Suzanne Tremblay

[Employment Insurance, March 24th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, one has to be really heartless to let people in our regions suffer from a crisis for which they are not even responsible. The aid package proposed by the Bloc Quebecois includes special measures for workers hit by the softwood lumber crisis.

How can the government explain to those suffering that it does not have any money for them after raiding the EI fund year after year, to the tune of $45 billion?

[Employment Insurance, March 24th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this government has made it a habit not to keep its promises. Before the 1997 and 2000 elections, the Liberal Party had promised the unemployed that it would remedy the situation of the raid on the employment insurance fund.

But what is there in the budget to compensate for the theft of $45 million? Not one cent. After such a budget, can anyone say that this government cares about the unemployed?

While the shirtless, the Sans-chemise, are out on the street, the heartless are across from us in this House.

[Agriculture, March 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary just talked about a $1 billion program, but on television the sum announced was $680 million. It would be nice to get the facts straight.

Quebec's farmers have already denounced the help that is currently available, since they can only get compensation for two-thirds of the animals they slaughter.

How does the government explain to farmers that it did not deign to improve assistance for cull, when these farmers are in an extremely difficult situation? Is this government trying to say that Quebec farmers do not count?

[Agriculture, March 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister just announced $680 million for cattle farmers, but this assistance excludes cull cows, which is a problem mainly in Quebec.

How can the government announce such substantial assistance without any help for Quebec farmers faced with the cull problem?

[Fisheries, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Quebec and New Brunswick governments have signed an agreement to develop a joint strategy and thereby avoid a repetition of last year's crisis in the crab fishery. That crisis affected 3,000 workers in Canada, including 1,000 in the Gaspé. These two governments are doing more than their share.

Given that it will be crab fishing season very soon, will the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans accept his responsibilities by tabling his plan for the snow crab fishery without further delay?

[Fisheries, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am truly quite pleased to speak to this debate and to remind the House with great pleasure that the Bloc Quebecois will have no trouble supporting this motion.

For the benefit of those who will read this beautiful prose one day, I would like to read Motion M-136 in order to provide the full text:

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.

When my colleague from Matapédia—Matane spoke on October 23, 2003, he pointed out to the House that the translation of custodial management in French made no sense. A request was made to correct the motion, but to no avail.

I would like to help the House write the text of the motion properly in French. It is rather irritating to have to stop our language from being massacred and to see that there is a lack of political will to do what we ask about something as insignificant as accurate language.

The first report tabled by the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans is entitled, “Foreign Overfishing—Its Impacts and Solutions: Conservation on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Bank and the Flemish Cap”.

Report 2, tabled in March 2003, is called “Custodial Management Outside Canada's 200-Mile Limit”.

This has never had anything to do with the term used in the translation of this motion, “gestion de garde”. This is a nonsensical expression and I hope that this time we will get what we want and the text will be written as it should be, since the matter is of some importance.

Thank you for the opportunity to make that aside, and now I will move on to the speech itself.

What is important perhaps is to provide those listening with a little more information. People do know something about them. But the Grand Banks of Newfoundland always sounds a bit odd. I remember when we were kids, we made all sorts of jokes about the name. But we never really knew what we were talking about. I think it is important to explain what is meant by the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap.

There have always been limits. When I was young, we were used to hearing that our territorial limits were three miles from the coast. After that, it went to 12 miles and then 200. So everything up to 200 miles off our coasts is considered Canadian territory.

In two areas off the coast of Newfoundland, the continental shelf extends beyond the 200-mile limit; two peaks jut out, outside that zone. These two peaks are referred to as the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks because they are part of that historic fishing ground known as the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. That is an extremely important fact.

Then, the other important part is the Flemish Cap. The Flemish Cap is a sort of underwater island, reaching beyond the 200-mile limit, but it is both within and beyond Canada's continental shelf.

Thus, there are three areas in which Canada says it cannot intervene and we have nations from all around the world there, blatantly abusing the resources that swim in Canadian waters.

I remember when I was a member of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans having discussed this issue before the report was complete. I was astonished at the kind of nostrums they were offering us, such as saying that our authority did not extend beyond the 200-mile limit.

Later, the organization called NAFO was created with the aim of overseeing all this.

Nevertheless, Canada gets cold feet when it comes time to shoulder its responsibilities, as we see in many sectors. With respect to agricultural subsidies, for example, Canada was the first and only country to cut them. It is not complicated; farmers were receiving $5 billion in subsidies and then, supposedly because of the WTO, everything had to be cut. That was not what happened in the United States or in Europe. It looks as if the government used the treaties that were supposed to enable us to manage as a pretext to do nothing further.

My colleague who spoke previously pointed out that when Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949 it brought with it an absolutely extraordinary resource. In one of the speeches given last October when this motion was debated the first time, I read that the revenue Newfoundland could be making from the fishery, had it been properly managed, would today be around $3 billion.

There once were many fish around Newfoundland—an enormous quantity of fish. We know that fish travel and that what is found off Newfoundland ends up coming into the Gulf. It had a positive effect along the coast of the Maritimes and right into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

When people realized that there were no fish left, no cod or flounder left, in Newfoundland and that moratoriums had to be imposed, it was quite obvious that there were no cod left in the Gulf of St. Lawrence either. The fish left Newfoundland for the gulf.

Mismanagement leads to disastrous consequences. A few years ago, the government injected $3 billion into the budget to reorient regional economies. It is all fine and well to help fishermen learn a new trade, but what about the boats they own, the training they do not necessarily have, and the lack of motivation in young people?

I live by the sea. I would not like to have to move into the heart of a concrete jungle. I would probably suffocate, because I have always lived by the sea and breathed the salt air.

When a government lets a region destroy itself, the future of Canada is in serious trouble. The government is supposed to bring about change. It would be an enormous change if the new Minister of Fisheries and Oceans took the time to read the two unanimous reports. The Bloc Quebecois and all the other parties unanimously approved the recommendations in these reports. I invite the new Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to read them and then do what is best for Canada.

[Employment Insurance, March 9th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, in February, on the French CBC program Le Point , the Prime Minister said, in reply to a Tadoussac resident, Marc Loiselle, who is a seasonal worker affected by the spring gap, that the employment insurance reform had been completed.

How can the Prime Minister state that the reform has been completed, considering that he has taken billions of dollars from the employment insurance fund, thus forcing thousands of seasonal workers to face the spring gap?

[Employment Insurance, March 9th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, by taking billions of dollars from the employment insurance fund, the federal government has significantly reduced benefits and forced many seasonal workers to face the spring gap.

How can the Prime Minister remain indifferent to the spring gap that is affecting seasonal workers in the regions when, on June 11, in Baie-Saint-Paul, he solemnly pledged to the Sans-Chemise coalition that he would deal with this issue when he became Prime Minister?

[International Women's Week, March 8th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, on this second day of International Women's Week, I join all Quebeckers who yesterday demonstrated their confidence that together, anything is possible.

Women are demonstrating in 2004 to put an end to the setback they have suffered ever since the federal government decided in the 1990s to cut transfers to the provinces, when a true fight against poverty would involve taking into account their needs in health, education and social housing. Yet the current Prime Minister withdrew from these three areas when he was finance minister.

The Bloc Quebecois is asking the federal government to correct the fiscal imbalance that is preventing Quebec from implementing a family policy that would grant better parental leave than that currently being offered by the federal government. That would be the first step toward respecting the needs of the women of Quebec and respecting the jurisdiction of Quebec.

[Parental Leave, February 27th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary said that the two ministers, that is the federal and the Quebec ministers, have met.

Instead of wasting time on pseudo-negotiations with Quebec, how can the parliamentary secretary justify the federal government's decision to appeal an issue as clear as the one presented by the Morin decision?