Thanks very much, Osborne.
Once again, gentlemen, thanks very much for your time this morning.
If you would refer to slide four, it's basically the composition and the objectives of the NHAAC. I know some of you are wondering what an NHAAC is. I did when I started. It's the National Harbour Authority Advisory Committee. To summarize, it's a group of people, volunteers from across the land, who come through their regions to the national forum to provide information on small craft harbours and how we can better the program, and to find success stories and share them for the overall betterment of the Canadian fisheries in the harbours in general.
We're here as the elected board that meets from that national body. Today I would not want you to look at us as three individuals. I want you to look at us as 5,000 pairs of eyes of the volunteers--and I stress the word “volunteers”--who run these harbours across this land. I must say, personally, it's an honour to represent each and every one of them.
I refer you to page five. Osborne touched on this, and I want to reiterate his comments about the positive relationship that we have with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans small craft harbours. It's had its growing pains, but I'm sure all of you are pleased to hear that we work with them very well. There's transparency, there's trust. It's a win-win for everybody. I know they have the passion as well to keep these harbours going. Working with a regional and headquarters staff has been absolutely nothing short of fantastic these days. I think that's evident when we came up with our theme: creating the future together.
Slide six is simply an overview, and I won't spend a lot of time on it, because we are here on behalf of the volunteers. It points out the importance of the Canadian commercial fishery in an economic context of the whole Canadian economy. The one part of this slide that I'd like to point out is that small craft harbours' facilities are often the only visible federal presence in some remote communities, or the only public access to waterways. To me that should be key, as I'm sure it is to everybody in this room.
I refer you to slide seven. This slide simply points out the history of the harbour authority program. It started in 1987, and it points out, through the bullet form, how the program came to be. Note that the day-to-day operations of these harbours all across Canada are now the responsibility of the harbour authorities. I will make a note that the harbour authorities do charge for services to the best of their abilities, or to the best that the condition of their harbours will allow.
Slide eight is an overview of how many harbour authorities there are versus how many harbours there are. It's evident, if you do the math, that there are a lot of harbour authorities managing more than one harbour, and I myself do that. That comes with its challenges, but just to point out the extension to the volunteers, sometimes managing two harbours can be quite a challenge.
Luc and I both used to have hair, right, Luc? Mine has diminished over the years, but it's all worth it.
It also points out that in smaller harbours, the activities are conducted by the volunteer members or by the board of directors. In the larger harbours we have a sufficient revenue base, where we can hire managers and what have you. But for the most part they don't.
The previous slide pointed out the harbour authority day-to-day operations. Slide nine points out the responsibilities of small craft harbours and DFO. They retain the responsibility for the overall physical condition of the harbours, especially with respect to major capital repairs. I will also point out that it's not just wharves and floats, gentlemen, it's dredging, and that is all across the land, from my region at one coast to the other end of the country. Dredging is huge. You could have the prettiest harbours in the world, but if you can't get to them, how in the world...? We're dysfunctional when it comes to that aspect of it.
I don't want to come across as an antagonist, by any means. I want to come here and share a success story of working with Fisheries and Oceans staff, who are doing their part, but I certainly do want to make a point about the funding. I appreciate the announcement that was made this morning. We were not aware of that. But by the same token, it's still, in our eyes, not sufficient to properly sustain the program as a whole--every aspect of it.
With that, I will pass the presentation on to Luc.