Fisheries Committee on May 3rd, 2007

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

Yes.

[Christina Burridge]

The $900,000 came from DFO. Otherwise, I think we would have been completely unable to open the fishery in March. Correct?

[A voice]

Yes.

[Christina Burridge]

It's precisely what I meant, that it was a stopgap, ad hoc solution, and it's not sustainable. DFO has already said it's not sustainable.

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

Right.

Did any money come from anywhere else?

[Chris Cue]

A little bit of money came through the AFS, through a couple of bands, to put a couple of small charters in their area. There was a little bit there, but I'm not familiar on the way it went. I'm pretty sure most of that money came from DFO.

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

Okay, thank you.

You talked about a cooperative solution to get this thing done. It's quite simple: the minister has to go to the Treasury Board or to the finance minister and ask for the money to do the job that they're legally responsible to do. It's not that difficult. He just goes over, knocks on his door, and says, “I need money to do science, to do the surveys, to get this product out of the water and into the markets so we can have an economic livelihood for all three coasts and our inshore fisheries.” It's not that hard.

There has to be a reason he's not successful in doing that. Maybe it's because old habits die hard, if it's easy to get fishermen to volunteer and spend their money to do something that DFO is supposed to do, or still, post-Larocque, continue on with these habits because they're thinking nobody will get caught. It shows you that this department, in my view—and I've asked year after year for an inquiry into the practices and the policies of this department—has taken a terrific resource on both coasts and completely destroyed it.

In 1992, if you look at the cod fishery, there was a $4-billion readjustment for that fishery in Canada, and not one person in DFO was ever held responsible. Not one. It's like telling foresters they have to cut a bunch of trees and use those trees to pay for the forestry research, or telling other people in other industries—or telling MPs—you come to work for three weeks, you don't get paid, you volunteer your time. I wonder how we'd like it after that.

Isn't the solution quite simple? Isn't it that the minister needs to go back to the Treasury Board and to the finance minister and insist and demand that the money be there to pay for the science that needs to be done in order to assist your industries?

It's not that difficult. When I hear of the situation, “Well, we can't get the money right now, but we have a way of working with you—”. I think, Greg, you said that, that they want to work in some sort of manner with you, and you're asking, “What does that mean?” They'll get back to you. That's like a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, don't you think?

[Geoff Gould]

Well, you're also saying that they need to get an appropriation of funds.

The total amount to fund the science properly is within their budget already. They just have to reallocate a few of their programs and the money is already there. They get a huge budget. This is not a big percentage of their overall budget. We say it's their basic mandate to fund these fisheries properly for the benefit of all Canadians.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Mr. Eidsvik.

[Phil Eidsvik]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to add to your comment about the federal role in the fishery.

The federal government accepted the role, demanded the role to manage the fishery. When they did that, they assumed the responsibility to manage the fishery properly. That includes spending money.

What they're clearly trying to do here is exert jurisdiction over the provinces, over the fishermen, over the communities, but not pay the bill. They want to offload the costs onto the provinces and onto the communities.

The use of the fish, in the way they've done it in Larocque, is clearly an infringement on provincial rights. Fish are not property. The federal government's power to manage fish is management of the fishery, it's not to distribute the fishery as property. So when they come along and say, “Well, use this to fund DFO, use this to fund them”, they're exercising provincial jurisdiction and clearly infringing on provincial powers.

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

Thank you.

I have an e-mail here from Claire MacDonald, who's the senior adviser of small pelagics in DFO region. The minister just allowed, against all the protestation of inshore fishermen, a mid-water trawl off Nova Scotia. In her e-mail she says:

—a possible fall spawning survey on herring would be attempted by the mid-water trawl vessels using any balance of the allocation.

What do you think they mean by that?

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

You had a little time. Perhaps you could come back on the next round.

Fabian Manning now has the floor.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.

I'm from Newfoundland and Labrador and I'm quite familiar with the lack of science and research that's gone down over the years. It's certainly an eye-opener to hear some of the comments being made here today. We're well used to quota being taken for scientific purposes, and I always found a problem with that, whether it was here or in Newfoundland and Labrador.

I'd like to ask a couple of questions, if I could. In regard to this process of taking quota to fund science research, can someone tell me when that process started? How far back did some person in an ivory tower here in Ottawa come up with that grand idea?

[Phil Eidsvik]

I'll tell you, Mr. Manning, on salmon that process began a number of years ago. I'd say as long as I've been in it, which has been around 15 years, they've been doing that on salmon. Chris has been around a long time as well. He probably could talk about some of the other fisheries.

[Chris Cue]

I think the bulk of them started around 1997 with the herring and the groundfish in that area. For us, we had the coho response in 1996, and I think about 1997 is when we really started to get into this taking of fish to add to the charter programs in science.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

In regard to shared stewardship and co-management, could anybody elaborate on that for me in regard to the consultation with the industry that went on? It seems that it works in some places. There's some success in regard to shared stewardship and co-management, but there seems to be a concern being raised in other fisheries apart from that. So would someone like to elaborate on that a little bit for me?

[Christina Burridge]

The formal policy was established in 1999, although certainly in some fisheries there were cooperative arrangements that go back quite a long time before that. I would say in the early days we had perhaps a rosier view of co-management than we do now. Many fisheries accepted the terms and conditions of that.

I think the problem in the last decade has been that as DFO budgets have consistently been cut back, there's been a creeping incrementality whereby every year DFO comes back and says, “Well, we need you to fund a bit more”. So the cost to industry has increased, but there hasn't necessarily been any demonstration of what the benefits are that we're getting. One of the problems has been--and we said this in 2002 and we've said it since--that there isn't a clear understanding of what should clearly be for the public good and that government should fund. Are there some things that industry should fund?

I think we certainly need to have those kinds of discussions. But the current situation, whereby DFO just offloads costs arbitrarily and says “We won't give you a fisheries management plan if you don't pay for this”, is unacceptable.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

There is one minute and 45 seconds left.

You have the floor, Mr. MacDonald. Then it will be Mr. Haché's turn.

[Ron MacDonald]

I think people will question this. I read the JPA when I took over for the Sablefish Association, and I have to tell you, it's brilliantly written. If we got one-tenth of the benefits out of it that we're supposed to get, I'd say hallelujah. The reality is the documents sometimes become less convincing in the results of real co-management. What they really have become is a thin veil for a mechanism to milk money out of the industry, to supplement without appropriations from Parliament the departmental budget.

Do I believe in co-management? Absolutely. Do I want a co-management agreement? Only one that works. I want a framework established by the department that's the same for every fishery on the east and west and north coasts of Canada. Every agreement is different. In some agreements, I pay 100% and he pays 20% and they pay 100% of his. What kind of system can you have in fisheries where there's not transparency, certainty, and some parity in the way it's done?

So in many respects I think it started off well. We need to continue to work towards co-management, because it is the best model, but it can't just be used as a thin veil for another pump to get moneys that otherwise should not be going in, through laundering fish into money, basically.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Would you like to use the remaining 30 seconds?

[Robert Haché]

Very quickly, the advantage for bureaucrats in saying that one pays 20% and the other pays 100% is very simple: it's divide and conquer. This is something we've seen at DFO for a long time. Anybody who's been involved with that department knows that.

This has to stop. We're going to ruin everybody.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

Can I have just 30 seconds more—?

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Thank you.

Mr. Cuzner.

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

Thank you very much.

I'd like to congratulate our co-chair here, who's doing an adequate job filling in today.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!