Gerald Keddy

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Progressive Conservative Party vote no.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Conservative Party votes yes to this motion.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the members of the Progressive Conservative Party vote no.

(The House divided on Motion No. 12, which was negatived on the following division:)

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise during report stage of Bill C-5 to speak to the amendments in Group No. 5.

I have been listening to and following the debate. A number of issues have been raised by the government to which I and other members in the House take exception. Part of the responsibility of the government is to pass legislation that is workable and recognizes the diversity represented not only in the House but across the country. Recognizing diversity will be necessary to protect species at risk.

As a number of government members have said, it has been a nine year process so far. Quite frankly, it has been a process of trial and error. From what I have seen it has involved mainly delay, obfuscation and deception. We have still ended up with a less than satisfactory piece of legislation. We have seen the government force closure 76 times in the House. It is now doing so again.

I will speak directly to the amendments. I will use an example of a species representative of all species at risk in Canada to illustrate the government's lack of political will to do anything about species at risk in a workable, concrete or coherent manner.

The fact that Motion No. 109 has been dropped is commendable because it allows the hard work done by the committee to be noticed. The amendment was brought in with the consent of committee members including a number of Liberal members. It is nice to see the motion back in the legislation.

Motion No. 75 would enable the minister to make regulations for critical habitat for aquatic species or migratory birds on federal lands. It would remove the enabling authority for aquatic species and migratory bird protection through regulations. It would allow the minister to recommend regulations to the cabinet for the protection of critical habitat at which time the cabinet could choose whether or not to act. That is totally unacceptable. Either we protect wildlife in Canada or not, but we should not leave it to cabinet to decide.

The committee was uniform in its declaration that there should be a third party scientific agenda. It is not a problem. It is a simple issue. Protecting endangered species or habitat in Canada is absolutely no problem. The only problem is lack of political will. The government has come up with a fantasy that the co-operative approach would somehow work. Co-operation is fine and important. In the long run it may be the key to successful legislation. However the legislation must have teeth. There must be a reason for private landowners and people to buy into it.

The issue hinges on compensation. It is the key to the legislation. However the issue has not been addressed. If we provide compensation for landowners who must take land out of production because an endangered species is found on it we will have found the key to a successful piece of legislation.

The public has bought into the idea of protecting endangered species. However Bill C-5 would not provide the tools to do so.

I said earlier that I would like to take one species to show what the inaction of this government has done toward making that single species extinct, because it is still barely hanging on. There is still just a little bit of a gene pool that allows a few Atlantic salmon, which is the species I am talking about, to actually return to the rivers in Atlantic Canada, spawn, go out to the ocean, come back and spawn again. It is inconceivable that the government, in the time it has been here, has done as little as it has done to protect Atlantic salmon.

Atlantic salmon are extinct now in 14 rivers in Nova Scotia's southern uplands, the area of Nova Scotia that I represent. When I was a kid those rivers had thriving populations of Atlantic salmon. We are talking about one generation here. We are not going back to the turn of the century or the 1850s. We are talking about 25 years ago when there were thriving populations of Atlantic salmon.

Those rivers today have 10% of their salmon remaining, the ones that are not extinct that is. Another 50 rivers in Nova Scotia are in serious danger and have seriously threatened salmon populations from acid rain. While salmon stocks remain in some of the rivers, it is a barely viable population base and has been recognized for some time as a species at risk.

In their own brochure, the Nova Scotia Salmon Association criticized the government. It wanted to show the negative impact of acid rain on fish stocks, which it called the silent killer. The association notes state that like the canary in the coal mine, Atlantic salmon is the biological indicator that signals loss in water quality. If we do not have good freshwater quality, we cannot have Atlantic salmon reproducing.

What has the government done about Atlantic salmon? It has shut down the hatcheries in Atlantic Canada, in New Brunswick and in Nova Scotia. There is no such thing as restocking the rivers unless it is strictly a private restocking effort. It has done enough genetic research to find out that the Atlantic salmon stocks in the rivers in the inner Bay of Fundy are distinct species, a subgroup of Atlantic salmon, and it has done nothing to protect the critical habitat for that subspecies.

The Atlantic Salmon Association, a privately run organization, raised $500,000 to study the genetic make-up of those salmon in the inner Bay of Fundy. The government, which is supposed to protect endangered species, managed to find $150,000 to dedicate to the project and it has not even given the money over yet. It is scandalous.

In 1960 we found out Nova Scotian salmon, eastern Canadian salmon migrated to the west Greenland Sea and overwintered there. In the late sixties, early seventies, eighties and nineties, the fishery that developed in the offshore made that whole group of species nearly extinct.

In 2001, 40 years after we found out where the salmon were going, Greenland set its harvest at 200 tonnes of salmon, or approximately 70,000 salmon. However low numbers and low prices resulted in a catch of only 40 tonnes, representing 15,238 salmon, 9,800 of those salmon were from Nova Scotian and eastern Canadian rivers. Nothing has been done. This is just one species. We can name a dozen.

My point is that one species alone tells the story and sets the record of the government on protecting endangered species.

[Government Contracts, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is frightening to think that the minister does not know the answer to that question.

Contracting scandals, RCMP investigations, auditor general investigations, corruption covers that group of lads over there like scum on a pond. How many referrals to the RCMP and the auditor general will it take to make the government concede to our demand for a full and accountable, by the way, public inquiry into all government contracts?

[Government Contracts, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, last week the new Minister of Public Works and Government Services said that government programs had been systematically abused and that abuse may well be systemic. Parliament and Canadians deserve to know how many RCMP investigations are underway.

This is not a hypothetical question. This is a serious question. How many RCMP investigations are currently underway?

[Fisheries, June 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the government insists it is patrolling overfishing on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap, so let us take a look at the record.

From 1990 to 1993 when this government was not in power there were 65 seaborne surveillance missions and 500 air surveillance missions. From 1993 to 1997 that average started to drop once the government got in power until there were 58 sea surveillance missions and 475 air surveillance missions. From 1997 to 2000 it dropped again until there were 40 surveillance missions by ship and 450 by air.

Let us look at the record in 2001 when the government said it was protecting the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap. In 2001 there were 31 sea surveillance missions and 467 by air. In 2002, and let us understand that the year is half gone, there have been only 10 sea patrols and 166 air patrols.

That is a sad and sorry--

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, following the debate this evening is almost incredulous. The member for Toronto--Danforth has been sole sourced. He is out here all by himself defending the government and its policies. His colleagues seem to have scurried away into the dark corners and recesses of this Chamber. They have left this member all by himself. He has done an admiral job defending difficult policies and deserves a round of applause for doing that.

The member's comments on the PCO do not just pertain to unethical practices. The PCO's practices are bordering on being illegal. That becomes the issue that needs to be brought out into the full light of day. We need to assess whether they are not just unethical but illegal.

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I just heard the last part of that intervention. It reminded me of a question that I asked the auditor general last week at the public accounts committee. The member said he hoped and prayed that the moneys were spent correctly and that there was a right and proper formula followed.

I asked that very question to the auditor general. The auditor general's reply was quite simple. She said that when she questioned the people involved, in this case with the Groupacton file and some improper spending of government dollars, the civil servants and the bureaucrats knew exactly what the rules were, where the dollars were and how the dollars were spent. They knew that they were in a conflict of interest. They knew that the contracts were not applied fairly and correctly following the government's policy.

My point is that we have a very good civil service. To a high degree, we have an excellent group of bureaucrats. They answer to their political masters, to the ministers of the departments. If a person is a top level civil servant and the minister tells that person not follow file or not file it, that is the gap and that is where the problem lies.

[Fisheries, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of fisheries.

It is critically important for the survival of Atlantic salmon that the west Greenland fishery be shut down entirely and immediately. Every fish caught off Greenland is one less fish returning to the seriously threatened salmon rivers of Nova Scotia and eastern Canada.

Will the minister of fisheries support the position of the Atlantic Salmon Federation in calling for a zero quota for the west Greenland fishery? Will he lobby NASCO this week to end the Greenland salmon fishery?