Fisheries Committee on Nov. 19th, 2007

[Micheline Leduc, Director, Harbour Operations and Engineering, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

I don't have the detail with me, but I think about seven harbours were receiving funds from that $2.85 million. A number of those were new projects and some of them were contractual carry-overs.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

What would have been the source of delay? November's a pretty tough time to do construction projects in the Gulf of St. Lawrence or in the northeast Atlantic.

If there was to be new construction and authorization was being given to proceed to a contract, what would have been the source of delay for the announcement to occur on November 16? I think that was the exact date. Not a huge amount of actual construction can hit the ground at that point in time on the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the northeast coast of Newfoundland.

Would you be able to comment on that?

[Micheline Leduc]

Actually, the projects were approved earlier in the year. I guess the minister's office chose to make the announcement in November. But all of those projects were approved earlier in the fiscal year, and therefore those projects were commenced earlier in the fiscal year. For those projects that were already in progress, it was simply a continuation of the projects.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

In terms of the management cycle, are there any other projects that have been forwarded by regional officials and are being mused about by the small craft harbours HQ, still looking for funds, or have we now completed and exhausted the funding level for fiscal year 2007-08? Or are there still approvals or projects that are awaiting consideration?

[Micheline Leduc]

All the funding has been committed to date, although there might be some approvals or announcements that still remain to be made publicly. The budget for small craft harbours has all been committed.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

What would be the cause of the delay in the announcement of those projects? I assume that you cannot proceed with contractual authority to proceed until either the announcement is made or the minister signs off on it.

What you may be indicating--you could be clear to the committee.... Are there projects that could actually be authorized to proceed within this fiscal cycle, within this fiscal year, that have not yet been authorized to proceed? We're at a situation where it's November, so we actually have to spend funding within this fiscal year. However, because the approval process has not been completed, are we facing a crunch that those projects may not actually be undertaken?

From a project planning, construction, and project management cycle, if that were to be the case, I would assume we're not working with a best practices model here. The delays would cause some concerns to those involved in the contracting and construction processes.

Would you be able to comment on that?

[Cal Hegge]

I don't think that's a—

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

We have time enough for a brief answer to his question.

[Cal Hegge]

I was simply going to point out that we have an annual expenditure plan that would include most of these projects, if not all of them. As Micheline said, I think there's sometimes a bit of a delay in terms of when the project is actually announced and when the work is actually started.

The other thing I would mention in terms of our budget is that we do have some storm damage assessments that have come in recently, because of storms in various parts of the country. We are looking at how we're going to fund those, as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

Mr. Blais.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Here we are back at work; once more into the breach, as they say.

First, for the record, I would like to express my disappointment at not seeing the deputy minister here today. You started by saying that this matter was a priority for her. It is a priority for us too. When a matter is a priority, we act accordingly. I am disappointed that the deputy minister can only grace us with her presence in December. I will be able to tell her so personally, but I would also like to make it known today that, in my opinion, it makes no sense.

I know that the committee and people who live this situation every day have worked diligently to make the minister aware. I feel that a significant level of awareness has been reached in the last few months. I saw this as positive, but I am beginning to doubt whether the minister is really interested in moving the matter forward. If the new deputy minister is not interested either, that is not a good start. I hope that she will be able to answer my questions on the subject.

But I feel that the questions from my colleague and your answers attest to the fact that, without a massive investment, the situation is going to get worse. In other words, what cost $400 million in 2004 now costs $480 million according to your estimates. I would suggest that it is even more. So the situation is getting worse because not enough money is being spent on maintenance. I see that as irresponsible. In a way, the inevitable is already happening. Wharves are closed and out of bounds to fishing vessels because of concerns that they are not safe. Fences have been erected as a result.

I am not going to ask you to express your opinion on the matters that interest or concern the deputy minister. But I would like to know if it is your impression that we are heading for the point of no return if changes are not made.

[Cal Hegge]

I always prefer to be optimistic. It is true that we are have a clear and serious lack of resources, but we continue to work closely with central organizations like the Treasury Board. I feel that they are aware that this program lacks resources. I cannot say that we are going to get more money in the immediate future, but that is always our expectation.

As the chief financial officer of our department, I can say that we are short on resources in several other areas of our capital budget. I think that this committee is aware of the situation. It is not as if we had the flexibility to transfer funds from one program to another, for example.

I would like to repeat one thing that I said at the beginning: the deputy minister is well aware of this program. I have personally spent a number of hours with her explaining the problems and briefing her on the challenges. She considers the program one of the department's key priorities. I hope that she will have a lot to say when we appear next time. That will be on December 5, I believe.

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

If we have time for her.

As I look at the small craft harbours funding problem, it seems to me that there are six places, or areas, or envelopes where we ought to be investing. There is the area of maintenance and repair, of course, which is very important in its own right. There is the question of Nunavut, which takes up $49 million according to the figures I have seen. There is the divestiture program which once, let us not forget, was $61 million but is now up to $82 million, a lot more money.

In another envelope, we have development issues. We talk about maintenance and repair, but not about development, except for Nunavut. I would also like to talk about development, both in Quebec and elsewhere in the country.

We must keep two other concerns in mind. First, there is climate change and its effects. You know as well as I do that the situation is getting worse, and without immediate action, it could get dangerous. Also, as Mr. Byrne mentioned, the present fleet in comparison to what it used to be. I imagine that that is also a factor in the budget.

Do you see any other areas that should be considered in an exhaustive study of funding needs for small craft harbours?

[Cal Hegge]

I feel that the list is just about complete, but I would add the funding necessary to provide additional support to our harbour authorities. The amounts are not as large as in other categories, but I think that more support is needed in that area. With that addition, the list is pretty complete.

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Thank you, Mr. Hegge and Mr. Blais.

Ms. Bell.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm sorry I wasn't here last March to hear the discussion, and I haven't had a full briefing on this subject. But I come from the west coast, and I just want to make sure that the programs apply across Canada on all three of our coasts--west, east, and north.

As to the divestiture program, is that the program that's been going on for a number of years to divest the government of small wharfs such as Denman Island, Nootka Island, and those places I represent?

[Cal Hegge]

The divestiture program was basically introduced during the time of program review in about 1995, when it was agreed that we would eventually get out of the business of recreational harbours and non-core fishing harbours across the country.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

We've lost some capacity in our small communities because we cannot afford to maintain the wharfs and they have fallen into even further disrepair. I know there are many organizations trying to get some funding from the federal government, as well as the municipalities and the province, to bring back some sorts of wharfs to our small islands, which are growing rapidly but don't have access.

Is there money in here allocated toward any of that, or would that be another program?

[Cal Hegge]

If I follow you correctly, I can say categorically that our existing budget is virtually dedicated to those approximately 750 core fishing harbours I alluded to.

We continuously get requests from other well-intentioned groups that would like federal funding to enhance their harbours or wharfs, but unless it's a scheduled harbour and part of the core fishing harbours we unfortunately have to tell them we don't have the funding for that. So if what you're alluding to falls into that category, unfortunately we do not have any resources to do that.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

So the divestiture program is still going on, and you're trying to get the small craft harbours into a state of repair that someone would actually want to take them over.

[Cal Hegge]

Yes, and we're prepared to divest ourselves of them for a very nominal fee. We have kind of a priority order for the groups we would look at divesting to. We have to consider the federal government first, the provincial governments, municipalities, aboriginal, not-for-profit, but we have divested and will continue to divest ourselves of a number of harbours, of which we no longer have a need, to interested third parties for nominal fees.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

So with what's remaining then, there is obviously a huge funding shortfall in what's required, from what I understood in your document, and also an issue of volunteer fatigue. I just wondered what's happening to address that aspect of it.

[Cal Hegge]

On the volunteer fatigue part, I think we have, as was represented by the National Harbour Authority Advisory Committee itself when it was in front of the committee last March, a very good partnership. Both parties to this partnership recognize the challenges of the program. We meet regularly with the executive committee, with the advisory committee.

Coincidentally, we are meeting with the National Harbour Authority Advisory Committee this week here in Ottawa. That's made up of 15 members across the country, and we do what we can with them. We have regular workshops. We provide the tools we can, maintenance manuals, etc. We provide sessions on some of the environmental concerns with respect to harbours, which are increasing. We provide whatever training we can within our limited budget.

We would like to be able to have, as I said earlier in response to Monsieur Blais' question, some additional funding--it's not a huge figure--to be able to put forward to enhance some of the issues with respect to the harbour authorities, and to perhaps help them with succession planning and additional training. There's a very low turnover rate among these 5,000-plus volunteers that I mentioned, so working to bring in some new blood, if you will, and finding ways and means to help them in the volunteer work they do is something we would like to do a better job of.

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Thank you, Mr. Hegge, Ms. Bell.

Mr. Keddy.

Just note, there are ten minutes for this side, and they're going to split the time between Mr. Keddy and Mr. Calkins. It's five minutes each.

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

I will save five minutes for Mr. Calkins.