Fisheries Committee on Nov. 7th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I call the meeting to order pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the study on the issue of new rules for boat stability, and in particular the matter of the fishery boat length requirements.

We welcome our witnesses to the table, members of the audience, and certainly the members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

I think we have a couple more people who are going to appear, so maybe we will get started in the interests of time.

We have Mr. John Gillett and Hedley Butler.

Mr. Gillett.

[John Gillett, Fisherman, Twillingate, As an Individual]

I'm going to touch briefly on boat safety. I'm not going to talk too much about stability.

What I'll say is, in order for a fisherperson to keep his or her boat in good and safe condition, he or she must have money. Therefore, DFO should give us an amount of quota that is good for us to maintain our enterprise, so that we will be able to buy new equipment for our boat, put safety equipment aboard our boat. Right now, our enterprises are really getting hit with low quotas and low TACs.

Back in the 1970s, fishing incomes were way down and the vessels that we had were in very bad condition. Sometimes fishermen had to take shifts to keep the water out of their boats. And the reason for that? They didn't make any money. They got 2¢ or 3¢ a pound for their fish and they weren't able to maintain their vessels.

When the fishers' income became higher and vessels were made better and safer, crab was up to $2.50 a pound. You saw the difference in the vessels, how nice they looked, the amount of fibreglass that was put on them and the safety equipment that was aboard them.

I heard the Canadian Coast Guard remark, “We must be doing a good job. We're teaching the fishers in safety courses how to do it.” That has something to do with it, no doubt, but money is the main reason that they're able to afford safety equipment aboard their vessels.

We're headed down that same road again. We do not have the money to keep up with the safety regulations, because of low individual quotas and the total allowable catches. So we have to have quotas in our enterprise to be able to keep our vessels in safe condition.

That's all I have to say on that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

You're welcome.

Mr. Butler.

[Hedley Butler, Town Councillor and Fisherman, Bonavista, As an Individual]

I don't have a written presentation, but I want to make a few comments on stability.

Back in 1997, I had a boat at King's Point. To get that boat built, I had to get some specifications from the government to give to the boat builder to make sure she was constructed right. After bringing that boat back to Bonavista, and then, after she was seaworthy, getting another inspector to come aboard from the government agency and inspect the boat, I had to do more modifications to the boat.

What I'm saying on stability is, are we all singing out of the same book? She was okay to be built at King's Point, and she was inspected down there and everything was okay, and when I got back to Bonavista the boat was not up to specifications according to another inspector. Do these inspectors have different books for different areas, or different regulations for different areas when it comes to safety aboard the boats?

Another thing in looking at the stability of the boats is that fishermen, in this day and age, have to go off a lot farther. When I first started to fish, it was only under the shore. I had cod traps. Now we're going up as high as 270 miles in boats 64 feet 11 inches in length. With these boats, you have to have something there--what we call “under your feet”--to be going off that far. If you get caught in a storm or wind, or something like that, you need that. There is no doubt about it, stability is a big thing. We have to train a lot of people about stability, especially in the fishing industry, because a lot of people don't understand. A lot of people do understand, but I think a bit of training on stability would be a safety factor for us guys who are on the water and steaming a long way.

Mr. Chairman, that's all I have to say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Butler.

Mr. Watkins, did you have a presentation or a few points you want to make?

[Ted Watkins, Fisherman, Cottlesville, As an Individual]

I don't have a presentation, Mr. Chairman, but it was short notice. I happened to be fishing, and today is the day I'm not out, so I came in to take in the meetings.

Seals were a concern, but stability is a big thing. I operate a fishing vessel of 64 feet 11 inches, which is as long as I can go. It was built 25 years ago, actually in Nova Scotia, and it's the sister ship of a line of ships that had stability tests done, but my particular vessel didn't have one. I got a letter about three months ago from Transport Canada advising me that I had to have a stability booklet for my boat within one year.

There's a snowball effect. Somebody in power makes a rule, but this has a snowball effect, in that I've checked around with the architects and am told that for all the vessels in Newfoundland and Labrador to get the proper stability booklets would probably take five years to implement. This is something like the federal gun registration: you implement it and then it's a mess, it's chaos. Nobody has thought it out.

The other factor in it is the cost. It will cost me at least $15,000 to get a stability booklet on my boat—and that's a very conservative figure—at a time right now in the industry when I have about 25% of the income I had three to four years ago, because of a decrease in market prices, a cut in fish quotas, and the booming cost increase for fuel. I'm actually earning right now about 25% of what I earned three to four years ago, and that's a fact. To bring those costs down on your head at this time in the industry.... I know we can't ignore safety, but there's no help there.

The other part of the snowballing effect is that I'll be told within one year that I have no CSI certificate; it won't be valid unless I get this booklet done. Then I'd have no valid certificate, but I have a mortgage on my boat. The condition on the mortgage on my boat is that I have to carry insurance, and the condition of my insurance is that I have to have a valid CSI certificate.

So do you understand what they're really doing? Somebody said you have to have this done, and I find out I can't get it done in five years, and then all those other things fall apart: the insurance is invalid; the mortgage will probably be recalled. So it's a snowball effect.

Stability is very important in all vessels, but we're also into a multi-species fishery. This fishing season, I'm on the fourth lot of gear that I've installed on my boat. I start sealing, and that's a type of gear you use on your boat. I'm involved in the crab fishery, so all that comes off when I start whacking crab pots on her. That's another fishery. I'm a shrimp dragger, so that crab gear comes off, and I install shrimp gear on it. Now I'm seining for mackerel, so all that is taken off for trolling on the rocks, and I'm fitted out with another lot of gear.

Quite frankly, when you're involved in so many different types of fisheries, a simple stability book put in my hand is not going to mean a lot. There's a lot more involved than some architect drawing up a stability book.

You're going to have to take a look at what fishery you're involved in, and of course that's where the size of the vessel comes in, and this is where the stability problem is, in that every boat that's being built is restricted to 64 feet 11 inches. We're reaching out, trying to make them wider and deeper, and we're compromising stability. I don't know, when you get to 64 feet 11 inches, whether you can ever get a stable boat that you're going to go 150 miles offshore with to fish shrimp. You can look at our own Canadian offshore fleets with 300-foot boats and look at the foreigners and everybody with 300 or 400 feet. We're out there fishing the same waters, in the same conditions, with a boat that's 64 feet 11 inches.

That's about all I have to say. Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you for your time, Mr. Watkins, and the rest of our presenters. I know our members have a number of questions, so we'll start immediately, with Mr. Matthews.

[Bill Matthews, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for coming, gentlemen.

In his last few comments, Mr. Watkins basically touched on what I was going to ask about when he talked about the different fisheries that he participates in. Each fishery is different, and it has different effects on your vessel, I would think, depending on the type of fishery it is.

You're restricted by the length of your vessel. As a result of that, people have gone to modifying their vessels, as you said, in width and by going up higher. We've seen some very tragic situations in our province in the last little while. People say they were caused by vessel instability, but I guess they're still being investigated and studied or something or another.

I think the dilemma for the government has been that DFO will say that if we let them go to the vessel size they want, then the demand is going to be for more resources, because the vessel expenses are going to be higher. So that's what you get coming from DFO. We can't let them go to bigger boats, because then they're going to be yapping for more fish, but where are the fish going to come from, blah blah blah.

My take on it is that if you're a true enterprise, if you're a business, and you decide to go to a bigger vessel for safety and stability reasons, then you will suffer the consequences if you can't pay your bills. That's my belief.

So in a roundabout way of getting to a question, do you think government should free up your boat size and let you go to something longer and bigger if you so desire, with you taking on the consequences? Is that the answer to it, or is there something I'm missing?

[Ted Watkins]

I think it certainly will help to free it up. One of the biggest concerns on the stability thing is that they throw the stability thing at us like they did in my letter, and it must be done within a year. For a boat I've been operating for 25 years, that's not going to change my situation for the future, but it will for building new boats.

It doesn't matter. They say everybody has to have it, so I have to have it, and they're not going to go back through the years. My boat's been fishing for 25 years and I haven't had an accident. I'm hoping I don't have one tomorrow, but I'm very comfortable with the stability of my boat, so I really don't know why I have to all of a sudden, at this stage of the game, be thrown into a pile with everybody and have to go get my boat done. It's more or less paperwork.

But to your comments on the future, on the building of new boats, the relaxing would greatly help. It would be good. My concern, though, is dealing with the past, because I'm in the past. I'm not into the future yet. I think every new boat built, whether she's 64 feet 11 inches or what, should have a stability test. I think we could start with the present. But the problem we have is how to deal with the past. How do I get a stability test done in one year when it'll probably take me five years to get around to finding an architect? I also have money costs. There's an economic cost that I'm concerned about.

So on your comments about the present and whether we should allow them to lengthen out the boats, if that's what it takes to pass the stability test, sure, you should lengthen them out. But if they can't pass it, then the boats shouldn't be built anyhow. It's a matter of what we do now and in the future that should take care of it. But how do we deal with the past?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Just as a point of clarification—it won't come from your time—you said your boat was built 22 years ago.

[Ted Watkins]

Yes, that's correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

All right. And it's 64 feet 11 inches?

[Ted Watkins]

That's correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

How wide is the beam?

[Ted Watkins]

It's about 21 feet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

So that's 21 feet on 64 feet 11 inches. What's the height? That's the depth of the boat in the hull itself from the bottom of the keel to the top of the wheel house.

[Ted Watkins]

It's about 8 feet for the deck.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

The deck is about 8 feet. And for the boats that are being built today in the 64-foot 11-inch class, what would the width of most of those boats be?

[Ted Watkins]

In the 64-foot 11-inch class, I don't know. Boats presently are 30 feet in the beam, so that's 8 feet wider than—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Than your boat. What would be the overall height from the bottom of the keel to the top of the deck on a lot of them?

[Ted Watkins]

Well, the decks won't be a terrible lot deeper. It's the superstructure that they stick on top, and the gear. Mine is basically a one-storey boat above the deck. You get them going to two, and they've even gone to three. So you're packing the superstructure on top, and that's what's causing a lot of the problems right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but they could be as much as 8 or 10 feet taller.

[Ted Watkins]

That's correct, yes. They are. There's no doubt about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you very much for that. I think we just needed that for François and for my own information.

Mr. Byrne, sorry for the interruption.

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

Those were good points of clarification, Mr. Chair.

I just want to talk to you and then get your points of view.

There are two complementary forces. Transport Canada regulates for safety, regulates design, and has no real interest in fisheries management, but DFO actually manages vessel construction and vessel size for conservation purposes. In other words, they limit you at 34 feet 11 inches, 39 feet 11 inches, or 64 feet 11 inches to try to control fishing efforts.

One thing that has been raised by DFO is that if they allow vessel length to change, if they basically have an open policy on vessel length, notwithstanding the safety issues, then you guys, for your fleets, would basically spend an awful lot of money on building bigger boats or putting extensions on your boats. That expense would force you to demand extra quota, and that's why there's a reluctance on the part of DFO, if I understand DFO correctly, to change or amend vessel replacement rules and vessel length rules.

Ted, would you and Hedley and John be able to describe to me...? So they're saying that they are containing capital investment expense by keeping the restrictions in place. Have your fleets in the last while spent a lot of money anyway on gearing up for new fisheries, whether it be shrimp or pelagics, which now seem to be coming on stream, and instead of going lengthwise, you're going upwards? In other words, you've already spent an awful lot of money—your fleets, not necessarily your individual boats—gearing up for shrimp and other things, and therefore that whole argument is somewhat invalid.

John, do you want to answer?