Fisheries committee  It is cost recovery as such. You do try to have a cushion there for a bad year. But it's the same thing; on day one there was a little guideline that came out. We work back and forth in your area. I'll use an example. Over the last few weeks the harbour authorities from Petty Harbour, Flatrock, Torbay, and anything further along--we've all contacted each other to see where we're sitting on rates for this year, to be competitive.

Fisheries committee  I have one quick comment. For the MP from Alberta, if you want to get votes, there are so many of our friends and relatives in Alberta that if you put wharfs in Newfoundland, you'll get votes in Alberta.

Fisheries committee  You are very inventive in what you try to do. The fee you have to charge depends on what service you provide. When our harbour authority was first formed, we had very little service to provide, with the exception of berthage. As we've grown over the years and made reinvestments in fresh water and bathrooms, things have gone up.

Fisheries committee  Our fee structure applies such that if you are a non-fisher vessel, pleasure or commercial, you pay double the berthage fee of the fish harvester. Now, other services there, such as using the jib crane, are the same price. You mightn't think that non-fish harvesters use jib cranes, but if you have a tour boat with a 100-passenger life raft, they need to use a jib crane to get it off the boat.

Fisheries committee  I'm going to say no, not in about ten years. We used to receive the same thing. We haven't availed ourselves of it since becoming somewhat self-sufficient.

Fisheries committee  I did go over the report in much detail--not in perfect detail, but some--and it was nice, not just from our side of it but also from the small craft harbours side of it. Gary Sooley is behind me here. We all know every one of Gary's numbers, including his home number, off by heart.

Fisheries committee  On the piece that we're doing with tourism, the province's finance department does have someone at the table with us. We took all the groups in community tourism and put them at one table. There are 22 individual businesses and entities there now. I'm there for the harbour authority.

Fisheries committee  I just want to make a comment. We've fought. We've argued. We go to him like Santa Claus for one thing more than we're going to get. But they're our friends, and we know where they come from, and it's good that we have them there. They're good people to work with. That's from Gary and Bill Goulding on down, whoever we're dealing with.

Fisheries committee  I will use myself as an example. In my own community we've had warring factions, and they've been in the media across the country. Those are our tour boats. The harbour authority, during the last 19 years that we have been operating, has been the mediator in a lot of this between the tour boats, the tour boats and the oil industry, the fish harvesters and the fish farms, the fish harvesters and the oil industry, the fish harvesters and the tour boats.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  I'll use myself as an example for Bay Bulls. I can't speak for the other communities. We have never accessed ACOA money for wharf projects. It's an avenue we're going to try, and it's not for fish harvesters' wharves, because those do not qualify. This is for the portion of our facility that's going to be used for pleasure boaters and tour boats.

Fisheries committee  I speak for my own harbour authority, and yes, we are. We have been for a long time, with the exception of infrastructure and large projects and certain environmental things. For instance, a couple of years ago we accessed those waste-oil tanks. They came from the department following a request.

Fisheries committee  The province has to go to the federal government for joint funding on all infrastructure. The municipality has to go to the province and the federal government for joint funding on infrastructure. I'm going to say it's not realistic to expect the harbour authority to be able to do their infrastructure large projects without help.

Fisheries committee  He's tight on his own. With the money coming in to keep those doors open since 1992 we had to get inventive: supply boats, cable ships, cruise ships--you name it, we've done it to keep those doors open. That money goes back to the harbour authority. For an awful lot of the work we do in these harbour authorities we don't contact the small craft harbours people.

Fisheries committee  What I see down there is something that I've built. I'm part of it. All of us have the same feeling for the areas we're in. When you see something go in there you think, “I helped do that”. It gives you pride, and you want to see it survive. We all survived through 1992 and that moratorium.