Fisheries Committee on March 3rd, 2009

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

I call the meeting to order.

I believe as our first order of business we have a couple of motions by Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Stoffer.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The first motion deals with a DFO employee by the name of Lorraine Ridgeway. An audit has revealed an allocation of over $400,000 in two years for travel and expenses. Knowing that my Conservative counterparts appreciate accountability and fiscal responsibility, I thought it would be warranted to have her come before the committee, along with whoever she wishes to bring, just to explain to us what value the Canadian taxpayer got for that money. She can come to the committee whenever it's convenient for her and/or her departmental officials.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Go ahead, Mr. Byrne.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

I believe my colleagues within the Liberal Party would have no objection to this.

We would like the witness to be able to provide specific information as to exactly what files she was involved with while on those specific points of travel, and what indeed she accomplished. So we could relay that to her. I don't think anyone is too concerned about issues that are populist in nature; what they're interested in is what value we got for that particular money.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Mr. Stoffer, do you have that information?

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

I don't have that personal information of what she's done, sir. All I know is that an audit was done, and apparently they said she made 51 international trips in that time period. I'm not saying anything is illegal or immoral here, I'm just saying it seems like an awful lot of money to spend for one official over a two-year period. I just thought it would be nice to bring her in to ask her to explain how we got the best value for the dollar on that. And whatever documents accompany her would be great.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Monsieur Blais.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The Bloc Québécois will support that motion, but we do not want the committee to act as a tribunal, quite the contrary.

The information that appeared in the papers is significant enough, and this has tarnished the reputation of the person in question as well as that of the department. In my opinion, it is absolutely the right thing to do to offer this person the opportunity to explain what happened to us. Obviously, I have no intention of this becoming a court. It is not our role to judge, but rather to understand the situation, where perhaps funds were overspent. Is there a way of doing things within the department that, in our opinion, should be modified or changed? We shall see.

In order to support this motion, we do not need to judge this person or set up a tribunal. It is rather an issue of offering this person the opportunity to explain the ins and outs of this way of doing things. In that way, we offer this person the opportunity to provide us with more details than what appeared in the media. Furthermore, I believe that Ms. Ridgeway already provided some explanations to the journalist in question. It would not be unusual for her to present her perspective to the committee members. I would like to know if the department should change some things about the way it does business that could, in our opinion, result in excesses. We shall see, but my idea is certainly not that the committee become a tribunal.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you, Mr. Blais.

Mr. Kamp.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the comments. I certainly agree that if we bring Ms. Ridgeway in, we bring her in as the director general for international policy and integration. That's her title. She has a significant role in the department. It's never a bad thing to get a closer idea of what these people actually do on behalf of Canada. In her case, in 2006-2007 she was elected to chair the United Nations informal consultation on oceans and the law of the sea. That required a fair bit of travel, as she will explain to us. We're certainly not opposed to meeting her and finding out what her job is and what she delivers on behalf of Canadians.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Are we clear? Most of the members asked me to do this in a smart fashion because we have a number of guests waiting. Are we ready for the vote?

(Motion agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Mr. Stoffer, you have another motion you wish to bring forth.

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

Yes, again very quickly.

As we all know, there was an incident in a NAFO-regulated area off Canada's coast a week ago Sunday. The coast guard vessel did a tremendous job in rescuing and saving the lives of those particular sailors. I would like then, if possible, to ask the Commissioner of the Coast Guard to appear before the committee. It would be, first of all, to thank him and to thank the crew who did the great job, and also to ask the crew and the coast guard exactly what happened on that particular day, because there are extenuating circumstances as to what happened to the trawler.

I think it would be appropriate for us to ask the coast guard in a very respectful manner what the conditions of the sea were like, what the discussions were, etc., just to get a better idea of what may have transpired that day.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you very much.

Is there any comment on this?

Mr. Byrne.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Yes. I have stated for the record that I'm not in support of our colleague Mr. Stoffer's concerns. The evidence doesn't measure up to those concerns, in my opinion. However, I do think there is value to actually just hear what the Canadian Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board have to say. I would ask that those two organizations be called as expert witnesses. We can put the questions of evidence of any malfeasance directly to them. So I would be supporting this particular motion from that point of view.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Mr. Stoffer.

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

I just want to make a clarification. I'm not in any way insinuating any kind of malfeasance in this regard. All I'm asking is just for the details of what transpired that day.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Mr. Kamp.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

I think if Mr. Stoffer wants that information, he's certainly free to get it from the coast guard without having to bring in witnesses to ask that kind of question. I think we have a busy agenda before us scheduled in the next number of weeks. Personally, I am not supportive of this motion.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Monsieur Blais.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Thank you, Mr. MacAulay.

I am quite unsure about this motion. At first glance, I have many reservations. Unless Mr. Stoffer has specific information that he would like to share with us, I have the impression that if we were to invite the commissioner to speak to us about what happened... In a few days, we will be experiencing a very sad anniversary. I am more inclined to invite the commissioner to give us further information on the investigation into the Acadian II.

Unless Mr. Stoffer is in possession of some information that I do not have, I think we can perhaps get the same kind of information by asking the commissioner to write us a letter, for example, that might allow us to better understand the timeline of these events. I have very mixed feelings on the subject.

Peter, I am not trying to undercut you on this. I find the proposal interesting, but I would like to know why I should support it. If something in particular happened, that is fine. That would allow me to understand why we should summon the commissioner. In my opinion, it would be a much better idea to invite him to review the follow-up on the Acadian II file. Even if there were three investigations, they do not indicate that we got to the bottom of the Acadian II story. On the contrary, there remain many unanswered questions. This committee will eventually have to deal with that. It would be a different discussion, another story.

As for the events of February 22, I followed it on television as did many others. I have my own theories as to what happened, but I would like to better understand the thrust of Mr. Stoffer's motion before saying whether I will support it or not.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Is there any more discussion, or are we ready for the vote?

(Motion negatived)

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

We'll suspend for a couple of minutes and get our guests seated at the table.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

I call the committee back to order.

Mr. Bevan, chair of NAFO and ADM, welcome. I understand you're heading this group, and you can introduce your people. I expect you'll have an opening statement to make. Proceed, and welcome.

[David Bevan, Assistant Deputy Minister, Fisheries and Aquaculture Management, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have a deck that I believe is being distributed to the members, and I'll just briefly speak to that.

I guess the choice before us with respect to NAFO is between the revised convention and the old convention of 1978. There is no opportunity to choose other options; the solutions would not be realistic. We have to either accept the new convention or we'll have the old one as the alternative.

The 1978 convention is fatally flawed. It is a convention that was designed with the sovereignty of Canada as one primary objective, and to achieve that, we put in place the objection procedure. That was put in at our request. So we have a convention now that permits objections with no constraints, that has no dispute settlement procedure because we didn't want to be bound by a dispute settlement process in order to maintain our freedom to operate. Decisions are based on votes, which creates winners and losers, and that was the means by which decisions were taken in NAFO for a long period of time. There's only a single species management, so we were voting on TAC and quota in the course of these meetings.

We created winners and losers, but the losers had an alternative. They objected; they set unilateral quotas. The fishing was above the scientific advice, and the actual fishing, because of non-compliance, was above what was unilaterally set. In those circumstances, the outcome was almost inevitable, and a collapse of the stocks resulted.

The objectives for NAFO reform were to protect our quota shares. We and the EU hold the vast majority of quotas in the NAFO regulatory area. We wanted to constrain the use of objections by making objections part of the decision-making process, whereby the onus is on the state wishing to object. In other words, a state would have to explain why it was objecting, and we wanted to have in place an effective mechanism to resolve disagreements, in particular those over allocations.

We have had tremendous progress over the last few years in improving the monitoring control and surveillance scheme in NAFO, and we'll talk about non-compliance and how the incidence of non-compliance has been dramatically reduced as a result of the changes made in 2006 to the NAFO conservation and enforcement measures.

More broadly, our international strategy has moved forward with a multi-faceted approach to stop overfishing. NAFO reform is one aspect of that, but we worked the multilateral processes to help create the conditions for change. I'm not going to pretend that NAFO was suddenly moved to take steps to protect the vulnerable marine ecosystems or corals or seamounts. That only happened as a result of the work done by my colleague, Ms. Ridgeway, in terms of the UN General Assembly and an alternative to banning bottom-trawling--which supports 14,000 Canadian jobs--and finding a better way to manage the impact of fishing on vulnerable marine ecosystems.

By and large, we have strong bilateral relationships with Spain, Portugal, and Russia--we have some current issues with Russia--and that's been a key component to getting action in NAFO and getting action, more importantly, on the high seas.

Compliance in NAFO has changed quite significantly. As a result of ongoing enhanced enforcement presence, and significant improvements in the NAFO conservation and enforcement measures that were adopted in 2006, there's been a steep decline in serious infringements in NAFO. That is reflected in the data we have, where we had 13 serious infringements in 2005, seven in 2006--the year the measures came in--one in 2007, and zero in 2008.

In the global context, we see dynamic change is occurring at an increasing pace. That's reflected in measures to reform all of the RFMOs. The UN General Assembly resolution adopted in 2006 called for the protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems from bottom-contact fisheries. The RFMOs have to report back to the General Assembly this year, so NAFO, along with others, will be going back to the General Assembly process and reporting the progress made to date.

In the U.S.A. we have the Magnuson-Stevens renewal act. That has serious implications for Canada's ability to access the U.S. market, in that the new American law requires the Americans to stop overfishing within two years, and they must ensure that the fish they're importing into the United States, our most important market, are coming from sustainable fisheries. That means that their conservation measures could be applied to countries that are shipping that fish to the United States.

The EU is also moving ahead in January 2010 with measures for tracking and traceability so as to avoid importing into the EU illegal, unregulated, and unreported fish. We have a commitment from the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization ministers that there will be a stop to IUU and an end to misreporting. So there is growing transparency and accountability.

I would point out that in the North Atlantic we had a problem years ago with IUU fishing in the NAFO regulatory area. It ended with the arrest of several vessels in that area. But we had continuing problems in the oceanic redfish fishery up until a few years ago. NAFO, NEAFC, and the North Atlantic fisheries ministers agreed to implement port measures, and those port measures in the North Atlantic have virtually eliminated IUU fishing there. Half the vessels were scrapped, and the other half, unfortunately, have moved to other parts of the world to continue that activity. But they're no longer in the North Atlantic.

The key results we've achieved since 2006 have been improved monitoring, control, and surveillance measures. Those are measures that require vessels to be pulled from the NAFO regulatory area to port for inspection under certain conditions. In 2007, we amended the convention text and adopted measures that met Canadian objectives in the areas of application, protection of Canadian quota shares, and constraints in the use of objection procedures. Canada attained agreement to safeguard provisions in the NAFO measures that reinforce the protection of Canadian quota shares. That is to say that it now takes an active vote to change the quota key. In other words, the quota key stays the same unless there's an agreement to change it.

In 2008 the French version of the text was adopted, and now the convention text can be ratified.

On the NAFO enforcement measures, there has been some thought that UNFA was stronger than the current measures in NAFO. That's not the case. The UNFA measures allow the inspecting people to remain on board the vessel for 72 hours and to then take it to port in their country and await the presence of the flag-state inspectors. There is no provision in UNFA that allows boarding inspectors to take action outside the authority of the flag state. That's not the case. Portraying UNFA as a means by which we can pull a vessel off the high seas into Canada and apply Canadian law to that vessel is not accurate. I think it's clear that this is the situation. As soon as the flag state takes control of the vessel--