Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries

Issue 12 - Evidence

The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries met this day at 7:10 p.m. to examine matters relating to the fishing industry.

Senator Gerald J. Comeau (Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Chairman: I call the meeting to order.

Tonight we are continuing with our examination of matters relating to the fishing industry. We have as witnesses this evening from officials of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who will be talking to us about the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review. As well, a representative of the Independent Panel on Access Criteria is with us.

We will first with Mr. Paul Sprout, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Fisheries Management who I will call on in a moment to introduce his colleagues and to do some opening comments. Once that presentation is over, we will call on Mr. Arthur Kroeger, Chair of Independent Panel on Access Criteria who will then introduce his colleagues and have some opening comments to make.

Without further ado, Mr. Sprout, would you please proceed?

Mr. Paul Sprout, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Fisheries Management, Department of Fisheries and Oceans: I would like to start by introducing the two colleagues with me this evening. They are Catrina Tapley, a director with the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review and Michelle Doucet, a director with the Independent Panel on Access Criteria. Later, Mr. Kroeger will introduce one of the other panel members and will make a presentation.

This evening, I will make a presentation from a deck that the members should have. The front page is titled "Building a Better Atlantic Fishery," and it is a presentation to this committee.

Page 1 provides a quick outline of what I would like to present. My remarks will be divided into three parts. I would like to start by explaining what the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review is and what it is about. I will then talk about the public process in which we have been involved with the policy review. I would like to introduce the Independent Panel on Access Criteria briefly, and then I will wrap up talking about next steps.

Slide two deals with what is the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review. First, it is a collaborative process, for identifying a vision, objectives and direction for managing the Atlantic fishery.

There are two phases to the review. Phase one is the phase we are in right now. It is designed to answer the following questions: What are we trying to achieve in fisheries management over the long term? What are our objectives? What are our principles? What is our direction?

Phase two asks a different question. It asks: Given the direction from phase one, how would you go about implementing it or put it into place? Phase two is about strategies and the operational policies to implement the direction from phase one, the phase we are now in.

Why conduct a policy review? For one reason, there have been significant changes in the Atlantic fisheries since the last comprehensive review. The stock fluctuations are an example.

We are all familiar with the collapse of northern cod in the early 1990s. At the same time, there has been an extraordinary increase in shellfish in Atlantic Canada. Aboriginal people are participating at levels that they have never participated before in the Atlantic fishery.

There are significant changes in the fisheries management approach in the fishery. Within the last decade we have introduced individual quota fisheries into a number of fisheries in Atlantic Canada.

Finally, there are many new resource users - aquaculture, eco-tourism and recreational fishing. All of these uses have been blossoming and increasing in the last few years.

At the same time, the department's focus has broadened. With the adoption of the Oceans Act, the department is moving toward more integrated approaches in fisheries management and broader oceans use. Oceans use takes into consideration not only management of fisheries but also other uses of the ocean.

There is also public opinion to be considered. Public opinion increasingly is concerned about resource management and protection of the resource. They demand conservation. They also encourage more transparency in decision-making, more involve ment in decision-making and less reliance on experts for making decisions.

Finally, we have the consideration of consistency with the advice of other important institutions, two of these being the Auditor General and the committee on public accounts. Both of which have talked to the department and have indicated that the department needs to have a clearer idea of its broad direction. It needs a policy framework.

In terms of the process, we began the AFPR in June of 1999. At that time, we had public meetings in several of the provinces, which include in this case the Maritimes, Quebec, Newfoundland and Nunavut. At each of the meetings, we asked the public who attended their interest in participating in a public review. We sought input on the process to follow their advice in this area and the top questions or issues they thought we should tackle. The results were that there was strong support for a policy review, for the reasons that I have indicated in the previous page, and others that were added in the public meetings.

At the same time, in terms of issues and concerns, people brought forward concern for marine conservation. Issues also were raised on consistency versus regional specificity.

I will explain what we mean by consistency versus regional specificity. In the public meetings, we encouraged the design of policy framework that would be broad and provide overall principles for the Atlantic fishery. At the same time, people requested that we take into consideration the individual differ ences in the areas, cultural significance, et cetera. The challenge for the policy review is to find a balance between consistency and flexibility.

We also heard a great deal of concern and support for our core activities, particularly enforcement and science. At all public meetings people raised issues around these programs.

Finally, without exception, at all of the meetings we attended, people, particularly fishermen, raised issues around the fairness and transparency of the allocation process within the department, and their role in this process.

We established an external advisory board. This is a board comprised of the usual suspects, that is, commercial fishermen and processors. We also had recreational fishermen, First Nations, environmental groups, and others, including the provinces. It was a broad representational group. We used this body as a sounding board as we prepared the drafts of our discussion document.

This is our discussion document. This was provided to you earlier. It is entitled, "What We Heard." This document outlines a broad direction for the Atlantic fishery. It poses questions around the principles suggested in the discussion document. It was prepared by the department following the public meetings. We consulted with the external advisory board. This document was subsequently released, 15,000 copies, and was the basis of public discussions.

I would like to turn to the next two slides, which summarizes the discussion document. In two slides, I will summarize 70 pages in English and roughly 74 pages in French. Obviously, this is a high level summary, but it will give you a sense of the major direction outlined in the document.

First, there are three major objectives in the policy review and there are four policy themes that amplify these objectives. The objectives are conservation, orderly management and shared stewardship. In conservation, we make it clear that this should be a priority.

However, conservation cannot be achieved in a top-down manner. In other words, for conservation to be truly effective, the department has to work with its stakeholders to achieve an objective. We must involve fishermen and other groups in a more active way in achieving in objective.

Orderly management is at issue of the instability in the allocation process. This is a very challenging area. However, it is an area on which we must move forward if we are to provide certainty in the fisheries process. We propose measures in this area on how to achieve better stability and certainty in the allocation process.

Finally, on shared stewardship, we talk about the need to move from our decision-making model that is largely confined to one where the department makes most of the decisions, to one that is more shared. We would move from a command and control structure that is largely paternalistic to one that is more participatory. These are the three objectives.

The following page amplifies these objectives with four policy themes. The four policy themes are conservation, economic and social viability, access and allocations and governance.

In the section on conservation, we provide a definition. This definition indicates components or elements that would include ecosystem management, establishing a conservation ethic, a regulatory framework and embracing the precautionary approach. It also proposes how to involve stakeholders more actively in the process of defining more specifically the goals of conservation.

In the section on economic and social viability, we talk about the role of the licence holders and fleets. We suggest that they should have more flexibility to make decisions on their social and economic objectives within constraints. A constraint would be conservation. A constraint would be that you do not adversely affect a party outside your own fleet area. We also talk about the role of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans as helping to foster the conditions for fleets and licence holders to make goods economic and social decisions about the use of the resource.

In the section on access and allocations, we lay out a three-step process for how we can encourage more stability and certainty in this process. We talk about the role of government and the role of industry, and how we can achieve this end.

Finally, on the issue of governance, and this permeates all the themes, we talk more specifically about how we can move from our current approach to one that embraces co-management comprehensively and across many fisheries as we possibly can with the proviso that we have to build on the capacity and the interests of industry to move in this direction. The signals that we are getting are that people want to move to an arrangement where they have more control of decision-making and more involvement in the outcomes.

Slide seven discusses the public consultations. As I indicated earlier, we completed the discussion document in January of this year and released it. Starting in April of this year, we began public discussions. We had 19 public meetings through the Maritimes, Quebec, Newfoundland and Nunavut. The meetings followed a standard approach. We would open with a short introduction to the discussion document, similar to what we have discussed already, then those who had registered ahead of time provided presentations. There were then round table discussions on each of the policy themes. At the end of the day, we summarized the advice that we had heard. That pattern was repeated at all 19 public meetings.

All of the meetings were open to anyone who wished to attend. We broadcast them broadly, and we had very diverse involvement of participants and organizations stakeholders in attendance at these meetings.

We also met bilaterally with the provinces and territory. We also had discussions opinion leaders in the various industry organizations, at universities and so forth on the discussion document and their thoughts and views on it.

In April and May of this year, we began to analyze the 181 written submissions that we had received to the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review. In August, we published "What We Heard." It is a synopsis of the public input that we received at the public meetings that occurred in Atlantic Canada in the months of April and May of this year about which I spoke earlier. This document was then distributed to all the stakeholders who attended the public meetings, all industry organizations that had registered with us and other interested parties that had brought their interest to our attention.

I would like to tell you a little of what we heard in our public meetings. First, the overall impressions were that people were very appreciative of the process. They liked the opportunity to be able to come to the meeting and to say what they wanted to say. They felt the process was open and transparent. They thought the officials were sincere and attentive.

There was support for the discussion document. People felt, in general, that was well organized, that it described the issues well and provided a good basis for discussion. There was good media interest in the public consultations. We had media reporting at all meetings, and it was generally very balanced.

Having said that there was generally strong support for the public process, we need to say that there are divergent views on a number of issues. For example, many of the inshore fishermen want emphasis on the owner-operator and fleet separation policies. The owner-operator policy requires that the individual who owns the licence operates the vessel. Fleet separation policy prevents processors from owning licences. Both policies apply to vessels less than 65 feet in length.

Although there was divergence on some views, there was strong consensus on others. For example, there was very strong support for moving to a more transparent rules-based system when it came to access and allocations. People wanted the process of making decisions to be clear.

Having said that, there were divergent views on the role of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans when it came to commercial allocations. The discussion document proposed a change in the current arrange ments. We had attempted to determine, where the commercial share by sector had largely been determined, whether allocations should go to fixed gear or mobile gear. This was not a situation of trying to determine whether it was a commercial, recreational or Aboriginal share. That was not at issue. We were trying to determine within a commercial share if allocations should go to fixed gear or mobile gear.

If there were a dispute between two gear types, our document, in terms of long-term direction, encouraged the industry to try to reconcile and resolve those differences. It also went on to say that if they could not resolve those differences, that it should default to an arm's length process that could include mediation, arbitration or whatever process made sense to the industry to solve the impasse. However, it would not be the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that resolved the dispute.

There was divided opinion on this approach. There were two schools of thought. One school said that it is about time the department moved out of this area, and they were appreciative of this direction and support it. The other school said that that would not work, and it is ultimately the minister's responsibility to deal with the trade offs that were implicit in these sorts of decisions. Therefore, they did not support any change in the status quo.

There is one other area in which there was strong support. On the issue of increased involvement in decision-making, many groups, if not most, wanted to be more involved in decision making. However, people argued that we needed to have the capacity as an industry to be able to do that, which meant that we needed to move slowly and phase this in over time consistent with people's abilities and capacity to take on or assume more decisions for particular functions or areas.

Page 10 outlines some of the key considerations with which we are grappling as a result of the consultations. These are posed in the form of questions; but this gives a sense of that upon which we are reflecting as we prepare the final policy framework.

Under the social economic area is the issue of how we deal with the divergent views and the regional differences on owner-operator and fleet separation about which I spoke. There are issues around the role of government on access and allocation, and how we appropriately factor in the advice that we may receive from the Independent Panel on Access Criteria.

There are issues around governance. How do we give appropriate voice to many that feel they are not part of the process? How do we involve aquaculturalists, recreational fishermen and other parties who are new interests and feel they want to be more involved in fisheries management than they presently are? We have the issues of capacity building to which I spoke already.

One other issue is how we properly validate the public opinion that we have heard and the advice we have received in the processes that we have followed thus far?

I would like to turn briefly to the Independent Panel on Access Criteria. Mr. Kroeger will provide further comments shortly. By way of introduction, I will mention that following on the northern shrimp decision made in 2000, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans made a decision to form the Independent Panel on Access Criteria. This panel was formed to review decision-making criteria for new or additional access in commercial fisheries that have undergone a substantial increase in value or abundance.

In preparing the terms of reference and the membership, we consulted extensively with the provinces on this issue. The provinces raised a number of concerns regarding the northern shrimp decision. As I indicated, the minister, after considering their concerns, formed the panel. After consulting with the provinces, we agreed on the terms of reference and the membership.

The mandate more specifically is as follows: The panel is tasked with developing access criteria to guide decision-making. It is also tasked to provide advice on the relative ranking or weight of these criteria and advice on the decision-making process. It is required to consult with the provinces and territory and other resource users in providing and preparing this advice.

The panel is not examining arrangements that are already in place. The panel is to provide advice for the future for decisions that may come forward later.

The membership of the panel is comprised of Arthur Kroeger, the chair, who has joined us this evening, Martha Jackman, who is also with us this evening, Gordon Munro, David Newhouse and Paul LeBlond.

The Independent Panel on Access Criteria process was announced at the end of June of this year. The panel began consultations in August, and has completed four rounds of consultation. It has had over 66 meetings, which I think is an underestimate, with different organizations and groups. And at the same time, the panel has prepared a questionnaire that they have circulated to over 200 stakeholders organizations. They have invited these organization to the questionnaire, which will aid the panel in fulfilling its terms of reference. The panel is expected to produce a report later this fall, and Mr. Kroeger may wish to speak to that.

I would like to conclude with the topic of next steps. As I have said, we are expecting the Independent Panel on Access Criteria panel to provide a report to Minister Dhaliwal. We will have further meetings of the external advisory board and the provinces as we finalize the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review. We expect those meetings to occur later this fall or early this winter. We anticipate that we will be finalizing the policy framework early next year in February or March.

We will then move into phase two, as I indicated at the beginning of my presentation. That phase will be how to implement the broad direction defined in phase one. How do we achieve the direction outlined in phase one?

The Chairman: We will now move to Mr. Kroeger who I understand has a brief presentation to make after which there will be questions by members of the committee.

Mr. Arthur Kroeger, Chair of the Independent Panel on Access Criteria: Mr. Chairman, I will be brief, because Mr. Sprout has covered the main subject of the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review into which we are intended to fit. He has also talked a bit about our process. I will give you a quick sketch.

I have with me Professor Martha Jackman, vice dean at the University of Ottawa. We will be sharing answers to your questions.

The panel includes two people who are very knowledgeable about the fishery. Paul Le Blond was a member of the Fisheries Resources Council. Gordon Munro has done extensive work in the Canadian fishery, and also for the food and agricultural organization of the United Nations.

The other three of us are neophytes. We had a lot to learn. We began at the end of this June with several days of extensive briefing by the department. They gave us seven books, which would come to about 18 inches high. We did a lot of reading and had further briefings in July. In the third week of August, we were ready, we thought, to start having a look at things on the ground. We began in Iqaluit on the August 20, 2001. We came down to Goose Bay, went to St. John's and on through Atlantic Canada.

As Mr. Sprout said, we made four trips in all with a number of meetings on each trip. Generally, we met each group only once, but in the case of the governments, the provinces and territories, we met twice, at the beginning and at the end.

We completed our round of consultations, I think it was 66 meetings but there may have been more, in Quebec City on August 23, 2001. Since then, we have settled down to start trying to draw conclusions from that which we heard.

Obviously, in a subject such as the fishery, I do not need to tell this committee that we have a very diverse range of opinions, lots of advice and lots of good insights. We are now trying to draw conclusions, put those on paper and get our report into the hands of the minister. Everything takes longer than you think it will, but I do believe we can get something to Minister Dhaliwal by the end of November 2001.

Our terms of reference limit us to the question of access. Who gets to fish? We came at our work by trying to educate ourselves broadly about the Atlantic fishery. We did circulate the seven questions that the core of our mandate and about which we will be talking about in our report. The three of us who are new to the fishery felt we had to learn a lot. Therefore, in the discussions we encouraged people to talk broadly about the Atlantic fishery - where it has been, how it works and what its problems are and what part their organization plays in it.

We have learned a lot, including, I might add, much about Aboriginal participation. We have only a limited role but again the advent of Aboriginal people into the commercial fishery is a very important new step. We felt we needed to understand it fairly well. We did in the end have meetings with seven Aboriginal organizations in addition to the government of Nunavut, which is predominantly Aboriginal.

We were all impressed with how complicated this field is. It is not merely an industry. Its products have to be sold in the marketplace. Eighty per cent, I believe, of our catch is exported. We all learned, those of us who needed to learn it, that when you get into Atlantic Canada you are talking about communities, sociology, history, biology, and complicated interactions among these. We will try in our report to be sensitive to those, even though there is a very specific sets of questions we need to answer.

I do not need to tell this committee that the fishery is not a field in which there are nice, simple and quick answers. If there were any of those, they would have been discovered a long time ago. That which has happened in the fishery has been incremental.

We are impressed by the changes that have taken place over the past decade or more. Mr. Sprout referred to the move to get the industry to take more responsibility. There have been some interesting successes there.

There are other areas in which there are still many problems. We recognize that we will not come up with a single silver bullet answer. We hope we can contribute to the steady progression that has taken place in the past decade and more and that we can add to the process of the fisheries policy review. However, we do not have the illusion that we will have brilliant new ideas about which no one has thought before.

The Chairman: We appreciate both groups for taking the time to be with us this evening and to help us understand better the process that you have been going through.

Senator Watt: First, I would like to congratulate you people who have made an attempt to allow the Aboriginal people to begin to start taking part in the design of the future of this country. I would like to state that this is new.

I want to talk about, opportunities for economic development that would offset social problems. Mr. Kroeger, I think we have known each other for a number of years. You were with the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development at one time. This is an area about which you are personally aware. You know that opportunities in the North are exactly the same as opportunities down south. We also get the feeling from time to time that our neighbours are actually invading us in terms of the access we should have. We wonder if we will survive economically and socially.

At times it does not matter how much noise you try to make when you are a small group of people, you do not get the attention. For that reason, I feel that it needs to be addressed over and over again.

Not too long ago, the Nunavut challenged the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in terms of decisions being made some time ago. I believe that they lost their court case very recently. Whether their concerns were analysed and digested properly remains to be seen. They were asking for a fair shake out the allotment available within that given region where a number of different fishermen were harvesting the fish in that area.

This problem will not go away because they loo at it from the standpoint that our new Nunavut government needs to be able to generate its own revenues. They are trying to get the southern government to understand why they would like to have their quotas increased.

I notice that you met with the vice-president of the economic development area of the Makivik Corporation. Would there be a need also to meet with the other groups? Makivik is one organization that has been heavily involved in the international shrimp fishing over the years, in which I was very happy to participates in the early years.

The conservation aspects of the species do not rest necessarily within the hands of that particular department with which you have dealt. That department deals with the development only, not so much the conservation and management side. There is an organization called Anguvijek. This organization formed after the James Bay Northern Quebec Agreement was signed and Makivik came about. Anguvijek was a management group established in the early years. If I remember correctly, that group is also within the mandates of DFO. Is that correct?

Mr. Sprout: Yes.

Senator Watt: Balooka is one area that has been dealt with by this particular group. If I remember correctly, last fall, they were having a meeting with the officials from Fisheries and Oceans, and there was scientific information gathered by the Fisheries and Oceans that turned out to be quite old. They were trying to base their decision that there should no longer be a beluga hunt based on this dated data. As a matter of fact, they were considering putting the beluga on the endangered species list.

Before that happens, it is important to ensure that the scientific information available is not outdated. There is a tremendous need for scientific work in the North. That is always lacking. If Fisheries and Oceans is to be effective in our area, whether in the Subarctic or high Arctic, they have to pump some money into scientific research that is heavily needed in the north.

I want to ensure that this is taken seriously. At times, we have guarded the information and at other times there is not enough scientific information. Therefore, political people have to make the decisions without being fully satisfied that the scientific information is there. They should not have to do that.

Scientific information and traditional knowledge are one thing, not two. It is also very important to ensure that the Aboriginal people are participating and putting their input into the process about which you are talking today. Not only would that be appreciated by me, but it would be appreciated by those who live in the North.

They do not necessarily have an opportunity to express their feelings and give their input into decisions that will be made by the politicians. Whatever little input the Aboriginal groups could have is very much appreciated.

I would like to go further, Mr. Chairman, in regard to the fish habitats. We have done well down south destroying our environment. We are about to do exactly the same thing in the Arctic. We are neglecting the environment as a federal govern ment, in my opinion. Environment may not be solely under your responsibility, but you do have the right to make representations to the Department of the Environment and Health Canada.

There are two areas that are really bothering us in the North today. One is that we are destroying ourselves. We are destroying the fish habitats with human waste. As you know, the population is increasing. It is not remaining as small as it used to be. The human waste is spreading.

As you know, in the springtime, the whole land up there is a lake. The toxic chemicals that might be affecting the future well-being of the fish is penetrating everywhere. That is very important.

We are very much concerned with the water that we are consuming today. On top of that, we are also very much concerned with what we are consuming in the food chain. That is another factor that is very much worrisome to our people. Many of our people are dying, and they do not know why. Many people have stomach cancer, and they do not know why.

I have undertaken to conduct research on this during the last summer. I am about to release it. Hopefully, it will make some difference in our lives.

As you have mentioned, there is no magic solution to all our problems. It will take some time to penetrate into the minds of the people who have to make the decisions. Hopefully, some action will be taken later.

I do not have a question, but really more of a comment.

Mr. Kroeger: I realize that Senator Watt has made quite a broad statement. Our mandate is fairly focused.

In fact, when we went to Iqaluit, we had the benefit of our first meeting being with four major organizations that all have an interest in the fishery, including the Nunavut Wildlife Manage ment Board, the government, and a Baffin organization of six communities which is looking to develop the fishery. We met them all together. They talked broadly about the fishery and how it figured in their future.

One of the things that impressed us the most is that the people of Nunavut have come to the commercial fishery only recently. They were certainly fishing for food as far back as anyone would care to look. However, as participants in the commercial fishery, they are fairly new.

One of the points made was that, as Senator Watt said, there is a rapidly growing population and a lot of young people. The opportunities for those people are not great. One of the areas in which there is actually a potential for real growth in opportunities is the fishery. It is not something of which I had thought, even though as Senator Watt said, I had some experience with Northern Affairs a long time ago. I had not thought of it in those terms.

If you could get an expansion of participation by northern people in the fishery, it could be important for their young population. At present, the share that the residents of Nunavut have in the northern commercial fishery is fairly low. In one fishery, it is about 27 per cent.

Elsewhere, In Atlantic Canada, we heard much about ad jacency, but Nunavut does not have the kind of share that you would expect them to have given the waters that are immediately adjacent to the Territory. This is something that the minister has been working on. I believe that there will be more progress in the future. It struck us as quite important that it should happen.

I might add as a footnote, because Senator Watt began talking the participation of Aboriginal people generally, that we found a high degree of acceptance as we went around the five provinces and the territory to the principle of sharing the fishery shares. I will cite only one example. The union in Newfoundland and all of the participants supported the allocation of a quota to the Innu nation of Labrador, who had not had one before.

There is a recognition that there has to be more sharing with Aboriginal people as we go along. That is not to say that there are not problems, obstacles and resentments, but the attitude was quite accepting of the principle.

Mr. Sprout: To a certain extent I would echo Mr. Kroeger's comments, but want to add the following. The senator raised the issue of traditional knowledge. I would like to support that view.

We, too, believe that that is a relevant and important consideration. In fact, in the discussion document, we talk about how we can incorporate traditional knowledge or fishermen knowledge in the decision process in a more active way than we currently do. We suggest that this is an approach that we should take, and one that I would like to underscore.

It is true that economic opportunities are important to Nunavut. That was very much represented to us in our discussions with the officials and in the public meetings that we had there. It is registered strongly in our minds that particularly in this area that economic access and opportunities to acquire fishing opportunity are important considerations, particularly in Nunavut. I wanted to ensure that the senator was aware that this had been registered.

Senator Adams: You met on October 22, 2001 with the Nunavut Department of Development and the minister. Did you mention anything about the future of Nunavut and how it will operate with the TFO in the future?

I remember a couple of years ago that our chairman went to Iqaluit and Pangnirtung. He met with about 40 fisherman unions between Pangnirtung and Broughton Island. They were concerned about having the quotas and not being able to get turbot in the winter and summer. They had some difficulty fishing in the wintertime fishing.

Sometimes we do not get much of a freeze up, and you cannot get out to deeper water. As a result there were left over quotas and people would come up and take them back down south. Did you talk about that a couple of weeks ago when you met with them in Iqaluit?

Mr. Kroeger: I do not think that subject came up during our meeting with the minister and members of the government, senator. They talked fairly broadly about the changes that are underway to enable them to participate more generally in the fishery, including Greenland halibut and shrimp.

They did refer to some specifics, although I do not recall that the particular issue to which Senator Adams was raised. Do you remember, Professor Jackman? Was it in relation to char?

Senator Adams: Yes.

Mr. Kroeger: I think that there may have been a reference to that.

Senator Adams: I am talking about char and turbot in the wintertime.

Ms Martha Jackman, Board Member, Independent Panel on Access Criteria: I do not recall any specific mention of char, but certainly, both the government and the Tunngavik were very effective in pointing out to us that the adjacency principle that seems to apply elsewhere is definitely highly attenuated in Nunavut. In our research, we noted the recommendations of the standing parliamentary committee on access to new fisheries in Nunavut. In the case of Nunavut, the facts speak quite loudly for themselves.

Senator Adams: Some of the famous restaurants in the south find the fish very expensive. When I went to Yukon last March, there was a fish hatchery for Arctic char. I went to a restaurant. When the waitress said that they had have fresh Arctic char. I told her that I knew where it came and did not want to eat it. It is something else. I know the difference in taste between the two.

There is a char fishery in Pangnirtung. They are looking for more quotas. They are saying that the fish is here. Some of the people from the department only allow so much in terms of quotas, and they say that there is only so much that each person can catch.

More research should be done. I live in Rankin Inlet. Char is difficult to catch there. We had a cannery at one time in Rankin. It has closed down. We use it mostly for smoked char and caribou meat.

The fishermen in Nunavut cannot compete with fishers in the south because of the costs involved in shipping. We have to put our product on the planes to send them down south. Some airlines charge too much per kilo to bring freight down south from the North. People from restaurants want to order it, but they cannot afford to order it from people in the community. I do not know how this will work out. It is a very difficult situation.

We have been talking about aquaculture. Does DFO have anything to do with people who want to get into using seaweed for fertilizers? How does it work? Do you needs a licence to get into that seaweed business?

In Rankin Inlet, we have different sea weed. We call it different names in Inuit. Some are up to 20 feet long. They float in the sea. There are tonnes of this stuff floating in the sea. People are really concerned about using this for fertilizer or other things. That seaweed has no chemicals in it. Senator Tunney beside me is a farmer, perhaps he might like to by it.

We have been talking about aquaculture, but I do not know how that kind of thing can be related to the people. This seaweed could be packaged and shipped down south. I was wondering about how to get into something like that.

Mr. Sprout: On several of the points you made, I would like to confirm that in public meetings that we heard concerns about southern vessels fishing off Davis Strait, or near Davis Strait, and removing fish that many Nunavut thought would be more appropriately harvested by themselves. These issues were raised.

There were definitely issues around char research. This was a concern in Nunavut, and also, a concern a lit bit further south. There was the similar concern that people felt there should be additional research done on char particularly, and that would help provide a better base for the fishery and potentially provide more opportunities. These two-points were raised.

The department is interested in pursuing the subject of aquaculture. We believe that done under appropriate conditions and with appropriate constraints in place, it could be done in a very environmentally sustainable manner. As well, it could provide local employment and economic opportunities.

I cannot speak specifically about the seaweeds, but I can tell you that at a conceptual level, at least, it is something in which we are interested. If Nunavut officials have ideas in this area, we would be interested in listening to them.

Senator Forrestall: Mr. Kroeger, if you think you are a neophyte, imagine what I feel like.

I am curious about two areas. My colleagues have heard me express concern, and that concern remains with me, because no one has been able to persuade me that my fears are not well grounded. Those fears, and the question I want to ask, have to do with safety.

As the northern fishery develops, the benefits from it evolve to the people who are there. As it becomes more lucrative and promising, perhaps as a career or as a solid part of an annual effort to raise the wherewithal, is there a parallel development in training, safety and resource management? Are all these other things going together with your task to determine who should fish and what fishery should they fish?

Did anyone get into the question of safety during your hearings?

Mr. Kroeger: The question of safety did come up periodically. Again, it figured in some of the broader discussions we had. There were some worries expressed about people, in boats that were too small, were going out too far and putting themselves at risk. Perhaps I should ask Mr. Sprout to talk about the questions raised concerning safety and training for people in the fishery.

Mr. Sprout: Senator, at most of the public meetings safety was not raised. However, in Newfoundland, in particular, safety was an important issue. It was very much along the lines that Mr. Kroeger has described. Within the last 10 years, and the last five in particular, we have had a large increase in crab fishing off Newfoundland. There is a significant inshore component, of principally small vessels, that are moving out to catch crab and there are safety issues involved in this fishery. The fishermen are encouraging the department to relax its constraints on the size of vessels.

We have constraints on the size of vessels for conservation reasons principally. The larger vessels have higher fishing capacity, and because they have higher fishing capacities, they can catch more fish. We get into a vicious small circle about conservation.

We are, however, having to consider the implications of the fishery in terms of safety and conservation simultaneously because of the facts are, as you have indicated, that people in smaller vessels are pursuing fisheries that are further offshore and that is an issue from both the safety and conservation perspec tives. We are discussing with the fishermen about how to pursue that and still achieve our conservation objectives.

In pursuing it, it will not just be the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that must be involved because, as you correctly point out, there are issues around training and capacity that must be fulfilled to achieve safety. Safety is not just about the size of the vessel; it is also about how you conduct yourself, how educated and informed you are, the safety standards that you apply and your attitude. We must work with the Department of Transport and possibly other departments to try to achieve the objectives of safety and conservation.

These discussions are just beginning between the fishermen and us. We are initiating talks with the Department of Transport in this area, as well. We are at the initial stages, but we are moving toward trying to find a consensus on how best to achieve the twin objectives that we have here.

Senator Forrestall: I appreciate that. Are they showing up at our fisheries training schools? For example, at Sheet Harbour we have two of the most magnificent vessels I have ever seen. Two weeks ago Minister Dhaliwal opened the new facility, and alongside are two of the most gorgeous fishing boats I have ever seen in my life. They are big, but they are not overly large. My immediate impression was to hope that the crews would get adequate training, because these are very sensitive pieces of equipment. In comparison, my fishing was done on an old, 22-foot Cape Islander.

Are the young men taking the first proper steps, again coming back to safety, of attending the training institutions? Are we requiring that? Perhaps it is a matter of developing a different form of captaincy licence. Because of the nature of our cultures and experiences, it may not be necessary for someone to know terrestrial navigation. He may do very well by other means.

Are the young men and women showing up at these schools to earn certificates of proficiency - wanting to learn so that they will be able to fish safely? Is that happening? If it is not, is there something that could be done? Is it something that this review should address?

Mr. Sprout: Steps are being taken to address this issue, and I would like to outline some of those in addition to my earlier comments.

Professionalization is happening in the fishing industry. This is a process whereby the industry itself comes to grips with the standards it thinks are required to be professional group. Some of these standards include navigation and safety at sea. To become a registered fishermen, you have to attend and pass these courses. The pace at which we are proceeding varies from province to province. We are making particularly good progress in New foundland where the union itself has taken a strong leadership role in professionalization. It is requiring its members to take these courses - particularly new entrants - to address the issue of safety as well as the broader aspects that professionalization would imply and support.

At the same time, HRDC is also supporting this process through training initiatives. It has helped to sponsor, and has provide and facilitated, support in this process. It is working with the various industry organizations to try to achieve this objective of training professionalization.

Very recently, in dealing with First Nations that are increasingly becoming participants in the fishery, we established with the First Nations, in co-operation with training schools, a mentoring program that mentors First Nations with the support of non-natives to assist new First Nations that are entering the fishery. This mentoring program includes navigation training, safety at sea, and vessel upkeep and maintenance. This provides a strong foundation for people to become involved in the fishery and to practise it in a safe and conservation way.

All these steps are in place now, although the pace varies from province to province. However, the program is in place and it is moving along the lines that I have described.

Ms Catrina Tapley, Director, AFPR and National Policy Framework, Department of Fisheries and Oceans: When we conducted our consultations on the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review, we were encouraged by the number of people within the industry who said they believe there is a need to build capacity around their management skills. In your first question, you talked about resource management. Are people saying they would like that? Certainly, we heard, in those 19 sites, a number of groups state that they want to accept more responsibility. However, they also recognize that they need more skills to do this, beyond safety and into resource management. Moving forward with that showed that there was quite a positive sign.

Senator Forrestall: You have a long way to go. I commend you for the strides you are taking. I hope those steps are adequate. I look across the table at my two friends, Senator Adams and Senator Watt, who have been outspoken articulate supporters of the expansion of the northern fishery on behalf of their people. I have watched them for a number of years now. When I was in the House of Commons, I watched some of the debate that went on over here in this respect because we were always concerned about it.

I wish you well and I look forward to your report, Mr. Kroeger and panel members, provided it is not like our national trade deal, about which John Crosby wondered who could read its 1500 pages. He said that he wrote it and should not be expected to read it - or something to that effect.

I want to make a passing observation. I find that, in all of this, one former politician, John Crosby, came forward to give you evidence. I will not ask you to comment on that, but I will comment. Good on John Crosby and down on those who had the professional knowledge to be supportive, but did not take sufficient interest to appear to lend their support, if nothing else, for the work you are doing. This work is long overdue.

Senator Tunney: This is my first appearance at this committee. I have only recently been appointed to the committee, and I am delighted to be here. This committee was one of my indicated preferences when I first came to the Senate.

Fishing is a fascinating industry. Many years ago, and again recently, I read an interesting book called Net Profits by Stephen Kimber. It was about the ups and downs of the fisheries in the 1970s and 1980s. It is a fascinating book. Some of my questions will flow from the information in that book.

I have a serious concern about conservation, which would include quotas on specific species of fish. I am also concerned about fish farming because of the many articles I have read about farmed fish escapees into the wild, which may very well do us in. Those escapees often involve the spread of disease in concentra tions of the fish population.

I would like to address my concern to everyone here, in particular to my two friends, Senator Adams and Senator Watt. I would like to see all of us caution on quota volumes and the possibility, just as in the cod fishery, of overfishing and new techniques in fishing whereby larger volumes are harvested.

Would you care to comment on international conventions? If you do not have time to address all of my concerns, there will be another occasion. These are my special interests and concerns.

The Chairman: Those are marvellous questions, Senator Tunney. I can see you are fitting in well with our group. Welcome to the committee.

Mr. Kroeger: On the question of conservation, there is an important relationship between how to handle questions of access when a fishery increases, or when it increases in value, and the great pressure to increase the number of people to go in and take advantage of the higher prices. There can be implications for the survival of the stock, or at least of the size of the stock, in the medium term. We have been conscious of that in our meetings. We are currently discussing that issue, as a panel, to determine what we might say in our report.

Mr. Sprout: Senator, I take from your comments on conservation that you are concerned about conservation, that it be a priority and that it be the foundation of decision making. I would like to reinforce that by the following: In the discussion document, we propose that the primary principle should be the conservation of the resource. This should be the first priority. Interestingly, in the public meetings we had, without exception, people agreed with that. That will be clearly indicated as a principle in the discussion document. We have a great deal of support for it. It must be mentioned in an explicit way in the final policy framework. It very much supports the tenor of your remarks and observations.

On the issue of fish farming, you have raised an important point. Escapees and disease transmissions is an issue being raised by various groups, whether they are in British Columbia or in the Maritimes.

As a department, we believe it is possible to conduct fish farming in a sustainable manner that respects conservation, but it has to be done under strict rules with strict constraints in place. It is deviation from these rules and constraints that would cause us concern. Having said that, we recognize this is an issue among groups. We certainly heard in the public process on the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review, particularly in parts of the Maritimes, that people were concerned about fishing farming. We are worried about the enforcement around it and about the rules being respected. We acknowledge that those have to be respected. However, we believe that, if they are respected and if appropriate constraints are in place and adhered to, the science indicates and supports the idea that the farming can be done in a sustainable manner.

On the issue of new techniques in fishing and the implications of quota fisheries, I take your point on this. We believe that to do a good job on conservation, we must have a sound science basis, good fisheries management practices and finally, a conservation approach that the stakeholders, the licence holders and the fishermen actually buy into or accept. The thrust of the discussion document is really to make the argument that we want fishermen to be involved in decision making, or at least to share in the process in a more active way. We think that if they do, they will accept the outcomes.

When it comes to different fishing techniques, one of the things that we have signalled in the document is we must consider more carefully, in the future, the fishing capacity of the different fishing techniques and at the impacts that those techniques and methods have on fish and their habitat. Increasingly in the future, we have to move to what we have described as a more ecosystem-based approach. In other words, it must be an approach that is more comprehensive and not exclusively focused on single-species management but, rather, considers the broader aspects of the ecosystem, which means examining the fishing technique, the gear, the implications and the impact.

On the issue of international conventions, it is true that, of the stocks in Canada, a few migrate to outside waters and are harvested by foreign nations. Most of the solutions that we seek in the policy review will occur in Canada in its domestic fisheries, but not all. This is particularly the case in Newfoundland - but not only Newfoundland - where we have straddling populations that are harvested by foreign nations. This is a significant issue and we have a number of requests about how current arrange ments should be changed to better ensure conservation and a fairer sharing of the resource. These are issues that we have brought to the attention of our international staff in the department. Those conventions, arrangements and agreements are being examined and revised over a period of time.

Ms Jackman: Senator, one of the most interesting people that we spoke to was Tom Rideout, who is the Executive Director of the Canadian Aquaculture Associations. Perhaps your committee might well want to talk to him.

The Chairman: He was a witness on a couple of occasions in the past.

On page 10 of your slides, in respect to key issues for consideration and under "government issues," there is a question about how to give a voice to others, including aquaculture and recreational groupings. One that struck me, and on which I took notes when we went through the slides, was about communities. That group seems to be often neglected in most decisions that are taken by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I like to refer to them as "coastal communities" where people have depended on the resources of the fisheries for hundreds of years, have built their communities around the fishery resource and have developed a way of life around the resource.

I would like to give you an example of what can happen when governments interfere, and perhaps become social engineers, in the way of life that has evolved in and around these communities. I refer to a company, and please correct me if I am wrong, by the name of DB Kenny on the islands off Digby County. Apparently, over the years, the company amassed a set of quotas by buying out the quotas of individual fishermen. They amassed a rather large company based on the quota of what used to be a whole group of individual fishermen. It is a concentration of all these licences under one hat. About one year or so ago, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans purchased this quota. Am I right on this point? You would know, Mr. Sprout.

Mr. Sprout: I cannot speak to the specifics. There is a licence retirement program now in Atlantic Canada. We are purchasing licences. We may have purchased licences that would have been accumulated by this company, but I cannot speak specifically to it.

The Chairman: Even if I were dead wrong about this specific company, you are, in fact, in the process of buying licences from people who have amassed all these individual licences from small villages that depended on the fish being brought in to these communities to make them viable. You come into an area, buy out this amassed quota and you turn around and hand this quota over to the Aboriginal groups, to satisfy the Marshall decision, as I understand it, to provide further access to Aboriginal groups who, according to the Supreme Court decision, were granted a entry into the fishery. Remember that, all this time, the fishery was fully subscribed. There was no further room for expansion of licences. Each licence that is handed over has to be from an existing source.

My understanding is that after DFO bought back from DB Kenny Fisheries a resource that belonged to the public, the company turned around and paid a royalty to the Aboriginal groups so that it could fish the quota. The royalty is being handed over to the Aboriginal groups because they are not fishing that quota.

I am envisioning a great big merry-go-round of a resource that is supposed to feed the coastal communities that, all of a sudden, no longer have access to the quota. Now that belongs to DB Kenny, which is trying to feed its profits. This is supposed to provide a royalty to Aboriginal communities. The fishermen, who used to fish this quota under their own jurisdiction and are now employees of the system that you have put into place. I mentioned social engineering a few minutes ago, and, at the end of the day, who is minding the fish?

Not one of these groups now, that are all trying to live off the fish, has any stake in it. The fisherman does not, because he is no longer the person who believes there is a future in the fishery. Perhaps it is not DB Kenny; it may be another company that is getting the royalties or making a profit. The Aboriginals, who are not fishing the licence, have no stake in it. Yet, we talk about conservation.

I refer to this document, where you report on comments called "What We Heard." In 1998, this committee presented a report on the privatization on transferable quotas and enterprise allocations, et cetera. The department responded to our report by saying that they would get back to us. As a matter of fact, it said: "DFO agreed to issue public statements on the role of individual quotas in the fishery of the future, once a review of Atlantic fisheries policy is completed."

This was the undertaking that was given to this committee on the issue of privatization. In the policy document that you issued, "The Management of Fisheries on Canada's Atlantic Coast" you did not even mention the word "privatisation" or "transferable quotas" or any such thing. That was one of the key issues on which this committee spent a huge amount of time and effort, and on which we placed a great deal of importance. I do not think it is even mentioned in your document.

As a matter of fact, judging from some of the comments that I have read in your "What We Heard," witnesses actually said that you did not want to talk about it. The Senate said that DFO is perhaps undermining its exercise by saying there are issues they are not going to talk about. It harms the overall process to say that there are things DFO will not talk about. There should be a debate about Individual Transferable Quotas, ITQs, from soup to nuts. Apparently DFO did not want to talk about this issue. Do you have any comments on that?

Mr. Sprout: I will start with your remarks on the implications of the licence retirement program and royalty fishing, et cetera, and I will provide a bit of perspective on that to assist in dealing with this issue.

The issue you have raised on licence retirement and the effects it has on communities is an important one. I would like to elaborate by noting the following: The Marshall decision indicated that First Nations beneficiaries have a right to the opportunity to make a livelihood in the fishery. It became the responsibility of the government, in this case the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, to implement and to try to find a measure of mechanism to deal with that decision. We did that initially, by consulting with First Nations and with non-natives.

The Chairman: We might save this part for a future meeting. If we get into that, it might take a whole evening because we would be raising a series of issues. We might have a future meeting on this subject. Suffice it to say, I realize that DFO has an interpretation of what the Supreme Court said and that you are making moves to address and respond to the Marshall decision. I want to get back to the community itself.

Mr. Sprout: I was responding to your earlier observations. On the issue of privatization, our document makes it clear that the fishery continues as a common property resource, and we, as I indicated in my remarks in the public meetings, actually encouraged discussion with anyone who wished to come to the meetings. Anyone who wanted to make a presentation was permitted to make a presentation. In the round table discussion, any question that people wanted to raise was raised. Having sat through, in some cases, 10- or 12-hour meetings with hundreds of questions, I do not recall any occasion where there was any question that possibly could have been asked that was not asked. To the best of our abilities, we tried to respond to those questions. Specifically, on the issues of privatization and ITQs, we have taken the view, as put out as a proposal in the discussion document, that we wanted the fleets and the licence holders to try to decide within certain kinds of constraint what kind of fishery regimes they want to have. Instead of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans dictating that it had to be a competitive fishery or an Individual Quota, IQ, fishery, or some other kind of fishery, our suggestion was that perhaps they might know better than we did. We wanted to ensure that whatever they proposed would be conservation-based, would not adversely affect parties outside their particular fleet or area and would deal with the whole series of other constraints that we outlined in the discussion document. We did not pre-empt any discussion on the issue of privatization. Any time it was raised, we enjoined in the discussion and, in fact, encouraged discussion on any of these concepts.

The thrust of the discussion document was not to dictate that this is an outcome that has to be taken forward, as opposed to saying that we think in principle that, as fleets and as a licence holders, they should have more capacity and flexibility to make decisions. However, they have to understand that, in making decisions, there is a responsibility, which includes things like conservation and respect for other parties, et cetera.

That is the level of discussion that we were encouraging in the discussion document. Having said that, we definitely got into discussions of privatization. There are individuals, groups and organizations that are interested in privatization, IQs and other types of things. There are other organizations that are not interested in that and have strong views in the opposite direction. We are trying to find a consensus around the broad idea of fleets and licence holders having flexibility to make decisions within constraints.

I believe that the public meetings permitted and encouraged that kind of debate and discussion.

Ms Tapley: One of the constraints, in addition to the one Paul talked about, that was key in your report as well, was the business of the concentration of licences. That was one of the constraints we certainly talked about in our discussion document, which provoked a bit of discussion in our public meetings.

The Chairman: Was the subject of concentration brought up in your document?

Mr. Sprout: We were concerned that, if fleets have more capacity to make decisions, the outcome not be undue concentra tion of licences. The reason that I was setting up the Marshall discussion, senator, was to come to that point because, in the Marshall decision, one of the things we are concerned about is concentration and we have put mechanisms in place to try to address that particular problem. Specifically in the discussion document, we actually listed, as a constraint, issues about concentration because we are worried that might be an outcome of people having flexibility to make decisions. That is an example of what could bind the flexibility or decision making.

The Chairman: Getting back to my original preamble and the issue of coastal communities, did you make any kind of effort to involve the people of the communities? I am not talking directly of the fisher, because that is a person who has had a direct stake in the outcome of whatever you do and the decisions you make. Rather, I am talking about the community that has been built on particular quotas. Generally, I found that DFO has made little effort to include the community. You can always claim that the invitation was out there and that no one came. These people have never actually been brought in. I cannot see why DFO would not want to have these people involved, because they are impacted by the decisions you make.

I noticed as well that little effort has been made to define the word "conservation" - a word that appears frequently. It is one of those fuzzy, warm words that everybody loves. What is "conservation?" Conservation is something that is the result of something else. There should be a definition of what you mean.

The words "fleet separation" have always been explained as a processing plant that is not allowed to buy a licence. However, my understanding is that fishermen are allowed to buy a processing licence, so it is not really a fleet division; it is a way of stopping processors from getting involved in the fishery, while not stopping fishermen from getting involved in processing. I find it amazing that, in the year 2001, we are still not examining this more seriously.

My final point has to do with the issue of partnerships. In your report, you make a reference to legislation, or possible new legislation or regulatory framework for partnerships. Is this something that has yet to come out on the plate? If you recall, Donald Savoie, I believe, gave a fair shot across the bow a couple of years ago to a minister to stay away from it for a little while until this issue of partnerships is better understood and defined. In our report, we also made some points about that.

I have thrown many issues at you, and if you do not have time to answer this evening, we can meet again in the future.

Mr. Sprout: These are relevant issues, and I would like to respond.

On the issue of communities, I would point out that in the document "What We Heard," the summary of the 19 public meetings indicates that communities were present at each of the meetings. For example, in Newfoundland, we had municipal associations attend each of our meetings. They made presenta tions at every public meeting and they provided subsequent written submissions to the Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review.

We had similar input at the other public meetings. I would say that the strongest outside input we had came from communities. In fact, one of the points we explicitly acknowledge in our final policy framework is the need to factor in the role of the community. We believe the communities have a role, and we have sought out their involvement in the public process; we have encouraged it; and we are thinking carefully about how that can be factored into a final policy framework.

There is a role, we agree with that, but it is a question of how to work that out in the most effective way.

We also agree on the issue of conservation, which we define in our document. We apply that definition in four broad ways. We talk about precautionary approach, ecosystem management, and establishing a conservation ethic and a regulatory framework. We believe the concept of conservation is quite complex, and so we elaborate on what we mean by it.

We also talk about the next phase of operational definitions of conservation, probably on a species-by-species level. In fact, we very much support the view that you have just noted that we need more clarity around this. We have taken initial attempts in the discussion document to provide that clarity.

On the issue of partnerships, Donald Savoie said that we needed to clarify the issue around access and allocation. He said that the partnering issue was so problematic because there was an uncertainty regarding access and allocation. We have taken that to heart in our discussion document. We have provided some thoughts in terms of how we might get at the issue of access and allocation and the principles.

In the document, we have indicated that we are obviously working within the legislative framework and regulatory environ ment, and that may need to change in the future to accommodate the new direction. However, that should not stop us from having a full discussion at this stage, so that is noted in the document as well.

The Chairman: I believe Senator Watt had a final wrap-up question.

Ms Tapley: I would like to add something to the issue of fleet separation. This issue came up repeatedly at our hearings and was one of the most contentious issues between the two sides. Inshore fishermen came out to every meeting to talk about the owner-operator principle and the fleet separation principle, and what it meant to them. By the same token, we had thoughtful and considered presentations by the other sides as well - by processing companies who feel they do not have a stable supply of fish resources. We talked about that issue at length. The document provoked a lengthy discussion around that. This is one of the key issues that we need to deal with.

Senator Watt: Due to the interest of the Southern Canada in respect of raising fish through the potential depletion of stock in the Arctic, or anywhere else for that matter, does DFO have a relevant policy? For example, is there a policy that concerns the extraction of fish eggs from the Arctic livestock to deposit them elsewhere? If that happens, how would it happen, and when would it happen?

Mr. Sprout: Yes. There is a policy on aquaculture that constrains the movement of fish eggs from one watershed to another - from one stock to another, for issues of genetic concerns, as well as disease concerns. We talked about that concern earlier this evening. The policy covers the conditions under which those kinds of transfers can occur and indicates which are related to genetic and disease issues.

Senator Watt: Does that exercise take place?

Mr. Sprout: Yes, it has occurred. As I indicated, there are no rulings around how it can occur, where and which stocks, et cetera. It has occurred in some locations in British Columbia, extensively. There are other examples in the Maritimes to which we can point, as well. It is across not only finfish, but sometimes shellfish are also involved in this kind of transfer operation. Again, we have scientific rules designed to deal with the genetic and disease issues that might be associated with any such transfers.

Senator Watt: Does that include Arctic char?

Mr. Sprout: There are general stipulations on the movement of any species. That would include Arctic char.

Senator Watt: Are you saying that one could actually transport the Arctic char from the Arctic down to Florida, for example?

Mr. Sprout: There are stipulations under which one can transfer eggs or fish to other locations. Those stipulations are designed to deal with the disease issues and other concerns that might occur. In some cases, there is prevention: For example, one cannot export live eggs unless they have gone through a screening process. In some cases, they cannot be exported at all. There are stipulations in place across these species.

Senator Watt: Does that policy exist within your department? Can we have a copy of the policy?

Mr. Sprout: Yes, you, may.

Senator Watt: There is a small group of people trying to be innovative in terms of finding solutions to possibility of extinction of a fish species in certain areas. We have undertaken one experimental pilot project in my small community of Kuujjuaq, which is a land-holding corporation. I wonder whether those groups have been involved in the discussions you have had with various communities?

Mr. Sprout: I am not sure. The issue of transfers was not raised during the public meetings, nor was it raised in the context of the policy review. I am not aware that it came up as an issue in the Independent Panel on Access Criteria discussions. At this time, I cannot say.

Senator Watt: If there is an innovative idea being generated in the North to increase the stock as much as possible and also to plant them in a lake or river system, would DFO be interested in providing some financing in respect of scientific matters?

Mr. Sprout: That would involve a different group ours. I would have to refer it to them. As you are aware, we would have to deal through the board in the case of Nunavut, who would probably have that responsibility.

Senator Watt: I am not talking about Nunavut but Nunavik.

Mr. Sprout: We would have to work through that with our science group. I could put them into contact with the group interested in doing this.

Senator Watt: You mentioned previously the training needs of those people so they can be fully qualified and have the same professional recognition. I have experience with people who have been trained. We have been involved in international shrimp fishing for a number of years now. You also mentioned about the training of First Nations with a priority focus on safety issues and conservation. Does that include the Inuit?

Mr. Sprout: I was referring to a program that is in the Maritimes that deals with the Marshall beneficiaries.

The Chairman: I thank all of the witnesses this evening. You have an important task ahead of you and we appreciate the time you have taken to brief us on this important subject.

We would like to have you appear before us in the future to learn more about your studies and reports, Mr. Sprout and Mr. Kroeger.

Mr. Kroeger: We are obliged, of course, to give the report to the minister first. Once it has been made public, I would be glad to return.

The committee adjourned.