Fisheries Committee on June 3rd, 2020

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

What we are definitely seeing, Mr. Chair, is really depressed prices at the wharf due to a decrease in demand for the product. In particular, lobster is one of those products. The price for lobster in the first quarter, for which we have the statistics, remained strong. Last year's prices were particularly high. They were record prices, but we're receiving reports similar to what the honourable member has heard about a reduction of up to 40% in the price from the high to where it is right now.

What we're hoping to see is an increase in demand for this product in the short term, and we're seeing the recovery of some of the markets already. The Lobster Council of Canada has told us, for instance, that the Chinese market is now up to 50% of where it normally would be at this time of year, after having been much lower in the previous few months. That will actually help with the particular problem of too much lobster coming in at the wharf. A lot of the relationship is managed between the processors, the buyers and the harvesters. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans does not directly interfere in that as the fisheries regulator.

I would also like to mention that one of the things the government has done to help address this situation is to use the stabilization fund that we were talking about in the previous question to fund possible increases in the processors to move from the live lobster market to a more processed lobster market, to increase storage and cold storage for lobster, and to help them retool to meet the new demand shifts created for seafood, away from the live market and towards the more processed market.

As to the question regarding the surplus food purchase program, in fact, fish and seafood are eligible under that program. That program is going to be administered by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, but fish and seafood are going to be part of that program, and there may be an opportunity for what's being harvested, either by the harvesting community or by the aquaculture industry, to avail itself of that program. The details of that program aren't out and are apparently under development by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which is doing so in consultation with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, to ensure that our sector is appropriately represented and acknowledgeable under that program.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you for that.

I'm glad you mentioned the storage facilities. I was on the phone this morning with one of the storage facilities and was trying to find remedies. No one wants to see crates of dead lobsters that could be feeding people, especially in some of these communities that have food insecurity.

I'm wondering if there is any plan for us to increase storage capability or capacity in the short term. Is that something we're looking at as well?

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

I believe that is going to be one of the key pillars of the Canadian seafood stabilization fund, which will be administered by the regional agencies. One of the primary pillars of that program announced by the government is actually to increase storage. The desire is to increase storage in the short term so as to continue to have a market and buyers for the goods of the harvesters, and have that lobster come off the wharf and go into storage and then to processors and buyers so they can increase inventory and continue to process that fish and seafood. This should also have the long-term benefit of more storage and processing capability for when we have the recovery period.

The hope is to move very quickly through the regional agencies to get that storage capacity up so that there's some ability for the purchasers and the processors to buy that stock as fast as possible.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I know I won't have a chance to get an answer on this question because I'm running short of time, but I wanted to just speak a bit about the communication and get a sense of having something written.

How can DFO help these fishermen who are looking for help, who don't understand the programs, who have heard that we have put almost a half a billion dollars into the fishing industry, but they don't know how this works out? Is there any way that DFO can figure out how to communicate effectively with these fishermen in these areas that may not have the greatest Internet capabilities?

I hope you have a plan for that, and I know you can't answer because we're out of time, but perhaps you could look at how we're doing for communications going forward.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Battiste.

We'll now go to the Bloc and Madame Gill for six minutes or less, please.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a question about the $62.5 million in support given to the industry for storage capacity. Storage affects the price, not only in the short term, but in the long term as well.

So I was wondering whether that was something you evaluated. Storing fish does not bring more money to the fishers, quite the opposite. You get more fish, and the price then goes down.

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

The objective, I would say, of the cold storage facilities under the Canadian seafood stabilization fund is to allow the processors to continue to buy the harvesters' product over the long run.

What happens is that if processors and buyers find themselves in situations in which they cannot either store or send the seafood on to the buyers because of lack of demand, they start regulating how much seafood they're willing to purchase from the harvesting community, and we're already seeing that in certain fisheries at the moment. Because they're concerned about their inability to store seafood and fish, they're actually putting limits on how much they'll buy from those individual harvesters, as opposed to what we've seen in the past, when they bought all the product available.

We believe that if we increase the storage capacity of these processors, it will mitigate against the need on the part of the processors and buyers to limit the amount they'll buy from the harvester community.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I feel that is a minimum. It may be fine for those who have the storage, but it does not have a significant impact on the fishers, other than a mitigating impact. We know only too well that many are heading towards a season of losses.

I was wondering about the benefits and subsidies provided by the government. I was wondering why there were differences between the support given to the fisheries sector and that given to other sectors. I talk to a huge number of fishers in eastern Quebec. Generally speaking, they see a big difference in the benefit, as well as in the subsidy. They feel that they have a lower-cost program.

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

The objective of the government is to establish a program that has national application, which would be of benefit to all sectors across the economy. Initiatives such as the Canada emergency response benefit and the Canada emergency wage subsidy are examples of such things. As they have rolled out, we have made changes to them to try to capture differences in sectors.

I'll use the example of the Canada emergency response benefit. We saw very quickly that this was an issue for our sector because of the seasonality of the sector and its impact on seasonal workers, especially those who are coming off of EI. The government made an adjustment to that so that workers coming off of EI—a lot of that was happening in our seafood sector, both with processors and harvesters—would be eligible.

We noticed immediately after this that the change did not catch those individuals who were on fishers' EI, which is not regular EI. Within a number of days, we made a change to make those individuals eligible for the Canada emergency response benefit. Having said that, we realized, through our ongoing consultations with the industry, the union representatives, the harvesters' associations and our provincial counterparts at both the officials and ministerial levels, that a lot of the harvesting community was not finding itself eligible for these benefits. They technically can apply and be eligible, but because of the structure of the industry or their enterprises, some are eligible and some are not.

We—

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I am sorry, my six minutes run out very quickly, Mr. Forgeron, and I have more questions for you.

You mentioned employment insurance, but many who work in the industry and fishing crew members will not have access to it. You also spoke of seasonality, and that is precisely how certain communities make their entire living. In their case, a bad fishing season can destroy them.

Knowing that the current fishing season has already been significantly impacted by the drop in demand, would it be possible to provide income, like employment insurance, to our seasonal workers for a full year to cover them until the 2021 fishing season?

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

Mr. Chair, I'm going to answer that question in two parts, and I'll try to be very quick.

Seeing gaps in our sector, especially gaps with regard to the fish harvesters and share persons, who are organized in a very different way from the normal economy, we actually did the grant and benefit program to address those gaps that we found in the Canada emergency response benefit and the Canada emergency wage subsidy directly. Those individuals have choices between either the national program or the sector-specific program.

The Prime Minister also announced that, in the case of employment insurance, those who receive fishers' EI could expect to receive fishers' EI either based on the benefits that they would be entitled to from this year's fishing or, in short order, that they could be secure and understand what they might be entitled to based on previous years' earnings because of the expectation of loss in earnings. That has been done for EI for fishers, who are a small subcategory of the seasonal workers in our sector.

The wage-earning sector, which we—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm sorry, Mr. Forgeron. I'm going to have to cut you off. We've gone way over time.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Would it be possible to have the answer in writing, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Yes, Mrs. Gill.

Next we have Mr. Johns for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you to all the staff at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard for the work that you're doing, in light of the difficult circumstances that you're working under.

My first question is actually.... Mr. Battiste was talking about the food procurement plan. My colleague Alistair MacGregor and I wrote a letter on April 24, calling on the government for a Canada food procurement strategy, plan and investment. On May 5, we heard the Prime Minister announce the $50-million plan. We've been asking for days to see if seafood would be included in that plan. Today's the first day that we got confirmation that's actually happening. Fifty million dollars doesn't go very far when we're looking at agriculture and seafood.

Will you be increasing it now that we know that seafood's going to be included? When will you be opening up that program so that we can understand the details?

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

The program that was originally announced had both the agriculture and agri-food sector and the fish and seafood sector included in it. The $50 million always envisioned both sides of the food community.

Whether or not there will be a plan after the program rolls out.... I do not know when the program will roll out. It's being administered by our colleagues at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada—

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

I'm sorry I have to be short, but I have six minutes only.

My concern, sir, is that time's running out. These fishers are out fishing. They don't have a market to ship to. In the United States, in Alaska, for example, they buy their salmon when prices drop. They serve it to the United States military, to U.S. penitentiaries and government operations. I hope that you'll be considering doing just that.

My second thing is that you rolled out these programs around the fish harvester grant and the fish harvester benefit. When will this money actually land in the hands of fishers?

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

We hope to be announcing the details of these programs in the not-too-distant future. We are working with our colleagues at ESDC to develop the programming for these initiatives. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans historically doesn't deliver these types of programs. We are working with our colleagues over there. We hope to be rolling them out over the course of the summer months.

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

My concern with that, sir, is that fishers need money now. A lot of them can't access the CEBA program or any of the financial supports, the Canada emergency wage subsidy. They are going into the season. They don't have these supports in place.

I'm also asking about their request that licence fees and moorage fees be waived, especially for boats that don't go out and fish. This could help support conservation. I know on the north coast of the Pacific, for example, a lot of first nations own licences. They'd prefer not to go fishing, but they are going to have to, to be able to afford to pay for those licences.

Is the government considering waiving those fees?

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

At this point there is no plan to waive fishing licence fees. I believe that in the case of mooring fees at small craft harbours, those are applied by the small craft harbour authorities, not by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Is that correct, Sylvie?

[Sylvie Lapointe, Assistant Deputy Minister, Fisheries and Harbour Management, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Yes, it is.

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

Okay.

We're asking that the government consider waiving licence fees for these fishers for conservation reasons but also to help these fishers get through for next season.

Also, what are you doing for sport fishers, recreational fishers? A lot of them are making a living relying on tourism. They're not showing up. Many of them can't access the CEBA loans, the various different programs the government is rolling out, or it's not even close to enough.

What is the government doing to look at that sector in particular to help support those fishers? Will they be applying the same EI program based on 2019, for example, into 2021, like they are with the commercial fleet?

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

When it comes to what we're doing for the EI system for the commercial fleet, that is actually limited to those who are participating in the fishers' benefits of the EI system, which are the owner-operators and the share persons.

It actually doesn't apply to the—

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

Exactly.

Will you be applying something similar to the sport sector because they are in a different category?

[Jean-Guy Forgeron]

What I believe will be happening is that they'll be considered a part of how the government's approach would be to seasonal workers and their treatment under the regular national EI system, which is the responsibility, policy-wise, of ESDC and the Department of Finance. Fisheries and Oceans is not involved directly in that discussion.