Finance committee  Yes, that's correct. By removing those non-essential, as you say, low activity or recreational harbours that would be better utilized by municipalities, it's reducing that footprint for the core mandate of the core commercial fishing harbours. It happens over time, but eventually

Finance committee  Especially in rural communities, you can have harbours in Nova Scotia with 10 fishing vessels operating but the entire community is dependent on that facility, or you can have harbours that have 200 vessels that can generate additional revenues, but both facilities are just as im

Finance committee  There are significant opportunities. I can't quote exact numbers, but when you look at the aquaculture industry in Canada, we're just scratching the surface. In Nova Scotia, for example, they've just done a renewal of the policy on aquaculture. There are a lot of opportunities to

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members, for the opportunity to present here today. My name is Osborne Burke, and I'm a volunteer member of our local harbour authority in Cape Breton. I'm an elected volunteer with the small craft harbours regional advisory committee and our

Fisheries committee  As far as taxes, I know in the Maritimes and gulf region we had to deal with that in New Brunswick; in Nova Scotia we're exempt. In New Brunswick we were successful in changing that. I believe we're exempt in Prince Edward Island as well. There may be challenges in some of the ot

Fisheries committee  To add to Luc's comments and Morris's wheelbarrow or two of money, if we have the dollars, we can go a long way on fatigue. Yes, we're challenged, no different from any other volunteer group across the country in recruiting people and getting them in there. When you get the volun

Fisheries committee  One quick comment I could make is that harbour authorities have a lease with the federal government on the federal facility, and in that lease it states quite clearly that, as volunteers, we are responsible for operating costs. That's the sum total right there. When you look at e

Fisheries committee  The ice is a factor. We have global warming and the impact of rising sea levels. That's another thing that concerns us, and we're seeing the impact of that. We're seeing more infilling, more storms, and less ice cover. That's something the committee should address as well, beca

Fisheries committee  Certainly, and I'd ask any one of the others to jump in here.

Fisheries committee  The only caution I would throw out, though, to my fellow representative is that I wouldn't want to see small craft harbours' hands tied if there were a separate pot of money and they had no flexibility. Suppose there comes a time when there's a core harbour in the A-base funding,

Fisheries committee  Certainly. In relation to the numbers, I think we've heard in testimony in the past the number $500 million or something. The small craft harbours directorate would probably be best suited to providing the actual numbers in terms of dollars. What I mentioned earlier today was tha

Fisheries committee  For clarification, when you say “expanded”, are you talking about small craft harbours taking on additional dollars for divesture?

Fisheries committee  With small craft harbours—and it might be a question for them as well—my argument to the committee would be, let's put the dollars in A-base funding. My understanding is that small craft harbours would have a plan on how to deal with divestiture region by region or where there's

Fisheries committee  Just to add to what Ben said, the $40,000 is not $40,000 to start with, because it's inclusive of HST, first of all. In reality it is about $34,800 or somewhere around there. That may not be exact. Second, the $40,000 was set way back when, which is probably not keeping pace wi

Fisheries committee  I believe with the small craft harbours staff and the public works department and with the harbour authorities, we've had a lot of time to plan, as we said before this committee in the past, and there's been a lot of planning and a lot of preparation done. Even with that, you hav