Peter Stoffer

[Tobacco Act, October 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, again I take great delight in listening to the the Reform Party member speak about his trials and tribulations when it comes to tobacco. Although I cannot verify the actuality of it, the member mentioned subsidization for tobacco farmers. Every time I hear that I think of the Stompin' Tom Connors song and “my back still hurts when I hear that word, Tillsonburg”, a great tobacco growing area.

Would the member and his party not agree that if that were so, we would have to assist these farmers in the production of another crop? Of course what is making the rounds these days and becoming popular is industrialized hemp which is non-cannabis. It would enable these farmers to grow an alternate crop which, as we know, is very good for the environment and very useful in various products such as paper and clothing. Would the hon. member not agree that it would be an alternative for these farmers?

[Criminal Code, October 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear the member from the Reform Party speak because he speaks with compassion from what he knows.

As the hon. member knows, we spend a lot of money in this country defending ourselves against the importation of contraband i.e. drugs and everything else. As I asked my question earlier to the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, I would now like to ask this member as well. Would the member not agree that part of the solution would be to increase our foreign aid to third world countries that make this contraband we are talking about? We should hit it right at the source. Would that not alleviate some of the problems we are facing?

[Criminal Code, October 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, again I comment quite favourably on the speech of the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, or New Glasgow to be more specific. I thank him for his comments. There are a couple of things I would like him to elaborate on if at all possible.

He speaks of the solicitor general but after the last couple of days, I think we should be speaking of the Office of the Solicitor General because we in our party more or less think of the current solicitor general in the de facto mode.

With regard to the responsibilities of the port police and what has happened in Nova Scotia and Vancouver regarding two major ports and the easier access organized crime now has to smuggle contraband items of any kind, whether they are drugs, weapons, forged money or whatever, those responsibilities are now merging with the ones of the municipal police or the city police of the area. Of course, I am in total disagreement with that. I really appreciated the idea of a separate police force or enforcement agency and that their business was strictly only that, not only in the two major centres but in the smaller centres as well, in the smaller ports.

He mentioned a concern about the drug trade and our cuts to foreign aid. Would he and his party not also agree that one way of reducing organized crime's efforts to bring in contraband drugs for example, would be for our foreign affairs department, our immigration department, CIDA, et cetera to give third world countries more access to capital? Their farmers and people in the agricultural industries, and I am thinking of Asia, Columbia and other third world countries, would then get away from their dependency on things like cocaine, heroin and poppy seeds and would be able to concentrate on more economic alternatives.

As he knows, the cuts to foreign aid to these countries have made these people very desperate for any cash or income of any kind. They resort to what we would call the criminal element and grow the cocaine and heroin that organized crime brings into our country. Of course, the effect of cuts to our military and cuts to our police allow organized crime to bring this contraband into our major ports as well as to our coastal communities.

Communities on all three coasts are being devastated by economic cuts in terms of fisheries and other related matters. People are moving away from those communities and we do not even have a civilian presence in some of these communities, which makes it easier for organized crime to do its job.

I would like the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough to comment, please.

[Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Implementation Act, October 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I first of all wish to commend the member for Davenport for his eloquent speech. I also commend him for the hard work he has done as chair of the environment committee and his long commitment to the environment.

My question is a historical one. In the last parliament the Liberal government changed the environmental laws to allow China to purchase nuclear reactors. Canada gave China $1.5 billion in loans to do that. Just recently we have made some agreements with Turkey. It is quite obvious that the Government of Canada historically and today has a very poor track record when it comes to nuclear conversations of any kind.

Does the member for Davenport agree with the government's decision to circumvent or change environment laws in order to pursue its nuclear policies?

[Petitions, October 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I rise to present four petitions on behalf of the communities of Lower Sackville, Jeddore, Wellington and Mount Uniacke in my riding.

The petitioners pray that parliament will enact Bill C-225, an act to amend the Marriages Act (Prohibited Degrees).

[Automotive Industry, October 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.

For 35 years the Volvo assembly plant has been in Halifax. It has now built a vehicle that has been proclaimed the number one car built in North America for two years in a row.

Because of Bill C-11, the auto tariff reduction bill, this money making plant is moving to Mexico, throwing 223 hard working Nova Scotians out of work.

Why are the Prime Minister and the Liberal government destroying auto industry jobs in this country? What are they going to do to help the 223 workers they have now put on the unemployment line?

[The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy, June 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, that is why, with remarks like that from the veterans affairs minister, the people of Atlantic Canada have no trust in the government.

The government has had six years to come up with a comprehensive package for the people on the east coast and those in Quebec.

Why is the government abandoning its responsibility for the people on the east coast? Why, in God's name, will it not do something for those people now?

[Oceans, June 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, June 8 marks the international day of the oceans. Coming from Nova Scotia, this day is very special indeed.

The ocean represents 75% of the earth's surface and unfortunately the human race and our government are systematically trying to destroy this very precious resource. By pollution, dumping of nuclear waste, overfishing and sloppy oil and gas explorations their track record is not very good.

Even today many of our fish stocks are in peril and the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people who live along coastal communities are in jeopardy. I urge this government and all nations to take action now to protect our oceans so that future generations may benefit from what our seas have to offer.

[Fishers Bill Of Rights, June 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the New Democratic Party and every single fisher person and plant worker that I have spoken to across this country, we want to thank the hon. member from Charlotte, New Brunswick for his private members' bill. It is absolutely fantastic.

It is rather shameful that a private member from the opposition has to introduce a bill of this nature. Even to have to discuss this bill is incredible. He basically wants the rights of fishermen and plant workers to be at the table when discussions or decisions are made on their behalf.

I wonder how much consultation the government did with Bombardier before giving it the largest defence contracts of all time. I bet it consulted big time on that. But when it comes to fisheries matters, there is no consultation at all.

The parliamentary secretary indicated the five principles under which the Department of Fisheries and Oceans operates. I would like to give the Government of Canada and those people listening today the five principles under which I think the DFO operates.

The fifth one is do not tell anything to anyone in a timely manner. Number four, pit one region against another. Number three, waste valuable tax dollars. Number two, put policies in place without consultation with those closest to the industry. The number one principle under which DFO operates is fatten up the bureaucracy in Ottawa and keep the minister in the dark. That is exactly what is happening.

It is unknown to many Canadians, but DFO has about 800 people working for it in Ottawa and I do not see anybody fishing in the Rideau Canal.

The territory of Nunavut has two million square kilometres. Guess how many enforcement officers are up there. For two million square kilometres, there are two. There are six parking lot policemen for the West Block and Confederation building parking lots. It is unbelievable where this government puts its priorities.

I will give the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans credit because it is due. He mentioned that the all-party Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans will come up with some serious and strong recommendations and preamble language to assist the government in what it should do for the future of the fisheries. I definitely agree with him on that.

Let us face it. Today in the papers there is talk about a crisis with the Atlantic salmon on the east coast. There is talk about a crisis with the salmon on the west coast. That is quite amazing because they are not supposed to join. The common thread is we have a crisis on the west coast, a crisis on the east coast and a crisis within our freshwater fishery in Manitoba and Ontario. What is the common theme of all these three? The DFO.

Mr. Speaker, do you want to know why since the day I was elected I have been calling for a public judicial inquiry into the practices and policies of this department? This department is completely out of control. It is absolutely out of control. It has no vision. It has no future. A good example of that is the so-called post-TAGS review.

In 1992 the government of the day put a moratorium on the cod and came up with the adjustment programs, NCARP, AGAP and TAGS. To this point $3.4 billion has been spent and there is more capacity to catch the fish today than there was when it started the moratorium. It is absolutely incredible.

I cannot understand why the government will not consult with fishermen when it comes to the allocation of quota, when it comes to the type of gear, when it comes to everything else.

Recently in southwest Newfoundland there was an announcement of a quota of 20,000 tonnes of cod. I would certainly hope that the government would work with the fishermen of that region on a sustainable harvest of that catch.

As we know, Atlantic salmon is in deep trouble. If big nets, big draggers or trawlers are used, it is well known what will happen. A lot of bycatch is going to happen and history shows that a lot of this bycatch will be thrown overboard.

Regarding the issue of TAGS, the fishermen and plant workers of the east coast have been asking and begging for answers from this government. The minister of human resources indicated to this House that there would be a report in place on post-TAGS. What do we get? We get federal officials gallivanting around Atlantic Canada presenting their new vision of the post-TAGS program. It is absolutely unbelievable that he would disregard all members of this House when it comes to such a viable issue. Obviously DFO does not listen to the fishermen and plant workers.

The 1983 Lockeport, Nova Scotia experiment with National Sea pumped hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into this company that just sucked the oceans dry.

In central Canada there is the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. With absolutely no consultation with the fishers of the north, it sort of picks and chooses who it wants to talk to and its policies are set basically on that.

I do not understand why this government has such an incestuous relationship with those people, for example, on the west coast in the Sport Fishing Institute. We have a classic example of Ms. Velma McCall. She used to work for the Sport Fishing Institute. She lobbied very hard for the Sport Fishing Institute to get an exclusion zone of commercial trollers around Langara Island. What happens a year later? This woman is now the ministerial assistant for the DFO on the west coast.

Tom Bird used to work for DFO. Guess who he works for now? The Sport Fishing Institute. The personal relationship between the hon. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Mr. Bob Wright of the Oak Bay Marine Group is absolutely scandalous. They pick and choose their policies, give them to their friends and under no circumstances do they consult with commercial fishermen of any kind or those people of the Coastal Community Network on both coasts.

It goes on and on. These are the types of people who will assist the government and DFO in new policies. They are Eric Tamma, Coastal Community Network from Ucluelet, Ross Helberg, the mayor of Port Hardy, Sam Ellsworth of Nova Scotia, Arthur Bull of the Bay of Fundy region, and Mark Butler of the Ecology Action Centre of Nova Scotia. These five people are just a small example of the experience and the expertise this government needs to listen to.

Again I have to say it is absolutely incredible that it takes a private member's bill in order to push this forward. I really encourage everyone on the Liberal side to take this bill seriously because it really is important and it is mandatory to involve the people who are closest to the resource to have their say in such a viable industry.

[The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy, June 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it seems that the successor program to TAGS has been decided by the federal cabinet. It is reported that the size and terms of the program were conveyed by the federal government to the provincial Newfoundland government yesterday.

This is an affront to members of the House who were assured they would be briefed on the content of the post-TAGS program by the minister of HRD.

The people of Newfoundland and Labrador also have a reason to be angry. First, TAGS is being wound up prematurely, a year earlier than promised. Second, rumour has it that sums involved in the new program are insufficient to address the scale of the human distress created by the collapse of the cod fishery. It does not appear that there will be a provision for a license buy back, traditional income support or early retirement packages.

Instead of a community based and administered program designed to help the fishers and plant workers of Atlantic Canada, the Minister of Finance and his officials concocted this plan so as to wipe their hands of this file. Their callous treatment of the people of Atlantic Canada will not soon be forgotten.