Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Again, it's a pleasure to be here. You've already introduced the people with me. We also have some other officials from the department, in the event there are specific technical questions to which you would like answers. We'll try to make sure we can cover all the bases for you.
Since we met last November, our government has made further strides on behalf of Canada's fishers. I'm proud to highlight some of these achievements before taking your questions.
Let me start with this year's budget. We announced a little more than $581 million for initiatives related to DFO and the health of our oceans. Of that, the largest single investment was in the Canadian Coast Guard. It will receive $324 million over 10 years to buy, operate, and maintain six new vessels. This funding brings our government's commitment to coast guard fleet renewal to $750 million so far.
What this means in total is that four new offshore research vessels and twelve new midshore patrol boats will be on the water by 2014. The vessels will be deployed to their respective regions as they become available. I should add that all these boats will be built here in Canada.
Eight of the new midshore patrol vessels will be primarily for conservation and protection in the Maritimes, Quebec, and the Pacific. The other four are new additions to the fleet and will be used for maritime security in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes region. The four offshore research vessels will be state-of-the-art. Three will be for fisheries science in the Pacific, maritime, and Newfoundland regions. The fourth will be for oceanographic science, based in the Maritimes.
Overall, five of the new vessels will be additions to the coast guard fleet and 11 will replace existing vessels nearing the end of their life expectancies. Plans are under way for a high-speed air cushion vehicle in Quebec for search and rescue.
In terms of fleet renewal, we're doing the right thing. We are adding and replacing resources according to where they are needed most. For example, I also announced a redeployment of two coast guard heavy icebreakers, the Terry Fox and the Louis S. St-Laurent, from the Maritimes to Newfoundland and Labrador. This measure will save Canadians about $10 million in additional infrastructure costs that would have been necessary to keep the vessels in Halifax Harbour. These icebreakers operate in the Arctic from June to November and in the gulf during the winter. There is more than enough wharfage in St. John's and Argentia, and both of these harbours are closer to the Arctic, which is their main service area. So there is no operational need to keep the icebreakers in the Maritimes. Building additional facilities there will be a waste of public money, something the Auditor General has already mentioned.
As you may have seen in the national news, the Terry Fox is in Newfoundland right now to free up some 90 vessels trapped in the ice. Clearly, the operational need is there for the vessels.
Canadian fishers also fared well in other areas of this year's budget, including $39 million for fishery science over two years and $20 million over two years for the Atlantic integrated commercial fisheries initiative. DFO has also received $30 million over two years of the $110 million devoted to implementing the Species at Risk Act, and $9 million of the $19 million for a new oceans initiative will also come our way over the next couple of years to help us deliver Canada's oceans action plan.
We increased the lifetime capital gains exemption to $750,000. Credit for this initiative can certainly go to the committee, and particularly the chair. This will help better rationalize the fishing industry by aiding fishers in retiring on their own terms.
I should point out that the main estimates you have seen tell only part of the story concerning funding to my department. I am tabling two decks that go into greater detail. One concerns the main estimates themselves, and the second updates our expected funding this year, including funding from the recent budget. Of course, challenges and operating pressures certainly remain, and as much as we'd like to, we simply can't do everything everyone asks for.
Let me add something else about another item of interest to the committee—the small craft harbours program. I am pleased to highlight that the $20 million in temporary funding, which the past government scheduled to sunset this year, will be permanently added to the budget. With that money and the additional $11 million provided to the program this year, the total program funding will be $96.8 million. This is good news, and it stabilizes the budget at last year's level, but I'm hoping to secure additional funding to maintain these harbours, which are so vital to our coastal communities.
In relation to fisheries renewal, over the past year I've spent a great deal of time talking to fishermen, provincial ministers, and other fishery stakeholders, and what emerged from these discussions and our own research was that Canada's fishery continues to face significant challenges.
With this in mind, I was pleased to recently announce some of the initiatives we're putting in place to better support the fishing industry. From a national perspective, we announced a new integrated approach to fisheries management that has come to be known as “oceans to plate”. This is an approach where we focus on getting the greatest value for fishermen and for all Canadians from that resource.
Much of the work that lies ahead involves restructuring and rationalizing different parts of the fisheries. Our capital gains tax exemption, which I mentioned earlier, will be crucial to enabling this to happen. Fishermen understand that restructuring and rationalization is necessary for the long-term viability of the industry. And we are looking at different market-based approaches to achieve this in various fisheries.
At the same time, fishermen want to ensure that after consolidation, after rationalization takes place, the licences are in the hands of independent fishermen. Given this, I have taken steps to strengthen the owner-operator and fleet separation policies for Atlantic Canada that help to ensure that the wealth, benefits, and control of the fishery remain in the hands of independent fishermen. So I'm ending a practice called “controlling trusts agreements”. Hopefully, this will, as this committee has dictated many times, clean up the fishery. I think these measures will go a long way toward helping fishermen run their own operations.
I also announced our intention to establish a fishery sustainability checklist for Canada's commercial fisheries that will be used to demonstrate to our markets and to others the sustainability of our fisheries. This will help Canadian fish and seafood to better compete on the world stage, as retailers and consumers are demanding more products that have been certified eco-friendly.
We're also pleased to announce a number of financial measures that will help put Canadian fishermen on a firmer footing.
We'll be reviewing licence fees across the country to make sure our approach is a fair one in light of rising costs to doing business in the fishery.
The Department of Human Resources and Social Development will be contributing half a million dollars toward the fishery skills and training strategy. The strategy will be organized by the Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters and will help support our new oceans-to-plate approach within the industry.
For the Quebec fishery, I'm committed to bringing permanence and stability to sharing arrangements there by 2010. I have also committed to establishing geographic fleet shares in certain fisheries, which will provide further stability. As well, we are planning to conduct a viability study for the offshore northern shrimp industry.
We all know that shrimpers in New Brunswick and Quebec are seeking licence fee relief to help mitigate lower shrimp prices and increasing costs of things like fuel, which is having an impact in all parts of the industry. I can tell you that I'm keeping a close eye on the situation, and I should make it clear that shrimp licences will be part of the national fee review.
I'm also confident that other measures we're putting in place will provide a greater opportunity for fishers to manage their businesses more effectively.
In the spirit of self-determination for fishers, I'm pleased to move forward on several other measures under the federal-provincial fishing industry renewal initiative for Newfoundland and Labrador. These initiatives follow significant consultations with fishery stakeholders and much work on the part of the province and my own department.
To help the industry self-rationalize, we've removed a number of regulatory barriers. For example, we will allow fishers to combine fishing enterprises, and we've introduced a new class of vessel size—let people build bigger boats for safety and for sensible reasons. This will give core fishermen the flexibility to use the boat that best fits their needs. And we'll eliminate volume restrictions in the current vessel replacement policy. We will also help to restructure and rationalize the fisheries inshore shrimp fleet by converting temporary inshore licences to regular ones.
Taken together, I believe these investments and initiatives will give Canada's fishers more flexibility and choice in running their businesses. They will help to make the industry more viable and sustainable for those who rely on it today and in the future.
Let me say a brief word on the international front. This past fall Canada was instrumental in helping NAFO reform itself into a more effective fisheries management organization. This year's season is well under way, and I'm very proud of the fact that there hasn't been one citation issued to boats for overfishing or misreporting the catch. They can no longer afford to do so, thanks to the tough sanctions we helped realize. It is real progress.
What lies ahead? The main priority is Bill C-45. Many of the changes it proposes to the Fisheries Act will help support our goal of improving the economic viability of Canada's fishery, and it will help to make fisheries management in Canada more inclusive, accountable, and transparent.
Right now there's a hoist amendment before the House that will effectively kill the bill. It would not buy more time for further consultation, as has been suggested. It takes the bill out of commission completely.
We've been accused of not consulting enough on the bill, when extensive consultations on a renewed Fisheries Act have in fact been ongoing in the department for years. This includes hundreds of fisheries consultations and information sessions from coast to coast. Let me add that the text of the bill has been publicly available since December 13.
Our goal will be to get the bill into committee so that members can review it clause by clause to ensure it will provide the modern legislative framework we need for a sustainable fishery well into the century. Nothing is ever so good that it can't be improved. I'm willing to work with anyone who cares as much about the fishery as I do to improve that key piece of legislation. If we can't have the best piece of legislation, it's nobody's fault but our own.
I again thank the committee for inviting me here today, and I'd certainly be pleased to take your questions.
I hope we've impressed upon you what the government is doing and that we're doing it in the best interests of Canadians. As I've always said, you can do so little alone, but through working with the members of the committee and others interested in the industry, we can do a lot.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
