Fisheries Committee on Nov. 17th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

I will call this meeting to order.

Mr. Hearn, thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come and appear before our committee today. We really do appreciate your time. I know you're quite familiar with the proceedings of our committee and other committees. Generally, we allow about 10 minutes for presentations or any opening remarks, and then, as I'm sure you're well aware, we move into questioning. Our members are constrained by certain time limits for questions and answers as well.

Without any further ado, Mr. Hearn, if you'd like to make any opening comments, please proceed.

[Loyola Hearn, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, first of all, for the invitation to attend. It's not that I necessarily wanted to come to appear before the committee, but it's a great chance to get back and see some old friends, including many of the people around the table. When I say “many” instead of “all”, it's because there are some new members, not to slight some of the older members here. It's just great to see you all again.

I have intentionally not prepared an opening statement because I spent five years, I believe, on the committee with some of you as members, by the way. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I believe it was a committee that did a tremendous amount of work. One of the things we always complained about when people came to visit was that they used up as much time as they could to avoid getting into the actual questions and answering them.

What I think we should do, Mr. Chair, is get right into the questions, because it is a forum for the members, not for somebody from outside to come in and waste your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Hearn.

Mr. Byrne, I believe you're up first.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you kindly.

Thanks, Honourable Hearn, or should I call you Senator Hearn? I hope you had an opportunity to get the background check done, or is that the other Loyola? It's great to have you back among friends.

We do have some serious business. It was indeed your Conservative colleagues, former colleagues, who asked you here today. I think there's going to be some good value for us all, indeed.

I think it's fair to say that when you leave office, you leave office. It's not necessarily prudent or appropriate to drag those who have left public office back into the public limelight, but you were indeed asked here, so we'll take advantage of that.

Loyola, one of the things in the hearts and minds of people from Newfoundland and Labrador as they look back over the history of this issue, and your political career as well, is that you were a very strong critic of NAFO, especially in your opposition days. You were a very strong critic of the Government of Canada's handling of foreign overfishing. You said in your past career that NAFO was fundamentally broken, that it could never be fixed, and that Canada has to get out of NAFO, and you were a very passionate spokesperson for custodial management.

One of the things that's caught Newfoundlanders and Labradorians off guard is that in your tenure of office as fisheries minister you had labelled NAFO and foreign overfishing as just that, but before you left office as fisheries minister, you said that Canada actually had custodial management of the nose and the tail of the Grand Banks. In fact, the Conservative Party of Canada made that statement in its 2008 election platform. It is now the official policy of the Government of Canada that custodial management is not required to be achieved because we already have it.

Given the fact that there is nothing that has changed in NAFO—the convention has not changed at all, although there are amendments before NAFO and before Canada for revision to the convention—and you made these comments and the Government of Canada made this commitment that custodial management of the nose and the tail of the Grand Banks is policy and always has been, how does your past criticism of NAFO and of Canadian governments' handling of foreign overfishing mesh and jibe with the fact that you now believe we've always had custodial management? How can the two relate? It seems to me you were incorrect either now or then. Which is it?

[Loyola Hearn]

Let me first say that in relation to statements on custodial management of foreign overfishing, yes, I was certainly involved. In fact, when I came to Ottawa in 1980 and was on the fisheries committee probably a year or so later, one of the biggest issues this committee dealt with over a five-year span was foreign overfishing and dealing with ways to try to prevent that.

As you'll remember quite clearly, because you supported the motion, I even presented in the House a motion saying that Canada should take custodial management because of the frustrations we were having in relation to dealing with the raping of our stocks. You supported that. You were in the House. Your government, at the time, did not. The government voted against it. And I checked to see if you were in cabinet at the time and you weren't. The Newfoundland cabinet minister absented himself. He did not support the motion.

So if you want to get into the political spin of it, I have statements here that I can roll out from former Prime Minister Martin, saying “We will take custodial management”, etc.

The question you're asking is, do we have custodial management and did we get it or did we not? Let me differentiate first. And I will answer the question. I'll answer any questions you ask.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

But did we get it or do we have it?

[Loyola Hearn]

Well as I said, I will answer that for you.

First of all, there are two major issues. There is NAFO and there was the inability of NAFO, as it existed at the time, to deal with a problem that was facing the country. But when I say “the country” here, it's more or less our province, Newfoundland and Labrador. And let me say to you that for every decision made in relation to our dealings with the fishery or with NAFO, we had Newfoundland's problems in mind because Newfoundland was the prime beneficiary of any changes, or if they were the wrong, they would be hurt most.

If you ask me, do we have custodial management, as you just did, my clear-cut answer to you is that it depends. And why I say that is it depends on what custodial management is. I don't know what your definition of custodial management is. I have never seen one. I have not seen a definition from your party of what custodial management is, so how can we judge whether we have it or not? I do know that in international law there is no definition. I couldn't find it, and I don't think anybody can, and I've heard some top-notch lawyers say there is no definition of custodial management. So when you ask somebody, do we have it or do we not, it sort of depends on what you're talking about.

I'll read very briefly a definition given by a former colleague of yours, and the Liberal lead on the committee, Mr. Matthews, when he said, “If we could get all contracting partners of NAFO to fish under the same system, especially one that was acceptable to Canada, then we pretty much would be where we wanted to be”--in relation to custodial management.

If that is custodial management, my answer to you would be, yes, we can say we have custodial management.

For this very committee, the definition was:

The essential purpose of custodial management would be to establish a resource management regime that would provide comparable standards of conservation and enforcement for all transboundary stocks, inside and outside the 200-mile limit. In other words, precisely the kind of regime promised by UNFA but delivered by Canada rather than NAFO. By implementing such a regime, we would impose no greater burden on others than on ourselves nor would we demand less of others than ourselves.

If you wanted to dig into that, you could say yes, we've achieved that or are pretty close to it if we haven't fully achieved it.

There are other definitions, including one from Tom Rideout, and including at least two...or however many times Minister Hedderson appeared here, you have a different definition. So there are some. Under many of them, we have achieved custodial management.

Is this what people think custodial management is? Complete control? In other words, have we supplanted NAFO? Can we go out there and take charge? Of course we can't. We are not there yet. Can we ever get there? Maybe.

But let me say one thing to you, as members of the committee. Mr. Blais and Mr. Stoffer are here. These guys were there when we debated some of this. In the two years that we were in government, we made more progress in reforming NAFO and in improving NAFO, and in improving their surveillance and the way we treated those who broke the rules out there, than others had done in the 20 years previous to that.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

I appreciate that, Mr. Chair--

[Loyola Hearn]

Perhaps it's a vague answer, but it's a very vague question, and I think it's as direct an answer as the question was.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

In the spirit of our witness' opening testimony, we'll try to move on and actually get some questioning in.

But I will say this. Loyola, you were saying that since before you were in government and after you were in government nothing has changed at NAFO, absolutely nothing, in terms of the convention or the regulations or anything else. Yet we've gone from stark criticism to now, apparently, custodial management.

I will, Mr. Chair, turn the rest of my time over to my colleague.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

You have 30 seconds.

[Loyola Hearn]

Could I respond to that, Mr. Chair? Mr. Byrne is wrong on this.

One of the reasons I came here was because I have.... Well, I haven't had to listen; I can always turn off the radio, which is good. Mr. Byrne spends more time on the talk shows down in Newfoundland than I'm sure he does in the House, unless he has changed.

The thing is that much of what you are saying is just not factual. NAFO is not the same NAFO that was there two years ago. Mr. Thibault, actually, started making some of the changes. We made a tremendous amount more. The convention, which he's trying to scuttle, will make some major changes that will be beneficial, particularly to Newfoundland and Labrador. He and some others who are not in tune with what is really going on are trying to scuttle the deal. It mystifies me, Mr. Chair, and it's one of the reasons I'm here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Hearn.

Monsieur Blais.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Loyola.

I can see that you have been a parliamentarian for some time. You are still very skilful in your answers, whether the questions are vague or direct. I know very well that you have a position and that you are sticking to it. I am going to try something else. As I understand it, the negotiations we are discussing took place in 2007. In my opinion, and I am not alone, the negotiations became a kind of bargain basement sale. We did not get our money's worth and we gave up more than we got. That is my impression, that is the impression of a lot of people, including several of our witnesses.

There is talk of a new text, but the basic problem remains. For several years, NAFO failed—everyone agrees that it did—in the case of cod. We could not say that our international organization succeeded in resolving great challenges. The results, unfortunately, were not there. So, we had to ask ourselves—as we eventually did—whether we ought to remain part of NAFO. When you were minister, you decided to cooperate, to take part in negotiations designed to improve NAFO. I do not feel that there has been any improvement.

I understand that there have been negotiations, but can you account for the feeling that we gave up more than we got there? We are discussing a new text. But the people from Newfoundland and Labrador who are involved are very familiar with the matter. You are very well acquainted with the people who have testified; you know them perhaps better than I do. These are credible people; their opinions about the amendments are not purely partisan or political. There are facts, and they have their views on them.

Against that background, I would like to hear what you have to say about what you did, about your successes. I cannot say whether you were the chief negotiator, I do not know exactly how things proceeded. But you were the one responsible, you were the minister at the time.

[Loyola Hearn]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blais.

The questions you raise are certainly very good ones. I'm not sure how close you are to what has gone on in NAFO. I don't think NAFO is something that would be very high on your agenda. I don't think it will come higher than seals, for instance, or small craft harbours. I'm sure, being part of the committee, you're well aware of what goes on.

Number one, I completely disagree with you when you say that nothing has changed. A tremendous amount has changed. I don't agree with you when you say that we gave away more than we got. We gave away nothing—absolutely, positively nothing. Unlike the case years ago, when you had the voting system, which some of the people who have been here want to get back to—you voted on everything, but in order to get enough people supporting you, you had to buy the votes, and we gave away fish many times, and that's well known—we gave away absolutely nothing to get the changes that have been made.

You talked about people from Newfoundland who have been here who know the fishery well and are concerned, and about their credibility. I have nothing to say about the credibility of anybody; I don't know them well. But let me say a couple of things to you about your three points; first of all, that nothing has changed.

When I came on the committee, as you well remember, you heard me rant many times—and I had the support of a lot of you, as you had my support on many issues. In those days, the committee operated mainly on consensus, and I doubt if we even had a vote on committee. We had very few, if any, because the committee worked together. Most of our reports, except one or two that had one person at a time, I think, dissenting on some major issue.... Other than that, they were all unanimous.

The thing was, we had around 300 citations issued by a very small surveillance fleet, some of which were tied up in port in St. John's—again, read Hansard—because they didn't have enough fuel, as a result of their budgets being cut by the former government, to go out and do the work at sea. We have seen the number of citations reduced tremendously, particularly the major ones. However, the few that have been issued in the last couple of years since the changes in NAFO.... Somewhere, Hansard says it's like a warning ticket on the highway: the cops stop you and give you a warning ticket; the next day, you're speeding again, and they give you another warning ticket, and nobody ever does anything. These boats continued to fish, and nothing ever happened.

Now, the boats—all of them—have been taken out of the fishery zone immediately. The first one, some time ago, was kept out for between six and eight months. We're talking about those big draggers that spend up to four months at sea. If you take those boats out of the fishery and leave them out for six or eight months, you know what it does to the bottom line. Besides that, there were fines and punishments for those who ran the ship. In the last couple of incidents that happened, some of them only fished for three or four weeks out of three months. Imagine what that does to your bottom line. So to say that nothing has been done.... A tremendous amount has been done.

Did we give away anything? No, absolutely nothing: there were no deals, no extra fish, absolutely nothing.

In relation to the people who appeared, let me just ask you one question. How is it that in the committee we're against this, when everybody directly affected, representing the industry, is in favour? The people representing the deep-sea fishery, who catch this fish and depend on it, are in favour; the people who represent all the fishermen, because of the inshore effect of trans-boundary stocks.... Mr. McCurdy not only is in favour, but was part of putting the package together. And the deputy minister from Newfoundland and Labrador, who is an integral part of this.... The Newfoundland government supported it solidly, up until a month or so ago, when certain things happened. For two years, they were part of creating the plan we had and supporting it.

To say the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are against everybody...? Everybody connected with the industry is supporting it. Those who are not—the ones you've had here—haven't been connected with the fishery for years. It's something like bringing back—and I'm a Leafs fan—the last Stanley Cup-winning Toronto Maple Leafs team to play in the Olympics. That's what we're doing.

It's a whole new ball game. It's a new NAFO; it's a new league, and you're playing with the same old rules and hockey sticks and skates. It can't work.

That's why we have the confusion. But there is nobody directly connected to the fishing industry in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador who is not supporting the changes, because they see the benefit of the changes to the province, and that is why we forced the changes that are there today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Hearn.

Mr. Stoffer.

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

Thank you very much.

Loyola, welcome back to Ottawa. It is good to see you again, sir.

I'm just going to read you a statement that was read by Tom Hedderson, Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture. Just a simple question, is he right or is he wrong?

The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture for the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Honourable Tom Hedderson, said, and I quote:

The amended NAFO convention can serve as a vehicle for other nations to impose their management of overstocks inside Canada's sovereign 200-mile limit.

Is he right or is he wrong?

[Loyola Hearn]

He is wrong, completely wrong.

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

Okay. By the way, have you had an opportunity to thoroughly read the text of the new NAFO?

[Loyola Hearn]

Of course.

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

And have you had a chance to read or listen to the testimony of people like Bob Applebaum?

[Loyola Hearn]

I've read what I could get of the meetings.

Yes, to a certain extent they are, in the sense of jeopardizing our sovereignty. It's not going to happen. It won't happen and can't happen, because of the protections involved.

They made two or three points, but I won't get into them because it would use up all your time. When I mentioned the Leafs playing in the Olympics, I was referring somewhat to the group.

NAFO has changed completely. As NAFO operates today, it's mainly dealing with an ecosystem approach rather than with specific species. It's dealing with consensus rather than voting. In that system there was yes and no, and if we didn't have enough votes, we had to buy them by giving away fish.

Let me ask you something. You say these are credible individuals, and I have absolutely no doubt that they are. They all come from responsible positions. We had people representing us at NAFO in 2006 and 2007, the two years that we're dealing with here in relation to the convention. Mr. Etchegary says that DFO has no involvement in NAFO, that it's all done by Foreign Affairs, that those who go are only on the subcommittee, and that type of thing.

Our people from DFO were the people who were directly involved. We have very little dealings with DFAIT, except the courtesy thing internationally. Our people call the shots.

Was the minister's office involved directly? We were on the phone directly at the NAFO meetings, telling them that if we didn't get what we were after, to come home. It got down to that on the last Friday morning. Because of my visit to Belgium--well, actually, I met Mr. Borg in France--a commitment had been made to me that they would support us in what we wanted to do with cleaning up and bringing in an enforcement regime that would take the boats out of the fishery and punish them for the negative work they were doing or for any rules they were breaking, and when we weren't getting that, we told our crowd to go in and tell them to deliver on their promises or to come home. Did they deliver? They cooperated with us.

I'll name a few people we had at that meeting. You're talking about these four experts; we had our own experts, just as good, just as high-ranking--higher-ranking, in some cases--and just as credible, but they were a whole lot more tuned in to what's going on than any of these people you had in front of you.

We had David Bevan, who I think you will agree is the best head that's been around for quite some time in relation to fisheries, whether local, national, or international. We had Earle McCurdy. We had Ray Andrews, who was a deputy minister of fisheries from Newfoundland and worked in the federal system with Crosbie for quite some time. We had the head of the delegation, David Bevan. His co-partner in fighting for our reforms was the regional minister, Wayne Follett, a Newfoundlander, and not one of the bureaucrats who had been representing us before. We had Earle McCurdy, Ray Andrews.... We also had Bruce Chapman there. We had Lorne Wheeler representing my office. If you don't know him, anybody who knows him will never question his integrity. These people are all from Newfoundland. They're not just good Canadian reps, but from Newfoundland. They were looking after Newfoundland's interests because they wanted it, number one, and because they were given direction to do it, number two.

If you're going to say that these people are saying one thing, well, the people who were directly involved were just as high-ranking and were more involved. David Bevan was actually the chair of NAFO for a couple of years, as you know. If you want to talk about rank in any way at all, these are the people who are working in today's game. They know who the players are. They know what the moves are. They know the changes that have been made and have adapted with them.

We spent hours and hours and hours discussing this. I know I'm long-winded, but this is the crux of it all, Peter, and that is why when I hear people saying, “These experts say...”, well, we have another bunch of experts.

Earle McCurdy represents every fisherman in Newfoundland and Labrador, and others besides, and you know him well. He's not out there saying what he's saying because he likes me or the government or anything else. Earle has been pretty independent through it all. He sees the benefit of this to the fishermen and to the fishery, especially in Newfoundland and Labrador, and so does every other industry rep.

So who's wrong here--a bunch of people who have been out of it and who are talking about how these changes would have played in their game years ago, or the people who are currently playing and the people directly affected?

To me, look, it's a no-brainer. And that's what really concerns me when I hear some of the stuff that's thrown out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Hearn.

Mr. Kamp.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Loyola, for coming.

As you know, I got to work with you during those years, so I'm kind of familiar with many of the things you did and the focus you had on these.

You've tried to clarify the statement that nothing really has changed in NAFO. As you've explained, there are changes that have been made that are sort of regulatory changes rather than, say, legislative changes, which these amendments to the convention would be. In fact, we had other witnesses here telling us, on the enforcement side, for example, how their body had enacted some changes in 2006 and so on.

When you took office in 2006, one of the things you used to say was that you wanted to give NAFO teeth. I know you've shared a story or two with me about some meetings that you've had with European ministers, and so on, about the approach you took. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, and how you think you accomplished giving NAFO teeth?

[Loyola Hearn]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Randy.

Again, rather than go over it all, a lot of what we did I have already probably included in my answer to Mr. Stoffer. But we were confused, as you know, and people around this table who were here know how confused and disgusted we were with the lack of activity. We were blaming the then ministers, whether it was Minister Thibault or Minister Regan, in the House, and Minister Thibault, to his credit—and I guess followed up by Minister Regan, but I had more dealings with Mr. Thibault on the issue—started to move on the surveillance aspect.

What's the old saying we have? The proof of the pudding is in the eating. All we have to do is go back three years, five years, and look at what was happening on the nose and tail and the Flemish Cap in relation to activity by foreign countries. Look at the number of citations. Look at the amount of surveillance we had. You've had people in here who have already placed it on the record, I believe.

We have 800 dedicated coast guard patrol days in that zone—800 days. That means we have two boats out there--more than two boats, two and a half boats, practically, every day. We have three boats dedicated to that—“we”, being Canada. The EU also, by the way, helps out there, and the Americans every now and then. We have 23 seagoing Canadian inspectors, 200 to 250 at-sea inspections annually; 250 inspections, and how many major citations? We were issuing 300 citations over a period of a few years when we had nobody out there. Now we have all kinds of people out there and we only issued one I think last year--no, not last year, I believe the year before--and four or something this year.

For daily surveillance patrols we have Provincial Airlines, the best air surveillance company in the world. They've picked up contracts all over the place because of the work they've done here.

We have port inspections. Our observers inspect any boats that happen to land in our area. And when boats are taken back to port, whether it be Spain, Portugal, Russia, whatever, our inspectors are there when they arrive. They're either on the boats or with secured hatches, and they're there when they arrive.

In fact, in one case, when a Russian boat landed in Portugal, they wouldn't unload the boat. Our inspectors stayed there, and they stayed there over the weekend. I guess the Russians figured they'd go home, but they didn't, so they didn't unload the boat the next week. And it was Easter, the week after, so they figured the boys would go home for Easter, and they did. But before they came home, we had two more over there waiting. They waited up until the middle of the summer, when Russia finally gave in. On the couple of offences that Russia has had recently, they have really nailed their boats, crews, and companies.

So that's the kind of stuff it takes.

And we cooperate with others. One of the things we did right from the start—and you were part of this and you were with me—is we went over and we met with the various ministers. We didn't go begging for help. My statement to Mr. Borg—and you can check it out—the head of the EU fisheries, was that we cannot continue to do what we're doing with the stocks. It is our intention to clean them up. So you can either work with us in doing that or we're going to do it for you. To my surprise, he looked at me and said, in a room full of witnesses,“I agree with you.”

People can criticize him if they want to, but from that day until certainly when I left, and I would say still, he has delivered, on behalf of the EU, on any commitments they made. And when we say there are no changes in NAFO, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Look at what's happening on the ground. That's what it was all about. We weren't into this racket to worry about which definition are we using to describe what we're doing or in relation to who is getting the credit, because, as I've said before, the minister before me started some of this, but what we did do was force a tremendous number of changes. But the other thing we did, Mr. Chair, is we made it possible to do this kind of surveillance.

So instead of having the coast guard boats tied up in St. John's with no fuel to do the work, we put billions, not millions but billions of dollars—in fact in my last two budgets over $1 billion each year—into the coast guard for new boats: two new science boats, new oceanographic boats, and x number of surveillance boats. In other words, we gave them the money to do the work.

If you want to talk about this in reality, bring in the people involved and bring in the people from industry—and you've had maybe a few of them. Bring in the people who are actually out there. Bring in the observers and ask them what the changes are. You can play all your little politics you want with this and bring in people who are against it. You may have some radio stations that will only call or have people call who are negative, who are against it. That's one of our problems, and that's a big problem. The only solution we have is to fight it.

We can make changes in NAFO--the best organization by the way, recognized as the best regional fisheries management organization in the world. You might say whoop-de-doo, the rest of them must be pretty bad--and some of them probably are. NAFO was once too, but it has come a tremendously long distance in a short time. It's not just in the two years I was there but starting previous to that. But they have come a long way. When you hear people saying that nothing has happened, bring in the people who were directly involved and are affected by all of this.

If we can make the changes in NAFO to stop the overfishing so that the stocks can rebuild.... Ask the scientists what's happening to our yellowtail stock. Ask them what's happening to our American plaice stock. These were the stocks we worried about...and even our cod stock, though that is rebuilding more slowly. The American plaice is rebuilt to the point where they are probably going to have to either increase bycatch or open the season because it's affecting other fisheries.

There are good things happening on the ground, and that's what we set out to do. That's what we talked about, and that's what we set out to do. Whatever the ammunition we used along the way, and the threats we used and everything else, they're all perhaps part of the process. It worked because we got changes made.

Did we get what we want? Of course not. I was there two years. This government has been in power for three years, roughly, a little bit over. Rome wasn't built in a day. And when you look back at the previous government, during their 13 years, and ask what progress was made during those 13 years.... When these same people, by the way, that you talk about as being the great expert witnesses...who was at the helm when our stocks were being devastated out there? When we were giving away fish to get deals, when the coast guard was rusting out and had no fuel at the ports, who was at the helm? These very people. Who was running the fish companies? Some of the rest of them who were out on spawning grounds catching whatever they could. I understand that Mr. Byrne might have gotten into trouble by saying that same thing.

That's where it rests. What have we done? We did what we said we would do, and that is, we went there to clean up NAFO, which we did. Is it perfect? Is there more work to be done? Absolutely. That challenge is not mine any more; it's yours.

Mr. Chair, I'll leave it at that.