Stagg Editorial- April 1995

BRIAN TOBIN

Canada's navy has been called on to the Grand Banks by Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin. Finally after years of government impotence the Liberal fisheries minister has organized the support of Prime Minister Jean Chretien and placed Canada's navy for the first time on the firing line to do battle for the preservation of the Grand Banks fishery.

Tobin has the guts and the political insight to do the right thing - the very thing that Newfoundlanders have longed for since the collapse of the fishery.

The fisheries minister has shown that Canada is prepared to put its military might where its diplomatic mouth used to be. No more will expense account diplomacy be a substitute for courageous action in defending the resources of Canada. Canada through, its fisheries minister, is showing the world that this North American fishing nation will do on this side of the Atlantic what responsible European countries have been doing for years when it comes to repelling the irresponsible fishing practices of Spain and Portugal. Plain common sense military might will thwart the lawlessness and stupid selfishness of these two European countries that would strip the Grand Banks of its last remaining turbot stocks without a thought or any regard for the resource or for others who depend on it for a livelihood.

Brian Tobin has astutely assessed the situation. He has realized that classic military aggression as long practiced by the British and the French in arresting rogue European vessels in the Eastern Atlantic must be applied to our own seas. There will be no more cowardly spinelessness as long as the fisheries minister pursues this policy of military protection of Canadian territory and Canadian resources.

The fisheries minister is right and he is doing the right thing for Canada and for Newfoundland.

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