Fisheries Committee on May 3rd, 2007

[Christina Burridge]

Nine million dollars.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

And if that's not done, it could in fact destroy the fishery.

[Christina Burridge]

It will destroy the fishery.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

And this is an underutilized species, if I understand correctly, that's become—

[Christina Burridge]

Yes, you could probably say that.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

It's become of value.

[Christina Burridge]

Yes.

And we have exactly the same situation with salmon: because we don't have Marine Stewardship Council certification, we will see some of our product de-listed this year. We're looking at $25 million worth of exports to Europe. The cost of complying with Marine Stewardship Council certification is certainly going to run in the millions of dollars.

Similarly, in the last five years we've developed a quite substantial market for halibut in the European Union. Again, without Marine Stewardship Council certification, we'll lose that market. We're very afraid that without adequate science we'll have nowhere to sell our fish products.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Thank you very much, Ms. Burridge and Mr. MacAulay. Your time is already up. You will have an opportunity to come back to this on the second round.

Mr. Asselin.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

There is one point I would like to understand better, and I would like to give you an opportunity to explain it differently. The federal government, or at least the minister, decided to use allocations of fish to fund research and development or science activities generally. You referred frequently to the Larocque decision, but the notes we have from the Library of Parliament also refer to the Décary decision.

[Robert Haché, Member, Executive Director, Association des crabiers acadiens, Nova Scotia, Canadian Fisheries Working Group]

Larocque is the same as Décary.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

The Federal Court of Appeal judge, Mr. Justice Décary, wrote that:

When the Minister decided to pay a contracting party with the proceeds of sale of the snow crab, he was paying with assets that did not belong to him. Paying with the assets of a third party is, to say the very least, an extraordinary act that the Administration could not perform unless so authorized by an act or by duly enacted regulations.

Could Bill C-45, which the minister is preparing to have passed, make a practice legal that is not exactly legal at the moment? Paying with the assets of a third party, unless authorized to do so by law or regulation, means, under Bill C-45 that what I consider a hidden, excessive tax would be imposed to increase funding for scientific research. Bill C-45, would allow the minister to do directly what is being done indirectly at the moment.

[Robert Haché]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Asselin. I will try to answer your question, because I am the person who is probably the most familiar with the Larocque decision. I worked on this issue as a consultant with the fishers involved, the crabbers in zone 12. What you say is quite right. Bill C-45 will give the minister all the authority to do exactly that. The problem will remain the same, if not worse, as long as there are no policies or guidelines to cover this practice.

On the other hand, in doing this, would Parliament be giving the government ownership of this resource, which, for years and years, has been considered a public resource, one that belongs to all Canadians, and not to the Government of Canada?

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

In your appearance before the committee today, you are speaking out firmly against this policy, which you find quite unfair. For how many years has it been in place?

[Robert Haché]

It was established in 1995 and was based on some very good intentions: the government wanted to fund partnership agreements with the fishery by giving it more responsibilities and some decision-making power. The fact is that the department did not have the authority required to ask for royalties from fishers to fund scientific research. So it started using quotas.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. MacDonald—

[Robert Haché]

Our main concern, Mr. Asselin, is the lack of a clear policy on the part of the federal government and Fisheries and Oceans following the Larocque decision. The problem is that no decision or program tells fishers clearly how scientific research will be funded. Some of our colleagues and some fisheries will not be getting any funding this year. That is the main problem we are talking about here this morning.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Legislation cannot be passed without first consulting the people who will be affected by it. If the committee should succeed in convincing the minister to welcome consultations on Bill C-45, would you be interested in appearing before the committee again? This bill affects fishers and processors, in other words, everyone in the industry, as well as an organization like yours. Do you think it would be a good thing if we were able to convince the minister to do this?

[Ron MacDonald]

I think Bill C-45 is here because the department lacked the policy framework to correct Larocque. The Fisheries Act, I think, is here not because it's been well thought out nor because it's had a broad consultative process. There's been no consultation—zero. There's been no consultation. They pulled it off the shelf. It had been a failed bill in the previous government, and they said we need to give the minister the authority to take fish from the public and use it without an appropriation from Parliament to pay for these things. It's the only reason that I can see that a new government would come forward without consulting.

Bill C-45 gives a mechanism for the government to do something that is questionable at best and that Larocque said the minister does not have the authority to do. I don't think we should easily give those authorities to the crown. I think you have to be very cautious when you impinge on the public right to fish; the resource is not a crown resource, but a public resource, and that's vastly different. This bill tries to talk about a whole bunch of other things, but the crux of the bill is to absolutely do that. That is something I'm fundamentally opposed to, and so are most fishermen.

The problem is that they've not only funded science and management through this nefarious process, but they have also funded associations, so we have associations of fishermen out there who now have no mechanism to run their operations. Some in the department are going around trying to get support for Bill C-45 by saying that if you pass it, forget all the bad things, because we can amend it to be good things. As a former chairman of this committee, I think that's an impossibility, but they're saying that if you do it, there would be a mechanism to fund your association. I find that a particularly weak argument to support a bad bill.

The fundamental thing is that in the absence of policy coming out of the government, and in the absence of legislation that I think is supportable, we have a funding shortfall of probably $30 million in a very fragile industry. Some of the weak fisheries will not survive, or, if they do survive, we will be penalized in the marketplace because we will not be able to prove, as Christina said, that we are fishing sustainably.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Unfortunately, I must interrupt you. Thank you very much, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Asselin.

Mr. Stoffer.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for appearing before us today.

One of the terms I've heard on both coasts is the term “fish laundering”, meaning you use fish to pay for your activities that have not been authorized by the crown—in this case, the Treasury Board.

Mr. Gould, you haven't had a chance to speak yet, but your industry is very valuable in your community of Prince Rupert—and Mr. Haché could, if possible, discuss on the east coast. Are there any allegations or concerns post-Larocque that DFO has done a nudge, nudge, wink, wink to various groups and associations that if we could do this, we'll help you? We could wait and pause until we get Bill C-45 to do it, but we need some money in order to do this so you can go and fish.

Is there any evidence of that at all, or any kind of documentation that may be available to show that DFO is indeed contravening the Larocque decision?

[Geoff Gould, Executive Director, Area A Crab Association; Chair, Canadian Fisheries Working Group]

In area A, no.

When we wrote to the RDG in British Columbia to ask them to fund our charters, we were just given a polite form letter two months later saying they did not have sufficient funds but were very interested in working with us in a joint project agreement. We wrote back and asked, “What kind of project agreement do you envision when you have no money to support it?” And that's where the matter died.

So for our area, no; but I'll let someone else take that question too.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Go ahead.

[Phil Eidsvik]

Peter, I'll answer that question if you want.

I'm with the Area E Gillnetters Association, a salmon association on the Fraser River. We have a problem with a stock that was almost listed under the Species at Risk Act, but wasn't.

I did get some pictures. This is the lake where the fish swim and spawn. It's a very small lake, and heavily populated, as you'll see from the pictures, with boats, marinas, golf courses, and water parks.

The stock that goes in there is about 5,000 fish in a good year, swimming in a stock of 10 million to 15 million sockeye. The 10 million to 15 million run very healthy, but the small stock of 5,000 fish is unhealthy. So they need to do some rebuilding of the stock with some hatchery work, and some other stuff like that.

The government came back to us last March and said, well, if you guys don't come up with $500,000, you won't be able to fish on the big stock at a level that's appropriate. Last year, it represented somewhere between $100 million and $150 million in fishing opportunity to our fleet—and I'm speaking of the salmon fleet as a whole. So we fishermen agreed among ourselves that we didn't really have much of a choice between $100 million over here or in coming up with half a million dollars over there. So the government agreed to issue us what were called scientific permits, intended for scientific research.

In August, a full two months after the Larocque decision, a bunch of our seine vessels went fishing and caught $1 million worth of sockeye salmon, and went to the processors who paid the fishermen for fishing it. The processors then paid an association with the money. Then the association transferred the money over to another association, which was supposed to transfer the money to DFO, without going through Parliament for the appropriation process, to fund the hatchery and the other stuff to rebuild this particular run.

We're being told right now that unless we find a way to release that money—What happened is that our association clearly knew it was illegal and raised the thought, are our directors involved in this or complicit in an act that could either lead them to be sued or charged with some type of criminal conduct? We didn't know. So we wrote to DFO and asked if this was legal. The response was that the money had been frozen. The fish that should be being rebuilt right now are in danger of being released, where we know they're probably going to suffer nearly 90% mortality. And four years from now, we will have that $100 million or $200 million fishery with very little fishing in it—maybe there will be $10 million worth of fishing then.

And again, DFO is saying “Guys, find a way to get us some money”. The whole thing is very confusing. But certainly there was “Pay the bill, guys, or you're not going to fish”. That was very clear.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

I think Ms. Burridge would like to add something as well, but there is very little time left.

[Christina Burridge]

I think what we've seen on the west coast is that we had a formal policy on use of fish, starting in 1999, which encouraged representative organizations to give up a portion of their catch in order to fund some of these activities. Now that's illegal, so DFO is in chaos; we are in chaos. What we need is a short-term fix covering off everything that was previously covered, and we need a long-term solution with a policy that's going to be fair and equitable and practical, and that takes into account both the state of the stock and the marketplace.

So what we'd ask the committee is, how do we get to that point?