Loyola Hearn

[Business of the House, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, we want to ask the government House leader what he has planned for the rest of today, tomorrow and early next week.

I would also like to ask him if he has reconsidered my request of January 23 to dispense with our break during the month of March so we could continue the business of the House. That request, as you know, Mr. Speaker, was supported by the House leaders of the other parties.

Furthermore, I would ask him if he plans to have a further debate on BSE, because last night I believe the debate was exceptionally good, but so many members who wanted to speak of course could not get on the record because of the timeframe. I wonder if he plans to continue with perhaps a special debate, maybe during regular sitting hours when the issue can get the prominence it deserves.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, we just came from a meeting with the restaurant caucus. We talked about all of those who are affected. Sometimes we do not know how far the loss in this industry extends. When we talk to these people and stop to think about it, where does the beef usually end up? Besides what we buy personally, a lot of it ends up on the tables in the hotels and restaurants around the country. These people are hurting also and they are encouraging government to do exactly what the member is asking: let us get the industry going again.

I just wonder, from the member's own experience particularly in the west, are the restaurants, the hotels and the eating establishments having the same problem that all the ones we spoke to tonight seem to be having?

[Fisheries, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, again, it all happened in 1949, as I said. When we came into Canada, we brought the Grand Banks. Then it was just the Province of Newfoundland, not the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the fishing banks off the coast were referred to as the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, meaning ours, the Grand Banks O-F, of, Newfoundland.

The Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Canada has always looked upon them as just the Grand Banks O-F-F, off, Newfoundland. There is a difference. They say O-F-F, with the extra F, so that they are off Newfoundland. We say O-F, with the F off. They are our banks, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Canada has to take responsibility--now that we are part of this great country--within NAFO. As for the other countries, as I mentioned, that make up NAFO, many of them are very responsible countries. Consequently, if we were to make the proper approach and show some leadership--and in fact the inquiries have shown there has been very little connection between the minister and NAFO--I think the cooperation would be there to let us manage, on their behalf, the stocks of our coast.

[Fisheries, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, let me recognize the job that the hon. member who just spoke did as chair of the committee. As he said, he was chair of the committee for probably a year and a half when this issue was first introduced. He, along with the other members of the committee, solidly supported the motion that Canada take custodial management over the nose and tail of the Grand Banks.

He wants to know what I think of the argument. It is too bad I cannot ask a question back to him. I would ask him what he really thinks of NAFO. Because I know, and I have heard him say it on a number of occasions. It is very similar to what is said by the unions, the fishermen, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the special all party committee, by everybody except the Minister of Fisheries and some of the key members of government. For whatever reason, they are protecting the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, probably, which told us quite plainly, “Please do not rock the boat”.

If the government does not show some leadership in relation to protecting our resource, how do we expect Norway or Finland or Iceland or Denmark or anybody else to do it? Many of these countries have concerns about their own resources.

I believe the time is right, even within NAFO, to get people together to agree upon a protective mechanism. But somebody has to be charge. It is adjacent to our shores. The agency that should be in charge here is the Government of Canada. If it is properly presented, I think we would get international support.

They do not have the guts to do it.

[Fisheries, February 4th, 2004]

moved:

Motion M-136

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take immediate action to extend custodial management over the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks and of the Flemish Cap.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for seconding this motion.

As many members will recall, during the last session we debated this motion. Like many others, it died on the Order Paper but it has been brought back in its entirety. Instead of being in the second hour of debate, we are starting all over again and we will have one hour of debate now and the second hour sometime in the near future.

It is also a bit ironic tonight that we are talking about preserving our fishery when around us, I understand in the gallery, there are many people who have been affected by the BSE problem right across the country. Many of us think it is a western problem but it is a Canadian problem. The destruction of our fishery is not an Atlantic Canadian problem, it is a Canadian problem, period. People on the west coast, in the north and near the Great Lakes realize what is happening to our fishery.

Tonight I will zero in on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap. The fish that once were so abundant in that area had such a great effect on the economy of this great country of ours. In a nutshell, for those who are not aware of the area and the problem concerned, I will quickly explain as well and as plainly as I can the situation in which Canadians find themselves in relation to a renewable resource which, like our farming industry, has been totally and utterly neglected by the government.

When Canada joined Newfoundland in 1949, it found that we had abundant resources. In fact at the time we had the greatest groundfish resource in the world, the northern cod. For centuries people from Canada, from Europe and of course from Newfoundland and Labrador fished that resource. They fished it carefully, knowing what happens when a natural resource is destroyed. Things changed and when Canada came together with us, it called the shots, but it was also supposed to accept the responsibilities. It did not and we have seen the fishery destroyed.

Perhaps a more ironic point is during these years we had a three mile limit I believe, which eventually extended to 12 miles and then finally to 200 miles. Even when we had no limit, foreign boats were fishing inside our waters. In the early days the fishing was with hooks and lines on the Grand Banks. The city of St. John's all around the waterfront was filled with what we used to call the tall ships. The Portuguese and the Spaniards, who fished according to the historic agreements, the international agreements we had with them, would land in St. John's and take on supplies. They would come in out of storms. They appreciated how well they were treated that they, speaking of the Portuguese, presented St. John's with a huge statue which they carried through the streets. It still is there in the Basilica of St. John the Baptist in St. John's. Thousands of fishermen lined up to walk in the procession to show appreciation for the way they were treated by Newfoundlanders.

Things changed. The 200 mile limit that was finally established did not protect our resource. Fish swim. Canada is not unique in the world but perhaps in our case we have the most lucrative grounds that extend beyond any 200 mile limit.

The continental shelf off the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland and Labrador extends beyond 200 miles. When the 200 mile limit was put in, there were a couple of major sections, basically like points, extending outside that limit. They are referred to as the nose and the tail of the Grand Banks, because really they are extensions of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Those points are in international waters.

We are supposed to have an organization called the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization, or NAFO. This organization allocates quotas to other fishing countries, the 19 countries that have historic rights or treaty rights with our country. Nobody pays any attention to it, unfortunately. Quotas are allocated based upon the scientific information as it relates to the size of the stock. Many of the countries just go out there, and there is an objection they can raise saying, “We do not agree with the quotas set and we are going to catch whatever we want”. This is what has been happening.

Many of these nations are referred to as rogue nations and they fly flags of convenience on their ships. We in this House are well aware of that. We know all about flags of convenience. I am not sure who owns all the boats; we might check into that too. However, these countries just blatantly rape the stocks off our coast.

We have for years, particularly over the last couple of years, requested that Canada take some control over this fishing resource. And let me thank sincerely the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, the chair and the members, from all parties, some of whom are here tonight, who have unanimously supported the request for Canada to take some control over this fishing resource.

One might ask what this all means. One might say that we had a few fish, that they are not as plentiful as they were, but we are making a lot of money on crab and shrimp. The fishery has changed somewhat, and because our ground fishery has practically been destroyed, the emphasis is now on crab and shrimp, lucrative species. Right now concerns are already being flagged about that resource, again because of the way it is being managed, particularly by government.

However, I am going to list for members some startling statistics. As far as we know, the first evidence mentioning the concern that our stocks were diminishing goes back to around 1968. The famous fishery scientist Sir Wilfred Templeman mentioned at that time that he had concerns about the state of our stocks. Since 1497, when John Cabot first came over and rediscovered the Atlantic coast, Newfoundland, for almost 500 years people had been fishing, yet the stocks had remained consistent. Around the 1960s people began to see that we were starting to overfish. And of course that was nothing compared to what is happening today.

Concerns were raised in 1968. In 1973, our stocks were starting to show some decline. If we had taken the scientific advice at that time, if we had learned from those who were starting to point out that there was a problem, if governments had taken the stand they should have taken and shown the intestinal fortitude government should show to protect a Canadian renewable resource, we would still have those stocks. If they had not been traded off so we could sell our wheat and our cars and encourage foreign countries to invest here, we would still have those stocks. It was, “Come here and set up a car factory and we will give you fish off Newfoundland”. That was a constant deal.

If only we had protected that stock. I am just going to let the House know, in today's figures, what would have happened if we had protected that stock. The return from our ground fishery today is practically nil. Most of our income from this industry, which is somewhere near $1 billion, give or take, is from shrimp and crab, two species which then no one even wanted to touch. Nobody wanted to hear about them.

However, if we had kept the 1973 stocks as they were, today to the people of Canada they would be worth approximately $3,327,500,000, over $3.3 billion in today's dollars, if we had just been able to preserve the amount of fish we had back in 1973. There are about 25,000 people who would have been directly and indirectly affected by the loss of that amount of product. So on top of what we have today, on top of a billion dollar industry in crab and shrimp, and on top of the number of people working in the industry, we could add to that 25,000 jobs, and these would be much better paying jobs than the eight, ten or twelve weeks that we see quite often today. Many of these were year round jobs; 52 weeks of the year with two and three shifts going at major plants. We would have added to our economy, on top of today's billion dollars, $3.3 billion.

Imagine what that would do to the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador. Imagine what that would do to the economy of Canada.

People say that we have oil and we do not want fish. Oil, like minerals, disappears. Once we take them out of the ground, that is it. They are non-renewable. To make things worse, when we started to develop Hibernia, for instance, there was an agreement that it would be spread over so many years at a certain rate of development. On a number of occasions now, the government has agreed to or has let the companies accelerate that development. Who is the big loser? The province, because we are the ones who would benefit somewhat from it.

We get very little from those resources. They are clawed back again by the federal government. That is why today Newfoundland, with the richest resources in the country, and with the smallest population, is what we call a have not province. I say to people, “Please look at what Newfoundland has”. I know that as more and more people travel there, they are starting to ask why we are called a have not province. They say we have so much: the minerals, the oil, the fishery and the forestry. And there is tourism galore. It is the best place in the country to go if one wants to enjoy oneself.

But for every dollar we take in through revenues and royalties, the federal government claws back anywhere from 75¢ to 90¢. It is like a person on social welfare going out and making a hundred bucks. Everyone says to get back in the workforce because it is great stuff and then they take the hundred dollars off his cheque. The person then asks what is the sense; it is just as well to stay home and do nothing.

We need a complete and utter change in our philosophy in how we deal with our provinces and in how we deal with resource development.

Tonight in the House we are debating two issues: fish and, of course, agriculture. They are two resources that are renewable, two resources that if protected by government, a government that understands and listens, a government that makes the right laws and rules, they are resources that will be just as good 100 years from now as they are today. I use the example, which goes back only 30 years, of the difference it would have made if we had protected that resource.

We are looking at how we balance budgets and we usually cut. We look to the worker and we reduce the workforce. It just makes us less productive. It puts fewer dollars into the economy. Let us look at how we can best benefit from our resources. Let us look at our raw resources. Let us look at the maximum potential and let us get there.

This is an issue we could talk on for months, but there are others here who are well aware of the issue. Colleagues in this House have familiarized themselves with this issue. I look forward to their comments.

[Questions on the Order Paper, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I refer you to yesterday's Hansard of February 3, at page 22. The hon. House leader, following the comment by the member for Huron--Bruce, said:

...I am pleased to announce that tomorrow evening, at the conclusion of government orders, I would like there to be a take note debate on this issue [BSE] in response to the initiatives taken by my two colleagues and to questions that have been raised by other members of this House.

I think it is only right and fair that the House leader should have mentioned that the original request in writing came from our party on January 22, which is quite some time ago, when we requested, and I quote:

It is my strong recommendation that the House of Commons hold a special debate in Parliament on one of the first available evenings during the week of February 2 in relation to BSE.

Just for the record, I am not sure whether he omitted it intentionally, but he did allude to his two colleagues and I think it only right and fair that the record be set straight.

[Action Plan for Democratic Reform, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the House leader learned a valuable lesson today on democratic reform.

I, like the government House leader, am engaging in my speech as the House leader of the official opposition. With these words I too wish to express my deep gratitude to the people of my constituency, St. John's West, and to the leadership of the new Conservative Party for the confidence they have placed in me.

I also want to thank the government House leader for providing me with an advance copy of the government's action plan for democratic reform. Such gestures go a long way in building trust and cooperation among all members of this distinguished House. Unfortunately, that is about as gentle as I am going to be this afternoon because what we have seen is a document which, if analyzed carefully, does nothing but appease government backbenchers, especially those who could not be put in cabinet.

This action plan I received earlier today from the government is littered with platitudes on reforming Parliament. All of these on the surface appear to be fairly noble objectives; however, we have no guarantee as parliamentarians that this action plan will be put into practice prior to the next election. We do not know that the government is serious about dealing with the so-called democratic deficit, and the past actions of the Prime Minister certainly demonstrate otherwise.

It was only last week that the Prime Minister and his government punched Parliament right between the eyes. They talked all they wanted, however their actions proved them wrong. Question No. 37, which I addressed earlier, proved they have little regard for Parliament or parliamentarians. They released sensitive information that should have been released to the entire House of Commons and put on the parliamentary record, but instead they chose to do otherwise.

Mr. Speaker, as you are well aware, parliamentary debate does not just simply mean talking. It also means listening. One of the first things the new government could do to prove it is serious about democratic reform is to have the Prime Minister and members of his cabinet be present in the House during debates. If the Prime Minister and his fellow cabinet showed up for debates, it would give all members from all parties a reason to be present in the House. I challenge the new Prime Minister and his government to take me up on this suggestion.

It was former Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker who once said, “Parliament is more than procedure; it is the custodian of the nation's freedom”. That is as true today as it was in 1949.

We have real responsibilities as parliamentarians and we must strive collectively to fulfill our tasks to the best of our ability. As important as democratic reform is, I must state for the record that it does not benefit the lives of my constituents in St. John's West or those of any other Canadians. I would argue that the democratic action plan announced today by the government is nothing more than a shell game, a camouflage to make it appear that Parliament is doing the work of Canadians in the run-up to an election.

Canadians cannot be fooled. Democratic reform does not decrease the waiting time for hospital patients in my constituency or anywhere else. It does not help the state of the fishing industry. It does not lower the tax burden faced by Canadian families. It does not help farmers affected by BSE in western Canada or anywhere else in this country, not by one inch. It does not help the cash strapped military, nor does it help financially burdened post-secondary students. It does not help seniors or the most vulnerable in Canadian society, and I am referring to the homeless.

My point is that although the new government has been preaching democratic reform with great fanfare, the reality is that it is irrelevant to a great majority of Canadians. Democratic reform has everything to do with process and nothing to do with helping ordinary Canadians. In fact, I would argue that the only reason this is moving ahead at all is that the Prime Minister sold his caucus on the idea when he was running for the leadership of the Liberal Party in order to give his lonely Liberal backbenchers some power.

I am a realist. Canadians are realists and they understand better than most that today's announcements do not concern them at all.

However, let us suppose that democratic reform actually was the number one priority of Canadians. Would the Prime Minister follow through? Let us examine his past record.

As minister of finance, he used time allocation 13 times on finance legislation. As minister of finance, he continually opposed reforms to political financing. The Prime Minister voted against establishing an independent ethics commissioner and he voted against giving committees the right to pre-review major appointments. The Prime Minister voted against tabling all the departmental audit reports here in the House. He voted against establishing a parliamentary committee to oversee government spending. He voted against establishing an independent public commission to investigate abuses at HRDC. He voted against tabling the prime minister's code of ethics in the House of Commons. He voted against strengthening democracy through parliamentary and electoral reform. This from a man who wants us to believe he is serious about addressing the democratic deficit in Parliament.

We understand the motives of the Prime Minister and his government. Canadians understand him too. It is an old, tired government attempting to sell us more of the same. It is trying to have us believe it can roll the dice and change the world and the House of Commons in the process. That will only happen when the government is replaced by a new forward looking and energetic government which will be found in the Conservative Party of Canada.

I challenge you, Mr. Speaker, any of the members or the press to go through the document tabled today. When they look at words such as “consult” and they look at electing committees, the majority of whom are members from the Liberal Party, they will wonder where is the real democratic reform.

[Privilege, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to draw your attention and the attention of the House, which is difficult, as you know, to a letter I received from the leader of the government in the House, dated January 28, 2004, a copy of which was also sent to you and all the other House leaders.

This letter concerns the answer given by the government to Question No. 37 in the previous session on February 14, 2003. After providing its initial response, the Chrétien government later admitted that the answer provided was deficient. Since then, the new government has become involved and has accepted responsibility for providing an accurate answer to Question No. 37. This is the subject of the letter I received from the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

The leader of the new government has also written to the member for Edmonton Southwest and has provided certain information. However, I am not dealing with the accuracy of that information at this time. My objection is that the information provided has not been placed before the House of Commons by government. The government, having accepted responsibility for the accuracy of the answer to Question No. 37, has an obligation to make a full statement in the House of Commons and has an obligation to correct what it knows to be a false answer.

The government also has an obligation to the House to make known what steps it has taken to ensure that the information provided to Parliament has been accurate, is accurate and will be accurate in the future. This is a primary duty for any government.

Mr. Speaker, you will be familiar with the precedents that require the House to be informed when it has been given inaccurate information. You will also be aware that in the past the House has treated the deliberate giving of false information as contempt.

Several things are clear here. The House was given inaccurate information. The new government has accepted responsibility for that false answer. It has issued public statements giving new information, but it has failed to bring that new information to the House of Commons in order to make it part of the parliamentary record. It has also failed to give that information to every member of the House of Commons by presenting it to the House. I should also note that it has failed to assure the House of the measures taken to guarantee the integrity of the answers posed to the government by opposition members.

I maintain that this constitutes contempt of the entire House by writing only to House leaders and to the member for Edmonton Southwest. The government House leader has withheld this information from other members of the House, particularly those who are not affiliated with any political party. Indeed, he may have withheld it from the entire Liberal backbench.

The government House leader wants Parliament--and I dare say Canadians--to believe that he has corrected this wrong by posting the information on a website. I would remind the government House leader that the House of Commons is by no means a website and should not be treated as such.

There is also reason to believe that the government withheld this information from the member for Edmonton Southwest until a time when it could bury this bad news among other media activity on the day it was released.

You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that at his news conference on that day the Prime Minister stated that it was a “good news day”. Clearly, news management was on the Prime Minister's mind.

I believe that a committee examination could well find that the detailed information contained in the letter by the government House leader was available in early January but withheld from the member for Edmonton Southwest until January 28.

The procedures used by the government House leader in this case are contemptuous to individual members of Parliament and indeed to the collective House. Should you rule in my favour, Mr. Speaker, I would be prepared to move that this matter be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to determine if contempt of the House has occurred.

I have that motion ready, Mr. Speaker, should you require it.

[Private Member's Business, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to seek unanimous consent to withdraw private member's Motion No. 386, standing in the name of the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan from the order of precedence.

[Fisheries and Oceans, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am very familiar with the government's plan for oceans.

While the minister was recently flying over the Grand Banks stating that more resources are necessary to protect our fishery, his chief officials were silently meeting, planning to reduce his staff and his departmental employees by 600. How can the minister explain these conflicting initiatives?