The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

Before we begin our routine proceedings, the Chair would like to welcome to the Speaker's gallery today from the Energy Council of America: Chair, Mr. Jim Ellington, from the Mississippi House of Representatives; Past-Chair, Mr. Matt Smith, from the Colorado House of Representatives, and Mrs. Smith; and the Council Executive Director, Ms Lori Cameron.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in this hon. House today to congratulate the Women's Juvenile Volleyball Team from Queen Elizabeth High School in Foxtrap.

This team, under the guidance of Mr. Terry Mosher, the 2002 Canadian Volleyball Coach of the Year, recently attended the National Juvenile Championships in Saskatoon.

It is worthy to note that this is said to be one of the strongest teams ever to leave this Province for a National Volleyball Championship.

Their caliber of play is certainly evident in their 186 wins and ten losses in route to winning twenty-six school banners or gold medals in the last three years.

In Saskatoon, the girls posted a six and three record to claim the Division 2, Tier 3 Championship. The team went undefeated in play Sunday past, defeating the Alberta Blazers in the semi-final and beating Nova Scotia Provincial Champions 25-19 and 25-15 to claim the gold medal.

I would like all hon. members to join with me in congratulating team members: Kathryn Byrne, Lacey Haines, Michelle Harvey, Kayte Inkpen, Rhiannon Morgan, Natasha Noseworthy, Krista Parsons, Gabby Peyton, Shalanda Phillips, Erica Simms, Melissa Smith, and Coach Terry Mosher on a remarkable accomplishment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Gander.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS KELLY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Mr. Brad Peyton, originally from Gander, who will be working with Hollywood actor Tom Hanks' production company, Playtone, to write and direct a feature film called, The Spider and the Fly.

Mr. Peyton recently received a Grand Jury Award at the NoDance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, for his nine minutes film, Evelyn: The Cutest Evil Dead Girl.

Mr. Peyton produced, wrote and directed the film himself and has demonstrated an incredible amount of enthusiasm and artistic initiative.

Mr. Peyton's film, a short dark comedy, was not the first film he has produced, but the second. Both films have garnered him much attention, including a recent write-up in the Canadian Film Industry Magazine, Take One: Film and Television in Canada and The National Post.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Peyton is another example of how Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can succeed in any endeavour, especially film making. It is a true testament that we have the talent to build our local film industry, as long as there is support. On behalf of all members of the House, I congratulate Mr. Peyton for this new film project with Tom Hanks' production company and his receiving a Grand Jury Award at the Nodance Film Festival.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Today we have heard that there is an emergency meeting between our federal minister in the federal government, other Liberal MPs, and Minister Jane Stewart for Human Resources, responsible for EI, Stéphane Dion, the Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, and the federal Minister of Fisheries.

I wanted to ask the Premier, Mr. Speaker, or the Fisheries Ministers: Are they aware that these meetings are taking place? Have they been involved in the discussions? Have they been briefed on what the outcome will be? And, if so, could they inform the House please?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, we are fully aware of the meetings that are taking place in Ottawa at noon today with those ministers, along with Minister Manley, by the way. I understand he is going to be at that meeting as well, and the MPs from Newfoundland and Labrador. They know our position on this, Mr. Speaker. We have made it quite known in the public, in Ottawa, to each of the members and ministers who are involved in the discussions today.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, when the minister made a statement in the House yesterday she talked about early retirement. I would assume that the minister has done some analysis and government has, at its disposal and fingertips, analysis of how many people it believes should be reduced from the industry.

I want to ask the minister: Have you done that analysis? How many people do you believe should be reduced from the industry? And what specific proposals did the minister make on behalf of government to the federal government recently in her trip to Ottawa?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I certainly would not speculate as to what the take-up would be on either component of a program for licence buyback and early retirement, if it was to become available, Mr. Speaker. I can honestly say that in terms of what the eligibility would have been for those programs in the past, we have crunched some numbers as it relates to the industry today and we have done some analysis around that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to note that the minister said they have done some analysis based upon what the early retirement programs were in the past. We all know that the Premier was part of a government in the past which rejected early retirement for those people below the age of fifty-five.

I want to ask the minister this question, Mr. Speaker: What specific proposal have you put forward to the federal government relating to early retirement? If it does come, and we all believe it will and hope it will, it will be a federal-provincial shared responsibility. Can the minister enlighten us or inform the House and thus the people of the Province, particularly those who will be impacted and affected by this decision, exactly what criteria her and her government have proposed to the federal government for early retirement?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think what the hon. member has to understand and realize is that, as it is today, there is no program for early retirement or for voluntary licence buyback. In fact, Mr. Speaker, we are three weeks into this and only now have we even gotten an agreement that they will put these particular components on the table for discussion.

What I say to the hon. member is this: If and when there is a program, this government will be ready. We will have our homework done. Actually, as I said, we have already started analysis on it. We will be at the table, Mr. Speaker, so when there is a program then we will have something to talk about; but the reality is that we want a fishery, we want to see this fishery open, we maintain that position, Mr. Speaker -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JONES: - and while we maintain that position we also realize, Mr. Speaker, that there has to be a reduction in the capacity within the industry and we are prepared to work with the federal government to see that implemented.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we all realize there is no program. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure that out today. The question centred around what proposals have the provincial government, through the Department of Fisheries, made to the federal government in terms of criteria for early retirement? The minister is clearly not going to answer the question, so I am not going to belabour the issue.

Mr. Speaker, this issue, the recent decision by the federal government, its complete indifference, its arrogance to the people of the Province have led to a resolution that we are going to discuss this afternoon, as proposed by the Premier.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in this House the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs admitted that he has had no discussions with any of his provincial counterparts. What I would like to ask the Premier is this question: Can he tell us about his discussions with Gordon Campbell, the Premier of British Columbia; Jean Charest, the Premier of Quebec; John Hamm, the Premier of Nova Scotia; Pat Binns, the Premier of Prince Edward Island; and Bernard Lord, the Premier of New Brunswick, which are all coastal states.

Can he tell us about the conversations that he has had with his counterparts on amending the Constitution? If he can, tell us when he had those conversations, and does he have their support?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As we indicated yesterday, we, on this side of the House, have enough respect for the democratic institutions, such as the House of Assembly, that we would not go into detailed discussions with anyone and presume the outcome of a debate and a vote that is going to happen today. We have that much respect for our parliamentary institutions, Mr. Speaker.

The fact of the matter is I have spoken to these people and given them an advance notice of the type of resolution that we are going to debate today. I have indicated that I expect and hope that we will have unanimous support for the initiative put forward by this government, that I am so proud to lead, and then we will go into the details with them as to exactly what it is we envisage unfolding in the next several months.

With respect to the issues that were questioned earlier, Mr. Speaker, on the type of program that may or may not be in place after today - we hope there is a program, some compensation issues to go along with an opened, limited, sustainable fishery.

Unlike the Leader of the Opposition, who does not want to put forward a position on anything, maybe the Opposition House Leader - rather than ask a question about: What are the components that you put forward? Maybe he would like to suggest - because he did mention an age limit, for example, for early retirement - to us what the position of the Official Opposition is as to whether retirement age should be fifty-five like it was in the past, or are they trying to suggest that they think it should be an age lower than fifty-five?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. Premier to now conclude his answer.

PREMIER GRIMES: Instead of asking questions, Mr. Speaker, there is a golden opportunity for them to finally state to the people of the Province something about what they believe should happen instead of trying to be critical of the things we are trying to do to protect and defend Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, two things: First of all, we are not going to apologize in this House for asking questions on behalf of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Secondly, nor are we going to take the view that before we stand in Question Period we should vet our questions through the eighth floor of the Premier's Office. That is not going to happen, Premier, not today or any other time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, a few years ago, just before the last sovereignty referendum in Quebec -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: This is an important issue, Mr. Speaker.

- the Government of Canada, led then by John Chrétien, as now, put a series of questions to the Supreme Court of Canada to clarify the obligation of the national government if Quebec, or any other province, proposed amendments to the Constitution. The court said, in its opinion, that the Constitution Act of 1982 gives every province a right to initiate changes to the Constitution and there is a corresponding duty to all other participants in the Confederation, including the federal government, to engage in Constitutional discussions. Is the Premier aware that once we pass this resolution - and again I predict, as I did last week, as I did yesterday -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. E. BYRNE: - that this will pass unanimously. Is he aware that when we pass this resolution today and present it to the Government of Canada that irrespective of Mr. Chrétien's attitude, or Mr. Dion's attitude towards this place, that they will have no choice but to engage in such Constitutional discussions?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Of course, we were very aware of the secession case that was put to the Supreme Court of Canada, by the Government of Canada, in advance of bringing in the clarity bill. We were very well aware of that. The question is, I think, that should be asked: Is the Prime Minister aware of that? Because he suggested that it does not matter what we do in this Legislature. This is the insult to Newfoundland and Labrador. This is the insult to any supposed respected partner in Canada, that we have a right, a democratic right, and a responsibility that we will exercise today to pass a resolution saying we want to begin a negotiation, a serious negotiation, with the Government of Canada about our Terms of Union, and about the Constitution that we willing signed onto in 1949.

The question is: Does the Prime Minister of the country understand the responsibility? I think the language in the actual bill, as I understood it, was the reciprocal duty to engage in the negotiation at the request of any one of the partners. Did he understand that when he stood up and said in Calgary: I am only here for nine months. I am glad I haven't talked about the Constitution in the last ten years and I don't intend to talk about it in the next nine months.

The question is one that we have already put to the Prime Minister in the last few days, Mr. Speaker, as to whether or not he understands. We fully understand. That is why I have been saying in the public that we will not be deterred in Newfoundland and Labrador, we will have our say, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, there is very little disagreement on the complete and absolute arrogance and dismissive attitude, not only of the Prime Minister and his federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, but the culture and attitude of the federal public service to this place itself. No disagreement on that whatsoever.

My question to the Premier is this. But before I ask it, the Supreme Court decision, as he indicates that he has, and I am sure that he does, as does, I am sure, his Minister of Justice, further states that when one participant in the Confederation, namely us, Newfoundland and Labrador, seeks an amendment to the Constitution all other parties in Confederation are obligated, irrespective of their colonial attitudes and ignorant attitudes to this place, they are obligated under the law, Mr. Speaker, to come to the table and discuss it.

In light of these binding obligations, Mr. Speaker, on the Government of Canada and other provinces and territories to discuss the constitutional amendment, I would like to ask the Premier this question: Once we pass this resolution in this House today, will he send that immediately to all other provinces, will he send it immediately to the Prime Minister, and invite them to a constitutional conference talking about renegotiating the Terms of Union for Newfoundland and Labrador?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am glad that in asking this question the Opposition House Leader, Mr. Speaker, answered the question he asked before. His previous question was: Did we know about the reciprocal obligation? Then he stood up and said: Well, I am sure you have the case, and I know that you know. So, I don't know why he asked the question before, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, let me point out this: What we plan to do today, after the debate that we will have commencing shortly, is to follow the instructions that we are asking permission to follow in the resolution itself. The resolution does not say: BE IT RESOLVED that we immediately invite everyone to a constitutional conference.

I will read it now, because we are going to debate it shortly. It says: BE IT RESOLVED that this House call on the Government of Canada and direct the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to, not call a constitutional conference which you just suggested, but to begin negotiations leading to the establishment of a joint management regime over the fisheries adjacent to Newfoundland and Labrador. That is the resolution.

Maybe he is suggesting by his question, Mr. Speaker, that he is going to move an amendment today. If he wants to move an amendment suggesting that he wants a vote today on demanding that there be a constitutional conference immediately, so be it. We are going to have the resolution in a few minutes. We propose this resolution, as the government. It says to begin the process, and we hope to have the authority of the House today, to begin the process of negotiations leading to the establishment of a joint management regime, and in those negotiations such joint management regime would, through an amendment of the Terms of Union, have some constitutional reinforcement.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. the Premier now to conclude his answer.

PREMIER GRIMES: We intend to follow the outline in the resolution if it is passed within the next few hours, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, there is a distinct difference, I suppose, in what was just talked about. Once this House passes a resolution and it is sent, the obligation under the 1982 Constitution, as clarified by the Supreme Court when asked to clarify it, that any province can open up a discussion. It is an obligation. It is a right that we have enshrined.

If we are serious about it, truly serious about it, then what would be stopping us once we passed that resolution to begin that process? What would stop us from beginning it? Secondly, in the Premier's own words, the current Prime Minister and current federal Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs have laughed it off. So, how successful are we going to be with those two jokers at the head of the table negotiating with us?

The question is this: If we immediately begin the process, we are obligated, and the federal government is obligated, as every other province in Canada is obligated, so why would we not proceed on that front?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have laid out a well-thought-out approach to this in the resolution that is before the House today, which says we would begin a negotiation. The end objective here is to have joint management over the fishery resource: Newfoundland and Labrador and Canada. That is the objective. The steps to be followed are to look at changing the Terms of Union, having the Constitution changed to enshrine it in the Constitution if that is achievable.

Now, Mr. Speaker, maybe the Opposition House Leader should check with his party leader, who has said as recently as their annual convention in Corner Brook, because he was criticizing my rather tough approach and said: We should deal more co-operatively with the Government of Canada. We should deal more co-operatively, because the Premier's hard stance is not having that great an effect. We should have a more respectful relationship with the Government of Canada.

That is his speech that they all cheered just a couple of weekends ago, and now he is here suggesting: Don't even start a negotiation. Go up and demand your place at a constitutional table.

I guess that is a slightly different approach. Maybe they will have a caucus about this later and figure out what their real position is. Our position is clear. It is in the resolution that we will begin debate on in a few minutes, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, one final supplementary.

In light of the binding obligations - because that is what they are, Mr. Speaker, I say to the Premier and government - in light of the binding obligations spelled out by the Supreme Court of Canada, I believe it is proper to ask by what moral, political, legal, or constitutional right does Prime Minister Chrétien or Minister Dion purport to have to stonewall the very legitimate, democratic and political right that this Province has? They do not have that right.

I ask the Premier this question: In view of the fact that they do not have that right, why would we in our own Legislature not exercise that very right?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the Opposition House Leader wanting to appear to be very aggressive and tough today, and very determined with respect to this, but again, Mr. Speaker, maybe he should think again about his words.

If we are going to pass a resolution today, that he suggests we are, that says we begin negotiations with our partner, the Government of Canada, I am not sure that he would suggest that it is great to call up and say: Oh, hello jokers, Prime Minister and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister. Hello, you jokers. I would like to have a negotiation now.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

PREMIER GRIMES: Your words. Your words, not my words.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER GRIMES: Your words. Mr. Speaker, his words, not mine.

I can tell you this, Mr. Speaker, that maybe he should check with the lawyers that are in his own caucus, because we know and we have the legal opinions, and we have had them for some time, that suggest exactly what he says, that there is a reciprocal obligation to engage. But, we also know - and he should check - and his colleague next to him is telling him right now, that the Government of Canada has legal opinions. The Government of Canada has legal opinions that suggest that reciprocal obligation only applies to a secession motion, and that there is a basis on which they can try to deny us if they like.

We are saying we will not be denied, there is no basis on which they can deny us, but that is not our first demand. Our first demand is to deal with the spirit of the resolution, which is: engage in a negotiation, look at changing the Terms of Union, change the Constitution, and it all happens in good order, in time, through a process that is well thought out. Instead of trying to beat our chests today and suggest we are really tough, we are really mean - they are a bunch of jokers and we are going to say: Hello, jokers, we are coming up and you better start talking to us.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. Premier now to conclude his answer.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Ferryland.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Premier has often indicated that our economic performance is due to a strategic economic plan in our Province. On May 5, the Government House Leader said: The economic visions and plans of the government are clearly documented in a Strategic Economic Plan, which was unveiled in 1992 by then Premier, Clyde Wells. Now that is the best his current government has to offer the people of Newfoundland and Labrador in 2003. It is a plan with an eleven year record of failure.

I want to ask the Premier: How can he defend an economic policy that saw the biggest out-migration of people in our history, that downsized our population by 10 per cent, the biggest downsizing in the western world since the Irish famines?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, it speaks to attitude with respect to the type of question that is asked. Mr. Speaker, rather than be happy and be pleased that out-migration in the Province today is slowing and almost stopped, rather than be pleased that a plan that was put in place, started some ten years ago, but as in the resolution today - if he has read it - the updated version, which was done only a couple of years ago, Securing our Future: The Renewal Strategy for Jobs and Growth, in case he missed that event. There were consultations all over Newfoundland and Labrador, in every region of Province.

There was an updating, I think, with seventy or eighty recommendations that came from the people of Newfoundland and Labrador about how to grow and diversify our economy in all regions of the Island and Labrador. It is because of that new plan, which built on the already succeeding previous plan, that we have had just about a total end to out-migration. We have some of the lowest social assistance rates in the history of the Province. We have record employment rates, since they have been keeping statistics in the 1970s. Mr. Speaker, more people are working in the Province than ever in recorded history.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: And he wants to get up and talk about a plan. They say: We have a plan. We might show it to you in election, but between now and then you better just trust me. There is a plan for you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Ferryland.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Not only did more than 60,000 people leave our Province, but those who stayed behind did not fair very well from this government's economic policy.

The latest report from Stats Canada reveals that incomes in Newfoundland and Labrador have not kept pace with the cost of living. In fact, the medium income in this Province has declined by 3.7 per cent since 1990, the biggest decline in the entire country.

I want to ask the Premier: How will he defend the economic policies that have made Newfoundland and Labrador poorer, relative to the rest of this country, than they were eleven years ago?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FITZGERALD: (Inaudible) glass half full or half empty?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS J.M. AYLWARD: I say to the Member for Bonavista South, our glasses are always half full over here, Mr. Speaker. No difficulty.

I can also say, in response to the question, Mr. Speaker, the facts are clear. This government just recently signed collective agreements that gave our public sector employees a 15 per cent increase.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, our personal income tax has never been higher. It shows that the people of the Province have confidence. They are putting the money back into our economy. We have been able to grow our personal income tax and our economy by over $100 million every year. And I know it kills them, but the facts are there, Mr. Speaker. We are proud of our record. We have no difficulty.

Mr. Speaker, one more important thing: Our plan is clear. We are still waiting to see the peekaboo plan over there.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A final supplementary, the hon. the Member for Ferryland.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I believe Stats Canada's figures any day over yours, Minister.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Stats Canada revealed another alarming statistic about the growing poverty in this Province relative to the rest of the country, when 14.3 per cent of the average income in this Province comes from federal and provincial government programs, such as EI and welfare payments. That is the highest in this country. Even the recent equated territory of Nunavut is less dependent on government transfers.

I want to ask the Premier, how does he defend economic policies that have made Newfoundland and Labrador more dependent on government transfers than ever before in our history?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, let's talk about the facts. The facts are that my statistics and our statistics, even though he does not like them, are from Stats Canada. That is what we are giving out.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS J.M. AYLWARD: They are not our own statistics. Now, they are not the ones he would like to hear.

Mr. Speaker, for his own health I am not even going to mention the GDP today, because I know he cannot stand that, but I will say we always hear about the doom and gloom, and he talks about so many things. He will never stand in this House and say: Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have the highest percentage of home ownership in the country - because that is something which is also a fact, Mr. Speaker.

I can say time and time again, our plan is clear, our plan is to grow the economy. The only plan that they have acknowledged, finally, the Member for Conception Bay South, was the Marshall plan. What is the Marshall plan? Cut, slash and burn.

Our plan is to continue to grow our economy. We do not need to connect the dots for the people in the Province anymore. The people of the Province have connected the dots on the Marshall plan and who has created it, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The resolution on the proposed change to the Constitution today, and the Premier's words in the House this afternoon in response to questions is that he wants to sit down and negotiate with the Government of Canada on fisheries management. Yet, Mr. Speaker, the other day he said that he wanted to sue the Government of Canada for negligence. What kind of strategy is that? Does he seriously think that the Government of Canada is going to sit down and talk to him while he is in court suing them for negligence for the past fifty years? What kind of strategy is that, Mr. Speaker?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the question, and I think the people of Newfoundland and Labrador would like to know that the members opposite laughed raucously. They thought it was the funniest thing in the world, Mr. Speaker.

I tell you this, and let me explain why we will take action on both fronts, Mr. Speaker, because the resolution today, the resolution that we will have a serious debate about in just a few minutes, is a very serious issue about the future. It is all about the future, and I think they are nodding, Mr. Speaker. They recognize and acknowledge that this resolution has nothing to do with the past. It is about the future. It is about having a say jointly about what will happen from now on, and that is the negotiation that this House, I would expect, will give us the instruction to begin today.

Mr. Speaker, in the meantime, is the hon. Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi now suggesting that we should just forget about the disaster of the last fifty-four years, in which the mismanagement by the federal government has led to the circumstance that we are in today?

Those people understand fully that they should be held accountable and responsible for their mismanagement. They have been negligent. I even heard the words out of the lips and mouth of the Leader of the Opposition just a couple of days ago, that they are negligent. He is a lawyer. He is advising everybody that there is negligence here. The member who just rose says there is negligence here.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. the Premier now to conclude his answer.

PREMIER GRIMES: Do we ignore negligence for the last fifty-four years because we are going to negotiate about the future? Not this group, Mr. Speaker. We are going to do both.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi-Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Premier earlier suggested that he might get nowhere with Ottawa if he talked rudely on the telephone to the Prime Minister. Now he is saying we can successfully pursue a course of action by suing them in the courts for negligence and negotiate with them properly as well.

Mr. Speaker, my experience has been - will the Premier be surprised if the Government of Canada says we will have to wait until this lawsuit is over before we sit down and negotiate with the Government of Canada? Will he be surprised if that is what happens?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The question is: Would I be surprised by the Government of Canada if they...? No, Mr. Speaker, nothing about the Government of Canada would surprise me. Absolutely nothing. I have seen just about everything in the fourteen years that I have been involved in politics at the federal-provincial level, but I can tell you this. There is no question, and I will say it again, the Government of Canada will take whatever positions they want to take. There are two things that will be clear. I believe that in a matter of a few hours we will have the support and the resolution and the resolve of this House to begin a negotiation about the future, and the government will also, because we will feel obligated to do so.

If the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi wants to go out and explain to the fisherfolk and the plant workers of Newfoundland and Labrador why we are not going to do anything about it, the neglect of the last fifty-four years, he can go and make that speech. We are going to do both, Mr. Speaker. We are going to do both at the same time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Question Period has ended.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance.

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In response to a question yesterday by the Opposition House Leader on the breakdown of the recoveries on loans and advances under Activity 1.1.06, there was a question concerning the breakdown of the interest owing to the Province that is being collected currently through the Department of Industry, Trade and Rural Development. Excluding the equity interests, loans receivable under Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador, $47.2 million; under the Fisheries Loan Board, outstanding loans to be received $14 million; and Farm Development Loan Board, $6.4 million, for a total of $89.6 million.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: It being Wednesday we will go to the Orders of the Day and we are dealing with the resolution presented by the hon. the Premier.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. LUSH: Mr. Speaker, I just want to advise all members of the House and the viewing public that, although this is a government resolution, there is agreement on all sides by the Opposition House Leader and by the Leader of the NDP that we do this resolution under the rules of Private Members' Day.

We have agreed that there would be four speakers from each side, excluding - four from each side and the Leader of the NDP, and that the times would be the same times as we have in Private Members' Day.

We would just like for the Chair to ensure that the members stick to the fifteen minutes. We do this to avoid a prolonged and protracted debate, because it appears that everybody agrees and hence the agreement by the three parties.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Because of the importance of this particular resolution, I will take the first couple of minutes of my fifteen minutes allotted to again officially, even though it is on the Order Paper, I think it is worth again reading the resolution into the record, the resolution that will be debated and hopefully supported and passed here today.

Mr. Speaker, I move, on behalf of the government, the following resolution:

WHEREAS the seacoast fisheries of Newfoundland and Labrador were brought into this nation with Newfoundland and Labrador's accession to Canada; and

WHEREAS the Government of the Dominion of Newfoundland held and exercised responsibility for the management of seacoast fisheries prior to Confederation; and

WHEREAS the Constitution Act, 1867 vests in the Government of Canada exclusive authority over the fishery; and

WHEREAS under current International Law an independent Newfoundland and Labrador would control its adjacent resources including the fishery; and

WHEREAS federal management of seacoast fisheries since 1949 has failed to adequately protect or develop the principal fisheries adjacent to Newfoundland and Labrador; and

WHEREAS failed federal fisheries management has led to the complete collapse of the Northern Cod fishery and other ground fish stocks, the basis for Newfoundland's colonization and the mainstay of its economy for 500 years; and

WHEREAS the federal government has failed to adopt a comprehensive plan for stock recovery since the groundfish moratoria were declared in the early 1990s; and

WHEREAS it is recognized and accepted that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has maintained and continues to exercise primary regulatory authority over the fish processing industry in this Province; and

WHEREAS new fisheries for species such as crab and shrimp have developed in the wake of the collapse of ground fish stocks and solid, sustainable management practices are vital to the future of these fisheries; and

WHEREAS it is accepted that the regulation of fish harvesting and processing should occur in a seamless and integrated way; and

WHEREAS the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has consistently requested a greater say in fisheries management since 1949 and has identified this as a priority in Securing our Future: The Renewal Strategy for Jobs and Growth; and

WHEREAS the fishery remains an economic mainstay and principal industry of Newfoundland and Labrador and the economic and social foundation of most of its rural communities; and

WHEREAS federal management of fisheries adjacent to Newfoundland and Labrador does not give due regard to local experience and considerations; and

WHEREAS the advice of the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council (FRCC), which was established to integrate practical knowledge derived from local experience and scientific information on resources, has been largely ignored in the federal government's recent declaration of a moratorium for 4RS3Pn Gulf cod; and

WHEREAS the recent decisions of the Government of Canada on 2J3KL Northern cod and 4RS3Pn Gulf cod were undertaken without proper consultation with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the people who depend upon these resources and with disregard for the recommendations of the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council; and

WHEREAS these decisions have further undermined the confidence of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians in the effectiveness of federal fisheries management; and

WHEREAS other provinces control their main resource industries; and

WHEREAS significant and decisive action is required to address this concern;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this House call on the Government of Canada and direct the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to begin negotiations leading to the establishment of a joint management regime over the fisheries adjacent to Newfoundland and Labrador;

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the principal elements of such a joint management regime include

(1) the establishment, through an amendment of the Terms of Union, of shared, equal, constitutional authority by the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and Canada over the fisheries adjacent to the province;

(2) the establishment through an amendment of the Terms of Union of a joint fisheries management board and the delegation to that board by the governments of Newfoundland and Labrador and Canada of sufficient of their authority to permit that board to successfully implement this joint management regime;

(3) the development and implementation of a conservation and re-building plan aimed at the achievement of long-term sustainability of the fisheries in the waters adjacent to Newfoundland and Labrador and in particular a plan that would achieve the recovery of the ground fish stocks;

(4) the development and implementation of fisheries harvesting plants, including the establishment of Total Allowable Catches, based on the principles of conservation, sustainability, adjacency and the long-term well-being of the fishing communities of rural Newfoundland and Labrador;

As well, Mr. Speaker, that one of the principal elements of such a joint management regime include

(5) the establishment of programs in Newfoundland and Labrador to enhance knowledge and understanding of the ocean ecosystems adjacent to Newfoundland and Labrador through the encouragement and support of scientific research and the utilization of customary and experiential knowledge of the fisheries possessed by fish harvesters.

Mr. Speaker, as was indicated earlier, it was fifty-four years ago, in March past, that the separate and distinct Dominion of Newfoundland ceased to exist by a democratic choice of our people and became the youngest province of the great Country of Canada. Mr. Speaker, up to that point in time, for the 450 years of our settled time here, the aboriginals being here centuries before that, the government of the Dominion of Newfoundland held and exercised responsibility for management of the seacoast fisheries. Confederation, our voluntary entry into Confederation, Mr. Speaker, changed that and the responsibility for management of fisheries was vested with the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada has had exclusive authority over fishery management decisions since that time, since 1949.

We suggest - and I think everybody here knows, Mr. Speaker, in this Legislature and in this great Province of ours, that with the authority also came responsibilities. There are always responsibilities that come with the exercise of authority. Those responsibilities were several. The responsibility of exercising sound stewardship of the fisheries resources, not just cod, but all of the fisheries resources. The responsibility of exercising sound management decisions that took into account the principles of adjacency and our historical dependence on these very natural resources that we brought into this great country of Canada with us. The responsibility to ensure that fish management decisions take into account conservation measures to ensure that fish stocks are not, and were not, overfished.

Mr. Speaker, most importantly, the responsibility as well, to ensure that all of its management decisions took into account the impacts on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador that brought access to this great resource into Canada with us. Otherwise, we would still be the Dominion of Newfoundland and we would still be exercising both the responsibility - and we would have the accountability and the authority and the responsibility ourselves.

Mr. Speaker, our assessment is clear, and I think it is shared by members of this Legislature. Federal fisheries management of our fishery, in our view, since 1949 has been a failure. Many times in the past fifty-four years - and others will probably speak to it today. We have recognized circumstance and circumstances in that fifty-four years of history where our fish resources have been used as bargaining tools for other Canadian priorities that were deemed to be greater than those here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Sadly, Mr. Speaker, a higher priority was sometimes given to foreign policy, as important as it is, and other international trade considerations than it was to the very people of this Province who brought the resource with them and depend upon its existence for their continued sustainability as a people - not only the resource, but as a people in their communities.

As a result, as well, there have been years of foreign overfishing of straddling stocks. I do not doubt, not for a minute, like most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, that that was a significant contributing factor in the severe decline and non-recovery of the Northern cod on the Northeast Coast. This stock - the stock upon which the Province was founded in the first instance; the stock in which rural Newfoundland and Labrador depends upon; the stock that is considered to be the birthright of every Newfoundlander and Labradorian was allowed to dwindle and almost disappear completely before any action was taken against foreign overfishing, whatsoever.

So, Mr. Speaker, we submit, and I submit, that the policies of the last fifty-four years have failed. They have failed the fish and they have failed the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, it is clear as well, and I submit that action was only taken when it was on foreign overfishing because the government of this Province, governments prior to the one that I lead, implemented a sustained information campaign on international foreign overfishing that opened the eyes of the world to the pillage that was going on in the rich fishing grounds off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and Labrador and the pending ecological disaster that was occurring off our shores. It was this government that led the campaign that went to the United Nations in New York and made the presentations - made presentations around the world about what was happening to the stocks here. Only after that campaign, led by the people and the government of this Province, did the Government of Canada start to take some action with respect to putting some limits on foreign overfishing, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: One other very important issue. Mr. Speaker, while the Northern cod stock - just to name that one stock - was shrinking to dangerously low levels and the federal manager was saying: No, go ahead and fish it. Even though Newfoundland and Labrador fish harvesters were saying: we have to set more nets, we have to go further, the catch rates are lower, there is something wrong. They said: no, our science says there is lots of fish, just go fish harder. That is what DFO, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said, Mr. Speaker.

One other factor, very much linked to it that everybody in Newfoundland and Labrador is aware of, while this cod stock was shrinking the harp seal population was allowed to grow and grow to record numbers, numbers never seen or heard of in the history of this part of Canada. Grow it did, Mr. Speaker, to the point that there was an obvious ecological imbalance that had to be addressed. What was done about the seals? Nothing, because there was some resistance and there were other groups protesting about that. No plan to fully utilize the totality of a seal harvest, provide food, provide other sources, oil, so that the full product could be utilized and meet needs in the world; backing away from some pressure. No action on seals, Mr. Speaker, none whatsoever. Very little action on foreign overfishing. But, what action with respect to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians? A moratorium! You must stop fishing. No other real action taken at all. That is not what we call a comprehensive plan, Mr. Speaker. That is not good management of the fishery.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, as a result of these - just a couple of examples, and many others - we recognize the inherent flaws in federal management. Some people suggest, and it has been said just recently: But if you let Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have a say in it, they will fish every last fish. To our shame, by the way, in this Legislature, to our shame, the person who wrote such an article stood right where I am standing in this place just a couple of years ago as the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. He wrote an article for the national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, and said: Sure, it is only a natural instinct for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians - he was our proud leader a couple of years ago - it is only a natural instinct and left to them they will fish every last fish.

Mr. Speaker, I will finish my introductory comments - because I will get to speak at the end - with this: In 1887, long before we joined Canada, the Assembly in the Colony of Newfoundland passed a resolution to investigate the operations of fisheries departments in other countries and to recommend the establishment of a similar department in our country. Do you know why, Mr. Speaker?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Premier's time is up.

PREMIER GRIMES: Could I just finish this one point?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank all the members for leave.

I will finish with this point: In 1887, why was that resolution passed in the Legislature in Newfoundland at the time? Because there was a fisheries crises, because the stocks were dwindling, salmon were disappearing, codfish were disappearing. Not 1987, but 1887. A government right here took action and came back - it was Chaired by the hon. A.W. Harvey and he presented a report in March of 1888. So, when we had responsibility for ourselves we set up a commission. We studied examples elsewhere.

I will finish with this, Mr. Speaker, here is what they did. They reported back in June of 1889. The Legislature passed an act to provide for the formation of a fisheries commission based on the importance of scientific examination of the fisheries. They hired a Norwegian consultant with extensive knowledge of fisheries, scientific and practical. The first step taken was to erect a hatchery to restore the propagation of cod and other fish in Trinity Bay. They looked at the effects of gear types, all the different types of gear that were used in the fishery, to eliminate ones that they thought were harmful and causing overfishing, and they were able to report, seven years later, that the fish were more abundant than they had ever been.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: So, they did take action when it was left to us. They took the right actions. They closed out the fishery for a little while. They restricted it, but they did the other things, Mr. Speaker. They changed the technology that was used. They put in the rebuilding plans. They got the best scientific information that they could and they had it rebuilt in seven years. An example and a lesson for all of us that when done right and when giving Newfoundlanders and Labradorians today, just like Newfoundlanders then, an opportunity to provide leadership and get the right things done, it will happen, it does happen, and with the passage of this resolution we can start down the road to have some real say with the government again, the Government of Canada, as equal and respected partners so we can do it right again, unlike was done ten years ago.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Ferryland.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Our party and our leader, who regrettably could not be here today for medical reasons, fully support this resolution here. We have looked through the resolution. Our leader has gone through the resolution, and we, too, support this resolution here today because we are every bit as concerned. I do not think anybody in this Province can take more pride in our history or a greater concern, or greater intentions there, and we do not doubt intentions of anybody in Newfoundland and Labrador to try to get a better future for them.

When we look at this resolution here today it goes back - and the Premier made some points today. It does not matter what the reason was. It does not matter whether foreigners overfished it in the past when we are looking to the future. It does not matter whether it was our own local people. It does not matter the role that technology played. I know we cannot apply 1887 to today because there is a far cry in technologies and so on that affects the ocean, but still, it is a point and it is an interesting point to show that where we have powers to exercise over our own destiny, we can get solutions that can get the proper result and can be effective.

To talk about seals and other particular areas, that is not the relevant thing today. The important thing we have to look at here today is that we are operating in a country where we are more dependent on resources off our shores than any other province in this country.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: That tells us today that other provinces in this country can exercise a degree of control to have an impact on their economies to a far greater extent than Newfoundland and Labrador, because we are an island province. We developed around the ocean, we survive around the sea, and regardless of what new directions we move in the future, Newfoundland and Labrador will not survive and enjoy the prosperity that it can without continuing its dependency and developing its resources around our coastline.

We have seen - and there are reasons. I have to concur with what the Premier said today. There is one government today that has responsibility since 1949 for the management of the fishery in this Province. It does not matter who you blame it on for doing the job that brought us to where we are today; there is one and only one government responsible for the demise that we are in today, and that is the Government of Canada. The one that had the power and the control over that resource.

Do you would think for a moment in Ontario and Quebec, with 60 per cent of the population of this country compared to us with only 1.7 per cent today, do you think it would happen? Do you think it would happen if we had 30 per cent or 40 per cent of the population, that it would be allowed to happen? It would not happen.

We have been treated as pawns for international trade. We have been treated as pawns in a ceiling in the past, to use it for federal government benefit to enhance and work on their international trade and international relations. We cannot and should not accept it anymore. We should not accept it.

People got the impression that - and the Premier alluded to it - they would fish to the end. Well, when you are out in a competitive environment everybody is going to try to make a living, and they are going to try to maximize what they can, but there has to be control.

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and fishermen - I know many of them, and I even fished in the summertime and grew up in a fishing boat - want to see a future around the fishery. In fact, the federal government acknowledged by setting up the FRCC that more than federal bureaucrats should have a say. We need an arm's length Fisheries Resource Conservation Council to look at things other than scientific information. That is a whole new issue of scientific information.

When the moratorium occurred, announced on July 2, 1992, what has happened to the science since? They cut back on science, when the fishery shut down. That is when you needed science the most. That is when you needed the greatest input of dollars to enhance science, to enable us to better make decisions.

Ask anybody who has fished around this Province in any areas that know, the shore, and know the coast, and know where fish move and know patterns. They told us and they told people around this Province, and I spent over twenty years in the business, it is going to end. It is not going to last very long more on the Virgin Rocks. It is not going to last down in southern areas, not to the same extent here. Wherever they fish, they said, the end is coming. They said it for years.

When I went around and campaigned in 1992, before the moratorium, I was told by people at the doors, by people who spent their lives out on trawlers and out on the sea, that the end is coming. We are getting smaller fish, there is discarding going on at sea, there are foreigners out there. Regardless of who is doing it, the federal government turned a blind eye - and I will use the word negligent. I think the federal government was negligent in carrying out the responsibilities on ensuring there is a future there. It would not have happened, had we been a larger part of the Canadian population and we had more clout in Ottawa.

Our country has no recognition for smaller provinces to give them a say. Even the United States of America allows tiny little states to have some degree of political control within the Senate. The smallest state in the United States has as much clout in the Senate as the largest state in the United States. There has to be something.

We support joint management, a joint management committee established with federal and provincial; because, I can tell you, people fishing there are not out to catch the last fish. People are out there to make a living and they want to see a future. That is why the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council relies on more than just raw scientific data. It listens to people. There are people on it from a broad spectrum of industry, so they can understand, they can add input.

It is where you fish. People have fished for years. You might fish in areas and get no fish whatsoever, a half mile away. They move in patterns and so on and it is established. People who are experienced know that. That is why it is so important to have input from the people who are the front line people, the harvesters, in the industry. That has been ignored, and it is unfortunate that the Government of Canada has taken to ignore that. I think there has been a major reason for that.

What we have to do here now - the Premier of this Province says his resolution is one to begin. The words he used here: to lead, begin negotiations. Well, in beginning negotiations, I say to the Premier, we have to do certain things. We have to educate the other provinces of this country on the importance and the value of the fishery, and what the people of this Province feel is the best course of action.

We are not there to see a fishery destroyed. That is our livelihood. It is our future. We have to convince British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and all the provinces across this country, on an education process of what exactly happened. I do not think we have done a very good job of an education process. I think what needs to be done over a period of time - if we are not ready to sit down and look at a constitutional change, revisit the Terms of Union, if we are not prepared to do that immediately, as this resolution is saying: We are going to move toward it. One of the most important things we need to have is a specific, formalized, well-organized, well-thought-out plan of informing the Canadian public and informing the political leaders in each of these provinces, because we need the support of seven out of ten provinces and we need over 50 per cent of the population of Canada supporting us. That is fundamental to get change.

What province in this country would not want to see us have a say in our future? Just because our resources happen to swim around our shores, why should we be denied the right? We are not capable. They say we are not capable; we will not manage it properly.

I think we are close to the resource, and we understand the impacts. We understand the impacts of a demise of a fishery far more than Stéphane Dion or Jean Chrétien, or for that, most of all of what is in Ottawa. We understand it, and people who grew up in rural Newfoundland in particular. You do not have to be from rural Newfoundland to understand it. You could have been born in the City of St. John's and never been close to a fishery, but, I can tell you, people in rural Newfoundland understand the impacts it is having on their daily lives.

To sit back and see the out-migration of this Province at an alarming rate when something should have been done about it. We will never be able to get over that hurdle unless the federal government realizes that we have to have a say. They have not been the best managers. I mean, people say: Well, the Province would have done worse.

Prior to 1949 we had, as a Dominion, the control. We brought this into Confederation. We brought a vast resource into this country on accession. We brought it there, and who has taken it and managed it since? The federal government, and they have done a disastrous job of doing it, and there is a price that the federal government should pay not only for devastating the stocks off our shores, too, but any reasonable, compassionate, moral conscious government should have to look at the repercussions that have been reaped because of their mismanagement. That is another issue that is ongoing here in the entire process because of a recent decision.

I do not feel that - and this may have been mitigated more by the decision to shut down the Gulf cod and actually shut down the Northern cod fishery in 2J3KL also, as well as 4RS3Pn. It might have been the one that started this, but I really thing we have to start a process that is well-structured, that is organized, that is not haphazard, that is thought out, that there is behind the scenes political information and lobbying. The message has to be taken out to the people of this country. Because people, when they understand the situation of what is happening here, when they understand not only our desire but our right, shouldn't it be a right of ours to be able to have a say in what we brought into this country? Not for a moment would we ever see it happening in any other major province in this country. That is all part of a plan.

On the eastern side of this country we have been a victim. We have been a victim of federal government centralization and urbanization. We have read articles on: we have too many people. We should have another 200,000 gone. We have seen the federal government has not worked to negate that process. They have centralized offices in Halifax and Moncton. Every year we are hearing things shifted out of this Province here. They are urbanizing and centralizing it because it is cheaper to give services here and they would love a lot of the coastal parts of this Province to shut down. That is all part, I think, of a major agenda. You cannot run everything based on economic efficiencies. There are certain fundamental rights that people have, where they want to live within a province or within a country, and people in this Province want to live around the fishery in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. The reason they are not doing it is because they have no choice. The biggest reason for taking away that option has been the mismanagement of this fishery. We would never have a depopulation of rural Newfoundland today if the federal government had to exercise proper management and control, enforcement, and proper allocation of resources and quotas. The whole picture all comes under the federal government.

We advocate, Mr. Speaker, that this Premier start a process, and this government start a process here, to educate, first of all, and I think it is important that this should be done in a very serious manner. We have to do it not necessarily in a confrontational manner at all. I think we have to do in a very rational, a very professional manner and we have to have a plan. We have been eager to find out, certainly, what the specific plans are because when we move forward - and while we endorse this entirely, Mr. Speaker, the people in Newfoundland and Labrador, I can tell you, do not need a vote from this Legislature to know what they want, but it is certainly a fundamental part of the process. They know that they want to have a say.

Other parts of this country might not think that this Province should have a say, but it is a resource we brought here, it is a resource we depend on, it has sustained this Province for hundreds of years, and it is one that we cannot let go at all and not say anything, and not let go without a fight. We cannot let this go at all. Whatever it takes, it has to be a priority of this government to set that straight. It is not going to happen overnight. It is going to happen, I guess, over the next, who knows, period of time. The federal government, a callous attitude in Ottawa with Stéphane Dion and the Prime Minister - Oh, I am only going to be in office for several months.

The business of this country, and the lives of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are going to be put on hold because the Prime Minister only has seven or eight months left in the term? That should not even be a consideration. That is an insult. That is an affront to the people of this Province because his political agenda, the Prime Minister of Canada, does not want to deal with it, because it is a constitutional change. It is a fundamental right. He has to do it and, as our House Leader said today in Question Period, when we move in that direction, when we go beyond the agreement to move forth and negotiate here, when we get to that point, there is a right. He has an obligation, as the Prime Minister of this country, to listen to this Province -

MR. SPEAKER (Butler): Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. SULLIVAN: Just a half minute to finish up, Mr. Speaker?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. SULLIVAN: I say to the Premier again, I think what is important is the selling job we have to do to other provinces in this country. We have to educate them. We have to do our homework. We have to have a very articulate and formulated plan. We have to get all the provinces on side in this issue here and I think they will understand. They will understand that we have a right to have some degree of control over our future, not to have it manipulated and controlled by a government in Ottawa that has not done a job for the last fifty-four years.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to say, first of all, that I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak early in this debate. The Premier did an excellent job in introducing this resolution and outlining the history of the involvement of the Newfoundland Government in fisheries prior to Confederation. I do have to correct him slightly, though. Both he and the Member for Ferryland talked about the end of jurisdiction over the fisheries in 1949. In fact, the jurisdiction over fisheries by this Province continued for a further five years.

The Terms of Union itself, Term 22 in the Terms of Union, continued the fisheries laws of Newfoundland in effect for a further five years unless all the laws, the fisheries export laws and all of the laws of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Dominion of Newfoundland, were continued for a five-year period unless the Cabinet of Newfoundland agreed to change.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, there was a special committee set up. The Newfoundland Fisheries Development Committee was set up and produced a report in 1953 to investigate the whole issue of the fisheries and make recommendations at the end of that when they reported in 1953. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, and I have read a report that the response of the Government of Canada to the notion of Newfoundland's fishery after that report was presented to the Minister of Fisheries in Ottawa was that there was to be no special development fund, no special programs. Normal services only was the response of the Government of Canada to the most important resource and the most significant employer of people in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and supporters of communities.

That was the early response of the Government of Canada to the most significant, perhaps the then largest single protein resource in the world, the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, off the Hamilton Banks of Labrador, a very significant source of food not only for the people of this Province but for many other parts of the world, as evidenced by the 500 years of fishing that had taken place here prior to now.

The thing that happened though, Mr. Speaker, there were a couple of things. When they decided first of all that the fishery was not important to the Government of Canada, they also ignored what was happening in other countries. A very interesting study of what happened to Newfoundland's fishing industry after Confederation is found in a book by a very prominent economic historian, David Alexander. It is called The Decay of Trade. He talked about the salt fish industry and its decay after the Second World War, but principally after Confederation. What he said that happened in other countries that had a strong fishing industry and a strong salt fish trade was that their governments, their national governments, supported that industry by developing trade relationships with purchasers of the salt fish of the fish trade. For example, in the case of Norway and in the case of Iceland, they made agreements with the purchasers of the fish resources of Norway, of Iceland, to a country like Spain or like Turkey or like Greece, which were markets for our fish as well. They made trade agreements to take, in exchange for the sale of the fish products of Iceland, Norway and Denmark, they agreed to take products, whether it be Seville oranges from Spain or different products of Greece or Turkey in exchange for the continuation of a salt fish trade in those countries because they did not have access to hard currency after the Second World War.

The Government of Canada did not do anything like that, Mr. Speaker. They did not do anything to support this fishery. They did not have it on their agenda at all, Mr. Speaker. In fact, as other speakers have said and as the Premier has pointed out, and as many of us have known for many years, the Government of Canada, in fact, traded access to the fishing resources off the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador in exchange for other priorities of Canada, whether it be access to European markets for Canadian manufactured goods or whether it be in exchange for purchases, major purchases by Eastern Europe and Russia of Canadian wheat.

Mr. Speaker, there were deals done for the benefit of Canada at the expense of the fishery off Newfoundland and Labrador. We had, starting during the early 1960s, Mr. Speaker, a very significant level of foreign overfishing taking place with the development of the factory freezer trawlers. The development of these huge factory trawlers that came first to all from England and then Eastern Europe, Germany and East Germany. They came off our shores and fished. There is a very remarkable book that outlines in detail the development of these distant water fleets. In fact, the book is called, Distant Waters, written by an American journalist who travelled on these trawlers throughout the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, on the Hamilton Banks off Labrador, on the Georges Bank off the Massachusetts and the New England Coast.

He described how the German fleet, for example, would fish inside the ice off the Hamilton Banks - one mile inside the ice - in a group of five or six or seven boats with one boat taking turns being the lead boat because the lead boat could not fish. They would fish one mile inside the ice for a very important reason: because that is where the spawning fish were. The fish were spawning. They congregated to spawn, and that is where they could get the maximum amount of fish. He calculates the destruction of that fishery on it year in and year out and does the calculations and the numbers - hundreds of thousands of tons of fish caught every year during the 1960s which was the first round of destruction of that fishery. That was done under the aegis of the Government of Canada.

While the people of this Province were complaining - I can remember from my youngest years. I was born before Confederation, six months before Confederation. I used to like to tell my friends in other parts of Canada that I was born before Confederation. Then it gave me an opportunity to explain what real Confederation was to people in this Province. I can remember from my early childhood, my teenage years, listening to people on the radio, fishermen talking about the foreign fleets not just coming inside the 200-mile limit, never mind the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks, but coming inside the headlands, coming into Conception Bay and destroying the nets. Russian trawlers destroying the nets in Conception Bay, in Notre Dame Bay, in Placentia.

The Speaker, I am sure - I see him nodding his head - remembers that as well, that this was a fact of life in those days for the fishermen of Newfoundland and Labrador, that their livelihood was being threatened, their nets were being broken up. I remember people talking about how they are killing the mother fish. That was the expression that was used. They were killing the mother fish, the large huge fish that were spawning off our shores.

All of that was done under the policy of Ottawa, while the people of this Province had no power and no control over fisheries policy that was dictated in Ottawa, that was done based on foreign policy considerations. It had nothing to do with the interests of this Province, and a regard for the fishery by Ottawa that it was not important, that it was not significant. A failure to take on its responsibilities not only to the people of this Province but the responsibilities as a Government of Canada and the responsibilities as stewards of that resource.

I would be very interested in seeing what basis there is for a lawsuit against the Government of Canada. I know the Minister of Justice has people working on it. The Premier seems to be very keen on it. Maybe it is something worth exploring. Maybe we should talk about that a little bit. Maybe the Premier and his colleagues should let the information out about the prospects of such a lawsuit. Maybe it is something that we could consider pursuing.

First and foremost, Mr. Speaker, we have to recognize that the experience of this Province since Confederation has been a failure of policy, a failure to protect the stocks, a failure to protect the communities of this Province, a failure to protect the fish stocks themselves, and a failure that will not go away.

I heard one of the Ministers of Intergovernmental Affairs, for example, say the other day that joint management will not put the cod back in the water. Mr. Speaker, management by Ottawa for the last fifty years has certainly seen the cod being taken out of the water, being destroyed by foreigners and by policies of the Government of Canada. In fact, there was another federal minister who said something like that in a little more anger after the last moratorium. When Minister Crosbie was confronted down in Bay Bulls by the fishermen, when he was challenged on the moratorium, he said - I think he used g.d. fish - I didn't take the g.d. fish out of the water. Well, Mr. Speaker, he may not have because he wasn't a fisherman, but he was the one who established the policies, who controlled the policies, who used or abused or ignored the science, who did not listen to what the fishermen were saying, and managed the fishery into oblivion. That is what we have had happen.

I want to say this, Mr. Speaker: Who has more interest in keeping the fish in the waters? Who has more interest in protecting and preserving and rebuilding those stocks? Is it the Government of Canada in Ottawa and the people on Kent Street who work in the DFO bureaucracy, or is it the fishers of Newfoundland and Labrador, the plant workers of LaPoile, the people who live and whose livelihoods depend on that fish being strong and regrowing and coming back? I have to say, Mr. Speaker, there is only one answer for that, that the greater interest, and the greatest interest, lies in that of the fishing communities and those close to the resource, and this has been the experience.

David Suzuki, a world renowned biologist and ecologist, was here a couple of days ago. What he said was, when they looked around the world to see what fisheries resource management plans worked, what they found was, as a foundation, his organization, that the people who looked after the resource best were those who had a local say over that resource, some control over the management of that resource and could determine themselves the level of fishing required and what had to be done to preserve it. That, Mr. Speaker, is the reason why we need joint management of the fishery.

Mr. Speaker, I will say something about the timing of this. This is obviously a reaction to the fisheries crisis that we find ourselves in today. I suppose we could criticize the Premier for being political about it, for being opportunistic. On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, I will give him that, that we are all politicians and we all have to recognize that we are in a political environment and we have to take political actions. I will say, Mr. Speaker, that this is something that is also before a royal commission. We have a Royal Commission now considering not only this issue, but many other issues in terms of our relationship with Canada. We fully expect that the Royal Commission when it reports at the end of June, if it reports on time, will deal with this issue.

I made a presentation to the Royal Commission in March. One of the issues that was talked about there and one of things that I encouraged, what we needed to do was to have some control over our fisheries to participate in joint management of that resource and have a say in that management because of its importance here. But there are many other issues and, I guess, I have to say that I am encouraged, Mr. Speaker, by this resolution. I am encouraged by the talk around the Province about the need to change our relationship with Canada, something that we have been talking about for a number of years.

Our party, and myself as leader of that party, urged the creation of a Royal Commission to examine the Terms of Union. A couple of years ago that was done. So, we were encouraged when the Royal Commission was announced by this government. We are encouraged by the climate in this Province now who recognize that we have to have significant change. I would suspect that, although this is here today as a single motion, that it is not something that can be pursued on a stand-alone basis. We are going to have a Royal Commission. We are going to have a whole series of issues that have to be raised with the Government of Canada, and with the people of Canada, as part of our -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. HARRIS: If I may have a moment to finish this point. I am on my final point.

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank members for leave.

This is a very important part, a significant plank, if you will, in a whole series of issues that will be coming to the forefront over the next couple of months when we get the report of the Royal Commission, and we do need to emphasis this as a significant first step. Perhaps recommendation one, prior to the Royal Commission. We are jumping the gun a little bit, but I think it is something that there is a consensus on and the need for it was heightened by the response of the Government of Canada. This is why, I think, we are all so unanimous at this point.

Back in November we all recognized, in this House of Assembly, that the issue of the continuation of the cod fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador was something that we, in this Province, had to have a say on; that we did not want to leave it to the Government of Canada, to the Minister of Fisheries to make a decision by himself. That was instinctively recognized by every person in this House back in November, and that is why we agreed to establish the all-party committee, not just of Members of this House of Assembly but also of the House of Commons and the Senate, because we knew instinctively, Mr. Speaker, that this decision was something that we had to have a say in. So, we did everything in our power to insist that we have a say. We formed a committee. We invited Members of Parliament. We invited Members of the Senate to participate in that committee and they agreed to do so. We worked very hard to develop a series of twenty-two recommendations which involved us of not only a say in whether the fish stocks should be fished or not, but also a say in how they should be rebuilt.

The Premier mentioned the fish hatchery of the 1880s that was established in Dildo, Trinity Bay. Well, that was something we discussed in our committee because we said that is an example of the kind of thing that needs to be done to rebuild this fishery. We cannot just do one thing, which is take fishers out of the equation. When we did that, Mr. Speaker, we did it recognizing that we had to have a say. And what happened? We were given short shrift by Ottawa. We were ignored and the government turned its back on the people of this Province and the elected representatives of this Province.

This is a response to that, Mr. Speaker, and a response that we, in the New Democratic Party, fully support, and we will work with everyone in this House to pursue this as a goal, along with other recommendations, which will come out of the Royal Commission which we hope will report in June.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I stand in the House today to support the resolution of our government to renegotiate the Terms of Union with Canada.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution is about having a say in the union that we have with Canada, and it is about being a full partner in terms of resource development, management, and in terms of having some control and some autonomy over the resources that are ours in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to point out - and it may have already been pointed out by some members in the House already today - that when Newfoundland came into Confederation it controlled its seacoast for three miles. I think it was the three-mile limit for a period of up to five years. As I am sure other nations at that time, or dominions, the first context of the agreement was in the five year piece. Prior to Confederation itself, we controlled all the fisheries jurisdictions within the boundaries of Newfoundland and Labrador. At that time, of course, the fishery was quite different than it is today. We were focused mostly on the cod fisheries. Whereas today we are focused on many species, that we have a great dependency upon, in addition to cod.

Mr. Speaker, the Constitution of Canada gave the federal government legislative power over seacoast and inland fisheries. Under the current international law an independent Newfoundland and Labrador, I guess, would have controlled the adjacent resources, including the fishery. However, that was not part of our joint agreement with Canada.

Anyway, to point out a couple of things. By 1970 Canada had extended its jurisdiction to the 100-mile limit, and in 1997 it was extended to 200-miles. Had Newfoundland and Labrador remained a nation it would likely have controlled the seacoast and the fisheries, as Canada does now within that jurisdiction.

I want to point this out. Under the United Nations Convention of the Law, Mr. Speaker, coastal states are given complete control over territorial sea. I think it is important to point that out because while Canada is not a signatory to that particular agreement, it has accepted and applied the same principals of adjacency and geographic definitions that are contained in this convention. So that might question us to ask why we need to be able to come to this House and present the resolutions that we do, to have greater access and greater control, because if those current definitions, as they are outlined under the federal Oceans Act, were applied and the adjacency pieces were applied in terms of the definition that is contained, then we would certainly at the present time have more say and more control than we do right now. It is an important piece that needs to be pointed out.

Mr. Speaker, considering the significance of the principles of adjacency and the historical dependency that the people in Newfoundland and Labrador have on the fishery, you would expect that we, in this Province, would have more control and more management over this particular resource. Canada is obliged, Mr. Speaker, to manage the resources that are within its jurisdictions and the federal government has to recognize the importance of proper resource management and that the management of these fisheries is for the people, the harvesters, and the people who live adjacent to these resources. In this case, Mr. Speaker, it is the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

I think all of us would agree that the federal government has somehow been very shortsighted in its decisions. They have fell short of what our expectations are with regard to the management of this fishery over the long term. They have certainly been falling short of our expectations of a strategy to rebuild these stocks over a longer period of time and to ensure that we have a good, stable fishery for the economic future of our people and the regions of our Province that rely on this resource.

Mr. Speaker, the federal government has a responsibility to meet the short-term needs of people who have been historically dependent upon this resource as well. We, no doubt, entrusted them with the responsibility of management of our fisheries and they have certainly not lived up to the expectation that we have. That, of course, leaves our people, the people who have had an historical dependency upon this resource for a very long time, in a very difficult position today. I think they have a responsibility to also address that particular need.

Mr. Speaker, the government must ensure that any quota of fish which is allocated by the federal government provides for the maximum economic benefits for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, for our harvesters, for our plant workers, for our communities and our processing companies. We are the people who are adjacent to this resource and it has been the long-standing position of this government that adjacency would be the most important consideration in determining access to, and allocations of, fishery resources.

Mr. Speaker, I want to caution people in this House, the federal government is now discussing a concept of equity sharing within fishery resource management. That is a very frightening concept for people in Newfoundland and Labrador, the province in Canada which has the greatest dependency upon marine resources in our country. To know they would actually entertain a concept that looks at equity sharing as opposed to adjacency can certainly be very frightening for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. We need to be very cautious and cognizant of that, Mr. Speaker, because we have not received our full benefit of the fisheries adjacent to our shores. I guess in light of the current situation with regard to reductions in cod fisheries and crab fisheries in certain areas of the Province, the closure of cod fisheries, the reduction of bycatch and so on, it is more important than ever that this situation be addressed in our Province today. I think our very future, as Newfoundland and Labrador communities, is dependent upon this. It is not about what has happened in the past, Mr. Speaker, it is about taking a stand today for the future. We cannot go back and change what has happened over the past fifty-four years but I can guarantee you something, Mr. Speaker, that we should be compensated for those losses and we should be given greater inclusion and greater say in the future.

Mr. Speaker, how can a nation like Canada, that is built on the very principles of providing for its people, at a time when we need the nurturing of our communities and the nurturing as a Province and the protection of our resources for our people when we need it at the greatest time in our history, that they could actually turn their backs on our people, because is the way that I see it, Mr. Speaker.

I have seen, with this government in the present day, not only have they implemented a closure of fisheries that have been against the judgement, against the experiences and the opinions of the people in our own Province and in our own industry, Mr. Speaker, but they have done it with little or no regard for those of us who depend upon it and have depended upon it for many years.

Mr. Speaker, we are a Province, I guess, that has been through some very difficult times in the fishery. I will not recap the history but what I will say to you, Mr. Speaker, is that ten years ago when the federal government introduced a moratorium on cod fisheries as a means of protecting and rebuilding stock, they continued to let foreigners fish outside the 200-mile limit, not abiding by the regulations that had been set down by NAFO.

Mr. Speaker, while the people in our Province, the people in our small communities that line our coastline, while these people had to haul their boats on slipways, take to their homes - and many of them took to other communities and other provinces in Canada to even survive over that twelve-year period - while those kinds of pressures were put upon people, there was foreign fleet of vessels that continued to fish the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador, continued to fish the Grand Banks, Mr. Speaker. That is the kind of injustice that our people have had to tolerate. That is the recent history injustices, Mr. Speaker. That is recent history injustices. I am sure there are many, if you wanted to stand here today and recap them, over a period of time.

It leaves one bewildered. It leaves one puzzled, Mr. Speaker, to know that we could have 40,000 and 50,000 people leave our Province, and small communities shut down, because there was no resource. Yet, that same resource continued to be fished and plundered by other nations at the pleasure of our Canadian government, at the pleasure of the national government that we are a part of, Mr. Speaker, and that is not right.

All of us know in this Province that the settlement patterns of Newfoundland and Labrador and our whole reason for existing, Mr. Speaker, is based on the fishery. It is the reason that we are here, and I think there is no dispute about that. We have been influenced by the fishery to settle this Province, to build the great communities that we have from peninsula to peninsula, from bay to bay. We are not prepared at this time to pass everything over to a federal and national government that will continue to plunder our resource and not offer the proper rebuilding mechanisms that are necessary to see a sustainable fishery into the future. We have to take action now.

Our primary focus, we feel that the FRCC recommendations, not just in this current year, Mr. Speaker, but in other years as well, have been very responsible to a degree in recommending measures that were needed to be implemented to rebuild fisheries in the Province. It is unfortunate that a lot of the measures that they propose as a conservation council in rebuilding stocks have not necessarily been adhered to. It seems that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, their primary focus has been on moratoriums as a result of rebuilding cod stocks, as opposed to implementing other measures that need to happen.

Mr. Speaker, because of the moratoriums we have seen on cod fisheries in our Province over the years, we have seen a greater dependency on the crab resource and on the shrimp resource. People will know that 80 per cent, I guess, of the fisheries in the Province today, or the total value within the industry, is derived from crab and from shrimp. Mr. Speaker, what are we seeing happening in those particular resource sectors today? In crab alone we have seen reductions in quotas. In 2J and 3PS we have seen reductions of up to 40 per cent this year in that resource. We are seeing declining catch rates in shrimp in the Gulf region, Mr. Speaker. These things are troublesome, they are very troublesome, because when you are not in a position to be able to be a full partner and have some full say in the decision making and in the allocation and in the capacity and in the quota and so on, Mr. Speaker, it is very frustrating. We have to be very cautious and very careful that we do not see the same thing happen with regard to other species as has happened with cod over the past number of years.

Mr. Speaker, there are people who will question the lengths to which we have to go to have full say in this particular partnership with Canada. There are people who will question our ability to achieve joint management through the process by which we have chosen. Mr. Speaker, I think if you look back through history and you look at the many reports that have been written on the fishery - and there have been many reports - they all have looked at one thing. You have to remember, most of these reports were done at a time when we had trouble in the fishery of one kind or another. In all of these reports, Mr. Speaker, they have recommended that there be increased provincial and federal coordination and management of fish stocks. That is what we are trying to achieve through this process.

Mr. Speaker, if you look at the Kirby Task Force, if you look at even the Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment, if you look at the Royal Commission on Economic Union, and you look at the Harris Report, all of these reports that were done at a particular time responding to a particular challenge in the industry, all have the same underlying principles. So, is it necessary to go to the lengths that we are going to today? It certainly is, Mr. Speaker. The very future of this resource for the people of our Province depends upon it.

Mr. Speaker, we have been asking consistently to have a reopening of the cod fishery in the Northern Gulf. We have been asking this which is consistent with the advise of the department, of the Conservation Council. We have not been able to achieve a reconsideration of that decision. Mr. Speaker, we have documented the viewpoint and opinion of the industry in this Province. The Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, Mr. Speaker, has looked at the full balance of this issue from a conservation perspective, from an industry perspective. The recommendations that are before the minister have not been looked at to the greatest degree and to the greatest benefit of our people. That is why we are here today, that and the fact that the immediate needs of our people -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MS JONES: By leave to clue up, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, I am sure there are many other people who want to rise today and speak to this resolution and I will conclude, but just a couple of more points.

Canada has not lived up to its Terms of Union and its commitments that it has made to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is time, Mr. Speaker, for us to ask for these terms to be renegotiated. We must secure joint management of our fisheries, if we are to secure the future of our rural communities and the resources that are adjacent to these communities. This is a necessary piece that has to occur, Mr. Speaker.

I think the attitude of the federal government is well reflected in the comments from their own minister in recent days to this current issue of cod fishery closures, Mr. Speaker. The stubbornness of the federal government to actually respond to the people in this Province at a time when they needed to have their country nurturing them and offering support to them, that has not been forthcoming.

I will say this, Mr. Speaker, and this is a message that I would like to say to the federal government today. There is a saying and it goes like this, Mr. Speaker: You either live in hope or die in despair. Well, this is one government that is not willing to wither away yet, Mr. Speaker, and this is one Province that is not willing to wither away yet, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS JONES: We will take the stand to protect the fish resources off our shores for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HARDING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand here today as well and speak on and show support for the resolution on the fisheries, as put forward by the Premier.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about taking over management, or co-management or whatever form of management of the fisheries off our shores, we are talking about a very complex matter. Complex, I guess, is probably putting it mildly. We are talking about something that we know relatively very little about. The scientists with DFO will be the first to admit that. With the limited financial resources allocated to DFO science, it is practically impossible for them to even scratch the surface. Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, we have to initiate steps now, as per the resolution we are now debating, to obtain some management control of what remains of our cod resource. Our cod resource, Mr. Speaker, that the Dominion of Newfoundland held and exercised responsibility for prior to Confederation.

The Northern cod, Mr. Speaker, was once considered one of the world's greatest renewable resources. In 1952, annual cod landings off the Northeast Coast reached 300,000 tons, most of it caught by inshore fishermen from Newfoundland and Labrador.

In the 1960s, Mr. Speaker, deep sea trawlers began concentrating on the Northern cod over wintering and spawning grounds. Cod catches peaked at 810,000 tons in 1968 and foreign vessels accounted for 85 per cent of that. Can you just imagine that, Mr. Speaker? Three years after Confederation, in 1952, 300,000 tons caught mostly by our own fishermen, and sixteen years later, in 1968, that almost tripled, 810,000 tons, and 85 per cent of it caught by foreigners.

The resource, Mr. Speaker, could not stand that kind of fishing effort, especially when a large portion of this fishing activity was occurring on the prime spawning grounds on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks and on the Hamilton Banks.

Mr. Speaker, this massive fishing effort was all permitted by the custodian of the resource, the federal Government of Canada. To add insult to injury, in the 1980s, the federal government also permitted an open season on the dragging of caplin on the spawning grounds called the Hamilton Banks. This was done, Mr. Speaker, by Russian draggers. They were given a free hand, pretty well, on these caplin stocks, the main source of food in the marine ecosystem. Is it any wonder our cod stocks are destroyed? Is it any wonder we have not seen any volume of marketable caplin in recent years? Is it any wonder why practically all groundfish species have been decimated?

Mr. Speaker, it is frightening when you realize that we have the same custodians looking after our crab and our shrimp fisheries. Their record with shrimp management, or lack of management I should say, probably, is no different from their cod and caplin management. Iceland destroyed their own shrimp fishery a few years ago. So, what did they do? They came over here off our shores dragging for shrimp on the Flemish Cap. I think it was three or four years ago, the Icelanders had a shrimp quota on the Flemish Cap of 30,000 tons. Yet, it is reported that in that year they actually caught 60,000 tons, double the quota they had been given by NAFO. They had no regard for shrimp quotas, and there was nothing that Canada or NAFO could do to stop them.

Last spring, Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to go out over the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap on one of DFO's reconnaissance flights. What a sight to see. Twenty-eight to thirty foreign fishing vessels, or you could call them foreign fish processing plants, towing toward our 200-mile limit. Can you imagine the destruction and the damage these foreign factory trawlers were having on our fishing grounds, and can you imagine what was left in their wake? Is it any wonder why DFO scientists are saying the cod stock biomass in 2J+3KL is extremely low. Is it any wonder they are saying mortality has been extremely high in offshore areas since the moratorium was called in 1992? Few fish, they say, survive past the age of five. Is it any wonder, then, that very few fish are migrating to the inshore like they traditionally did?

Mr. Speaker, we have all kinds of documented evidence that there are numerous violations of small fish protocol, violations of directed catching of fish on the moratorium, including cod, misreporting of catches, illegal gear, late reporting by observers, and no reporting at all by some foreign countries. We have all kinds of evidence confirming that.

So, where is the enforcement? Where is the protection for the fish off our shores? Maybe once or twice a year, Mr. Speaker, DFO will make a big scene by escorting a foreign factory freezer trawler into St. John's harbour. What do we see? After a week or so of legal wrangling, a half a dozen or so of our fishery officers are placed on the vessel and sent back to the European or Russian destination from where they came. That is usually the last that we hear of it. Probably, in most cases, within another month or so, that foreign vessel is back again fishing on the Grand Banks or just outside of our 200-mile limit.

Mr. Speaker, in view of all of this, year in and year out our federal government is still content to be the friendly diplomat and let NAFO play the caregiver outside of our 200-mile limit. If you go back over the minutes of NAFO over the years, I bet that you will find very little difference in the conservation and enforcement wording in their meetings last September that were held in Spain as compared to what it was in the minutes of NAFO meetings twenty years ago.

It seems as if the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans feel their greatest enforcement accomplishment is when they catch an inshore fisherman in a twenty-two foot fiberglass boat with eight or ten undersized crab. They will go after our own to the full extent of the law. I am not condoning our own fishermen breaking the law, but that seems to be the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, we have three or four top bureaucrats in the federal department of Fisheries and Oceans in Ottawa who have been there for years. They have a mindset and an attitude that has not changed for years. Therein, I believe, lies a major part of the problem with the management of the fishery off our shores. They give the minister his directives. Until that changes, it will never be any better. Unless a federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans can be put in that department who truly understands the fishery off our shore, and who can use his own mind, we can expect more of the same. Outside of that, Mr. Speaker, it can only probably be done through some form of shared management which we are now seeking today.

Mr. Speaker, three or four weeks ago Minister Thibault made an announcement to close the 2J+3KL and 4RS+3Pn cod fisheries off our shores. Was there any mention of foreign overfishing in his speech? To the best of my knowledge, I do not think there was. The only thing I heard about foreign overfishing was when a CBC reporter, I think, questioned him after his speech was over.

The only conservation measures, Mr. Speaker, are those that affect our own inshore fishermen. That is how it has usually been. It seems like our own fishermen have to be the ones penalized all the time. Mr. Speaker, our federal government has totally mismanaged a renewable resource that we entrusted to them in 1949. Having said that, I do not blame the local DFO bureaucrats in our Province. I know most of these people on a personal basis. They are good, honest, dedicated individuals doing the best they can with the limited resources they are given by their superiors in Ottawa.

Mr. Speaker, we have no choice, it would seem, but to pursue the course of action that we are initiating today. While it is not going to be easy to have Ottawa agree to relinquish some of their power and authority over the fishery, we must still pursue it vigorously.

In the short term, in order to address the immediate crisis we must pursue together, all together in this House and in this Province, the reopening of a limited 4RS+3Pn cod fishery as recommended by the FRCC and other stakeholders. We must try to get some meaningful, monitoring fishery in 2J+3KL. We must have immediate steps taken to implement an income support program while a long-term retirement and licence buyout program is to come later.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I support the resolution as put forward by the Premier and will vote in favour of it, in what I hope will be one step in the survival of rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. LUSH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am also very proud and privileged to participate in this very important debate today.

Canada was greatly enriched when Newfoundland and Labrador became a part of the federation. We brought to this country rich, natural resources, on land, in the sea and under the sea. We also brought a strong, vibrant society made up of a robust and dynamic people. Our people have contributed - out of proportion to our numbers - to the cultural diversity and social wealth of this nation. Our natural resources have helped to make Canada one of the most prosperous nations in the world. Canada has become a nation which enjoys one of the highest standards of living; a nation which enjoys a well-deserved reputation for social democracy; a nation which, year after year, ranks in the top three of the best places in the world to live and raise a family according to the United Nations.

We, as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, have been proud to make our contribution to this nation and to the progress which has brought it such prosperity and high esteem. We are also painfully aware that within this great nation disparities continue to exist and that no system of government, however good it has been in the past, is beyond improvement. This is what this resolution is about, Mr. Speaker, about improvement. This resolution has been put forward in good faith as a sincere effort to begin a renewal process and a strengthening process. It points to the future to ensure that the fishery that brought our ancestors to this great and beautiful land is restored and will be our legacy for the generations who follow us.

One of my principal responsibilities as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is to facilitate effective and efficient working relationships with other governments. While this includes foreign governments, our primary focus is on relationships we have with other Canadian provinces, the territories and, of course, the federal government. My staff and I are ably assisted by our colleagues in line departments with central agencies.

In fairness, I must point out that in many areas - for example, in addressing child poverty through the National Child Benefit and related provincial programming, the Province and the federal government have been able to establish effective working relationships which led to effective programming. I might say the same thing about the Francophone and minority language policies and programs. I could also say the same thing about immigration and multi-culturalism. Good cooperation but unfortunately, there are so many areas in which working relationships are, at best, strained and often ineffective. We need only to look in the recent past at the often rancorous exchanges on the issue of health care to know that all is not well.

Other areas of stress have been very apparent recently. I note, for example, the climate change. The Kyoto Accord have strained federal-provincial relations, not because we are not agreed on the need to address climate change but because the federal government acted without adequate consultation with the other governments in this federation that have a direct and genuine role in meeting these challenges.

The issue of Senate reform remains a sore point for many jurisdictions. Here in our own Province, the transfer of harbour facilities at Port Harmon, Stephenville, without adequate consultation and the downgrading of the Gander Weather Office have impaired relations unnecessarily. There is no need to belabour these issues, Mr. Speaker. It is becoming increasingly clear that our federation is not working as well as it should, as well as it can. We need to address this and address it immediately.

This is an important resolution, Mr. Speaker, for Canada, not just for this Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is important because it is a call to begin the reform of the way governments work with one another within this country. It is a call to review the way in which we share our risks and benefits. Mr. Speaker, the world federation is synonymous with partnership and with the concept that we share the risks and the benefits of our enterprise, the Canadian Federation. A fundamental of risk sharing in a partnership, Mr. Speaker, is the principle of informed consent. Without informed consent risks are not shared they are imposed. While there is no doubt that Newfoundland and Labrador has shared the benefits of being a member of the Canadian Federation, regrettably the Province has been exposed to fare more risk than is reasonable.

Mr. Speaker, the Terms of Union were negotiated to ensure that the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador would be a respected and an equal partner within the Canadian Federation. However, the federal government has not had an enviable record of observing the spirit and intent of the Terms of Union. Nor are we alone. Every province in this country has had difficulty with the increasing drive of the federal government to centralization and the increasing unilateralism of its actions.

Mr. Speaker, we do not expect the adoption of this resolution to be a panacea which brings the solution to all of the problems associated with the fishery, but we do expect it will be the beginning of a new relationship with the federal government in the management of the fishery, a new cooperative and collaborative relationship. It is important that we be very clear about what we are seeking. We are not asking that the federal government return to pre-Confederation terms and yield to Newfoundland and Labrador the sole jurisdiction of the fishery. We are seeking joint management. We are seeking a partnership in which the benefits and the risks are truly shared, shared decision making.

I pointed out, we brought incredible wealth into the partnership in our people and with our natural resources. It follows that the development of our resources is a subject in which we have a direct and compelling interest. Our compelling interest today and into the future is ensuring the survival of our fishery for the benefit of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and for all Canadians. To realize this, we must be partners in planning and executing a set of policies and programs which will prevent, stop, halt, further decline; that will provide immediate protection for the remaining cod stocks from all forms of predatory activity, whether that be from seals or foreign overfishing on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks. That will start us down the road, the long road, to success and rebuilding the stocks.

Mr. Speaker, it is very clear from the reaction of the people throughout the Province that we are collectively resolved to achieve these goals. We are prepared to take the hard decisions and undertake the difficult work that will be necessary to restore the stocks, our fishery, and our pride in this great tradition, in this great fishing culture. Mr. Speaker, we attempt to do this, we attempt to achieve this, within our great nation.

It is time, Mr. Speaker, that the federal government attempted to match this resolve and undertake to do what is needed in a true, effective and equal partnership with Newfoundland and Labrador. Mr. Speaker, I am so proud to participate in this very important debate, historical debate. I expect that I have participated in several of the debates that have taken place in this House on this and related subject matters.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution today, though, I believe, has more impact than any other resolution in our past. Our people, I believe, have become more determined, our people have become more committed to the resolve to ensure that we are treated as equal and effective partners within this Federation of Canada. Mr. Speaker, this government, the people on this side of the House, will spare no effort to ensure that we achieve the goals as indicated in this resolution today.

Mr. Speaker, my challenge is to the federal government to come to the table and meet the goals that we have advanced today and the request that we have made in the same determination that the people of this Province want the government to move.

Mr. Speaker, I thank hon. members for their co-operation - for the co-operation in the way that we have managed the debate today. It points out, I think, the resolve of our people. It points out the travesty that this Province is experiencing with this present move by the federal government to close our fishery. We are making today a last-ditch stand which we hope will preserve our fishery for the future and for generations to come.

Thank you very much.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for The Straits & White Bay North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am happy to stand here this afternoon to take fifteen minutes, approximately, to say a few words on this very important resolution and this very important matter regarding the fishing industry in particular in Newfoundland and Labrador but, Mr. Speaker, in a broad sense, the economy, the culture, the social fabric, the essence of what it is that has enabled us to live and to survive and to grow in this Province, and what was a country and a colony before, for over 500 years now.

Mr. Speaker, other speakers here this afternoon, other members here this afternoon - and all of us, over the past number of days, weeks and months - have talked about the importance of the fishing industry to Newfoundland and Labrador - rural Newfoundland and Labrador in particular - and also to urban areas like Grand Falls-Windsor, Gander, Corner Brook, St. John's, Clarenville, various areas around the Province like that. We all know the importance of that.

I am not going to go into that in any great detail today. I am hardly going to go there at all. I am not going to talk about how important the fishery is to a place like Green Island Brook, where 180 people live and sixty-five of them, as a result of the decision of Minister Thibault over the last couple of weeks, are now considering leaving. Sixty-five people in a community of 180 are considering leaving in the next two weeks. They have their plans made, their bags packed, so to speak. A tragedy. As Richard Cashin said when the moratorium came on us in 1992, the destruction of the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador was a catastrophe of biblical proportions. Mr. Speaker, I do not think that is too strong a statement to say.

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to belabour the issue. I am not going to belabour the point, and talk too long on the fact that it is the most important industry in Newfoundland and Labrador, the most important industry in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. What I will talk about is the crux of the matter here: basically the essence of a very long resolution brought forward by the Premier and supported by all members, I believe, in this House of Assembly, and certainly, I suggest, by the vast majority of the general public in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The essence of it, even though it was a long resolution, Mr. Speaker, is the BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED. That is the essence of what we are debating here this afternoon. Number one, "...that the principal elements of such a joint management regime include (1) the establishment through an amendment of the Terms of Union, of shared, equal, constitutional authority by the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and Canada over the fisheries adjacent to the province...".

That, Mr. Speaker, in my view - at the very least, anyway, I do not know about anybody else - is the crux of the matter. That is the point we are here debating today. That is what is important to the industry in Newfoundland and Labrador, and that is what is important to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

We want some control over the most important industry in our Province. Is that too much to ask, Mr. Speaker? I do not think it is very much to ask at all. What is wrong with a group of people, a people who were a nation, a people, a very important Province in this country of Canada, what is wrong with us wanting some control over an industry that provides for so much of our population, and provides for so much for our gross domestic product, that generates a billion dollars in revenue to our economy in Newfoundland and Labrador every year in direct monies? I do not think it is very much at all.

Mr. Speaker, we have, over the past, our party here, had a long history of supporting the notion of co-management of the fisheries resources off Newfoundland and Labrador. It is a position that has been espoused by leader after leader, former premiers, throughout the history of their participation in debates on fisheries in this Legislature and outside. So, it should come as no surprise to anybody that we support it here today.

I think the question is, and what has to be answered and has to be put to the people of Canada, to the Legislature, the House of Commons in Canada, to the Prime Minister, and the Minister of Fisheries and to all premiers of this country is: Why is it that we would like to have joint management of our fisheries resources? Because, Mr. Speaker, we need to avoid the situation that we find ourselves in today, and I am not talking about the fact that the fishery is, as of right now, whether there is a change in the decision or not, but as of right now Minister Thibault has decided that the Northern cod fishery and the Northern Gulf cod fishery is closed. Now, he might change his mind, I do not know, but the fact of the matter is, the decision right now is that it is closed.

Whether that is the right decision or the wrong decision, in the eyes of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador it is the wrong decision. In the eyes of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, it has probably been made for the wrong reasons. In the eyes of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, it has been made in the absence of appropriate information, soundly based scientific information. It has been made in the absence of an incorporation of the commercial catch information from the fishermen and the fisherwomen in the fishing industry. It has been in, I suppose, opposition to the recommendations of the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, the all-party committee from Newfoundland and Labrador, the fishermen's union, the Fisheries Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, and many other organizations who, over the past couple of weeks, have spoken out on this.

Mr. Speaker, we need joint management because we want to have confidence in the decisions that are made, and confidence that these decisions are being made for the right reasons and for the benefit of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and not for the benefit of somebody else, somewhere else, at some other time maybe. That is what is wrong at this time. We want self-determination. We want the opportunity to be able to make our own decisions on these important issues. We can decide today, we can decide tomorrow, how many trees we want to cut up - back of Gander, but we cannot decide how many fish we can catch and we cannot, in any way, influence the decision on how many fish we want to catch off Port au Port. There is something fundamentally wrong with that.

In Alberta, they can decide today how many barrels of oil they will pump out of the ground. They can decide how many buckets of the tar sands they are going to haul away every day, but we cannot decide on how much crab we are going to take off the Funks this year. We cannot even sit down to the table with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans in a partnership arrangement and say that this is what we want. There is something fundamentally wrong with this, and why? Why are we in this situation? Well, you know, we can go back and debate how we joined Confederation and how the Terms of Union were put together, and whether it was right or wrong, but it is no good, really, to go back fifty-four years and rehash those debates.

What is important is to deal with the attitude that comes towards us today when we say that we want to do this; and it comes, as the Premier said earlier, from former premiers of this Province - a former Premier, at least, of this Province - who maintains - and he, like many others; there are other former politicians, there are others in the general public, who would suggest, both inside of this Province and outside of this Province - that if we had the power to determine how much fish would be caught, we would catch it all. We would have destroyed the fishery just as the federal government has mismanaged the fishery into ruin today.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not know if they are right or if they are wrong on that. My belief is that if we had the power to at least sit at the table and help make the decision, I think we are a fairly responsible bunch of people here in Newfoundland and Labrador. I think we know what is in our best long-term interest. I think we would probably make the right decisions. But, Mr. Speaker, if we did not make the right decisions, at least they would be our mistakes. They would be our mistakes and we would have nobody, essentially, to blame other than ourselves for it.

We look back, and I know from time to time the debate comes up here in this House of Assembly about how during the 1970s and 1980s - this is one of the things that keeps getting thrown back at us by people who are in the federal government, federal politicians, former federal politicians and what have you, that we, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, presided over - or throughout the 1980s and again today - a rapid expansion, a significant overcapitalization and a resulting overcapacity in the processing sector of which we have jurisdiction.

Why, Mr. Speaker, did we do it? I know why we did it. I was not very old in the late 1970s but I have the benefit of being able to read a few books these days and look back at it. We did it because if we did not catch the fish, somebody else was going to catch it. We were told by Ottawa, we were told by the Law of the Sea, we were told that if it is surplus to the needs of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, if it is surplus to our ability to catch and process it, then there are lots of people out there with boats and fish plants who are lining up ready to take it off our hands. That is why we ended up with so much processing capacity in this Province. That is why the government of the day put bounties in place and funded the reinforcement of trawlers. That is why we saw this rapid expansion in our industry. Mr. Speaker, we were driven to that because we did not have any control over the resource, and no say in how it does.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for this paternalistic style of management that we see in Ottawa, this father-knows-best attitude towards the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, it is time for it to end. If the people of Canada, if the Government of Canada wants the people in Newfoundland and Labrador, if they have any desire to see us stop bickering and fighting with them, and to see us where our grievances on the fishery in particular are put to rest, then it can only come about if we are equal partners in the federation, if we are equal partners in determining how our fishery is run, if we can sit at the table and help make the decisions on how much fish is taken out of the water, how the fishery is managed, what kind of boats are going out there, how much of it we take on any given day, those types of decisions - the fundamental, important decisions that must be made in the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, all we have control over now is the processing sector. We all know that the processing sector is driven by the harvesting sector. This is what has to be done. We have, in Newfoundland and Labrador, a crisis that has confronted us in the closure of the Northern cod and Northern Gulf cod fishery, a crisis that - no, it is not like 1992, it is not like 1992 in that the numbers of people affected are not as great, but for an individual like a Lewis Hughes, for example, or a Marvin Hughes in Green Island Brook, or a Harrison Coates in Eddies Cove East, or a Carl Hedderson down in Noddy Bay, for those people it is just as devastating as the closure of 1992. Because, for those people, certainly 75 per cent to 100 per cent of their income, in some instances, came from the codfishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the end of this fishery today is not only the end of an income for them right now, but even worse than that. In 1992, these people had some hope that the fishery was going to reopen. They had some hope that in a couple of years time they were going to get back at it. They had some hope that the compensation program that was put in place was going to bridge them through this rough period until they could get back on the water and start making a living again.

Today, Mr. Speaker, we see none of this. The people have been flattened. Psychologically they have taken a severe hit, probably even greater than the economic smack that they have taken. That, Mr. Speaker, is unfortunate. It is absolutely disgusting that it could be handled in this way by the Government of Canada.

Mr. Speaker, I know I do not have very much time left, I think I have probably three minutes or something like that. I am not sure. I remember last week, I believe it was last Thursday, I did an interview with Newsworld. In the course of the interview, and I was interviewed on this resolution and how we would or would not support it, what I thought of amending the Constitution, and how that might affect our management of the fishery here in Newfoundland and Labrador, the interviewer spoke about Stéphane Dion's comments earlier in the day. He said, in a flippant way, unfortunately, that amending the Constitution would not bring back the fish.

Mr. Speaker, it is important for everybody, whether it is Stéphane Dion or the people in Newfoundland and Labrador, to understand that this debate about constitutional change, this debate about joint management of the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador, while the catalyst for it may have been the fisheries decision on cod in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Northern cod stock area, while the catalyst for it may have been that, we do have a fishery that is worth approximately $1 billion here in Newfoundland and Labrador. While it will not bring back the cod, maybe some shared jurisdiction, maybe the ability of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, maybe the ability of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, to sit down at the table with their federal partners and decide how this fishery is going to be managed in the future, will prevent the collapse of the shrimp fishery and the crab fishery which is driving our fishing industry today. Maybe, Mr. Speaker, that is what will happen.

As for the individuals - and I am going to clue up shortly - who suggest that we would catch all the fish, well, Mr. Speaker, I would have to say that the Government of Canada has done a very good job of managing us into catching all the fish in the past thirty or forty years. That is where we are now. You know, the fish is all caught effectively in many areas.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, just a few seconds to conclude?

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave to finish up?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, that is what has happened. I don't know why they can get up on their high horses and say that we wouldn't be able to manage the fishery when they haven't been able to manage the fishery themselves. Give us a chance. Give us the opportunity to sit down as equal partners and work on fisheries management in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say this. It is all right for us today to debate this resolution here in the House of Assembly. I think it is a solid resolution that I can certainly support and, as has been indicated, that we will certainly support. Mr. Speaker, in the absence of a plan that takes us from here, debating on the floor of the House of Assembly here today, to a situation where the Terms of Union are amended and we have a joint fisheries management agreement with the federal government, then I would have to ask: What is this all about?

Mr. Speaker, we have to have a plan laid out by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador that takes us from the floor of the House of Assembly today to sometime, hopefully in the not too distant future, where we have seven provinces representing 50 per cent plus 1 of the population of this country on side and willing to support our constitutional amendment. We have to have the Government of Canada then prepared to table the appropriate amendment in the House of Commons and bring this to fruition so that we do have our joint fisheries management.

That, Mr. Speaker, is the most important thing here today. The rest of it, the debate about cod, everything that we talk about here today - if we do not lay out a plan and get it into our minds that we have to go from here today to there tomorrow, then this is all for nothing.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is indeed a pleasure and honour to make a few comments regarding this resolution before the House today. As the words quite clearly state, it is to begin negotiations leading to the establishment of a joint management regime over the fisheries adjacent to our Province.

My comments will, of course, be in support of that resolution, and the resolution is very specific today. It deals with the issue of the fisheries, a joint management regime, a very specific issue that this Province is asking to have some say in when it comes to determining what happens in that particular industry. Of course, the catalyst for this resolution is the events that have been unfolding in this Province for the last three weeks as the result of Minister Thibault's actions in regard to the cod fishery in this Province.

That is only the catalyst, Mr. Speaker, to direct this specific resolution regarding the fisheries, but this resolution and a broader resolution regarding joint management issues have been long in coming, and there have been many other resource industries in our Province that could be embraced by such a joint management type of regime. It has been brewing for many years. It just did not start three weeks ago. There have been ongoing events in our relationship with Ottawa, the federal government, over the last number of years, which have been brewing. Sometimes hotter than others, but always in some area, in some facet of our relationship, there sometimes have been disagreements and discord that needs to be rectified.

I would trust that our brethren on the other side of the Gulf, in mainland Canada, do not confuse our words used in our resolution, of negotiate, which certainly employs exactly that, states explicitly. It is to negotiate, to discuss, to review, the Terms of Union. Don't misunderstand the intent of the resolution and give any sinister motives to it. It is exactly that. It is a request to negotiate.

We have had our Constitution Act, of course, since 1867. It is not a rocket science thing. It may be sometimes complex, but the Constitution of the country is fairly straightforward, our constitutional set-up. There is a federal state made up of some provinces and territories. Section 91 basically sets out what the provincial powers are. It deals with such things as property rights, administration of justice. Section 92 basically outlines what the federal rights are: criminal law, enactment of income tax, defence and fisheries, but somewhere in between that, albeit we have a Constitution which is a framework which tells us how our governmental system, our particular democracy, is going to work, we had the wheel but sometimes the spokes need to be shined up every now and again. Sometimes spokes get broken in that wheel. Sometimes you need to put in a new one. That is what is happening in this process right here. A few spokes have broken. We, for example, came along in 1949 and headed to that federation with our Terms of Union.

I point out for a second, as well, just how much times change and why you always have to be prepared to reconsider, to reflect, to design new formulas to deal with new situations. In our Terms of Union of 1949, clause 31, it deals with a number of things that we gave over, as a country to Canada, that no longer exist for various reasons. Either they have disappeared, are no longer relevant, or they have been divested of: the Newfoundland Railway, Newfoundland Hotel, civil aviation, defence, no remnants of that here in our Province anymore; bait services, no longer relevant anymore; lighthouses.

Times have changed in the past fifty-four years and you always have to take change not as a challenge or something that you say no to, don't talk about it. You have to embrace change and say, sometimes things change for technological reasons, for economic reasons, for legal reasons and for constitutional reasons. You need to have a dialogue sometimes.

I go back for a second to how it comes off the rails and spokes get bent every now and then. Well, we have had a few bent spokes here. I guess, maybe having three bent spokes in succession has been problematic, when our Gander Weather Office situation went off the rails some time ago, the Stephenville Port divestiture situation, our federal-provincial cost-shared agreements. Traditionally, we always had cost-share agreements. We have been told now suddenly by the federal government, no longer. We are sorry. That is not longer going to exist. Joint resource management, equalization issues, megaproject funding, whether it should or should not be. All issues that we need to address from time to time as times change.

We do not need to be in a Meech Lake type of controversy, or a Quebec (inaudible) type of mentality. We do not need this constitutional whiplash, as it has been called sometimes, where you beat yourself into a frenzy and you have to have an argument, and you box yourself into corners that you cannot get out of before you decide to negotiate. It does not always have to be controversial, adversarial, confrontational. There comes a time when all parties to the party have to realize that we have to talk, and that is what we are suggesting here. You talk. You cannot hide behind doors and say you are not even going to talk and negotiate with you. That leads to nothing.

The federal government, if they had their way, would do exactly that. They are saying: We do not want to talk to you. Go away. The end result is, this is an issue over which you have no control. It is written on a piece of paper called a Constitution and therefore: Don't talk to us, don't bother us. That is not how any workable, growing, Constitutional system - even common sense would tell you - is designed to work. You have to evolve. You have to be flexible. Their immediate response to the thing is totally unacceptable. There has to be a process to respond to change. There has to be the dialogue. Where is the openness? Where is the trust that is supposed to be in any kind of relationship? It is not here. We certainly do not need knee-jerk responses. It should be carefully thought out responses and properly negotiated responses.

For example, not only are we here in our House of Assembly today debating this resolution, our MPs, which give us a national perspective, at least the Liberal Party MPs, are in a crisis situation today in their national caucus saying that they may do anything. I take that to mean ranging as far as resign. What have we come to when we cannot have a dialogue, either us, as a Province, or our own federal MPs who are there?

Mr. Dion, you talk about attitudes and so on. His actions bring to mind an old quote from Sir Winston Churchill, who, in commenting on one of his colleagues, said, "There but for the grace of God goes God." That is exactly the type of attitude of Mr. Dion. Such arrogance, such insolence, to be acting this way towards this Province. That attitude and that response is totally inappropriate and unacceptable.

The Prime Minister does not want to get involved because he only has nine months left. Well, I am sorry, we cannot run our affairs in accordance with his retirement plan. We are a country and we are a Province, and we have an obligation to proceed.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. PARSONS: I suggest, not to be difficult, not to be harsh or critical, but if you are not prepared to deal with your responsibilities as the Prime Minister of this country you ought to do the honourable thing and move aside, let someone who is prepared to do it. That is not being unreasonable or harsh. That is being responsive in carrying out your obligations.

It is not only a matter of Constitutional niceties. We had questions today in Question Period about what we can or cannot do as a result of the Quebec secession case, and can we demand that they negotiate with us and so on. It is not a case of legalities only and constitutional niceties, I say. This fisheries decision shows why we must have dialogue and a joint management regime. It is a decision that affects people. It affects us. It affects all of us. This is not a Grand Bruit or a La Poile problem, those communities are impacted by larger cities. The capital city of this Province is impacted by this decision. We all live in a very small pot here, in this Province of ours called Newfoundland and Labrador. What happens in our small communities affects our bigger communities and affects us as a Province.

We are not interested in beating up on anyone. We want to negotiate within the Canadian family, within the Canadian partnership that supposedly exists and within the Canadian Federation. We realize we are only one voice, but we are a voice. We ought never to be told by anyone that we are not entitled to voice our opinions and to voice our concerns.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. PARSONS: I would conclude by saying one thing. We cannot and will not continue to have a Sparkes Street decision and attitude shoved down our throats. We need a thoughtful, efficient process whereby both governments contribute to reach a Water Street, rural Newfoundland decision.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Government House Leader, in his commentary - and he had many good things to say - talked about this being a last-ditch effort to save our fisheries. In my view, it is but a very necessary - a necessary but only a first step today as we, as a Province, and as a people through the will of the Legislature, exercise our moral, political and democratic rights within the context of Canada and Confederation.

For the record, Mr. Speaker, let me be clear, and let everybody be clear, on where our party stands. I want to quote for you the Leader of our party, Mr. Danny Williams, the Member for Humber West, who in Nova Scotia on June 2, 2002, said the following:

Because what is at stake today in the Province and what we are debating is not only something that is important and is self-explanatory and, onto itself, an inherent right, in my view, but is the very nature of provincial rights as they currently exist within the country.

Here is what Mr. Williams had to say, June 2, 2001, in response to issues dealing with the fishery and joint management and jurisdiction, and I quote:

That is why we are angry. We just want a fair share. Comments like, fish have no home, from Trudeau, the philosopher king, might make good sound bites but they portray arrogance and contempt for a hard-working people who have been deprived of their heritage.

In Atlantic Canada, he said, we are resource rich but economically poor. We do not benefit as we should from our resource bounty, and part of that reason is that we gave up ownership and control of some of the most important resources when we joined Confederation. Prior to that we were a sovereign country and we owned the sea's resources.

We brought with us the fish in the ocean, oil and gas in the adjacent ocean shelf and God knows what else might be discovered in years to come with the emergence, and ever increasing emergence, of new technology. We brought with us the vast land of Labrador, something which Canada, onto itself, coveted before we were a province.

By contrast, Mr. Speaker, the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were carved out of federal lands in 1905. The federal government of the day gave those new provinces ownership and control of oil and gas in those former federal lands. They could own them and manage them as they saw fit. Alberta, in particular, has turned those resources into colossal wealth for the people of that province. There is no Alberta accord to allow Albertans a limited share of the benefits of their natural resources. As a result, in 2001, Mr. Speaker, they paid down $5 billion on their provincial debt.

What is the difference between the wealth beneath Alberta's soil and the wealth between the sea adjacent to our coasts? Why have we been treated differently merely because our resources are located underwater rather than underground? Mr. Williams says: I believe that this distinction cannot be justified. I believe it is fundamentally wrong. I believe the situation is discriminatory and goes a long way to keeping our Atlantic provinces in positions of fiscal and economic subservience.

Our offshore resources belong to Canada simply because we are provinces of Canada. They are there because we are there. Our resources in this Province were there because we are here, long before Canada, as a nation, even existed. Those resources go where we go. If we left Canada, the economic zone would go with us. There is no dispute about that. Why then should there be any dispute about the claim to the right of ownership of those economic resources within our country?

Mr. Speaker, as late as the last election in 1999 we expressed clearly what our policy was in terms of this very important and significant issue. I will quote it: We called for, at the time, a national agreement to discuss negotiating constitutional roles and responsibilities in the fisheries. We said: A PC government would aggressively pursue a Canada-Newfoundland fisheries agreement providing for joint decision-making, not unlike at all what the resolution put forward by the hon. Premier has called for today.

Mr. Speaker, it is important before I talk about the future and where we go from here to there, to counteract, I believe, the notion that exists within the public service within the federal government, the notion that I have seen to my own disdain and anger - and to be honest, it still boils. I think the nationalistic sentiments that are ever present in our Province, they are there.

Fifty-four years ago people in the Province voted to join Confederation, by the narrowest of margins. The attitudes I am talking about are those that are referred to in The Globe and Mail, The National Post. The flippant attitude that the federal Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs displayed when this was first put to him was a laugh. The flippant attitude by the Prime Minister of the country towards the legitimate expressions of a people in the country. The legitimate and bonafide expressions of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador were treated with disdain. There is a notion - and I believe we have all encountered it - across the country that somehow we were the beggars going to Canada in 1949 with our hands out to them, saying: Could you please save us from economic ruin and disdain? That notion has been perpetrated since we joined the country for the last fifty years - not by people here, not by people within our Province - whose people's ignorance and for their own self-serving attitudes have perpetrated that notion.

I challenge that notion today. I challenge it historically, not just based on some argument that I, as a member, put forward or our caucus or members in this House forward, but by the historical data that is present today. The fact remains, that in 1949 Canada wanted us much more than we wanted them, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: To prove the point, in a document written by the Canadian High Commissioner to Newfoundland, written to Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister of the country and his Cabinet at the time. Here is how they put the advantages, and I quote directly from that document: The ascension of Newfoundland would increase the Canadian population by 312,000 people and enlarge the Dominion by some 192,000 square miles. An area larger than Finland or Sweden and nearly four times the size of the Maritime provinces, possessing very considerable mineral and forest resources, as well as easy access to the finest fishing grounds in the world. It would solve - this was written to the Prime Minister of the day and to the Cabinet of the day. It would solve, permanently, all questions of Canada's post-military and civil aviation rights; which are, at present, terminable after March 31, 1949.

When did we sign the Terms of Union? On April Fool's Day, April 1, 1949. There is no coincidence, Mr. Speaker. Historically, the facts speak for themselves. It would make possible a common jurisdiction over North Atlantic fisheries. It would, in the sense, give Canada frontage on the Atlantic and a window towards Europe and prevent the Dominion being shut off from the Atlantic, as it is to a considerable extent from the Pacific. It would add materially to the extent and variety of Canada's resources, enhance our prestige and place in the world. That is what Canada saw in our nation at the time.

Mr. Speaker, let me talk about Labrador for a moment and what Canada saw in Labrador. Another document that outlines the historical context of what we brought to this country. I, for one - and I know members on all sides of this House, no matter where they sit, will stand together on this. I said this to the Premier over the last week: We will support his resolution, not a problem. I, for one, and I know all members opposite, will not stand anywhere, whether publicly or privately - and I recall encountering this very notion when I first became involved in politics at the university level, at the Canadian Students Union Conference I attended one time in Ottawa - that we are somehow to be thankful because of what Canada has brought to us. But, for some reason the rest of the country is not to be thankful of the rich and immense bounty, financial wealth and otherwise, that we brought to Canada.

In Labrador, for example, in an historical context, it was no surprise - and I am quoting now - to the Government of Canada or the United States during the 1940s that Labrador held a vast array of mineral and natural resource riches, in addition to the world's largest airport built at Goose Bay, Canada. As it was, the existence of the Goose Bay Airport was kept secret for military purposes and was only confirmed to the Newfoundland public in 1943, two years after construction had begun.

Mr. Speaker, this is what people in our Province understand. We have been here for 500 years. We are the oldest place in the western civilization. The oldest European western civilization. Five hundred years old. We know this intrinsically, it is in us.

Had information about the value and the exact quantity of the iron ore in Labrador been released however, it would have come quite as a shock and surprise to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and their government. This information was deliberately kept secret in 1947 by the Canadian Minister, C.D. Howe. We all know who C.D. Howe was, one of the most influential Finance ministers in Canadian history. The only person who has come close to being as influential in this century to C.D. Howe has been Paul Martin, former Finance Minister. Not quite as influential, but almost. This information was kept secret by C.D. However, fearing that if the Newfoundland electorate knew of the value of the iron ore in Labrador they would have taken a very different view of what Canada stood to gain from having the Province in Confederation and would have voted accordingly.

Let us not say today, in the Legislature here, that we are somehow the little brother or little sister of Confederation asking for something that people somewhere else will decide for us. Let us demand our inherent right. Let us demand, today, our inherent right to have a say in what we believe to be ours.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. E. BYRNE: That is what this resolution is about. It is about a demand for our inherent right, as a people, to self-expression and self-determination.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of meeting with Dr. David Suzuki, all of our caucus did. A question was put to him about successful fisheries on the planet. Without exception, he said to us, the most successful wild fisheries on our planet and in our globe are those to which the people who prosecute them, who survive because of them and depend on them, have the ultimate and equal or outright say about their management. That is all that we are asking for.

Mr. Speaker, the future on this question is all but important. John FitzGerald who used to be a Page in this House, now a nationally and internationally recognized historian, wrote a book, Newfoundland at the Crossroads. It is full of empirical data and historical data taken from archives that were, for the last forty to fifty years, not available to us, out of London England and out of Canada, because there was a time constraint on when this information could be released. He is a great Newfoundlander, he is a signpost for us today, his work. I believe it to be, because through his analysis and through his research he has clearly and unequivocally, in my mind, demonstrated how Britain conspired with Canada to ensure that we, as a people, joined Confederation. He has demonstrated clearly, from a historical point of view, factual point of view, how Canada's paranoia about, if we had developed our resources ourselves and been allowed to develop them, what that would have meant to their ability, as an emerging nation, within the context of the globe and its influence. How the United States of America, at the time we joined, its own iron ore exports were decreasing. Its need for iron ore was so great that it would have been more attractive for us to join America than it would have been for us to join Canada. Those were the legitimate and historical considerations that -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. E. BYRNE: If I just may conclude?

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you.

Those were the legitimate and bona fide expressions and considerations that were going on in the Privy Council in Canada and at the Cabinet table.

Mr. Speaker, my advice to the Premier, and to any Newfoundlander and Labradorian who wants to listen, and to any person in the country who wants to listen, is this: This resolution today is but a first step - a necessary one, as I began to say, but only a first step - because it legitimizes and demonstrates to everybody, and I say it will, the legitimate expression of people in this Province to have a legitimate say, a real say, a meaningful say, in the management of our resources, in this case the fishery, entrenched in the Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, we also must recognize, and we recognized last week with the flippant comments of the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs federally and the Prime Minister, what we are up against. It is going to require much more than a resolution. It is going to require day over day and week over week and month over month and year over year the continued resolve of this Legislature in a non-partisan way, and the continued resolve of the people of the Province, to overcome it. It is also going to take the continued resolve of our federal MPs and Senators.

Mr. Speaker, we do have some leverage. We do have some leverage, and anybody who thinks we do not, anybody who thinks that we, only 500,000 of us, cannot exercise some leverage in this situation in terms of a constitutional context, yes, we can. The clarifications that the Prime Minister of the country, Jean Chrétien, asked the Supreme Court to give on Constitution Act provides us that very leverage, in my view, and it is the leverage that, at all costs, if negotiations do not succeed - this motion asks for us to negotiate with the federal government. If that is successful, then the next logical step is that we have to convince seven provinces and fifty plus one per cent of the population. That act gives us some leverage.

I say to the Premier, to the government, to the people of the Province, and anyone who is listening, that if the spirit and intent of this resolution is not upheld in due course, then let us not be afraid of exercising that leverage.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will not take a long time in closing the debate, but I would like to thank all of the participants and interveners, and a particular thank you to the Opposition House Leader, and the Leader of the NDP, but everyone who participated.

Again, with respect to the last comments that were made, I can only say that in the tone and tenor of questions asked again by the media with respect to this, talking about, whether or not, what would happen - because people sometimes jump a little bit ahead - what would happen if the Government of Canada tries to deny even the negotiation, you know, where would you go? Would you think about separating?

Of course, that is not the kind of thing that I seek any mandate to do, but my commentary is always this: It will be another very sorry and sad symbol of a constantly deteriorating relationship between provinces, as equal and respected partners, and the federal government. If this deteriorates into a legal harangue about whether or not they can deny us even the right to talk, because there have been legal opinions that we have gotten, that we know that the Government of Canada has, that if they choose to do so, they can argue under that same cessation case, that it is only narrowly defined to a separation attempt. The message in that, if the Government of Canada even goes there, if that is where they go, then what they are saying to people is that unless you go back and mount a separation movement in your Province and threaten to leave Canada, we will not talk to you, and, I think, that will be the saddest commentary ever in terms of a relationship in the country, and it will not only be a message to Newfoundland and Labrador. It will be a message to every single province and territory that we, this great Canada, put together, as the Opposition House Leader so rightfully said, assembled by us voluntarily.

There was no Canada, that then they said, you know, there wasn't a Canada that started by saying: Here we are this great land mass from sea to sea to sea and we think now we will divide ourselves up into ten provinces and three territories and we will decide on who has what jurisdiction.

It was the other way around. We came together voluntarily and created Canada, and now our creation, the phrase that I use, is in danger of running amok. It is getting out of control. What we created voluntarily is threatening to run out of control, and there are real messages for all of us. No matter where we are in the country, if one of the so-called equal and respected partners comes forward with a request from all of its legislators, every single one of us, therefore having been supported by all the people, never mind what party they voted for, never mind what candidate they chose. They sent us all here and we stand up and say on behalf of the people who sent us here that we want to start this negotiation. We have an end goal in mind, but we want to start a negotiation. The elected representatives in a democratic society are saying so - hopefully, as I understand it - unanimously. Then there will some real messages for every Canadian, no matter where they live in this great country.

If the leaders of the Canada that we created ourselves turn around and say: That's nice. I am glad to hear that you would like to have a talk, but I don't want to have a talk. Because that is what we heard last week. I think there are Newfoundlanders and Labradorians everywhere in this Province and knows that we know of our own kin who are everywhere in this great country, who take offence to that. There are Canadians in every jurisdiction that take offence to that kind of attitude. I do appreciate the strong unequivocal comments, particularly the last ones by the Opposition House Leader.

Mr. Speaker, let me conclude again, because I do agree in looking at the historical documents

and there was some reference to it. The key to the documents that were secret at the time - and no wonder they were secret leading up to 1949 because if they were out in the public they would have been explosive. The debate was contentious enough as it was. The documents from the Canadian High Commissioner to Newfoundland to the Government of Canada - some quotes there - but the key to it: the accession of Newfoundland would increase the Dominion of Canada by an area larger - by four times larger than the Maritime provinces with the great wealth he talked about, not only the Island but Labrador - possessing very considerable mineral and forest resources and then this one, which is our debate today. As well as easy assess to the finest fishing grounds in the world, which is our very targeted and pointed debate today.

So, in 1946, leading to 1949, it was acknowledged that with the management of the fishery done by the Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who were here at the time, we had managed it, eked out and squeezed out and sustained ourselves, gotten a living from it, built our communities, raised families, and still through 450 years of settled experience, after the Aboriginal existence for years and centuries before that - still being described as easy access to the finest fishing grounds in the world. I gave the example of what happened in the 1880s when there was, at the time - by the way, the debate was a serious one. Check the historical records. There was a collapse in the fishery.

I finished my remarks earlier, Mr. Speaker, by talking about what the people here did about it. They did not just shut down a fishery, they put in place a rebuilding plan. They put in place the hatcheries. They did the grow-out. They changed the gear types. They invested in science to make sure that they better understood the ecology of the whole system, the interactions on what would happen. In seven years, it is reported, seven years later all reports said a great change had been accomplished. The fisheries were brought under control and a full flourishing fishery, commercial as it was, was back in operation again. Now, is that the experience from the last decade? I think not. From 1949, and with the correction to 1954 because of the salt fish things and so on - but in that last fifty years, the management decisions have been made by, other than, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

I think the people in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, would recognize more so than anyone else, that in the bureaucratic system - you know the saddest part of it all is that those who are employed by the Government of Canada as experts - and there are several of them - and as regional managers, people with influence and say right here in Newfoundland and Labrador, over in the White Hills, we in this room, we in this Chamber, we know what their advice was to the Government of Canada. We know what their advice was. The people closest to the resource with real expertise, having lived here, seeing the science, knowing the experience, putting it all together, said there is the basis for a limited, sustainable fishery. It is those kinds of people, by the way, who made the same recommendation to their superiors a little bit up the ladder. But guess where all their superiors who were a little bit up the ladder are? Kent Street in Ottawa. As we know here, I do not subscribe to any particular theories, plots or schemes, I just happen to know it exists.

I was engaged in Newfoundland and Labrador, in discussion groups as the leader of a teachers' union here some twenty years ago, invited by senior federal bureaucrats when they talked about the inefficiency and waste of small boat fisheries. The social fishery they called it. Why would you have a social fishery? Why would communities be sustained because of a fishery? Because, a fishery - you should be using a natural resource to feed the people. The most efficient and economic way to do it - we know what the answer is. The most efficient and economic way - if your only objective is to take fish and feed people - is to send out three or four factory freezer trawlers, do it all offshore, no fish plants, no communities, no inshore fishery. Federal officials were talking openly about that in this Province twenty years ago, and probably for twenty years before that. They did not have any management schemes or thoughts or ideas that suggested you should listen to the people that are there, you should look at sustainable fisheries practices that can also sustain a lifestyle that has been the very feature and the backbone of this particular Province for almost 500 years. What we have in fifty years is the circumstance that we face today.

Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that the recommendations that are here today in this particular motion, it is not the first time, which is why it was again offensive to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, but very symbolic of an attitude, when the Intergovernmental Affairs Minister rushed outside to the media and said it is improvisation. I do not know where this could have come from.

When everybody knows there is at least a twenty-five year history, because others have worked very hard at this and put their political hearts and souls into it to try and accomplish some meaningful say, because the record shows that the Peckford Administration worked at it almost incessantly from 1979 right through until 1986 and 1987, several attempts at the constitutional table and elsewhere, because they understood that a real part of the future was having some kind of real say in the fundamental management decisions.

They looked at the constitutional amendments, and the Peckford Administration shifted some policy but also stayed into the realm of trying to have a fisheries management board for a couple of years, but every time trying to have a real say.

Under the Wells Administration, the same kind of a notion of a joint management regime of some particular description was sought out, lobbied for. The objective always being a real say for the people close to the resource, because the people in Newfoundland and Labrador understand more than anyone else that if you destroy the resource you destroy yourself. That is why it was not destroyed for 450 years, because the people in our rural communities knew that if they destroyed the resource they were destroying their very own beings and their very own communities.

In the Tobin Administration as well, there were attempts to have increased co-operation and co-ordination between DFO and provincial government officials.

It is true, that the Official Opposition had it as a major plank in their election platform the last time, that we should have joint management. We absolutely should have. There is no disagreement on that in Newfoundland and Labrador. That has to be part of the answer for the future, and that is why I am delighted, Mr. Speaker, in anticipation of what I expect to be a unanimous approval of this today. Sometimes we might haggle over the approach, exactly how you do it, but the end goal, I believe, is what is in the heart and soul of every Newfoundlander and Labradorian. It is time, and it has been said before, too.

Today, as I said with respect to J. S. Macdonald, the Commissioner, he talked about forest resources, minerals, fishery, there are lots of other issues. Today, we are focusing on the fishery, but it will not be very long because we have had a Royal Commission in place now for some fifteen months, and again it is interesting to see the reaction to it. The reaction from the same Minister Dion, by the way, fifteen months to the Intergovernmental Affairs Minister for Newfoundland and Labrador. Minister Lush, he says, I hope this is just not a disguise for a fed bashing exercise.

That is the exact comment. I hope that is not a disguise for a fed bashing exercise. The minister, on our behalf, reminded him, Minister Dion, he said, on behalf of the Government of Canada, please understand our message is in the title. Our message is in the title of the Royal Commission. We have put a lot of thought into it, and our title for the Royal Commission, which will report in five or six weeks, is: Renewing and Strengthening Our Place in Canada, because we are very proud and fierce and loyal Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and I believe - there is a separation element, there is no doubt in my mind - but I believe most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians today, if treated fairly, would also like to stay as loyal and proud Canadians. We would like to see that happen.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER GRIMES: Mr. Speaker, I think it is clear, too, from the messages we have seen in the last little while, in particular, on an issue that the Government of Canada brought to the table, this Legislature did not announce these fishery management decisions. They are in the purview right now and the mandate of the Government of Canada, solely, unilaterally. We think it should have been shared. We think it has to be shared into the future. They brought it forward, but I think the attitudes that many of the speakers have talked about here today suggest to us that our title on our Royal Commission about renewing and strengthening our place in Canada, it is pretty obvious that Canada, itself, needs a bit of renewing and strengthening. One way to do it is to deal with its partners in the provinces and territories with some respect and some dignity.

I will end by saying this. I hope the message coming from this Legislature today, that we have given serious thought and consideration to this, full deliberation, and we want to start a negotiation with an end goal in mind: that there will be a negotiation with a willing partner in Ottawa, rather than resistance and legal harangue over what the secession case does or does not obligate someone to do.

What are not talking about obligating; we are talking about a moral obligation, to come and engage with a partner who has identified a very serious problem and would like to go down a road and a process to get to a solution whereby we have an equal say, as equal and respected Canadians, into the future. I just hope that we get the right response to a very strong and clear message that I appreciate this Legislature sending to the Government of Canada today.

With that, again I thank all of the speakers and the interveners in the debate and look forward to support of this particular resolution.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: All those in favour of the resolution, ‘aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, ‘nay'.

I declare the resolution carried unanimously.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. LUSH: Mr. Speaker, before Your Honour adjourns, I want to make a motion that will give us all a great degree of security and comfort. I want to give notice that on tomorrow I will move that the House not adjourn at 5:30 p.m. nor 10:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER: This House now stands adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, at 1:30 p.m.