Emergency Debate – Fisheries

Thursday March 21, 2002

 

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg--Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I did not intend to make an intervention tonight but I heard that the Liberal caucus was yearning for more NDP and opposition speeches and I did not want them to go without.

    I have a few things I want to put on the record. First, it is very nice to see so many government members paying attention to what members of the opposition have to say. I want to congratulate the government on having more than its usual one or two members present in the House. I did not mean to drive the hon. member out by congratulating him.

    Earlier in the evening I think the hon. member for Sackville--Musquodoboit Valley--Eastern Shore had occasion to remind the House that this unfortunately is an old problem. It is not something that we have just come to know about, although it appears that with the particular problem that was the occasion for this emergency debate, the appropriate ministers of the government knew about it back in September but did nothing about it and did not share that information with parliament. Instead they waited to deal with that information at an international meeting.

    It is only now that the House is able to be seized of the impending crisis with respect to these particular fish stocks. The fact is that we have known for a long time, not just Canada but the world, that we are engaged in a form of overfishing and overconsumption not only of fish but of many other resources. Perhaps what we need to turn our attention to ultimately is the fact that it is our way of life and economic system which demands this kind of growth and that kind of consumption.

    An hon. member: Capitalist conspiracy.

    Mr. Bill Blaikie: Someone said capitalist conspiracy. Now that he mentions it, there certainly is an economic element in this crisis.

    There has been a corporatization of the fishing industry. We know that corporations are driven by shareholder value and the excessive need to provide profits for their shareholders. This means that the survival, quality and long term sustainability of the fish stocks is very low on their radar screen. What is very high on their radar screen is the next quarterly profit margin or what their shareholders are going to demand of them at the next annual meeting.

    Capital conspiracy is an element and I thank the hon. member for mentioning it. There is a way in which our economic system drives us to do things to the environment that we should not otherwise do. I had an occasion to speak about that a long time ago. On October 19, 1979, when I made my maiden speech in the House, I talked about the depletion of fish stocks which was a problem then.

    The fact is that as a civilization, not just the Liberal government or the Conservative government before that and many others, we have not faced up to the fact that we are depleting our natural resources, not only our fish stocks but all kinds of natural resources. We are just not willing to face up to the need to redesign our values, our patterns of consumption and our economic system so that we are able to lead a sustainable economic life on this planet.

    I want to share a story which I think goes a long way to explaining the nature of the environmental dilemmas we find ourselves in. Earlier this week we saw the breaking off of a huge part of the ice shelf in the Antarctic, another sign of environmental damage. Sometimes we do not see that damage coming. We do not appreciate just how close we are to the critical point.

    I ask members to imagine that there is a pond. I am not talking about a pond in the Newfoundland sense because I know that ponds in Newfoundland are more like lakes.

    What I want to illustrate is that a lot of our environmental problems are geometric in nature. They are exponential in nature. They are not arithmetic. They do not go one, two, three, four, five. They go two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. I will pretend I am an Alliance member and stop there. This is the nature of the problem we face.

    Imagine there is a pond and it will be covered in 28 days by lily pads. It will be covered exponentially, geometrically: one lily pad, two lily pads, four lily pads, et cetera and it will be covered in 28 days. On the 27th day, how much of the pond will still be uncovered? Half. One could be sitting there on the 27th day of the 28 day period but the 28th day will be the critical day when all of a sudden everything is completed.

    One could be sitting there and somebody could be saying “We have a problem. The pond will soon be covered”. Somebody could say “Are you kidding, half the pond is left”. On the 28th day, boom, the pond is covered.

    That is the kind of situation we are facing with a lot of environmental problems. They are growing exponentially and geometrically. We do not know whether we are on the 24th, 25th, 26th or 27th day but scientists, the David Suzukis of this world and others, tell us that we are somewhere in the mid twenties. Let us hope we are not on the 27th day.

    It means that we cannot wait until the 27th day because by that time we will have no time left. We have to act now with respect to fish stocks and all kinds of other natural resources and with respect to stopping pollution.

    I wanted to tell that small illustrative tale which I have always found very powerful. I know I have been a bit facetious but I am not being facetious when it comes to that story because when I read it some 20 or 25 years ago, it spoke very powerfully to me of the nature of the cumulative environmental and depletion problems that we face as a planet and a civilization.

    I hope some day the government will see it is not enough to just keep assuring people that there is lots of time left or that there is lots of this or lots of that left and that we do not have to worry. We do have to worry and we need to act as quickly as we can to solve all these problems.