been shut down for the last 10 years because of the moratorium on ground fishing and cod stocks.
The member has asked me about other communities. I look across the coast of Newfoundland and see the towns of Isle aux Morts, Rose Blanche, Ramea which is just off the coast from Burgeo, Gaultois, and the Burin peninsula communities of Fortune and Marystown. Burin had a primary processing plant at one time. Thank god right now we are into secondary processing. Trepassey in St. John's West literally has been shut down and boarded up, a town where people worked 12 months a year. Thousands and thousands of people were fully employed. That is the impact the situation has had on the economies of those towns. It is not a very pretty sight.
My colleague opposite talked about the resource being a world resource. It is a tremendous protein resource for the world that we are talking about here. Someone has to take responsibility for conservation of that very important protein resource on the nose and tail and Flemish Cap, which is known as a nursery area where fish spawn and grow quite readily because of the nutrients and the water temperature.
We have been debating species at risk. We have been debating conservation. We have been talking about environmental issues. However no country in the world, including our own, has risen to deal with this crisis.
It is about time that someone rose to the cause for this very important nursery area, a great protein resource for the world, or it could be if we managed it properly. With proper enforcement and a proper management regime in place, it could be again that which it once was, a great food resource not just for Atlantic Canada or Newfoundland and Labrador, but for the entire world. It is time that someone rose to the occasion.