Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to introduce my first petition as a member. I am presenting it on behalf of 850 fishermen throughout Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec who voluntarily participated in retirement under the 1998 Atlantic groundfish strategy when we had to close the groundfishery.
The issue of the petitioners is that they were charged too much tax on their capital gains. A number of them were charged at 25%. About 850 of them were charged at 100% tax on their capital gains. The basis of this is that every Canadian taxpayer should be treated fairly. All they are asking is for the government to acknowledge that it made an error here and take corrective measures.
It has been 10 years now. I should recognize the hard work done by Ms. Elizabeth Harvey over the years in trying to get this onto the government agenda, as well as my colleague from Random—Burin—St. George's who has been working very hard on this file as well.
We are talking about 200 fishers who were taxed at 25%. Again, 850 were taxed at 100%. I would like to present this petition and I am looking forward to the response from the government.