Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As my hon. friend from Delta—South Richmond said, it is definitely not with great pleasure that I rise here today to speak about the moratorium that has been announced.
As a great and well-known historian said, history repeats itself, but never looks the same. Unfortunately, the impression we are getting here from the government is that history does repeat itself and looks much the same as before.
We can look and look for the reasons behind the moratorium— because of climate change, as some scientists have said; or because of the never-ending growth of the seal herds; or because of foreign overfishing—it does not change the fact that the real reason we are in this mess today, along with all the fishermen in Gaspé, the Lower North Shore, western Newfoundland and Labrador, is the federal government's mismanagement of the resources.
Let us ask ourselves the question quite simply. If there had been proper management, would we be facing a moratorium today? The answer is no. If the resource had been well managed, we would not have a moratorium today. No one has mentioned resource management since 1990 or 1992, except for imposing the moratorium. You can talk about the resource for 50 years, or 250 years. In Gaspé, as in Newfoundland, it is a 250-year-old tradition that is disappearing today.
There are communities, fish plants, businesses, women and men who are going to find themselves without work because the plants are going to close their doors. These are the people who get sent directly to social assistance. Because, despite official statements, the assistance plan offered to the people is shamefully small, does not meet the real needs of the people, and leads nowhere.
The announcement to the plant workers led, in my view, to a great deal of frustration. It had already been strongly rumoured in November or early December that there would be a total moratorium on cod fishing. I criticized the minister for this and I am going to do so again. At the time, he caused families and workers in the Gaspé Peninsula to panic, a month before the Christmas holidays.
I think that, from that moment on, serious consideration should have been given to developing an assistance plan so that, as soon as a moratorium was announced, we would have been ready to take action and offer assistance to these people.
What I find frustrating about all this, is obviously how badly this resource has been managed. It is obvious. Perhaps the current minister cannot be blamed for this bad management, but perhaps his government can be. There has been a moratorium on cod for ten years, and for ten years people have known that this stock is not being rebuilt. Therein lies my criticism of this government.
Consider what other countries do in similar situations, such as Iceland, for example. Iceland has managed to solve this kind of problem and, today, it has an abundant resource. But how? It is because the Government of Iceland took action when it was needed, even against the UK. Remember when Great Britain threatened to send in its war ships so that fishers in the UK could continue to fish inside Iceland's zone. Thanks to the resolve of its government, Iceland, which is a very small country, managed to protect its resources. It managed to ensure that this resource has prospered, and today people are making a good living off this fishery.
I understand the frustration of people in Newfoundland and Labrador, and I also understand the frustration of people in the riding of my hon. colleague from the North Shore. These people live exclusively off this resource. Entire communities may disappear, and the message they are being sent is “leave”. People in the Gaspé Peninsula are being told to leave. About 1,400 people are affected, and some observers say it is 2,000.
They are telling people to leave. People are being told they have no future in the Gaspé, that they have no future in Newfoundland or on the Lower North Shore.
We know perfectly well that the moratorium that has just been declared will not last for only two, three or four years. We know that the resource has not come back since the early 1990s, and that it will probably not come back in the affected zones because of a whole host of factors.
One of the factors people talk about, and I will come back to it, is the ever increasing numbers of seal herds, especially the grey seal. According to some observers, a seal consumes one tonne of fish per year, on average. Do you know what that means when there are five million seals? It means five million tonnes of fish.
When they say five million tonnes, it does not mean five million tonnes of whole fish. As some of our colleagues explained, or maybe they did not have enough time, the seal is a predator. The seal prefers the liver. What does the seal eat? It only eats a very small part of the fish. What do five million seals represent when we are talking about one million pounds? That is a lot more destruction, and a whole lot of destruction when you consider a herd of five million seals.
This is another good example of poor resource management. The seal is a resource that we could have started developing ten years ago. In fact, we could have started harnessing this resource or encouraging certain companies to adapt and move toward processing seal products.
I asked questions in the House about the seal industry. I was told, “Yes, there are markets”. There are markets but we cannot make it work, even with quotas of 350,000. Last year, 312,000 seals were harvested. The industry was not encouraged. The federal government had not invested in research and development to develop a valid industry that could have gradually replaced the ground stocks industry, knowing perfectly well that the resource was not coming back.
We have known for the last seven, eight or nine years that the resource is not coming back. There was another resource that we could have harnessed and we did not react accordingly. As for the assistance plan now being proposed, we need to consider the option of changing over plants. We need to start processing seal products and to start developing other markets that are different from those that we already have.
As I was saying, I have asked questions of the Minister for International Trade, among others, about why the negotiations, especially those with the Americans, are not getting anywhere. How is it that it is still banned today when there is a seal herd busy destroying the resource in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off the shores of Newfoundland? How is it that they have not made it an urgent matter to negotiate the opening of a new market with the United States involving seal products, among other things?
The answer we are given is that negotiations are under way. If this is anything like the way things are usually done with international trade, if it is anything like the softwood lumber situation, we can wait a long time and cannot take the outcome for granted. If we depend on the Minister for International Trade to open up new markets in the U.S. we will be waiting a long time. As hon. members can see from that situation, results are a long time coming. Not only a long time, there just are not any results.
I would like to come back to the assistance package being offered. It has a strange resemblance to the plan offered in connection with softwood lumber. It has such a similarity to that situation, where the sawmills continue to shut down. Thousands of jobs have been lost and people have had no assistance. None whatsoever. There is supposedly a program in place for softwood lumber to help the communities but it has not necessarily helped the softwood lumber workers.
What I am calling for when I speak about a true assistance plan—and this is one of the things i have been saying since the moratorium was announced, and even before that, and on which I have asked many questions of the minister in this House—is a plan that will help the people affected by the moratorium. It is a plan that will help the affected workers. These are the ones that need to be helped now. Some in the Gaspé, as some of my colleagues have already pointed out, are already in those gaps as far as EI is concerned. It would have been necessary to extend EI benefits for these people so that they can, even if it takes three, four or five years, get training, change direction, make a decent life for themselves. This would have been important in the assistance plan.
Another important aspect of this aid package would be to provide assistance to the industry, to the businesses.
In our region, when we look at dried, salted fish, several businesses are jeopardized and are at risk of disappearing. We are talking about people who dedicated their whole life to developing these businesses and, all of a sudden, they are told, “You are going to close down; the business will no longer exist, and you will lose everything you have worked for”.
I think there is a liability and it rests with the federal government. Everyone recognizes that the federal government has the sole control and management of the resource and that we are in the position we are in today because of its management.
Had I been here in 1992, I would have said the exact same thing. Successive federal governments, regardless of stripe, have all totally mismanaged the fisheries.
One can wonder if the fisheries are important at all to the federal government. Does the government really care about the thousands of jobs at stake? Is it really important that the region and the people in the east can continue to have a decent living? This is not obvious to us in the east.
The resource has been mismanaged for years. For years we have been paying the price. Today, again, in a region where the unemployment rate is over 20%, we are being told, “1,400 jobs will be lost”. Do you know what that represents for us? That is roughly the equivalent of 30,000 jobs in Montreal. It would be a catastrophe on a national scale if Montreal were to lose 30,000 jobs, but it is not a national catastrophe because the jobs are only being lost in the Gaspé, along the Lower North Shore and in Newfoundland. That is the difference.
The east has never been given a fair shake by the federal government. This government has never acted intelligently to develop a new economy in our regions.
Here is another example. In 2000, during the election campaign, the Liberals came in and announced a plan to spend some $30 million, supposedly through Canada Economic Development, to help develop the Gaspé. Do you know what it was for? It was solely for loans and there was almost nothing for business. It was the Government of Quebec, with what little money it had at the time, that contributed.
I am convinced that the government that was just elected in Quebec City will continue to do the same thing. If we want to develop the regions, we have to rely on ourselves alone and not on the government, which only collects taxes from us and gives us nothing back in return.
For another example, take the case of air transportation in our regions. If ever a government has abandoned the regions when it comes to air transportation, it is this government. I could give all kinds of examples. postal services, land transportation, transportation systems in general. How are we supposed to develop a region if it is impossible to have an air transportation system that works properly? This is one of the problems we are currently experiencing.
Again, we are being told that the private sector will develop, but that is not true. Without government intervention in regions like ours, it is absolutely impossible.
I want to come back to the assistance plan announced for us concerning Canada Economic Development. If Canada Economic Development added $7 million in the Gaspé every year, that would be $14 million. However, if Canada Economic Development used the same criteria as previously announced, then it is useless.
It is a totally useless assistance plan because, in a region where the economy is in trouble and where the unemployment rate is 22 or 23%, development cannot happen the same way it could in Toronto or in Vancouver. The criteria have to be changed and adapted so that very small businesses can create one, two or three jobs, and slightly larger businesses, small and medium size businesses, can also have access to the Canada Economic Development program. However, for the time being, the criteria are such that each time or nearly each time a business person submits a project, he or she is told that it does not qualify. I have good examples of that.
Last week, a business from Pointe-à-la-Croix came knocking on the door of the Canada Economic Development office in Gaspé. It was told that its project was stupid, or almost. That is what these people were told, even though their project is very good and is supported by the Quebec government. Among its sponsors is the Liberal member who was just re-elected in the riding of Bonaventure.
The federal government, through Canada Economic Development, told these people that it could not help them with this project. We see that constantly in our regions, particularly in the Gaspé peninsula.
Yet the riding of Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok is well represented by a Liberal member. That should change things, but it does not. Day after day, people will realize that because both he and I are told the same thing each and every time, namely that the projects do not meet the criteria, that they are not good, and so on.
This is what we heard when we went to Newfoundland with the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans not too long ago. There was an assistance program in 1992, but every time a project was submitted, the answer was that it did not meet the criteria. This is what the officials were telling people and, in some areas, the money was not even spent entirely. It is as simple as that. No project by these people could meet the criteria of Economic Development Canada. It is impossible for our regions to do what is done in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver.
In conclusion, I will say that the seal, among others, has been often targeted, and there are several reasons for that, but the most fundamental reason is the mismanagement by the federal government, its inability to manage the resource. Things have to change, and quickly.
Right now, there is pressure on other resources, for example, crab, lobster and shrimp; further resources are not being developed in an efficient manner. We cannot let the moratorium be extended to other species, because we will find ourselves in the same situation.
I ask the government to undertake, for once, to really manage the resource with a vision for the future. This must not be a vision for a week or a year, but a vision for the future, over a 10, 15 or 20 year period. This is the only way to manage this resource.