Mr. Speaker, in case the parliamentary secretary or the Minister of Human Resource Development does not know, I am from northeastern New Brunswick, not the northwest. There are no programs for northeastern New Brunswick.
The federal government has done a flipflop and has given $1 million for the next three years to northwestern New Brunswick. This funding went to a committee which perhaps turned up 30 jobs, whereas there are some 400 to 500 people without work. That is what happened. This was a little patch-up job, a bandaid solution. That is all the government has done to keep people quiet.
I get calls from people in northwestern New Brunswick, in the Madawaska—Restigouche area, who have the same problem we do.
The federal government is washing its hands of what is happening in our area. People are calling us every day about not having accumulated enough weeks to qualify for EI benefits.
The federal government claims it is doing everything it can to try to create long term employment. But how? If it wants to shut down the fishery, let it say so outright. The crab fishery is finishing within a few weeks. What are the fishers going to do in July and August. What is the federal government going to do to help them? That is the question.