Mr. Speaker, it is with some concern that I rise to speak about Bill C-45, the new Fisheries Act as proposed by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
I certainly want to acknowledge the courage of the minister. The Fisheries Act is 138 years old. It has not been substantively changed in that period of time. However, as my late father used to say, caution has to be taken when judging actions. There is conventional wisdom that often takes place and one has to wonder whether a decision is taken based on convention or wisdom.
This bill, quite frankly, is quite flawed. All the stakeholders and anyone who has taken an opportunity to review it has come to the determination that it is substantially flawed and would endanger a $4.3 billion annual enterprise to this country, an enterprise that sustains thousands of communities throughout Canada and well over 80,000 individuals and their families.
One of the key points that has to be raised on the floor is the decision that was taken by the minority Conservative government not to have the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans review the legislation prior to second reading to enable the all-party committee to review the legislation, to conduct hearings and hear from Canadians from coast to coast to coast on the impacts of the bill. That decision was taken because there was a reluctance, an absolute denial of any opportunity for change based on good advice.
While the minister has acted with some courage in bringing forth the legislation, I regret he did not complement his courage with wisdom. The bill is flawed for various reasons. I will not, however, throw out the baby with the bathwater. The sanctions process, the ticketing process, quite frankly, is very reasonable. In fact, it is long overdue. The establishment of allowing officers and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to deal with relatively minor infractions of the Fisheries Act instead of through a court proceeding, through a ticket violation or sanctions process is a welcome change. It is welcomed by all fishers.
However, there are other elements to this which have to be viewed from the point of view of the law of unintended consequences. Unintended consequences can arise from the minister's decision to remove what is called his absolute discretion. A cornerstone that the minister brought forward when he tabled this bill is that he lauded the point that the absolute discretion, as was prescribed in the original act, would now be rescinded.
The minister tabled the bill on December 12, 24 hours before the House recessed for Christmas and January, not allowing any review from Parliament whatsoever. He did indicate that he was moving forward with very significant changes.
From my own constituents' point of view, what the minister had said was that the bill would now allow for fishers, industry stakeholders, to have a greater say in their own industry when it comes to management decisions, scientific decisions on allocation and who gets into their fishery.
When we look at it just at that broad brush, any reasonable person looking at that would say, “Imagine fishermen having a say in the management of their own fishery”. Who could argue with something like that on the surface? That is exactly what the minister and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans concluded, that there would be a statutory, obligatory requirement that existing stakeholders would actually have a legally guaranteed role to play in decision making related to the fisheries in which they are directly involved, fishermen managing their own fishery.
I will present to the House a scenario of the law of unintended consequences, and I will use a very specific example. That principle equally applies to industrial stakeholder fishers: dentists from Nova Scotia who happen to own licences in the northern shrimp fishery; other corporations that really never set foot in a boat, that are called slipper skippers simply because they own the enterprise and the licence and basically reap the benefits of it directly with no onshore, no adjacent benefits accruing to communities or to individual fishermen.
A case in point is the northern shrimp fishery. In 1997 there was a decision taken by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to allow inshore interests to participate, to prosecute the northern shrimp fishery. That was the first time ever. Since the late 1970s until 1997 the entire offshore shrimp industry was dominated exclusively by offshore factory freezer trawlers. Seventeen licences were issued, all of which were owned by large corporations or stakeholders that had no relevance to the adjacent communities to the fishery, with the exception of the Labrador Fishermen's Union Shrimp Company Limited.
That is a case in point. Under this bill the minister and the department would now have a legally binding requirement on them to listen to the views of the stakeholders. That would have been the 17 factory freezer licence holders, up until 1997, and those 17 factory freezer licence holders could effectively bar access to every inshore fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador to gain access into this fishery. Why? Because that is exactly what this bill prescribes. As the minister says in the press release, the minister and every person engaged in the administration of this act or regulations must take into account the stakeholder interests. There is a case in point of the law of unintended consequences taking hold.
Another example of the law of unintended consequences that should have been reviewed by the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans to hear expert witness testimony would be the requirement that the minister must take into account the principles of sustainable development and to seek to apply an ecosystem approach in the management of fisheries in the conservation and protection of fish and fish habitat and must--not shall or may--must seek to apply a precautionary approach such that if there is both high scientific uncertainty and a risk of serious harm they will not be engaged in any management decisions that could impact on that.
The key word is “must”, not may, must. It is a complete removal of the absolute discretion of the minister that was applied under the previous act. That is a case in point of the law of unintended consequences.
Say, for example, a particular group wanted to challenge the validity of the minister's decision to maintain the harp seal quota throughout Atlantic Canada and Quebec. If a group came forward with substantial evidence from its point of view, and brought it forward to a federal court in Toronto, that particular NGO could actually challenge the minister's decision to maintain a harp seal fishery and could actually seek recourse through a federal court to actually shut down a particular fishery or challenge the minister's decision relating to quota or any specific management items. That particular court in a place very far away from where the fishery is actually prosecuted, very far away from the adjacent communities, could actually decide how an east coast, west coast, central or Arctic fishery was actually managed.
That is the law of unintended consequences that has to be understood by all members of the House before a formal vote is taken. That is why we asked that the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans review this legislation and hear expert testimony from stakeholders.
The point was brought forward that there were extensive consultations on the act before the bill was brought forward. First off, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans put in a request to the minister and to the department to assist the department and the minister in crafting the bill before it was tabled so that we could bring forward as members key elements of the bill that we wanted to have included and key concerns. That request was denied. It was not acted upon.
On December 12, 2006, 24 hours before the close of the House, a bill was tabled. There were no further discussions for the next eight weeks.
We asked who exactly was consulted and what was the actual consultation that occurred. In my own constituency I found that next to no one was consulted and the few organizations that were were simply sent a letter from an official within the department indicating that a new fisheries act would be tabled soon.
There were no details about the act and no chance for input, with no relevance whatsoever to this act, and that is what has been put before us. It is an act that has been described as having endured extensive consultations when in fact no consultations whatsoever, no substantial consultations, have been conducted.
A third element of this that really gravely concerns me is the fisheries co-management process. Fishermen want to know exactly what that entails. They want to know if additional fees can be placed upon them as a result of a cooperative agreement or a trust arrangement being put in place between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and an umbrella stakeholder group that states or claims it represents the interests of fishermen.
The first party would be the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the second party would be the fishermen themselves, and the third party would be the organization in question. The fishermen want to know if that third party interest can apply for or create levies of additional fees on the fishermen themselves. That is a very important point, but I wish we could have had an opportunity to review this act in committee so that we could have put these facts on the table. This is a very substantial concern.
I appreciate the fact that the sanctions process, the ticketing process on relatively minor infractions, is a better process. It provides a substantial improvement to the current regime. However, there is the law of unintended consequences and possibilities. If there was nothing to fear from the concerns that I raised and that were raised by other members and industry stakeholders, this act should have been placed before committee for review before second reading. Witnesses and evidence should have been presented as to exactly where the act is going.
As well, I have grave concerns about the management process leading to extended terms. The minister will acknowledge that a recent agreement was just put in place with Ocean Choice of Newfoundland and Labrador and High Liner Foods, allowing for greater long term tenure to certain resources based on certain criteria. However, that is one example.
There are other examples that may not be beneficial to the people of Atlantic Canada and to fishermen and fishing communities generally across the board. We want to know exactly where that process is taking us. That is a major concern that has been expressed by my constituents.
Key among this is information about specifically where it is that we are taking the legal and binding right of interest groups that now have a formal and legally binding say in the management of our fishery.
The minister himself will acknowledge that on the northeast coast of Newfoundland there was a decision that was taken in 2J3KL cod, a decision to allow a small commercial scale fishery to fishers there in a resource that, generally speaking, scientists had described as significantly depleted.
Today, as was the case when the minister made the decision, the point of view of very few scientists has changed. Their point of view was that the resource was depleted to the point where any commercial fishery could cause a serious and negative decline in the overall abundance and health of stocks. Biomass would not be allowed to increase and would not be allowed to recuperate. Therefore, science was against that particular decision, or some scientists were, I should say.
If Bill C-45 had been in place at the time of this decision an interest group could have had the capacity or capability of bringing the minister's decision before a federal court for judicial review, because the law specifically states that the minister is no longer capable of making a unilateral decision. He no longer has absolute discretion. He now must adhere to a set of principles that must take into account sustainable development and the scientific information that is available at the time, the scientific information but not the stakeholder information, the information from fishermen themselves.
The minister was proven correct. His decision was a valid one. However, I would remind every resident of the northeast coast of Newfoundland and southern Labrador and the northern peninsula area that I represent that if this act had been in place at the time of that decision, it could very well have been that an organization from outside of the province, outside of the country, could have put forward a judicial action to actually suspend the fishery. That is a very real possibility.
If I am incorrect in what I state, if the minister does not believe it and the department does not believe it, what I can say is that we would have had an opportunity to bring this before a committee and hear expert testimony as to exactly what was happening here. This had to be done. The stakeholders were depending on it. The industry interests were depending on it.
I am concerned about the co-management agreement. I am concerned about the potential for additional fees to be imposed upon fishermen and their communities as a result of the legally binding cooperative agreements that could be put in place between DFO and the stakeholder groups.
I am concerned about the loss of discretion by the minister to act appropriately in ways that he or she knows would be beneficial to the fishery. I use specifically the case of the northeast coast cod as an example that probably would not have happened. I use specifically the case of the seal fishery and all those advocacy groups, the interest groups that are out there that at chomping at the bit for a way to shut down our seal fishery.
This act may provide them with that very possibility or opportunity, in a federal court in a place very far away from this fishery, with evidence or testimony heard by a judge that could result in a decision that the minister did not act in accordance with the act he has tabled. That is a very real possibility.
I have many concerns, but the last major one that I need to speak about in this House is the concern about the exclusion of legitimate fishermen from new fisheries as they emerge or expand.
For example, on the co-management agreement that was reached in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on crab in area 12, would the existing full time fishermen in area 12 have allowed small boat permit fishermen to come into their fishery when the resource skyrocketed in abundance and the price went up? Would they have had an opportunity to boycott or basically veto through a court action the decision of the minister of the day back in the 1990s, not too many years ago, to allow small boat permit entrants into that fishery?
Could the interests of the northern coalition, the large offshore factory freezer trawlers, have prohibited access to inshore fishermen for prosecuting the northern shrimp fishery? After literally decades of dominance by the offshore factory freezer trawlers, could that have been a possibility under this act? The evidence that I am receiving and the input in legal opinions and by industry stakeholders is yes, it definitely could have been. That is why this act should have been presented to committee before second reading before it went any further.