Fisheries Committee on Dec. 5th, 2023

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

Pinnipeds are eating the lobster, but that's another issue.

[Annette Gibbons]

They are, for sure. The minister talks a lot about pinnipeds eating fish.

Discussions are underway on fisheries strategies in Quebec. The department is holding discussions with Quebec fishers. This week, we will discuss strategies to adopt for the future with them. The dialogue is still ongoing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

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, Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Gibbons, again.

My first question is this. People are asking me when the federal government will be coming to the table with money for B.C.'s watershed security fund for restoring secure watersheds for the health of B.C.'s people, its salmon and its economy.

What does that look like? What is the timeline? When will we see the proper investment in B.C.'s watershed security fund?

[Annette Gibbons]

We'll have to come back to you with a written answer on that.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Gibbons, recently, along the west coast of Vancouver Island, we saw that a boat.... I don't actually know exactly what happened. Whether it overturned, I think, is still being investigated. However, there were two people, mariners, in distress. One of the mariners has since been found passed away, and the other one is still missing.

Unfortunately, in the aftermath of that incident, it was discovered that the Coast Guard's radio direction-finding capability, which of course is based on well-established technology, has been allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair that it is no longer functional.

Can you speak to this? How could we have let this technology fail mariners at sea? How could we ensure their safety?

[Annette Gibbons]

I'm going to ask Chris to provide more information, but my understanding is that this technology is perhaps not as effective as it once was.

[Chris Henderson]

The direction-finding technology is one of many tools used in search and rescue. As a result of reductions in the past, yes, the direction-finding capability had basically degraded to the point where it was not functioning.

We now have a project in place, a $42.5-million project, which has been initiated and will continue over the next six years, to replace the 48 direction-finding antennas and to add a 49th. The system is in training to replace it. As I mentioned at the beginning, direction-finding is one thing in a fairly deep tool kit that we use to help locate people in distress at sea.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron.

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

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, witnesses.

Maybe you could table a document on this at a further time with the committee. It's on the recently announced roughly 5,200 traps awarded for the third year in a row, which I think is temporary—I don't know how long it is for temporary to become permanent—for moderate livelihood licences. Could you table with this committee the banked licences that came from the control numbers and the LFAs that were used for that, please?

As well, could you also table with this committee, on the licence buyback program in the east coast, how much has been spent, how many licences have been bought and for what species, please?

Now, my first question is for the deputy commissioner.

In 2008, the polar class 1 icebreaker was announced at a cost of $720 million. Now we're up to, I believe, three that we're going to build. Three years ago, the estimate by the Parliamentary Budget Officer was that this was at a cost of $7.2 billion or $2.4 billion per ship. That's going from $720 million to $2.4 billion, I think it was, per ship. That's times three.

In that report, he estimated that if there was a one-year delay, that would add another $235 million to the construction of it, and if it was a two-year delay, which we're almost up to, it would add almost another half a billion dollars. Have you updated the financial numbers to know how much over budget these icebreakers are, since they haven't started construction?

[Annette Gibbons]

Do you want me to start?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

On the icebreakers.

[Annette Gibbons]

Yes. I would say that we're still working on the numbers, for sure, of what the cost will be on all of these projects.

It's important to note, and I know the committee is aware of this, that we're building an industry in this country—a shipbuilding industry. The numbers we used to estimate in the past were based on the sort of run rate of established shipyards.

Obviously your cost structure is going to be different when you're regularly building a class of ship. You're going to have an efficiency rate, which we are now seeing, for example, at Irving on the AOPS. Each ship is costing less than the one before, because they are achieving that efficiency.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Certainly I understand that. However, having these in two shipyards was one of the reasons the PBO identified for the cost overrun.

It sounds like you don't know what the costs are yet. It's change orders and change orders and delay and delay. This was 2008. We're now almost in 2024 and we still don't have an agreed design, so we can estimate that to go up.

I'll move on to my next question.

Last week, here, the Canada Border Services Agency said they don't believe any elver have left this country across the border. Do you agree with that?

[Annette Gibbons]

We think that elvers do leave, in general. They are best positioned to comment on that, but certainly there is.... I don't know if....

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

In their testimony, they didn't even know that the elver season is over now.

Does DFO actually communicate with CBSA when there is poaching going on, to tell them to secure the borders?

[Annette Gibbons]

We do.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Then why haven't they?

[Annette Gibbons]

I can't answer that for them, sir.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Okay.

The recent report by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development indicated that DFO was failing to monitor the fishery harvests and collect the catch data required for fisheries, and that DFO hasn't delivered the corrective measures that it committed to seven years ago when these issues were first brought forward by the Auditor General of Canada.

We're currently studying IUU fishery. This has exposed DFO's failure in this area. What is the department doing, now that it's been exposed yet again by the Auditor General and the environment commissioner, to fix these issues?

[Annette Gibbons]

It's a multi-year plan of different activities. We do different things each year to try to improve our ability in this area. One of the things we're working on—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

What things would you be doing, since it's been seven years of failure so far?

[Annette Gibbons]

Well, some work has been done. We've received funding to do that. We've done some already, and we continue to do work.

We're working on e-logs, for example. We're trying to make sure we're able to introduce a system that actually works for fish harvesters.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Chair, could we request that the PBO update his report from 2021 on the polar class 1 icebreakers and provide us with an updated estimate of the cost?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Okay. Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Kelloway for five minutes or less.

Go ahead, please.