Evidence of meeting #20 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 point.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Prawn Producers
I'll try to deal with that very quickly as well.
I think one of the points that Derek made was that this is very much an aging workforce. The average age in many of these plants is well into the fifties and sixties. They can't attract young people into the fishery because it's not a model that the young people want to work in. Young people don't want work for 60 days or 30 days a year. At some of these fish plants, they now have to attract foreign workers to keep the doors open. You may not have known that, but that's how some of these plants are keeping the doors open.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
That's a complicated issue in terms of supply of product, the number of weeks of work, and so on and so forth, and the wages that are paid.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Prawn Producers
On the equity part, the point here is that we've seen the new entrants get virtually all of the increase and there is virtually no increase from the traditional fleet. I guess the point is whether you start removing these year-round jobs from the traditional fleet who had no increase over this period in order to save the seasonal jobs for the people who have enjoyed those 15 or 20 years of good increases. I don't think that's an equitable solution.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
In terms of allocations, I don't understand. Your allocation has gone up to—
Conservative
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Thank you.
Mr. Butler, you said that you'd like to see renewed scientific efforts. Can you give us some specifics on what you meant by that?
Executive Director, Association of Seafood Producers
Bruce could probably speak to that better than I can. I've always said there is a short list of some very bright people in the fishery and Bruce, I've always said, is one of them. Bruce would have a better understanding of the shrimp assessment model, for example. We can do much better in our science on understanding exactly what this bloom was, its duration, and its prospects for the future. As he said, we have two leading scientists working on this resource. We could do better.
As well, I think work can be done in public-private partnership. An example that I alluded to is CFER, the Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems Research in Newfoundland and Labrador at Memorial's Marine Institute. We work with them now to help meet some of our conditions. We contract them to do science for us.
For example, they're working with us to do a population model on snow crab. Right now, our snow crab fishery is based on models and indexes. We don't have a true biomass estimate. We don't really know what we have for snow crab in biomass that we can draw from in terms of quotas. What we do is build an index, and as that index changes, we change fishery quotas in response to that. We're very proud to have recently certified that fishery under MSC.
One of the conditions that we have to do better in is understanding exactly what the population of snow crab is. We could work with people like CFER, for example, to do that work. DFO is giving us assistance but their resources are limited. That's why we've had to go external. We've used the centre in Gaspé as well, to do science for us, to work with us, so we can meet the conditions.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Mr. Butler, as somebody who in a previous life did a bit of fisheries work, one thing I will guarantee is that you will never get an estimate of the biomass. It's not going to happen. But that's another story.
Executive Director, Association of Seafood Producers
We have some interesting stuff going on. But there are challenges, you're right.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
I'll believe that when I see it. That's okay. It's a goal worth striving for, but I think the difficulties are essentially insurmountable.
Mr. Chapman, you were fairly...not critical, but you questioned the science that has been done in the past, in terms of effort. I know you didn't question the competency of the people or the department doing the work. Yet, the department and the science did detect the bloom in the shrimp and it did detect the decline in the shrimp. You were somewhat critical of the index method of sampling. The index method of sampling fish and wildlife populations is one of the most efficient ways of determining trends, and this is what we're talking about here, trends. Whether determining the numbers of moose or deer or so on all across fish and wildlife biology, index sampling has been done, and index netting and sampling, in particular, in fish management has been done.
Why, Mr. Chapman, do you think the index method of assessing trends in shrimp stocks is so inadequate?
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Prawn Producers
I've obviously allowed you to misunderstand what I was trying to say. The index is reflecting what happened last year and we can measure it going up and we can measure it going down, and we've done that. DFO has done that. They've done that fairly well. I don't take any issue with the index that's there.
What I take issue with is that it doesn't tell us how we should drive it from this point forward. In that respect, we should have a model. There are not enough resources put in place in the department to develop a model. With population modelling, what we talked about in crab a little bit, even with a production model if not an absolute model, you can at least have a sense of what the response to your fishing effort would be at a certain level. We don't have that in the shrimp fishery.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
But if our index sampling shows us that the population biomass is going down and if we apply the precautionary principle, which I think we're doing, we should end up with a sustainable fishery, albeit at a lower level. Is that fair?
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Prawn Producers
This population bloom took place because of nature. The contraction took place not because of fishing.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Prawn Producers
In future, however, how hard we fish it will make a difference. In that respect, you need the relationship between the effect of how hard you fish it and the future trajectory. That's what we need the modelling to be about.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Does the data or the information show us that this population of shrimp will stabilize? Fish and wildlife species have a habit of erupting, declining, and then levelling off. What is your view of what we're looking at over the next little while? Will there be a levelling off or a continued decline?
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Prawn Producers
Well, it's speculation—
Conservative
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Prawn Producers
—but the speculation is that it will return more toward what we experienced in the pre-bloom period. As to how stable it was, we don't know, because our current research vessel survey index only started in the mid-1990s. We don't have it for the 1980s and the 1970s, when there was a fishery, albeit at low levels. So we don't know what the equilibrium is.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
How large was the “pre-bloom” shrimp fishery in terms of a percentage of what it is now, or what it was at the peak?
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Prawn Producers
The largest single fishing area, which brought this committee into looking at this topic, had reached 85,000 tonnes in area 6. It's currently at 48,000 tonnes, I believe. It started in the pre-bloom period at about 10,000 tonnes.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Okay. We're talking about a fishery that's eight times what it was in pre-bloom, so we're talking about some potentially serious disruptions.
