Fisheries Committee on May 13th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Once again, I welcome our witnesses here. I'm going to throw the floor open to some opening comments, and then our committee members will have a round or two of questions.

First of all, I'd like you to introduce yourselves, and then tell us all about your....

[Leo Finnegan, Mayor, County of Prince Edward]

My name is Leo Finnegan. I am privileged to be mayor of the beautiful County of Prince Edward. I have with me this morning, Barry Braun, our commissioner of recreation, parks, and culture.

I'd like to first welcome you to our county. We're almost an island. We have 500 miles of shoreline here and we're connected by four bridges and a ferry. It's largely an agricultural community; however, in recent years...we now have 14 operating wineries, which started about 15 years ago. So wineries are attracting lots of attention. We have a provincial park here, the Sandbanks Provincial Park, which is well known. About half a million people visit the park each summer and about a million tourists go through this county every year.

As I said, it's largely an agricultural community. We have one of the best natural harbours on the north shore of Lake Ontario at Picton, which you're going to see later on today, I understand. And we also have a harbour at Wellington, which you're going to see also. So we're very proud of our community and we're anxious to see it grow. And it is growing. Many people find this county by boat. They're either sailing from Toronto, or whatever, and they sail into Prince Edward County and there's an expression, “They come for a day and stay for a lifetime”.

I'm going to turn this over to Barry Braun, our commissioner, and have him explain what happened as far as the divestiture of our docks is concerned.

Barry.

[Barry Braun, Commissioner of Recreation, Parks and Culture, County of Prince Edward]

Thank you, Leo.

Welcome. As Leo has indicated, thank you for the opportunity to address the committee. I understand this committee doesn't get to Ontario very often, so this is great.

I'll start by providing a little background about the divestiture of recreational harbours in the County of Prince Edward. Following the 1995 decision of the government to divest, the municipality at that time decided to commission a study. It was a harbour divestiture, infrastructure, and economic assessment study, to determine whether or not it was in the best interests of the municipality to divest.

We had six possible locations that could be divested, six federal properties. The study recommended and council approved that we divest five of those six. The only one that was not divested was Point Traverse, which is located at the southwestern tip of the county. It has since been designated as a national wildlife area, so presumably it went to the Ministry of the Environment.

I will walk briefly through each of the divestitures we have completed and the ones that are remaining, simply to give you a little bit of our experience with each of them and to give you an indication of how they've benefited the county.

The first one we divested is referred to as Northport and is located in Sophiasburgh Ward on the Bay of Quinte at the northern end of the municipality. The Bay of Quinte, of course, we share with the municipality of Belleville and others.

The federal dock was on site there. It was about a 30-metre wharf, with a smaller inner wharf next to it, so to speak, of 12 to 15 metres. That was the only federal property, but the municipality owned a boat launch ramp right next to the property. The federal property is also attached to a three-acre municipal park on the mainland there.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans provided $10,000 in 2001 to make the required repairs to the wharves, based on research and quotes and analyses the municipality did of the condition. Once the repairs were completed, the property was legally transferred in 2003.

The property, now municipally owned, continues to be used as a docking facility, primarily for recreational boating and fishing, and together with the park it's attached to, it hosts numerous community events, picnics, family gatherings, and those kinds of things. Certainly, from our perspective, it is serving a good recreational purpose.

Waupoos mainland was the second one that was divested, and it's located in North Marysburgh Ward on the shore of Lake Ontario. The property included an approximately 30-metre wooden wharf that needed to be totally replaced. In 2003, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, through the federal Department of Public Works, replaced the wharf at a cost of approximately $240,000, and then the property was formally transferred to the county in 2004.

This facility serves as a home for a barge that provides access to Waupoos Island, because that's the only way to get there--by boat, of course; it's an island. There is sheep farming that takes place on the island, and the barge is docked at Waupoos mainland dock and serves the purpose of moving livestock, as well as equipment and people, to and from the island for farming and visiting purposes.

Waupoos Island was next in line. It's located in Lake Ontario, off the shore of North Marysburgh Ward. It had a 20-metre concrete dock that was in need of some repair. In 2004, the DFO provided $20,000 in funding. Through that funding, the municipality made the repairs to our satisfaction. The ownership was transferred in 2005.

This dock primarily serves the farming industry on the island. There has been some application for permanent residence on the island. There are houses on the island, but they have not been occupied for a number of years. The owners are looking at making it more usable for residential living, so the barge may be used in the future to transport the people who live there.

Those are the three harbour properties that have been divested to the municipality.

The Wellington facility is now in the process of being divested—the transfer documents are actually in the hands of our solicitor. Wellington facility is very much a success story. It's a good news story. The community has rallied around the development of Wellington Harbour. There is a large beach area. With the work that DFO and the federal government have done with the municipality, you have become very much a partner in the development of the harbour, along with numerous volunteer community organizations. It's nice to see the feds in this partnership.

This year, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans provided $266,000 to replace a 58-metre docking facility owned by the feds. This has recently been completed, and you'll be able to see the finished product today when you visit.

Significant improvements have taken place at the harbour over the last two or three years. It's the main wharf in the harbour, a jewel in the development, and we appreciate the involvement of the federal government.

There are a couple of issues that we will address later regarding Wellington.

The only remaining federal property to be divested is in Picton, and the federal property there is located at the Prince Edward Yacht Club in Picton Harbour.

We've had a subcontracting agreement with the yacht club for a number of years. They manage and collect the fees for the docks. We are hoping to divest that into work with DFO sometime in 2009.

There has been some research done on that site by federal Public Works, I believe, regarding the requirements there. Seawall issues have to be looked at before the municipality will be in a position to assume ownership. We're hoping to do that in 2009.

Picton and Wellington are by far our busiest harbours. Picton is easily at 85% to 90% capacity for most of the boating season. With the expansion and development during the last two years, we're anticipating a similar situation for Wellington. Last year, Wellington was 65% to 70% occupied, and we're expecting that to increase this year with the additional docking facilities that we've been able to provide.

In general, the municipality of Prince Edward County has been very pleased with the divestiture process. The staff at DFO have been significantly cooperative and helpful in many ways, and fortunately we've been able to deal with the same people from the beginning, so that certainly helps.

We have been pleased in all cases. The funding required to bring the facilities to the standard that was acceptable to the municipality has been met, and in turn, the bureaucracy, for lack of a better term, has been pretty easy in terms of bureaucracy. It hasn't been a major issue and there haven't been a lot of political ramifications in any way, shape, or form. So we've been pleased with the process over the course of the last five or six years that we've been divesting our federal properties.

The most significant issue we have with our harbours is in fact in Wellington. Every two years the municipality is spending in the neighbourhood of $80,000 to $100,000 to dredge the channel, to ensure safe access to the harbour and the facilities that are within the harbour. Years ago, I think it was in the late 1980s, the channel was developed with the cooperation, at that time, of a multi-partnership between the municipality, the provincial government, the federal government, and the local conservation authority. I'm not exactly sure of the division of responsibilities during that development, but I know that all four groups were involved in building the channel to create the access from Lake Ontario into Wellington Harbour. Since that time there has been no provincial or federal money put into that channel. The jetties on both sides of the channel have deteriorated significantly, to the point where there is going to have to be significant dollars spent on them within the next two to three years, at the very outset.

We have, through various means, tried to look at long-term solutions to the silting problem, and for the last four years we have looked at every possible solution that I think is available. We have run into one that is almost identical to our situation in Pickering, in Frenchman's Bay. They are currently working with both the provincial government and the federal government on funding. It sounds like 50-50 funding between those two governments for what is going to be approximately a $7 million project to extend their jetties to alleviate the problem they have been having, very similar to ours, which has been dredging every two years.

We're hoping we can look at doing a similar project with provincial and federal support, to eventually resolve the issue we have there in Wellington, from having to spend upwards of $100,000 every two years just to ensure that boats can get in and out.

So that's where we currently stand with our divestiture process. As I said, for the most part, the municipality has been pleased, Mr. Chairman, and we're certainly willing to answer questions or have further discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Thank you, Mr. Braun and Mayor Finnegan.

Mr. Simms, for questions.

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

We'll split our time.

Let me start. Certainly between the witnesses before and the witnesses now, we seem to have a model area for divestiture--at least one of the candidates thereof--so it's good news all around.

I have just a few questions about the barge you spoke of. Which harbour is that again?

[Barry Braun]

Waupoos.

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

And the barge is owned by whom?

[Barry Braun]

Currently it is privately owned. It used to be owned by the Oblate Fathers, which is a religious component of the Roman Catholic Church, I believe.

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

So do you derive any revenues from this barge other than the docking fees?

[Barry Braun]

We do not. No, we have an agreement with the barge operator, who purchased the barge from the Oblate Fathers, and he runs the sheep farm on the island. So he now owns the barge, and he has an agreement with the municipality. It's a written agreement dealing with damages to the dock and those various things that we look at on an annual basis and discuss with him.

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

Okay, so it doesn't provide an essential municipal service, per se?

[Barry Braun]

No, it doesn't.

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

Okay, fine. Let me go to the situation described with the dredging, which you anticipate doing every two years, right? But you want the investment similar to what's being proposed in Pickering. Is that correct?

[Barry Braun]

I believe that would be, from what we've been able to see so far, ideal in our situation because theirs is very similar, and it's going to give us an opportunity to see how they progress. But from all the studies we've done—and we've done numerous studies—on how we can resolve this on a long-term basis, extending those jetties farther into Lake Ontario and slightly at an angle appears to be the primary solution.

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

What do you figure will be the cost estimate on that?

[Barry Braun]

Well, looking at Pickering's, which is very similar in size, we've been estimating anywhere between $5 million and $7 million.

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

And have you approached DFO about this? Have you—

[Barry Braun]

Not formally.

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

Not formally. You plan to, I gather?

[Barry Braun]

Yes. One of the things we're doing now is trying to gather some additional information from Frenchman's Bay in Pickering, so that we in fact have a decent proposal.

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

All right. And they're going through that similar process now in their negotiations for divestiture?

[Barry Braun]

Yes. I believe they have since 2006, but I'm not exactly sure what the current status is. They're working with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority on this project. We have met with them, and all indications from them are that both governments are very positive about the project. I don't know whether that means it's totally approved yet or not. That I don't know for sure.

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

Okay. Of the other harbours you have divested thus far, I believe the number was five. Is that right?

[Barry Braun]

Actually three; we're in the process of the fourth.

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

Now, in that process of what you've divested thus far, what environmental speed bumps have you come upon thus far?