JOHN CUMMINS, M.P.
Delta - Richmond East
NEWS RELEASE
June 24, 2010
Cohen Inquiry: Who is DFO Protecting?
Wayne Wouters, the Clerk of the Privy Council has decreed that fishermen
and environmentalists like Alexandra Morton will be given no resources
to study the hundreds of thousands of documents that DFO is about to
dump on the Cohen Inquiry.
Wouters was Deputy of Minister of Fisheries from 1997 to 2002. The PCO
is the bureaucracy that staffs the central office of the government,
both the Cabinet and its committees and the Prime Minister.
DFO has advised the Inquiry that it has identified 300,000 documents
covering only the last five years of the fishery. Now with just days
before the Inquiry must complete its first report to the Prime Minister
and send it to translation, only a minuscule portion of the documents
have actually been received by the Inquiry. The first report must be
submitted in both English and French by August 1, 2010 and the final
report of the Inquiry by May 1, 2011.
DFO will decide what documents to submit to the inquiry. Everyone
remembers how the Department withheld key documents from Bryan Williams
when he conducted his post season review in 2004. Clearly DFO is up to
its old tricks in offering up a huge number of documents covering only
the last 5 years and actually delivering only a handful of documents so
far. Any serious investigation of DFO management would have to go back
to the early 1990's, the period when sockeye declines first became
apparent to fishermen. This, of course, includes the period when
Wouters was Deputy Minister of Fisheries.
Justice Braidwood in the Taser Inquiry report indicates why it is
fundamentally important that DFO documents and testimony be given
careful consideration.
" "I concluded that … there were suspicions that inaccurate
information was released deliberately in order to cast the officers'
conduct in a more favourable light.
Interestingly the only funds that the Clerk of the Privy Council agreed
to provide fishermen and Morton was for lawyers. Both Morton and
commercial fishermen dependent on Fraser sockeye who originally called
for the Inquiry have received only a small part of the legal funds.
" The Alexandra Morton group of environmental organizations will
receive 460 hours of legal funding.
" The David Suzuki Foundation group of environmental organizations
will receive 1570 hours.
" Area D gillnetters fishing in Johnstone Strait and Area B
seiners (most owned by Jimmy Pattison) will receive 985 hours of
funding.
" West Coast of Vancouver Island trollers and the UFAWU will
receive funding for 760 hours.
" Area E gillnetters fishing on the Fraser River and the Fisheries
Survival Coalition who have fought for the Inquiry since 1992 and who
have been hardest hit by the decline of Fraser sockeye receive 835 hours
of funding.
" The BC Wildlife Federation receives 790 hours of funding.
" Aboriginal groups receive 7,421 hours of funding.
" The Pacific Salmon Commission, operated jointly by DFO and the
US, receives 1045 hours of funding.
Without adequate funding Fraser River commercial fishermen and credible
environmentalists like Alexander Morton will find it very difficult to
carefully consider what is likely to be more than one million documents.
Wouters denial of funding smacks of yet another DFO insider using his
position to protect himself and his former colleagues at DFO.
Author
Topic: Cohen Inquiry Underway (Read 7860 times)