Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Fraser Valley for sharing his time with me today. He provided some fodder for the member for Guelph—Wellington to ask her question. She provided me with some fodder to speak in this debate when earlier, in asking a question of one of her own colleagues, she asked would people not rather hear us talking about and she listed things such as health care, education and whatever, than doing what we are doing here today?
The member represents an area which has become very quickly a very solid Conservative area and she should be very much aware of that. Let me say to her that people across the country are sick and tired of listening to the government talking about these issues. What they want to hear in the House is some solid debate that leads to decision making.
We are supposed to flesh out ideas here to provide the type of debate that stimulates government into making not just decisions but right and proper decisions. There should be debate that holds it accountable. For a long time the government got away with it, but that day has ended. No more will the government members opposite get away with it after a few days, weeks, months, or perhaps even a year and a half, because they will probably try to hold on now with their fingernails. We will probably have to drag them out of here as we had to do with the Liberal government in Newfoundland. When it realized it was going to lose, it held on in order to get every last ounce of benefit it could out of what is provided by the people of the country.
What has the government done about resource development? We see resource rich provinces as they develop their resources looking at empty purses because of the clawbacks of the government. What about the equalization formula that it has set? It is so idiotic that no one benefits. What about the health care system? It talks about the $2 billion. For five years it promised a couple of billion dollars to health care. By the time the provinces get it, it is going to mean very little. In fact, all of the provinces ended up with less money than they had originally because of the effect on the equalization program.
In the health care system, one area that has been neglected is research. We could say the same for fisheries. Because of the total lack of research, we do not know what is going on and because we do not know what is going on, we waste a tremendous amount of money.
Imagine how much money could have been saved in the House by the government if it had done more research into amnesia. Many of the members over there on the government side have amnesia. They cannot remember what happened and because they cannot remember what happened, they have consistently spent more and more and more of taxpayers' dollars without any accountability.
On forestry, it has already been mentioned the mess the government made of the softwood lumber deal. I remember standing here. We were together on that issue. I remember my colleagues around me talking to the then minister responsible. We said that the softwood lumber agreement would soon run out and asked when would we have a new agreement. Day after day the minister kept saying “Don't worry, be happy. We have never lost an argument before the World Trade Organization. We are protected. We have no problems”. The time came for the agreement to end and the agreement ran out. What happened? History of course will write that Canadians got shafted from coast to coast. The softwood lumber issue has been a fiasco.
When it comes to managing our fishery, there has not been any management. The funny thing about it is this past week the new rookie Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, who would not know a cod fish from a McDonald's burger, came to Newfoundland and promised all kinds of new money. He promised money for aerial surveillance and he promised money to put more boats on the water so we could have greater surveillance on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, the Flemish Cap, and within our own waters, within the 200 mile limit.
More surveillance means one thing, and it gives us great consolation. It means we can now issue more citations to foreigners. One might ask, what is a citation? It is something like a warning ticket. Whenever one meets a friendly Mountie on the highway, and everyone is in a good mood and not too many people are around, instead of giving the speeding ticket, he gives a warning ticket which basically says, “Be a good little boy or girl, slow down and drive safely”, which we should do anyway. We have been doing year after year.
In the past 10 years alone the Government of Canada, through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and perhaps even National Defence, has issued approximately 300 citations to foreigners because they have been blatantly abusing the rules. We have to understand that out on the high seas, in the NAFO-regulated zone and within our own waters, we probably only have one vessel at a time, and for many periods no vessels. For months last year we had our coast guard boats tied up because the government would not give it enough money to put fuel in them boats. The people on the boats and the people involved in the coast guard could not go out and do the job they wanted to do. We have great people in the coast guard.
When they would catch somebody breaking the rules, blatantly fishing species under moratorium, blatantly fishing inside the 200 mile limit, blatantly overfishing, blatantly using gear types that were illegal, they would issue a citation, send the boats home and get the country of ownership to deal with the boat. Do we know what happens? I do not know and the government does not know because we have asked. What happened to the 300 citations and how many of them were punished? The government does not know. It has done research, but it does not know because when it sends them back home, nobody comes back and tells it what has happened.
We are now going to put out more boats and more planes. We have tremendous aerial surveillance in the country. A company from Newfoundland and Labrador actually does the work, top of the line, the best in the world. I am prejudiced, but it is true that it is the best in the world. It can do its job by spotting blatant abuses, but the government has to follow up and take action. There has been no action, none whatsoever. Nothing has been done except issuing citations, and now we are going to issue more citations.
Getting back to the member for Guelph--Wellington, do the people of Canada want us to talk more here? No, they do not. They want us to perform. They want to see some action. We have a reactionary government that has been throwing money at the issues across the country.
The Prime Minister today was in Alberta and announced $1 billion for BSE. It is two years too late and a billion dollars too short. The Prime Minister has been running around the country throwing out money like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, like giving out candy on Hallowe'en; trick or treat. It does not matter how the Prime Minister treats the people of the country over the next few weeks leading up to the election. The people of Canada are going to play a trick on the Prime Minister and members opposite, one that they will remember for a long time. We will get away from talking about things in this chamber, and start doing things that need to be done for the people of this great country.
