Fisheries Committee on June 1st, 2023

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

As we know, everything is increasing. In the context where thresholds must be respected, some companies, to take possession of a certain number of resources, will multiply small transactions, rather than make a transaction that exceeds your threshold. Is this something you can measure?

[Anthony Durocher]

Yes. In fact, there have recently been changes to the Competition Act, so it's now more difficult to structure a transaction in such a way as to avoid having to give us notice. That said, we also often review transactions as a series, even if they are not structured in such a way as to avoid having to give us advance notice. Obviously, situations are all different from one another and the relevant facts must be considered, but this could lead us to review a series of transactions as a potential case of abuse of dominance.

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

Are you in a position to know how much of the market share belongs to foreign interests? You say that the share of foreign investment compared to domestic investment isn't what you're looking at. That's really what we're looking at here.

Do you have any means or indicators that alert you to the fact that foreign investment exceeds a certain threshold of acceptability?

[Anthony Durocher]

As I said, the important thing for us, whether it's foreign or domestic investment, remains the sole aspect of competition. The nationality of the company does not matter.

Very often, as part of our reviews, we calculate market shares, whether based on revenues or otherwise, to better understand who the other competitors are in the market. Sometimes it's foreign competitors, sometimes it's domestic competitors. It really depends on the industry and the relevant facts.

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

What would be your definition of a good practice that respects competition in fishing, for example?

[Anthony Durocher]

I'd say we're really the champions of competition in Canada. One of our roles, as Mr. Callaghan mentioned, is to provide pro-competitive advice to all levels of government.

Our role is primarily to promote compliance with competition laws. We do a lot of work with small, medium and larger companies to make sure they understand what the compliance issues are and what our role is, so that they're able to refer complaints to us if they think they see anti-competitive activity in a market or potential cartels.

We therefore have an educational role. In that sense, for us, a good practice is to make sure that all companies are in compliance with the law and know how to detect possible anti-competitive behaviour or actions so that, if necessary, we can investigate and—

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

—submit these cases to the courts.

[Anthony Durocher]

Yes.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that. You were a little bit over.

We'll now go to Ms. Barron for six minutes or less. Go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Cameron, my questions are going to be for you for the most part in this round.

We are hearing about fishers ending up in debt to licence owners before they even start the season because of the lease prices being set before fishing takes place. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that and what the results and impacts of this are.

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

Excuse me, Mr. Chair, but the wrong microphone is on and the interpreters can't hear Ms. Barron very well.

I think it's back on now. I'm sorry for the interruption.

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

Did I say something brilliant?

Okay, I'll start over. It sounds as though we just had some interpretation problems.

Basically, Mr. Cameron, I was asking about the debt that many fishers are going into to licence owners because of the lease price being set before fishing takes place, and I'm wondering if you can speak to the impacts of those situations or if you have come across situations like that.

[Duncan Cameron]

Sure. It certainly happens. The crab fishery is a little different, because in most places it's almost a year-round fishery. In other fisheries maybe there are only 30 days or 60 days, a very short term, so you can make that debt mistake multiple times in one year and really get yourself in a spot. Because of the length of the season, crabbing is almost more like a job. You can do maybe one or two other fisheries a little bit, but you're committed almost the whole year to it, so if you do that, you and your crew are not making money for the whole year.

It's going to take a lot less time before it goes badly and your business evaporates than it would if you leased some halibut quota or a prawn licence. You can make that bad decision and you and the crew are done in a month, and then they go work some other job to make up for it or something. In crabbing, if you do that, it certainly exists, but those people, unfortunately, are discarded fairly quickly.

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

Thank you for clarifying.

One of the other things you were talking about was the current licensing policies not being about conservation. I'm wondering if you feel that the current licensing policies take the socio-economic impacts on fishers into consideration.

Perhaps you can build a little bit more on your thoughts around what is not being taken into consideration when decisions are being made that impact communities and the environment in multiple ways.

[Duncan Cameron]

I guess I probably worded it a little poorly. We do use licensing policy in a sense to set conservation. We have a limited number of licences, but the idea of who owns those licences is not the same as the idea of transferring quota. It's not used in the same sense. There's not really much effort at all given to achieving socio-economic goals in our fishery. That's become really clear in how it appeals decisions. Those frameworks and safeguards or the promotion of socio-economic benefits just don't really exist.

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

What impacts are you seeing? Can you share any examples of the impacts of not taking socio-economic benefits into consideration?

[Duncan Cameron]

Yes. Area E Tofino harvesters lost 50% of their access to their business. That sounds like losing 50%, but it really means losing 100% of their profitability. In a very short time frame, the profitability of the business they've been doing for a long time went away. Then those harvesters moved elsewhere and diluted access in other parts of the coast, so it's become a coast-wide issue.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Cameron, you also spoke about the tensions between indigenous and non-indigenous people as a result of the reallocated access to fisheries and harvesting. We know that reconciliation doesn't mean taking resources from one person and giving them to another; there's a bigger process that needs to be taken.

I could go on, but with no further ado, I just want to see if you could share a little bit more information around some of those tensions you're seeing and the impacts on indigenous and non-indigenous people.

[Duncan Cameron]

It's not an area that I fish specifically, but when it happened.... I think it's really clear to say that naturally there are tensions. Those tensions are downloaded onto us and projected by poor policy. You can imagine what it might bring when you're losing your entire livelihood and the community of people you work with are losing their livelihood, and it's sort of being heralded as reconciliation.

Our response to that was to put together a package really quickly to get those harvesters out on the water with boats and gear and the capacity to start fishing right away and to fairly compensate the harvesters who lost access. That was turned down. It's now been more than two years since the appeal decision of April 2021, and three licences have been purchased. Single processors have bought more licences in that time.

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

Thank you.

What are the impacts you're seeing around the crab fishery in terms of food security, access to crab for local communities, crab staying here in Canada and so on?

[Duncan Cameron]

I think we've been pretty lucky up until this point, until recently. The crab fishery has really started growing significantly in value in the last five to 10 years. Before then, there was not a lot of interest in buying licences, other than among fishermen. It was a very independent fishery up until recently, and it still is, in most areas. Crab are available to the public, but if we don't get a policy correction, that will change.

China represents more than 90% of the export market. Some years when it's better in one area, in the Hecate Strait, more of it goes to the U.S., but for most areas, over 90% is sent to China live.

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

Thank you.

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair? I'm not sure if my timer is still accurate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have 20 seconds.

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

I'll take that back next round.