When you refer to the black market, what are you talking about?
Evidence of meeting #7 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 heiltsuk.
Evidence of meeting #7 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 heiltsuk.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Roy Bloc Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
When you refer to the black market, what are you talking about?
9:25 a.m.
Vice-President, Spawn on Kelp Operators Association
The black market is in addition to all of this.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Roy Bloc Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
What would you estimate the number of pounds fished on the black market to be?
9:25 a.m.
Vice-President, Spawn on Kelp Operators Association
I don't think DFO really knows. I don't even think we really know. But what we're talking about here is that Heiltsuk has gone from 144,000 pounds to 240,000 pounds to 325,000 pounds in three years.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Roy Bloc Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
And the black market landings have to be added to that.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
June 8th, 2006 / 9:25 a.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I just want to back up a bit to make sure I understand the context here. What the Gladstone decision did, to my understanding, was refer it back to the lower courts, and the lower courts didn't deal with it. They put a stay on it. DFO decided to deal with this in a political way, in essence.
So really, this decision was made at the time by the government and DFO on how they were going to manage the spawn-on-kelp industry. Is that correct?
9:25 a.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Somewhat; I mean, they were guided by the Gladstone decision, but really the Supreme Court at that time did not instruct the government to allocate fisheries in any kind of manner. So it was essentially a political and a department decision.
9:25 a.m.
Vice-President, Spawn on Kelp Operators Association
In 1996 it was, but then in 1999, when--
9:25 a.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
I'm coming to 1999.
In 1999 the minister of the day, David Anderson, was asked by Mr. Cummins about how this fishery was being managed. Anderson came back at that time and said that basically there was no limit; it wasn't impacting public access to the spawn-on-kelp.
So in 1999 the government of the day determined that there was really no impact; it was being managed in a fairly reasonable manner. But you're saying that from 1999 there was a change.
What happened? What created the change? I understand that the Heiltsuk were granted additional licences, but what changed that resulted in that change?
9:30 a.m.
Vice-President, Spawn on Kelp Operators Association
I can explain that in two parts. In 1999 what happened was that the Marshall decision came out, and on the east coast they decided that they were going to buy back the licences. In British Columbia, Anderson said he couldn't afford to buy the licences back, so he issued licences and kept issuing them.
The DFO website, which you can access right now, tells you they shouldn't do it. And they're printing that.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
So it was the failure to look at buyback a number of years ago that created this problem now, a number of years down the road.
9:30 a.m.
Vice-President, Spawn on Kelp Operators Association
Yes, and it's continuing.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
My other question is with regard to the integrated harvest planning committee, which is brand new. What impact are they having on how this is managed?
9:30 a.m.
Representative, Spawn on Kelp Operators Association
Because it's brand new, they don't have any impact--yet. On the integrated harvest planning committee, the one that you just referred to, there are five representatives from the spawn-on-kelp industry and ten from the sac roe industry. We would not have allowed an increase of production to this extent in a regulated fishery.
The fact that we weren't invited or informed of the negotiations that were going on in January and February of 2006 has led us to where we are here today, to say to you that we've gone too far and that the industry is suffering greatly.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Is it possible that this integrated harvest planning committee could have an impact on managing the fishery better?
9:30 a.m.
Representative, Spawn on Kelp Operators Association
We hope so, but it's almost too late to back up. The damage has been done, and whether they can reverse it....
Generally when you give away a quota to anybody, it's very hard to...and this organization won't be able to drag it back.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
There are two other points that you raised in your presentation, and I think they are troubling because they seem to be consistent in terms of what we're hearing about the department. We had them in the other day, and we were talking about information, and clearly on another matter they're making decisions on information that doesn't always lead to the results they intended.
This is not exactly the same as what you are talking about, but with reference to DFO cancelling the Nuu-chah-nulth spawn-on-kelp fishery, when they were asked for information they were not able to provide any stock assessment data or scientific projections. It sounds like what's before us now is another case of DFO not having adequate information to assess the impact of giving these additional licences--or they wilfully are disregarding the information.
9:30 a.m.
Vice-President, Spawn on Kelp Operators Association
DFO has been using roe-on-kelp as a currency since the Gladstone decision. We are the currency to settle land claims. If you look at it, David Anderson made a speech in the House of Commons that he would not buy back roe-on-kelp licences because they were too expensive. Then he went out and issued more and more and more. And we can't take it any more.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
9:30 a.m.
Vice-President, Spawn on Kelp Operators Association
They never did want to study the impact. The mandate of DFO should be to study the viability of every fishery in British Columbia that they seem to be giving quotas away on. We seem to be settling land claims with fish quotas in British Columbia.
When you come to the east coast, to Atlantic Canada, they have interim measures where they give the permits, licences, give them a quota, and then they start buying it back from the industry. In British Columbia we don't do that. What they do is buy the odd licence back, find out it's too much money, and then turn around and decide they're just going to issue licences. And nobody stops it.
If you look at spawn-on-kelp--you can see how small our membership is--we get railroaded by industry. The interim agreement for this year was signed by the roe herring industry. We're not even on the board that signed it, and DFO pushed it through; they've given the 92,000 pounds. Then they write a letter, which I have right here, to industry saying, oh, we've just made a deal with Heiltsuk, and we're going to have peace in the central coast roe herring fishery; we're giving them 92,000 pounds of roe-on-kelp.
You cannot trade apples for oranges, which is what they've been doing. They keep saying they're going to retire licences and they don't. If you look at the Heiltsuk deals, they were supposed to retire licences and then they turned around and reversed it. The only licences they've retired for Heiltsuk are three gillnet licences, when they were supposed to retire six. The rest of it is just being made up.
When I say “apples and oranges”, what I'm getting at is that you can keep putting roe-on-kelp up for sale and you have roe herring for sale. They're two different markets. One does not balance the other. They're totally different. That's what our problem is.
If you retire licences, it does not help people who are in the roe-on-kelp industry. The only thing that's going to help us is to retire roe-on-kelp and bring the licences back to the original 28 in the quota. Then we have a hope in the market to go ahead. But if we just keep saying, “We're going to retire roe herring,” it helps the roe herring industry; it does not help the roe-on-kelp industry whatsoever.
