Gerald Keddy

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, May 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, what we have here is a good example of the complexities of the bill and of how individual members of parliament will look at it differently.

I said earlier in my speech that it is dangerous and wrong to divide this along pro-life/pro-choice lines. I believe we can deal with aspects of the bill. We may not be able to deal with the bill but we still have a responsibility to try.

The comment about Copernicus and Galileo is still an apt comment. Copernicus was threatened to be burned at the stake if he continued to make his scientific observations. He recanted and refused his scientific observations and continued to make them in secret. Other astronomers of his age continued, even under pressure from the church or state, to make them in secret. The pressure did not prevent or stop them from looking. It did not close their eyes or their minds.

We cannot prevent this. We can control and regulate it and should use the powers of parliament to do that in a common sense and judicious manner.

I do not care to indulge in a debate of whether it should be 14 or 28 days because it does not have to be part of this debate. We can take discarded fertile cells that have been fertilized in vitro or use other processes and other ways to get stem cells without using embryos. Let us look at that possibility.

As for the sanctity and protection of human life, I do not believe that is part of this debate. This debate is about whether we will look at what I recommended earlier, dividing the bill into two parts. Should we look at stem cell research in one part and assisted human reproduction in another? The bill warrants being divided.

Certainly we cannot ignore it any more than people ignored the fact that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. We cannot suppress knowledge. We can control knowledge and science to act in a moral and ethical manner but we cannot stop people or their minds from working.

We have the opportunity, if done in the right way, to find a cure for cancer. There are people who sit in this Chamber who are only here because of stem cell research. Are we saying that somehow we should make the decision as to whether they can be here or not? We had better ask ourselves that question. If we answer that we should make that decision, then I believe we have exceeded our powers as parliamentarians.

This is not about the power of life or death of discarded in vitro embryos or other ways to access stem cells such as through umbilical cord blood. This is about whether we will take a step that is controlled to find a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis or the ability to grow a kidney for our sons or daughters who may need it from their own stem cells.

We do not have the right as parliamentarians to say no to that process. We have the right to regulate the process so that it fits within our moral and ethical thoughts and jurisdictions. We do not have the right to say no to it.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, May 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate on Bill C-56. My colleague from Richmond--Arthabaska has spoken at length on the subject. It is certainly an important subject to debate in the House. It is a subject that is personal to most members of parliament.

Unfortunately, from the little bit of debate there has been so far, it appears that it is becoming a pro-choice, pro-life issue. Quite frankly, I do not think that is the issue at all.

Members of parliament need to take a long hard look at this. Some ethical, moral and religious questions need to be asked. Certainly there are a number of other questions as well. I think members of parliament would have to look long and hard to find it in their hearts to refuse to discuss some of the issues that are brought up by Bill C-56.

The purpose of the bill is to give Canada its first comprehensive and integrated legislation dealing with assisted reproduction. This legislation is long overdue. Back in 1993 the government started discussing legislation to deal with some type of integrated approach to assisted reproduction. Here it is 2002, almost 10 years later and a bill still has not passed through parliament.

It is unconscionable that with its majority the government would ignore its responsibility not only to Canadian women, but to Canadian men, to Canadians everywhere. This is the type of issue which the government has the responsibility and authority to deal with. The government has been irresponsible for 10 years in refusing to deal with this issue.

Now that the bill is finally here, I expect it to be dealt with in a serious manner, but not necessarily in an expeditious manner. The government wants to deal with the bill expeditiously. We have waited 10 years for this piece of legislation and the government wants it through the House before the House rises in June. Somehow or another, now that the legislation has finally got to this point the government says it is absolutely essential that we give it a perfunctory debate and pass it along. That is totally unacceptable.

This is a very important issue to all Canadians. It is an important issue to the House. It is one that needs and warrants clear and thoughtful debate. It is an absolute requirement before we pass this piece of legislation on to the other place that all members of the House know what they are voting on and why they are voting on it.

The bill will proclaim the need to preserve and protect human individuality, diversity and integrity of the human genome. I think most parliamentarians would support that. Understanding that free and informed consent is a fundamental condition of human reproduction and assisted human reproduction, there should be nothing in the bill that members of parliament cannot deal with in a reasonable and sensible manner.

It has been proposed by other members and by our party's critic, the member for Richmond--Arthabaska, that the bill be divided. That is a timely piece of advice which the government should take a long hard look at.

The bill certainly could be divided to ban cloning. It must be understood that Canada has already signed an international agreement to ban cloning, yet we do not have the same legislation in our own parliament. We are a bit behind some of the international agreements we have already signed.

The proposal to divide the bill is a sound proposal. It would allow us to take the cloning component of the bill and have an individual bill on which most members of parliament could agree. I do not think there are many members of parliament who, in a serious way, could support the cloning of human beings. The stem cell part of the bill has moral, ethical and religious connotations. We cannot easily separate that from the bill but it may be necessary.

Research is very important in the bill and one of the goals of the legislation. It is research that may find treatments for not only infertility but other serious diseases that every Canadian family faces: Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cancer. It is a known fact that some members who sit in the House are cancer survivors because of stem cell research. We have other members in the House who would take away the opportunity for people to prevent Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and cancer.

This is a serious legislation that warrants a long, hard, serious look. It is not without some difficulties and it is not without a great deal of bias that has been expressed already by individual members of parliament. I would ask individual members of parliament to put that bias away and look at the advantages offered here.

The bill needs some amendments and amendments should be brought forward. When we deal with issues like assisted human reproduction a number of questions need to be asked. For instance, in vitro embryos can only be used if deemed necessary for purposes of stem cell research. The product of assisted human reproduction, discarded embryos at a very early stage, could possibly be used for stem cell research but only if deemed absolutely necessary and not produced for that reason.

This is where we need guidelines. This is where we need to know exactly what the bill is giving us.

Scientists will still need to obtain a licence from the agency before embarking on any research project involving in vitro embryos. All research proposals will have to be peer reviewed and approved by the ethics review board before being submitted to the agency for consideration. It is obvious that research involving in vitro embryos will be conducted with strict regulations and in an ethical manner.

I for one would like to make sure that those regulations come back to parliament. We cannot give some group, even if it is a government regulated group, the authority to make regulations without bringing those regulations back to parliament for approval. We want people to trust the process, to buy into the advantages that are available and to understand that we now have science and technology available which can, and I believe should, assist men and women who are not able to have children to have them.

We do not want to involve ourselves in the religious argument. If we have the technology we have the moral and ethical responsibility to assist women to have children. We have a responsibility to say that the day is on the horizon when stem cell research will grow another kidney, will find a cure for Parkinson's and will deal with a broken spinal cord.

I do not think we in this place have the right to say that research should not be carried out. We have the right to regulate it and the right to say whether it can be carried out on embryos but we do not have the right to prevent it.

I will use an analogy. It is akin to many years ago in the 1500s when Galileo was looking at the stars. His acceptance of the Copernican system was rejected by the church. It did not stop it or prevent it. It was not reasonable. We no longer believe that the sun revolves around the earth. We know the lessons that science has taught us.

We have an opportunity here and I think it would be a grave mistake not to take this opportunity to help not only women and men in the country but to help people who are suffering and will suffer and to help those who are yet to be born who will suffer from disease.

This is not an opportunity to clone human beings. Let us strike that from the list. We have the opportunity to help future generations of human beings.

The bill would allow the governor in council to make regulations concerning consent for the use of human reproductive material or an in vitro embryo for research purposes. It is absolutely essential. We cannot leave this up to individuals to decide for themselves. We have a responsibility to produce legislation with intelligent and informed debate, and I for one believe that can be done.

The creation of in vitro embryos and research on the embryo will be possible under regulation from the governor in council with a licence. That will be a problematic issue. Many of us will wrestle closely and dearly with that issue.

I do not think members have completely made their minds up yet. I certainly do not have my mind completely made up. However we do have the responsibility to deal with the issue, to wrestle it to the ground and to come up with something that I hope will help future generations of Canadians.

The bill would give the government a wide range of powers to regulate embryonic stem cell research. I think all of us would agree that regulations are needed. The fact that the bill would allow parliament to be pushed aside is an issue that I think is of great public concern.

It is absolutely essential that this vote, because of the moral, ethical and religious issues surrounding it, be allowed to stand on a free vote. The government has yet to say whether it will allow a free vote for its own members but this is the type of issue that must be a free vote.

While we debate this, Canada is lagging behind the rest of the world. Legislation already exists in the United States and in other countries around the world. We are on the cutting edge of new science and new technology and we are not up to speed with everyone else on the planet.

We have not dealt with the whole issue of the donors of sperm or ovum and it needs to be dealt with. Whatever our considered thoughts are on this, we have a responsibility to deal with it. In my humble opinion the donor should be known. We have learned that through the adoption process. There should be no debate or question on that. If people want to donate sperm or ovum, their names should be known. There is a greater responsibility, not just to the offspring but to their access to medical records.

There are dozens and dozens of issues here that we have an obligation to deal with. We should not think for a moment that donor anonymity is not problematic. It is problematic just in having enough sperm to carry out science because many people want to know the donor. They want to make informed decisions on their reproductive future.

A committee should review the regulations in Bill C-56 but they should not be reviewed by a committee that is in a hurry to get the legislation passed. It should be a committee that has the time, the opportunity and the scientific background and knowledge to make informed decisions. As it now stands the regulations have not been put forth to committee nor to the House. I believe as parliamentarians we must demand that this take place.

The bill can and I believe should be divided into two parts, the first dealing with infertility and reproduction issues, and the second to deal with research and development of stem cells and where those stem cells come from. We can no longer ignore this issue. It must be dealt with. I believe Canada can be a leader in adult stem cell research and can receive the benefits that may result from that.

In conclusion, the bill would add another layer of controversy to an already complex issue. It would put Canada in line with measures taken by other industrialized countries, including the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. It is a fairly comprehensive approach but I do not believe it is comprehensive enough. We will draw upon the best practices of countries around the world.

However that does not mean our bill should be the same as that of the United States or Great Britain but it should be respective of Canadians and respective of how we want to deal with this complex issue.

As parliamentarians we have an obligation to deal with this issue. Stem cell research gives us the opportunity to do wonderful things. We can begin to close the door on many of the diseases that face Canadians of every age, whether it be Alzheimer's, cancer or multiple sclerosis to name just a few.

We have the opportunity of not having to look for a lung or a kidney. This is not star wars. We have the opportunity in the not too distant future of producing those organs from donor stem cells of the very adult or child who needs them. We cannot close the door on helping to reduce pain and suffering.

The bill should be divided into two parts. Let us do that to make it easier and more understandable. Let us be able to more judiciously deal with these complex issues.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, without question, whenever we are dealing with the U.S. especially on trade, it is a tough sell. The Americans are ferocious negotiators and are totally protectionist, which should not have come as a surprise to us.

When I say that the government dropped the ball on the file, I mean that it dropped the ball on the file. In the middle of an American election the Prime Minister made comments on the outcome of the election. That was a huge mistake regardless of who was going to win. The Prime Minister was linking trade. That was a big mistake. We cannot link trade. We cannot link softwood lumber to oil. We cannot link fish to softwood lumber. That was a huge mistake. That is what I meant when I said the file was not handled properly.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the member, having been down to Capitol Hill in Washington, realizes that pushing trade positions is a difficult sell to the American public.

I cannot speak directly for the softwood lumber industry in B.C. However, I know that under the Webster-Ashburton treaty between Maine and New Brunswick and the association between the maritime lumber bureau, which is made up of all of the maritime provinces, and the New England area of the U.S., we can make very good headway, not necessarily sawmill to sawmill but industry to industry. The government has failed miserably in that respect.

If we push our ideas and our claim to free trade to the right people in industry, we can be fairly successful. We were very successful in eliminating tariffs in the Christmas tree industry with the United States. We went to the producers and suppliers. It was very successful.

We need to have head to head meetings. The way to start is by having meetings between congressmen and parliamentarians so that everyone gets both sides of the story. The power lies in the sawmill industry, especially in the southern states of Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. The power is not in the Pacific northwest but rather in the mid-southern timber lobby.

There is an opportunity to put smaller players together so they understand the issue. Four or five huge conglomerates in the U.S. are very much in control of the American timber policy. People on TV talk about 150 American mills being shut down. They are not being shut down because of a cheap supply of Canadian lumber; they are being shut down because of productivity. They did not change with the times and are not competing with us on an even footing. That is the problem. That is what has led to their own demise. They want Canada to be the bogeyman, but that just is not true.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that was an interesting comment, and it amazes me. When we are trying to organize something in the House and all parties are speaking basically on the same issue, why would someone would come up with that type of condescending attitudinal question. However I will answer the question.

First, the member for Calgary Centre spoke before and not after the fact. The hon. member should look up past records of the House and he will see which party first brought up softwood lumber. There is a complete record of all committee meetings and everything that takes places in the House of Commons. I challenge the hon. member to do that.

This is not about one party or one person's file. This is about finding a solution. One of the most outstanding issues that the government has failed to address is the whole argument about American and Canadian stumpage rates. Canadian Alliance members failed to address that when they were speaking earlier today and since Canadian Alliance members had the opportunity to go first as the official opposition, we would have thought they would have put all of their arguments on the table at that time.

We were beaten up on the issue of American and Canadian stumpage rates which should never have happened. The stumpage rates in the U.S. refer to the selling price of the timber in the U.S. market. In some instances, because it differs from state to state, the buyer is not necessarily responsible for logging roads, environmental remediation or the planting of trees; the U.S. forestry service is responsible. That gives the U.S. a huge advantage on this file.

Canadian stumpage rates, which Americans like to say are too low, refer to the average price paid for timber to the government and any province. There is no difference between Nova Scotia and British Columbia when the stumpage is being sold on crown land. The buyer of the timber is responsible for putting in logging roads and any remediation of the roads when they move. In many instances where there is not sufficient regeneration, the buyer is also responsible for the planting of trees after the land has been logged. That is one concrete point where we have failed on the file. We have been unable to convince the Americans that we have a fair rate for stumpage and they have an unfair rate which tends to distort the price of timber south of the border.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I appreciated the comments and the passion that the member for Acadie--Bathurst brought to the debate. I would caution him that as good as the idea may sound we simply could not begin to take the surplus lumber that Canada would have because of the countervailing duties and anti-dumping duties. It would help but it would never make up for our trade loss to the United States.

I would also like to thank the member for Joliette for raising this issue today on behalf of the Bloc. As we will take all day to debate the motion, I would have hoped that it would have been a votable motion. It is extremely disappointing that it is not.

Certainly there is a greater issue here which is the unprofessional and amateurish way the government has handled this file. It has known this was coming for a long period of time and chose to sit on its hands and do nothing about it. Unfortunately since May 2 there will be a 27% duty made up of anti-dumping and countervail duties to be imposed on May 23 which will directly impact the four provinces under the old softwood lumber agreement. The anti-dumping duties will affect the other six provinces in Canada.

It is a Canada wide issue that the government has had a lot of time to deal with and has failed to deal with in any concrete way. It is an issue that especially speaks to the performance of the Prime Minister of Canada and the Minister for International Trade. These two individuals have carriage of the file. They have discussed the file face to face with the president of the United States and the American lumber lobby. They have completely and utterly failed in their duties to the softwood lumber industry and to the workers in the sawmills and the softwood lumber industry in Canada.

I would like to point out for the Liberal benches that we are dealing with people's lives and with communities. There are 350 communities across Canada that are dependent upon the forest industry to provide them with sustenance and livelihoods. There are 373,326 direct jobs in Canada: 101,417 in British Columbia, 24,499 in Alberta, 88,473 in Ontario, and 108,916 in Quebec. The rest of the jobs are in the other six provinces across the country. In Nova Scotia, the province I hail from, softwood lumber is a billion dollar industry, not something to be ignored at all.

We have a $47.4 billion export market for softwood. A large percentage of it is in the pulp and paper industry. There is $11.4 billion directly attributable to softwood lumber. If we think about the scale and the amount of dollars involved in trade, a significant part of Canada's trade surplus is made up of softwood lumber. We have a government that has totally failed its commitment to Canadians on this file.

The motion presented by the member for Joliette reads:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should set up an assistance program for the softwood lumber industry and its workers, to support them in the face of the unjust decision made by the American government to impose a 27.2% tariff on Canadian softwood lumber exports to the United States, the program to continue in effect until such time as this conflict has been resolved.

Whether one agrees with the Bloc motion or not, it raises a good question and one that has not yet been asked in the House today. Again I will speak directly to the government benches.

The NAFTA hearings scheduled for this important issue will not take place until February 2003. When we are talking about until such time as this conflict may be resolved we are almost a year away. After that the process could continue for another one to two years. Let us go to 2004-05. Now we are talking about supporting communities for an extended period of time. That type of support asks and begs for a plan, a plan the government has not shared with anyone else. If it has one it is keeping it close to its chest. It certainly is not allowing someone else to have a peek at it.

I have looked at the chronology of events. It is interesting to look at them and go backwards. The government has gone backwards on this file. In February 2003 there will be an initial hearing under chapter 19. We hope that Canada will win that hearing, but when we go to court anyone can win the final decision. That is the problem with going to court. That is the problem with not having the savvy, the intelligence, and the ability to deal with this before it ever gets to court.

The next most important date moving backwards from 2003 is May 23. That is the day the U.S. department of commerce will publish anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders. The ruling has been there since May 2, however that is the day the enforcement begins.

The spin that the government has put out is interesting. Somehow we have won a little with the May 2 decision because the commission found a threat of injury from Canada to American lumber producers rather than actual injury. That is like saying we have pneumonia but we are probably not going to die from it. We are not quite sure.

There are a number of important dates in the softwood lumber file. We have to backup and look at the U.S. department of commerce revising its final determinations on countervailing duties and anti-dumping from 27.2%. We can go all the way back to March 31, 2001 when the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber agreement file expired. The government at the time was saying it was not a problem. We would have free trade in softwood lumber.

Well, we need free trade in softwood lumber but we do not have free trade in softwood lumber. What we have is a country that is taking its largest trading partner to a higher authority called the WTO. There we hope we will get a favourable decision for the softwood lumber industry, its workers, the families who are affected, and certainly Canada's trade relationship with the United States.

If we look at the issue and break it down into segments, then perhaps the government will more easily understand it. The duties collected by the U.S. under the agreement will exceed $1 billion per annum, coming from the softwood lumber industry in Canada. Somehow we are supposed to exist under an agreement like that and our industry is not supposed to suffer.

I find it totally amazing when I look at the response of the government to the direct requests from members from all the opposition parties on this side of the House for some form of assistance to the industry through HRDC or some other government agency to industry workers. We have to be careful about the type of assistance we give to the industry whether we give direct assistance or not.

When we look at the impact on direct jobs across the country and the number of interventions that have been made, there has been a total lack of response from the government. It is nothing short of a shameless response by the Minister for International Trade and an inability of the Prime Minister to even grasp the significance of the file.

There have been a lot of requests for assistance. I would like to read a letter from the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party which spells out the measures to help victims of the softwood lumber dispute. The leader wrote to the Prime Minister on March 22 more than a month ago. The letter reads:

Dear Prime Minister:

I was surprised by the refusal today in Parliament of the Minister for International Trade to spell out measures the Government of Canada is taking to assist people and communities who will be hit so hard by the failure of the softwood negotiations. For hundreds of Canadians, that failure means their jobs ended when their shift ended today. Thousands more people, in communities across Canada, will be in a similar situation soon. They need to know, urgently, what help will be available to them, as they try to pull their lives back together.

The government says it was pursuing a two-track negotiation.

In this case, I think both trains are on the same track and it is not a pretty sight.

It goes on to say:

It was always evident that the first track could fail, and a prudent government would have set up contingency plans to help the victims. Apparently that has not yet been done.

It is one month later and it has still not been done.

The leader of the Progressive Conservatives went on to say that he understood that not even a committee of cabinet was considering the issue. There is still no response.

The letter goes on:

--considering that issue, or pulling together the resources that can help the individuals, industries and communities whose livelihoods are threatened.

I am writing to request that you spell out immediately a package to help the victims of the softwood failure. I hope you would also identify the Committee, or other mechanism, in your government that will co-ordinate a program to sustain forest workers and communities through this crisis.

We are still waiting and I suspect in a month's time we will still be waiting.

Let us take a look at what the government is doing today. We have already know that the Prime Minister has been completely unable to recognize the importance of the file and has been totally inept in his handling of it.

The largest file that we have on the table with our trading partners around the world is the softwood lumber file. Where is the Minister for International Trade? He is in Spain, and I do not know what he is doing there. I hope it is something important. Where should he be? He should be negotiating with the Americans and trying to end this completely devastating attack on the softwood lumber industry in Canada.

The only good thing is that he is in Spain with the Prime Minister because the Prime Minister will certainly not handle this file. If he is out of the country, maybe we can get something done. Maybe somebody else on that side knows the phone number for the president of the United States or the international trade arbitrators and could call them. In the meantime we hope they do not totally ruin the file.

What has the government done? The Prime Minister was at a hockey game the other night and said that part of the problem with the Canadian softwood lumber file was that we beat the Americans in Olympic hockey. That is an absolutely scandalous statement to make. Obviously the Prime Minister does not recognize the importance of this issue.

We have not negotiated with the U.S. and every overture we have made has been rejected on behalf of the United States. Is that the way to negotiate difficult issues? The government loves to sit back and benefit from the dollars that come in from free trade, but it would have been completely unable to negotiate that agreement. It actually voted against it. That agreement took some vision and understanding of how to deal with our trading partners.

That is not the only issue on the board which the government is not dealing with in forestry. I brought up the softwood lumber agreement issue at committee in 1999, two years before the agreement was set to expire. I said at that time that our natural resource committee should be travelling through the United States, looking at its sawmill industry and listening to the power of the lumber lobby, especially in the southern U.S.

However this was not important. It did not matter. The government had other things to do. There were a million and one reasons why that did not happen but the real reason was there was no will on behalf of the government which controlled the committee.

I brought up a number of other things at a meeting on May 6, 1999. One was the number of links to forestry sustainability in Canada and certification. I wanted to know what had been done about this because it affected our exports to the EU and would affect our exports to all our major trading partners. Right now it affects a number of our exports into the U.S. I wanted to know how this would affect our cross-border trade with the United States and why companies were getting around the countervail by increasing their exports of round logs into the U.S. so they would have some cashflow and make a few dollars.

The one thing the government finally did move on was the $500,000 capital gains exemption. However we have compliance checks at the border. We have a number of things that threaten our industry.

As my time is up, I will wrap up by making one statement, which has been made by other members when they have spoken to the issue. What absolutely epitomizes the government's understanding of this file was May 2, the day the decision came down four to zero in favour of the Americans.

Our government is under intense pressure to react. Outside the House of Commons the Minister for International Trade rejected calls from the opposition for government aid. He said “there were no direct job losses linked to the situation with the U.S.” That is amazing.

[Supply, May 6th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, a minute is not long enough to sum up this broad and extremely important issue but I will attempt to do it. My question is still not answered. Will we dedicate more people, resources, ships and helicopters to patrol the Grand Banks or will we not? That was my question. I assume from the parliamentary secretary's answer that we will not.

The other issue is that there are a number of things we can do right away. Non-compliance is on the rise. To have the members responsible for checking compliance on their own ships is akin to having the fox guarding the chicken coop. There should be a Canadian compliance officer on every ship fishing off the Grand Banks, along with a foreign national so that we have some common sense applied in checking for compliance. We cannot expect countries to check on themselves.

[Supply, May 6th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on what we informally call the late show to ask for an answer to a question that I have previously asked in the House.

The question was put to the minister of fisheries. It was:

--since the minister still refuses to assert Canadian custodial management outside the 200 mile limit, will he agree to increase coast guard and DFO presence inside the 200 mile limit?

I went on to say:

It is absolutely shameful that the minister expects one coast guard vessel to patrol all of the Grand Banks inside the 200 mile limit. What is he going to do about it?

The minister's reply was that he knew it was a serious problem, he would look into it and he would do something immediately.

The issue, especially on overfishing and on surveillance, is an important issue for Atlantic Canada. The entire DFO fleet for surveillance in the country consists of 27 rotary wing aircraft or helicopters stationed at 11 bases and 5 DFO regions specifically in Atlantic Canada.

In the maritimes region alone, we have only four helicopters. There is one at Saint John, there is one at Charlottetown, there is one at Yarmouth, which is a secondary helicopter, and there are four based out of Halifax.

Certainly if we are ever going to attempt to control the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap, we will need to have more long range helicopters, not small choppers, and fixed wing airplanes and some type of geographical positioning instrumentation on board all ships fishing on the Grand Banks. There are a number of things that could be done and implemented immediately. None of these have been done.

We have a total of four coast guard vessels on the east coast. We have one stationed in Newfoundland to patrol all of the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap. It is absolutely impossible. When we go to the NAFO meetings in Europe, we come back with our tail between our legs. We cannot reach an agreement. We do not get the assistance from those who should be our European allies.

Certainly the 10% of the Grand Banks that lies outside the 200 mile limit is a major problem. We have complete overfishing, which even the government admits has increased since 1995. We need something that can be done today, immediately.

Let us look at a couple of things that we can do. We can go to the NAFO meeting and ask for assistance to curtail overfishing. We can put observers on every ship fishing off the Grand Banks, including Canadian ships. We can check for netliners. We can make sure undersized species are not caught. We can make sure that moratorium protected species are not ground into fishmeal. There was a Russian trawler in Newfoundland with 35 tonnes of fishmeal on it. No one knows what that fishmeal was made of, but I will guarantee that a lot of it was made out of undersized fish. That is what fishmeal is made out of: heads and undersized fish.

Let us do something about this. Let us do something about this right away.

[Supply, May 6th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I have a direct question. The hon. member is talking about a decision made 50 years ago. We are talking about a new piece of legislation that would completely change the animal cruelty legislation that is on the books today. Most rural members I know expect that we need to bring in new legislation. The bill is 104 years old. Obviously it needs to be updated.

The people I am listening to are the federations of agriculture from coast to coast in this country and especially the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, the farmers I have the pleasure to represent and who come to my office and say they are chicken farmers or turkey farmers or dairy farmers and they are afraid they are going to be out of business under the provisions of that bill. I am not worried especially about how this affects the dog and cat owners of this country, because I think the provisions are there for them. I think the pet owners are protected. I am worried about people who make their living on the farm. The problem is that they are worried about it too.

[Supply, May 6th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the member for Saskatoon--Rosetown--Biggar. She spoke with real feeling about people who are on the land and close to the land, and the problem with the lack of assistance from the current government.

In her opening statement she touched on two pieces of legislation that are still before the House and are important to rural Canada, the species at risk legislation which we expect to be reintroduced and the cruelty to animals legislation. I want to make two points on each one of those pieces of legislation.

The cruelty to animals legislation is problematic to every farmer across the country because it takes animals out from under the property act. That is the most dangerous aspect of the bill. Farmers list their animals as collateral, not as animals, to the bank. The bank recognizes them as collateral. If we were to take them out from under the property act and put them under something else, I expect the bank would recognize them as collateral but it would put us into the pet category. They are not pets and that is the most open, flagrant and serious mistake in this particular piece of legislation.

In any proposed new species at risk legislation the Progressive Conservative Party consistently has asked for greater compensation. Farmers and rural woodlot owners are more than happy to protect species at risk but they do not want to do it with their own dollars.

I have heard the statement made by rural Canadians about wildlife and especially about urbanites who like to see wildlife but they do not like to suffer the consequences of it. I have heard them saying that people in the cities can keep their public wildlife off my private land. It becomes a confrontation and that is a mistake. Somehow we must learn to coexist but we cannot do it if we expect the rural landowner, who is under pressure now, to pay the bill. I would like the member's comments on that.