Fisheries Committee on May 29th, 2007

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

That means you have not allocated any money for this year for those situations in the Fraser River.

[Micheline Leduc]

Oh, yes, absolutely, and actually an announcement was made not too long ago. Mr. Randy Kamp made an announcement to address the flood control mitigation in the Fraser River. I think it was for $550,000, of which some portion of the money was going to repair the shear boom and do some dredging at Steveston and the Fraser River.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Carrier.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

On page 5, you talk about budgets totalling $114 million a year for maintenance and recapitalization. If I understand correctly, this is for essential harbours. Does that mean that you have no budget for harbours deemed non-essential?

[Cal Hegge]

No amount is set aside for non-essential harbours, but, depending on the situation, if matters of health or safety are involved, for example, we can allocate a portion of our budget to non-essential ports.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

So you evaluate the situation on a case-by-case basis to determine whether there is really a critical need.

You talked about an update going back to 2004 and 2006, designed to reflect the increase in the value of assets and construction materials. Was an evaluation also conducted in the field? As my colleague emphasized earlier, repairs that are not made for lack of a budget necessarily result in additional damage. So, from year to year, your evaluation of maintenance costs should take that into account. You yourself say you want to stop the deterioration.

Are you aware of that situation, and are you trying to establish the required budgets taking into account the deterioration that is ongoing?

[Cal Hegge]

I think so, but—

[Robert Bergeron]

The $114 million amount is a budget that is necessary for us to maintain, from year to year, all the essential fishing structures included in the program. If we had that $114 million tomorrow morning, we would be able to stop the deterioration, but we wouldn't be able to repair all the facilities that are in poor condition from one day to the next. In 2001, we stated that it would be necessary to make repairs totalling $400 million. We haven't really done a case-by-case breakdown since then to determine whether that amount has increased to $500 or $600 million. We've only done updates to reflect inflation.

Now we're in a position to say that approximately $500 million would be needed tomorrow morning to really restore all our facilities to good condition. The $114 million would enable us to have a self-sufficiency budget. We could stop the deterioration and subsequently maintain all our facilities properly, repair them as necessary until they reached the end of their economic life. Perhaps all our infrastructure has to go through a full life cycle before we can repair all our facilities.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

It was determined that certain harbours were non-essential. Did the department determine that they were non-essential or did users contribute to that evaluation? Have you received a lot of requests, without however granting them, from those local administrations that would like to be included on the list of essential harbours?

[Robert Bergeron]

Recreational harbours are included in non-essential harbours. In 1995, the government decided that the harbours program would divest itself of all those recreational facilities. That decision was communicated to everyone. I believe that people in all the communities that have recreational harbours know that we want to divest the facilities in question.

As regards the fishing harbours that we consider non-essential, I would say that the vast majority of the 172 harbours that we must still divest have been the subject of discussions with the communities concerned. People know that we want to divest ourselves of them. The problem we're currently facing is that we don't have enough funding to expedite the divestiture of those facilities.

However, in the case of a certain number of communities, we haven't yet really spoken with users. So they don't necessarily know that we intend to divest those facilities. Note that we're talking here about facilities where the activity level is really very low. In general, they are facilities that are in quite poor condition.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

You said that 172 harbours were considered non-essential?

[Robert Bergeron]

Yes, and we want to divest them.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

To your knowledge, in how many cases do the people from the community not approve of that evaluation and would like to convince you to consider their harbour essential?

[Robert Bergeron]

In a little more than 50 cases, the decision to proceed with divestiture is not necessarily final. We intend to do so, but we haven't really started discussions with the communities with a view to making a decision. The divestiture of a harbour is a decision that we make together with the communities concerned.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Merci, Monsieur Bergeron.

We ran out of time about a minute ago.

If we could have a point of clarification before we go to our next questioner, you stated that the harbour maintenance program was funded in 2007-2008 for about $82 million, and we would require about $114 million in order to really do all the maintenance we need to do. If we did more maintenance, would it also increase the other numbers for the salaries and benefits plan, the harbour operations program administration, and the divestiture dollars? Would they automatically increase proportionately?

[Robert Bergeron]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Okay. That was my point of clarification. Thank you.

Mr. Lunney.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm still working on these figures, trying to reconcile them and understand them. I think there's still some confusion around the table about these $82 million, $114 million. The $82 million is on the wish list--that's not there, right? That's what I asked the last time. The $82 million would be to top up what we're short in the small craft harbours budget. Is that just to meet operational?

[Cal Hegge]

There's a coincidence of numbers here. The $82 million on slide 2, for example, represents what our harbour maintenance budget is for this year. There's a second $82 million figure at play, and that's what we figure we would need over five years to divest of the non-essential recreational harbours. So they're totally distinct figures.

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

Okay. So that's $82 million a year—

[Cal Hegge]

This is $82 million a year—

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

—times five, for the $400 million, roughly.

[Cal Hegge]

No, this $82 million in our base budget would continue on—well, it drops a little bit for next year and subsequent to that, but that's in our A base. That's what we currently have for maintenance in our budget. It's not enough, as we've said, but that's what we have.

The $82 million would be a one-time amount over five years; $82 million would be the total. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's $82 million over those five years that we would use to divest of the 354 harbours. But we don't have that. Because we don't have that, what we're doing is picking away at it piecemeal by diverting $1.5 million out of our existing budget for them.

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

Mr. Bergeron a few moments ago referred to an estimate in 2001 of $400 million over five years to complete the divestiture program. No? That was to bring the harbours up to operational standards.

[Robert Bergeron]

Yes, it's to bring in all the core harbours up to standard. We would have required, back in 2001, $400 million in order to do this.