Fisheries Committee on Feb. 5th, 2008

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Good morning. I'd like to call the meeting to order.

First of all, I'd like to apologize for Mr. Manning, who is unavoidably absent. I'm filling in for him this morning.

I'd like to welcome to our committee this morning Mr. Toomasie and Mr. Earle, who are here in person. Joining us on the line are three other witnesses: Mr. Kilabuk, Mr. Kalluk, and Mr. Akeeagok. I hope my pronunciation was satisfactory and acceptable.

Mr. Toomasie will give a five-minute opening statement, and then our three guests who are on the line with us will give five-minute opening statements.

I'd like to say to all our witnesses that we welcome you this morning. The committee looks forward to hearing your testimony.

Before we begin, I'd like to tell you that all political parties represented in the House of Commons are present here this morning. This committee has demonstrated a great interest in small craft harbours, and we very much look forward to hearing what you have to say to the committee.

We will proceed, beginning with Mr. Toomasie, please.

[Lootie Toomasie, Chairman, Nattivak Hunters and Trappers Association]

Thank you, and thank you to the committee here this morning. Thank you for inviting us to Ottawa. I appreciate your inviting us to this fisheries committee.

My name is Lootie Toomasie, and I am from Qikiqtarjuaq on Broughton Island in Nunavut. I also was the mayor for 12 years, and I finished my term back in 2006. I have been to different standing committees like this in Parliament a few times before. I'm here with the fisheries committee this time. Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity, and anybody else as well.

Harry Earle is with me this morning, and he is our fisheries adviser.

My community is located along the Davis Strait in central Baffin Island. It's a small community of 550 people, but everything we need for a community is there. We have health centres, wireless Internet, and all that.

We don't have everything that we need, actually. Just to open my statement, my community has had a fishing quota for a long time but has never reached a benefit. I'll describe that once I go through my statement. We don't get a benefit at all, even though we have had a quota for some time now.

All the fishing boats went to Greenland that were fishing in the Davis Strait. That means there were 12,000 tonnes going to Greenland that we suspect should have been landed in Canada. They should have been landed in Canada, but they were landed there, because we don't have a port, as simple as it is.

That's a long story, but I'll make it short.

Once again, we need facilities up in the Arctic. In my community, we are closest to where the fish stocks are located right now, and that means...[Inaudible--Editor]. If you look at the map, if you have maps, we are closest to where most of the fish are. I am speaking about my community, and I'm trying to be very specific in what I say. I mentioned 12,000 tonnes that go to Greenland and that don't get landed in Canada, and that we don't get the benefit for.

Let's go to small craft harbours. Right now we have a small craft harbour that only fits small domestic boats, community boats, but it needs expansion.

As I mentioned in my introduction, I was mayor for 12 years. I have been involved in this issue from the beginning. Back in 1981 I was involved in how our community would lobby to have this small craft harbour and how it should be built at that time. It is too small now to have those fishing boats come in. So we need to upgrade and expand our current small craft harbour.

This is in the plan now. It is the cheapest small craft harbour that has been planned in those seven communities at this moment. It will only cost $2 million. In comparison, costs for other communities are much higher.

As I mentioned, it is in the plan now. This past summer, Government of Nunavut representatives, I believe they were, were in my community to survey what is required and what they will need to know before they build the expansion. They built the lighting system this summer and past fall. That's the only thing that has happened so far on this plan.

Even though so far we have fishing boats coming into our community, they anchor their boats in the channel. We live on the island, but the mainland is on the other side. They anchor their boats because we don't have a small craft harbour that fits.

I'm sorry, I think I have gone beyond five minutes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Thank you very much, Mr. Toomasie.

Before we go to our first guest on the line, Mr. Kilabuk, I'm going to ask those people waiting online if they could try to be as quiet as possible, because it's causing some cracking on the line, and it's interfering with our listening here. So for those of you who are online from the north, try, if you could, to be as quiet as you can, because it is causing a problem for us.

Now we will go to Mr. Kilabuk.

I'd like to say again to our guests online that we would appreciate your trying to stay within your five-minute timeframe, please, because we're listening to four presenters this morning and we want to get to a round of questions and answers afterwards. I would ask you to try to stay as close to five minutes as possible.

Mr. Kilabuk, please.

[Tommy Kilabuk, Chairman, Ikajutit Hunters and Trappers Organization]

Thank you very much.

Good morning to you all. This is Tommy Kilabuk from Arctic Bay. I want to say good morning to all and thank you very much for allowing us from Arctic Bay to take part in this meeting this morning. It's good to visit Ottawa over the phone, but I believe you are warmer than we are in Arctic Bay. We're dipping around minus forty degrees Celsius right now, but that's the reality of our world up here.

Yes, we have some concerns in our community that we're going to express to the standing committee this morning, and this is from a hunters and trappers organization from Arctic Bay. We are asking if the boundary line from OA, which is at the mouth of Lancaster Sound, could be moved to the Nunavut boundary line to the west, pass through Lancaster and through the Northwest Passage, so that Arctic Bay could be included in the OA boundary. We're looking forward to doing some turbot fishing and all that.

Since the economy for the sealing has been affected again by Europeans, we are asking the standing committee if it could be considered to move the OA boundary line from where it is now to the Nunavut boundary line so that our small community could be included in that boundary line for turbot fishing and marine fishing through our territory.

Also, we are looking for a small craft harbour in our community, which is needed for domestic use and for commercial use, for sealifts that come to our community. It's always hard for sealifts to unload and all that, because they're just unloading right to our community shoreline. And time is always affected too due to that. If we could have a small craft harbour, that would really help the community and the people who are coming into our community on sea, by boat, so that they could unload quicker, and we could use it for commercial use too.

Another issue we're facing every day in our community--and that is one of the concerns--is the cost of items that come to our community by sealift. I think we should have a better support and reduction on the marine navigation service fee, which I believe is about 18 times higher than for the people who are below the 60 degrees latitude. I believe we could have a better support on that, because the cost of living up here is tremendous. I believe the standing committee can help us on that, so that the cost of living up here could be reduced.

Also, to give an explanation of Arctic Bay, we're about 760 people, and about half of us, 60% to 70%, are unemployed. Due to that, we're looking for help so that we could do some marine fishing and all that. If the boundary line OA could be moved, that's one of our biggest issues here in Arctic Bay.

I thank you very much for allowing me to talk this morning. This is Tommy signing off from Arctic Bay. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kilabuk, for your presentation. Thanks for staying within the time of five minutes. You did that, so thank you.

Now we go to Mr. Isaac Kalluk, please.

[Isaac Kalluk, Chairman, Resolute Bay Hunters and Trappers Association]

Thank you very much.

Good morning to you all. Thanks for inviting us to share our concerns on this very important matter.

Up here in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, in the High Arctic, we have about 260 people, and about 10% are unemployed. We would like to get this going, if it could be at all possible. Our main concern is that we would be mostly interested in offshore. There's a rumour saying that Lancaster Sound might become a park in the future, but still we're going to keep going. It would be very important for us here in Resolute Bay, the most northern community in the High Arctic. It would not only be important to us, but it would also be good for all of Canada to keep our sovereignty more effective later on.

I don't have too much more. We would like to see this go through the standing committee. It would bring a little more money to the community. It would be very good for us, because this is harsh country that we live in, and isolated.

That's about all I have to say. Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kalluk, again for your presentation.

We'll now go to Mr. Akeeagok of the Iviq Hunters and Trappers Association, please.

[Jaypetee Akeeagok, Chairman, Iviq Hunters and Trappers Association]

Hi, there are two of us here. I am Jaypetee Akeeagok of Iviq Hunters and Trappers Association from Grise Fjord.

Good morning. It's still dark here, by the way, as you might know from the location of our community.

In case the committee members don't know, Grise Fjord has a population of 140 people, and it is also one of the few communities that have not benefited greatly from decentralization or separation. When Nunavut separated from the NWT, none of the opportunities ever came here. So in this community the hunters and trappers organization is very active in trying to help our population here. About 90% of the people in the community here are hunters, so we have been actively involved in seeing how we can have an economic base. The only job opportunities here are in basic community services: water, sewer, municipal services. You also have the co-op.

What we have seen in the past is that some of the people who have graduated have moved out because the opportunities are not here—and 90% of the hunters would greatly benefit from renewable resources, such as deep-sea fishing and the other renewable wildlife here. We have an active outfitting company here, but that's very seasonal, so we are trying to expand and to see how this community can benefit from turbot and shrimp deep-sea fishing facilities.

Last year we tried to apply for a quota for this community, but we were denied by the 0A. However, we would like to proceed and be more involved in the deep-sea industry, as we know our hunters will have to seek other avenues to get further economic opportunities for themselves in order to enjoy the same benefits as other Canadians. So we will be seeking the same opportunities as other communities. Actually, we might work more closely with...[Inaudible--Editor]...to try to obtain quotas, however we can do it.

On small craft harbours, as I indicated, our community members here are hunters and we have lost four or five domestic boats, and those are more important assets for bringing food to the table. Without our...[Inaudible--Editor]...we feel that there are going to be no other job opportunities provided. Even the food we try to put on the table decreases, because we have strong winds here. We cannot unload and do what basic farmers in Canada do easily; we have to work four or fives times harder to maintain our assets.

Another topic I would like to very briefly touch upon is that I have the same concern about this community being charged an extra $1,200, I believe, per tonne. I might be wrong on that, but we're being charged more for sealift to get our food and yearly supplies here than other communities. I believe it's 18% higher than in Iqaluit itself, because we are in the wrong location. The federal government have been indicating that because they have to bring in the icebreaker with our sealift, they give us a surcharge on all the goods that are being delivered here during summer.

So we are politely and strongly saying that it would be a lot of help if they could delete that extra surcharge. Other communities, even in the St. Lawrence, are enjoying those icebreakers more than we do, and they're not being charged for the services being provided to get our sealift up here.

I believe my five minutes are up. I would like to thank you once again for an opportunity to give our presentation through a telephone.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Thank you very much.

You're on a speakerphone, so obviously there are other people listening with you, are there not, Jaypetee?

[Jaypetee Akeeagok]

Yes. In my opening statement I mentioned that our secretary/manager, Lydia Noah, is here with me. There are two of us in our office here.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

The reason I ask is that there seems to be some problem at times with hearing you. I didn't want to ask you to shut off the speakerphone and go just to the phone. We'll tolerate it so that your people can listen.

Thank you very much for that.

We're now going to go to a round of questioning by all parties. We're going to start with the Liberal Party for 10 minutes, with Mr. Scott Simms.

Mr. Simms, please.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to say welcome to all of our guests, both online and here with us in person.

I want to start out by talking about the infrastructure itself and the usage of the infrastructure. You said there are certain types of vessels that cannot take advantage of the infrastructure you have right now. I think, Mr. Toomasie, that's something that you brought up.

Could you elaborate on this, as to the vessel types and essentially where the problem lies?

[Lootie Toomasie]

Thank you.

Yes, I mentioned in my statement that the only type of boat that fits into our current infrastructure is a maximum of about a 30-foot boat.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

A maximum of 30 feet?

[Lootie Toomasie]

Yes, a boat beyond 30 feet does not fit in there. It's very small.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

What do they go now to...?

Go ahead.

[Lootie Toomasie]

Thank you.

They use this existing harbour only for local hunters. That one is not fit for commercial fishing. I mentioned the boats anchored in the channel, but they can't even go near the existing breakwater now.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Where do boats that are longer than 30 feet go now to get access for commercial reasons, particularly about OA?

[Lootie Toomasie]

I'll have Harry Earle, fishery adviser, answer your question.

[Harry Earle, Arctic Fisheries Alliance]

The larger fishing boats, which range from about 100 feet in length up to 200 feet, all go to Greenland to off-load. Basically, the entire turbot quota is off-loaded in Greenland, except that usually on the last trip they bring it back to Newfoundland.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

So you're talking about anything above 30 feet.

[Harry Earle]

That's right.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Interesting.

Mr. Akeeagok and Mr. Kalluk, one of you mentioned a surcharge. I'm interested in hearing quickly about this surcharge that is levied upon you by the coast guard. Is that correct?

[Tommy Kilabuk]

Yes, they do. When our sealifts arrive either in late August or September, our annual sealifts of dry goods and whatever the store requires, they start charging a surcharge to bring in icebreakers with the contracted shipper.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Who pays for that right now? Does your association pay that surcharge?