QUESTION PERIOD — Fisheries and Oceans
Elver Fishery
March 20, 2024
Leader, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are killing the fishing industry in eastern Quebec and the Maritimes. The situation facing families and entrepreneurs is disastrous. By suddenly closing the elver fishery over safety concerns, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard is only encouraging poaching and the organized criminals who continue to fish with impunity in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Why isn’t your Prime Minister calling on the RCMP to intervene, instead of allowing these easily identifiable criminals to do as they please?
Thank you for the question and for drawing attention to a challenge facing many communities as a result of illegal fishery activities. Although I have no information about specific initiatives or investigations in progress, I will certainly pass on your perfectly legitimate concerns to the minister.
It’s common knowledge that elver poachers ship their products by truck from the Maritimes to Toronto and by air to China. Apart from Liberal complacency towards these criminals, why hasn’t the Canada Border Services Agency taken action at the Toronto airport, where it could easily intercept shipments of illegally caught elvers? What is the Minister of Public Safety doing?
Thank you for the question.
As I say all too often, I don’t accept the premise of your question, although I do wholeheartedly agree on the importance of the issue you’ve raised.
That being said, it’s always a challenge, in major centres like the airport and the port in Montreal, to investigate each and every item that leaves the country, but once again, I will add that to my list of questions for the minister.
