Fisheries Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2018

[The Chair, Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we're studying the current state of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' small craft harbours.

Welcome, everybody, here this afternoon.

I want to give a special welcome to some departmental officials. We have Sylvie Lapointe, assistant deputy minister, fisheries and harbour management, who's been here twice in one week. That's probably a record. As well, we have Denise Frenette, Director General, Small Craft Harbours.

We'll get started with your opening statements before we get into questioning. Go ahead when you're ready. You have seven minutes or less.

[Sylvie Lapointe, Assistant Deputy Minister, Fisheries and Harbour Management, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm pleased to be here today to speak to you about the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' small craft harbours program.

I understand that, as part of your study, you have toured small craft harbour facilities in different parts of the country and that you have heard from various stakeholders. We look forward to seeing your study, and we thank the committee for the opportunity to contribute to the work you are doing.

Before taking your questions, I would like to share with you some information about our program.

The small craft harbours program is important for Canada's economy because it provides critical support to the commercial fishing industry, which had landings valued at almost $3.4 billion in 2016. In total, we are responsible for 1,008 harbours, 678 of which are what we call “core harbours”. In other words, their main purpose is to support the fishing industry. The remaining 330 are used less by the industry or are recreational harbours.

Our job is to ensure that the harbours that are critical to the fishing industry are open and in good repair. We do this by carrying out necessary repairs, maintenance, construction and dredging at the facilities in co-operation with local harbour authorities.

Another key objective of the program is to transfer ownership of designated harbours to third parties, particularly the non-core facilities I just mentioned. These divestitures are important because, as they are completed over time, the government is able to focus ongoing investments on harbours that are critical to the fishing industry.

We are working diligently to meet our mandate. Between 2008-09 and 2017-18, the Government of Canada provided the small craft harbours program with approximately $820 million in temporary funding, in addition to its regular annual budget of approximately $92 million. Temporary funding measures have been critical to improving the quality of facilities at core fishing harbours, resulting in an increase of facilities that are in fair or better condition from 73% to 87% between 2011 and 2018.

In budget 2018, the Government of Canada announced an additional investment to the program of $250 million over two years to accelerate repair and maintenance work at core small craft harbours across the country, and to divest non-core harbours through transfers to interested parties. To date, work has begun on 85% of the 189 projects that will be funded through budget 2018. This is in addition to the 104 projects being carried out this year with funding from the program's regular operating budget.

Despite our success, it is important for us to give you our perspective on the challenge posed by the temporary nature of this funding. While these funding measures accorded to the program have been critical to improving the quality of facilities at core harbours, their temporary nature has made it challenging for the program to make sound, longer-term decisions.

While these funding measures accorded to the program have been critical to improving the quality of facilities at core harbours, their temporary nature has made it challenging for the program to make sound, longer-term decisions. I know that you've heard about this challenge from others as well, as you've gathered evidence for your study.

In closing, I would like to say that one of the keys to the program's success is its strong collaboration with the 5,000 volunteers that represent the 565 harbour authorities we work with across the country.

Harbour authority officials are on the ground, managing day-to-day operations on core harbours throughout the country. The input they provide to us through their knowledge and experience makes them invaluable partners.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the harbour authority program. Over that time, the contribution of harbour authorities to the small craft harbours program has been significant. They collect an estimated $24 million annually in revenues, which is reinvested into their harbours to defray operating and routine maintenance costs and to pay their staff. Harbour authority volunteers nationally contribute the equivalent of 70 full-time equivalents toward harbour operations. These very significant local contributions, valued at approximately $5.3 million per year, would otherwise fall on the small craft harbours program. The total estimated volunteer and user contributions are calculated at approximately $29.3 million per year.

Harbour authorities will continue to be the key to the success of the small craft harbours program moving forward.

Once again, thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Ms. Lapointe.

Before we start with the questioning, I'd like to recognize a sub for today from the government side, Ms. Khalid, from Mississauga—Erin Mills. Welcome to FOPO.

Starting now with the questioning, on the government side, for seven minutes or less, we have Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Speaking of recognition, I'd also like to recognize in our gallery today some of our independent fishers from British Columbia, some of whom have appeared here before to great effect. I know that we have some issues about owner-operator and fleet separation that we're looking forward to discussing with them. I think everybody would join me in the hope that this gets to be done face to face in British Columbia, where we'll get a chance to hear as many people as possible who have experience on the water.

On the whole issue of our small craft harbours, we were able to make a fascinating visit to British Columbia and to central Canada, and my colleagues were out on the east coast. It seems that the amazing amount of money that comes in on temporary fixes cumulatively adds up to a tremendous amount of money but doesn't get the effect it needs because everything that's being done is of a patchwork nature. Sometimes the repairs are so interim they in fact don't really hold up all that well and in the long run we end up spending a lot more than we need to get these small craft harbours in good shape.

Can you comment on that? What needs to change?

[Sylvie Lapointe]

It certainly has been a challenge to manage the program with temporary funding, although we have received significant amounts of it. It does put us in a situation where it's difficult to do that longer-term planning process, and it's challenging just in terms of keeping staff on board. With temporary funding, we can hire only temporary folks. Every time the program nears the end, those folks tend to move on and then we're starting from scratch every time. It is a challenge.

For the major capital projects, we try to plan five years out and prioritize the work. We have a rigorous process in terms of peer review and prioritization criteria, based on safety as the primary criterion, but then also looking at operational needs and what the needs are from a socio-economic perspective.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

In the interests of getting a couple more questions in, I'll get right to the point. What I've heard is that the A-base funding is probably going to be a lot more efficient in terms of delivering the ability to plan in advance and to get more sustainable work done to make sure these harbours are kept up to speed. That's basically what it comes down to.

Cumulatively, we're spending the money anyway. We may as well have a good amount, committed for a long period of time, so the work can be planned and scoped accordingly and we're not just doing the patchwork.

[Sylvie Lapointe]

As I noted, our A-base funding is $92 million, and that hasn't changed since 2009. As you can imagine, the cost of almost everything has gone up since then, as well as the demand for more investment.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Sure.

In our visits, we had a chance to speak with many of the volunteer port authorities. They are working very hard, but they also profess to have some difficulties and challenges as a volunteer group in having the capacity, the knowledge and the background to actually assist with coming up with the right plans, the right operating regimes, etc., in these small craft harbours.

Is there anything in place that would help them with that capacity in terms of training or in terms of bringing in people with expertise who could assist them, even on a temporary basis, in the planning of something big for their harbour?

[Sylvie Lapointe]

We do engage with the harbour authorities on a regular basis, as well as bringing them all together during various times of the year, where we try to provide them with as much information and capacity-building training as possible to help them with some of the challenging issues they have to deal with.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

How do they access that? Do they simply ask?

[Sylvie Lapointe]

No. We actually proactively go out and engage with them and bring them once a year. We just had a meeting of the national harbour authorities in the fall, where we brought them together and had really good sessions with them to give them the information and expertise they need.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I have one final question.

A common theme that we hear in a lot of our studies is that in the transactions between DFO and local people there is a relative absence of local knowledge in some of the final decisions that are made. Local people feel they're there and they know the landscape. They know, in this case, the needs of their harbours, and sometimes what they end up getting is something quite different from what they believe would be effective. We've had anecdotal information that sometimes what is delivered actually didn't work as well as what they had asked for.

Where there is a difference between what they recommend and what is delivered, is there any transparency? Is there any reason given to them why they would do something else, instead of what the local people have advised?

[Sylvie Lapointe]

We have really good contacts with local folks. As you've described, they have on-the-ground operational expertise. We consult with them in terms of the types of projects we're considering, as well as the design of those projects.

Sometimes what ends up happening is maybe not exactly what they would have expected, but that's sometimes due to the fact that we have financial limitations, or we have other considerations such as environmental regulations and restrictions that we need to take into account.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

It would be useful if there was follow-up so they truly understood why what they thought was very sound advice didn't appear to have been followed.

[Sylvie Lapointe]

We believe we have good relationships with the harbour authorities at the local level, but of course we can always do better.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Yes. In some cases, there's a fairly constant turnover in personnel at certain levels. The harbour authority will have a relationship with somebody in small craft, but then that person gets rotated through or promoted, and they have to basically start all over again. There's that lack of continuity on the relationship side that gets in the way of the overall satisfaction of the harbour authorities.

[Sylvie Lapointe]

Yes. It's hard to keep the same staff in the same positions for any length of time these days. People are mobile and they move around pretty quickly, but your point is well taken in terms of the importance of the relationship at the local level with the harbour authorities.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Hardie.

Now we move to Mr. Arnold on the Conservative side, for seven minutes or less, please.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here, Ms. Lapointe and Ms. Frenette.

I'm going to carry on with what Mr. Hardie was discussing here, which was the design and reconstruction or improvement phase. This is sometimes happening. I'm not saying it happens in every case, but we saw instances of it when the committee travelled to the five provinces on the Atlantic side.

I did some travel this summer, including to a harbour in southwest Nova Scotia, Wedgeport Harbour. The small craft harbour authority had come in and built a breakwall in the harbour. Because of where they had put it, they had basically blocked off about 300 feet of usable dock space, so there was no room to bring a larger vessel in there. You could have brought in a 12-foot car topper safely, but anything bigger than that and you would have basically been on the ground along 300 feet of usable dock space.

How can that be explained to the small craft harbour branch and the designers and so on? We saw example after example like that.

[Denise Frenette, Director General, Small Craft Harbours, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

To Sylvie's point, we have regular communications with the harbour authority. When it is time to design, there should be engagement, and that is factored in, but the engineers also have to ensure they do the work in accordance with the codes and regulations they have to abide by. We can certainly look into enhancing our communication and conveying the message you're conveying to us today to the staff, to ensure there's proper communication.

We have qualified engineers, and my sense is that they're doing their best to meet the operational requirements and meet the code, as well as ensuring that we stay within our financial capacity to deliver the project.

I would bring it back to the issue of the long-term funding and better planning. If we had more stable funding, it would allow us to find longer-term solutions for some of our harbours. Those would be areas that could help us in this situation.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

It's alarming to me, as someone responsible to the taxpayers, to see this happening over and over again. This was a blatant case of obviously an engineer who hadn't talked to local fishermen or hadn't talked to the local harbour authority to understand what they were doing, building a breakwall and blocking off probably 300 feet or more of possible docking space from a harbour that is already squeezed for docking space. It was mind-boggling.

Thank you for some of your numbers on what has been provided for temporary funding, short-term funding and so on, and the improvements that are being made.

Can you tell me if there is any other resource sector in Canada where this type of government investment ratio would be similar? Is there another resource or industry where the government input was $820 million just from 2009 to 2018? That was in temporary funding. We can add up the total funding that was there as a full-time or a permanent spot as well.

What other sector would see that type of ratio of input?

[Sylvie Lapointe]

I'm not aware of other examples, but we could certainly look into that and get back to the committee.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

You mentioned in your presentation just now that you have worked on maintaining the core small craft harbours. For those that are non-core, you basically look at divestiture, if there's an interest.

What happens if you are looking to divest a harbour and there is no local interest in taking it over? What happens to those harbours that you're trying to divest and nobody wants?

[Sylvie Lapointe]

Depending on their state, sometimes they get demolished or they remain in our portfolio and our footprint.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Do you have any idea of the number of those?