Gerald Keddy

[Health, May 14th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, we now know that the Prime Minister and senior executives of two crown corporations enjoy special access to private health clinics.

The Prime Minister claims he pays with his health card. Guess what. I called the Prime Minister's clinic today to ask if I could get an MRI. I was told that absolutely I could get one in two weeks for $585 with a referral. The catch is my health card does not cover it.

Why is the Prime Minister deliberately misleading Canadians?

[Samuel de Champlain, May 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, Samuel de Champlain was known to Canadian school children as the father of New France, yet those same students do not realize it all began on the south shore of Nova Scotia.

On May 8, 2004 a re-enactment celebrating the 400th anniversary of Champlain's landfall was held on Rissers Beach, including a ceremony of greeting by the Mic Mac.

Champlain made his first landfall at Cap LaHave, named after Cap de la Hève in France. He explored and mapped the coast of what would become Acadia. Names like: Rossignol, Cap LaHave, Port Mouton, Port Royal, Cap Negro, Isle Haute, Cap D'Or and Port Joli pay tribute to his travels.

In 1605 Champlain founded Port Royal, the first permanent French settlement in Acadia and later went on to found Quebec in 1608.

My congratulations to the festival Champlain committee in recognition of its hard work in celebrating this truly Canadian story.

[Question No. 81, May 6th, 2004]

With regard to income tax deferrals for woodlot owners affected by hurricane Juan, what actions has the Minister of Finance taken in relation to: ( a ) the minister’s statement in the House of Commons of February 4, 2004; and ( b ) the government’s response to Question No. 44 on the Order Paper tabled on March 22, 2004?

[Fisheries Act, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, on the final comment of the member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton's, it is my understanding, from what the Minister of Fisheries stated in the House, that he had not met with the fisheries committee on this legislation and that any consultation had occurred under a former minister some time ago.

Again, when bringing legislation into the House of this magnitude and importance, it is absolutely essential that the minister of the day meet with the committee of the day. Things change, issues change, dynamics change and it would have been important to at least have met with committee.

The basis of Bill C-33, an act to amend the Fisheries Act, we have had a long and prolonged debate over that. I think we all understand where the bill came from and why, and I will review that.

Before I do, let us go back and look at the original aboriginal fishery strategy of 1992 and the Sparrow decision of 1990. There has been nearly 14 years to bring the aboriginal community into the fishery. In Atlantic Canada, to a great degree, the aboriginal fishing strategy has worked well. Certainly, a majority of the bands have fishing licences, if not all, which range everywhere from mackerel, to crab, to offshore shrimp, to offshore clams, to the lucrative lobster industry and to the groundfishery. It is not as if suddenly today the aboriginal community will start to partake in this fishery.

Let us look at 12 years of an aboriginal fishing strategy. I just pulled a clip off the wire and the best comparison to that is the same amount of time, actually 13 years, or 12 years of this government dealing with the offshore, specifically the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and foreign overfishing.

I am not about to try and blame all the ills of the fishery upon the foreign fleet. It is not only the fault of the foreign fleet, it is our fault as well. However, it is important to be consistent with regulations and it is extremely important to be consistent with enforcement. I do not see any of that in this legislation, Bill C-33. I certainly have not seen any of it on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks for the last 12 years.

Newly released data shows that more than 90% of foreign ships caught illegally fishing on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland over the past decade got off scot free. Between 1992 and 2003, Canadian fisheries officers caught foreign ships illegally fishing 319 times on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, but the foreign ships faced fines in only 21 cases. Basically it was carte blanche. They could do what they wanted and fish where they wanted. I am not certain we will see anything different here.

The success of the fishery is to base it on conservation, to have trained fishery officers and to have trained fishermen who understand the resource. There is a willingness to incorporate the aboriginal fishery, certainly there is in the South Shore. There is no question that the aboriginals have a stake in the fishery and they will be participants in that fishery.

The question is how does one bring legislation like this into being without talking to the fishery committee, without having committee hearings that include first nations and other stakeholders? How can that happen.

I agree with the member from Bras d'Or that absolutely, there is a very important economic component to this piece of legislation. It provides opportunity for first nations. It provides much needed opportunity for first nations entry into the fishery. What are the parameters of that opportunity? What are the rules and regulations that will govern it?

There is not even agreement among the individual Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy bands. They have not all signed onto this. There are still a few of them that are holding out. There is far from unanimity on this subject. There is still division even among the first nations.

As was mentioned here a few times, the September 17, 1999 Marshall decision affirmed the treaty rights of the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and the Passamaquoddy people to hunt, fish and gather in the pursuit of a moderate livelihood. That court agreement has come down. No one is arguing about that decision.

There needs to be open and intelligent discussion on how we can best incorporate first nations into the fishery. It was not DFO that said we are not going to have extra effort in the fishery. It was the first nations who put that idea forward because they and the non-native fishery saw the importance of not over-exploiting the resource.

There are a number of amendments. The bill amends the Fisheries Act to expressly provide that a breach of a term or condition of a permission granted under section 4 of the act or of a licence or lease issued under the act is an offence. That is a change to the Fisheries Act.

Changes to the Fisheries Act should not be brought in without having a debate, without trying to look 20 years into the future to see how it could affect the individuals involved. How will it affect the aboriginal fishery? That is the first component we are talking about. How will it affect the non-aboriginal fishery?

My great concern is the whole basis of a communal fishery. I am not proposing at all that a communal fishery cannot work. It probably could work and could work well. However, how do we enable the mentoring and training of fishermen to be passed on intergenerationally within the fishing family? I do not think that question has been answered at all, and it is an extremely important one.

In summary, I do believe the bill is being rushed through. I do believe it has been brought in late. It has not really been thought through. Unfortunately, we need this piece of legislation, but we cannot use it in its present form.

[Fisheries Act, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's comments, but he is still not answering the question. The question is very simple. This is not about opportunities for first nations. This is quite simply not about even implementing Sparrow and Marshall. My question is on licensing and regulations and how they will be governed. What is the difference? How does one look at and pass down a communal licence?

I understand the mentoring, the training and the years it takes to be a professional fisherman. However, what happens if the chief of any of the bands decides that a licence will go to someone else and that someone else has no experience in the fishery? The success of the fishery is that family owned licence and the training that goes on from father to son or father to daughter. That success is the years of work and mentoring it takes to be a successful fisherman. What happens if there are no rules and no regulations in place to ensure that the first nations that get involved in the fishery can stay in the fishery?

[Fisheries Act, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my hon. colleague's speech. To be honest, it kind of reminded me of the Prime Minister's trip to see President Bush. He promised that everything would be fixed, that softwood lumber would move, that cattle would move. However, when we read the fine print, nothing has changed and it is business as usual. The cattle are not moving. There is no progress and no future to see cattle moving. Softwood lumber had nothing to do with the Prime Minister. We would still be waiting for the wood to be sawn, if it did.

Now we have legislation here that has not been clearly thought out. The main difficulty I have with the bill is very simple. This legislation does precisely the opposite of what it is supposed to do. It allows certain aboriginal organizations to prevail over certain regulations.

It is important that all Canadians, especially Atlantic Canadians and Canadians who live in maritime regions, whether it is B.C. or Atlantic Canada, to know exactly what those regulations are.

The minister was having difficulty explaining the regulations. It is important to know if is it just a matter of licensing or if it is simply a matter of who will fish first. We live with that already. That is not a difficulty. Is there something else that we do not know about?

Under Marshall, we understand there is the right to fish. That is a given. Under Sparrow there is a right to fish. Those rights can be accommodated and they are being accommodated. What we need to know is exactly what they mean when certain aboriginal organizations have a right to prevail over certain regulations.

[Fisheries Act, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am not on the fisheries committee, but after listening to my colleague from the NDP, I got the feeling that maybe there was something in the bill that I had missed. The member was comparing a communal fishery and a co-operative fishery. It is my understanding that they would be two totally different things. I would like the member to clarify that first of all.

The second thing I would like the member to clarify is the term “aboriginal organization”, which is explained in the regulations. The regulations define and provide express regulation making authority to cabinet for designating persons who can fish and vessels that can be used to fish under a licence issued to an aboriginal organization and for authorizing designations to be made through licence conditions.

My difficulty with that particular term and my reason for asking about it is that it is not clear to me whether the licence will be handed down through the communal aboriginal fishery and therefore determined by the chief or if the licence will be determined by DFO and it will tell the aboriginal community who will fish the licence.

I raised the point with the minister that it takes a long time for a fisherman to become trained and become an expert in the fishery. It is not just throwing a net in the water or throwing a couple of lobster traps overboard. It is a matter of knowing the currents, the fog conditions and the different smell in the air. There is also a safety component. It is a huge job to train expert fishermen, especially fishermen who are going to be involved in the offshore fishery.

My first question for my colleague from the NDP is most important. Could he explain the difference, as he sees it, between a co-operative fishery and a communal fishery. The second question is how this licensing will work under the bill, because I do not see how it can work.

[Fisheries Act, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very closely to the member for Matapédia—Matane's debate on Bill C-33. After listening to him, I am surprised the Bloc would consider supporting the bill. Like the Conservative Party, we agree with the principles of the bill to try to develop a fair and equitable fishery policy that works both for first nations and for non-first nation fishermen.

My great problem with the bill is the lack of consistency, especially in the regulations. The life of the fishery, the success of the fishery and the future of the fishery is based on fair rules and regulations that allow people to fish and that allow individual fishermen to provide for their families to make an income. However, of primary importance is that the rules and regulations are there to protect the stocks and the species. That way we are guaranteed a fishery in the future.

If we have one set of rules for one set of people and another set of rules for another group of people, we run into a very serious problem. It sounds to me as though a lot of this could have been settled if the minister would have gone to committee with this, put it on the table and negotiated the process whereby the stakeholders, both first nations and non-first nations fishermen, could have had some input about the rules. It would have gone a long way toward making this better legislation.

In closing, I would like to member to comment on this. For the life of me, this reminds me of the way we have been negotiating with NAFO. We allow anything to happen on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and outside the 200 mile limit, but we have these great motherhood statements that say that we will protect the resource on our side, as if the fish did not swim over the line. We all know that the fish migrate across the north Atlantic.

The difficulty with the rules and regulations and the absolute authority of the minister of fisheries to be responsible for conservation and to ensure that the bands fall within that policy are the parts of the bill that I have not heard clearly enunciated by the minister.

[Fisheries Act, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the issue here about regulations and the absolute necessity to have consistency in the regulatory package is a major fault of this bill. The minister certainly understands that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is responsible for conservation. Quite often, when dealing with first nations, that is the overriding responsibility of DFO under the Sparrow decision.

However, my concern on the regulations is that they could further encourage inconsistency in the regulatory regime. For instance, in lobster fishing area 34 in southwest Nova Scotia, one could have a ministerial permit that would allow first nations to fish fewer traps than any other fisherman in that area, or they could perhaps fish more traps. They may be allowed to set those traps earlier. One could look at different seasons. There are a whole number of issues that are of great concern to myself and certainly a concern to fishermen.

More importantly, it takes a long time to train someone to be a capable fisherman. This is not something that just happens in a heartbeat. Quite often it takes generations. If these licences that the aboriginals will now have are not going to be passed on intergenerationally, we could be setting ourselves up to lose all of that knowledge that needs to be passed down from licence to licence in the fishery.

It is not only just a matter of being able to fish, it is a matter of being able to find one's way back to shore. It can be, quite frankly, a matter of life and death.

[Fisheries Act, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I have another question for the minister.

In the regulations that would be changed under this bill, it states that it provides that the terms and conditions of some licences to aboriginal organizations would prevail over certain regulations to the extent of any inconsistency. Could the minister explain that?

It provides that the terms and conditions of some licences to aboriginal organizations would prevail over certain regulations. I would like to know what those regulations are? Are they regulations on fish stocks? Are they regulations that concern conservation? Are they regulations over vessel size? There are hundreds of regulations that govern the fishery, so which regulations are we talking about?