Mr. Speaker, I would have liked for my colleagues, including my colleague for St. John's West, to be able to ask the parliamentary secretary some questions.
I am shocked by what we just heard. This problem has existed since Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949. My colleagues opposite are well aware of this, as is my colleague who chaired the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. I want to call the parliamentary secretary to order. The Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans did not present the government with one report; it presented two.
A first report was presented on November 8, 2002, and a second one was presented more recently in March 2003. This latest report did, in fact, reiterate the standing committee's recommendations regarding the custodial management of the nose and tail of the GrandBanks and the Flemish Cap off the coast of Newfoundland.
The resource was abundant in 1949, when Newfoundland joined Confederation. Unfortunately for the people of Newfoundland, resource management and protection was handed over to an irresponsible government, the federal government.
This is still the case today. We are told that diplomacy will be employed and that efforts will be made to resolve the problem through NAFO, an organization that has never assumed its responsibilities and that has never operated as it should.
Everyone knows quite well that this approach will never result in a resolution. NAFO member states had one goal: to appropriate our resource, conserve it and use it for their own purposes. This has continued since 1949, and the federal government has never reacted once in a way that would have allowed conservation of our resource.
There is more. Perhaps my colleague from St. John's West did not mention it earlier. In 1992, there was a moratorium on cod. Consequently, in the early 1990s, everyone knew already that the resource was seriously threatened. The moratorium of the early 1990s was a disaster, as much for Newfoundland as for the Gaspé, one of many regions hard hit by this famous moratorium.
When we talk about the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap off the coast of Newfoundland, we are talking about overlapping resources in a basin that extends to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
If the resource off the coast of Newfoundland is depleted, there is no doubt the resource in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and around the other Atlantic provinces will be seriously affected. In my opinion, this is the worst environmental disaster of the past century in Canada and Quebec.
A very plentiful resource has been depleted because of the irresponsible actions, and lack of vision, of a government. This government simply failed to take its responsibilities. That is what it was asked to do.
As the hon. member for St. John's West indicated earlier, the original three mile limit was extended to 12 miles and then to 200 miles, while still not protecting our resource.
Today, as the parliamentary secretary reminded us, we have, of course, the United Nations Fisheries Agreement, which the 15 members countries of the European Economic community have agreed to sign, finally giving it effect. That has taken a good many years.
The agreement being in effect is still no guarantee—and I call the attention of the hon. parliamentary secretary to this point—that his government will take its responsibilities. Here is the perfect case in point.
Another 600 or so jobs are slated to be cut at Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Naturally, one could tell me that is only a rumour, but where there is smoke, as they say.
To protect our resource, the department should not be facing these kinds of cut. On the contrary, it should be provided with the extra resources needed to conduct efficient monitoring so that we could see what is going on inside the 200 mile limit as well as outside. The United Nations Fisheries Agreement provides for the protection of what is called straddling stocks both inside and outside this 200 mile limit.
The government's response is that we cannot afford to protect the resource, but air resources could be increased. The minister said, “We may increase air surveillance”.
Will the Coast Guard have the means to respond when the time comes? The answer is no because the Coast Guard has been completely underfunded since 1993. Its equipment is starting to become obsolete. Money was invested in the Coast Guard after September 11, but only for security, not to protect the resource.
We experienced a moratorium in 1993 and we just went through another one with the cod fishery. They had 10 years to try to solve the problem and now we are no further ahead than we were 10 years ago.
I am supposed to believe that the federal government is going to assume its responsibilities and protect the resource. The federal government is finally going to make good on what it owes the people of the Maritimes and eastern Quebec. Indeed, that is its responsibility and it is precisely because of its lack of responsibility that people have been so hard hit in Newfoundland, the Gaspé Peninsula and the Maritimes.
They can try to sugar-coat things or give nice speeches, like the one the parliamentary secretary just delivered, but I do not, nor will I ever, believe a word of what they are saying.
As my colleague said, this affects all Canadians. In fact, the fisheries are managed just as badly on the west coast as on the east coast. There are just as many problems on the west coast as on the east coast when it comes to managing the fisheries.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is about the worst system there could be for managing and protecting the resource. From one ocean to another, the members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans keep hearing that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans does not listen to the fishers, the plant workers, or the people who process the resource. The government does not want input because it wants to manage the resource its own way and it is managing it very badly.
I want to reiterate my support for the hon. member for St. John's-West and his championing of this issue. As a member of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, I remain convinced that the recommendations contained in both reports, in 1982 and 2003, were correct and that they should have been implemented by the government, contrary to its reaction, especially when the first report was issued. The government automatically rejected that report and did not even take the time to read it. Therefore we were unable to take action on the international stage because, in a way, we shot ourselves in the foot.
In the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans we were extremely disappointed, and with good reason. All members of this committee reiterated the report's recommendations in 2003. These are the recommendations we want to see implemented and put into practice.
The Speech from the Throne talks about the democratic deficit in the context of the House of Commons. I think the government had two fine opportunities to partially rectify the democratic deficit by accepting the unanimous recommendations of all members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. And if it had done so, at least part of the solution could have been put into effect and the resource might be better managed today.
Two years later, we see that this government has done absolutely nothing. I do not believe that in two more years, if the same government is still in power, something will be done.
I reiterate my support for the hon. member for St. John's West, and salute him as well.