moved:
Motion M-136
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take immediate action to extend custodial management over the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks and of the Flemish Cap.
Mr. Speaker, let me thank the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for seconding this motion.
As many members will recall, during the last session we debated this motion. Like many others, it died on the Order Paper but it has been brought back in its entirety. Instead of being in the second hour of debate, we are starting all over again and we will have one hour of debate now and the second hour sometime in the near future.
It is also a bit ironic tonight that we are talking about preserving our fishery when around us, I understand in the gallery, there are many people who have been affected by the BSE problem right across the country. Many of us think it is a western problem but it is a Canadian problem. The destruction of our fishery is not an Atlantic Canadian problem, it is a Canadian problem, period. People on the west coast, in the north and near the Great Lakes realize what is happening to our fishery.
Tonight I will zero in on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap. The fish that once were so abundant in that area had such a great effect on the economy of this great country of ours. In a nutshell, for those who are not aware of the area and the problem concerned, I will quickly explain as well and as plainly as I can the situation in which Canadians find themselves in relation to a renewable resource which, like our farming industry, has been totally and utterly neglected by the government.
When Canada joined Newfoundland in 1949, it found that we had abundant resources. In fact at the time we had the greatest groundfish resource in the world, the northern cod. For centuries people from Canada, from Europe and of course from Newfoundland and Labrador fished that resource. They fished it carefully, knowing what happens when a natural resource is destroyed. Things changed and when Canada came together with us, it called the shots, but it was also supposed to accept the responsibilities. It did not and we have seen the fishery destroyed.
Perhaps a more ironic point is during these years we had a three mile limit I believe, which eventually extended to 12 miles and then finally to 200 miles. Even when we had no limit, foreign boats were fishing inside our waters. In the early days the fishing was with hooks and lines on the Grand Banks. The city of St. John's all around the waterfront was filled with what we used to call the tall ships. The Portuguese and the Spaniards, who fished according to the historic agreements, the international agreements we had with them, would land in St. John's and take on supplies. They would come in out of storms. They appreciated how well they were treated that they, speaking of the Portuguese, presented St. John's with a huge statue which they carried through the streets. It still is there in the Basilica of St. John the Baptist in St. John's. Thousands of fishermen lined up to walk in the procession to show appreciation for the way they were treated by Newfoundlanders.
Things changed. The 200 mile limit that was finally established did not protect our resource. Fish swim. Canada is not unique in the world but perhaps in our case we have the most lucrative grounds that extend beyond any 200 mile limit.
The continental shelf off the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland and Labrador extends beyond 200 miles. When the 200 mile limit was put in, there were a couple of major sections, basically like points, extending outside that limit. They are referred to as the nose and the tail of the Grand Banks, because really they are extensions of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
Those points are in international waters.
We are supposed to have an organization called the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization, or NAFO. This organization allocates quotas to other fishing countries, the 19 countries that have historic rights or treaty rights with our country. Nobody pays any attention to it, unfortunately. Quotas are allocated based upon the scientific information as it relates to the size of the stock. Many of the countries just go out there, and there is an objection they can raise saying, “We do not agree with the quotas set and we are going to catch whatever we want”. This is what has been happening.
Many of these nations are referred to as rogue nations and they fly flags of convenience on their ships. We in this House are well aware of that. We know all about flags of convenience. I am not sure who owns all the boats; we might check into that too. However, these countries just blatantly rape the stocks off our coast.
We have for years, particularly over the last couple of years, requested that Canada take some control over this fishing resource. And let me thank sincerely the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, the chair and the members, from all parties, some of whom are here tonight, who have unanimously supported the request for Canada to take some control over this fishing resource.
One might ask what this all means. One might say that we had a few fish, that they are not as plentiful as they were, but we are making a lot of money on crab and shrimp. The fishery has changed somewhat, and because our ground fishery has practically been destroyed, the emphasis is now on crab and shrimp, lucrative species. Right now concerns are already being flagged about that resource, again because of the way it is being managed, particularly by government.
However, I am going to list for members some startling statistics. As far as we know, the first evidence mentioning the concern that our stocks were diminishing goes back to around 1968. The famous fishery scientist Sir Wilfred Templeman mentioned at that time that he had concerns about the state of our stocks. Since 1497, when John Cabot first came over and rediscovered the Atlantic coast, Newfoundland, for almost 500 years people had been fishing, yet the stocks had remained consistent. Around the 1960s people began to see that we were starting to overfish. And of course that was nothing compared to what is happening today.
Concerns were raised in 1968. In 1973, our stocks were starting to show some decline. If we had taken the scientific advice at that time, if we had learned from those who were starting to point out that there was a problem, if governments had taken the stand they should have taken and shown the intestinal fortitude government should show to protect a Canadian renewable resource, we would still have those stocks. If they had not been traded off so we could sell our wheat and our cars and encourage foreign countries to invest here, we would still have those stocks. It was, “Come here and set up a car factory and we will give you fish off Newfoundland”. That was a constant deal.
If only we had protected that stock. I am just going to let the House know, in today's figures, what would have happened if we had protected that stock. The return from our ground fishery today is practically nil. Most of our income from this industry, which is somewhere near $1 billion, give or take, is from shrimp and crab, two species which then no one even wanted to touch. Nobody wanted to hear about them.
However, if we had kept the 1973 stocks as they were, today to the people of Canada they would be worth approximately $3,327,500,000, over $3.3 billion in today's dollars, if we had just been able to preserve the amount of fish we had back in 1973. There are about 25,000 people who would have been directly and indirectly affected by the loss of that amount of product. So on top of what we have today, on top of a billion dollar industry in crab and shrimp, and on top of the number of people working in the industry, we could add to that 25,000 jobs, and these would be much better paying jobs than the eight, ten or twelve weeks that we see quite often today. Many of these were year round jobs; 52 weeks of the year with two and three shifts going at major plants. We would have added to our economy, on top of today's billion dollars, $3.3 billion.
Imagine what that would do to the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador. Imagine what that would do to the economy of Canada.
People say that we have oil and we do not want fish. Oil, like minerals, disappears. Once we take them out of the ground, that is it. They are non-renewable. To make things worse, when we started to develop Hibernia, for instance, there was an agreement that it would be spread over so many years at a certain rate of development. On a number of occasions now, the government has agreed to or has let the companies accelerate that development. Who is the big loser? The province, because we are the ones who would benefit somewhat from it.
We get very little from those resources. They are clawed back again by the federal government. That is why today Newfoundland, with the richest resources in the country, and with the smallest population, is what we call a have not province. I say to people, “Please look at what Newfoundland has”. I know that as more and more people travel there, they are starting to ask why we are called a have not province. They say we have so much: the minerals, the oil, the fishery and the forestry. And there is tourism galore. It is the best place in the country to go if one wants to enjoy oneself.
But for every dollar we take in through revenues and royalties, the federal government claws back anywhere from 75¢ to 90¢. It is like a person on social welfare going out and making a hundred bucks. Everyone says to get back in the workforce because it is great stuff and then they take the hundred dollars off his cheque. The person then asks what is the sense; it is just as well to stay home and do nothing.
We need a complete and utter change in our philosophy in how we deal with our provinces and in how we deal with resource development.
Tonight in the House we are debating two issues: fish and, of course, agriculture. They are two resources that are renewable, two resources that if protected by government, a government that understands and listens, a government that makes the right laws and rules, they are resources that will be just as good 100 years from now as they are today. I use the example, which goes back only 30 years, of the difference it would have made if we had protected that resource.
We are looking at how we balance budgets and we usually cut. We look to the worker and we reduce the workforce. It just makes us less productive. It puts fewer dollars into the economy. Let us look at how we can best benefit from our resources. Let us look at our raw resources. Let us look at the maximum potential and let us get there.
This is an issue we could talk on for months, but there are others here who are well aware of the issue. Colleagues in this House have familiarized themselves with this issue. I look forward to their comments.