Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As Mr. Chair mentioned, my name is Lucien LeBlanc. I'm the son of a boat builder. That was a family business in the area. I'm a commercial fisherman and during the off-season of our commercial fishery, I'm a fishing charter captain. I own a tourism business here. I'm on the local municipal council, and I sit on the harbour authority. I believe that's why I was asked to speak here today. It's a long list when you spell it out.
I'm going to take a different approach from the two previous presenters. I do very much appreciate their opinion on the matters from a broad spectrum. I'm going to get down to the nitty-gritty and give you guys a picture of the past issues and tribulations, the current issues, as well as possible suggestions at my end for the future.
Please don't take this as a selfish route because I'm fixed to mainly one wharf. I've used many wharves in the area, but I sit on the harbour authority for Wedgeport. Although the issues are specific to Wedgeport, you can extrapolate them to mainly all the harbours in the area, as Mr. Facey and Ms. Shiels have mentioned.
In the past, we had two wharves in our port area. The tuna wharf you may have heard of. The tuna wharf is the former tuna fishing capital of the world. For any tuna that's been caught in Canada, basically the know-how and the knowledge to do that originated in our area. The Tuna Wharf was abandoned some years ago from funding for small craft harbours. The reason they did so, in their opinion, was to have their funds focused on Wedge Point wharf, where the majority of the commercial activity happens in this area, whereas, in reality, I believe it was a lack of effort in their allocating funds to this wharf. Regretfully, it's sad for our small coastal community here that the tuna wharf, which holds such historical value and commercial importance, basically is about to be condemned.
There was a lack of board effort from the harbour authority in our area, and that's something I feel small craft harbours touched on. Basically, with no harbour authority in the area and disorganization among the fishermen, coupled with a lack of effort from small craft harbours, it's caused enormous issues similar to the ones we previously spoke of.
For example, 20 years ago, we foresaw the economic growth in our area. We foresaw that our vessels were going to get larger, where the industry was going and, basically, the high-paced growth that we were realizing. We submitted a proposal, because we saw that our vessels were going to get larger. That proposal in Wedgeport was lost. There was a lack, by our board, to check up on it in Moncton, but some 20 years later, finally, when we reorganized our board and a younger generation came in, we checked on that proposal and apparently it was lost. In terms of planning for the future, we are actually 20 years behind in our area and we're seeing the same detrimental issues as other wharves.
Currently, to try to put a band-aid on the problem, rocks were dropped in our harbour. Basically, a rock wall was constructed. Although we were very adamant about the fact that we needed more capacity and we had the same overcapacity issues as anywhere else, those rocks were dropped directly adjacent to our wharf itself. Instead of being some few hundred metres off so that more berthage could be used on this outer perimeter of our wharf, those rocks, to save a few dollars, were dropped directly adjacent to the wharf, making it impossible to tie any vessels there because there's a pile of rocks.
In our view, small craft harbours, in trying to save a few dollars from building the rock wall further from the wharf, shot themselves in the foot, so to speak, because now we're at an overcapacity issue and we can't tie vessels there because there's a $1-million rock wall in the way. The wharves are definitely not meeting our current needs. The vessel costs in our area went from $250,000 10 years ago to $1.2 million, just in 10 years.
We had 50-odd vessels at $1.2 million, average, in our port and our port, as was mentioned previously, is operating on a budget of 30 or 40 years ago. We have a closed harbour. We're not permitting any new entrant. When you're in a community of 1,800 people, everyone knows each other, and just as of last week, we had a young gentleman basically put his life on the line to mortgage.... He got a mortgage for $1.6 million to buy into this industry. Not thinking there wouldn't be any room at the wharves, he approached us to have his new vessel docked here and we have no options for him. There's nothing we can do. Expansions are very much needed; upgrades are needed. However, the funding that's been allocated in recent years is poorly organized band-aids.
They're trying to fix the problems that were let go of 30 or 40 years ago and we need some significant capital investment, if we're going to move into the future.
My solutions are more capital for infrastructure. However, I believe it has to be more efficiently spent. There's a disconnect with Public Works. I think a lot of the issue is that Public Works lacks willingness to consult with the harbour authorities. I believe they make an effort, but I don't think it's a genuine effort. I think they do it because it's mandated. However, I believe that in Wedgeport, the issue lies with Public Works and basically, there's a lack of communication between them and the harbour authority, so I think that could be touched upon and improved.
Thank you.