Fisheries Committee on Nov. 9th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Very good. Thank you, Mr. Rennehan.

Mr. Dixon or Mr. Martell, do you have a few comments about stability that you'd like to add?

[Gary Dixon]

George's comment almost makes it seem like the commercial that's been on pretty well 25 times an hour in the last six months—that “hands in your pocket” one.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Gary Dixon]

Someone made it for this situation, right?

I'll go back to the late-1980s, when the cubic number was a huge issue. I wasted three years of my life, along with Harland, who was there also, chasing to Ottawa, thinking we were really going to get something straightened out here. After three years, I swore off ever attending another one of these meetings, but here I am today, 16 years later, and the cubic number is still 80% there—still doing I don't know what.

When it comes to stability issues, they can go right back to the cubic number. We would bring a perfectly good haul in, cut the sides off, build the boat, come in six inches, and build the sides back up with plywood. Now that wouldn't be added on because it was considered a wash rail.

So if we're talking safety issues...I argued then and I still argue today that DFO should stick to conservation, which they haven't done much of a job at, and put a lot better effort into it. Let the boat builders and CSI deal with building boats.

The boat in Newfoundland rolled over, for those of you who don't know it—it doesn't take a rocket scientist, and you can use these half-dozen words—because it was too goddamn short and too high. It was as simple as that.

As far as the length overall, Robert, you know we've been dealing with this for quite some time.

I've had one argument from day one. If it's 44' 11", it's 44' 11". Put your two pop bottles there. If it's 49' 11", it's 49' 11". I argued then, and I'll still argue today, the numbers were rigged. I read them myself. I don't care who it offends and who it doesn't offend. I'm not here to make friends; I'm here to tell it the way it is. The numbers were rigged. The people who counted them were the people who didn't want the tanks. And here we are, I'll say four years later, still discussing it.

We have approximately 1,000 boats starting lobstering in two weeks. I'll make an estimation, which I know I'm allowed, that at least 500 of these have some form of extension beyond 44' 11". But because of the powers of the gods that be, someone has decided that on April 15 there was a new policy to come out. Someone realized that the extension had to be in a slant form.

Unfortunately, my company, which employs 60 people, started two boats last November and launched them in May. And guess what? Out of 1,000 boats, those are the only two boats to date that will not be licensed to go lobster fishing.

I have a serious problem with this. It's discrimination; it's unlawful.

Gerald, you know I've asked you to work with me on this for the last six months. Until someone has balls enough to stand up and say the line is here—wherever the line is. If it's 44' 11", it's 44' 11".

You know, I get the answers—and I'm not going to point my fingers at anybody—I go in, and they say, Gary, sorry, we won't be bothering all the ones that had licences last year, but because the two that you built were launched on April 18 and May 12, even though one fisherman borrowed pretty near $1 million and another one borrowed $500,000 or $600,000, sorry, those two boats are not going to go lobstering. I'm still being told that today.

As simple as it may sound, all I'm saying is, what is so difficult about classing these two in the same category as hundreds and hundreds out there, many of them exceeding 50 feet? I don't want to be put on the spot, because I work for all of them, but I'm telling you right now, a lot of them out there are far beyond 50 feet.

So some of the people at the meetings—I sat in on some of the councils in Halifax when this was in the court system—were the powers that be who said, oops, we didn't realize that these boats were over 44' 11" until a couple of years ago. Harland and I sat on the board with some of these people, and I was chairperson of the committee. They were the same people who 15 or 16 years ago knew that stern extensions were an accepted practice, and it's been an accepted practice for at least 15 years. Whether it's right or wrong, it's been accepted. If we are going to make a law, it's always been a known fact that a 44' 11" boat is not the most efficient boat to run.

But as far as the stability is concerned.... When I got into this business 30 years ago, every individual—and I hope there's nobody here, as I don't want to insult anybody—I ever had to answer to was from Portugal, Scotland, or England. They manned the whole office in Halifax, in Dartmouth.

In the year 2020...for God's sake, don't we have technology enough in North America? My suggestion is—and I mean this seriously—if they really want to build some good sea boats, they should hire Stanley Greenwood, because that's the man who has proven more than everybody else—every engineer, every boat that's ever come here.... George, you know it. We had the navy, all of the boats.... You had to spike your boots to the floor if you wanted to stand up in one of them. True?

[A voice]

That's the truth, yes.

[Gary Dixon]

Regarding stability, we don't have a stability problem here. As far as somebody coming down.... Again these are the rules coming from Lloyds of London. They put five or six 45-gallon drums of water up on your boat and one man stands and pulls on your spar with the rope. To this day, 30 years later, I still don't understand how that represents whether your boat will roll over if you fall into a 20-foot hole that's empty. I guess they make two pulls on it and send you a bill for $12,000.

I know, because every boat I have has a stability booklet, the 42-footer and the 45-footer. It was $12,000 to $15,000, and that's what they do. They put four or five barrels of water up on the house, pull on it with a rope, and count how many seconds it takes for it to come back. I guess that justifies whether you're going to sink or survive.

To conclude, I would still like to address the 44' 11" issue. I know that you've tried as best you could to make it happen. I know we have a lot of opposition and people who don't really care about the tanks. But we have two boats out there that I feel are being unjustly cut short of going lobster fishing. Now there are 1,000 boats, with at least 500 or more of them exceeding 44' 11" in some form.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Gary, back to boat stability for a second--and it's for all the boat builders--as a point of clarification, how wide would a 44' 11" boat have been 20 years ago?

[Gary Dixon]

Twenty years ago, a 44' 11" boat was 16 to 18 feet wide.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

How wide would that boat be today?

[Gary Dixon]

You can make it square. I thought about taking the tools; it wouldn't work putting the bow in the middle.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Gary Dixon]

That's no exaggeration. They've got them; they're 28 and 29 feet wide now.

There's no care about the height. That's why they're rolling over. There's no care about the width, but there seems to be a huge issue over the 44' 11".

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Going back to the Cape boat—and I'm not trying to take time from the committee—the Cape Island boat was developed in this part of the world. It's been fishing for nearly 100 years, since the first square stern boat was built, and it's probably the safest boat. We build them. We send them to Africa. We send them all down through the United States and all across Canada. A derivation of it is in every part of Atlantic Canada, and there are lots of them in western Canada.

What has suddenly changed?

[Gary Dixon]

Nothing's changed, stability-wise. I don't know of any that have rolled over. I don't know if anybody in the back knows of any that have rolled over.

They're trying to paint the whole industry with a couple of incidents that go back to the same thing. We have fisheries rules and regulations dictating the length of the boats; therefore, whatever room the fisherman needs, the only way to go is up and out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you.

Mr. Martell.

[Harland Martell, President of Wedgeport Boats and past Chairman of the Nova Scotia Boatbuilders Association, As an Individual]

Yes. I want to touch base first on the stability issue, and I'll highlight a couple of other things to emphasize what Lisa said earlier. Then I'll make some comments on the length restriction or the restriction of vessels.

In Lisa's report she mentioned statistics basically for the maritime region from 2002-03. Even though there's no doubt they're valid, I have some more statistics here from the September 2006 Glitnir report for the Canadian fishery in 2005.

Based on the Glitnir report, the Canadian fishery was worth approximately $4 billion of landed value. This was not processed value but landed value.

The report breaks down Atlantic Canada as Newfoundland, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and P.E.I. Atlantic Canada accounted for 84% of that $4 billion in landed value and 72% of landed volume. Obviously, when we look at their reports, Atlantic Canada encompasses a large amount of the entire Canadian landed value of fish. This includes not only the west and east coasts, but also the north, the prairies, the lakes, and so on.

The report also notes that the industry was fragmented and comprised of many small boat operators, which of course is no news to any of us here.

With that, just because there are big dollars, it doesn't mean that any individual makes up all of those big dollars and can afford some of the changes that are being proposed in the small fishing vessel regulations.

One of the other things I might add is that when it comes to stability in the proposal, as Melanie mentioned, there are several criteria for a vessel under the proposed regs and the March 7 ship safety bulletin.

Of course, one of them is whether the boat operates in areas of icing conditions, between December 1 and March 31. As those of you in southwest Nova Scotia and other parts of Atlantic Canada know, a large number of vessels operate during that time, meaning that you are going to be exempt from any other type of criteria they may have, as long as they keep that wording there.

A few other criteria concern whether there are live wells. Again, based on what we interpret as a live well, a vessel with live wells will have to have a stability booklet. A vessel that carries cargo in slush ice, such as herring, capelin, and any other moveable cargo, would have to have it.

The point I'm getting at is that Transport Canada would like you to think they're coming out in the proposal, and not in the bulletin, with a simplified stability analysis, which, sure, if you read it, would make life a lot easier for the fishermen involved. If they could comply with that simplified stability, it would cost a lot less and go a long way towards seeing that Transport Canada meets some of its goals and objectives of basically trying to increase the safety of the men and women at sea.

But as long as they keep those clauses in there, particularly in the icing condition area, then the simplified stability will not apply to those vessels. So when you hear them say, well, if it passes the simplified, then you won't have to have it—

I'm sure that even though I was absent for the first time in a long time from the CMAC meetings in Ottawa—and Melanie says they wish I'd been there—they probably still said, “But if they comply with the simplified, they won't have to get a full stability booklet.” Well, if you keep those clauses in there—

I know when you go back to your places in Ottawa and you speak to your colleagues up there, you're probably going to have someone come out and say, it's not true what these guys are saying down here because they can fall under the new regs with the simplified criteria. As long as you continue to have those clauses in there, there is no simplified criteria, because most of the vessels in Atlantic Canada will fall under that. For that matter, most of the vessels on the west coast would probably fall under a lot of stuff as well, because many of them have live wells and carry herring, as we know.

Speaking of the west coast, I recently built a ship, and it was sailed and landed in Vancouver on July 16. The vessel had live wells in it. Fortunately, it wasn't operating in icing conditions throughout any time of its particular fishery year, but the March 7 bulletin forced the complete stability booklet—I had commenced construction on March 22—which cost $8,000 to the customer at that particular point. That was a quote in my contract to him, and I have since learned that after all the expenses that went into it, it should be more than $10,000--that I know for a fact--in the most ideal situation.

In the report that was done by E.Y.E.--one of the members of the Nova Scotia Boatbuilders Association that I contracted to do so with some input from some admeasurers and surveyors, as well as people within my shop--E.Y.E. consultants informed me that with all their calculations, they put the boat in the worst condition. It's a 20-foot-wide boat, 41 feet long. It had two live wells directly across the vessel on the fore side of the fish hole, as we would refer to it, and on the rear side of the fish hole. In the worst operating conditions--all hulls half full, all fuel tanks half full, all water tanks and holding tanks half full--the report came back and said that the cape boat of our traditional design, the boat that made it out to the west coast, passed with no problem.

We didn't have to pay $8,000 to know that, but now we have some statistics to say now we know that. When you go to Ottawa, they say that if it's a sister ship, you won't have to do it. I don't know of any true sister ship that's ever built in southwest Nova Scotia. Yes, the hull could be the same, even in New Brunswick, where they have moulded hulls, and perhaps even Gary here has some moulded wheelhouses, but if we don't put the same engine in the same boat, put the same fuel tanks in the same place with the same capacity, put the same toilet in the same location, then it is not a sister boat, and all the calculations will have to be redone and recalculated. A true sister boat is one that is basically identical in all forms, not just the outside dimensions of the vessel. Again, a sister ship is another thing you're going to utilize in the stability things; if it's a sister ship, it won't cost that much.

I was able to read the preliminary report at CMAC before it came out this past week. I read it last week, but it was presented at the CMAC meeting, Melanie and Lisa tell me. They make reference to the cost being between $2,000 to $3,000 if you have this, this, this, this, and this. Basically what they're saying is that if you have the lines the same as they are on the previous ship, and if you have this and you have all this work done...they're basically trying to describe a sister ship. The truth of the matter is that it's not going to happen down here for the fishery.

Again, getting into the stability of things, the stability is only but one cost. This is not part of what this committee is for, but I'll give you some idea, even though stability is one big chunk and one big figure.

If we want to look into proposed regulations of all the minor and semi-minor changes in the reassessment that's going to be mandatory and will be coming out over the next several months, we'll certainly look into that to see what some of the cost is. I'm sure Melanie and Lisa can remember, if not George—I can't remember if George was present at the meeting—but I would say go back about a year and a half ago to one of the CMAC meetings when we were talking about the proposed regulations, about which I might say they've altered some of this proposal based on some strong input that I put in disagreeing with what they wanted to do—

They wanted to have specific types of smothering devices for the engine room, i.e., engineered fire extinguishers and smothering devices. Incidentally, we had just put one in a boat that had to be complying with certain regulations in Quebec that we were building at the time, and that particular smothering device cost the fisherman $14,000, without a single cent to me as the builder. I just want you to know that. That was the cost of setting it up. It was pretty much identical to the systems we use right now, other than that there was no engineer who said it was engineered.

They were able, in subsequent meetings of the construction standards, to move that out and look at some different criteria, thank God. Looking at that, it's an example of an extinguishing system that I told them at the time costs $2,500 to the fisherman as I build it, and I make a little bit of money at that, compared to $14,000 in one item alone. That's just as significant as the stability issue. But there are also many other changes they're proposing. If you add all of them up, I don't know where it'll come out for each specific boat, but the stability is only one chunk of the change that people may have to end up paying, and it's a lot more than just the stability.

On the length criteria, I'm going to get into it not only from the DFO perspective, but let's look at where this fleet came from, and let's go back to Transport Canada, if you can bear with me. The fleet was developed and designed under DFO regulations and policies based mostly on length criteria. We, the industry, even in the wood era, but more so now in the fibreglass era, have built and modified our moulds to meet the criteria of DFO length restrictions over the decades.

Over the decades, up until the year in which we became metric, we always called it 44' 11", 39' 11", 34' 11", etc. Incidentally, so did much of the requirement under Transport Canada. Whether it's the collision regulations or whether it's some of the existing standards in there, it's referring to 40 feet, and it's referring to 50 feet in a number of things in the old regulations. When they changed to the metric system specifically...actually, when they changed the regulations, the collision regulations carried out the 50 feet, for example. It uses 15.2 metres as opposed to 15. But the new proposed regulations are now rounding down to the metre. We're dealing with 12 metres, which is 39' 4", if my math is correct. We're referring to 15 metres, which is 49' 2". So the boats that are at the 11-inch mark are all going to jump into a different category based on the requirement.

Secondly, Transport Canada for years, outside of certain regulations, has always used registered length. Registered length is the length of the vessel from the stem to the fore side of the rudder stock and not to the back of the boat. Most of the statistics they're using are encompassing the registered length and not the overall length, but the new rules are taking the registered length and utilizing and interpreting it as an overall length to set the new regulations so that they're taking the fatalities and the incidents of one sector and saying it belongs to another sector if that vessel fits into that category. From a registered length perspective, you could be as much as five or seven feet shorter than what you actually are.

Again, length has always created a problem. One of the things I would urge DFO to do—I have said this in Ottawa, and I know my colleagues at this table who have seen me in Ottawa, and I say to Transport Canada and their proposal, if you're going to have a cut-off and if it's going to be length overall, which certainly is easier to manage and understand, use at least the old criteria. If we have to, call it 12.2, 15.2, or whatever, to match the existing fleet. They're insistent on not doing it, for whatever reason. They say they like round numbers, so I actually insisted they use round numbers in centimetres; it doesn't bother me. Then we'll have a big round number--round the centimetres up.

Now, from a DFO perspective on lengths...probably about three or four years ago, and with regard to LFA 33, 34, I stood on the lobster committee as a representative of the Nova Scotia Boatbuilders Association. They wanted my input, as a representative of NSBA, on what I thought the length of a lobster boat should be.

My opinion then was, and still is today, it should be whatever length the fishermen want it to be and whatever length they can agree to with DFO for their guidelines, after which it should be clear. I said the clearest way to define length is the length overall, including all appendages. If you nail a two-by-four off the back of your boat and it sticks out two feet and it doesn't fit between those two posts, as Gary said, then it's two feet too long; either cut two feet off the bow or cut two feet of the two-by-four. We can't manipulate that.

If you make areas in which there's room for manipulation, I and Gary both--we're geniuses at it--will go out and manipulate and spend nights and days reading the regs and trying to find a way to circumvent the intent of that rule. And there is one reason why we're doing it: because our customer base wants us to. Length overall is one I have not yet been able to figure out how to manipulate.

[A voice]

But you will.

[Harland Martell]

I may still try. But it's the hardest one to manipulate.

[A voice]

We appreciate your honesty, Mr. Martell.

[Harland Martell]

That's my stand. As a representative of my own company, Wedgeport Boats Limited, as president of that, and wearing that hat, I still believe in what I say from that perspective, and representing the interests of the NSBA and the feedback from them, the length for the fishing restrictions should be left to the fishermen within the guidelines of the mandate of DFO. But we've got to use common sense. I have to agree with Gary; I've seen over the years, “You can have this, but you can't have that. Move it this way. Make it stick out that way. Do this. Do that.” Then it opens up so many things to interpretation. We can add tanks afterwards, we can do this afterwards, and we can pop it off. A whole whack of things can be done. We're only causing frustration, aggravation, and really, perhaps, not meeting the spirit of the entire agreement.

Now, from a pot carriage capacity, the five-foot extension they are allowed, when done in the manner in which they are accepting it, it doesn't carry any more pots than the guy who puts his five feet in the water.

It could lead to more structural stresses on the vessel in ways they probably weren't designed for, but going beyond that. So far, we haven't had any large instances of it.

But at CMAC, if you look at B.C., B.C. follows some similar criteria on the five-foot extension. In fact, we had a five-foot extension on the one we sent out to B.C. But some vessels have got to the point where they have become unstable because of the length requirement, and by circumventing it, they have added extensions beyond any criteria that existed at the time to create an unstable boat and a dangerous boat. So they go hand in hand.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Martell.

I will say, for three guys who passed it all down the line to the ladies, once you guys got started, you had a lot to say.

We're going to try to save a little bit of time for questions, because we've taken our entire allotment of time and we haven't asked a question yet.

I know Mr. Cuzner has questions. To ask my political colleagues to be brief is almost impossible, but I'm going to ask you to be brief. We'll go around in a line and let everyone get a couple of questions in and see if we can make a couple of rounds. Try to ask one or two questions, and you'll get another chance.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

That's like asking the chair to be on time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Ouch!

Mr. Cuzner.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

I want to thank the witnesses today, because they've been able to add some technical merit to some of the things we've been hearing from people in the industry. So I really want to thank the presenters today.

We had a tragedy about eight years ago. Don Caldwell lost his life at sea. It was the first day of crab fishing and he was setting out in the Glace Bay Hole. He had a bigger boat tied up at the wharf in Glace Bay, but because of the licensing, he wasn't allowed to take it, and away he went.

Some of the statistics you shared with us today...anecdotally, it seems to me the vast majority of accidents or occurrences take place on the opening day, on the setting day. Whether it's crab or lobster, or whatever it might be, there's a disproportionate number of instances there, not that there's a huge number, but there's a disproportionate number on that opening day.

Is my assumption or my perspective true, and would any statistics support that assumption?

[Lisa Anderson]

Actually, we entered into discussions yesterday with an individual from the Coast Guard, with search and rescue. In Newfoundland they have been tracking similar stats as to some of the accidents and occurrences, but one of the things Melanie mentioned earlier is that there's no tracking as to following how many days at sea or at what point in the season some of these accidents occur, and that's data that would be useful information to see exactly what is going on. In the collecting of statistics on accidents, either under provincial or federal jurisdiction, sometimes that information is lost, which would be very viable for determining some of the causes and some of the prevention options.

It's a fair assumption to make that on opening day or close to the start of the season you may have more accidents, but there's nothing in the statistics supporting the view that those are actually occurring. We don't know at this stage.