Fisheries Committee on May 29th, 2007

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

Another aspect that must increasingly be considered is storms. The budget contains no provisions for storms or exceptional situations that might occur. In view of what we know about climate change, high tides and so on, and in view of the condition of certain wharfs, as you mentioned, I imagine that a storm and much stronger than average winds might make a wharf already in poor condition deteriorate further.

When I asked the question the first time, no provision hade been made. I don't mean within the small craft harbours budget, but elsewhere. I was afraid that, if a provision was made there, it might eventually be possible to cancel it, but I get the impression that storm situations are quite exceptional. In view of anticipated climate changes, I feel they may perhaps occur more often than in the past. Has that aspect been evaluated?

[Cal Hegge]

Yes. We have a small reserve in our budget for the situations you mentioned. So we check the amount of the reserve during the year to see whether we need funding. If not, we spend the funds in another way.

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

How much money does that represent for 2007-2008?

[Robert Bergeron]

In principle, the reserve is set at $5 million at the start of the year. But a certain number of projects have been funded out of the reserve in previous years. So, at the start of the year, we have to deduct the cost of continuing those projects from the amount of the reserve. In principle, it's $5 million. Subsequently, if the reserve isn't used for emergencies or unforeseen situations, we distribute it in three amounts in the course of the year: first in June, second in September and third in November. So they are one-third segments at a time. Those segments are granted to each of our regions, and we use that money for regular projects.

[Cal Hegge]

I'd also like to add that if we don't have funding to address a serious situation—I'm speaking hypothetically—we can look at the budget allocated to slippage to see whether we can use funding from other programs. That sometimes happens.

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

What does slippage mean?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Your time is up.

Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I believe it's Mr. Manning's turn.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

I was recognizing you since he had already spoken.

Mr. Manning.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, once again.

I just want to get back to the thought process, I guess, of going into multi-year planning and the tendering process. As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, the budget will be passed some time in the next number of days, hopefully, and the minister will make the announcements into the month of June. And then we have July and August, which is a holiday period for a lot of people, and trying to coordinate some things then.... And then we're into the fall of the year. By the time the tenders are awarded, we're pretty close to Christmas. By the time you start in Newfoundland and Labrador, it will be in January.

I travelled around my riding in January and visited three or four project locations. As a matter of fact, every day I went to visit, for some reason or another, they were shut down that day--too much wind, too much snow, too much hail, whatever the case might be. It's very, very difficult.

This, in my view, drives the cost up of doing the project. I'm just throwing this out and asking for some.... If you have extra insurance that has to be carried, or extra time that has to be allotted to have those projects done, I realize it will cause some concern, but let's look at a multi-year process or at a possibility of doing something that would slow down one year but would hurry up the process for future years in regard to putting some things on hold to some extent. That may not be the right word to use, but what I'm trying to get at is approving the projects that will be approved, getting them approved either in late fall or early winter, to be ready to go to tender, so the construction would start in June.

I'm just wondering if that is a possibility of something that you have been discussing, because this is a serious problem. And I'm sure there's a serious cost associated with it if you add it all up. I just wanted to throw that by, just to get some feedback.

[Cal Hegge]

I'll make a general comment. I think you've pretty adequately described the challenge we have with respect to trying to manage an annual budget, although it's a multi-year process, because we get it every year. But trying to manage an annual budget based on projects that often have not slippage, but delays in them, and trying to juggle the budget so we don't have any amount that we're going to lapse at the end of the year....

And I must say, as an aside, that the small craft harbours budget, given the demands on it, never has a lapse of funds. We utilize the full budget. In fact, we often take slippage, which I referred to earlier, which is money that another program can't spend, and we put it into small craft harbours.

Juggling this to make sure we don't have any lapses and to address the urgent ones keeps Micheline up at night trying to do this properly, or as effectively as she can.

That is a general comment that basically just confirms it is a challenging situation.

Micheline, you could probably add a little more around how you do this.

[Micheline Leduc]

Certainly we're trying to accelerate the whole budgeting process, so we're engaging our regions earlier in the year to start planning for the projects for the next year. We are limited by a fiscal framework that prevents the department from allocating the funds until a certain time of the year.

But what we are doing now--and again, it's as a result of the joint work we've done with Public Works--is engaging them and engaging ourselves sooner in the game to do the planning work earlier, such that we're ready to roll once the project is approved right at that point.

Also, we must take into account at all times the regional particularities, and Newfoundland certainly comes to mind with respect to a shorter construction season, so that needs to be taken into account. Also, what we're finding is we're coming across more property issues and environmental issues, things that are just complicating the planning process.

So we're giving ourselves a little more time to do that right so that we do it more cost-effectively and therefore we're able to deliver more quickly on our projects. But your point is certainly well taken.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

I know the $20 million that was due to sunset this year now is part of the A-base only. It seems we're doing things on an annual basis, and I understand that's the budgetary process. But in my riding, as an example, I may have a major harbour with 150 boats that will need constant improvements, where others are small repair, group repair--maintenance jobs, we call them.

Say I'm looking at a harbour that needs a $3 million or $4 million project. If I go to the minister I don't expect for a second that I'm going to have that done in this particular fiscal year, for the simple reason of fiscal restraint. So I would say to the minister, maybe if we're around, we'd look for it three or four years out, and we'd do so much a year for three years. And then when I sit down with that harbour authority it's not this constant struggle to make sure we're going to get some extra funding a couple of months down the road.

Is it possible, even in your discussions, to look at something where we could say we're going to do this over a three-year period? Is that possible the way the budget is set up now? Can we do that? Because I know it would certainly alleviate some of the concerns that some of the harbour authorities have in my riding if I could get commitments from the department that we were willing to do this.

[Robert Bergeron]

Many of our projects are multi-year, especially major capital projects, projects over $1 million. It's rare that we'll do one project into one year fully completed. It's done over several years, sometimes three, four years, or whatever. Even with the smaller projects, we have a fair number that overlap two fiscal years.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

This is a political question, and if you can't answer it, I understand.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

That was the last question, Mr. Manning. We need to go to Mr. Dhaliwal.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, panel members, for coming.

I am very new, actually. This is probably the second meeting I have attended. I'm not very familiar, but you have touched on the dredging issue, and Mr. Lunney might be very well aware. In B.C. it's a key issue in our part of the riding.

What is your mandate to do the dredging, specifically when it comes to your department's mandate?

[Robert Bergeron]

The dredging we do is on our property. We will dredge the access channels to our harbours and we will dredge the basin, but we don't dredge outside of that. Our mandate with respect to dredging is limited to the water lot that we hold.

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

When we look at the port authorities taking advantage of those situations as well, what is your opinion on whether they should be contributing to the dredging part of the budget that you have?

[Robert Bergeron]

If it's minor dredging, and especially recurring dredging, to the extent that the harbour authority can contribute, we are going to encourage them to do it, but usually we are referring to very small amounts. We don't necessarily require that they contribute to dredging.

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

How much would be the budget in B.C.?

[Robert Bergeron]

The budget...?

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

For dredging.

[Robert Bergeron]

For dredging, I'm not sure. I can tell you the overall budget for small craft harbours in B.C. This year it's slightly over $12 million. For dredging in particular, I'm not sure if we have this information here. We could make it available.

[Micheline Leduc]

We can make it available. What comes to mind is the dredging that we do at Steveston, which is pretty much a regular feature each year when we spend some money there. We do a bit of dredging also in the Fraser River. This year in particular, given the flooding situation, we are still waiting to see but we may have to intervene and do some dredging in the Fraser River.

It depends from one year to another, but generally those are the two areas where we would be involved in dredging.