Fisheries Committee on Nov. 19th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Yes, you will.

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

Welcome to our witnesses. Before I start, if the witnesses would indulge me for a second, I'd just like to congratulate our new chairman. It's my first opportunity to be at this committee since we've come back, so I'd like to congratulate our new chairman. He'll find that we have a great group here to work with, and it will always be interesting and always be exciting.

To our witnesses, I just want to be clear that although there's not been an increase in the A-base funding, the A-base funding has been stabilized on the $20 million that was scheduled to go out of the A-base funding.

[Cal Hegge]

That's correct.

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

I realize there's a daunting task before you folks, certainly, and before all of us to try to bring all of our core fishing harbours up to snuff. I wrote down your $475 million figure that needs to be spent over the next five years.

I guess my question is--because I've never really seen it laid out, and we try not to be too jurisdictional here--if you look at the east coast in particular, the requirements for the wharfs and the infrastructure, and I guess the state the infrastructure is in, for instance, in Prince Edward Island versus Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, do we have it broken down into provincial and regional jurisdictions--Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, P.E.I., New Brunswick, and British Columbia?

[Cal Hegge]

Are you asking if we have our expenditures...?

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

Yes.

[Cal Hegge]

Yes, we do.

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

Do we have those numbers, and can we get them?

[Cal Hegge]

Yes, we can give you the numbers.

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

With projections on what would be required within this $475 million number? That's what I'm....

[Cal Hegge]

Oh, I see. No, we don't have that. I thought you were talking about our existing distribution, but no, we don't have that readily available.

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

I guess the other thing that certainly would be important is the difference between the various areas that still maintain a significant fishery and areas where the fishery is not as important--now aquaculture may be replacing some of that in certain areas--but on a cost-benefit analysis of exactly where the wharfs are needed the most and where the fishery is most significant. That's not to take away from areas that have important fisheries, but where is the money best spent? Have we ever looked at this on that basis?

[Cal Hegge]

As you know, we don't allocate our funding on an ad hoc basis. We have a certain formula, which has been discussed at this committee before. We like to think we are spending our money against those projects that meet the criteria and represent the highest priority, recognizing that we can't do justice to all the requirements within the program.

As I said to this committee previously, we are going to be looking at our formula. We had been hoping to get additional funding before we do that. If we're not able to increase the pie and we change the approach to allocating the available funding, we're going to have winners and losers if we decide to change the distribution of the funds.

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

I'm being very careful with what I say here. If you have certain areas, southwestern Nova Scotia, for instance, where you have a $500-million or $600-million industry, what portion of the allocation goes to that area? If there's a $4 billion or greater industry across Canada, if you break that up, are we actually putting money where we're getting the most return on those dollars? That's simply based on a business proposition; that's not to take away from one part of the country to benefit another. But it's a question that needs to be asked.

The other question I have—

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Hurry it up, because you promised Mr. Calkins five minutes.

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

Quickly then, with climate change, the northern jurisdictions of Nunavik and Nunavut have more ice-free periods. There are wharfs that need to be built. What other sources of funding, outside of the small craft harbours directorate, can we find? Is that a question of Arctic sovereignty? Is there somewhere we can tie that in to free up more dollars for small craft harbours?

[Cal Hegge]

I'll give you a quick answer. As you know from the economic update, there's a lot more emphasis going to be placed on the north. We're watching that very closely. If there's any opportunity for us to get on that bandwagon with respect to small craft harbours, we're going to do that.

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

You'll crowd on there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Thank you, Mr. Keddy.

Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I certainly appreciate the witnesses being here again. I appreciate the update, as well, on some of the things that have changed.

Mr. Byrne talked about some of these quite large deficits of the needed funding. As far as I can tell, it has been a long process of infrastructure deficits in successive budgets.

One of the things I'd like to talk about is when the small craft harbours directorate started accruing some of these deficits. Has it been this way since the first harbour or wharf was built? When did we get so far behind on this issue?

[Cal Hegge]

I can say that it has been that way for a long time.

I'll turn to Robert, who has been with the program a little longer, to see if he would like to comment on that.

[Robert Bergeron, Director General, Small Craft Harbours, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

The situation has been cyclical. We've had periods when we had high budgets, which were definitely sufficient to maintain our facilities, but then we had the lows.

The last time we had a peak budget was in the early nineties, when in one year we had up to $118 million to maintain facilities. We used this money to do a bit of investment in new harbours as well. We increased capacity here and there, but most of it was used for maintenance.

Since the early nineties the situation has gone down. The low was reached during about the mid-nineties. Since then the situation has improved. We're still not at exactly what we need to maintain facilities, but the situation has definitely improved over the last ten years.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I have a quick question. If I remember correctly, there are five regions and five regional directors for small craft harbours. Is that correct? I believe they report to you. From a structural perspective, is that how it works?

[Cal Hegge]

We have five regional directors. We have combined the gulf and the maritimes regions for small craft harbour purposes. They report to the regional director general or the associate regional director general.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Which region is Nunavut in?