Mr. Speaker, it is great to get questions from the minister. Maybe someday soon we will reverse the roles. We could have a lot of fun with it. One never knows what could happen.
Let me answer the last questions directly in case I am accused of avoiding them.
There are people in this country who were here before any white men came. They lived off the land and had access to the resources of the land historically. When the Europeans came and settled this country, they did not treat those people very well originally. History did strange things to a lot of people over the years. There is not one of us here in the House who is not aware of that. We could go back one or two generations in our ancestry, and some of us do not even have to go back one generation, to see how others in society were treated. However, dealing with events in history sometimes can be extremely dangerous because we are dealing with the events in the present day society and setting, but the events actually happened in an entirely different society and setting. We have to be aware of that.
Having said that, the aboriginals in our country always had and always should have proper access to the resources. Sometimes if the rules and regulations governing the resource are not properly put in place then it is open for abuse by all of us. We have to make sure that does not happen.
The Minister of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans dictates who can and cannot fish in this country. Earlier this year I asked the minister directly who is it that really determines who fishes because third parties were telling people who could fish and who could not fish. The minister made it clear that a person who has a valid licence and is given that licence has permission from the minister and the minister only.
Consequently, the result is a concern about blanket licences and third party decisions on who can participate and who cannot. We must control our resource. There has to be central control on that resource, in proper cooperation and consultation with the groups. That is one of the concerns I have about this whole issue.
The minister talked about consultation. First, we clarified the fact that the minister himself had done very little consultation. He wrote a letter and got an answer. That is not consultation with a committee. The former minister had a couple of meetings and the staff had a couple of meetings. It would have been interesting to know, and the minister might be able to provide this information, how many discussions were held with stakeholders. How many visits were made to where the regulations, these amendments, will have an effect on the people involved in the fishery? Do the people know that we are talking about such things as imprisonment for non-compliance? The committee raised that question. Do we deprive somebody of his freedom and stick him in prison because of non-compliance with some regulation?
There are questions that have not been answered. The minister has not answered them. The committee raised them. It has stated it is not in a position to do it.
This bill is opening up a can of worms. We have to get the whole issue clarified before we put people in the position of finding out that they are a lot worse off after the passage of the bill than they were before.