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.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Can you, Mr. McCurdy, provide for the committee, letters—I assume from you and your organization to either DFO or to the advisory committee—documenting your concerns about this change that was not agreed upon by the committee?
President, Fish, Food and Allied Workers
I've written on what I've perceived as the unfairness of the sharing arrangements on the stock for, oh, the last...I have letters going back at least for the last three or four years. There was a period of about 11 years when the inshore got roughly 40%, give or take a percentage or two. There were a couple of outlier years when it was up around 45%, but that was brief. But for the run of it, for 10 or 11 years, the lowest we had was 39.5%. This year we got 29%-point-something. So that isn't preserving our share.
For the offshore, by the way, the threshold they were given was 37,600 tonnes when the inshore is admitted.... This year, subject to a couple of areas that are not finalized, they'll have 64,000 tonnes, plus the opportunity to fish another 18,000 tonnes of special allocations that they'll have the opportunity to fish under royalty charters. So that's an awful.... To say that 90% of the increase has gone to the inshore is true of one area only. If you look at the total stock, it's not even close to being the case.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Thank you, Mr. McCurdy.
Mr. McCurdy, if you're going to provide any documents, could you provide them to the clerk? We'll make sure they're distributed to the committee.
President, Fish, Food and Allied Workers
They would be in English only, but yes, I can.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
We'll make sure they're translated, as I said before, if you don't mind doing that. Thank you.
Mr. Simms.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Thank you, Chair.
I want to get back to something that was said earlier when Mr. Kamp brought up the idea that the policy was developed in 1997 and carried forward and the minister today is carrying forward that policy.... I think Mr. McCurdy brought up a pertinent point when he said that in the case of the crab harvesters and the difference between the supplementary fleet and the full-time harvesters at the time, the courts ruled that the hands of the minister should not be tied and therefore made that decision.
It's not like that decision was recent. It was quite some time ago. Therefore, in this particular situation, it wasn't even mentioned from 1997, which they go back to. think this was a fundamental decision that you could share the pain all around, which is what we have been arguing for, and certainly the courts even said that we should look at this.
I want to go to Mr. Barnes first.
In your submission, you speak of adjacency and your membership. At one point, as you said, you did get a catch from the offshore. Even if you did have that catch, do you feel that this business of LIFO is as important now and that it is not fair for the individual members?
General Manager, Fogo Island Co-Operative Society Ltd.
Well, I think adjacency is a very important matter before this panel, because if we go back and look, in my documentation, at the Beothuks.... I'm going to take you back a little bit in history, because I think this is a very important point. The Beothuks landed here or were here before the white man showed up on our shore.
The land claims agreements say that we have to give access to stocks, and they're not species-specific, which is very important, because when they talk about the inshore they say we have to be species-specific. We have to have taken part in the shrimp fishery in order to be considered a part of the group to fish, whereas the land claims agreement are not species-specific.
So there's a double-edged sword here. I don't understand how you can say that as long as the Beothuks or the aboriginal people put their foot in the water in the Atlantic, it's okay; that they get access and rights to it. I don't disagree that they should have access, but why treat the white man now differently? We're being discriminated against.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
I want to get to plant workers in just a few moments, but before I do that, let me turn to Mr. Watkins.
You mentioned your father earlier. You're saying to this committee that your father was given every impression that this temporary licence was not a temporary licence and that you were asked—not only your father, but you were asked as well—to invest in this fishery.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Okay, but do you remember that time, back when your father got the licence?
As an Individual
Yes, I do, because I was side by side.... If it weren't for me, he wouldn't have invested. I was his son coming up and I was skippering his boat, and we needed fish to catch to—
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
And through his interactions with DFO...?
As an Individual
Those were the interactions with.... Actually, DFO had a policy in place that if you didn't have shrimp gear bought by a certain date—and you had to have it bought and show receipts—you couldn't get this licence. They put a deadline there, so we had to jump and buy the gear and buy the vessel in order to fish shrimp. That rule was in place. We didn't just get it dropped on our plate. DFO actually told us that we had to spend money in order to get this permit.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Which led you to believe, amongst other factors, that this was a permanent measure that was in place?
As an Individual
Exactly, and it came just after the moratorium. This was the fishery that was supposed to take the place of the moratorium, and if this fishery worked out, it would be turned into permanent licences.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
In 2007 much the same thing was indicated to you. Minister Hearn, the minister of the day, said to you that you needed to invest in this fishery, as your father was instructed back then.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
That is how you find yourself once again.... How much is it? You have a $2-million boat.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Your payments plus interest per year are what?
As an Individual
Well, it's $2 million in licences and debt to stay in the fishery and to rationalize. The payment per year is $214,000.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
This is for Mr. Barnes and Mr. McCurdy.
Mr. McCurdy, I'm going to ask you to touch upon the adjacency principle, because you have spoken about it over the years many times.
If both of you could talk about the effect that this will have on plant workers themselves, I'll start, Mr. Barnes, with you and then go to Mr. McCurdy.
General Manager, Fogo Island Co-Operative Society Ltd.
There is a dramatic effect on our plant workers. In my presentation, you will see the man-hours laid out. With the cuts from the quotas that were in place in 2009 to where we are today, I think we're talking about 140 workers in the 3K area alone, and I'm talking about all species. We lost the cod quotas back years ago, we have now lost shrimp, we have lost the turbot quotas—they were cut in half—and we're cut down on crab by half in area 3K.
Looking at the man-hours there, I think it's a cut from 2009 of 2,900 ten-hour days for 140 people. So the math is there if you want to do it; it's specific. It's big and it's drastic and we're going to lose plants. We're going to lose communities.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Mr. McCurdy, concerning adjacency and the effect on plant workers, the two gentlemen you brought all the way from Newfoundland and Labrador won't have a chance to sit at the table, so perhaps you could speak on their behalf to say something that they would like to say and to talk about them.
President, Fish, Food and Allied Workers
We have 10 shrimp plants in the province, most of them in communities of certainly less than 5,000 in population, and most of them, in fact, in communities of less than probably 2,000 in population, I would suggest. The only show in town, really, is the plant and the jobs on the fishing vessels. Anything else in that community absolutely depends on those new dollars.
The amount of quota we have lost since last year is the equivalent of the loss of about two and a half shrimp plants, in terms of person-hours. That's just since last year. The problem with the current trend in the way the department is applying LIFO is that more and more of those plants will go down. Each year we'll just lose more. As for the impact on rural Newfoundland, that's why I'm so strong on having the economic discussion before decisions are made, and before people just say that we're stuck, that we're married to a particular pop decision or something somebody said 20 years ago.
Let's examine the current circumstances, analyze what the impacts are, say what some possible alternatives are to deal with what is a difficult situation at best, and ask what course of action best does that in light of the current circumstances, updated to today, not just taking into account what somebody might have said 20 years ago.
The other thing I would suggest is that the committee should concern itself not so much with what somebody said at a given point in time about changes, but with how the changes in the IFMP occurred, how the policy changes occurred, and whether that is fair and reasonable in today's world. Is the burden of the economic impacts of these changes being shared in a fair and equitable manner?
I think those are the key considerations you should look at going forward.