Dear Editor, I've been struck by the irony of recent, published pictures of my Member of Parliament, Robert Sopick. Smiling broadly, he is shown in one, presenting trophies to the winners of a fishing derby and, in the other, in beaming attendance at a sport fishing banquet (below) . A few days later, the government Mr. Sopuck represents, rammed through the all-purpose budget bill which included the gutting of the Fisheries Act. Now, all the Act will allegedly "protect" are those fish that are part of "a commercial, recreational or aboriginal fishery." The old Act protected all fisheries, presumably because fish don't always stop abruptly at the boundaries they have been designated. How naive! As a recent article from a Canadian professor of environmental law suggests, if the fish don't "obey" the new rules imposed by Harper, they could find themselves in mortal danger of strip mines, oil spills, clear cuts and the other hazards
