Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to discuss with my friend, the parliamentary secretary, a fishing issue. Unfortunately, we have with us the former minister of fisheries. I know it will be difficult for the parliamentary secretary to read his prepared speech and try to explain why the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is in such a mess. He knows as well as I do that a lot of the mess is because of the former minister, but he cannot say it very well.
Some time ago I raised a question concerning the minister's visit to the United Nations. At that time he, along with a number of others, agreed to a document that basically discussed the type of fishing gear that was being used. Concerns were expressed about bottom trawling, in particular, and other gear that would do damage to the environment.
No one in his right mind would object to governments expressing concern about some of the fishing gear being used, particularly when it is used in sensitive areas. We support any effort that the minister or the government would take in these areas.
However this initiative was taken in haste. We were told, and it is on the record, by officials of the department that even the department itself was unaware of some of the wording of the resolution until a couple of days before the actual signing, and that no one really knew what they were signing. There is no excuse for that because we should never sign a document that has been changed or tampered with from the original, which, I guess, approvals were given. Either someone is not telling us the truth of the matter or the government acted in haste.
The concern we expressed at the time was that the minister did this without any consultation whatsoever with industry. Industry picked up the information that the minister was going to agree to such an agreement a couple of days before it actually happened. There was a flurry of activity and we had several excuses about the wording being changed.
This might work out okay if it is done in moderation and if it is done to deal with poor technology used in sensitive areas not affecting the general harvesting of products such as shrimp for instance or general trawling for groundfish.
As Canadians we have to be concerned with the destruction that has taken place, particularly just outside our 200 mile limit. Most of that destruction is being done with bottom trawling and we have to be very sensitive about that. However just to go out and ban bottom trawling would be extremely unproductive at this time. We have to educate the people who fish in these areas, that such technology can be very damaging because a bottom trawl is almost like a vacuum cleaner. It sucks up practically everything that is there and in directing for one species it is catching several others, which is having complete and utter devastation on our stocks.
My question was not to express concern about certain technologies, nor was it that we were against using destructive technology in sensitive areas. It was the fact that the minister would rush off and do something like this without proper consultation, because sometimes we can do ourselves a lot more damage than good.
On the other hand, if properly presented with the right cooperation from other countries, we could get a stronger agreement. All we are seeing from the foreign countries with which we deal in these arrangements and all these conferences we have is lip service. They come here and listen when we talk to them about this but we are not getting anywhere.
I hope the parliamentary secretary will tell us that he learned from that and that collectively we can go on--