Fisheries Committee on March 3rd, 2009

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

Where?

[David Bevan]

In the NAFO convention. If you're a party to that convention and there's some measure adopted, it applies to you by obligation if you don't object or if you don't go through objection procedures and disputes. If it applies to you, if you accept it, it comes into your management of those high-seas fisheries automatically.

So when we adopted a measure such as the 2006 changes to the conservation enforcement measures, they were obliged to follow it. It applies to them once it is adopted. We don't need to ask their permission. We don't need to have them ask us. We don't have any of that going on. Once it's passed, it applies to those parties in the NAFO regulatory area.

The only quid pro quo here was that if Canada so desired and asked, and if Canada accepted and voted yes to a measure, it could apply inside the zone, but it's certainly not going to apply.... We're not going to ask for anything in the NAFO convention area in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Also, I'm not quite sure when a minister or negotiator would be so inclined as to make these requests and have it apply, but clearly any party to NAFO has the obligation to follow the decisions of NAFO in the NAFO regulatory area. That's in there. In reality, it's the same as—

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

To actually allow.... This is your stalwart defence of the indefensible, in my opinion, and we'll just leave it at that. Because to allow that provision into the context of the proposed NAFO convention is contrary to Canadian sovereignty; at the very least, to not allow a quid pro quo for Canada, with the consent of NAFO--being able to usurp the authority of NAFO on consent of NAFO--to control outside of 200 miles is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

But, you know, the formal acceptance of any NAFO decision now has gone from 50%, a simple majority, to a two-thirds majority. That's being hailed by DFO and by the Canadian government as being a victory and as NAFO being more inclusive. Past experience at NAFO says that whenever tough conservation decisions need to be instituted, getting the 50% simple majority has been tough enough. Now we have to go to a two-thirds majority.

In fact, any observer of the NAFO process would agree that in order to get some of those tough conservation positions, Canada has often had to seek concessions from other contracting parties by giving away fish from non-threatened stocks. How has the two-thirds majority achieved any greater success? Because I'll tell you something from a guy who's been around this process: I can't see it.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Mr. Bevan, be as quick as you can, please.

[David Bevan]

I would point out that in the past, prior to the changes at NAFO--in behaviour, at least--that took place back in the 1990s, we won all the votes and lost all the fish. That's a reality. We paid with fish to get the votes, and then when we won the votes, because of the convention people just went fishing anyway. That's the reality. Every conservation measure that's been put in place since that time has been done by consensus, with not one vote on one conservation measure. We've had tremendous gains, as you can see from the compliance on the conservation measures, all by consensus.

The real fear that all the people who participate in NAFO now have is that there's going to be a potential redistribution of fish. That's why we want more stickiness to the process. That's where the votes will be: not on the conservation, but on the sharing of the resource. We want to protect ourselves, along with the other quota-holders.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you, Mr. Bevan.

Monsieur Blais.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bevan, Ms. Lapointe, Mr. Beaupré, the first thing that comes to mind is that every time I have heard talk about NAFO since I started to become interested in it—not as a small child, but when I was younger, a few years back—I had the impression of looking at a failure, that is that there was overfishing and illegal fishing. Take cod alone as an example. NAFO existed, was up and running to a certain extent, but the fact remains that cod off the Grand Banks was pillaged. There was illegal fishing. In the end, I asked myself what the use of NAFO was.

Afterwards, I heard that Canada was a major funder of NAFO. First of all, there was a recognition of failure on an issue that is of primordial importance. Second, it seems as though only Canadians are major participants in NAFO, or practically so. Therefore, I wondered whether it was worth carrying on with it and that is a question that I am still asking myself.

Given what I am still hearing today, the question remains the same. I would like to hear you on the effectiveness of the organization and on its funding.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Mr. Bevan.

[David Bevan]

One must admit that NAFO failed as far as overfishing of cod in the North is concerned. Unfortunately, the same thing must be said regarding fisheries management in Canada. We had problems with the cod fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as well as in Nova Scotia. That is why we are in the process of changing the way we manage fishery resources. We are in the process of changing NAFO as well.

Canada must pay approximately 40 % of the cost of NAFO because we have a lot of fish. Canada is a country that has interests in NAFO, therefore we must contribute, as do the others. NAFO managed to obtain the Canada Clause, which ensures that Canada has the right to the greatest share of the harvest because our country is the one with the greatest interest in the fishery, in the NAFO zone.

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

We were talking about the degree of effectiveness in the past and the degree of effectiveness today.

[David Bevan]

In my opinion, NAFO is becoming more effective, because we have far less a foreign fishery, therefore more compliance with regulations. Also, we have seen an increase in the population of certain species of fish. For example, the populations of yellowtail, cod and redfish are increasing. We are therefore hopeful that this fishery can reopen in three to five years.

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

I would like to make one comment, Mr. Chair.

Are we more effective because there are fewer fish, less plentiful resources?

It is an unfortunate thing to realize, on the one hand. On the other hand, we do have an interest and that is obvious. We know that fish, the resource, has no boundaries. Unfortunately, if the past is any indication of the future, we know that some countries—Russia, Spain, Japan etc., not to mention any names—are capable of doing almost anything when it comes to the resource.

What can we do to avoid the ineffectiveness of the past becoming in the end the modus operandi of NAFO?

[David Bevan]

In my opinion, NAFO is more effective now. Countries have learned that they need to change their behaviour as far as fisheries management is concerned. In the past, Spain, the other countries and even Canada continued to fish a much too high volume of fish, even if there had been changes in the environment. For example, there were changes in the productivity of cod. The cod population changed, and was greatly diminished. And yet we did not change our habits.

It is clear that we have to find a new way of managing the fishery. All of the countries agreed on this and changed the way they issued fishing permits in the NAFO zone. That is why NAFO is more effective today, compared with the 1980s and 1990s.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blais. You have about three seconds left, so perhaps we'll move on.

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

One, two, three.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Mr. Stoffer.

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

Thanks very much to you, Mr. Chairman.

And to David and to your colleagues, thank you very much for coming today.

You indicated quite clearly that a lot of this was based on certain circumstances, certain conditions, and that's the part that makes me nervous. On page 8 it reads, “In cases of serious misreporting under certain circumstances...”. This is the part I get kind of confused by. It seems very, very weak and very vague, because we don't know what those certain circumstances will be.

When George Baker was the chair of this committee, we filed for international observer reports on various vessels operating within NAFO. We did get one after a year, and it was so blacked out that all we got was the name of the vessel and the days it fished. That was it, more or less.

So my first question for you is this. Are international observer reports open to the public for inspection or open to a committee like us, so we can investigate exactly what was said and done on a particular fishing vessel's voyage?

[David Bevan]

I've got to be quite frank that we aren't putting much weight on international observer reports at this point. We're relying on data from satellite systems, air surveillance, observed tows by fishery officers, and extrapolation of those tows based on days on ground. We have a very clear idea of where they're fishing, and we know how much their catch per unit effort is, so we have those as a way of estimating catch. We compare known catches from high-compliance vessels, such as the one Japanese vessel, to their counterparts from other countries. We use a number of checks and balances to get very clear understanding of the catch.

We also are inspecting vessels that land in Canada. And, as you're hearing, we can be involved in vessels landing in Spain, for example.

So all of those are used to estimate catch, and the observer reports have been fundamentally switched for more scientific-based information, and we aren't using them in terms of compliance to the extent we used to.

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

But there are observers on board.

[David Bevan]

There are observers on board.

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

So if it was a Russian vessel, would there be a Russian observer on board?

[David Bevan]

Yes, except Norway hires Canadians, and some of the others are also looking at that, but—

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

Mr. Bevan, I say with great respect, that's why it costs us that NAFO is in many ways a sort of toothless enforcer of this, because if you have observers from the country on the vessel from that country, we're not quite sure. And there's usually just one observer on board.

[David Bevan]

That's correct.

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

That person has to sleep eventually, and these vessels have the capability of fishing 24/7.

Although I appreciate the technology you use to observe and sort of understand what's being caught, I simply find it quite difficult that NAFO can really police itself on many of these issues.

And I go back, of course, for the committee, to the Olga. As you know, the Olga disappeared, and this committee found it—and the chairman was there—in Iceland, of all places. It was supposed to go back to its home port. It was supposed to be punished, in whatever way, for the illegal catch it had on board. We found out it was in Iceland. The fish disappeared. When we asked the Icelandic fishery minister, he said, “That was in the past; we've moved on from there.” And the ship was sold at auction. So that was just one isolated incident a few years ago.

I suspect—and correct me if I'm wrong—that this type of incident could happen again.