Fisheries Committee on Nov. 28th, 2013

[Matthew King]

I'll take a shot at that, Mr. Chairman.

In budgets 2011, 2012, and 2013, as was the case with every federal department, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was obliged to participate in this broader deficit reduction goal, and we've done that. In 2011-12, under the auspices of the strategic review, we actually reduced our expenditures by about $57 million. That ramped up, and we ramped up and completed that reduction by the end of this year. By 2013-14, we will have made the strategic review reduction.

In the strategic operating review that was in budget 2012, again, we had a three-year ramp-up period to meet a target, and we did. We'll meet that in 2014-15. That will be $79.3 million.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

What you're doing is meeting the direction that you're given by government. What I would like to have from you is what impact it has on the department, and what impact this loss...in my very short time here.

[Matthew King]

I was going to get there. I have one more round of reductions to talk about.

Fisheries and Oceans and the Canada Revenue Agency were also asked to come back and do a targeted review—this was announced in last year's budget—and that will ramp up to $33 million.

So to answer your question, in their entirety, that results in a reduction of about $170 million, which is about slightly less than 10% of our base. Along with that came a 10% reduction in the number of people who work at DFO, remembering, though, that both the budget and the number of people swelled, as they did in every other department between 2006 and 2009.

We are confident in the reductions made to date that we have done everything we can possibly do to minimize the impact on services to Canadians. I believe that in the fullness of time we'll be able to demonstrate that. We've used all kinds of initiatives to get to the targets we had to get to. The coast guard was responsible for about 45% of that total reduction, and the balance came from DFO.

In the DFO case, we've done an awful lot of work to consolidate back offices. We've made some adjustments to reflect differing policy priorities. We've taken an awfully close look at our internal services, which, in comparison to some departments, had been trending upward. As the deputy minister and the accounting officer, I believe I'm at a point now where I can still say that I can meet and fulfill my commitment to Canadians, as expressed through the budget and through the Speech from the Throne and other documents, with the resources I have. That being said, it's never an easy thing to reduce. We're bureaucrats; we're good at adding.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

That's the part I want to get to: what effect does it have with the scientists themselves in Winnipeg? Can you refer to that?

[Matthew King]

I'll ask David to help me out a little bit on ELA. ELA, the Experimental Lakes Area, was actually a very good example of the types of programs you have to look at when circumstances call for a reduction in expenditures. I don't think the government or the department ever said the work ELA has done over the years was not useful and not helpful, but relative to other science programs, it was less directly applicable to the day-to-day work at DFO.

That being said, the department and certainly my previous minister, and my minister now too, I believe, have always recognized the work it's done. We're now coming towards the tail end of very intensive three-way negotiations with the Institute for Sustainable Development and the Province of Ontario, and we're confident that ELA will emerge slightly differently but will continue the work it's done.

If you want a bit more information, I'd be happy to ask David to fill in the blanks a little bit.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I hope you're right, that's all.

[Matthew King]

I think I am.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I'm very concerned, and many people involved in the fisheries are very concerned, that you're not right. You can only implement what you're told.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Briefly, Mr. Gillis, please.

Your time is done Mr. MacAulay. I just asked Mr. Gillis to be very brief.

[David Gillis]

Very good.

Very briefly, to add to what the deputy said and to clarify a point, the employees at ELA have been affected—not surplused, I expect. It's been some time, and you'll appreciate that the process around this, where we're dealing with individuals, is both highly prescribed and the details are somewhat protected, for reasons that you'll probably understand. We do expect that their status is going to be addressed very shortly.

You asked about the roles. The roles were various, and they were all of the roles that would be associated with operating a field camp of the type that ELA was when we operated it. Some of those individuals, I expect—and it's already happened in several cases—will find other posts in our science system to which they are suited. How many of them will land there we will see in due course. I believe it will be a fair number of them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gillis.

We'll do a five-minute round now.

Mr. Chisholm, start off.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much.

Welcome to the officials here today.

We have lots of questions and not a lot of time. I want to follow up a little bit. You have gone through some significant changes over the past number of years, not just with the latest legislative changes and downsizing, but with the challenge to fulfill your mandate.

I understand that you've changed your organization quite a bit—the responsibilities within—in terms of where you're servicing various places. I speak particularly about the north.

I understand that in the western Arctic, Yellowknife, for example, some of those offices have been cut and the staff have been withdrawn or reassigned elsewhere. Many of those services, as they relate to habitat management, for example, are coming out of Burlington. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that.

I was up there in July, and there is some concern being felt about not having the DFO expertise on the ground there, that it's going to be delivered out of Burlington, and the loss of that local knowledge, and so on. I wonder if you could speak to that.

[David Bevan, Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Certainly.

We did redesign the way we handle the fisheries protection program, as we went from a habitat program that was essentially looking out for habitat for habitat's sake and involving huge numbers of referrals that we were not finding to be sustainable or that were not relevant to protecting fisheries. As we moved from that model to the other model, we also looked at changing our process to move towards standards, towards guidelines, to inform proponents, and to centralize our offices from 69 to 15.

I think Kevin can give more detail on the changes. The program redesign did allow us then to centralize and to have a different approach to the enforcement and to the provision of guidance to the proponents. We don't believe we need to be everywhere all across the country when we can use other tools to reach people and to provide the services.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Before Kevin jumps in there, I appreciate that organizational stuff, but I'm thinking specifically about the north and the specific characteristics and nature of it, the co-management boards, the subsistence fisheries, and all of that. You're going to try to deal with that, provide the support for that, from Burlington?

[David Bevan]

I think there are going to be people on the ground to deal with the first nations obligations. They may not be the same types of people as in the past, but there will be people to meet our obligations under all of that.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

They won't be scientists?

[Kevin Stringer]

I would say David's outlines are.... We have consolidated, and I think the numbers actually are from 63 to 16 offices. I would add the issue around partnership. The idea is that we wanted to bump up the partnership, work with local people, and consolidate our decision-making and our people in a few areas.

When we had 63 offices, including in the north, and I'll come to that in a moment—

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Kevin, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to interrupt.

I understand where you're going. What you're saying is that you're going to try to partner with people on the ground in order to provide that.

I'm going to have to ask you one other question to go with this. That's another example of how things have been shifting. I understand, for example, that the justice department in Vancouver was providing support for aboriginal negotiations and other support for the fishery in Vancouver. That now has, in effect, been dismantled, or that mandate is no longer there. Those legal services are now going to be drawn out of Ottawa. I'm thinking, for example, of people who decide, “Well, to hell with it all, we're going fishing; we're going to put a net in the lake or in the river. We have rights, too.” On a Friday afternoon at 4 o'clock in Vancouver you can't get anybody. That was a scenario that was raised to me.

I'm asking you to talk about that, please.

[Kevin Stringer]

I hear you. I'll quickly finalize what I was talking about.

The exception to the consolidation is the north, where we've maintained our offices where they were. There is a little bit of a reduction, but on the number of offices in the north, we still have staff in Iqaluit, Yellowknife, Whitehorse, and Inuvik. They may have moved someone to Yellowknife, but it's not a significant consolidation.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

You don't have any scientists in Yellowknife.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Chisholm.

[Kevin Stringer]

I don't think we've had scientists in the north.

I'll let the deputy speak to this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Very quickly, Mr. King.

[Matthew King]

On the justice issue, we've had a group of I believe eight or nine lawyers in our Pacific region office for the better part of a decade. It was one of those things that was started as a pilot, and you can see why it would have been attractive. I think it might have been there for a dozen years or so.

There were some good parts about that, and you've identified some good parts. There were some less good parts about that, too, in that frequently we would have different advice coming from all these justice lawyers from the Pacific region versus the head of our legal services here. The reduction of that complement was done in concert with DOJ, itself meeting its own obligations.

To be honest and frank, it was always a little bit of a source of contention within the department. I can absolutely tell you that the head of legal services in NCR now is more than capable of providing the legal advice the department needs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thanks, Mr. King.

Mr. Kerr.