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--