Fisheries Committee on May 8th, 2008

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning. We do not want to have to wait for the Auditor General to come to the same kind of conclusion as the one she reached about the Prime Minister's residence at 24 Sussex Drive. For wharves, it is even worse. I have already mentioned that the heart of a community, the heart of a village, is its wharves, and there is no other option. If we had to, we could find other options for the Prime Minister's residence. We do not want the Auditor General to find that the wharves are in ruins, we want something done. They are in ruins because the situation has been deteriorating year after year.

For 2008-2009, we see nothing but divestiture: $10 million over two years, up to 2009-2010. But in concrete terms, there is no more money than there was last year. I can only conclude that the situation is not going to get better, it is going to get worse, and it will cost a lot more to improve it or stop it getting worse yet again.

I was wondering what your intentions are about all that, so that we can avoid such a situation. We are telling you, but if the Auditor General told you, perhaps things would move forward to a greater extent. I hope that this is not the case, I hope that you will take our representations as seriously as you would if they came from the Auditor General. I would like to hear what you have to say about the matter.

[Claire Dansereau]

Thank you. As you can imagine, we take it very seriously. There is a limit to what we can do. Just yesterday, we completely revised our action plans for small craft harbours, internally at least, to make sure that we are as organized as we can be so that we can do the best job possible with what we have.

We always start by planning. Do we have enough information? Are we working closely enough with the communities? I feel that this is one of those areas where we will never have as much money as we need. So it becomes a matter of setting priorities. We have to do our best with what we have.

I do not know if Cal wants to add anything, but I have to say that we take this very seriously.

[Cal Hegge]

We have discussed the situation a number of times. Our approach as a department is to spend our small craft harbour money where the needs are most urgent from the point of view of health and safety.

As you know, we are going to receive more money in the 2008 budget for divestiture and for a new harbour in Nunavut. That will help us, but it is a fact that we lack the resources that will let us improve the situation.

Just as before, we will continue to work closely with central agencies to make sure that they are really aware of the small craft harbour situation.

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

What answers have you given, especially to the people in Quebec? If I am not mistaken, it was last February when they sent the message that they were fed up. Moreover, if nothing significant is done, they are considering ways to no longer contribute to the deterioration of the infrastructure. How do you respond to that now?

[Claire Dansereau]

It is the reality in Quebec, but it is also the reality everywhere, I think. There is certainly a level of frustration. We continue to work with them, and we continue to make them a priority. That is all we can do.

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

This year, in Quebec specifically, the sum of two million dollars was set aside for dredging. To my knowledge, this is the highest amount for dredging ever. Usually, it was about a million dollars each year.

Several examples occur to me, like Pointe-Basse at Havre-aux-Maisons, in the Magdalen Islands. Each year, they need to dredge there. The almost never-ending effort could be stopped by a longer pier or breakwater.

Because you have inadequate financial resources, do you, in fact, have to think in the short term rather than in the medium or long term?

[Claire Dansereau]

As in any planning situation, short term things, the immediate ones, always have to be done. If we are well organized, we can ensure that not all our money goes to the crises and that, little by little, we can fix the problems that will help us in the long term.

Our investment plans are built on that. I cannot say if the individual cases that you mentioned would be priorities. Each year, our priorities are based on health and safety, the environment, and, we hope, on a long-term investment that will allow us to save money.

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

Could you explain the reply that you gave to the Auditor General about maritime fees? I had the opportunity to ask her about that a few days ago. How do you see the Auditor General's criticism, or opinion, on maritime fees?

[George Da Pont]

As we said in our response, we accept the criticisms that have been made. We are in the process of discussing the future and the fees with the industry. We have been trying to negotiate the major issues for over a year. The Auditor General's criticisms dealt more with our information base and the improvement of the links between the costs of our services and the fees. We will continue to make improvements for several years, but we would like to negotiate with the industry that pays the fees.

[The Chair, Conservative, Fabian Manning]

Thank you, Mr. Blais.

Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome to our guests again this morning.

I'm going to start off on small craft harbours. I'm reading on page 26 of the report on plans and priorities. Under small craft harbours it talks about previous benefits. It says:

These benefits have not yet been fully realized. DFO will therefore pursue, as one of its priorities, the sustainability of the SCH Program. To that end, DFO will develop and implement a SCH strategic planning framework....

--and so on.

I am wondering if that is a work in progress. If so, as you know, this committee is studying small craft harbours, and I would hope that whatever strategic plan was there would take into consideration recommendations that were made from the report of this committee. Could you let me know where that's at and whether or not as administrators you're waiting for the recommendations from our small craft harbours study.

[Claire Dansereau]

Cal will speak to the specifics, but I can say that in all of our programs--and you heard me say this when I came to introduce myself to the committee--I view myself as a work in progress all the time, and I view the work of the department as a work in progress all the time, so all of our programs ought to be forever in a state of improvement. We look forward very much to the recommendations that will come from the work you're doing. It will be of great assistance to us. The work you have done in the past has been of great assistance to us.

It is an important source of information and will certainly continue to be added to the base of our work.

Cal, do you want to add some specifics?

[Cal Hegge]

Yes. It definitely is a work in progress, and I agree with Claire's response. We are certainly going to be receptive to both your first report and the ultimate report to give us some guidance in that regard.

We are going to be looking at things in response again to the long-term funding shortfall of this program. What can we do to ensure the money we are spending is going where it's most needed? I think we need, in that regard, to look at the condition of our asset base. We need to look at the impacts of some of the factors that have been mentioned by this committee, notably climate change, overcrowding caused by additional usage, say, of the aquaculture industry, and others. So we're working together with our colleagues in the department with respect to that.

We are also looking at some internal cost efficiencies, and I'll just highlight one. We have been working for the last couple of years with Public Works and Government Services Canada, which does a lot of the contracting, and in collaboration with them over time, we're going to accept additional responsibility to manage contracts up to $400,000 a year, which is actually going to save us money and enable us to turn that around and enhance the program delivery capacity of the department.

These are just some of the things we're going to be looking at in the development of this strategic plan.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you.

I'm going to move on now to aquatic animal health. My question is general, and it was brought on by looking at some of the tables and so on, on page 49, and taking a look at the budget information on page 46 insofar as aquatic animal health goes.

Is that the budget allocation for taking a look at sea lice, for example, on the west coast? Would that come out of there?

[Serge Labonté, Senior Director General, Science Renewal, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

No. We have research programs on sea lice on the west coast as part of the regular science program.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

How much money is DFO spending every year on an ongoing basis researching the effects of aquaculture and sea lice? It's not out of the aquaculture budget; it's out of the science budget, you say. Even though it's a kind of hand-in-hand issue, I'm just trying to get an idea of what the plans and priorities are for DFO in terms of researching sea lice to see if there is any impact on natural and wild stocks.

[Serge Labonté]

I cannot give you the number, but I can come back to you with a specific answer on that.

[Claire Dansereau]

I can tell you it is ongoing. It's a very high priority for us, as you can imagine.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I think it's a high priority for everybody who has a vested interest. Obviously, I think there are some tensions around this particular issue, and I would be curious to see what DFO is doing about that.

[Claire Dansereau]

We agree there's tension, and we certainly agree that the science we've been doing up to now has not given us the indication that the fears people are talking about are materializing. But it requires further work, and we are absolutely committed to doing that work.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I'll let you guys decide who should answer my last question. I would imagine it's probably for Cal, although I'm not sure. It deals with management priorities, human resources modernization.

There were a couple of comments on the Public Service Modernization Act and so on, and it says the department is pursuing initiatives that will...and then it lists a bunch of bullet points. It's on page 27.

One point is to reduce employment equity gaps and the other is to improve union-management consultations and increase the use of informal conflict resolution. I'd be curious to know what some of those union conflict situations are. I don't know where they are in the department. I'd also be curious to find out what the department is doing in terms of addressing employment equity gaps.

[Claire Dansereau]

As you know, employment equity is a very real issue across the public service. None of us feel that we are attaining the objectives we think we should be attaining. I can tell you, every department across government is focusing on this.

Each of the ADMs has within their performance contract some focus on ensuring that the employment equity targets that we've set are actually going to be met, because it's clear that we need to be much more reflective, even at the more senior levels, in Canada as a whole. So that's ongoing.

In terms of labour relations, we have a number of unions, and we have a very active relationship with all of them. Just a couple of months ago, certainly since my arrival, I and the deputy and the whole of the senior management team attended a labour-management forum in which we spent one day together talking through various issues to make sure our working environment is the most productive, so that we're not trapped in little irritations that actually stop productivity.

We do that at the national level, but we do it also at the regional level. I can say that as in all labour-management relations, there are days when things go well and there are days when things don't go so well. And there are days when there are more grievances than others. But by and large--and, as you know, I have varied experience having come from other places--my analysis or view of the department at this point is that it has a very healthy labour-management relationship, which means that productivity is maximized, which is clearly our goal.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

It says “improve”, so I'm certain there are some issues there. Is the department considering things like final-offer binding arbitration? What is it right now? Is it basically just the simple union-administration negotiation process that you would normally find, or are we moving on to some of these more innovative ways of conducting negotiations?

[Claire Dansereau]

Cal has more experience, so he'll answer this.

Collective bargaining for the government is done by the Treasury Board Secretariat. It's done across the whole of government. So we don't make those kinds of decisions; we would participate as a whole. What we do is manage our relationships within our departments.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I see.