Mr. Speaker, I am amazed at the comments of my friend and colleague across the way. This is not a political issue. I have read Mr. Crosbie's book and I reject many of his premises and the conclusions he reached on this particular issue. He is not accurate, in a word, and I think anybody who is familiar with the circumstances when Mr. Crosbie initiated the separate commercial fishery knows that he is inaccurate.
I have stated publicly before that this is not a political issue and that the first disaster we talk about happened in 1992 on the watch of a Conservative government. I am not denying that. In 1994, it happened under a Liberal government. And we had better inquiries then than the one the minister is proposing now.
Let us look at the people who supported Mr. Fraser in 1994. They were outstanding academics, people who were well recognized in their fields, not only nationally but internationally. In fact, one American, Lee Alverson, was on that particular committee. They looked at it and did the best job they could, as Mr. Fraser admitted to the committee the other day when he said, “We did the best job we could. We couldn't answer all the questions because we didn't hear the testimony”.
That is a problem. This issue is not an aboriginal issue, as members across the way would have us believe. This issue is about the management capabilities of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and we have said so every year since 1992. People in the commercial fishing industry talk about the department's ability to manage their fishery; it is the department's responsibility to ensure that sufficient spawners get to the gravel and it has not done it.
Why do we want a judicial inquiry? We want it because the other inquiries were unable to expose the management problems of the fishery. It is not a higher temperature issue. Mr. Fraser was able to address that issue and so was Dr. Pearse in 1992. They dismissed this notion that higher temperatures were responsible.
The issue is a management issue. The only way we will get to the bottom of it is through a judicial inquiry. The judge has the right to limit the number of interveners. We are not going to end up with 99 aboriginal interveners and an intervener for every commercial and sport group in the province. The judge has the right to limit it. He will do that. There would be agreement among those interveners to move this issue quickly because it is in the best interests of the resource.
That is what this is about. Let us forget the red herrings that the minister talks about in saying that somehow it will just go on like the Somali inquiry and another minister like Doug Young will come along and kill it. We want answers. That is what we want.