NL-Outsidethebox [confederation]

This is an excerpt from an Article in the The Independant called Betrayed.

Betrayed By ryan.cleary@theindependent.ca

Fishing industry players on
Canada’s East and West
Coasts are accusing the federal
Conservatives of “betrayal” for
failing to follow through on perceived
commitments made leading
up to January’s federal election.
Further, Fisheries and Oceans
Minister Loyola Hearn is charged
with falling under the thumb of the
federal bureaucracy, the same senior
civil service that led the department
in the early 1990s when commercial
fisheries collapsed at both
ends of the country.
“We feel entirely betrayed and
abused, and I’m not overstating it,”
says Phil Eidsvik, executive director
of the B.C. Fisheries Survival
Coalition, a group opposed to
expansion of aboriginal fishing
rights.
“We feel like we’ve been stabbed
in the back by people that we spent
the last 12 to 14 years working for,
putting up lawn signs, donating
hundreds of thousands of dollars
to.”
In an interview from Vancouver,
Eidsvik, a failed Conservative candidate
in the last federal election,
says he was told this week the federal
government intends to allow
the continuation of “race-based”
commercial fisheries.
Eidsvik acknowledges the
Conservatives didn’t directly
promise to deliver “equality” in the
commercial fishery, but he says
salmon fishermen in B.C. were led
to believe that would happen.
Likewise, many voters in
Newfoundland and Labrador say
they were led to believe the
Conservatives would take a
stronger stance against foreign
overfishing.
Prior to his party winning power,
Hearn, MP for the federal riding of
St. John’s South, passed a private
members’ bill in the House of
Commons calling on Ottawa to
immediately extend custodial management
over the nose and tail of
the Grand Banks.
In an appearance May 30 before
the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans, Hearn said
he never supported walking away
form the Northwest Atlantic
Fisheries Organization (NAFO),
the international body that oversees
fishing outside Canada’s 200-mile
limit.
“Some people recommended that
we get out of NAFO because it was
not doing the job that it should do.
However, I never said that and I
went back through my reports to
make sure of that,” Hearn told the
committee.
“I have always believed that it is
better to fight within rather than
without,” he said. “Should the leadership
come from NAFO? Yes, but
NAFO regulations need more teeth
to be effective … NAFO has been
in place for a long time and many
members are good people.
Resentful, guilt-ridden
and pissed off, Pam
Pardy Ghent writes
a heartfelt column
three days before her
husband leaves to look
for work in Alberta
Fishing industry reps here and in B.C.
say Conservatives not meeting expectations

Read the rest of ‘The collapse of the fishery will continue’