Mr. Speaker, that is shocking information. I did not know that Mr. Giraud, one of the few who responded in a positive way, was on the Conservative executive out in B.C.
It would seem that the Conservative definition of consultation is to go to fellow Conservatives, listen to what they want, stick it in a bill and draft a press release for when it is tabled. Fishermen in my community would be appalled to know that is how the government operates. I will be sure to make them aware, having learned this particular fact, of how they get treated.
The Conservatives do not listen to the fishermen or the plant workers. All they want to do is ram something down their throats at the behest of some interest group or some individual within the Conservative Party, and that is not appropriate. It is disrespectful to the people who really depend on the fishing industry, who have depended on it for generations and who have taken it upon themselves in many regards to protect the resource and to fight for the resource, sometimes without regulation and sometimes without an act being there at all.
I remember protest after protest in which I was involved in trying to protect the fisheries resources. I was arrested on a number of those occasions but I was never convicted, which may be why the Conservatives want to change the act.
I must say that it is appalling that the only people the Conservatives have so-called consulted with are people from the mining industry or, as some people would call them, the contaminating industries, although some people in the mining industry are good and there is no doubt about that, and that they only consult and ask Conservatives.