Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for New Brunswick Southwest for her motion and her speech this morning. It is truly a noble cause to try to save the last of any species. As she said, her original thought was to do a study on the endangered right whales. However, she eventually allowed it to encompass beluga and killer whales.
The declining population of the whale species is something we should be concerned with, and I believe we all are. We have inventories of right whales predicted to become functionally extinct within a few decades unless action is taken. We saw 17 dead whales on the Atlantic coast in Canada and the U.S. last year, and so far this year there have been no new calves sighted in those populations.
However, I debate here that this is not time for another study. It is time for action.
Before I get into the reasons for saying that another study is not the answer, I first want to sincerely thank and recognize all of the work that the local groups have put into the conservation of whales and other species.
My path to this House was an unpaved path, working with conservation organizations, where I learned that it is the work on the ground that can accomplish goals beyond anyone's wildest hopes. I applaud the volunteers for all they do—people like Joseph Howlett, who lost his life while saving the life of an entangled whale, and all those who transpose their words into actions. While I also applaud the member for New Brunswick Southwest for the idea of having the standing committee study the issue with the mandate of identifying ways to protect and recover the species, I want to point out some alarming facts.
First, as a member of the current majority government, she has or should have access to the ministers responsible for taking action on protecting and recovering any species needing help. Why has she not been able to get the ear of her ministers? Why is she, as a member of the majority Liberal caucus, forced to ask the House of Commons to support her motion to do what her party's ministers should already be doing? I propose that it is because her Liberal ministers are not as committed to saving the environment as they purport to be. We see much talk from the Liberal government and very little action.
Second, I would like to point out that while she has presented this motion to have the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans undertake a study and present a report, has she looked at her own government's record of acting on that or other committees' report recommendations?
I bring to the attention of the House the report from the committee entitled “Newfoundland and Labrador's Northern Cod Fishery: Charting a New Sustainable Future”, which had 10 recommendations, with almost none acted upon. The report from the same committee entitled “Wild Atlantic Salmon in Eastern Canada” had 17 recommendations, with very few acted upon. These recommendations directly dealt with predation, seal population overabundance, and exploding striped bass populations, which are all impacting the wild Atlantic salmon and the cod stocks in the Atlantic. The committee put a lot of hard work and time into those studies and coming up with those recommendations.
Although the member for New Brunswick Southwest may have good intentions, her efforts and our time in this chamber would be better spent if she were more successful in lobbying her own Liberal colleagues, especially her own Liberal cabinet ministers and the Atlantic Liberal fisheries committee members to have action taken instead of repeating talking points.
The member for New Brunswick Southwest has five Liberal colleagues from the Maritimes on that standing committee. I sit on that standing committee, where the members have invested themselves heavily in providing complete, impartial, detailed reports to this House, and I am frustrated at the inaction and incompetence of the government in responding to the committee's recommendations.
The maritime Liberal members on that committee, five of them, must be either embarrassed or furious, but scared to speak out that their government has ignored the recommendations put forward by the committee. Why have they not spoken out? They are failing to stand up for their constituents. Recommendations that could help recover Canada's northern cod stocks, recommendations that could help recover wild Atlantic salmon, recommendations that could provide economic benefits for Canada's indigenous and non-indigenous peoples were all derived by our hard-working committee members and cast aside by a Liberal government that is becoming exposed as all talk and little action.
Speaking of the hard work on our committee, we are currently in the process of doing three different studies. One of them was approved over 16 months ago and its first meeting was held over one year ago. This motion's deadline would further delay those studies. I hope that the studies we are completing now will come up with recommendations for the government through this House and that those recommendations will be followed. That is why I have caution about what we are doing here. I do not oppose doing a study, but I am opposed to doing a study, making recommendations, and having a government not follow through on those recommendations.
As I have said, we have recommendations in these reports that I want to quote from:
That Fisheries and Oceans Canada support a grey seal harvest program that emphasizes full utilization of the seal to provide economic opportunities with an aim to significantly reduce the seal populations and enhance the recovery of wild Atlantic salmon populations.
We still have yet to see any action on that.
From the report on northern cod, we had another recommendation that we:
Ensure careful management for prey availability, especially capelin, and factor in ecosystem considerations like habitat protection and climate change
and
That, Fisheries and Oceans Canada implement management practices to deliver the greatest value from the resource with the lowest impact on stocks.
These are the types of recommendations that the committee put a lot of hard work into, and I commend all the members on that committee. We truly worked together to come up with significant, respectful recommendations. As we move forward through the debate on this issue, I hope that the government is listening and that the importance of these recommendations and government action on those recommendations comes through, because it is disheartening as a member of Parliament and as a member of the committee to put that hard work in and not have it heeded.
As I said, we are currently working on a number of motions and studies on the fisheries committee. Those studies tend to get waylaid and set aside as other things pop up that seem to be more important or more urgent. I do not know if there is anything more important than protecting a species that is possibly at the brink of no return. Therefore, while I do not oppose this motion, I would like to move that the motion be amended by deleting the words “within four months of the adoption of this motion”. That is so that we can have time to complete these other studies and that we are not set at a deadline for a time to complete this study, because it may take more than four months. I would prefer that we not be limited by a set timeline, so that the committee can continue to do good work and provide good recommendations that will be heeded by the government.
As such, I move that the motion be amended by deleting the words “within four months of the adoption of this motion”.