Fisheries Committee on March 31st, 2009

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

That's good, because there's also the boat and Buddy in the back. The partner you have on the boat is a hand who helps you, in many cases, and I'd like to know what happens to him or her in this regard. But also, what is your viewpoint on the FRCC, or your opinion on what a buyout is? And did you have a chance to read the FRCC report when it came out?

[Bobby Jenkins]

No, I haven't read about their version of the buyout. Their version and our version may differ somewhat, but I think at the end of the day, Peter, before we get down to actually buying the licences, a lot of people are going to have to come together to figure out what we're going to do. We're still in the preliminary stages. As I indicated to Lawrence earlier, we don't have the money yet to do anything.

In area 25, in the western end of P.E.I., they have bought 10 or 12 licences. I think they've ironed out a lot of the wrinkles. Some of the stuff they've done I think we can copy; some of the stuff they've done won't work here. So it's at preliminary stages.

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

Now, in terms of buying out the licences, is this to make sure the licence is no longer ever used again? Or does it involve the licence being more or less held for future generations in that particular community?

[Bobby Jenkins]

Our fishermen, when we had the meetings in the fall of 2007, indicated very strongly that when we bought these licences out, they were to be dead: taken out of the system completely, left with no bona fide.... They're done.

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

Thank you. I think that would be the way to go, if indeed it happens.

[Bobby Jenkins]

It's the only way we're interested in doing it.

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

Right. As you know, in Nova Scotia a while back there was a concern about trust agreements, and the previous minister indicated, I think, a six- to seven-year-plan for dealing with them. Can you tell us how many trust agreements you know of on the Island, if indeed there are any, and what your opinion is on maintaining, if at all possible, the owner-operator principle and the fleet separation principle?

[Bobby Jenkins]

I'm only aware of two or three trust agreements. I've never personally been involved in one myself. I have a lot of family in the fishery, but none of them has been involved in trust agreements.

I'm not 100% sure, Peter, how I should answer that question. Some of the guys who got involved in it needed to get involved in it to go fishing—

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

I'm not accusing anyone of doing something wrong. If it's a matter of survival and maintaining your livelihood—

[Bobby Jenkins]

Well, I think in some of the cases that's how it went down; it was a matter of survival and was the only avenue they had to get into the fishery at that particular time.

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

My concern has always been the concentration of the resource into fewer and fewer hands.

[Bobby Jenkins]

Yes. As a bona fide fisherman, a core fisher, I don't really like that. I don't want to see corporations control various numbers of licences and dictate how it's going to be done. I'm not for that, and I don't think the fishermen of P.E.I. are for that.

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

Jim?

[Jim Jenkins]

Yes, Peter. Thank you for your questions.

I'd like to go back to the buyout, the FRCC report.

I read the 1995 and 2007 reports several times. I don't share the same opinion as the FRCC in the 2007 report, whereby they think it should be a self-rationalization program, because they didn't see the positive aspects of it.

I'd like to have them reflect back to between 1975 and 1978. The Province of Prince Edward Island, under the comprehensive development plan, and the federal government bought out 186 licences on P.E.I. I don't think you would find a fisherman in this room or in Prince Edward Island who would say that was a bad move. It was a very positive move. It had a very positive effect. It allowed a few people to go out. They got some money for their outfit and they were able to find other employment and carry on.

The problem I see with the FRCC is that they should be putting themselves in the place of the fishermen and trying to imagine the problems our fishermen today face, the real financial crisis they're in. I think you'll find that a buyout program—and in this particular case, one that is cost-shared, if you will, between the fishermen and the government—has many positive features.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Jenkins.

Mr. Allen is next.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our guests. I appreciate your testimony. It's great to be here today in Mr. MacAulay's riding. You certainly draw a crowd, Lawrence. It's great to see everybody. Small rural communities, that's what this is all about.

I have just a couple of things. I am glad Mr. MacAulay brought up the WTO, because based on discussions I've had, this Doha Round has been going on since 2001, so there's a reason we're in 2009 and we still haven't got agreement. It's for a lot of those reasons we talked about: the importance of our small craft harbours program, as well as the importance of the EI system too, clear across the country. I think what we're going to see is that...certainly I don't believe any different from our minister, who would not be supporting any type of agreement where those things would be in jeopardy. So I think we can put our minds at ease a little bit on some of that.

I have a question on the conservation and protection, Bobby, that you were bringing up. The FRCC report of 2007, in section 7.2, talks a lot about some of the self-policing and some of the issues around management of the stock. When we were on the Magdalen Islands, we had a discussion about this. Some of the testimony we heard is that there is a role for government to play in this, but they also said the fishers are cooperating, that there are efforts to combat poaching—they have 1-800 numbers, and they're actually going into the schools to teach their young kids about the importance of the industry and the mechanisms.

One of the lines in the report said it was suggested to the FRCC that some harvesters set as many as 50% more traps than the allowed limit. So in addition to your suggestions about reserve fisheries officers and that type of thing, in line with the comprehensive approach, what kinds of other things would you suggest the industry could play a part in, if government and industry came together to help police this? What types of things would you suggest you could do?

[Bobby Jenkins]

We had a group of our fishermen from Southern Kings and Queens last year. It came out of our annual meeting; they formed a little committee. I think they had 10 or 12 representatives from various harbours. They met during lobster fishing every two weeks, I think, to discuss what was going on. Their role was that if they knew something illegal was going on, they were going to try to report that to the best of their abilities.

They were working completely on their own time; it was just a volunteer position for every one of them. If governments had been involved in something like that, it could have helped these young fishermen who were starting out, trying to help their industry on conservation and protection. There was no help there from government at all. They just did this on their own. With these guys taking an approach like that, if there was something from DFO to kick in and help by various means, I think something like that would go a long way.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Do you believe that our eventually reaching to get certification of our product...and I think you're right, that's probably in the long run going to be important. Do you think that dealing with some of these issues is going to be important for us to achieve that certification?

[Bobby Jenkins]

Yes, I do.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay. You talked a little bit about the buybacks, and I'd like to get an idea. Can you tell me a little bit about the age profile in your area of the fishers who are currently in the industry and what your ideas are in terms of how we get the young fishers in? We've heard some testimony that if we can get this rationalized a little bit, the return would go up. What other ideas do you have to make sure we get the young fishers back?

[Donald Johnston]

On the buyout aspect of it, we always stated that we buy out the aging fishermen first. There's a large percentage. I don't know if it's 50% or not, but it's over 50% now and there's a very large percentage ready to get out of the fisheries, though.

They would have first crack at the buyout, and then you wouldn't have to replace them into the workforce, which is one of our main concerns, and we never really did anything for the young people. I know there's been stuff done through the association, but our association personally just thought the young fellows would go as they would. It's an open market, but there has to be training and stuff. The first time I sailed a boat was when I bought mine 28 years ago.

But I think the main concern right now is, getting back to the FRCC report, how taking fleets out of the water could not be good for our fishery. I just can't understand how somebody could sit there and make that statement. It is the best thing that could ever be done, and it has been proven in the past. We as fishermen all know that.

On the buyout, we want to buy out the elderly fishermen first, so they wouldn't be taking somebody else's job when they left the fishery, and I think we have the numbers to do that. We are looking at 60-plus that we'd be buying out.

[Bobby Jenkins]

Yes.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Bobby, I'm going to go back to a report you talked about called “Planning for the Future”. You mentioned a few things in that report. Can you elaborate a little on some of the things in that report that would be helpful to the committee for consideration?

[Bobby Jenkins]

We covered the whole buyback scheme of things in it and we covered conservation and protection in that “Planning for the Future” report. I'd have to refer to some of the notes in it. We're going to back to 2007 now—it's been around for a couple of years, Mike. Pretty well everything we discussed with our fishermen at two big meetings came out of that report. The whole thing was really based on a buyback.