Fisheries Committee on May 13th, 2019

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I want to thank you also, because I was invited to attend the meeting last summer and join you and stay up with that. Keep pursuing it—we urge you to do so.

[Jeffery Hutchinson]

Thank you.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

We urge you to continue with that work.

I want to ask about the divestiture aspect of the small craft harbours program. As a west coaster, we always look at it as kind of being bullied. It's divest or destroy, right? Minister Garneau helped us back off on divesting the Lasqueti dock and the Bamfield dock, and then Bamfield thought they'd better take it because they were worried it could be destroyed. Tofino took theirs some years back, and now they're in real trouble trying to keep that dock maintained. They don't have the money to do it. A lot of the indigenous communities rely on that dock for transportation and they don't have the funding to maintain it.

Can you tell me how you're going to go back to those communities that have taken on small craft harbours through the divestiture and are now worried that they're going to get destroyed? These are critical pieces of infrastructure.

[Jen O'Donoughue]

I have one piece of clarification. The amount of money in the estimates is an “up to” amount to give authority for the grants. It's part of our authorities process.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Sure.

[Jen O'Donoughue]

As to the actual divestitures, my understanding is that there's still planning under way. I'll defer to others who have more details on the planning, but if we go through and determine that divestiture isn't the right option, then we look at a different funding source.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Sure, but you know most of these communities don't have the capacity to take it on in the long term. They don't even have the tools to collect revenue, a lot of them, the way they're designed.

[Timothy Sargent]

For a small craft harbour divestiture, it's very much a case-by-case thing. It's not that we tell people they have to divest a harbour. We only do it when we think that the capacity is there and there's actually a desire from folks to do it.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I haven't seen anything on plastics, any funding for cleanups. We've heard loud and clear that it needs to happen. Is there any money planned for that?

Also, we haven't gotten a breakdown of the southern resident killer whale funding and where that is in terms of the schedule on that.

[Jen O'Donoughue]

There is $2.3 million in the estimates under the grant under the innovative solutions Canada program that is related to plastics.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Perfect. So there are eligible applicants for that.

[Jen O'Donoughue]

Yes. There are terms and conditions related to the program.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

On SRKW, we haven't gotten anything on that. Are you able to send the committee the breakdown of what that looks like, that $167 million and what the plan is with that?

[Jen O'Donoughue]

Not at this point in time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Now we will go to Mr. Morrissey for seven minutes or less.

I believe you are sharing your time.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you.

My question is possibly to Mr. Waddell, as you're under fisheries and licensing policy. One of the irritants I deal with in my office, as a member of Parliament, is getting calls from fishermen who cannot get through to DFO offices as it relates to transferring simple licences and applications. It's extremely frustrating. Come the weekend they want to do it; they're getting close to starting the seasons. It's an issue I deal with a lot and there has been no satisfactory resolution to it. It's unacceptable.

When somebody decides they're going to acquire a licence, it could be a week before fishing season starts, because again, the Government of Canada says when you're going to start. The answer is that it could be four weeks before they get around to transferring it, which is a simple transfer.

Could you comment on that briefly?

[Mark Waddell, Director General, Fisheries and Licence Policy, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Certainly.

Part of that is we do have service standards that start with in terms of doing a transfer. We have a 30-day service standard.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

I know you've had significant cutbacks in the past.

[Mark Waddell]

We buttressed those, particularly in your riding. We have added to the Tignish catch certification office, which is the same office—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

That's not the office that these transactions go through.

[Mark Waddell]

It does a lot of the online support for those using our national online licensing system. They all field the first volley of calls, then they work with regional colleagues to prioritize those works and initiate transfers.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

It's something that I would suggest that the department look at, because over the years there's been a lot of reduction in front-line staff. You cannot walk into an office and get a person to talk to you. I get that complaint a lot. They simply said, they have nobody there to talk to you about the licence. That occurred in the previous government, not with ours, so it's something I'm asking you to do.

The other one is small craft harbours funding. We have a couple of hundred million dollars. We made some announcements last year, in my own particular case, and I don't think we got to tender stage yet. That is an inordinate amount of time from the time funding is approved, until it gets through all the design stages and finally gets out to tender.

I did an announcement in July of last year. We were advised earlier than that and it still hasn't gotten to tender. That, in my opinion, is unacceptable at a time when we're attempting to get money out the door. As a government, we make announcements and commitments to small craft harbours and it just appears to be way too slow to be getting funding out.

Who wants to comment on that?

[Mark Waddell]

The only comment I would offer on that, sir, is that my understanding is 96% of projects that were announced in part of budget 2018 funding have been initiated. I'm not aware—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

What's your definition of initiated?

[Mark Waddell]

Begun.