Gerald Keddy

[Fisheries Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague. At the beginning of my comments I read for members some of the findings from the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. My colleague mentioned section 36 of the regulations.

The scrutiny of regulations committee was basically saying to the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources that the minister did not have a clear understanding of section 36(2) and that his interpretation was wrong. The committee went on to state:

Disallowance of that section may change the manner of enforcing compliance with terms and conditions of licences, but would certainly not affect in any way the ability to impose such terms and conditions.

More clarity is needed in this process. This is just another example of the Liberal government saying to us that it really needs to do something about the Fisheries Act, but it is not willing to have a thorough debate in Parliament and make the consecutive changes that need to be made. This is another example of the Liberal government trying to slip something in through the back door. Perhaps no one will be watching, thinks the Liberal government, and it will be able to move on and give the minister unprecedented powers that he has not had in the past but in such a way as to avoid the parliamentary process.

[Fisheries Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak to Bill C-52, an act to amend the Fisheries Act. I would like to state that I will be splitting my time with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. The member has always had a great interest in the fishery and will bring some very vigorous and intelligent comments to this debate, to which I am sure the government will be looking forward. It has been some time since it has had much vigorous and intelligent debate of its own.

This is an important and serious bill. I think the government expected that we would look the other way, that the bill it would enter through the back door, be approved and give the present minister of the day and future ministers quite responsible powers, powers that they have not had in the past. They would receive these powers without a comprehensive and introspective study of the Fisheries Act. It would allow the government to perhaps open the door to an abuse of the process and an abuse of the power of the minister.

The bill deals with section 19.1(6) of the Statutory Instruments Act and with Government Motion No. 15, which the Minister of Fisheries brought it in on June 3. It needs to be read into the record:

That, given the importance of the fisheries in Ontario and the introduction of Bill C-52, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (terms and conditions of permissions, leases and licenses) by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans which addresses the concerns of the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations, and pursuant to Standing Order 124 and subsection 19.1(5) of the Statutory Instruments Act, the resolution of the Standing Joint Committee providing that subsection 36(2) of the Ontario Fishery Regulations, 1989 be revoked, presented to this House on May 9, 2005 in its Second Report (Report No. 75 – Disallowance), not be adopted, and that this matter be referred back to the Standing Joint Committee for further study.

Had the motion passed, we would have given the minister the right to lay criminal charges with the idea that there would be a little clause of change that would need to be made for the minister of natural resources in Ontario.

Members of Parliament were misled, if I could go that far, that this was a little housekeeping job simply to address the importance of regulatory change in Ontario. That is not the case. It changes the Fisheries Act across the country, from coast to coast to coast. It gives the minister powers to lay criminal charges that the minister did not have prior to this.

We understand the importance in any regulatory regime of enforcement, of being allowed to lay charges. We also understand we have an act that is 137 years old. It desperately needs revision and renewal and we have nothing to do that.

I would plead with the government side and with the Minister of Fisheries and reasonable people to review the Fisheries Act, to dust off those dusty pages which no one has looked at for over 100 years and be prepared to bring constructive change. Let us look at a regulatory regime with the ability to lay charges. However, do not do it under the guise that somehow we have this little problem in Ontario with the minister of natural resources and it needs to be addressed.

Frankly, that is not the way to seek consensus. It is not the way to come to opposition parties and work in a progressive and comprehensive way toward making regulatory change. It was an excuse, “Let's just fix this little thing and don't pay attention to the details”. Frankly, there are a number of us in the House who are paying attention to the details.

Therefore, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the “That” and substituting the following:

“this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-52, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (terms and conditions of permissions, leases and licences), because the principle of the Bill is flawed in that it violates the principles of law by permitting public officials of the Government to create a regime which could result in severe fines or imprisonment or seizure of property that have not been specifically authorized by an Act of Parliament.”

I would hope all my colleagues would realize that when we talk about a regime which results in severe fines, imprisonment and penalties that should be authorized by an act of Parliament. The amendment clearly speaks to the difficulty we have with the bill, the fines, imprisonment and the enforcement.

[Statistics Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I listened quite closely to the member for Winnipeg Centre, as I always do when he is speaking in the House. I was glad to hear how he finished off his comments, because for quite a while I was not really sure if he was willing to support this legislation or not.

I understand the member's longstanding debate about the Senate, but I take some slight exception to that. Legislation coming from the Senate is certainly worthy of debate in this place. It is not the Senate's fault that it sends legislation to us; it is the government's fault. This legislation should have been tabled a long time ago. I would like a little more explanation of that.

I would like to give the hon. member an example. Let us look at the 1831 census in Nova Scotia and the Church map. Mr. Church, who actually did the census and drew the maps of the area at the same time, would hire an individual, quite often a young child who knew the neighbourhood and knew all the individuals. They would go by horse and wagon in those days and actually name off all the individual houses, draw them on the map and put down their census information. That has been a great source of information for genealogists in Nova Scotia and of course for the rest of the country as well.

But why on earth would we worry about the 1911 census or the 1901 census? What information is in there? What difference is it going to make 100 years after the fact for someone to be able to look up their personal family information, how many children were in the family and what the resources were?

I realize the census is more complicated today and there is a bit more information, but once we are dead and gone it really is not going to make that much difference to us, so surely we can amend this legislation. Surely we can support it. I agree with the fact that the government has not done its job, but it does not mean that this information should not be passed.

[Bridgewater Flood, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this time to call attention to all the committed and dedicated men and women from my riding of South Shore--St. Margaret's who worked tirelessly during the recent state of emergency in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia.

From May 22 to 27, heavy rain fell throughout Nova Scotia with 225 millimetres of rain falling in the Bridgewater area alone. Heavy flooding resulted, roughly 100 people were evacuated from their homes and 17 roads and 12 bridges in Lunenburg county had to be closed by the department of transportation.

I commend the volunteer fire departments and other emergency workers for their role in protecting the residents of our communities.

Emergency Measures co-ordinator, Brian Kaiser, along with dozens of professionals and volunteers, performed yeoman service in coordinating the municipal and provincial response.

To everyone involved in the response team and to all the neighbours who assisted neighbours, I extend a sincere and heartfelt bravo, good work and thank you.

[Natural Resources, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government is clawing back 90% of Newfoundland and Labrador's revenues from the Voisey's Bay development. Why will the government not agree to renegotiate its contract with the province of Newfoundland and Labrador in order to provide a more equitable revenue sharing plan?

[Budget Implementation Act, May 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is very clear what happened during the Mulroney years. The Conservatives inherited $38 billion worth of deficit from the Trudeau Liberals. They managed to operate the country without cutting transfers for education and health care and they continued to deliver services for Canadians. They managed to operate the country when interest rates were 19%. They never shut the border down to beef. They never shut the border down to softwood lumber.

If you want to take a government's record, I will put it up against the pitiful state of affairs that you have run the country into any day.

[Government of Canada, May 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government, in a shameful display, has deliberately delayed the passage of the Atlantic accord. It has once again delayed the clean-up of the Sydney tar ponds, spending the money on other Liberal election promises.

Now it is delaying a vote of confidence. Will the Prime Minister stop these stalling tactics, face Canadians and call a confidence vote on Monday?

[Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, there is a fair amount of work that needs to be done at committee. We need to explore a number of avenues. There is no real difficulty with the bill. However, the difficulty of not moving forward with it means we are doing nothing and then exactly what the member is talking about comes into play.

We continue to lose our lighthouses at an alarming rate. Some of them literally fall into the ocean because of the ravages of the sea. We would continue to have divestiture, as she has said, to the provincial and municipal governments, and they are taking on a cost. That is why I think it is so important to designate the rest of the lighthouses, which should have historical heritage designation, immediately so we do not simply have 19 in all of Canada with that designation.

At least another 100 of them would classify as heritage properties. We need to be very careful about the commercialization aspect. Some of the lighthouses will end up being passed into the hands of private individuals. The idea of the bill is to offer some protection to at least the physical structure outside of the lighthouses and to continue with the silhouette of the lighthouse on the skyline, or on an island or next to the ocean.

I do not know if we can control it all, but we can do a better job than we have done. It is very important that we do it forthwith.

[Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, for the last 10 years the government has been pursuing a divestiture process with lighthouses. There have been many divestitures. It has accelerated in the last few years. A number of them have been sold off.

As in all federal divestiture processes, the lighthouse first gets offered to the province, then to the municipality and then to private individuals. In the United States, a great many lights are now owned by private individuals. When the government is divesting the light, it also divests property. That property is ocean frontage and it is valuable. There should be some onus on the new owner of the lighthouse to keep that heritage property in shape.

I do not have the exact numbers in my head, but I have assisted with at least five or six divestiture processes in the riding of South Shore--St. Margaret's with local lighthouse groups. The Sandy Point lighthouse group in Shelburne county actually took over one lighthouse and has done a lot of great work with it, maintaining it and doing the upkeep of the light.

There is very much a concentrated and accelerated process on behalf of the government to rid itself of these lights. We need to protect them now.

[Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act, May 10th, 2005]

--or Advocate or Digby? There are lights throughout coastal Canada that are an important part of the fabric of our society. We cannot afford to lose these lights at this time when we are in the best of times in this country through no fault of the government but simply through hard work by Canadian taxpayers. We can afford to save them.

I do not mean to make this into a partisan discussion, but if we can find money for other things, if we can find money to keep the government alive, then we can find the pittance, the almost pitiful amount of money, that it would take to keep these lights operating.

We are not looking for hundreds of millions of dollars. We are looking for legislation that would allow these lights to be protected in perpetuity. The current legislation is not enough to protect lighthouses.

Two federal bodies have the power to select and designate heritage lighthouses, the Federal Heritage Building Review Office and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, yet they have only managed to protect 19 of the over 500 lighthouses in this country. They have managed to partially protect only another 101.

I am not about to suggest that we can save every light and keep every light in Canada operational. I am suggesting that we can maintain the physical part of the light. The lights could be kept in them, and with technology today, the ability to keep the light on would be a lot cheaper than it was years ago. We have better systems and better technologies to keep the light on.

If we speak to the fishermen, the people who have traditionally used the light, we will learn that with all of the technology available there are still occasions when they depend upon that light for navigation or they depend for safety upon a foghorn associated with the light. When all technology fails and they are coming home on a stormy sea, in the fog or in the dark, a navigational beacon is important.

If any members have ever been in those circumstances, they know that the value of those lights is not to be taken lightly. They are still very important. They still have a safety value and they still have a navigational value, even with all the technology we have today.

I would sincerely urge all of my colleagues in this House to look at Bill S-14 and to look at the manner in which it was brought forth. I appreciate all the good work that was done in the Senate in fast tracking this bill. I appreciate the fact that it has made it to the floor of the House of Commons. But with a very tenuous grip on government, we may not have a lot of time, so I would urge everyone with all possible haste to make sure this bill passes and to get it to committee to make any changes that need to be made.

We are amenable to changes, but we are not amenable to not having this bill pass, to having more lights fall into the ocean where they can never be recovered and to having more lights sold to private individuals who have no responsibility for maintaining the outside physical structure of the light and keeping it as a heritage property, as we would with any other heritage property in Canada.

We are not asking for the sun and the moon and the stars. We are asking for this very good, solid, commonsense piece of legislation to be passed forthwith from the House, to go to committee and come back for third reading, so that we will be able to save at least one more lighthouse before the ravages of time and the sea take more of them from us.