Fisheries Committee on Nov. 9th, 2006

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Blais.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good afternoon to all.

I would like to start by asking you a question regarding the memorandum of understanding you were talking about earlier. You said that the departments of Transportation and Fisheries and Oceans had taken a step towards resolving the boat stability issue.

I know that we will have the opportunity to look at the document, but based on your reading of it, does not contain anything new?

[Melanie Sonnenberg]

In this document, I think what we're seeing is an acknowledgement that there should be a relationship between the two groups, perhaps a formal one. As an industry rep, what I'm disappointed about is that we were unaware of this coming. Industry should have been at the table to see what we were going to talk about and what the objectives were.

What frightens me is reading this and hearing about bureaucrats sitting in a head office in Ottawa—people who've never been to sea—talking about gear loading and deployment, the professionalization of fishers, and the possibility of linking fishing licences to safety practices criteria and regulations. I find this most alarming.

While l'm a fishermen's rep, I think I have a little better understanding than a lot of those people, and I don't feel comfortable about it on any given day.

So while the paper is new, and we've never seen some of the things in here done this way before, I'm concerned about how they got there, I'm concerned about why they got there, and I'm concerned that we didn't have any input when it was presented to us.

That's the best I can do in terms of speaking to this at this time, because it's new to us as well.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

While you are talking about the document you have in your hands, and which we will be able to read later, Transport Canada officials are saying that there will be a consultation process this fall and next spring. That does not surprise me at all, except that I do not quite understand.

Have meetings been scheduled? Has anyone told you that there might be such meetings?

[Melanie Sonnenberg]

I think it's a misnomer to say we're going to meet in the fall and in the spring. Yes, we do. We meet at CMAC, which is not an ideal body for the fishermen or for the fishing industry to go to because you're talking about big shipping, cruise lines, and the list goes on. It's the marine environment. Then you take the fishing industry, which comprises 20,000 vessels, and you try to deal with your issues, as well as other things that are going on simultaneously. That's what their idea of consultation is.

I listened in. I felt like an eavesdropper, but I realized that you have a link, and I went on and I listened to some of the things that were discussed that day. I didn't catch it all, but I will tell you this, the word “consultation”, in my opinion, was used very loosely.

The fishing industry has not had, in my opinion, what we would call in any way, shape or form, adequate consultation on the things we're here discussing with you today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

That's why we invited you here.

Mr. Kamp.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for appearing. I appreciate the input. As you probably know, we go away from these meetings and take another look at the transcript of what you've had to say, and wrestle with some of the issues, at times trying to reconcile some of the testimony that may not be in agreement with other testimony, and then come up with a report. I think you've provided us with some very important input so that we can do that.

Just to reiterate, Lisa or Melanie, what I think one of you said, the way I see the statistics, as you did, is that the number of marine accidents is actually on the decline from 1999, particularly among fishing boats.

According to my figures, in 1995 there were 372 accidents, and in 2004 there were 223. That's a fairly statistically significant decline. Among those there was capsizing in only 17 in 1995 and eight in 2004.

Yet we've heard in this committee a number of times, both on this trip and before, that because there are boat length restrictions, people are trying to get around those by going wider than they should and going higher than they should, making for an unstable boat or a dangerous boat. I think those may be words that you used, Mr. Martel, as well.

I have two questions about that. If that is the case--I mean if we're allowing unsafe boats to be built--why are we not seeing more accidents as people are tending to do that more, rather than fewer accidents, which is in fact what we are seeing?

Secondly, I guess I am not understanding the process. I am not a boat builder nor the son of a boat builder. I know they do get modified, but are some boats being built wider than they should be and taller than they should be in boatyards, and being signed off on by a naval architect whose business it is I think to make sure that the boats are stable when they leave the boatyard? How is that part of it happening?

[Harland Martell]

I'd like to address some of that. Gary might want to add to it.

Let's look at southwest Nova Scotia and let's look at the trap fishery, not the one you see on the Discovery Channel off the coast of Alaska but the one off Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I., and, for that matter, Newfoundland. Let's stick with what people in this room probably know, which is southwest Nova Scotia, LFA 33, 34, and 35, up the Bay of Fundy.

With the boats, because of regulations that meant we couldn't go longer, we had to make two choices, to go wider and/or higher. In those particular fisheries, we went wider, which created a more stable boat--maybe a stiffer boat, not as soft, but still a more stable boat.

We didn't go high, which creates instability in more of the boats more dramatically, because of the operation of the fishery. When it first started going wide, the fisherman still had to grab a buoy out of the water every 10 or 15 minutes. He didn't want to be way up there and have to throw an anchor at it and grab the buoy like they do off the coast of Alaska. That's not the way they operate.

So for a lot of the fisheries, the width has actually improved the condition of the boat and the room in which they have to operate. There are some benefits to some of the regulations that saw the boat evolve.

In Newfoundland it's created more of a problem. I don't know the statistics there specifically, but I would dare say that if we see the overall statistics--you may have seen the statistics on some of those capsized--it comes down in certain areas and goes up in other areas where they were forced to go higher. Newfoundland is well known to have gotten the boats to go much higher, but maybe as a general statistic, the numbers are still similar or down. That may be because of where they took place.

For example, I don't know of any of the wider boats that have ever capsized--ever. I can't even come up with one. I'd love to be able to search my memory and come up with one, but I can't find one.

So it may be that the statistics are skewed because of that particular situation.

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

Go ahead, Gary.

[Gary Dixon]

I'd like to address this a bit.

The reason there are less accidents is because of the wider boats with the stern extensions. Going back seven or eight years ago, you'd have a 44' 11" that was 18 feet wide. A good portion of the fleet now is fishing offshore. It's been gradually moving that way. From 10% to 50% are fishing offshore--up to 50 miles offshore. When you have to travel that far, it's very important that you can carry your traps in one load. It's a long ride out there, especially when, in most cases, it's going to be an uncomfortable ride. You don't get a chance to pick the perfect day.

I addressed the 50-foot length and the width as being a good thing, because we don't have these fishermen out every night now. After they've pounded around for 20 hours, they have to steam in for five hours, get in at 1 o'clock in the morning, take the bait out, take the lobsters out, put the bait and the new crates back aboard, and go back out. So now you have three or four really tired individuals steaming back and forth in the night, falling half asleep, trying to stay awake.

The 50-foot boat is very simple. It allows them to take two tiers off the top. We know that in terms of stability, the higher you go, the worse it is. This allows them to take two tiers off the top of the boat and put half of the load in the 5-foot extension that's on the stern, down where it's supposed to be. It makes a big difference to stability, whatever you carry, when you can take the top third off.

It's just been a matter of evolution. It's safer. It's way more livable. Plus we don't have to worry about whether these guys are going to come home. We've never lost...and our guys fish in some hard, hard weather. We fish in the worst times of the year. We don't lose anybody to boats flipping over.

Having said that, DFO has to knock off thinking that boats are a ways and means of doing conservation. After 25 years, I would hope you people could address that and make these people understand: do the job you get paid to do, get your noses out of boats and boat building, and let the fishermen decide what they need for boats to safely go and do the job.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you.

Mr. Lunney.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to go back to something that was only briefly mentioned earlier, and that's the RIAS that you're expecting to come out.

The RIAS, for members who may not be familiar, is a regulatory impact analysis statement. For government to regulate anything, they're supposed to talk to the community that's going to be regulated or impacted, to have some discussion about the impact of the regulations. Second, there is supposed to be some kind of cost-benefit analysis. In other words, is there a benefit of regulating that is actually justified by the risk?

Mr. Martell, you're the one who mentioned the RIAS. I understand it's supposed to be coming out in the future, if I understood your remarks correctly. Are you aware of any consultation with the industry regarding this RIAS, and how thorough would you expect that analysis would have been?

[Harland Martell]

Yes, sir, I am very aware of it.

Two points. One, the RIAS is mandatory in this particular situation. But first let's go back to what we were referring to earlier, that a lot of the talks are around Transport Canada's new proposed fishing vessel regulations. That's just one segment of the reform of the Canada Shipping Act, 2001; for you parliamentary people, it's called Bill C-14.

Within its first few pages, Bill C-14 gives its objectives and mandate. Ultimately, I guess, it's saying that they're trying to create a better environment for the safety of men and women at sea. That's just in summary, or course, or a paraphrase. It also dictates that as a regulation or as a law, it has to be economically sound--those aren't the specific words, but that's what it's saying--and it has to be enforceable.

When we go to what's proposed here, we're trying to make some sound input into the proposed small fishing vessel construction regulations and stability standards. But now we're at the stage, having done all that through the “consultation”, as it's called, when they're going to be doing the RIAS.

The RIAS is late. I was just out in Vancouver, B.C., last week, and Brian—I can't remember his last name, but he was a Transport Canada guy--was doing a presentation there to the fishermen who wished to attend. The whole regulations were scheduled to come out, I believe, in 2005, and then it got moved to 2006, because it was lagging behind. The last one was May 2007, and now it's looking like 2008. The RIAS has just been slow in coming.

I was asked to be part of that RIAS. The way it developed, and for various reasons, some personal, I backed out of that particular...and not the complete RIAS, only as part of it. Right now I know that the NSBA is in consultation with Ottawa to be part of that RIAS.

It just seems that every time something is agreed to, it gets delayed and delayed. The only thing I can say is that if we, as industry representatives, do get involved in part of the RIAS, I just hope that the data we present and find, that gets consolidated with the actual consultants who are making the large presentation on it and with the Ottawa people, will come out to be sound data.

I must say, there is a glimmer of light here. One of the individuals within the government bureaucracy did tell me that if the RIAS is to the point where it's really unfeasible economically to think that certain regulations can come in, then alterations and amendments to the proposed regulations would have to be looked at. He didn't say “changed”, he said “looked at”, and although I don't know what that fully means, I assume it means changed or modified while still trying to meet the objectives of Transport Canada.

The status right now is that the RIAS from the small fishing vessel is not contracted out to anyone specifically yet for the cost analysis portion of it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Martell.

Melanie, I think you had a comment.

[Melanie Sonnenberg]

I'll be really brief.

In terms of the consultation process you mentioned--and I don't want to sound like a broken record here today, for fear of repeating myself, but I'm going to--the consultation is totally inadequate. In the Maritimes we're talking about 26,000 fishermen, and I can tell you that 25,599 have no idea what's coming down the pipe. Why? Because Transport refuses to acknowledge that the system has failed us.

We've repeatedly told Transport--I will go to my grave telling them this--that they have failed the industry because we're not able to spend the big bucks to go to Ottawa, sit around for a week, and incur those expenses. It's not practical and it's not reasonable.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Very quickly, Mr. Lunney.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

I think perhaps there is an angle here that might be very useful to the committee. I don't remember us having at committee any discussions particularly about the RIAS process before. That may be an avenue for us to pursue, to make sure that the hopes and the views here are represented.

From RIAS situations in other committee work I've been involved in, I am aware that the criteria spelling out exactly how RIAS is applied are very loose and often very significantly glossed over. The people being regulated are not adequately protected.

Perhaps we can be of service in that department.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

That's a good point.

Mr. Manning, you can have one final question.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the presenters here today.

Melanie, don't make any apologies for that, because we've heard loud and clear about the consultation process. As I'm sitting here as a member of the committee, to be honest with you, to hear that again just makes the case more solid to bring it back to Ottawa and pass on that message.

I'm also very upset, as a member of the committee, that you signed a memorandum of understanding when we were fighting the battle a couple of weeks ago to try to get that as part and parcel of this process. To find today that there is a memorandum of understanding signed that we as parliamentarians are not even aware of, let alone you people not being aware of it, brings back some memories of things that happened in Newfoundland that I wasn't aware of before.

We hear statistics all the time. We heard a statistic that 80% of tragedies at sea in some way, shape, or form go back to human error. Nobody wants to hear of tragedies--none of us. We all live in outport communities, and we earn our living from the sea.

I realize that in Newfoundland some of the fisheries are different because there are high quotas. However, there is a concern being raised that if you allow fishermen to go longer and build bigger boats, in order for them to be able to pay some of that cost, the pressure will come on them to add on to product that they're taking from the sea

While some people think it's a futile argument, the fact is that it could become a situation in which you put out the expense to enlarge your boat and make it safer, realizing maybe two years down the road or a year down the road that you need more product to make this work.

I live in a small community of 500 people where 40-foot boats are alone, 160 miles offshore, trying to make a living. They're playing with fire every single day. My own family participates in that, and it's a very dangerous game.

I made a comment in Gander or St. Anthony the other day that I heard a lot of stupid things before I went to Ottawa, and I'm up here hearing a lot of stupid things since I've been to Ottawa in relation to what I would deem to be common sense. Safety has to be the number one concern of everybody, regardless of this.

It seems as though the numbers game plays very well to people who are in these towers in Ottawa. Is there a length that we could agree on or that industry could agree on that would be...? Is it 50 feet? Is it 53 feet? Is it 54 feet? I'm just trying to get my head around the fact that if you go back and say, “Well, 44' 11" doesn't cut it”, then what does cut it? Could someone enlighten me? I don't know if I'm getting across the question I'm trying to ask, but it seems as though they need a number, and I guess we need a number to fight for.

[Melanie Sonnenberg]

George is a fisherman, so he's in a better position to answer this, but I will say this about what you're referring to. Every fishery is different, as you well know. Every fishery has different criteria, and I think the most important thing for the committee to remember--and you said it, you hit on it--is that industry itself has to sit down and...I was going to say, “duke it out”, because oftentimes that's what it turns out to be. There has to be a discussion at the table with the people who are fishing that particular fishery. They have to decide. And not everybody is going to be happy. Nobody is ever totally happy with anything.

But there has to be a realization that we can't have this paternalistic relationship all the time. Yes, there has to be some of it going on from DFO, but there also have to be people at the table who know what's required, and then some of DFO's conservation issues and so on need to be brought to it and put on the table. We're adults.

Yes, people are driven by earning a living; that's part and parcel of it. But let's be real. People just want to earn a living, and I think the majority of people fall into that category.

It has to be a joint relationship in thee true sense of the word “partnership”, which is freely used by DFO. It's not a partnership. It's an exercise in downloading cost to industry, in my opinion. But let's work on a true relationship, and that would be part of it, which is what you're talking about.

You can't pick a number and say that 53 feet is going to cut it for the lobster, the crab, and the groundfish. We can't paint everything with one brush. I think that's what Transport is trying to do. DFO often tries to do it--get a number and try to put your square peg in your square hole. Every hole can't be square. It's that simple.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Dixon.

[Gary Dixon]

I'd like to address the issue. You asked the question about the cost to build a boat, that the fisherman needs to give him the length he needs or the width he needs, and whether it would exceed what he's building today, for example.

Whenever I've built boats in the past and had to manipulate them by cutting things off and adding things on to meet DFO regulations, to meet requirements for licensing, it has cost way more money than if someone had just come and told me what they wanted for a boat. If I could build the boat you wanted, I could build it cheaper if I didn't have to look at the rules and regulations on how I had to cut and destroy your boat in some form to do that.

Secondly, I'll use the same phrase I've used in the past, and I'll just speak for the lobster industry. If it's 49' 11", there's no secret to it, 49' 11" is the magical answer. Unfortunately, some of the people who are happy with the 49' 11", with just a shelf on the stern extension, are not the same people who have to leave their home port on June 1 and put 25 tonnes of ice in the hold, 10,000 pounds of bait down in this tank, and go off 300 miles, like they did in June this year. They all survived hurricane-force winds, but I'm telling you there were a lot of them saying their Hail Marys the three days they had to put up with that.

I'll say the same thing now that I've always said. Those who want the 49' 11" shelf or slanted stern, who fish in the bay and go fishing until June and go golfing the rest of the summer, no one's asking you to put a tank on. If you have no need for it, you have no need for it. The guy whose lifestyle is set up because he's just bought a $500,000 swordfish licence needs to go fishing for the summer months. He needs to take 25 tonnes of ice; he needs the 10,000 pounds of bait and he needs his five feet for buoyancy and for safety. Why should a handful of people have the say that because they don't want the tank, they think DFO should make it illegal, which they have had so far?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Rennehan, go ahead.

[George Rennehan]

This has been pretty well covered, but the biggest thing is the most restrictive licence confining you to that. So many times people can't afford to give up that licence and have to build a boat according to the most restrictive licence they give. Gary gave a prime example of it.

In the swordfishery, we have a lot of these 44' 11"s--lobster boats--and they cannot go over that. They're doing the same thing that those of us in the swordfishery were doing in 55-footers and 60-footers. Are we helping safety?

I just came from Ottawa. From what I heard in Ottawa in the last three days, they just set safety back ten years, in my opinion as a fisherman, because we will find a way to get around it. We're really good at that. We always have been. So it's a matter of which illegal is the most evil. That's what it boils down to. Am I illegal not to do my steamship inspection, or am I illegal after I've done my steamship inspection and I say I can't use the boat from December 1 to March 31 on account of icing? Which is the most illegal? I'll put the $10,000 in my pocket that it's going to cost me to do the stability and take a gamble.

So I honestly think Transport Canada is setting safety back here.

Thank you.