- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- South Shore—St. Margarets
- Nova Scotia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,927.65
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand here tonight to speak to the bill presented by the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Bill C-294, regarding interoperability, and the member who spoke previous to me, the member for Mirabel, who is my seatmate, spoke eloquently about the impacts and the structure of this on the agriculture industry, which I will come to.
However, if you will provide me a little leeway, Mr. Speaker, as members know, the Speaker's riding and mine have had some dramatic forest fires these last two weeks. In the context of this bill and agriculture, I just want to stand up and thank a few people in the riding and in the Speaker's riding who have done an amazing job dealing with the issue of livestock that had to be evacuated.
It is a huge issue. People do not generally think about that in these kinds of fires, but on Cape Sable Island in Shelburne County there was agriculture livestock, and a lot of it, that had to be quickly evacuated, because it is tough to move it slowly. They actually did not have an evacuation order, but they moved it out in case. They moved it to the exhibition in Yarmouth, in the Speaker's riding, and they were fantastic to deal with. They took in a lot of animals and kept them safe and healthy, as did the exhibition in Bridgewater, in my riding. It was a full house of livestock that had to be safely moved and stored, which is no small effort. I would like to thank both those organizations for all the volunteer work they did to protect the animals.
In Bill C-294, the summary says that the enactment would amend the Copyright Act to allow a person, in certain circumstances, to circumvent, or get around, a technological protection measure, TPM, which is a technical term, to make a computer program interoperable, or in other words to make a computer program work with any device or component, or with a product they manufacture.
On this bill, we need to start with what the purpose of the Copyright Act is, and the member for Mirabel touched on it. The Copyright Act provides exclusive rights for authors and creators of works. It can be an artistic work, a dramatic work, a musical work or a literary work, and the latter category encompasses computers and computer programs. These exclusive rights are collectively referred to as “copyright”.
Copyright provides the rights holder, the person who created the work, the sole authority to perform specific acts vis à vis the product. They control what happens to their product. That is the purpose of copyright, and these rights are listed under section 3 of the Copyright Act and include the sole right to reproduce the works, so that the owner and creator is the only one who can reproduce that work, or they can choose to rent that work out to somebody else, and that includes a computer program, like when we sign up for or buy Windows. We buy a licence, but we we do not actually own the software. That is owned by the manufacturer, but the manufacturer can license those out.
A copyright generally lasts for a person's lifetime plus 50 years.
Other persons may use a protected work under certain circumstances. The owner of a copyright may assign it to another person. They may also license the use of the work with or without conditions, often in return for a payment or royalties.
What is this act doing on artistic copyright related to the issue of technology and specifically farm equipment? An important part of that is that section 41 of the Copyright Act defines circumventing a TPM, which I referred to earlier, as descrambling a scrambled work, decrypting an encrypted work or otherwise avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating or impairing the TPM. In other words, circumventing it is trying to find a way to use that computer program or work that one was not authorized to use as a person who is not the original rights holder.
This is an important part of what this is trying to get at. The member who is putting this bill forward worked quite extensively with people in his riding who are concerned and having trouble delivering their businesses.
With increased computerization in the development of everything that we buy or do, whether it be a cellphone or even a fridge now, as everything has computer chips the technology can be used to actually be anti-competitive. It can be used to make it exclusive so that nobody else can access or connect another device to that device, in order to make someone buy their other devices and not be able to buy a competitor's device. It is becoming more difficult over time for manufacturers to market their innovative products if they cannot connect to the original product if it requires that.
Large companies such as John Deere, which the member for Mirabel mentioned, have introduced what are called digital locks on machinery. This move restricts access to repair or interoperate the tractor or equipment with another manufacturer's equipment. One cannot even go in and repair it, whether it is on warranty or not, unless it is through an authorized dealer. That is a primary concern as to operating farm equipment because when a repair of this type of equipment needs to be done, it is not done when one is not harvesting, but done when one is out in the field. It is very difficult often to get those who are the only authorized repair people to actually be able to come out, repair that equipment, get the parts and do it all in a timely manner so that one can get back to one's work in farming. Every day lost is an important and costly loss for that farmer.
As a result of all that, those who are significantly disadvantaged by this have been calling for changes that would safeguard both the right to repair and the right to connect one manufacturer's equipment to another manufacturer's equipment. One may prefer a different combine from the combine that John Deere has one's equipment hooked up to. That is a big issue.
What this bill attempts to do is allow, in certain circumstances, an individual who owns that equipment to seek repair from suppliers or even on their own by accessing it and getting it repaired without having to go to that authorized dealer only. That “authorized dealer only” concept is a sort of monopolistic trait that says that if I can only go to that dealer then I am sort of held captive to what that dealer is going to charge me for those repairs. It prevents a free and open market.
We are going to see this not only in farm equipment but with everything in our lives. Try to buy one's home appliances from different manufacturers. If they are all computerized and one is from one manufacturer and the other from another manufacturer, although they are supposed to be able to “talk” to each other they will not be able to because of these restrictions around TPMs and the inability to do this.
The member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands began working with all of these groups and put together, as the member for Mirabel said, a very simple bill. It is not very long. It is two clauses and it repairs that simple clause in the act.
I would commend the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for tackling this. Sometimes it is confused with the right to repair, which is another private member's bill before this House, which is the right for us to repair a certain thing in a certain way. This bill makes sure that, if one wants to connect two pieces of equipment together that have technological protection, one will be able to get that done without breaking the law.
As we consider this going forward, I will be supporting the bill. We studied it at the industry committee. It is now here for third reading. I would encourage all members of this House to support this important bill, which is pro-competition.
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- Jun/8/23 11:14:35 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord.
As we know, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, said, “All politics are local.” I am going to focus on what has been happening in my community, my district, in the last two weeks.
At 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 28, two weekends ago, first responders in Halifax arrived in the Westwood Hills subdivision in Halifax. This is in my district, 10 minutes from my house. They were responding to reports of a house on fire. They were there in minutes. The fire was driven by winds of 40 kilometres an hour, and it was spreading rapidly through the house and moving to other homes in this family suburban neighbourhood. It was engulfing homes and hopscotching from house to house. It was missing some, burning others and skipping and bouncing over streets. Cellphones screamed with an alert for residents to immediately leave their homes. Over the next hour, as the wind drove the flames across neighbourhoods along Hammonds Plains Road, more than 16,000 people were evacuated.
Many, not knowing what to do, went to the homes of friends and family outside the evacuation zone. Others went to the comfort centres, which were set up quickly by volunteers. Some were set up within an hour, such as the ones at the Black Point fire hall and Black Point & Area Community Centre on St. Margarets Bay and the Canada Games Centre in Bayers Lake. They were set up by volunteers, such as Janet Fryday Dorey, who opened the Black Point comfort centre and kept it open from then until this day.
The volunteers at the centres were and are remarkable. They put their lives and families on hold to provide comfort, food, clothes, a place to sleep, a person to talk to, a place to help find accommodation and a place to regroup in this trying, confusing and emotional time. There were volunteers like my neighbour, Peggy Pippy, who ran food and clothing drives for victims.
To give some idea of the desperation of the evacuation, I want to share an experience. Captain Kevin Corkum and firefighter Conor Scott were working at the firefighting command post on Hammonds Plains Road in Halifax on that Sunday when an emergency call came in. A family could not get to their elderly father, who has dementia and was at home on Yankeetown Road. This was inside the evacuation zone, where the fire was raging.
Fire crews had retreated from the area because of the speed of the fire, which was making it unsafe for them to battle the intensity of the flames. Captain Corkum said, “When the 911 call came in [saying] that there was a person in the house, we knew that fire conditions were going to be bad on that road.... But that's what we do. We're the fire service. Our main objective is life safety.”
Captain Corkum said that he and firefighter Scott, wearing only basic personal protective gear, and with no oxygen equipment, jumped into the chief's pickup truck to attempt to save the man. Firefighter Scott said, “There were moments when it felt like we were driving through a wall of fire”. Captain Corkum reported that “as they travelled toward Yankeetown Road, day turned into night, and visibility was zero.” They could not see the civic numbers and ended up passing the home twice before they found the driveway. “As we pulled up, everything around the house was on fire. There were trees on two sides, maybe 20 to 30 feet away, and everything was on fire,” the captain said. Captain Corkum was driving and instructed firefighter Scott that he had 30 seconds to check the house for the man. Both doors were locked, so Scott ended up kicking in the front door.
Captain Corkum said, “The elderly gentleman was in his chair unaware of what was going on, unaware of the danger [around him].” Corkum and Scott grabbed the man, lifted him up and carried him into the truck, with only minutes, maybe even seconds, to get out, and “Captain Corkum said it was one of those moments that ‘you're there doing what has to be done.’” “It's the first time,” he said, “in my 22 years that I'm looking around...and I'm like, ‘I really don't know that I'm 100 per cent going to get out of this’”.
According to Captain Corkum, “Luckily...they were able to make it through the smoke and embers to get the man to the command post, where he could be assessed by paramedics.” After, Scott said, “My heart grew a little bit. I was very, very happy when we passed him off”.
He continued:
And then it was just moments later before we're on to the next task. But there was this brief, beautiful moment where we knew he was going to get back to his family.
Corkum and Scott “then went on to help evacuate a home in Upper Tantallon, where a family was still packing items” and could not escape.
Captain Corkum said to the media, “It was an unprecedented fire for me, just with the speed and the forward momentum that fire had and just the sheer amount of fire”. He went on to say, “I've never seen anything like it in my 22 years, that's for sure.”
According to Brendan Meagher, “even though the pair knew it was dangerous, they kept going.” He stated:
They kept going, they got to the house, they got in and they got him in that truck and...they got out of there and they saved his life.
I believe, as do most Nova Scotians, that what they did was remarkable and heroic.
According to Captain Corkum, this was only one story of those told during these devastating fires. I'm sure there are many people with many stories of real heroism that we will hear from in the coming days.
I would like to share with members another experience I had during this time in my riding last week. The next day after that fire, Monday, May 29, after attending the morning news conference with the Halifax deputy fire chief, I drove two hours south to the town of Shelburne. I went to the fire hall and command centre, which was managing the fire for the municipality. I met with Fire Chief Locke. He and his crew had just arrived back from Clyde River, where they were battling the spread of the Barrington Lake fire. It was quickly becoming the largest fire in the history of Nova Scotia, with 65,000 acres on fire. In Clyde River, the fire had jumped the highway, as it had jumped across the lake a few hours earlier. Chief Locke told me that the freight train speed and the power of the fire overcame the firefighters, who had to abandon their hoses and gear and jump into their trucks; they barely escaped with their lives.
He has been a firefighter for 50 years, and he had a hard time with his emotions as he described what his team faced. The flames they were battling reached 200 feet high and whirled around them. This happened time and again to crews battling this beast.
Half the county was evacuated. Yesterday, the fire was only declared held; it is not growing beyond the 65,000 acres. More than 200 kilometres of the area has been destroyed. The Halifax fire is now 100% contained.
The two fires incinerated more than 300 private property houses and buildings, destroying homes, dreams, family treasures, vehicles and everything dear to these families, and to us, including pets, dogs and cats, that were lost in the flames. The job of rebuilding for these families is immense. It is going to take time before everyone can return home safely. Knowing that the fire cannot resurface and restart is essential.
The 190 professional volunteer firefighters who have kept the Barrington Lake fire out of the towns of Barrington and Shelburne are exhausted. They worked 18 hours a day. A member of my constituency team, Tyson Ross, is one of these firefighters; he slept in his own bed for the first time two nights ago. However, they know the work is not done. They need to get the 65,000 acres secure and fire-free before residents, who simply want to go home, can do so safely.
They left their jobs to save their communities. They left their families to risk their lives to save others. They left their own evacuated houses in the fire zone to save the houses of their neighbours and strangers. The words “thank you” seem desperately insufficient for what they have done for our province and these communities, given what we owe them.
Nonetheless, I will conclude by thanking the volunteer firefighters who fought and controlled the fires at Beech Hill Road and Pubnico. I want to send an enormous thanks to the hundreds of firefighters who fought, and got under control, the Halifax fire, and who have enabled all but a few thousand of the 16,000 residents to return home. From the bottom of my heart, I thank the 190 firefighters who have fought, and continue to fight, the largest fire in the history of our province, known as the Barrington Lake fire, and the Lake Road fires in Shelburne County, over the last 14 days.
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- Jun/5/23 11:39:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I again would like to thank the member for her kind comments.
One of the experiences we had, as I mentioned in my remarks, were areas where there was only one road in and one road out. The evacuation on the north shore of Quebec, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness explained to me the other night, was a big challenge because 10,000 people had to go through one road and one bridge, and that bridge had been damaged.
What does the member think we can do to better plan and look at these communities in a different way to provide assurances or ways to have alternative exits in case we face this again, which we will?
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- Jun/5/23 11:10:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have heard some very good speeches tonight on this important issue. I would like to start by thanking the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay for bringing this forward.
I would like to make more of a personal comment. I am not the first member of Parliament who has had to deal with wildfires in the riding, but two of the largest wildfires in Nova Scotia are in my riding, and one of them is still out of control. Therefore, I would just like to personalize this a bit with what the last eight days have been like in my province.
Going back to Sunday, May 28, two Sundays ago, as members of Parliament, most of us were either flying to Ottawa to come here to do our jobs, as we do every week, or we were preparing, like I was, to leave early on Monday morning. It was late in the afternoon of that Sunday when my phone started to go with an alert that there was a fire and an evacuation going on 10 minutes from my house.
There was a major fire in the community of Tantallon, which I am sure nobody in the House had ever heard of until eight days ago. It is a wonderful community up behind exit 5, as we call it, off the 103. It is the exit where people get off to go to Peggys Cove and St. Margarets Bay. It is a community of families and young families. There are three day cares there. There are a lot of retired folks, including quite a few retired RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces personnel, up there. There is an RCMP detachment in Tantallon, right there by the Sobeys. There is one street in and out of this subdivision, and it has no fire hydrants. On the back of it is the wilderness that is Nova Scotia. It is about a 15-minute drive from downtown Halifax.
That day, the wind was about 40 kilometres an hour in Nova Scotia. On the first evening of the evacuation on that Sunday, I went to the newly opened comfort centre in the Black Point fire hall, which is about 30 seconds from my house. It was opened quickly by one of the two volunteer managers of the community centre, Janet Fryday Dorey. As people streamed in, they were really just in a state of shock.
I talked to one couple who were sitting on their porch at about 3:30 in the afternoon having a beverage, as people tend to do after they have cut the lawn or done their chores on the weekend. They were sitting there and said that in so-and-so's back yard there was a fire going. Then the fire started to get bigger and within moments it had spread to their house and very quickly, because the winds were 40 kilometres an hour, it spread to the next house. The couple said, “We'd better get out of here”. They quickly got in their car and left. There was a roofer working on a roof next door who saw the fire happening, got off the roof and started to knock on people's doors to get them evacuated.
When they came in, they were saying they did not know what was happening, that their neighbourhood was on fire and they did not know where to go or what they would do. This was not a comfort centre where people could sleep. It did not have showers. Community members started to come in, saying, “I have a room” and “I have a place for somebody to stay if they need it.” People from a couple of local inns in Hubbards came in and said, “If there is anyone who is evacuated, they can stay here for free.” Then food started to arrive. For Nova Scotians and most Canadians, food is the first response to a crisis, and food started to come in so that people had food to eat.
I was there until about 11 o'clock at night. I got home when the centre closed. My cellphone rang, and it was the Minister of Emergency Preparedness calling on a Sunday night. On that first night, he phoned me, the local member of Parliament, to ask what was happening from my perspective, which I greatly appreciated. I was still a bit in shock.
I knew there had been a fire starting in the south of my riding two days before. It started around a lake. I also knew that on that same day, 20 minutes down the road in a community called Chester Basin, another fire had started on Beech Hill Road. It was out of control, and the winds were blowing at 40 kilometres an hour.
This modest fire in Shelburne County on a lake started on Friday night, May 26, at a party on a lake, when a fire was set to keep people warm. It was accelerated by the wind that Sunday and started to spread across the county.
The next morning, the deputy fire chief of Halifax and the Department of National Resources were holding a media briefing to say what was going on. That was in Tantallon for the fire in Tantallon, not the Shelburne one. There were over 100 fire trucks from around the province on the scene in Tantallon, where in the space of two hours, over 16,000 people had been evacuated from their homes and had to find a place to live temporarily.
The fire only got worse on Monday and Tuesday. In Shelburne County, the fire doubled in size every single day. If anyone knows Shelburne County at all, it is the big lobster fishing community in the southern part of my riding. There are two main towns and a lot of villages. The two main towns are the town of the Shelburne and the town of Barrington. This fire spread between the two of them. They are 30 kilometres apart. Over the next few days, half of that county was evacuated.
That fire is still out of control. It has grown to 25,000 hectares, or 65,000 acres. Luckily, we had some rain on the weekend and it has not grown. It grew a bit on Sunday, but it has basically been stable. Some 5,000 to 6,000 people in that community were evacuated.
Part of the fire in Halifax spread into the riding of Halifax West, and over 20,000 people were evacuated in Nova Scotia. During the week, while we were fighting the fire in Shelburne, an additional fire began behind the town of Shelburne, and another one in East Pubnico.
There were a number of volunteers at the comfort stations. The Red Cross was running the comfort station in Shelburne, and the Salvation Army was feeding and running a station for the firefighters. My lead constituency assistant is a volunteer firefighter and has been fighting this fire every day since it started in the woods. I was back in the woods with them. They brought me back one night.
We had communities shut off. We had firemen shut off. Firemen had to drop their hoses in communities like Clyde River and run for their lives to get on their equipment to escape the speed of this fire. It is feet down in the Earth now. It is a fire we are going to be dealing with in Shelburne County for months and months to come.
The Halifax fire is 100% contained. There are still about 5,000 people evacuated in Halifax. The amount of work that has to happen to allow the rest to go back is huge in terms of determining safety, determining water quality, because most are on wells, and restoring power. The premier, the minister of emergency preparedness provincially and the federal Minister of Emergency Preparedness have been working well with all of the municipal officials as one team.
This is unprecedented. We have never had this happen in Nova Scotia. There was no playbook for dealing with a suburb of Halifax burning at the same time as the largest fire in our province's history in Shelburne County.
I just have to thank all the firefighters and all the first responders, as well as all the volunteers who are still helping to feed the firefighters. I ask for the patience of all those who are still evacuated; I ask them to please not go back until the evacuation orders are lifted. It is not safe. There is no going around it on an ATV or by boat. People will put themselves and others in harm's way if they do that. I ask them to please listen to local officials so we can deal with this as expeditiously as possible.
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- May/29/23 2:11:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am speaking from the fire command centre in Shelburne County on the wildfire crisis at both ends of my district, here and in Halifax.
A massive wildfire in Halifax, where I was this morning, forced the evacuation of 18,000 people. That is as many people as are evacuated currently in western Canada. Most left with only the clothes on their backs, as the fire moved extremely fast. There are no fatalities and no missing people so far. The Halifax fire continues to burn out of control, and many homes have been lost.
I was at the Halifax comfort centres last night and this morning. The stories are heartbreaking. People rushed to their cars as the fire swept into their backyards, forced by 40-kilometre-an-hour winds.
Here in Shelburne County, we are battling an out-of-control wildfire covering 20,000 acres. The communities from Port Clyde to Barrington West have been evacuated and are under threat. More than another 2,000 people have been evacuated.
To professional and volunteer firefighters, saying thanks does not seem like enough as they risk their lives to save our communities. I thank the countless volunteers helping these families. Our prayers go out to the families in these uncertain and tragic days. Please pray for our communities.
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- Sep/26/22 8:54:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to speak in the emergency debate on our situation in Atlantic Canada as a result of hurricane Fiona.
For those who have not been through this kind of situation, in the last 20 years of my residency on the south shore of Nova Scotia, I have seen four hurricanes and a number of tropical storms hit. Besides the storm chips that everybody buys, there are a number of routines, unfortunately, that we get into to prepare for a storm and then some once it happens.
When people live in the country on a well and septic system, there are a few things they have to do. They have to fill the bathtub with water so they can use the water to flush the toilet. They also have a generator, and if it is one of those big fancy ones, maybe it covers the whole house. However, if they are like me, they have a generator that will power the refrigerator and maybe the microwave, and it has to be filled every once in a while. One of the hazards of this job, I am finding, since this is my first term, is that my wife is at home in this situation now having to fill the generator with gas to keep it going and do all the things we have to do.
I live on St. Margarets Bay, and some members may not know it is where Peggy's Cove is. Nova Scotia Power workers came down our street today because we do not have power, as we lost it at midnight on Friday. They looked at the devastation of the trees on our street and on the power lines, including on my property. They said 11 o'clock tonight was when the power would be coming back, but then said, “Well, we're not going to fix this street today; there's too much work. This is the worst street in St. Margarets Bay. We'll be back in the next day or two. We have to replace lines and all kinds of things.”
It is a very difficult time, and the limited power affects everything, and things we do not think of. During the calls I was making in my riding on the weekend, I talked to a family whose mother had a stroke. They had to rush her to the hospital, but the hospital did not have enough power to run the MRI machine. The doctors could make assumptions and could give her medication, but they could not do all the things we would normally expect to get done in such a serious situation because the hospital was running on emergency power. I am sure my good friend, our doctor colleague from Cumberland—Colchester, saw this many times in the hospitals when he had to deal with these storms in his riding in his previous life.
The member for Kings—Hants spoke a little earlier about the impact on agriculture in his riding. In Cumberland—Colchester, we have a thriving grape-growing industry and make some of the best wine in Canada. We just got a report from one of the largest wineries that 20% of its grapes are on the ground and that because of limited power, it only has 25% power and cannot harvest the remaining grapes. This is a problem for the business this time of year, given the damage that some of the vines sustained with the wind and trees, and the processing facility challenges with the roof.
This is a flavour of what local life is like. Everyone is getting together on my street. The guys are getting the chainsaws out and helping where they can. For every guy I know, including me, if there is a chance to use a chainsaw they will and they are. However, besides the ways we band together in these kinds of crises, and what we do in Atlantic Canada and most of Canada when these things happen, there are some really difficult things.
I would like to begin by my sending my condolences to the families of those who have lost their lives in this storm, one of whom is a 73-year-old woman from Port aux Basques. There are reports of waves of, on average, 10 metres. I was phoning fishing communities on the weekend throughout Newfoundland, P.E.I., New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and the folks I spoke to in a southwest Newfoundland fishing community said that the occasional wave came in at 30 metres high, which helps explain why we see some of this devastation. We feel for the family of the woman who was lost at sea and has been found.
The member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour would know where Lower Prospect is. We found out today in my riding that one of my constituents from Lower Prospect is now missing and presumed to have been washed out to sea. They have not found him yet.
On top of that, obviously homes have been destroyed by flooding and by trees, mainly trees. The power is still out for hundreds of thousands of people in Nova Scotia alone. My understanding from the latest update is that out of 82,000 homes in Prince Edward Island, 80,000 of them still do not have power. Most of their power comes from New Brunswick.
My thoughts obviously remain with my fellow Nova Scotians and all of the Atlantic Canadians who are still reeling and dealing with this disaster.
As I mentioned in the House earlier today in question period and during my Standing Order 31 statement, hurricane Fiona was not the first hurricane to hit Atlantic Canada. As I said, I have experienced four in the last 20 years, but there have been over 30 since 1951 and quite a few before that, dating back as early as 1775, although the science on that is a little tough. There have been tropical storms and extratropical storms, and we know how to prepare for these.
I can give some examples of a couple of famous ones that happened. People close to the fishing community will know of the “gales”, as they called them, of 1926 and 1927, when over 300 fishermen were killed on the Grand Banks when two hurricanes came in. One hurricane made landfall in Yarmouth and the other one landed in Port Hawkesbury. Those were in 1926 and 1927.
Hurricane Cindy, in 1959, moved ashore in New Brunswick. There were similar ones throughout the decades that we could talk about. In 1950, hurricane Able went ashore at Goodwood in Halifax, which is also in my riding. In 1940 there was one that was called the Nova Scotia hurricane, and it went ashore in Lockeport in my riding.
We have these kinds of storms. They are growing in intensity, but we have had them for centuries in Atlantic Canada. They always bring tragedy, but Fiona was different in the sense that it was geographically larger. I was in the south shore when hurricane Juan hit in 2003. When it hit, it was intense, but it was compact and it moved fast through the region. It did a lot of devastation at midnight with a high tide and a full moon. The Halifax waterfront was destroyed. However, this one was larger and slower-moving, so the winds stayed around longer.
Hurricanes affect the ocean in two ways, in waves of surges. One is when the power actually moves the water and then another is when the wind also pushes the waves. It is sort of a double impact that happens. When it is more sustained over a period of time like that, there are more intense waves, which is what happened with Fiona.
I would also like to reiterate our leader's comments from earlier today when he asked the Prime Minister how we, as opposition members, can best support Atlantic Canadians who are in dire need right now. Everyone—not only in this House, but all Canadians—can help us, and I must express my gratitude to the federal government for its constant communication with opposition MPs and its rapid response to requests for military assistance.
I would also like to thank the municipal leaders in my community whom I have spoken to. They have done diligent work in communicating over the past few days with me and also with their residents about how to be prepared and what to do afterward in providing services to our residents. We can all get better results from our constituents when we work together with open lines of communication.
In times like this, we depend on the power workers, who work around the clock to restore operations as quickly as possible. Never before have we seen this many downed power lines posing a threat to workers and the public. It could be weeks before some of the Nova Scotia Power workers get a full eight hours' sleep, I suspect, and we owe them our thanks.
On top of that, we are welcoming more than 300 power workers from other provinces and even, as we heard earlier, power workers from New England. It is is our tradition in Atlantic Canada of supporting New England and of New England supporting us in times of crisis. Atlantic Canadians have a reputation of helping out our friends in need, and we always get that same treatment from other parts of the country.
Additionally, I want to extend my appreciation to the police, paramedics, firefighters, the Coast Guard and members of our armed forces for everything they are doing to keep our communities safe and to try to help us rebuild.
In typical Maritime fashion, the community is coming together in light of the disaster. Warming centres and evacuation shelters are being staffed and supplied by generous donations. Nova Scotians are tough, and the character of our communities is most present in times of tragedies such as this.
As we start to rebuild, I know the resolve Nova Scotians and Atlantic Canadians have will not be diminished. I have been impressed with many groups and organizations that have swiftly begun assessing the damages of the storm. In Atlantic Canada, that includes industry groups representing many of our farmers, fishers and forestry workers, all of whom are reeling from the damage.
Of course, in coastal communities in Atlantic Canada, big storms always pose a threat to our wharfs and small craft harbours. I heard reports from constituents and people in coastal communities around the region about the extent of the damage they have witnessed at wharfs. I have talked to mayors in Newfoundland, ministers in P.E.I. and fishing associations in New Brunswick to understand the early assessment. A lot of those groups are really only getting on the water now and getting out to see the extent of the damage to the wharfs, the fishing gear and the farms because it is relatively safe to do so now, bar running into downed power lines.
As well, I spoke over the weekend and today with the Maritime Fishermen's Union, the FFAW-Unifor in Newfoundland and the PEI Fishermen's Association in my capacity as shadow minister for fisheries. They have conveyed to me that the situation in southwest New Brunswick is serious and that the north shore wharfs in P.E.I. have had major damage. As well, we have seen the destruction in southwest Newfoundland, which is complete and devastating.
I have had reports from fishermen in P.E.I. that they hauled their boats in preparation for the storm, and when they went to see their boats, they were not there anymore. I have had fishermen tell me that the shed where they store their halibut gear and lobster gear is completely gone. I know New Brunswick fishermen were out in the water today, and will be tomorrow, trying to find the lobster gear they left in the water in the fishing areas. That will be a big challenge.
David Sansom, president of the Red Head Harbour Authority in P.E.I., said:
Our lower wharf, the tide bumped so high, it pulled it right out and destroyed that. And our east wharf this evening, the tide came up and lifted it right out of where it's secured.
He continued:
Just everything is loose and everything is unusable at this point.
On top of that, gear has been lost, and some fishers will lose out on days, if not weeks, of fishing due to the infrastructure damage. They may even lose a season. The P.E.l. summer lobster season is ongoing, as is New Brunswick's, but as we await the assessment of damaged wharfs, it looks like some fishermen may not get back out this season. They have three weeks left in the season.
That is why the fisheries minister must take a serious look at extending the seasons in those communities and keep in mind the severe financial setback the hurricane is causing fishing families. The Department of Fisheries must also immediately begin to prepare plans to repair wharfs under its jurisdiction and expedite permits to get vessels back at the docks as quickly as possible.
FFAW-Unifor, which represents many inshore fishers in Newfoundland, issued a news release this morning on the situation in southern Newfoundland. I will read the brief release it put out this morning, which reads:
Professional fish harvesters on the southwest coast of the province are left reeling after post-tropical storm Fiona made landfall in the area on Friday and Saturday. The damage left in Fiona’s wake has impacted multiple enterprises, leaving significant damage to gear, boats, motors, and sheds. FFAW-Unifor is seeking financial support from federal and provincial governments to assist these inshore harvesters in their rebuilding efforts.
“The damage from Fiona has been felt in particular by folks located between La Poile and Port aux Basques. Some inshore harvesters have lost all their gear, motors, boats, and sheds – just washed away with the storm. As small-scale operators, they have no financial recourse through traditional insurance channels and we are therefore asking for financial relief from our federal and provincial governments,” explains FFAW-Unifor Secretary-Treasurer, Jason Spingle.
“Support following hurricanes and tropical storms has been provided to inshore harvesters in the past, and we expect that Fiona will be no different. These fish harvesters will require financial help to replace their lost investment in order to resume fishing next season,” Spingle says.
Harvesters in this region rely mainly on lobster and halibut as their primary, and in many cases, sole source of income. Rebuilding infrastructure and replacing lost gear and other equipment will be paramount to the region’s ability to rebound from Fiona’s destruction.
In the immediate-term, FFAW-Unifor is communicating with members on the ground to continue to assess the full impact of damage, and to ensure our members and their families have their basic needs met in the coming days and weeks. The Union will also be approving a donation to the Canadian Red Cross via the Executive Board as soon as possible....
“Recovery on the southwest coast will certainly not happen overnight and we acknowledge that there is significant work to do. What our members need now is commitment from our elected officials that support will be given to the inshore harvesters that need it. Without that commitment, their livelihoods will be lost,” concludes Spingle.
From our perspective, as the official opposition, we are advocating that support.
Commercial fishing organizations and their members and those who manage port authorities are doing an inventory of the wharves damaged in the hurricane. Some concerns that have been expressed to me by port authorities are that under normal situations, the federal government cost-shares repair work with port authority revenue through small craft harbours funding. The concern now is that many port authorities do not have their share of funds to pay half the cost of repairing the damage, and in some cases replacing a destroyed wharf. They will be looking to the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard to provide sole-source funding from small craft harbours to pay 100% of reconstruction costs to help these port authorities bring back infrastructure to proper safety and operating standards.
As the fisheries minister is aware, but perhaps not everyone in this House is, there are a number of active fisheries that are open currently, and many fishers are attempting to assess damaged and lost gear. The fishing organizations I have spoken to want to know up front if the financial aid will be there.
The Minister of Fisheries is well aware that the fall lobster fishery in LFA25, between New Brunswick and southwestern P.E.I., is open. The season is short and is almost over, but the loss of these few days has had a big impact. As we asked in the House today, we are asking for the minister to extend the season so that they can complete it. I will ask the government again tonight if it will consider extending that season.
As I said in the House earlier today, our small craft harbours are the Trans-Canada Highway of our oceans, and without them, boats cannot get on the water, which means seafood cannot be caught, which means there is less Canadian product on supermarket shelves and less income for our coastal communities.
The men and women on the sea who feed us deserve a government that will remove the bureaucracy, cut up the red tape and get our wharves functioning again. These commitments from the government are serious and must be upheld.
In light of the situation, we as legislators must come together, listen to what is needed on the ground, and deliver quickly to Atlantic Canada what they need to recover from this hurricane in a time that would allow people to resume their ability to earn an income and support their families.
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