Loyola Hearn

[Fisheries, April 7th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, let me say, as those on the former standing committee will admit, that nobody worked harder to get such an endowment fund than the member who has just asked the question.

The fund has to be delivered through an independent body, which has now been set up, after two years, by the way. My officials will be meeting with them very soon to get this moving forward.

[Fisheries, April 7th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, let me assure the member that I am herring him well and I am not trying to cod anybody. We are committed to ensuring we deal with the overfishing on the nose and tail. Anything I said before on that side of the House I believe not only as firmly but even more firmly today because, unlike the members opposite when they were in government, we not only will talk about such issues, we will deal with the issues.

[Fisheries, April 7th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, let me congratulate my critic and thank him for his question. Let me also say to him that despite any disagreement we might have in question and answer period, a Newfoundlander will always be right.

The member well knows, being part of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, that the issue of control off the continental shelf and of the overfishing that goes on is an issue we have fought since we came to this place. I assure the member that the issue is being dealt with in the throne speech and the priorities listed are very important ones for our province.

[Committees of the House, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. The title says it all: “Northern Cod: A Failure of Canadian Fisheries Management”.

I wish to thank the staff and researchers, who did a tremendous job, along with the members of the committee. It is a unanimous report from the all party committee.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to this report within the 120 day limit.

[Employment Insurance, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this is the peak time when people are applying for unemployment insurance benefits. It is also approaching Christmas. Instead of a four or five week wait, which is too long anyway, they are now waiting eight to ten weeks. These facts and figures are coming right from the minister's own department.

Every other province has received either overtime benefits or extra staff. Why is the government discriminating against Newfoundland and Labrador?

[Employment Insurance, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, since the Liberals came to power in 1993, federal employment in Newfoundland and Labrador has declined by 39%. Now we see another example of cutbacks.

During this season when many people are filing for EI benefits, Service Canada has a backlog of about 4,000 applications. Why is Service Canada providing neither overtime nor extra help to deal with the backlog?

[Trade Compensation Act, November 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have no intention of shooting the minister, nor do I have any intention of talking about the people who work in search and rescue. Every time they go to work, they put their lives at risk and do a great job.

My target is the Department of National Defence and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for the lack of management and coordination. It does not matter how many resources we have or where they are placed if they are not managed properly.

This is a prime example of complete and utter mismanagement of resources in an area where we cannot afford to mismanage them. Because of complete and utter incompetence in this case, lives were lost. It should never happen again and to ensure it does not, I am asking the minister, on the record, to have a judicial inquiry into this incident.

[Trade Compensation Act, November 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this month I asked some questions about a tragedy that happened off our shores earlier this year when the fishing boat, the Melina and Keith II , sank with a loss of four lives. The amount of time it took search and rescue to get to the site was thoroughly unacceptable.

I know the parliamentary secretary is going to get up soon and read the prepared script, but before he does, I want him to listen to some of the facts, which I usually do not read into the record.

It took over four hours for search and rescue to reach the Melina and Keith . The beacon was released at approximately 3:26 p.m. Search and rescue was aware of that, but had to determine the validity of the distress call. It took them approximately 40 minutes. They had to call around to different people to try to find out whether or not this was legitimate, including family members of the crew. That was unnecessary, as I will mention in a moment.

Why was the crew, which was on duty at 3:26 p.m. and would not leave until 4, allowed to leave when it was known that there was distress at sea?

The position was determined shortly after 4, shortly after the crew was allowed to go home. Search and rescue, as I mentioned, had called around, trying to determine whether or not the Melina and Keith was at sea and roughly where it was so that the distress call could be validated. Family members, as I mentioned, were called.

Each boat at sea in that class has a black box. It is required. This lets DFO, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, know the location at all times. The position is updated every hour. The Melina and Keith was fishing fixed gear, gill nets. It moved less than a mile in the three hour period and DFO knew exactly where it was. During all the time search and rescue was calling around, spending 40 minutes to determine the location, DFO could have told them in seconds where the Melina and Keith was if these departments had been coordinated.

To add insult to injury, the DFO surveillance plane was in the air at that time, flying in or near the Bonavista corridor. The operators heard about the incident. They asked permission to fly over the distress area not once but twice. They were told, “It's in hand. It's covered. You don't have to go there”.

The plane could have drawn attention to nearby boats and a rescue could have been effected hours earlier. Fifteen minutes of time saved would have saved one life. Twenty-five minutes would have saved at least two lives.

Meanwhile, back on shore, once the 40 minutes had elapsed and position had been determined, it took the search and rescue crew one hour and 55 minutes after the location had been determined, for a total of over two and a half hours, to get a chopper off the ground. This is unacceptable.

We have a search and rescue unit operating eight hours a day, five days a week, with other crews on standby. Standby is no good in a place like Newfoundland.

As we speak this evening, we have been informed that another tragedy has occurred off the coast of Newfoundland. Whether search and rescue could have done anything or did do anything there is not the case. We are talking about a case here where the time it took to respond cost lives. It should never ever happen again.

[Trade Compensation Act, November 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in the debate on Bill C-364. One reason why I want to speak on this is it has been put forth by the hard-working member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca.

One might ask what is the connection between the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl and the member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca. There are very few Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who do not have someone in Fort McMurray. Because of what has happened in our own province over the years, due to government neglect and mismanagement, many of our young people have had to leave and go west. Fort McMurray is the third largest Newfoundland community. That will give members an idea of how many of our people are in Fort McMurray. Any interests which the member for Fort McMurray has, is an interest for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The other question people might ask is why am I speaking to the bill. Even though it does not mention softwood lumber, most of us are aware that the big issue around which the legislation is built is the softwood lumber dispute and the shafting the producers and exporters have had because of government inaction.

I do not have a lot of softwood exporters or producers in my riding. It is more or less an urban riding now. When I had the rural section of it, we did not have many trees and the ones we had certainly were not very big. It has not been an issue with which I have had direct contact. However, we have many softwood producers as well as exporters in the province. Mainly they are in the area of two Liberal members of Parliament, and I will not draw attention to them. They are in Newfoundland and Labrador today making a political announcement on infrastructure, one that was made in Newfoundland and Labrador about a month ago. When an election is coming, Liberals love to make the same announcement twice, maybe three times or four times.

The funny thing about today is when the two members arrived in Newfoundland and Labrador to make the announcement, they arrived independent of each other, each not knowing the other was coming. Apparently both showed up to make the same big announcement. On our local stations this evening there is quite a story on how the members of Parliament could not get their act together.

Since they could not be here, someone has to stand up for Newfoundland and Labrador. We have found that is common practice.

The major concern the bill points to is the period after having signed a free trade agreement, an agreement which the government opposite said originally it would never support. When free trade was introduced by the Mulroney government, the Liberals at the time not only said they would not support it, they said that if were ever elected, there would be no free trade. We all know they said the same thing about GST.

They were elected, and we have free trade and GST. It is a good thing we do. These days the only thing the Liberals can crow about is the fact that we have a surplus. We have had one for a few years. Looking ahead, if the Liberals do not squander it all, which they are certainly doing these days, we will continue to have a surplus. However, they talk about the great fiscal policies.

We know how we really got the surplus. The surplus came to us because of three programs, the main one being free trade. There is no one in the country who doubts that free trade gave us most of the money that we now receive. Second, is the GST, and no one likes it. The government was going to get rid of it, but it brought in a lot of money. It helped balance the budget.

We on this side of the House, leading into the Christmas season, cannot take all the credit for bringing in the plan to address the major deficit of the past, a deficit we inherited from the Trudeau government, which grew when interest rates went up over 20%. However, we had the plan. It was free trade and GST, and it addressed the deficit.

Let us give the Liberals credit for their contribution. They also contributed to creating the surplus. They cut social programs. That was their major contribution to the deficit. All we have to do is look at what happened to our health and education transfers over the years under the Liberal government. The social programs across the country have been cut and cut. Now in the last few days we have seen billions of dollars going back into them without any management plan.

Having given the Liberals all the credit they are due, let us look at the situation at hand.

Producers and exporters have an amount of $5 billion sitting outside their pockets and outside the country, which they should have if there were any leadership by the government or any international presence. We are a joke on the international stage.

I want to get away from the softwood lumber issue for a minute because everybody else is talking about it, about duties and about the lack of ability by government to get the countries which have signed the NAFTA, the United States in this case, to live up the agreement. It is inconceivable. It just lack of leadership.

Let us go to another issue. Back about four years ago, we on this side of the House, and some of us down in the corner at the time, consistently asked the international trade minister when he would address the upcoming softwood lumber negotiations. He would say, and the record will show, that we should worry about it, that Canada had never lost an international ruling. It was not going to be an issue. Suddenly, the time period was up. What happened? All we have to do is ask our exporters and our producers. The government fiddled while Rome was burning.

At the same time, we also asked him questions about the tariff on shrimp going into the European market. If Canadian shrimp is cooked and peeled here, when it is sent to the European markets, it is subjected to a 20% tariff. One might say that the Europeans can afford it. If that were all there was to it, it would not be problem. The problem is in our kindness we give huge allocations of shrimp to the same European countries that are blocking our excess to the markets. They can go home duty free and put their shrimp into the same markets we sell our shrimp at 20% less than we can do it. Every time the quotas off our coast are increased, Canada is the major beneficiary, but the foreign countries get a quota also.

The thing about Canada is we fish what we are given. They fish sometimes up to 10 times as much as they are given. Last year when Denmark was given a quota, it used the objection procedures and said that it did not accept that. It said that it would fish 10 times more than it was given. The Danish fished seven times more, and that is on paper. We can imagine how much they really fished.

What is happening to Danish shrimp? It is going into the European markets. Who is really blocking Canada? Who is really trying to ensure that 20% tariff stays? The Danish. What are we doing about it? There are people in the country who could say what we are more quickly and in fewer words. However, we are doing absolutely nothing. It is the same thing we are doing about the softwood lumber. We are showing no presence on the international stage. We are becoming the laughing stock of the world, and our people are the ones who are suffering.

[Supply, November 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the testimonies just keep on coming because again we are hearing people say that the finance minister was directly involved, but he did not know what was going on. The former prime minister, Mr. Chrétien, who chaired cabinet as prime minister, said that he knew as well as everyone else knew.

To say that he is exonerated, certainly. We did not say, the Bloc did not say nor did the NDP say that the present Prime Minister was there and supervised who received what share of the money from what good friend in the promotions company. Oh, no. Mr. Gomery said that he was not involved in the supervision but he did not say that he did not know.