Mr. Speaker, the member has hit the nail on the head. The government has convinced the Ontario minister, perhaps working in conjunction with him for all I know, good Liberal brethren that they are. They have put inappropriate pressure on the Ontario hunters and anglers and have fed them a bill of goods about the bill. They have told them things that simply are not true.
We made it very clear that the kinds of restrictions listed in the letter from the Ontario Federation of Anglers & Hunters are matters which are currently regulated by the Ontario fishing regulations. In the last little while, the Ontario government has tired of the very public process of using the regulatory scheme to manage the fishery and has said that it is much easier if it does it by licence conditions. That does not make it right and it is not right when a bureaucrat can put in place a regulation. Failure to comply with that regulation, as the government would like to happen in this bill, would see the full weight of fisheries enforcement come down upon the transgressor, including large fines, jail time, and/or seizure of vessels.
Those are problems the we face. The member for Winnipeg Centre has said very clearly this evening, that this bill is symptomatic of the kind of legislation we have seen come into this place over the last 10 years, and I find it very disturbing. I want to see a clear bill. I want to see it clearly define ministerial and government responsibility. I want to see the regulations flow from that, regulations that have been vetted by the public and regulations which everybody understands and to which they an opportunity to respond. I do not want to see these kinds of backroom deals that can be cooked up if this legislation goes through. It is not healthy for the resource because the public will be kept out of the loop. They will not know what is going on, and that is very problematic and something that I find very upsetting.
I want to thank the member for his contribution to the debate this evening.