David Anderson

[Supply, October 23rd, 1997]

It is wrong.

[Supply, October 23rd, 1997]

That is wrong. I never used that word. Vigorously is the word I used.

[Supply, October 23rd, 1997]

We both work on it. So does the Prime Minister.

[Supply, October 23rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize if I have mis-described him, but I understand that he was on the resource policy committee of cabinet which included oversight of the department of fisheries—

[Supply, October 23rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy that the hon. member has asked these questions. First of all, I want to tell him that I am anxiously awaiting his speech and will listen carefully to the first points he will raise. I will read his speech afterwards, and perhaps we can have lunch together and discuss some of the points on which we are not in complete agreement.

As for his first question on co-operation with the provinces, I met with Quebec's Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in Saint-Jean a few weeks ago. Our discussions were very constructive. He was very nice, and in the interviews he gave after our meetings, he mentioned that we had got along well together and that we will continue to hold discussions regarding close co-operation.

The hon. member has put his finger on a specific problem. Without this co-operation at the provincial level, there may be an increase in the capacity of fleets at the same time as the federal government wants to, and must, reduce the size of the catch.

As for his second question, it will be in the new legislation, but I think that the rules do not allow me to speak about it before the bill is tabled in the House. We can also get together to discuss the changes sought by the hon. member. Like his colleague who used to sit on the Standing Committee on Transport, he is well aware that I am very favourable to suggestions from the opposition regarding bills.

[Supply, October 23rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is at liberty to make me aware of the particulars of the young rancher's case, which I do not know, or the issue with respect to the beaver dam on somebody's property in British Columbia. Again I am unaware of the details of that.

I would suggest to the hon. member that the measures taken by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are not the only measures sometimes taken with respect to water courses. The department of agriculture and the ministry of agriculture for the province of British Columbia are involved as well. Enforcement may not be by DFO officials. It may be by members of the fish and game branch of the province of British Columbia. I simply do not have the details. If the hon. member will give me those details I am willing to look into those cases.

The hon. member spoke about hatcheries. They do have remarkably successful results in some instances but not all. It depends on what type of salmon the hatchery is designed to produce, whether it is chum, sockeye, chinook, coho or indeed whether it is steelhead.

I am happy to look into the issue for him to find that out but the assumption that every hatchery is an improvement is not entirely correct in all instances. I have to point out to him and his colleague who is sitting next to him that there are major genetic problems with taking a small group of fish and flooding the entire gene pool of a particular species of salmon. Genetics is a problem that we are facing with hatcheries around the country. It is a worldwide problem and if that is the situation I certainly will be in touch with him.

On the Horsefly sockeye channel I simply do not know why that would be the case. If the hon. member will discuss it with me later I will get him the details. Sometimes we have closed artificial spawning channels when the optimum number of fish have spawned. That is appropriate because any extra fish simply stir up the gravel and do not increase the production of fish. I will have to check on that. I am happy to do it on the member's behalf.

[Supply, October 23rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to know my switch is activated by your sitting down in the chair.

I congratulate the hon. member, the Conservative Party critic, but he does remind me of the words of a former minister of fisheries of the House, namely Mr. John Crosbie, who said “No one will pressure more for short-sighted and bad decisions than provincial fisheries ministers”.

The member was a former minister in Newfoundland. Month after month, year after year, Mr. Crosbie had to put up with the pressure of bad decisions being made that led to the collapse of the fishery. He is as responsible as any member here. It is amazing that during the time Mr. Mulroney was in government the Liberal Party did not make decisions. I wished to explain to the hon. member of the Reform Party.

I refer to the problem Mr. Crosbie outlined in his new book. I recommend that hon. members buy it; it is cheap at the price. The book points out that people like the hon. member were the cause of the decline of the Atlantic fisheries. Indeed they were the cause of the collapse of the Atlantic fisheries. For him to come here today and happily say that he is new here and not here to defend mistakes, as he literally did two minutes ago, is a bit thick.

I refer to the motion before the House:

That this House recognize the urgent need for action to address the serious problems in Canadian fisheries on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and calls upon the government to establish a comprehensive national fisheries policy that demonstrates real commitment to resource conservation, leadership on the issue of resource sharing with foreign interests, and sensitivity to the individuals, families and communities whose futures are linked to the health and sustainability of the Canadian fisheries industry.

We have put an amendment forward. My hon. colleagues, the parliamentary secretary, has put an amendment forward pointing out that the objectives outlined in this resolution are in fact the current policy of the government which took over from the Conservative Party and changed the very policies that created the problem we have.

The hon. member, typically Conservative, forgot one basic. He talked about from coast to coast. There are three coasts to Canada. The Arctic coast is also important, with important fisheries. He should recognize, like many of his Conservative friends, that he is living in the past when he refers to only two coasts.

He mentioned science. Recently I had the opportunity to travel in the Arctic region. I was on a coast guard vessel, the Louis St. Laurent , now the world's premier platform for scientific work in ice regions. Some first class work is being done under the surface heating and Sheba-Jois programs. This program involves freezing the ice-breaker in the ice for 12 months. People are coming to us wanting to work with DFO scientists in this very important area. It refers to global warming and other issues, namely reflection of the surface and other problems we face in the Arctic.

At least 20 American organizations including all the premier research organizations in the United States, for example Scripts and Woods Hall, are putting up $5.1 million of the total $8.1 million cost. They would not come to Canada to work with us if they knew that our science was not the best in the world. The American organizations involved could go anywhere in the world to work with any other nation or could do it themselves. They come here because we do the best work in the world. Our scientists at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and in our universities are the best in the world.

It is important for the hon. member to recognize that his criticisms are off the mark when it comes to science. They are cheap shots at our good scientists. As a member of the fisheries committee he should ask its chairman and the parliamentary secretary to make sure the committee has the scientists before it. Then he can learn what he obviously does not know now, which he admits by getting up and saying that he is new here and knows nothing.

He referred to the Atlantic groundfish stocks and the consequence of the collapse. We have had to cope with the consequence to business, communities and individuals. They have all had to change a way of life and a tradition their families practised for generations. I know the hon. member has experience with that. We needed a national effort to assist those in trouble and to rebuild a sustainable Atlantic fishery.

Members opposite, members of the Conservative Party and the member who was a provincial minister of fishery, cannot sit here and pretend they had nothing to do with it. They cannot pretend they had nothing to do with the state of the groundfishery off Atlantic Canada in their years of government when the cod stocks collapsed and 40,000 Atlantic Canadians were out of work. Rather than sit on the sidelines and look for someone to blame, this government has applied what we have learned from the lessons of that groundfish collapse.

We have learned that the stocks are not inexhaustible. I quote a former department of agriculture publication about codfish and the east coast fisheries in 1885: “Unless the order of nature is overthrown, for centuries to come our fisheries will continue to be fertile”. We proved that wrong in Atlantic Canada. We proved that the fishery is exhaustible and the policies that created that were the policies of the previous Conservative government and the policies of the previous speaker who was the minister of fisheries of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

We have had to recognize that we need to change our ways. Fleet sectors have changed their ways, individuals have changed their ways, processes have changed their ways, governments have changed their ways. The people who have not changed their ways are the reactionaries of the Conservative Party who sit opposite.

Studies have dissected the failings of the past. Prescriptions have been put forward as the way for the future. We have all embraced the need for change with the sole exception of the Conservative Party. We have all attempted to face the future with new prescriptions.

The fishery of Atlantic Canada is being downsized and restructured. It has secured new sources of raw material and focused on new products. Some of that raw material comes from the Bering Sea. It has been and is becoming more resilient, adaptive and despite all odds has moved forward.

Through the painful lesson of stock reduction and moratoria we have been reminded that we must always put conservation of the resource first. We in government have learned the need to change our relationship with the industry and we know now that we cannot do it ourselves, that partnership and co-operation with the other players are essential. I offer to the hon. member and his party that co-operation, that willingness to work with them so we can get away from the attitudes that so dominated the Conservative Party year after year in the past.

I will quickly mention the international commitment to conservation through our efforts to negotiate the United Nations fisheries agreement on straddling stocks and through NAFO, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. In recent years we have worked successfully through NAFO to put in place the necessary control mechanisms such as onboard observers and port inspections as well as management decisions in accordance with the best scientific advice, international scientific advice as well as Canadian advice, which is still the best of all international science available.

When it comes into force, the UN fish agreement will provide the foundation in international law for effective conservation of straddling and highly migratory stocks on the high seas. That means groundfish.

Opposition members come into this House and call for a national fisheries policy. Unfortunately the only thing they can say about their proposed national fisheries policy is that they would like it to be “comprehensive”. When my parliamentary secretary even asked the gift question to the Tories of what they would do, they had no answer for him whatsoever.

So let us look at what does constitute a national fisheries policy. Does it mean a national policy across the country which my hon. friend was hinting at when he started to talk about British Columbia, a national standard, one size fits all policy at a time when we are recognizing the importance of diversity? Of course not. Does it mean, and this is even more troubling, that opposition members have ignored the views and input of fishermen and their organizations from across the country? Does it mean they are so divorced from reality that they are not even aware there are differing views of what the fishery of the future should be? Are they pretending that our job as legislators is to be responsive to those views or not? Are they asking us to do what they did, which is to ignore the very people who make their living from the fishery?

I have met with fishermen from coast to coast to coast. Had the hon. member not had such a comfortable summer, had he looked at what was going on within the fishery, he would have known that instead of making the errors which he did in his earlier presentation.

I have been to St. John's, his city, six times since becoming Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

First in the national policy we must develop an environmentally sustainable fishery. Conservation must be first. We must accept the notion that conservation is central to the economic viability of individuals and companies engaged in the fishery and of the well-being of the communities that depend on the fisheries for their very existence.

I challenge any member opposite to tell me that environmental sustainability is not the best principle for the fishery. I challenge any member opposite to rise and tell me that there is any better way of putting in place that conservation concept than through the precautionary principle of making sure we err on the side of caution.

I challenge any member opposite to rise in their place and tell us why they did not put conservation first and why they did not apply the conservation principle in the decade they were in power here in Ottawa and in the similar period when they were in power in St. John's.

The second principle which I have put forward very clearly is that the fishery of the future must be economically viable. It must be managed so as to provide participants with a good livelihood, something better than subsistence. The fishery must not been seen, as it has been in the past, as the employer of last resort or as the doorway to some government program of support.

As a nation we have been blessed with a diverse and valuable marine resource base. We must continue to develop that base and develop the tools to manage it so that we have a good return for the participants to be able to sustain their coastal communities, not just in the best years but year in and year out in the fishery. That means there must be a recognition that the fishery will be smaller.

Once again I refer the hon. member to the words of wisdom of my predecessor, the hon. John Crosbie, when he discussed this in his book. If he looked at the St. John's newspaper this morning he would know that there are excerpts quoted in that very paper. He would see in those excerpts Mr. Crosbie's recognition of the errors of the past and his commitment to a sustainable fishery in the future based on that reduced size.

There have to be fewer participants and harvesting capacity must be more in balance with the capacity of the resource.

The fishery of the future must be internationally competitive. The vast bulk of our fishery resource product is sold overseas. We must continue to focus on quality. We must continue to pay more attention to stability of supply, ensuring a competitive price.

The final principle that I will put forward of this government's sustainable fisheries policy is that the fishery must be self-reliant. Fishermen must continue to work with us as partners in management, not as adversaries, as marked the situation when the hon. member was the provincial minister of fisheries for Newfoundland and Labrador.

That adversarial relationship is another aspect of the fishery which we inherited from the very party which has put forward this motion in the House today. Those members should rise in the House and explain how they allowed the fishery to deteriorate to the state it did.

The Fisheries Council of Canada has said that fact that the groundfish stocks collapsed to such an extent should serve as a warning that the fishery of the future should not mirror the fishery of the past. The warning is clear.

On the day I was appointed Minister of Fisheries and Oceans I declared conservation to be my major goal and it will remain so. It means that when I take a tough decision, as I did in Newfoundland on the recent food fishery decision, I will not be put off course by complaints from opposition members. A Conservative member, a colleague, a former member of the legislature, headed up an organization simply to oppose me on that science based decision of the food fishery.

Let me quickly turn to the west coast. I have no apology to make with respect to the west coast. The policy we have followed is to get the best deal we can for British Columbia fishermen.

The hon. member was making some rather foolish remarks about the west coast fishery. We have learned the lessons from the east coast fishery and we are applying fleet reduction on the west coast fishery. We are reducing the number of fishermen. We are introducing area licensing so that we can avoid the problems that have plagued the east coast fishery over the years.

I have here the list of targets and achieved targets. For example, area 23 in Barkley Sound, the sockeye return has reached 260,000 fish. The escapement target is expected to be achieved. In area B, the south coast seine, the catch of 3.6 million sockeye toward an allocation of 3.8 million, only 200,000 out and the fishery was continuing. In the same area 2.7 million pinks have been harvested out of an allocation of 2.5 million. In other words, we were over .2 on the pinks and under .2 on the sockeye.

In Area D, allocation is very closed to being achieved. In Area E, which the Fraser River, Juan de Fuca, an allocation of 1.4 million sockeye has been achieved. In Area F allocation has been achieved. In Area G the fishery closed September 21 with an estimate catch of 1.307 million sockeye toward an allocation of 1.377 million. We were under by 70,000 in that fishery. In area H a catch of 713,000 sockeye was recorded against an allocation of 688,000. We are over again there. We are meeting targets. We are meeting the allocation levels despite the difficulty of marine forecasting.

I suggest to the member that he pay particular attention to what is taking place on the west coast. I would also like to point out that when it comes to dealing with Americans we have followed the policy of making sure that we worked with the measures that have the best chance of achieving the best deal for our west coast fishermen.

It is easy to attack the Americans roundly by such measures as the blockade of a ferry. That is easy to do. What it does not do is achieve the results for west coast fishermen. The member knows because of his experience that if we are to have an international area of fishery such as the west coast of North America and the northeast Pacific, the United States and Canada must work together. He knows that.

Last week the premier of the province recognized that and after all his months of complaining and criticizing that we kept contact with the Americans and discussed this with the Americans, he has now reversed himself and said that we did not discuss it enough. We did not have enough contact with them.

Even the premier of B.C. has made a 180 degree change of direction, done his somersault. The only person who is left out there preaching the concept that we should continue to attack the Americans is none other than the hon. critic of the Conservative party.

We have adopted the measures that are most likely to achieve success. I want that understood. I would be happy to answer any questions he may have.

[Supply, October 23rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I have noticed many times when I rise to answer questions that this microphone is defective.

[Fishing Industry, October 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying a moment ago, we realize there have to be some transitional measures with respect to licence retirement. This will affect fishers in Atlantic Canada, including the area of Gaspé.

I would point out to the hon. member that the TAGS program will continue until May 1998. My colleague the hon. minister of human resources has put in place a process for analysing the impact of the termination of the TAGS program. We will await of course decisions in due course.

[Fishing Industry, October 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. I did visit his riding, Gaspé, as he indicated. I pointed out at that time in discussions with fishers in that area that we have too many boats and too many fishermen out there chasing too few fish. We have not had the recovery of northern cod stocks in particular that we would like. Therefore it will be necessary to continue with rationalization of the fleet and a reduction of the number of licences. These are programs that will come forward in due course. I should point out however—