Fisheries committee  Thank you, Chair, and thank you, members of the House of Commons, for inviting me and welcoming me here today. I don't know what background you were given for me, but I'll give a short bio of my background in the fisheries. I started in 1979 in the fishery in Newfoundland and La

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question. It's a good question. When I learned of that—and I'm not speaking as someone in the political realm now, but as someone who's had over 35 years' experience in the industry—I was quite surprised. It was a social decision, a social policy made by the Pr

Fisheries committee  That's a good question. It's an important question, because in the past, prior to the 1970s, much of the fish that was landed around the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador was processed at a plant at that landing site. As there became greater competition for that landed resource

Fisheries committee  Thanks for that question. As I said earlier, one of the biggest problems we have and have always had in the industry is that great divide between the harvesting, which is under federal jurisdiction, and the processing, which is under provincial jurisdiction. In order to have an

Fisheries committee  Again, it's a good question. I'll remove the politics from it; I don't have any comments on LIFO. I think what happens generally is that groups want to hold and consolidate their authority. That authority, certainly in the fishery, is the jurisdiction. The federal government wan

Fisheries committee  No, I'm not.

Fisheries committee  I was a member of the Senate fisheries committee a couple of years ago when we did the seal study and the aquaculture study.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, colleagues. I want to start off by thanking the chair and the members of this committee for inviting me to speak here today about implementing third party habitat banking in the Canadian context. This wasn't part of my speaking notes, but I th

Fisheries committee  I'm here as a witness, so I don't want to get entirely political, but as much as it was ironic, it was disappointing, because third party habitat banking is a good idea. You've heard it from—

Fisheries committee  —our other witnesses, and we've heard it from stakeholder groups. I'm unsure why. I have been part of the legislative process for a very long time, and not just as a senator but as a senior official at DFO who is knowledgeable about the industry. I know it takes a long time to g

Fisheries committee  No. Actually, habitat banking is common in Canada. Our amendments regarding habitat banking were for third party habitat banking—first nations, conservation groups—which can only be described as a positive advance. The other parts of the amendment were the offset, which were dis

Fisheries committee  Jurisdictional challenge occurs if something is being forced on a jurisdiction by another jurisdiction. I think in any development where there is a benefit to the environment, where there are jobs created, where there is facilitation of a project that might involve a mining com

Fisheries committee  Sure. I'll give a direct example. It was Senator Dan Christmas of the Membertou First Nation in Nova Scotia. He and I worked together on these amendments. He voted for them. He's with the independent senators group. It was on his initiative that first nations were part of our c

Fisheries committee  Well, I know they didn't come to committee.

Fisheries committee  There was no testimony of first nations at committee.