Fisheries Committee on June 5th, 2007

[Matthew Bol]

If it's at all possible, yes. It's more difficult in Newfoundland than in Maine to have recreational boaters. In Maine there are a lot of recreational boaters, so you can generate a lot of extra revenue.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

But you still feel the dollars should come from the federal system.

Of course, I'm concerned about the funding of small craft harbours. Listening to what you've had to say, I heard you talk about local involvement, and in other areas you had provincial or state involvement and the federal government pretty well removed. You would never be suggesting that would take place here.

[Matthew Bol]

I think the federal government in Canada has to, if it wants to continue with what I would call “small” small craft harbours, although maybe not in the same numbers, because it's a lot of money to maintain a lot of small harbours, as opposed to rationalizing and consolidating them....

Probably the federal government should continue to play a role in funding. As much as possible it should be long-term funding, such as a trust type of fund that is depoliticized as far as possible and for which the local authorities have to put up some of the capital funding. I know that's going to be difficult for some of them, but maybe then at the local level there will be some pressure to consolidate the numbers of harbours. I have travelled on the east coast and have been on one side of the bay and there's a small harbour and a jetty; I drive less than a mile and there's another little jetty and a little fish thing, and I think, “Oh, both of those are DFO's; why do we have two, when one would do?”

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

We will end it on that interesting observation.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

You would suggest we take one of them out, probably.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

I'm not going to suggest we take one out; the member who represents the two might want to decide which one to take out.

[Matthew Bol]

It's very difficult to do in Canada. Airports face that when we have competing airports close by. Stephenville and Deer Lake are two examples.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

That's absolutely right, and we should shut down Deer Lake.

We'll go to Mr. Asselin.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

In 1999, through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the federal government hired you as a consultant to see what was going on in Australia, in Denmark, in Iceland, in Japan, in New Zealand, in Norway, in Sweden, in the United Kingdom and in the United States. Your mandate was to go and see how those other countries were handling small craft harbours and compare that to what we have in Canada. That mandate certainly cost several thousand dollars, you will agree.

Of course, you wrote a report in which, of course, you made recommendations. Do you feel that your report has done little more than sit on a shelf in the department library? Has it been read, has it been used, have your recommendations been put into effect?

Forgive me if I have grave doubts, because since 1999, even though the harbours belong to the government, it has invested little or no money to maintain its own harbour infrastructure.

Did you provide recommendations in your report? Do you feel that they have been followed? If so, which ones?

[Matthew Bol]

I think I can answer those questions.

The first question you had was on the cost of the study. At the time, it was $25,000. In our thinking, that's not a large study. We did not make recommendations. The report you see is what we produced; we did not produce any management letters or anything else. It was a fairly quick study and it probably took less than six weeks.

There was a high level of interest by the department because the department at that time said it was reviewing its role in small craft harbours. I do recall having a meeting with a director general. I looked in my files today, but I don't recall the name. What they did with the report, you probably know that better than I do; I don't really know. I have not followed it.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I have one last question.

Did officials from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans come with you on the trip to the countries you visited?

[Matthew Bol]

Well, I wish we had visited the countries, but unfortunately, we didn't visit any countries. This was all done through collection and a review of relevant reports and documentation and by identifying and then contacting people in these countries. So it was all done by telephone.

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

I would just like to come back to that answer you gave just now on the local role in the financial management of small craft harbours.

I will add to Mr. MacAuley's comment that, with local port authorities and the involvement of volunteers, there is already a form of volunteer financial management at the local level. But the problem is in the lack of funds. The goodwill, the priority-setting and the effort at the local level all seem to be relatively good. On the other hand, when the time comes to actually do something, there is not enough money.

[Matthew Bol]

Yes, I appreciate that a lot of volunteer work is being done. I read some of the transcripts of the committee, and I was very impressed by that. I also saw there was volunteer burnout.

My thinking concerning ownership of the small fishing harbours, hopefully, at a consolidated level--and this would be a long-term view of some consolidation--is that if I were on a board of directors for an organization, I think I'd want to have more say and control over the long-term development and capital plans of that organization. If at all possible, if I were a large enough organization, then I could go to get some funding outside of federal or provincial levels, and that's an airport model.

So I think if it is at all possible--it may not be possible with the very small craft harbours--and then if you have local ownership, you can raise local funds and get away from the tyranny of lack of capital financing that airports used to see in the past. Now we see that for airports they can raise money and get more revenues, and they're modernizing Canadian airports.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Kamp.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Bol, for your good presentation and your previous work.

I don't have a lot of questions for you, but in those countries you looked at that have a federal system--you referred to central government--in some cases, is it a federal government that takes responsibility for this, or in other cases, is it a state or provincial government? By “central government”, are you referring to both of those or only a federal government?

[Matthew Bol]

In some countries they had three levels of government. They had a central government, a state or provincial type of a government, and then local governments or municipalities. In all countries there's a central government, so I use that term.

I think in places like Iceland there's a central government--a federal government--and then local municipalities. I don't believe there's an intermediate level. That's what I was referring to.

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

In a case like Canada, with a federal system, did you do any thinking about whether there's some value in having, say, the provincial governments, as opposed to the federal government, take some responsibility for small craft harbours?

[Matthew Bol]

I didn't give it a lot of thought at the time. We recognized there was a difference between our system and systems in other countries. I really haven't given it a lot of thought.

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

Okay.

On some of the briefing figures we have, I don't know if this figure is currently accurate, and I don't think it matters too much, but the replacement value of small craft harbours in Canada--what I saw--was $1.8 billion. Let's just use that figure. The department I think determined that approximately 4% should be spent on maintenance, which at that time was $72 million per year.

Did you do any look in these other countries to determine whether they knew the replacement values of small craft harbours in their jurisdictions and whether a certain amount of the replacement value percentage was spent on maintenance, for example?

[Matthew Bol]

No, we didn't get into that kind of detail.

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

I just have a final question.

In Canada, as pointed out already, we have an interesting system where the federal government takes responsibility, but we don't centralize that. We decentralize into the five regions, but we continue to maintain ownership by the federal government of the core small craft harbours. We expect the harbour authority to manage those on our behalf as best they can. I'm curious as to what you personally think of that model.

I think on the one hand you could say it's the best of all worlds, but perhaps you could also make a case that it's the worst of all worlds. We give the responsibility but not the ownership to the harbour authorities. Perhaps the argument could be made that they might approach the job differently if they actually had to own it. I'm wondering what you think about that.

[Matthew Bol]

We found, in our work, that ownership of the harbours was at the local level. It could be a local municipality, a local authority. So that model is prevalent in all the countries we looked at.

My personal idea is that it's pride of ownership, with more involvement in development, operation, because it is now our harbour as opposed to a federal harbour. I personally think that is an important consideration, an important factor, particularly if you can couple it at a local or regional level with the idea that yes, there are moneys available from the federal level for part of our capital cost, but not all of it. I think, therefore, there's even more interest in good, rational plans for developing and maintaining the port. If someone else comes up and says, every once in a while we're going to provide 100% of your capital, then I think there's less interest in maintaining that as well as it should be. That's a personal view I've seen in other consulting assignments.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Thank you for that, gentlemen.

I'll now switch to Mr. Simms, please.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd also like to express my sentiment in your passion to protect Stephenville Airport. Could you please extend the same courtesy to Gander? We would appreciate it, sir, and put you on a pedestal for it.

I want to ask a question that ties into airports as well as small craft harbours. The government divests these properties for the sake of local ownership and so on, but the constant complaint we get is that the government doesn't pay when it continues to use those services. For example, the coast guard arrives in Botwood. It anchors up for a couple of days and it doesn't pay the fee you would put upon the private sector. A military plane lands in Gander and it doesn't pay. The government is compelling these people to search for revenue streams but at the same time is a customer that is, if I could put it mildly, delinquent.

There are other countries, from my understanding, that do provide grants to, say, airports, marine infrastructure--I don't know--for the sake of the emergency services they provide, or for whatever services are required in operations. Are there other countries that do this in small craft harbours, that provide money to them whenever a government boat pulls up to a small craft harbour, or a government plane, a state-owned aircraft, lands?