Finance Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2023

[Paul Lansbergen]

Yes.

You know, the government doesn't necessarily have to intervene to increase indigenous participation in the sector. As I said, it is happening through industry collaboration and through non-indigenous and indigenous interests. They will come together to bring more indigenous participation in the sector, whether it be company-owned, by buying the assets and the access from non-indigenous interests or the government programs. There are integrated commercial fisheries initiatives for Atlantic Canada, Pacific Canada and even the Arctic. That's where the government would give money to indigenous communities and help them train, and then they would go and negotiate a transfer from the incumbent licence-holders.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Do you have any idea of.... Is there is an amount of money that might help this situation?

[Paul Lansbergen]

It's difficult to say, because it depends on how much access the government wants to transfer and in which fisheries, because they have different values.

I would say that it's in perhaps the tens of millions of dollars as opposed to, say, hundreds of millions, and certainly not into the billions. Again, it depends on how much, how quickly and how it's done.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you very much.

[Paul Lansbergen]

Thank you.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Ms. Grynol, when a hotel room goes empty for a day, you can never recover that potential lost revenue. You're suggesting that 50% of your members have vacancies not because there are no people wanting to take the rooms, but because there are no workers to support that business. Is that right?

[Susie Grynol]

That's correct. In a survey of the field yesterday, 50% of our members said that they are limiting hotel room capacity. Of that 50%, 90% are saying that they're limiting up to a quarter, and we're in our off-season today.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Wow. This was just yesterday, I assume.

Do you have any estimates on how much this is costing or could cost the Canadian economy? If you don't have it now, let's find it. If you would be—

[Susie Grynol]

I do.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

That's great. Wonderful.

[Susie Grynol]

As you asked, I do have that.

Let's look at just a hundred-room average hotel. The cost of not having a labour supply is $725,000 in lost revenue for the year. In profit, that's 43% down from a normal year. Rolling that up to an overall industry impact, it would be an annual loss of $3.3 billion in revenue lost. That will only increase as we get to the summer periods.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

This is potential tax revenue from profits from a small business. It's from employees who have a job and would be paying taxes.

You've heard about this global talent stream that can bring people here in two weeks.

[Susie Grynol]

Yes.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Why are we doing this between industries and picking who should get in faster than others? Why can't everybody come in the two weeks if they meet the criteria, or if you've used the worker program before, why can't you be fast-tracked, like in NEXUS?

[Susie Grynol]

That's an excellent question.

It is part of our recommendation that the government look at all of the systems and ways in which people come into the country and effectively prioritize the most in-demand sectors, and we certainly fit that bill. That is one of our primary recommendations, because if we do that and we invest in the labour force, we can capitalize on what is historic demand for Canada today. If we don't do that, we'll be letting other countries eat our lunch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Chambers.

Now we'll go over to the Liberals and MP MacDonald for five minutes.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses who are here today.

I have a couple of pages of questions, but I know that I won't get to all of them.

I'm going to start with the Fisheries Council of Canada and Mr. Lansbergen.

One of your recommendations surrounding the fisheries science is to conduct a review of other countries and compare those practices in the area of fisheries science. Do you have any specific practices from other countries that you would like to see Canada adopt?

[Paul Lansbergen]

That's a good question.

I think that as we move forward, there are new technologies that can come to bear, in particular to make fish surveys. Instead of having vessels go out and do comparative trawls or trawls, maybe there are new technologies we can use—radar technology or something else—that would estimate the abundance of fish stocks.

Maybe some countries like Iceland or Norway are ahead of us in that respect. It's difficult to say, because some countries don't have the same diversity of species that we do. It's perhaps simpler for them to conduct that fisheries science. We also have the longest coastline in the world, so there are some challenges, but it never hurts to look at what others are doing.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

We know that just recently there was a moratorium on redfish, and it's supposedly coming back. There were discussions with the Canadian independent fisheries yesterday.

Another one of your recommendations was to “engage with industry” to “leverage industry resources promptly to guarantee assessments”. Can you expand on what resources you're referring to relative to the industry itself?

[Paul Lansbergen]

Yes. Thank you.

In some fisheries, the industry is the primary purveyor of fishery science. For shrimp, for example, the industry has been doing the fish surveys for 20 years and it has never missed a beat. However, in the eastern Arctic for turbot, the government has been relying on Greenland for a vessel. In recent years, there have been challenges securing that vessel. We don't have our own vessel to use. It resulted in four years of data gaps. That's obviously troubling. The survey occurred this past fall, using the Greenland vessel.

In other fisheries, we've been relying on aging Coast Guard vessels. The new ones have now come on stream. They've had some challenges in commissioning and things like that.

Hopefully the worst is behind us, but we're still very concerned. The government needs to have a backup plan in case is has problems. It needs to give us enough notice so that we can use one of our vessels. We can configure it the exact same way as a Coast Guard vessel. If you give us a month's notice, we can probably make it happen. If you give us three days, it's not possible.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Obviously, coming out of the pandemic, there are global economic challenges. As we hear around this table from time to time, we have to be mindful of our spending. I think our most recent budget was targeted spending. It was a good budget.

What are some of the regulatory changes the government could make that you believe would be beneficial to the industry without necessarily carrying a price tag? Are there policies or regulations that need to change that could have a positive effect on your industry?

[Paul Lansbergen]

That's a great question.

As part of the blue economy strategy, the government is conducting a regulatory review now, with a consultation deadline of March 17 or something like that. We're working with our members to collect examples of regulations representing a barrier to innovations.

One of the examples that I'm looking at the most is the gear type regulations, which can be quite prescriptive. They say we need to use a certain gear equipment in a certain fashion. We're coming up with innovations that will enable us to be more efficient and perhaps have less bycatch and fewer other environmental impacts. However, the regulations may not be able to provide an opportunity to do that.

That's one of the biggest areas I think we need to look at first.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

In 30 seconds, I'll ask this very quickly.

How can we increase our competitive level nationally and internationally?

For competitiveness among other countries in your sector, is there any one particular item that stands out and says we could grow this sector?

[Paul Lansbergen]

I think the biggest thing is a change in culture within DFO, so that it views itself as a champion for the industry and not just a regulator of our resources.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP MacDonald.

Members and witnesses, we are moving into our third round. We have enough time for one more full round.

We are starting off with the Conservatives and MP Hallan.