moved:
That this House do now adjourn.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the Chair for recognizing the importance of this issue and agreeing that it is worthy of an emergency debate. I also want to give a sincere word of thanks to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
Back in September when I became the fisheries critic for our party I gave notice at my first meeting that I would be pursuing this issue. Later in the fall I formally moved that the committee address the issue which it unanimously agreed to do. I then asked that committee travel to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador so members could experience firsthand the devastation caused by overfishing on the nose and tail of the Flemish cap.
Under the direction, guidance and co-operation of the Chair, the committee went to Newfoundland and, as members will hear tonight from a number of committee members, they learned a tremendous amount about the effect of overfishing on our province.
I will be sharing my time tonight with the member for South Shore because we would like to get as many people involved in this debate as possible.
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have discussed this issue for years. It gets raised, it flutters, it dies and it is forgotten until some issue causes us to revive it. This time let me assure people that it will not die.
Thanks to the work of the committee and the interest generated not only in our province but across the country, all aspects of the industry and perhaps even society have come together. We heard from governments, oppositions, unions, harvesters, processors, plant workers and people from the affected towns. They all came together with the same concerns and, with small variations, made the same recommendations. I am sure all members of the committee feel as I do and, as I have said, we will hear from them all tonight.
The interest in this issue has to carry beyond Newfoundland and Labrador. It has to carry across Canada because it is a major national issue for two reasons. Even though the direct effect might be felt more in Newfoundland than anywhere else, it is also felt in Atlantic Canada. However the economic effect is felt right across the country. Most of the rules and regulations pertaining to the fishery are governed by this very forum in which we are now participating.
I also want to say a word of thanks to the new minister of fisheries. Last fall, before the member became the minister of fisheries, I made the remark in the House that I hoped he would become the minister of fisheries. Since being appointed to that position he has been extremely co-operative with the issues we have brought before him
I raised an issue yesterday that may have caught him by surprise. It concerned mature codfish being found on a boat that was simply detained for polluting Canadian waters. I should not use the word simply in the sense that it was a minor offence, because it certainly was not. The boat was detained for pumping out its bilge water and polluting Canadian waters.
When the boat was brought into Newfoundland, mature codfish, a species under moratorium, were found in its hold. I am sure the minister will talk a bit more about this tonight. This was the straw that broke the camels back, as the old saying goes, because today the minister announced that he had closed Canadian ports to the Faroe Islands.
The problem we have of course is that the Faroe Islands are governed by Denmark. Our man in Denmark is the former minister of public works who left here under a cloud, and as somebody said, it is the greatest tragedy to hit Denmark since Hamlet .
I am not sure how that will play out but I do not care. All I care about is that the minister had the intestinal fortitude today to quickly make the first move. It is only a minor move. We have to make many more.
During the night we will get all kinds of examples of what has been happening. I will read a few into the record.
In recent months we have seen directed fishing and excessive by-catch of moratorium species. In fact this past year enough species of fish under moratorium were caught by foreign nations to keep several plants in Atlantic Canada going. The amount of fish that they were allowed to catch but overcaught, or an excessive by-catch, would keep Canso, Burgeo, Fermeuse and Trepassey, all those plants, going.
When I say plants people think of a few weeks work a year. Until we closed down the fishery some years ago these plants operated 52 weeks a year and in some cases around the clock. We provided full time employment for people in the centres I mentioned and in many more.
What has happened now? Many of these places are like ghost towns simply because the resource is not there.
We just heard about Fishery Products threatening to lay off half its workforce, again because of a lack of resource. Six hundred jobs in Newfoundland is the same as 15,000 being laid off in Ontario. The 30,000 people affected in Newfoundland by the downturn in the fishery equates to 600,000 people being affected in Ontario. That gives the House an idea of the impact overfishing has had on our province.
Another major issue that we will not be dealing with tonight directly but plays an important part in this is the rapid growth of the seal herd that is probably doing more damage to the growth of our stocks than even foreign overfishing.
Another thing that is happening is directed fishing after closure, increased frequency of mesh size violations. That means countries participating in the fishery are using a mesh size, smaller than the average, which means they are catching fish that should not be caught. There is an increase in the issuance of citations. This past year alone I believe we have had 27 infringements. How many more take place that we know nothing about? This is about five times the total of the last five or six years.
Countries are not getting better in relation to conservation. They are blatantly thumbing their nose at us and doing whatever they want. There is non-submission or late submission of observer reports. The observer program is becoming a joke because observers are being put on the boats by the countries involved and they go back and tell them whatever they want to tell them. One observer on a boat cannot work 24 hours a day. The whole thing is a charade.
What is not a charade is the fact that a major Canadian resource is being caught by foreigners who have absolutely no regard for environmental standards for the preservation of our resources. They are looking after their own bottom line and we are paying the price.
At recent NAFO meetings Canada proposed a number of good solid recommendations but they were rejected by NAFO.
What can we do? I say to the minister that he has to get foreign affairs and international trade on the ball. We have to get NAFO working the way it should. We have to take over the custodial management of the nose and tail of the Flemish cap or we need to extend our jurisdiction and run the show ourselves. It should be our resource for our people and we should not be defending foreigners who are there to rape our resources for their benefit and we are paying the price.
