Fisheries Committee on Nov. 25th, 2022

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and hello to the witnesses. MP Zarrillo, thanks for joining us today.

One of the many things that you learn in a committee like this and with a vast array of expertise is that oftentimes there are common themes. We had four ministers of fisheries in the Atlantic provinces speak to the fact that we're in a climate crisis and that we need to adapt. We've heard that from fishers, fishing associations, processors and NGOs.

Some of common themes there were, number one, we're in a climate crisis; number two, they have the largest industry in Atlantic Canada that is impacted by those fisheries; and number three, we need more investment. We've given about $1 billion since 2015 into small craft harbours. As MP Cormier said, that's not enough. We need to do better, and we also need to adapt how we do things.

With all of that in mind, there's a lot of food for thought here, and I particularly liked the conversation between Martin and MP Cormier about a strategic committee. I thought that's an interesting approach.

I want to take some time to unpack the whole concept of climate-resilient harbours. My dad, when he worked in mine rescue, would often have these bigwig engineers from Montreal come and meet with the miners to tell them how the mine was going to be run and how to have structural integrity, and oftentimes the miners would say, “Come here, buddy. I want to talk to you about how we think we can make this work.” The practitioners—that is, fishers and fishing associations—know how to make things work.

When it comes to the environmental resiliency of the small craft harbour, I'm wondering, Martin, Luc, and Mr. MacLeod, if you can give us an idea of what that means to you in terms of creating resilient small craft harbours, or for that matter other coastal infrastructure, such as processing plants that are mere feet away from the ocean. What do you mean by creating environmentally resilient small craft harbours and other infrastructure? What does that mean to you and what are the steps that need to taken, say, in the next year or two or three?

We'll start with Martin.

[Martin Mallet]

I think we need to put a strategic group together, a focus group to look at all of these angles and put them together. This is going to be a long thought and work process. We need to get not only fishermen and MPs and DFO personnel, but also engineers and climate experts, to try to give ourselves an idea of where we're going here along our shores with this climate crisis. I think that putting a long-term study group together should be number one on the list. We're in this for the long haul, so we might as well put the infrastructure together to take care of it.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thanks, Martin.

We will go to Luc and then to Mr. MacLeod.

[Luc LeBlanc]

To me, resiliency will mean fishing enterprises operating in a much more hostile environment. By environment, I obviously mean the sea. The sea is getting angrier and angrier at everybody who's on it. These new installations or these investments will have to keep track of the fact that fishermen need to operate in this increasingly more hostile environment.

I will give you a very concrete example. Wharves that are clogged with sand need to be reopened in a timely manner and really fast. To me, a resilient harbour is a harbour that can operate in an increasingly more hostile sea.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. MacLeod...?

[Robert Macleod]

I really don't have any answers. I know we have some of our older oyster warehouses that probably at the time seemed to be built quite a way from the water, but with bank erosion and higher water levels now, more of those than we like to admit are getting flooded out. I don't know if they need something additional like a breakwater around them or something to protect them.

The newer warehouses are built far away from the water, but some of our biggest buyers probably have their buildings sitting in the worst spots. I really don't know what the answer would be on that. I don't know.

As Mr. Morrissey said, we do have a little harbour that we operate through the shellfish association—lobster fishermen, mussel fishermen and such. We're very fortunate that it's deep water. When Malpeque Harbour gets sanded in and there's no access, we have very deep water at our wharf. We could probably use a breakwater outside of it to really protect it against these storms. As I said, in the last one, it was under the water. The boats were higher than the wharf, but they survived. The next time, who knows? We're very fortunate to have deep water in it.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Kelloway.

That concludes our first hour of testimony.

I want to say thank you to Mr. Mallet, Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. MacLeod for being here today and sharing your valuable information with the committee as we do this particular study.

We are going to suspend for a couple of minutes to switch over our panels. The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We will call the meeting to order again, as we have everything done to be ready for the second panel.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of new witnesses.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. All comments should be addressed to the chair.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses. Representing the Fisheries Council of Canada and here in person is Paul Lansbergen, president. He, of course, is no stranger to FOPO. Representing Sogelco International Incorporated, we have Richard Ablett, vice-president and chief science director.

Thank you for taking the time to appear today. You each have five minutes for an opening statement.

We will begin with Mr. Lansbergen, please, for five minutes or less.

[Paul Lansbergen, President, Fisheries Council of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the committee for the invitation to appear. It's a great pleasure to be back here in person for the first time in this Parliament.

As many of you know, the Fisheries Council of Canada is the national trade association representing processors across the country. All of them also harvest.

For the topic of the study today, I'd like to say that I have personally worked on climate change policies for three different sectors over the last 20-plus years, to varying degrees at times, and I have looked at mitigation, adaptation and resiliency-directed policies through them. I am pleased that you're conducting this study. It's a big topic, and every little bit helps.

To give context on how hurricane Fiona affected my members, I should first describe a bit of where they operate and how.

My members operate processing plants at wharves, and their harvesting is largely done, though not exclusively, using frozen-at-sea vessels. If the plants receive harvests from frozen-at-sea vessels, the wharves are largely privately owned and are correspondingly large and on deep water. For the plants that rely on smaller vessels and/or independent harvesters, the wharves can be much more vulnerable to extreme weather events, as you've heard from other witnesses.

I'd like to report that my members were graciously only indirectly affected by Fiona. My heart goes out to all those who were much more directly affected. I can only imagine how devastating it can be to have your homes, your businesses or, worse, your loved ones lost because of Fiona.

However, there will be knock-on effects through the supply chain, because harvesting capacity is diminished. This means that processors won't have the same level of product to supply their customers and they could lose shelf space, which is always difficult to get back.

Earlier this week, you heard from Oceans North. While I may not always agree with Dr. Fuller, I would like to say that in her opening remarks, she gave an accurate characterization of the challenges we face with climate change.

With your indulgence, I have some brief comments on broader climate change through the lenses of mitigation, adaptation and resiliency. After that, I welcome your questions.

In terms of mitigation, actions that can be taken across the sector and the coasts will be differentiated based on the circumstances inside and outside our sector. For example, electrification is an effective option for the inshore fleet, but not necessarily for the offshore fleet. Hydrogen might be a more appropriate alternative fuel for offshore vessels.

Within my membership, companies have largely picked the low-hanging fruit, which are the actions that conserve energy and cut costs. The more transformative actions are slower in coming because they require more collaboration and involve considerably more risk and a lot more money. However, the Ocean Supercluster and other efforts are advancing new technologies, such as replacing doors on trawl nets. This could improve fuel efficiency upward of 30%, because it drastically reduces the drag on the vessel.

For adaptation, we are experiencing climate change impacts already on the oceans and our fish resources, and these impacts will only get more pronounced in the decades to come.

DFO has been working with the FAO and allied jurisdictions to better understand these climate impacts on our oceans and the corresponding adaptation strategies. I applaud that collaborative approach. A lot of this relates to how DFO manages our fish resources and the broader ocean ecosystem, but it also includes regulations that govern our sector.

I look forward to ongoing dialogue on these complex issues. A good example is how the fisheries science and management decisions that follow will incorporate climate impacts. It will be paramount to engage the sector as this is done, so that we can understand and buy into it.

Thinking more broadly than just DFO, a national adaptation strategy was released yesterday. I am glad that it is there, but I have to say that its development lacked meaningful engagement with the ocean sector, and particularly the fisheries sector. In fact, with all the attention to the blue economy and oceans, one could have expected that the ocean would have been its own theme in the strategy. Instead, it was mostly implicit, not explicit, across the five themes.

Quite frankly, I was quite disappointed in the process and the draft strategy. I'm still reviewing the final version, but from a quick scan, I didn't see a whole lot that had changed in how oceans or fisheries are considered.

In terms of resiliency, true resiliency is all-encompassing and includes the sector's assets, community infrastructure and, in fact, the global supply chain. You've heard considerable testimony from others on this.

We, individually and collectively, need to consider how and where we build infrastructure. For example, our building codes, our engineering standards for where and how we work and live, need to better incorporate resiliency.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Ablett for five minutes or less, please.

[Dr. Richard Ablett, Vice-President and Chief Science Director, Sogelco International Incorporated]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee.

My name is Richard Ablett. I represent Sogelco International, a seafood processing and marketing company operating in Montreal, or based in Montreal, and owning and operating two factory units in the Maritimes.

One is in New Brunswick, as Bolero Shellfish Processing in Saint-Simon, a factory operating on the basis of traditional lobster and sea cucumber processing products. A second plant, where I'm based today, is in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. That's Summerside Seafood Supreme. Our plant is involved with the production of specialty products, including a range of chilled, pasteurized seafood ready meals. They're marketed throughout North America as mass retail products. Together these two plants operate on a year-round basis, with about 280 employees. Sogelco has sales in the range of $50 million to $60 million. It's a family-owned business. It's been in business for 46 years.

Today what we're trying to do is provide a perspective for consideration by the committee from the viewpoint as downstream, value-addition secondary processors. We operate at the end of the value chain within the P.E.I. seafood sector, and with an emerging threat of market loss.

Over the last few days I've been listening to the deliberations of the committee. I see a lot of direction towards the primary end of things, the requirements for rebuilding infrastructure. Our company is very much at the end of the chain, in a sense, as an ingredient purchaser in the aquaculture sector in P.E.I., specifically with mussels. Live mussels constitute the basis of a range of our products. If you just look behind me, you see, as an example, “mussels in garlic butter” types of products, with a high content of Prince Edward Island cultured mussel. These are selling across Canada and into the United States, effectively through the Costco chain and Walmart marketing outlets. Walmart and Costco are major customers for our products. Our sales are growing.

The interesting feature of the product base coming from this factory is that they are pasteurized, chilled products—never frozen. This allows us to produce and market a product into specialty niches inside these mass retail chains without the competition from frozen product. Our plant is able to make 20,000 units a day.

Behind all of that, we recognize that hurricane Fiona has had a massive impact on infrastructure and the primary resource of fishery and aquaculture based in Prince Edward Island and the region. Obviously, recovery assistance is needed for what we call the front end of the value chain.

Summerside, our plant here, represents a real-time example of an unforeseen impact of the hurricane at the downstream end. I'm sure that many other secondary processors in the region will have similar problems. We try to bring this to your perspective as an example.

This particular factory in Summerside has a long-term supply arrangement with Prince Edward Island north shore mussel growers and processors, specifically with Prince Edward Aqua Farms, one of three of the larger operators in P.E.I. It's been in place for 12 years, with an understood supply chain that's been uninterrupted and can provide mussels to the plant of a high-quality nature and meet our specifications. In the last year we purchased 1.1 million pounds of mussels from our supplier. We're scheduled to move up to 1.7 million this year on the basis of expanding sales for the products you see behind me, but also for three new products that will be introduced in the 2023 season. Not to get into it, but these would be additional mussel retail products—mussels arrabbiata, Thai curry and a seafood boil product.

What I want to try to do is tell you what our emerging dilemma is, as an example, and then try to say what might be provided as some kind of mitigation approach.

Currently the plant is challenged with a reducing supply of up to 500,000 pounds of mussels due to losses in the resource space behind us, so dropping from 1.1 million pounds down to 700,000 is really sitting in front of the company right now. Obviously, the supplier needs to look after its own resources and its own customers, primarily as a live-market supplier. Mussels are moved out across North America, as you know, and something like 80% of the Canadian supply comes from Prince Edward Island.

This reduction to our processing operation can result in a problem with our firm's capacity to meet the customer agreements that were set last summer with mass retailers on pricing and availability. This is really an issue that can significantly impact the business, and we're probably [Technical difficulty—Editor] on launching new products if the supply to the operation is actually reduced.

Suppliers raised their price to the factory here due to the impacts of Fiona, and the need for cleanup costs.

For clarity—

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Chair, a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm sorry, Mr. Ablett.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

We are being told that the sound is cutting out and it's interfering with the interpretation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Your five minutes are up anyway.

Could you move your boom up halfway between your upper lip and your nose?

[Dr. Richard Ablett]

Is that worse now? Is that better?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

It sounds better now, but I'll go to Mr. Lansbergen for his opening statement, because we're going over the five-minute mark.

He's already made his statement. I'm sorry.

We'll go to Mr. Bragdon for a round of questions for six minutes or less.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and it was such good testimony that I'm sure it's okay to hear it a second time.

Thank you to our witnesses who are here today for taking the time and sharing valuable insights about the effect that hurricane Fiona and its aftermath has had on your respective sectors.

We've heard a lot from the witnesses so far. They've made it very clear regarding the absolute need and urgency around adaptation and making sure we have resiliency of infrastructure in place to handle and deal with the ever-changing climate that we're facing. Everyone we've heard from has emphasized that.

I want to get your individual perspectives as to whether you feel there has been an adequate response and an urgency to the response thus far from the government in relation to making sure we get the infrastructure back up to where it needs to be. It needs to be at resilient levels in time for the coming seasons to adequately support our fishing sector and those at all points in the cycle, whether on the water, on the processing side or on the storage capacity side. It should also include those in marketing, sharing around the world the good-quality fruits of the sea that we produce here in our region.

I would like to get both your perspectives.

I'll start with you, Mr. Lansbergen, and then move to Mr. Ablett.

[Paul Lansbergen]

Thank you, Mr. Bragdon. That's a very good question.

Because I don't represent the harvesters who are on all the wharves, and certainly the ones who were directly impacted by Fiona, I'm not really in a position to say too much about that, but every little bit helps, for sure.

The adequacy of the government response will be dependent on how much can be covered by private insurance that harvesters hold. You heard from the witnesses earlier this afternoon that the bigger problem will be whether there's the capacity to rebuild everything that was lost. That will be the bigger challenge for the immediate time frame.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Ablett.

[Dr. Richard Ablett]

There is obviously effort under way, Mr. Bragdon, to improve the infrastructure and put it in place, but again, time is an issue here. Winter is coming in Prince Edward Island, and it looks unlikely to me that some of the wharf reconstruction will be done on time.

There's $300 million that has been identified in the hurricane recovery fund. I understand something like $100 million might be directed toward the wharf infrastructure issues and some of the hardware replacement. Obviously, that's a good first move, but there are still decisions to be made to allocate some of the other monies into areas that need to be supporting the front end, if you like, of the processing, harvesting and handling chain.

Yes, things are under way, but time is going to be very tight.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Yes, we're hearing that as well, Mr. Ablett and Mr. Lansbergen.

I want to go back to Mr. Lansbergen on this question as it relates to the development of a capital asset management plan that was to be put in place. I believe it came out of a recommendation in a report from 2019 from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. I'm wondering what kind of progress has been made on that.

Do you see that the plan is adequate, or should it be revised and updated to take into consideration the ever-changing factors on the ground that we're seeing?

[Paul Lansbergen]

I'm afraid I'm at a bit of a loss, because I'm not familiar with that strategy or plan.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay.

I don't know if Mr. Ablett would have any familiarity with it.

He's saying no. Okay.

It's one of the ones that there has been a lot of talk about. It's to make sure that we have sustainable small craft harbours and make sure that we have good infrastructure in place going forward.

I think this has been the repeated message. We hear a lot about climate urgency and we hear some promises, but it seems like the response so far has been inadequate and not enough to meet the urgency of the moment or especially the need to get our infrastructure in place, as well as the equipment the harvesters need to do what they do best, which is get out there and harvest the fruits of the sea that we love to see harvested. It's bringing that urgency to the table that's going to matter the most.

I think we've heard and we can gather from this that there's a lot of talk around taxation as it relates to climate change. I think we need a whole lot more talk around adaptation and resiliency of infrastructure and making sure the immediate investment is put where it needs to be to get things to market on time and get these harvesters back on the water.

Thank you for your time today.

Is that all my time, Mr. Chair?