Jean-Yves Roy

[Transportation Amendment Act, March 19th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my hon. colleague's remarks. I am having a very hard time trying to understand the Canadian Alliance's position.

On the one hand, they are asking that the government invest in grain transportation in western Canada. They are asking it to take action with respect to air transportation. On the other hand, a member of the Canadian Alliance Party confirmed to me this afternoon that they are totally against regulating transportation.

I gave my hon. colleague from the Canadian Alliance the example of bus transportation in my region, which is regulated. We get great service at an affordable price. Our bus transportation system is regulated, which means that paying routes are earmarked for the Orléans Express company, enabling it to provide in my region services which are important to our community.

As I said earlier, this is pretty much all we have left in our region for transportation. We know that there are currently companies calling for the deregulation of bus transportation, even in our region. Deregulation would simply spell the end of this mode of transportation for us.

At present, there is hardly any rail transportation in our region, and air transportation is not doing any better, with Air Canada being in difficulty and abandoning regional airports, lines which, incidentally, are said not to be profitable, when the planes are consistently full and airfares cost a fortune. I fly between Mont-Joli and Ottawa, and it costs me more than $1,000 just in airfare.

I would like the hon. member to clarify the Canadian Alliance's position. Does the Canadian Alliance want the federal government to take action to help, as he said among other things, western producers ship their grain? This would require the government to invest in transportation. Would the hon. member agree to the federal government investing not only in the transport of goods in his region, but also in the transport of passengers in a region like mine?

[Transportation Amendment Act, March 19th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the hon. member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, who just spoke.

I just got back from a tour during which I took a look at transportation in my region. I toured the Gaspé Peninsula. I know that the hon. member represents a riding located in the Vancouver area, so perhaps he is not experiencing this problem. However, even though we support the bill now before us, this does not in any way solve the issue of transportation in remote areas.

I would like to tell the hon. member that, as regards air transportation, the situation has become a catastrophe at home. Service in our region used to be provided by an Air Canada subsidiary, but that company is about to cut service completely.

As for rail transportation—the train used to belong to CN and VIA Rail—currently, a train leaves Gaspé only once or twice a week, depending on the circumstances. This is getting utterly ridiculous.

There is also the other rumour regarding a request by certain companies for the deregulation of transportation by bus, which is more or less the only mode of transportation that we have left in our region. Right now, it is practically the only mode of public transportation. Air transportation, with its exorbitant costs, is also bound to disappear, despite the Quebec government's efforts to prevent that from happening.

I believe that the cause of all this is the deregulation of transportation. Air Canada finally eliminated its competitor, Inter-Canadien, by reducing prices, which left it alone. Today, Air Canada is not profitable and is on the brink of bankruptcy. Therefore, because of deregulation, we will lose access to air transportation.

I would like to give my colleague an example regarding transportation by bus, which is regulated. We have an excellent service. What were bus carriers offered so they would provide service to remote areas? They were offered protected routes, that is profitable routes where they have no competition, which enables them to provide good service to remote areas like ours.

I am convinced that, without such regulation of transportation by bus, people who live in northern British Columbia would face the same situation as we do. The same goes for people in northern Ontario and in all of western Canada, who are spread out over a vast territory.

That being said, I would ask my colleague the following question. I would like to know if he would be in favour of a new form of regulation that would give an air carrier protected and profitable routes to enable it to provide service to regions such as mine, namely the Gaspé Peninsula and the lower St. Lawrence area.

[St. Lawrence River, March 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Coast Guard has decided to stop paying to have the St. Lawrence dredged, although it continues to pay to dredge the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and the Fraser River in the Canadian north.

How can the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans justify such a decision that treats Quebec differently and is extremely detrimental to Quebec's ports?

[National Defence, February 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence is about to close the cadet camp located in Cap-Chat. This is an institution that is over 30 years old where, each year, some 500 cadets come for training.

Can the Minister of National Defence tell us why, in a region where unemployment exceeds 20%, he is about to cut 70 jobs and deprive a whole community of $3 million in economic spinoffs?

[Fisheries, February 26th, 2003]

Mr. Chairman, in answer to the question of the hon. member, I could give you some very concrete examples. Let us take aquaculture, for instance.

In the area of aquaculture, the main purpose of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was to carry out research. We now realize that we do not know much about aquaculture. Besides our capacity to farm fish, our knowledge in that area is quite limited.

We have paid the price for that lack of knowledge in the Gaspé area. A plant opened its doors about ten years ago, but then had to close down. Nowadays, we have changed direction and turned towards other sectors.

We do not have adequate knowledge. One of the roles of the department is to invest enough in research so that it knows what the impact will be.

Some people mentioned Atlantic salmon farming on the west coast. My hon. colleague talked about it. What do we know about the impact of Atlantic salmon farming off the coast of British Columbia? Not much, right now.

We are starting to find out about it, but unfortunately, we should have invested much more money in research to determine the impact early on before any industry became overdeveloped and too many problems resulted.

When talking about the U.N., some people mentioned earlier the precautionary principle that was approved in Rio. The Government of Canada knows about it. It signed these agreements in 1992, in 2001 and again in 2002. None of this was implemented however, because we have not invested enough in research. It is as simple as that.

[Fisheries, February 26th, 2003]

Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate my colleague for making the effort of putting his question to me in French. If memory serves, he once was minister of education in Newfoundland. He just proved his openmindedness, and for that I congratulate him.

Indeed, in managing the fishery, knowledge of the resource is essential. To manage any resource, one has to have a good knowledge of that resource. I think that, in the past, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the whole government probably, or I should say certainly, did not put enough money into research to have a good knowledge of our fish resources.

This is one of the problems that we are facing today. After the lesson learned in 1992, the government should have invested heavily in research in order to acquire a good knowledge of the resource, but it did not. Had it done so, maybe we might not be facing the possibility of another moratorium today.

We must invest heavily in research. When we have a good knowledge of the resource, we will be able to manage it properly. I think that this is very important. It is something that we have not done in the past and that I hope we will do in the future.

Of course, we have started to invest again, but so far these investments are very small compared to the enormous needs. We have not built up knowledge in the past and we have not invested enough, which means that we have a lot of ground to make up. That is the problem that we are facing now.

[Fisheries, February 26th, 2003]

Mr. Chairman, I think the answer is no. I do not think speculation on licences is possible. We should not forget what a licence is.

The resource belongs to the community, quite clearly, and not to individuals. The department is responsible for the management of the resource and the delivery of licences. The department should be diligent enough to prevent this kind of occurrence.

Our basis should be those who had fishing rights last year. Let this be clear. If somebody sold a licence, hoping to get a licence to fish crab, it is totally wrong. We should not help the fisher who had the licence during the previous year. It is that simple.

People who were allowed to fish last year and would unfortunately be affected by a moratorium this year should be the ones getting assistance or benefits from the department.

[Fisheries, February 26th, 2003]

Mr. Chairman, I wanted to deal with eight points tonight, but, unfortunately, I could deal with just one in my ten minutes. I figure I would need 70 minutes to talk about the rest of them, but I know you will not let me have all that time. So, I will try to summarize my eight points, and talk about them at least briefly.

Obviously, my first point, which is the one I talked about during my ten minutes, is the assistance plan we should provide to those affected by a possible moratorium on cod fishing. It is an important issue, because it concerns the well-being of real people. Some 4,000 families on the east coast could be affected by such a moratorium. It is crucial that they get a good assistance program.

My second point concerns the importance of providing an adequate and secure infrastructure to the fishing and shipping industries in eastern Quebec. We have been discussing this seriously for two years. What I have in mind is ports for small boats.

Of course, some money has been invested, but ever since this program has been implemented, whatever has been done has not been done quickly enough.

As a result, we still find ourselves today with infrastructure that is in poor shape. We need to invest, and if memory serves well, during the discussions we had with the previous Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, the number that was mentioned was $400 million. That is the money needed to repair all of the ports, alienating many ports to wind up with a final number of approximately 800 ports that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans would keep and that could provide adequate service.

Unfortunately, this program is not making progress fast enough, and most of the infrastructures are still in bad shape. There needs to be a lot more work done and investment made both in Quebec and in the maritime provinces. We toured some of the infrastructures in Newfoundland and Labrador that were in disrepair and that needed work. That was my second point.

I touched on my third point briefly at the beginning. In my opinion, fisheries management by the federal government in the past has seriously hurt fishers, plant workers and coastal communities. I am not just talking about the current government. I am talking about all governments since the time the federal government took over responsibility for the management of the resource.

The resource has been mismanaged, and entire populations affected as a result. Take the Gaspé and Newfoundland for example. For the people in these regions, the fishery is their main industry. It is the biggest industry. Today, because of mismanagement, this industry is shrinking, while the people in these regions, particularly in the Gaspé, which I am more familiar with of course, are getting poorer.

I did not address the next point previously, but it would have been interesting for the federal government to look into the possibility of giving these fishers a capital gains exemption similar to the one granted by the Government of Quebec.

If we want to encourage people to continue in the industry, it seems important to me that a tax exemption be granted when, for instance, a father sells his fishing boat with all the gear to his son. This is done in agriculture and other sectors. A tax exemption would be important, and the Government of Quebec just announced it will be granting this kind of exemption to fishers to make the transition from one generation to the next easier and ensure that fisheries remain an industry. This was one of the points I wanted to address.

That is the position we have defended as members of the Bloc Quebecois. We want marine resources to be equitably distributed while respecting Quebec's traditional quotas. This does not mean taking from others what is theirs.

Traditionally, each of the Atlantic provinces was assigned a share of quotas, and we are asking that this share be respected even in the event of a reduction. The government should not start playing with the quotas of the individual provinces to try to please people right and left, as it did in the past, giving to the fishers in one province what it had taken away from the fishers in other provinces.

I think one of the worst approaches to managing the resource is to create divisions between the provinces. Perhaps it served the purposes of the federal government at the time, but to create divisions between the provinces that way in order to manage the resource is, in my opinion, one of the worst things the federal government has done in the past, and this has been done in certain sectors.

We in Quebec are asking that our traditional quotas be respected, and I touched on that earlier, quoting figures. The fact that quotas were not respected in the past is posing a very serious problem, particularly in Quebec and in provinces like Newfoundland. Because of the 1992 moratorium and the potential moratorium on cod, it is imperative to at least maintain traditional quotas in other fisheries. This appears very important to me, and it was one of the points I wanted to raise earlier.

Reference was also made to the Coast Guard. Personally, I did not make any reference to it, but there were extensive discussions about it in a debate held in November. Very clearly, the Coast Guard has been underfunded, and mistreated by the government; it has really taken a beating from this government.

For many years, the government did not make any investment in this organization, with the result that it now has to invest billions of dollars in it to improve the fleet and replace infrastructure, among other things. Sadly, it took the events of September 11 for the government to wake up and see that the Coast Guard was in terrible shape.

This led the government to decide to invest in an organization that, in my opinion, was completely inadequate, both on the east and west coast. We must remember that, for fishermen, the Coast Guard is important, particularly when boats are in trouble and lives are at stake.

This is important to the fishing industry and I believe the federal government should have begun re-investing in the Coast Guard much sooner and ensured that this organization had proper and adequate resources to operate.

Something else that I mentioned earlier is that we believe that the federal government must provide the sealing industry with access to the American and Korean markets.

As I mentioned to one of my colleagues, seal quotas cannot be continually increased without developing other markets. Of course, right now, the market is probably able to absorb the current quota of 350,000. This quota does not reduce the population and, as the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council said in one of its press releases in April 2002, and I quote,

Predation by seals continues to be the dominant sourceof exploitation on groundfish.

We are told that this 350,000 quota will not prevent the seal population from growing, but merely stabilize it.

As my time has run out, I hope I will have the opportunity to speak later.

[Fisheries, February 26th, 2003]

Madam Chairman, why is the minister allowing dragging? I think that it is completely incomprehensible. I think that all fishers, whether they are lobster or crab fishers, would all say so. Drag fishing completely destroys the ocean floor and breeding grounds. It is simple, but I do not understand.

[Fisheries, February 26th, 2003]

Madam Chairman, that is exactly it. I will simply give Newfoundland as an example.

With the committee, in Newfoundland, we met their minister of fisheries and some of his predecessors, as well as industry stakeholders. What they told me—and I will never forget what I heard in St. Johns, Newfoundland—was this: since 1949, that is since they handed management of the fisheries over to the federal government, things have gone from bad to worse.

There is a reason for this. It is because the federal government was unable to manage the resource. It did not invest enough in research. We do not even know as yet what the real problems affecting the resource are, whether in the gulf or off Newfoundland, and in the Maritime provinces.

Someone has already brought up the seal question. Seals eat a lot, and my colleague has cited some examples, but do we know what one eats in a year? Not yet. There has not been sufficient investment in research for us to know that a seal eats x pounds of cod. What the scientists tell us is that there has not been sufficient research to provide an accurate answer.

There ought to have been sufficient investment, as soon as DFO was created and took over management of the resource, to provide proper knowledge of the resource so as to manage it properly. But that is not what happened. As one of my colleagues has said, the fisheries have never been of any great importance to this government.

It is no big deal to make 4,000 people unemployed tomorrow morning, or so we are being told.