Fisheries Committee on Oct. 18th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

I call the meeting to order.

I apologize for my tardiness. I was at a photo op trying to encourage people to vote for the Bay of Fundy as one the seven wonders of nature and it ran a little late. I apologize.

Hopefully you all have gone online and voted. If not, you still have lots of time to do that at votemyfundy.com. This is a public meeting, so I figured I had better get that out there.

The notice of the meeting is to take into consideration the subcommittee report. I believe you all have a copy of the report in front of you. Your subcommittee undertook to ask the analyst to provide a work plan for our study on aquaculture. I don't know if you want to take a couple of minutes...or you've had a couple of minutes already to take a look at that.

Are there any questions or comments?

Mr. MacAulay.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

We had quite a period of time waiting here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Did you? Then you've studied it in depth.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I just got in ahead of you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Okay.

Are there questions on the subcommittee report? I'd like to ask for a mover for that report.

Do you have a question, Mr. Allen?

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

The report says the committee will resume the study on aquaculture in the Pacific region from the previous Parliament, but I don't think that's really what we said we were going to do. I think we said we were going to do it on closed containment.

“That, the Committee resume the study on aquaculture in the Pacific Region from the previous Parliament”...that doesn't seem to be the gist of what we talked about at the last meeting. We talked about closed containment, as opposed to a continuation of the study. That would sort of set us in line with the motion that was passed in the last Parliament, which we said we could put aside if we wanted.

I'm not sure this reflects what we had a long, drawn-out discussion about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

The clerk is telling me that the title is still the same as what's in the subcommittee report. But what you're suggesting, Mr. Allen, and you're quite correct in suggesting, is that the discussion the subcommittee had was to undertake a study on aquaculture in the Pacific region, and that was based on the evidence gathered from the previous Parliament. Does that make sense?

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

We're not really resuming. We carried our evidence forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

I didn't say “resume”. I said “undertake” a study on aquaculture in the Pacific region based on evidence from the previous Parliament. Would that be more in line?

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

No, it's nothing like what we had talked about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Please enlighten me, because we did talk about--

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

I think it's fair to say that the committee undertake a study on closed containment aquaculture that was initiated from a committee study on aquaculture in the Pacific region during the last session of Parliament. That might start to make some sense to me, but what we talked about clearly was closed containment aquaculture. We said we were not able to pronounce ourselves on all the stuff the Cohen commission was going to be doing. We said that closed containment was something we could probably get our hands around and get some meat into. We could do it in a very nice, neat timeframe and produce a report some time early in 2012, based on a schedule.

This seems to infer that we're going to do more than that. When I look at the work plan it makes me even more nervous, because the last time we were discussing this we were talking about a lead-in to the report that might be a few sentences on the evidence. We talked about putting stuff in an appendix. But clearly it was a move toward closed-containment aquaculture. So unless something is going to say that it's closed containment, I'm not sure that's in the spirit of what the subcommittee agreed to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

What I'm trying to get to is what you want in this. Give me some wording for this motion.

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

That's what I just gave you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

No, that was a--

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

I gave it to you on the front end. You forgot when I was into my comments at the back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Okay, so you added to it. You completed it. Thanks.

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

It should say “That, the Committee undertake a study on aquaculture in the Pacific Region that focuses on closed containment.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

I'm trying to clarify this for the clerk. It's a new study, is what we talked about.

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

It is new, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

But we're using the evidence from the previous Parliament.

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

That's okay. The motion says that. I'm okay with that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

That's what I said earlier when I was changing it around. But do you specifically want the words “closed containment” in there? Is that what you're suggesting?

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

Yes, I do, because that's what we're focusing on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Well, that's what I'm trying to get to.