George Baker

[Supply, September 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I just have a few words. I want to share my time with the hon. member for Cumberland-Colchester.

First, as far as the Bloc is concerned, it was not very long ago when its members stood in this House and praised the Senate. It was not very long ago when they were suggesting that perhaps the Senate was the only place that could protect the people from the legislation of the Tories, for example, the old age pension cuts and the GST.

What was the last piece of legislation that the Bloc stood in the House and supported that involved massive tax changes? What was it? Was it a bill from the government? Was it a bill from this Chamber? No, it was not. It started with the letter S . The letter S denotes the Senate. The Bloc stood in this Chamber and fell over backward. They tripped over one another to praise the Senate and all the work it had done on this massive tax change that was called S-9. They praised the committee system of the Senate. It was a massive, sweeping tax change. It was probably the biggest tax change we have had in about 20 years.

Why? Because the Bloc said: "This is a wonderful bill coming from the Senate. What it does is reduce taxes as it relates to the United States. We represent the people of Quebec who like the United States. Therefore, we are all in favour of what the Senate is doing".

They fell over backwards. In fact, they were kissing cousins with the Reform Party. They were hugging one another. They stood up, both of them, praising this legislation, a bill with an s on the front. It did not have a c , which means Commons; it had an s , which stands for the Senate. It came from the Senate. It originated from the Senate banking committee and they stood as one, the Bloc and the Reform Party. They praised it and they praised it and they praised it. Now the Bloc stands today and says that they are asleep in the Senate.

[Supply, September 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Could you clear up the matter of what is under debate right now? Reformers have made the point that they believe we are confined to a debate on the Senate. Is that correct? Or, are they wrong again?

[Supply, September 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for his excellent speech and the excellent job he is doing as parliamentary secretary to the minister.

I would like to ask him, in his position as parliamentary secretary, whether he is happy with the performance of the Government of Canada as now being the leader in the world in economic development and its prospects for the future. Is the hon. member happy to be a parliamentary secretary in a government that now leads Japan, the United States, England, Germany, France and all the other countries?

[Supply, September 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who just spoke opened his speech by stating the reason he was making his points was that the federal government had responsibility for reconstructing a road in his constituency. Could the hon. member give the House a yes or no reply to the question whether he is agreement with the Reform party's budget published last year, which said the federal government should get out of the business of road construction and turn it over to the private sector so that the general public could pay for the road through tollgates?

[Petitions, June 19th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I have a petition signed by 39,550 people from 114 communities in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The petitioners ask the federal government to either open a food recreation fishery for cod in Newfoundland and Labrador on the same terms as that announced for Quebec, the maritimes and St. Pierre et Miquelon. Or, if the federal government refuses to treat everybody the same on the east coast of Canada, then to cancel the food recreation cod fishery for Quebec and the maritimes and to terminate the agreement the federal government has with France allowing a recreational cod fishery in the waters around St. Pierre et Miquelon.

The petitioners do not want an answer to this petition. All they want is action from the government.

[Privilege, June 19th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I will be very brief. Standing Order 48(1), which covers this question, states very clearly that a written statement shall be given to the Speaker one hour prior to making the point of privilege, which was done, as I understand it.

The rest of the procedure is contained in the custom of this Chamber. The custom of the Chamber is that the statement must be brief when it is presented to the House. I presume that the hon. member would be brief in presenting the statement.

[Oceans Act, June 11th, 1996]

The hon. member for Skeena said the Japanese. Could that be correct?

What is the quota for Quebec? Thirty-five tonnes of blue fin. The Japanese have a bycatch of 180 tonnes in Canadian waters. A decent sized blue fin is worth $20,000 or $30,000. That is what is paid for one fish.

Historically we have belonged to the International Tuna Commission which involves three countries: the United States, Japan and Canada. Once a year there is a little get-together. They usually decide that Canada will get the lowest quota of the three. The fattest blue fin tuna are the ones chasing the mackerel into the hon. member's riding.

The Japanese have marvellous boats with helicopters on them. They are incredible vessels. The quotas are given according to the number of vessels. That might run into 10 to 14 vessels. By international agreement they have unlimited quotas for skipjack, albacore, yellow fin and all of the different tuna. We cannot catch them. It would be illegal for someone from Canada to catch them. The Japanese have a bycatch of 180 tonnes and a Canadian province only has a quota of 35 tonnes.

On top of that, the feeder boats come in behind them. They load up on yellow fin, albacore, skipjack, all these tuna, a bit of swordfish is permitted as well, 10 per cent bycatch for these others, and then a bycatch of a 180 tonnes of blue fin, then they go back to Japan. Surely we do not need provincial intervention to see the wisdom of cancelling those quotas.

Also chasing the mackerel is the porbeagle shark. Restaurants in Quebec City or Vancouver sell shark fin soup for $200 and $300 a bowl. Those shark fins come from the porbeagle shark off the coast of Newfoundland. As they head in they follow the continental shelf chasing those very mackerel which are going into the hon. member's riding to spawn. The fins are cut off. Five hundred tonnes for a vessel from Denmark, from the Faroe Islands. In fact the vessel's name is the Bakker .

Far more things can be done that do not require the help or even the suggestion of the provinces, that would maintain the federal government as the manager of the entire fishing resource, as many members have pointed out, as the hon. member for Skeena has just said, as part of the ocean's ecosystem. Members of Parliament should be promoting those things in the House every day.

[Oceans Act, June 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, we have a very serious problem in fisheries management and that is France. It was only a short time ago that France was given control over that great stretch of ocean that goes out about 150 miles in a straight line. It is a big corridor and France controls it. All the migration the hon. member is talking about, because of the control France has, would all be for naught. How could we manage a fishery when we have the entire doorway to the gulf cut off by France? It is an interesting question.

We do not have any control over those things. We should have control over them but we do not. The Canadian government should have done it the right way but it did not. When France was given that territory, the Government of Canada should have apologized to the people of Canada.

What we can control are the spawning grounds. As the hon. member says, there are a lot of mackerel spawning grounds. They are the best in the world. Control over the spawning grounds does not require provincial input or input from anybody else. All it requires is a bit of common sense. As the hon. member knows, the mackerel now in the second week of June are coming in from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of St. Lawrence to spawn. They usually start at the end of May.

Chasing them are the blue fin tuna. Who has the highest quota for blue fin tuna in eastern Canada?

[Oceans Act, June 11th, 1996]

Yes, and even when we go to the fishermen.

Today my phone calls concern fathoms. When fishermen set a net under 400 fathoms in the Atlantic Ocean today for turbot-a familiar word-they must have by regulation a net size of seven and a half inches. Unfortunately our fishermen do not have that size nets. Above 400 fathoms it is five and half inches.

Last year the federal government agreed to change that regulation size. There are hundreds of fishermen saying "how can we continue to fish today, our fish plants will close?" On checking why the regulation was changed, I discovered the regulation was changed by a conservation committee, set up by the hon. John Crosbie when he was minister of fisheries and oceans, that consulted with the fishermen and the environmentalists and came up with a regulation that cannot work. Now here am I lobbying today the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to change the very thing he had used his consultation process to get from the local fisher persons.

[Oceans Act, June 11th, 1996]

No, the politicians make the lines in the ocean. They draw these lines and say here will be the regulation over on this side of the line and here is another regulation over on this side of the line. It is as if there are police officers at the bottom of the ocean who come up with stop signs and the fish are actually stopping somewhere in mid-ocean and turn around.

Therefore I can understand what the hon. member is talking about when he talks about the ecosystem that should apply to the fishery as it is not presently applying. Let me elaborate on the ecosystem and what is considered under these amendments.

If we look at the respect governments in Canada have for the ecosystem and the effects that government action has on the ecosystem we see today that while our fishermen sit at home, just outside the 200 mile zone, on what we call the Flemish Cap, which the hon. member for Gaspé is very familiar with, we have the foreign nations that continue to fish every single resource there.

I can understand the hon. member's point when he says there should be more consultation than there presently is. The only problem, something we have to think about as parliamentarians, is that when one gives the authority to the local area to have an input sometimes what comes out the other end is not desirable. There has been case after case of that.

In other words, when we tell the province of Quebec it can manage a certain part of the fishing resource, as the federal government has done, which has not been so for the other provinces although they have moved over the past 20 years historically, and then we tell Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and Newfoundland the same thing, what we have is a hodge-podge of regulations. We have a non-respect for the very thing the hon. member is promoting, the ecosystem.