Thank you, Mr. Chair. That will be me.
On behalf of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, I want to thank you, Mr. Chair, and all the members of this committee for your time today. I, too, wish I could be there in person, but will settle for the virtual.
I agreed to serve as a commissioner because I believe in a strong relationship between Canada and the United States. It's the only way to ensure Great Lakes productivity.
As Ms. Dingell has noted, the GLFC has not met in more than a year. As I will explain, the commission's dysfunction is rooted in Canada's flawed governance structure.
From our first day in 1956—long before me—until 1979, the commission communicated with Canada through the Department of External Affairs. In 1979, DFO assumed a more prominent role in the administration of the commission's Canadian portfolio, at the expense of our relationship with what is now Global Affairs Canada, or GAC.
Our problem, thus, has been decades in the making, with the commissioners deciding in 2018 to embark on a course to address these problems. That journey toward solutions came to a head in November 2021, when, for the first time in the commission's history, we were unable to establish our suite of programs because of the significant impact of an $8.8-million Canadian deficit on our binational programs.
The shortfall was exacerbated by the fact that the U.S. was no longer willing to subsidize Canada's deficit as it had for decades. The consequence was the deferral of the commission's budget for seven months, in the hopes that Parliament would provide the funds, which it finally did in April 2022. For that, we, of course, thank you.
On that basis, the Canadian and U.S. sections felt confident in setting our belated 2022 programs in June 2022. However, we were dismayed to learn the following November that not only had Parliament's 2022 funding not been provided, but the full Canadian appropriation for 2023 was not available either, some eight months following Parliament's commitment to fully fund the commission.
Worse, DFO then communicated its intent to withhold from Parliament's allocation $15 million, and more than $3 million each year thereafter, contrary to the program negotiated by the commissioners. Is this what Parliament intended?
U.S. commissioners enter into discussions with their Canadian counterparts trusting that decisions made between the sections representing the parties to the convention will be implemented as promised. Nowhere does the convention give anyone other than the commissioners the authority to set the commission's programs, yet the portfolio manager, by withholding funds, did just that.
DFO's actions, frankly, shattered the collaborative approach between the two commission sections and further demonstrated what we had been reporting for years, which is that the current governance arrangement is irreparably broken. While this was not the first time this had happened, it was, indeed, the final straw.
These problems are rooted in the very structure of how Canada supports the commission.
For the information of members, I have provided documents to the clerk, including our legal opinion detailing the history and the mechanisms of the commission, the role of DFO and the resulting conflict of interest and duties innate with the current interface between the commission and Canada as a party to the convention.
DFO will rightly tell you that they have now paid most of the current year's allocation, but so long as the governance issues remain, the fiscal issues cannot be resolved. If there is one message I want to leave you with today, it is this: Money alone is not the problem. Money is, however, a symptom of the greater governance issue. The commission has the obligation under the treaty to determine its programming and allocate its budget. This may not be how the portfolio manager would prefer it to be, but that does not change the will of Parliament as expressed in the convention.
It is germane to note that years ago, the commission suggested several solutions, prior to advocating for a machinery of government change to GAC. However, we could never get traction with DFO to explore these alternatives. This intransigence brought us to where we are today.
We are asking for your help to ensure an adherence to the convention and to the high ethical expectations set out by statute and by Canada's own rules.
First, we ask that the commission's portfolio management duties be moved from DFO to GAC to mirror the successful and proven U.S. structure. Our commission belongs at GAC, and no one has given compelling reasons to the contrary.
Second, we ask that Canada accept the proposed memorandum of agreement, the MOA, as the commission has drafted it and shared it with DFO as the current portfolio manager. This MOA will clarify several fundamental convention expectations and provide better fiscal transparency and adherence to the provisions of the convention.
The commission is simply asking that it be allowed to implement the treaty as our governments intended.
Our concerns are not personality-based. In fact, my staff tell me that DFO CFO Mr. Goodyear is working to help remedy many of these problems. However, change is difficult because of a deep-seated culture, which includes a deep misunderstanding within DFO of the commission's full mandate, a misunderstanding of the department's role as the commission's portfolio manager, and a misunderstanding of the context within which the department delivers sea lamprey control on behalf of the commission, rather than as a domestic program under the authority of the Fisheries Act.
We were also cautiously reassured when Minister Murray attended the 2023 Great Lakes day on Parliament Hill, where she expressed her personal regret for the animosity that has taken root in our relationship.
Mr. Chair, our commissioners, U.S. and Canadian, are eager to get back to work. We are volunteers who are committed to the Great Lakes, but we can no longer allow these problems to fester.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My staff and I are pleased to take your questions.
