Fisheries Committee on March 12th, 2009

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Have you thought of ways to control that? For example, when you buy back licences in the fishing zone that you cover, which varies from place to place, I believe, you still have no control over the number of lobsters landed. So if you buy back licences, but the remaining fishermen get bigger boats, there will be more fishing than when the licences were for smaller ones.

[Jean-Guy d'Entremont]

If you buy back a licence covering 250 traps, but keep using 200, that is a reduction of 50 traps. If you buy a licence for 250 traps, but you only want to use 200 of them, there are now 50 fewer traps. It is a way of reducing the fishing effort. But if a fisherman buys a licence and uses the same amount of traps, nothing changes in terms of fishing effort, but the boat will make more money because his catch will be greater.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

So when a licence is bought back, the traps it covers must not be redistributed.

[Jean-Guy d'Entremont]

That is correct, yes. There are different ways of going about it. It is very complicated to decide how not to get back to the situation you were in before you bought the licences.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

What is the difference between the lobster fishery in Maine and ours on the east coast?

[Jean-Guy d'Entremont]

We have looked at that. In the United States, they fish year round. They have no fishing season. The rules on the number of traps are different. The size of the lobsters they sell is also different; in general, they are bigger than ours. But the cycles that can be observed in the United States are very similar to those we see in south-east Nova Scotia. So the cycle is the same, but there are two different ways of managing the fishery.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Walker said earlier that, in your area, efforts were made in the rest of the zone and the landings of lobsters decreased. If you could make one specific request today, would you ask for government support? If so, what form would it take?

[Donald Walker]

I can not make a request personally, but I would say that, in the FRCC's view, it is up to each person to find a solution that works for the future, for sustainability, for the long term. We are not here to demand an ideal solution for each sector. Each location, each province, each small business, in fact, has different needs. As we said in our report, fishermen have options, but they are all going to have to find a way to use the ones that work for them. We talked about five possible options earlier.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

The FRCC needs the government to help bring harmony to the entire lobster fishery. What would its main request be?

[Donald Walker]

It is not for me to say what the FRCC's request is. We have no requests, we just have advice.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

And problems.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Monsieur Lévesque.

Mr. Stoffer.

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

This sounds like the opinions and problems of politicians, like all of us.

Thank you.

Monsieur d'Entremont, on page 40 of your report you talk about EI benefits, and you say, “Although the FRCC has noted the negative effects that the EI program may have on resource sustainability, it is not making a value judgment on the program in the lobster fishery.”

Well, as you're well aware, it's not just the lobster fishermen who access EI. It's people in agriculture, forestry, manufacturing--people right across the country. But as you're also aware, the Doha Round is going on now through the WTO, and the chairman of that particular fisheries committee has indicated that EI benefits may have a very negative effect on fishing in this regard.

My colleague from Prince Edward Island, Mr. MacAulay, raised this issue as well, the fact that the EI benefits were considered a subsidy to the fishing industry. We're not trying to eliminate it, but we're discussing the issue, and that's made an awful lot of people in Atlantic Canada very nervous.

I'm just wondering if you could elaborate on your viewpoint on this one. There is no question, everyone would love to have a full-time job, with full-time salaries and benefits, etc., but in many cases it's just not possible. So if possible, could you elaborate on that? If I were the chairman of that committee overseas and I saw this report, I would put it right in Canada's face and say, “You see, even your own FRCC said that it has a negative impact on the fishery.”

I'd just like you to comment on that, please, elaborate and explain that more.

[Jean-Guy d'Entremont]

Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Van Kesteren asked if we had some tough questions, and this was one of them. But we need to say how it is. This is a driver in the fishery. When people are fishing and they don't quite get enough money from the fishery but they get enough stamps, that allows them to remain in the fishery even if they don't make any money--people who otherwise would be out.

There's a flip side to that. Because there's an EI system, the fishermen don't need to fish every last one. They may stop when they get enough lobsters. They don't have to continue. There's a flip side. There are two ways of looking at it.

But we certainly do not want to make a value judgment on the benefits of having an EI system. We've mentioned tourism as well. These are industries that use the system because they're seasonal. We have absolutely no problem with that, and we don't want to make a judgment. But we feel it's warranted to tell the minister that this is a reason that the effort could be driven more, or it could be less in some areas. There's a flip side to it.

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

That's absolutely fair enough. Thank you.

The other concern I have is in regard to monitoring, especially dockside monitoring or vessel monitoring. A lot of fishermen fear that cost is going to be downloaded onto them. As you've rightly pointed out, with all the concerns affecting fishermen and their enterprises now, they're getting whacked over the head with all these charges and licence fees, etc., compounded on top of each other. Well, as a fisherman, you would know. If you throw on additional costs, that burden just may be unacceptable, especially this year when lobsters are going for $3.00 or $3.25 a pound in some areas. Fishermen were forced, in some cases, to sell their lobsters out of the backs of trucks in Fall River or Dartmouth and those areas.

I'm wondering how you would see an effective monitoring program, and who should bear the ultimate cost of that monitoring program. I agree with you that we need to have a much more effective system, not only to catch the cheaters, but also to protect the integrity and the conservation of the resource.

[Jean-Guy d'Entremont]

I think in answer to that, Mr. Stoffer, the risk that we currently have is like driving at night with your lights off. When you don't have the information in front of you to make decisions, it's very scary and dangerous.

We feel that the risks are too high. You need to have the monitoring. You can achieve that more efficiently if industry has a hand into it. We're talking about the government here. Government is usually not as effective and efficient as industry. So we're saying involve industry and ensure that effective monitoring gets done.

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

Who should pay for it?

[Jean-Guy d'Entremont]

Who should pay for it? I don't recall exactly what we said here. I'd have to look back on that, I would have to guess. It has to be at least shared so that industry does have a say into it. I'm not sure exactly what I said on monitoring.

[Gerard Chidley]

I don't think we pointed out who should share it, but it depends on what you're using it for. If it's to create a scientific index for management to deal with, then DFO management or DFO science should have to share some of the burden.

When you look at the value of the lobster industry to the tune of $600 million—not this year, say last year—it was around 110 million pounds of lobster. Two cents a pound brings you out to about $2.2 million. For two cents a pound on probably, at most times, a $5.50 to $6 lobster, you can create a nice, effective monitoring system that actually can give you size frequencies, landing data of what's landed, plus a check on what traps are in the water. If you're going to maximize the value out of the fishery, you nearly have to know what you have in the water to start with.

We go through it and blacklist our species, like on the islands, as of course you know. We pay so much for shrimp, so much for crab, and so much for everything that comes out of the water. That's because we have a quota system. It's a quota system. We started that way, and we've evolved to the point that you're trying to fine-tune every year. It exactly depends on what you want the information for. To my mind, that's where it's due.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Allen.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Being an avid consumer of lobster—

[A voice]

Hear, hear.

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

—in the last hour and 15 minutes I've come a long way from deciding which white wine to have with it. I'm in a whole different space here now.

I'd just like to ask a couple of questions on the economics. As you indicated, when you were previously doing the study, that was one area that you probably thought we could focus on, maybe. Mr. Walker, you talked about some of the things on the Quebec side, the buy-backs and fewer traps. Can you tell me—or do you have any indication based on those types of things—how that has impacted the price, and how that has impacted the return to the lobster fishermen, as opposed to elsewhere in other regions?

[Donald Walker]

The impact hasn't been as great on the price as it has been on the increase of viability to the fishermen who are left in the area. You also have to remember that any time you do a buy-back, you have to control effort. We are very proactive in controlling effort compared to other areas.

We have different scenarios where different buy-back systems are in place. But we are also always very strong on controlling effort to stop effort creep, because with today's technology and the type of fishing that's done, it's very hard if you don't put a control on your effort at the beginning. It hasn't really changed on pricing, but it has changed on volume, which is for viability reasons.

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

You're in the second consecutive ten-year resource sustainability plan. Was the first one based on the 1995 study? Would you be midway through the second turn of this?