Evidence of meeting #25 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was boats.
4:40 p.m.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
Okay.
Do these port authorities get together once every three months or every six months to talk about issues that affect all of you?
4:40 p.m.
Harbour Authority of Old Perlican
No. We have our annual general meeting, or a conference, every year in Gander. That's about the only time.
We're volunteers. We're working; we're fishing. But there's no doubt about it, you are talking with everyone in Old Perlican, Bay de Verde, and the other areas, the other communities--our area and Bay de Verde are the two main areas. They're doing their thing and we're doing our thing. We've all got a broad picture of what we want, what we need, and it's pretty simple when it comes to that.
We had an engineer do a study for us back in 1999. He went around and talked to fishermen, plant workers, and plant owners and got their perspective. We put it all in the hat and discussed it, and we had a five-year plan. There's also been discussion with Gary Sooley, there's the help of the engineers and what have you, and that's the way we do it. But basically, from my perspective, you're doing your own thing.
4:40 p.m.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
Coming from Nova Scotia, I can appreciate the volunteerism of it all. I appreciate the fact that when harbour authorities started out, like with airport authorities, there was a lot of caution and people putting their backs against the wall about this. Now we have found, throughout the years, that it's actually been quite successful.
One of the concerns I see...and just help me out if this is happening. We were in Carbonear this morning and the gentleman talked to us about a new breakwater. We were in Port de Grave and we talked about new docking facilities. We'll be in other areas where they will talk about dredging. All of this costs money. In many ways, if you have 68 authorities, you have 68 requests, and in some cases you may have two or three requests per harbour. So for someone like Gary, who advises the minister or advises MPs, or whoever, eventually you're going to have to make a choice of who gets what.
The reason I ask the question, do you get together.... Does anyone ever say, “Okay, Carbonear, we'll push for you guys for this year and maybe you can help us push next year for ours”? I'm not trying to downplay the importance of what you require for your particular authority, because you're right, they're like highways in Ontario and they're like anything else: they're very important to your businesses. But I can see that with all these requests going in individually, it would be quite difficult for DFO to make a decision based on funding criteria.
So do you get together in that regard to help each other out? You certainly don't want to be at each other's throats. I know you get along here quite well.
4:40 p.m.
Harbour Authority of Old Perlican
We're trying to get the biggest slice of pie, no matter what. That's the bottom line with it. We look at it, we go to our meeting, and we say we need this. If Carbonear wants a breakwater, that's fine, we've got nothing against that, but we're telling Gary, “Look, Gary, we've got the landings, we've got the boats, and we want it.”
4:40 p.m.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
I noticed the camaraderie among the first group that were here, and now this group as well. I'm sure Gary is hearing it all. Who decides who gets what? That's a challenge, because you don't want it to be a political decision; you want it to be based on sound economics and on the viability of that particular harbour and its authority. So it would be very challenging.
Pat, you represent them all. What do you do?
4:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Irish Loop Development Board
What do you do? I guess I can bring the political perspective too, because I did that in a past life and dealt with harbour authorities and so on.
Let's be frank. I did a quick count, and I think in an ideal world I could perhaps bring the 12 harbour authorities that I think are in existence in my region around the table and say, okay, from a purely economic development perspective here, we're going to prioritize and we're going to do a five- to seven-year business plan around what our port facilities are. That's going to mean some of you are going to be very happy and others of you are going to be very sad. In the process of doing that, we would be laughed out of the room, of course, and our credibility as a regional economic development board would be shot and we would have essentially walked away from a very important constituency. So sometimes it's nice to be able to hand that one off to someone else to deal with.
Priority setting around fisheries infrastructure is nothing, I believe, that our board would attempt to position itself around. I say that completely honestly. There perhaps is a role for an organization such as ours to support our harbour authorities in terms of some long-range planning and perhaps facilitating some local business planning, but I don't think we'd touch that one with a ten-foot pole, to be completely honest.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Bill Matthews
Thank you very much, Mr. Curran.
We're now going to Mr. Kamp, one of our colleagues from British Columbia. If you don't know, he's the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans as well.
Mr. Kamp.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for coming.
Just before the session started I was chatting briefly with Mr. Johnson and we were talking about Mr. Calkins' question in the previous session, that long-range question about what you think things might look like in 30 years. Mr. Johnson, you had some sort of answer to that, and perhaps others of you do as well, so why don't you tell us what that is?
4:45 p.m.
Harbour Authority of Old Perlican
Everyone does. If you don't, you shouldn't be here. You should have something in your mind, or why are you doing this?
Thirty years from now you're going to see fewer fish plants. They're going to be super-sized fish plants. You're going to see landing ports.... You're going to be told where to land, not because of your preference. That's my opinion.
Economically, there is not enough money for the government to please everyone. In my opinion, you'll see an eastern and northern--you won't see a central, I guess--southern and western. That's what's going to happen, in my opinion.
There's another thing we have to look at. I was in for the last hour of the other meeting. I don't know if it was mentioned before, but I hope we don't lose perspective with all this. We're caught up in this oil bit. Oil is great, but where is oil going to be 30 years from now? Hibernia--there's going to be a plug in that, right? We have a renewable resource worth a billion dollars, and a billion dollars is a lot of money, so let's look after it.
We have our elected officials. Mr. Manning has done great things, and we appreciate it, but someone has to take the wisdom. You're elected to do this stuff, along with our input, so you have to look at it. You should be telling us what there is going to be 30 years down the road, and naturally get our opinion, and here it is. As Pat just said, who is going to stand up and say it? Are you going to say “Old Perlican, sorry, we can't put any more money into your community, you have to go to Carbonear”?
It's going to happen. Right now the biggest boat you can have is 90 feet, and if she has a full-time licence of 300,000 right now, that's 600,000. That's probably going to be 1.2 million with refrigerated holds like you see. Where that boat goes to tie up, it doesn't care. All they are concerned about is getting that hold filled, getting into port, and getting the cash. We all know what the world is about, right? The world is about money and sex, so that's it.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
4:45 p.m.
A voice
He forgot about beer.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
If anyone else wants to chime in on that one, that's fine. Otherwise I'll move to a slightly different topic.
4:45 p.m.
Harbour Authority of Carbonear
It's all according to what our politicians are going to do, I suppose, with foreign overfishing. I like to be positive about it. Maybe you'll have to ask harbour authorities, but there should be more fish if we get it right. I think we're heading that way.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Okay. So you see a vibrant fishing industry in 30 years, and harbour authorities would support that.
4:45 p.m.
Harbour Authority of Carbonear
There should be, if there is a way of doing it. You have to have the will.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
I'm going to defer to my colleague Mr. Calkins in a moment, but before I do that, can you give me some real numbers of what your budgets are in your harbour authorities, what your revenue is for the year and maybe kind of a general breakdown of how that is spent?
4:45 p.m.
Harbour Authority of Old Perlican
I'm not quite sure. I believe we take a quarter of a cent per pound over the wharf.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
In real numbers, what is your annual budget?
4:50 p.m.
Harbour Authority of Old Perlican
We don't have any budget as such. We have a harbour supervisor, and for whatever is landed at the wharf we get what is called an off-loading fee.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
Harbour Authority of Old Perlican
Last year, I don't know, it might have been $75,000.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
Harbour Authority of Harbour Grace
I wouldn't be able to give you real numbers on that. I can go back to the person in the office and get them.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
