That's true, unfortunately.
Evidence of meeting #3 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
Evidence of meeting #3 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
9:05 a.m.
Director, Gulf Trollers Association
There will be several of the following years where we won't have any run that's commercially exploitable, so this is a run that we need to make some money on if we're going to have enough money to stay in the business.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
John Cummins Conservative Delta—Richmond East, BC
That, Chairman, is really the nub of the issue here. The failure, actually, of the department to act quickly on this Cultus Lake issue, and to act at all until just very recently, is going to have a huge cost on the industry. Do you have any estimate of the lost revenues in British Columbia?
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
John Cummins Conservative Delta—Richmond East, BC
Yes, a huge loss. That's a loss to fishermen unless this issue of the Cultus is addressed. I'm really concerned about that Cultus issue.
The other issue I want to talk to you very briefly about, because we're going to be running out of time here, is what is the commercial allocation? If there's a total allowable catch of 8.5 million on a run of 17 million fish, what percentage of that in the end is going to accrue to the commercial industry?
9:05 a.m.
President, Gulf Trollers Association
It should be around about 5.7 million if they go to the 40% exploitation rate. That will include the commercial fishery, and it will include the natives taking their pilot fisheries. So it's a lot of fish. Our market suffered last year because we had no commercial opening at all on the sockeye last year. We had a pink opening late in the year for four days and we were allowed sockeye bycatch, but by that point in time the sockeye had evolved into being almost worthless on the troll market.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
9:05 a.m.
President, Gulf Trollers Association
The government keeps track of our catch through logbook programs and then through sales slips that are mandatory for us to report. In our quota fisheries, we have mandatory dockside validation with an outside validator.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
John Cummins Conservative Delta—Richmond East, BC
Could you explain how the logbook works, for the benefit--
9:05 a.m.
President, Gulf Trollers Association
By midnight on any given day we have to log into our logbook what we have caught that day. In my particular vessel, it's also electronically reported to Fisheries through satellite. Basically, every fish is counted.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
John Cummins Conservative Delta—Richmond East, BC
Is there much room to beat the system, so to speak?
9:05 a.m.
President, Gulf Trollers Association
There's not much room. I guess crooks can usually weasel around to some degree, but certainly it would be minimal.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
9:05 a.m.
President, Gulf Trollers Association
Yes, we pay totally for the costs of monitoring. One of the things that bother us horrendously is that the other sectors that use the resource really have a very ad hoc, at best, system of monitoring their catch, if any monitoring goes on at all. It's not a reliable figure, and DFO will usually admit that when pushed.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gerald Keddy
Thank you, Mr. Hughes.
We'll hear our next questioner.
Mr. Matthews, five minutes.
May 18th, 2006 / 9:05 a.m.
Liberal
Bill Matthews Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much. I want to welcome the witnesses.
Maybe I'm a little confused here, but with respect to the three or four things you said you needed, I thought you said you needed accountability for catch.
9:05 a.m.
Liberal
Bill Matthews Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
You've basically given some answer on that to Mr. Cummins when you said how you account for your catch. Are there other fisheries that you claim are not being accountable?
9:05 a.m.
Liberal
Bill Matthews Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
Can you expand on that for me so I fully understand?
9:05 a.m.
President, Gulf Trollers Association
In the sports fishery it's done by what they call a creel count, which means they serve a number of fishermen, and if you're out fishing, they ask you how many fish you caught and you tell them how many fish you caught. There's no inspection; there's no check; there's no validation. It's just you verbally telling them what you caught. They then take that number and they extrapolate it to all the fishermen. The error factor is probably anywhere from 80%.
On the native side of the business, they validate their own catch and....
9:10 a.m.
Liberal
Bill Matthews Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
So there's no one who monitors that. Is what you're telling me?
9:10 a.m.
President, Gulf Trollers Association
Well, they do have native validators who have been hired by the DFO. But in the Williams inquiry, it became very apparent that that figure is many times what is put as their catch.
9:10 a.m.
Liberal
Bill Matthews Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
These people are hired by DFO, but do they have to be native?