Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for inviting us to address you.
First of all, I'm a fisheries consultant. The name of my firm is Services-conseils STF Consulting Inc. My services are being retained by the Association des crabiers acadiens.
This morning, I'm speaking on behalf of that association and on behalf of the very large majority of the 150 traditional crab fishermen in area 12. They are represented by the following associations: the Association des crabiers acadiens, the Association des crabiers gaspésiens, the Association des crabiers de La Baie, les Crabiers du Nord-Est, the Association des pêcheurs professionnels crabiers acadiens and the P.E.I. Snow Crab Fishermen Association, one of whose representatives, Mr. Cameron, is here this morning.
The businesses I am talking about this morning rely exclusively on the snow crab resource. They have access to no other fishing licences in the southern gulf.
The charts I'm going to present to you this morning will be included in a request we are about to make in two or three days. We will be submitting that request to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada for an investigation to be conducted by that office into the snow crab stock and fishery in the southern gulf. I am taking this opportunity to ask the committee to support our recommendation to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. That would help a great deal in clarifying all the confusion and problems surrounding the snow crab in the southern gulf.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. I've provided you with a series of charts. I won't present the charts individually because I'm going to try to talk to you in the four minutes allotted to me.
First, I will tell you that the charts are based on a historical timeline. All the data are divided between before-2003 and after-2003. They are based on eight years: from 1995 to 2002 and from 2003 to 2009. The averages in the charts are based on those two series of years. Why did we choose those two series of years? Because they coincide with the cycles of abundance and decline in the snow crab resource, which you heard about this morning. There are booms and busts. The first cycle was from 1995 to 2002. The second cycle was from 2003 to 2009.
This also coincides with the introduction of new access to the crab fishery. The first time there were newcomers to the crab fishery was in 1995. Those people stayed in the crab fishery temporarily, somewhat as you were saying this morning. The department granted crab licences while the resource was abundant and stopped granting them when it was no longer abundant. In 2003, Fisheries and Oceans Canada decided to stop following that recommendation and to include those people permanently, not taking into account the need to balance the resource against fishing capacity.
If you look at the table in Figure 3, you'll see annual snow crab catches in the southern gulf since 1995. The scientists and the department have told you they had to reduce the total allowable catch, the TAC, by 63% because of overfishing during the last biomass cycle. If you look at the period from 2003 to 2009, you can see very clearly that there was overfishing.
However, who benefited from that overfishing? Who benefited from this new crab? On the following page, you see the table on landings by the traditional crab fishermen—the people we represent—they are there. You'll see that, ultimately, comparing the period from 1995 to 2002 with that from 2003 to 2009, the quantities were roughly similar.
I'll close on that point. You'll be able to ask questions on the other tables that follow to determine where the crab was fished and by whom. What happens when you apply overcapacity to the fisheries? You have actual figures and data.
The data here are from Fisheries and Oceans Canada. They aren't from the industry. These are the department's official data.
Now let's look at the traditional crab fleets that everyone says don't want to share. That's false: the crab fishermen want to share in a context in which a balance is maintained between abundance and scarcity of the resource. That's simply what we're asking.
If you look at what's happened since 1990, when the traditional crab fishermen in the southern gulf had 85% of the harvest, you'll see that, between 2003 and 2009, their percentage dropped to 56%. There's a threshold beyond which it's no longer profitable. Our big fear now, at the start of this difficult period and for the long term, is that the traditional crab fishing industry will no longer be profitable.
Thank you. I'll await your questions.