Shawn Murphy

[Fisheries Act, May 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my learned colleague for this question. He certainly is very knowledgeable on this issue. He has lived it, not only in his district of Malpeque, Prince Edward Island, but also as a former chair of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Ocean, which has spent quite a bit of time studying this issue.

He raises some good points, but I think he does agree with me that from a global context, although everything is not perfect and this implementation has not been perfect, by and large the whole implementation of the Marshall initiative by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has worked reasonably well. It is not perfect.

The hon. member raised one point about the whole issue of aboriginal persons on the water. Again, that is one of the programs on which I just reported about seven minutes ago. The minister announced last year that the department is trying to upgrade the skills and training of the aboriginal fishers so that they will better trained in the whole process of fishing. My colleague knows that we cannot take what we call a landlubber and put him at sea or the next thing we know we are going to have problems. People may think that fishing is easy. It is not an easy occupation. It is a hard occupation and it is a dangerous occupation, and one has to be trained to do it.

What has happened on the east coast is that a lot of fishing families have been at it for eight generations. A lot of the Acadian families started in the 1600s, so for them it has been 10 and 12 generations. A lot of these men--although a lot of women go to sea now--were trained by their fathers. A lot of them started as young men and have learned their training at sea. Again, that is the program the minister announced and it has been a good program.

He identifies in his comments the whole issue of the acquisition of licences, and the learned member is correct that the department, to meet its requirement under the Marshall initiative, is supposed to get two additional licences on the north shore of Prince Edward Island. The department has tried its very best but one of the problems, because of the acquisition by DFO of a number of these licences over the last number of years, and perhaps because fishing has been relatively good--although there are parts of Prince Edward Island where the lobster fishery, especially on the strait side, has not been good, but in the district that I call LF24 it has been relatively good--is that it has driven up the price of these licences pretty high, as my learned friend knows very well, and that has caused problems in acquiring these last two licences.

My learned friend is right. It would be better to have them spread out across the north shore. Hopefully that will take place.

[Fisheries Act, May 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for allowing me to rise in the House today to speak on this issue. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, I appreciate the opportunity to add my thoughts to what has already been said earlier on this bill by the minister and to show my support for Bill C-33.

I would also like to add my thanks to the members of the standing joint committee, co-chaired by the hon. member for Surrey Central, for their interest in this issue, and their very hard work and efforts in bring their concerns forward.

I have carefully read about and listened to the committee's concerns. They have done a lot on this issue, as has been stated in the House by the minister and I believe others. That committee has reported to Parliament and its report, issues, concerns and recommendations have been taken very seriously.

Specifically, the committee has made a case for the need for greater clarity and certainty in the Fisheries Act. That, it is my submission, is exactly what Bill C-33 would do. It would provide greater clarity and certainty on matters of legislative authority with respect to regulations that govern Canada's aboriginal fishery. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has listened and the government is responding.

The bill would expressly provide that the governor in council could make regulations respecting the method of designation where a licence was issued to an aboriginal group. It would expressly provide that breach of a term or condition of a licence issued under the Fisheries Act would be an offence.

The bill proposes a number of amendments. It would amend the Fisheries Act to expressly make compliance with licence terms and conditions a requirement under the act. It provides that the terms and conditions of prescribed licences issued to aboriginal organizations prevail over other regulations. It defines for greater certainty the term “aboriginal organization”. It would permit the governor in council to prescribe an entity as an aboriginal organization. It provides express regulation making authority for designation provisions.

What we are offered today is an opportunity to clarify the Fisheries Act. Before we act on this opportunity, I would like at this time to highlight the government's longstanding, and I should add ongoing, efforts to strengthen the involvement of aboriginal groups in the management of fisheries on all three of our coasts.

Over the years many programs and initiatives have evolved to allow the Government of Canada to negotiate with and work cooperatively with aboriginal groups in the management of a regulated fisheries.

As everyone in the House knows, in 1990 the Supreme Court of Canada issued a landmark ruling in the Sparrow decision. In that case the Supreme Court found that where an aboriginal group had the right to fish for food, social and ceremonial purposes, it would take priority after conservation over other uses of that resource. The court also indicated the importance of consulting with aboriginal groups when their fishing rights might be affected.

In response to this decision, DFO launched the aboriginal fisheries strategy. Among other things, the strategy provides aboriginal groups with an opportunity to participate in the management of fisheries, thereby improving conservation, management and enhancement of the resource.

I would like to step back and talk about the aboriginal fisheries strategy. When the Sparrow decision came down, followed by the other decision on the east coast, the Marshall decision, there were certainly questions raised as to how these particular court decisions would be handled by society in general.

There was a certain feeling in the fisheries community, and I guess society as a whole, that we would have chaos in the fisheries industry. The principles of the fisheries industry as they are governed, conservation of the resource, sustainability of the industry and the whole precautionary principle would give way, and we would have chaos and things would be very troublesome.

That is not the case. This has been going on for quite a few years now. I am a little more familiar with the issues on the east coast rather than the west coast. I applaud the people who implemented the strategy. In my opinion, this is a strategy that has worked. As everyone in this House knows, not everything in Ottawa works; however, this strategy has worked. I want to congratulate everyone who was involved in the implementation of the strategy.

On the east coast we have, I believe, 34 native bands. There are presently agreements with 32 of the 34 bands. Unfortunately, with respect to one band, in the dying days, March 31 to be exact, the agreement just did not come about. It is a little unfortunate but again, 32 of the 34 bands have signed agreements.

In each case, the band has been given access to the fishery. It has been done on a coordinated basis and these principles of sustainabilty of the resource, conservation of the resource, and the sustainability of the industry have been adhered to.

Again, everything is not perfect. There have been a few problems along the way. As recently as last week, I talked with the executive director of the Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association. I asked him specifically if in his experience the program had worked. He was very unequivocal. He said that it had definitely worked. He had nothing but good to say about the way this program had been implemented in that province.

Looking back, it has been a real credit to the officials in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans but also, and perhaps more importantly, to the band chiefs who negotiated these agreements.

My province, I believe, has 28 lobster fleets and two snow crab fleets. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would have many times this amount, probably in the hundreds. I do not have the exact number. When a community, whether it is native or non-native, has three or four lobster fleets and maybe a snow crab fleet, or another fleet, it not only provides employment and economic development, but it also enhances the whole economic and social fabric of that community.

The coastal communities on the Atlantic coast rely on these fishing fleets, and the native communities are no different than the non-native communities. So with four or five lobster fleets and a snow crab fleet, they need gas, they need workers, and they need people to make repairs. There is the whole issue of the sale and marketing of the products. Name it, it is there. We can see the economic development opportunities that flow from this strategy, which again I applaud.

To turn the page, and keeping pace with change in recent years, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has renewed the strategy. Part of this renewal has included the development of two programs introduced last year that continue to increase the opportunities for first nations communities involved in our fisheries industries.

First, the aboriginal aquatic resources and ocean management, AAROM, program supports aboriginal groups in areas where DFO manages the fisheries and establishes aquatic resource and ocean management bodies. It enables these bodies to obtain access to skilled personnel and related support that allows them to participate effectively in decision making and advisory processes.

The second initiative is the aboriginal inland habitat program. That program shares the same objectives as the AAROM program but focuses on fish habitat management in inland provinces. This program facilitates the engagement of inland aboriginal groups in activities of fisheries and oceans in the fish habitat management program, and of course we are talking about aquaculture and fish farm management.

It encourages new collaborations among aboriginal groups and helps us build established working relationships. It is not part of the policy discussions, but I would hope that what happened on the Atlantic coast, with the inclusion of the native bands and the established fishery, that it would serve as a template for other industries, perhaps forestry or similar court cases that come down giving native groups rights, albeit limited, to some of our timber resources. That is also something that I think the government and perhaps our aboriginal leaders should consider. I really think this is a program that has worked and should be emulated in other areas.

Very recently the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced new initiatives for aboriginal fisheries mentoring and training. The at sea mentoring initiative will help Mi'kmaq and Maliseet First Nations in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and in the Gaspé region of the Province of Quebec to further develop skills to fish safely and effectively in various fisheries.

Again, we can see some of the challenges and dilemma of this program. In certain instances people are now fishing who did not fish before. It is not something that one can just go and do. One has to be trained. There is experience involved. It takes time. This program that I reported recently talks about some of the initiatives that the minister is taking to enhance the level of training and skills that our aboriginal fishers will need to have when they utilize the licences that are presently owned by their aboriginal communities.

It will assist the first nations in diversifying the catch in the inshore fishery and improving overall fishing skills in the mid-shore fishery as well as learning vessel maintenance.

There are always going to be challenges and it is never going to be perfect. I see the two programs that I just talked about adding two new layers to the existing program which has been so successful.

At the same time, the minister announced a new fisheries operation management initiative that will support first nations in learning more advanced skills to manage the communal fisheries assets with the objective of maximizing benefits not only for the fishers but also for the coastal communities. I want to reiterate how important that is.

Both of these initiatives respond to the training, the mentoring and the management expertise requirements identified by the first nation communities. In addition to helping aboriginal groups develop skills and capacity, we have increased their access to the fishery and we have signed multi-year fisheries agreements with 32 first nations.

Clearly this government continues to do its utmost to ensure that aboriginal Canadians can participate fully in the fisheries, with conservation and sustainability being the top priorities.

Despite all of these positive initiatives, as everyone is aware, certainly people who follow fisheries issues, the management of fisheries is extremely complex. We see that in what is going on off the coast of Newfoundland as we speak. There is nothing simple about the management of fish. Issues around treaty and aboriginal rights add to this complexity, but I believe they are being handled in a good manner.

As I first said when I rose, we certainly very much appreciate the committee's concerns around clarity. We are taking actions to address the issues that it has raised. I should point out also that there has been considerable consultation with aboriginal fishing groups and other fishing groups and I understand that the bill has received broad support from all concerned.

It is clear that Bill C-33 fulfills commitments made to the standing joint committee and addresses the issues raised in its reports. The bill proposes greater clarity and certainty on existing legislative authorities, a key component in an orderly and properly managed fishery.

I urge all members of the House to join me in supporting Bill C-33, which I consider a very important piece of legislation.

[Fisheries, May 7th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, as I just said, this is being treated very aggressively as a priority by the government, the Prime Minister, and a number of ministers. It deals with our multilateral agreements.

Some 14 months ago we were talking about multilateral agreements. The opposition members led by their leader were screaming at us. They were telling us to turn our backs on international law, turn our backs on multilateral agreements, turn our backs on our international partners, and send our troops to Iraq.

We did not follow the opposition's advice then and we should be cautious about following it right now.

[Fisheries, May 7th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this issue is being taken very seriously by the Prime Minister, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, the Minister of Natural Resources and the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

What we saw yesterday was just a part of the continuum that is going on with air and sea surveillance, and international agreements.

The hon. member said yesterday that he thought this was a joke. If he thinks that for a fisheries officer to go on a foreign vessel for 35 hours is a joke, I say he is playing politics.

[Criminal Code, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in the House today to the motion to refer Bill C-32, an act to amend the Criminal Code, drugs and impaired driving, and to make related and consequential amendments to other acts, to the committee for hearings.

I believe I speak for everyone in the House and for the Canadian public generally when I say that everyone wants to propose the best legislation in dealing with this particular issue. The core of the legislation which is before the House is to change the Criminal Code so that police officers would have the authority to demand that a person who is suspected of having drugs in his or her body participate in standardized field sobriety tests, known as the acronym SFST. I see this as one more step in a continuum of tools that our police officers have at their disposal to deal with drivers who are under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

I practised law for quite a few years in Atlantic Canada. When I first started, the breathalyzer had only been in for four or five years. Anyone who is a little older than me can recall the tools that the police officers had at that time to deal with alcohol. They were the very tests that we have talked about here: touching the nose, walking a straight line, stooping over and the different tests that the police officers did at the time. Those tests did not give a very consistent or standardized approach. The trials were complex and complicated. The test results usually were fought by the accused because the success rate was certainly significant.

However, as time progressed, technology came to be and we developed the breathalyzer. There were certain problems with that, and then we had the offence of refusing a breathalyzer. This is all in the continuum as we deal with this very serious offence but we have been dealing with it for 40 years.

Although I will be speaking to this legislation, which is good legislation and I would ask my colleagues in the House of Commons to support it, I will point out that the Canadian public has dealt with the whole issue, not successfully, but there have been some successful steps made on the issue of driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. We also have had the penal sanctions and the publicity surrounding it.

However, when I look back, the best tool that the Canadian public has used on these offences, which we see so much with younger people in society, is that we have made the offence socially unacceptable. The statistics prove that this has lowered the incidents of the offence over the last 20 years, and especially over the last 5 or 6 years. We see with the younger people in society and I believe in every province that it is not socially acceptable to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Getting back to the legislation, it is a serious issue and it would give the police more tools in their arsenal to deal with a situation where a person is not so much under the influence of alcohol but is under the influence of drugs. In this case, the core of the government's proposal is to change the Criminal Code so that police have the authority to demand that a person who is suspected of having drugs on his or her body participate in the standardized field sobriety tests which I have talked about before.

If the person failed these tests, the police officer would then, on a consistent basis, have reasonable grounds to believe that the person was impaired by a drug, or in some instances by a combination of a drug and alcohol. The police officer would be in a position to demand that the person accompany the police officer to a police station where the person would have to submit to further tests administered by a drug recognition expert.

The bottom line is that once that happened, a bodily fluid sample could be taken. Then and only then, if the final bodily fluid test indicated clearly what the drug was in the person's system, the concentration of the drug could be indicated. The expert could then form an opinion as to whether or not that concentration of the illegal drug was such that the person would be impaired pursuant to the Criminal Code of Canada. That would all go forward to the courts and if everything were done in proper order and the safeguards were there, the person would be convicted of that offence.

This is not a new technology. It is not a revolution of the law. It is just a further step. It continues the whole process that we are working on in society. I understand that this was developed in California in the early 1980s. It found its way into Canada quite some time ago, at least nine or ten years ago. It is my understanding that there is now in excess of 100 officers trained as drug recognition experts.

The program began in British Columbia in 1995 and some drug recognition experts are now present, I believe, in most of the 10 Canadian provinces. The RCMP, in cooperation with other police agencies, is conducting a training program. We can expect these training officers to be present throughout the land within the next year or so.

That follows on a trend that was started 30 or 35 years ago with the breathalyzer. That was a very complicated instrument when it first came into play. More police officers were trained in the use of that instrument and it is quite commonplace right now.

Dealing with the whole issue of drugs and alcohol, I want to point out to the House the incidence of drug users in fatal accidents. A Quebec study determined that in excess of 30% of fatal accidents in that province involved either drugs or the combination of drugs and alcohol.

As I already pointed out, we do have the offence within the Criminal Code right now. It has been there for as long as I can remember. Driving while impaired by alcohol or a drug is currently a criminal offence and can result in severe penalties. The maximum penalty, I believe, is life imprisonment if the offence causes the death of another individual.

We talked about the tests which are the first step in the three-pronged process leading to the conviction of a person who has in his or her body a concentration of illegal drugs that is causing impairment. Police officers across Canada need this tool in their arsenal because we are ploughing new ground, so to speak. The whole scientific literature, the decided cases and the jurisprudence involving alcohol is very well established but is a little behind with respect to drugs.

In a lot of cases there is no scientific consensus of the threshold of the drug concentration in the body which causes impairment and makes driving hazardous. It becomes difficult when there are drugs mixed with alcohol, drugs mixed with other drugs, and illegal drugs mixed with prescription drugs. There are all kinds of cocktails. That is why we need this legislation. It would be so beneficial.

I urge all members of the House to support the legislation. Let us refer this important piece of legislation to committee, so that the committee, the House and subsequently Senate can move quickly on it.

[University of Prince Edward Island, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this Saturday, May 8, the University of Prince Edward Island will confer honourary degrees upon three outstanding members of Canada's Acadian community.

As members know, 2004 marks the 400th anniversary of the first Acadian settlement here in North America.

The individuals being honoured have each made exceptional contributions to the continued strength and richness of Acadian culture. They are: Mr. George Arsenault, a writer, broadcaster, historian and folklorist from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; noted author, Dr. Antonine Maillet, former chancellor of the University of New Brunswick, who won the prestigious prize in French literature, “le Prix Goncour”, in 1979; and historian and community volunteer, Francis Blanchard, of Charlottetown.

I have no doubt that the members of this House will join me in congratulating these three outstanding citizens for this award.

[Canada National Parks Act, April 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, Parks Canada has a very significant role in protecting, enhancing and expanding our national parks system, which, as I have stated, is a matter of considerable pride for all Canadians. I have mentioned the exit surveys taken of the tourists who visit our country and our national parks and the complimentary statistics toward our national parks system that come out of these surveys.

Again, though, the point I want to make is that we cannot take our national parks system for granted. A lot of parks, including the one in my province as well as Banff, are getting a lot of traffic, so there is stress. We cannot take these parks for granted. I understand that Parks Canada is aware of the problem and is being careful. We have to be very cautious as we go forward.

I am very pleased to see that the government is expanding our national parks system. This is something for our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. It is something that I urge this government and provincial governments to continue. This is a matter of trust.

One of the growing areas of the tourist industry is the area of cultural tourism, and these relationships that Parks Canada has formed with our aboriginal communities have hit the nail right on the head. When people visit our national parks they can see the interpretive centres that interpret the people who lived in this country before we lived here. I think it is tremendous. Not only will this be a good relationship with aboriginal communities, but I think it will be very beneficial for this country's tourism industry.

[Canada National Parks Act, April 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate today in the third reading debate on Bill C-28, an act to amend the Canada National Parks Act to remove lands from the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve of Canada and Riding Mountain National Park of Canada.

When this bill first came before the House, I guess in my own inexperience I would have thought it would have been done by an executive council order. However, upon reflection, I can see the importance of legislation dealing with our national parks and any transfer of lands out of our national parks.

As other speakers have perhaps said better than I can say, our national parks system is a jewel. A lot of the exit surveys of both domestic tourists and international tourists indicate very clearly that the reason they came to Canada and the most enjoyable parts of their visit to Canada were their visits to the national parks. Something we have to bear in mind as we go forward as a society is the importance of our national parks system.

I was very pleased earlier this year when this government announced that our national parks system would be expanding by the addition of five national parks.

I have a particular interest in this as I come from a province that has, not a large national park, but a well-travelled national park. We have the Cavendish, Brackley and Stanhope areas, and now the new extension in Greenwich. However, compared to these national parks, it is a tiny park but one of the highest travelled parks in Canada. This of course leads to new challenges and issues that the employees of Parks Canada have to deal with.

As has been said by other speakers, the national parks of Canada represent not only Canada's heritage of magnificent physical landscapes but they also represent ancient cultural landscapes. Many of our renowned national parks are the traditional territories of aboriginal communities with living histories that predate Canada by several millennia.

In the same way that non-aboriginal Canadians take exceptional pride in their national parks, aboriginal Canadians also want to feel that national parks are important and relevant institutions for their people and their cultures.

As do Canadians in general, aboriginal communities want to be meaningfully consulted and to participate in our national parks planning and in their national parks management. They want to see their ancient and present day cultures accurately and respectfully portrayed in park information and in some of the interpretative programs. They want to see that sacred sites are protected and that traditional ecological knowledge is reflected in resource conservation and in management decisions.

I am pleased to point out that Parks Canada has worked hard to improve relationships with aboriginal communities, especially aboriginal communities that we have seen in this particular case that live near the national parks system.

This effort is focused on two main points: making national parks relevant to aboriginal Canadians and making the cultural landscapes of national parks known to all Canadians, giving all Canadians the opportunity to learn about and to appreciate the people and the cultures they are visiting.

Pacific Rim National Park Reserve has taken significant strides in recent years to promote aboriginal initiatives, forging relationships and making significant efforts toward the meaningful involvement of aboriginal people in the cooperative management of the national park reserve. The results have been remarkable.

By way of illustration, I would like to highlight a few of these most noteworthy accomplishments. Pacific Rim National Park Reserve worked with the Ucluelet First Nation to develop the Nuu-chah-nulth Trail inside the national park. Opened in 2003, this interpretive trail provides extensive, on-site interpretation of regional first nations culture, history and language.

In June, the Ucluelet First Nation will again honour the opening of the trail by erecting the first totem pole to be carved and raised in the traditional territory of this first nation in 104 years. That is a source of great pride for this first nation community. This “welcoming” pole will greet Canadians and other international visitors to the trail and to the Ucluelet First Nation and the Nuu-chah-nulth traditional territory. It will symbolize the long history and continuing presence of the first nations peoples in this region and in the national park in particular.

On the West Coast Trail unit of the Pacific Rim National Park, Parks Canada funds an initiative called Quu'as West Coast Trail Society. A not for profit group, this society is a training and mentoring program for the three first nations along the famous West Coast Trail, one of the world's great recreational hiking routes. I believe the previous speaker gave a very detailed, illustrative description of this trail and how it is used both by Canadians from all parts of Canada and by our international visitors.

By engaging in the cooperative management of the West Coast Trail with Parks Canada, young first nations members are exposed to the full gamut of park management issues and training related to public safety, resource conservation, monitoring, and public interpretation. As a result of this program, first nations graduates have gone on to secure full time employment with Parks Canada, with other agencies and with industry.

I want to point out that there are seven first nations within the area encompassed by the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. A manager of aboriginal programs sits at the park management table and directs cooperative programs such as the promotion of first nations languages, cooperative training, the establishment of aboriginal national historic sites, and the development of aboriginal tourism opportunities.

By way of contrast, in 1997 there was no representation of first nations in the workforce of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Today, first nations represent some 18% of park staff in virtually every aspect and level of park management. This represents the approximate representation of the aboriginal people within the general area of that park.

There is no better indicator of the relevance of the Parks Canada program to first nations than their willingness to participate in the protection and preservation of one of Canada's great national parks. I believe this and certainly the two speakers who have gone before me have pointed this out. Parks Canada has placed particular focus on its relationship with the aboriginal people, and the record in Pacific Rim clearly indicates this action.

Bill C-28, which will withdraw lands from Pacific Rim in order to expand the Esowista Indian reserve of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation will further strengthen those relationships. It will also improve the quality of life for aboriginal people, a government priority identified in the recent Speech from the Throne.

I want to point out two additional facts that have been indicated by other speakers. This legislation has received broad support from the other parties. It has received support from the native bands that it affects. It has received broad support from the provincial government and other local governments. I believe that the people involved, the chiefs and the senior management of Parks Canada, deserve a lot of credit for the way this legislation was brought forward before the House. First I want to congratulate them and then I want to thank them.

Second, as has been stated, this allows some housing developments to go up on the adjoining first nations reserve, and also, before the land was authorized to be transferred, all the environmental concerns were addressed and mitigated, which I am glad to report.

I would ask all members of the House to support the quick passage of Bill C-28.

[Atlantic Canada Tourism, April 19th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the marketing efforts of the Atlantic Canada tourism partnership, millions of potential visitors are reading about the Atlantic provinces in publications around the world.

The partnership invests approximately $100,000 in media relations annually. As a result, in 2003 it generated media coverage worth an estimated $11.7 million.

The ACTP brings together the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and the tourism departments and tourist industry associations of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Atlantic Canada has a great story to tell. Thanks to ACTP, it is a story that we are sharing with millions around the world. As a result, this coverage will encourage more visitors to explore our Atlantic provinces.

We are all very proud of our rich Atlantic Canadian heritage and traditions. We are very pleased to be able to share them with visitors from around the world.

[Fisheries and Oceans, April 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, last June there was an unfortunate incident on Saturna Island where the wharf burnt. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the department have been working very closely with the community organizations. They are going to take over the management of the wharf. Yesterday, the minister announced that his department will replace the wharf.