Evidence of meeting #16 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fishers.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
I call this meeting to order.
Good morning everyone. It is a real pleasure to be with you all today.
Ladies and gentlemen, before we begin, it's our custom at the committee when we travel to allow a few minutes for a few words of introduction from the member who represents this area and the area that we are travelling to.
Monsieur Blais.
Bloc
Raynald Blais Bloc Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to begin by conveying my greetings to members of the Committee and wishing them a very warm welcome to Grande-Rivière.
In the next few hours, we will be hearing from several different witnesses. I also want to point out that, this afternoon, we will have an opportunity to visit the Sainte-Thérèse plant and meet with people who have been, or are still, grappling with this problem. We will begin the hearings, which will allow us to gain a better understanding of the impacts—even though, in actual fact, we are already quite aware of them—impacts which are very real.
In the communities, there are economic impacts, but there are also impacts on individuals. These people will tell us about their experience, what they are going through now and what they could be facing next year. After that, we will begin our work and present a report containing recommendations. This year, and especially next year, we are aiming to have these recommendations acted on in order to make life easier for these people and mitigate the impacts.
I want to thank you for being here today. We will turn it over to the witnesses to say what they have to say. I am sure it will be a worthwhile experience, for us and for you.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Merci, monsieur Blais.
Ladies and gentlemen, throughout our proceedings this morning, you will hear an alarm signalling that time has expired, whether it's for presentations or questions from members. Members of the committee know what time constraints they are limited to. I would ask, if you hear the alarm, that you begin to bring your remarks to a conclusion.
Starting off this morning, we have Monsieur Scantland, who I believe is going to make a presentation, followed by Monsieur Cousineau, Monsieur Blais, Monsieur Lelièvre, and Monsieur Desbois.
Monsieur Scantland, if you want to proceed, you have four minutes to make your opening comments.
Gilbert Scantland General Director, Conférence régionale des élu(e)s Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine
I would like to thank the Standing Committee for coming to our region to see for itself the reality we have been facing since early spring. This situation obviously has an extremely prejudicial effect on all our maritime communities. I particularly want to stress its impact on our plant workers, dock hands and fishers.
I would like to take a few moments to introduce the Conférence régionale des élu(e)s. This is a group composed of elected representatives from the Gaspé and Magdalen Islands region. It is an organization that was created by the Government of Quebec, five years ago, to act as a special point of contact with the Quebec government regarding development in the region. The Conférence régionale des élu(e)s is regularly consulted by the Quebec government on all issues relating to development in the region. In that sense, the Quebec government has also been made aware of the current situation.
In my opening statement, I will be emphasizing one word in particular: insecurity—the insecurity created by the current management scheme and reflected in the current circumstances of fishers, fish plant workers and the industry as a whole. To me it is inconceivable, given the current situation, current knowledge of the resource and the work being done by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, that we are unable to plan better, particularly over the longer term.
Right now, we are in a situation where all the harvesting plans were announced at a very late date—and I will be dealing in general terms with harvesting plans as a whole. There is no, or almost no, consultation, particularly when the news is bad. When the news is good, they are ready to consult and share the resource but when the time comes to announce bad news, it is done on the sly with very little consultation.
I would say that the ones who are really missing in all these consultations are the communities. The communities are never consulted about what is happening in an area where they are the most directly affected. The fact is that 25% of the economy in the Gaspé region depends on the fisheries. Yet, the communities, like the Conférence régionale des élu(e)s and elected representatives in general, are rarely, if ever, consulted regarding the status of the industry. Furthermore, very little information is communicated to partners when changes or draconian cuts are made to quotas.
Obviously, all of that has a shock effect on the industry as a whole—as I was saying earlier—and it results in disputes between the different fleets, between traditional fishers and those with temporary allocations, between fishers and the fisher helpers, or between plant workers and fishers. It systematically destabilizes our communities. It results in tragic situations, both for the families and for the companies.
Cuts in fishing quotas also accentuate interprovincial competition. We know that Quebec has not often been the beneficiary of resource sharing when it comes to competitive quotas. In that regard, quota cuts also lead to fierce competition among buyer/processors at both the provincial and interprovincial levels.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans' power to manage the resource is definitely too heavily concentrated in Ottawa. Furthermore, it focuses more on issues in the Eastern provinces, to the detriment of Eastern Quebec. Decisions are made very slowly with respect to sectoral issues. I would just like to give you an example: a request to lower licensing costs for the shrimp fishery is still being reviewed more than eight years later—eight years to make a decision.
There is also the groundfish issue. After three moratoriums and scientific confirmation of the impact of grey seals, we are still awaiting a management plan to reduce or eliminate grey seals in the Gulf. This is just to illustrate the fact that things evolve extremely slowly and that solutions are never brought forward.
I know that time is flying by, but I am not sure how much I have left.
In general, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans manages the resource in a vacuum, resulting in repeated objections every spring, which forces governments, at the local and regional levels, to get involved and provincial governments to manage the situation, since the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the federal government generally just offload the problem. This is a very poor example for the fishing industry in the Maritime regions. It presents the image of a totally disorganized industry. When the time comes to work with--
Conservative
Gaétan Cousineau Coordinator, Mouvement Action-Chômage Pabok Inc.
Thank you for inviting me to discuss the direct repercussions on individuals of all the problems we are encountering in the fishery and other sectors. For 20 years now, the Mouvement Action-Chômage Pabok Inc. has been defending people who encounter problems with the Employment Insurance Act. In fact, people often turn to our organization to try and understand what is happening to them when they are unable to find employment, and to receive advice as well.
In the last 20 years, we have experienced the closure of the Murdochville plant, the cod moratorium, and the closure of the Gaspésia plant on two occasions, before and after reconstruction. We also suffered the setbacks associated with the Smurfit-Stone plant in New Richmond. Every closure has had an appalling impact on individuals, families and children. First of all, the greatest impact is on jobs. Job sources are limited to three, although now it is more like two, since work opportunities are very limited in the forest industry. As a result, people have to upgrade their skills in order to move into other areas of employment.
When you have been a fisher for 20 years, it is pretty hard to move into the tourism industry and remain in the region. So, we see a lot of former workers leaving the region to go and work in Western Canada, on the North Shore, in Montreal—all over the place. They work in order to qualify for employment insurance, so that they can return to their region. Most of the people I have spoken to tell me that they end up with less money when they have to leave the region to work somewhere else. The main reasons for that are, first of all, travel costs, because they go back home to visit their families regularly, and also the fact that they have to pay rent both at home and outside their region. I regularly have occasion to see the disastrous family environment that this creates. There are suicides, separations, kids who have to be taken out of high school and university, because there is not enough money to meet their needs. We have seen families broken up and their homes repossessed by banking institutions. All of that creates an absolutely miserable environment.
The people who are left here, who do not have an opportunity to go and work somewhere else, are reduced to working at short-term jobs provided by Emploi-Québec every season, where they earn $10, $11 or $12 an hour, or an annual income of $20,000 or $22,000, placing them just slightly above the poverty line.
So, you can imagine the kind of gloomy atmosphere that settles over a region such as ours. Often we ask ourselves why we are unable to recover from this. When the climate turns gloomy after consecutive closures, people feel as though they have hit rock bottom. As a result, it is very difficult, and it takes a very long time to regain a positive spirit and possibly start a new business or invest money—of course, someone who is not earning any money is not able to invest any.
For us, this has been the situation since the cod moratorium, which resulted in the layoff of almost 1,000 people. At the Murdochville plant, it was 700 or 800; at Gaspésia, 600 or 700; and at Smurfit-Stone, 300 or 400. Those are direct jobs that do not include all the indirect jobs.
The population of the Gaspé area is aging. The region is emptying out and, very often, the ones who are leaving are replaced by retirees—former residents of the region who spent 30 years working somewhere else and have come back home. The economy is obviously a little less dynamic when it is supported by retirees.
Those are the comments I wanted to make this morning.
Thank you.
Conservative
Gérard-Raymond Blais Representative, Municipalité régionale de comté de Bonaventure
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. I represent the Bonaventure RCM and will be speaking to you today about the situation in the region since fishing quotas were cut, something which is causing great concern among residents.
I am the mayor of a municipality by the name of Saint-Godefroi in the Baie des Chaleurs. For many years now, we have had the sense that we are always on the receiving end of news announced suddenly and bluntly—bad news like cuts to the crab fishing quotas. The two gentlemen that came before me pretty well summarized the situation residents are facing.
Mr. Scantland talked about insecurity; I would like to talk about uncertainty. People are leaving the Gaspé region in droves—particularly young people—to find work. In the past, people talked about going to work in the large urban centres, like Montréal and Quebec City. Now people are leaving the province to go and work in Alberta and Manitoba.
That worries residents, because it results in a significant loss of income for crabbers. Furthermore, dock hands and plant workers who only worked four or five weeks before now find themselves reduced to only two weeks of work. There has been a return to what I experienced when I was 16 years old, what were called at the time “odd jobs”. Nothing has changed in all those years, not to mention the economic losses in Gaspésie and throughout the region that you will be visiting in the coming days.
Furthermore, this has had a considerable impact on the health of residents of the Gaspé region. The reason I know is that, for several years, I was the manager of a centre that treats drug addicts. The job losses, the uncertainty and the insecurity all affect people's health.
Friends, drug addiction in Gaspésie is more and more common as a result of these job losses and sudden drops in income from one day to the next. I do not understand why the experts in government cannot predict what is going to befall us today, tomorrow or in future years. I beg you, members of Parliament and ministers alike, to do all you can to ensure that people have some inkling of what could occur in the next few years.
In terms of problems in the fishery—Mr. Cousineau talked about some of them—we have experienced the same difficulties in the groundfish fishery. At the time, I was with the CSN and we discussed the issue at length. We tried to find solutions. After the cod fishery, now it is the crab fishery's turn.
So, I think it is plausible that your experts are well positioned and well enough paid to be able to predict what is going to hit us in the coming years. It is not only the Bonaventure RCM; the entire population is raising the alarm, asking that you answer its call.
The people behind us who are listening to the discussion have lost income. Sometimes they find themselves living below the poverty line. That is not the case for the majority, but it is for a pretty large segment of the population.
I can imagine what it is like to be in the position of the people who represent us. I do not want to be mean, but it seems to me that they live in a completely different world. When they are seated comfortably at their desks, they cannot possibly imagine what people who earn only $12,000 a year are going through.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will conclude my presentation by once again urging you to plan, and to think about the people living in poverty, who are encountering these problems on a daily basis, and who get up every morning wondering whether they will still be working tomorrow, and whether they will be able to allow themselves a little luxury and regain their physical and psychological health.
Thank you.
Conservative
Léo Lelièvre Acting Reeve, Municipalité régionale de comté du Rocher Percé
Good morning to all the members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, as well as all the captains at the back of the room.
It seems to me that, prior to this year, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should have cut crab quotas gradually. This year, the quota cut has put a great deal of pressure on the economy in our RCM. The municipality, the RCM in general and business have been hit hard. For the fishing captains who are behind me, this year has brought a deficit. Since the crab fishery closed in 1989, captains have made the necessary effort to conserve the species. They have paid for observers at sea, like the BIOREX company, and dockside observers from Resmar Inc., who are responsible for weighing the crab that is fished. During those years, there were about 130 traditional crabbers. Now there are more than 350. That is what is known as overfishing. There are too many people out there, and that is why the resource is declining.
As regards the dock hands, it is impossible for them to qualify for employment insurance when they only work four weeks. They are worried about their future. The federal government should provide financial assistance and training at the École des pêches.
As for plant employees, once again, I come back to employment insurance, because people work in order to qualify. Some work in plants for four weeks, which does not really pay much. One thing is for sure: they are not eligible for employment insurance.
Because we live in a remote, even devitalized region, the government should reduce the number of hours needed to qualify for employment insurance and restore isolation premiums for people living in areas such as ours, which are remote. That would really help people.
In terms of the local economy—convenience stores, grocery stores and businesses—the situation is not promising. Sales are down. Plants where US money is coming in are not financially viable. The exchange rate is too high. The government should also consider granting a tax exemption to processing plants. It would be possible to have employees work at other sites and grant them tax exemptions.
In the Gaspé region, wood is disappearing. There is no more wood and there has been no more cod since the moratorium, as my colleagues were saying a little earlier. Now a moratorium is being imposed on the crab fishery. What will become of that fishery, of the fishing captains, dock hands and plants in years to come? I do not know whether the government can answer that, but I would really like an answer.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
Daniel Desbois President, Association des crabiers gaspésiens inc.
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, we are appealing to you today on behalf of our members, who are all traditional snow crab fishers in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.
We would like to discuss the current situation—a situation which warrants that an inquiry be conducted with respect to the management practices of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Not only are those management practices contrary to the principles of sustainable development, but they raise a great many questions as to whether the resource is being managed in the public interest and in a manner that is consistent with new departmental policies and the principles laid out in the Fisheries Act and the Oceans Act.
In the crab fishery in the southern Gulf, the vast majority of fishing enterprises that we represent are the only ones whose economic activity depends exclusively on that resource. They deal with the coastal communities in Northern New Brunswick, the Gaspé, the Cape Breton Islands and Prince Edward Island, and employ approximately 800 professional fishers.
Furthermore, the primary processing activity of 15 or more plants in New Brunswick and Quebec depends on supplies of crab from that fleet. These plants represent between 3,000 and 4,000 additional seasonal jobs.
Traditional fishers fish in zone 12, which has been the main crab stock fishing zone in the southern Gulf since the mid-1960s. Those stocks also supply three other sub-zones—12E, 12F and 19—and now zone 18 as well, since fishers from zone 18 were rolled into zone 12 in 2003.
This year, Fisheries and Oceans Canada suddenly reduced the total allowable catch of crab in zone 12 by 63%, from 20,900 tons to 7,700 tons in 2010, on the grounds that the commercial crab biomass in the southern Gulf was overfished during the first declining cycle of the resource. This decision shocked the entire industry, which will be facing income losses estimated at more than $125 million this year. The overall 2010 quota reflects the lowest TAC since the fishery began.
As far as we are concerned, DFO decisions in recent years with respect to management of the snow crab fishery in the southern Gulf triggered the overfishing, something which was roundly criticized by the Department's scientists. Like what has happened to too many fish species in Canada and around the world, this dramatic situation is the predictable result of an ill-considered increase in the fishing capacity for short-term political gain.
Indeed, since 2003, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has permanently tripled the snow crab fishing capacity in the southern Gulf. The Department chose this course of action at the time on the grounds that it wanted to use the snow crab fishery to reduce the fishing effort of lobster and groundfish fishers in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. Fisheries and Oceans Canada then added some 700 new entrants to the 150 additional crabbers in the main snow crab fishing zone—zone 12. Those new entrants secured 34.8% of the overall quota for that zone. The Department also authorized an excessive increase in the number of boats, from 160 to 400, as well as the number of traps, which went from 18,500 to 38,000.
By taking that course of action, Fisheries and Oceans Canada acted in direct contravention of the principles of sustainable development, completely ignoring its obligation to consider fully the environmental and economic impacts of its decisions, as well as the interests of future generations. The Department chose to undermine these principles, rather than encouraging their adoption. Finally, Fisheries and Oceans Canada chose to imperil both the survival of the resource and the economic survival of the people who depend on it now, as well as those who will want to make a living from it in future.
In actual fact, Fisheries and Oceans Canada adopted practices that are irreconcilable with its own sustainable stock management policies, which very clearly argue in favour of maintaining a healthy balance between the fishing capacity and available resources in all Canadian fisheries. The official data show that 40,000 additional tons of snow crab have been harvested in the southern Gulf since 2003, compared to previous cycles. All of the additional harvest is attributable to the sub-zones and new entrants.
In fact, the catch of traditional zone 12 fishers, who have depended exclusively on that resource since the 1960s, remained about the same over the last two cycles—110,000 tons between 1995 and 2002, and 109,000 tons between 2003 and 2009.
In the previous cycle, from 1995 to 2002, Fisheries and Oceans Canada seems to have been aware of the impact on the resource associated with these new entrants. That consideration seems to have disappeared since 2003, however. The fact is that the Minister has proportionately increased the share of the catch allocated to the new entrants, even as the resource was declining more and more. Managers at Fisheries and Oceans Canada continue to go against the grain in maintaining that approach, without considering the potential impact on this species' natural cycle of decline. Yet all of this has been very well documented by the Department's own scientists. Fishers who depend on these resources, as well as several other stakeholders who support the representations they are making to you, are asking that a proper inquiry be carried out into our allegations that Fisheries and Oceans Canada's management practices in the southern Gulf are not consistent with government commitments to sustainable development or even its own management policies.
In April of 1999, the Auditor General of Canada concluded his report on management practices in the Atlantic shellfish fisheries as follows:
4.107 We noted significant weaknesses in the Department's management practices designed to achieve its objective for the Atlantic shellfish fishery. Our audit found decisions that contradict the Department's Fishery of the Future strategy, which formed the basis of our criteria for this audit. In addition, the Department is pursuing social objectives that it has not articulated to Parliament, and economic objectives for which it has not identified expected results. There is an urgent need for the Department to clarify these objectives and to develop and implement the strategies to achieve overall sustainability of the Atlantic shellfish fisheries.
In February of 2000, in response to the Auditor General's report, the Department undertook an extensive review of its Atlantic fisheries policy. That review gave rise to the new Atlantic Fisheries Policy Framework that was adopted in March of 2004. That policy framework received unanimous approval from both industry and provincial governments. It highlights what should and should not be done in terms of the changes that are needed to ensure the sustainability of the stocks and the Atlantic fisheries. Naturally, we would have expected the Minister to quickly put into practice these important principles and the guidelines set out in the framework. However, that does not appear to be the case.
I would like to draw your attention to the following example. In March, 2005, and again in March, 2006, the Department announced that it would extend until 2009 the fishing overcapacity in zone 12 announced in 2003. The decision made this year is even more worrisome, in our view, since it was precisely in a cycle of natural decline, where the biomass is at its lowest level in the history of the fishery, that the Department announced, on March 8, that it would extend the overcapacity to 2014. It should be noted, however, that, in Chapter 5 of the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Framework, which deals with access to the resource, the Department's new management policy certainly does not encourage using the resources from one fishery to fill gaps in other fisheries experiencing difficulty.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada adopted these policies with a view to responding to the Auditor General's warning. But certain facts were completely ignored. The Department has done quite the opposite when it comes to managing the snow crab fishery in the southern Gulf, as well as other shellfish fisheries in the Atlantic region, according to what our fisher colleagues are saying.
In 2006, and again in 2007, the traditional crabber fleet formally asked the Department to begin discussions, with a view to codifying the relationship that should exist between fishing capacity and the available resource. In keeping with that vision, the guidelines and principles set out in the Atlantic Fisheries Strategic Plan--
I am almost done, Mr. Chairman.
Our requests received neither a response nor an acknowledgement.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Thank you, Monsieur Desbois.
Madame Metallic, do you have some opening comments?
Delphine Metallic Assistant Director, Natural Resources, Listuguj Mi'gmaq Government
Good morning to the standing committee. Welcome to the Gaspé.
My name is Delphine Metallic. I'm Mi'gmaq from the community of Listuguj in the Gesgapegiag territory. As you know, Listuguj fishes under the inherent right to fish granted or reaffirmed through the Marshall decision. We fish in zone 12. This is our tenth year in the fishery. We are still new, still learning, and we still want to be included and be part of the resource management.
In the past 10 years since Listuguj gained access to the fishery, it has brought to our community a new hope, a new economy to some degree, and a new industry. We have many fishers and captains, and the whole community has benefited. The nature of our licences is communal so the whole community benefits; not just one fisher or two fishers have benefited. Our whole community has benefited from this small craft fishery.
The recent cuts have dramatically affected our community, which is already economically depressed. I don't have to get into the realities of first nation communities, where there are no viable economic opportunities. A fishery like this brought a lot of hope.
We believed the fishery was being managed properly. We moved from a fixed quota to a percentage quota. We see now that the drastic decline from the biomass could have resulted in mismanagement of the fishery. This causes us great concern. We need immediate and sustainable measures to address this urgency that we are faced with. Solutions should be collaborative and inclusive.
I will just give you an idea of how the dramatic decline in the TAC has affected our community with the loss of jobs, as in the rest of the areas that are impacted. There is the loss of the profits that were turned back into the community to fund underfunded projects, which are chronically underfunded, as we know. We also utilized the profits gained from the fishery for employability measures in our community to help people rise above poverty levels, but they continue.... It's a very difficult situation.
Listuguj Mi'gmaq's main concern is the continued survival of the species. We are prepared to work collaboratively with stakeholders and government officials to find workable and sustainable solutions. Any objectives of a strategy should include the continued survival of the species and should also include the Mi'gmaqs on resource management, with meaningful involvement.
I speak here today only for Listuguj, just for my community, not all Mi'gmaqs. We are committed to ensure that objectives are met through consultations with the government, stakeholders, user groups, and other interested groups, and the continued involvement of all our community members at all levels.
In the past, we have engaged in other resource management efforts involving the community at large to develop, to manage, and to monitor. This has proven to be successful. We are committed to ensuring sustainability and are concerned, as I mentioned, with the survival of the species.
We need to develop a Mi'gmaq governance working group that would ensure a sustainable snow crab harvesting plant with Mi'gmaq involvement. As somebody mentioned earlier, decisions are made too far away, without the awareness of what goes on at a local level.
We should create a constitutionally protected rights-based fishery under section 35. We understand that this will take time and financial resources.
Listuguj is committed and ready to move solidly towards the development of a fishery that is sustainable and that will continue for generations to come. It's important that we preserve the stock so that our children and grandchildren will benefit.
We are only at the beginning of fully exercising our Mi'gmaq inherent right to fish. With access through Marshall, we now have an opportunity to fully implement treaty negotiations. Full implementation and full participation in the Gulf small craft fishery require capacity building and progress.
Listuguj has demonstrated that it can manage. For example, our salmon management plan has been utilized for over 25 years. We are looking to create sustainable solutions to help address the situation.
Thank you.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's a pleasure to be here today to look at the snow crab industry in Atlantic Canada. Since the downturn on the cod moratorium, we've relied so much on other species, and crab in particular has become so important.
I have a few questions I'd like to ask. My first questions are to Gilbert and Daniel.
The FRCC made a recommendation that there be an independent, third party, apolitical structure established to hold public hearings and make public recommendations on access and allocation issues. Do you believe that is a good recommendation and would that help with allocation and access criteria?
General Director, Conférence régionale des élu(e)s Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine
Unfortunately, I am not aware of who sits on that independent commission, but if the communities are not involved and cannot influence the commission, it will be difficult to arrive at something that respects the individual circumstances of each.
The Conférence régionale des élu(e)s conducted a study on the cost of the insecurity brought about by current management practices, and the cost is incredibly high. Businesses are unable, year after year, to evaluate the stocks that are delivered to them. Fishers are unable to estimate the stocks they will be harvesting. As a result, there is no development occurring in the industry. We are not moving forward, because we have not ensured the basic minimum. In that regard, it is obvious that someone is going to have to look at this and establish a basic minimum that people in all the communities can rely on and, from there, build up the industry. Right now, we are not building the industry, we are tearing it apart.
President, Association des crabiers gaspésiens inc.
As we see it, if there is any way of reducing the political impact of quota allocation, that would certainly be a very good thing. At the same time, there need to be real consultations to determine who will sit on these committees. So far, the consultations have taken place out of politeness more than anything else. They consult us, but it is more out of politeness than out of interest. It is a little like what is happening this morning: we are given four minutes to make a presentation, on 10 days notice. That is almost an insult to us.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Gilbert, you mentioned that you'd like to see DFO decentralized. What recommendations would you make on decentralizing DFO from Ottawa?
General Director, Conférence régionale des élu(e)s Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine
I think that, where fisheries management is concerned, there are other ways of working than simply having someone make decisions from a central point and filter them down to the communities that depend on these fisheries. It seems to me we could show some imagination and find governance models that involve the communities. Let us be adult enough to think that our communities are capable of making the necessary choices when it comes to properly managing the fish stocks they depend on.
In terms of decentralization, my view is that Fisheries and Oceans Canada should be the custodian in charge of conserving the resource, not managing it. The Department should be providing advice on how to harvest the resource, but the sharing and management of the resource should be left to the communities. When I say the communities, I am talking about fishers and processors—the people who earn a living from the fishery.
Conservative
Bloc
Raynald Blais Bloc Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To begin with, I would like to let the witnesses know, as well as everyone who will be making presentations later this morning, that Committee members are very interested in receiving any documentation that you have and would like to forward to us. If the material is translated, that would be even better; if it is not, we will have it translated. I am thinking in particular of the briefs of Mr. Desbois or Mr. Scantland, or any other material you may wish to present. Please do not hesitate to do that. We will be very pleased to receive it and to look through it, in order to better understand your testimony.
I am a guy from radio, like Gérard-Raymond Blais, whom I had the chance to work with for several years. In radio, we are used to saying whatever we have to say very quickly. At the same time, I fully understand that dealing with an issue like the impact on the snow crab industry in just a few minutes is pretty well impossible. That is the reason why we are holding several hearings, something that will give us a chance to reflect on all the issues.
I would be interested in hearing more from you, particularly, Mr. Desbois, on the inquiry you are calling for with respect to the Department's management practices, which do not jibe with the principles of sustainable development, and so on. Perhaps you could say a little more about that.
President, Association des crabiers gaspésiens inc.
My presentation focuses almost exclusively on this topic, with supporting graphs. Without these graphs, it is difficult to provide much detail. I had to cut back my presentation and was unable to complete it. I had asked to make a single presentation with the representatives from New Brunswick, but that was not possible. However, it might be possible to do that at another time, in order to provide more descriptive information. Unfortunately, I am not able to present those graphs and complete my presentation--