Fisheries Committee on Feb. 5th, 2008

[Jaypetee Akeeagok]

Yes. I would like to indicate to you once again that we are extremely excited to try to set up a deep-sea fishery, or even a test fishery here in our community, which we hope will start this spring.

But going back to small craft harbours, there were some studies done in the past. In this community we are not looking for something extravagant; we're not looking for $10 million. We're looking for a facility that can provide protection for domestic boats from strong winds. I believe the largest boat in this town is 30 feet long. We need to maintain our hunting to put food on the table, and we have absolutely no shelter for our boats when the seas get rough. We cannot order any trailers because they cost too much, so a lot of the bigger boats are just dragged up on the shore when that happens.

We are asking for funding to be made available to put up shelters in order to maintain our livelihood and develop a fishing industry in the future. The sealskin industry, our renewable resource, has collapsed, so we are looking for different avenues to maintain the population here in our community.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Calkins of the Conservative Party is next, for 10 minutes, please.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I certainly want to thank all of our guests for coming today and for being online. It certainly is very interesting for an Albertan to hear some of the perspectives on what is happening across our great country.

I have a few questions, and then I'll probably share some of my time with Mr. Keddy.

As I look at where Resolute and Grise Fiord are, how much of an open-water season do you have? What kind of fishing season are we really looking at here for deep-sea fishing and the inshore fishery?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Go ahead.

[Jaypetee Akeeagok]

For this community, in terms of the summer season or boat season, we are looking at from July or early August to early October. That is our open season for boats, but our open seasons are sometimes longer. However, because the ice patterns are changing, sometimes the access to Jones Sound becomes blocked from multi-year ice that is being dragged down here from the Kane Basin in the North Pole area.

In terms of inshore fishery, we are proposing to do ice fishing, as they do in Cumberland Sound, in Pangnirtung. We would have a longer winter season because of our dark season up here. If that goes as planned, it would be from roughly the end of February to June.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

[Tommy Kilabuk]

This is Tommy from Arctic Bay. Can I please respond to that?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Certainly.

[Tommy Kilabuk]

Thank you.

Our season usually starts around June, and then ice starts forming around the end of October. It seems as though the global warming is affecting us. It used to start freezing towards the end of August, and it would be frozen in September, but global warming is also affecting our community, and we're feeling every bit of it in our community.

To add on to why the small craft harbour is needed in our community, the time limit that we have and the amount of fishing the ships would have up here would be crucial--instead of travelling to Greenland, where they would unload and come back to our area. That would take a bit of time from fishing. If we had a small craft harbour in our community, that would make unloading quicker and they could go back to their fishing area. So in that sense, it is crucial to have a breakwater in our communities because of the time span that we have for the open water.

Thank you.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you very much.

That leads me to my ultimate question.

Obviously for the winter season the freezing capacity is built right in. In the ice-free season, if these wharves were built, you'd obviously have to have processing and freezing capabilities if you're not going to have them on the boats.

My understanding is that there are a couple of boats leased by the fishing organization up there, and they're freezing right on the boat. Is it a quick freeze on the boat? If that boat were able to make port some place on Canadian soil, there would have to be the facilities and infrastructure in place to off-load and keep that frozen. I'm wondering if anybody has looked at what that would cost over and above building some of these wharves and breakwaters. Now we're talking about not just building wharves. That's just the first part. The next part is all the other accompanying infrastructure, especially if we're going to move into any type of processing or pre-processing before it's shipped into the markets, which I believe you, Mr. Earle, indicated were in the Far East.

Has anybody looked at that? Is there any information on that?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Mr. Earle, do you want to respond to that?

[Harry Earle]

It really hasn't been studied thoroughly, but the principle of having isolated fish plants serviced by fishery boats has existed in Newfoundland and Labrador probably since the turn of the previous century, for 100 years perhaps, along the south coast of Newfoundland, where fishery boats have come into the fish plants and picked up the product and bring it to Boston ports. So we envisage the same type of structure, where you would have refrigerated boats pick up the fish and bring it down to St. Anthony and eventually, say, to Montreal, which is an international container port. At the same time, when you're heading north, you'll bring up supplies if you're empty.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

But many of your smaller--

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

You have three minutes left.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Gerald.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

Mr. Keddy.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

You share time almost as well as I do.

I would like to thank our witnesses for appearing today both by conference call and here in the conference room. I have a couple of quick questions.

I'm just trying to figure out some of the logistics here. I've been at a number of committee hearings at which we've talked about small craft harbours taking some responsibility for the north. I'm trying to get a clear picture of this situation as it exists on the ground--or on the ocean, if you will--today. My understanding right now is that there are no small craft harbours inside of Nunavut. Pangnirtung is, I think, the only community with a proper harbour and a wharf at the present time.

Can you just quickly tell me if that's correct?

[Lootie Toomasie]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We've been looking at which communities have the high and low tides. Some of these communities have water levels--

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

I'm going to interrupt for a second. I don't think you understand my question.

As I understand it now, there's no small craft harbours presence in Nunavut.

Mr. Earle is nodding his head yes.

[Lootie Toomasie]

Thank you. That's right.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

I'm assuming the five communities we're discussing today all have a reasonable tide. You started to talk about the tide and the current--a reasonable tide and not too many knots at sea.

What's the average tide in your community, Mr. Toomasie?

[Lootie Toomasie]

The tide in my community is a bare minimum compared to.... You have seen the current level. It's very minimal. It's something like four feet above.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Okay. Your concern is not the tide or the current; it would be ice conditions.

[Lootie Toomasie]

In the last few years the ice has started to disappear at the beginning of July, and it freezes up again in the second week of November.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

I'm know I'm running out of time, but I have a question and a statement.

Certainly the federal government has responsibility for the north. We understand that, and we need to work in partnership with Nunavut. It seems to me that the request is reasonable enough. I realize that some department has to take responsibility for it. I don't know if that's small craft harbours branch or Indian Affairs and Northern Development, because it really is a northern development issue.

There's a greater issue that maybe we should discuss at another time. We've discussed around it several times. We have Canadian boats fishing in the high north—a number of them from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia—and they're landing fish. We're freezing them at sea, landing them, and shipping them out of Greenland when we could be landing and shipping them out of Nunavut. The communities themselves are a long way from being able to bring the infrastructure in where they can fish that quota themselves. But at the end of the day, that's what's needed. There is a great distance from where we're starting to where we want to end up.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bill Matthews]

I don't know if anyone wants to respond. If they do, please move quickly, because we're running out of time. We have to go to the next round.

Mr. Earle looks like he wants to answer.