Madam Chair, it is an honour to speak here, not just in the case of this particular ban, and not just because of the atrocious action being taken by politicians in the European Parliament, which I will get to in a moment.
We stand here for the memories and the traditions of people like Jack Troke of Twillingate, of people like Mark Small, who lives in my colleague's riding of Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, and of people who tragically lost their lives many years ago, the story of which was told in a novel called Death on the Ice. These are the people for whom we stand here today, to make sure that we fight for what they believe in and the traditions and rights of their ancestors. Their story has to be told and we have to defend it. It is our responsibility and it is our right, and we must exercise it to the greatest of our abilities.
I want to add some context to this debate. When it first started, the European Commission had put out some derogations or exemptions, as they called them. The original European ban started in member states. It started in the Netherlands and followed through to Belgium. I made interventions with many of my colleagues sitting in the House. We told them about the slippery slope they were creating by doing this.
Obviously, some people in the European Commission believed in what we were saying, because exemptions were put on for commercial harvests done responsibly and done through government regulations to the point where it was a responsible hunt. The exemptions were in place for them.
Here is what happened. They turned this issue over to the internal market committee, and the 27 members of that committee looked at it and said they were definitely going to play politics with this issue. They overturned the exemptions, and it is now a complete ban.
When that was done, the rapporteur of the report from the United Kingdom said that if these exemptions were put in, trade sanctions would be avoided.
Lo and behold, a member of the European Parliament from Denmark said this was not about legalities. The committee's own legal counsel told them it would be wrong for them to do this, but the member from Denmark stood and said this was about politics alone.
Elections are going to be held in the European Union in June, and these members want a feather in their cap. As one of my colleagues pointed out earlier, less than 20% of the people get out and vote for European parliamentarians, so they need an issue to make themselves look good. Yet they accuse us of using this as a political scheme. This is their scheme.
They are doing this because they do not care about the traditions. They do not care about the people who died on the ice. They just want to keep their jobs. They want to keep security for themselves. Shame on them.
That is why all of us are standing in this House tonight, because if we do not, we will be disregarding history. There is too much at stake here.
This is not just for Newfoundland and Labrador. This is for Quebec's east coast, for the Gaspé, and for the Magdalen Islands too. This is critical for all Canadians.
We need to be vocal. We have to tell the Europeans that it is a slippery slope. They have an unregulated hunt in Germany for deer and boar. They kill over one million animals. It is not regulated. It is not fair. We have to tell the Europeans to look in their own backyard.
We need to tell their rural MPs, their people who live in the country, and their hunters that they have to be aware of this because they will get bit in the end. What is happening to us will happen to them. The dangerous precedent that they are going to bring forward to the European Union will cause problems for them.
Animal rights groups do not go after those people who stand in big stadiums and kill bulls for sport, not yet, but they will now, and good on them. They deserve to feel the wrath that we are feeling. We are being singled out here.
So I would suggest to the House that we take note of this situation and tell these people what they are doing, that they are setting a dangerous precedent. The Conservative government has to do the same thing.