The DFO

Now Dave's pretty worked up concerning the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and quite frankly who can blame him.

Now I've always had my own thoughts on Canada's fisheries policy and I might as well throw them out there.

Canada's East Coast is crawling with foreign ships. No surprise there right? The Canadian government could take some simple steps to prevent these foreign ships from being in our waters. Tobin did it before and it can be done again. I've always reasoned that the federal government doesn't come down on them is because the foreign government involved would impose some sort of trade penalty on us. Guess who that would be designed to affect. The Maritimes? Of course not, trade sanctions are designed to affect the region most important to the government. Yes you guessed it, Ontario.

The fear in Ottawa is that restoring the Atlantic fishery would put at risk industrial and high tech jobs in the one province whose support is required in order to win a federal election. And we all know that will never happen. So what is the solution?

Well quite frankly there is none. That's the problem in being part of such a large country. Maritimers get pissed about the federal governments handling of the fishery, the feds throw a few dollars around and then everyone goes home. Thats it. Done.

And that is one of the reasons why the 'conservative' parties of Canada must come to grips with their differences. Quite simply the Liberals will not pay attention to Maritimers concerns as long as we continue to vote for them. And we do. Well I don't of course, but Maritimers in general still split their votes between the Liberals and PCs in every election. Its pathetic.

And why is it that the one party that favours local control of resources, over the model of federal control, are not supported in the Maritimes? The Canadian Alliance has always been for local control over resources and yet Maritimers still vote for the same PC or Liberal schmucks. How many votes did the Alliance get out East in the last election?

So what do we do until the government prevents foreign ships from raping our shores? Pack up and move to Ontario for one of those jobs or get organized and punish the federal government. Vote splitting is not enough because at the end of the day the only thing politicians care about is winning. Its really very simple.

PS: And since we're on the topic... it's fishermen! not fishers!