Evidence of meeting #121 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was inshore.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, what is the relevance to this committee?
Liberal
Joanne Thompson Liberal St. John's East, NL
That's right. It's my time.
It could be a conversation related to cod. I do find it stressful that public funds are being diverted to a person who works for the Conservative Party of Canada in a partisan role. He's the senior Atlantic desk.
I would like, Mr. Chair, to table with the clerk the expenses for Mr. Small's office and screenshots of Mr. Kent's LinkedIn profile to confirm his ownership of the firm in question and his employment status with the Conservative Party of Canada.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I have a point of order, Chair.
Again, it goes back to relevance. When the first issue of relevance came up, the comment back was, “Well, maybe it has something to do with cod.” This has nothing to do with the study. This is purely an attack on another member. It's reprehensible, and again, it has nothing to do with this study.
The member said that in a minute maybe it could have something to do with cod. It has nothing to do with cod, nothing to do with this study today. I ask you to rule on the relevance.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
The member's time is her time, whether it's a question or a statement she's making. If it's relevant to the study, it'll be entered into the study. If it's not, it won't show up in the study.
Liberal
Joanne Thompson Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you for that, Mr. Chair.
Certainly, Mr. McCauley, I've seen similar things from you in the past in other committees.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
I will bring up that I don't want to use unparliamentary language, but as the member opposite knows, that is not true, and it's shameful for her to push away from her actions by pushing such comments against me.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
I would ask members to keep comments to what we're studying or doing here in committee, please.
Liberal
Joanne Thompson Liberal St. John's East, NL
I will move it quickly. I would like to put the following motion on notice. I move that the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Ocean condemn the improper misuse of public funds for partisan purposes, and that the committee refer the specific matter relating to Mr. Small and Mr. Kent to the Office of the Ethics Commissioner for a priority review.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Okay. We'll now go to Madame Desbiens for two and a half minutes or less, please.
Bloc
Caroline Desbiens Bloc Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île dOrléans—Charlevoix, QC
My goodness, there's a lot of action today, Mr. Chair. We don't usually see that.
Since my colleagues are using their speaking time to make statements, I'm going to take this opportunity to inform the witnesses that Quebec has been giving considerable thought to various decisions made by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
In recent years, we've had to make some important decisions. One day, we'll have a meetup with independence, but in the meantime, we absolutely must find a way to correct the course, to correct the effects of the decisions made by this government and its predecessor. We have to do it for Quebec's fishers.
Shrimpers didn't fish this summer. There's also a moratorium on mackerel, which the U.S. is still happily fishing. There are also issues related to climate change, to which we are adapting poorly, because we have no power to implement measures commensurate with what we see on the ground. Everything is managed by the federal government, which obviously doesn't listen to the people on the ground. Quebec is experiencing this problem, and so are other provinces.
There is therefore a broad fundamental question to be asked in the context of our study, which concerns Newfoundland and Labrador more than Quebec. That said, we're still concerned about the cod biomass, even though we're told that these are cod with different DNA and that there's no impact on the other type of cod. Some scientists are telling us the opposite. It's all a bit obscure.
In this context, I dare to hope that our study will once again highlight the fact that there are profound gaps in communication and understanding of the field between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the various scientific organizations, independent organizations and experienced fishers, whose reading of the situation is neglected, according to many. We'd all do well to put more emphasis on what we're told by fishers and people who work in the marine sciences, who collect clear data on a daily basis.
Liberal
Bloc
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
I want to give the last two and a half minutes to Ms. Barron.
Go ahead when you're ready, please.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Thank you, Chair.
First of all, I forgot to say congratulations to Ms. Street on her new position.
I just wanted to acknowledge that and say, through the chair, that I'm very excited about the opportunity to work further with you down the road.
With that, we have gotten off topic quite a bit this meeting. I want to offer the remainder of my time.
I have questions that I can ask you, but instead I want to open up the floor to you, Ms. Street, for you to offer any final thoughts that you have for us that we should be considering in our final recommendations to the government.
Inshore Member Representative of Area 3Ps and President-Elect, Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union
Absolutely.
I guess my last statement is related to something that Ms. Jones asked earlier and that I didn't have time to respond to. There were a couple of tangents there—I'm not quite sure how they mesh together; it was very confusing—and the insinuation, somehow, that we don't support this fish being landed to plants like Icewater in Arnold's Cove. Of course, those plant workers are actually our members.
We fully support the first 115,000 tonnes of this fish being landed to Arnold's Cove and to the shrimp company in Labrador. The shrimp company does absolutely fantastic work and is the engine of its community. However, we need to do it sustainably, and we need to do it with conservation in mind. We need to do it in the ways that our members, our owner-operators and our inshore harvesters have been nursing this stock back since the moratorium. To do that, we use passive gears.
Mobile gears hunt fish, and I've heard Dr. Rose say this. Mobile gears, such as bottom trawlers, are not selective. What you get is what you get. What our harvesters fish, whether it's with gillnets or longlines.... We have harvesters who have invested in longline systems or hook-and-line systems for fall fisheries, to extend that fishery into the fall and create longer employment, as we discussed earlier. However, we need to do it sustainably. If we do that, this stock is going to support our members in Arnold's Cove. It's going to support the plant workers in every other plant where cod is processed. However, if we are going to allow technologies on this stock right now when it's in a vulnerable state and the tech is so low, then we're just going to wind up back to how it was when I was 10 years old and saw the small fish floating on the water in Port Union. I saw what those draggers brought in; I heard what those draggers brought in. I saw that plant empty; I saw houses empty. I saw my friends leave to go to Alberta, never to come back. I saw communities absolutely devastated.
We support those plants and those workers, but we need to make sure that what we're doing makes sense. What the Liberal government has done here makes zero sense, and Ms. Jones should know that, because there has been no fanfare for this decision. It was not the political win that the government keeps trying to defend and keeps trying to claim it was.
If the Liberal government is actually listening, it will know that there is backlash, and there's a lot of it. It's very volatile right now, but for some reason, the message is not getting through.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Ms. Barron.
That concludes our rounds of questioning.
I just want to say thank you to our witnesses, the Honourable Gerry Byrne from Newfoundland and Labrador, Dr. Rose and Dr. Carruthers, and Ms. Street, the newly elected president of FFAW. I was reminded, just a few seconds ago, that somebody showed me something on a desk one time. It was a wooden plaque kind of thing that said that sometimes the best man for a job is a woman. Hopefully, you live up to that and show them that you're much better than any man who's been at it in the past. Again, all the best.
I want to thank our members for participating this evening, but we have a few minutes now when we have to look at version two of the study we just did. We'll allow our witnesses to sign off, and we'll continue on with a bit of committee business.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
