Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to be in the House today to speak to this particular hoist motion.
For people in the House who might not know about Labrador, it has an area of 112,000 square kilometres, much of it coastline. I grew up in a community of about 45 to 50 people that was and is a fishing community, like so many others dotted along the coast of Labrador.
Our family has fished and continues to fish both commercially and recreationally for food and sustenance, and for hundreds of years now, back to my Inuit ancestors. We know about the sea and how important it is, not only from a personal perspective, but from a cultural perspective as well. We know how important the sea is. We know how important the fishery is to our livelihoods.
Over many hundreds of years, the Métis of Labrador, of which I am one, the Inuit of Labrador and the Innu of Labrador have taken care of the fisheries resources. We have been good stewards of the fisheries resource in our area because we knew it was for our livelihood. We knew it put food on our table. We knew it was there to sustain us day in and day out. That comes from our very strong value system in Labrador and our aboriginal people. That same value system, I would say, is shared by non-aboriginal people in Labrador as well.
We have a history around the fishery. We have a history around the sea. We know what it means to us in an integral way, not just in a political debate, not just to make hay over it, not just to score political points. We know how integral the fishery is to our communities.
When we see the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans introducing such a substantive bill, an omnibus bill, which sort of deals with everything in the Fisheries Act at the one time after 138 years, we have to wonder why he is in such a rush to get it through. Some of us would say that he is just trying to make history, that he wants to be the minister who changed an act that is 138 years old. That is what it seems like to us. It seems like the minister just wants to get himself down in the history books without any care for the people who are going to be impacted, without any care for the people and the communities that are going to have to deal with the changes, and without any care, really, for the fisheries resource itself.
That is one reason that I can see for this sort of swift action on the part of the minister. He is trying to bring the bill into the House and jam it down the throats of politicians and subsequently try to jam it down the throats of fishers and all those stakeholders who depend on the fisheries resource.
The minister and the Conservative Party talk about transparency, accountability and openness. I can safely say that I have been on the wharves and I have talked to people in the fishing industry. I have talked to the fish plant owners and the fish plant workers, all of whom have a say in one way, shape or form. I also have talked to conservation groups, aboriginal groups, commercial fishers and recreational fishers.
I have talked to a whole range of people who are involved in the fishing industry and they knew basically nothing about what was coming down the pipe. They knew there were some policy reviews years ago. They knew that the minister was going around having chats with this group and that group. But they did not know that this bill was coming down with the substantive changes that are in it.
That government over there talks one thing and walks something else. The government does not want to listen. That is evident not only around this particular Fisheries Act, the way it has implemented it, and the substantive changes it has brought before the House, but with other issues as well.
We only got a look a couple of weeks ago at the government's changes to student programs and all the new criteria that nobody knew anything about. The government had to change its mind on that and start approving people and organizations. The Conservatives have made mistakes time and time again. This is certainly one of the mistakes that they have made when it comes to accountability and openness. There has been no openness when it comes to Bill C-45.
The Conservatives talk about consultation. It is hard to find a group out there that will admit that they have been consulted on Bill C-45. My colleagues in the other party have said that they wanted a list. There has been a so-called stakeholders list provided by the government regarding consultations.
If we look through the list, all it says is that a letter has been sent out, a phone call has been made, a letter has been sent, and the government calls that consultation. Sending out a letter and notifying people that the government is bringing in a bill with all of these changes is the government's idea of consultation. The people do not even know what the changes are and how the changes will affect them.
It is unconscionable that the government would talk about consultation, provide some kind of list and all it does is make a phone call, leave a message and send out a letter. There is not even any indication that the people have received the letters, the messages and are responding in any type of substantive way.
From a Labrador perspective, and I would think that this is the same throughout the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and Atlantic Canada that there is hardly a group, a fishing enterprise, a processing company, a union representative, an aboriginal group, a coastal community or any other, that was consulted. They may have been talked to but that is not consultation.
Consultation comes with obligations, time and information. There is a legal duty to consult aboriginal groups, as the minister rightfully knows. From the groups in Labrador, I have heard nothing that would indicate that there has been any effective consultation with the three aboriginal groups, the Labrador Métis Nation, the Labrador Inuit Association which is the Nunatsiavut government, or the Innu Nation, on the proposed changes to the Fisheries Act.
It would seem that this whole issue around consultation that the government purports is a sham. It has not consulted and in fact one of the government members just in the last few minutes admitted as much. He said that we cannot talk to people before the tabling of a bill. Even Conservative members of the House are saying that there has been no consultation on this particular bill. That is what was admitted to by the member from the west coast.
In terms of the bill itself, it talks about downloading responsibility. The act seems to not firm up or strengthen environmental regulations but basically it would weaken them.
Of course we all believe in the principle and concept of conservation. We have to conserve our stocks in whatever form, whether they are in the ocean ecosystem or in inland waters to make sure they are healthy and there for all time to come.
We have seen basically an example within Bill C-45 of the government's disregard for the voice and opinion of those in the fishing sector. Being from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, we saw the row in the province when it came to the sale of FPI. No agreement could be reached. Communities on the island portion of the province were waiting, left out in the cold because the government could not respond regarding the sale of FPI and how the quotas were going to be handled.
The bill talks about cooperating with the province and of downloading some responsibility to the province and that type of thing, but the latest examples from the government show that it cannot even get along when people's livelihoods are at stake in communities like Burgeo, Marystown and the Burin Peninsula. The government talks one thing and does another.
The government says that we could have effective consultation once the bill goes through second reading and ends up in committee, but knows itself that we cannot make substantive changes to the bill once it is in committee. We can basically only talk about what the government has already decided to do and the changes that it has already put into being in this particular bill. The government knows that.
Again, it seems to me that the Conservatives want to use procedure now to not hear the voices of those in the fishing industry and to not hear the voices of those in our communities.
The Conservatives want to basically use a strong-arm tactic to basically say to the people in our communities to take it or leave it, that what the government decides is good for them and that they must accept it. The government is saying the communities have to swallow it hook, line and sinker. I am speaking now for the people of Labrador.
We also have many quotes from the minister. There is one where the minister says “we don't want endless consultation”. Nobody is asking for endless consultation. We only want some type of consultation with people in our industry.
The minister says “people want concrete action and they want it now”. He talks about that in relation to changes to the Fisheries Act and Bill C-45.
I can say to the minister that when people on the coast of Labrador and on the coast of Newfoundland who were stuck in ice during the seal fishery this past spring, who had their boats damaged, who could not get out and get a seal pelt to earn some money to put food on their tables, when all of that was happening and when there is still an ice crisis in the sense that even a fishery that was supposed to open cannot open because of the ice conditions, we called for action. We called for action in this House. We called for action in the committee. There have been calls for action on the open line shows by the union, by the fishers and by the industry itself.
What has the minister done? Nothing. He calls for action. He says, “We want action on Bill C-45”. I would say that fishers back home want action when it comes to some kind of help around ice compensation. People have been going without a cheque now for six and seven weeks. There is no money to pay the bills. There is no money to make the payments that need to be made. We called for action on something that is concrete and on something that means something to the people in our communities, and he has not moved an inch from what we can see.
The minister says he is going to do it. He says he is going to study it. He says he is going to gather information on it. That is what the minister says he is going to do and then he may take some action.
He is better off using that type of rhetoric when it comes to Bill C-45. Go out and gather some information. He should listen to the people, consult with them, understand the implications that this bill is going to have, first of all, for our ecosystem, our fish resources, and then our fishers and those that depend on the resource.
While I am at it I should say to the parliamentary secretary that we would like to see some action on ice compensation. This is what the fishers have asked for and the minister has not done it.
The minister is saying that he wants to see some concrete action on Bill C-45, yet he has gone about it all the wrong way. We cannot get action when we need it from this particular minister.
It was the same thing only a few months ago when my Liberal colleague from P.E.I. had to force the minister to put more money into small craft harbours. The minister was not taking any action on small craft harbours.
The Conservatives felt so ashamed of themselves, so downtrodden, they felt that they needed to do something to make themselves look good so they put some more money in. It was only after my Liberal colleague from P.E.I. shamed them into putting more money into small craft harbours.
The Conservatives seem to want action on Bill C-45 above everything else. When we ask them to take action on something that is concrete and meaningful on specific issues, they only pause and sit there. They pause and sit there while people go hungry, while people are looking for some assistance from this particular minister and this particular government.
It would point to a party and a government that does not understand Atlantic Canada, does not understand the fisheries, and is not willing to respond in an adequate way when it is asked to respond.
It is only appropriate that I and my party support this hoist motion. It is only appropriate that we hear the voices of the fishers and those in our communities who are going to be affected by the changes in Bill C-45, allow them to have a say, to have some input, and to understand the consequences of this particular piece of legislation. Is that too much to ask?
We ask the government, what is the huge urgency in this? What is the huge urgency? The bill has been with us for 138 years. If we are going to make changes, why do we not do it right?
There is urgency when it comes to ice compensation. There is urgency when it comes to small craft harbours. There is urgency when it comes to some kind of regulatory reform and vessel size, which I understand the minister has put some effort into. There is urgency to protect the fish and the ecosystem, but I do not believe there is any urgency to ram through Bill C-45 without due process, without proper process. We certainly do not want the bill to be rammed through with the flaws that we have observed in it.
I call upon the Conservative Party to do the right thing for a change. I say to the Conservatives that for once in the last 15 months of government they should listen to what the people have to say. Listen to what the people have to say because it concerns and affects them.
It is incumbent upon the minister to do so. The minister is from a fishing province, but sometimes he is like a fish out of water when it comes to his own portfolio. He is in some sort of airy, up there type of strata and does not have his feet planted on the wharf. He is not listening to what people are telling him.
I say to the Conservative Party that it should support the hoist motion. It should take the summer, early fall, have effective consultations and come back with a bill that makes sense, that all parties, the fishing industry and communities can support. The hoist motion just makes common sense. It is what the people want and it is time for the Conservative government to listen.