Fisheries Committee on April 1st, 2009

[Ashton Spinney]

Yes, we do have predators. The groundfish cod, the sculpins, all of those are predators of lobster. In different areas, the cod will eat a large lobster and swallow it. I personally have opened the stomachs of cod and seen a lobster that would be a pound and a half; and prior to that one being swallowed, I saw another one that would have weighed a pound. They went straight down. The ones that went in first were almost completely decomposed. Well, they weren't completely decomposed, but almost decomposed, up to the one that had been recently swallowed, which was green, as it had just gone into the stomach.

So we do have predators. Yes, we do have natural predators that are there.

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

Is the grey seal a predator?

[Ashton Spinney]

On the grey seal, I'll say this. I bought my first lobster licence in 1957 and have fished out of the same harbour all of those years. Two years ago, I saw my first herd of grey seals in my lifetime. They have spread this far west, and they were there. Now, whether they eat lobster, I do not know. I know they didn't bother my traps to take the frozen herring, the bait and stuff, that was in the traps, but they lived on something, because they're huge animals. They were prolific. Everywhere you looked, they were around you.

If they're living on groundfish, then they're doing tremendous damage to those groundfish stocks. We're talking of animals that are the length of these tables and longer, the males at least. You don't get to be a structure like this—the table—unless you eat.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Spinney.

Mr. Stoffer.

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

No matter how long you're on this committee, you learn something new every day!

Well, Ashton, and others, thank you very much, gentlemen, for coming down and speaking with us today.

Ashton, we've heard about conservation efforts in other areas, such as the Magdalen Islands, and what they're doing in terms of reducing the number of traps per boat. On P.E.I. we heard about some of their efforts, when they talked about the buyback of the lobsters. We heard the average age of the fishermen is in the forties or fifties, and in some cases higher.

We've heard—at least through the media here as well—an awful lot of interest in what's called the government buyout of the licences, not just to conserve the stock, but also to allow the fishermen to retire with dignity.

I was wondering if you could give our committee a short synopsis of what LFA 34's view is on a buyback. How should it work? Who should participate? Who should pay for it? What would be the average cost to either the provincial or federal governments, in cooperation with LFA 34, of reducing number of licences in this area?

[Ashton Spinney]

That is one thing we do not support, not one of the reps, nor have I heard it from any fishermen. They haven't called and said, we should have a buyback.

Our concern is not the buyback, but about making money available so that young people can buy in and purchase the licence or enterprise and have something for the future.

When our licences were valued at about $1 million, and you had somebody coming out of school and going for a couple of years into the stern of a boat to qualify, it was just impossible to even think about getting a licence with that magnitude of cost.

So our major concern is access to funds or capital. I understand the province is doing some of that with its loan board, making capital available. If my memory is correct—I do this by memory, and I apologize if I don't have this right at my fingertips—I think they're looking at a 20-year payback.

That we applaud and are thankful for.

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

So you don't buy into the argument that there are too many fishermen chasing too few lobsters.

[Ashton Spinney]

Let me say it to you this way. When I started out fishing, if you got $5,000 for the year--stock, lobster fishing--it was a good year.

We have seen our industry grow from then to close to a 100-year high. Our industry is in good shape, but we are not going to say to you that we are not going to watch it. We are watching it.

As I said, we are in the process of writing a conservation harvesting plan, and we are looking at doing it for 25 years and putting all kinds of benchmarks in to meet the requirements of MSC and the sustainable fishery.

Now, whether it will go MSC...I can't say whether area 34 will go MSC. That will be the decision of area 34, but we are looking at all the possible avenues, and there may be others on the horizon that will step up and be along with MSC.

What we would like to have go to the eyes of the world and into the marketplace is that we have a sustainable fishery and that we're working to keep it sustainable.

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

My last question for you, Ashton, is asked because we're here. The issue of Georges Bank is discussed again in terms of the rigs and the seismic work and all of that.

I am just wondering what LFA 34's position is on the possibility of oil and gas exploration, aside from testing the possibility of it on the Georges Bank.

[Ashton Spinney]

We do not support any oil activity whatsoever on Georges Bank.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

To Mr. Spinney, Mr. Hines--and I want to add Greg to this--and the people who have bothered to come out today, I thank you. For a B.C. boy who is making his first visit to Nova Scotia, it's truly an honour. We've felt very welcome.

My colleague Blaine Calkins--known as the antelope--and I did a run this morning around Yarmouth; it is April Fool's Day. We were able to breathe in some of the history. We stopped at an Anglican cemetery built in 1806. We're surrounded by architecture. I think most of the homes here were built before B.C. even started. It's really exciting to see what we see.

I'm caught by your last comment, Ashton, where you said that one of your number one priorities is to make money available so that young people can buy in, so that they have an enterprise for the future. Sometimes the best way to prepare for the future is to look at our history.

From what little I've learned, quickly, about Nova Scotia, there was a day when you dipped a basket in the waters and pulled out cod, and that day is no more. I wonder what we can do so that 100 years from now there will still be a lobster fishery here.

We heard from Colin MacDonald that his number one issue is, who is the customer? That comes from Harvard Business School's Ben Shapiro. We have a common professor, he and I. Business is the number one issue for him.

In your opening comments you listed many industrial or business-related issues, but then you got down to the lobsters, and you talked about sustainability and what is being done by LFA 34.

The FRCC differ from you in their assessment. They say they consider that with few exceptions, the current system of input controls is in fact not capable of controlling the increase in exploitation rate. Furthermore, they say the current fishing strategy has no mechanisms to control fishing effort, given the competitive effort drivers. Effective fishing effort and exploitation rates are expected to increase steadily. This puts the ecological sustainability of the resource base, the economic sustainability of the fishing enterprises, and the social sustainability of fishing communities at considerable and increasing risk.

They refer to your great success here in LFA 34 and say that may mask what is really happening, that the high results may come from increased fishing effort, not necessarily from a healthy lobster pack, if you want to call it that.

As MPs, we have to ask what our role is, and it's different from yours. I'm told that the specific objective of fisheries management is to ensure the conservation and protection of Canada's fishery resource, and in partnership with stakeholders to assert its sustainable utilization. That's from the Auditor General's report. That objective has been embedded in the recent fisheries bill, so it continues to be the objective of fisheries management.

To make sure that history doesn't repeat itself, to make sure that your avowed goals for a sustainable fishery are fulfilled, how do you answer the FRCC's challenge, and how do you get away from the fact that for a detractor, much of it seems to be all about business and not about the lobsters?

[Ashton Spinney]

I differ on that strongly, because it is all about lobster. We have made a lot of changes and brought about a lot of things in our industry—as I said to you, our seasons, our traps, our controls that we have in there, escape mechanisms, a return of our berried females. All those things are protecting our industry. I would suggest that you remember, over all this effort you're talking about, that we are at a 100-year high. We haven't decreased. We have maintained and kept going up until just very recently. There is a little anomaly at the top. I'm not sure if it's a 96- or 97-year high right now.

We are looking at that right now. First of all, we think it is no wisdom at all to say we're going to maintain at a 100-year high, but we're looking at it and saying we should be able to keep it at 65-year to 75-year highs. When things start to drop down below this, some major things are going to kick into place that will put more lobsters in the water and give us protection.

As far as the effort is concerned, we're still at the same number of traps. Our boats have increased in size, but that just enables us to fish in areas—so that you'll understand, the collapse in the groundfish, the cod fish, has enabled our lobsters to move out and spread out over a greater area. We fish an area, give or take a little bit, of about 22,000 square kilometres, up to 50 miles from the headland. That is area 34. We're bound on the outside by area 41, in which Mr. MacDonald's company owns the eight licences. By the way, that's the same stock they fish, and they do a selective fishery on our stock outside of what they fish on St. Georges Bay. What's on Georges is understood to be a different population, but inside of that it is primary LFA 34. It's not a fishery out of control, and with FRCC and their situation, they're dealing with lobster in eastern Canada. The difficulty is, when you leave area 34 and go to the other side of the province, the strait and P.E.I. and those areas, it's totally a different fishery. One blanket doesn't cover all.

I understand where they're coming from, what they're writing, but concerning a quota system, we strongly frown on that because a quota system puts people out of work. It's putting enterprises out of work. Communities ease out because it ends up in the hands of a very select few. On the offshore fishery there used to be a lot of independent licences, and now it's all owned by one company.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Do I have more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

You have two minutes.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Do I understand, Ashton, that you and Colin are on opposite sides of the debate? It may seem evident to everybody else in the room, but I was just figuring this out as I was listening to you and to him that he would like to see quality control, which may be a different way of saying increased costs.

Robert, you said that the idea of dockside management would lead to increased costs, which would be downloaded to fishermen, and he probably sees that as a way to concentrate power in the hands of one owner, whereas you want to see a diffusion to keep a more traditional approach to the fishery so that individual operators can afford to get in and stay in.

Is that a fair characterization?

[Ashton Spinney]

Yes. Let me put it to you this way. Within the responsibilities that you gentlemen set in our great country, if the tax dollars stop coming to Ottawa, how are you going to pay the bills? The more people you put out of employment—I shouldn't say “you people” but the more people “we” put out of employment—through the way we approach things is going to take away tax dollars and lessen your ability to meet the challenges of our great country.

The wisdom is to keep people working and earning. That is the approach our inshore fishery has worked on and lived on and strived on, and the fishermen still take that approach.

Does that answer your question?

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

More people will be working, you would say, under your approach than under his.

[Ashton Spinney]

There are 987 licence holders, and generally there are three aboard—a captain and two crew. That's not counting the spinoff in related onshore industries—the bait, the handling, the trucking, and all the other things that take place.

Last December, they were coming in to protest the price of $3 or $3.25 a pound. They came here, and they met. They knew they were going in the hole, but they knew they had to try to make money so they could give something to their hired men so their families could eat. The men went back fishing, knowing they were losing, because we are the economic engine of southwest Nova Scotia. So it wasn't that they decided to stay there till they made so much money. They decided that we needed to try to help, regardless of the situation we found ourselves in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Gentlemen, on behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank you both.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

This is the only lobster fishing area where there is an actual refuge, but nobody had an opportunity to ask a question about it. With the consent of my colleagues, I would like to hear some comment from the fishermen out on the water about their perspective on the refuge.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Go ahead, Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

What do you think of the refuge? There's an area of refuge near lobster fishing area 34.