Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue 3 - Evidence, February 24, 2005
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 24, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 10:53 a.m. to examine and report on issues relating to the federal government's new and evolving policy framework for managing Canada's fisheries and oceans.
Senator Elizabeth Hubley (Deputy Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chairman: The Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans will now begin. This morning we will be hearing from representatives of the Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters. Our mandate as the Fisheries and Oceans Committee is to examine and report on issues relating to the federal government's new and evolving policy framework for managing Canada's fisheries and oceans.
The Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters, the CCPFH, is a non-profit organization founded in 1995. Its mission is to ensure that fish harvesters have appropriate knowledge, skills and commitment to meet the human resource needs of the Canadian fishery of the future. The CCPFH's stated objectives are:
...to represent the interests of professional fish harvesters across Canada in their dealings with the federal, provincial and territorial governments on national issues of common concern;
...to provide organizational structure and leadership for the development of a program of professionalization for fish harvesters in collaboration with the organizations representing professional fishers from across Canada;
...to act as a National Industry Sector Council to plan and implement training and adjustment programs for the fish harvesting industry in Canada.
I would like to welcome you all this morning; you have a strong component here and I would like to introduce you; we have Earle McCurdy, Christine Hunt, John Sutcliffe, O'Neil Cloutier, Rachel Josée Chiasson, Ronnie Heighton, Rick Nickerson, Sandy Siegel and Keith Paugh. I believe that Mr. McCurdy and Ms. Hunt will be making the presentation.
Mr. Earle McCurdy, Fish Food and Allied Workers; President, Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters: Thank you, senator, and we appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee. We have had several appearances in the past. We were quite pleased with the analysis of the privatization of the fishery that the Senate did some months ago. It was quite a helpful analysis to have in the public arena.
I would like to say that with our group here, we cover British Columbia, Quebec and the four Atlantic provinces, and people from our Ottawa office are also here. It is a pan-Canadian group we have here.
I work for the union, and in the union we recognize seniority; when it comes to our ancestors, there is no challenging the seniority of Ms. Hunt's people, who have been here longer than mine. We will ask Ms. Hunt to lead off. She is with the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia and will speak specifically with reference to the Pearse-McCrae report and issues of relevancy in the Pacific.
Ms. Christine Hunt, Native Brotherhood of British Columbia; Vice-President, Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters: A workshop took place on November 20, 2004, in Nanaimo, and was attended by a broad cross-section of industry and community stakeholders. There were panel presentations and keynote speakers, presenting industry, community, First Nations, environmental and academic perspectives on salmon management issues. The workshop concluded with a consensus-building exercise in a plenary session to identify points of agreement and action priorities.
Those points of agreement and action priorities are as follows. ITQs are not justifiable as a conservation measure for salmon; they do not, in themselves, solve basic conservation problems and may make things worse in some regards, for example, incentives to high grading and price dumping. ITQs are associated with significant increases in charges to fishing enterprises for surveillance and enforcement measures and other services. These would jeopardize the viability of many independent operators. There are serious doubts as to the technical feasibility of ITQ management for salmon, because of the unique characteristics of the fishery — migrating stocks, presence of multiple substocks, very short harvesting periods with frequent closures due to mixing stocks, variation in price for different types and sizes of fish, difficulties in establishing catch history, significant numbers of inactive licences and slipper skippers. Slipper skippers are men or women who have licences but do not fish the licences themselves; rather, they lease it out and stay home and make lots of money.
First Nations representatives argue that the requirement to consult has not been met by the Pearse-McRae process. First Nations are concerned about the catastrophic loss of employment, knowledge and skills from their communities. The Mifflin plan took away many licences and crew jobs and they fear that ITQs will have even more devastating impacts. After the Mifflin plan was implemented, there were suicides in our native coastal communities on the West Coast, as young men growing up thought that they would be following their fathers and grandfathers on to fishing boats. When there was no light at the end of the tunnel, no licences or boats left in their communities, they just could not deal with it. Most recently, in a community called Bella Bella, over Christmas there were three suicides of young men in their early 20s.
The First Nations people of the West Coast want a freeze on any ITQ fisheries until a social economic impact study is done. That has resounded very clearly from our native organization, the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia. DFO may attempt to win industry support for ITQs through the newly established harvest boards. Although they have elected members, these structures are too new and untested to be able to make such decisions, do not have mandates to take on major issues and would not provide legitimacy for ITQs. Coastal communities' representatives see the introduction of ITQs as possibly a death knell for local fisheries. The Ecotrust report confirms the dramatic consolidation of ownership of fishing licences in urban areas since Mifflin and Pearse-McRae are again seen as exacerbating this trend.
The workshop recommended that the steering committee take a constructive approach in its communications with DFO and the public, making it clear that there are issues in the salmon fishery that need to be addressed but emphasizing that ITQs are not an effective or fair way to resolve these problems. The workshop supported the following principle for improving management of salmon fisheries. Fleets should contribute more to the cost of management and science, and industry should participate in efforts to develop appropriate options to generate such revenues. Fleets should support more comprehensive and effective co-management arrangements, and options should be developed to transfer appropriate management responsibilities to fleets.
Commercial harvesters recognize that there will be a transfer of substantial fishing rights and assets to First Nations through the treaty process and agree to cooperate in the design and implementation of such transfers.
There is a need for innovative approaches to improve the marketability and value of wild salmon products and industry should participate actively in the development of improved linkages between harvesting, processing and marketing. Policy and regulatory mechanisms should be kept in place to allow coastal communities that depend on fisheries to keep fishing assets in their areas through licence banks or other options.
One of the things the First Nations community on the West Coast is concerned about relates to a large fishing company owned by Jimmy Pattison named Canfisco. Eighty per cent of their skippers are First Nations, who in turn employ five or six members of their family or band. Were the ITQ system put into place, the company would rather send out 10 boats than 40 boats. Therefore, there would be a big swath of layoffs for the native commercial fishermen and that is a real threat to us.
I shall read from a letter, in response to the Pearse-McRae Report, written by Chief Bill Cranmer of the 'Namgis First Nation in Alert Bay. In that letter, Chief Cranmer said, in part: ``The report also recommends that the changes be implemented immediately. This recommendation is very troubling. It implies that the report had an adequate public consultation process. This was not at all the case. The consultation process used by professors Pearse and McRae was exceptionally selective. The current limited touring round by DFO officials is equally exceptional. Although we were invited to a meeting in Campbell River, we did not have adequate notice, and because of the significance of this issue to our community and to our fishing heritage, we requested that a meeting be held in Alert Bay. We were told that this was not possible due to the short-term nature of the current consultation process. This is very far from an adequate form of consultation for an issue that is so important to rural coastal communities and especially to First Nations. Given Canadian standards of public consultation on important policy issues, and of course the Supreme Court's Haida rulings about Aboriginal consultation and accommodation, we are surprised to the point of being shocked. We can only think that the advice you were getting from your staff must be at fault.'' This letter was to DFO. It continues: ``Whatever you have been told, there are very broad public concerns about this issue in addition to the legal obligations to adequately consult with coastal First Nations.''
The Deputy Chairman: Thank you very much, Ms. Hunt.
Mr. McCurdy: I will ask Mr. Cloutier to take over now.
[Translation]
Mr. O'Neil Cloutier, Alliance des pêcheurs professionnels du Québec (AFPQ), CCPFH Secretary-Treasurer: One of the best ways to convince the Senate or the government that the coastal fishers want to hold on to what they have would be to hear it directly from a fisherman. I work as a fisherman. I am the managing director of a regional organization operating in the southern Gaspé region, mainly in Chaleur Bay. The mandate of our organization is to ensure that the lobster fishers, whom I represent, will earn enough to maintain a reasonable standard of living so that the regional economy will continue to thrive.
Skipper-owner and fleet separation are two of the main principles that are advocated by our group. Over the years, three variables have affected fishing income. The first, and something over which we have no control, is the weather. The second variable is the landed price for our product and the third is the actual volume of product that we land.
With that in mind, if ever the two principles that we have so vigorously defended over the past four or five years were to disappear, and I am referring to the skipper-owner and fleet separation principles that we would like to see incorporated into the act, then, unfortunately, we would lose all control over the last two variables, namely price and volume. Privatizing the resource will cause us to lose this asset. The fishers will earn less, thus causing social and economic repercussions for the fishing communities.
You must understand that fishing is a way of life for us. It has a cultural dimension. Fishing has represented our livelihood for hundreds of years; its origins can be traced back to our first exchanges with the European continent. We are extremely attached to our regions. If the government does not ensure that these two principles are maintained in the act, then, unfortunately, as has been the case with other groups, we will witness an unravelling of our regions' social fabric.
Once again, the federal government's cost-cutting measures in fishery management will penalize the regions. There will be a mass exodus from most of the communities towards the larger urban centres, since, in Gaspé, after tourism, the fishery is the only economic engine.
I represent 212 lobster fishers who work along 300 kilometres of coast line, and help to keep these localities alive. In our opinion, it is unacceptable to privatize the resource by neglecting to maintain these two principles in the act.
We are appearing before you and we hope that you will understand the importance of these issues for our regions, not only for the Gaspé, but for all of the communities that border on the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. That represents five provinces. That is all we have left. Please save a little for us. That is the message that I am conveying on behalf of my fishers who have asked me to become involved in various groups, including the Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters. It is important for the regions that this message be understood. Give us a little breathing room. We must avoid concentrating the resources in the hands of a few individuals, and learn from what is happening in New Zealand, or even in Western Canada. We must avoid that if we want to keep Canada strong, with a good regional representation. That is my message to you.
[English]
Mr. McCurdy: Thank you, I will try to be both brief and non-repetitive from what was said.
With respect to the issue of policy renewal that you spoke about, the DFO policy framework for managing the oceans, we have not been directly engaged in that by the department. We are looking forward to that opportunity. One of the things that will arise in the course of that, at some point, will be presumably a reopening of the Fisheries Act. I will not be surprised if we ask for an opportunity to be back here to seek you help on some points in relation to that.
One of the things that we are running into is acts of vandalism against the English language that you have to be aware of to realize that they are taking place. One of the new bits of terminology in the fishery in the last couple of years has been the concept of so-called ``best use'' of the fish resources. ``Best use'' sounds relatively benign. Naturally, you want to make the best use of something; it is hard to advocate for the worst use. That phrase is code for changing allocation priorities. In British Columbia, they found that it was a code for reversing or changing and tampering with the traditional priorities of who gets access to resource. In particular, it subjugated the commercial sector to a lower standing than the recreational sector, even though the commercial fishery has a rich tradition and history in that province. They talk about best use as being whatever the Department of Fisheries and Oceans decides is the most suitable way to use resource, as opposed to recognizing the long-accepted criteria of historical use and adjacency to a resource as being the cornerstones of fisheries access.
So, that is one example — it is not the direct topic of your session here today, although it might be some day — of the issues arising under the Species at Risk Act. There are all kinds of terminology that sound benign. We have had cases of stocks being recommended for listing as endangered. Under the act, an endangered species is one that is at risk of imminent extinction or extirpation, which is extinction in Canada. There are species recommended in that category that have tens of millions, in some cases hundreds of millions, of individual animals recommended for listing. They may be at a lower level than they were, but at risk of imminent disappearance is a bit of a stretch. Hence, there are some issues with process there.
This Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada — COSEWIC — has taken its mandate beyond what the act say, which is dealing with critters that are in danger of disappearing. The committee is replacing or doing DFO's job. There is a Fisheries Act and a Species at Risk Act, and there is a lot of conflict between the two, which is causing tremendous grief for people in the industry.
I read in some of the material that the Furbish's Lousewort is down to fewer than 300 specimens in Canada. I hope it will be around for future generations of Canadians to enjoy. There is a difference between species, whether plants or animals, that are otherwise unregulated by anybody and species that swim in the ocean and are regulated by a department based at 200 Kent Street, employing 11,600 people, with a $1.4-billion budget and a science branch with more than 1,000 people in it. COSEWIC has four or five people who have expertise in fish — yet it makes these recommendations with sweeping consequence. The interaction between the Species at Risk Act and the Fisheries Act is of great importance to us — although I appreciate it is not directly involved in the matter you are dealing with here today.
Mr. Cloutier made reference to coastal communities, and the committee's chairman mentioned to me that that is the focus of your work. We have done an extensive survey of 1,500 fishing captains and 600 crew members. As well, focus groups and interviews have been conducted. That is more people than are usually polled about who they think will be the next prime minister, for example. Our survey was extensive. When this work is complete, we would be glad to share the details with your committee. In fact, we have a summary of some of the findings in a very brief paper that we will leave here.
For example, respecting the impact on coastal communities, in the absence of the kinds of policies Mr. Cloutier talked about, the fleet separation and the owner-operator policy, in British Columbia currently 40 per cent of the licences and quotas are held by people in Vancouver. Vancouver is technically a coastal community, but it is not exactly fish-dependent. That is a growing number. Ms. Hunt talked about the despair in coastal community, referring to suicide and so on. That is the erosion of the small coastal communities that have no reason to be there except for their relationship with fish. There is a great concern there.
We have had previous discussions with your committee on some of these matters and Mr. Cloutier referred to the owner-operator and fleet separation policies. In the past, we have talked about a legal gimmick that some processors found to effectively subvert the policy, namely, the trust agreement. I was pleased to see the transcript of the questioning of Minister Regan. Senator Mahovlich addressed that issue with the minister in questions. There is a real urgency to address that.
We had a good meeting with the minister yesterday on that topic, and they have some officials engaged. However, the situation is eroding daily. These are legal subterfuges that allow the undermining of public policy.
If I can give a brief example, the licensing policy of DFO says that in the event of the death of a licence holder, the estate has up to five years to dispose of the licence. That gives the family enough time to grieve, to get on with their life, to get advice and then make a decision as to whether the licence continues to be fished by someone in the family, or whether it will be sold or transferred. I have read trust agreements between individual licence holders and fish processing companies under which immediately upon the death of the licence holder, the power to direct the disposition of that licence transfers to the processing company. This could be before the funeral takes place. There is total undermining of public policy, and we have been tilting at this windmill for five years now. It is starting to get on our nerves. They should say that they have changed their policy to suit the reality — we do not recommend that, of course. However, they should not pretend that there is one policy in the full knowledge that something completely different is going on, and just process the thing to death. We need changes and we need them now.
There are some issues that arise vis-à-vis the financing opportunities for new entrants, how to deal with existing trust agreements. We have told the department that we have ideas on that, engage us on it. We have told them to set up a joint committee, where we can sit down and work through that, but let us get on with it. In the meantime, get the message out there that we are not going to tolerate that. If people think they can hide behind agreements that undermine public policy, they have another thing coming.
In fairness, there are some departmental officials, notably in the Gulf region, who have stood up to that and enforced policy and refused to honour trust agreements. However, that has not been widespread.
The other thing is tax issues. We are developing proposals on possible changes to tax policies, which will allow the intergenerational transfer. When the baby boomers move through, it will allow that to happen in such a way that it does not so burden the next generation of licence holders with debt that nobody will make any money fishing anymore. That is a taxing question, if you like, but we have some ideas and we are planning to pursue them.
That is a quick sketch of some issues. It will probably be more fruitful if I stop and we let the discussion begin.
The Deputy Chairman: Thank you very much. You have certainly highlighted the interest of the committee in how this is affecting our fishers in coastal communities.
I am wondering, since we have other members here today, if anyone has anything to add — perhaps something specific to your area — or if you would like to comment further, just feel free to. Would you prefer to do that or will you wait for questions? Is there anyone who would like to make a comment?
Mr. Sandy Siegel, Maritime Fishermen's Union, Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters: The only comment I would make is we were here a few years ago speaking to you about owner-operator. We are still speaking to you about it, unfortunately, because we still have not gotten any satisfaction from the Department of Fisheries or the minister on the issue.
The committee had a specific concern, and I think you produced a document I have read, on privatization of the fisheries, an issue that is dear to our hearts. I represent inshore lobster fishermen; I represent the Maritime Fishermen's Union in eastern New Brunswick.
The chairman mentioned that the committee is interested in the impact of public policy on fishing communities. My only point would be that, in my own organization, the time frame for solutions is now. The window of opportunity is closing. We have been here five years talking about the same thing, about the impact of owner-operator on destroying inshore communities. Privatization of the resource, as Ms. Hunt talked about, also has its impact on destroying inshore communities.
We are now attempting, in our own way in Newfoundland and New Brunswick and in various places on the East and West Coasts, to come up with viable options to address new ways of dealing with the problems, which may allow communities to survive and be sustained. In this discussion today, if we can speak to that, as it is your interest and it is also ours, we need government support. We need political support and we need government support to be able to put some of these options into play.
We just finished a sector study that interviewed 1,500 enterprise owners and 600 crew, which is an analysis of the fishing industry as up to date as you will get in Canada. One of the main points it puts forward is that our inshore coastal communities are in desperate trouble.
There are going to have to be some new approaches in policy, by government, policies that parallel other countries — whether it is Norway or the European Union — in finding new, creative, proactive solutions to allow communal approaches to come into place to deal with these issues of the allocation of fish and the prosecution of fisheries, et cetera.
It is an extremely important point. It is just getting on to the agenda — if it is at all. Perhaps your committee will help that to happen. It is important because the window is closing. The pressures that Mr. McCurdy spoke about are closing off options, yet we are discussing these things. It is time for some kind of action, and hopefully this discussion today will help facilitate that.
Mr. Rick Nickerson, Maritime Fishermen's Union, Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters: I am from Southwest Nova Scotia, probably where most of these trust agreements are drawn up. We had a meeting last week of 150 fishermen, and they fully supported owner-operator.
The biggest problem in the industry with trust agreements is that there is no way for new entrants to get into the fishery. This is why a lot of these agreements exist. The fishermen believe in owner-operator. Ninety per cent of the fishermen participated, and some of them had trust agreements. They fully want to do away with them, so we need a way to get new entrants in.
As Mr. McCurdy and everyone else said, we are not in that debate to solve the problem. We are tired of hearing people in DFO saying that the fishermen do not know what they want. When 80 per cent of the participants in the most lucrative fishery in Canada say, ``Do away with trust agreements; we want owner-operator,'' can the message be any clearer? There is no opportunity for me or anyone else that is in the retirement stage to transfer their licence to new entrants. That is what we really need help on.
[Translation]
Mr. Cloutier: I forgot to tell you something that is very important. A few years ago, you will remember, the department began to explain that it was necessary to amend this old, outdated legislation, which no longer reflected the reality of the 21st century. During that time, through their organizations, the fishers became very involved in management, conservation and protection of the stocks. The department has co-management models and agreements with some of the fleets. And there will be more. There are entire sectors investing in conservation. We need only look at the lobster fishers in the Magdalen Islands and Gaspé regions. There are also some in Nova Scotia, and there will soon be more in New Brunswick. Various initiatives have been taken by other organizations to ask the government to overhaul their own management approach, in order to maintain and conserve the stocks while accommodating fishing at an acceptable level. If you want to know the difference between a completely private fishery, and one that is community-based, then you need only look back to what happened in 1972 when the government asked the western fleet to travel through the Panama Canal to take advantage of the untapped stock of herring in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. After a few years of this type of activity, it took 25 years for the stocks to replenish around the Magdalen Islands. The fleet simply disappeared. It went back to British Columbia, and left us with the problems. To us, privatization means extreme overfishing without regard for the stock.
This is a very important part of the bill. We are telling the government that it might not be necessary to completely amend the act since some changes have already been made. Fishers have managed to adapt. They develop, acquire new knowledge that they apply along with the managers at Fisheries and Oceans. The scientists and the fishers work well together. It is wrong to say that we must absolutely have a new act which will lead to disruption and privatization of the resource. You must realize that we have acted, that we are involved.
I would like to take this opportunity to table a brief in both official languages; it deals with sentences that must be implemented by the Justice Department in support of initiatives undertaken by groups of fishers who want to maintain the stocks while continuing with an acceptable level of fishing. I provided the minister with a copy of it last week, so it is now public.
In reading it you will see what communities are doing in the 21st century to maintain their income levels, their economy and their community. It is wrong to say that the act is outdated and that nothing is being done. There is a great deal of activity, there are a large number of activists, something for which all of the organizations are responsible. That is what I wanted to tell you.
[English]
The Deputy Chairman: If you leave our clerk the copy, we will make copies.
Mr. Keith Paugh, Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association, Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters: We have 1,300 core fishermen in P.E.I. from small communities around the province that are dependent on fishery. I would like to reiterate what my colleagues have said today regarding owner-operator and fleet separation policies. We fully support it, and we think something has to be done immediately. We are beginning to see, even on Prince Edward Island, erosion in the owner-operator policy.
I would like to comment on DFO and their cutbacks on conservation protection areas. We have seen a lot of cutbacks in that area; it is also hurting our fishery because they are not policing it as good as they should be.
Senator Adams: My question is to Ms. Hunt. About four or five years ago, we finally start to get some quotas up in the Arctic, but it never really worked out well because it is not coming into the community. It started with the Wildlife Management Board for Nunavut, then between DFO, NTI and Nunavut Tunngavik Corporation they figured out some quotas for the people in the community. It started with the turbot and shrimp quotas about four years ago. About four or five communities filled some of the quotas but some of the outsiders bought some of the quotas for the community.
There in an organization called the BFC, Baffin Fishery Coalition. It would be nice if they could join you people, because they have a hard time solving the problems in Nunavut because they are mostly operating people from outside Canada, like people from Europe.
We had 4,000 metric tonnes of turbot in 0A; in 0B, we had 1,500 tonnes, plus 2,500 tonnes of shrimp quotas.
There is difficulty between those organizations and DFO. DFO did not have any policy. As soon as it turned over some of the quotas — I thought Nunavut quotas should be going to the community. Not one pound of those shrimps or turbot helped the economy of the communities.
At one time, there were fish plants in the community on the coasts, and then ITQs came along. People started selling the quotas, and so we lost some of the quotas in the community. Before ITQs, did you have any agreements between your bands on the coast that DFO guaranteed those native fishermen the right to be able to fish? Is there any agreement policy between DFO and Ottawa?
Ms. Hunt: Under section 35(1), we have a guaranteed right to our food, social and ceremonial needs, and they usually are met on the coast. I am not sure if that is the answer you are looking for.
I want to add that this organization has a seat for someone from the North, and maybe we could talk later about how we can get in touch with your people.
Senator Adams: In the meantime, were some of the quotas in your organization settled with land claim?
That is what we did. We figured we were going to control everything, and now we cannot do anything.
Ms. Hunt: The Nisga'a Treaty is the only one that has been settled in B.C., and they have their fisheries program all worked out. Apparently, it is working well. However, no other tribe along the coast has signed an agreement yet, although some are getting close.
It is a very complex issue, with 182 bands in British Columbia. All the bands that live up the Fraser River and on the coast will be claiming part of the runs, as the Nisga'a are doing.
Senator Adams: A couple of years ago, the quota in salmon was cut down in B.C. We talked to some of the native people from there. They had equipment and everything, and somehow the quotas were cut down in the salmon fishing five or six years ago. People were complaining that DFO came along and locked everything, seized nets and everything. I do not know exactly how many people were hurt from that.
Since then, there is salmon farming in B.C. — and the same is true regarding salmon farming on the East Coast. Is salmon farming affecting any of your communities along the coast of B.C.?
Ms. Hunt: Yes, in the Broughton Archipelago in my territory there are quite a few farms, and we have had a total collapse of the pink salmon runs on the Mainland where the fry pass by the fish farms. Also, the fish farms there have a lot of sea lice. There are a lot of problems with the fish farms and the escapes.
I was out seining with my father a couple of years ago when there was an escape. They tried to minimize it, but the seiners were pulling up this odd-looking fish and then making jokes on the radio phones saying, ``How much are the packers paying for Atlantic salmon today?'' The company paid $1 a pound. However, a scientist who lives in that area went around that day collecting samples from all the boats and slicing them open and, indeed, there were fry in there and other things. On 14 rivers on Vancouver Island, they are spawning.
Senator Adams: Mr. McCurdy, I saw a study in Nunavut about the future of the commercial fishing up there. You compete with the Europeans and others who have quotas and are coming in and fishing. How the does the union system work?
Mr. McCurdy: I am not familiar with all the details of the fishery in Nunavut, but I have some understanding of the general issues. First, there was the lack of clear-cut rules for access to resources. If there are no understood rules of priority, that is when the wheeling and dealing starts. There was a always a sense — and Labradoreans experienced this for years, for generations — that the resources of the North were available for the people in the South and that there was not the kind of priority to the North that one might hope for.
With respect to the ITQ system, if quotas are allocated to corporate interests — for example, if a private company in Nunavut has a quota, then once it is theirs it is theirs to do with as they see fit. Someone from a southern area can come along and make an offer the private company cannot refuse. From then on, that quota is exploited for the benefit of the people where the buyer came from, not in the area that originally was supposed to benefit from it adjacency to the resource.
My own view on ITQs is that there should be oversight on those corporate enterprise allocations. Whether it is a periodic audit, there has to be some onus on the user of the resource to indicate that his use was consistent with public policy objectives. At the moment, that is missing. Not everything should be bought and sold on Bay Street. Fishing rights should be viewed as a heritage of coastal people, not as another commodity like futures in pork bellies or something.
Senator Watt: I will focus on an area that I think I understand the point that you have raised. Things are running away from you, if I understood correctly — that is, the work that is being carried out by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. You would like this committee to help you establish a working group between your group and DFO and to begin to start dealing with it on the basis that may be away from the objectives of DFO — that is to say, that they want to deal with this only if it is economically viable. That is the argument that they are using, conservation and economic viability. The two do not meet too well, in my opinion. However, the fact is getting away from the community based, and that is one of the reasons you feel that communities somehow have to be lifted, and realize that that is the base. That is what you should be focusing on.
You want to develop a mechanism such that you can emphasize those points directly to DFO. In other words, what you are saying is that, if the department is going to be moving in a direction away from traditional activities — that is, communities being looked at as the most important base, rather than just looking at a licensing issue on the economic viability only — that shift is putting a lot of burden on the communities. We have no idea what will happen to those people when there is a loss of jobs and industries, and resulting shut downs and whatnot. I do not think there is any clear plan from the government to come up with an alternative. What will happen to those people? Are they going to become welfare recipients after the collapse of the industry?
If I understand you correctly, you want to capture this before it has gone too far — but you feel it has already gone too far. I believe the concept of privatization, changing the policy to make it more economically viable, that approach started to trickle into the system in 1982. We are now in 2005.
It is surprising as a member of this community hearing from you that you have not been able to make mileage with DFO to emphasize what you are trying to emphasize. Our responsibility as a committee is to take that seriously and to see whether we can come up with the answer before it goes too far — because every day counts. There are actions taking place by the department almost on a daily basis, and you are starting to see the effect of that in your community. It is an urgency, if I understood you correctly.
Are you saying to us that, rather than having an ongoing study in this area, it is time to come up with an interim report? Is that what you have in mind, for us to move quickly as a committee, in the hope that that will have an impact on DFO and that they would acknowledge you and establish a working group? Is that what you are looking for?
Mr. McCurdy: The working group that I referred to was specific to the issue of the trust agreements and the undermining of clearly stated public policy. People use arguments of economic viability to make a particular case, but driving the price of licences beyond what is affordable for fishermen and taking the control away and putting it into the hands of processing companies, there is no economic viability, and in many cases it is a bogus argument. Several different organizations have different proposals and ideas and plans for how we cope with circumstances of declining available resources, and some very innovative ones. It is a matter of getting them addressed.
However, with respect to the trust agreements, which are really getting around the policy of the fleet separation, that issue is in urgent need of action, and anything your committee can do to underline that point would certainly be appreciated. It has been kicked around, and each day it gets worse and there is no need of that. Some details take more time, but we are saying to involve us in the details, because we have ideas to bring to bear here. We are the ones who have to live with the consequences.
I would hope that we can get there quickly, because doing nothing is not an option. It is allowing a continuing undermining of the authority of the government — which is what is happening at the moment.
Ms. Hunt: There is great urgency on the West Coast for DFO to recognize the recent Haida and Taku River Tinglit court ruling in consultation matters. They clearly have not done that — which I read from one of the chiefs from Alert Bay. We want a moratorium on the implementation of the quota system, until the economic and social impact of the coastal communities is done. The urgency is there on the West Coast.
Mr. Siegel: Just listening to what you were asking us reminded me of the last time we appeared in front of you — I think it was two years ago. We were reading from an earlier report from the council, which was making the point that the owner-operator and fleet separation policy was one of the best mechanisms. Roméo LeBlanc put it in place in the late 1970s. It was one of the best mechanisms for allowing equity, in terms of the social and economic benefits of the fishery coming back to the communities — I know your focus is communities; it is ours as well.
Our study that is coming out says the same thing. In the crisis of coastal communities, a key pillar must be the separation of fleet and owner-operator, because it is the mechanism, in policy terms, to allow the equity and resources to stay with communities and not be vertically siphoned away. If we going to do something about this — which we both want to do — around the survival of our communities, this lack of action on the owner-operator separation of fleets is extremely dangerous.
What is happening is that the department is signalling that there is a problem, but they are not doing anything about the problem. Trust agreements are being written as fast as possible, because they know what is coming. Larger and larger parts of the resource are being centralized and concentrated — even as we move to some kind of action from DFO, which is not happening yet. Hence, the ground is disappearing under our feet.
If we are serious about the survival of coastal communities, something must be done about those two policies, and your committee must help us. We can do all the studies we want, and have all the commissions we want, but if we do not do something about that, we will not have anything to work with. There will not be enough left to be able to make a difference when we finally come up with the options we need to find communal ways to become viable.
They are just as valid and real as private ones. However, that takes time, energy, models, approaches, bringing governments together, different departments, the provinces, the federal government. There is a real need for the country to take a look at the crisis of coastal communities and find a way to solve it. Whether it is a federal or provincial task force — that is one of the recommendations that may come out of our study — there has to be a common approach to do something about this. Otherwise, social havoc will be created; it will happen slowly and then increase, and then we will deal with it as a crisis. Hopefully, we will not have to go there. We need to do something different.
In terms of what we are asking you to do, we are asking you to help us get the department and the minister to move; second, let us seriously look together at what we are going to do for coastal communities. It will take many levels. It will just be Fisheries or the House of Commons or the Senate; we will have to work together.
[Translation]
Mr. Cloutier: We think that there might even be a hidden agenda within the new fisheries policy that is advocated by the minister. This agenda is, of course, the result of the large corporations lobbying the department. What is at stake is access to the stock. As soon as the large industries are given access to these fish stocks, the small, coastal fishers will disappear. The two principles that I stated earlier, namely the skipper-owner operating his own boat and fleet separation must both be used to protect community access to the fishery resource. That is what is at stake in amending the act. On one side, there is a great deal of pressure to privatize the resource and allow the large processors to have access to it, while we are telling you that you are on the wrong track. That is essentially what this debate is about.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Mr. Cloutier, it sounds like the lobster business in the Gaspé is being monitored and controlled, that it is doing what it is supposed to be doing and that it is very successful, is that correct?
[Translation]
Mr. Cloutier: The lobster stocks have remained stable from year to year. I represent fishers who earn $70,000 per boat, per season. That is not a lot of money, but it is a stable income that finds its way back into the community. You are right in saying that our model works because the fishers themselves are involved in the management, protection and conservation of the resource. It is a good social model.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Are the communities doing well? Are people happy in that area?
[Translation]
Mr. Cloutier: Of course, we would all like to have a little more, but the communities are satisfied with the social and economic stability that this activity provides. In an area where there are 200 or even 50 people earning a living from the sea, it is very important that this be maintained. For lack of anything better, yes, the communities are satisfied.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: You mentioned New Zealand and the system they have adopted. Do you think they are having problems right now; or is it fair to compare us to New Zealand since we have so many more communities than they do?
[Translation]
Mr. Cloutier: Yes, to the extent that the resource privatization model that the Canadian government is seeking to implement comes from New Zealand where a number of communities have suffered from this privatization. In fact, we have the same model in western Canada, and the people there can tell you how this has affected their communities. It is simple, it is a matter of seeing how it works. Little by little, the communities and stakeholders slowly fade away, to the benefit of corporations. That is what is happening today in New Zealand.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: Is your area maintained by the Canadian Coast Guard?
[Translation]
Mr. Cloutier: Yes, but because of their low funding levels, we rarely see the coast guard, unless a disaster occurs.
Resource monitoring is currently the responsibility of what is called the ``protection'' branch of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They have also experienced budget cuts. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans' other mandate is to reduce spending. There has been downsizing in the protection branch. That is one of the reasons why the fishers are finding new ways to become involved in protecting the resource through various projects.
There must be some way to take over the minister's responsibilities since his budget is constantly being cut by the government. The private sector will not be able to do that. It is up to the communities to become disciplined, to manage and control their behavior. This is not something that we see in the privatization model which relies on turning a quick profit.
[English]
Senator Mahovlich: I would like to ask about the West Coast, about how the Coast Guard is policing the West Coast. Are you satisfied out there?
Mr. John Sutcliffe, Executive Director, Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters: I have been asked to respond to that question, but I am unable to. It has been about three years since I was at the West Coast. I am now on staff with the Canadian Council. However, for 30 years I was very active in the fishery on the West Coast. On that particular item, senator, I have no recent information. I am not that close to the fishery anymore — except for an avid interest and concern in the privatization agenda for that fishery, which I do understand.
Mr. McCurdy: Just on that enforcement question, because it is critical. It has been a popular sport in Canada for a number of years for people to talk about and advocate shrinking and reducing the size of government. It has become like a mantra.
Initially, there was no doubt there was fat to be trimmed, but eventually, the rubber hits the road, and there are always consequences in terms of real services. The curtailment of the DFO budget over the last 10 years has meant that their ability to do the basic job of conservation and enforcement has been significantly undermined. They do not have the tools to do the job that is required because clearly is impossible to cover every little nook and cranny of it. However, there has to be a basic level of enforcement presence. There is not a Mountie on every mile of the TransCanada, but you spot one every now and then, enough to discourage you from getting your speed too high. You need some degree of enforcement, and enforcement and conservation priorities have been undermined by the continuous stripping of resources to the department, which has led, in some cases, to passing on of costs to people in the industry, such as the people we represent.
Senator Mahovlich: Someone mentioned that Atlantic salmon had been found in 14 of the rivers up the coast. Is that correct?
Ms. Hunt: Yes, on the east coast of Vancouver Island, they have found Atlantic salmon spawning in 14 rivers.
Senator Mahovlich: Are any universities conducting studies, sending people up to monitor some of these rivers.
Ms. Hunt: Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, which is a branch of DFO, is doing some work on it, as well as the provincial fisheries department.
Senator Watt: I want to get back to the same point again. To your knowledge, in the coastal communities, have there been any attempts to look at the possibility of countering what DFO is doing regarding to the fact that they are saying they want to focus on economic viability — switch that over to the community base. Has anybody looked at the numbers vis-à-vis what would happen if there were a major shift to the community? Has anybody done a study on economic viability in regards to what would happen to those communities? If not, would that be important to you?
You are going to focus on one or two items, rather than talking about several different problems — narrow your focus — if you are going to make an impact on this. That is how I see it.
[Translation]
M. Cloutier: Yes, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is undertaking a socio-economic survey of about 40 per cent of all of the Atlantic fishers. That is a lot of people. The results should be available next fall. However, when we say that we want the fishery to be viable, we do not necessarily mean that we want only one fisher to be left standing.
Currently, in the South Gaspé region, based on the income per fishing business, there is now a mechanism, a coastal restructuring project, through which attribution will be allowed to reduce the number of fishers. The permits of fishers who retire are being bought. We want viable communities and a viable fishery. However, there is a difference between 100 fishers and a single fisherman. That is what we want to avoid.
[English]
Mr. Siegel: Just to follow up on what Mr. Cloutier said, we need to be proactive. We need new options. DFO and the Government of Canada, about two years ago, stipulated, as I think you are probably aware, that for non- traditional fishers, not the traditional fleets, the inshore fishers, to get snow crab they had to provide rationalization plans for their fisheries — and particularly lobster fishery is not doing as well as the other areas. The department's claim is there are too many fishers — again, it is a economic model — so you should rationalize, get rid of half of them, and then the rest will be viable. In order to get snow crab for our members, in terms of the politics of that struggle, we had to agree, and did, to rationalization plans — in other words, ways of coming to grips with the problems in our fisheries, and using the snow crab in that approach.
We are all implicated in that, whether it is Quebec or New Brunswick or the Gulf of Nova Scotia or Newfoundland. The issue of rationalization is on the agenda. However, we have been attempting — and you could go down the table here. There are a number of different plans, where we are taking the problems in our resource and the request for rationalization — which means reducing the number of fishers — and turning that into development plans, turning rationalization into how our communities become viable in terms of putting the resources into projects, development and diversification. We may take out some older fishers — there is a need for that; we are not claming there is not a need — to reduce our fleets in some area, but at the same token to diversify our fishery so that we can create employment in our communities and maintain their viability rather than having them shrink and becoming marginalized.
This is a comment to say that we are addressing it, and there are a number of solutions on this table about how to proceed with community approaches to viability. It is real for us.
Senator Watt: I would imagine that that would also apply to the First Nations in the British Columbia area. The way you look at it is that the viability of the community is the most important point. You talked about what we can do to put a moratorium on the movement — how we can stall it — so that we can give ourselves time to get some additional information about what you are talking about. Those are the keys.
If we continue to talk about the many different problems within the relationship of DFO and the fishers, if we get ourselves locked up in the technicalities, I am afraid that we are going to be the losers at the end. That is why I am suggesting looking at it in the bigger picture, to see what we can do. Perhaps the committee can look at it as an urgent matter, and hopefully we will come to the conclusion that we need to come up with an interim report as quickly as possible.
Mr. Sutcliffe: Listening to you, I am struck by the difference between coasts. There is an agenda led by the department in the Pacific Region to do a real hurry-up job on the implementation, or some form of implementation, of a quota regime in the salmon fishery. I would love to get into that, but there we would say, slow down. Slow down, do the consultation that Ms. Hunt and her people have been asking for, and, in fact, the rest of the industry in the coastal communities, and actually coming out of that workshop, the academic community as well, slow down.
In Atlantic Canada, with respect to the trust agreements and the continual rapid erosion of the ground from under our feet and our communities, hurry up. It is the opposite.
The Deputy Chairman: It was pointed out by Mr. McCurdy that fishers see codes in different wording, and the one that was suggested was best use'' of fisheries. I should like to ask you, in what I am going to read, if you see a code there that we should be aware of.
I am reading an excerpt from DFO's March 2004 framework. It reads, in part, as follows: ``The shift from top-down management to shared stewardship also implies an evolution in the role of Fisheries and Oceans Canada from one largely taken up with day-to-day management of fleets and fishing activities to one concerned primarily with developing policy, setting strategic direction, and evaluating performance. To achieve this fully, certain fisheries management responsibilities will be delegated to resource users.''
I am wondering if ``co-management'' is a term that you use within your meetings and just what it means to you.
Mr. McCurdy: Certainly, that quote is a very familiar one, and there is some code in there because some of the responsibilities they are proposing to delegate are the responsibility to pay for the services. To a fair extent, the level of interest in the department over the years in partnership or co-management had a lot to do with the matter I referred to earlier, that is, stripping down the department's resources to do things. Usually when you look for a partner in business, you are looking for someone to bring dollars to the table. That was certainly part of the equation.
There is genuine cooperation that can take place between the department and the people who use the resource in a way that would improve the lives of both and improve on the level of management. Historically, it was what we sometimes refer to as a father-knows-best approach — that is, the people in Ottawa really knew what was best and said ``run along'' to the fishermen, when they had their own views.
In our organization in Newfoundland, we had fishermen holding a protest on the TransCanada highway because they thought the quota for cod was being set too high and that it was jeopardizing the resource. This was close to 15 years ago. At that time, the scientific assessment and the management assessment of the stock was that it could be held at what fishermen thought was much too high a level. Within a year or so, it was shut down completely. It was closed and stayed closed for the next three or four years, and is creeping back up now to a small fishery.
In the meantime, today, the situation is reversed. The experience of fishermen on the water — they have the most intimate relationship with the resource, because they handle it, smell it, feel it, touch it, look at the wind, look at the clouds, look at the tides, from the kind of traditions that have been passed on — leads them to their own evaluations. There is certainly a need for better interrelation between the two.
There are cases, slowly coming to light, where that is happening, depending on the individual's involvement in the department and the particular fishery, where there is some meshing. There are other cases where the father-knows-best regime is still in place.
Even with the resources they had in their heyday, if you are not out there actually handling the fish — there was an over-reliance on computer models and mathematical models and calculations, where the output was subject to very subjective inputs, and they had no way of being tested. My view is that estimating fish stocks is much more of an art than a science, and perhaps people relied too much on science to tell us how much fish was out in the ocean. Well, we do not know, nobody knows. The best you can do is get some kind of a rough handle on whether it is up, down or sideways from a previous year. It is a tricky proposition on a good day. Nature changes, currents change, water temperatures change — all of which can have a huge impact. Other factors are the interrelation of different species, the impact the sales on fish. There is a whole host of factors that come to bear.
This is a very complex piece of business, and no one should have the arrogance to assume they have the answer. The best you can do is say, ``We think things are getting better or getting a little worse; we better ease up'' — that kind of thing. I hope we can get to more of a genuine change in the whole approach.
There was an interesting comment from a scientist at a recent meeting on a related topic. He said to another scientist, in relation to who calls the shots on these things, ``We used to be it, but we are not it anymore. It is us and them now.'' I am not sure how thorough that view is, but the fishermen see and experience things that should be brought to bear in the assessment of the resource. I think there is still room for a lot of improvement in that regard.
The Deputy Chairman: You had a nice description of fishers, the people who are on the sea and doing the work and touching the fish and doing the fishing. The committee feels that that type of a fishery is going to be sustainable and it is going to be user friendly. It will also provide healthy communities, happy families and a livelihood that people have an assurance of, and I think some future for the younger fishermen that we hope to engage at another time.
On behalf of the committee, I should like to extend our thanks to you for coming from so many parts of the country, to bring your expertise and firsthand knowledge to our committee. It has been most helpful. We can only wish you the best in the work that you are doing, and certainly be very thankful for the help that you are extending to us. It is your position that we are very interested in.
I thank you again. Enjoy your stay in Ottawa, but do have a good trip back home. Say hello to all the islanders for me, Mr. Paugh.
The committee continued in camera.