Fisheries Committee on April 28th, 2015

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I appreciate your answer, and what I would like you to find and provide to the committee—and I think it's vitally important—is how we can have a role. If we are not part of the RFMO, how we could become part of it.

If a fisher fished in an illegal or what we would look at as an inappropriate manner in a different area, dealing with a migratory source, then the fish are gone. You know where I'm coming from.

What I want to know, and I'm sure the committee wants to know, is how we deal with this issue. If the fish are not caught in a proper manner as we see it in this country, how do we deal with that issue, dealing with other countries, let's say, in the Indian Ocean or wherever? If you could do that, I would appreciate it very much. I would like to see that.

[Angela Bexten]

I guess the approach we can take is the one that is in the bill right now under proposed subsections 5.6(1) and 5.6(2), which are on the import prohibitions.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

But, as I'm sure you understand, the problem is not the imports; it's the illegal catching of the fish that concerns me.

I don't want to hold this up for the day, but this is a fairly important matter. I believe my colleague from the NDP, Mr. Weston, in another speech said it's no good if the fish is fished somewhere else illegally. I'm sure the whole committee wants to know if there's a way the government can deal with this, so if you could find that.... It's okay to deal with the regulations regarding imports, but we want to know if we agree about how the fish is caught in the first place, and the means that are used, and all that.

If you could get that for the committee, I would appreciate it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Mr. Cleary.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

I understand the points Mr. MacAulay was making. He made a very good point, and if I understand the official's comment correctly, this is all about the tracking of fish and making sure we understand exactly how it goes from water to plate. But the concern then is about the RFMOs from one country to the next and whether or not the fish is caught sustainably or humanely or however you want to put it. I'm thinking about seals now, though.

I want to interject here, Mr. Chair, mainly because I'm thinking that maybe now is a good time to ask the questions I asked at the beginning regarding further numbers for fish caught illegally within Canadian waters or outside the 200-mile limit, and some estimates on the amount of illegal fish brought back into Canada through our ports. Are there any estimates?

Would you be the right person to ask?

[Angela Bexten]

We prepared some material on that request. I don't have the material in front of me, so we'd have to follow up.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Is it in the back of the room or is it in another—

[Angela Bexten]

No, it's not with me.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

You prepared some answers for follow-up. Did you expect to present those answers to this committee?

[Angela Bexten]

No.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Well, then, I'm sorry, but I'm just trying to understand why you would prepare those answers.

[Angela Bexten]

We looked into the question you had asked or the committee had asked, but I don't have the answers in front of me. It's not my area of expertise, I'm sorry.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

When can this committee get that information? What was in the package that was prepared?

[Angela Bexten]

I'm sorry, I don't know where it is in the system.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Chair, no disrespect to the witness—thank you very much for that—but these are answers to questions that I asked on this bill a couple of weeks ago, and my concern right from the beginning with this bill has been the fact that we don't have any hard and fast numbers, which I think are relevant to this bill and are the reason we want to bring those in.

How does this work in terms of timeline and getting this information and digesting it as part of this review of the bill?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Mr. Cleary, the clerk advises me that there is no timeline attached when a committee makes requests for information of that nature. It's not like in the House where we have a definitive timeline to respond. There is no definitive timeline here.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

So that information will still be presented to the committee?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Yes, and I guess we take them at their word that they're compiling the information and they're doing their best to compile that information and to present it to this committee.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Cleary.

Mr. Kamp.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With respect to this last issue, the work was done expecting that a question might be asked at the meeting with officials and the minister, but no questions were asked. If there a formal request made to the department to answer these questions, I assume that will be forthcoming. I don't recall it being made formally. If it was just a case of, “I wish we had this information”, then I don't think we can expect them to send it to us, but they would be prepared to answer it at that meeting.

With respect to the RFMO and the point Mr. MacAulay raises, I think the general answer is that we participate in RFMOs in which we have an interest. We are a part of number of tuna RFMOs, as Angela has said, the ones that most directly impact us in terms of their migratory patterns and so on. If we don't fish in that area, or if that stock does not migrate into an area where Canadian fishermen fish, then it's less likely that we would be part of that.

To return to the amendments at hand, the authorization or the authority to make a regulation to do what we're asking here is in the second amendment to clause 5. This one in clause 4 basically says that it's an offence not to provide the documentation that's being referred to in clause 5, which is an upcoming amendment. That's a little bit confusing I know, but....

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Kamp.

Mr. MacAulay.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I thank Mr. Kamp for his words of wisdom. The only thing I would ask the witness is what RFMOs are we not part of on the bluefin tuna path? I want to know this. I don't know if the committee wants to, but I want to know this. I want to know what ones we're not part of and how we can deal as a government with the RFMOs that we're not part of, being concerned about how the bluefin tuna is caught in different areas, how it is caught, and the number that are taken. As you know, there are fairly stringent regulations in this country and as has been said in this committee, “It's no good, but we have to do it. We have to try to take care of the stock”. I want to know what's going on with the migratory path of the bluefin tuna.

I appreciate and understand full well that you would not have all that information. I would like you to get it in detail for the committee, particularly how it's fished—not that it follows the regulations of the country. I want to know that we agree as a country and fully know what methods are used to capture the tuna, for example, if there are nets or whatever, which would be totally illegal here.

Okay, thank you very much.

[Angela Bexten]

Thank you. We can certainly provide that information.

On the issue of the bluefin tuna, as you probably know, we are a party to and a member of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. We do participate in the decision making processes with regard to bluefin tuna. I think that's part of the answer. The other part of the answer in terms of influencing other RFMOs is that Canada participates in a number of global organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations, and various other processes. There are opportunities there to promote things like sustainable fishing, the precautionary approach, science-based decision-making for fisheries management, and the ecosystem-based approach. There are bilateral and multilateral means by which we can use our diplomatic efforts to encourage states around the world to undertake sustainable fishing and sustainable fishing methods.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Mr. MacAulay.