That's right.
Evidence of meeting #9 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was europe.
Evidence of meeting #9 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was europe.
3:40 p.m.
President, Eastern Shore Fishermen's Protective Association
That distributes the benefits of the resource among all the communities adjacent to that resource.
3:40 p.m.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Right. In other jurisdictions, the controls have been lifted for that allocation or, as you said, that quota. As a result, ownership of that resource has been concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. I think particularly of the west coast. A lot of coastal communities have suffered as a result. I think that's the concern—am I right?—that you and your members on the east coast have.
3:45 p.m.
President, Eastern Shore Fishermen's Protective Association
That's right. In the first part of my presentation, I alluded to the fact that in British Columbia now, most of the fishermen there, who used to have lucrative incomes, have had that resource bought up. Now they simply fish for the companies or the investors—oil money or whatever—that bought that resource. They're just employees now, making very small wages.
3:45 p.m.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
It was raised by an earlier witness whether or not parts of CETA, CETA itself, or one of the appendixes or whatever, might somehow threaten those policies. I don't have an answer to that yet. We're still looking carefully at it. There are some suggestions that it won't, but the next deal, the TPP deal, might have....
Anyway, I appreciate you bringing the concern to our attention. It's something that we're quite aware of, and hopefully, in terms of marketing the resources, some of the recommendations from the maritime lobster panel, if they're put in place, might help the industry and the individual enterprises to maintain control.
3:45 p.m.
President, Eastern Shore Fishermen's Protective Association
That's right, and that's a work in progress.
Right now, part of my concern, on the marketing side of it, is that there were some buyers who came in who had niche markets. They could pay us more for our product, but of course they were sabotaged. They were brought into the fold, if you will, to use a certain conduit. They couldn't pay the price; they had to do a follow-the-leader sort of thing. They were confined as to how they could do business. That restricts the fostering of competition.
On our end, we're looking for competition. More and more, the competition seems to be consolidating. If you look at a competition bureau, they'd look at a bunch of people price fixing, but when a bunch of people buy one another out until there's only one or two left, well, then the pricing becomes.... There is no competition.
3:45 p.m.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
We'll hopefully get a chance to look at that for a bit in the fisheries committee.
Mr. Staples, I wanted to ask you a question in regard to the fisheries resource. We had a representative from the Nova Scotia Fish Packers here yesterday, and he said they now truck their fish down to Logan—
3:45 p.m.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
He kind of scoffed at the possibility that Halifax could compete with Logan in terms of being able to transport that amount. Could you comment on that? I didn't get to ask him.
3:45 p.m.
Vice-President, Air Service, Marketing and Development, Halifax International Airport Authority
There is a challenge in the pricing because the belly capacity in a passenger aircraft is sold off at wholesale prices compared to a dedicated freighter operation. My point for Halifax was that as we build passenger services on larger aircraft, we get a belly capacity that will be cheaper. There is still a market for premium product on dedicated freighters from Logan.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you both, gentlemen, for taking the time to come and present to us. We certainly know you've taken time out of your day, but it's important for us to hear from people directly, both their optimism or enthusiasm, or some causes of concern.
I have questions on both your presentations. I'll start with Mr. Connors.
You described that you represent in your association 220, as you describe them, individual business people, fishermen, the inshore fishery, from Halifax to the Canso—Cape Breton area, and that they bring in primarily lobster, crab, and halibut. You talked a lot about self-reliance, and certainly, having served in the military here, having worked with fishing communities as a Sea King person, and even having conducted some rescue operations, I know they're a tough and hardy group.
You said you had some concerns about making sure the EU deal was accessible to those small people. I'm wondering where that concern is coming from.
I imagine now as a single producer or harvester they would sell to an agent, or someone, either in their town or at one of the facilities next door, and that's how they would generally get into market. Can you describe that a little more?
3:50 p.m.
President, Eastern Shore Fishermen's Protective Association
Yes, that's true, and most of those are local people. They're suffering right now. I'm not making any accusations there. I'm just bringing up concerns and observations that we've had over the year.
There seems to be some...I call it predator pricing. In any case, there's some price manipulation taking place that is consolidating the marketing sector, in our opinion. Right now, I know there's an abundance, etc., but there are a lot of better markets out there, more markets than there ever were, but we're only getting 50% of what we were getting for lobsters 12, 13, 14 years ago. At the same time, halibut is about four times as much as what it was just five years ago.
So it's sort of inconsistent. That raises suspicions about a consolidation of the marketing sector, and the larger the players get, the fewer benefits are accruing to the fishermen down our way. We're starting to consider taking our local buyers so we can maintain our local infrastructure and sell directly to these niche markets, hopefully in Europe.
Don't take me as being too negative. I think there's some opportunity here, if we can get the right kind of mechanism in place so we can take advantage of it. But if we are going to be subject to some awesome monolithic power that's going to dominate the markets and exploit us, then we're not going to get any benefit from it. So I'd just like you to consider that when you're making your recommendations.
3:50 p.m.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Sure. When it comes to lobster in particular, Mr. Connors, when I was living here in the late 1990s, early 2000s, one of my close friends was a lobster broker for Schwimms. I think the price of lobster specifically now has more to do with the global recession that Canada has withstood. But certainly our friends in the large markets in the U.S., like Las Vegas and a number of places that were large purchasers of lobster, have scaled back, and that has affected price.
I don't know if you were here for our morning session. There has been some concern about whether this deal is only good for harvesters, the men and women on the ships, inshore or offshore, and not good for processors. This morning we went over the fact that current European tariffs for processed seafood are much higher. So fresh lobster—to stay with lobster because I do like lobster—has an 8% tariff rate but a 20% tariff rate on processed lobster. There's a clear benefit to the processing industry and the harvesters with the removal of those tariffs, and in fact Mr. Risley, who was here, talked about it being good for both, particularly for jobs in processing in the long term with those 20% tariff rates coming off.
3:50 p.m.
President, Eastern Shore Fishermen's Protective Association
Yes. Michael Gardner alluded to that at a Senate committee hearing, that the competition from our exporters was costing our national industries here a lot of money. I think that has to be addressed, but it might be a national issue. You know, it might be an industry issue that has to be addressed there.
But right now, with the amount of lobster that's coming in, and especially the quality of lobster that's coming in, the processors are playing a more prominent role. The reduction in that tariff, if we can get the right kind of structure in place and the right kinds of agreements through the right kinds of negotiations that everybody seems so reluctant to enter into.... We've had such a slugfest, I guess, over the years, in competition, trying to sort these things out, that people are reluctant to get back into these divisive issues of sharing the resource and the benefits from the resource. But we're on the low end of that right now.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
We want to try to get a win for both the harvesters and the processors.
Thank you. I'm sorry I have to rush, but I have limited time.
I want to get one question for Mr. Staples. Thank you for appearing. I know the federal government was proud to partner with the Nova Scotia government on the airport runway extension with your airport authority, and increasingly the airport is becoming a hub for the industry, whether it's CHC, IMP, Cougar. Could you talk about the importance of that world-class international airport and the other hub that has built around it in terms of economic generation for Nova Scotia?
3:55 p.m.
Vice-President, Air Service, Marketing and Development, Halifax International Airport Authority
Thank you.
Yes, it is a world-class airport, and we win awards on a consistent basis. Having built the infrastructure and the cluster around that, there are not many airports in Canada that can boast two airlines being headquartered there: Chorus Aviation, through Jazz, flying for Air Canada; and Canjet Airline, both at Halifax. Then there is the whole aerospace there, which you probably heard earlier.
There's no question that this infrastructure has supported that type of development.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for coming forward.
Mr. Connors, I’m probably repeating the question, but as a city boy, I want to clarify what exactly “control of your resources” means. Is that like a quota system, where you own the resource?
3:55 p.m.
President, Eastern Shore Fishermen's Protective Association
Yes, we fought for years against quota because the fishermen—fishers, I should say, because there are several women involved in the fishery there now….
I lost track of the question.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
What exactly does “control of your resources” mean?
3:55 p.m.
President, Eastern Shore Fishermen's Protective Association
In the past, there were licences and seasons. The licence gave access to the resource, and it also gave the allocation. There were no quotas. There was no certificate of ownership, if you will, other than the access or the right—or the privilege, more so—to catch it.
But then they put a quota system onto it; that's a three-day discussion, the quota system. It separated the ownership of the fish from the privilege of going out and catching it.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
At one point, you said you'll lose control of it. How do you lose control of it? What part would you lose control of, the actual fishing, the licensing, the quotas? What portion would you lose with free trade?
3:55 p.m.
President, Eastern Shore Fishermen's Protective Association
If there are provisions, for instance, that would deem the policies we have in place now to protect local ownership, so that it had to go on the open market....
