Fisheries Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 119 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

Before we proceed, I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses. Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. There are no witnesses in the room.

Please address all comments through the chair.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on February 8, 2024, the committee is resuming its study of derelict and abandoned vessels.

Before we get started with witness testimony and questions, Ms. Barron spoke to me before the meeting and wondered if we could go with a different format for this particular study—because it's so important to the west coast—with five-minute rounds all the way through for the time that's allocated for each session. That would be instead of going with six and then five and two and a half. I did tell Ms. Barron that I would have to put it before the committee first, that I couldn't just simply say yes or no.

Ms. Barron, you have the floor.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for bringing it up.

I just want to clarify for my colleagues that my intention is to see if my colleagues would be open to redistributing the timing a little bit more fairly to take into account that 30 minutes will be cut off at the end.

It doesn't have to be five minutes. I'm open to any suggestions. I know we've done this in the past in previous meetings when we've looked at a redistribution of time to take into account that 30 minutes are going to be cut off at the end, and the Bloc and I are the parties who feel that the most. Based on the fact that we have three witnesses from the west coast here today, it would be great if we could redistribute the time.

I ask for my colleagues' thoughts on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Do you want to chime in?

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Chair, I would agree because, first of all, it's Ms. Barron's study, and it's primarily focused on the west coast.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Go ahead, Mr. Arnold.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This has just been sprung on us right now. I'd rather we either recess for a few minutes or leave the speaking times as they are for this meeting, and we can come back to it at the beginning of the next meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Go ahead, Ms. Barron.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you for the thoughts.

Just to clarify for the members' information in case it wasn't understood, the request is for today's meeting. The change in the meeting agenda was sprung on me at the last minute, so I am trying to adapt to the fact that I have three of my witnesses here and I want to make sure that questions are asked of them appropriately.

I am requesting a one-time adaptation for today's meeting, so recessing or bringing it back at the next meeting won't resolve the issue today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Go ahead, Mr. Arnold.

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

If it's one time for today, I guess we can go with that.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Okay, we have everybody's permission, so we'll go with five-minute slots all the way down through.

I'll go back now to our witnesses for today.

From Terra Services Inc., we have Mr. David Roberts, manager, who is online.

You have five minutes for an opening statement, sir, when you're ready, please.

[David Roberts, Manager, Terra Services Inc.]

My name is David Roberts, and I'm the manager of Terra Services Incorporated.

We are part of an indigenous group ourselves. It's a joint venture of Terra Services Inc. and Patey's Safety and Industrial Ltd. of Newfoundland.

We have current supply arrangements with the Government of Canada for small vessel recycling. We've been doing that for the past couple of years. We have a couple of issues that maybe we can get help with.

One of them would be the funding part. We are interested in getting more information on the funding issue, especially with the equal funding from the west and east coast. There are also some issues with obtaining clarifications on becoming eligible recipients to work with the Government of Canada and other parts of the small vessel recycling. This refers to the indigenous groups.

The current wording in the Government of Canada's business legislation is about indigenous companies and indigenous groups. I'm here today asking for that to be changed to “indigenous group/company as being registered in the Indigenous Business Directory of Canada”. That would enable us to take a much greater part in the vessel recycling aspect with the Government of Canada and their efforts to get this done.

A lot of the issues we have with the Government of Canada are with the wording of a lot of these regulations we have. It may have to be tweaked a bit to enable different companies, especially the indigenous companies, to avail themselves of what's out there and what's available to us. That's my biggest concern, and we can talk about that if you like.

That is the gist of it—the funding aspect and getting our name and indigenous group qualified to take part in all of these projects that the Government of Canada has.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Roberts.

We'll now go to rounds of questioning. We'll start off with Mr. Small for five minutes or less, please.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to the witnesses today who are here to take part in this study.

Mr. Chair, I'll start off with Mr. Roberts, because that's our only choice, I guess.

Mr. Roberts, you talked about how the wording of regulations was a bit of a problem with this abandoned vessel removal program. What type of wording would you like to see that could make the program more efficient, maybe?

[David Roberts]

What we have here, and I'm thinking that the people I've talked to in your organizations, the Fisheries and Oceans people, is that the wording has everything to do with everything, of course.

The wording for eligible recipient criteria is “an Aboriginal group”. We are a group/company, and we are registered with the Indigenous Business Directory of Canada. The Indigenous Business Directory of Canada clearly states that if you're not in this directory, you cannot avail yourself of any opportunities with the Canadian government.

We are there as Terra Services Inc. and Patey's Safety and Industrial Limited. We are in the business directory, and we need the wording changed to “indigenous group/company as being registered in the Indigenous Business Directory of Canada”.

If that were changed, it would get rid of a lot of the red tape that we are now seeing. It would be a lot smoother sailing.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Roberts, what types of vessels have you removed? What were they made of? Were they wooden, fibreglass or steel? What types of vessels have you remediated so far since you've been in this business?

[David Roberts]

We've removed wooden vessels, and fibreglass, fibreglass over wood, steel, aluminum and concrete boats.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Do you operate mostly in Atlantic Canada, Mr. Roberts?

[David Roberts]

Yes, and on the west coast too. We operate in B.C., and we have had projects in Ontario and Quebec.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

How are you finding the recycling or repurposing of what you're removing from the environment? What challenges are you facing?

[David Roberts]

Well, I'll give you an example of one of the biggest challenges I have seen.

The Government of Canada established a network of marine service centres right across Canada, especially here in the Atlantic provinces. There are criteria for removing derelict boats from the marine service centres. This is one of the criteria. The criteria are there for the local harbour authority managers to look after these projects and get them removed.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Roberts, are you saying it's possible that the number of derelict vessels is way underestimated? Are there a lot more around that are not registered? Is that possible?

[David Roberts]

In the past six years since your program came out, there are in excess of thousands of vessels just in the marine service centres in Atlantic Canada that are still there. There has been only one vessel removed from the marine service centres in the past six years through this program.

In my hometown, there are two marine service centres. One has 14 vessels and the other has 13. Because of the restrictions that we faced, we could not put a proposal in to Fisheries and Oceans to remove those vessels. The restriction was because the eligible recipient criteria was for indigenous groups only.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Roberts. We have to move on now to the next questioner.

Mr. Morrissey, you have five minutes or less, please.