Evidence of meeting #11 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was terms.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
No, not.... Well, on the fishing sector, I'll try to leave that to the fisheries associations to try to work through that.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
I can assure you, sir, it's a touchy area.
There's a 16% tariff on lobster tails and claws going into the EU. Am I correct? When will that be zero? When we sign the deal?
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
My estimation is, if we signed it today, by the time all the legislation was done—the EU has to go out to all of their 28 countries—the earliest I would see it coming into play would be January 1, 2016.
So on lobster tails—
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
Yes, they're 16%. They would go from 16% down to 0% in probably about three years.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
Of course that will be shared. No doubt most of that 16% will go to the fisherman.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
Also, looking at lobster, my concern is that lobster itself, and I'd like your opinion on it, is not marketed as well as it could be. In the little touring I have done, particularly in China and other places, I have seen that it's hardly promoted at large food expos. Do you see that as a problem? I also look at the same market. If you look at the population of China, we have a very large food expo and other sectors are well represented there, but the lobster industry, in my opinion, is not. Would you agree or disagree, and what should be done?
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
There is no question that the marketing of lobsters in most of those reports has been identified as a problem. There have been efforts to try to bring the industry together to get something going. I'll give you an example. There are really two lobster sectors. There's the offshore lobster sector, which is basically Clearwater, and they're doing a crackerjack job.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
Clearwater, excuse me, is somewhat involved in the export of lobster, and I give them credit for it, and does seek markets, but other large multinational companies are not as involved. Perhaps you'd like to comment on that area too. Is that a miss or is that wrong? What needs to be done? I did look for a lobster in the food expo in China. I found one way down in the bottom of the case, wrapped in a piece of plastic.
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
For a major company to get involved in this, the real problem is that on the inshore lobster there is no price stability. There are wide fluctuations in price and the marketplace hates that. Retailers hate it. Food services hate it. In a sense a safe example is when the lobster fisheries open in Nova Scotia, the lobster prices are up, and invariably they start to go down, and then they go up and up. It's very difficult for a company that is into marketing and things of that nature to say this is something, even though it's a fantastic product. It's very difficult for a marketing company or an exporting company to commit a lot of effort to it because of the invariable fluctuations through the seasons.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
When you look at what Australia has done with their so-called lobster, they pretty much have a large portion of the Chinese market, whatever market it is there. They have that and we have very little. We're wondering what....
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
That's a good example. As you say, Australia has a smaller biomass, if you will, but they really work together.
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
Not only that, what did they do? They got together and were one of the first fisheries in the world to get the MSC sustainability certification. Right now in terms of lobsters in Canada.... That was how many years ago? Probably seven years ago. With that, even that label, bottom line gave them cachet to the Carrefours in France because it was distinctive. The first lobster fishery to be MSC certified was in 2013 in Canada in the Îles-de-la-Madeleine and now the lobster fisheries in P.E.I. are going through the process.
There was that type of lobster industry, which to some extent consolidated. It's consolidated in the sense that they're part of one type of common view, whereas—
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
No, not the Îles-de-la-Madeleine; I'm talking about Australians.
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
They went forward in terms of recognizing marketing and all sorts of stuff, whereas we still have lobster area 34, lobster area 32, and they're like separate communities. They're not really working together to a large extent.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
What do you see on eco-certification? You mentioned Australia. How do you see that playing in the marketplace? We're into it anyhow, of course. What I would see is that they could decide that certain areas.... For example, on the south side of Prince Edward Island, the last three or four years the lobster fishery was very poor. The catch was poor. Over the last 10 or 15 years there have been a lot of measures put in place to increase the lobster production. Last year they had a very big year.
The problem I would see with eco-certification is they could have decided that these fish should not be fished. Am I right? I hope that whoever's handling the eco-certification knows that fish swim. Can you see that as being a problem or not?
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
It's a necessary evil. I must admit that in terms of the certifying bodies, they have evolved quite well in terms of their knowledge of fisheries and biology, and so forth.
The important thing for any fishery that wants to get certified is to make sure they spend a lot of effort in identifying the accredited certified body that they think can work best with them. We have a number of people who have retired from fisheries management, people who really know their fisheries. They know that fish swim and they know the biomasses will change from time to time. That doesn't necessarily mean it's an inappropriate fisheries management regime, but that's the nature of things.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Thank you, Mr. MacAulay. Your time is up, sir. You get three more minutes and it's still not enough.
Mr. Weston, you're going to split your time with Mr. Sopuck, I believe.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. McGuinness, thank you for being with us.
You said earlier you're going to either have to move forward or you're going to be swept away. I thank you for being part of a truly historic agreement. I recall not so long ago when Canada had free trade agreements with six countries. We're now up to 43 countries, including the 28 included in CETA. We've learned that this will increase the number of jobs in Canada by the thousands, and the amount of money that's in the pocket of the average Canadian family by up to a couple of thousand dollars a year, potentially, as we gain access to the world's most lucrative market. We're in a historical time and you played a big part of that, so we thank you for helping.
I'd just like to ask you about the number of jobs that you see being created in your sector from the signing of this agreement.
