Fisheries Committee on May 29th, 2023

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you Mr. Chair.

Mr. Williams, I'm pleased that you said earlier that crab fishing licences in Atlantic Canada, and especially in my region—the Acadian peninsula—are now worth $10 million, $15 million or $20 million. Lobster licences are worth $1 million and more. For the younger generation of fishers, it's becoming very hard to buy such licences.

I'd like some clarification on this point. You said that the lobster industry in Maine uses long-term contracts for licences and that the licences don't belong to the fishers. How does that work? What happens to the licence of a fisher who retires, for example? Does the licence go back to the government to be assigned to someone else?

[Richard Williams]

The licences are redistributed. In the French system, there is a list of qualified harvesters, by seniority, who've worked as crew, who've come up in the fishery and who've grown up in fishing communities. When a licence becomes available, the next qualified person within a region or district has access to the licence.

They have to pay licence fees, which maintains the overall system for sustaining the administration of the licensing system, but they don't have to buy the licence. Because no one ever had to do that, it's not a barrier to people getting into the industry and so on.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I will give the rest of my time to Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Cormier.

I'm going to do a little bit of recommendation writing on the fly here. We know that DFO seems to have muffed that questionnaire. They didn't ask the right question to get the answer we needed. What would you say if, on a particular day, we say, one, no more sales to foreign interests, and two, all sales have to be done according to the beneficial ownership regime that should have been set up before now?

It's really simple. What do you think?

[Richard Williams]

I believe the UFAWU, the fishermen's union in British Columbia, has made exactly that request to the minister. The minister has authority. The minister issues licences and has a significant amount of control over whom they issue them to and therefore what should be known about the person they're issuing them to.

I'm not a lawyer, personally, but I can't imagine there would be a problem with doing exactly as you proposed, on January 1, 2024.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Okay.

I want you to rewind the PIIFCAF story a little bit. My concern is that if there's a substantial change to the way the free market system is allowed to work—i.e., not so much a free market system—a lot of people who own licensing quotas now could be severely disadvantaged. Was that the experience in the PIIFCAF process? Did people see their nest egg reduce in value simply because the regime changed?

[Richard Williams]

I've never heard a reference to that. I'm not aware of any incident where someone came forward with an appeal to say that it grievously damaged their economic interest. Again, the idea of the seven years was that there was sufficient time for people to recover their investment and to sell their licence off without ending up in a negative position financially. I'm not aware of any considerations of the kind you mentioned.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

How much time do I have left, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have 50 seconds.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

That's great.

You know, when you look at the situation today, if somebody wants to lease quota, they go to a processor and the processor says, “We can get our hands on this much quota. It's going to cost you this much, whatever you get at the dock.” It's like the old Tennessee Ernie Ford song Sixteen Tons: “Another day older and deeper in debt”. You and I are old enough to remember that one. Maybe a few others are as well.

How do we break that? We've talked about the transition to owner-operator, but getting there is still going to be somewhat difficult. The 2019 report suggested that everything up for lease, the licences and quotas, be on a board somewhere. It's more of a competitive process: willing buyer, willing seller. Could that kind of system work even if the financing was done through a processor?

[Richard Williams]

Yes. I've not heard fish harvester leaders in our region challenge the idea that processors would be allowed to help finance the fishermen who fish for them. That's a long tradition, as long as it doesn't happen within the context of a controlling interest in the enterprise or a controlling agreement.

To go back a step in your question, though, your 2019 report absolutely nailed the right approach here. British Columbia is unique, and the situation is so complex—in my view, it's chaotic—that with a full licence policy review, a substantial engagement process, you're going to need a made-in-B.C. plan. No expert can come here and tell you exactly how to do it. You're going to have to go out and—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Should we throw in the DFO—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Hardie. You've gone over. You're not sneaking any more time out of that.

We'll now go to Madame Desbiens for two and a half minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bourgault-Faucher, when talking about individual transferable quotas, you said that they weren't necessarily inadequate, but that they had greatly increased the value of licences and led to some concentration of ownership. What is good about these individual transferable quotas then?

[Gabriel Bourgault-Faucher]

What is often suggested to justify this approach is the stewardship of fishery resources by fishers. It brings fishers closer to managing these resources and contributes to their concern for maintaining and reproducing stocks. It creates a responsibility for the fisher because the individual transferable quota associates a quota with a fishing licence. In the past, quotas were general, fishing was competitive, and so there was less individual responsibility for these resources. That may be the good thing about individual transferable quotas.

The more negative aspect is that these quotas do increase the value of the licences, which results in higher prices and the concentration of licences that we currently see.

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

All things considered, could individual transferable quotas be converted to community licences?

[Gabriel Bourgault-Faucher]

That would be worth considering. I think Mr. Williams pointed that out. The cost of buying back these licences would be significant. There could also be resistance from fishers. It's something to think about before moving forward on a large scale toward community fishing licences.

That's why I'm instead proposing a pilot project to issue new licences, and to move forward in stages to see if it's a system that works well. We can already draw on certain experiences with indigenous communities and use them as inspiration to assess whether this could be considered for other non-indigenous communities.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Ms. Barron for two and a half minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm finding myself reflecting on the comment by MP Hardie acknowledging that DFO muffed the survey. With that acknowledgement, I am curious to know what the minister is going to propose as next steps.

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

Mr. Chair, there is no interpretation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Could you try again, Ms. Barron? We'll restart the timer.

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

Everything is working fine now.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I hope my time will not be taken. I want to make sure that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I reset the time. Even though you went over a couple of times today, I won't penalize you for that.