Fisheries Committee on March 24th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Mr. Stoffer.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to let Mr. Oliphant know that Tom Wappel was a corporate lawyer from Scarborough, Ontario, who was the chair of our committee for a couple of years. He did a great job, so there is hope for you yet, sir. That's just to let you know.

Mr. Bevan, you know that in 1996 DFO had a plan--what fishermen out there called the Mifflin plan--with area stacking of the licences. A lot of fishermen referred to it as “eat or become eaten” in terms of the reduction of the fleet. It caused a lot of turmoil on the west coast, as you are probably aware.

Some lobster fishermen have indicated that this buddy-up system or the doubling-up of licences may lead to that sort of atmosphere once again, because we have the trust agreement concerns that Mr. Hearn dealt with the last time. I'd like you to tell us two things. First, reiterate what DFO is doing about the trust agreements, the long-term plan on that. And second, with the buddy-up system and having two skippers on one boat and having 250 plus 125 traps on the boat, tell us what you perceive that will lead to, as compared to what they fear it may lead to.

[David Bevan]

We are still committed to preserving the independence of the inshore fleet in Atlantic Canada. People in trust agreements have a period of time in which to get out of those, and the person holding the licence in trust has to find a way within the timeframe to reissue the licence to independent core fishermen. That is still in place.

What we did, though, was to tell a number of fishermen that we knew some of them had bought other people's licences, and that within these LFAs we needed to work with their colleagues and peers to find a way to allow some of this licence combining, whether through stacking or the combining of two licences into one. We needed to find a way for that to go ahead. When we had those discussions, we found that on combining two enterprises, they didn't want to have 200% of the traps. They wanted to have the benefit accrue to the rest of the LFA fishers as well, so you could combine the percentage. You usually end up with 150% of what one enterprise would have, when you combine two into one.

That means there is a benefit for the others, because there is a reduction in effort. That means that there should be a better CPUE, catch per unit effort, for the remaining traps, and that helps the rest of the LFA, but it also helps the two that combined to reduce their costs and find a way to augment their earnings.

It's been in place for a number of years and in a number of LFAs, and it has not created the same kinds of concerns that some expressed regarding other schemes to reduce effort. But it has definitely been an attempt on our part to find a balance between benefiting the two that combined into one, and benefiting the rest of the fishers in the LFA.

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

For the trusts you're giving, what year do they have to have that finalized? I think it was seven years.

[David Bevan]

It was seven years as of 2007, so it would be 2014.

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

Thank you.

Regarding aquaculture concerns, as you know, there was an aquaculture site slated for southern Nova Scotia. One of the concerns was that you have these people who are experts in this talking about how all the poisons and stuff that would come from the site would damage lobster sites, which we know is not true. But the reality is the aquaculture sites can take up a lot of area and would be for mussels or halibut or whatever it is they would be doing. What is happening, on the aquaculture side of it, to protect the integrity of the areas where the lobster fishermen traditionally fish?

[David Bevan]

We do have a process for working with the provinces on the site selection. That site selection is based on ecological studies that examine the footprint. So it is not just the physical presence of a farm. You have to look at the physical changes that the farm could cause in the local ecosystem. We want them to be reversible, so that once you go fallow, it should be relatively quickly reversed and go back to the state of the ecosystem that existed before it was there. We want to make sure that we aren't going to unduly impact other users of the marine ecosystem.

There is a process that dictates where sites can go, and we do take into consideration the concerns of people fishing lobster or other species.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you.

Mr. Van Kesteren.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you.

Thanks to the witnesses for appearing before us again today.

I have a quick question for you, Mr. Elliott. You mentioned $391 million. Were you saying $391 million worth of lobsters?

[Robert Elliott]

I actually want to clarify that. My table here was referring just to frozen products. The total, out of the billion dollars in exports, is $107 million.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

So $107 million refers to those exported.

[Robert Elliott]

Yes, that's right.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

How many lobsters are harvested a year?

[Robert Elliott]

In terms of landings?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Yes.

[Robert Elliott]

I don't have that number with me.

[David Bevan]

It's about 45,000 tonnes in total.

Canada is a significant supplier of clawed lobster in the world markets. LFA 34 alone produces about 20% of the world's clawed lobster supply, and Canada about 40%.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Now, these little fellows, they're bottom-feeders, aren't they? Don't they eat the stuff that dies and drops to the bottom?

If we're depleting our lobsters, what impact does that have? Is it a circular problem? Is it all interrelated--i.e., we have less fish in the ocean so less are dying, which means less food for those guys to eat?

[David Bevan]

I guess those are really good questions. We are looking at whole ecosystem-based management as well as precautionary management. We're introducing that now. We have put on our website a framework for sustainable fisheries. That provides us with all these considerations.

When you're looking at a traditional fishery, this one has been in place for more than a hundred years. It has been managed generally the same way since its inception. Whatever changes took place must have taken place some time ago. But we do have to consider this. We have forage species policies where we don't want to remove too much biomass from an ecosystem so that the contribution of that species ceases to be there. We want to keep the ecosystems functioning. We do, however, have some changes.

Perhaps I should let the experts talk.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Yes, I was going to switch over to the experts.

I have another question for the experts. Do seals eat lobsters?

[Dr. Wendy Watson-Wright]

They eat quite a few things, so yes, they would.

On your question about the food and whether it's circular, yes, it is. It is all interrelated, as Mr. Bevan was saying. But in terms of whether the lobsters are starving to death, we have no evidence of that. It seems there's still a good supply of food. As you mentioned, they are scavengers, so what's down there, that's what they like to eat.

In fact, Mr. Bevan mentioned earlier the issue of paralytic shellfish poison and lobster tomalley. Certainly in the Bay of Fundy that comes from their scavenging on scallops and scallop roe and scallop insides.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Gillis, I think I want to direct this question to you. We had the ministry people, and I think Mr. Bevan also, when we talked about NAFO and the need for cooperation among nations. This seems to be a really serious problem, one that's global. Have we moved toward talks, at least, with maybe NAFO or--

[David Gillis, Director, Fish Population Science, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Concerning lobster?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I mean the whole fish population. It seems as though we run into these problems time and time again. We just can't seem to regulate it, because somebody's cheating somewhere else.

Is there a move afoot to look at a global solution, one where nations are getting together on this?