Scott Simms

[Questions on the Order Paper, November 25th, 2009]

With regards to the employment insurance program two-week waiting period: (a) how many individuals who apply for employment insurance report finding a new job within the two week waiting period; (b) how much would it cost the government to eliminate the two-week waiting period for all claimants?

[Criminal Code, November 24th, 2009]

In the mouth.

[Committees of the House, November 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the quintessential point of that question, and a good question it was, is that about two years the Conservatives signed this deal and realized that they had not achieved what they had set out to do. They analyzed everything to try to pinpoint some way they could needle through the words and come up with a way of saying they had declared custodial management without even ratifying the thing.

They found themselves in a situation where they were going to unilaterally, and again that is the point, extend that boundary beyond the 200 nautical miles. It is quite clear. It was said. It was written. They have created this little co-management arrangement by saying that they are in charge, but they are not in charge. They did not even formulate the original wording of how this is going to be done. It was the idea of the EU, the European Union. It was its pen that did this. So it was utter deception on the part of the Conservative Party.

Here is the situation. The Conservatives once said that there is no greater fraud than a promise not kept. Well there is a greater fraud. It is not keeping their promise and trying to pretend they did.

[Committees of the House, November 23rd, 2009]

It has been twelve and a half years. My apologies. Mr. Speaker, he has spent twelve and a half years on the fisheries committee and has seen the east coast of the province in my riding several times over.

In 1992, the cod moratorium was announced. Upwards of 700 to 800 people employed in the local fish plant in Bonavista as well as several hundred people just down the highway, 1,200 to 1,300 individuals in the town of Port Union, which is now Trinity Bay North, were affected. These stories are a tapestry of how the people relied so much on it, and not just the people but the community. It was so sacrosanct to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is about the community that thrives and makes that province what it is today.

Therefore, this situation of the collapse of a resource such as it is gives us an idea of how devastating it can be. Now we find ourselves in a situation where we want to take control of our own destiny. One way to do that is to control the resource from which we feed, and that is off the east coast of our province up to 200 miles out. That is the reason issues such as these amendments have to be turned aside.

[Committees of the House, November 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague knows all too well, despite being in Nova Scotia but having spent the last 12 years on the fisheries committee, and I hope I have that number correct--

[Committees of the House, November 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour for me to rise today to talk about this particular issue. As my hon. colleague has pointed out, this issue has been going on for quite some time, for the past two years, since the agreement took place in 2007.

I would like to start by congratulating the individuals who first brought this to our attention, the four retired individuals who my colleague from Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte mentioned earlier, people such as Bob Applebaum, Scott Parsons and of course, Gus Etchegary, in Newfoundland and Labrador, and their committee.

Over the past two years this has become a simmering debate that has now come to a head right in this House, which is where it should be. I think the House will cast its judgment on this. I hope the government will realize in this particular situation that it should seriously consider the amendments that are put forward in this House.

Certain countries have already looked favourably toward it. One has ratified it, in the form of Norway. Other countries are currently going through this process. For us, it is a situation where we have our country straddling some very precious fishing grounds, spawning grounds, the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, in particular. What we have here is a situation where it goes beyond our allotted 200-mile limit which was established for us in the late 1970s.

I think of two individuals in particular I would love to hear from in this debate. Unfortunately, they have departed and may God rest their souls. The two individuals I speak of would be the late Hon. Don Jamieson and the late Right Hon. Roméo LeBlanc. They fought so hard and so well for an issue that meant so much for the east coast of this country, and certainly for my province when they established that 200-mile zone off the coast. It is certainly to their honour that we speak of this issue today, whether one is for or against this subject.

Now we talk about NAFO, founded in 1979, on the tail of what was the International Commission of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, more commonly known as ICNAF. The NAFO website states, and this is very interesting:

NAFO's overall objective is to contribute through consultation and cooperation to the optimum utilization, rational management and conservation of the fishery resources of the Convention Area.

When I say “convention area”, I mean the northwest Atlantic.

To say that we have had our problems with this particular convention is perhaps a mild understatement.

Just a few days ago, we heard testimony from former federal fisheries minister Loyola Hearn. I can safely say that he was one of NAFO's most vociferous opponents. Whenever this House would talk about NAFO reform in earnest, the former fisheries minister and, by extension, the Conservative Party at the time, spoke so badly against NAFO that we were led to believe it is the worst thing that happened to the industry on the east coast of this country.

Is that part of the debate today? No, it is not. However, let us keep in mind that all of a sudden, this particular government is now pushing the virtues of what is NAFO. It is doing it by saddling up to an agreement that, in essence, I feel, gets it off the hook, as it were. Here is what I mean by that.

In 2006, that particular party, now the government, decided it wanted to extend the 200 miles. In its literature, the Conservative Party told the people of this country, and it certainly told the people of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, that it was about to extend 200 nautical miles, therefore becoming a complete, exclusive Canadian jurisdiction. In return, what we got was a deal whereby it figured that it had achieved, through some kind of nuance, just that. But now, all of a sudden, we find ourselves in a situation where, after two years of compiling evidence, many of us realize that it has done just the opposite. By trying to extend a management zone beyond the 200 nautical miles, what it has done is relinquished its own sovereignty within that particular 200 nautical miles. In other words, it wanted to push the door open but, unfortunately, the door came back in.

For a government that prides itself, as my hon. colleague pointed out, on exclusive rights, sovereignty over the north and the Northwest Passage, this is a hard pill for it to swallow in this particular situation.

That is why we rise here in the House today. That is why we express the concerns we have in this debate here in the House, and now go forward with a vote so that the will of the people can be heard and certainly the will of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The government states that it cannot see any situation in which it would invite NAFO to come inside the 200-mile EEZ, or the exclusive economic zone. If that is the case, why have Canada's negotiators agreed to this clause in the NAFO amendments? They defend this particular measure in the new amendments by saying that it can happen only by invitation, which begs the question why it is there.

I have a theory. I think it goes back to several years ago when the European Union decided that because of the situation in the North Sea and other parts of northeastern Europe, in which several states are bordering each other and things get confusing when the 200 nautical-mile rule is used, they have come up with a common management regime. The European Union has taken this common management regime and applied it to us, and the mistake we made was saying yes to that. That was the mistake. It is not the same situation. We are bordering the high seas here.

This is a situation in which boats from member states of the European Union, such as Spain and Portugal, are over here in the Northwest Atlantic. We are talking about Canada and the high seas. This is not the same management regime. They are trying to force that upon us, and the government has accepted it. The government wanted to say to this country that it did what it said it would do. Promise made, promise kept was its slogan, and in essence, it has given up far more than what it could have imagined itself.

The...Minister called this “improved decision-making” and stated that this will provide some protection for Canada's current allocation percentages.

In the short term, it is questionable.

The cost to conservation is, apparently, an acceptable casualty to improve our chances of maintaining our allocation percentages. Canada could have demanded both, a 2/3 system to protect the existing quota shares, and a simple majority system to promote conservation, but this did not happen.

At a time when Canada is trying to protect, as I mentioned earlier, the sovereignty of the north, we must consider that the sovereignty of the Atlantic coast is something that is paramount here and something that we feel is being threatened. Hopefully this House will pass judgment on that.

This is very important for us and for Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as for the east coast of Quebec. It is very important for the whole country.

For Canada and for ourselves, we must say to the entire region, to the entire international community, not just the people associated with NAFO but the entire community, that there is a move afoot around the world to go toward more international management regimes. We are seeing it in many jurisdictions around the world, through the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Bear in mind, however, that the issue of sovereignty has to be maintained for that one individual state, and this is what we are trying to do today.

They have made the straight giveaway of management within this jurisdiction that was so sacrosanct and that fought so hard for the past 30 or 40 years. We find ourselves in this situation today, and I hope that following this debate, changes will be made, certainly that an attempt will be made.

Just recently, last week, I attended the Bonavista fisheries symposium, and we talked about how there are certain things that just do not add up in this particular situation off the east coast. Only so much shrimp is being landed and brought to shore in the east coast of this province, and yet only a fraction of that is being processed. People are asking why. A lot of people have questions.

A lot of people need the answers. Today I hope that we are going to provide enlightenment in this debate and provide people with the opportunity to see what is happening with these NAFO amendments, why we should debate them and why we should cast our opinion to vote this down.

[Radiocommunication Act, November 17th, 2009]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-482, An Act to amend the Radiocommunication Act (voluntary organizations that provide emergency services).

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed my honour to bring to this House today, and for debate in the future, an act that will provide some financial assistance to thousands of volunteer organizations, across this country, that provide their services in emergencies.

By emergency services that we talk about in this bill, we mean fire, ambulance, search and rescue, and other related services provided in an emergency situation. What this bill will mean for the voluntary organizations is that they will not be charged a fee to be issued a radio licence. Again I remind the House that this could save these volunteer organizations, that have so little to rely upon as it is, a lot of money.

I would like to personally thank Chief Vince MacKenzie of Grand Falls-Windsor Fire Department, who is also the president of the Association of Fire Services in Newfoundland and Labrador, for his assistance on this bill.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, November 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague mentioning the situation in Newfoundland and Labrador, certainly when it comes to Abitibi.

Would he illustrate why, with this fundamental legislation, and other legislation, such Bill C-50, it is important to do something else in addition? A lot of that has to focus on upfront benefits, such as less hours and the two-week waiting period about which he spoke so passionately. I agree this should be considered. However, in this situation, the government has done all of it on the back end and it has done it piecemeal over the past year and a half. Now all of a sudden it is in a situation where it is forced into providing benefits all in the back end, nothing upfront.

Could the member illustrate, and perhaps he can allude to the study that was done by the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst, and talk about what needs to be done with regard to EI legislation on the front end of enabling people to find additional income?

[Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, November 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things the Conservatives keep talking about is the idea that we did not support Bill C-50 for the extension of weeks. I would like to point out to them that in 2004 with respect to a similar matter, a five-week extension, they voted against that, so therein lies yet another backflip. It is unbelievable in this situation because now all of a sudden there seems to be this self-effacing realization that EI is the way that they are going to endear the people of Canada when in fact they have denied all these benefits for so many years. We have bills such as Bill C-50 which could have been done a long time ago. This particular bill, as my hon. colleague from Scarborough Centre pointed out, they could have done a while ago. Now all of a sudden they keep forcing these people into doing what they promised they would do.

My colleague is an independent businessman and I respect him for it. He is a great man. He is a great speaker, hours of entertainment if nothing less than that. I mean, the man is just so diligent it is unbelievable. I am not even being paid to say these things. If I lived in his riding, I would campaign beyond belief.

I want the member to tell the House about his experience as an independent businessman and just how the Conservative government is trying to pull the wool over our eyes by pretending to be a compassionate voice of EI.

[Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, November 5th, 2009]

Now what do we have?