Fisheries Committee on Dec. 10th, 2013

[David Bevan]

We always have churn. At this point in time, we have over 1,000 people who could retire without penalty and about 300 who could retire with a full pension. We have churn.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

But they're not replaced. That's my concern.

[David Bevan]

We're keeping our focus on the front line at this point. I'm not saying that this is the way it's going to be all the time. We live by appropriations. If they go down again, we'll have to deal with that.

At this point we're controlling our vacancies. Generally speaking, we're trying to avoid anything that would impact on service delivery, so we are hiring technicians, ships' crews, and fisheries officers, etc. People doing core work are still being hired, but we are looking at our intake.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

But there's less of them.

[David Bevan]

No, we're still hiring.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

In the science field.

[David Bevan]

In the science field, I'd have to get back to you with specific data.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I'd like to have that.

[David Bevan]

Okay.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

You would agree that the delivery on the front lines is important, but getting to the front lines comes from the back lines. It takes research in order to deal with the people on the front line.

[David Bevan]

No, I'm saying that the front line is based on research. Research is part of my understanding of the front line.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Okay.

[An hon. member]

We're the back line.

[David Bevan]

It's the people on ships, fisheries officers, ships' crews, resource managers, etc. Those are the guys we're trying to protect as we move forward.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I'd like you to comment on the CETA, and looking at what the WTO has done, also what the WTO attempted to do a number of years ago.

I think you would recall how they dealt with the proposal that was on the table, the tax cards for fishermen, the small craft harbours issue, the EI. If you recall, it was a red light, amber light, green light type of thing, and all these issues were in the green light area.

Looking at the WTO and at CETA now, do you see that becoming a problem? Do they look at it as a subsidy in the fishery? Could you elaborate on that?

[David Bevan]

I think the subsidies that are really of concern to trading partners are the direct subsidies. You can't have subsidies to price. Price support would be a problem.

We've had that with the U.S. as well. People have looked at all of the programming around fisheries. You have small craft harbours and fishermen's EI and so on. That has been investigated and has been found not to be a direct subsidy.

Every jurisdiction has something similar, so we're all in this kind of situation together. We're an exporter. We export 85% of our seafood, the wild fish, and we export a significant amount of our aquaculture. As long as we're not involved with direct subsidies that impact the price and competitiveness of our fish on the foreign markets, I think we're all right.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

But you would agree that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much, Mr. MacAulay. Your time is up.

Mr. Cleary.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the officials for appearing before the committee.

My first question is for Mr. Grégoire.

Your answer to one of the questions from across the way was about the number of spills you deal with in the run of a year. I believe you estimated that it was between 1,200 and 1,400.

I want to talk to you about a specific spill, one off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, off Change Islands, back in 1985, 28 years ago. It's been mentioned a number of times in the House of Commons. It was a ship called the Manolis L. Are you familiar with the ship?

[Marc Grégoire]

Yes.

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

There have been a number of attempts since July when that oil leak was discovered to stop the leak, including doing repairs to the hull, using neoprene gaskets to seal the hull, and this sort of thing. There were reports as late as last week that the oil is still leaking. Oil-covered birds have been found, and that sort of thing.

Can you elaborate on what's being done and what can be done to stop that fuel from leaking? There's 500 tonnes of oil aboard that vessel, so it's a fair amount.

[Marc Grégoire]

First of all, we're taking this situation extremely seriously. When we were apprised of the first leak, we took action. We hired experts and they recommended that to stop the leak, the process we have used was the best course of action. It's a cofferdam basically—

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

I'm sorry to interrupt.

I'm familiar with what's been done in an attempt to stop the leak, so you don't need to go through it. I have limited time.

What are you going to do now, since what's been tried hasn't worked?

[Marc Grégoire]

We're not at the point of concluding that it hasn't worked.

We were there last week and we didn't observe any leak. We have the birds, so we sent the birds to the laboratory to find out if the oil from the birds is actually the oil from the Manolis L.. We do have oil samples from the Manolis L. We will see after the laboratory has investigated the birds whether it's the same oil. It's premature to conclude yet that it is the same thing.

We are arranging to send an ROV, remotely operated vehicle, down to examine the ship to see visually if there is still an oil leak. It's a matter of finding an ROV and a ship to do it. We're organizing that in the short term, in the near future. That is the action we are taking.

We don't want any leaks, and we're taking whatever action is needed to prevent leaks.

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

Thank you very much for that.

My next question is for Ms. Bouffard.

Ms. Bouffard, you appeared before this committee last week, and I asked questions about CETA. I asked about the compensation package from the federal Government of Canada, $280 million to Newfoundland and Labrador, for compensation for the elimination of minimum processing requirements. At the time I asked the question, the response I got back was that the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans didn't have anything to do with that compensation package and that it was the Department of International Trade that arranged that.

I have a question that follows that question from the last meeting. Are there plans to have any meetings with the department that allocated the funds to see how they can be best allocated to poise the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery to take advantage of opportunities in Europe?