Fisheries Committee on Feb. 20th, 2019

[Evelyn Pinkerton]

We have an established record in Newfoundland and Labrador. There's a very old co-op on Fogo Island. There's the St. Anthony bay co-op, I think, in the northern peninsula of Newfoundland.

There's one in southern Labrador, but the name is escaping me at the moment. These take a number of forms. That particular one is in the form of co-operatives that own fish-processing plants and are creating local jobs. That's their focus. The Alaska CDQ model is more about people having the freedom locally to create many kinds of fisheries development, including owning licences locally, owning fish-processing plants and developing their communities.

The model that I was talking about especially and that I think is particularly interesting is the licence bank idea, which is like a co-op. I think “co-op” is a perfectly appropriate term to use, because it means some local organization or institution that is capable of holding and leasing out licences. In the long-established—since 1982—Northern Native Fishing Corporation, three tribal councils do it.

I think it's a very flexible idea, because there are many different institutions that could hold these licences or quotas and then lease them out at fair prices. It's done all over the world. I mentioned one in Denmark and one in Massachusetts. We have a small one in B.C. that's specific just to dogfish. I think it's a really useful, flexible model that can be enormously helpful in the kind of transition we're talking about.

The reason I mention the CDQ program is that it's also a very flexible model of how you can reallocate licences and quota, especially from the large groundfish trawl fleet, some of which is not Canadian-owned. You could reallocate from that fleet either to quota banks—which can then lease out the quota or licences—or to onshore fish-processing facilities.

It's an enormously flexible and valuable institution to consider, which I think this committee would find very valuable to consider. There's a whole lot of research and a whole lot written on it. I would be very happy to supply any information that you like. I'm sure that Dr. Macinko and others here could as well.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Siider, if you could give this committee a top recommendation, your number one recommendation, what would you say that this committee should do in our report?

[Cailyn Siider]

Recommend an owner-operator and fleet separation policy.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

That's great. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I want to use a couple of minutes to bring up an issue. I know that we're going to run out of time.

It was mentioned that the committee would get to discuss Bill S-203 in early February. It didn't happen, for whatever reason. We went on our riding weeks, and it's now February 20. Because of votes this evening, it seems that we won't get to discuss Bill S-203 in committee business—if that was possibly what was going to happen—which means that, again, we're not going to be able to discuss this topic this week. The earliest we can get to it now is the end of February.

Colleagues, we are running out of time on this bill. This comes from the Senate. I will remind you that first reading was on December 8, 2015. Second reading and referral to the Senate fisheries committee was on November 23, 2016. They held 17 committee meetings and heard from 40 witnesses. The committee report was adopted on April 26, 2018. It passed third reading on October 23, 2018. Here we are in 2019, and it looks like we're moving into March before we can even discuss it.

As you know, we're running out of time to get this in front of Parliament, hopefully to be voted on before we rise in June. I would implore us to consider this and to make some time—which won't be this week—for it next week. We have a lot of awesome witnesses, and this is a very important topic, but we also have to look at how we deal with this proposed legislation.

I've probably just used the five seconds I had left to encourage my colleagues to consider this for next week.

[The Chair]

We'll certainly see if we can fit it into the schedule to come up with an appropriate time to do that.

Before we run completely out of time, I want to say thank you to the witnesses who have appeared today, both in person and by video conference. On behalf of the committee, I do apologize for the interruptions for votes, but it's something we have no control over, and we usually don't know they're going to happen until they actually happen. We can't plan for that when we're lining up witnesses, unfortunately.

Thank you for your presentations. If there is anything that you haven't submitted, such as your speaking notes or whatever, please do that because we can incorporate that into the study.

The meeting is adjourned.