But we were not too familiar with the NDP in my neck of the woods. Now I have come to appreciate my NDP colleagues in this House. We were also told that the Conservatives were a bit more to the right.
But what it seems to me from reading the report from the finance committee is that the Liberals were voted in on the left but are governing on the right. I will not use any more semantics at their expense, but that is my impression.
What I would like to say today is about the real world of the Liberals. A few Liberal MPs are okay. I will tell the House of my experience in recent days. In the last ten days, over the end of November and the beginning of December, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, of which I am a member, travelled the lower North Shore, the Magdalen Islands, New Brunswick, the Miramichi, Nova Scotia, and all around Newfoundland, including Labrador. My goodness, a public servant or a minister is a rare sight for the people of Labrador, yet they often find their resources being drained away by them.
What I want to say is that there were five parties in on this tour, and I hope we will be able to table a unanimous report.
The purpose of our trip was to hear what people had to say about the Atlantic groundfish strategy. We wanted to find out what they had liked about it, what they did not, and what they would like to see follow it. If the hon. members here in the House do not already all know this, we were told last year before the elections that TAGS was to end in May 1998.
I told the committee members that we needed to hurry up, that we needed to go and see the people where they lived, and to get back to the House before Christmas. We did so, but tabling our report is taking a bit of time. That is why I am pleased to intervene today and to share the impressions I gathered, but in a rather unpremeditated way, as I have no written report.
People are afraid that TAGS will not be renewed. People are afraid that the government will not keep its word. This is a program that was designed to end in 1999. People are afraid it will end in 1998, because the situation has not changed. The cod, the cod moratorium, the fisheries have not revived.
At the beginning of this program, there were close to 40,000 or 45,000 people enrolled in the program. People have lost their eligibility along the way, but there must still be a good 22,000 or 25,000 today. What are we to tell those 22,000 people who will no longer have a cheque in May 1998, but no job either? I think the government must give them some directives. It must inform them as soon as possible. It would seem that the machinery of government grinds very slowly.
People who are on TAGS did not ask to be there. People on TAGS are anxious to get back to work, anxious to be able to do something. They were put on a program, and to make it worse, when the auditor general brought in his report this fall, they got the impression that they were the ones at fault, because the government had transformed TAGS into a passive program. It told them “Sit there and wait for your cheque, and don't say a word, not a word”.
The people are really upset. Worse yet, not only do they not know what the government is going to do about renewing or maintaining the TAGS income security program, but we discover thanks to our NDP colleagues that the Minister of Human Resources Development has provided funding in the amount of $350,000 to train Human Resources Development officials how to act in case of trouble, should fisheries workers ever get angry. Does that make any sense? What sort of a country is this? What sort of a government is this?
I will summarize in three lines what I heard. I know the members opposite. More than three lines and they are lost.
The first line is what people told us when we toured with the fisheries committee. We heard a lot of people. We travelled for ten days and visited three cities a day, with an average of 300 to 400 people in the room, so close to 10,000 people came to deliver a message.
The people wanted three things: first, more income security. There was no other option. Take the example of the people of the Magdalen Islands. There used to be a redfish processing plant called Madelipêche. At one time it employed 600 people. However, when you live on an island and cannot fish any more and there are no trees to cut and no chance of a job in tourism, what do you do? There is nothing else to do. They said they needed income support. That is the first point.
Second, they told us “You MPs should tell the government to renegotiate in 1998 the distribution of resources. Negotiate with the provinces, which you did not include the first time. Negotiate with the plants. But we have to know who will continue to fish, if the stocks ever recover, because everyone agrees that there may not be enough fish for everyone. We want to know who will be redundant so that we who work in the processing plants can reorient ourselves. But no one is saying anything. They are saying “Now you have your little cheque, but pretty soon you will not have one any more”. And they won't take that.
So the first thing is the bread and butter, maintaining the TAGS income support program. The second point is for all ministers of fisheries, both federal and provincial, to have a look at resource distribution in 1998. The third point demonstrates the pride of the people of the maritimes, be they from the Quebec coast, New Brunswick, Newfoundland or Nova Scotia. They say: “Give us the tools to work. We need funds. If you want us to diversify, give us money, not peanuts. It is impossible to start up new industries without money”.
I could go on at length. As members are paying attention, perhaps we could check whether there would be unanimous consent to allow me to continue for a few more minutes. I would like to make another point and I note the members seem willing to give their consent.
I would like to say something about what Human Resources Development officials demand from the people participating in the TAGS program and trying to get out of it. The limit is $26,000, while the income ceiling for EI recipients is $30,000 before they have to start paying the government back, but only at the rate of 30% of what they earned over $39,000. Fishers or processing plant workers with families and machinery to maintain lose their benefits as soon as they earn $26,000.
During this trip, I met people who were trying to catch new species of fish. They had earned a supplementary income. What happened? They had to give it back to Human Resources Development Canada. I met a man who has not had a cent coming in since September. He is not entitled to welfare because he owns a home, poor soul, and a pickup to get to work. So he gets not one red cent.
Do you know what he told me, and I do not know how it will come across in English, but the cry from the heart was “Dear members of Parliament, I have had no money since September. I am not an animal, I cannot just graze in a field”.
I would like the Minister of Human Resources Development to come to my region and travel around to see the people, see what the real world is like. He will see that he will change his tune.
In conclusion, I am asking this today: if cabinet is not prepared to make a policy decision on maintaining TAGS, let the Minister of Finance establish in his provisions enough money so that, if a policy decision is reached in May, there will be enough money in his reserves to last all year.
