[English]
EVIDENCE
[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, October 23, 1997
• 0900
[English]
The Chairman (Mr. George S. Baker (Gander—Grand Falls, Lib.)): Order.
Our order of reference today is, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), consideration of The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy, TAGS, relating to chapter 16 of the report of the Auditor General of Canada, October 1997.
We have witnesses present via our television screen from St. John's, Newfoundland. We have Mr. Joe Edwards, who is president of the Local Fisheries Association in Lawn, Newfoundland; Mr. Edgar Jarvis, who's president of the Local Fisheries Association in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland; and Mr. James Everard, who is the president of the HELP group in Newfoundland.
I wonder, gentlemen, if we could take five minutes in the beginning to hear from Mr. Everard and then devote the rest of the period to Mr. Edwards and Mr. Jarvis.
Jim, could you describe your association and what you wish to do here today?
Mr. Jim Everard (President, HELP): Basically we are an association that has formed together because we had feedback from the people in the community that they weren't being represented by the people in power who were put in place to represent them concerning the TAGS program. They figured they were falling through the cracks when it came to income support and everything else. They banded together as a group, and we put together a petition to have a public inquiry into the spending of the TAGS money.
The Chairman: The spending of the TAGS money you're referring to is a list that you forwarded to the committee through the chair. Is that correct, Jim?
Mr. Jim Everard: That's right, yes.
The Chairman: Do you have with you now a copy of a petition saying you want the Auditor General to investigate these expenditures?
Mr. Jim Everard: Yes, I have a petition here with 1,804 names on it. It's signed by individuals from all over rural Newfoundland. The question they're asking is will this committee and will the Auditor General order a complete public investigation into the TAGS funding?
The Chairman: And if we understand you correctly, Mr. Everard, the reason you want this investigation is that nobody knows what these expenditures are. Is that correct?
Mr. Jim Everard: That is correct. Nobody seems to know exactly where this money has gone, who has this money, or what the money was used for. Therefore the federal government, and particularly the Auditor General, owe the people of rural Newfoundland and all of Atlantic Canada an explanation as to where this money has gone. I believe the only way he can do that legitimately is through a full public inquiry.
The Chairman: Do you have anything else to add to that, Mr. Everard, before we continue with the other witnesses?
Mr. Jim Everard: To anybody who is considering this petition of ours, instead of putting dollars and cents to this, think of the lives of the people in rural Newfoundland. Think of the names and the faces of the people who are totally devastated because of this cod moratorium and who have, as I said before, fallen through the cracks and lost everything they were in possession of before the cod moratorium. They have lost it. Their whole lives have been torn apart.
Everything you hear seems to come down to dollars and cents. Well, if it's down to dollars and cents, let somebody tell us exactly where these dollars and cents went, because it has totally and horribly destroyed the lives of hundreds and thousands of Newfoundlanders.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Everard.
We do have a motion before the committee regarding this from Mr. Matthews. We discussed it in our steering committee and there appears to be general agreement. The Auditor General told us yesterday that he was ready and willing to conduct such an audit. Those in favour of the motion put forward by Mr. Matthews that we request the Auditor General to do an audit of these items outlined by this group and conduct an investigation?
(Motion agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]
The Chairman: We have the letter already done, I think, Mr. Clerk, and waiting to be sent, so that will be forwarded to the Auditor General immediately.
Thank you very much, Mr. Everard.
Mr. Jim Everard: Mr. Chairman, could I ask you one question? When you're talking about an audit, are you going into the full public inquiry? Is this your intent, or is it just an in-house audit?
• 0905
The Chairman: No, Mr. Everard, this would be a request to the Auditor General to take the list that you have supplied and any other expenditures that were made similar to that, to conduct an investigation into those expenditures, and to report back to the committee, which is a public forum, on where these expenditures went, his estimation of what these expenditures were, and his recommendations concerning the same.
Mr. Jim Everard: Thank you very much, Mr. Baker.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Everard.
Now we continue with the other two witnesses: Mr. Joe Edwards, president of the Local Fisheries Association in Lawn; and Mr. Edgar Jarvis, president of the Local Fisheries Association in St. Lawrence.
Gentlemen, would you like to say a few words at the opening?
Mr. Joe Edwards (President, Local Fisheries Association (Lawn, Newfoundland)): Yes, George.
I took exception at the beginning to the Auditor General's report, the way it came out in the news media and whatnot, because we've had too many people in government departments telling us how we should fish our different aspects of the fishery, and I didn't think we needed another government department to define for us what we should or should not be able to do when the fishery recovers in our own province.
I think he misinterpreted his own role or mandate in regard to the success or failure of the TAGS program, because in the minds of the fishermen and plant workers who qualified for benefits, this program was to replace income lost. It wasn't to try to downsize the fishery.
As far as we're concerned, the moratorium was declared because the fish stocks were going down and in terribly bad shape. The people who are affected by this believe, me included, that the fish stocks are going to rebuild, and when they do, the people who worked in the industry should be able to continue working in the industry and see that it's managed properly to the benefit of the people in the province.
What I'm seeing here from the Auditor General's report, particularly chapter 16, in the last day or so—and we only had a day or two for both of us to study it.... Right from the beginning—I won't swear, but I feel like swearing—this was promoted by the bureaucrats in the HRD and the DFO as a way to exile three-quarters of the people in Newfoundland, to drive them out of the province and force them to go to work at the lowest wage, because we're not trained to go to Ontario or British Columbia or anywhere and demand big salaries.
It was shocking, because I was part of this as a member of the union and as a fisherman, and in the beginning, this was never told to us: “Look, we're going to give you some money for a year or two, but then we're going to force you to leave and forget all about your attachment to the province or to the fishery or anything else”. The way I'm reading it is that when the bureaucrats at HRD made up their minds to do this, there was no sympathy, no nothing; it was just they had a mandate and they were going to proceed and push people right out of it altogether, right out of the province.
It reminds me very much.... I've read a little bit about the way the U.S.S.R., back in the 1930s, took over the farms and everything else. I'm telling you something: when you get into this and look at it pretty hard, it doesn't appear to me that our government has acted very much differently from the way the Russians did back in the 1930s, to try to force their people to give up their farms and everything else.
I'll say another point now. There are other people here. I have a few points here, and if you have some questions, we may be able to cover them.
Another thing I've seen in this is we've had an awful lot of people who were wiped out completely, their hopes and everything else, and didn't get covered by this program, because the people in the different government departments had this mandate to downsize the fishery by 50%.
If it were only one department—probably more than they should have employed—if this were the Department of National Defence, give them a few bullets and let them shoot us.
We see the arrogance of the HRD in the response they gave to the Auditor General: there may be some sympathy to the fact that this was a bit of a rushed program. I'm going to tell you something; if anyone thinks the HRD just turned around and passed out that money without asking very many questions, they should come down to this end of it and see what we went through to try to prove we were qualified and everything else.
• 0910
It was an awful shock to us, Edgar and myself,
to realize in the last
day or two that right from the beginning
that role was there. Just get rid of those people.
They're too much of a drag on the department of UIC or
all this kind of stuff. That's basically what it
boiled down to. There was no consideration for the
fact that the reason we were so dependent on UI
in the past 25 years was that our fish stocks were
systematically being wiped out by foreign and our own
draggers and every other company in the world and we were
getting the blame for it, that we're
not good stewards or whatever.
There are an awful lot of questions here. For example, in one section of his report he says the rules for TAGS as applied in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia or Quebec were different from what they were in Newfoundland. Too many people are getting hurt under this program for that kind of stuff to be tolerated, as far as I can see.
I think that's all. I'll leave this for now, because Edgar will want to say a few words. If you have time for some questions, maybe we can get a chance to get a few shots at the other things we're concerned about here.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Edwards. We certainly do have time to question you, sir, and we will in a moment.
Mr. Edgar Jarvis, who is president of the Local Fisheries Association, St. Lawrence, Newfoundland. Mr. Jarvis.
Mr. Edgar Jarvis (President, Local Fisheries Association (St. Lawrence, Newfoundland)): Yes, Mr. Baker, like my colleague, Joseph Edwards, when I read that report I don't think the Auditor General was trying to criticize the way the TAGS program worked out. The people who were wrong were the people who designed that program in the first place. For the life of me, I can't see how people could sit down in Ottawa, particularly our own member, the Minister of Fisheries at the time, who is now premier of this province, and design a program that actually said we're going to downsize that industry in Newfoundland, which is all Newfoundland is based on, the fishery.... The main part of that funding...I think up to about 30% was all they had geared towards compensation for the people who were displaced by the downsizing of the cod stocks. I thought it was horrendous to say that is all the money they were going to earmark for that to retrain people and put them out of the industry.
It's almost amusing, when you come to size it up. The only thing they forgot to do in all their planning was to design industries for people to work in. If they had said they were going to use their power or influence to take 10% or 15% of the manufacturing industry out of Ontario and Quebec, or central Canada, and move it to Newfoundland, there would be some sense behind the design of this program, but basically what they were doing was saying they were going to drop the fishery of Newfoundland. What they were going to do with the people.... As Joe alluded to earlier, maybe they could have done what the Nazis tried to do with the Jews back in the Second World War: do away them. It's sickening and hurtful when you think about what people had in their minds when they designed this program.
To get back to the program itself, there were a lot of faults with that program. As far as income support goes, the way it was designed based on the unemployment insurance benefits you had received in the past, or a percentage of that, you had some families who had quite adequate support or income and you had other families who had very little or who got none at all. I think that was designed very poorly.
The retirement part of the package was a disaster. The people who designed it offered people a pittance, very small amounts of money. Unless you were close to 60 and your Canada pension benefits would kick in, you had basically nothing to live on.
The buyout for reducing capacity was a joke, because they spent $80 million or $90 million to reduce capacity. They bought out the licences but they left the boats and the gear there and they are still fishing today. I think that was a joke.
As for the responsibility of this country, Canada, and people saying this program had to be designed very fast because it came on them without warning, to me that's ridiculous. Since the early 1980s I myself, Joe Edwards, and people involved in the fishery have been going around preaching to managers and to politicians that something is happening out there, our stocks are being devastated, and if you don't put on the brakes and slow this down now we're all going to end up in a bad mess. We can see the results of that today.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Jarvis.
Now we'll go to questions from our committee. We go to Mr. Bill Matthews, from Newfoundland.
Mr. Bill Matthews (Burin—St. George's, PC): Good morning, gentlemen.
• 0915
Having met with you a week or so ago, I'm
just wondering. We're talking about a fishery of the
future, and we're very concerned about what's
going to follow TAGS. In our area of the province, in
the southern zones particularly, there have been some
encouraging signs in the last while. We have had a
limited commercial fishery. I'm just wondering if
perhaps you could relay to the committee what your
thoughts are on how we should pursue and get back into
that fishery and what your role should be in
having input into the fishery of the future.
You've just said that for years you warned that things were getting bad and the stocks were declining, but no one listened to you. I'm just wondering now, Edgar and Joe, if you feel as if you're being listened to today as we approach the fishery of the future. I'd just like to have your reaction to that.
Mr. Edgar Jarvis: From my own personal experience—that's all I can base this on if you're talking about the health of a stock and what should be done with it right now—from the fishermen's point of view in our area we still feel that the scientists are not being held accountable in another way. They are saying now that the stocks haven't recovered, and our question would be, what point do they want them to recover to? Is it 1,000 tonnes, 10,000 tonnes, 200,000 tonnes, 300,000 tonnes? Nobody seems to be able to put a figure on that.
As far as our old fishing activities go, we see right now, from the small bits of the test fishing that we're doing, catch rates way higher than I've seen in my lifetime of fishing since 1978. Based on what we've seen of catch rates, it might sound foolish but right now there's too much fish being caught and too fast to have a regulated fishery. Our catch rates are too high to have a regulated fishery.
An example I can give you, based on a 40,000 pound quota, which was something that we originally had before the moratorium, is that our inshore part of that, our fixed-gear part, would be around 25,000 to 28,000 pounds. It took us around 12 months to catch that. I think the average used to be around 22,500 pounds. Based on one-quarter of that quota being issued this year and with our catch rates, we've got seven days of fishing. Multiply that by four, and if it was the full quota you'd have 28 days of fishing.
Before 1992 it took us 12 months to catch that amount of fish. So, based on that, we're saying there are more fish there now than we've ever seen.
I don't know what the target figure is for the health of the stock, how big it should be. Nobody can come out and tell us that.
Mr. Bill Matthews: Edgar or Joe, what would be your recommendations? We've been preoccupied here for the last number of weeks with what may follow TAGS and what components should make up TAGS 2, or son of TAGS, or whatever people are going to call it. What are your suggestions as to what the new program should entail? Could you give us some guidance on that for members of the committee?
Mr. Joe Edwards: All I've heard from anyone so far is more retirement or licence buyout. Based on what has happened so far with that, in his report the Auditor General says there are only 333 people—I presume that's in the whole of Atlantic Canada—who took advantage of the early retirement.
I applied for the early retirement program myself. I was at the age to apply for it. When I got down to the nitty-gritty of it—and I did work on behalf of several other fishermen roughly my own age—the money that you would get based on whatever kind of formula they had, based on unemployment insurance receipts or whatever, was a very small bit better than welfare.
Here's a man, say 55 years old, and he's got at least ten more years if he's lucky and lives that long. As far as I'm concerned, to say that he's going to be able to get along on $145 a week is ridiculous.
The minimum here should not have been less than $1,100, because most people with 40 years and more in the fishery are probably poor. They don't have any money at all that belongs to themselves.
So if you were going to offer someone a sensible chance to retire, to say they would get any less than $1,000 or $1,100 a month wasn't very realistic. And as I said, the scrutiny you had to go through and the things you had to prove to them to qualify for that program were ridiculous.
• 0920
I think there's no question, as Edgar said a little
while ago, and as Jim and them are saying, if there's
going to be a program, there should definitely be
something done for another year or two or
three—whatever is needed—because there are some areas
of the province where I almost feel competent to say
that if they gave us back our quota and allowed us to
fish up on the south coast and possibly on parts of the
west coast, then maybe we could pretty nearly do
without TAGS. Maybe TAGS could just be there to
complement something or other in that area.
I still think there is definitely a need for something, because there are areas of the province—there are fish plant workers, for example....
What we're facing right now, if we come back to the fishery next year up in the Burin Peninsula up on the south coast and say “Look, there's a nice bit of fish there”, we don't even know as fishermen.... We went through a hell of a lot of trouble this year saying in some areas, “Could we get to sell the fish?” If the fish is there and the companies don't want it, it's still no good to us.
There has to be some consideration for an ongoing program, but Lord Jesus, make it something a little bit more reasonable than what we had here. I'm watching my own community, for example. We landed seventy fishermen, ten truck crews, and over the last five years our average landing was probably about six million pounds a year. That fish went into plants around the Burin Peninsula, year-round plants and everything else.
Now, when we came right down to the moratorium, because we had four or five bad years, about 35% of our fishermen did not qualify for any assistance at all, because the catch failure wasn't recognized. It was just based on how many stamps you'd got for two or three years before that. The fish plant inland was there 25 years, and that plant was not put there to be a stamp factory. When the big companies refused to buy the inshore fish.... That plant was built as a feeder plant to take our fish. At times a hundred people worked there for three or four months of the year.
You fellows might say—probably you will or probably you won't—but it has been known: “Well, what good is four or five months a year if then they have to be off on unemployment or something?” Let me tell you something: the unemployment that the people working in those plants got, based on that bit of work, was much the same as welfare. So we weren't breaking the whole scale, as far as I'm concerned.
There's no question that something needs to be done, but as I said, keep it reasonable. It has to be handled a lot better than the way this was handled. Again, we were told—and I'm pushing the hand, but one of the things that really bothers me about the Auditor General's report was that we see a bunch of graphs that tell us there's $100 million spent on administration in the last three or four years, and we get another bunch of graphs to say we're putting out $800 million for workforce attachment, and they go down.
I'd like to see the figures, the actual figures, of the numbers of people who actually drew TAGS, and the number of people who qualified for unemployment insurance, because if you qualified for unemployment insurance, that was not TAGS.
I suspect that Paul Martin and a few of his buddies at HRD and different places cooked the books to make sure that unemployment was related to TAGS. I still don't believe the TAGS money was spent.
Mr. Jim Everard: Well, I'd like to pass a comment on that if I could, because I've had conversations with HRD officials there, when Mr. Harrington was here, and there was a Mr. Corky, and he said exactly what Mr. Edwards just said—that if fishermen diversified their fishing industry and went fishing and qualified for UI, they were still considered to be TAGS recipients, although they were not receiving TAGS.
There were thousands of fishermen, as Mr. Edwards and the other gentlemen all said, that did diversify their fishery and did go into other species and did not obtain TAGS money or NCARP money. They probably received one cheque in the beginning. They were qualified for the UI program, or EI as it is known now, and they were still considered TAGS recipients, and it was an impossibility. So the figure of 40,000 people accessing the TAGS program is a round figure—totally round.
The Chairman: That's a very good point, gentlemen.
We are now going to go to two further questioners—one from Nova Scotia, Mr. Peter Stoffer, followed by Mr. O'Brien from Labrador. Mr. Stoffer first.
• 0925
Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Eastern Shore, NDP): Good morning, gentlemen. I first want to thank you very much for your openness and your candour this morning. I think everybody in this room is learning an awful lot of what it's like to be a fisherman in Newfoundland.
I have one question for you, though, and this is excluding the TAGS audit or the inquiry that you've asked for that we'll be looking into on behalf of the Auditor General. You also mentioned a very important thing about the science, about Premier Tobin before, when he was the fisheries minister, about Mr. Mifflin, and now Mr. Anderson. Of course you may or may not know this, but I have been very adamant in my call for a judicial inquiry in order that these scientists, whose records have allegedly been altered, mismanaged, moved around, lost or forgotten about, can openly speak before a judge or a committee without fear of retribution, without fear of losing their jobs with the DFO.
Would you agree with me on a sentiment of that nature? Would you also agree for an inquiry to be called into the practices and policies of the DFO when it comes to the cod stocks in Newfoundland?
Mr. Edgar Jarvis: I agree totally with that. I can recall back in the mid-1980s attending meeting after meeting and we sat down before bureaucrats. There were some of us present and also politicians and we basically said the same thing as you're saying now, that there's something going wrong here. The fish stocks are going down and we're being told all kinds of cock and bull stories, like the water temperature is too cold, fish are not coming inshore, you're not putting the extra effort into it, this is going wrong just because the big companies who were calling all the shots were catching a lot of fish offshore.
I suspect, the same as you, that scientists of that day were saying there's something wrong and they weren't being listened to. I think that should be brought to light.
Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Mr. O'Brien of Labrador.
Mr. Lawrence D. O'Brien (Labrador, Lib.): Thank you, gentlemen. I think the comments you've made certainly speak well of the view of the ordinary person back in the small communities throughout the province and throughout Atlantic Canada.
I come from a small fishing community and grew up as a fisherman myself, with my dad, and know what it's like to be out on the swell in the Strait of Belle Isle, so to speak—if you can understand that type of language; I'm sure you do, Bill—and to go through the perils of the sea and to find out from year to year, when we settled up in the fall, what it was like to do well and what it was like not to do so well. I am a living witness around this table in that respect.
There are so many things, as I said a couple of days ago when I spoke on the first morning the standing committee met and I gave a comment in front of the Auditor General. I said then, as I say now, five minutes of the time of a member of Parliament sitting here on a committee is little justice, but it's the system we work within, so if I can get in as many five-minute sessions as I can over the next year or so, maybe it'll multiply to the time I think I need to discuss this issue.
In terms of the TAGS program and a number of other points, I want to go back to something I've heard you gentlemen mention. I remember that in the 1980s my brother-in-law, Pat Cabot, who worked in conjunction with a group from Cabot and Martin and a few of them—you guys know who I'm talking about—said all of these things for many, many years, just as you are saying them right now. For many, many years successive governments of Canada, successive ministers of the governments of Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans refused to accept and totally ignored the information that was coming forward from the fishermen in the field, who clearly knew much more and still know much more than the scientists know relating to how the evolution of the fishery has gone, particularly the cod fishing.
We also saw the sealing issue—which is a crusade of mine, by the way—here in Ottawa with the Brigitte Bardots and all the others of the world, and the Brian Davis's and the this and the thats and something else. We saw the downturn on that and the increase in the numbers and down with the fishery relative to.... And then we saw under previous ministers a few years ago the scientists—lo and behold, as good as that advice is, I think the fishermen's advice is better—come in with a recommendation on the quota in the ground fishery, the cod fishery in Atlantic Canada. And I saw, literally, the fisheries minister at that time double that quota, double what was recommended by the scientists.
• 0930
They sit here today talking about the
TAGS program, talking about who's responsible, talking
about the poor fishermen or the lack of poor fishermen
or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, as fishermen
you should keep your heads high, because you did not
cause this problem. This was caused by the policies
of successive governments. And we are here today
dealing with the aftermath and where we're going in the
future.
I want to ask you, what do you think of some of the comments I've just made?
Mr. Jim Everard: I want to speak to the points you've been speaking on. What you've just said is totally right. The fishermen have been preaching and preaching for years that the fish stocks were disappearing and nobody was listening. They're saying the same thing about the seal fishery right now, that they're destroying tonnes upon tonnes of cod and nobody's listening again.
In 20 years' time, if the people down at that table and the people listening across Canada don't listen now, we'll still be at the tables because there will be nothing done. If we're not out there, the debt will be there.
Mr. Edgar Jarvis: I agree totally with your comments. At times it makes us, as Newfoundlanders, feel less Canadian when we hear comments coming out of central Canada—especially by bureaucrats or some politicians—saying TAGS is a waste of money, that it's taxpayers' money that has gone down the drain, and here you have thousands and thousands of people from this province who have brought a great resource of the world into Canada when we joined Confederation and we turned it over to be managed for our own well-being and for the wealth of Canada and look what happened to it: it was totally destroyed.
I don't think any us, as fishermen or citizens of this province, should have to apologize to anyone in Ottawa or anywhere else in Canada for the pittance that has been passed to us with regard to TAGS.
Mr. Joe Edwards: I feel the same way as Edgar and Jim in terms of what you said, Mr. O'Brien. But at the same time I can reinforce what Edgar said about not feeling shame or anything else. What's happening here is criminal. Jim, myself, and others have been trying to draw attention to the fact that so many people are being crucified because somebody said you have to get rid of 50%.
If we're going to look at things that way, look at the aid that's been offered to the farmers in the past century. If every time the poor farmers—they're not much better off than the fishermen—had to be helped, they had said get rid of another 50%, a lot of you and a lot of us sitting around this table wouldn't be as fat as we are right now, because there wouldn't be very many farmers left, when you come right down to it.
You can't put it in words. We deal with the bureaucrats at DFO and at HRD and we try to make sure that legitimate people get as much help as is there for them. Those people just pushed it to one side, came up with an excuse, for example, and said.... He commented on the fact that in Quebec or New Brunswick, and possibly Nova Scotia, they took the two years extenuating circumstances to catch there. Here in this province, do you know what they did with that? They said they were going to look at it, but now you have two years that are missing and then if you did qualify they'd say that for those two years you were missing they could use those two years to bring down your benefit rate and save a lot of dollars. What they would do instead of facing it—they should never have been involved, the UIC should never have been involved in this income—they would say they'll allow you $150 a week for that year you didn't qualify. So there's an awful lot of injustice.
I agree with Jim completely in the sense that too many people have been crucified in this so that whatever we do there should be some recourse for people, for someone to say let's have another real hard look at this and see where we went and what we did wrong.
The Chairman: Thank you, gentlemen.
We're now going to go, Mr. Edwards, to a member of Parliament from the province of Quebec. You made an earlier statement regarding the Auditor General's report, where two bad years could be erased in the judgment of whether or not you met the TAGS criteria. I think it was you, Joe, who brought up the point. We're now going to ask Mr. Bernier—
• 0935
Mr. Joe Edwards: The Auditor General said that in his report. That's what I was referring to.
The Chairman: That's right, you referred to the point brought up by the Auditor General's report.
We're now going to go to Mr. Bernier, from the province of Quebec, to ask you some questions.
[Translation]
Mr. Yvan Bernier (Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine —Pabok, BQ): I would like to start by welcoming our witnesses from Newfoundland. I am from the maritime region of the Gaspé Peninsula, more specifically from the town of Gaspé, at the very tip of the peninsula. My riding also includes the Îles-de-la-Madeleine and includes close to 80 per cent of Quebec fishers.
I found your comments interesting and I am interested in learning more from you. Our committee takes very seriously the requests we hear from people.
You mentioned a few moments ago that some of your fishermen had begun diversifying. I want to be sure I understood you correctly. You say that some people have started fishing other species.
You may wonder why I am interested in this question. The reason is that in Ottawa, on the basis of the Auditor General's report, there is a perception that people aren't trying to get out of their problems, that they just stay at home and wait for their cheque. I happen to know that that is not true.
You saw what happened in the case of the sentinel fishery, and you say that cod stocks seem to be starting to grow again in your area. If we add to that the new species that people have started fishing and the new fisheries in your area, how many people, in your opinion, who fish in 3Ps would be able to make a living from what could be called a sustainable fishery?
The reason I ask the question is that I too want to see a follow-up to TAGS. I think we need some direction and some guarantees that this time fishers will have the tools they need to get out of their predicament. I would like you to do some adult education here and tell us what these new species are that you are fishing. What volumes of cod and the new species could be fished? How many people, in absolute numbers or as a percentage, could continue to earn a decent living from fishing?
[English]
Mr. Edgar Jarvis: I'll make one comment on that and maybe Joe can carry on.
The basic species outside of cod in our area right now that we are fighting to get our fair share of is snow crab. We have a small number of supplementary licences; I think around 92 licences are fishing, supplementary. They have small quotas, somewhere around 46,000 pounds for the season, which is not a great lot of crab, but depending on the price it could bring you in a fair income.
As for the rest of us, there are, I think, something like 1,200 licences in the area. We have been fighting to try to get a share of that, but we are now only fishing on permit. This season we've arrived at roughly 6,000 pounds for our area, Placentia Bay, and Fortune Bay I think is around 5,400 pounds. We average around 90¢ a pound. That's not a big income, but it was a start.
We had fisherman like Mr. Edwards here—he can speak for himself—who were out fishing blackback flounder. It's not a big income, but it shows how determined you are to try to make a living at that. In some weeks you might make $200 at it. It's not a big income, but at least you're trying to do something. I've been at it myself for a while, but there are days at that when you don't make much money; you go into the hole.
There's another species now, the American plaice, but that is also under a moratorium.
We were a bit disappointed this year with the FRCC recommendation. We thought that at least they would let us have a test fishery on that species to see what is there, because scientists were claiming that it is not actual but there were never any surveys done inshore. We were heavily dependent on that species before the moratorium; sometimes it was around 50% of our landings.
So those are the main species.
There is some shrimp that other boat owners are involved in, and scallops, but they're small numbers and there are restrictions on licensing right now.
Mr. Joe Edwards: I have questions from you as to how many people we think could make a good living. I believe those are the words you used.
• 0940
There are differences here in Newfoundland.
The average income on TAGS was probably
around $13,000 a year. If you didn't have any other
income or didn't go fishing or anything else, it
wouldn't be classified as a good income, but here in
Newfoundland it's an income.
With the lobster, crab, the things we
traditionally fished...and unless we're making a
terrible mistake, and I don't think we are, about
the stock recovering, I think the numbers of people who
were there before can still make a living out of it.
What happened to us was, as I said, if you go back over the years...and I mentioned my own community and I didn't finish the job. What I was saying was that the fish plant here employed up to a hundred people for three or four months in times when the fishery was good. We saw the fish. We fillet the fish. As I said, the whole group of plant workers in Lawn, my own community, was wiped out. None of them got any benefits at all from TAGS. That was an injustice right there. I just wanted to follow that up.
When the fishery went down and was destroyed, everybody said, well, it's not going to come back. But we believe it is going to come back, and if we can get our people back into the fishery and they make a decent living, then we have to make sure what happened before doesn't happen again. With a recovered stock, with the new species and the stuff we're fishing, I think at least the numbers of people who were there on the south coast before can make a living.
The Chairman: Joe, we have four or five minutes left. We might go to one further question, but I wanted to ask you this on behalf of the committee. A short distance from where you live and you fish is an area of water owned and controlled by France. I wanted to ask you whether you are aware of intensive fishing activity in the French zone, in some cases using Canadian factory ships fishing cod. Are you aware of any of that activity right now?
Mr. Joe Edwards: George, not of any factory freezer-trawlers. We are told by DFO, although you don't get a big amount of information about it, that National Sea have I think 70% of the French part of the quota.
We have seen ourselves, with our own eyes...and it has been quite upsetting, when we were not allowed to go fishing, to have longliner fishermen from St. Pierre and Miquelon come and fish right on our doorstep, set their nets on the same ground we weren't allowed to go on and catch fish. That was upsetting. They had a small number of fishermen and with their share of the quota they could get a season out of it. They were catching fish right next door. You could look out from your own window in some communities down there and see the French longliners fishing. We weren't allowed to go.
They have put in a crab fishery. They have an understanding now that they have an extra 40,000 pounds of crab each to catch. They have increased the quota in their zone.
We see those things going on, conducted by a foreign country, and it's quite upsetting.
As for the factory-freezers, unless you were referring to the National Sea boats.... They catch a certain percentage of that quota.
The Chairman: Has the fishing been good for the National Sea trawlers?
Mr. Edgar Jarvis: I'm under the impression they use their trawlers to catch it. We've been told they caught 70% of that quota. How they caught it, I'm not sure.
Mr. Joe Edwards: According to DFO, 1100-odd tonnes were farmed out to National Sea.
The Chairman: In other words, you have a foreign nation on your doorstep actively pursuing the fishery, whereas you're sitting at home.
Mr. Edgar Jarvis: That's right.
The Chairman: Gentlemen, we've arrived at the end of our period. We want to thank you for appearing. While you were appearing before us we passed a motion concerning the Auditor General, requesting an investigation and an audit into all expenditures concerning this program which were not directly related to the income support portion.
• 0945
We want to thank you for spending your time with us, and we
want to thank you, Mr. Everard, for collecting all of
those names from people on TAGS and your request
to Ottawa. Thank you very much for your attention here
today.
We have to suspend our sitting until 10 o'clock while the video conferencing is being set up for the Gaspé. Following that, in the second portion at 11 o'clock, we'll go to Nova Scotia to hear witnesses from the Halifax area. So we'll take a break for about 12 minutes.
• 1046
• 1100
The Chairman: We will now reconvene our meeting.
We have a hook-up with Halifax, Nova Scotia, and we have from the Halifax West Commercial Fishermen's Association, Mr. Sam Ellsworth, who's the president. We're awaiting the arrival of Ron Newell, who's the president of the South West Fishermen's Quota Group Association.
We have Mr. Ellsworth presently on our screen. Of course, Mr. Ellsworth is very known and has been very well known over the years as being somewhat of an expert on a lot of the fisheries that take place off the east coast of Canada. We'll ask him if he'd like to have an opening statement, and then we'll go to Mr. Stoffer from Nova Scotia for questions.
Mr. Sam Ellsworth (President, Halifax West Commercial Fishermen's Association): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Before I begin, I'd like to tell you that I was talking earlier to Ron Newell. He will be a bit late, but he will be joining us eventually.
I'd like to take a moment of my precious ten minutes to thank the members of the committee for permitting me this opportunity. Also, I'd like to congratulate you on your choice of chairman. I've known George Baker for many years and I recognize his dedication to the fishery, especially here in Atlantic Canada.
Congratulations, George. Well done!
Today I was asked to comment on our experience with the Atlantic groundfish strategy, or, as we know it by its acronym, TAGS. I want to begin by stating that I do not appear before the committee to criticize those who have been displaced and are in dire circumstances because of the disastrous state of our groundfish fishery. Most find themselves in this troubling predicament through no fault of their own.
Nor am I here to say that there have been no beneficial impacts. This has occurred in a few select communities where reasonable local input was coupled with caring and wise direction.
However, as is outlined in the report of Canada's Auditor General, there were problems. This has resulted in a devastating loss of potential to bring about constructive, meaningful, and lasting change.
We now have many for whom this program has only given rise to false hopes.
It seems, to us anyway, as if most affected people in our community were never eligible to participate. Richard Cashin's task force and John Mullaly's board excepted, I can honestly state that the opinion of the leadership of our community-based fishermen's group was never sought.
However, the vast majority of our fishermen were told by some authority that they had to apply for TAGS or risk losing their status as fishermen. Mind you, the community leadership was not really looking for income support. We were looking to create new industry, rationalize effort, reduce capacity—harvesting and processing—and build toward a stable and viable future for our 250-year-old coastal community.
This becomes an exercise in frustration when you not only have to overcome all the normal obstacles but also are forced to compete against communities that have the benefit of considerable funding from myriad government programs and agencies.
No one associated with the TAGS program ever approached us to outline how our community might be helped.
It seemed as if every time someone in the community showed initiative, they were simply told “Sorry, you people are too close to Halifax”, “Geographically, our office has no jurisdiction in your area”, “There are no programs applicable to your situation”, “You are the victims of your own fierce independence”—and the list could go on. Suffice it to say that we finally had to say “To hell with this, let's get on with our lives”.
We've introduced diversity in our natural harvesting practices. We've created a management system to administer the first community-based quota management group. We've consolidated processing and buying operations. We've established at least two new associated small industries. We've reduced our fleet and, to a minor degree, associated dependency. We've imported foreign raw product, re-engineered our processing and marketing strategies, and embarked upon a ground-breaking aquaculture research program. All of the above, with the exception of three fishing licence buy-backs, has been accomplished without any TAGS money whatsoever.
• 1105
On the subject of the three above-mentioned buy-backs,
I can't elaborate in the limited time available, but I
can tell you the licence buy-backs in my community
were counter-productive and very divisive. Capacity
actually increased. A considerable portion of our
community could be losing quota to some black hole from
which we have been told it may not return. Simply
stated, we were placed in double jeopardy.
This occurred because the advice of all who represent fishermen here in Nova Scotia was completely ignored, and our very capable representatives, Gary Dedrick and Brian Giroux, were thrown to the dictates of a one size fits all policy that in no way could or should have been applied in our community, or probably many others.
And please don't blame fishermen for taking advantage of the situation. Why wouldn't a person take advantage of a policy so badly and hurriedly thrown together?
If anyone is interested, I can and will provide graphic examples whereof I speak. This policy made a mockery of fleet reduction. Had we been fully apprised at the time, we would have kept every boat in the place and actively fishing.
Further, one of the legitimate applications made on behalf of one of our older but active core fishermen was rejected—this after they had us jump through endless bureaucratic hoops because he was in receipt of Canada pension. To make matters worse, another of our fishermen received a licence buy-back while in receipt of not one but two other government pensions. Since when did we, the greatest and most just nation in the world, discriminate on the basis of old age?
I have the file with me today. As you can discern, it is reasonably thick. It goes back to 1994 and the problem remains unresolved: yet another TAGS boondoggle.
In the limited time left I will endeavour to tell you what my organization feels went wrong.
No viable alternatives were considered to remove people who wished to leave. As long as hulls were left in the water, as long as only the latent licences were being removed, nothing meaningful was being accomplished. There was absolutely no opportunity to address the debilitating overcapacity problem from our perspective and the needs of the community.
The persistent notion that some bureaucrat would be able to provide blanket solutions to the hundreds of unique ocean resource-dependent communities throughout Atlantic Canada either shows a lack of knowledge and understanding or conversely is an indication of an attempt to ram a single-minded agenda down the throats of every other community, regardless of the reality and uniqueness of their particular situations. The continuing dearth of any vision of defining policies from the various governmental agencies after five or some six years of wandering aimlessly in this wilderness, and after approximately $3 billion has been spent, surely screams out that something is radically wrong.
Will there be another round of more of the same? Quite possibly, given the continuing mess we find ourselves in. But if there is, please think about this. It has been a 20-year ride down this slope. In many communities we depended on groundfish for centuries. We will not cure this problem overnight. Burgeoning technology and an unforgiving, ruthless global marketplace were not part of this equation 20 years ago. Neither was the possibility that some of these fisheries may not recover and are showing little signs of doing so after multi-year moratoria.
There will be those who will need income support. There will be a need to convince others there is no future where my fathers or my generation found one. There will be a crying need to educate our children and introduce them to new and rewarding lifestyles. This will probably take a couple of generations, but there are some communities willing—actually fighting—to rise to the challenge of the immediate future. Please listen to them this time. Please let them have an opportunity to build on their solid and promising initiatives.
Just think if we in Sambro had been given that opportunity how much further along we would be at this juncture. But someone has to create the climate. Someone has to realize that not all fishing communities are redundant, or worse yet, expendable. Time is running out. I expect the patience of the rest of the country is wearing thin. Now, if you want advice, come to those whose lives are directly affected and who have proven over time their integrity and sincerity.
• 1110
If there isn't a major degree of local autonomy and
another round of re-engineering strategy, I am
prepared to guarantee you will ensure a prolongation of
the difficulties. Surely no one would want to be a
party to that. Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Ellsworth, for your excellent presentation. We'll now go to Mr. Stoffer from Nova Scotia for questions.
Mr. Peter Stoffer: Good morning again, Sam, and on behalf of all of us here at the fisheries committee, thank you very much. It's very well thought out, and your experiences come through again.
I have two or three questions and a small statement for you, Sam. Mr. Harrigan, as you know, has been appointed by HRDC to come to areas of Atlantic Canada to do a review—not more or less to set policy, but more or less to advise the government on what's going to happen on June 1, 1998.
My concern, and possibly you can elaborate a bit on this, is why the four—or five, actually, if you include Quebec—provincial fisheries ministers in those respective areas have been so silent in this regard. My fear is that the federal government may just decide, as they're doing in other programs, to offload that responsibility to the individual provinces. You know what a financial burden that would be to Nova Scotia, using that as an example. Can you give any insight as to why the provinces have been so silent in this debate that's going on now?
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: Thank you, Peter. I really have no idea. I understand that Minister John Efford in Newfoundland certainly hasn't been silent.
I think our problem here is the diversity of the needs of our coastal communities. I think it would be extremely difficult in Nova Scotia to come up with some sort of a blanket policy, or something that the minister would have a level of comfort in making a statement on, because the needs from east to west are extremely different.
As you know, there's still a viable fishery conducted in southwest Nova Scotia, whereas in the east we're under the same moratoria, and enduring the same effects that they are in say 2K and 3KL in Newfoundland.
Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay. Secondly, as you know, there are many different fishing groups within Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and P.E.I., and of course the perception out there is that these fishing groups aren't together but are all fighting each other over whatever piece of pie is out there. Do you feel after your statement today that there is some sort of reconciliation among those groups to come together, to solve their differences, and work as a team?
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: Yes, Peter, I think there is. I attended the FRCC consultations as a member of the FRCC in Yarmouth yesterday, and we have come a long way in the last four years.
Having said that, there are certain common themes that everyone has no problem agreeing on. Again, there has to be a certain degree of local autonomy in the decision-making process.
The reason I say that is we all fish differently. We fish at different seasons. Our multi-species nets from one community to the next vary greatly. The community next door to us to the east—their lobster season starts when ours ends. Compared to other jurisdictions, there's a humongous difference in the way we fish and the amount of fish that's available to us.
As I said, the eastern communities will need much different programs, a much different infrastructure than the western communities, to deal with the problem.
Mr. Peter Stoffer: Very good. Sam, thank you.
My last question for you is on the subject of ITQs—individual transfer quotas.
Besides the corporate allocations that have been received now, which are arguably roughly 50% of the stock, and there are other fishers out there who are selling their quotas to the corporates.... My perception is that they're doing it reluctantly because they feel they may have no other choice. Do you share that opinion, and can you just elaborate a bit on what ITQs have done to the fisheries in Nova Scotia, in your opinion?
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: Peter, that's a multifaceted question. I will try to deal with it one piece at a time.
• 1115
It's not all bad. If it wasn't for the degree of
concentration...some fleets can probably handle ITQs
better than others.
The problem we face in the inshore, particularly fixed-gear, industry is that there are about 3,200 licence holders in Nova Scotia. We have a basketful of fish to share. It's just not a program that's on without tremendous help and assistance and some degree of alternate employment outside the fishery, or at least outside fishing in the fishery.
We have a major problem on our hands, given the fact that, for instance, in 4Vs and 4W, and in 4Vn to some extent, there is no sign of these stocks rebuilding or rebounding, now under moratorium since December 18, 1992. So we have a long road to go and it will take major restructuring to deal with that problem.
Concentration is the biggest problem. When you say “corporate interests”, some are just people who are trying to put together enough fish so that it's a viable industry for them. I've heard of groups that were skippers; two or three have gone together in a single vessel and pooled their individual quotas. That seems to work for some.
In our case we will need to have fewer fishermen—I mean fewer owner-operators—accessing the amount of community quota we have. There has to be a way for them to leave the fishery with dignity.
Some fishermen probably do feel pressured to sell. I know that several are in dire financial straits. They're under extreme pressure. Many offers have been made to purchase them as individuals.
By the way, there's a huge degree of speculation involved in that, because at the present time—and I don't know if this is written down—the policy we operate under in the fixed-gear working group doesn't permit individuals to transfer their historic allocation out of that group unless the entire group agrees to it. So this is a very complex subject we're getting into and it will take us quite some time to work through.
Having said that, I think a program could be structured so that communities could purchase the amount of fish that is assigned to these individuals. It would be kept in the community and shared amongst fewer fishermen to make it far more viable for those who are left. Those who leave would do so because there would be alternatives in other things they could turn their hands to and feel they're making a meaningful contribution to society in those communities.
Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you very much, Sam. I truly appreciate that.
Unfortunately I have to go right now, but I do want to thank the chairman for the opportunity to have Sam invited.
Sam, when Ron shows up, if you can give him my best, I'd appreciate that.
I'm sure there are other people in the committee who have some questions for you, and they'll put you on the spot, so to speak. Thank you again.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.
Actually, in our round of questioning now we're going to go to a member of Parliament from New Brunswick, then to a member of Parliament from British Columbia, then to a member of Parliament from Labrador, and then to a member of Parliament from Quebec.
Mr. Stoffer, you wouldn't get on anyway for a second round, because that's going to fill up.
Before I go to the MP from New Brunswick I'll make just one comment. Perhaps our witness, Sam, can comment on it sometime before the committee meeting is over.
About 80 miles east of where you live there's what we call the silver hake box, the small-mesh gear zone. Fishermen call it the hairnet zone—some people call it the pantyhose zone—because the nets utilized by foreign vessels 80 miles east of where you live, inside the 200-mile zone, are so small.
Just last week there were 11 Cuban vessels there with Canadian licences. One of them was on a national quota from Cuba. The other ten were hired by Canadian companies to fish silver hake, squid, argentine, grenadier, and whatever else came out of the ocean. This is all within the 200-mile zone, just east of where you live, at a time when our fishermen are not permitted to fish.
I know I'm not supposed to be asking questions, but sometime during our hearing I wish you'd refer to that and fill us in on why that's so.
We'll go to Mr. Hubbard, from the province of New Brunswick.
• 1120
Mr. Charles Hubbard: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Mr. Ellsworth. I guess you heard the question. Can we have the answer?
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: Your question is the same as Mr. Baker's?
Mr. Charles Hubbard: Yes, his question.
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: It's true.
Incidentally, I have now been joined by Ron and Val. I'm sure if Ron wants to give his opening statement when I answer this question there will be an opportunity.
Yes, it's true that the silver hake box is located just off our coast, but it's also true that in the last three or four years we've worked hard to have the silver hake box moved a little further offshore to deeper water. There's 100% observer coverage on the vessels now.
A group of inshore fishermen, both mobile and fixed, sit on that committee. They are now using more and more grates, so there's supposed to be an escapement mechanism for any small groundfish. They told us yesterday in Yarmouth—this came up as a question—that the escapement now renders the by-catch about 0.001% or 0.002% of gadoids—in other words, cod, haddock, pollock; any of the normal groundfish stocks we fish. If that's the case, the only other concern we would really have is for our halibut and longline swordfish fleets in the area. Both those fisheries aren't that active right at present in gear conflict. Other than that, it sounds as though an awful lot of work has been achieved in making that silver hake fishery a much more viable and safer fishery and much more ecologically sound than it has been in the past.
The Chairman: Thank you. Perhaps, Mr. Ellsworth, you could also make reference to the fact that the Japanese have five times your quota, in your waters, inside the 200-mile zone, for tuna. Isn't that correct, Mr. Ellsworth?
But perhaps what we should do before we go on to this is to welcome Mr. Ron Newell, who is president of the South West Fishermen's Quota Group Association, to the committee hearing. We're sorry he was a bit late, but now we'll go to Mr. Newell for his opening statement. Then we'll return to New Brunswick for questions.
Mr. Newell.
Mr. Ron Newell (President, South West Fishermen's Quota Group Association): Thank you. I couldn't spoil my reputation. I'm always late for meetings, so I had to be a little late for this one, I guess.
It will take probably eight to nine minutes to read this. I designed this last night after reviewing my files. If I can be allowed that time, I would like you to listen to this.
The Chairman: It's your time.
Mr. Ron Newell: It's my view that the TAGS program announced by Brian Tobin after John Crosbie's program of AGAP expired was supposed to be a five-year strategy to reduce capacity in the fishery, reduce the number of fishery-dependent workers, and match the industry to the resource. The termination of the program initially was to be May of 1999. It's now shortened to May of 1998, mainly, in my view, because of a shortfall of funds because there have been more participants in the program than first projected.
A collapsing fishery and a crisis in the industry led to the development of the program. There were many adjustment options in the program: green projects, early retirement, licence retirement, retraining, and just income support to ride out the storm until the stocks recovered. Well, seven months from now the ride is over, but the storm has moved little. The program was to give many “oars to get their ship into shore in five years”. In just a few months' time the oars will be taken away and the ship is still out there, in my area. I'm speaking from the southwest part of Nova Scotia.
Many coastal communities are still faced with moratoriums. Our area is faced with low quotas. In the meantime, most of the industry is still standing by, many waiting for the day that may not come soon, if at all. With the TAGS program approaching its farewell party, we're still facing the same problem we had five years ago.
I think the TAGS program was designed with good intentions. However, a few things went wrong and many on the program viewed it as something different from its intentional purpose.
Before explaining these things, let me tell you I personally was involved in the TAGS program from the start. I filed hundreds of claims for fishermen and fish plant workers from southwestern Nova Scotia. I filed the very first claim from southwestern Nova Scotia for my uncle. After he started to receive cheques, word spread like wildfire and applications flooded my home for many weeks.
• 1125
Back then, most of the applicants had no intention of
leaving the fishery. To them, it was fill-in income
for weeks they could not work due to no work.
Some took advantage of the early retirement, a few
left the province to work in other areas, and a dozen
sold their licences. Other than that, we still have a
big problem.
Most thought in May 1999, when TAGS expired, the fishery would be back to normal, as it had been in the 1980s. Many thought quotas were a temporary policy and fishing would resume as normal after the five years were over. It took almost four years to realize they were wrong. Today, I can tell you the picture's much clearer to them. They realize that quotas and TAGS are here to stay. They realize the stocks are still in trouble and they now realize their way of life is about to change forever. Most importantly, they now realize it isn't how they'd like to see things; it's how things are to be. Their views are very different now from what they were four years ago.
To get back to something I mentioned awhile ago about the alteration of TAGS after its introduction, it did have good intentions in my view. In my area, many applied for a licence buy-back, but they were not accepted mainly due to huge bids; $300 million set aside for a buy-back was downsized to $97 million.
Many who were 50 to 55 years old came to my home and wanted to go on early retirement, but 55 was the minimum age accepted. Most viewed this as a short, ride-out-the-storm supplement. In their mind, 1999 was the year all would be back to normal. In the last five years I've talked with thousands of fishermen and plant workers. I've always been there for them and for some reason they've trusted me, or they tell me they do.
Let me give you a summary of these views, my views, and views from the community.
The TAGS program was not a total failure, as some say it was. It did put food on the table for many who could not otherwise have done so. It did help make credit obligations in which their properties were held onto. It did help in providing better education for the children. It did indeed help families from shattering to pieces. I say this because I witnessed it. It wasn't a complete failure.
Anyone who tells me that TAGS should never have been for a fisherman who depends solely on groundfish stocks and can fish for as little as three weeks out of 52 due to depressed quotas is wrong. I say to them, come to my home and I'll take you.... You take their place.
The TAGS criteria were flawed from the start. People who should have got it didn't. People who did get it shouldn't have. I know one fisherman I fought hard for, along with Derek Wells, who could not receive benefits under TAGS because the vessel he fished on didn't qualify. The vessel didn't qualify even though this guy depended 100% on the groundfish stocks.
Many TAGS clients got lazy. Some were offered employment and refused, because TAGS paid a better wage for lying on the beach and drinking beer than an employer could pay for working 30 or 40 hours. Mind you, some tried to get work and just gave up trying because of the competition in a restrained economy.
What happens now? We all know that in seven months' time the Friday visits to the post office every two weeks won't be so intense. The strain on families will still be there. The fishery hasn't changed a lot from four years ago, at least not enough to proclaim a victory in all areas, certainly not in my area. I don't have all the answers—maybe I don't have any—but I can at least give you the views of myself and others.
I am a very strong advocate of a licence buy-back. Why? Because the first one failed and a second one is warranted based on very different criteria.
First of all, you will retire a lot more licences now than four years ago with a lot less money. This is because bids will be much lower than before. It is because the picture is now clearer. Fishing will never resume like most thought it would. My phone rings every day from fisherman calling for a buy-back. They tell me they now see the picture. They tell me they're now ready and willing to leave the industry. They tell me they don't want to, but they will. They tell me they want to leave with some pride, a little bit of dignity, and not be forced or starved out. They also know that TAGS is ending and pressure to leave with a small buy-back proposal is a reality. I say, let them go, but let them go with dignity. It's a hard decision they've had to come to grips with, but nevertheless they've decided the time has now come.
• 1130
I view the buy-back as a must. I
worked very hard on this issue with Derek Wells,
our former MP, and support for buy-back is evident from
many other departments and sources.
Three hundred million dollars four years ago should have been altered. What has happened is approximately $80,000 has been paid out to many fishermen for TAGS who would have sold out for $50,000 four years ago, and they still have a licence. And guess what—they're still there, still wanting a buy-back.
Industry must be involved in the consultation process. You could have gotten 1,000 inactive licences back four years ago for $5,000. Now those licences have become active. It failed the last time.
I told David Anderson a few months ago in Shelburne that I'd like to be part of the consultation process. Industry should be part of the process, and I'd volunteer my time if I could help. Maybe industry is willing to cost-share such a program.
What will they do when they retire their licences? That's always a question I'm asked. The older ones tell me that they can get by on their savings, Canada pension, old age security, maybe withdraw some RRSPs, maybe sell their boats, and then get by. Some younger ones tell me they'll pay the bank what they owe for their investment in the fishing business and start over in a new life. Some expressed that if they could use their lobster and tuna and swordfish licences and just get out of the groundfishery with an option never to re-enter, that would be fine with them. Many said that if they were allowed to keep their personal licences, they could maybe get hired as a crew member, but again, with an option that they never be allowed a groundfish licence again.
A notice to fishermen that this will be the final opportunity must be established. They didn't take it very seriously the last time. They thought that by 1999 everything would be back to normal.
Another early retirement offer would draw many more applicants now than before. Why? Well, many were not of the age back then. Also, many who were 57 to 60 years old took a calculator and found that five years at $382 a week was much better than eight years at $200 a week for early retirement. Had they known, however, that TAGS was going to be a four-year plan instead of a five-year plan, the result would have been different.
Again, the plan was altered. It was just like the buy-back—altered. People made decisions based on the theory that all in the fishery would be well in 1999 and a five-year TAGS structure would not be altered. When the alterations came, the system became flawed and their views changed.
I could go on and on. I know my ten minutes is almost up, but I'll always be available to expand on this. I've got a lot more to say. I want to thank you for listening to my comments, and if I can be of any help, please feel free to contact me.
What I have said in this letter has come from four years of consultations, four years of preparing taxes for these fishermen, talks with MPs, MLAs, fishermen, and fish plant workers, etc.
TAGS had good initial intentions, and it did help, but due to structural changes, it failed. Its results fell far short of its anticipated achievements.
Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Newell, for your presentation here today.
We now go to Mr. Hubbard from New Brunswick.
Mr. Charles Hubbard: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I suppose again I have to ask the question you didn't get answered.
Good morning, Mr. Newell. Maybe Mr. Ellsworth could answer, because later in the House today we are again debating the fish problems, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and in particular the international fishing off Canadian shores.
The tuna is a very valuable fish. In fact, many fishermen, if they got three or four tuna in a year, would almost have a year's income. Could you answer that question that the good chairman had here, in terms of others fishing our great blue?
The Chairman: The question, Mr. Ellsworth, was whether it is true that the quota in Nova Scotia, somewhere around 35 metric tonnes of tuna, is a far cry from the 180 metric tonnes that the Japanese have in the same waters as a by-catch of unlimited amounts of yellowfin, albacore, big eye, and other types of tuna. Isn't that correct, Mr. Ellsworth?
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: Thank you, Mr. Hubbard, Mr. Chairman. To some extent it is correct, but I want to explain that none of these things in the fishery are without their complexities.
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First of all, as most of you know, tuna is
managed internationally, not unlike the NAFO stocks, but
tuna is managed by something called the International
Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna,
or ICCAT.
I've been a commissioner at ICCAT for the past four or five years.
In Canada our entire allocation internationally is 535 metric tonnes, maybe more now, plus or minus, of bluefin tuna, and that's shared on this 35-tonne, per-dip sharing formula amongst the various provinces and the people who are players in the bluefin tuna fishery.
It would be nice to have more international quota in bluefin. In my community, in particular, every summer we have all the boats come from the gulf to fish tuna adjacent to our shores, almost in sight of our plant location. None of our local vessels can access that because they are not licensed to access bluefin tuna. We've a long history in swordfish, as you know, but bluefin is an entirely different cup of tea.
Given the structure of ICCAT, given Canada's membership in ICCAT, it will be extremely difficult.
I have to say that, being a party to some of the negotiations, the Japanese have given up much of their high seas fishing quota to permit Canada, the United States, and other countries fishing the North Atlantic to access a little bit more quota on our shores and to seem to make the sharing formula a little bit fairer to everyone.
Tuna is a species that's on the knife edge of management. We have to be very careful how we manage it. There are a lot of environmental sensitivities to be considered and, quite frankly, we have to be very careful to make sure we fish it most responsibly.
In terms of the sharing formula, perhaps something could be worked out, but we've gone through this many times in the past, in very difficult negotiations, and what we have today is probably as good as we can expect, given the circumstances and given the nature of foreign fisheries negotiation.
The Chairman: I presume, Mr. Ellsworth, that you would strongly recommend that the committee should become involved in the issue. It would probably be helpful for us if we were to attend some of these meetings in which the enforcement, and so on, of tuna on behalf of Canadian fishermen is taking place.
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: Mr. Chairman, I would concur. The more we can educate any segment of the Canadian fishery, and anybody involved in the Canadian fishery, especially you folks—the more you're exposed to these international fora, whether it's UNCLOS at the United Nations in New York, the NAFO meetings, or ICCAT in Madrid....
Believe me, these are very complex. The same sorts of things as you read about in the papers when we talk about the negotiations on west coast salmon go on at these meetings. They're very tense, and what we have at this juncture is probably as good as we could hope for.
The history on this is not a good one. Had we been off the blocks earlier, we might have had a much better and a greater portion of this. We can roll this historic clock back only to 1978, although we were involved long before that. So we go back to the beginnings of ICCAT and the international sharing formulas.
We've said that those Japanese vessels, or any vessel that comes into the Canadian zone, must carry an observer 100% of the time. Even when the boat leaves the zone, the observer stays aboard until the trip is completed, whether in international waters or not.
So there have been some concessions, and the enforcement is actually starting to have some teeth and some penalties, and ICCAT is really starting to show some responsibility in the management of that stock of fish.
Mr. Charles Hubbard: I seem to be getting a mixed message here, Mr. Ellsworth, in terms of the answers you have given regarding DFO's responsibilities and activities. You seem to speak very highly of their decisions and of the fact that they are trying to manage the fishery very carefully. By the same token, when we spoke of TAGS, both witnesses seemed to indicate that there were concerns about what they called bureaucracy and the needs for local autonomy. Could you elaborate somewhat on that? Perhaps the money was handled by the wrong department; perhaps the bureaucrats were from the wrong agencies.
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Mr. Newell here talks about the necessity of trying to
retire licences and retire fishermen from the fishery,
and it seems most of the money—in fact some
76%—simply went for income support. Do either of you
have any recommendations for our committee regarding
any future moneys that might be available to assist the
fishermen who are affected by the groundfish disaster?
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: I'll lead in and Ron will pick up on this.
Yes, I agree entirely. The people who administered the program, in our area especially, just were not familiar with the players and didn't understand the structure in the communities where the program was to be applied. This came about very hurriedly. Really the communication on the program and what it may have meant or how it could have been applied was very poor, from our perspective.
You heard what Ron said about how the thing changed after it began. We were quite supportive, of course, of the reduction aspects of this—and when we say “reduction”, we're not necessarily talking about people; we're talking about fishing capacity, the technology, and the fishing power that's out there right now. But as you heard Mr. Newell say earlier, most of that element of the program was removed before it could do any good.
Perhaps if there were a far greater degree of co-operation between the officials of DFO to identify the sincere and concerned players in the industry, those with proven track records, we may have more luck with this. Certainly if any other programs are going to be considered, if there's no degree of local autonomy in the decision-making process, we're going to be in great difficulty, and you're going to be in for the same sorts of criticisms as you were on this program the last time around.
Ron.
Mr. Ron Newell: I agree with Sam about the criteria. It seems to me there wasn't much consultation from industry, or if there was it wasn't listened to, because it goes back to the fisherman who depends on harvesting groundfish. Just because a vessel was evolved in another type of fishery, he didn't qualify. Something's wrong with that. That man is hurting, and he's been hurting now since the groundfish crisis came about. Someone wasn't listened to there, I'm sure. That was a very poor policy.
Another thing is if something else comes out, industry must be consulted and listened to. You must get down and listen to the people who are actually hurting here.
The speech I just gave you a little while ago is from the fishermen. It's an average thought of what I got from them, and I combined it all last night. I think the industry is willing to cost-share a little bit as far as the licence buy-back goes. They see a much truer picture now.
Had the TAGS program not been altered at all from 1994, when it was first initiated, the success rate would have been a lot higher. But so many things happened since the day it came out, and I know that was because more applicants qualified than you expected—I think almost double. I don't know who did the figuring on that, but the accounting procedure there was way off. And I know after that you had to go back to the income support.
I can tell you that back then, most fishermen, as I said, came to me and said, “In five years' time it's going to be better”. I couldn't give them an answer on that. But this morning before I came here I met one guy in the local store, and he said, “I want to leave; I want to get out of here”.
It's not only the fishing crisis; it's everything else. It's the cost-recovery. They can't afford to go now. How can you tell a fisherman doing three to four weeks of fishing that has to pay out $4,000 or $5,000 for wharfage fees and all these user fees? He just can't make a go of it. It's not only that; it's the payroll, the accounting system, the EI reform, etc. All kinds of things involved have just sickened them, and they're going through a lot of trauma right now. They fear that next May they're going to be out with nothing.
• 1145
I think industry has to be consulted. I think
it will work. I know it will work. If you listen to us,
involve industry and really take them very seriously, this
will work and we can do a really good job.
The Chairman: We turn now to Mr. Mike Scott, from British Columbia.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. Mike Scott (Skeena, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Sam and Ron, for your presentation. I really appreciate having the opportunity to listen to your views on the TAGS program.
I have three questions. I don't know if I can get them all in.
The first question I have for you is this. When I was in Newfoundland last fall I was talking to people who had qualified for TAGS back when the program was initially announced and put into place. They had received letters from the government stating that they had qualified and they would continue to receive benefits until a fixed point in time. The letters I saw said the people who had qualified were going to be receiving benefits until 1998 or 1999, depending on when they actually qualified. Subsequently to that the government has said the program is going to run out of money and it will not be able to follow through on the commitment made in those letters.
Did people in your area receive letters from the government when they qualified for TAGS? Were they told they were going to be receiving these benefits until a fixed point in time? Has the government now indicated it is not going to follow through on the commitments in those letters?
Mr. Ron Newell: I can speak for my area, because if any problems come along with TAGS, I'm generally the one they come along to visit.
Yes, many received letters back in 1994 stating that it would be a five-year program and it would expire for them in May of 1999. They subsequently received letters telling the same person it will end in May of 1998.
There are also some people in my area who did not qualify for the full five years. Some qualified until 1997, but they got letters a year ago saying they had made a mistake and now they had to end their program in 1996.
The biggest thing that happened was that a lot of people took this to their bank and they based their financial commitments on this letter. “I'm going to get TAGS until 1998”, or “I'm going to get TAGS, Mr. Bank Manager, until 1999”. Then bang. That has hurt them. Now some have no income coming in at all.
So again, things were altered. TAGS had good intentions, but everything was altered. You put a program into place and then you start altering things. The whole system was quite a failure for that reason.
I agree with you, Mike. That's true. That did happen a lot in my area.
Mr. Mike Scott: That's my point, Ron. I really wanted to make the committee aware that TAGS recipients had actually been notified in writing that they were qualified for benefits and they would receive those benefits for a fixed period of time. Many of these people—-and I talked with people in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland who had received these letters—had taken them to their banks, as you pointed out, and received financing on the strength of the commitments that were made by the federal government. These were letters written by the federal government to the recipient. If you can't depend on a letter from the federal government, who can you depend on? I think that's the crux of the point I'm trying to get across right now: commitments were made and then they were subsequently altered or broken, in the view of some people. I just wanted the committee to be aware of that, Ron.
My next question is following up on the point Mr. Baker was trying to get at in his comments a few minutes ago. I was absolutely dumbfounded when I went to Newfoundland last fall and I found that during the course of the moratorium in that entire time, and even today, there have been foreign vessels fishing Atlantic groundfish inside the 200-mile limit. Can you confirm that?
• 1150
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: There probably are, because some of our areas within the 200-mile limit are managed by NAFO, and traditionally, historically, if there is a fishery that's open and if Canada is participating in that fishery, then on this historic sharing we had to open those waters to foreign vessels for whatever their portion of that quota should be.
Mr. Mike Scott: You know, I'm just a dumb guy from Fencepost, B.C. What do I know? But how can you get a rejuvenation of fish stocks if you're continuing to fish the very stocks that are in trouble and you're doing it with these large ocean-going freezer-trawlers, not the small hook-and-line guys from South West Nova? You're talking about big vessels, with big capacity. I fail to see how people in the industry can look at that scenario and figure there's going to be a rejuvenation of the stocks. It doesn't add up, to my mind.
It's more of a comment than a question.
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: Any stock that's under current moratoria would not be fished by anyone, including the NAFO fleets. However, any of the other stocks that were considered at some harvestable level...and we are trying to take some sort of ecological approach to this. The one that scares us most, of course, is when you're fishing the lower end, the bait fisheries, and the fisheries that may rejuvenate our stocks, even though they are rated strong in terms of recruitment and rebuilding. That does concern us greatly, that the rebuilding component may be erased if we're not careful. But I don't think any of the stocks that are under duress or under moratoria—I can say this with almost great assurance—would be fished by any foreign-flag vessels in Canadian waters.
The Chairman: Of course what Mr. Scott was referring to, Mr. Ellsworth, was the allowable by-catch of 5% on the turbot quota on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks in 3L, the northern cod stock zone, which on the basis of 20,000 tonnes of turbot amounts to 1,000 tonnes of northern cod as an allowable catch by the foreign fleet.
I see you nodding your head, so you agree with the observation.
We now go to Labrador, for Mr. O'Brien.
Mr. Lawrence D. O'Brien: It certainly is a pleasure to hear your comments, Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Newell. I think what you're saying is very fitting, and it ties into this overall great mystery, if you wish, of the Atlantic fishery.
One of the things I heard you mention in your opening comments, Mr. Ellsworth, was the leading to false hopes. A point related to that was the overcapacity, and the list goes on and on.
I was sitting here and trying to put this into some kind of perspective. I was thinking about the kinds of questions that went on here recently, just the last few questions before I spoke, about the 5% and the tuna and the Cubans and this and that. I started thinking to myself, what am I up against here as a member of Parliament, and what are we up against as a committee, and what are you up against as user groups and quota groups and the various things?
Just to put it into perspective, there's an old saying, an old cliché, that charity begins at home. I would like to think that's true. Unfortunately, while I subscribe to that theory personally, as a member of Parliament and as a part of the government, as I am, and the whole nine yards, it's not working that way.
I happen to believe, as I'm sure many of us believe...I'm sure you and Mr. Scott would agree on the B.C. salmon or the Gaspé, whatever the fishery...I happen to believe that adjacency is a very important aspect here. I'm into a situation where I happen to be a Labradorian—I won't say a Newfoundlander, George, because I don't feel I am; I feel I'm a Labradorian—and a Canadian.
• 1155
I have to try to put this in perspective. When
I look at the quotas and you talk about your president
of the South West Fishermen's...what did you say? I'd
put this in perspective, because I think of the shrimp and
I think of the Nova Scotians fishing shrimp off
Labrador. I think about turbot.
Both of these, Nancy, tie in to you and me, talking about adjacency.
I think about turbot and I think about the quotas that the other provinces in Atlantic Canada are getting relative to my riding. I think about TAGS and where we have got to. I have about a thousand plus people on TAGS dying on the vine, as Mr. Scott would say, with this letter of commitment that was given, which I referred to a couple of days ago as well.
Of all these fish off our shores—crab, turbot, shrimp, and God knows what else.... Don't let me forget seals, by the multi, multi, multi millions. Still, I'm fighting and scratching every single day of my life, with all of the inconsistency of rules and regulations that seem to appear from wherever—from the province if it has to do with processing, from DFO if it has to do with harvesting. Every time I write a letter, the response seems to be contrary to everything I believe.
I know, Sam, you are quite involved in this. Can you help me along in trying to resolve this massive maze that seems to be appearing in my mind relative to all of this? Do you believe, as I believe—it may be more difficult for you—that, yes, adjacency is relevant here? I ask this because I don't see, really and truly, a lot of Labradorians fishing off Nova Scotia or the southwest coast of Newfoundland, but I see an awful lot of others....
I tell you, quite honestly, so help me God, that, being a Canadian, I believe, yes, that other Canadians should fish off Labrador. But, by golly, when I've got only 500 fishermen, I do believe they should have a chance to make a living.
Thank you.
The Chairman: Mr. Ellsworth, I wonder if you could take a crack at that for the hon. member from Labrador. We know that your fleets in your area of the country are very mobile and have always gone afar to fish. Could you take a crack at answering his question?
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: I'll certainly try. We won't do it in 45 minutes.
I'll be in Ottawa tomorrow on scouting business, and if somebody would like to touch base with me, I'll have a couple of hours. If you'd like to go one on one, I'll try to put a little bit more detail and elaboration to this.
Adjacency is a principle of UNCLOS, and Canada of course has always been very strong in the promotion of some of the clauses in UNCLOS. I was a party to the last one, on highly migratory transboundary species. It's certainly supposed to be how we govern the fisheries of the world.
Within our own structure, it has become very complex.
As the chairman, Mr. Baker, pointed out, for many years Nova Scotians have had a long history of being truly, within our own Canadian zone, distant-water fishermen. Our halibut boats definitely have had a presence, even the under 65-foot fleet, in areas like 3PS, 3NO, and the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, in the days of the saltbankers, that sort of thing. It goes back a long way. There's a big history here.
Some of those elements of history are now enshrined in whatever policy we fish by under DFO regulations. They're also enshrined in NAFO agreements and in ICCAT agreements. That's where the problem lies.
I have to be honest with you, Mr. O'Brien. You're probably 40% along the way to being as confused and confounded by all these rules and regulations as most of us in the industry are, because believe me, there's a myriad of them and it is very complex.
Yet people have been denied access to the fisheries. Again, enshrined in UNCLOS is some right to access, but when the stocks are totally depleted or under moratoria, there is just no opportunity for that to happen.
What do you do about the people who have this long-standing attachment, dependency, history, whatever? What do you do in that case? They were the ones who developed, they were the ones who took the chances, they're the people who have sort of been the participants in that fishery for many years.
• 1200
I understand your predicament, but under the current
set of.... I spoke of the dearth of policy that's come
out, and we have to be careful not to make this more
complex again, but at the same time, it's going to be
very difficult to access a fishery that's under duress
or under moratorium for anybody who has not fished.
As I say, there are people in this country who have actually been denied access, historically, to some of these fisheries. Given the situation we're in from an ecological standpoint, this is a big mess.
That's the best I can do in the short time available, but as I say, I'd be glad to try to elaborate on that to a greater degree if we had more time, perhaps in a one-on-one situation.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Ellsworth.
We're going to our final questioner, Mr. Bernier from Quebec.
Mr. Bernier.
[Translation]
Mr. Yvan Bernier: I would like to start by thanking our witnesses. It was a long interview, but I too am getting used to Mr. Baker's outbursts.
I have a brief question for Messrs. Ellsworth and Newell. I noticed in each of your remarks, particularly those made by Mr. Ellsworth, that you were saying that if the Atlantic ground fish strategy, TAGS, were to be extended, you would like to see the new program offer greater local autonomy.
I would like you to clarify, if you could, what you mean by greater local autonomy. I will break my question down as follows: would you like to see a little more local autonomy in terms of the breakdown of the fish offered to your community, in terms of the catch? In addition, when you refer to local autonomy, are you thinking of the measures offered by Human Resources Development Canada, namely training, or more economic diversification? I would like to hear Mr. Ellsworth's answer to this question.
I would ask Mr. Newell to comment immediately afterwards, because I noticed that he is very interested in the problem of rationalization. He and his group want the fishery to continue, and they are aware that for the time being, there are a few too many people involved. Some people would leave the fishery reluctantly, even though they might be prepared to do so for the survival of the industry. I understood that Mr. Newell's group would even be prepared to purchase quotas in order to bring about rationalization. So we have spoken about local autonomy and said that people want to get involved. I would like a little more information about that. Thank you.
[English]
Mr. Sam Ellsworth: Thank you, Mr. Bernier. I'll try to deal with them one at a time.
First and foremost, most of the fish that's now available to us in Nova Scotia in the groundfish fishery is allotted to several community-based management units. Having said that, Ron and I, and all the others who participate, feel that not everybody can continue to participate in this fishery.
Yesterday, when we were at the FRCC consultations in Yarmouth, we were told by people who are very knowledgeable in this industry that there has been a 300% increase in capacity since this fishery was shut down. So we still have all these licences coming into this fishery, which is really under humongous pressure.
What we would like to do, and what we meant by local autonomy, is if you take one of these management units and send somebody from a government agency or agencies—it may have to be more than one to make this work—to be responsible for whatever the input would be, and if you start working with the executives of one of these committees, then a lot of the things we talked about, such as allocations of fish....
Right now, group to group, there's opportunity to trade. For instance, when we fish—and we're multi-species, again—if we run out of cod, I can pick up the phone and call Ron's organization or Pam Decker's organization or somebody else and say, “We're out of cod right now. I understand you have a surplus. Can we buy some, or can we trade you some haddock for some of your cod?” And it works. It keeps us on the water, very small trip limits, very small allocations, but it's a fishery that so far we've been able to maintain and make work.
• 1205
If we started to identify...they
identify themselves. As Ron said, there are a lot
of people today who would like to leave the industry.
There are people within my community who are now
looking to sell outside that community. It's very
important that we be able to let those people go with
dignity, with a sense of pride, and be able to address
their needs.
There is another thing we can do. Within those programs it would be very easy to have some diversity of economic opportunity for those people to leave the fishery. In my community we are now processing by-catch products such as dogfish. We are doing some shark products. We have the aquaculture project that I told you about.
There is ample opportunity there for expansion if there were some money put into some of those projects. We've identified markets and we're well on the way, so we could do a lot of things toward accomplishing a much kinder and stronger economy within those communities. But you do have to get down to that level here in Nova Scotia to make it work, because there are far greater ways of doing this as you go east and west.
In the circumstances, because we do have areas under moratoria and some that still have a semblance of a fishery, it makes things quite different. That's why you need that degree of local autonomy, and that's why we would certainly not be adverse, myself or Ron or anybody else in these community co-ordinating groups, to working with somebody to see that it takes place in a logical and pragmatic way.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Ellsworth.
Mr. Newell.
Mr. Ron Newell: I will have more on that.
As I said before, I believe that the resource and the participants do not match, and I believe they will never match, because no matter how successful fish stocks rebound, there will always be a quota, a quota based on caution. In our area today, the word is spreading that we're looking for a decrease in cod quota for 1998.
This year, 188 fishermen joined an organization. They based their fish on equal splits, all the fish divided by 188. It came out to 6,746 pounds of groundfish each for one year, 6,700 pounds at an average price of 70¢ a pound, and we're looking at a cod decrease for next year. These are the people who are calling me up. They know I'm down here today. When I arrive back in Shelburne County tonight, at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., my phone will be ringing and people are going to be at my door: “How did you make out, Ronnie? Is there going to be a buy-back?”
In today's paper, the Chronicle Herald, the headline is “Disgruntled Fishermen Want Out”. I'm telling you, the opportunity is here now. The opportunity is here far more now than it was four years ago, because they did not take it seriously. They are taking it seriously now. That's why I'm here today. That's why I've been fighting for this and that's why I'll continue to fight. I believe it's necessary; I believe it's crucial. After next May these same people, with 6,746 pounds of fish, will probably receive even less. What are they going to do without any TAGS income support?
Another thing I want to expand on is the fact that what is good for southwestern Nova Scotia may not be good for Newfoundland. One size doesn't fit all. I think Sam said before, you have to come to this area and see what our problems are. We do have a fishery and our stocks are rebounding in some species, but we're proceeding with caution, which I agree with. But you can't come in with a plan, an Atlantic groundfish strategy plan, that covers all of Atlantic Canada, because there are so many different issues and criteria in each section. Newfoundland is under a moratorium down toward the east and Cape Breton, but in southwest Nova Scotia, there is a fishery. So I think it has to be subdivided.
• 1210
Industry has to be consulted. Industry's input is
crucial. I don't think that happened the last time.
Without a buy-back, without something after
May of 1998, it's going to be a terrible disaster.
I can picture everything; families shattering. I
can see a lot of disparity.
I'm not coming here today to paint a false picture. I came here today and this is coming right from my heart. I'm telling you what is happening down home. I was up there on February 3 in that same room with the standing committee and I said the same thing, but now we are seven months away from a farewell party. It's crucial that something has to be done, and done now. I urge the fisheries standing committee to take me seriously, and Sam, and try to arrange something. Come down here and meet with industry and have something to back up this May of 1998 expiration of TAGS. Without that it's going to be a complete disaster, I can certainly tell you that.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Newell and Mr. Ellsworth. You've both presented us with a lot of food for thought. You've given excellent presentations to us. We want to thank you so much for appearing before us today.
Our meeting is adjourned.