Fisheries Committee on June 7th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much, Mr. Strahl.

Now we're going to go with seven minutes for the NDP.

We're going to go to you, Mr. Donnelly, but I believe you may be splitting your time. Is that correct?

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

That's correct, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I would like to thank the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union and Unifor—Mr. Lewis, Mr. Nagy, and Ms. Thorkelson—and the north coast nations that they represent. Thank you, Mr. Boyes, as well for your testimony to the fisheries and oceans standing committee.

Mr. Cullen, who represents Skeena—Bulkley Valley, will ask the first question.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thanks very much, and welcome, Joy. It's nice to see you, and Conrad, Arnold, and David as well.

I have a quick question just to set some context for us, Joy, if you could, and welcome to some Prince Rupert weather; we brought it in specially.

In the context of where the fishing fleet has gone, say in the last 10 or 20 years, there have been a number of government policies coming from Ottawa through Fisheries and Oceans that have affected the way people fish and the number of families the industry now supports.

To start us off, can you give us some context on the north coast region and what the impact has been of some of those policies, and the concentration of who's buying the fish and what impact that has on shoreworkers and fishermen alike?

[Joy Thorkelson]

When I first moved to Prince Rupert, it was a booming fishing town. I believe there were seven canneries, 10 fresh-fish plants, three reduction plants, a bunch of net lofts, two boat shops attached to the cannery and two other boat shops that weren't attached to the cannery, and probably around 2,000 to 3,000 shoreworkers, some of whom were union and some of whom were not.

We don't know how many people are going to be employed this summer. The company said it was going to be around 300, but they just had a meeting with my co-worker and said that it was probably going to be around 200 this year. We guess there are around 400 workers left out of around 3,000.

There's only one boat shop, McLean's, and it does all of the boat-shop work in Prince Rupert. There's one net store left, and ancillary industries have just gone down.

The Prince Rupert city council, along with the Port of Prince Rupert just built a new marina, and the new marina was complaining to the city that there are no ancillary industries now to repair any vessels in Prince Rupert.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you. That means there's a 90% or more reduction in the number of people working in the industry.

I have a question for Arnold. I'll leave off with this, and thank you for the time, Fin.

Actually, I'll go to Conrad.

What has the impact been on northern first nations communities?

This is a declared mandate from the government, from previous governments, to help first nations people acquire and sustain work. Joy has described the impact broadly. There are a lot of villages, and a lot of first nations people are living in Prince Rupert proper. What's the impact been over the last 10 to 20 years from federal policies on the ability of first nations people to find and hold on to work in the industry?

[Conrad Lewis]

Thank you, Nathan.

In a lot of our people's views—mine personally, and a lot of our families and fellow nations in the industry—our haun has been an industry that has sustained us both through sustenance and commercially for many years, but we've seen a slow transition.

From actually making a living and buying houses and cars, through policies that come from DFO or from the government in Ottawa we have seen a slow transition and are struggling now to ensure that our quality of life is maintained at a certain level. We have since fallen below that level. Where we bought houses and cars, where we went on holidays, and where we saw our children and grandchildren moving into houses of their own, we're now seeing them going into shared houses or getting into accommodations that are smaller than what they traditionally would have gone into.

We can reverse that. People say fishing is on a down cycle. It is not. It exists, and all we need is to manage it properly.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thanks very much for that, Conrad. I appreciate it.

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

In the few minutes that we have remaining, Mr. Nagy or Ms. Thorkelson, could you comment on adjacency?

I know you've presented some recommendations, Joy. Thank you very much for doing that. I think the committee could look at those and decide if it wants to go further and perhaps do a study to look at how they could be implemented.

In the remaining minute or so, could you talk about how adjacency or these policies on the west coast could make a difference for Prince Rupert and other coastal communities?

[Joy Thorkelson]

Arnie, do you want to take that?

[Arnold Nagy]

As someone who has worked in the plant a lot of the time, I remember when we used to watch all the groundfish being cut in the north. Now we see it being loaded into the back of a semi and trucked out. I've watched all of the halibut that in the old days used to come in on the so-called lottery fishery that would employ us for two months in the freezers and in the fresh fish department at Atlin. Since they've gone to quota systems, that fish now comes in a little bit at a time and is also loaded into the back of a semi and trucked out.

Basically, fish comes in, it's unloaded, and it's gone. There is no further processing of any of those fish that we used to do in the past. I think that's the important thing. So much money is caught up here. I think there is $800 million in B.C. in the value of fish; $400 million of that fish is from the north coast, and we're not seeing anybody benefiting from it in the plants. It's put on the back of a truck and it's gone.

With the adjacency principle, if you had to process some of that fish.... I understand that some of it might not be able to be processed up here, and that's the reality, but we have to be able to process something. We are flexible. We are willing to change. Maybe there will never be another canning facility up here, but we are willing to change to make sure that we can process some of that fish up here. Every time we've made a recommendation to the company, we've been told no.

What do you want to do? Do you just want to sit back and watch all that fish leave here in the north, and coastal communities such as Prince Rupert get wiped out? That's the reality of what could happen. People are going to be forced to leave Prince Rupert to try to find work elsewhere, because there are not a lot of other opportunities up here. People have built their livelihood around processing fish here in the north, and it's being taken away.

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

Thank you for your testimony.

[Arnold Nagy]

Adjacency gives us the opportunity to bring that economic future back for the people of the north coast.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Nagy. We appreciate it.

Mr. Morrissey, go ahead for seven minutes, please.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is one of policy, and I want some clarification.

There seems to be some insinuation that if DFO moved to a policy that was more compatible with the way DFO licenses and oversees the east coast fishery in Atlantic Canada, that would solve the labour problem at this particular plant.

In maritime Canada, there is no policy within DFO that dictates where the product must be sold or where it goes. For instance, 65% of the seafood caught in P.E.I. leaves the province to be processed elsewhere. I'm not so sure a policy change that would mimic what's done on the east coast would address your issue. Could you speak to that? There's no control of that product. It moves to where processing is more efficient on the east coast, even though the licences are controlled by independent fishers, so that policy change would not address the issue that's affecting this particular plant.

Could Joy or someone else comment on that ?

[Joy Thorkelson]

Very quickly, we believe it's a three-legged stool. I was trying to think of a fourth leg, but I couldn't.

The reason we tried to address this is that we need adjacency. We know that the Liberals at the Liberal convention passed an excellent resolution on adjacency. It was brought to the convention by the Newfoundland arm of the party, and it was passed. It's called the P-01 adjacency principle, and it sets out exactly our argument on adjacency.

The second thing is that if you have owner-operator and fleet separation, then the company doesn't control where the fishermen must deliver. Right now, as Arnie said, Lax Kw'alaams has a fish plant. The Government of Canada put a lot of PICFI, Pacific integrated commercial fisheries initiative, money into that fish plant. That fish plant is empty. It's not operating because the corporate control is directing the fish somewhere else. Those Lax Kw'alaams fishermen can't go and deliver to their own fish plant.

We need owner-operator and fleet separation, along with a fishermen's loan board, which I understand is provincial, and probably a few other things too.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

That's provincial.

[Joy Thorkelson]

Right. We need a few other things. That's not our ask of the federal government.

Our ask of the federal government is to go and have a commission to see what happens. We need adjacency, fleet separation, and owner-operator policies so that the company can't control, can't tell fishermen, can't take that fish away. That fish is all going to be delivered to Rupert.

That fish is going to go down because the Canadian Fishing Company controls those licences. Those fishermen must deliver to Canadian Fishing and that fish is going to go where Canadian Fishing tells it to go.

If those fishermen were independent, they could deliver to Aero Trading, which has an operation in Rupert. They could deliver to Lax Kw'alaams, which has an operation, or they could deliver to another private company that could be set up in Prince Rupert.

There aren't any private companies, because Canadian Fishing owns the licences. If you wanted to build a company on the north coast, it would be virtually impossible, because you would not have access to fish. The fish, either through quota domination or through licence control, is being delivered to Canadian Fishing.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

I go back, because I'm still a bit confused.

The adjacency policy that was adopted by the Liberal Party is in reference to allocating quota based on historical data and adjacency. On the east coast, if I want to set up a business, I can set up a business tomorrow to process product. I'll get the product if I pay the best price. We have no control, nor does anybody on the east coast want DFO to ever dictate where the fishermen can go and sell their product. As a politician, you would be lynched on the wharf if you did that.

Again, I can understand the policy change itself, the separation. My question then leads to the competition between the two plants.

I'm not sure who made the comment—it may have been Mr. Lewis—that you're competing with a plant that's owned by the same company, located in Alaska. Could you comment on that? What is making that plant more efficient than the Prince Rupert plant, therefore dictating that the company will transfer its product there? We face the same issue on the east coast. We'll have product that's moved all the way to Asia for processors for competitive purposes.

Could you comment on what is making the Alaska plant more competitive than the Prince Rupert plant?

[Conrad Lewis]

Who is that question directed to?

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

To you, Conrad. I believe you made the comment.

[Conrad Lewis]

Yes, I made that statement.

When we talk about skills and labour and we talk about Alaska being more efficient than the Prince Rupert plant, there is no comparison. You can get just as good material in Alaska as you can in the Rupert plant, but when you don't do it in the Rupert plant and you do it in Alaska, then the competition becomes unfair.

Then Rupert imported, and Sunnyside, North Pacific, and the other cannery followed. We were the transient workers who went there. We established ourselves. We made an income. We made a living. Then we stayed there.

Jim Pattison wants to do that in Alaska, and that is exactly what he's doing. His workforce is loaded with transient workers. That is how he is making his money.

It's the same way with fishing. The prices didn't stay low by themselves; they stayed low because they needed them to stay low. When they do that, whoever is in charge of selling and reaping the benefits of selling product, if he's managed to keep the prices low on buying it, and doubles, triples, quadruples the price on selling it, he's going to be making money, but the poor people who fished it will remain the same as they always have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Morrissey.

We're now going to go to the second round for five minutes. We'll start with Mr. Arnold.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank all of the witnesses for being available today. It's a short time to study this topic, but it's obviously very much of concern for the residents of Prince Rupert.

Could we get a little more history on this issue? We heard from many people in the video that some had 30 and sometimes 40 or more years of experience in the fishery.

How many canneries were there in the Prince Rupert area, say, 40 years ago, and roughly 10 years ago? It's just to get a history of the decline. Has it been a steady decline in the number of canneries and jobs there?

I won't direct it to anyone in particular, just to whoever feels they have the best history on that.

[Joy Thorkelson]

I think there were eight canneries. I was just trying to count them in my mind, but I believe there were eight canneries about 40 years ago, and now there's one, which is closed, so B.C. has no more canneries except for the small two-line cannery that used to just do sport fish. Now Nuu-chah-nulth just bought interest in that to see if they are able to can fish, but we don't know what they plan to do. We don't know whether they want to can sports fish or what they want to do.

Really, there is no production cannery in British Columbia now, and I would say there were eight 40 years ago. If you want to look at 10 years ago, there were maybe two, and now there's nothing.

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

Okay. Thank you.

There's an obvious trend here. It's not something that's happened in recent history; it's been over a number of years.

I have a question for Mr. Boyes.

How would adjacency affect your ability or the ability of other fishers to choose the location along the coast where they may want to have their fish processed? Would it force you or other fishermen into having your fish processed in one particular area, or would you still be able to choose?