Mr. Speaker, last week the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans closed the cod fishery to fishermen in parts of Atlantic Canada while refusing to deal substantively with other mitigating factors, such as foreign overfishing which he did not even mention, the rapidly growing seal herds, bycatch and gear types.
Why do Canadian fishermen and plant workers have to be the only ones to pay for government incompetence and will the minister tell us how he proposes to set up seal exclusion zones?