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.
February 28th, 2008 / 10:30 a.m.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for coming.
I may have missed this at the beginning. Can you just tell us why you're here? You're academics, I understand, and I think, Mr. Sumaila, you referred to a report. Have you written a report on this? What extra piece have you brought to this? Why are you appearing before us?
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes. I was invited by the chair of the committee, I guess, because of our work in this area. I've written a report with my colleagues, written a series of papers on this issue--
Conservative
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I'm an economist by training. I've been to Geneva. I've talked with the Canadian ambassador and ten other ambassadors, talked with Pascal Lamy about our report, presented it to him. I made a presentation to a group of countries interested in this issue. So this is something. This constitutes a big part of my research at the moment, yes.
Conservative
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
It's available in public. I actually sent material; it's just that it came a bit late. So you will get translations of this and references to the work.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Can you tell us, as you see it, if the primary motivation for this discipline is about subsidies, trade, or overcapacity?
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
You know, the WTO initially started mainly about trade, but then slowly the sustainability issue came in, and I think it's very strong and powerful now. They need to conserve our fishery resources through time, yes.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Do you think that's the primary motivation for this?
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
At the moment, if I am to put the two together, it would be difficult to say, but at least fifty-fifty. Conservation has become very important in recent years.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
But aquaculture is not part of this issue at all, is it?
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Aquaculture is not, as far as I can tell.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
You can subsidize your aquaculture industry all you like and impact trade inequities, but they don't care about that at this point.
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
In terms of fisheries, aquaculture is not a part. I don't know for sure, but I believe subsidies to aquaculture will be captured in other sectors, like in the agricultural sector it is. So for the trade side there has to be something on aquaculture too.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
The $20 billion in bad subsidies you referred to, have you in your studies translated that into either landed value or tonnage or anything like that?
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
This $20 billion would be about 25% of landed value globally. When we did a study of deep sea fisheries and the subsidies that go to them, we did a calculation of their profits and it came out to about 10% and the subsidy is about 25%. This is why economists are quite concerned about this. A lot of the activity that leads to overfishing and all that is actually fuelled by these subsidies.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
I'm curious why significant effort wouldn't be put into also addressing illegal IUU fishing, which is a huge problem and a big part of the overcapacity. I just wondered where your biggest return might be.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Finally, how closely are you monitoring Canada's participation in these talks? Do you get to...? Because we talked to them earlier in the week, and in terms of timelines, I think you're creating quite a dire picture for us. I'm not sure we got that quite so clearly on Tuesday. So I'm just wondering how closely you're monitoring what our negotiators are doing.
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I try to follow the discussions and get information about meetings and so on. Yes, I do that; but very closely, no.
As for the feeling I get in Geneva from other country representatives, Brazil, for example, has said that Canada doesn't seem to have a position on this, that it's almost like we're sitting on the fence, not sure whether to go for it or oppose it.
So that's the general feeling I get from the envoys in Geneva about Canada's position.
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
Sometimes when we're discussing this we can get some ideas. If I were in your place, the first thing I would ask Canadian negotiators about is the strange absence of asking for special treatment for aboriginal fishing. It's really very strange. Clearly there are a lot of things concerning artisanal fishing in developing countries, but the idea of taking aboriginal fishing as something special is completely absent from the text. And that's very strange.
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
And I think that is a point on which Canada will get a lot of support within the WTO fora.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Fabian Manning
Thank you, Mr. Kamp.
I'll ask our witnesses if they would like to make some short closing comments and just sum up their testimony.
I realize that “short” is not something you--
Professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, As an Individual
Perhaps my closing comment can serve as an answer to an earlier remark about whether it's a trade affair or an environment affair.
It's clear that it's not a trade game here. The idea is that fishing is a common pooled resource. Like air, it's a universal resource. The idea is to target the issue of the resource becoming threatened. It's clear that's it's absolutely not a trade game. From the point of view of money, it's not really so important in terms of trade flows. But in terms of environmental impact, it's really very important. It's a common pooled resource for all of humanity. You can't say you're going to save a resource here but not there. Everything is connected.
So it's not a trade game; for sure it's not a trade game.