Fisheries Committee on March 3rd, 2009

[David Bevan]

I'm not going to say everything's perfect, but I will say, as I mentioned before, we don't use observers. We are not relying on observers as our key compliance tool. We're relying on Canadian fishery officers and we're spending money, as you're aware, to keep officers in the NAFO regulatory area, and to have two to three vessels.... There are also vessels from other contracting parties. We've had as many as five patrol ships patrolling 20 vessels fishing in the area. That kind of coverage gives us the opportunity to see with our own eyes what's going on, and to understand from our own experience. Based on observing haulbacks, looking at what's in the freezers, we get a good idea of the catch per unit effort, and then we can extrapolate based on highly accurate data from the vessel monitoring systems and our air surveillance the number of days those vessels are on ground.

I'd also point out that the Spanish government and others have put controls in place based on the fact that when a vessel is in a particular area, they don't care what it reports. They take off its quota a certain amount of fish based on our CPUE, catch per unit of effort. So say they're catching seven tonnes a day. If they're in turbot waters, they'll take seven tonnes of turbot off that vessel's quota and haul them back when the effort is indicating that their catch is there.

So it is a significant change from what used to be there. With the new conservation enforcement measures that came into effect as a result of the 2006 meeting, we're quite confident that we have a very solid handle on what's going on out there.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you.

Mr. Kamp, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be splitting my time with Mr. Allan.

You can interrupt me at some point here.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Okay, I will.

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

Mr. Bevan, I have a couple points I need to clarify for my own benefit.

Within NAFO, we have contracting parties, who I assume are those who sign on to the convention. Do we also have other non-contracting parties who will fish in the regulatory area? In other words, could someone flying the Mexican flag be fishing in the Grand Banks in some way but not be a contracting party, not be subject to the rules that have been laid out in the convention?

[David Bevan]

That has been a problem in the past. There's nothing in terms of UNCLOS that would prevent somebody from coming forward and fishing in the NAFO regulatory area, as long as they're cooperating with the organization.

Having said that, the presence of NCPs, non-contracting parties, has dropped dramatically over the years as a result of actions taken by Canada, and recently by NAFO and NEAFC, and by Iceland as well. I'm not quite sure if anybody has data on that. I don't think we've had much in the way of presence of those kinds of vessels in recent years. But it is not prohibited under UNCLOS.

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

Is it true that in the past, vessels flying a contracting party's flag might change the flag to a non-contracting party so that they can exceed the quota that their original country would have had?

[David Bevan]

In the past, we've had vessels re-flag, whether it's Spanish, Icelandic, whatever. So they'd re-flag to Belize or to a flag of convenience. Canada spent a lot of time on talking with those countries to make sure there was a connection between the flag and the vessel so that they were going to meet their obligations.

All of that was going on, but I think the arrest of the Kristina Logos on the high seas convinced people that there's a better place to go fish if you want to do that kind of practice. That took place in 1994, and the drop in the presence of NCPs happened then, and happened as a result of other actions taken by Canada to ensure that the message got out to anybody who wanted to run a business based on this kind of action that we were serious about protecting straddling stocks.

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

Can you tell us how the enforcement procedures in the new convention—the objection, the DSP and so on—compare with other RFMOs?

[David Bevan]

The NAFO draft convention was similar to other RFMOs. On that one, I'd have to see if my colleagues can add anything to it, because I'm not personally involved in some of the other RFMOs.

[Sylvie Lapointe, Director, Straddling and Highly Migratory Stocks, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

The procedures in NAFO were largely based on what exists in the South East Atlantic Fisheries Organization and the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission. But by and large, most RFMOs that have objection procedures have no dispute settlement procedures attached to them.

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

Finally, the spectre has been raised of the encroachment on Canadian sovereignty. I want to give you an opportunity to respond to that again. Obviously, that should be a concern to us, if we believe it to be true. I'd like to know if you have any concern about that.

[David Bevan]

As noted, all parties are bound by NAFO decisions in the NAFO regulatory area. So anything that Canada puts forward as a proposal that is adopted would be obligatory for all parties in the NAFO regulatory area.

Because we're looking at ecosystem-based management, there was some concern that you can't split up the ecosystem and therefore maybe there'd be circumstances in the future where Canada might want to ensure the measures would be applied throughout.

I don't have a real concern because of the conditions on it. It would take a request. We could ask for it. We'd have to approve it. We'd have to vote for it. Clearly, there'd be a great deal of consideration given to that.

I would point out that any treaty has impacts on sovereignty: trade agreements, agreements on environmental issues. The Pacific Salmon Treaty means we can't unilaterally manage those stocks; we have to agree. So any treaty has some obligations. But in this case, I'm not really that concerned about it.

The other thing I would point out is that we have already moved ahead with vulnerable marine ecosystems, closing seamounts and coral closures in NAFO and the NAFO regulatory area. Canada did not have a problem with implementing the same actions inside our zone using the Fisheries Act. So whether we'd ever use this provision of NAFO would have to be considered, but it is our choice. I know this is about overfishing, etc., but if somebody wants to overfish, they'll have other problems. People fish for money, and unless you have your own market, you won't necessarily have any benefits in overfishing if your market gets closed. And that's where the world is going.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kamp.

Mr. Allen.

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

How much time do I have?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Four minutes. Three minutes and 30 seconds.

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

I have just a couple of questions for Mr. Bevan with respect to the adoption of the convention by all the countries.

You said you've been working under the new rules over the last little while. One of the things that was pointed out in testimony in the Senate committee was that there would be significant government debate processes in some of these other countries before this could actually be adopted. On page 7 of your deck, it states, “At 2008 NAFO annual meeting, French version of amended Convention text was adopted”.

Do you have any idea, with respect to the process in these other countries, how long this would take to adopt and how much longer you'd have to operate under these new rules on a good-faith basis?

[David Bevan]

Probably for some years. Nine parties need to ratify the convention before it becomes binding on all.

We know the process in Japan means going through the Diet. The process in the United States is not without some time for them to move ahead. I would also expect Russia to take some time. You already looked at a number of parties--that's three. Therefore, it's going to take a while.

Whether all the other nine are going to be able to move quickly is another issue. Some are more nimble than others. Some of the smaller parties are much more able to move quickly, and others have a more protracted time. I'd estimate we're probably looking at somewhere in a three-year timeframe. Even two to three years would perhaps be optimistic.

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

From this point.

[David Bevan]

Yes.

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

Okay. Interesting.

You talked about the number of serious infringements. Of course, significant dollars are spent by Canada--and you just referred to that in terms of the patrol vessels, and five patrol vessels in twenty. We've seen since 2005, 2006, and 2007 this has gone down. How much do you attribute that to our policing as much as you do to your arrangement under NAFO and the good faith you have between your parties?

[David Bevan]

Policing is really important. The measures we have are not going to work unless somebody's out there, so we keep two to three vessels out there. The EU has one, and from time to time there are others. The U.S. has worked in partnership with us.

All of those actions are necessary. There has to be a real understanding on the part of the fishing masters of what's going on, that they can't misreport. They can't now say they're somewhere they aren't, because we have their vessel monitoring system satellite data in near real time. So we know where they are, and we know what kind of fish they're fishing. We can see the hauls based on our fishery officers.

If we don't do that, we won't have control. That's the reality.

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

You talked about consensus. You're operating under consensus now and you've eliminated a number of the votes. In terms of the two-thirds majority, would you use that now, or is that a fallback position?

[David Bevan]

No, that's not applicable until the convention's ratified. In the last 14 years we've voted once in NAFO, and that did not come out with a position that Canada supported. Other than that, it's all been consensus. As I noted, all of the conservation and enforcement measures that improve compliance in NAFO were agreed on unanimously.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you very much, Mr. Allen, Mr. Bevan.

Mr. Byrne, for a short question.