Loyola Hearn

[Fisheries Act, June 6th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, let me say to the member that this regulation does not just apply to the people of Ontario. This regulation applies to everybody across Canada who is directly involved in the fishing industry. It relates to regulations that we are concerned about in Ontario.

Did we speak to them? No, we did not have hearings with the fishermen from Ontario. Why? It was only a couple of days ago this two clause bill was sprung in the House, with no briefing, no background, nothing. We had to persuade the minister to give us a briefing on Thursday to tell us what this was about and he tried to ram it through the House without any consultation whatsoever.

However I would say to the member that in light of the concerns they have in Charlottetown and in P.E.I., especially with herring fish, maybe he should talk to some of his own people so that we could solve some of these problems too.

[Fisheries Act, June 6th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, first, this is not a west coast or an Atlantic coast gang up on Ontario. This is just an issue that happens to be raised by the minister for Ontario about regulations that apply to Ontario.

Many of the issues we dealt with in the fisheries committee, such as the invasive species, concerns about aquaculture and certainly the Rouge River problems, we also dealt with many problems specifically relating to Ontario where the members of the committee worked very hard and diligently to draw attention to the valid concerns of the people of Ontario.

In relation to the efforts in the past by a former minister, he mentioned the arrest of the Estai by then minister Brian Tobin, who was known as the“Tobinator” because he went out there and had the intestinal fortitude to arrest the boat and bring it into port.

At the time, however, Mr. Tobin was eyeing the prime ministership and used it to his best advantage by going to New York, hanging up a net, holding up a baby turbot and then saying, “Here is what these terrible people are doing”. As a government, we proceeded to give them back their boat and pay all their expenses. I believe we were sued for even bringing them into port but to save face we negotiated to give them extra turbot. However we were the big losers. Publicity-wise, the minister gained some but the country and the people of the country were the big losers.

That is how the Liberals operate. Unfortunately, there is a lot of talk and a lot of hype but very little substance and we are seeing the same thing here today.

[Fisheries Act, June 6th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for getting the name of my riding correct. The last time he referred to me in the House he called me the member for St. John's South--Pearl Harbour. I know it can be pretty hot at times in St. John's South—Mount Pearl but I have not had to duck any bombs yet.

The member raises a concern about the input from people in Ontario who have expressed a concern with this regulation. I say that maybe he should call home and ask the fishermen in Prince Edward Island what they think about giving the minister the power and the control and, worse still, giving the parliamentary secretary the power to throw them in jail if they do not comply with licences.

I say to the member that I can understand why there is some concern in Ontario about this regulation. It is simply because the Minister of Fisheries has raised the concern thinking that if this is not corrected he will lose complete control over the fishery and it will be unmanageable.

The minister approached the scrutiny of regulations committee with that concern and it is based on that concern that the minister and the department is acting. However the scrutiny of regulations committee said that this concern was not valid, that this would not happen. The same powers to conserve will still be there.

I say to the member that maybe we should look at this in the big picture. Sometimes in order to solve a problem we come up with a mechanism to deal with that but we are creating a bigger problem by doing so.

I have no intention of trying to obstruct my good friend the minister from doing his work. What we are really trying to do here is to keep the minister from getting into greater trouble by changing regulations that will open up the floodgates and give him an even bigger headache than he has at present.

[Fisheries Act, June 6th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate. If we look at the bill we see that it is a couple of minuscule clauses and if we were to listen to the governing party we would think that this is very simple, we will ram it through and life will go on.

But life for a lot people involved in the fishing industry will go on quite differently if this bill passes.

I cannot help but remark, in listening to the people who have taken part in the debate so far, that we have two members from the governing party, the minister and one of the members, both of whom are lawyers. They talk about the legal implications and show that they do not understand what it is all about, but they mentioned that in order to understand it one should have one's feet in a pair of fishing boots.

The other member who has spoken, the member for Delta—Richmond East, is a fisherman, so if we are going to take someone's observations on a bill like this, with the implications it might have for people involved in the fishery, I ask, who would we rather take advice from? Two lawyers who never caught a fish in their lives, or a person--I am sorry, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans caught a trout one time, he told me--who is a full time fisherman who knows the ins and outs and the implications of legislation?

It is also very interesting to know who has been contacting members in recent days expressing concerns about this legislation. It was not members of the committee and not lawyers, but people involved directly in the fishery.

I am going to leave a lot of the technical parts of the bill to the other 17 or so speakers we have coming up after I finish. I want to refer to some of the comments made by the minister because he raised some issues or topics in his speech that certainly need to be discussed in this place.

The minister talks about conservation. He says that without passing this piece of legislation we could have problems with conservation. I hate to wake the minister up, but we have already major problems with conservation. We have problems with conservation all across the country. We have major problems in British Columbia. All we have to do is look at any report coming out on what happened on the Fraser River in recent years, particularly this year. A number of pointed reports talk blatantly about conservation practices or the lack thereof.

We can look at the east coast and the groundfish, which was once so abundant that we could catch it in a basket. In recent years, we have seen towns all around the rural areas crumbling in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, places whose very existence was because of the fishery, crumbling simply because that resource is no longer there, because we did not conserve the resource as we should.

Who is responsible for the fishery in this country? I have asked that question of at least two, maybe three and probably all four ministers I have seen since I have been here. Let us remember that it was only last week, on May 30, that I celebrated my fifth anniversary in the House. I have been here only five years and I have already seen four ministers of fisheries and oceans. One wonders about it. I will not let it put any colour at all on the ministers because I consider them friends of mine. I am sure they are very good people and I get along very well with the present minister.

However, one wonders how much any minister can do when he, or maybe eventually she, will have a year or less in a department as broad as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Therefore, a lot of what goes on falls into the hands of bureaucrats. This was one of the problems raised by my colleague: the concern that bureaucrats will now control who has a licence, they will control the terms of these licences and they will control who can be sent to jail for up to two years less a day because of any offence in relation to the regulations we are talking about.

Coming back to the conservation aspect, one of the problems we have in conservation is that we have absolutely no enforcement. The department mouths platitudes about conservation, but in order to conserve we need to have firm and fair regulations, which we can argue we may or may not have, but it is the enforcement of the regulations that is so important.

This is what the minister and the member from Ontario talk about: that we need to have control to be able to enforce the regulations. What about all the other regulations we have that we have not enforced? Why are our stocks at rock bottom? Simply because of the cuts that have been made by the department, the poor decisions that have been made and the loopholes that exist. It goes on and on.

If we are going to talk about conservation because we now have a problem at hand and we are panicking about how to solve it--and I assure the minister that there is a problem, as he will find out as the day progresses--why are we not thinking about the big picture of conservation and about the total fishery in this country?

He also talks about enforcement. I mentioned that. How can we expect to protect the resource if we have no enforcement? People turn a blind eye to what goes on in our salmon rivers. On many other rivers, we have seen such a large cut in the number of protection officers that people can do whatever they want. I guess it is human nature that if we can get away with something, we will do it. If it swims, catch it, and if it flies, shoot it: that is the feeling many people have. They do not worry about conserving, but that is what the department is supposed to do.

Then we have the abuses on the offshore off the Atlantic coast, whereby we send out our boats with solid men and women dedicated to the cause, to the department, whether they be members of the Coast Guard or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans patrol boats. They go out there and find, time after time, foreign boats blatantly abusing our resource by catching fish they are not supposed to catch, using gear they are not supposed to use and fishing where they are not supposed to fish. All our people can do is go aboard, sometimes to be kicked off, and issue citations.

A citation, as I have said over and over, is similar to a warning ticket on the highway, whereby all that can be done is give out a warning ticket, with no fines and no imprisonment. Nothing will happen. The next day the person can speed by the checkpoint again and pick up another warning ticket. Those boats throw their citations overboard, go home, unload and come back to fish again and abuse the resources, and we cannot do a darn thing about it.

Therefore, when we are talking about conservation and protection we had better look very closely at what we are doing when we have powers to do those things. The minister says we need powers in the act to be able to deal with this issue. What about the powers we have that we are not using and have not used over the years?

What about the bill itself? What does it really do? As I say, I will leave the technicalities to my colleagues who will speak after me, but I want to put on the record the section pertaining to the concerns expressed by the Ontario government and the minister from Ontario. What will happen if the regulation is revoked? That was basically the question. Is this fishery in danger? To listen to the minister and the minister from Ontario, if this regulation is revoked, we lose total control of our fishery. Everybody will be out there catching, poaching and whatever, and we will not be able to do a thing to control it. That is the height of nonsense.

The Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations included in its report a letter from the Minister of Natural Resources from the province of Ontario. It expressed concern about subsection 36(2) of the regulations being revoked and concluded as follows.

In closing, the Committee wishes to briefly address the statement by the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources that:

Terms and conditions [of licences] are currently the only mechanisms by which Ontario can establish allowable quota, areas where fishing can occur, designates who can take fish under a licence, reporting for commercial fishing licences.

To the extent this comment suggests that disallowance of section 36(2) would impair the ability to impose terms and conditions of licences, it does not reflect a clear understanding of the nature of section 36(2).

These are not my words or the words of the member for Delta—Richmond East, who will again elaborate on this. We are not the ones making the regulations and we are not the ones saying this. It has been said by the scrutiny of regulations committee. These are the words of the committee.

The scrutiny of regulations committee is basically saying that the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources does not have a clear understanding of the section and his interpretation is wrong. It states:

Disallowance of that section may change the manner of enforcing compliance with terms and conditions of licences, but would certainly not affect in any way the ability to impose such terms and conditions.

Consequently, the concern about not being able to enforce regulations or protect the resource is not valid. The committee makes that quite clear. The committee goes on to say:

In the same letter, the Minister goes so far as to suggest that the disallowance of section 36(2) would “threaten the sustainability of our fisheries resources”.

The committee states:

Whether or not section 36(2) remains in the Regulations, the authority to issue licences and to impose terms and conditions on the licence would remain unimpaired, as would the ability to enforce observance of these terms and conditions. The imposition of a fine or a jail term for breach of a licence condition, as opposed to suspending or cancelling the same licence, has nothing to do with the sustainability of the fishery resource.

While your Committee understands that the federal and provincial Ministers favour the enforcement of terms and conditions of licences through fines and imprisonment rather than licence suspensions or cancellations, the Committee would be remiss in its statutory responsibility if it allowed this policy preference to override the principle that the Executive may not create offences punishable by criminal sanctions without clear authority granted by Parliament. It is the responsibility of the Executive to ask the Houses for that authority.

All the committee is saying is that the authority to issue fines or to bring on imprisonment has to be, of course, in the hands of the minister or the minister's bureaucrats, and that in itself is a very dangerous thing.

Really, the justification that is being used by the minister and the members on that side who have spoken so far certainly does not jibe at all with what the scrutiny of regulations committee members are saying, nor with the reality of the legislation.

Again, we have talked about the conditions around licences. Here we are in this House disputing perhaps what the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations is saying, backing up what a minister from Ontario was saying even though the committee says he is off base on his interpretation of the regulations, but we are not at all concerned about other conditions of licences.

I say to the minister, we have across the country a fishery where, in order to participate, we have to be a holder of a valid licence. That licence can only be given by the minister and can only be given to an individual who is fishing whatever resource it might be. That licence cannot be given to a friend, a sister or a brother, or even passed on, as it used to be, to members of one's family without the direction and the okay of the minister. I have no argument with that.

The problem is, of course, that many of the people who are fishing today have a licence, are supposed to be the owner off the boat on which they are fishing and supposed to have control of what they are doing, are there in name only because the fishery has been taken over by people who can afford to buy licences. Instead of the fellow down the road, who fished all his life, being able to walk up and pay his $100 to get a licence, a licence now, depending on what we are fishing, whether it be lobster, shrimp, crab or lucrative resources like that, costs anywhere from $100,000 to over $1 million. The average fisherman certainly cannot afford to buy such licences.

We have a whole new, under the table, set of dealings operating which gives control of the fishery to, first, industry in many cases where we have the owners, the processors, buying boats, buying licences and having some fisherman sign his name as if he were the real owner when he has no ownership and no control because of all kinds of trust agreements under the table.

We want to talk about conditions around licences. These are the issues with which the minister should concern himself because we are placing the control of the fishery into the hands of very few people and we are taking people who earned a living for years from the fishery out of the industry entirely.

Years ago, because of a lack of technology and because of the type of gear we used, many of our fishing crews were made up of several individuals, from a cod trap where there were five or six people because of the size and the weight, in order to be able to haul it, to operating some of our larger boats on the west coast, our seiner being is one.

Technology changed that to some degree but what changed it more than anything else was the change in the fishery. Instead of having all of these people now on the east coast fishing cod, most of them are fishing crab. In order to fish crab, one does not need five or six in his small boat any more. The owner needs himself and somebody to steer the boat, which, quite often, is his wife or somebody from the family, so whole crews are being wiped out and displaced.

Even though they fished all their lives side by side with the enterprise owner, question mark, these people are being told they are no longer equal. Only the enterprise owners can have a core licence to operate and they can go look for a job as they always have with them.

Of course, with the change in fishery there are no longer any jobs. In some cases we have had brothers who fished together all their lives in the same boat, using the same gear and sharing the same expenses but somewhere along the line the boat was licensed in the name of one of them rather than the other. The person who now owns the boat is the enterprise owner and he can get a core licence because he has his own boat and he had it registered. The other person is told that he cannot have a core licence because he does not own an enterprise even though he fished all his life in the same boat with his brother.

I do not envy the minister one bit. I am not saying this in a critical sense to the minister because he inherited this mess but it is getting worse and trying to deal with it is a major chore. However it has to be dealt with because too many people who have lived all their lives depending on the fishery are being pushed aside and the people benefiting from the fishery resource are the ones sitting in a condominium, quite often in Florida, with their feet up on the table, drinking pina coladas and calling back home to see how much crab they caught today and how much money went into their bank account. The crew member goes home with his minuscule cheque wondering if he will get 12 weeks so he can collect unemployment insurance while the owner is enjoying himself.

I am not exaggerating here. I say to the minister, we have a minor problem here, not a major one, that can be dealt with by leaving it alone, but let us deal with the big issues because we have lots of them.

[Points of Order, June 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of things to say on this issue. This is a fairly comprehensive statement that the member has just made dealing with a very important and, I suggest, contentious topic. I question why such an item as this would be raised as a point of order.

It is not just a matter of moving one thing from here to somewhere else. We are talking about huge sums of money. We are talking in excess of $40 billion. We know how much bureaucracy it takes for the government to move that kind of money. This is an extremely comprehensive piece of work and I am concerned about the mechanism of dealing with such a topic on a point of order.

[Newfoundland and Labrador, June 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in case you have not noticed, summer is coming and everyone is planning summer vacations. All are asking, where can we go?

Why not visit the oldest settled part of North America? Why not come see where the Vikings settled 1,000 years ago? Why not come see famous archaeological sites, such as Lord Baltimore's colony? Why not come see 620 million year old fossils? Why not come see lighthouses, historic sites, scenic parks, wildlife and icebergs?

Why not come visit Cabot Tower from where Marconi sent the first transatlantic message? Why not see the St. John's regatta, North America's oldest sporting event, and visit Cape Spear, our country's most easterly point?

Why not come enjoy our festivals, experience our food, and meet the finest people in the world?

Why not visit Newfoundland and Labrador this summer?

[Fisheries, June 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Natural Resources has promised the people of the Harbour Breton area that federal assistance will be made available to them to help offset the devastation caused by the closure of their plant. This fish plant produced up to 30 million pounds of product a year in the value of $20 million.

If the Prime Minister can do a $4.6 billion deal with the NDP over supper, why is the minister reneging on his promise to the people of Harbour Breton?

[Supply, June 2nd, 2005]

Madam Speaker, there were certainly a number of issues there.

One of the things I will assure the member that I have done and continue to do is to make sure that my party fully understands where I am coming from and the condition in which my region is, whether it be good or bad, the resources we have, the potential we have, et cetera. That is quite evident in the support we have on major issues, such as the overfishing issue, the offshore accord and other issues like that.

He mentioned our party did not vote during the budget process. He is probably thanking us quietly for not doing that because if we had, we would have been into an election and I am not sure whether the member and some of his colleagues would be here right now. We did not vote because our vote would have killed the government. Nobody wanted an election at the time. Of course Gomery had not peaked, and there was not the pressure then that there is now.

The member went on to say that his party's amendments gave workers certain rights. He did not even talk about the employment insurance issue and the workers as such. Most of it was on international issues.

The main concern here, and the member knows this because two of his colleagues in answers to questions I asked admitted to it, is that the money will probably never see the light of day. It will only be delivered if the surplus reaches $2 billion and I understand that will not be determined until August 2006. Then there would be negotiations, et cetera.

His own colleagues said in the House that they do not trust the government. I do not trust the government. He does not trust the government. They made the point. I congratulated the speakers originally on that and I will congratulate the party for making the point that there are needs in this country, absolutely. But all they did was fall for a ploy from government. They were bought off, their support, to keep a corrupt party in power so that they could continue to throw money around the country, but their input into it was minuscule.

We have said in the House that this issue is of extreme importance right across the country, but specifically to certain regions. Whatever has to be done to make sure that this overall issue is corrected, that the money that is paid into that fund is used for the benefit of the people who should be deserving of this should be done. However, we are not going to see it in the present government.

[Supply, June 2nd, 2005]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in the debate this morning, not because it is a motion put forth by the NDP or by any party, but because it is an issue that should be debated here in the House, but not necessarily by this narrowly focused motion. I do not say that to demean the motion, which is a very important one, but perhaps a good wide debate on the whole issue of employment insurance would lead to more understanding.

One of the things I have learned since I came here is that in order to get anything done, we have to build supports. We have a huge country. There are areas that are extremely rich where people do very well and where unemployment is unknown. There are other areas where because of history, because of geography, because of the resources that have been destroyed over the years, people are eking out a living, as did the people who came here five centuries ago.

We cannot make blanket rules for people across the country. People who are used to living in a certain area have tunnel vision to a certain extent because that is all they see. It is difficult sometimes for people to understand what it is like in areas where conditions are different. By having these discussions, by talking within our own groups, within our caucuses and here in the House, we get a better understanding of the concerns and needs of people across the country.

One of the most misunderstood issues in this whole country is employment insurance. On one side there are people who, without some form of insurance payments, would not be able to exist. In other areas there are people who work all the time and contribute to a program from which they have never drawn.

The first year I worked, I was 16 years of age. I am slightly older than that now, as members know. I have been fortunate in that I have never had to draw employment insurance, but that is not true of many people around me, friends, family, people in my province and people across the country. We live in this diverse country where people's needs change dramatically from area to area.

Over the years I have had discussions with the member who moved the motion. We share many common concerns. He represents an area where people are hurting. I did, although most of it has been taken away now. We should not generalize. Just because we represent an urban area, and the unemployment rate in our region as given out by Statistics Canada is 2% or 5%, it does not mean that within that geographic area people are not having trouble finding employment. People in the areas of highest employment in this country cannot find jobs for a number of reasons, lack of training, lack of skills, lack of opportunity in their field of training, or whatever. It is a problem everyone experiences, but more so in areas where there is seasonal employment at best.

There is one thing that concerns me about the issue. The member makes it sound as if it is so important, and I agree it is, but I have not heard him explain why, when his leader did a deal with the Prime Minister to support the government and keep it in power, this issue was not one of the ones listed. They talked about money for the environment, training programs, affordable housing and foreign aid, but there was no mention at all of the employment insurance program. I think the member has a little bit of explaining to do. If this issue is so important to the member and his party, why was it not a priority in the discussions? Having said that, it is a very important issue.

I am going to concentrate on the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador. I see the member for Random—Burin—St. George's. He knows full well from where I am coming as he is in the same type of situation. Our areas depended on the fishery. In many small fishing communities some people fished and others worked in fish plants.

We had the richest resource in the world. It has been practically wiped out. In many parts of the member's riding there were plants that worked 52 weeks of the year. People had problems getting Christmas and New Year's off because of the amount of product that was being landed and needed to be processed.

Today many of these areas have no processing facilities. They have been closed. Some people have gone to Alberta or Ontario but there are always those who have been left behind, who cannot leave for all kinds of reasons, because of their age, their lack of training, or they have invested everything at home. They have to stay and depend upon a few weeks of work each year.

Right now if we took the crab out of Newfoundland there would be very little work in the fishing industry. That resource is caught in a few short weeks. This means that the thousands and thousands of people who work in the fishing industry year round are now limited to a very few weeks of work.

Other species are caught intermittently and there are five or six, or eight to ten weeks of peak employment. Then there are a couple of days here, a day there and a few hours somewhere else. The way the old system worked is that the last 12 or 14 weeks were averaged out to determine how much employment insurance a person received. The partial weeks, days and hours cut into the amount. A few years ago the system was changed to put on a limit of $225 or something like that, and anything below that was not counted.

Many of these people work for very low wages, $8 to $10 an hour, especially at the non-unionized plants. Some work for even less. Some work for minimum wage.

We have to realize that the unemployment rate generally has not changed in years. The minimum wage keeps going up but the unemployment rate has not changed. People are earning the same as they earned years ago and they only get 55% of their income. If people make $400 a week and unemployment insurance is averaged out at their top wage, that means they get a little over $200 a week. If partial weeks and days are thrown into that, they are down to less than $200, probably $100 a week. Can someone tell me, in this day and age how can anybody feed a family and keep a household going on $150 to $200 a week?

That is why the member has brought forward this motion. I notice the government just responded to a report and is basically saying it is going to do a pilot project for three years in areas of high unemployment, 10% or above, which is exactly what the member is saying. It is going to pick the best 14 weeks and see how it works. I think that is laudable. The government came out recently with this three year pilot project for the best 14 weeks. I am not sure why the member is pushing for a change immediately to drop it to 12.

I know that going from 14 weeks to 12 weeks is going to make some difference. However, one of the things we also have to be very careful about is that a lot of people who pay into the program and never take out benefits look upon those who draw in areas such as mine as always taking. We fought that battle here in relation to our resources. We do not want people to get turned off completely about supporting programs for those in need. We have to walk before we run.

The whole issue of unemployment insurance has to be revisited certainly in areas where our resources are diminished, mainly because government has given them away, destroyed them, or has not looked after them. We are sitting on $40 billion. Why are people not able to find work anyway when we have that kind of money to invest in training and infrastructure? Why is Harbour Breton closed and people are looking for help and there is $40 billion floating around?

There are a lot of unanswered questions. Can this motion solve them all? In light of what government is doing ties in. Is government willing to drop it another couple of weeks to make it a little better for people? I guess we will find out as we hear the speeches.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 30th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting to see what transpired here this afternoon. Those members have completely and utterly ignored this issue since we first brought it to the House. They procrastinated and refused to deliver benefits to Atlantic Canada but then were embarrassed and forced into it during the last election and made a promise. When they won the election, we then had to do everything to force them into an agreement. Once they got an agreement, they tried to drag it out as long as they could through comprehensive legislation. This afternoon, when they had a chance to speed up the passage of the single piece of legislation, they talked it out so there would not even be a vote.

How can the member, in good faith, in light of what is going on at the Gomery commission, where, because people did not scrutinize legislation in the past, millions of dollars have been wasted, ask this House, through committee, to pass everything in the wink of an eye? How can he be responsible and ask a question like that? Why are you trying to hold Atlantic--