Evidence of meeting #22 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 mccurdy.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Do you want to introduce again the two gentlemen you brought with you?
President, Fish, Food and Allied Workers
Mr. Russell is from the coast of Labrador, which is right on the fishing grounds; they're absolutely adjacent to his doorstep. There were licences issued for people very remote from there who are getting access while he's seeing his business go down the drain. He too invested in combining. They've both listened to Mr. Hearn.
I'll just read briefly from what Mr. Hearn said on April 12, 2007: “I am also moving to restructure the inshore shrimp fleet by converting temporary inshore licences to regular ones.” He said that this will help rationalize Newfoundland and Labrador's inshore shrimp fleet, and a rationalized fleet means a longer harvesting season for those remaining in the fishery. That's the full extent of Mr. Hearn's remarks at his press conference in 2007.
On the strength of that.... Also in the same press release is the announcement of a combining policy, whereby you could basically double up your enterprise. One licence-holder could buy up another. On the strength of that, both Mr. Genge and Mr. Russell, like Mr. Watkins, said, “Now I have a regular licence, and I'm actually around for the long haul in shrimp”, and they went out and invested what was for them a very substantial sum of money in combining, as a means of trying to build their enterprise for the long haul.
They are now, in terms of how this policy is unfolding, having the rug cut out from under them. They have 20-year loans and have only had since 2007 to start the process of paying down those loans. On the path this is currently on, there's no way in this world that they and the other hundreds of enterprises in that situation can pay down those massive loans. They have their houses, their cars, and everything they own put up as security to get the loan.
Liberal
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
I was wondering if we can make a motion to extend the hearing. I find this quite interesting. I think we should extend it.
Conservative
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Oh, I thought 5:30 was the deadline. My apologies. But can I make the motion anyway to extend the time?
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
The bells are going to ring at 5:30 and I want to get in as many questions as I possibly can.
Mr. Kamp.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try to be brief. I know that we're up against the clock.
Just to be clear, Mr. McCurdy, I think it's fair enough to say, “We don't like the policy and we think the government should think about changing it.” But it seems to me it would be a kind of revisionist history to say, “We didn't think that this could ever lead to a day when quotas would actually be reduced.” Because in 1997 I do see a letter in which you acknowledged that “in the event of a decline in future TAC, the share for the inshore sector would be reduced accordingly, possibly to zero”.
You say that you've raised this concern in recent years, but if you have the documentation where you've challenged LIFO and the interpretation of it in 1997, 2003, and 2007, those are the documents that I think we would benefit from seeing—
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, Mr. McCurdy has already said that the question he is raising is whether that is fair and reasonable in today's world, and “in today's world” is the point that I think this committee should walk away with. You can argue about the paperwork of a different world—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Mr. Cleary, do you have a point of order? That's a point of debate, actually.
Conservative
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
I have one final comment to Mr. Watkins.
You've said pretty strongly that DFO kind of forced rationalization on you, it cost you all this money, and now you don't have a way to earn the money to pay the bills you have. I understand that this could well be a difficult time for you. But wasn't it the case—and I have a number of documents that demonstrate this pretty clearly—that the change from a temporary permit to a regular licence in 2007, the move of Minister Hearn at the time, really was about rationalization? It was impossible for rationalization to take place if there were these temporary permits in the system.
But the point of rationalization, according to things that Minister Hearn wrote in that year, was so that if a time came—like this—when quotas were reduced, people would be able to survive rather than having a large number all of whom are unable to survive in any way. That was the point of the change in 2007, the way I see it. I don't quite see it the way you do: that somehow this was forced on you. I mean, you were able to catch more fish when you rationalized, right, when you got another licence—
As an Individual
It was only for a year or two. Also, rationalization was supposed to give us more time on the water, not off the water. I'm now down to one third of what I had. That rationalization is not working. It didn't work. To be cut down to one third of what you had back then, when this was the answer to the fishery.... I could debate this a lot. God, I wish I had time because you need to hear a lot of this.
But we were told that this was the way to go. We were told that combining had to be done. We ended up with groundfish licences taken out of the system and crab and shrimp licences left in the system. All we got rid of were boats on the water. The same licences are still out there. There was money wasted for no reason. Everything was done the wrong way.
Today we're in this mess because we were told that we had to do this. I couldn't survive on.... We already had started getting cuts from 12 years ago and down on to 8 years ago, down to a point that I had to buy. I had to rationalize. You took away the buddy-up system. The minister took away the leasing systems. I couldn't get fish any other way, other than to go to a private bank and sign my ass on the line and everything I owned. My grandsons and everybody else who is coming behind me...we're all in debt. We had to. We had no choice.
Today we're here, and it's all because of rationalization and the way the policies came down, and we weren't allowed to do anything else to survive, but only to go to the banks and put ourselves in debt. That was DFO's answer to our problems.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Thank you, Mr. Watkins.
As per the standing rules, the bells are ringing, so this committee now stands adjourned.