FISH Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES PÊCHES ET DES OCÉANS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, November 26, 1997

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. George S. Baker (Gander—Grand Falls, Lib.)): Order.

I am George Baker, chairman of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans of the House of Commons. I will ask MP Yvan Bernier to officially open the meeting.

Mr. Bernier.

[Translation]

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Yvan Bernier (Bonaventure—Gaspé— Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok, BQ)): Let me first introduce myself. I am Yvan Bernier and I am the member for Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles- de-la-Madeleine—Pabok. My riding is as vast as its name implies and those who are familiar with it know that it covers the shore of the Gaspé Peninsula.

We are here today as members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries. There are ten of us. This meeting is highly important and the subject we are dealing with today is mainly the TAGS program which, as you all know, is scheduled to end in May 1998.

We will listen with great attention to what you will have to say about fisheries management and any other concerns you may have with Fisheries and Oceans or the Coast Guard, since the latter also falls under the purview of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

This is both an important and historic meeting since committee members representing all five parties in the House made the trip, these members being the spokespersons of their respective parties. So we have here, representing the NDP and coming from Nova Scotia, Mr. Peter Stoffer; representing the Reform Party, the official opposition, and coming from British Columbia, Mr. John Duncan, the fisheries critic for his party; he is accompanied by his assistant, Mr. Gary Lunn, also from British Columbia; from the Conservative Party and coming from Newfoundland, Mr. Bill Matthews, who also is fisheries critic; on the far right, from your neighbouring riding, Mr. Lawrence O'Brien, a Liberal member, and Mr. Charles Hubbard, from New Brunswick, who is vice-chairman of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. I should also note that John Duncan is the other Vice-Chairman of the Committee. I will keep him for dessert. I, for one, am here in my homeland of Quebec.

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The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Mr. Wayne Easter, from Prince Edward Island, is here also, as well as Ms. Nancy Karetak-Lindell of Nunavut, representing the Liberal Party. So you can see there are people from all over. As every other member, I had to do some homework in order to get a grasp of the importance of what lies ahead. We all know that we will need to convince our caucuses at the end of this study. We will have to sell your ideas.

We will do our utmost to table a unanimous report since this would best speed up things in the House. As our friend, the Chairman, kept repeating this week, we expect you to tell us what you liked and disliked in the TAGS program, what you would like it to become, whether it should be continued and what is going to happen in the fisheries so that we can take good note of your comments and be in a position, each of us, to convince our caucuses, in order eventually to vote for a program that will closely reflect your views.

We will proceed in the following way this afternoon. Mr. Baker will moderate when English-speaking witnesses have the floor, since he is much faster in this language than me, while I will take over when witnesses speak French. So I will give the floor back to Mr. Baker, the Chairman of the Committee and MP for the riding of Gander—Grand Falls, in Newfoundland, for over 23 years.

Just one word before I finish. George is used to seeing me interrupt him now and then. I just wanted to extend the regrets of Mr. Ghislain Fournier, the member for Manicouagan, who could not be here today since he is presently travelling with another committee. He would have liked to be here for the hearing that is taking place in his riding and I trust he will contact many of you for a follow- up. As I said, if you should ever have problems with your MP over fisheries matters, do not hesitate to call my office and I will make sure your MP is aware of your views. So now, Mr. Baker, I give the floor back to you.

[English]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Bernier.

Our witnesses today are from the Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association.

Gentlemen, after the opening statement, please give your name before you speak so that in the official record, which will be printed from these proceedings, the people doing the record will know who is speaking.

We'll now ask the director general, Mr. Paul Nadeau, to introduce the witnesses around the table.

Mr. Paul Nadeau (Director General, Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

To give you a small geography course, this includes communities from Blanc-Sablon up to Kégashka, which is very near Natashquan. These fifteen communities are on about 400 kilometres of shoreline. Six of the communities are linked by road, and nine are still isolated, similar to northern areas.

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Our structure covers the whole region. We have one director per community. I will start with the western sector: Kégashka, Mr. John Evans; Romaine, Mr. Réjean Guillemette; from Chevery, Mr. Willy Ransom; from Harrington Harbour, Mr. Lloyd Ransom, who also represents Aylmer Sound; for Tête-à-la-Baleine, Mr. Marc Monger; and for Mutton Bay-La Tabatière, which includes two communities, Clyde Bobbitt. Unfortunately our representative for Saint-Augustin couldn't attend the meeting.

For Old Fort Bay, we have Mr. Marvin Buckle; for Saint-Paul River, Mr. Pierce Nadeau; for Middle Bay, Mr. Hollis Lavallée; for Brador Bay, Mr. Wesley Etheridge; in replacement of Mr. Camille Jones, for Lourdes-de-Blanc-Sablon, Mr. Germain Dumas; and for Blanc-Sablon, Mr. Riley Lavallée.

I almost forgot the most important guy, our president, our skipper, Mr. Andrew Fequet from Old Fort Bay.

I'd just like to clarify to the people attending the meeting that we were approached by Mr. Jacques Lahaie to organize this meeting and we asked, as the Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association, to have a few hours. I just want to clarify with the MRC, or the municipalities, that they're going to have a few hours after, because they may have different preoccupations or they may be looking at the crisis with TAGS in the fishing industry from a different angle. They are businesses, public organizations, and citizens who are directly and indirectly affected by the fishing problem. The plant workers and the fishermen are directly into it. There are two different perspectives, and we want to respect both.

I don't know if you have any questions, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Not at this point. Sir, you can continue with your presentation.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: We held a board of directors' meeting yesterday. We wanted to have some fresh material to work with and make sure that all the communities had input. We put together a very summarized document on the global preoccupations.

Everybody is very concerned, in the short term, with the cod stocks, which are still not appearing to be in very good health. We presented an introduction; I think you have a short document of about six pages, just summarizing some. We could dwell in the past and complain about the TAGS program—and we will certainly complain about a few things, there are several complaints from the people—but we'd better look to the future.

Unfortunately the future seems pretty bleak for small communities such as ours that are isolated from the rest of the province. We don't have a very diversified economy. We mainly depend on the fishery. It's similar to many areas in Newfoundland or in Labrador. There are very few opportunities for developing other economic sectors, such as tourism, forestry, or anything, because of the geography, because of the isolation mainly, and because of the absence of a real network. We don't have any link to the outside, and our transportation most often makes several projects rather impossible.

I'll start slowly with the introduction and browse through it. If some of the directors would like to make comments to a subject, they can just shoulder up and present some of their local preoccupations.

Would that be fine with you, Mr. Chairman?

The Chairman: Yes, that's fine.

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Mr. Paul Nadeau: First we wish to underline that we're an underdeveloped region. In 1984 we still had about 500 groundfish licence holders on the lower north shore. However, through the last 10 or 15 years we've dropped to about 245 core fishermen. We are aware that in eastern Canada there is a 5% of fishing capacity decrease since the moratorium started. However, on the lower north shore we've lost half of our fishermen. So I would ask the panel what is going on in other regions. What is the problem? We seem to be having to suffer very sharp cutbacks, although we see that globally fishing capacity seems to be and remain a very severe problem. I don't know if anybody could answer this question.

The Chairman: You are absolutely correct in what you're saying. You just continue on. You are absolutely correct, the effort was not decreased. According to the official statistics you have suffered a great decrease.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: We wish to underline that we hope we won't suffer any more or we won't be forced to suffer any more through some more elimination process that we are foreseeing. Mr. Fequet and I met with Mr. David Anderson, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, a few weeks ago, and we are very worried about what the outlook is. We see there is a big struggle between different types of fishing gear, mobile versus fixed. We know that it's going to be painful for everybody, but we hope it is going to be equally painful. So I think the message on that is pretty clear.

We are also preoccupied by the corporate and privatization philosophy that has been spread through the Globe and Mail, the Gazette, and several newspapers. We understand the rest of the country not wanting to see people depending solely on social programs. However, there is a reality we have to face in coastal communities, and that is if we don't get the proper help and we don't get the networks and tools to work with similar to those of larger centres it's very difficult for us to produce.

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Since we have to live with a very long winter, it will be very difficult to go from seasonal employment to full-time employment or yearly employment. If we could increase the number of work weeks, say from 12 to 16, it would be progress in a good direction. But we must not expect to go from 14 weeks right to 35 weeks per year without a significant investment from the government in giving us the proper tools to become self-sufficient.

What we are worried about is that we see that large corporations seem to promote...it seems as if there's a disappearance of the middle class, the people who left the poverty line a bit and had access to the crab fishery on the lower north shore, for example. Their heads were just above water, and they are seeing DFO coming back with drastic licensing fees, observer fees, registration fees, dockside fees, coast guard fees. I could keep on with the list. There won't be any money left in the pocket of the fisherman.

On the EI, employment insurance—it's not unemployment insurance any more—we see that our employment is seasonal and it creates a certain dependency in the economic system. We know in recent years there has been a surplus in the EI system. It seems as if we're financing the deficit with money intended for unemployed citizens.

I don't know if you have any comments, Mr. Chairman, or somebody else on your panel.

The Chairman: You go right ahead. You're doing fine.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Is that the truth?

The Chairman: You're right on. We represent all the political parties. We're preparing a report for the House of Commons in which we're going to state what should be corrected according to the information we're collecting. You're doing just fine on your first page, I can assure you.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: I'll give more figures, because there are quite a few fishermen here in the room who don't realize the impact because they are still not on unemployment. It's probably still stuck in the mail, because we have a strike as we're speaking.

Some fishermen, the sad news is, were investing $1 to receive $10 in the past, because of the long period of winter. With the new system we're seeing now that for the same dollar they invest they will receive not even half. They will receive $4.50 for $1 they invest.

That was a drastic measure and it decreases the dependency rather drastically. Maybe the global economy is saying the seasonal workers are dependent on the economy, but this was a drastic measure and it's certainly going to have an impact, and a very negative impact, if no other programs are put in place to promote the creation of employment.

We see a lot of the big corporations boasting about their independent economic status. However, I think a lot of people now are aware of the different transactions, international markets, stock markets. Everybody is getting access to it through the invasion of computers. We're seeing it—fortunately, just one part—on the lower north shore. We see that large corporations are benefiting from a lot of fiscal benefits and their big investments, but they don't put their money only in the country. However, most of our fishermen between the poverty level and the middle class, and under the poverty level, spend the money back in the economy.

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So we would like to know where the big loss is, because money doesn't disappear, as people like to pretend. I think money that is given to the community is spent back in the community, is spent back in the economy. If it be spent outside of the country, fine, then maybe we have a direct loss there. We know it's got to produce something. However, I think money is just a cycle. It rolls in. It rolls back in. If it rolls back in the economy, I think that's a benefit.

For right now, we have a rather big problem on our hands. We think the government and everybody was hoping in 1993, 1994 that the cod stocks would be building back up in 1997, 1998 and we'd be fine and dandy and there wouldn't be any problem.

However, we know now the FRCC.... There's a meeting going on in Moncton, New Brunswick, today. We know that the FRCC didn't have their analysis or all the results to provide to that meeting, to DFO, to the industry, to make some kind of an assessment or for people to present their ideas or management plan projects for 1998. So we see that there is a lot of discomfort.

People are postponing everything because of the fact that it seems as if the facts are not as healthy, or not healthy at all.

In some places in the gulf, in the 4R, I think this year there was some hope. But from what we are hearing on the eastern Atlantic, it's pretty bleak. I don't know if there is any further information on this today from the panel. We didn't hear a lot. There are only rumours that the 2J, 3KL, M, N, and O, those zones in the eastern Atlantic, are not doing very well. So as a temporary measure we certainly need the continuation of TAGS or an improved formula from TAGS.

I think a lot of people are disappointed about what the formula provided them in the areas. There was a lot of money in the budget that was declared to be available. However, before it reached the community it seemed as if it was all dissolved.

A lot of people in the community were afraid. With all the changes in the EI system and everything, people were mostly interested in remaining active. Therefore a lot of that money wasn't used on the lower north shore. We don't know where it was used. The federal government is telling us that they even took back the buy-back money, which completely handicapped that program, to feed the income support because there was a deficit in the income support program.

On the lower north shore we don't have exact figures for that, but originally we had about 600 recipients on TAGS and probably we're down to under 200 now, because there was only a certain duration for some. They were mainly plant workers. The fishermen and most of the plant workers did not benefit largely from TAGS. They remained active.

So for a temporary solution, until we find proper development programs, I think the federal government has the obligation to provide on a temporary basis until proper programs are implemented or there is some definite plan for diversifying the fishery.

We know that these days it is very difficult to get a number of licences. We can get one, two, three licences. In an area like the lower north shore, as we are very far from markets, it's almost impossible to get any buyer interested. Because we've only got one-pound or two-pound to bring to a plant, no buyer will ever come in the area to develop.

We have problems with DFO in Quebec to get sufficient numbers of licences. We seem to see a different attitude with DFO in Newfoundland. DFO in Newfoundland seems to be very much closer to the industry. They're helping and assisting the industry.

We speak about this because we know it for a fact. We deal with Mr. Dave Decker on a pretty regular basis. We had an agreement last year on the cod. We were the only ones in the gulf who had an agreement for an experiment on cod. We can see that Mr. Willy Bruce and others seem to be paying a lot of attention. They are preoccupied, and we find that fine, but in Quebec we have a lot of difficulty in being heard. We have to go through a regional office that is 450 kilometres from us. We have go through that level. Then we have to go to Quebec. Then sometimes we still have to knock on doors in Ottawa before we can even get half a dozen licences.

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Take the crab industry, for example. In the last three years we have seen the crab industry decreasing. However, we are seeing it increasing in the offshore fleet. In Newfoundland we see a very high increase. This is good, too. It's fine for that province. But we are looking at that and we are puzzled about where we stand and what is going on.

All these questions and preoccupations create frustration with the fishermen. They are neighbours. I think we are still in the same country, but we see that the rules are applied differently, even with the protection. This year with the protection we have seen some fishermen in Quebec couldn't even bring a friend on board the boat, for example. They go across the border and it's possible. We found that on the other side there was a rather fine rule, but on this side it was dramatic. It was a drastic rule.

There are these little differences there at the border. People from Blanc-Sablon, in this sector, are living it every day. That's why I took a bit of time to get off course and talk about it.

To keep on with the document, we would like to think of diversification, mainly development programs. We need programs in the short term as income support, but we also need to have some programs built and adapted specifically to the needs of this region, with the regional organizations. That doesn't mean only the fishermen's association. That means we would like to have a big part, at least 50% involvement, but we don't mind getting other economic sectors involved. If we work together we'll build a more solid economy.

[Translation]

Sorry, Mr. Bernier, I forgot to mention that even if we could have made our presentation in French, we chose to make it in English since the vast majority of fishermen here speak English and most francophone fishermen understand English.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Witnesses have the right to use both official languages and I think you do it very well.

[English]

I would like to say I'm not perfectly bilingual. I can read English. Sometimes I say a few words in English, but to be sure I don't miss anything I will sometimes use the earphones.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Fine, thank you.

[English]

We would like to see initiatives to promote different economic sectors, mainly because they are more accessible to us, such as the primary resource sector, maybe tourism. Maybe we have a small potential in forestry on the western part of the coast, agriculture. Fishers could be encouraged to go towards tourism, guiding, farming, marine products, the maintenance of the actual infrastructure.

We have fishing infrastructure on the lower north shore and with every little project the fishermen's committee has presented in the last five years it seems as though those buildings must be abandoned. Even though we need them, even though they are necessary, it seems as if the government doesn't want to put a penny into them. As soon as there's a nail to put in, or a piece of wood, in a project in the last five or ten years, those projects are no good any more.

That's a big problem. How can we maintain the minimum facilities if we can't have access to such programs? That's fine for large cities, where everything is built out of concrete and built for 50 years, but a lot of the buildings on the lower north shore are still built with wood and they still need maintenance on a yearly basis or every two or three years.

We require significant help, because we don't have a large number of investors. We have a small population, small communities. We can't build consortiums as easily as they can do it in the big communities. I think if you invest a dollar in a large centre you'll get the industry to come back with a dollar very easily. If you come with a dollar on the lower north shore, when people are broke they don't have that dollar to invest, and therefore you won't get the same results.

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So when the federal government comes here with crumbs, all we can do with it is crumbs—a little finer, that's all. It goes to nothing. It goes to dust.

This year I was talking to an HRDC representative in Sept-Îles. I said there was a program. I forget the title, because it was about six pages long, I think, and there was about $50 in it. The title was worth more than the budget itself. He told me that they invested a quite large amount of money on the lower north shore. When he ended, I said “How much?” He said “$500,000”. That is probably not even enough to put a hoist machine in the building they're building there.

So how are we going to have economic development when somebody is going to tell me that in 15 communities they've invested a large amount of money, in a year and a half, $500,000? I think that's ridiculous. To me it was like a slap in the face. Maybe $500,000 is fine for one person, but for a region it's not so interesting.

Another thing that we don't want to see we discussed. It's a debate—there are different interpretations on that—but most people don't mind working for their money. They don't mind being active for their money, but people don't want to shovel snow. We saw that people were given some income on TAGS but the different programs that were available weren't adapted to the communities. A lot of people didn't feel like getting on those programs because they didn't feel like shovelling snow. But I think people don't mind working if it's going to be something that's going to benefit them, that's going to benefit the community.

Mr. Gary Lunn (Saanich—Gulf Islands, Ref.): I have a quick question for you while we're on that point.

The Chairman: Mr. Lunn from British Columbia would like to interrupt you and ask you a question if that's okay.

Mr. Gary Lunn: It's just because you're right on this topic.

I have to admit that I'm impressed with what you've written in your report and that you've taken this approach. I touched on it with a few people in our last meeting. I'm asking this because I don't know: are there enough infrastructure programs for things within the industry that you can help to use this money, the active money, as you call it, that would somehow connect with the fishing industry—like wharfs or whatever that could be repaired, improved, replaced?

Mr. Paul Nadeau: I'll ask if Mr. Buckle wants to add a few words on this. I think he could give you, for example, several projects that they tried to get but, because of different programs or regulations in Quebec, people in the community that have the skills to do it are not entitled because they don't have a special card or the program is not adapted to the region.

The Chairman: Before we hear from Mr. Buckle, I wonder if he could also address this problem.

I say this because what you're suggesting, Mr. Nadeau, in your brief is that this type of program should replace TAGS income support. I'm wondering if, during your discussions with the fishermen themselves, they didn't put forward an argument that said that this was supposed to be a replacement for the income that they received from catching cod, but, now that the cod is gone, they would rather have it as an income support and that as fishermen that's what they want instead of works programs. I'm just wondering if you could—

Mr. Paul Nadeau: I will clarify.

The Chairman: That would come to my mind if I were sitting down with a group of fishermen and I suggested the works program idea.

I don't know if Mr. Buckle would like to tackle both of them at the same time and explain. Mr. Buckle, are you a fisherman, sir?

Mr. Marvin Buckle (Secretary, Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association): I straddle both sides of the fence, fishing and the industry.

The Chairman: Oh, good. Wonderful.

Mr. Marvin Buckle: Yes, there are some problems with the TAGS program. There are some problems in general with all programs.

I'll give you a good example. Right now we have a lot of infrastructures along this coastline in every community and most of them are in very bad shape. They've deteriorated over the years, but right now there's no financing available. As you know, Small Craft Harbours are no longer responsible for any of the docks. They have been given to the fishermen to maintain.

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We have no funds. No projects are available right now to do those. Even if we could, for example if the government today would give me a grant to repair the dock, I have to comply with a law in Quebec under the CCQ, which prevents me from doing construction and paying $20 an hour. Under the programs we don't get that kind of financing, so we are back to square one. We can't do it.

About the TAGS program, if I may dwell on that a bit, the TAGS program in general was a good program. Unfortunately it didn't fit well along our shore, mainly because of two factors. One was the price differential between the lower north shore and Gaspé, if I may use Gaspé as an example. They set a ceiling of x thousands of dollars to qualify. In Gaspé codfish sold for 50¢ a pound and on the lower north shore it sold for 20¢ a pound, which means we had to catch nearly three times the cod, and our season is about one-third of what it is in the rest of the province. The policy was not adapted to suit the region.

The Chairman: A $5,000 limit was reachable in one place but not the other.

Mr. Marvin Buckle: It was not reachable on the lower north coast.

The Chairman: But the same amount of fish was caught.

Mr. Marvin Buckle: Yes, for half the dollar value. Therefore a lot of our people did not come under the umbrella of TAGS. Those people today are lined up at the welfare office, trying to survive on $600 a month. With a long, cold winter in front of them they have to make a choice whether they are going to freeze to death or starve to death. That's the reality.

The Chairman: Okay, but sir, I think Mr. Lunn's question.... Mr. Lunn, like some other members in this committee, is searching for.... All along this trip we are searching for what can be done. The TAGS people were promised their money until 1999, so what the committee members are searching for is what should replace TAGS.

Mr. Gary Lunn: I can add one comment. The problem is everywhere we go we are hearing, loud and clear, a few key messages. First, the people don't want handouts. They want to go back and do what they love to do. But they have been given these letters and they have commitments. They have been given letters from the department that they would receive this income support until May 1999. However, it's widely recognized, and it has been widely criticized by the Auditor General, that the support in its present state is really not doing the job it should be doing.

So as a committee we really should be searching for alternatives, and getting those alternatives from you. This is one of the first ones I have seen laid out, and it's a very positive one.

The Chairman: So you have suggested GRAP instead of pay. But in suggesting GRAP.... What goes through my mind is if I were a fisherman and I were given income support because the cod were gone, then wouldn't I want the income support and not have to go to work for it? That's the problem I have.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: I understand. A lot of fishermen, until 1999.... It's sad to see the government probably won't want to stand to its commitment. So the GRAP certainly wouldn't want to start before TAGS has ended. TAGS should end. I think most of the fishermen want that. If there's going to be a transitional period, unless things change very drastically, things will not be settled in the short term.

I think TAGS should be maintained until.... But the formula.... If we don't have any cod in a year, what do we do after 1999? We had meetings, and a majority of people want to work. They can't work yearly, though, obviously. If they fish 14 weeks a year, a program like GRAP will not make them a yearly employed person.

The Chairman: Just in the summer.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Exactly. We are not going to start asking somebody who fished 14 or 16 or 18 weeks a year to start working 52 weeks a year. But I think that would be a large improvement from TAGS, because those people could produce something for themselves, for the communities, things they feel would benefit them.

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A voice: For the industry.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: For the industry, yes, and maybe in another economic sector if we have to.

The Chairman: So if we could get back for a second to Mr. Buckle, who explained to us that he can't do the work he needs to do because of provincial laws in Quebec, what are you suggesting can be done?

Mr. Marvin Buckle: That's the point I want to make clear to Mr. Lunn. I think the problem we have with TAGS and the bad image it has in Ottawa, let's say, or elsewhere is not the fault of the recipients. In the beginning the program was intended to retrain fishermen or whatever in other aspects of the economy, and after a couple of months the whole program was scrapped and it was no longer available to us.

So it's maybe sad in one sense of the word, but we have no alternative but to take the cheque for nothing, those of us who are receiving it. And with respect to an alternative, yes, I think we should do something. I have no grievance against doing an honest day's work and I think we should work for what we get. But as we sit here today, until there are some changes in government regulations we can't do anything positive or beneficial to us in the fishing sector, because we are restricted by regulations that forbid us to repair docks and infrastructure.

We can't even build anything, because we have to go and hire someone outside the fishery who has a CCQ card; otherwise we can't make a cardboard box. So we bring them in from Sept-Îles, Baie Comeau, or Port Cartier, Quebec or Montreal, or somewhere to do something and we sit and watch.

The Chairman: Mr. Nadeau, could you explain then why you're suggesting GRAP in your brief?

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Mr. Paul Nadeau: GRAP is in that line of what Mr. Buckle was saying, but with projects we could see or some kind of agreement between departments where some of the regulations.... I think Mr. Bernier would be familiar with the term; he sometimes talks about building a régie under a private...or between brackets, they will build it specifically for an isolated region in a particular, exceptional circumstance.

For example, just to show the particularity of the lower north shore in comparison to the rest of Quebec, in 1980 we used to get 7% credit on investment on the north shore, because Sept-Îles and the north shore—not the lower north shore, but the north shore—were part of region 09. Probably most people haven't had the opportunity to meet our deputy so far, because it's not easy for him to have access to us and it's far away. So we had 7% credit on investment, and in the Gaspé they had 20%, because they were recognized as a fishing sector. We only had 7%, so when people used to go and build boats, they would get a return of 20%, which was what the province required as a down payment. On the lower north shore, 7% didn't cut it, so some people built boats just with getting a down payment.

That's an example of how we tell the government we'll help you if you help us. Why are we being discriminated against? It's not because the people are not willing to do something; it's just that they don't have the tools to work with. They simply don't have the tools. I don't know if it's because we're missing representation, but we hope today the message is going to be clear and it's going to the right place.

The Chairman: We're sorry, Mr. Nadeau, for interrupting you so much, but this subject is very dear. Mr. O'Brien wants to say something.

Look, it's an excellent idea that you have. Other committee members are discussing this amongst themselves as they travel around. Various subjects have come up. There is a serious problem on some sections of the coast with what are called ghost nets, gill-nets. Do you have the same problem, or is it not the same problem? You don't have the monofilament nets in the bottom?

Mr. Andrew Fequet (President, Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association): My name is Andrew Fequet, and I'm president of the Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association. We do use gill-nets, but we don't have a ghost net problem, because our fishery for gill-nets is within five to six miles from land, and we all know that every time we get out. And they're not left for any long periods of time.

The Chairman: Do you haul them once every two days?

Mr. Andrew Fequet: Once every day, and when there are lots of fish, we haul them twice a day.

The Chairman: Just like a cod trap?

Mr. Andrew Fequet: Yes.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien (Labrador, Lib.): What about lost nets?

Mr. Andrew Fequet: We don't lose nets; we couldn't afford to. As you come up through the straits, Mr. O'Brien, I know you're from L'Anse-au-Loup down there, so as you come up, we don't go offshore.

The Chairman: No, you don't have that problem.

Mr. Andrew Fequet: We don't have any problem with ghost nets.

• 1435

The Chairman: What we're looking for, Mr. Fequet, is what could be done under your idea for GRAP. Now, your idea for GRAP can work only if we have a change of provincial regulations. As I read you, it's going to work only if the provincial government says that in the case of the fishermen, fisherwomen and plant workers—

Mr. Paul Nadeau: No, not exactly.

HRDC did discourage a lot of small projects as they involve any kind of construction. It was not only for the fishery, because I know that a lot of the federal government people were looking at probably letting go or abandoning some infrastructures because they felt they were no longer needed. But there are other types of infrastructures that are indirectly in the community that touched any kind of specific construction like that.

There are ways to go around it, but HRDC simply didn't want to see it, because we did several projects and it was around the rules, as we'd say, and we could do them. Lately HRDC simply did not want to invest in that type of project. That was the federal government.

The Chairman: If this were the answer, if we took your suggestion with GRAP, then you could work around it? If the government decided to implement it, then it could be implemented, you could get around some of these rules?

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Exactly.

The Chairman: Mr. O'Brien from Labrador.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: I'm not getting a clear picture from you. Mr. Buckle produced evidence about the card. If you're an electrician, you're an electrician and you can have this card. It is my understanding that Quebec is the only province that has this. Mr. Nadeau is saying “No, not quite so”. I'd like to get a better clarification.

If you got $100,000 tomorrow from a job creation program from Human Resources Development Canada to repair your stage down there, could you put fishermen on to repair that stage, or would you have to go to this card? I need to know that clearly.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: You can assemble the building. I'm not a construction specialist, but I can give you a few details. It's a very technical thing.

You can build the building in small parts, and at the moment of the assembling then you require somebody from CCQ, but just at that moment. It's not going around the rules; it's just being smart. But HRDC simply didn't want to look at it, because there was one very small phase of the project, the assembling part.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. If it hasn't changed, then that's pretty much it.

Mr. Gary Lunn: We're following this up only because it is an excellent idea.

Mr. Buckle, I understand your frustrations. You made the comment that you had no other choice but to sit back and take this TAGS, and we fully realize that. I can only sympathize with your frustrations, but this is something that is worth canvassing.

As the beneficiaries of any future or alternative program, you, the fishermen, have to be the people that are going to benefit from this, or there's no point in pursuing it. That's why we're chasing this one down. Maybe there's something that can be done and we can explore it further, but it is an excellent suggestion.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: We're presenting that to your panel because TAGS is very unpopular. We know that public opinion has a great impact and influence on government decisions, what will be the outcome, what will be the future.

We've seen a lot of fishermen who are worrying about the future. They cannot see an indefinite income support for just a loss of the cod. I think we could come for that. Maybe it would be fair to give it in that way, but in life you don't get what's fair, you get what you can negotiate.

I think something in between the income support that we have now and a GRAP program or any similar type of program would be an improvement on what we've had in the last three or four years, would produce for the economy. Then maybe the global economy would be more tolerant, would support it more. We need to work together on this. We know that we can't do it on our own.

The Chairman: You can now continue with your presentation. I assume you're speaking on behalf of the fishermen as far as this GRAP is concerned. So I presume there would be general agreement of the fishermen to that sort of project—a continuation of TAGS like that.

• 1440

Mr. Paul Nadeau: To be more specific on this, I know we've been walking on touchy ground in the last three years. I can tell you, we have our problems. The Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association is sometimes criticized, and will be criticized in the future, but it's still the only regional structure that represents the whole region. There is no other structure. I don't think in eastern Canada there is any region, except for ours, that has one full association.

For those who are 50 years old, it's probably harder to reorient in a new career. It's a solution for a terminal disease—the groundfish crisis. It's a difficult statement, but I think we know that in small communities a lot of the traditional fishers have little academic background. They have learned the trade of fishing through practical training and not theoretical training. It will be rather difficult to retrain these people.

It's through no fault of their intelligence, because in my opinion you could go to school all your life, but you don't get more intelligent, you just accumulate knowledge. I think these people are quite intelligent but maybe not compatible with the market requirements of today.

Probably the best solution would be to promote an early retirement program at the age of 50. It's a terminal solution, but I think it's the best option with the outlook we have today. What we have on the table today is not good. We have nothing. Solutions are not easy to come by. The federal government so far hasn't come up with a miracle solution, so this is one we're suggesting.

That will cover the early retirement program. I don't know if there are any people in the Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association who would like to make a comment at this point, so I'll continue.

We have seen the buy-back program. We used to call them harvesting adjustment boards. I think the program was aimed at reducing the fishing capacity. This was necessary, and unfortunately it's still necessary. The first buy-back program with the harvesting adjustment boards realized some good basic work, but we saw that a lot of the money was turned over to income support. It turned into a failure because there was not enough money put into it.

Maybe some larger enterprises were expected to sell for less, but they probably wanted sufficient compensation because they were completely out of the fishery. So while you're looking at having that reinstated as one of the measures, maybe some fishermen will be interested in opting out. Again, maybe this is not the best option, but it's one that some fishermen would like to see.

I don't think there will be one single solution to the problem today; there will be several programs that could alleviate or release the pressure we have.

The masterpiece that can solve or really jump-start GRAP is the regional development fund. We're talking about sufficient funding, Mr. Baker, we're not talking about $500,000. We didn't put a figure there because we didn't want to scare anybody in the room.

• 1445

The lower north shore is isolated. One of its main problems is there is no road network. There is no link between most of the communities. I think that is a drastic problem and you need to address it now. We know there is great potential. Probably 25 or 50 years down the road several beautiful salmon rivers will be dammed, and we won't be able to stop them. But the people who claimed this land and lived all their lives there will never even have the opportunity to see a road. I find that pretty sad.

If the government is as efficient in planning as it is supposed to be, it should know what we should aim for in the next 25 years. We know there are some megaprojects and we would like to see a part of them. I think people really could be more efficient in the GRAP program if we had the tools to be more self-sufficient.

There are other programs that could help people acquire different skills: joint economic ventures, development of the tourism sector, because it's not accessible at the present time to the outside world.... Tourism on the lower north shore...the MRC could correct me if I'm wrong, now or later, but I don't think it will ever represent more than 15% to 20% of the economy in the lower north shore in its actual state. But if ever we had a road, the gulf would be open to the States, to everything. A tourist, for example, could make the rounds of eastern Canada and he wouldn't look at the same scenery twice. At present they are going up and coming back on the same road.

We feel the tourists are suffering. They are not seeing the region for what it is. They say when they visit eastern Canada they backtrack. It's a bit like the cod.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Could I say something? It's an important point you're making.

I'm a promoter of roads, big-time. Let me say to you very quickly that you know where I'm coming from relative to a road in Labrador. We just got $370 million, thank God, from the Government of Canada this past year. About $200 million of that will go into a road along the coast of Labrador, up towards Cartwright and between Goose Bay and west Labrador.

I spoke with Mr. Bernier because I need a meeting—I may need it with you too—to talk with the Minister of Transport in Quebec, the members of the government and the officials of the Bloc Québécois, or whomever, and yourselves, to talk about the loop. We're going that way, and we're planning to join at Goose. It's not too far to get to Natashquan, where they already have a road, out of Havre St. Pierre and on into Sept-Îles and so on. And there are some road pieces along the lower north shore. So if we made that connection, we would have a great northern loop.

You would have two options, then. You could come down and go back this way, or come down and go back that way, or come down and cross by ferry and go that way, whatever the case might be.

I think that's a very good point. So you have an ally in me and I'm prepared to work with you—and I'm sure, Mr. Bernier, you likewise—to get on with issues like this. Collectively we can do better things together than we can by working independently of each other.

I wonder if John Evans could comment on that.

Mr. John Evans (Treasurer, Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association): Yes, I think I can. Listening to Mr. O'Brien there, I was hoping he could find at least $3 million or $4 million—

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: I'll vote for you if you want me to.

Mr. John Evans: I hope you will; and you would have my vote pretty quickly if you could find another $5 million to connect us with east of Natashquan, which is about 17 kilometres. Then we can be connected to all the rest of Canada. It's about 800 miles east of the 401, I guess. Then you could turn off anywhere and head for the United States.

That happened to me this summer when I went to Ottawa. I took the wrong turn and I was headed for the United States. That's why I know this well.

Our community got together and we got some petitions signed. There are ten communities around Natashquan. We sent them all off, but we're still waiting for a few more to come through. In our petition you'll see the little note we wrote asking for support, because our little community is choking without the road. In the last year the fishermen, because of the markets, went off to Natashquan for a better price and left us with our plant closed down.

Mr. Nadeau started off just now with the qualifications for TAGS. Our community didn't. There were about half a dozen people who qualified for TAGS in our community because of the fact that for what they needed to qualify at the time they didn't have the money or they didn't work long enough in the fish plant.

• 1450

But give us the road and we'll be self-sufficient. That's all we need. We're a small community, and with our little fish plant we can—

The Chairman: Mr. Evans, this petition, of course, is to the provincial government of Quebec, isn't it?

Mr. John Evans: That's right.

The Chairman: What you're suggesting is that we take this petition as looking for support for that proposal in suggesting what your director general says should be a part of the economic development package of GRAP.

Mr. John Evans: Correct.

The Chairman: Okay, got you.

Yes, Mr. Fequet.

Mr. Andrew Fequet: Mr. Chairman, for the transportation in Quebec, my understanding is that it's half paid by Ottawa.

The Chairman: Yes, sir.

Mr. Andrew Fequet: We have to present our projects to you people as well.

The Chairman: That's right. Okay, sir, I understand.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: It's driven by the province.

The Chairman: You now officially presented it to us and we accept it.

Mr. Nadeau.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: We wish to promote development ideas in other economic sectors and promote entrepreneurship for everybody. This regional development fund could be managed through a panel from the region, not from the region of the north shore or the Quebec region, but the lower north shore region, formed with 50% from the fishing industry and—we have to think about everybody else who has knowledge—50% from other sectors, with the federal public servants to lead this initiative.

That's an example of how we see things close enough to us that we have access in the decision-making and that we can clearly state our needs and clearly request and not have it filtered through—probably you'll see the term a little later—a Canadian standard formula, because sometimes it's not at all suitable for our region.

We need to repair our fleet, renovate our fleet, and we need to develop our tourism industry, all these things that have potential and are close to the reality of fishermen and fishers who may be invited to leave the fishery or are forced to leave the fishery, so that at least they can transit to a reality that's not too far from the skills they already have. For example, you can take a fisherman and maybe reorient him as a tourism guide or things like that in nature, with boats and things, but it would be difficult to take maybe a 45-year-old fisherman and ask him to become an engineer in aeronautics in a couple of years. I think those are things we will see available to the wide global market, but on the lower north shore, with the profile of the normal client, I think we should in the short term make sure that's it's going to be productive for the person and productive for society, and provide things that are accessible to people.

Then second is a strategic plan whereby we could further develop processing. We have facilities that are under-utilized. I think MAFAQ—Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Aquaculture of Quebec—already are working on a table on this, but we'd like to support this and maybe see your panel supporting it to further encourage processing of wildberries, under-exploited species, fisheries waste. We know that even crab shells are used in cosmetics. God knows we don't know what to do with the crab shells now. We dump them about three or four miles offshore with a very big and nice environment certificate that costs us about $2,000, but it is a joke. So we could do something maybe with this fisheries waste.

• 1455

As long as we have sufficient financing to help entrepreneurs, however, as I said previously we must know, understand and realize that entrepreneurs on the lower north shore have not been corporate investors, so the government will probably have to cut a little thicker slice than you would put in a large centre. That's the problem we have. We are caught in standardized formulas and therefore we are only going to be financed at a 25% venture, so we'll probably never see the light.

So after this we'd then like to get into a partnership. We'd like to get close to the decision-making. I think DFO is going toward this as we're getting more problems and everybody wants a share. So DFO wants to share with us. We understand we always were a part of it and probably we have a certain responsibility towards what's happening, but a large part of the decision-making was out of our reach.

We're not afraid. We will get closer to the management or the co-management. We're ready to present some projects that could suit our region.

For example, on the lower north shore we could get together to try to look at how we could better manage some stocks that are in jeopardy, such as the cod. What we're looking at is shares in each and every region in the province or in eastern Canada, because there are some regions that are well defined. There are different zones and so on. There are people who have landing ports in certain areas. Even though we deal with migrating species, we could establish regional shares and let the regions sort it out between the mobile and the fixed.

What the federal government tends to do is to bring all the small problems together to make it a bigger problem. They bring it to Moncton, Charlottetown, or Halifax, and then we have everybody talking a different language, like the Tour de Babel.

Everybody is there with their different realities and their different fleet sectors. Maybe, for example, we'll go on the north shore. They have a different fleet type than we have. They want something different, but they have an historical...and they should have a certain proportion of the shared resource.

We're ready to go to that, and we will handle our fleet sectors. We represent the mobile, fixed-gear crab and groundfish sector. Mind you, it's not an easy job. We don't please everybody. Sometimes we don't please anybody, to try to make it fair, but that's the reality. We are still standing as we are talking today.

We're ready to take a regional share and to manage it at a regional level. Not that we'd do that alone. We'd have to follow some standards from DFO, you understand, in a co-management or a partnership. We feel that taking all these regional differences and putting them at the same table on an eastern seaboard level is suicide. Nobody will ever agree. It will be unfair, because there will always be a large group that will take advantage of it.

In each and every region, use it. We're ready to be used as an experiment and to try it. We know at the present time there may not be very much cod to share, but we want to know in 1997-98 what there is to share. We don't want to wait until 2005 and be on life support, for example, not knowing what the future holds for us. We'd like to have a bit of an idea of what kind of a share there is and what it amounts to, versus the amount of fish, and then we could try to find a distribution formula with the actual fleet we have. Then we'd have a real picture of the reality. If each and every region could do that, the government and the FRCC would have a lot less pressure on their backs.

This is what we're talking about with co-management. That's how we see co-management. I'm sorry I just skipped a few rules of the co-management document. I have three of four co-management guidelines, but every one is different.

• 1500

Then we look at the offshore fishery. We're mainly inshore fishermen, but we also look at the long term and the global vision, and we're looking at the offshore fishery. We've seen that there's a tremendous potential in crab and shrimp. The market is good for that. There's a great demand. We see Newfoundland developing its offshore fisheries at a very fast rate, and we're very happy for Newfoundland. We feel DFO Newfoundland served the fishermen well. But on the lower north shore we feel we're forgotten once more.

This year in Quebec we had a very small portion of the northern shrimp. That wasn't through DFO. It was by agreement between our association and the Newfoundland association. It's ironic, isn't it? We're the only ones in Quebec who have a very small portion of shrimp. I think it's 200 tonnes. Probably we could all eat it around the table.

We had to deal with the industry, the FFAW, the Fishermen, Food and Allied Workers, in Newfoundland because we have a fleet that shares the shrimp in the Escoumains channel. That's a little tonnage we could get.

We feel we're not heard by the federal government when it comes to access to the offshore. We don't know how many NAFO zones there are in the eastern Atlantic altogether, but there are quite a few and we should have at least one, or we should have some part of the quota in one, because we're right there to the mouth of the Strait of Belle Isle. We have even fished on the Labrador. When we're asking for the moon, but we would like to have access to the offshore, because there's a big potential in crab and shrimp.

I don't know if there are any fisherman who would like to make any comments on access to the offshore. I thought Mr. Nadeau was ready to go ahead with his 40-footer, 200 miles offshore.

• 1505

DFO would under-exploit its species. Just to finish, we know that at present for access to the offshore, zone 13, the crab zone, has 49 licences. They are fishing at a 40,000-pound quota average, and the market price is the lowest in the gulf, at a little over $1 in 1997. Those guys are just at the break-even point. There are six from Newfoundland and 43 from this side, and they are struggling. Access to the offshore would certainly be an answer for these people.

Development of under-exploited species.... We have several opportunities to develop under-exploited species on the lower north shore, but we can only obtain licences, as I said previously, in small numbers. We get them by the half-dozen. I think that's a popular figure in DFO Quebec. Maybe they can't count after six. We can't get anything.

They want to make an experiment on a pilot project scale, but no buyers are willing to come in; it's not profitable. They say, we don't trust the fishermen; if we give them 50 licences, they will keep them forever. Well, I'm very sorry to say it to DFO Quebec, but we had 500 groundfish licences and we didn't keep them forever. Only 250 are left. So what's the beef? What's the problem?

That's for the development of under-exploited species. We have sea urchins, we have clams. A couple of years ago DFO Quebec were talking about the potential of sea urchins. They go up as far as Sept-Îles. Now I think there's a Mr. Dumaresque in Labrador who is developing, fortunately, the sea urchin. Probably the lower north shore of Quebec will have to wait because the rest of Quebec won't be there for us. We're not linked. We're almost from a different country because we don't have that link.

The best link we have for most marketing of our products is towards Labrador. Even most of the crab goes out by Newfoundland. What we send by the western part costs us.... Mr. Ross Fequet, president of the crab marketing board, will tell you it costs us a range of 50¢ to a $1 a pound in the last three years. It's something like $11 million to $12 million the lower north shore has lost because of the absence of a road. That is very easily counted.

We have already addressed that to our deputy. We still are looking forward...and we hope what Mr. Evans gave you today will be the first door. It's only 30 miles and there's only a bridge to build. That's basically what it is, a bridge to cross the Natashquan River. It's probably the longest beach in the gulf. It's 20 miles long and non-stop, 18 to 20 miles. It's all sandy, so it's very easy to build something on it.

This is to give you an example of what we have to live with. The year before last the price of crab in Sept-Îles was $2.42. At the time I was directing the crab marketing board and we fought like hell. We even went to the Régie des marchés agricoles du Québec, a marketing board which probably doesn't exist in Newfoundland, and the best we could get was $1.53. So there's a bit of a difference there. There may be a bit of difference in the crab, but not for almost $1. That's another example of how lucky we are.

Another thing we have, and it's a problem here in the Blanc-Sablon area, mainly, is again a problem with DFO. There's the 4R-4S line. That's a NAFO line, a Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization international line, just to manage groundfish. That line wasn't designed to prevent any fishermen from fishing on one side or the other. Newfoundland fishermen would come right to the shore, and the opposite; we would go to the other side. It was just for management purposes.

Now that line is being used by DFO Quebec and Newfoundland. All of a sudden lines were there for non-migrating species. Now we have a few scallops and maybe clams, and curiously, it seems all the resources are right on that line. So the Newfoundlanders are dragging on the line and the guys from Quebec...and here the line is right to the shore. At least at Blanc-Sablon instead of going to the middle of the strait it leaves the shore and cuts the bay in two, I think. It's a mile and a half from here, instead of going through the middle.

• 1510

That line is there, but it doesn't create a problem because we could go on the other side. But now, because it's being used for limiting the fishermen, they're adjacent and can only go a mile and a half in front of their doors there and they're into 4R. I don't know if they're in Newfoundland, but they're in 4R. So now this point is declared a Newfoundland zone and these fishermen don't have access to it.

We don't want a change in the NAFO line. I think it's an international thing and there would be a very long process, but we would like DFO and Quebec and Newfoundland to at least acknowledge access to our fishermen in an area that is adjacent and fair for either province.

We don't want to take anything from the Newfoundland fishermen, but we want our rights to be respected. People have historically fished mostly on the other side of the 4S line but now they are prevented from fishing a non-migrating species. That was not decided by the fishermen from Labrador and the fishermen from the lower north shore. It wasn't decided by the people. The decision came from somewhere. It probably came out of the fog.

That is a very important project for the short term, because the Stimpson clam and scallops is a means of diversification and has the potential to decrease the pressure on any income support program because it will allow people to be active. It will allow fishers to diversify and be less dependent on the groundfish stocks.

The Chairman: Mr. Duncan for a clarification point.

Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, Ref.): When you talk in your submission here about that zone going out to the middle of the strait, would it then be the same as the crab zone line?

Mr. Paul Nadeau: No. We have an exception, because for the crab zone there was an agreement between Quebec and Newfoundland to specifically make it a joint zone. It goes from coast to coast and that's the exception. That's why it's written in the document.

We could send you a map on this one. We discussed it yesterday and it was discussed previously. Unfortunately, I didn't have a map in the document. I would have loved to have had a map. I could send you a map. I think if there's some representative there from NAFO maybe I could get a map before I leave. I have a map at the office and could fax it to your panel to clarify that. The whole crab zone used to leave from what we called Black Rock just at the border, go to the middle of the strait and then down. We feel that is the fair....

Mr. John Duncan: It's probably better for you to send us the map, rather than have us interpret where the line should be.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Exactly. Okay. I'll make a note and we'll send you a map, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Thank you.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Is there any comment on the 4R line? My God, I must be doing it pretty good.

On financial assistance to regional fishing organization in isolated areas, now I have to talk for myself a bit. I talked for everybody else before, and now I'm going to talk for myself.

I think the fishermen's organization we have is very important. It helps the people. Yesterday, I think the document was much more colourful and emotional than it is today. We know you share your part. You've had enough of the emotions and frustrations and probably it's difficult to absorb. You will probably hear the citizens express their frustrations to you, but our organization wants to give a clear message where you can see a sense of direction. I think it's important for you to get a sense of direction from us and our input.

We don't want to just simply complain about the past. I think we could do that for the next week if we wanted to. We'd have a long list. But we want to plan for the future. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is talking about partnership and co-management. However, there's no program to help the fishermen's organization at this point to adjust and adopt a sustainable financing strategy.

• 1515

We understand that fishers are required to pay for several services, like the ones I listed just now. The organizations for fish helped to organize their management plans in a coherent manner. We have to prepare and we have to sign agreements now. We even have to be responsible.

We had an experimental cod fishery this year. I am going to take the opportunity to talk about this. My name was on everybody's lips this summer, and it wasn't great, because we had to implement a cod experimental. Four days before the cod experimental happened, DFO Quebec told me they weren't paying the observer fees. They were supposed to be covering it from the beginning.

We had 200 tonnes of cod, probably—like the shrimp, we could eat it. The crowd was here, to fish through an experimental. We had a protocol thick like this to prepare, and who prepared it? Our direction of the fishermen's association. Who had to live by it and try to pass it on and sell it to fishermen? Our executive board. I think Mr. Marvin Buckle and Mr. Andrew Fequet spent the worst week of their lives when we had to tell the fishermen, “You're going to have to pay 10¢ per pound, because you need to have an observer to check out and make sure you respect everything, because you've got 200 tonnes to catch between 150 fishermen.”

We were forced to implement an observer program, and we did it in-house, because Biorex would have probably charged us $1500 a fisherman, and you may as well stay ashore in that case. There probably will be a return. I'll inform the fishermen—probably a few fishermen will be happy. It took a long time for some of the money to come in. We reimbursed a little over six cents from the people we got the money from.

That was a difficult file. It's just an example of how much work we have to do when decisions like that come down from DFO four days before the fishery opens. We never had a choice. It was a do or die thing. You are damned if you do, damned if you don't. Because if we didn't go ahead, DFO didn't open the fishery. We went ahead, but we had to implement a fee. We had to implement a sufficiently high fee to cover the dockside monitoring and the observer to make sure our organization wouldn't go in the hole, because we'd had to finance it at that time.

These are things we have to live with today. DFO, with the pressure they get—I mean, it's global and we understand that—but we're on the front line every day. We have to live with this everyday. I don't think anybody working in the fishery, or on the direction of a fishermen's association, or on the board these days is putting on weight. Everybody is sweating. I think if there's one day we don't get an argument, it's maybe Sunday, because we're not on the boats.

We understand the frustration of fishermen. They're confronted, they're worried, and there seems to be no plan and no support coming. We're there trying to say “Well, guys, we'll try to do our best, but that's it. We can't foresee everything, and we're far from the decision making.” We want to get closer to that.

If it's going to keep on like this, well.... The more it's going, the less financing we're getting.

It's normal. The people have lost faith. The people who support the fishermen's organizations left are divided. They're worried, they're concerned, they're preoccupied. A lot of them are in financial difficulty. How can you pay a fee to an organization when you're in financial difficulty? Then it becomes a delegation of the blame. Who is to blame? Well, the person on the front line.

If we don't have the money to go and reach those people and try to help them, and if the opposite is happening, DFO comes there and collects the observer fee, the dockside fee, coast guard fee, licence fee. They collect it all from the fishermen. Well, then when the poor fisherman comes to us, we don't have any money left to pay a fee. A lot of the fishermen are on the break-even point, so it's very difficult for us.

What we're looking at is a five-year program to help the fishermen's organization in the isolated area. We don't have a DFO office easily available to all the area. We have a protection office, mainly. I think Mr. Perron is here today. They provide the best service they can. However, they're not the management office.

The management office is in Sept-Îles, 450 kilometres or more away. That is difficult for us. We're an intermediate. We're used an an intermediary in between, so there are a lot of problems that DFO doesn't have to deal with directly, because we deal with them. We confront the fishermen because we know there is no point in asking for things that are impossible; we won't get them. It's difficult, and we need money.

• 1520

We had a board of directors meeting yesterday and we came here today and probably the cost will be around $10,000.

Mr. John Evans, how much did it cost by airplane for you to come here? It cost over $500 just for the airplane ticket.

Mr. John Evans: Over $500. This is not getting me home. It's $431.33, and that only gets me back to Natashquan, and I have to get a hotel room out of that tonight and a plane ticket tomorrow.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: And that's just about 175 kilometres away.

You could fly on Air Royal from Quebec to Paris, France, in the summer for under $500.

Mr. John Evans: Mr. Nadeau, could I comment on that? If we add 70 kilometres more of road I could drive home tonight.

The Chairman: I wonder, as Mr. Bernier had suggested before, and of course we could make a decision on it in the committee, if the members who came into this meeting could propose a motion to pay for the transportation, as Mr. Bernier suggested, for this meeting especially. Mr. Bernier had requested that all of the communities be covered. So expense claims will be submitted.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Some clarification might be useful. Usually, when a committee invites witnesses to appear before it, it pays the costs of a number of witnesses. However, I said it would be easier for the committee to come and hear the witnesses here in the Lower North Shore and to ask them to meet us here. I do not know how much it might cost nor what information was given to you, but the Chairman is open to your requests.

[English]

Mr. Paul Nadeau: We were informed that the cost for the people from the sector from St. Augustin to Kegaska, which is nine communities.... The other communities drive here, so it's not a problem. But we were informed by your organizers that we would be reimbursed for the people who travel from the western part.

The Chairman: Good.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: And we thank you very much, because otherwise we wouldn't have had this opportunity to have such a large representation and make sure that all communities could voice their opinion.

The Chairman: Mr. Bernier takes care of that. He's the man with the money.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Thank you very much.

I think that was pretty much the final note. I thank you very much for your patience. I hope this message will be heard.

We would like to ask a few questions on exactly where the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans is standing and what is going to be the next step from here. Are we going to hear from you in the near future? Is there going to be a report? Are there going to be more meetings? This would maybe clarify for the people in the room, including myself, as to where we're going.

The Chairman: We are taking your suggestions, which we have, and we must say that you have made specific suggestions. And I'm sure, as Mr. Lunn pointed out, that we have not seen the suggestion for a new program called GRAP in all of our meetings, which is exactly what some of the members of the committee were discussing on the way here in fact. Some of the Reform members were.

Mr. Gary Lunn: I think in fairness, in our last meeting we were leaning towards this type of program but we hadn't heard this over on the island of Newfoundland.

The Chairman: No, we had not gotten the exact suggestion. What we are going to do is to make a report to Parliament. We have all of our political parties. The people who write the policy for each political party in the House of Commons are all here, all five political parties. They have to have policies on the fishery. They are all here.

• 1525

We're all going to be sitting down and going over this. Then we're going to be presenting our report to Parliament as soon as possible, maybe before Christmas. Some of the members, including Mr. Bernier, want it before Christmas. Some other members say, well, now, how about holding on until the middle of January. But he wants to give up his Christmas to do the report, it's so important, he says. Other members say, look, let's hold on for a couple of weeks and get some more material together.

We have all the factual material. All we need are the ideas, which you have put in place. You asked us several questions during your brief. We didn't want to interrupt you, but, yes, we have all of the documentation on all of the findings.

You asked about cod in 2J. We have the reports from the sentinel fishery in October. It is a disaster in 2J. Traditionally in this area you have fished 2J. We all know the great sacrifice some of the turbot fishermen made a few years ago. I think they traditionally were from this area.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: No, they were from the Gaspé coast.

Mr. Pierce Nadeau (Member, Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association): We did make a sacrifice in the turbot fishery, although not at our own doing. We were eliminated—

The Chairman: Yes, that's what I meant.

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: —due to DFO policies.

The Chairman: We know that. We have all of the information that's needed. We have all of the factual information. We know who is fishing where and who fished where, and so on. All we needed was the ideas.

You've given us a very good, broad view. You've talked about all these new charges from DFO. You've talked about the problems with the core fishery, and you've talked about support programs. You've talked about being able to fish—beyond 34-11, that is.

What I find rather interesting about your brief is not only the early retirement package and that type of thing but also GRAP. I find that fascinating. We want to thank you for that specific suggestion.

Mr. Lunn.

Mr. Gary Lunn: It's ironic, because only an hour before this meeting Mr. Baker and I were talking about a “GRAP”; we just didn't have a name for it. You have taken it that one step further.

In terms of the timing of this report, I think everybody agrees on the urgency. It is very important. We would like to get it out as soon as possible. I thought it would be great to do it before Christmas, but we also recognize that after we put our minds together and write a report, it may very well have to go back to five different caucuses.

Now, we break from December 13, so it could be in the new year. I think that's the reality. To get it through five caucuses and back....

The Chairman: Mr. Bernier wants to do it before Christmas.

Mr. Gary Lunn: We can try.

The Chairman: He is willing to give up his holidays. The problem is, we have to get the five political parties to agree with him.

We need to get the report out, though, because it's so urgent because of the timing. As you point out, the timing is here. It has to be done for May, and that's it. It has to be on the line.

Mr. Hubbard.

Mr. Charles Hubbard (Miramichi, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We're very impressed—I am, at least—with the organization you have and the fact that you seem to have a lot of really good control over what's happening in terms of your own organization, although maybe not in terms of the rest.

I am curious about a number of things. First, with groundfishers you've reduced the number of licences by 50%. I'd like to know if that has been done voluntarily or by buyout—lapsing, in other words.

As well, it would be good for our committee to know in terms of your fishery here on the shore the species you're after and the relative value of those different species. Was the cod the most important part of your fishery, say, five, six or eight years ago? If so, what's happened to it in terms of value? What species are you fishing? I know you mentioned other species, but which ones are giving you revenue now in terms of your work?

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Concerning the groundfishery, in terms of the first question, it was mainly voluntarily, but that was mainly because of the decrease in stocks. There wasn't enough cod coming to shore any more in the late eighties. A lot of people had to invest and go into Labrador. Some decided to go there or to leave the fishery. Economically, they couldn't make it any more, and the system didn't have to compensate them for that. It was a large number.

• 1530

I think 10 or 12 were bought back on the lower north shore in the inshore fishery.

Mr. Marvin Buckle: I think one of the major reductions was brought about through the core. When this was implemented two years ago fishermen without two permits and x dollars did not meet the core criteria. The qualifying years were 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993.

It's well documented—if you want to do any research, you'll find it—that the collapse of the cod fishery was after 1995-96. Those guys have been out of the fishery since then. That was a major factor. Because those guys were holding only a groundfish permit, they did not make the core criteria. So now they are in the fishery in token, but in reality they are eligible for nothing. They are paying their $100 a year to DFO to maintain a permit that's utterly useless.

Mr. Charles Hubbard: They are maintaining their licences, but they are not using them.

Mr. Marvin Buckle: This year when we had an experimental fishery, if you were not a core fisherman you were not allowed to participate in that, regardless of the fact that you had spent 50 years fishing before that.

The Chairman: Furthermore, you are not permitted in any new area. You're not permitted in any new fisheries. You have to stay where you are and rust—

Mr. Marvin Buckle: Yes.

The Chairman: —which is an absolute, total disgrace. For the federal government to do that to the fishermen is an absolute, total disgrace, isn't it?

Mr. Marvin Buckle: It leaves the fisherman dead in the water.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Thank you, Mr. Buckle, for correcting that.

The second thing was about the value and the alternative. We have a complementary crab fishery. We have quotas of 50,000 pounds, on average, from 40,000.... There are a few quotas ranking in the 100,000-pound range, probably 110,000 pounds, but the main average is 55,000. They are complementary crab licences.

If it weren't for that fishery, there would be no fishery left. There are maybe 80 fishermen in this fishery. Maybe there are 250 core, plus maybe 100 more dead in the water, as Marvin said. Over half the other fishermen are in a very sad situation, very sad shape. They are small inshore fishermen, with groundfish, mackerel, herring. They are pelagic and groundfish mainly. They are hurting very badly. Income support for them for a temporary solution, until we find a development program and a regional development fund, is very much needed.

• 1535

The Chairman: Before we go to Mr. Stoffer, let me very quickly ask Pierce Nadeau a question.

Do you think that core should be revisited and the federal government should go back and re-examine the policy? Do you think the fisherman who's only ever fished all his life should be given the privilege of being in the core fishery?

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: I think he should be.

In our area we have fishermen who fished for 25 to 30 years, and they didn't go to Labrador for 1989, 1990, or 1991. They're not considered core. And all they had was groundfish. You're in different boat categories. The traditional fishery here was cod trap and gill-net, hook and line, so they couldn't very well go to Labrador and fish offshore. So automatically they were out of the fishery back in 1985 or 1986; I think that was the last real cod fishery year.

Now with no core.... When they took the year, to make core, you needed either a dollar value, a number of licences—there was a whole bunch of issues that maybe applied to Newfoundland or Gaspé, but didn't take care of this area. You had guys with just that groundfish licence who didn't make an income. He might have gone out and fished more days than a guy who made $50,000 in another province or whatever, but he only made $1,000. He didn't have the dollar value to be considered core, so automatically he was out of the fishery.

The Chairman: Or maybe he wasn't the head of an enterprise who was out fishing with somebody else.

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: Exactly. We have a lot of guys who didn't even qualify for TAGS.

The Chairman: Because of those stupid rules.

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: Yes.

The Chairman: Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Eastern Shore, NDP): When you're talking about the zoning and sharing of other zones, has your organization had the opportunity at all to show this plan to other organizations in Labrador and Newfoundland, and if you did, what was the response to that? I find it extremely interesting, your new word for it, GRAP. I like that. I think we could use that.

The Chairman: It has to do with “grapple”.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Exactly.

I'm just wondering what your input would be from other fisheries as well, especially when you're talking about the sharing of other zones, i.e., Newfoundland, Labrador, or possibly the maritime provinces?

Mr. Paul Nadeau: We're talking about the non-migrating species, except for crab, because there are already zones implemented. It's mainly for new, underdeveloped species, such as spiny crab, Stimpson's clam, and scallops, because in our area we don't have a very large number of licences in these species.

• 1540

We were looking at not refining the NAFO lines, but giving fairness with the adjacency principle. We know that adjacency means proximity: you're close, you're near a ground, if you live all your life there and you have historical fishing activities there, you should be entitled to it. That's one of the basic principles used now to determine access.

Here in Lourdes-de-Blanc-Sablon and Blanc-Sablon Brador, the eastern sector, this line is just in the front door. It's simply on the front door, and we feel it should be in the middle of the straits.

We discussed this through management plans with DFO and Newfoundland. In DFO, Quebec there is an ongoing discussion; however, we haven't reached any agreement at this point.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: So you haven't had the opportunity yet to speak to other fishing groups from other provinces about your concerns?

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Not from other provinces, no; just with the west coast in Newfoundland. It would simply touch them; it wouldn't concern any other regions or provinces. It would concern only the west coast in this sector.

The Chairman: Mr. Nadeau, are your fishermen into lump at all?

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Yes.

The Chairman: Wesley, is it good this year?

Mr. Wesley Etheridge (Member, Lower North Shore Fishermen's Association): First of all, Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to see that you have come here to visit us and to listen to our concerns. I want to touch on a couple of important issues, mainly TAGS to begin with. While some people here touched briefly on it, I want to add something to that.

If a fisherman from my village, Brador, during the year to qualify for TAGS, didn't go to Labrador even though those fishermen were in the fishery from 10 to 25 years.... By the same token, if a person left Brador and went on another larger vessel and went up and fished in Labrador, he qualified for NCARP, which was two years prior to TAGS. The person in my village who didn't go there, seeing that there was no cod to catch.... The program itself I think was ridiculous, when you asked the guy to fish at least ten weeks in the cod fishery when there was no fishery, and have x amount of dollars to qualify. These people didn't even get NCARP or TAGS.

To add insult to injury, this year, lo and behold, when we did have some kind of fishery, the test fishery, these people didn't meet core. Therefore they were not allowed to participate in the groundfishery. These fishermen fished in the fishery for 15 to 25 years and did nothing else.

So for that reason I think there are a lot of flaws in the TAGS program regarding that compensation or income support.

The Chairman: And core, because core kills you.

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: That's right.

The Chairman: If you don't make core, you're dead.

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: That's right.

The Chairman: If you're not dead now, you're going to be dead.

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: That's right. Unfortunately, I'm not in that category, but some other fishermen—

The Chairman: Yes, but death to the manufacture. So core is perhaps the most important thing of all.

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: That's right.

So if a person didn't qualify for TAGS, he didn't qualify for core, as he had only one licence, which was a groundfish licence. Now, there were all terms of that. If you had two licences—

The Chairman: You missed SEC. There was NCARP and then there was SEC. No, I didn't say sex; SEC.

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: I understand.

The Chairman: SEC, what is it?

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: Special eligibility criteria.

The Chairman: There you go. Is it the same thing?

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: No, this is for the buy-back.

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: The program of the buy-back wasn't there. You were offered to sell your licence, but first you had to meet this program, SEC. So how could you sell a licence if you couldn't meet the program? There was a flaw there again.

I want to touch on a couple of other issues regarding licences. I think the program for licensing is very unfair. It's hard to get a licence. When DFO do issue a licence, instead of issuing several licences for a certain quota, they issue one licence for a large quota, which makes some fishermen very wealthy overnight while other people stay at the poverty line.

• 1545

If a program is to be implemented, it has to be the total package: the licensing, everything, has to be in there. There's no way to come out and say that we're going to support income support. The support program is going to have to stop some time, and if you don't have a licence when it stops, you're in the same situation as you are today, only it's five years down the road.

If you have one licence today and you're paid support for another four years, you're still only going to have one licence. So it has to be a program where there are licences issued to people who only had one licence, which was the program when it started. It said that there would be multi-species licences, which was the program prior to TAGS, in which the government led the fishermen to believe in the future.

The Chairman: Were you fishing lump?

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: I want to talk about one more problem before we go into that.

We don't have a sealing industry here on the lower north shore. We see that in the lower north shore when seals migrate here to the gulf and they go on to the Labrador, they pass right along our shoreline. While Newfoundland fishermen, good for them, are able to harvest the seals, we can't harvest the seals because we can't move them. We can't move them out of this area, because of transportation problems.

There should be some money for the sealing industry in this area. It is a traditional fishery. It has been fished there for 500 years.

The lump is like every other species. When they start taking lump in Newfoundland, they start in early spring; we start here from May 15 and on. By that time, the market is so saturated we don't get anything for it.

The Chairman: The lump are coming down which way, though?

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: They come by Port aux Basques through the straits, as everything comes.

The Chairman: It's the same thing for mackerel. Mackerel comes up through the gulf.

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: The cod is the same thing. The cod comes all the way up the west coast of Newfoundland to Port aux Basques, right down to Port au Choix before they come here. So we're the last to catch cod; that is the reason why we have the major problem here.

I think GRAP was a great idea, but there has to be support too, until we can find a real solution to the problem. There's going to be some fishermen who are just never going to move from fish. They can fish for 50 years; they're never going to leave that. There has to be income support for those guys until the fish stock rebuilds. There must be a test fishery to prove that one stock is rebuilding. This year we had a test fishery in this area and it was very successful.

The Chairman: Are you at the whelk?

Mr. Wesley Etheridge: We can fish any species, but as we said, we don't have the roads to move them and we don't have the licence to fish them.

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: We have all the species here, but we don't have the licence to fish them. That's the problem. In a lot of cases we have the resource. If we had access to it, you'd get a lot more fishermen who could make a living from fishing if the multi-species licence was available. But the way DFO issues the licences—two or three for this village, two or three for that one, and we'll see if the market....

The Chairman: On whelks or winkles, do you guys know what I'm talking about? Do you use deep buckets or the reel?

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: We use pots. There are lots of species there to fish, but there's no way of getting them out of there and no market for them.

The Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much for your final words.

Mr. Buckle, you have something to say?

Mr. Marvin Buckle: Mr. Chairman, you might think it's a joke, but this came from DFO just recently. We have a couple of aquaculture farms along the coast. Recently 20,000 scallops were picked up; they died from whatever source. There was a biopsy, or whatever you do through the scientific aspect. The report we had from DFO was that those scallops committed suicide. So if our fish commit suicide, why don't they give us permits to fish it?

This is not a joke.

The Chairman: You guys better give me the rest of that story. There has to be something else to this.

Mr. Marvin Buckle: Ask Mr. Nadeau to give you a copy of the report. In layman's terms it's suicide.

The Chairman: They committed suicide. The scallops are committing suicide.

Mr. Marvin Buckle: That's correct.

• 1550

Mr. Andrew Fequet: We have the 4R or the 4S. In the 4S we have a line from Blanc-Sablon that goes up to the coast on the north shore area. We are fishermen and we eat fish. The DFO in Quebec drew an imaginary line east from Natashquan and cut us off from catching recreational codfish—that's to go out and catch a fish to eat. I hear on the radio from Newfoundland that in Quebec they're allowed to catch codfish to eat. In Newfoundland they're not. That's not entirely true.

The Chairman: I see. They drew their own line.

Mr. Andrew Fequet: They drew their own line. Because we were isolated they cut us off even from eating our own fish. To me it's a bit ridiculous for DFO to do that.

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: Excuse me. I'd like to comment on that too. You can come from Montreal to the Sept-Îles area and go jig your recreational fish, while we were never eligible.

The Chairman: DFO probably thinks the fish don't swim. That's the problem. That's really crazy.

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: Another point I'd like to make is that we traditionally fish turbot in the Seven Islands area. I received a letter after the fact, indicating that DFO had decided that we don't have an historical background, because when we fish, we fish a species we will make money at. I'm not going to go fish a species there's no money in. So in the years they chose, 1991-92, I fished a species, which was crab, that I was actually staying above water with. But DFO chose those two years, and because I didn't fish turbot in the Sept-Îles area then I was not allowed to fish there any more. There were no fishermen whatsoever when I fished turbot in Sept-Îles in the 1980s. They came in the picture after. They were still fishing turbot there, but we're not allowed.

So we're saying if we get access to the resource we can make a viable living. It may not be a very good one, but at least we'll stay afloat.

The Chairman: What did you do with your gill nets?

Mr. Paul Nadeau: I'm going to have to correct you, Pierce. They gave us 50 tonnes of turbot for us to fight over as to who's going to get it. I asked them for 300 tonnes to experiment with, but they gave us 50 tonnes to experiment with. This is what DFO asked me to manage, and I will probably do it. It'll be probably more closed till we're off, and no turbot fish, but we'll try to that little bit with 50 tonnes. That's what we were given to experiment with on the lower north shore because there are no buyers. I think there were no buyers last year; there were a few buyers who bought turbot, accidental catch maybe, but that was it.

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: My licence says 48 kilograms. That's what I'm allowed to fish. We started that fishery.

The Chairman: How many gill nets are you going to put out to get that, Pierce?

Mr. Pierce Nadeau: I don't know. Maybe I'll trying jigging them.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation.

Do you want to say a concluding word, Mr. Bernier?

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Before concluding, we should perhaps pass the motion.

[English]

The Chairman: Yes.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I would have a few words to say to you a little bit later, but before we part, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to have us pass a motion aimed at reimbursing the witnesses we have heard today for their expenses. The Clerk of the Committee will get in touch with Mr. Nadeau so as to ensure that no back-up documents are missing. Would you like to repeat the motion in English? No?

[English]

The Chairman: No, that's fine. Moved by Mr. Bernier, seconded by Buddy Stoffer.

(Motion agreed to)

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Nadeau: I wish to thank you, Mr. Bernier, Mr. Baker and all of the members of the Committee, for helping cover the costs we incurred in coming to this meeting. Thank you.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Given that the Chairman is allowing me to get the last word, I must tell you that today I often refrained from speaking because I saw that my colleagues wanted to learn as much as possible.

I would first like to thank Mr. Nadeau and Mr. Fequet, whom I met in a previous life. I too was technical adviser for the fisheries association. I must admit that I had not yet ever come to the lower north shore and that I had been wanting to come here for a very long time. I took advantage of the Fisheries and Oceans Committee's trip to ensure that you would be heard.

• 1555

I would like to add that I took down some notes and that I will be getting in touch with you again. I see an awful lot of good things in the GRAP that you are proposing. Even though in English this acronym seems to be getting attention, I would like for you to find it a French equivalent as quickly as possible, because the literary translation does not give the same impression.

The ideas laid out concerning your regional fund are excellent and this is one of the reasons why the Committee decided to go into the regions. Our wish was to enable all members from all of the regions to know what the real-life situation is. Without ground fish, given that some people are telling us that the replenishment of the stocks will require a certain length of time, what else can people do? That is important. You have given us ideas and are asking us to help you bring these projects to fruition.

Before all the members of the Committee and without wanting to be partisan whatsoever, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to say that it is encouraging to know that since 1993 a lot of ground has been covered. In the political arena, one of the elements we were looking for was labour. There are now federal- provincial agreements. If ever there were a follow-up to TAGS, I believe this is something we could use because it enables us to move directly into the regions. That is the comment I wished to make.

I also really appreciated the fact that we talked about the future of the fisheries and quota-sharing between regions. This is a possibility that has been dear to my heart for some time now and we will have the opportunity to discuss it further. We have seen that there is a lot of material that we will be able to discuss.

That having been said, I see that the Chairman is telling me to hurry up. I would like to tell you that I much enjoyed my visit here and that I hope we will stay in touch because this is but a beginning. When we talk about your GRAP, we talk about reorganization. It might be stated that our meeting today is the beginning of a new era for the fisheries.

We will try to work in a non-partisan way so as to move things forward. Everyone is aware of my political philosophy, and I try not to bring it up in meetings such as this. It is however unfortunate that Mr. O'Brien has left, because this morning it is not me but rather the people of Labrador who are saying that the federal system is not listening to them. If people feel they are not been listened to enough, then perhaps they should use the same language as you. To my mind, the message of all the fishing regions is clear. The feeling is that Ottawa is not listening to us properly and that is why the members you see before you wanted to come here to be at the heart of what is going on in the regions.

We went to Newfoundland, to Labrador and we are here on the Lower North Shore. We will then go on to the Magdalen Islands, but we will not get all the way to the Gaspé, on the continent. It is not that I do not like those other fishermen on the continent, but our perspective is different and we wanted to visit the most remote and the most severely affected regions. It is people from the continent who will go to the Magdalen Islands.

We will then continue our journey with stops in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to come back to the southern part of Newfoundland that we were unable to visit initially because of a storm.

We have therefore done a lightning trip. Mr. Nadeau, you were asking where the Committee is headed, what it wants to accomplish and what type of report it will table.

The Chairman tells me that I want to move too quickly. I have been pushing the Committee to table a report as quickly as possible because I would like to see this done before Christmas. But we must wait for all of the members of the Committee. I would like us to deliver a clear message to the Government of Canada, through the House of Commons before which we will be tabling our report. But in the House, it is the majority that decides, and Mr. Paul Martin, the Minister of Finance, is part of the majority. Mr. Martin is gathering his ideas for his budget before the holidays. He will only have a few lines left to gather after the Holiday Season. Usually, when we come back to the House mid-February, he tables his budget. I would like to be certain that he will provide funding for the eventual extension of TAGS, at least until year-end.

• 1600

This is one of the reasons why I have been pushing the Committee to come to a decision as quickly as possible, even if that means that certain issues will remain unresolved, because all of the development ideas that you have submitted to us today deserve to be reflected upon. We could not expect to be able to study over the course of one weekend or of one week all of the ideas that we have gathered. This is one of the reasons why I have been pushing the Committee to ensure that income support will be maintained and that we will be able to move to the second stage, which will be the GRAP or something else.

That is all I had to say today. I finished my statement in French, because that is the language I am most comfortable in. As I mentioned earlier, I am also able to express myself in English.

[English]

In conclusion, I will add some words for the people and for Mr. Fequet. I was pleased to meet you today and I would like to keep in contact with your group. I really appreciate that there is your kind of organization in the lower north shore, because it's very hard, when you come from the Gaspé coast or even from Ottawa, to keep in touch with the people.

I understand your last request that there will be a need for a financial means about that. I'm not the minister, but be sure I will put pressure on that too.

[Translation]

Thank you very much. I will now allow the Chair to wind up our meeting, unless Mr. Nadeau has something to add.

Mr. Paul Nadeau: Mr. Bernier, I would like to make a brief comment in French, because I believe that there are in this room quite a few francophones from Lourdes-de-Blanc-Sablon. I believe that the message from the fishermen's association could be summarized as follows: decentralize and give the regions a voice. The exercise we are taking part in is nevertheless very interesting. Even though you stated earlier that there is a problem in Ottawa, the problem is not necessarily in Ottawa, but perhaps between the two, at the level of the filter there is between the two, in other words between Ottawa and the organizations, given the distances that separate us from one another.

Today, these distances have disappeared: you are here in this room with us. This type of exercise could perhaps be repeated from time to time, to ensure that the bureaucratic hierarchy between the two, which is nevertheless necessary, is not such that we lose track of what is going on, which is often the case. It would be good if, from time to time, you were able to come and verify if this hierarchy is truly a good filter or if everything comes out all diluted at the other end. We would like to see some decentralization and direct access to the House of Commons once in a while to verify that the needs of our regions are truly being expressed and if you are able to respond to them directly. Thank you very much.

[English]

The Chairman: Thank you for coming. Thank you very much.

Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

The Chairman: Could we pass the following motion before we stand up? It's been moved by Mr. Stoffer that the committee have a working lunch in St. Anthony and a working dinner in Miramichi to discuss future business and the proposed trip to the west coast, and to have informal discussions on what the committee has heard on their trip to Atlantic Canada and the lower north shore of Quebec.

Mr. John Duncan: What day is this?

The Chairman: It's when we're in Miramichi; I don't know what day it is.

Mr. John Duncan: Friday?

The Chairman: It's Thursday night, which is tomorrow night.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

We'll break for five minutes and then we'll hear from the council.

• 1604

• 1631

The Chairman: Order, please. Our order of reference is the fisheries management in the Atlantic provinces. Our witnesses for this round table are from the chamber of commerce of the lower north shore, I believe. That's our one witness, Mr. Cliff Joncas. We also have a representative...both of you are from...?

Mr. Alexandre Dumas (Mayor, Municipality of Bonne-Espérance): I'm from Lourdes de Blanc-Sablon. I'm mayor of the Municipality of Bonne-Espérance.

The Chairman: Excellent. We have the mayor with us as well.

We would like to open this session of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans with a statement from each of our witnesses. Perhaps the mayor of Blanc-Sablon would go first.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: Sir, it will be a very short beginning, because I came back yesterday at 5 p.m. from Quebec and Montreal and Seven Islands. As a matter of fact, I wasn't informed about this meeting. Still, I'll do my best.

At the table here today you have quite a good representation. I was 11 years on a Canadian corporation, representing the Quebec government. Also, I was born in a fisherman's family. I worked quite a while with Labrador and Newfoundland people. We used to speak in St. John's.

I was born in a fishing family. The only fisheries in those years, in the beginning, were cod and seal. Fishermen used to live on seals in the springtime. You would salt the skin and sell it, and leave the fat to be rendered in the sun during the summertime and sold then. Some of the products used to go to the shipyards. Others used to go to make lipstick and so on, as happened in Newfoundland.

The cod were so plentiful the fishermen never thought to organize themselves. As a matter of fact, there was a lack of information. The Norwegians and others used to come here and take the fish raw, straight to Portugal, Norway, Spain, and all those places.

But eventually a fish plant opened at La Tabatière, brought in by the government. I was a student in Quebec City then. It seemed that from La Tabatière coming down on this part of the coast, there were no other fishermen. We worked very hard to get involved in it and to prove to the government there were some other fishermen coming down on this side. Do you know what I mean?

Gradually the thing went on and they formed a co-op. Then some young people from the area started getting involved in it.

But on this part of the coast we had to reorganize ourselves in other ways. Modernization came, and naturally we had to follow it.

• 1635

Just last Thursday I visited a company, Via Mer, in Saint-Hyacinthe. I tried to inform myself to see what could be done in this area.

The Minister of Fisheries from Quebec made an offer, in the sectorial table on the east part of the lower north shore, to reorganize the plants, to transform them. I was very surprised to see that in our area so many species were thrown overboard while fishermen could have an income from them.

Take scallops as an example. Those companies up on the Quebec south shore, along the St. Lawrence, have to use scallops shells from London, England, to prepare coquilles Saint-Jacques to sell to the market. They prepare that with shells sent from London. Those shells are not as appropriate as our shells, because those shells are not smooth. They're kind of curvy.

They told me they have to order in thousands and thousands of shells. They also have to order in shells from overseas to mix up in chicken feed for hens to make shells. They also had to send for those from London.

When those fishermen fish for scallops, they take only the muscle and throw all the rest overboard. Even the lip of the scallop could be sold. The fishermen could have a revenue from the lip of the scallop, from the spawn of the scallop, and even from the shell of the scallop. So that's one item.

Another item they could be developing in this area is the knife, le couteau. I don't what you call it, really. They are those long ones. These could also be created and prepared, especially for those big food markets.

There's also the other one, the one between the scallop and the clam. What do you call it? It's the one they have in the Magdalen Islands. They have found a place where there's plenty of it. That also could be produced there and prepared and for the market.

There are also mussels and clams. The bays were never fished for clams. There was a project in years past at Verreault Navigation, the big shipyard in Rimouski. They were preparing a fish plant project for clams. They were supposed to have some type of digger that would go in the water and that would leave the small ones.

But that project went down because there were too many cod to look after. There was a loss of time and so on. They gave up; it wasn't there.

I'm listening to the fishermen complain about crab. Yes, quite a lot goes into transport, which I will come back to later on. But there's a big market for those small crab that we are throwing away at the present time. There's a big market for that for coquilles Saint-Jacques or other tasteful fisheries products.

There's also mackerel. There's only one problem in terms of mackerel being put in cans. We have to find some way to take the fat off the flesh. When the fat is not scraped off the flesh it leaves a little bit of an oily taste in the product. If we could find that, there would be a good market for mackerel.

There's also herring. About 35 years ago I worked with kippered herring in Stephenville, in a big fish plant owned by people from Norway, Harold Nors. We used one whole building, which belonged to the air force.

But again, all those things were pushed back because of the quantity of cod. They were too plentiful. Also, there was modernization, a new way of production and so on.

• 1640

All that today is due to the cod dropping down. Unless we go with the fishermen, and give them the permits, give them the capacity, if their boat is too small.... Make sure there are plenty of boats available at the present time that can go farther than 39-footers, to go after the species farther out, and to be able to live with.... I'm quite sure they'd be happy.

• 1645

Another fish plant will close in September or October. Bring in product that could go mostly around the clock, because here we have a period of maybe two months when we have problems with the ice. If you get a certain quantity of product in your plant, you can produce like they do in Newfoundland. You freeze it, and in wintertime you produce your product.

There is also the seal market. At the present time, I'm told that 15,000 pounds of seal product is held up on the Magdalen Islands but is not sold. They promised 50,000 pounds to the Japanese but only produced 15,000. We could produce more, sir, because the seals they are producing in the Magdalen Islands are what we call young calves—you know, they're fat and milky and so on, so they haven't got a proper meat. But as one of the fishermen said here a few minutes ago, if we could have a permit here to produce seal, canned or as fresh meat, there's a big income, sir, in that.

But we had a problem with the provincial government in years past. There was a study on that. They were telling me my study was wrong because the fishermen are used to catching seals in nets. A biologist told me that seal gets sour in the bottom of the strait or in the gulf here in the springtime. He said the water is too hot. Imagine when it is cold enough that you could freeze the seals—as soon as he stops breathing he'll freeze.

So there are all those studies, but I'm never convinced. We tried that product one year. We could sell the seal in Newfoundland, sell the seal in Toronto, but not in Quebec. I imagine that something went wrong there, but that was in years past. Still, the person who gave the results made a study for Maurice Lamontagne in Mont-Joli. I told her I agreed with her that in a swimming pool the seals would sour, but not in the Strait of Belle Isle or in the gulf, in this area where I am.

If I come to all those things, Mr. Chairman, it is because I recognize, as the fishermen said, that we were forgotten on this part of the coast, like a lot of the parts of Newfoundland. I liked Labrador when I visited it this summer for 11 days, from Maine to Red Bay.

As I'm telling you, it's not nice to see the situation we are in now. The citizens in this area have a long winter to pass. A lot of them have no employment insurance, and for some of them TAGS has been cut. I heard a citizen here complaining a few minutes ago that he wasn't treated equally like he should have been treated when the TAGS program came on. As a matter of fact, I worked for a few of them to try to get their TAGS back, but I go through so much red tape that I get discouraged sometimes.

I find that it's nice for you people to come to this area and meet with those fishermen and listen to their complaints. But as I'm telling you, there is lots to be done on both sides of the government. Besides that, when you feel things drop and when you see the economy falling and you have to fall on welfare.... The people used to be proud enough to say “I'm not on welfare. I work for my living”, and so on. When you see them forced to go into that situation, it's terrible.

When you're used to making a living, and then you see that the wife is not working, the man is not working.... You see a lot of that sometimes—functionaries, not doing their work. I saw that when I was on the Canadian Saltfish Corporation. I couldn't do anything, because I was only one speaker.

You see the by-laws that the federal...just implanted in the Quebec province. In other parts of Quebec they have never had to follow it. Fishermen have spent a lot of money to paint their boats with expensive paint and to fix up their fishing units and everything. In other parts of the province, in front of those fishermen, they split their fish on a piece of plywood, salt their fish in a salting unit where the flies come up and down and so on. We have to make sure we treat our species...and make sure the boat never has a spot that wasn't painted.

• 1650

All those things build up, as you said. It was a kind of separation, you know. We don't have any legal separation from Newfoundland. It's only a question of a political border. We were all brought up together and so on. It was a great help to us, and we helped also. It was the government that was forcing us to act like that.

I see quite a potential for living in this area if the federal government and the provincial government get together and go ahead with it.

Those satellite plants, those small plants, were not equipped. They could prepare the product to bring to the major plant to prepare the finished product. That's the big thing that should be done. To wash the shells, for example, to clean those shells, to prepare the salt fish—we don't need to do that in the big plant, but the other satellite plants could do that.

They could prepare the lumpfish. There are so many species, such as the horsehead and rays—they are using that in town now to prepare menus. It's similar to scallops. It has the same taste. There are so many species we don't fish, but they are there.

With a good facilitator, a good person to come down from the federal government and meet with us, take the knowledge of the other province, like you see on the other side of the harbour in St. John's, those two big plants over there; take the people from the Gaspé coast, people from the south shore.... On the fishing side on the north shore, it's only from Kégaska to Blanc-Sablon who are fishermen. When I was growing up there was one fisherman in Seven Islands. When the mine got going it was still one fisherman. But when iron ore dropped they all said they were fishermen. There were no fishermen. That's why Alliance Quebec took a big grab on that.

As I'm telling you, there are fishermen only from Kégaska to Blanc-Sablon. I think that population should be well looked after, you might say, and you should try to encourage those people.

As you said, I hear some people saying you can't train those people when they are 45 or 50 years old. I saw that in St. John's. I saw that all along the coast. It's hard to change their ways. For those people to become painters or something similar.... We shouldn't send them to school. The technology today is not the same.

When I think of the complaints... If you had Maldonado today he would give you the real picture of the coast. Go listen to him. He never spared it. It seems to be done the same way. You can get discouraged, but things can be done to develop the area.

We are close to the Newfoundland border, and we always work together. I don't believe anybody could have any objection if we were to live together again for a while.

As I say, often because of our education and our knowledge we were used to being led but not to lead. But the young generation today aren't the same. They are going to lead. They want to lead, and I praise them for that. I'd like your people to collaborate with them and try to boost them once more, because as he said, we have to build that road for the coast.

1655

When I pled for that road with Newfoundland, the road was supposed to leave from Red Bay, go to St-Augustin on the Quebec north shore into Churchill Falls and then up to Goose Bay and those places. But something went wrong and that went down the drain. The tunnel under the Strait of Belle Isle went down the drain and so on.

For our development today we are asking for a railroad. It is cheaper. Because of the high hills, the launch going up as far as Havre-Saint-Pierre and Seven Islands is the only way we can come down. We could join each village after that with roads, but that also went down the drain when the mines boomed and the lower north shore was forgotten.

I'm proud to see those fishermen taking their part and I'm proud to see those fishermen blowing it up on the front page and expressing themselves to the people. I wouldn't have seen that in past years when I was young, but now I'm glad to see them expressing themselves and telling the authorities what's going on.

I thank you very much again.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

Now the committee will hear from the chamber of commerce, Mr. Cliff Joncas.

Mr. Cliff Joncas (Chambre de commerce de la Basse Côte-Nord): Good day, gentlemen.

To follow up on what the association had to say about the regional power they should have, 30 to 35 years ago when I started fishing every fisherman had the same licence. Crabs were no good at that time. We used to break them up because they were cutting gill nets. But if we woke up at 3 a.m. we made a decent day of it. If we woke up at 8 a.m. what were we going to do?

Over the years, all this has changed. The man who talked, wrote and kicked ended up with the best licence, the one that paid. The man who went fishing had no time to do that and ended up with the cheap licence for cod that came up for sale. Today, you have the millionaire fisherman. Mr. Dumas and some of the fisherman told you how 20 years ago at Sept-Îles there were no fishermen there. The boys from this coast went up there and showed them how to fish.

Right now those fellows have crab licences and are bringing in, if you please, $200,000 and $300,000 a year. They don't have to wake up at 3 a.m. They can wake up at 6 a.m., 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. to go fishing and make 10, 15, 20 times more than the fishermen on this coast. The boys from down this way might be bringing home $10,000, $15,000, and some only $5,000 and, mind you, are working hard for it.

The best fisherman is not the one who works the hardest. The past has shown that the best fisherman was the fellow who could talk, write and complain. I wonder why the association never answered.

There's a global quota of crab, herring, shrimp, whatever. That global quota should be shared among all the fishermen equally. Mr. Dumas has 5,000 pounds of crab, 5,000 pounds of herring and 5,000 pounds of shrimp. I'm willing to go for crab.

The market doesn't set the price. There's a marketing board right now. Mr. Dumas has 5,000 pounds of crab that I'd like to have. I have 5,000 pounds of shrimp that Mr. Dumont would like to have. The marketing board sets the price and says your shrimp is worth 40¢ a pound and each crab is worth 60¢ a pound. I deal and I give them the difference.

I personally have already mentioned to DFO what a problem it's coming up with now. Who changed what went on 30 years ago? Politics changed it. The ones who...

[Inaudible—Editor]...to the caisse electorale got paid for it. We still have it at the present time. They're the ones who are grossing $300,000 to $400,000.

• 1700

By doing that, every fisherman could share the wealth, every fisherman could be dealt with the same way.

I don't know if you have talked about it this evening, but not too many fishermen are under 35. Someone was asking why there are only 250 fishermen left out of 500. Some of them got discouraged fast. I was one of them. Mind you, I wasn't fishing for my living; I was fishing because I belonged to the lower north shore and I fished on the lower north shore, I paid my studies by fishing, and I came back to the lower north shore for what was in the water and to stir up my surroundings. In 1986, when there was nothing else to fish, I moved ashore. I had something else to go do, though. It was a pastime.

Some of the 250 who have gone saw there was no way to do it any more. He couldn't write and he couldn't talk, and he wasn't going to get a licence. He only had cod; he only had groundfish. He wasn't going to get the shrimp and he wasn't going to get the crab, so he took off. He got out of it and went to work wherever he could work. Some of them went and tried their 1442s, and some of them went somewhere else, and that's what led up to it.

The young ones are not there today. Myself, I wouldn't encourage my boys to go. The fishermen who came home in the night swearing over the day they had got up at 3 o'clock the next morning to come ashore with nothing. That's what was going on in 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990. So there were no young ones who were going to follow in the steps of the father. That's why there's no one under 35 here today.

Through all this, last spring I heard that on the northern peninsula they were issued a quota of northern shrimp. It was given to a community managed by a regroupment of 15 or 20 people. I went and asked Fisheries and Oceans again, “Why weren't we entitled to have that same share?” Their answer to me was, “Which party did you vote for? We're sorry, but in here right now, it's the Bloc Québécois.” Because it was the Bloc Québécois, we were not due to have a share of shrimp. I think that's a problem, myself.

In 1972-73 I worked at the Canadian Saltfish Corporation. Every meeting we went to—and fishermen there can confirm it—the quality of our cod was 92% to 95% choice. How could the Canadian Saltfish Corporation, with 92% to 95% choice fish, go broke? That's a big problem to me, one that I see fishermen not being part of. As Mr. Nadeau told you just now, if there's any power to give, give it to the region.

To prove that to you, I have another one, if we put the fishing to one side. Last December on the lower north shore, the CRD came down and said, “We're going to create a Corporation de développement de la Basse Côte-Nord for you. The Corporation de développement was created, what, 15 years ago? Last December they came down here to create harbours. Mind you, last Monday—with all this potential, we're not off the ground yet—we had three meetings and conference calls scheduled, and Monday all this was cancelled. That's how far we are from the exterior.

In our region at the present time, some of the problems Mr. Nadeau has spoken about, but the biggest problem we have is that our region is region 09, which is from Tadoussac to Blanc-Sablon. Mind you, in Tadoussac region there's Baie-Comeau, Sept-Îles, and Port-Cartier. There are mines, woods, industrial towns, and this and that, but we have to abide by the federal employment rules: “Your rate of employment is that much and that's what you get.” That's what we're into, which is not fair.

• 1705

What we should have is the same rate as Labrador has. That's our living. We can't compare to them. We can't compare to Sept-Îles, Baie-Comeau, no way we can. They're up there with an unemployment rate of maybe 5% or 6%, while ours is 25% and 30%. But if we put it all together, ours falls down the same as them, it falls down to 8%, 9%, 10%. So our region is paying for what's up there. As an example, we're not ready for what we have there, because we took on....

Now, mind you, before the Corporation de développement de la Basse-Côte Nord was created, in this region we formed the Corporation de développement de Vieux Fort-Blanc-Sablon. We had to change it because of the Corporation de développement de la Basse-Côte Nord, which was mixed up because the Corporation de développement that is named.... We are called the Corporation de développement de Blanc-Sablon, and this is the one today that's creating the arena behind you. We're building that one.

When we say that we compare ourself to Labrador, our experience down in L'Anse du Loup at the present time.... They got an arena built this last fall. The people got $60,000 over a period of five years. That's to give you an example of why we are penalized for being part of the region, although we're not. Where's the $60,000—over a period of five years, mind you? They got an arena for $800,000. At L'Anse du Loup they are billed at $10 an hour. Ours there, it's costing the contractor $38 an hour. That's the...rate for the contractor, too.

They got $800,000 for the $60,000 over a period of five years. Take the same pro rata here and you know what we picked up—$450,000 cash, money. And besides that, all this part to be finished right now is free labour. So we involved around $600,000, and what we got from it is $250,000, and $90,000 over a period of three years. That's $30,000 a year. That's what we got from it.

Over in Roddickton, which is the same kind of region, a fishing region just like here, they invested $170,000 over a period of 10 years. They got $1.2 million. I have nothing against Roddickton and I have nothing against L'Anse du Loup. The community invested $170,000 over a period of 10 years. They got $1.2 million. If we apply the same pro rata over here, we're going to get $6 million. Mind you, give me $6 million and I'll solve a lot of the problems we have here today.

We have St. Barbe coming up. The footing is done, the groundwork is done. They had $900,000, but the problem they had is they're building where there's already an arena, and they're not going to have any free labour to take up that arena. They were lacking $400,000 to take that arena; they got it the other day. We don't want that much. Mind you, that's going overboard, but we must have our fair share. We don't have our fair share today because of the region Sept-Îles-Natashquan to Tadoussac.

Talking about TAGS, I don't see anyone in Sept-Îles on TAGS. I don't see anyone in Natashquan on TAGS. As for the guy who was refused TAGS, why was that decided from Sept-Îles and Quebec when they don't know the situation, they don't have a clue about fishing? They don't know a thing about it. But the office for TAGS today is at Sept-Îles. Why is that? Because the hôtel is there and because this is there and that is there. He's a fonctionnaire. All this should come back where it belongs. Now that's not only federal, that's provincial, too.

We have a school board, which is in Sept-Îles at the present time, and mind you, it should come down here fast. But it's going to take three years of study before they move it down there.

So they're telling us what to show our kids instead of us doing it. I told the minister in February, “You wouldn't like it if Clifford Joncas went to Quebec to tell you what your kids are going to study.” Well, it's the same for me. I don't want you to come here and tell me what my kids are going to study. But that's what's done at the present time.

There's another example to be given, the Labrador shrimp company in L'Anse du Loup. Fifteen or twenty years ago they were issued a shrimp licence. Mind you, there were no boats, nothing at all. They were paid a royalty by this Norwegian boat that fished their shrimp. That Norwegian boat paid them a royalty on every pound of shrimp they sold, which comes out today to about a million bucks a year.

• 1710

Their credit union at the time was dealing with the caisse populaire from here. We helped them. They stayed there for five years. The Labrador Shrimp Company, with their royalty on the shrimp, helped the credit union to have their own bank after the Bank of Montreal pulled out.

This is the way to go. It didn't cost anyone money. They got a licence. No one was going to catch the shrimp anyway. We would love to have the same thing here.

Now they are on their own. They are independent. Mind you, last year they created 600 or 700 jobs. Now they are going ahead.

All of this is run by fishermen. On top of that, the president is a local guy. The general manager is a local guy. They are doing the job. It's simple. There's not that much paper. But the business is running.

That's what we would like to have here now.

Four or five years ago we brought up a solution for the problems in our area. A lot of money came from TAGS to build up tourism services—nice projects, but until a centralized industry or something half decent comes around, I'm sorry for them. They are going to die. The money was well invested, but the surroundings are not there.

What we proposed four or five years ago was to take the region from Red Bay to Modeste.... We have plenty of things to show. The only problem we have is that we haven't the tools to show them with.

A lot of people who come from Newfoundland down to Red Bay would love to go out and see the Madeleines, and a lot of people who come down to see the Madeleines would like to make the round trip. Right now they can't, because transportation is not there.

Four years ago, again, we asked for a fast boat to make the trip from Havre-Saint-Pierre to Blanc-Sablon three times a week. The answer to us was it was asking

[Inaudible—Editor]. We wouldn't ask for a road, but there won't be tourism on the north shore unless you have transport by boat or you have the road. There's no one who is going to go to a small village for a week, but I wouldn't mind going to a small village for two days, knowing that two days afterwards a boat would come.

So communication is a big problem. It has to be solved. But we are not heard from. Unless there's someone on the Hill who has the power and there's someone there to listen to us and to take it to the proper place, nothing will go on on the north shore.

Right now don't ask the fishermen to leave the water and go to look for a job, because the jobs aren't there. Or if you take the job, you're going to take it from someone else. So we are still at the basic line we started from.

• 1715

Parks Canada would be one solution for us. There are plenty of things to see. I was listening to a report from New Brunswick today. They were supposed to strike a $1 billion tourism industry in 2000. They struck it this year, 1997. We'd like to strike $500,000 two or three years down the road, but if the facility is not there and Parks Canada won't come in, we're going to have trouble doing it.

I thank you for listening to me.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: I would like to add one more thing. So many people from the four maritime provinces used to fish here. They used nylon twine, and there is lots of that dragging on the bottom of the sea area all along our side. We asked for a project to try to clean that up as much as possible.

I know some people say there is no nylon twine there, but if we could try for a year to clean up this part, beginning in the month of May before the fishing starts or after all the fishing is over, you'll see there is stuff there where they're supposed to be fishing. I know it's hard work, but if we clean the bottom of the sea along this area where it was so productive before, it will help in the years to come.

Thank you.

The Chairman: I imagine, though, if you ask fishermen to drag for nets you'd need a fairly hefty winch. You certainly couldn't do it from a small boat. I suppose you could work with it. Some of the fishermen are nodding and others are shaking their heads behind you, as far as the size is concerned.

I know about other experiments that have been done in other parts off Newfoundland. It was pretty remarkable, as you say, what they picked up from the bottom of the ocean. But you need a pretty big outfit in order to do it.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: There are a few draggers around. When they're held up with nothing to do in the fall or at the beginning of the season, they could pick up a few tonnes. Just to give you an example, this year's ZIP program followed the north shore to clean the beach and a mile or two from the beach. It was almost impossible to imagine the amount of trash that resulted from dragging around those beaches. Imagine what there is in the sea after they've been fishing for generations and generations. It was okay during the first years when they used cotton twine or something, but now there's nylon.

• 1720

In the past when you went to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon you couldn't travel from Langlade to Miquelon. Now when you go there you don't even land at Miquelon; you land at Langlade. You can drive across to Miquelon. All that twine and everything else is dragging there.

The Chairman: You've given two very good presentations.

Mr. Bernier, MP.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Do we have other witnesses to hear or could we ask a few more questions to these gentlemen here?

First of all, let me say that I am happy to see you, Mr. Mayor and Mr. Joncas. I am the member for Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la- Madeleine—Pabok, and this is the first time that I have laid foot on the soil of the Lower North Shore. I have been wanting to come here for a very long time, and here I am. I hope that we will stay in touch.

A lot of things have been said. If you will allow me, I would like to start off by coming back to one of the first statements made by Mr. Joncas. I took some notes earlier on and at one point you talked about shrimp licences that you had not succeeded in getting because of a local MP who is a member of the Bloc. I did not quite follow.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: I was asking for information.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: You were asking for information.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Yes. As I was reading the newspaper, I saw that the north of Newfoundland was granted a shrimp license. The license was granted to a community rather than to a fisherman or a plant, the way it should be. The license, that was for several thousands of tons, was granted to a community. An organization of some 15 to 20 individuals was established and it decided how the shrimp would be fished and processed so as to reap the maximum benefit for the maximum number of people.

Today, I phoned to ask if it would be possible for us to obtain the same thing for the Lower North Shore. The answer I was given was the following: "For what party did you vote, Sir?"

Mr. Yvan Bernier: You asked the question in Sept-Îles, to the managers working there.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: I do not wish to say where.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: You are speaking before the Standing Committee on Fisheries and we are taking note of this. Here, the Committee is trying to work in a non-partisan way. As for the requests of fishermen's associations—at least those dealing with the fishery review method—our hope was that there be a re- evaluation by region. This is one of the methods that was suggested.

People say that the Labrador organization obtained something, but when we speak directly with the people from Labrador, such as residents of Mary's Harbour, they complain of the fact that a lot of people, supposedly from Newfoundland, are fishing in their waters, even though they are from Newfoundland. It therefore appears that someone is always envious of someone else.

You are nevertheless right; you have to start somewhere. The lead you spoke of could be an interesting one.

That being said, at some point, I will go to Sept-Îles, and there are people who might...

Mr. Cliff Joncas: No, no.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: No, I will not launch a vendetta.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: No, no. Do not launch an enquiry there. You will not get at the truth.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I will not launch an enquiry. What I want to say is that the message we are given here will be relayed...

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Now, the Bloc Québécois...

Mr. Yvan Bernier: ... to the managers, in the sense that this type of request for community licenses should be extended.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Indeed.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I will not go and say that someone told me something. But human nature being such as it is, if someone over there feels like talking, I will find out one day.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Very well.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: But have no fear. Your name will not be mentioned in this.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: At the provincial level, the riding is PQ.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Pardon?

Mr. Cliff Joncas: At the provincial level as well, the riding is PQ.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Yes, yes. The north shore region is predominantly sovereignist.

Something however led me to ask myself something. When you talk about region 09, I gather that you are talking about employment insurance administration, about the tables outlining the regional unemployment rates.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Yes.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: That is what you are talking about.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Yes. The programs too. Everything is based upon that.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: And you say that you have been included in a total that also encompasses Sept-Îles.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: From the Tadoussac river to the Saguenay, that is our region; from Tadoussac to Blanc-Sablon.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Fine. I have another question for you. Is Human Resources Development Canada's office based in Sept-Îles? Do you ever meet with Mr. Eugene Harrigan?

Mr. Cliff Joncas: As a matter of fact, we are meeting with him this evening.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: You are meeting with him this evening!

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Well then, use that opportunity as much as you can.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: They are coming as a group.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: They are coming as a group?

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Yes.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Take advantage of the opportunity, because we have the same problem in the Gaspé and in the Magdalen Islands, as odd as that might seem, because I am not sure that one could compare the economy of the Magdalen Islands to that of a region that extends all the way to Rivière-du-Loup or La Pocatière. We go right over Rimouski.

• 1725

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Sept-Îles is not far from Baie-Comeau. Luc Dion says:

The establishment of a conseil régional de développement office in Sept-Îles is another priority issue for the local Chamber of Commerce and the Corporation de promotion industrielle et commerciale. It is not a matter of demanding the dismantling of the study team of the CRD project, but only of decentralizing the service.

It is in Sept-Îles, and we are 500 miles below Sept-Îles.

Just as in the case of the representatives from Transport and Hydro-Québec, these are people that we do not see very often and this has an impact on the dynamics of our projects because they are the holders of important tools.

If Sept-Îles does not have the tools, what do we have here in Blanc-Sablon? We do not have anything.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: And who is Luc Dion?

Mr. Cliff Joncas: He is the representative of the Sept-Îles Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: He is not to be confused with Stéphane Dion, the federal MP.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: There is something I would like to add, Mr. Bernier. I am one of the representatives of the Chamber and of the CRD of the north shore. I had an awful lot of difficulty getting admitted, because there was to be only one person for all of the north shore. Had I not been bilingual, I do not think I could have taken part, because the meetings are carried out in French only and they said that they do not have the time to do translations.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: The director of the CRD will be here later today.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Is the director still Mr. Sirois?

Mr. Cliff Joncas: No, it is not Mr. Sirois.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: It is Yvon Forest.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Mr. Sirois left.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: I am talking of the period when Mr. Yvon Sirois was there. He never wanted... So they appointed me representative of the region extending from La Tabatière to Blanc- Sablon and they gave the last part of the shore to Mr. Richmond Monger, who was the administrator for the north shore from Tête-à- la-Baleine on. I simply wanted to let you know that we were given no information in both official languages.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: When you talked about the seal hunt, I took down some notes, but at one point, you got a little carried away.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: No, Sir. It is not a seal hunt. For us, it is a seal fishery. But there no longer is one.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: But in our regulations, we talk about a hunt.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: That is something else I mentioned to Fisheries and Oceans. Go about it discretely, as long as Greenpeace does not hear about it.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: But if there is not a road, they will not be able to come and pester you.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Oh, yes, they came here. This is where they came in the beginning. It is here that Brigitte Bardot came in the beginning.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: Mr. Bernier, as a matter of fact, I was just talking about the seal hunt with people in the Magdalen Islands. The fact is in the Magdalen Islands the seal hunt takes place when there is ice in the gulf. The baby seal that they kill over there has meat that does not pull away from the fat until it reaches the age of a month and a half to two months. This is why, when the seals come down to Labrador, we have real seal meat. If they kill a female on the ice, she still has milk because she has just given birth. You only have the male or else the female that is not old enough to breed. That is the issue.

Waldman, in Montreal—it used to be a big market—got their seal in Alaska to sell it in Montreal. They had the right to sell seal in Montreal, but we did not. We had the right in Newfoundland and in Toronto.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: When you say "sell seal", you mean seal meat.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: Canned seal meat or...

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Is that due to the provinces' regulations pertaining to canning or food?

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: The provincial regulations stated that that seal was deep in the sea in the months of May and June in Blanc-Sablon. They had carried out their studies in the swimming pool at l'Institut Maurice-Lamontagne.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: It is the seal meat we eat. We were raised on that and no one was ever poisoned.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: I was never poisoned because I knew that my meat was good. In the depths of the sea, the temperature hovers between 32 and 31 degrees, because there are always icebergs there. The temperature can drop even lower. There are always icebergs there and the cold water from the North and from the Atlantic Ocean also flows over here. It is ridiculous to believe stories like that.

• 1730

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I took note of the fact that you talked about problems with the stock levels.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: You must sell the skins and the fat from the seals. It is difficult for us to preserve them. At the time of year when we fish, there is no transportation. The Newfoundland ferry is not running and only starts up again on the 1st of May if there is no longer any ice. It is therefore impossible for us to preserve the meat, the skins and the fat from seals until they are sent off to Newfoundland. We only take the meat and the skins.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: In the old days, it was easy, because we salted the seal skins and sent them off to England where they were treated with a product that could even die them white. But in the wake of Greenpeace, Brigitte Bardot and all of the others, the plants slowed down and a few years ago they were destroyed by fire.

But what are we going to do about that? It is a way of life. People used to live off that. Even the inhabitants of Kudz Ze Kayak in the North can no longer sell their seal skins; they only keep the meat, for the local market. It is a tradition that is similar to the corn roasts that you hold in town or on l'Île d'Orléans, but not in the Gaspé.

The issue here is that the fisherman needs the seal for food. We were brought up on that; we need fish, seafood and local products, the same as you people in the Gaspé. But at the present time, we are forced to do otherwise and to live otherwise. If only we could move forward. Could you imagine a plant where 25 to 30 of us would process fish thanks to a government grant rather than paying Joe Blow to come and modernize our plants and prepare all of these products and process all of these species? That is how we could earn an income, but not if we wait for someone from Montreal to come and tell us: "No, Sir, that is not it", while someone else from Quebec City comes and tells us: "No, no, change that around the other way". Oh my!

Mr. Yvan Bernier: We have touched on numerous issues, but one of our main concerns, and the very purpose of our presence here and of this trip, is that we wish to examine those regions which are considered to be problem regions so as to determine what can be done in the absence of a fishery. For example, on the Magdalen Islands, in the absence of the redfish fishery, you cannot turn to tourism, but those who were lucky enough to find themselves jobs in the mines when it was the right time have not had to suffer the same burden.

We talked a little with the fishermen about the repercussions of the possible shutting down of TAGS in May. We asked them what they had liked about it and what they would like to see afterwards, and we listened to the ideas they put forward.

How do you envisage the socio-economic future of your region? Some people put forward the idea of a regional fund for fishermen. We would like to have at least a 50% share in it and the community would also come on board.

I see that you have ideas.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: In all of this, it is once again the fisherman that is being taken hostage.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: In your view, the fisherman would be taken hostage in that?

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Yes, it is the case right now. If he fishes down below, it is the fisherman who is taken hostage. Do not forget that in all of this one thing has yet to be said: it is not the Canadian fisherman who took the cod. Do you know where the greatest catch was taken? It was taken behind closed doors in Ottawa. That is where the cod was caught: our fish was caught in Canada's trade with Russia, Portugal and Greece. The small quantity of fish that our Canadians took...

[English]

They exchange; that's what we're down to. You buy our wheat and we'll give you 20,000 tonnes of cod. You buy our wood and we'll give you 20,000 tonnes of cod.

So it's not the fishermen to be blamed today. Some of that goes to the federal government. They have to take some of the blame. It wasn't started yesterday; it was started years back.

• 1735

[Inaudible—Editor]...to come up here. There were 50, 60, or 80 lights aside there. They weren't just small boats, they weren't 40-footers; they were 300-, 400-, 500-footers.

Mind you, I was up in Goose Bay talking with the fishery about the cod going down. That wasn't our boat. It was National Sea Product's boat. The engineer was at the bar with us.

Mr. Baker, you've heard of Tars Cabot. Tars Cabot was there, and Tars knows a bit about fish. That's what he was telling us, that he knew what ruined the fish. This guy came and asked to sit at our table. He said that he knew a bit about the fishery. He said, “I'll let you know, boys, you haven't seen very much yet. I saw 17 men around a conveyor belt picking out the big ones, and the small ones went overboard.”

So don't come and tell me today that the federal government, after doing that to fishermen, is going to penalize those fellows. I wouldn't take it. I don't blame Jean Chrétien for training these men over in Newfoundland, to take care of the fishermen. I wouldn't live with it, no way, after knowing that...

[Inaudible—Editor]...and I'm going to be penalized for it. Thank you, boy.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: I'd like to give you some more information, Mr. Bernier, concerning the cod. When they used to drag for fish outside Newfoundland, the Portuguese used to tell us they respected the size. When we visited the three or four plants.... I took part in the inquiry for the federal government. We saw containers of small cod about so long. When they saw us passing through the plant, they pushed it to one side and they threw canvas over it. They told us to keep on going to see the fish belonging to Mifflin or H.P. Dodd.

They ruined our fish, and I asked them the reason why they caught the small cod. He said they have a lining inside their drag nets that drags in all the small fish. I saw the large boats taking the small ones in Portugal. I visited Portugal, north and south, for the federal government and I saw it.

[Translation]

Mr. Cliff Joncas: After all of that, their sons could no longer fish. The social impact goes further than one might think. Those guys are not thinking about that today. Give them $15,000 to $20,000 a year. Why would they not be happy with $15,000 to $20,000 a year? It is not true that they are happy if they get $15,000 or $20,000 a year.

What would you say if you were told today that, through no fault of your own, but rather through someone else's, your pay was going to have to be cut? The fisherman is ready to go back out fishing. If the fish is not there today, it is someone else's fault, not mine. To say today that we are now suggesting other solutions than that which have been applied during the last three or four years is something that should be thought long and hard about. Yes, I agree that there is something to be done and constructive solutions to be put in place, but that should be carried out within the community itself.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: It is ideas such as that that we want to hear.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: The only proposal we have to submit to you now is that relating to Parks Canada.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: In your view, the infrastructure within Parks Canada could feed you?

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Indeed. Look at the tourism industry that is building up all around, from Blanc-Sablon to Kégaska. That is where the development will take place. There is nothing else here. There are no mines and there is no wood because all of the trees have been cut down.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I am not a prospector. The only things I am prospecting for today are ideas.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: That is it.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I am not too familiar with mining either.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: Now, as we were saying earlier, there is the infrastructure project. All of that is fine and dandy, but it is Cliff Joncas who is going to respond to the invitation to tender. And I, Cliff Joncas, the businessman, am not allowed to hire those guys; they are demanding that I hire a guy who has his card, even if I know that he is not as good a worker as someone else. If I hire that someone else, I am the one who will be penalized. I had to appear in court because I had hired a fellow from my area. I was not required to pay the fine because the judge understood my reasons. But the law stipulates that even if I only have three days worth of work per week with my grader, I have to bring down a fellow from Sept-Îles, pay for his travelling expenses, his lodging in Blanc-Sablon and his trip home to Sept-Îles. I had hired a fellow from the area and I was taken to court for that. It was not that far away.

• 1740

Today, it is not with infrastructure projects that you will be able to resolve our problems.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: No, those are just ideas for a starting point. We are wondering what the economy will sustain itself on afterwards. It is certain that at the time, the construction of this infrastructure will create temporary jobs and it is not necessarily those we are thinking of who will benefit from that.

We were really talking about proposals for economic diversification in your area. We suggested other solutions to you. For example, sharing and community quotas are possible ways of going about things. We should study the short term, middle term and long term situations. In the short term, we will have to deal with the fact that some people will not have bread and butter on the table in May. In the middle term, we will have to determine who will continue to work in the fishery and who will leave it. And we will have to think about what should be done for the fishermen who have left the fishery. These are some of the questions we will have to tackle. We need to communicate.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: They gave us another option, but the fishermen who will continue to fish will not be very numerous. You have the example: of the 500, there will only be 250 left. In the other regions, it will be up to them to decide. Two months ago, the provincial Minister for Fisheries came to meet with us.

[English]

Our provincial fisheries minister came here about a month or a month and a half ago. One of our fishermen asked him for the right to fish the lower north shore. I wasn't very pleased that he had to ask for the right to fish the gulf to Labrador as a Canadian, okay? He wasn't asking for too much. He was asking for the right to fish the lower north shore. They're not asking for very much, but they can't even get that much. The minimum they're trying to obtain, they still can't get, when they know that not far from here there are boys there working 10% of what he's working and making $200,000 or $300,000.

The Chairman: Exactly.

Mr. Cliff Joncas: That's what's not fair. That's where the licences I was telling you...should be worked at. I mentioned that to DFO, but there's a big problem for them.

The Chairman: Your points are very well taken, both of you gentlemen. We've been investigating a lot of the quotas and the fishing methods around the east coast, and you're correct, because the vessels you referred to that catch small fish—the turbot drags and the cod drags—drag the bottom. They don't drag mid-water, they're not on top of the water, they're not down in the third level of water. They're along the ground, and they're dragging. They're dragging today. They're dragging in 2J, the French draggers from Paris, from St. Malo, because they have a turbot quota in 2J.

But you can't fish in 2J. They're dragging the bottom now. They're dragging the bottom up in area 0, just north of Labrador, where the turbot grow. They're dragging the Grand Banks, and it's all with the agreement of the Canadian government. You're absolutely correct. We're looking at this very, very carefully.

Nothing has changed, you know. Over the years not much has changed since you were with the Canadian Saltfish Corporation. Nothing has changed. That went down the tubes, and our fishery has gone down the tubes.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: Can I just add one thing to that, sir? I'm not trying to defend myself.

When we went down the tubes, who took the decision to go down the tubes? We saw that big stock of fish go to Portugal and Spain—

The Chairman: That's right.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: —and the value of the money dropped and the fish rotted on the wharf.

The Chairman: Yes, that's right.

We want to thank you very much for your very comprehensive submission to the committee. We're going to be reporting to Parliament, and I'm sure you'll hear about the committee report. Thank you very much.

Mr. Alexandre Dumas: We'll be glad to receive a copy of your report.

The Chairman: Thank you. This meeting is adjourned.