Evidence of meeting #9 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 fishermen.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chairman, Fisheries Resource Conservation Council
What we say in the vision statement is that the lobster fishery belongs to Canada. The lobsters belong to Canada.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
Thank you. That's perfect.
On page 41 you make recommendations. As long as I've been here, we've always heard this continuous discussion over quotas in lobster. As you rightfully point out, there's not much of an appetite for that, but as times change maybe attitudes will change.
I remember years ago, when I went around asking if lobster fishermen wanted to have something similar to the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation in Manitoba, or the Canadian Wheat Board—did they want to develop a lobster marketing board—and almost unanimously they said, “Get lost with that idea”. But now they're talking about it, that maybe this is something they're looking at. So attitudes and times change.
On page 41, bullet 3, you talk about “the implementation of quotas with a transferable component”. As you know, Mr. d'Entremont, I don't mind individual quotas, my concern is the t in the middle, or the v in the middle—either individual vessel or individual transferable quotas. What that would do, in my own personal view—and you can correct me if I'm wrong—is that would concentrate the lobsters into fewer and fewer hands, which basically means that if you had the money.... For example, I take it a company like Clearwater, through trust agreements, can buy up all these licences, and thus they would guarantee themselves the resource coming into their hands, but they would effectively control the lobster fishery.
So if you're reducing the effort, I believe in the fact of a buy-back, but making sure it's a true buy-back, that they don't find a back-door way into the fishery. If you're going to have 40 fishermen in a harbour, then you have to make sure, if you're buying them back, that there are 30 left when you're done, and that's the effort. But under the ITQ system, it could be concentrated, and if you expand that thought process a little longer, there's nothing under the current rules that would stop Clearwater, for example, from selling their entire enterprise to a foreign entity—i.e., Iceland, the United States, or somewhere. What lobster fishermen are telling me is their greatest fear is having control or management of the lobster fishery by foreign hands. This is something they believe an ITQ would lead to. I'm just wondering if I can have your comments on that, please.
By the way, thank you very much for your report. Did the minister respond to the report thoroughly, as they do our reports? And if they did, is it possible to get a copy of that response?
Thank you.
Chairman, Fisheries Resource Conservation Council
Thank you very much.
That is a good question and a very pertinent one. The answer regarding the minister's response is that we did receive a “thank you very much for your report” type of answer, but we have not yet received a detailed explanation of what will be approved or not. We are aware....
Pardon me?
Chairman, Fisheries Resource Conservation Council
I am not sure where that is. I am not certain at this point, because it's not something we debate or discuss afterwards. We just provide the advice, and it's a stand-alone report. However, we're writing another report now on herring, so we did ask, because we'd like to know if there's somewhere or somehow we can improve our reporting and the manner in which we provide advice. We haven't received a formal piece of literature saying they are going to do this or that or the other thing. We haven't had that yet.
We are aware, however, that DFO has implemented or is in the process of implementing many of the points that we've raised. The three main points are reducing effort, monitoring, and organizing the industry. So that's that question.
Having quota systems throughout the world is probably the easiest way to balance capacity with the available resource. In order to do so, the first thing you need to establish is the number of lobsters out there, and that's very difficult, because we lack the scientific information to just spit out a number and say there are this many lobsters in the water, with this many here and that many there. I'm not saying you can't go down that road, but science would have to improve or find a way to establish how many lobsters are available, I think. That's rule number one.
Once you have an IQ, an individual quota, then you have to determine how to balance the capacity with the available resource. So your quotas are set so that if you catch that quota, the resource should be fine, thank you very much. If you establish that the quota is x, and you divide that among the fleet equally or by historical performance or however, then if the quota's well set, the fishery should react accordingly. If you set quotas low, the fishery should increase. If you set quotas high, the fishery will probably reduce.
Now, in the idea of ITQ, the individual transferable quota, the “T”, which you don't like, is what actually keeps balancing the capacity with the available resource. One buys the other one and combines and reduces an entity so that the enterprises are actually economically viable, and you leave that decision with the user. The fisherman decides how much quota he or she would need to make that enterprise work. That's how ITQs work. So the “T” in it is what keeps balancing the effort or the exploitation with the available resource, and that's why it's key. So with the “T” you have a self-rationalization process whereby the industry members themselves buy one another out or sell, and that balances the economics of the situation.
The other points you've raised are on the Canadian aspect of it and the percentages established to determine the concentration situation. Those are separate issues. The council did not deal with all those explanations, because they wanted industry to think about them, and if it works for them, they have to design the ITQ system in order to meet those criteria. If, for example, fishermen are concerned about the Canadian or the non-Canadian entities buying into the quota, then the framework has to be set up around that to ensure that doesn't happen.
The rules of the ITQ system that you would establish can be made to deal with that issue. It's the same thing if concentration is an issue and a concern. You set limits of concentration in your plan. Some fisheries, such as the mobile gear groundfish fishery, have a limit of 2% per licence. That means there's a minimum of 50 vessels or 50 licences that can be active in the fishery. Other fisheries have 5%, while other fisheries have--
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
I'm sorry, but we're constrained for time here for questioning.
Conservative
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I certainly appreciate the testimony I'm hearing here.
Let me preface by letting you know that in a previous employment I worked as a fisheries technician for Alberta fish and wildlife division. We worked on walleye in Alberta, which are about as tasty as lobster, but that's about as close as they get. I worked on something called the minimum size limit experiment, which absolutely changed the entire fishing regulations in the province of Alberta as far as walleye is concerned.
The whole notion there was that a sport fisherman was allowed to catch three walleye at 15 inches. It was found out afterwards that a female walleye doesn't actually start spawning until about 17 inches in length. What we were doing was harvesting everything before it had an opportunity to reproduce. Lakes would be reduced to nothing but a few old walleye that managed to never get caught, and there was no healthy juvenile recruitment. I see the same thing happening here through your recommendations.
One of the things that we did was introduce something called “slot size”. That slot size protected fish that managed to get to that age when they were reproducing. They were protected in that slot, which meant that it was a non-harvestable fish. The equivalent could be said for a lobster. It's the same notion.
In your report you talk about raising the carapace length, which obviously protects a female. You go into quite a bit of detail in regard to the Bay of Fundy, and how different carapace lengths throughout the region result in different ages or different reproductive capacities or sizes at which females become reproductive.
The other difficulty we had with the walleyes was that we couldn't tell the sex. I understand that you can look at a lobster and tell if it's a female or a male, so I'm wondering why you seem to make no recommendations on whether there should be a moratorium on the harvesting of females or on whether there should be different sizes for females versus males, and why there aren't any references to a slot.
Also, while it was hinted at here, there was no actual recommendation to designate some areas as off limits. If you take a look at the lobster fishing areas, they basically cover every fishable area. There isn't a single place where a lobster can hide without the risk of having a trap set within ten feet of it.
I'm wondering why there are some of those absences, given the knowledge of other fisheries that we have around the province. I was somewhat surprised not to see some recommendations along that line.
Chairman, Fisheries Resource Conservation Council
Thank you very much for that question.
You can tell the difference between a male and a female lobster, but you have to flip it upside down. You have to physically see it, so the lobster has to come up in the trap first in order for you to determine the sex. You have to flip it upside down. You can easily see if it's male or female.
What we refer to in our report, and I'm not sure which page--
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
I don't mean to interrupt, but if you trap a lobster that's not the right size, it's simply returned overboard.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Each one of those lobsters, if my knowledge of the fishery is correct, is measured, because it has to comply with the length, so simply flipping it over and taking a look at the swimmerets would be the second step in the process. On the deck of a boat it would be technically feasible, would it not, to make that determination and decide whether or not to return a lobster? Is that not true?
Chairman, Fisheries Resource Conservation Council
Yes. Every lobster has to be handled--
Chairman, Fisheries Resource Conservation Council
--individually. You're right. It's easy to tell the difference between male and female, number one, but we recommend a window. You call it--
Chairman, Fisheries Resource Conservation Council
--a slot. We call it the window. If a lobster doesn't reach a certain size, then you throw it back over, and it survives. They use that in various places in Atlantic Canada.
What we're saying is that in areas where you're not close to your 50% mature, we strongly advise that you allow for those larger females to stay in the water. You return them to the water. We do have that.
We do have a recommendation on refugia, which are closed areas. The refugium is in Browns Bank. In southwest Nova Scotia there's an area 40. If you look at the last page in the back of your book, you can see area 40, which is a place where no fishing of lobster takes place at all, by any fleet. We feel this is where larvae are spawned. They drift and they settle in area 34. That could be why southwest Nova Scotia is doing so well, but we don't have the proof.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
So what we have, then, is that this refugia is actually doing its job, but it's the only one in the entire area. If we were to take a look at the entire fishing area, whether it's up by the Gaspé, the îles-de-la-Madeleine, or wherever the case may be, one refuge or one place certainly wouldn't be indicative. If you take a look at any type of conservation plan or preservation plan, you're usually looking at anywhere from 12% to 20% of an area that should be left as a refuge in order to allow an opportunity for healthy stocks.
In the context of this report, then, and I guess necessity being the mother of invention, the reports submitted in 1995 and 2007 were under different economic times and different economic conditions. We're now in 2009. In these different economic conditions, do you feel that the recommendations in the reports are still just as valid today, considering the economic times, as they were in 2007 and 1995?
Chairman, Fisheries Resource Conservation Council
The risk is higher, even from 2007. Today what's scary is that what we predicted was that if the costs of doing business, like the cost of fuel, etc., were higher, and if the exchange rate came to almost par with the U.S.... It's a perfect storm of what happened to the fishery. The prices going down and the economic situation globally all make the situation graver than what we said in 2007. The situation is grave.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Knowing what you know for the recommendations you had in 2007, are there any other recommendations that you now wish you would have included? Are there areas that you wish you would have explored? Because as our committee goes through this, as we travel through Atlantic Canada studying this issue, it doesn't make sense for us to redo the work you've already done.
Could you point out, for the benefit of this committee, areas that you wish you would have covered and areas that you'd like to see more focus on, so that we as a committee can hone our future committee hearings, our future questioning, and our future witnesses to take up any of the areas where you feel that some new examination maybe should be looked at?
Chairman, Fisheries Resource Conservation Council
Not to pat ourselves on the back, but I think we've covered most or all of the issues. We didn't put enough emphasis, I think, on the economic sustainability pillar. When we looked at sustainability in lobster fisheries, we identified four pillars of sustainability. The ecology or biology part is number one, plus the social, economics, and institutional parts.
I think the economics pillar is one that we touched on and mentioned, but now it's really coming to the point where it's a graver situation. It's quicker. If anything, we should have sounded the alarm harder. If I were to say something like we're sounding the alarm here, we're in trouble, and something's going to happen; it's not a matter of if, but when.... And now it's sooner rather than later. That's how I would respond.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
If I have any time left, one of my colleagues may wish to use it.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for coming here today.
I remember serving on the ethics committee last year. We were studying access to information. Hidden in some of the reports and hidden in some of the facts, oftentimes, are things that nobody wants to talk about.
I say that because we found that we were struggling with access to information. We didn't have the people in place to handle all the claims that were coming forward, so when I asked the probing questions, like where the claims were coming from, I found out that the majority of them were coming from our institutions, from the prisons, and nobody wanted to deal with that.
I guess that's the question I'm asking you. We know we have a crisis or are bordering on a crisis. What's looming in the future doesn't look that good. Are there areas that are just sensitive and that you don't want to talk about? I know that quota areas.... People are cheating on their quotas.
For instance, we saw on the news that with the natives.... There were some problems with the natives. Is that possibly an area? Or is that a small part of the problem?