Fisheries Committee on Nov. 5th, 2009

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.

I have a few questions that I want to ask. This has been a very interesting item to hear testimony on. It's like the He Said, She Said movie, everything going back and forth.

Mr. Dean, you said NAFO is so broken that it cannot be fixed, and Mr. Vardy, you said we need to go back to the drawing board for this. You both commented about how difficult it is in the international community to try to get consensus and try to get things done.

How long would that take, and what are the consequences of living with an agreement that is so broken and cannot be fixed? I'm suspecting the fix is not short term.

[David Vardy]

I think this is going to take three years to accomplish, but in the meantime, Canada will have to be very careful not to enter into an agreement to endorse this convention that would weaken our position. We have to put that whole convention on hold, and we have to work with other member countries to deal with this issue and to put it on the table as something that Canada is extremely concerned about.

We have to recognize as well that there are countries other than NAFO members that are fishing outside of 200 miles, and sometimes in the discussion we've been having around this table we may have lost sight of the fact that there are these so-called non-contracting parties. They're not so much out there today, but they have been in the past, and when the fish come back, we're going to have to be very concerned about these parties.

This is something that is probably going to take some time to do and is going to require a political commitment, and it's something that should be done now. The thing is that when these stocks come back, other countries will be poised to take advantage of that restoration. Northern cod is a good example. One of the big concerns I have with the recent decision of NAFO to open zone 3M for cod is that, for one thing, they have ignored the scientific advice and have set a higher quota. The whole opening of a quota in zone 3M, the Flemish Cap, provides an opportunity for countries to grow a Trojan horse. It provides a Trojan horse for countries to fish the northern cod stock in zones 2J and 3L. It is difficult for inspectors to know whether the fish was taken in zone 3L, in the nose and the tail, or whether it was taken on the Flemish Cap. When the fishery was closed on both the Flemish Cap and on 3L, the nose, it was very easy to determine that there was no cod fishery taking place, but now we have made that distinction a little more fuzzy.

The point that needs to be made is that as the fishery starts to rebuild, the pressure on Canada will be extremely great, so before we build the stocks, we have to solve this problem. If we don't solve this problem, the stocks won't recover.

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

This leads me to my next question. You brought up Mr. Chapman, Mr. McGuinness, and Mr. McCurdy. Certainly, there is no question that they share frustrations with the current NAFO agreement. There is absolutely no question. They are on the record on that. Mr. Chapman has been involved since 1977, according to the testimony he gave us, and in the early 1980s for NAFO as well. What I find kind of intriguing is that these people are representing the fishery, and they wouldn't have a vested interest other than wanting to continue to fish, as you guys have said. I would think they would want to continue to fish and they would want to ensure the long-term stocks so that they could continue to fish.

Mr. Vardy, when you talk about the whole sovereignty issue, why would they be so concerned about that intrusion into their territory? They seemed to support this agreement.

[David Vardy]

I would not attempt to try to speak on their behalf as to why they would be supporting this convention. The only observation I would make is that quite often there is a tendency for the industry to support measures that are being taken by government because there is a somewhat symbiotic relationship that sometimes takes place. The reality is that quite often we see Canada supporting measures that are not in keeping with the precautionary principle. That's one of the reasons there's a need for the people who are involved in management decisions to be at greater arm's length from this whole picture.

I made a comment earlier that I thought we were dealing with an anachronism in terms of public administration when it comes to the fishery. In other sectors--the energy sector, for example, in oil and gas, and in the communications sector--we have quasi-judicial boards that make decisions, and the decisions are taken with all the information being in the public domain. In the fishery, there is not the same opportunity for other people to speak up and make their voices heard.

There are times when I think people in industry would like to see the fishery continued, even when the quotas should be reduced, the mesh sizes increased, and things made more conservation-oriented. That's the nature of the beast. The nature of the beast is that business people are concerned about the bottom line, today, and I think there's a certain amount of myopia in that people tend to say they'll worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes. It's in that area that there need to be people who are concerned about the fish.

We once had a minister who said that he was not the minister of fish, he was the minister of the people. What he said was that he was going to make decisions that were in the best interests of the people, which meant he was going to keep the fishery open when it should have been closed.

Sometimes somebody has to look after the fish. Somebody has to look after the interests of the fish; otherwise, we won't have them in the future. What we have to do from a public policy perspective in Canada and elsewhere in the world is make sure there is a good, strong conservation voice being articulated and present at some of these international meetings, so that people who are more concerned with the bottom line don't get preoccupied with the problems of meeting their bottom line today and lose sight of the bigger picture. That's all I can say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Thank you once again on behalf of the committee for taking the time out of your schedules to come and appear before our committee. We really do appreciate your input.

The meeting is adjourned.