Evidence of meeting #43 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was convention.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Tilly O'Neill-Gordon Conservative Miramichi, NB
We need people like you to take an interest in our communities, so I'm sure our government appreciates your contribution.
On Tuesday we heard from Gus Etchegary of the Community Fisheries Alliance. Are you members of his group? Do you support the goals of this group to abolish NAFO?
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
Certainly, I am a member of the group and I support the negotiation of a new approach to NAFO. NAFO, in its present form, should be totally changed. Whether we say that NAFO has to go or that NAFO has to be totally transformed becomes a semantic question, but some of the things in this provision are very difficult to accept.
In particular, I want to make reference to the fact that we have an objection procedure. There's an attempt to deal with the objection procedure in article XIV of the convention. It provides for a panel to be established, and there's a very complex, lengthy procedure for the establishment of the panel. There are two things in particular about this. One is that it goes on so long that the final outcome doesn't actually impact on the fishery until the fishery is over. The other thing is it's not binding. This is not a binding approach, and that's critically important.
Now, the other thing I wanted to say, just to finish up on that, is that you don't have to file an objection procedure. Most of the overfishing that has taken place over the last 30 years has been done without filing any objection procedure. Quite often, states that want to overfish simply go out and do it without telling anybody, and we don't know until after the fish is taken, until the end of the season.
So even if we had a binding dispute resolution system, which we don't have, we would still need a mechanism to deal with the issue of overfishing without the dispute, the objection procedure, being filed.
Those are major issues.
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, I am a member of the Community Fisheries Alliance. I'm here today basically speaking as a private citizen, not in my capacity as a member of the alliance. I support the representation that Mr. Etchegary made before the committee. It simply reflects, as I indicated earlier, a genuine concern that given Canada's role with respect to the principal coastal state in the NAFO convention area, Canada can do better in the language of this new convention. I really think that.
Conservative
Tilly O'Neill-Gordon Conservative Miramichi, NB
We also heard from Phillip Saunders, the dean of Dalhousie Law School, that without NAFO the north Atlantic would be unregulated. Is an unregulated zone, in your opinion, better than NAFO?
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
In my opinion, there has to be some form of regulation. Custodial management basically makes the coastal state the lead agency with regard to management of the zone, with involvement by some form of regional fisheries management organizations, which is radically different from the way NAFO operates now, recognizing the non-reciprocal rights or fishing activities of other countries.
But to answer your question, no, I don't think it is an answer to leave the zone unregulated. You cannot have an unregulated zone. There has to be something in place. I think it would be unrealistic for us to think that we could put any new solution in place overnight. This has to be done over a period of time. And if we were to withdraw from NAFO, I think we would need to serve notice that we were going to withdraw from NAFO and would be taking a different approach to the management of the stocks on the continental shelf. We would have to be very clear to everybody, to the international community, on exactly what measures we were proposing to take.
I think it would be imperative that Canada have designed an alternative to NAFO, and the alternative to NAFO has to be able to remedy some of the shortfalls in NAFO. It's something that's needs to be done, and it needs to be done quickly.
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, I read the transcripts of Professor McDorman and Mr. Saunders before this committee. Mr. Saunders spoke at length on custodial management, and I may have misread the transcripts, but I think his understanding of custodial management in the way that we have defined it was flawed.
He basically indicated that Canada would assert management rights over the resources beyond 200 miles, the straddling stocks, and that essentially what this would amount to--and I'm paraphrasing--would be a resource grab for Canada. In fact, I think his words were that it would be a huge one for Newfoundland and Labrador.
That is totally wrong. The only benefits that would accrue to Newfoundland and other provinces that have fished on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks through the concept of custodial management as we have defined it would be resources that would become available as a result of stock rebuilding. The historic shares of all countries that have fished there would be respected. So it's not that we would assert custodial management under the definition that we enunciated; it's simply that there would be a far more effective management regime and a management regime that would fully recognize the historical shares of those countries that have historically fished in that area.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our guests for coming in today. I know some of this gets a little bit repetitive because we're sort of covering some of the same ground, but I just want to touch on two areas.
When you talk about the new approach to NAFO, going it on our own and getting totally out of NAFO altogether, I'd like to take from your lenses as deputy ministers, as ADMs, your bureaucratic perspective. You've both said that you've been around throughout NAFO all these years and you've had many frustrations and you've seen the pitfalls.
Could you explain to me why you would see these types of pitfalls, but when it comes to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans bureaucrats, and being around them as well, they don't share the same vision and ideas, as professional bureaucratic individuals?
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, it would be inconceivable to think that they don't see pitfalls. It's not that we're designing a new creature. What we're doing is basically tinkering with the language of an organization that has been around for 30 years. Successive governments of Canada in the past have expressed their frustrations with NAFO, and the very frustrations that successive governments and ministers have expressed over NAFO in the past are basically the frustrations that remain, certainly for me, in large measure.
So it's not that I'm thinking any differently, I don't believe, than other people who have worked on the NAFO file.
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
Quite often when you get into the middle of something, you become part of it. You become conscripted by thinking that you're making some progress. You may get too close to an issue and think you're making progress when you're not really making progress.
That's part of the problem. Quite often bureaucrats get caught up in process. Process becomes something that is inherently valuable, when of course process quite often doesn't achieve an awful lot.
My sense is that there's a real need to step back and see what is really happening. We can create this very elaborate Byzantine organization in NAFO and we can pretend that it doesn't work, and you'd get some satisfaction by creating, elaborating, making this great artificial structure, making it look elegant, and using it as an opportunity to network with people in the international arena, but people who are operating out of Ottawa in the international arena are not close to what's happening on the ground or in the water in places like Newfoundland, and they don't necessarily see the enormous damage taking place. We need to look at what's happened to our province over the last 20 years: we've lost 80,000 people; we've gone from 590,000 down to close to 500,000. We've got a devastating depopulation of rural Newfoundland.
Quite often there's a tendency for people who are operating out of the centre to be blind to the real impact on the people who are suffering and to be concerned too much with process. Governments today are very much focused on process. I suspect that our colleagues in Ottawa, not only in DFO but also in many other agencies, are preoccupied with process, and I think one really needs to look at what's happening on the ground. One needs to make a distinction between what's happening on paper and what's happening on the ground.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Yes, and I think, too, that it would take some political will at the upper levels to push that forward to a new approach and say that we were going to do something bold and move on.
Regarding custodial management, all the witnesses we've had before us have told us their definitions of custodial management and what it means to them, and most of them are pretty consistent on what they think custodial management is. From Conservative senators to fisheries people to industry people, they've all said that we don't have custodial management, so how would you have any confidence in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans when the minister comes in and says, “Yes, we have custodial management, and yes, we have custodial management through NAFO”?
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, several years ago there was a private member's motion passed in the House of Commons on custodial management. There were approximately 200 members of the House of Commons who voted on that motion, a private member's motion. I'm assuming that every member who voted on that motion knew what they were voting on. At least I can assume that 200 members of the House of Commons had a definition explained to them by the individual who moved the motion to the extent that they felt comfortable either voting for or against the motion.
I was extremely surprised when the former minister, Minister Hearn, stated that the Government of Canada had achieved custodial management. We were all bewildered. Of course, that position has been repeated by his successor. Clearly, the definition of custodial management that David Vardy and I framed, along with Premier Wells at the time—I think it was in 1992 or thereabouts—was understood in the context of Canada asserting management on behalf of the international community.
Now people say that's a novel idea and it doesn't have any international precedence, but I think it was Professor Saunders who basically referenced Antarctica almost as being an area under custodial management, because at least four or five countries, probably more now, have taken it upon themselves to research and what have you to safeguard and understand the dynamics of the continent.
Custodial management and management by NAFO are two different animals. They're poles apart. That's why I was extremely surprised when Minister Hearn said we had basically achieved custodial management. Then, of course, he finished the phrase by saying, “through NAFO”. Well, it didn't meet the test.
Gérard Asselin Bloc Manicouagan, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First, I want to thank you for making the trip to appear before the committee.
It is not always easy for retired public servants to tell a House of Commons committee what they saw during their time in the public service, whether at the federal or provincial level. But, you and I both know that the role of elected representatives is to pass legislation, and the role of public servants is often to implement that legislation. When something is not working, you have no choice but to complain or to voice your frustrations or dissatisfaction to the minister responsible, and I see that that is what you did with Minister Hearn.
But, as a result of the implementation problems, your dissatisfaction and your frustrations go back 20 years, as there was mention of the 1990s earlier. I have been here since 1993. Between Mr. Hearn and Brian Tobin, two members from Newfoundland, two former Fisheries and Oceans ministers, how much attention was paid to your concerns? There were a number of people from Newfoundland, members and ministers, within that department. How much attention was paid between the time Mr. Tobin—who was not only the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, but also the Premier of Newfoundland—was in office and the time Mr. Hearn was appointed? What steps were taken, what efforts were made? That is my first question.
Mr. Chair, I am worried that I might run out of time before I get to my second question, so I will ask it now. If the committee were to ask you to put your frustrations down on paper, as someone who has worked on the ground and seen the problems involved in implementing the NAFO convention, what would you write? What would you suggest to rectify the situation? To ensure that your efforts benefit the committee and help to solve the problems you experienced once and for all, tell us what does not work and what we need to do to make it work?
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
As far as telling ministers about our concerns, as deputy minister of fisheries in 1989 I worked very closely with Clyde Wells--as did Mr. Dean--on an approach to take with foreign overfishing. It involved the foreign overfishing campaign and a very vigorous international campaign to change the Law of the Sea.
Premier Wells made it one of his priorities to go to the various Law of the Sea conferences in Rio, New York, and other places to try to change the Law of the Sea, recognizing that the provisions that applied to Canada weren't really working.
So throughout my tenure I had extensive involvement with Mr. Wells.
I didn't work with Mr. Tobin on this file to advise him how I felt this matter should be dealt with, so I can't really say.
On the question of advising this committee how to go forward in terms of solutions, what works, and problems with the NAFO convention, I am certainly prepared to offer any suggestions or thoughts you might find useful. I'd be quite pleased and honoured to be given the opportunity to do that.
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, I was appointed Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture in 1994, and I served in that capacity for seven years. I worked very closely with Premier Wells on this file.
The most interesting experience I had with Premier Wells on this file was in March of 1992, when the premier was determined to confront the European Union on foreign overfishing. I accompanied the premier to Europe. We met with most of the EU ministers responsible for fisheries. We also met with a number of national government leaders and ministers. To be quite frank, the only glimmer of hope that we received was from the State Secretary for Food, Agriculture and Forestry, Dr. Kittel.
When we returned to Newfoundland, the premier extended an invitation for Dr. Kittel to come to Newfoundland and Labrador because he wanted to see first-hand the impact of what was happening. Dr. Kittel came and spent approximately a week in our province. I can assure you that when he left, he had full sympathy for the concerns the premier had raised during his trip to Europe.
By this time, the West German fishing fleet, for all intents and purposes, had disappeared from the north Atlantic. The Spaniards and the Portuguese, of course, upon acceding to the European Union in 1986, I believe it was, basically took over the fisheries file within the European community, and it's been the Spaniards and the Portuguese who have dominated fisheries policy within the European community since that time.
The other interesting experience I had, again to show the lengths we went to in trying to find some resolution, was in the early 1980s. We received word at that time, through the Government of Canada, that an industry delegation from Spain would like to come to Canada and meet specifically with representatives of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to assess what opportunities there might be to capitalize on what they referred to as “mutual fishing opportunities in the northwest Atlantic”.
We met with that delegation. It was a fairly large delegation, including representatives from the Basque Country. We said to them that if NAFO could function more effectively and if we could be assured that through greater discipline these stocks would be managed in a more sustainable manner, then we would go the extra length to encourage joint ventures between the Newfoundland and Canadian fishing industries and Spaniards and what have you. Unfortunately, that didn't materialize, and in fact matters got progressively worse in subsequent years.
Mr. Tobin, in his capacity as then Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, took very aggressive action, which led, of course, to the Estai incident and the turbot war. I think it's fair to say that during most of his tenure in Newfoundland, a lot of the foreign fishing activity on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks was curtailed, simply because of moratoria on various species. There was a continuation.
After Premier Tobin left politics in Newfoundland and Labrador, the two successors certainly carried this issue forward in much the same manner that it had been carried forward by Premier Wells and Premier Peckford before them.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
If it's not already obvious, I should say for the benefit of the committee that we are hearing from two of the most distinguished public servants that Newfoundland has ever had. I think your opinions deserve a lot of weight, and I hope our committee will give that weight to these comments when we make our report.
My question may be rhetorical, but perhaps you might want to comment on it.
We've had a lot of talk about Arctic sovereignty of late. I don't think there's much doubt about our sovereignty in the Arctic, but it's still fun for the government to talk about it. Suppose we had a Canadian delegation go off to discuss Arctic sovereignty in general with other countries and they came back with a convention or a rule that they'd agreed to that would give an opportunity for the Northwest Passage to be administered by an international group--with the consent of Canada, of course--in terms of pollution, passage, and other rights of control over access to that passage. What do you think the reaction would be in Canada over something like that? Is that in any way comparable to what we're dealing with here?
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
In my opinion, there are some similarities, but there are also some differences.
I think there would probably be a fairly strong reaction, because Canada clearly sees itself as being in a sovereign position. I would expect you'd see very strong negative positions and opposition from the Government of the United States, which is very concerned about passage through international waters. I think there are fairly major differences in the sense that one of the things one has to consider is that this passage opens up a new gateway. You're not dealing with historical rights, as you are with NAFO.
In the case of NAFO, there are historical fishing opportunities. That's something we have to somehow deal with. In the concept of custodial management, we respect the historical shares and historical access that countries have had in fishing historically and traditionally on the Grand Banks. There are questions with that, questions with regard to how far back you go. Are we talking about going back 200 years, or are we talking about historical rights that were accrued over the last 30 to 40 years? These are very big questions, but I think that would be one of the differences in terms of looking at the Northwest Passage versus a NAFO convention.
In terms of an international authority to manage the Northwest Passage, I think such an authority would probably be seen as problematic by many people. I think there are differences, and I would hesitate to offer advice on the Northwest Passage, quite frankly.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
I was thinking in terms of the management inside the 200-mile limit being equivalent to the international management of the Northwest Passage, which Canada claims for itself, but you did touch on something that I want to ask about.
You mentioned respecting historical shares. Is it a difficult concept under custodial management for Canada to say that because this stock has been mismanaged, we are proposing to manage it? I think the concept is that because the international community has failed to do so, Canada would exert a certain custodial management under international law to protect the environment and the sustainability of the species. I think that's where you get in to do something on behalf of the nations.
I take it that it is possible to develop a regime, but do you both have confidence that Canada could in fact supervise a regime that would indeed see the rebuilding of those stocks and ensure that there's a greater biomass of food and protein available for the world community, including Canada? Do you have confidence that we could do that with the right amount of political will and with the scientific knowledge we have at our disposal? Is it doable?
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, I think the operative words are “political will”. If the political will is there, there's nothing magical about managing outside 200 miles. Yes, there will be objections to that concept, but I think if it's a concept that's clearly developed, clearly defined, and sold over an extended period of time, probably five years or so....
The issue that matters most to those who have historical fishing rights in the northwest Atlantic is the ability to fish, and if a new management regime—that is, custodial management—basically provides the opportunity for these stocks to be rebuilt faster and in greater volume and quantity than they would under the traditional NAFO approach, then who are the losers?
But it will take salesmanship and it will take political will to develop the concept and to sell it. I think that's probably what Dr. May would say.
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
I just want to add one point to that, Mr. Harris, and this opens up a whole other issue—that is, the whole question of science and scientific fisheries management. If Canada were to take on this task, it would have to substantially increase its expenditure on science, because it would be dealing with a much larger area and a much more complex situation. The reality is that Canada is already incurring the lion's share of the expenditures in the management of the continental shelf. I think we are incurring as a country about 70% of the costs. But I would emphasize that, on the question of political will, the political will would include the will to spend the money needed to do this.
If this is going to be an important thing, if this is an important issue for Canada, then we have to be prepared to spend the money, and this will cost money, for us to enforce the 200-mile limit and beyond. For us to patrol the continental shelf, we will need to make expenditures of resources. If we as a country are not prepared to make that commitment, then we are not going to solve this problem. So I think we have to be prepared to recognize that this is not just a matter of political will and extending jurisdiction and recognizing historical shares; it's a matter of putting our money where our mouth is as well.
Retired Public Servant, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, on that point, a witness before this committee, Mr. Anderson, on behalf of DFO, outlined the commitment that the Government of Canada is making to enforcement in the northwest Atlantic. So it's not that Canada would have to start anew. It basically would be incremental funding in addition to the significant commitment the Government of Canada now makes to enforcement, either by ship or by air, in the northwest Atlantic. I believe the number that was indicated was somewhere in the order of $30 million at present being the expenditure. So we're already making a significant commitment to ensure the sustainability of these resources.
