Mr. Speaker, I would not say that my colleague may have misinterpreted my words, but he seems to be thinking somewhat along the same lines.
What we are saying is that we support the principle of the bill. However, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans must respond to the rulings that were imposed following the Marshall and Sparrow decisions. The department has no choice but to respond.
However, we must look at the way of responding or the deadline for responding. It says September 17, 1999, and we are in May 2004. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans would have had quite enough time to consult and to ensure that the regulations are tailored, appropriate and consistent. It would have had quite enough time, since September 17, 1999, to amend them.
This seems totally unacceptable and surprising to me. This reflects the importance that this government gives to fisheries. We can see that decisions regularly taken by the government are political decisions, not decisions to ensure the protection and conservation of the resource. This is the precautionary principle. It is the basic principle that should guide the department and the minister in the management of fishery resources.
It seems obvious to me that it is not how the resource has been managed in the past. It is far from obvious since we had two moratoriums. It is wrong to think that the government has managed the resource properly. Its management has been political. Over the past 10 years, the management of the fisheries, a resource belonging to the community, has been political.
Indeed, political decisions were made to grant privileges. I am not talking about privileges for the native peoples. They should have been included right from the start, which was not the case. From day one, since the federal government has been responsible for managing the resource, native peoples should have been considered as stakeholders in the harvesting of the resource, which is only right since they had access to it in the past.
It is because of the way the federal government has managed the fisheries in the past that today we have to make decisions such as this. It seems to me to have been taken in a hurry since the bill put forward is flawed. The government has waited five years after the Supreme Court rendered its decision to put forward this bill. It does not seem to make any sense. This is representative of the way the federal government has been managing the fisheries ever since it has been responsible for them.