Evidence of meeting #132 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was licences.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Red Deer—Lacombe, CPC
Mr. McIsaac, if we adopted a similar model to the way Alaska runs its fishery, do you think the fishermen in the coastal communities in British Columbia would be better off?
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Can you identify what country this foreign influence is coming from?
Vice-President, Programs, Ecotrust Canada
I can. It comes from a number of different places—
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
What is the nationality of the person involved with the money laundering, who you said also owns the quota?
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
Thank you, Mr. Arnold.
Now, for three minutes or less, we have Mr. Donnelly, please.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I want to thank all of our witnesses for their presentations today. I also want to apologize to our witnesses. We have a 90-minute session here with six witnesses, so that's 42 minutes of presentations, and now with this vote interrupting our questions, we have only a couple of minutes each to ask you questions.
I had questions for all of our presenters. I'm now going to have only two questions, and I'll start with Ms. Sutcliffe.
You spoke about tracking corporate control, and you suggested a public registry, I think. I'm wondering if that is one of your recommendations for a more accountable reporting of quota ownership.
Vice-President, Programs, Ecotrust Canada
Absolutely.
Right now, there's actually no reporting of quota ownership online by DFO. We had to get the little bit we did get through an ATIP request.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
I do appreciate that you've written your suggestions. Are those submitted to the committee?
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
That is going to be my point for everyone who has presented today. I stress this to all of our witnesses. If you haven't already submitted recommendations to this committee, it would be very much appreciated if you could submit those. You can also submit background reports, which are important for our analysts to review, but the recommendations are also very key.
Mr. McIsaac, you mentioned “tools down”, which was a comment about the government. Could you elaborate a bit more on the department's waiting and not going further and looking into the outcome of this study?
As an Individual
The minister didn't want the department to be conducting the same study as the standing committee. Basically, the minister told the department “tools down” on doing that. The department was doing it in two stages. One was doing a background piece, and the other part was doing interviews, which was the second stage.
They downed tools on the interview part and just continued to do the background piece. The background piece should've been presented to you guys. It was to be presented to you. That was what we were told.
As an Individual
I have an email that outlines what they were to produce last year.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Okay. I don't believe this committee has heard anything about that. We had department officials here and they did not mention that. Obviously, I think we need to bring the officials back and question them about why they haven't spoken about that.
Can you forward that email to the committee?
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thanks very much.
Again, I'm sorry that we are out of time. I'm sure all of us would be asking more questions. I really appreciate your time today.
Thank you.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you to our witnesses. If they want to hang around, we are going to come back after the vote. Maybe when our next presenters present, we can ask questions of everybody.
Red Deer—Lacombe, CPC
Mr. Chair, if we have any other questions, can we ask our witnesses to respond to them in writing? If we have them for our witnesses, would they be able to do that?
Would that be okay?
Red Deer—Lacombe, CPC
I'd be interested to actually hear about why DFO is being very non-transparent about where the quota is.
Ms. Sutcliffe, if you could write back or give us a response, that would be great.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Can we just confirm that those questions and answers would be part of recorded evidence?