Peter Stoffer

[Statistics Act, April 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to seek unanimous consent of the House to make Bill C-312 votable.

[Remembrance Day, April 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all the individuals who spoke today in favour of the motion. I know I have great support from all the people who spoke.

I would be remiss if I did not include for the official record a couple of individuals who are sitting in the House today, my colleague from Winnipeg Centre and my colleague from the Alliance Party from Surrey North whose fathers were also part of the liberation of Holland. The father of my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, Lieutenant Jack Martin, was part of the liberation of Holland and the father of my colleague from Surrey North, Corporal Ernie Cadman, was in Apeldoorn during the liberation and ended up marrying a Dutch girl. As I always say, if people are not Dutch, they are not much, so he is half much.

I rise to ask the House to make this motion votable. I understand the role of the committee when it makes a particular bill or motion non-votable. It goes before six of my colleagues in committee and they decide yes or no. In this case they said no but I remind the House that what the committee said no to was the original wording of the motion. That has now been tossed out.

We now have a new reworded motion with the generous help of the heritage committee, the heritage department and the Government of Canada. They helped me rewrite this motion to make it more palatable, more accessible to the House of Commons and hopefully votable. We are not debating the original motion. We are debating the one the reworded motion which the House unanimously agreed to debate. In fact, the department of the Minister of Canadian Heritage was gracious enough to help me rewrite this motion.

Again, I thank all members who spoke on behalf of our brave men and women in our military, past and present, our civilian workers attached to the military, past and present, and all Canadians across the country who support our military men and women in their efforts to spread democracy around the world, as well as peace and freedom. At this time I seek unanimous consent of the House to make this motion a votable item.

[Remembrance Day, April 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for its generosity in allowing me to change the wording of the motion. The purpose of the motion is to make Remembrance Day a very inclusive event for civilians and our armed forces personnel from coast to coast to coast.

The other day we celebrated the 85th anniversary of those who lost their lives at Vimy. Just as important as those young men and women who lost their lives going over the top as they say, were those people who were left at home. Those people did know whether their loved ones had perished or were severely wounded either physically or mentally in the serious challenges of World War I, especially at the battle of Vimy. I could comment on many other battles but this particular one was really where Canada saw its growth as a nation. Our maturity as a nation basically started from that particular battle.

As members know, back then we did not have the instant communications that we have today. Part of the motion is to bring those people who kept the home fires alive into the remembrance part of Remembrance Day.

Soldiers cannot do their duty for the service of Canada if they do not have the support of their family, their loved ones and, just as important, the support of their community, their province and their country.

At the end of the debate I will be seeking unanimous consent to make the motion votable in order to allow the House to reflect upon the sacrifices made by our armed forces personnel, merchant mariners and all those people who participated in the war effort from coast to coast to coast. I am not necessarily speaking of the ones who went in ships overseas or flew overseas but those people who stayed at home as well.

I remember the Rangers in Newfoundland and Labrador who supported the war efforts, the coal miners of Cape Breton who supplied the energy needed to make the machinery, the farmers of Saskatchewan and all the prairie provinces who supplied the food and the men and women who worked in the plants, especially the women who worked in the factories. For many women it was the first time they had worked outside the household . That was an integral part of our victories overseas, not just in the first world war but also in Korea and in the second world war.

It is imperative for the House of Commons and the Senate to reflect again on the sacrifices made by so many people in the very serious times we are facing now. We have men and women serving in peacekeeping duties overseas in countries like Afghanistan. They have very concerned families at home. I am sure every member of parliament in the House today has some armed forces personnel from their ridings serving in some capacity, be it in the army, navy, air force, the cadet programs, administrative programs or in a more supportive role such as the legions or various associations across Canada. Millions of Canadians support our men and women overseas and our men and women on the homeland who are working to ensure that we have peace and security at home and abroad.

This particular Remembrance Day motion would not only reflect upon the sacrifices made by those in the past but would also continue to serve as notice that we appreciate the sacrifices made by those young men and women who have left recently. I think of members of Princess Patricia's light infantry and many others who have left Canada to go overseas in very difficult situations to preserve peace and freedom and spread democracy around the world. I can think of no nobler act than this particular motion in terms of remembrance.

I should advise the House of why the motion was changed. On Remembrance Day many schools and provincial buildings are open. In my ignorance I assumed that the federal government could tell provinces through an act of legislation to close their provincial buildings or schools in the act of remembrance.

I realize that the House of Commons or the federal government did not have that jurisdiction. Therefore with Heritage Canada, along with my staff, I was able to reword the motion to get it to a point where through a motion in the House we would encourage the provinces to act accordingly to what the House of Commons and the Senate would hopefully do in the very near future.

That is the purpose of the change. I thank the House and all members who are here today from the various parties for supporting that change, as well as yourself, Mr. Speaker.

On a personal note, I have talked many times in the House about my parents and my oldest brother who were liberated by the Canadian military in the liberation of Holland in 1945. In fact there is a member of parliament across the way who I serve on the defence committee with whose father was one of those liberators. It is always a great time for me because I know my mom is watching now. My dad unfortunately has passed on.

They indicated to me that any time I get a chance to rise in the House I should thank Canadians, their forefathers and foremothers, for the sacrifices they made for our freedom and the freedom of millions of Europeans in that time. We can never thank Canada enough for its sacrifices.

It is rather ironic that many years later I could actually stand in the House of Commons where those difficult decisions were made. Sixty years later we still reflect on whether it was the right decision or the wrong decision. Hindsight is 20:20 but regardless of a person's personal belief on whether the decision to send troops over was right or wrong, I am standing here as an example of the decision that was made to send troops in order that my parents could be freed.

In 1956 the decision was made to move to Canada. My father always said that with a military like that imagine what kind of country Canada was. In that era of 1956 employment opportunities around Holland and Europe were very slim, in many cases non-existent. The decision to emigrate from Holland and move to Canada was a tough decision but one made for the benefit of the family.

I know I do not speak alone. There are over 70 members of parliament here who were born in other countries and have relatives born in other countries. I know the sacrifices they made as well in order to come to Canada and be part of a great nation that we truly are, from coast to coast to coast.

I encourage again all members of the House to support the motion. At the end I will be seeking unanimous consent to make it votable.

[Remembrance Day, April 8th, 2002]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the national holiday on November 11th, Remembrance Day, be designated to remember the men and women of the Armed Forces and the Merchant Navy and all civilian groups who served in close support of the armed forces, all of whom sacrificed of themselves in the service of Canada.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my seconder from Winnipeg for sponsoring the motion.

Before I start on the particular wording, I did put a notice of motion beforehand to change the actual wording of the motion. I thank the folks at Heritage Canada very much for helping me along in this process.

I seek unanimous consent to change the wording of the motion and have the debate on the following amendment. I move:

That in the opinion of this House, the national holiday of November 11, Remembrance Day, be designated to remember the men and women of the armed forces and the merchant navy and all civilian groups who served in close support of the armed forces, all of whom sacrificed of themselves in the service of Canada.

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

It's time to take action.

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

And his colleagues heard it as well. The parliamentary secretary from Quebec is doing a fine job. They need to stand up not just for Canadians but for the fish stocks. It is the constitutional mandate of the Government of Canada through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to protect fish and fish habitat.

The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is from Nova Scotia. When he was appointed as minister he said that as his legacy he would like to leave the department in better shape than when he found it. It is very admirable of him to say that. However, his legacy will not be a very good one if more fish stocks go down or become extinct or are no longer available for commercial processing. His legacy will not be very good if more people leave the east coast to look for work because their traditional fishing industry has been downgraded. His legacy not be good if he goes to Europe and asks them please not to rape our ocean stocks any more, please be nice to our fish stocks. It is time to stop asking and to start doing.

The minister should put his foot down and tell the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister that we need to take this issue very seriously. The Prime Minister had a discussion with regard to softwood lumber. I am asking that he take this issue extremely seriously and not to slough it off as a problem that fish swim, as the previous prime minister has done. He should take a leadership role and stand up for that great province of Newfoundland and Labrador to protect the Grand Banks and institute custodial management of it.

At those meetings in September he should tell the NAFO countries that this is how it is going to be, either to clean up their act or we are going to clean it up for them. That should be the bottom line. On October 1 if the NAFO countries do not agree, so what? Take over custodial management and let the chips fall where they may. That would be responsibility. For a minister to say we should not do that or maybe it is not the right way to do it, I say so what?

How many more people have to leave the great province of Newfoundland and Labrador to look for work? He is the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans for Canada, not for Lithuania, Russia or the Faroe Islands. He should stand up for Canadians and protect the fish stocks. If he does that, he will have our full support.

He announced in the House that the ports will be closed to Faroe Islands fishing vessels. I agree and support that. Unfortunately some stevedore jobs will be lost because of that. That is fine. We can accept that. This is what we heard in Newfoundland and Labrador. We will support that decision. It is a reactionary decision. However, what is he going to do in October? I would like to ask the minister what the government will do on October 1.

I suspect that the NAFO countries will carry on with business as usual and we will stand back and say that we will have to have another meeting and discuss it further.

The fish stocks cannot wait. It is our constitutional obligation to protect the fish stocks for future generations. I encourage the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, the Prime Minister and all parliamentarians to support stronger action when it comes to protecting the Grand Banks.

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for St. John's West for bringing the debate to the House of Commons. I also thank the Speaker for allowing the debate to take place. It should have taken place a long time ago. However I am glad we are able to debate the issue tonight.

I will mention a couple of things. First, when we refer to the Flemish Cap and the nose and tail of the Grand Banks we are referring to something we call the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Let us remember that. It is the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. It is not the Grand Banks of Lithuania. It is not the Grand Banks of the Faroe Islands. It is not the Grand Banks of Russia, Japan or China. It is the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Second, in the early seventies former Prime Minister Trudeau said the problem with fish is that they swim. He was absolutely correct. In 1979 the hon. member for Winnipeg--Transcona who is from Winnipeg took time in his maiden speech to talk about overfishing on our high seas. That was in 1979. I thought I would let members in on that little historical fact.

The Liberal government and previous governments have ignored the issue to date. They have tried to use diplomacy when diplomacy has failed. It is time to take serious action. Atlantic cod stocks are in serious trouble. The wild Atlantic salmon is in serious trouble. The turbot or Greenland halibut is in trouble. The redfish is in trouble. There are a couple of reasons for this within our 200 mile limit but we know why it is so outside the 200 mile limit.

I applaud the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans for his words today. I know he is bilingual but he is talking out of both sides of his mouth. One minute he says we cannot take unilateral action because the rest of the world may be upset with us. The next minute he says we will take whatever action is deemed necessary. We cannot have it both ways. Either he will stand up for Canadian fishermen and the fish the planet relies on for its food source, or he will not.

Let us be clear. We are talking about extending the Flemish Cap and the nose and tail of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to the 350 mile limit to include the entire continental shelf. We are not saying all foreigners must leave. We are not saying the boats that operate in those waters must go. We are saying it is time we took over because NAFO has failed. It is time Canada took custodial management of the area to set quotas and enforce penalties. That is what my Liberal, Conservative, Alliance and Bloc colleagues on the fisheries committee heard. It is what we have all agreed to informally although we have not yet put it in our report.

On the subject of enforcement, the committee was in Newfoundland recently. I asked a gentleman from the coast guard how many vessels were patrolling the waters of Newfoundland and Labrador for fisheries violators. This was a few days ago. His answer was none. There were zero. Not one vessel, coast guard or military, was patrolling the waters of Newfoundland and Labrador to look for fishing violations. Their surveillance aircraft was on the ground. They do not have the budget to maintain that type of surveillance and enforcement.

Provincial Airlines Limited does contract work for DFO in terms of surveillance. It does a good job. However it has only one surveillance aircraft, sometimes two. It does not have the funding from the Government of Canada to do more surveillance. It is willing to provide the surveillance but the federal government does not give it the funding.

Why we do not unilaterally take over the continental shelf and tell the rest of the world what we are doing and why we are doing it based on the evidence before us? One reason is that DFAIT representatives appeared at the committee before we left and gave an entire 20 minute speech on why it could not be done.

My hon. colleague from Scarborough asked them a good question. He said it was the same argument they would have given the minister in 1976. He was absolutely correct. The government bureaucracy is timid, shy and nervous. I do not know why. The greatest advice I can give the minister is to completely ignore the officials at DFAIT. He should brush them aside. He should not return their calls. He should get rid of them. If that is their approach the people at DFAIT have absolutely no sense of responsibility. They do not care about the fish stocks off our east coast. If that is the analysis they give us it is absolutely incredible they are still employed by the Government of Canada.

In 1992 on behalf of Jack Harris, leader of the provincial NDP in Newfoundland and Labrador, we had a resolution before our convention. We resolved:

—that the New Democratic Party calls upon the Government of Canada to instruct their representatives at these conferences, to duly notify the participants that, unless overfishing on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks ceases by January 1, 1993, Canada should immediately take the necessary steps to assume custodial management of the fisheries in that area.

That was in 1992, 10 years ago. Today the foreign affairs minister was asked when he would ratify the law of the sea. He said not to worry, the government would do it. How many fisheries ministers and foreign affairs ministers have told the House of Commons they would ratify the law of the sea? We signed it 20 years ago. We are still waiting for the government to ratify the law of the sea. I do not want to sound partisan but it begs the question of how serious the government takes the issues we heard when our committee travelled to the east coast.

There was a gentleman here by the name of Mr. Tobin. We all know about the Estai affair. It looked good. He looked tough. He said he would protect the little halibut and turbot that were hanging on to the continental shelf by their fingertips. The reality is that the ship went back to Spain with all the fish and we paid the money. What did we get out of it? We put observers aboard foreign vessels. I do not know if members have seen a report from any of the observers. We got one in committee a few years ago that was all blacked out and whited out. We could not make out anything.

The countries that fish in the Flemish Cap and the nose and tail of the Grand Banks have their own citizens as observers aboard their ships. There are no Canadian observers aboard the ships to review their procedures. In many cases the observers' reports mean absolutely nothing because there is only one observer on the ships. The ships fish 24-7. That is one of the major problems.

We along with the hon. member for St. John's West are asking that we take custodial management and control of the entire continental shelf off our coastlines as quickly as possible. We need to assume full responsibility for the Grand Banks of Newfoundland so that we are the enforcers, managers and custodians. We would then look after the resource and divvy it up as we deemed necessary.

On a more personal note, since 1990 total landings for the sea fisheries are down by more than half a million metric tonnes.

I have some statistics from the great province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Since 1990, 40,000 people have left that beautiful province. The Burgeo, Trepassey and St. John's fish plants have closed. In Marystown the workforce is down from 1,000 people working 52 weeks to 650 people working just 26 weeks and they are lucky to have that.

I want to stress something very clearly. In editorials across the country there is the perception that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador who work in the fish plants want to work just long enough to get their weeks to qualify to go on EI. What utter nonsense. The mayor of Burgeo and others said at the committee that there was a time when people in that town worked 52 weeks a year at that fish plant. That is what the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are doing. For anyone to accuse them of being lazy is simply irresponsible.

Not only has the government given up on its responsibility for the protection of fish and fish habitat, it has also given up on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. We simply cannot go on with this any more.

At the fisheries committee I have raised an issue with DFAIT officials and other people. We are going back to NAFO in September and we are going to discuss our concerns. If the government is serious about having NAFO talks, those talks should be in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Bring the world to St. John's. Have those meetings there. With the evidence before them, Canada should tell them “If you do not resolve these issues on your own, we will resolve them for you”.

The government is going to have these talks in September. I ask the minister and everyone else. What will it do in October? The member from the Bloc Quebecois is absolutely right. It will probably talk some more. The time for talk is over. I am certainly not advocating gunboat diplomacy. That is wrong. I am advocating that the government show some backbone.

It is also unconscionable that the former minister of fisheries, now the Minister of Natural Resources, and the former Minister of Industry, Mr. Tobin, knew these infractions took place last September and nobody in the House was aware of it. Those two gentlemen, members of the cabinet, knew exactly what was going on and refused to tell anyone in the House or the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

What did the government do? In January it went to the NAFO talks in Denmark to express its concern. According to Mr. Pat Chamut we did not win a thing at those talks.

The minister himself has said “We will go back in September and talk about it again”. What is he going to do in October? If we could have asked the minister a question, my question would have been what will be done on October 1 to protect those stocks and protect the interests of Newfoundland and Labrador and the rest of Canada?

Not only that, the fact is these countries from overseas have absolutely no responsibility toward these stocks. By taking control of that, Canada will be doing them a favour. The management through NAFO simply is not working. It has failed. It was a nice try but it has failed.

We have jurisdictional responsibility for the ocean floor for 350 miles, but we do not have it above the water table after 200 miles. We are asking for that control.

When the member for Gander--Grand Falls was the committee chairperson, he expressed this same issue many times. I want to give credit where credit is due. I work on the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans in the Parliament of Canada and we are chaired by an outstanding gentleman, the member for Malpeque. He does an outstanding job for our committee.

If the government will not listen to the member for St. John's West, or to me from Nova Scotia or to my colleagues from Quebec or British Columbia, then I encourage the government to at least listen to the member for Malpeque because he heard the same thing we did.

[Species at Risk Act, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to debate Bill C-5 and the amendments in Group No. 4.

First I want to speak to hon. members on the Liberal side, especially my colleague from Bras d'Or--Cape Breton who just spoke about stewardship. He made a good speech if indeed that is what the government is providing, but unfortunately the government is not. It takes the members for York North and Churchill River to provide that stewardship. It is simply ironic and incredulous that two Liberal backbenchers have to stand in the House and literally yell and scream in order to tell the government that what it is doing is wrong.

It is unbelievable in this day and age that we are talking about the change of one simple word, the change of the word “may” to the word “shall”. When it came to the aboriginal consultative group, the original bill said that the government “may” do this, which means it will not do it. The committee got together and put in the words “the government shall establish”. The government has turned around and changed that again.

The member for Churchill River, my former colleague, says that the wording should be that the minister “shall” establish a council. That is exactly what this is about.

The fact is that aboriginal people, first nations, Metis, Inuit and Innu and many others, have a very strong knowledge of what goes on in terms of traditional knowledge of our natural environment. If we want to consult with anyone, it should be with those people. They are the ones who live on the land. In many cases their nutrition is supplemented by food off the land. They know what is best for the species. They know what is best for themselves.

It is absolutely incredible that I listened to two very good members of the Liberal Party turn around and basically aim their entire speech right at the front bench. It is one thing for us in the opposition to do that. That is what we are here to do. However it is wonderful, and it is quite sad at the same time, to hear the government's own backbenchers do the same thing.

I encourage my colleagues on the Liberal side, especially from Nova Scotia, and those across the country to review what the government has done and support the member for Churchill River's amendment because he is absolutely right.

Why do the aboriginal communities have a large distrust of the government? The government plays around with wording of that nature in order to avoid responsibility and leadership, not only in aboriginal affairs but in terms of our natural environment.

I go back to the work that the committee did, especially the work by the hon. member for Windsor--St. Clair and his other colleagues. They worked extremely hard. They also spent a lot of taxpayers' dollars to bring people from around the country to the hearings and come up with recommendations that at best were watered down. They were the minimum. Individual members wanted tougher language, stronger conditions to protect our various species and habitats, but through compromise the 16 members from five political parties got together and said “This is the minimum we can do, the very best. This is something we can all support”.

What did the government do? It ripped them up in a heartbeat, in record speed, which meant that all along the environment committee's work was a facade. That is what is really sad. People poured their guts into this report and worked extremely long hours only to have the government turn around with record speed and bring forward amendments which it has absolutely every intention of passing. It ignored the work of the committee.

If members of parliament on both sides of the House are frustrated at the government's action, imagine what the aboriginal communities, Metis and Inuit people must think, along with many others.

While I am on the subject of consultation with our first nations, what about consultations with coastal communities throughout Canada? Fishermen and fisherwomen in Canada's many hundreds of fishing communities know the waters they are adjacent to extremely well. They could tell us what is happening to our fish stocks, water temperatures, or the natural environment. The government does not want to listen to them. It only wants to listen to its own bureaucracy and delay the inevitable of accepting leadership and responsibility. It is a sad day.

I fear the five year review process will not have any merit at all. If there is a problem, the government will tell us not to worry, that a bit of jigging around will be done and it will do it in five years. Five years from now someone could stand in this place and say that five years previously a particular species existed but it has since gone. What would the government say then? It would say “We simply did not know. We did not have the right information at the time. Maybe we should have a royal commission and spend millions of dollars”.

The government could save a lot of time by accepting the committee's recommendations as is, which at the very best is the minimum. It should move forward to strengthen the bill in order to protect all species for future generations.

[Species at Risk Act, March 21st, 2002]

It should be. The hon. member is right.

When we see things like this going on we can only shake our heads in full dismay.

In conclusion, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Windsor--St. Clair, all the members of the environment committee and all the people who presented to the committee, to the Government of Canada.

I only plead and beg for the government to stop this nonsense, accept the amendments brought forward by the environment committee, move quickly to protect the species within our country and move forward to a proper balance of our environment for all our children and their children's children.

[Species at Risk Act, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the great people of Sackville--Musquodoboit Valley--Eastern Shore to address our serious concerns about the government's approach toward what should be one of the most important pieces of legislation the House ever sees.

Unfortunately the government decided to ignore its own parliamentary committee, the nine Liberals who sit on that committee. We appreciate that it will ignore us, but the fact is that it ignored its own people. The report of that committee was unanimous in its concurrence in terms of the proposed amendments.

The individual MPs did not do it on their own. They heard evidence from many learned people across the country who have serious and grave concerns about the condition of our environment and the species within that environment. They worked very hard.

I speak for my colleague from Windsor--St. Clair and for all other MPs from various parties who worked on that committee to hash it out. Anyone who works on committees, as I do on two full committees, knows it is very difficult to come to consensus or to put together a report that is unanimous in terms of its recommendations or the concerns it wants to move forward. This is what that committee did, only to have the government turn around and reintroduce its own amendments.

The government has made a grave mistake. The original bill came to the committee and the “deeming” section on page 7 read:

For the purposes of the definition “ wildlife species” in subsection (1), a species, subspecies or biologically distinct population is, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, presumed to have been present in Canada for at least 50 years.

The all party committee changed that to read that the definition of wildlife species now covers:

--a species, subspecies, variety or geographically or genetically distinct population of animals, plants or other organism.

That was not good enough for the government. It brought forward a motion in the name of the Minister of the Environment which reads:

That Bill C-5...be amended by replacing the following lines 11 and 12 on page 7 with the following:

“cies, variety or biologically distinct population of animal, plant or”.

Basically that means the government could say it will protect the Beluga whale in the St. Lawrence. However it will forget to tell us that there is a distinct population of Beluga whales in Hudson Bay. That population is genetically different and distinct from the one in the St. Lawrence. The Belugas in Hudson Bay are very seriously threatened by extinction. This amendment by the government will do nothing to protect them.

The government could say that it will do some protection in the St. Lawrence. It would be utter nonsense. All species in Canada should be treated with the greatest care. I just returned from a committee tour of the east coast. It was most unfortunate once again to hear very serious evidence of the raping and pillaging of our ocean resources in terms of fish stocks.

The government has not learned a thing from the cod crisis. Now the Atlantic salmon is in crisis. The turbot, the same fish Mr. Tobin bragged about in 1995, is clinging on by its fingernails. He is right now; it is hanging on. Another species, the redfish, is now in serious trouble.

What does the government do to protect those stocks? Absolutely nothing. It has learned nothing from the collapse of the cod stocks. Yet it calls itself fiscally responsible. After the collapse of the cod stocks $4.2 billion Canadian were spent readjusting the east coast fishery. It is still spending more. More and more species of fish are in serious decline. One of the greatest reasons for this is the serious overfishing within and outside the 200 mile limit of Canada's economic zone.

The other day we heard about a Russian trawler fishing within our waters and catching moratorium fish. We heard that Icelandic ships, which had a 67 tonne quota on shrimp and which should have taken no more than a couple of weeks to catch, were fishing for over 100 days on the Flemish cap. That can only result in a very serious decline in the shrimp stocks as well.

We found out the government knew in September that was happening. The former minister of fisheries, now the Minister of Natural Resources, and the former minister of industry, Mr. Tobin, knew very well that very serious infractions were happening on the east coast of Canada and they did absolutely nothing stop it. Thousands of people go unemployed, the biodiversity of the fish stocks is suffering as we speak and the government says nothing.

It pains me that the government ignores nine of its own members but it also pains me that it also ignores the scientific evidence of someone like David Schindler, a leading scientist and environmentalist in the country. He is not one for flippant remarks. When this man speaks he speaks wisely and cautiously. The government even ignores people of that stature.

It is unfortunate that we in the federal New Democratic Party cannot begin to even support the bill because of the serious flaws. We can only assume two things. Either the bureaucracy surrounding that department is completely inept and so out of touch that it is unbelievable, or the bureaucrats are giving clear information to their political masters and their political masters, because of their complete ignorance toward the protection of species within our environment, are overriding anything they are saying.

The tragedy of all this is that for every species we lose it brings us closer up the food chain to ourselves, and that is a tragedy and a legacy that we should not leave for our children's children.

It is unfortunate that the government continuously stalls, delays and thwarts any concentration of a consortium of effort of people working together to come up with long term solutions to protect the health of our country and the biodiversity of all the species within our country. I am simply beside myself as to why the government does that. Why is it so ignorant and arrogant when it comes to the aspect of this particular bill?

The people from that committee came forward with some wonderful amendments. They hashed out the bill and brought it back to the government only to have the government again thwart their very efforts. I have been on the environment committee many times and I can only imagine the frustration that those Liberals and the other opposition members who worked very hard on that must feel.

Why do we hear people from the Alliance constantly getting up and saying that committee work is a sham? In many ways they are right. I would like to disagree because I think committee work is a very valuable part of a parliamentarian's work.