Evidence of meeting #98 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was enforcement.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Thank you.
I want to go back to traceability. Am I correct that Maine has had a traceability system for some time? You're saying yes, so for how long?
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Yes. I'm not sure. We could come back to you on the exact date. I think it's been in place now for several years.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
I assume they put it in place.... Were they dealing with a significant illegal fishery in Maine?
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Yes, they had the same situation.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Okay, so why...? Can you tell the committee if there are any tools that you are missing in DFO or other departments that would allow you to effectively get control of what, by any stretch of the imagination, was an extremely unlawful summer?
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
The regulations giving us the ability to require a licence for possession all along the supply chain is a really crucial missing piece.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Could you expand a bit more? I would assume it would have been....
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
That is not the case right now.
Right now, we're first point of possession, which is the harvest and the sale from harvest to the first buyer. However, as you keep going along, and these—
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
That is not regulated at the moment.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
No, but who would have jurisdiction to regulate? What's the regulatory framework you would be looking at?
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
That's what we're proposing to bring in now.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Yes, you're proposing to bring it in, but explain a bit more what you plan on bringing in, because often it is in the regulations where the control must be. We've seen some of the unreported situations in the lobster fishery, which is the buyer and a processor, which is provincially regulated.
Are we seeing the same in the elver fishery in the requirement that you referenced and more regulatory...?
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
There is a gap in the regulatory framework now. Under the Fisheries Act, our intervention is limited to the harvest and that first sale. As you go further along—
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
You only have jurisdiction over the harvest. Where would most of the profitable illegal activity be occurring, in your opinion? How far down the road from the fisher? I see a smile from Mr. Wentzell, so you may want to comment.
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Right at the harvest there's a huge margin, which is why the poachers are out there, but there would be further points along the chain.
5:05 p.m.
Regional Director General, Maritimes Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
To build on the deputy's response, certainly provincial jurisdictions have the authority in terms of the buying and selling aspect of seafood. We've also talked about colleagues at CBSA in terms of export—
5:05 p.m.
Regional Director General, Maritimes Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
That includes any harvestable product. One of the reasons we're proceeding as a department with federal regulations is that we know this product exits from Canada at different points, so to try to work with multiple provinces to get various regulatory tools lined up would take us far longer. That's exactly why we're proceeding with federal regulations.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
I appreciate that.
I have a bit of time left. In a possible closure, how many fishers whose only source of income is the elver would be impacted? Do we know that?
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
There are indigenous communal commercial licence-holders, but there are eight licence-holders. They employ people to fish—
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
They employ people to harvest on the river. It's not just eight people alone. They employ people as well.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Morrissey. You're right on the mark. I'm glad I caught you.
We'll go to Mr. Perkins for five minutes or less, please.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
I think those eight plus the three communal.... The eight, anyway, employ 200 to 300 harvesters who do this for them.
Deputy, you said you've started the regulatory process, and the speed of that is two years. Is that two years from now? We've seen six years of poaching escalating every year. Why did it take six years to start another two-year process? Are you telling us we're likely to have a closure until that's done?