44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 26, 2022 11:00AM
- Sep/26/22 2:44:41 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, a critical part of hurricane Fiona rebuilding is the damage caused to our fishing industry. Wharves are damaged and lost, fishing gear is ruined and vessels are totalled. Without this infrastructure, there is little economic opportunity for our coastal communities. Wharves are our fishing industry's Trans-Canada Highway. The poor DFO maintenance and management, raised in four parliamentary reports, made them vulnerable to destruction.
They are DFO's responsibility. When will the rebuilding of our wharves begin?
80 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 2:46:02 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, good wishes are not enough. If this happened on the Trans-Canada Highway, reconstruction would be happening now. There are only a few weeks left until winter sets in. We cannot wait weeks for assessments, months for design and permitting, months for tendering and months for construction. DFO needs to use its enormous power now to begin rebuilding now.
When will DFO do its job, support commercial fishermen and get to work?
74 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 7:36:35 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am very happy to see some degree of unanimity in our solidarity with the people of the Atlantic coast. It is very important that we all agree to help with the rebuilding as soon as possible.
The leader of the official opposition said that the government must act quickly and that his party would make sure the government takes action to achieve concrete results.
Once that is done, is it also not important to start getting serious about the energy transition to counter climate change, to slow it down and ensure we can adapt to it?
I spoke earlier with the Liberal critic responsible for waterfront development. Adaptation is necessary, but we also have to begin the transition in regions that produce fossil fuels, for example, while showing respect for local populations and investing in the transition.
Is it not time to stop building pipelines and start supporting the transition?
153 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 8:39:07 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I want to talk about the experience I have had in my riding in Grand Forks, where we had flooding in 2018. The regional district did a study as to what could and should have been done better to help the recovery process. There were things that came up as things that hindered the recovery and the rebuilding process. One was the inflexibility of the federal government in taking into account local solutions. The local governments were putting forward innovative solutions that would have helped people quicker and at a lower cost, but the federal government programs were totally inflexible. Four years later, the City of Grand Forks is still waiting for the full amount of money that was guaranteed to it, and those people are very frustrated.
130 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 11:07:06 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, we need to be able to do both: adaptation and mitigation. We need to be able to do that, recognizing challenges coastal areas face, but we also have urgent and critical needs around the rebuilding of wharfs and other coastal resources that our local industry and communities depend on.
We have had many hurricanes and other storms in the past that have caused damage from time to time, and one of the things we have to do to get industry, small business and communities back on their feet and individuals working again is make sure we have the right investments in community infrastructure that we can move forward and build together. That is something we are committed to helping our communities do, and we will stand with them every step of the way.
135 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 11:22:17 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, of course it makes sense to have resilient infrastructure, infrastructure that is fit for purpose and that can respond to these things as much as possible.
I am not an engineer. There are probably limits to one's ability to build for all possible events, but I would assent in principle to the idea that we should as much as possible, in the process of rebuilding and in the process of building up infrastructure, try to be prepared for and resilient against the possibility of storms and other kinds of weather events.
94 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
