Madam Speaker, I am going to be the last speaker. I have been on the road since 4 o'clock this morning to get back to Ottawa to speak on this very important issue.
Of course we are supposed to learn from our history lessons throughout life, but it seems that for some reason or other the federal government has not learned its lesson. In the early 1990s when we had the major collapse and the TAGS program was brought in for our fishermen, it appeared that the process should work. But it did not work and of course today we are back again with the same problem.
The minister of fisheries had an opportunity to basically make history where no other minister has had the opportunity, that is, the minister should have listened to the all party committee report that was formed by all political stripes in Newfoundland and Labrador, including senators. We gave him a plan. As politicians who are close to the people, who know about Newfoundland and Labrador, who know the industry, we felt that we gave him a plan that would have worked if he had listened and implemented it. However, he chose not to. Of course as a result he has to live with that. And we, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, have to live with it, unless the people tell him differently and rise up, unless they tell the minister that what he has done is not good enough and that we need better representation than what the federal government is giving the people in Newfoundland and Labrador.
We have a right to determine our own future. That future has been taken away from the fisher people of Newfoundland and Labrador. We now are more dependent on the federal government than ever before. We have the best resources anywhere in Canada with the fishery and with the oil. However, for some reason or other, Upper Canada seems to want to keep us back and not let us have what we rightly deserve.
Of course the fisheries minister is at it again. The federal government is at it again. Now what are the fisher people going to do? The fisher people in Newfoundland and Labrador have been down before. They are used to fighting back the battles. They are going to continue the battles, because they will rise again and be successful like they were in the past. We are going to make sure that the minister, the federal government and whoever is here understand that and are accountable to the people.
The government talks about having to conserve the stocks. No one in their right mind would say, “Take it all out”. We know, and we were there to conserve the stocks. We are not stupid people. For some reason or other, the government must think that we are stupid people. No, we are intelligent people. We understand that this is our resource. We are not going to destroy our own resource. We are going to work together as a people to make sure we get the most out of our resource so that we can continue.
Fogo Island, an area I represent, put $38 million into the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador last year, I believe. I know it is not cod we are talking about with this issue of Fogo Island, but it was $38 million. I would say that for all the province it is $100 million or more that the fisher people of the province are putting into the economy of the whole country, because they are not spending just in Newfoundland and Labrador, they are spending everywhere in Canada.
We have taken away their livelihood. What are they going to do? I will tell members what they are going to do. I will tell members what the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are saying. We have seen the burning of the flag, which I know we do not take too lightly, and we should not take that too lightly. People said only just this weekend that when people start burning their country's flag it shows that there is major unrest. With major unrest come problems for the country, and more than problems, because we have just seen what happened over in Iraq with the burning of the U.S. flag. The Iraqis did not want the U.S. there. If we want to use that analogy, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians do not want to be a part of Canada because it is not taking care of the people it is supposed to be taking care of.
As a result, they burned the flag as a symbolic gesture to let Canada know and to let the Prime Minister and everyone in the country know that they are very unhappy and unsettled about the future for themselves and the province.
We can look back and talk about what has caused all this. We can look at a gentleman who was called Captain Canada. We were all so proud in Newfoundland and Labrador when he took on the overfishing. We were very proud. I do not think there was a Newfoundlander who did not say that it was the first time the federal government had the guts to do what it should have done. But where did it get us? Nowhere. It did not get us anywhere. It did not get us anywhere because it was done for political reasons, for all the wrong reasons.