Evidence of meeting #15 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was wto.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
No. The government doesn't pay you anything, so it's not a subsidy.
NDP
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
No, you yourself have to receive the subsidy.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
But the reality is that I'm getting a benefit because my competition has now been bought off. Would that not be considered a subsidy?
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
No, it's not a subsidy, because it's something given by the new conditions of the market. It's not something that is due to a direct payment by the government.
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
My colleagues have written a lot about buy-back subsidies, actually. The way to make it not a subsidy, for sure, is to internalize the buy, so the one who is remaining should pay those who go off.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
That's not what's happening, though. I'm not losing a penny of this; the taxpayer is. I'm profiting from it because my competition is gone.
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
So it's a subsidy.
NDP
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
If your benefit comes from the new conditions of the market due to what happened, there is no subsidy.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
I'll let you two work that out between yourselves.
My other problem is indigenous exemptions. I don't see anything in the text. Why?
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
You're right.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
If you're in Nunavut right now, and you're an Inuit fisherman with a high cost of fuel and everything else, under no circumstances can you make a profit catching fish if you've paid for everything all on your own. You need government assistance to be able to do that. Yet companies can buy their gas in the Faroe Islands, come up the coast to the OA-OB line, fish for turbot, and go away again. Yet if we assist our fishermen who have adjacency rights to the fish, that could be considered a subsidy, and these are indigenous people.
Why would there not be exemptions in the text for indigenous people, our first nations people? For example, the Marshall decision, which allowed almost $750 million to buy out non-aboriginal fishermen, to take their enterprises and transfer them over on a communal basis to first nations people--is that considered a subsidy?
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I think you are touching on a point that Canada can make strongly at the negotiations to include some exemptions for aboriginal fisheries--
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
Okay, you're saying they might, but we've only got two months to go.
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes, this is the place to push. That's what I'm saying.
NDP
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
No, no. Push the negotiators, the countries, the WTO, to put something in explicitly for aboriginals. Two months maybe--
February 28th, 2008 / 10:30 a.m.
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
I agree. I agree with you that it's a strange aspect of how the draft text.... The only way for aboriginal people, as I see it now, is to say that what they fish is not marine capture; it's a delta or a river or something like that.
As I told you, everything with deltas or rivers, internal waters, is not affected by the draft text.
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
Oh, yes, yes, that.
NDP
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
Yes. Everything concerning artisanal fishing is in the box for developing countries.
I agree with you that it's strange.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
Two thing, then: figure out that buyout subsidy for me later on, and he can get back to us on what the consensus is; and two, do everything in your power to protect our first nations people in Canada.
Thank you.
