Mr. Speaker, we have had so much opportunity to address these issues in the past. We had the standing committee out there on the coast with members from all sides of the House. We had an excellent chair. I note that the former chair of the fisheries committee is here as well, the member from Prince Edward Island.
We have reported on these problems in times past. We made recommendations to the government, yet the recommendations have been ignored. In times past we had John Fraser, who did an excellent report. He was a man who knew a lot about this fishery and was a former Speaker. Those recommendations were ignored.
With all due respect, I am sure that Mr. Bryan Williams, the former B.C. chief justice, is going to want to do his best, but we have problems. People's confidence in the DFO is at an all-time low and that is hard to beat; it has been down for a long time. It seems that it is lower than ever now. Public confidence is at an all time low, frankly, when the department appoints people to investigate; we on this side of the House of course know that the members would never use partiality or patronage to choose who might be investigating this matter.
Frankly, where I come from people have a hard time accepting that the department will appoint people to investigate itself and will come up with real answers when the department has ignored the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for numerous years. It has ignored our previous reports. That is why people are mad. We know it is going to cost money. We know it is going to take time. That is the level of the frustration that people are experiencing over the mismanagement of these resources.
I fail to have a high level of confidence that the measures the minister is taking in response to this crisis are sufficient to satisfy the level of public concern and the crisis in public confidence about the importance of this resource to British Columbia for many years to come. If we do not address these problems now, the whole fishery in 2008 is in question, and then there is the fishery in 2012. We do not know how many years it will take to recover, if it will recover at all, and frankly we have a great concern.
If this is not bad enough, in my own riding we now have Parks Canada wanting to get in on the act and ban fishing within parks. That is a big concern, because part of one of our great national parks, Pacific Rim National Park, includes Barclay Sound. That is right at the opening of the Alberni Inlet where all the fish come in for those great million sockeye runs that come into Port Alberni. Now Parks Canada wants to shut down all fisheries passing through Barclay Sound. As if it is not bad enough with DFO mismanaging things, now Parks Canada wants to step in and add more confusion to the mix.
Fisheries management is seriously out of control. We need to have a proper investigation into this. We know it is going to cost money and we know it is going to take time. We are frustrated. We would like to see some real solutions come forward more quickly. I think the minister has an opportunity to bring in some real enforcement, to do some proper supervision, and to make some significant changes, even without an inquiry, but people are not satisfied with those actions alone.