THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, May 2, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 9:04 a.m. [ET] to study the federal government’s current and evolving policy framework for managing Canada’s fisheries and oceans including maritime safety; and, in camera, for the consideration of a draft agenda (future business).
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
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Honourable senators, good morning. My name is Fabian Manning, senator from Newfoundland and Labrador. I have the pleasure of chairing the meeting this morning.
Today, we are conducting a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to me or the clerk, and we will work to resolve the issue.
Before we begin, I would like to take a few moments to allow the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator Kutcher: Stan Kutcher, Nova Scotia.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy, and I’m also from Nova Scotia.
Senator Ravalia: Good morning and welcome. Mohamed Ravalia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Cuzner: Rodger Cuzner from Nova Scotia.
Senator Petten: Iris Petten, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Busson: Bev Busson from British Columbia.
The Chair: On February 10, 2022, the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans was authorized to study the federal government’s current and evolving policy framework for managing Canada’s fisheries and oceans. Today, under this mandate, the committee will be hearing from the following witnesses, who will be presenting their proposal for changes to Canada’s fisheries management system: Helen Forsey and Barry Darby. Welcome. On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for being here today. I understand you have some opening remarks. Following the presentation, I’m sure members of the committee will have questions for you.
The floor is yours.
Helen Forsey, Changing Course, as an individual: Thank you so much for inviting us to appear here today to talk to you about the federal government’s current and evolving policy framework for managing Canada’s fisheries. Having met in the past with a number of this committee’s honourable senators, it is a special pleasure for us to continue the discussion now with the full committee.
As you will know from reading our brief, we’re here to offer a proposal and rationale for a major change of course in Canada’s fisheries management system. With so many long-standing and seemingly intractable economic, ecological and social problems in our fisheries, we see an urgent need for a paradigm shift in the basis that this policy is built on. We propose a shift from the current quota-based framework — which focuses on the amount of fish caught — to a system based on the fishing effort put into getting that catch.
I will take a moment’s digression for a bit of background on us. Mr. Darby and I might be considered the unpaid staff of Changing Course. Mr. Darby is originally from Burin on Newfoundland’s south coast. He is a former fish harvester, math and physics instructor, and fisheries adjustment coordinator at the College of the North Atlantic in the 1990s. Since retiring, he has been busy with research, consultation and public discussion on fishery policy, analyzing the issues and exploring the potential for a better way forward.
Five years ago, I joined him in this fishery work, contributing my skills as a professional writer and editor, as well as my background in the agricultural and environmental fields and my experience in public policy and advocacy. I have, of course, a special fondness and respect for Parliament’s upper chamber, where my father spent nine busy and productive years while I was working in international cooperation and raising my children.
Barry Darby, Changing Course, as an individual: Our research, analysis and experience have convinced us that the ongoing failure of the current management framework of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or DFO, is due to inherent flaws in its fundamental assumptions. The present output-based system — that sets total allowable catches and allocates quotas — actually fosters fishing practices that damage fish stocks, worsen climate change and destroy the marine environment.
It is also problematic in economic terms. Among other things, it often means we catch much less of the harvestable biomass than we could sustainably catch otherwise. Arbitrary regulations and the cost of quotas worsen the labour-related crisis as harvesters age out of the fishery and younger people face major barriers to entry.
Because these flaws are rooted in the nature of the output-based system and its underlying assumptions, the system cannot be fixed by piecemeal modifications. A completely different approach is needed — a better way. We propose that better way is to regulate the fishing activity — the “who, what, how, when and where” of the fishery. This input-based approach that controls the fishing effort has been continuously successful in the Newfoundland lobster fishery for almost a century, and it is compatible with many Indigenous traditions of sustainable harvesting.
Our brief and our Changing Course website point to the multiple advantages of shifting to input-based management. It improves the economic and social benefits for fish harvesters, processors, coastal communities and the nation. It provides ecological benefits for the fish and the ecosystem, and gives additional benefits to DFO itself.
Our proposed approach will integrate Indigenous traditional knowledge and ongoing local input so as to complement, expand and enhance the scientific basis, and to shift the policy emphasis to ensure a responsible and productive human role within the marine ecosystem.
Right now, we have the opportunity — and, in fact, the obligation — to discard the current year-to-year crisis management mode, and replace it with a long-term approach that will be beneficial in all dimensions of sustainability. Taken together, what we are recommending in Changing Course will transform our capability to achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability in the fisheries. Canada can seize this opportunity, and build a fishery for future generations to be proud of.
We welcome your questions and challenges, and look forward to a robust discussion today. We hope this will be the beginning of further in-depth study of these ideas by your committee. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Forsey and Mr. Darby, for taking the time to appear before our committee this morning. I look forward to our senators’ questions. We will begin with our deputy chair, Senator Busson.
Senator Busson: Thanks to both of you for being here. I know that this is your passion, and that both of you have spent a lot of time and effort bringing this message forward. We really appreciate that.
In your presentation, you used words like from “quota-based” to “effort-based,” and from “output-based” to “input-based.” Could you describe in practical terms what that would mean as far as the fisheries management?
Mr. Darby: The current system is based on how much fish are caught. The catch is an output from the operation of fishing. That has historically been how we measured how much fishing there was, going back centuries when that was the only measure we could use.
Inputs are what you do before you start fishing — how many hooks you have, how many nets, how long your net is, how big your otter trawl is, and all of these sorts of things that the harvester can arrange before they start fishing. It’s an input to the process, whereas catching is what comes out of it at the end.
The way it’s managed now is the output is set up at the beginning instead of at the end. We’re saying to take a look at what is done at the beginning, like how many hooks you have, how many nets you have and how big your otter trawl is.
Ms. Forsey: That is from a harvester’s perspective, understandably. From a manager’s perspective, the management system needs to think about not just the “how” — which is what Mr. Darby was focusing on — but also the “who.” Who has the licences? What rights does the licence give? What training and qualifications do they have? For the “how” and the “what” we talked about, is it one species that we’re focusing on for management, or is it a more ecosystem approach? The “what” deals with those things. The “when” and the “where” are the seasons and the zones. The management pretty much defines those things for the harvesters. The “how” is what the harvester looks at before they go fishing.
Senator Busson: For clarification, would there be a part of that management system that actually controls the amount of fish caught?
Ms. Forsey: Everything would continue to be recorded — the stock assessments and everything. There would be no lack of data. In fact, there would be more data because you would have an active fishery providing real-time data. How much is caught would definitely be recorded, as well as how much bycatch. Instead of bycatch being discarded at sea, it would enter into the data collection, which would help amplify the understanding of the ecosystem and everything.
The amount caught would no longer be set in advance and define how, where and when you fished. Right now, it seems as though everything has to be within the quota, or within the total allowable catch. With input-based management, it’s about the basis of the management. Right now, the output controls the final word on it. There are other elements used in the management, but the final word is the output.
Mr. Darby: To answer your question simply, there would be no limits on how much fish you could catch, or the actual number of kilograms of fish that you could catch. You would, however, be restricted to using, say, 1,000 hooks, in which case there are only so many fish you can catch with 1,000 hooks. In that sense, it limits the amount of fish, but not specifically.
Senator Busson: That answers my question. Thank you.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you to you both again. It was a pleasure to converse with you in St. John’s a while ago, and I certainly appreciated your wisdom.
I was wondering how the potential changes to monitoring and reporting requirements under the input-based system might affect the workload and operational practice of fishers. Particularly from my perspective, it’s the small-scale and independent operators in and around my region.
Mr. Darby: In some ways, there wouldn’t be a lot of differences. If each fisherman were allowed to use 200 metres of gillnet, then that would be the limiting factor rather than 1,000 pounds of fish, or 5,000 pounds, or whatever the quota was. The limit would be the amount of fishing gear that he could use. They would still go out in the morning and set their nets, their lines, their otter trawl or whatever fishing apparatus they were using, and they would catch the fish, bring it in and sell it, and it would be recorded. In many ways, it wouldn’t change the way the fishermen operate, but there would be some positive things.
I will give you a quick example. We had around, I think, a 3,000-pound weekly quota. One of the effects of that was that the fishermen would go out on Sunday or Monday morning and catch 3,000 pounds, and then for the next five or six days, he would be unemployed. The fish that gets landed — which is quality, grade A fish — then sits. The processor has to buy enough fish on Monday to last them all week, and, by Friday, that is grade B. We lose quality because of the DFO policy.
Senator Ravalia: Do you think there is an element of safety in all of this as well? I know that certain DFO regulations force people to go out and get the gillnets within a certain time frame. Would your vision potentially impact safety issues?
Mr. Darby: I wouldn’t want to say it’s a be-all and end-all solution. Since fishermen would be under input-based management, they would be able to go fishing every day. Maybe the week would only be a five-day week; I don’t know. A six‑day week is the way we did it years ago because nobody fished on the Sabbath, right? You could make that part of your regulation.
Knowing you were going out tomorrow, if it was stormy on Tuesday, then you wait until tomorrow and go out. I think it would enhance safety.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you very much.
Senator Petten: Good morning. Nice to see you both again.
You stated that the precautionary approach that DFO takes to fisheries management is not protecting the ecosystem and is not maximizing benefits for the harvesters of local coastal communities. If this is the case, why do you believe they are still using that approach? Why is DFO still using that approach?
Mr. Darby: I’m not sure. I think there is enough evidence to show that it should have been changed a long time ago. My own personal opinion is the following: First, it’s because DFO is a bureaucracy, and it doesn’t have within it the ability to change readily. That’s the nature of bureaucracy. I worked in one for 32 years.
The second is that when we first started measuring fishing — maybe 200 years ago — the only data that we had available for us was landings. Nobody knew how many people were fishing, or how many lines were used. The reason we’re using quota today is because we used it yesterday, and the day before, all the way back to 200 years ago when that was the only thing we had. We are saying this is 2024; let’s change.
Senator Petten: You have pointed to the northern cod fishery collapse as an example of DFO not approaching fisheries management correctly. Do you think there is a larger issue with how DFO collects data and how they use that data?
We have heard in other committee meetings that DFO seems to struggle with utilizing existing data, such as Indigenous traditional knowledge, which you mentioned, when deciding to list animals as a species at risk, for example. In your opinion, is DFO able — with their current tools and funding, et cetera — to make well-informed data-driven decisions?
Mr. Darby: The policy and practice are like a virtuous circle. One drives the other. If we practise fishing by quota, then the policies will tend to be written to accomplish that. If we say that the fishery is going to be driven by the inputs, then fisheries managers will look at that data — other data — in order to determine how many nets would be used or how many fishermen would be fishing in this area. The feedback from that fishing will inform any changes that might occur in the following year. I don’t know if that focused on your question?
Ms. Forsey: I wanted to mention this in regard to your first question about the “precautionary approach framework”: I’m a word person and notice how words are used sometimes very correctly and sometimes for spin, and I think that calling it “precautionary” — because there is definitely an element of precaution in it — is partly a sales gimmick. I’m sorry; I’m being a little too blunt there.
If you say you use a precautionary approach framework, how can there be anything wrong with that? But the thing is, is it really precautionary? And would something else be more precautionary or equally precautionary and have other advantages? We’re talking about a better way. We’re not talking about a perfect way, or saying what we have now is all bad. Because the output-based approach is so widely used — the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization sets quotas and that sort of thing — it fits well with an existing system.
Regarding your second question, we have also written about how the science that gets done — Mr. Darby alluded to this — is driven by the goal or task that is set by the system. If the system is to limit the amount of fish caught, then the science will explore those aspects more.
But there is such a range of inputs, and if it pays more attention to the inputs, then more of the things that a lot of academics study — for example, hyperallometry, where the big, old, fecund female fish produce proportionally more healthy offspring than the same biomass of smaller fish — would be more taken into account in terms of setting the kind of input elements that Mr. Darby was talking about, such as mesh sizes, number of hooks, method of fishing, et cetera.
I guess you also asked if DFO is able to make appropriate decisions on this basis. I would say it’s not as appropriate as it would be under another system.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you very much for being here with us. I have about 27 questions. Can I do them all during the first round? Okay. I’ll do my best.
I want to apologize first before I ask my questions. I’m not an expert in this area of input-based management production systems at all, but I did some reading on it, so it makes me an expert immediately. Please don’t take anything I say as truth on this particular issue, but what you are addressing is really important, and I think our committee should hear from people who are experts in input-based management systems.
If you look at a production system, you have input-based management and you have output-based management, and there are huge differences in how production systems work on those bases. Input-based management has been around in production systems, such as agriculture, if I understand correctly, since the 1980s. Are you aware of any models or examples that have been useful in other fields, such as agriculture — which you could share with us — that might utilize this kind of approach? What were the strengths and weaknesses? What were the errors and mistakes that happened in those models?
Mr. Darby: An example from a non-fisheries area?
Ms. Forsey: From a non-fisheries area? Sorry.
Senator Kutcher: I’ll come to the fisheries next. It’s okay.
Mr. Darby: No, I do not remember asking ourselves that question.
Senator Kutcher: Fair enough. Let me move on to the other one.
Ms. Forsey: I think in forestry there are examples. I haven’t read any of the academic literature or anything on forestry.
Senator Kutcher: Neither have I.
Ms. Forsey: I learned a lot from the forest management advisory committee that I sat on in Ontario for 20 years, but I’ve forgotten a lot of it too.
Is the type of machinery specified? No, but the seasons, the things to avoid — I’m just thinking of seasons and zones. The zones are very well defined in terms of what the dominant species is, so, in a way, it’s partly input-based management. It’s also definitely output-based management.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that. Are you aware if the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, an important world body, has been looking at this issue? Have you had an opportunity to discuss it with them? If so, what has been the outcome of that?
Mr. Darby: I’m not sure I can answer again. The use of input-based management is not very prevalent worldwide. Our best example that we use in our brief is the lobster fishery. With one exception, it has been managed without quotas, because in some ways, another name for input-based management is “no quota management,” and that’s how we manage our lobster.
I’ll make use of our one visual that we brought out. The lobster fishery had no quota on it, and it’s been managed successfully for quite a while. My family had a long history with lobsters, and, in 1923, because there was no regulation, the fishery was closed because of commercial failure — they had fished it out — for three years. In 1927, they reopened the fishery with a set of policies that has resulted in nearly 100 years of successful harvesting.
This is the 1927 book that was passed out — all four pages of it. In the four pages, it also talks about how the processing has to be done as well, so only some of it is on harvesting. It perhaps gives you a sense of how simple input-based management could be, and also be successful.
That’s probably our best example of good input-based management.
Ms. Forsey: Another thing is that the fisheries management guidebook of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or FAO, has an entire chapter on input-based management and an entire chapter on output-based management. It compares them and talks about some of the pros and cons of both.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that, because I’m aware of that.
New Zealand, Iceland and Norway, who did some really interesting research before 2020, have been identified as having some of the best fisheries — the most sustainable globally. Do any of those countries use a combination of input-based and output-based management processing? Do you know?
Mr. Darby: The inshore fishermen in Iceland actually took the Icelandic government to court a few years ago. I’m loose on the details — I’m not sure exactly how. However, the courts ruled that fishermen in the inshore fishery were allowed to catch fish as much as they could, or they could go fishing every day using automated handlines, and they were capped off at — I think — 600 kilograms of fish per day during a three-month or four-month season. As a result, they catch high-quality fish, they make good money, and there’s no bycatch and no wastage, and also the fish get landed every day, so they’re very fresh and it contributes to Iceland’s reputation as having high-class seafood.
The details of how it got there had to do with the fishermen challenging the government in court and winning. I don’t know the details exactly, but this was maybe a decade or so ago.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you very much. I’ll give up on my next 23 questions, if that’s okay.
The Chair: You were going to be giving up on it anyway.
Senator Cordy: You just have to look at the chair and get “the look.” I used to be a teacher. All teachers have “the look.”
Thank you for being here. Your paper is excellent, and I was struck by your quote from Thomas Hardy, who said, “If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.” I think that is so true. If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up somewhere else. It’s really interesting to look at the input and output, and I think how you described it is really good.
The fisheries have made some decisions that are not working. An example would certainly be the cod moratorium in 1992. Here we are, over 30 years later, and the cod stocks have not gone back. So what is wrong? How do we look at that, and how do we deal with those kinds of decisions that have been made? Nobody wants the cod stocks depleted, or anything else depleted, so how do we do that?
An example of a decision that was made recently is related to the elvers. We know that those who were fishing legally have been punished. The decision was made a week or less than a week — I think — before the season opened, so that left the elver fishers with this: What do you do? Yet, from what I’ve been reading, there are elver shipments leaving Canada and being shipped to Asia. Therefore, the legal elver fishers have been punished, and the illegal elver fishers are being rewarded by having their shipments go to Asia.
How do we square the circle?
Mr. Darby: The elvers, some of the alewife and the salmon, for example, are fish that go from fresh water to salt water. This is not an area we focused on very much, so the only point I could make is that, under input-based management, the plan for the coming year would be announced in detail by the end of December of the previous year so that people would know what was going to happen, when they were going to go fishing and what they were going to fish for — and to choose, maybe, what they were going to go fishing for. Fish plants could gear up for it and so on.
Today, we’re waiting. Here, it is now May 2. When I was growing up, people would have been fishing for perhaps a month or more already this year, and we’re waiting for news from DFO as to what the fishery is going to be. We don’t know yet. This means you get no advance notice, and it takes weeks to get ready. Sometimes fish plants even get built.
This is a major flaw in quota-based management. It is all announced at the last minute, and you’re supposed to be ready. It takes a while to restructure a boat. These are all major problems with input-based management that we haven’t gone into a lot of detail about, but it’s a major problem.
I don’t know if that covers off your question.
Senator Cordy: We did hear from an American official about a problem they had with illegal fishery or overfishing — any of those kinds of things. They really cracked down on it, so you wouldn’t have — I’ll use the elvers, because that was the most recent example I can think of — illegally fished elvers being shipped out. They have really made significant gains in terms of that. Are we doing enough on that?
Mr. Darby: Again, I’m not very familiar or up on this sort of thing. But the problem has more to do with how they’re caught, when they’re caught and what is restricted. The fish are coming up a narrow river, and it’s not that hard to block it off. Back then, we stopped fishing. When I was a youngster, there were limits on where we could set salmon nets around salmon rivers. We knew back then that you couldn’t fish in front of a river for salmon because that would destroy the salmon stock, so that’s a particular thing.
On the export management, I don’t think that’s the best way to go for managing the fishery. I mean, I’m not saying that we don’t need rules about exporting goods and all that, but, as a management tool, I would stick to the tools that a harvester can use in catching and managing the fish — the actual fishery.
Do you want to add anything to that, Ms. Forsey?
Ms. Forsey: Again, it’s for a harvester, but also the tools the managers can use for setting the policies and the rules for the seasons, the zones and the licences. How many licences for what time and what place, and for which species or which combination of species? It’s tools for managing as well as for fishing.
Senator Cuzner: Thank you very much. I consider Senator Kutcher to be a bit of a mentor, so if he says he doesn’t know anything about this, you can be certain that I know less.
I’d like to get back to the lobster because if there’s anything that is sustaining the sector now, it’s lobster and crab, and both have limits in gear. There are 250 traps for lobster and 30 traps for crab, so we’re seeing success.
I think the other thing that has brought some success, and has been able to sustain those sectors, is that they’ve allowed core, core-adjacent, non-core and non-adjacent access to the share in some of the wealth of the lobster so that they were able to share in the crab to take some effort off of the lobster, which paid huge dividends. We’ve seen that they were able to increase the carapace size because of that — because they have other sources of income. We’ve seen success. What you’re sharing with us today is a shift in the paradigm, without question, but it’s an interesting shift. When you look at the successful fisheries, you can make the case, I think.
Let me ask you this, though: To use a new bureaucratic buzzword, have you socialized your paper with the bureaucrats and with those in the industry: the fishermen, the harvesters and the processors?
Mr. Darby: That has been difficult. Some people haven’t been talking to us. I have a meeting scheduled with two officials from DFO in St. John’s next week, and I have a feeler out to try to meet with the provincial department of fisheries, which I hope will be successful in due course.
We’ve attended a lot of conferences and online meetings, and that sort of thing, and we’ve written papers in the Navigator Magazine and other magazines. In a sense, what we’re doing here is perhaps the first opportunity we’ve had for serious input with recorded sessions, where it gets said. In that sense, we’re really grateful to the Senate committee for doing this because, in a way, after five years at it, this is the first time. We sent off our initial submission to Jonathan Wilkinson, the then-Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard. That was four ministers ago. A year later, we got back a polite “thank you.” That was it.
It’s been a slow slog. I don’t know if that answers all your thoughts.
Ms. Forsey: One more thing: For the meeting with DFO that has now been arranged, I think it may be partly thanks to the fact that we were invited here. When Mr. Darby was talking to the person doing the arrangements, he mentioned in passing that on May 2, we would be away because we’ve been invited to appear before the Senate Fisheries and Oceans Committee.
We had written to the regional director of DFO for Newfoundland and Labrador, and got a note back from a lower level saying, “Sorry, we can’t meet with you,” even at the lower level, so then we actually wrote back. There seems to be sort of a firewall around DFO in St. John’s, anyway. It’s very hard. Also, it’s hard to get through to anybody in the minister’s office. There’s one phone number and they don’t take messages. You send letters, and it takes a year for them to get back to you. We have tried and looked up names and talked to people whom we were introduced to at one point or another, and then they’re not there anymore.
Mr. Darby: I would reiterate the fact that it is a bureaucracy, and there are things about bureaucracies that encourage that inability to change.
Senator Cuzner: If I can close with one point, the area that I represent is pretty much an inshore fishery, for the most part, and it long sustained a hook and line fishery. With the way things had evolved, certainly through the 1970s and the 1980s, and with the mistakes that had been made with high grading and the dragging and disruption of the ocean bottom, there were a lot of mistakes made in policy development back then. I think that it takes a lot of work and a lot of focus to right those wrongs.
Anyway, it’s an interesting concept, and I look forward to learning more.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you for being here. My apologies for coming in a little bit late.
I wanted to pick up on the question that Senator Cuzner posed. You responded in telling us about your interactions with the federal fisheries ministers and officials. My question is about organizations and associations connected to the fishery and fishers.
You have your own organization. As I understand it, you first released your paper in 2019. I wonder if you could just give us a sense of the growing support you may be seeing among those who are directly engaged in various fisheries.
Mr. Darby: Generally speaking, if we are able to talk to people one-on-one or in small groups, where we have time to fully explain, as we are doing here, then responses are often surprising but often positive.
To expect people who are ingrained in quota-based management — and it’s really ingrained in everyone’s thinking, from the unions to the harvesters, to the fish plant owners, to the general public, to government officials. Everyone thinks about managing the fishery by setting the quota. That shift — which we call a paradigm shift — is difficult to do.
I can speak almost personally. I started this with some seriousness about a decade ago, and it was a while before it hit in my head that the fishing quota — the measure using quota — is not a measure of fishing. Like everyone else, I measured how much fishing there was by how much was landed, and it was a natural conclusion that, therefore, we should set how much we should catch. It’s a natural process of thinking.
All of a sudden, something sort of twisted in my head, and now when I think about fishing, I’ve got to remember that’s not catching; that’s not kilograms. That’s number of hooks or the number of nets. That’s a mindset that is not there yet in harvesters and fish plant owners. Fishing is so many kilograms, and it isn’t.
Senator McPhedran: If I can follow up, in these conversations that you’ve been having with associations and individuals who are directly involved in fisheries, has anyone signed on to your policy proposal?
Mr. Darby: I’ve had some interesting conversations. I was talking to a fishing captain in Nova Scotia two years ago, I guess, and I had a conversation with him after he had gone over my proposal. He said, “That’s interesting. Couldn’t be any worse than what they’re doing.”
So that’s feedback, right? But there was no process of follow-up for that. Besides, we study policy. Policy is what government sets. If the policy remains the same even if people have a different mindset, it doesn’t change. If you change the policy, you’ll change the practice. You can leave the policy like it is, but then the old definition of insanity applies. You’ve pinpointed a major challenge.
The Chair: I want to follow up on Senator McPhedran’s question. I talked to some people in the harvesting sector in my area about your proposal, which we’ve met about and discussed in the past. In today’s fishery, the quota system gives a value to the enterprise. A harvester has 100,000 pounds of crab to catch, which he or she carries from year to year, and it creates a value for his or her enterprise. Years ago, when I was growing up in my hometown, a fishing licence was $25 or $30, renewable to DFO. Today’s enterprise may be worth $1 million or $2 million because of the quota system. When I talk to harvesters, they tell me that gives them stability, because they know what the value of their enterprise is.
How do you sell your idea of what you’re putting forward — and I understand where you’re coming from with regard to the management of the fishery — to somebody who has an enterprise today valued at X amount of dollars because of their quota? If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that we don’t have quotas with your proposed system. Does the value of the enterprise then go down to $25 or $30 again? If that’s the case, you’ll have a very difficult job selling that. I hope you understand what I’m trying to say here.
Mr. Darby: We’ve talked about this quite considerably among ourselves, and you can’t economically break an egg. There is going to be change, and change will affect different people.
I think people could be — I don’t know if “negatively” is the right word — affected negatively in the sense of their idea of what it is. But if you have a fishing boat, and right now you can catch 50,000 pounds of crab, that’s a quota. If, in the future, you’re able to go out and fish with a crew of five, and fish with 60 pots per person — 360 pots — and you can fish for four months, that will enable you to catch just as much crab, or more, than you could under your quota system.
In fact, if the crab are more plentiful than what DFO is estimating, you’ll actually catch more, which is a good thing. If there are less crab out there than what DFO predicted, you may catch a bit less, but that’s good for the stock and is more likely to be sustainable.
I don’t think the harvesters will lose any money in the process. What they will perhaps not have is the ability to go to the bank and say, “I have a quota; therefore, I can borrow a million dollars to build a million-dollar boat.” Then, maybe they’ll have to build a half-million-dollar boat to do the same thing, which — again — is good for the fishery. I’m making this up — obviously — because we are talking about the future, which I find unpredictable. Does that answer your question?
The Chair: I’m just wondering because it’s an issue that has been raised with me.
Ms. Forsey: I have an agricultural background. One of the big problems with supply management in agriculture is the quota for milk or eggs has a market price; it’s on the market. The result is that when a dairy farmer retires, their retirement income is from selling their quota. Years ago, when the system was being established, the National Farmers Union advised a non‑marketable quota. Unfortunately, the mistake was made, and now the marketable quota keeps a lot of younger people out of the dairy and poultry industries.
I recognize that as a problem, to the extent that it applies. I think that it doesn’t apply to as many harvesters as it does farmers because, as Mr. Darby was pointing out to me, for the ones who have a large quota, there will have to be some kind of set-up to deal with that — some sort of just transition, and some kind of compensation, to deal with the people, who may not be that many, who will lose a lot. It’s not so much when they’re still fishing as what they have to carry on or pass on.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Petten: I’m trying to make sure that I understand. DFO would still play a role — obviously — because they, or someone, would have to collect the data. You’re saying that this would be a different way of managing it, so they would still be doing it, and you will still have the data collection and all of that. I feel like I understand how this could work on a small scale — as you said — with cod, lobster and smaller fishers and amounts, but I’m wondering about it. This year, for example, in Newfoundland and Labrador, the snow crab quota is 57,000 tons, which is a lot, and they’re going farther offshore, and the larger fleet is going outside the 200-mile limit. That’s a different process, a different vessel and different things, and I’m just wondering how it would work with other fisheries to apply what you’re saying under the cod — what had happened from years ago — because, in some senses, they’ve graduated from that to becoming involved in other things. I’m wondering if you could possibly go to Port de Grave with me when you explain this to them.
Mr. Darby: I’m sure the initial reaction could be quite negative. I think that would be true. But my suspicion — and this is one of the flaws in quota-based management — is that we underfish quite a bit. In the case of cod, for example, they’ve just changed the limit reference point from 850 down to 315, and I did calculations on what we lost by fishing under the new regulations. I estimated that we lost a billion dollars in the last seven years in lost catches in cod alone in 2J3KL.
My suspicion is — and I can’t prove it — that we’re underfishing crab right now, and if we had an effort-based management system, we could catch more crab than we’re catching. Anecdotally, for lobster — another crustacean — we catch around 80% to 90% of the fishable biomass every year. For crab, we catch less than 30%. That’s fishing by effort. If we were to fish crab by effort, could we catch twice as much? If we caught twice as much, everyone would make twice as much money, and your people in Port de Grave would love to catch more crab and make more money. There’s a sales argument to be made, but it’s nuanced. Does that help?
Senator Petten: I’m trying to understand. Do you still see DFO collecting the data? Are you just looking at a different approach about how they do it?
Mr. Darby: That’s a good point because they didn’t have surveys to know how much crab was out there. They said they improvised by using crab fishermen’s data to determine it last year — didn’t they? So they would do more of that going forward.
Ms. Forsey: The other thing is that one of our recommendations is for even better, broader and deeper data collection, especially utilizing and bringing up-to-date technology that is available now for data collection and analytics. You would have more immediate feedback and more real-time responses.
Senator Busson: You caught my attention when you talked about how your system would deal with bycatch, because I think that’s one of the real shames in the way that fishing happens now. There is so much bycatch wasted in the system, as it now is applied to the commercial fishery. Can you explain to me how your system has a better outcome when it comes to bycatch? You suggested that, and I would like to understand it.
Mr. Darby: I’ll try to make it quick. Our recommendation is that all dead bycatch should be landed. Right now, it’s not being landed if it’s low grade — people high grade. I was talking to a halibut fisherman in Little Harbour — in Little Port — two years ago. They were throwing back the big ones. They only had a 1,700-pound quota, and big ones were a dollar less per pound, so by throwing back the big ones, they made an extra $1,700. Under effort-based management, you can keep all your catch.
Senator Busson: How would that affect endangered species?
Mr. Darby: You get into being selective here. If you fish halibut, you will catch mainly halibut. Then, you can flick them off alive. If you use pots and traps, then it’s easy enough to live release fish. If you haul a gillnet and 90% of your fish are dead, whatever that fish is, if it’s not the fish you want either in price or in species, then you’re going to throw it back in the ocean.
Senator Busson: I get it. Thank you so much.
Senator Kutcher: Mr. Darby, you mentioned a paradigm shift, which is an important issue in the scientific structure. It’s when available data doesn’t support the dominant explanatory model. The challenge that I see, and would love to understand, is this: In your three-legged stool, which I love as the metaphor, what data do you have that shows when changing — I agree with you that the way we do it now is not optimal at all — to a different approach in each of those three areas, this will happen?
Mr. Darby: What we’re doing is saying, “Here are two frameworks, and here are the flaws” — I heard the quote you mentioned. On balance, which one is better? I’m not sure, unless we focused on a particular thing. There may be a few things where quota-based management has some advantages, but when you take it all together, the balance is that input-based management is much better overall than quota-based management.
Ms. Forsey: We would love to have the data that you’re asking for. We’re hoping that, thanks to the Senate’s influence, within a few years, while we’re still alive, we’ll have some data to show you that a good decision has been made.
One thing that we did talk about was somehow taking advantage of the fact that 2J3KL has had very little fishing and no big-time industrial fishing for a long time now. It’s almost an opportunity to start in that area with groundfish on a trial basis. You might call it “sandboxing” — I think that’s a term that is used these days — and see how that would work in 2J3KL to safely deal with the groundfish now that we have more or less a clean slate to start with. Then, you would have some data along the lines you’re asking about.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Forsey and Mr. Darby, for a very interesting discussion. I am delighted that we had the opportunity to give you the opportunity to present here this morning.
Senators, the second item on today’s agenda is a discussion on future business. I suggest the committee proceeds in camera for this consideration. Are there any objections to proceeding in camera? Seeing none, we all agree; I like that. We’ll now continue our meeting in camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)