Fisheries Committee on March 6th, 2008

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

No, I'm just basically saying if we believe the argument that there are too many boats chasing too few fish, we need to reduce the effort. So one of the ways the government can do that is to buy them out. The federal government says okay, Mr. Allen, Mr. Keddy, Mr. Kamp, here's x number of dollars, now out you go--and by the way, Mr. Stoffer, you get to remain.

The reason I say that is because the Mifflin plan in B.C. was similar to that. They stacked the licences and basically you had to eat or become eaten, and half the fleet was gone literally overnight. The people who were left were told that they'd be successful and everything else, but it didn't quite work out that way.

So if government uses direct tax dollars to buy someone out and indirectly benefits someone else, that could be considered a subsidy.

[John O'Neill]

First of all, it wouldn't be indirectly, because under your scenario they would be giving you the money to buy out the licences. Now, as I said--

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

No, not me, the government directly buys them out--that's it, he's gone now. Now I'm left. That means I have more access to the resource. My competition has been bought out.

[John O'Neill]

So it's truly a restructuring and a redistribution of quota.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Yes. The reason I say that is because--

[John O'Neill]

I can see why the expert witnesses were perplexed. That's difficult to say right off the bat whether it is or not.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

The reason I say this is because that's more or less what the Marshall decision did. They bought enterprises from non-aboriginal fishermen and turned them over to communal licences in the 34 bands within Atlantic Canada. Could that be construed as a bit of a subsidy?

[John O'Neill]

I'm not sure of the particulars. I understand that program basically has run its course.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Yes.

[John O'Neill]

We haven't really looked at those programs that are not going on in the future--

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

The thing is, though, it could happen again.

[John O'Neill]

--so I don't know the particulars of how it--

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Your time is up, Mr. Stoffer

Mr. Kamp.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, gentlemen, for coming.

I appreciate the opportunity to continue, I think, to provide some clarity to this. I don't want, in the brief time I have, to talk about the substance of the draft text at this point. Perhaps some of my colleagues will do that. I just want to make sure we really understand the process.

The Doha Round, as I understand it, is divided into five sections, and one of those sections is about rules. Fisheries subsidies is one of the areas we're looking at in terms of rules, and I'm sure agriculture subsidies and so on are part of these negotiations as well. My understanding is that even though there are these five areas in the Doha Round, it's not possible for the rest to fail and somehow some declaration on fisheries subsidies, on its own, come out of this round. My understanding is--and you can correct me if I'm wrong--that the round is a totality and that it either succeeds or fails in totality. Is that right or not?

[Gilles Gauthier]

You're absolutely correct. The WTO operates not only on a consensus basis but also it is what we call a single undertaking. So all the issues that are in negotiation have to move together to a final decision.

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

It seems I'm hearing from some who seem to think that what's being worked on is a fisheries subsidies document, and somehow it could make it if everything else failed in the Doha Round--and certainly it has had its difficulties after the last number of years in reaching consensus on a wide variety of issues. This is only one of them.

You mentioned as well that decisions are made by consensus, so that means if consensus can't be reached, then the round would fail. And is the failure of the round still a possibility, in your view?

[Gilles Gauthier]

It's hard for me to speculate on the outcome here. What I would say is that countries are fully engaged in the discussion. A number of issues are at play, and it is difficult to see how one particular topic can be hived off because it may be of interest to a few members but not to the rest; you need to have sufficient support across the board to try to arrive at a consensus at the end of the day.

The issues are complex, but the effort remains there, because overall I think it is in Canada's interest to have a strong and effective multilateral trading system, since we are one of the largest training nations in the world.

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

With respect to the fisheries subsidies discussions, I assume they've been going on since 2001 as well. Is it accurate to say that the chair's draft text was produced because the group was pretty seriously divided on a number of issues, and it wasn't heading towards any consensus on what the text should be?

[John O'Neill]

That is correct. That's a very concise summary of why it was produced.

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

So he just went ahead and produced something more or less as a discussion document to try to crystallize some of the lack of consensus. In your view, is the group still pretty seriously divided on these issues?

[John O'Neill]

They are probably more so, on some of the issues; yes.

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

There are eight articles in this draft text, and they're doing a run-through article by article. Is that right?

[John O'Neill]

Correct.

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

Are they bracketing and expressing their disagreements?

[John O'Neill]

It has been a process of the members making statements on each and every article and the chair taking notes. There have been a number of calls already for a revised text that reflects the discussions we've had, but the chair wants to complete what he calls his first reading of all of the articles, and we haven't quite finished that in either anti-dumping or in fishery subsidies.