- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- South Shore—St. Margarets
- Nova Scotia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,927.65
- Government Page
- Apr/17/23 3:06:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, elver poachers are still fishing on the rivers in Nova Scotia, even though the minister shut the fishery down on the weekend. DFO enforcement, for two years, has been told not to arrest, just to observe. Shockingly, the government was surprised that thousands of poachers showed up instead. It is beyond ridiculous that the minister shut down the fishery because the poachers caught the quota, not the licence-holders, while DFO stood by and did not enforce the law.
Why are the Liberals supporting criminals continuing to fish elvers while stopping legal harvesters?
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- Feb/17/23 11:09:16 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while we were all enjoying Boxing Day, the frigid North Atlantic Ocean claimed the life of a 27-year-old lobster fisherman from Nova Scotia.
Christian Atwood was lobstering off Cape Sable Island, setting the last trawl of traps, when he was pulled overboard. He has not been found.
Christian leaves behind his beautiful 16-month-old son, Colson; his loving partner, Kristen; his siblings; and his parents, Carmella and Ralph.
Everyone who knew Christian remembers him as a fun-loving, cheerful guy and a great father. He was the light that shone in every room when he entered. His father, Ralph, told me that he did not want his kids to go fishing because of the danger, but the draw of the ocean gets in one's blood, and fishing was in Christian's soul.
The vast unmarked grave of the ocean is no consolation for those family members who have had people lost at sea. Christian's family is asking us in this place to do better to make our fishermen safer at sea and bring them home.
May Christian rest in peace.
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- Feb/9/23 3:07:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, the Liberals have found a new strategy to kill jobs, and that is to protect mud. The Liberals are proposing to shut down the critical halibut and swordfish fisheries off Browns Bank with a new marine-protected area by the end of next year. More than 95% of the ocean floor that the Liberals are planning to protect is mud. Apparently, a fishing line 12 feet under the surface of the water is a danger to the mud 270 feet below.
Will the Liberal who wants to kill fishing jobs to protect the scarcity of mud—
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- Nov/28/22 2:05:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, from Halifax, down the south and western shores of Nova Scotia, is Canada's most lucrative fishing region, where the lobster season will open this week. It is dangerous work fishing in the North Atlantic in the winter. This year, fishermen are facing more challenges. If the howling winds, frigid temperatures and unpredictable waves were not bad enough, the Liberal government's taxes are making it more difficult for fishermen to fuel their boats and make a living.
The government's unscientific closures for the bait fishery have made it tougher and more expensive for fishermen to set their traps. The men and women who make a living on the sea feed Canadians and, in southern Nova Scotia, the lobster industry is the main economic driver. Families depend on a thriving lobster season to pay the bills and put food on the table. I hope everyone in the House will join me in wishing all the fishermen in lobster fishing areas 33 and 34 a safe, successful and prosperous lobster season.
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- Sep/27/22 2:36:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since the hurricane, I have been speaking every day with fishermen and fishing organizations about the damage caused by the hurricane and the needs of the industry to recover. As I said, it is clear that we need some new programs to deal with this.
It has been four days since the hurricane, and the minister has yet to call a single fishing organization in Atlantic Canada. How do I know this? It is because I talk to them to every day and she does not.
How will the minister design new programs that respond quickly if she does not talk to the fishing organizations and the people most impacted?
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- Sep/26/22 9:17:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think there are some strong methods already. I know that, on the point where I live on the ocean, half of the homeowners have used this technology and it has worked. The other half of the homeowners, on the other side, have not used it and the shoreline is eroding.
Regarding the harbours themselves, where the commercial operations take place, we need to have much more investment in those harbours. We already have probably in the neighbourhood of $3 billion to $4 billion required to bring the wharves up to standard across Canada. That does not include making the breakwalls and everything else that needs to be done in order to make them a little higher because the seas are a little higher, the storms are a little stronger and the boats are a little bigger. All of those things are contributing to the exposure of those fishing communities to the storms that we are receiving.
I would agree with anything we can do to figure out erosion, but Mother Nature is Mother Nature and it is pretty hard to win a battle against the ocean with artificial means. The ocean will take things away, unfortunately, so planning where one puts one's house and how one builds those breakwalls is very important.
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- Sep/26/22 2:44:41 p.m.
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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?
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- May/30/22 8:23:13 p.m.
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Madam Chair, how many prosecutions have occurred from DFO investigations for out-of-season fishing in the Maritimes?
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- May/30/22 8:17:38 p.m.
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Madam Chair, it was the lobster fishery in southwest Nova Scotia. They were fishing out of season in the summer. Will that happen again this summer?
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- May/30/22 8:16:56 p.m.
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Madam Chair, Marshall I states that the indigenous right to participate in the unregulated fishery of 1761 is a right to participate in the regulated fishery of today. Why, then, for at least the last three years, has the DFO allowed out-of-season lobster fishing in southwest Nova Scotia?
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- May/17/22 2:46:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of gas coming from the government.
Lobster bait costs have more than doubled because of the decisions of the minister. Average fishing fuel costs have gone up 140% since the fall. The government's disastrous policies are increasing bait and fuel costs for fishing, making it more difficult to earn a living. Because of these increased costs, fishermen are now only able to go out every second day. In Nova Scotia, 70¢ from each litre of diesel goes to governments.
It is time to lower gas taxes. When will the government do the right thing and lower gas taxes?
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join this discussion and listen to the thoughtful remarks of my colleagues from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. I am also pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-251, an act respecting the development of a federal framework on the conservation of fish stocks and management of pinnipeds.
I would first like to thank and congratulate my friend from Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame for his hard work on this important issue and for this innovative bill. Like him, I come from a riding that depends on the Atlantic Ocean for the local fishing economy, and I have many constituents who are concerned about the damage pinnipeds are having on our marine ecosystems.
The science is clear: Pinniped overpopulation is having a severe impact on fish and other marine life populations from coast to coast. I hear from fishermen at every wharf I go to along South Shore that they are worried about how this overpopulation is impacting the stocks of many species that they fish commercially. This includes, but is not limited to, mackerel, halibut, shrimp, crab, capelin, Atlantic and Pacific salmon and even lobster. Pinnipeds are devouring them all.
There is also scientific evidence that suggests that plummeting cod stock populations off of Newfoundland in the 1990s, which led to the cod moratorium, was due to an overabundance in the seal population, as well as Spanish and Portuguese overfishing. I sat in as a staffer on the ad hoc committee on the fishery in those years during those decisions.
Additionally, many residents on both Atlantic and Pacific coasts have seen pinnipeds deep into rivers like never before. Rivers are not a natural habitat for them. They are chasing the food that would otherwise be abundant in the ocean, but the animals are adapting to the diminishing food stocks in the oceans they have been consuming and trying to find their source of protein and fat elsewhere.
Every day it seems like another fishing industry is faced with perilous quota reductions and warnings from DFO that, if overfishing continues, more moratoriums and fishing closures will happen. The Liberals are intent on leaving all the fish in the ocean in order to feed pinnipeds and reduce economic activity. These gloomy warnings cause stress for families that depend on the economic benefit that commercial fishing provides.
Countless studies have shown that pinniped overpopulation is contributing to reduced stocks and an imbalance in the ocean and in our biodiversity. For example, there were 2.7 million seals at the start of the cod collapse, the cod moratorium, in 1992. Now, 10 million seals in Atlantic Canada consume the weight of the entire Atlantic commercial catch every 15 days. On top of that, seals in Atlantic Canada annually eat 97% of what is taken out of the ocean.
Harvesters, indigenous groups, coastal communities and scientists are desperate for updated population estimates for pinnipeds. It is reported that seal populations are at their highest levels in a century, and these populations simply continue to grow. In order to address this problem, we need to know just how bad it is and ensure that DFO comes up with a plan to deal with it, which they have not done for 30 years.
Let me repeat, the purpose of the bill before us is not to prescribe a solution. Rather, it is to compel the government to produce an annual census of pinnipeds in Canadian waters and use science to implement a management plan. We have a duty to ensure that the Minister of Fisheries and DFO are working in the interest of commercial fisheries and fishermen to protect the sustainability of our oceans. All parties agree on this. That is why there has been unanimous consent at the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans to study this issue in both this Parliament and the last.
Supporting Bill C-251 is common sense, and coastal MPs from every party in the House have recognized that a pinniped census is required to ensure that DFO is doing its job to protect the biodiversity of our oceans. If there is not all-party support, I would be curious to hear the rationale from members as to why they are prepared to let our oceans face these catastrophic outcomes.
The bill calls for a federal framework to be tabled in the House of Commons within one year and annually after that to provide a yearly pinniped census and a management plan to tackle the problem. We need to know what we are facing.
I have heard hon. members talk about and question costs, which is always a consideration in the House for the government. DFO does biomass studies every year in the $2-billion increase it has added to its budget since 2015. We do annual biomass studies of many species, but not enough. Why would we not do biomass studies of the largest predator of our commercial stock? We have not done that ever in the history of our country. This framework calls on that.
The goal is to promote conservation and protection of marine ecosystems. At the end of the day, I think this is a principle that all members can agree upon. We cannot allow an ecological disaster to take place in our oceans simply because the actions required to stop it may not be politically popular. We cannot turn a blind eye to the carnage and suffering that will take place if pinnipeds run out of things to eat. It is a fact. They will starve within 10 to 20 years.
The situation is putting our entire biodiversity at risk. DFO has estimated that if something is not done about the grey seal population off the coast of Nova Scotia, the entire Nova Scotia fishery will disappear within 10 to 20 years. Membertou First Nation in Cape Breton is taking an innovative approach to this problem, which is having a severe impact on the first nation's ability to fish and maintain its livelihood. The band has been piloting a grey seal harvest. It is calling on the government to allow a full commercial harvest of grey seals. The band is teaching its community members how to humanely harvest pinnipeds.
Over the past few years, a small number of seals were harvested by Membertou, with flippers and loins processed by a Maritime seal company. Most of a pinniped can be harvested. Over eight countries in the world are harvesting pinnipeds now, and up to 100% of them is being used for things, as my colleague mentioned, from protein powders, to omega-3 and food sources for Canadians and other people around the world.
We should look to the experiences and ingenuity of first nations on how this issue can be dealt with. After all, it was our first nations who were first harvesting seals. We should expand and broaden our knowledge of their uses, such as meat and fur. We have seen how regulated and careful management of pinnipeds can be successful.
For example, Norway has managed its seal populations to a successful equilibrium, and Iceland has ensured its thriving fishing economy is not damaged by the overpopulation of pinnipeds. These two progressive, democratic states have found ways to protect the sustainability of the North Atlantic by keeping an eye on pinniped populations and continuing to be strong exporters of this seafood product.
This is an important number. Russia and Norway catch more Atlantic cod than the entire Canadian fishery, yet that species was in decline at the same level in 1992 as it was in Canada. We did a moratorium. They managed pinnipeds. There is no reason why we cannot continue to have our leadership on the world stage, as we do in so many areas, when it comes to the humane and sustainable fishery of pinnipeds for generations of Canadians to come.
In fact, we need to do this for our coastal communities to ensure the biodiversity of the ocean is returned to its natural state and we can continue to reap the benefits with a robust commercial fishery and a sustainable diversity of our oceans in the years to come.
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- Mar/31/22 2:50:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Unifor issued a news release on its meeting with the Minister of Fisheries that stated that the minister said her goal was to leave as many fish in the water as possible and that fishermen would need to sacrifice their jobs for climate change. In a statement responding to the release, the minister did not deny this.
Is the minister's actual goal to shut down the fishing industry?
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- Feb/28/22 3:16:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to two of those reports.
The first is the fisheries committee report on moderate livelihood. After extensive work at committee, Conservatives issued a dissenting report in response to the majority report. The majority report fails to adequately address the time-tested necessity of seasons for a reason.
Years of science and research have made it clear that conservation of our Atlantic lobster stock is dependent on the fishing seasons, which optimize the ability for stocks to reproduce. This leads to a greater abundance and stronger ecosystem. We continue to see a lack of enforcement when it comes to out-of-season fishing. As the official opposition, we continue to call on the minister to fulfill her duties and responsibilities as laid out in Marshall decision and take immediate action to resolve the current situation.
The second is the fisheries committee report “Pacific Salmon: Ensuring the Long-Term Health of Wild Populations and Associated Fisheries”. While the crisis facing the Pacific salmon may not be new, the state of Pacific salmon stocks has never been so dire. Over the past six years, five different fisheries ministers have asserted that the legislative changes, resources and direction that DFO has provided were sufficient to restore and protect Pacific salmon.
However, the current state and continued declines of Pacific salmon clearly show the government's assertions and actions have failed. In our complementary report, Conservatives call on the federal government to connect federal resources with plans and actions that are already mandated, known and proven to support the recovery and conservation of Pacific salmon stocks.
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- Feb/15/22 3:06:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today more fishermen have been lost at sea, and our hearts go out to them.
Captains know the risk of sinking while fishing. What Adam Newell was not counting on was losing his vessel while tied up at the DFO wharf. Adam saw his vessel smash into the rocks tied to that wharf. DFO wharfs are falling into the ocean. Adam would not have lost his vessel if the government had not ignored four fishery committee reports to this House.
When will the government act so more vessels are not lost tied up at the wharf? Without wharves, we cannot fish.
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