John Cummins

[Fisheries Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to address this particular issue again tonight. It is an issue of considerable concern back home. One of the difficulties we have had in British Columbia is the whole notion that somehow or another the management of the fishery was out of our control, that decisions were being made on which people did not have the ability to make proper comment and that decisions being made were simply onerous and at times expensive for the fishermen involved.

Let me give the House an example. Our problem today is with the ability of the government to put conditions on a licence and then to impose sanctions on that condition. The sanctions, as we have suggested, could involve fairly substantial fines, time in jail or the seizure of the vessel and fishing equipment. Those are all significant penalties for breach of a licence condition. The problem with licence conditions is that we fail to provide the proper scrutiny for those regulations.

I just want to walk through the process. The Fisheries Act is the big Kahuna of the management of the fisheries. It is the body of law from which all the other authority derives. It advises the minister of his responsibilities and obligations and so on. It limits the responsibilities the minister has and it defines them very clearly. For example, in section 43 of the Fisheries Act, it states:

The Governor in Council may make regulations for carrying out the purposes and provisions of this Act and in particular, but without restricting the generality of the foregoing, may make regulations--

It then goes on to list a whole host of regulations:

(a) for the proper management and control of the sea-coast and inland fisheries;

(b) respecting the conservation and protection of fish;

(c) respecting the catching, loading, landing, handling, transporting, possession and disposal of fish;

(d) respecting the operation of fishing vessels;

(e) respecting the use of fishing gear and equipment;

The list goes on. It is fairly precise and yet at the same time it is open-ended and it does give the minister a fair amount of latitude to operate.

However, once that is said, in making the regulations that will apply to the fishery, the minister has certain steps to follow. To begin with, he has to provide a committee of cabinet with those proposed regulations which would then be subject to some scrutiny. That scrutiny is fairly well outlined in the Statutory Instruments Act.

For example, in the Statutory Instruments Act it suggests that there must be an examination of the proposed regulations. It states that the regulations must be presented in the usual way in both official languages and so on and then it states:

3.(2) On receipt by the Clerk of the Privy Council...the Clerk of the Privy Council, in consultation with the Deputy Minister of Justice, shall examine the proposed regulation to ensure that

(a) it is authorized by the statute pursuant to which it is to be made;

(b) it does not constitute an unusual or unexpected use of the authority pursuant to which it is to be made;

(c) it does not trespass unduly on existing rights and freedoms and is not, in any case, inconsistent with the purposes and provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights;

and (d) the form and draftsmanship of the proposed regulation are in accordance with established standards.

It is fairly onerous, if we will, as regards the kinds of oversight that are carried out before that regulation comes into effect.

If the bill is acceptable by cabinet, what happens next is that the bill is gazetted, printed and then comments are invited from the public.

I have an example from October 1, 1998 of regulations amending the fishery general regulations. It lists the regulations. As we go down through the document, we come to a regulatory impact analysis statement. The minister is required to provide this regulatory impact analysis statement. It first describes the regulations and then goes on to suggest what alternatives may be in order. It talks about the benefits and costs of the particular regulations that will be there so that this thing is not just thrown out without those safeguards. It then talks about the consultation that took place, the compliance and enforcement that would be required and that would include the fines. It then gives the contact person in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Let me give an example of when we simply have licence conditions attached to a licence.

All of these requirements under the statutory regulations and, in particular, this regulatory impact analysis statement are foregone. They are not part of the process.

For example, on the gillnet fishery on the west coast, gillnetters are required by law to have a revival tank on the vessel. The purpose of the revival tank in the Fraser River fishery, for example, is if any coho are caught the coho, which we are not supposed to capture, are to be put into the revival tank and maintained there until they are fit to be put back in the water and then their survival would be ensured. That is the purpose of the revival tank. That, on the surface, makes sense.

However the government has done this by licence conditions and it really has not looked at the impact of this. These revival tanks cost somewhat better than $1,000 for the average tank. For a fisherman who last year only fished 39 hours and maybe only made $3,000 or $4,000 with his licence, $1,000 is a lot of money. The worst part of it is that fishermen are required to have that revival tank on their vessel in July and August when there are no coho in the river.

We have a case in British Columbia now where a fisherman was charged for not having a revival tank on his vessel in July simply out of spite. The bureaucrats were upset with this fellow because he had been protesting some of the actions of the department and was not satisfied with it so the bureaucrats used this section. They told the fisherman that because he did not have his revival tank in operation they were going to take him to court and march him through the process. They told him that under the terms and conditions of the licence he had to have the tank in operation whether it was needed or not therefore he would have to pay.

That is the kind of outrageous authority that I do not think we should be giving these bureaucrats. I do not think that is what is called for and I do not think it is what Canadians want or expect.

I think the Ontario minister and, unfortunately, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters were in receipt of communications from the federal minister about this particular bill. The minister put the fear of God into not only the Ontario minister but the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and all but told them that if these regulations were not in place and the committee's disallowance report went ahead, the government would not be able to manage the fishery and it would to be over. It would have to shut the fishery down because it would be impossible to manage without being able to attach conditions to a licence. The government said that in the absence of licence conditions the commercial fleet would be unmanageable, it would not be able to control the species taken, the amount taken, the gear used, the time for fishing and the location of fishing.

In fact, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters said, “otherwise the protection currently in place through regulation for the $7 billion a year sport fishing industry will be unable to address the species of fish taken, the amount taken, the type of gear used and the timeframe and location of that activity”.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. For example, the Ontario fishing regulations talks about restrictions. No. 16 states:

No person shall engage in angling within 25 m of a cage in which fish are held for culture or a pound net.

No. 17(2) states:

A person who is angling from a boat may use two lines in the waters of Lake Erie, except in Rondeau Bay and the Inner Bay of Long Point Bay.

The Ontario minister is under the impression that the fishery cannot be managed without licence conditions. Well they do it in the regulations in Ontario already. That is just one example.

In No. 17(5) it states:

A person who is angling by trailing lures or baits behind a fishing vessel that is in constant forward motion created by muscle, motor or sail power may use two lines in the following waters:

(a) the waters of the St. Marys River west of 83°45'W. in Division 17; and

(b) the waters of Division 23, excluding

It goes on to list some exclusions.

In No. 18(1) it states:

--no person shall engage in angling through the ice with more than two lines.

In No. 18(3) it states:

No person shall engage in angling through the ice with more than one line in the waters set out in the table to this subsection.

The table is extensive. They are all doing things in the regulations which the minister in Ontario tells us that if Bill C-52 is not passed, they will not be able to do. Well they are doing it. It is just that these guys do not want to be bothered with open government and accountability.

The bureaucrats do not want to answer for the licence conditions that they put forward. Somehow they think it is okay for bureaucrats to put in place licence conditions which can result in imprisonment, large fines or the seizure of fishing vessels or fishing lodges if one is a sports fisherman, and I find that to be particularly reprehensible.

I responded to the Ontario minister of fisheries in a letter on July 8 in response to letter he sent to our fisheries critic on June 7. My friend, the parliamentary secretary for natural resources, read a good part of the Ontario minister's letter into the record. My letter read:

With respect, your response indicates that your office may not understand the objections of the Committee. The objection is not whether your Department’s objective is wise from a policy perspective. Its sole concern must be whether s. 36(2) of the Ontario Fishing Regulations is authorized by the Fisheries Act.

That of course is the issue. I also told the Ontario minister in my letter:

Furthermore, you seek to have Parliament amend the Fisheries Act to give your Department the ability to launch such criminal proceedings against fishermen who might breach a term or condition established by your officials.

I went on to say that the scrutiny of regulations committee has already refused to endorse such a course of action. On April 14, 2004 it warned:

Our acknowledgement that the amendments...would resolve the Committee's objections to the legality of the relevant regulatory provisions does not imply an endorsement of those amendments.

Particularly as regards the proposed section 10(1), which would impose a legal duty to comply with the terms and conditions of a license, we can conceive that some Parliamentarians might object to subjecting such non-compliance to penal sanctions that include imprisonment. To deprive a citizen of his liberty on the ground that the citizen has failed to abide by a requirement imposed by a public official in the exercise of administrative power, such as a term or condition of licence, could be thought undesirable as a matter of legislative policy.

I do not know of anyone on this side of the House who does not subscribe to that point of view. It is highly inappropriate for someone to end up in jail because he or she was not in compliance with a regulation that was put in place by a fisheries bureaucrat as opposed to a regulation which was authorized by this place.

The fisheries minister in Ontario is simply asking Parliament for an authority that it has never granted to departmental officials. It is worth underscoring that this authority that is being asked for is one that simply has not been allowed in other places. As I said earlier, the Library of Parliament could find only two instances where regulatory schemes or conditions to a licence would be sanctioned by someone other than Parliament and without parliamentary scrutiny. They were in the airline industry and in the nuclear industry, but there are public regulatory bodies that are overseeing those industries, and in fact, there is full public disclosure.

The parliamentary secretary was suggesting that parliamentary scrutiny would still be available, but section 10(2) contained in clause 1 of Bill C-52 makes it very clear that the regulations referenced in section 10(1) will not be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. That is a deep concern.

I suggested to the minister in Ontario that he has two options available to protect the fishery in Ontario. He could continue to impose terms and conditions on a licence and employ licence sanctions as an effective means of censure. In other words, he could withdraw the licence for a day or two days, or simply suspend the licence if that is his wish. That course certainly would be available to him, or he could develop and seek passage of regulations to replace existing licence conditions.

Certainly that is the route I would prefer to see, regulations to replace these existing licence conditions. We have this public process in place to oversee those regulations, to get public input and to ensure that not just the special interest groups are heard, and those special interest groups may simply be the commercial fishing industry or the sport fishing industry or some such other body, but to ensure that the public at large has the ability to respond. That is important.

Quite often, as my friends down the way have been suggesting, on these fisheries issues the public at large has a very real interest in protecting the fishery because of the historical and cultural significance that maintaining a sustainable fisheries has.

Although the bill may be very small and does not quite fill a page, it is of huge significance. It is one that we certainly should not be supporting.

[Fisheries Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the issue at hand here is about the ability, so to speak, of the Ontario minister to enforce the regulations that have been put in place. Of course the scrutiny of regulations committee made it clear that there was still an ability to enforce the regulations. It may take a different form, simply, but it is still there. I think that is an important aspect of the issues we are dealing with.

The minister in Ontario would have us believe, of course, that he is not going to be able to regulate the fishery on a whole host of issues. We do not buy into that. We are concerned that regulations that are going to be put into place by a bureaucrat could result in a fisherman doing jail time, being the recipient of a very large fine or in fact losing his vessel. We find that particularly offensive.

The point I would like to make is that the Ontario minister has a couple of options available to him. He can continue to impose terms and conditions on a licence and may employ licence sanctions as a means of censure. That is there in the act and he is able to do that. Nothing in the disallowance report or in the committee's report would have prevented that, so he has that ability to impose terms and conditions on a licence by means of censure. In other words, he can withhold licence privileges for a day or simply seize the licence.

The alternative is that he can develop and seek passage of regulations to replace the existing licence conditions. That is another option available to him. Of course to me that is the obvious choice. It is the choice I would like to see because it is the most open choice and it is the choice that allows for public scrutiny of what is happening. That does not mean to say we are going to catch every incidence of bad legislation or bad regulations being brought forward, but that does mean to say the opportunity is there for members of the public to make comments if they wish.

To me it is this whole notion of the public having a say in this process that is important. As well, this notion that somehow these bureaucratic regulations could result in jail time is what I find particularly offensive. I wonder if my friend would agree with that.

[Fisheries Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I fully support the comments of the member opposite on the Devils Lake issue. What we have is a government which is prepared to get tough on fishermen in a very arbitrary way, yet refuses to get tough on our neighbour to the south when our watersheds are going to be devastated by environmentally irresponsible actions on the part of the U.S. That has to be troubling for us all. I can assure my friend across the way that he certainly has the support of members of the Conservative caucus on steps that could be taken to address that most important issue.

I would like to get my friend's comments on a couple of items with regard to Bill C-52. The first is that we asked the Library of Parliament if it would investigate whether there was another area where government had used regulations or statutes in the same way as it is doing with Bill C-52. In fact, it was only able to find two other statutes where there were similar provisions. One was with regard to regulating nuclear facilities and the other was airlines. In both of those instances, the industries are governed by public regulatory tribunals and not by secret regulation, so they do not apply.

The Library of Parliament, in essence, was not able to find similar statutes where bureaucrats are allowed to add terms and conditions to a licence that could lead to jail time or forfeiture of fishing equipment and so on. I am wondering if my friend is aware of any.

The second point to which I would like to draw my friend's attention is something that he addressed in his interventions. I found that very intriguing. In the process of developing regulations, under the Statutory Instruments Act, the cabinet at committee is presented with a review of the proposed regulation. The regulation must be examined to ensure that it is authorized by the statute pursuant to which it is to be made; that it does not constitute an unusual or unexpected use of the authority pursuant to which it is to be made; that it does not trespass unduly on existing rights and freedoms, in other words, that it is not in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; and that the form and draftsmanship of the proposed regulation are consistent with what is expected.

There is some real scrutiny on any regulations that proceed under the normal process, a process which Bill C-52 intends to ignore.

I wonder if my friend would like to comment on the process involved in the Statutory Instruments Act, as well as the inability of Parliament to find similar situations.

[Fisheries Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my friend is wrong on several counts in his speech.

First, he says that parliamentary scrutiny would continue over the bill. However, if he reads clause 10(2) of the bill, he would understand that is not the case. It states very clearly:

For greater certainty, those permissions, leases and licences—including their terms and conditions—are not statutory instruments for the purposes of the Statutory Instruments Act.

In other words Parliament really does not have too much to say about the bill.

Second, he also suggested somehow or another that it would be impossible to enforce the Fisheries Act if this amendment went through. Let me again quote from the scrutiny of regulations committee report. It was talking about disallowance of section 36.(2). It states:

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.

The third point I would like to make is the member opposite attributed some concerns to the Ontario minister of fisheries and to Ontario Federation of Hunters & Anglers. In brief, he suggested that without licence conditions the minister could not regulate the species taken, the amount of fish taken, the gear used, the time for fishing and the location of fishing.

I would suggest that is simply wrong. If we look at the Ontario fishery regulations, those regulations quite clearly deal with those issues now. They talk about species taken, the amount to be caught, the location that the catch can be made and so on. The regulations in place already cover those issues.

However, as my friend from Winnipeg Centre is saying, what the government is trying to do is to avoid scrutiny of Parliament and make these regulations in secret without the benefit of gazetting so there can be public input and without the benefit of scrutiny of regulations examining those regulations to determine if they are in compliance with the intentions of the act.

Would my colleague care to comment on those issues?

[Fisheries Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my friend from New Brunswick Southwest and my friend from Winnipeg Centre have identified the real problem in the bill. The bill avoids parliamentary scrutiny. Very briefly I would like to show how the system works now. I think it works very well.

This was a British Columbia sports fishing regulation amendment. It actually came into effect on May 30, 1995. What is interesting about it is that the particular regulation amendment was gazetted in the Canada Gazette. As part of that gazetting a regulatory impact analysis statement was included. That impact analysis statement gave a description of what the bill did. In this instance it was to license people to fish for shellfish. It talked about the alternatives to the bill as well in this regulatory analysis. It talked about benefits and cost. It dealt with the benefits and the cost.

In the conclusion of the regulatory analysis it talked about the consultation. In this particular instance the consultation was with the sports fishery advisory board. It recommended that this regulation be put into place.

It went on to say that the regulatory change was prepublished in the Canada Gazette, Part I, on March 11, 1995. It was prepublished so that the public could comment on the regulatory change. It was noted that no comments or representations were received at the time, which is fine.

The bill met with approval; people did not feel it necessary to comment on it. Then most revealingly it gave the names of the bureaucrats who were responsible for the new regulation and whom to talk to.

That is a pretty open process. That is the kind of process we on this side are talking about that we think is appropriate. It opens up government and allows the light of day to shine in and does not give licence to some to act in any manner they may wish.

I wonder if my colleague would care to comment on that open process that is in place now and if that meets with his approval.

[Fisheries Act, June 6th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, it is a little late in the day on this but we asked the Library of Parliament to see if it could find similar provisions to what the government is proposing in Bill C-52. It found similar provisions in only two other statutes, one regulating nuclear facilities and the other regulating airlines. Both have regulations by public regulatory tribunals, not secret regulation abilities by federal bureaucrats.

This particular bill is away out there when it comes to anything that has ever been passed by the House. The House has never given that sort of authority to anyone.

I know it is late in the day and I am springing it on my good friend but I wonder if he would care to comment on that. As I said, there are only two similar statutes and both of those have public regulatory tribunals governing them.

[Fisheries Act, June 6th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, just in case the member opposite had not noticed, this is a partisan place. Government's job is to propose legislation. Our job on this side of the House is to find fault with it, if fault is there. We have found a very reasonable and legitimate fault with the bill. In fact the committee itself found this fault with the bill and we concur with the committee's finding. It is as simple as that.

I did not personalize this debate. The member opposite did. My comment back to him was that if he wants to shoot that way, I can shoot back and I do not mind doing that. I would prefer not to, but I will and he ought to know that.

The committee also said, and this is what is particularly disturbing about it:

In the event the Houses agree to revoke this provision--

--and it is talking about 36(2) of the Ontario fisheries regulations--

--your Committee would expect this decision to form a precedent for the removal of similar provisions in other regulations under the Fisheries Act.

That is troubling.

[Fisheries Act, June 6th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, yes, I was charged under the Fisheries Act for protesting the heavy-handed and illegal regulations that the government has put forward.

In fact, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, which the member sits on, found those same regulations to be illegal and advised the government that it lacked the internal fortitude to put a disallowance motion in the House because the committee at that time was dominated by Liberals who would not call their own government to account. That is the issue.

If the member can take a shot, I will take a shot. He is a lawyer and should know better. Perhaps if he was a good lawyer, he would be practising law rather than sitting here blathering on like he is doing right now.

Let us take a look at what the committee said. The committee said very clearly that the government can continue to operate the fishery without this particular provision. The committee made it very clear in a letter to the minister that its comments did not imply an endorsement of the amendments and said it could conceive that some parliamentarians might object to subjecting such non-compliance to penal sanctions that include imprisonment.

The committee went on to say that to deprive citizens of their liberty on the grounds that they have failed to abide by a requirement imposed by a public official in the exercise of an administrative power, such as a term or condition of licence, could be thought undesirable as a matter of legislative policy. I agree with the committee's statement. It is unfortunate that the member opposite does not.

[Fisheries Act, June 6th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, my friend is absolutely correct. The bill does not just affect the Ontario regulations. In fact, when we look at the wording in the bill, it talks about everyone acting under the authority of a permission referred to in section 4 or of a lease or licence issued under this act that would comply with its terms and conditions. The bill applies coast to coast to coast. This is not an Ontario bill.

I have spoken with commercial fishermen in Ontario and they are uncomfortable with the bill because it gives the minister some authorities for which there is no accountability. That is the bottom line issue here. As I said, under the current act there is openness and transparency. The government is committed to publish these regulations in an open way. They must be published in the Canada Gazette. However, under this bill, there are no limits on the nature or scope of the terms of conditions that can apply or be imposed on fishermen. There are no limits on penalties that can be imposed and the bill would remove the requirement to publish or make public the licence conditions that would apply.

That is simply wrong and I cannot state it enough. I find amazing the audacity of a minority government to bring a bill such as this forward. What do the Liberals think we are? They thought they could rush it through. They brought it in last week thinking they would rush this baby through so fast that the opposition would not have time to look at it. Well some of us have been around a little while, like my colleagues from the Bloc and across the way from the NDP, and we have seen this stuff before. We know what these guys are up to and we will not tolerate it.

[Fisheries Act, June 6th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, one would have thought that members on the government side would have been eager to now stand in their allotted time and defend their bill, but apparently that is not the case. To be quite honest, I can certainly understand why the members opposite do not want to stand to defend this particular bill.

Let us look at the bill. Bill C-52 amends the Fisheries Act to “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” under the act is an offence. This amendment is meant to make it easier for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to enforce the act, so the department says.

The issue here is that Bill C-52 was before this House as Bill C-33 in the third session of the 37th Parliament, and as Bill C-43, again in the 37th Parliament. Both of these bills died on the order paper. In a sense, it does not really take a whole of thought to understand why.

At the introduction of Bill C-52, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans suggested that the bill comes about because the Senate and House of Commons Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations tabled a disallowance report, and the government failed to respond to that disallowance report with substantive legislation.

There is a problem there. If we look at the backgrounder document that the government distributed to members of the opposition and others, we will see that it states that this bill adds a clause to the Fisheries Act requiring licence holders to obey conditions of their licence, effectively moving the regulation in question into the act and thereby obtaining permission from Parliament for such a requirement.

That particular phrase rather clouds the issue, because it does not really tell the story of what this bill would do. The government says it would like to have passed the bill in all its splendour this afternoon and alluded to the fact that it is “hurry up” and that if the bill is not passed the Ontario minister will be unable to manage the fishery.

It should be noted today that the scrutiny of regulations committee first advised the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in 2000 that the governing Ontario fisheries regulations were illegal, which means that five years ago the government was advised that these regulations were illegal.

The regulations governing the Fisheries Act and the act itself actually make up quite a good document. It is 137 years old, as some members opposite suggested today, and to be quite honest I think it is still quite a good bill. The bill itself makes very clear what the minister's powers are and it makes very clear what the minister's obligations are when it comes to protecting the resource.

On the offence side, sections 181 through to 184 make clear the procedures that government must follow if it is going to enforce the act, and I think those procedures are laid out in a very clear fashion for everyone to understand. The regulations that flow from that act are scrutinized by the joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons to ensure that the regulations are in fact consistent with the obligations as set out in this particular act.

Therefore, I do not have a problem with the Fisheries Act and neither does the Senate and House of Commons Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, which makes it very clear that within the act itself the government has the authority to manage the fisheries.

If Bill C-52 is not passed today, it does not mean the end of the world, as the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources suggests. It simply means that perhaps a little more work is going to have to be done by the bureaucrats to put in place appropriate regulations to ensure that those regulations are in compliance with the Fisheries Act and meet the demands of the act. That should not be too difficult for government to do. In fact, that should be the obligation.

I would like to now turn the clock back a little. My friend from Winnipeg will probably remember this issue better than most. I am referring back to March 6, 1986, and a speech in the House by the Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn, who was the President of the Privy Council at that time and the minister responsible for regulatory affairs. At that time he introduced in the House the citizens' code of regulatory fairness. He stated that it was a unique initiative based on the principle that Canadians are entitled to know in as much detail as possible exactly how government regulations are to carry out responsibilities. Citizens have a right to know the rules of the game and know that they will be fair.

That is what the citizens' code of regulatory fairness was all about. I will quote from the guiding principle of this regulatory policy. Principle No. 6 notes, “Regulation is legislation and, as such, will be brought more fully under the control of elected government representatives and subjected to more effective review by Parliament”.

Principle No. 7 of the regulatory policy stated that “the public has an important role to play in the development of regulation and the government will increase public access to and participation in the regulatory process while simplifying procedures and restricting legalities to the minimum”.

Is that not interesting? Back in 1986, almost 20 years ago, introduced in the House was a document which in fact I think speaks very clearly about what the government is not doing today and what it should be doing, the document being, of course, this citizens' code of regulatory fairness.

According to the policies and the guiding principles of this piece of legislation from 1986, it required public participation in the regulatory process and input from the public to ensure that the public fully understood the regulatory process that they were to be governed by and guided by, and that they had input. “Anything but” is the case today.

The code's purpose, as Mr. Hnatyshyn stated, was “to provide a high set of standards for ensuring regulatory fair play”. He said, “The code also provides an explicit basis for judging the performance of regulators. In this way, the code is intended to regulate the regulators”.

There is no regulation of the regulators in this particular bill. In fact, what the bill does is give the departmental bureaucrats, who visited upon the country the cod crisis of 1992 and who visited upon fisheries on the west coast the disaster of 2004, the ability to make regulations on the fly without public input and without the scrutiny of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. It gives them carte blanche to do what they want and to establish regulations as they see fit without any scrutiny whatsoever. For me, that goes beyond the pale.

I do not want to give the minister the power to have bureaucrats create regulatory offences without some safeguards; I am not prepared to simply turn over to fisheries bureaucrats the ability to make regulations governing the fishery without the appropriate scrutiny. I think that is wrong and I think that for this place to allow this to go forward is just outrageous. It is beyond the pale that the government would bring in a bill of this sort.

The citizens' code of regulatory fairness addresses this issue as well in point 6 of the code. It states that “the rules, sanctions, processes and actions of regulatory authorities will be securely founded in law”.

If a bureaucrat can make regulations on the fly, where is the guarantee that those regulations would be securely founded in law? Where is it? Where is the scrutiny to see that in fact the regulations the bureaucrat is putting in place are regulations that were envisioned by this place when the Fisheries Act and its amendments were passed? It is not there.

Point 7 of the code states that “the government will ensure that officials responsible for developing, implementing or enforcing regulations are held accountable for their advice and actions”.

Accountable? When have we ever held officials in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans accountable? Can anybody name one official in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who was held accountable during the cod collapse on the east coast or during what went on last year on the west coast? The crisis last year was about the fourth we have had since 1992 and nobody has ever been held to account.

In fact, let us look at one of the latest newspaper headlines: “Ottawa pays officials $32-million in bonuses”. There is also a graph showing us that 223 of 237 executives at the fisheries and oceans department received bonuses totalling $1.7 million. Those bonuses went to officials and executives of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans last year when those boys last year cost the economy of British Columbia probably $70 or $80 million, at a modest estimate, and maybe even as much as $150 million, also a modest estimate, because of lost opportunities in the next cycle of the 2004 fishery. In other words, in 2008 the loss to the economy of British Columbia could total $150 million, yet those guys received bonuses this year.

Where is the accountability? The citizens' code of regulatory fairness says that these bureaucrats should be held accountable. I do not see any accountability in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, none whatsoever. What I do see with Bill C-52 is the transference of this regulation making authority from the minister or from this place to a bureaucrat, without any scrutiny whatsoever, none, zero.

Nobody is standing there saying that this particular licence condition does not meet the demands or the expectations of the act. It simply says that the bureaucrat can put in place a condition and nobody has any right to challenge it.

If the issue is brought to court, the court would simply acknowledge that Parliament put that regulation in place and it gave that bureaucrat the authority to make that particular condition that is attached to the licence and nobody can do anything about it. The court will simply acknowledge that the bureaucrat has the authority and it will do absolutely nothing to protect the fisherman who is hurt.

As I said to my colleague earlier, if a fisherman who is hurt by that particular piece of legislation comes to a member of Parliament, there is essentially nothing that we could do short of trying to obtain some change to the act to rein the authority of the bureaucrat, but nothing else could be done.

Not one member in this place should find any solace in this bill, nor should there be support for it. It is beyond the pale and my wildest imagination why anyone would want to give this authority to the bureaucrats who caused the destruction of the 2004 Fraser River sockeye run or who were directly responsible, in many ways, for failing to serve notice at the very least to government that there was a crisis in the cod fishery on the east coast before it was too late. Why would we want to give these bureaucrats authority to continue to act with licence? I do not know. I just plain do not understand it.

Bill C-52 would make it a criminal offence to break an unpublished secret law written by unaccountable bureaucrats.

Bill C-52 would put no limits on the nature and scope of the terms and conditions that can be imposed on fishermen.

Bill C-52 would put no limits on the penalty, the breach of every secret term or condition that is punishable by imprisonment. The penalty is not tailored to fit the crime.

Bill C-52 would remove the requirements to publish or make public the regulations.

There is no requirement in Bill C-52 that everyone in a fishery should face the same set of licence conditions. There is no requirement that every fisherman would face the same sets of terms and conditions to fish, so that the fishery then could be tailored and there could be different rules for different people.

Regulations under the Fisheries Act make those who write regulations accountable to Parliament as a whole and in particular the scrutiny for regulations committee, as well as the fisheries committee. In Bill C-52 neither the scrutiny for regulations committee nor the fisheries committee would ever see this new form of regulation. This is not a scheme of regulations that was ever intended by the Fisheries Act.

The Fisheries Act provides for open, public and accountable regulations. Bill C-52 would remove that. These amendments would undermine that scheme of open, public accountability that is built into the Fisheries Act. When regulations are created under the Fisheries Act, they are published prior to going into effect so that members of the public can comment on them.

That will not happen with these terms and conditions. When regulations are created under the Fisheries Act, a publicly available regulatory impact statement is a legal requirement. There is no such requirement for a term or condition as proposed under Bill C-52.

Bill C-52 is simply a way for the minister and the bureaucrats to regulate the fishery outside the requirements of the Citizen's Code of Regulatory Fairness. It would substitute the regulation of the fishery through public accountable regulations grounded in law and would substitute instead a scheme of regulations by unaccountable bureaucrats, all done behind closed doors.