Madam Speaker, as you are no doubt aware, this can be a heated debate when the hon. member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl takes the floor, because he was highly convinced and also highly convincing during the hearings held last week in Vancouver.
I will start by quoting from a report that very clearly describes the current situation. I will simply read the following:
The frustration of 1994 lies in the fact that no one, including the authorities, theexperts, and this Board, knows precisely what happened or how—
This quote describes perfectly the situation in 2004. But, it is straight out of the Fraser River Sockeye Public Review Board's 1994 report.
Therein lies the problem. I am asking the same question I asked the departmental representative; what did we learn in 1992 and 1994, to see history repeat itself, almost exactly, in 2004? As one historian said, history repeats itself, but never looks the same. Unfortunately, the impression we are getting is that history does repeat itself and, on the contrary, looks much the same as before.
What conclusion can we draw from what happened in 2004 on the Fraser River? First, I want to give a brief explanation to people in eastern Canada who are less familiar with the region. The Fraser River is over 1,000 km long. With its tributaries, it can be extremely difficult to get one's bearings. There are approximately 97 aboriginal bands, in addition to commercial and sport fishers, all along the river.
It is easy to imagine the distance that needs to be covered and the extent of the problem when there is a disaster such as the one in 2004. It affects many people and groups and, in my opinion, perhaps it could not have been avoided, given what we have heard, but it could at least have been foreseen. In fact, a similar situation had occurred in 1994.
So, I was wondering, and I still wonder, if the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is capable of remembering? Does it learn from the past? Can it manage operations based on past experiences? I get the feeling that it cannot, that it has no historical culture. Experience is something that, every year, has to be acquired all over again. Planning is done without consideration of what has happened or of past experience. These are a few of the things we realize when we look at the current situation.
We talked about this situation. We talked about the possibility that two million salmon have vanished. We have also met with scientists, and they cannot tell us today whether two million salmon have, in fact, disappeared. What is the figure? That is another problem. The scientists have told us that the infamous counter of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is not working correctly.
This is the extent of our knowledge, of our ability to understand the situation and an ecological system like the Fraser River. It is clear that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans does not even have the means to carry out serious, scientific studies so that we can have some answers.
Of course, hypotheses exist. Could the water temperature have affected the salmon run? Could it have killed a large number of salmon? Perhaps it was the stress caused by fishing. Or maybe the salmon, rather than swimming in a straight line, so to speak, had to work their way around obstacles, such as the setnets in the Fraser River, or other kinds of nets, and therefore tired themselves out more so that fewer and fewer reached the spawning grounds up river?
The scientists cannot answer any of these questions today and have only hypotheses. They do not have the means to carry out an in-depth study on the situation. We must therefore make do with guesswork.
The first thing needed for a solution to the situation is knowledge, in my opinion. At the present time, it seems clear to me that we lack scientific knowledge, and we will continue to do so until there is a major investment by this government and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in research. That is fundamental.
This is true for the eastern fisheries as well. I can speak about the western fisheries and about the Fraser River, but my remarks apply just as well to the situation in the east. Since 1993, Fisheries and Oceans budgets have been drastically cut back, particularly research budgets. And, again this year, we hear that the department will have to cut 5% from its budget, when it is already under-funded. What it needs instead is more funding, since we know that its key responsibility, its main role, is protecting the resource.
If I were a senior Fisheries and Oceans official, I would be tempted to say: they have given me a mandate but they have prevented me from carrying out that mandate by not providing me with the means to do so. That is what this government is doing as far as Fisheries and Oceans is concerned. That is how it is affecting knowledge about the resource. That is why we do not know what is happening with the resource. So knowledge is the first requirement.
The second is the public inquiry. I am not much in favour of that, or perhaps should say I am not in favour of a public inquiry, because I see it as again relieving the government of responsibility. The judiciary is being asked to come up with some conclusions, when the government should be doing so as it should be properly managing the resource. No inquiry is needed; everyone knows that the resource is badly managed and everyone knows who is responsible for that mis-management. There is nothing complicated about it. Everyone knows. That is the way it is in the east, in the west, in every part of the country where the resource is managed by Fisheries and Oceans.
I feel like talking about resource protection. I can give a very specific example of what the department is not doing currently in my region. With respect to the precautionary principle this government is applying to resource management, I will give a very specific example. At present, in Belledune, New Brunswick, an incinerator is under construction on Chaleur Bay to dispose of highly toxic material imported from the United States. It is not even meant to dispose of our own. This week, it was established by scientists that the release of dioxides and furans from this type of incinerator will cause considerable damage to resources in Chaleur Bay.
There is currently a dispute between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick about how to share the herring resource. Chaleur Bay is one of the main nursery areas for herring; that is where it grows up. This resource is now facing destruction in the long term, perhaps even the medium term, because it would take only a minor accident for the resource to be contaminated and banned for human consumption.
When we talk about accountability, the precautionary principle, prudence, the government has shown none of that. At present, it has the tools to deal with this problem, but is not dealing with it, under the Fisheries Act. With this act, it could deal with the situation in Chaleur Bay, but it does not.
I could give many examples. Another problem I have noticed on the west coast is that, when an accident happens, Fisheries and Oceans takes no part in any assistance plan. What should be done, really, when these communities are hit is to provide them with practical assistance. When people lose their livelihood overnight, they need practical assistance to survive. What people are asking for when fishing is closed or banned is an assistance plan for those affected, so that they can survive.
We asked for it in reference to groundfish and we went even further. I recommended an individualized service plan to the government at the time. I recommended that the government or public servants meet with each person affected and find out how to bring these people back into the labour force, because we know very well that at present the fisheries resource is not recovering as quickly as we thought. There is even some chance that the problems will last for many more years. Consequently, there are people who have left the fishing industry in the east and found themselves with practically no income. They have ended up working at little jobs for $7, $8, $9 an hour and have found themselves on EI at the end of the year and then facing the gap.
If that is how a responsible government operates, and if that is how responsible managers operate, the party opposite has missed the boat, not only on the Fraser River, but on the east coast too. It can be seen everywhere: in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland—which has been hard hit by the groundfish crisis—and in Quebec as well. In fact, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence there are many injustices and problems to be dealt with.
It is extremely difficult to resolve the Fraser River situation. There is no use in pretending that this can be resolved easily. There are 97 aboriginal bands and a multitude of groups of sport fishers and professional fishers. I asked everyone involved the following question: “If you all decided to sit around a table and talk, do you think this problem could get resolved? Do you think that we could resolve the allocation problems, that the resource could be shared reasonably and fairly, and that we could find a way for everyone to benefit?” The answer was yes.
However, in the current problem it seems that the government wants to divide and conquer. When there is a multitude of groups that do not agree, it is much easier to make whatever decision you want. That is what the government is doing. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the government would have a much harder time responding to and dealing with just one organized group representing all these people or a well-structured, determined organization of all the participants of the salmon fishery in the Fraser River.
There is another element whose effect is extremely difficult to adjust. I am talking about higher water temperatures. Is this the cause, as I stated earlier? Possible, say the scientists, but far from certain. Did the Fraser River's warmer water temperatures during the spawning season cause many more salmon to die? This question needs answering, but I do not think water temperatures are the sole reason.
We have also talked about overfishing. I do not think this is the sole cause, either. We have talked about poaching. I do not think this is the sole cause. However, I want to add something here. In my opinion—the parliamentary secretary talked about this earlier and did not seem to agree—the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has recently made efforts to increase surveillance so as to reduce poaching in the Fraser River.
Nevertheless, the current resources are clearly inadequate. I have said so before. We are talking about a river 1,000 kilometres long and its various branches. It is a huge territory to watch over, and I do not think that, realistically, the resources allocated to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, with respect to fisheries wardens, are sufficient to cover as large an area as that, and to cover all the activities on the Fraser River as well.
We have heard, as a result, that there is a lot of poaching. That cannot be 100% wiped out, but, if the necessary effort is made, perhaps 50% or 60% could be dealt with, and that would give the resources more of a chance. In the end, of course, it is the fishers who are penalized the most.
This is what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is doing. It is also a question I have asked. It would not even need to monitor this resource, because it deducts the percentage it has estimated for poaching. In fact, it deducts that percentage automatically before it awards fish quotas, which are the number of salmon that fishers are allowed to catch.
What the Department of Fisheries and Oceans does is deduct x , the number of salmon it knows very well will be poached. That penalizes all fishers, Aboriginal groups and the industry.
Those salmon are sold on the black market. Obviously, they could be traced back to the source. At present, methods have been proposed to eliminate most of the poaching. To do so, there is increased surveillance and perhaps a new way to trace the fish stocks. It is the same system that has been recently implemented for beef in Quebec. I think the rest of Canada ought to implement it as well, considering the crisis we have been through.
In conclusion, I do not agree with the creation of a judicial inquiry. We know the answer. We know who is responsible and who must take responsibility, and we have known that for years. We have known it since 1992. We know that the cuts have been hard on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We know that the department is responsible for the resource and responsible for managing it in the interest of the community.
In conclusion, in my opinion, agreeing to a judicial inquiry would be tantamount to relieving this government of its responsibility for this situation.