Fisheries Committee on Nov. 28th, 2016

[Trevor Taylor]

Sorry for making light of this. It is a very serious matter.

You can go to this website. I did it this morning. I ascertained exactly how much each vessel that is licenced to fish cod in Icelandic waters has for a quota and how much of that quota it has landed as of today's date.

We see no reason why in Canada we couldn't do the same. In Canada, however, you cannot get information below the level of the fleet sector. If the fleet sector has less than five vessels in it, you can't get it at all. When you can get the information, it is only after formally requesting it from the relevant person in the department—once you've identified that person—followed by lengthy time periods waiting for information to be compiled and cleaned of any reference to the vessel- or fisher-identifying feature. The Fisheries Act needs to require the timely disclosure of information, both on the science on which the fishery is based, and on the fishing activities and management actions that ensue.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present here today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Taylor. We appreciate it.

May I ask you to indulge me for just one moment? Can you spell that website name for us? I know you can't distribute it because it's not in both languages. Is it possible, because I know the Icelandic language—

[Trevor Taylor]

I'll leave you a copy of it. It's “Fiskistofa”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Okay. I'll distribute it accordingly.

[Trevor Taylor]

I'll leave you the address.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

All right. Thank you very much for that.

I thank all of our guests.

For our witnesses, before we get into the questions and answers, I want to point out two things. If someone else is answering the question and you want to weigh in on the subject, keeping in mind that we only have seven minutes, you can put up your hand and try to get the attention of the person asking the question. When I give seven minutes to one of our colleagues, they have it, and it's their own exclusively, so you need to get their attention. As for people on video conferencing, put up your hand, and hopefully we should be able to notice at that time.

Colleagues, because we have people on video conference, I suggest that you direct your questions to someone or to an identifiable group. I'd like you to avoid saying “anybody can answer”. Let's try to do that to make it more efficient.

That said, we'll go first to Mr. McDonald from the government side, please, for seven minutes.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today, both here in person and by video conference.

Trevor, to your comment about the H's being there or not there, I will let you know that for the translators who are here today, at least one of them did travel to Newfoundland to do part of the cod study. He was there with us in St. John's, but we didn't feel that was good enough, so we took him to Port de Grave and to Fogo Island. He has learned by baptism of fire, if nothing else, and I'm sure he was able to keep up.

For my first couple of questions, of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't point them toward the minister of fisheries for Newfoundland, being somewhat of a colleague to some degree, I guess. I'd like to hear more explanation on a couple of things that he spoke of.

Firstly, Minister Crocker, in your presentation, you spoke about bringing the current owner-operator policy and fleet separation policy into legislation as part of the Fisheries Act. Can you expand on that concept? Also, what would the actual value of that be to Newfoundland and Labrador, especially to rural communities?

[Steve Crocker]

Thank you, Mr. McDonald.

In my opening, I did say that we feel that by opening the Fisheries Act and making these changes it gives us an opportunity as well to make some other changes that I think we feel are long overdue. One of those is the owner-operator and fleet separation issue.

When you look at the fishery and how it's structured in our province, you see that today we have about 9,000 harvesters, with 3,000 enterprises fishing from probably some 400 communities and adding a value of $500 million or $600 million per year to our economy. One of the things that fisheries minister Roméo LeBlanc did in the 1970s was to bring in the fleet separation and the owner-operator policy.

For anybody who doesn't understand it, what it really does is keep large companies from owning large portions of our industry. We feel that it's very important. I'll go back to the numbers I just quoted about the number of harvesters and the people and communities affected. It's important to make sure that the licences that are there are maintained by professional fish harvesters in our province and are not out on the open market so that a company can come in, for example, and just consume all these licences.

Just recently, I saw an article out of a Nova Scotia newspaper, I think, about an Asian company that was advertising for lobster licences. This company was looking at our resource in Atlantic Canada in particular as an opportunity to consume these licences and have control of our fishery. One thing the owner-operator policy does is that it takes the control of our fishery and gives it to the people and the communities that were meant to have that control.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you.

Secondly, Minister Crocker, in your presentation you also talked about Newfoundland and Labrador harvesters getting formal recognition as professional fish harvesters. Can you expand on that concept and tell us about the Professional Fish Harvesters Certification Board and why it would be important to have such recognition included in the Fisheries Act as well?

[Steve Crocker]

Again, it links back directly to the earlier comments, I guess, about owner-operators and fleet separation. We have had those people in our province since 1996, and we were the first province in Canada that looked at our harvesters as professionals.

Having this as policy but not legislation opens it up to court challenges and to challenges that may cause obstacles in the future as people become more aggressive, I guess, for those licences.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

As fisheries minister—and perhaps others can weigh in on this as well, because several have spoken about the aquaculture industry—do you feel that aquaculture should have its own act and not be spread out...? We have acts for transportation, navigable waters, environment, and fisheries. Do you think aquaculture should have its own act? Why or why not?

[Steve Crocker]

I'll defer that to Liz.

[Elizabeth Barlow, Director, Aquaculture Development, Department of Fisheries, Forestry and Agrifoods, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador]

There have been a number of consultations, in a number of forums through the CCFAM and its SMC, discussing the federal Fisheries Act. It's been bartered around for quite some time now. There are some gains that could be had with the federal Fisheries Act, but as you say, there are clearly so many other departments that would come into play.

I think one of the main reasons there is such a drive for an aquaculture act is that right now we're picked up in bits and pieces by all of these other acts. There could be much more clarity and much more certainty around the aquaculture industry—and investors in the aquaculture industry—if we had our own act, but I think we're still in discussions with the other provinces and internally as to what an aquaculture act could and would look like. It's still something that we're trying to explore though the CCFAM.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Does anybody else want to weigh in on aquaculture? No?

That's it for me, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. McDonald.

Now, for seven minutes, we're going to go to the official opposition and Mr. Sopuck.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you.

I want to again correct the record. There are significant habitat protections in the new Fisheries Act, as follows. “Serious harm to fish” is defined as

the death of fish or any permanent alteration to, or destruction of, fish habitat.

“Fish habitat” is defined as

spawning grounds and any other areas, including nursery, rearing, food supply and migration areas, on which fish depend directly or indirectly in order to carry out their life processes;

The idea that the new Fisheries Act has no habitat provisions is clearly false.

I should point out that the mining industry, when they presented to us, were very clear. They said:

...the 2012 changes to the Fisheries Act have in practice broadened the circumstances in which the section 35 prohibitions apply and increased the circumstances in which an authorization and offsets are required.

They talked about the increased burden on mining project proponents.

I have also found a document that is the Auditor General's 2009 report regarding the old Fisheries Act. That auditor looked at 23 years of the old Fisheries Act. He or she says that the program's lack of success without sufficient support of science was likewise documented in the auditor's 2009 on the fish habitat management program, which indicated that the fish habitat management program actions over 23 years could not be demonstrated to have adequately protected fish habitat, and, by extension, fisheries.

We had some very interesting testimony—a week or so ago, I think—from the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, which talked about direct experience with the old Fisheries Act. Mr. Ron Bonnett is the president of the CFA. They represent 200,000 farmers across Canada. I will quote him now:

The experience that many farmers had with the Fisheries Act, unfortunately, was not a positive one. It was characterized by lengthy bureaucratic applications for permitting and authorizations, and a focus on enforcement and compliance measures taken by officials coupled with a lack of guidance or outreach....

He went on to say:

There are also many accounts of inconsistency in enforcement, monitoring, and compliance across Canada with different...organizations, which led to a confusion and indiscriminate approaches to enforcement and implementation. Even at the individual [farm] level, there were different interpretations of the act based on one's familiarity with agriculture. ... It is CFA's position that a complete revert to reinstate all provisions of the Fisheries Act as they were would be unproductive [and] re-establish the same problems for farmers, and...provide little improvement [in conservation]....

The municipal people I've spoken with right across the country express the same issues with regard to how the old Fisheries Act was done.

I'm asking you, Ms. Venton, given the problems that the agricultural community had with the Fisheries Act, the very grave problems—I represent an agricultural constituency—with inconsistencies, delays in permitting, and a general increase in costs to cash-strapped municipalities, why is it that you want farmers and rural communities to be subjected to what was a very inadequate old Fisheries Act?

[Margot Venton]

Thank you for that question.

To clarify my earlier statements, we were very clear that we don't propose reverting to the HADD prohibition. We would propose reverting to “harmful alteration, disruption, and destruction of fish habitat” as the primary definition for what constitutes the HADD, or what constitutes the habitat protection prohibition, but we would add into that... I think some some of the examples you raised were really interesting ones. I would agree with you that there are huge problems with inconsistencies under the previous HADD regime, in part because of the very broad discretion under that section 35(2) authorization power. It wasn't guided by any regulatory provisions.

Also, there was nothing written down in the act to explain how the minister.... When it says “minister”, of course, what it means is the dozens of delegates that the minister relies on to implement the authorization provision. They had no consistent regulatory guidance to follow, which is why we are recommending the inclusion of clear regulatory guidance within the actual provision itself—or within a regulation, if that ends up being structurally simpler—but I think some of that needs to be right in the section 35 provision, in what is now, I suppose, the subsection 35(2) exceptions category, to make clear how decisions are supposed to be made to address that challenge of inconsistency.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Okay. With all due respect, that's a lawyer's view, and the world, the economy, and rural communities are not nearly that clear cut. That's the reason why we had such difficulties with the old Fisheries Act.

Minister Crocker, I must express my sympathy for you. We have had from every non-governmental organization a desire to decrease ministerial discretion, and that is something I profoundly disagree with. I think that every public sector decision has to have, at the very end of the chain, an elected official. On that one, we Conservatives on this side will always come down on the side of democracy and the role of elected officials.

In fact, I'd like to address my next question to the Atlantic Salmon Federation. You also expressed a view that ministerial discretion should be limited, but it was ministerial discretion that created the recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program, of which I think the ASF and the Miramichi Salmon Association have availed themselves. Could you describe your experiences with the recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program? Could you also comment on the impact of that program, which was created under the new Fisheries Act, on your work as an Atlantic salmon conservation organization?

[Charles Cusson]

On the first part of your question in regard to the partnerships program, that has been a very well-received initiative. Speaking for the jurisdiction that I represent in Quebec, many of our affiliates were able to take advantage of that program. I understand that it's going to continue, which is a good thing.

As far as the.... I've lost track of the second part of your question, Mr. Sopuck.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Again, the point is that it was ministerial discretion that created that program. I'm constantly amazed at how non-governmental organizations want to reduce the powers of the minister when the minister's office is the one place where you have a chance to seek redress or a change in policy, or to ask for funds to do programming.

[Charles Cusson]

The best way I can address that is with an example. I might, at a certain point, defer to my colleague, Dr. Sutton, who is originally from Newfoundland. Recently, an aquaculture project started up on the south coast of Newfoundland. With aquaculture not being something new—it's been around for a while—we know about all the challenges that are involved in that type of economic activity. It was our contention and also that of other groups that the process to get this particular project off the ground was expedited without proper consideration for the possible ecological damage that could be caused by it.

At this point, Steve, if you want to continue—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Cusson. I'm sorry, but I have to interrupt there because we're out of that seven minutes.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Mr. Donnelly, please, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for being here to provide their testimony on this important review of the Fisheries Act.

I'll start with Oceans North, Mr. Taylor. You've introduced a very interesting idea of harmonizing with, or at least reflecting, the Oceans Act when looking at the Fisheries Act, which I'm not sure we have heard before. Thanks for bringing that in.

You did mention a purpose statement and some specifics around the preamble, etc. Is that what you're looking for? Is it modernizing the language? You referred also to the concepts that are new in the 20th century Oceans Act versus the 19th century Fisheries Act. Could you expand a bit on that in terms of the wording in the Fisheries Act that you would like to see?