Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman from Newfoundland likes to teach us all a little history. I am sure a little history that he probably does not wish to recall is that the Conservatives were in charge of the fisheries department between 1984 and 1993 and there were many problems back then.
That is not the whole premise. I agree with the hon. member when he talks about his distrust in the minister for introducing a bill now, just prior to an election. How committed is the minister and the government to the changes when it comes to aboriginal fisheries?
In committee the other day we heard witnesses from British Columbia who indicated a particular group of aboriginal people were drift netting within the Fraser River, an illegal act. DFO recognizes that it is an illegal act. It does great harm to the resource. We asked the department officials what they were doing to stop that, and their answer was, “We are working with them”. I am sure that for anyone else, under any other circumstances, the letter of the law would have been thrown at them.
No one was arguing on our committee that aboriginal people have an access and a right to fisheries, as long as, and we have seen this on the east coast, the cooperation and acceptance is done in accordance with the rules that are in place. The law is the law of the land.
I would like the member to comment on what he thought of those comments, when the DFO officials said that they are working with people instead of actually enforcing it.
Also, the Marshall decision was a Supreme Court decision. The government forced aboriginal people to use the Supreme Court to ensure that. Instead of negotiating with them, it went to litigation. That ended up costing us $750 million. I would like the member's comments on that please.