Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I may not be a good example because I had a very good idea of what was going on over there. My region was experiencing the same problem, and I knew that Newfoundland was affected in the same way. As I said, I am not a good example because I was very well informed. I was familiar with the issue and I followed the situation closely.
However, I would like to go back to the fact that the magnitude of the problem is clear from a statistical point of view. We know that communities are affected. I could see that happening in the Gaspé, where I lived. But as long as one does not meet those affected, as long as one does not see what human tragedy really is, as long as one is satisfied with looking at statistics, one can say “Yes, Newfoundland's population is on the decline. Yes, villages have disappeared. Yes, the economy has been totally destroyed”.
However, we have met people who have lived through the tragedy, people whose village has closed down, people who had been honourably earning a living in a given area for generations, people who had been earning a living in an industry and, suddenly, found they had no future. They were forced to move away and, today, their 18 to 20 year old children must also move away, because there is no work. Basically, these people have been left alone to cope in a more or less active environment, the social fabric of which is gradually deteriorating. At that point, things are quite different, because you are really living with them—temporarily, for the time that you are there—going through what they go through daily and what they have been going through for years.
The government has said “We will create assistance programs to support you”, but these are essentially useless programs. All it is doing is keeping these people in poverty, when it should have been exercised caution and protected the resource, which we did not do.
The Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans is asking today that we protect the resource. This is what we are asking. It is quite simple: let us protect the resource, at least what is left of it, to ensure that it can renew and rebuild itself and that, one day, we can rebuild the economies of these regions.
Of course, they will no longer be based only on fishing, because this will not be possible. However, let us at least give the resource a chance, to ensure that we can rebuild the economies of these regions and that some of these people can go back to earning a decent living.
This is simple. This is what we are asking this parliament to do.