Mr. Speaker, that is a loaded question, I believe. You will understand that I have no intention of saying that the government is protecting our resource well, when I have been saying the opposite for the past 20 minutes, and am firmly convinced of it.
We need only look at what went on this spring with the fisheries, with the cod fisheries. Let us look at what is happening elsewhere in the world, in order to see how our successive governments, and the federal government, which, I would remind hon. members, has complete and total responsibility for managing the resource, has in fact managed it.
The resource has been managed in such a way that nowadays we cannot even fish for cod in the Atlantic, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off Newfoundland. Let us see what is happening elsewhere in the world. Let us take Iceland as an example. In Iceland, since the late 1970s, they have managed the resource in such a way that now, in the waters of Iceland—a tiny country—they can catch from 212,000 to 250,000 tonnes of cod per year.
Last year, we caught only 6,000 tonnes. Now we are no longer fishing, because there is a moratorium on cod. The resource has been badly managed. Foreign vessels were allowed to pillage the waters off Newfoundland, the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, and over the years in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as well. For solely political gain, huge foreign vessels have been allowed to drag the sea floor and totally destroy the resource.
The current government is not the only one responsible. This has been going on for 50 years. Quebec has been demanding to manage the resource ever since 1994. Newfoundland is now calling for co-management, and rightly so. If we allow the present government to continue to manage the resource, whether shrimp, crab or other resources, there will be no fishery left within 10 years.