SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 332 - Jun/14/24

Jun/14/24 12:30:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech and for having the idea of creating this day, which recognizes those who are truly on the front lines of the fishing industry. Their work is not often recognized. That said, we cannot overlook the lax approach, the inadequate management of the fisheries sector, and the lack of transparency of the department or its ill-timed decisions. Does my colleague think that this day will help make workers and their families a priority for his government?

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Context: House Hansard - 332 - Jun/14/24

Mr. Martin Champoux (Drummond, BQ)

Jun/14/24 12:33:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a quick question for my colleague, and I also want to congratulate him on taking the initiative to create this day. Fish harvesters, especially those from the Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands, have been feeling extremely frustrated, primarily over the management of quotas and fishing licences. Does my colleague think that a day like this one will raise the government's awareness about the realities of fish harvesters?

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Context: House Hansard - 332 - Jun/14/24

Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

Jun/14/24 12:34:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the member for Malpeque's motion to create national seafood day on the first day of October. I note, it is numbered Motion No. 111, which is a great number for it. I would have been happier if it was Motion No. 1, but Motion No. 111 is a good substitute, because three times, four times or five times, this is the most important industry in our rural coastal communities on all three coasts. We will be supporting this motion, but I would like to make a few comments about it. As I said a little earlier, I represent a very large fishery riding, the riding of South Shore—St. Margarets. There are more than 5,000 commercial fishermen in my community. Every possible species one could think of that is commercially harvested is harvested in the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Of course, the most lucrative one is the best lobster in the world from Lobster Fishing Area 33 and Lobster Fishing Area 34, a winter fishery. Seafood, and lobster in particular, is our number one industry in Nova Scotia. It drives our GDP. There would not be any government jobs in Halifax if it was not for the wealth generated by fishing for the food Canadians eat in the South Shore of Nova Scotia. As much as I support this motion, as much as we support this motion, I believe it is, after nine years, the first time the government has actually done anything positive for the seafood industry. The member for Malpeque went through the numbers financially of what it does, province by province and species by species. I would say that some of those are declining numbers because the government has pursued policies that have actually harmed the industry, when it has pursued any at all. I will start maybe with something I have raised quite frequently over the last year, which is the elver fishery. I know everybody knows what an elver is. It is otherwise known as a glass eel, a baby eel. After being born in the Sargasso Sea, they swim back to the rivers of Maine, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. They go up the rivers to become full-size adult, grown eels that live for about 25 years before they migrate back out to the ocean to reproduce. These are the most expensive fish we harvest in Canada, and arguably in the world, at $5,000 a kilogram. That is the cost of the glass eels, or elvers. This industry has been under attack. Elvers are exported, by the way, live to China, where they are grown into full-size eels for food. This industry has been under attack because of the incompetence of the government. In particular, fisheries minister number four, whom I defeated, closed this fishery in the year 2020 in hopes that the poaching would end, and then, the poaching increased. Fisheries minister number five, last year, closed the industry halfway through the season in hopes that the poaching would stop, and it increased. Fisheries minister number six, this year, did the same thing. The ministers have done the same thing three out of the last four years and have expected a different result. That is the definition of insanity. The best way to enforce the law is to arrest the people on the river who do not have a licence, and 74% of the rivers in the Maritimes, where there are poachers, are not licensed rivers, so it is easy to identify where they are. The government has ignored many great reports. I mentioned the issue of pinnipeds earlier. Those are seals, sea lions and walruses. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans did an excellent unanimous report on that, and I will tell the House what some witnesses said. Trevor Jones, who is a fish harvester, said, “Leadership within DFO, in its wisdom, seems to think that closing a commercial fishery [that being seals] to harvesters will save and help rebuild fish stocks, but the truth is that it does not.” When the fishery was closed 31 years ago, the cod fishery, the groundfishery, there were about three million seals in Newfoundland. Now, there are over eight million seals, with no harvest, and the expectation is that the fish will come back. Even though 97% of the unnatural mortality in the Atlantic Ocean of fish is caused by seals, the government sits on its duff and does nothing. It only just acknowledged, after 31 years, last year, that seals eat fish. That was a revelation to the Liberals that seals eat fish. I guess they were enjoying Alberta beef like the rest of us do. The Liberals have a record of inaction on almost every file. Recently, only a few weeks ago, there was an issue with the endangered right whales. There is a great policy that when a right whale is discovered swimming by Nova Scotia or into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, there is what is called a dynamic closure, a closure for 15 days of the area where the whale is spotted. If the whale is not spotted again, it opens up. Right whales cannot swim in less than 10 fathoms of water. Nonetheless, the minister, only a few weeks ago, closed a fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence right up to the coast, right up to the sand, to the edge, in less than 10 fathoms of water, throwing crab fishermen and lobster fishermen in that area out of work. Of course the massive protests were so bad that the Liberals' own member from northern New Brunswick criticized the minister of fisheries for yet again failing to understand the basics of the fishery. The minister had to back down. The simple, basic closure is estimated to have cost the community a considerable amount of money. The cost, apparently, for the minister's mistake was $40 million to the industry and to the people in the community. Martin Mallet of the Maritime Fishermen's Union did say that it is difficult to put a price on the closure cost-wise, but for two weeks, depending on the number of fishermen, it can easily go into a few million dollars' worth of lost revenues. The whales do not go into water less than 10 fathoms deep, yet the minister thought, “Well, let's close that and put people out of work.” Yet again it was another failure by the government. The list goes on. There has been an issue of poaching in the lobster fishery. Some members will remember that it, most famously, was in the news again in St. Marys Bay in the riding of West Nova in 2020. The minister refused to implement and enforce the law. That is the basis of our society: enforcing law. The fishery cannot work unless the law is enforced. It is sort of like saying, “You know what, the Trans-Canada Highway has a speed limit, but there'll never be any police on the road.” Do members think everybody would do the speed limit? That is what is happening. DFO, in large parts of the province of Nova Scotia, between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. has absolutely nobody on duty. DFO does not meet boats when they come off the wharf, does not monitor the catch as it comes in, and allows illegal fishing. In fact DFO does not even have any idea of the food and ceremonial fishery of first nations with respect to how much is caught. There has been testimony at committee from DFO enforcement officers who said that 90% of that in Nova Scotia is an illegal commercial fishery. DFO does get catch data for the FSC fishery in B.C. but does not get it in Atlantic Canada. There has been failure after failure by the government with respect to the fishery, to the point that I would be surprised, out of the fishing ridings in Atlantic Canada, to see any Liberal survive the next election, given the anger towards the government on fishery management, with its six incompetent fisheries ministers over the last nine years. Again and again, when asked by the committee unanimously for the government to act, the government ignores what it does. We have raised the issues with the parliamentary secretary, who I see is in the House, but still nothing seems to happen on the elver fishery, the lobster fishery enforcement and the many other fisheries that our communities depend on. I would say that while we do celebrate the fishery, one day is not enough. I would like the government to celebrate the commercial fishery every single day and do its job. Its job in the oldest department in the government is to ensure the sustainable growth of a commercial fishery for generation after generation, yet the government is introducing marine-protected areas in areas where nothing needs to be protected, and it cannot even produce the science in those areas that would show that something is endangered and that the cause of endangerment is actually the commercial fishery. I have asked the government questions on that. I have asked it to provide the documents on these things, and it cannot do it, because it is making stuff up as it goes along. As it does so, it harms the day-to-day fishery and the rural communities in our country that depend on the fishery. Therefore while we support the motion, we would ask the government to start doing a better job and pay attention to what fishermen are saying and what needs to be done.

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Context: House Hansard - 332 - Jun/14/24

Mr. Marc Dalton (Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, CPC)

Jun/14/24 1:11:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Conservatives will be supporting this motion. I am a member of Parliament from the west coast and, obviously, seafood, the fisheries and fishing have been part of British Columbia's history from the time it began with the first nations and for the past couple of hundred years with fishers. It is fine to have a motion, which Conservatives support, on a national seafood day, but it really camouflages, I would say, the inaction of the Liberals, backed by the NDP, on the fisheries front. They are really not getting anything done. They put forward this motion to show what they are doing and say it is a love fest because we all agree about the importance of the fishing industry, but their policies have really been targeted to reduce fishing and the fisheries. They have mismanaged the whole sector. I have visited different communities where the fishing industry is really important. I have met with industry officials, owner-operators, those trying to make a living, and the frustration is palpable with the Liberal government. They feel that this industry and their livelihoods are under attack. It is a growth industry for the Liberals, but in what sense? While they put $300 million into the industry on the west coast, almost all of it is allocated toward 200 new bureaucrats. They are inflating and building up the bureaucracy and not really making any difference on the ground. They are actually making things worse. There are different issues that are a big deal and that are having a negative impact. For example, the marine protected areas are basically closing down very significant areas of the coastline to fishing. There have been Order Paper questions on some of the different issues with these marine protected areas, as well as with the southern resident killer whales in the no-transit areas. There have been questions about how many whales go through this area, what times of the year and whether there has been a difference. It is sealing off areas for harvesting and fishing. The Liberals' response has been that it is a good question but they do not know what is going on. Basically, they are implementing their policies willy-nilly and destroying the livelihoods of many British Columbians by their insane and unscientific policies, which are taking significant areas away from fishing. One of the biggest issues with regard to protecting the fisheries and seeing growth in the industry, on which there is almost unanimous consent, has to do with seals. We need to realize that 97% of unnatural deaths of salmon are not by fishing. That is 3%, but 97% is by seals. A councillor from one of the first nations in my region said that seals are destroying the salmon catch, and there is nothing being done about it. Liberal ministers sit on their hands, not doing anything, and then they blame it on climate change or whatever, when it is just bad policy and bad management of the fisheries. We need some grown-ups, some adults managing the fisheries. I am looking forward to a Conservative government, which would bring some common sense. Another issue that is of great importance is that of owner-operators. Conservatives, under the Harper government, made it so that those who operated the boats had to be the owners. It was not just going to be the big corporations. The Department of Fisheries just seems to be lazy. It would rather deal with two or three big companies than a lot more of the smaller owner-operators who live in the community, provide jobs in the community and actually bring the fish back to the community to get processed. DFO prefers corporations that process the fish on the ships or take it up to Alaska. It is very frustrating for the fishers because they feel that their communities are being undermined by the Liberal-NDP government. There needs to be some changes. That is what the Conservative Party supports, to put the power back into the owner-operators. Right now, the packaging plants have moved. They have moved to Washington and Alaska. They are not in Canada. They are not in British Columbia because of the Liberal policies. We want to empower the owner-operators, the small business people and the fishers to have the livelihoods that would help the first nations and coastal communities that are dependent on it. The Liberals and NDP, including the provincial NDP, are at war with the workers. We want to support working-class Canadians.

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