FOPO Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES PÊCHES ET DES OCÉANS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, May 9, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.)): We shall call the meeting to order.

Along with pretty well everything else in Fisheries that we've been studying on this excursion, we'll also be looking somewhat at the departmental structure of the gulf region today in Moncton.

I would ask our first witnesses to come forward. We have Jim Jones, regional director, fisheries management, and Mike Chadwick, assistant regional director, science.

The floor is yours. I believe you have a presentation to make, and then we'll go to questions.

Members, we are going to keep it fairly tight. We have to be out of here no later than 1 p.m., I understand.

Jim, the floor is yours.

Mr. Jim Jones (Regional Director, Fisheries Management, Maritimes Region (Gulf Fishery), Department of Fisheries and Oceans): Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, everyone. I certainly thank you for coming to Moncton and New Brunswick. I know you're making a trip through P.E.I., and I know that some of us will be joining you there later this evening.

We wanted to highlight a few things for you this morning in terms of the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence and the gulf region, which is the management authority for the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, and also highlight some of the unique aspects that we think characterize the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence as a fisheries component. We also want to talk about what I think is one of the really innovative and interesting aspects that we're trying to encourage within the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is the establishment of better networks, discussions, and cooperative research among Fisheries and Oceans, among the fishing industry, and among the universities within the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

One of the things we've worked on quite a bit is the establishment of what we call the southern gulf research network, which is a priority-setting avenue for research. It involves 27 different agencies, government departments, universities, and industry associations. We have some representatives with us today from the Atlantic Veterinary College at UPEI, from St. Francis Xavier University, from the University of Moncton, and from the fishing industry, who will be available to talk about this exercise and the potential it holds.

First I would like to briefly describe for you the state of the fishery in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. We have packages for you that contain information relative to the gulf and its fisheries, as well as the organizational structure of the region.

I'd like to start by describing what we mean when we talk about the gulf region. It was re-established in 1999, with a mandate for fisheries management activities in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. To achieve this, we have units that deal with fisheries management and supporting corporate policy and science functions in the Moncton office.

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Geographically, the gulf region comprises all of the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence adjacent to the eastern coast of New Brunswick, the Northumberland Strait coast of Nova Scotia and western Cape Breton, as well as the whole of Prince Edward Island.

These waters, which represent less than 1% of Canada's exclusive economic zone, account for approximately 15% of the total catch of Canadian fisheries and thus constitute one of the country's most productive marine areas.

Within these geographical boundaries, the regional office is in Moncton and there are three area offices, one in Tracadie-Sheila in New Brunswick, one in Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island, and Antigonish in Nova Scotia. We have as well 20 local offices through which the region serves 161 fishing harbours and approximately 13,000 fishing licence-holders.

The region is also very complex. The management encompasses three provinces directly, plus Quebec and Newfoundland indirectly through interaction with fish quotas for a variety of species, like crab, shrimp, cod, herring. As well, it crosses three cultures. The anglophone, francophone, and aboriginal cultures are very much a part of the region, and the region is officially bilingual.

For greater detail in terms of some of the structure, there is an overview brochure in your package, and it provides greater detail, if you should require it, on the structure and the resources of the gulf region.

In terms of the fishing industry, it's characterized by the predominance of the inshore fishery; the less-than-45-foot-long boats constitute 97% of the fleet.

[Translation]

In terms of the resource itself, shellfish and crustaceans represent almost 90% of the total value of landed fish.

[English]

Generally speaking, the state of the fishery for the gulf region in the year 2000 can be summed up

[Translation]

as represented by crustaceans and shellfish, as I said earlier. According to the latest statistics from DFO for 1999, the total value of fish landed by fishers in the Gulf was 326 million dollars, or twice the 1990 level. This growth can be explained mostly by the increase in the price of lobster and snowcrab. The export market is valued at more than 500 million dollars.

[English]

In addition to those basic numbers, the fishing industry in the Gulf of St. Lawrence has incredible sets of investments. The infrastructure attached to the fishing enterprises in the Gulf of St. Lawrence—that's the cost of the vessels, the equipment to go fishing in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence—is in excess of $500 million.

If you look at the accrued value, or the market value, of fishing licences, we have 3,500 lobster licences, core lobster enterprises, in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, plus very active crab, shrimp, and groundfish fisheries. These licences are transferred from individuals for a certain value. The estimated value of these licences is over $600 million.

When you look at the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence in terms of its structure, we have a landed value that is over $300 million, an export value that is greater than $500 million, plus a set of investments worth over $500 million. So it's a driver of the economy in many parts of the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, in particular since the fishing activity, of course, is conducted in the rural coastal communities.

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[Translation]

Since the middle of the 1990s, integrated fishery management plans have been used to manage most of the fishery. These plans represent a great step forward in terms of management, as they make accountable all of the stakeholders in the commercial fishery, thus improving the implementation and viability of the programs.

[English]

One of the things we've tried to work quite extensively on is improving the whole concept of integrated fisheries management, which brings together all the stakeholders of the fishing industry, and trying to develop the concept of co-management with both the inshore and the midshore fleets.

As well in the region, we have a considerable aboriginal fishery. We have first nations and native councils that have participated in food fisheries under Sparrow since the early 1990s, the first nations under Marshall since 1999. We have two first nations in Prince Edward Island, two along the coast in gulf Nova Scotia, and twelve in New Brunswick that we deal with relative to the fishery. As to some of the advancements that have been made, most of our bands have signed interim fishers arrangements with us last year. I think everyone's aware of the one band that did not, with Burnt Church and some of the issues we had there.

A lot of the activity has been focused within the inshore lobster fishery and the snow crab fishery. The native communities within the southern gulf now fish about 90 lobster enterprises, and that's considerably more than they had prior to the Marshall decision—there were less than 40 enterprises within the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. We also have the equivalent of over 114 fishing enterprises that have been transferred to Mi'kmaq and Maliseet communities, and we're engaged currently in the process to renew the interim arrangements for year 2001.

What I will do, as I know the individual members may have questions relative to us or some of the other individuals who are here, is ask Dr. Chadwick, who's the regional director of science, to explain some of the unique features of the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystem and perhaps to talk a little about some of the priorities we're trying to establish in concert with the representatives of fishermen, the fish processors, and the universities in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence relating to research on that ecosystem.

The Chair: Dr. Chadwick, as briefly as you can.

Mr. Michael E. Chadwick (Assistant Regional Director, Science, Gulf Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): Okay.

I have a few documents in your blue plastic pack. I want to take you through those. The first document is a series of coloured graphs, and the intent of those graphs is to show you three points. The first point is that the southern gulf is one of Canada's richest ecosystems and the reasons I'll go through very quickly. Second, we have a fairly good understanding of the marine resources in this ecosystem in respect of the harvest fisheries. The third point will be that with the ecosystem itself, we have a very poor understanding.

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I want to take you through that. Then I'll take you through a second document, which is a series of minutes from meetings related to the Southern Gulf Research Network. In that package is a list of research priorities that relate to my initial point.

The southern gulf, as Jim has pointed out, is a small area, but it's a very productive area. The reason is mainly that it receives more fresh water inflow than any other semi-enclosed sea. This is from the many rivers that surround it and the ice coverage, where almost as much fresh water is released when the ice melts in the spring as is released in a whole year's flow of fresh water from the rivers. That's something to bear in mind. It's very shallow, which means that the sunlight drives all of our ecosystems. The nutrients at the bottom become mixed with the sunlight at the surface and create a rich growing environment.

We have anomalies, where we have very cold bottom water with species that are arctic, like snow crab, which do very well in the southern gulf, better than anywhere else that I'm aware of. Then we have species in the coastal areas, like oysters, and the next place they're found is south of Cape Cod. They do very well in the southern gulf as well.

Jim's already identified to you the fourth graph, which has a garish colour. It summarizes the various values of fishing enterprises and so forth in the southern gulf. The next graph shows the size of our science group in Moncton.

The following four graphs look at the precautionary approach, which is the framework in which we try to put all fisheries. When I said we had a fairly good understanding of our marine resources, it means we can put the key species into this precautionary approach, so we can see where we are relative to the reference level of biomass and some reference level of exploitation rate.

You can see, for example, with our herring stock the current estimate of the resource for the fall is that we have a very high biomass and the exploitation rate is below our target. This is an unusual feature of a major fishery. For southern gulf cod, which is another very important stock, you can see that we have quite the opposite. We have a very low biomass. You can see that biomass relative to the long time series of information that we have on this stock. For example, we have a fairly good knowledge on the groundfish because since 1970 we have conducted annual surveys during the month of September, and because of the consistent bottom on the southern gulf, we are able to sample the fish quite well and get an idea of the stock size, independent of the fisheries.

The last slide in that series is for snow crab. You can see that for the last decade or so we have been in the green zone, the safe zone, and you can see the year 2000 relative to the other years. Again, this information is based on the survey, where we can view the resource independent of the fishery.

On the next graph you can see what proportion of the stock is removed by the fishery. Again, this is a view that is not usually available for marine resources.

Lobster, which is our biggest fishery, is shown on the multicoloured graph, to demonstrate that the main fishing zone generally should have the same characteristics, where the landings today are as good as they were over a century ago. Again, there are not many stocks where you'd have such a long time series of information—how many fisheries in the world show a hundred years where the landings today are as good as they were when those fisheries began?

This is to underline to you the significance of the resources in the southern gulf and the fact that we have some knowledge as to their condition.

The next graph shows you that in the southern gulf we have the main pieces. When you add the biomass of herring and groundfish, whether it's cod or plaice, and lobster and crab together, you can see that since 1978 that total reproductive biomass has been around 500,000 tonnes, meaning that despite great variations in the composition from one year to the next, the total amount has remained pretty much the same.

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This fairly constant biomass has occurred despite large changes in bottom water temperature, where you can see the extent of a zero-degree temperature over the four different time intervals.

The species themselves, where they are located in the southern gulf, have also changed throughout the last thirty years. Today, for example, the cod are found mostly off the west coast of Cape Breton. In earlier years in the 1970s, they were off Chaleur Bay, which is the other side of the gulf. With these details, the whole business of taking survey information and explaining it to the industry to get a picture of the resource—the resource is always moving.

This brings me to ecology and the stomach contents of cod. Again, we have samples over thirty years. In the early part of the 1970s, most of the stomach contents were euphausiids or shrimp. Today the stomach contents are mainly herring. There have been large changes in the stomach contents.

The next package is the series of minutes from the meetings. Again, last year we brought together our various stakeholders, which included over thirty different agencies. Members of the universities, members of the fishing organizations, members of research laboratories, provincial governments, and federal colleagues came together. Every one of us had one thing in common and that was the southern gulf. All of us appreciated the importance of this area. The challenge was, how can we all develop collective research priorities?

You'll see the collective research priorities are there, and as you read through them, they're grouped into four themes. Within each theme, there are several priorities. About half of them relate to a better understanding of the ecosystem.

One final document would be the yellow booklet that gives you a quick overview of the science program as it stood last year. The new book for this year is not yet printed. It gives you the resources in the various species categories I mentioned.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Chadwick, and Jim.

Before I turn to questions—and we'll go to you first, Dominic—I might point out the order of the day should read, so it's clear for the record, “Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a meeting on the departmental structure in the Gulf Region”. We were not doing that as a specific study. I know, John, you were raising that earlier.

Mr. LeBlanc.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you for coming to the committee this morning.

As both of you know, I have been worried, as has our chairman, from the perspectives of our constituents, with the ability of Fisheries and Oceans in this region to meet the needs of your clients and our constituents.

Mike, I have read your documents on the Southern Gulf Research Network. I commend you for bringing together, and working with, non-governmental people in bringing together this group of people. I think it's a fantastic initiative.

I'm surprised so much of this work has to be done outside the normal structure of Fisheries and Oceans science. I'm surprised, for example, that last evening in Halifax we had a very interesting discussion about the Oceans Act and some of the challenges oil and gas might represent to fishermen. I'm surprised that in the gulf region, as important as Jim said it is for the commercial fishery on this coast, there's no oceans branch staff in your science branch.

Do you have any views on that, Mike?

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Mr. Michael Chadwick: Do I have views on it?

The Chair: Let's hear them, Mike. That's what we're here for. Lay them on the table.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: We could put you under oath if you're worried about it.

Mr. Michael Chadwick: No, I'm not worried about it.

To me, yes, it makes sense that those who understand and have the information relating to the fisheries would also have a say as to the kind of work that would take place with regard to the ecosystem.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: As the director of science in this region, with the importance of the Oceans Act and some of the work described to us last evening in Halifax, with the importance of understanding the ecosystem and your comment that the ecosystem is something we don't understand as well as we should, would it not be augmented if, in your region, you had the benefit of some of the scientific advice, expertise, and resources that come with the new Oceans Act mandate?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: I think it would make it simpler if it was all in the same pot. Whether it's with me or with my boss, it would make it simpler, yes. Basically, it's a competition with our clients. It makes it simpler for them as well when you're speaking to one body as opposed to several bodies.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, Canadian Alliance): There are so many places I could go with such a broad presentation. I do want to go to the aquatic resources for a second.

You talked about the biomass of cod in the southern gulf. Spawning stock will decline by 1% and the fishery has been closed since 1992, but you don't go into a lot of detail. This is of great concern, correct? I'm left wondering, are we staring at a slow and steady erosion of the current population? Do we simply not know at this point whether we have a recoverable population there?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: Thank you. That's a good question. In fact that is the hub of the concern. The four southern gulf cod were the cornerstone species of the biomass back in the late seventies. Today it's no longer the cornerstone. Herring is the cornerstone species.

You may be interested in knowing that a five-year-old cod today is about one-third smaller than it was back in the early 1980s. In other words, the growth rate is much less and the natural mortality has increased. Our estimates are that it has probably doubled in the last decade. Yes, without any fisheries this year, we expect a very small decline in the actual reproductive biomass.

There is recruitment coming in slowly, so the stock, we feel, will rebuild. We're very puzzled as to why natural mortality for cod would be going up in the absence of fisheries. It's the kind of thing that I believe requires work.

Mr. John Duncan: How do you define natural mortality?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: How do you define natural mortality? It's mainly losses in the population that occur other than through fishing.

Mr. John Duncan: You can measure that there is mortality?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: Yes.

Mr. John Duncan: You don't actually know the specifics of all of the mortality, correct?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: Our measure of mortality is based on a survey, which occurs every September. Basically, you can see the number of five-year-old cod or six-year-old cod in 1998 and then see those same numbers in 1999. Comparing the two, with 100 one year and 80 the next, you've had a loss of 20% over the year. That's what I mean by natural mortality.

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We account at the same time for any removals, whether it's with our sentinel fisheries or otherwise, but nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, there has been a change in natural mortality with southern gulf cod.

Mr. John Duncan: Changing the subject, in your backgrounder on the aboriginal fishery, one of the bullets says that prior to the Marshall decision first nations held one tuna licence and they now have seven. That's not very descriptive. Does this mean there were six transferred under the aboriginal fisheries strategy, or does it mean this just happened as a consequence of private endeavour or whatever?

Mr. Jim Jones: I think these were ones that have been transferred since the Marshall decision.

Mr. John Duncan: As a consequence of the AFS?

Mr. Jim Jones: We distinguish between the two. The aboriginal fisheries strategy was put in place to deal with the Sparrow decision. The commercial enterprises and access we're providing to first nations have accelerated under Marshall, and I think most of these were since the Marshall decision in September 1999.

Mr. John Duncan: So is this part of the established policy or strategy that the tuna fishery is also one in which we'll have a changed composition?

Mr. Jim Jones: We have actually a large number of bands throughout New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and P.E.I. that expressed some interest in tuna fishing, yes.

Mr. John Duncan: Thank you.

The Chair: Madame Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski-Neigette-et-la Mitis, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation.

At the beginning of your document, when you introduced yourself and explained who you were, you said:

The Southern Gulf Research Network brings together representatives from some 30 organizations within the fishing industry, as well as universities and research facilities having an interest in the ecosystem.

Can you tell us about your partners, and explain exactly who you are?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: Would you like me to identify them for you? We have some of them with us here this morning.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Are there any private businesses? Are there representatives from all of the universities in the Atlantic region?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: No, only the universities located in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. There are five of them: l'Université du Québec à Rimouski; the University of Moncton; the University of Prince Edward Island; St. Francis Xavier University and Mount Allison University.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: You said that these universities are located in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. You also said in your presentation that you had extended your boundaries in 1999. Since I am a newcomer to this committee, could you tell me what these new boundaries are? What exactly is the area that you cover, in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence? I have the map here. Does it mean that your starting point is here? Is this the southern part of the Gulf?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: The southern Gulf of St. Lawrence is shown in white.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: The entire white part.

Mr. Michael Chadwick: Yes. It goes from the Gaspé Peninsula to the tip of Cape Breton.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Does that include the white part beside Newfoundland?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: That is another zone where the water is more shallow. What is special about the southern Gulf, is the fact that in the summer, the water is warm. The Gaspé currents flow off the coast of the Gaspé Peninsula which gives us...

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Is Chaleur Bay considered part of the southern Gulf?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: Yes, precisely.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Was that not the case before?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: When we talk about the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, it isn't from a political standpoint; it's about the ecosystem.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I understand, but you said that things changed in 1999. When the other gentleman made his presentation...

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Mr. Michael Chadwick: No, it changed in 1984.

Mr. Jim Jones: It is only in terms of fishery management. For research purposes, for the ecosystem and that type of thing, there is a great deal of interaction with our colleagues in the Laurentian region, for example with the Maurice Lamontagne Institute for part of that type of research. It was when the region was redrawn, in 1999, but only for the part affecting fisheries management. The research and scientific activities, etc., continue...

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Like it was before.

Mr. Jim Jones: Yes.

Ms Suzanne Tremblay: I see. When you talk of what has changed, that is with regard to the fisheries management.

Mr. Jim Jones: Yes, that's right.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Fine. Thank you.

[English]

Thank you, Madame Tremblay. Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

The very first person I spoke to at DFO when I was first elected was Jim Jones in Moncton.

My first question for you is, do you yourself believe in the owner-operator principle?

Mr. Jim Jones: The industry in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, both the inshore and the midshore components, have greatly supported the owner-operator principle as a basis for our licensing system, and as a manager responsible for these fisheries I think it's one of the fundamental pieces we work with. Virtually all of my industry is telling me that's the basis upon which they wish the licensing system to be based. As a consequence, one of the things we have tried to stay within in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence is to enforce the issue of owner-operator.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: But the question was, Jim, do you personally support the idea of the owner-operator?

Mr. Jim Jones: My answer would be yes. I've seen the advantages it brings. I'm aware that there are other circumstances where groups may see the owner of the vessel not necessarily being the operator. When I look at the work I've partaken in in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence in the last 20 years, I think my personal view would be that the owner-operator has yielded significant benefits for the fishing industry.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Jim, when the gulf region was reconstructed, it wasn't brought back to its original state. When it was taken away and then brought back, how much of it was brought back? What percentage?

Mr. Jim Jones: It's difficult to put a percentage on it. We have a responsibility for fisheries management, for biological science research, for policy and economics, and obviously a corporate arm to support that. In terms of the broader DFO programs, oceans, which includes habitat, environmental sciences, and the implementation of the Oceans Act is something that is retained through the Halifax office. We have a series of service delivery agreements for those functions as well as for small craft harbours and for the coast guard activities within the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Also, with the gulf region having about 35% of the Atlantic fishery, correct me if I'm wrong, but they get something like less than 10% of the science resources. Is that correct?

Mr. Jim Jones: I'm not sure of the exact figure in terms of the percentage for the Atlantic. Mike may have more precise information.

Mr. Michael Chadwick: Yes.

The Chair: Mike can find that information, but, Peter, you only have time for one more question.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: It will be my last question then. Jim, your statistics are quite revealing about how productive this area is in terms of the fishery and how many people are relying upon that fishery. Speaking on a more personal note, it must have sent shock waves through the system when Corridor Resources were given that lease off the Cabot block right in the heart of that zone without any environmental assessment.

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Did the gulf region, or you yourself, or anyone from your department, express any concerns that could be released here publicly about what you folks had said, or what concerns you've expressed, on behalf of the fishermen about their fears of seismic or future oil and gas explorations without the proper environmental assessments to protect the interests of those fishermen?

Mr. Jim Jones: If I could try to answer, again, the whole question of oil and gas is within the responsibility of the oceans directorate out of Halifax.

I think we've had some input, obviously, into the positions the department is taking on that. I know one of the things that Mike and his group are involved in, and will be involved in, is looking at doing a resource assessment of these impacts.

Mike, perhaps you may wish to highlight that process for a moment.

Mr. Michael Chadwick: We will be having a review of the state of resources and what research is required to be done to assess the impacts, and that will be done in November of this year.

Mr. Jim Jones: I think the answer to your question is we provide input into the departmental response relative to the oil and gas question.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Is that for public knowledge?

Mr. Jim Jones: Yes.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Assadourian.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian (Brampton Centre, Lib.): Thank you.

On page 2 you talk of exploitable biomasses, and then on page 3, I don't know if it's a scientific observation or not, but when the temperature is warm, you have more cod; when it's cold, you have more herring. Does the increase or decrease of the cod have to do with the temperature, or is there some other environmental or other reason that we don't know of?

If you take the picture, or the drawing, the square, from 1980 to 1982, and go back to the fish in 1983, it's a very high number of cod. When you go to when it's cold, 1993, it's very low. Is this just an observation, or is there a scientific truth to it, and how come?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: That's very astute of you, but those graphs are only illustrative.

It would be hard to do an analysis of any kind in just looking at them like that. But in a way, temperature did cool from the mid-eighties up until recently. And there are some who believe that temperature has a role, although we don't know quite how, in perhaps the poor growth and recruitment of cod.

But there are other factors as well. That is the problem in biology; everything interacts. You have changes in prey and you have a change in temperature. In noticing the distribution of cod, you probably noticed as well that when the temperatures were warmer we had more cod in the Magdalen Shallows, which is at the bottom left graph of that second-last one.

It's a complicated subject and there is a lot of science literature on it, but there is nothing that's definitive.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: Thanks.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Keddy, and then I'll come back to Mr. Lunney.

Mr. Gerald Keddy (South Shore, PC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank our guests, the witnesses, for appearing today.

Looking at your charts of the species change, I have a particular interest in the species change. Our fishermen in Nova Scotia are telling us they're seeing a species change almost on a yearly basis. It's not only just different fish in the water that we've been traditionally fishing, but different sea birds, different land birds.

We're hearing the same thing from the Inuit up north, that there's less ice, there's less ice for fresh water, and there are changes in species, not so much in the sea at this point, but there's certainly a different species change in birds. I just wonder...because you're being very careful with your answer, and that's very scientific. Scientists tend to say, the more you know, the less you're sure of.

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Is that part of what, in your opinion, is going on in the gulf region—that there's some climate change taking place? What's the role of that huge body of water coming out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River, and quite simply the pollutants, whether they be chemical or biological, that are carried in that?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: When we talk about the ocean, the ocean's a huge place. As I said earlier, the gulf's productivity is based on the fact that it's a shallow sea. It's only 60 metres deep. The average ocean depth is 4,000 metres.

When you're talking about changes in composition in the ocean, the first question that scientists ask is, well, how do you know that? So there are very few parts of the ocean for which we actually do surveys or use the fishermen to develop a scenario of what's actually happening. I think a lot more work is required there, where all the various points of view are brought together and some consensus is reached manually as to what the state is.

Because it gets tricky. Yes, we can look at herring, cod, plaice, and snow crab, and see over the last couple of decades what those ones have been doing, but that's not telling you what all the other pieces are doing because we have no real census going on. So it's hard to say.

That would be the main debate: what's your source of information on the change of the species composition?

Mr. Gerald Keddy: I have another question for Mr. Jones.

We talked a little bit about Marshall. Again, what we've seen in southwestern Nova Scotia is a huge escalation in the value of licences. I'm wondering, first of all, if you've seen the same thing occurring in the gulf region.

Second, because Mr. Stoffer obliquely asked that owner-operator question, how many licences do first nations currently have that they're actually fishing? If the issue is that you're going to have first nations fishermen on the water, then there has to be a training program set up. There has to be some kind of a mentoring situation. Are we going to have first nations fishermen, or are we going to have royalty charters that simply dollars are collected from?

Mr. Jim Jones: In terms of your first question relative to the price or the cost of retiring licences, I think we have seen an increase. I think part of the increase may be due to the number of licences we're looking to retire with the Marshall program.

Normally there's a certain market for exchanging licences. Obviously when you increase the numbers that are required, there's some resulting price effect.

I think, though, that there's another resulting price effect that generally comes from.... If you look at the fisheries in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, for species like lobster, where catches have for the most part remained very good, prices have remained very good. Over time there would be a general increase in the value of these licences anyway. The same goes for species such as shrimp and crab.

While one may conclude that the relatively increasing prices are due solely to Marshall, I think that's a little simplistic. I think there are other factors.

Indeed, on the retirement of some crab licences, for example, we've had a number of individuals who have refused our offers because they've gotten better prices with other private groups.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: Just very quickly, in southwest Nova Scotia, lobster licences went from $150,000 to $250,000. That was the range they were sold in. In LFA 34, they went to $700,000 in the two-year period. Now that might be simplistic, but it's not difficult.

• 1050

Mr. Jim Jones: No, no. But, as I say, I think part of it is the natural increase in prices because of the stability of some of the catches and the prices.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: The collapse of other fisheries.

Mr. Jim Jones: The collapse of other fisheries and when we're buying...trying to retire licences for access, clearly we're increasing from the regular market price. So obviously there's going to be an upward increase in price.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Jones.

Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney (Nanaimo—Alberni, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, I was interested in your presentation regarding the total biomass in your charts here, which has remained relatively stable with some fluctuations over the years, although the species dominance seems to have changed and continues to change.

When we were recently over in the maritime division, we heard a lot about aquaculture. I'm wondering now what influence aquaculture is having in the southern gulf region.

The Chair: Mr. Chadwick.

Mr. Michael Chadwick: The aquaculture industry is very important in the southern gulf—the molluscan aquaculture industry, mussels being the primary species. The second one would be oysters. Both of those are growing and are worth up around $30 million or more per year. Those fisheries would not be in the biomass graph because they're very, very, very near the shore. They're more or less in our estuaries.

Mr. James Lunney: Okay. Thank you.

I have a second question. Are the cod stocks affected as a bycatch of other fisheries?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: They can be, although I think today that's not an issue. The accounting is there, so when we're looking at, let's say, the removals of cod, I think we have them all. But, yes, that means trawl fisheries tend to catch more than the target.

Mr. Jim Jones: If I perhaps could add, one of the fisheries where there used to be a significant bycatch of cod and groundfish species was in the shrimp fishery. Some of the technological improvements made in the early 1990s, especially with sort of a separator grate—in the industry it's called the “Nordmore grate”—have reduced considerably any bycatch issue in the shrimp fishery.

Mr. James Lunney: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lunney.

A last short question, Mr. LeBlanc.

Oh, sorry, I didn't know you were on. Mr. Wappel, first.

Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.): Thank you.

Good morning, gentlemen. I'm a new member of this committee, so I'm going to ask you just a few questions that may seem rather obvious, but they're not obvious to me, so I hope you don't mind.

On your first chart, at the top left, the region is obviously divided. There are a number of lines there. What does 4T represent?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: The 4T represents pretty well the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Mr. Tom Wappel: All right.

Mr. Michael Chadwick: So that would be the black line.

The Chair: I think maybe, Jim, if you could explain the zones, like 4T, 4S, under the NAFO, or whatever. Just give us a quick overview. If you were to look at a bigger map, you'd see a lot more zones.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Mr. Chairman, the reason I'm asking is because 4T would appear to include Gaspé.

Mr. Michael Chadwick: Yes, it does.

Mr. Tom Wappel: You didn't mention Gaspé when you were mentioning what you were.... You said gulf New Brunswick, P.E.I., gulf Nova Scotia, but you didn't mention Gaspé. But Gaspé appears to be in 4D.

Mr. Jim Jones: It's because we have a regional office within the Laurentian region within Quebec that manages the activities within Quebec, and so we sort of share parts of the southern gulf as well as parts of the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence with sister regions.

Mr. Tom Wappel: The reason I'm asking this is because the order of the day is the departmental structure in the gulf region, not in the southern gulf region. So that's why I'm asking. What would 4S be—the northern gulf region?

Mr. Jim Jones: That would be in the northern gulf.

Mr. Tom Wappel: All right, and that's not your jurisdiction either?

Mr. Jim Jones: From the management perspective, we coordinate fisheries that cross the different regional structures between Quebec and Newfoundland. Fish like shrimp, cod, and herring, for example, are shared among fishermen throughout New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, P.E.I., Quebec, and Newfoundland.

Mr. Tom Wappel: The reason I ask this specifically is that the bottom left graph says “distribution of staff in 2000”. The English version does not contain a number, while the French version says 77 people. Beneath the graph it says “Science Branch, Gulf Region”. Now, is that 4T and 4S, is that 4T only, or is that part of 4T?

• 1055

Mr. Jim Jones: The number 77 is the staff in the science branch in the Moncton office. We have a significant research staff as well in the Laurentian region in the Institut Maurice-Lamontagne in Mont-Joli, and we share some of the basic stock research. For example, I think we provide research for crab and for groundfish in 4T, which includes Gaspé. Out of the Institut Maurice-Lamontagne they would do research, for example, on shrimp and on redfish, and they do northern gulf cod and northern gulf herring as well.

Mr. Tom Wappel: So in reality this is a pie chart of the science branch, Moncton.

Mr. Jim Jones: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Okay, I have two short questions flowing from that. Are biologists not scientists?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: More or less they could be. I'm a biologist by training. In the public service we have a category for research scientists that is quite separate from the one for biologists.

Mr. Tom Wappel: But biologists would normally consider themselves scientists, wouldn't they?

Mr. Michael Chadwick: Yes, and they're just as good, really.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Tom Wappel: The final question on the pie chart is...it's a wonderful pie chart, but it doesn't give me any numbers. We don't need the answers now, but perhaps you could provide us with a breakdown of the actual—

Mr. Jim Jones: Yes. The numbers are in your yellow folder.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Are they? Okay, great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

Mr. LeBlanc, you have the last question on the chart.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Jim, in your presentation you talked about the difficult situation with aboriginal fisheries. As you know, in my constituency the reserve of Big Cove is a large aboriginal community. There are others. I'm hearing a lot from fishermen in my riding about their concerns with respect to your having sufficient enforcement resources.

We heard fishermen in Ottawa a month or two ago tell us some rather disturbing stories about boats being tied up at docks without enough money for fuel but crews being paid. Are you satisfied that with the approaching fishing season, Jim, you're going to have enough enforcement resources that my constituency office won't be flooded by phone calls from people saying they can't find anybody from DFO to carry out the enforcement mandate?

Mr. Jim Jones: My initial response would be that one would never have enough enforcement resources to do what everyone in any of the regional offices considers necessary to be done.

Having said that, I think we have a significant level of resources, and we try to focus on the set of priority areas we have across the region. That includes the coastal fisheries, the estuarial fisheries, and the inland fisheries as well.

Obviously, when we get into circumstances like the one last year at Burnt Church, it considerably taxes the resources we have. For events like that we bring in additional resources from other regions of the department, as we did last year.

I think I would say that clearly we have some points where some of our coverage relative to our at-sea patrols may be less than what is desired, but I think that by and large there is a potential for focus that is available to cover the entire activities within the region.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Jim, just to follow up on that, with the approach of the food fishery in the coming weeks, what specifically will the department be doing to ensure that the native food fishery isn't abused, as I believe it has been in past years, by some people making it into a backdoor commercial fishery? Do you have any specific plans to try to avoid some of the messes of previous years with respect specifically to the food fishery that will be starting soon?

Mr. Jim Jones: I think we have a number of things. One is with the first nations, and you mentioned Big Cove in particular. Last year we did have an interim arrangement with them that provided for a series of management measures relative to their commercial activities and their food fish activities. We instituted, for example, dockside monitoring relative to the food fish activities there last year.

• 1100

Aside from that we do have proper operational planning, that is, enforcement planning for all these activities. Clearly, you know there are circumstances where there are some individuals within first nations....

Again, I think one can't generalize that this is an across-the-board first nations problem. There are individuals within first nations who participate in the food fishery as a food fishery only and use it for legitimate food sources. There are others who try to use it as a commercial fishery. I think the recent...we have enforcement that tries to counteract that in the Richibucto area, for example. Last year we had a series of charges that were laid against individuals who participated in the food fishery and used it for commercial sales. I think those kinds of activities will obviously continue again this year.

The Chair: Thank you, Jim. Mr. Duncan has a short point of clarification, and Suzanne has a question.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: The question relates to NAFO area 4Vn. If I look on the map in your book here, it seems not to correlate with how 4Vn looks on this map. We do have ensuing testimony that relates to 4Vn, so I kind of wanted some clarification as to where 4Vn actually is.

Mr. Jim Jones: As an administrative unit it's managed out of the Maritimes region in Halifax. I think it shows up here because—and Mike may be able to provide more detail—if you look at the herring and the groundfish stocks in particular in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence in 4T, they migrate over the winter to the 4Vn area. It's an integral part of the ecosystem, but as we have a Laurentian region that administers the fisheries activities in Quebec, the administration of the fisheries programs in the 4Vn area, the Sydney Bight area, is done out of our regional office in Halifax.

Mr. John Duncan: I actually understand that. My question is, why are the two maps different?

Mr. Jim Jones: This one may have an error, then.

Mr. John Duncan: Or they appear to be different.

Mr. Jim Jones: Okay. I'm sorry.

The Chair: Jim, 4Vn on the NAFO map is smaller.

Mr. Jim Jones: Yes 4Vn is really the Sydney Bight area. This one is an error; it should actually say 4V. Someday someone can actually explain how we have zones one, two, three, and four and all the different letters that are attached to them.

The Chair: Madam Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Mr. Chair, I want to speak on the same topic, basically. With respect to all of the answers given to Mr. Wappel, I am unable to make either heads or tail of any of it. I don't understand how it is that we are speaking about a southern gulf region. This gentleman seems to be the director and he says that the Laurentian region is beside it, but that there is a regional office in the Laurentian area. Who is the boss in the Laurentian area? Is it people from the Laurentian area? What is it with all of this overlap? Are you throwing red herrings our way? Is this a case of the administration putting out red herrings all day long?

Mr. Chair, I would appreciate a report which would provide very precise information on this whole issue of areas. I understand that this will not be possible today, to provide us with this report and to clarify this, but I think that it is important, for neophytes such as Mr. Wappel and myself, so that we do not come across as complete idiots the next time and so that we are able to navigate these troubled waters like them.

[English]

The Chair: I think that information can be provided, Jim. We'll work it out between Jim and Fisheries and Oceans in Ottawa, and we'll get that information. Thank you very much, Mr. Jones and Mr. Chadwick.

We'll turn to the Maritime Fishermen's Union. Just to give members a warning, we're going to have to cut the questions down to three minutes or we'll not be out of here on time.

• 1105

I think there are some people in the room who are wondering about the new members of the committee. We've been in Moncton a few times. We'll just go around the table, and members can give their riding and province. Don't make it long; make it short. We'll start with Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I'm Tom Wappel. I'm from Scarborough Southwest, which is a suburb of metropolitan Toronto. My southern boundary is Lake Ontario.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: I'm the member of Parliament for Brampton Centre. I have a lake in my riding that is three times bigger than this hall.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: I'm Dominic LeBlanc from the neighbouring riding to this one of Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, and Ron Cormier is a constituent of mine.

The Chair: I'm Wayne Easter. My riding is Malpeque in central P.E.I.

Mr. John Duncan: I'm John Duncan of Vancouver Island North. I have about 40% of the British Columbia coastline in my riding, a little more than Sarkis.

Mr. James Lunney: I'm James Lunney from Nanaimo—Alberni, which is also on Vancouver Island. I have the other 40%. I'm a new member of the committee. Of course, the fishery is very important on the west coast and in our neighbourhood as well.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: My name is Suzanne Tremblay and I represent the Bloc Québécois. I am the Member of Parliament for Rimouski-Neigette-et-la Mitis. I am new to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. I am replacing Mr. Bernier, who did not run during the last election.

[English]

Mr. Gerald Keddy: I'm Gerald Keddy, the member of Parliament for South Shore, which is in Nova Scotia. It goes from St. Margarets Bay to Cape Sable Island, actually Charlesville, and down the other side of the Woods Harbour area.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I'm Peter Stoffer from the federal riding of Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore in Nova Scotia.

The Chair: Thank you, members.

Who is making the presentation, Mr. Cormier or Mr. Belliveau?

Mr. Michael Belliveau (Executive Secretary, Maritime Fishermen's Union): I'll make the opening remarks, if it's all right.

The Chair: Go ahead, Mike.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: Thanks, Mr. Chairman, for inviting us to make a presentation.

In our formal written remarks we tried to focus on the general topic of the structure of the management in the gulf region. I noted with interest some of the comments of the previous witnesses. It's our job to track how the department works in this area. For the most part we were in some conflict with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Moncton, but at the same time, obviously, we recognize their authority and the need for a gulf region.

We do not support the full-scale privatization of the fishery, and we strongly oppose the virtual gutting of the DFO gulf region that took place during the 1990s. We do not believe that any governmental actions in the fisheries in the 1990s can be viewed in isolation from the cod catastrophe that not only wreaked havoc in the fishing communities but also traumatized the DFO as an institution.

The loss of the cod was seen in Ottawa as the end of an industry, as far as we could determine. The fishery was viewed as a kind of sunset industry, with the remnants being parcelled out to corporations or corporatist-type fleets. Hence, we saw the emergence in the 1990s of the partnership strategy, which to this day has never really gotten beyond a handful of elite fleets in snow crab, northern shrimp, or offshore scallops.

Understandably, Ottawa was reeling under the weight of 40,000 fishermen and plant workers being thrown out of work, but it was extremely frustrating in the period I'm talking about, during the 1990s and following the cod closures, to represent a broad-based, inshore fishermen's organization like ours in the maritime provinces where cod was important but for most inshore fishermen only one species in a multi-species approach to the fishing year.

• 1110

It was frustrating through the 1990s to be subject to definitions, new policies, and decisions that were derived from the groundfish models and the trauma surrounding cod in Newfoundland.

As far back as 1992, when Minister Crosbie announced the extent of the cod disaster, he moved at the same time to cancel all unused groundfish licences. This was in complete contradiction to the bona fide licensing regime that was in place in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, although it was consistent with his target of reducing the groundfish sector by 50%. That is one example.

There was a period of at least four or five years where the bureaucracy appeared to be blind to the nature of the Atlantic fishery outside of Newfoundland. The fishery in the Maritimes and especially in the southern gulf was first and foremost dependent on lobster, which is a radically inshore species found in shallow waters all along our coasts. It's almost as an afterthought that the bureaucracy came to notice that lobster was the number one fishery in Canada in terms of value and the number of fishermen and communities it supported.

It was in this same period of trauma, cost-cutting, and downsizing that the gulf region was eliminated. The region was ignored. When we say the gulf region, of course we're talking about the gulf region within the structure of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We're not talking about the ecology yet. We're talking about the region as a management structure within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The region was ignored, in our judgment, just as the reality of seasonal work and unemployment insurance and the kind of impact they have on rural communities in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island were ignored. We don't believe this was just an accident.

The gulf region had all these bona fide inshore fishermen pursuing a multi-species approach to fishing that ran in almost complete contradiction to the partnership model, where a few corporatist-type fleets would pay considerable amounts of money for science, protection, and licences in order to have their exclusive quota allocations for scallops, snow crab, etc.

There was also a cultural component, which has already been referred to. I noticed that Mr. Jones referred to three cultures in the southern gulf. It made me wonder what a culture is. We have the native culture and the Acadian culture. Then where do you go? You have Prince Edward Island. Is it a culture? The Cape Bretoners are clearly a culture, and they're in the gulf. We could go on to the Protestant Scottish, who are a kind of culture as well. They dominate Mr. Stoffer's province. So there are many cultures.

But in this case we're referring to the fact that the gulf region is very distinct. I would say that when you look at it closely, you'll see that the majority of the southern gulf fishery is Acadian, and you don't find that anywhere else. It is unique in the country in that sense. It's unique in the sense that it's a totally bilingual region when it comes to management services, and to have those services shifted to Halifax, we were living under it so we know what it meant. We felt it day in and day out. It's not necessarily my first language, but it's our members' first language. We could see the inadequacy of Halifax to come up with French-speaking people.

There are other inadequacies that came out of Halifax. We couldn't even get a basic bona fide list for the members here. If I could digress for half a second, bona fide is a licensing regime that we brought in in the early 1980s, and 90% of the owner-operator fishermen in the southern gulf are what we call bona fide. They're inshore fishermen, they're multi-species licence-holders, and a stable number. They were established and categorized back in 1982 at 3,400, and there are 3,400 today. It's a very successful regime, which was used as the model for the whole new core licensing system throughout Atlantic Canada, which came in, I believe, in 1996-97. So when I refer to bona fide, I'm talking about a specific licensing regime we live under in the southern gulf. You couldn't even get a bona fide list from Halifax. It was merged within a larger list of fishermen who have a different category base and so on.

• 1115

It was an odd period, and we went through this for about four years in the middle 1990s, until.... I'm diverging a little from my text. I've got to find my text here.

I'm back at the cultural component in the southern gulf. This is a key argument, which finally did carry, that you needed something like the Moncton centre here to service the fishermen and the fishermen clients in the region, who were at least 50% French-speaking.

The unemployment insurance reforms were by no means the only reason for the dramatic electoral revolt, which you may have noticed or heard about in this part of the world—Mr. LeBlanc knows it well—the electoral revolt in 1997, where for the first time in history we saw the New Democratic Party elected all along the east coast of New Brunswick. That was clearly not just an unemployment insurance issue, and people should realize that. It was the way fisheries were being managed. And it was things like taking your basic management structure, like the DFO, and putting it out to Halifax. Those things were felt on the shore and they were resisted very strongly. We saw it on our wharves and in the communities.

So the middle of the 1990s were an extraordinary time for DFO, and the attempt to eliminate the gulf region was one of the more extraordinary miscues. If there was ever a natural fisheries management regime in Atlantic Canada, it is the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. You heard from Mike and Jim, and we share their perspective on the ecology they're talking about.

The fishermen have a very tangible community of interest in the southern gulf. It's why we were successful in negotiating the bona fide licensing regime back in 1982. The fishery is predominately inshore because of the lobster, but also because the herring spawn on inshore banks all through the southern gulf, as do the mackerel and the cod. It's an ecosystem itself to be won by the thousands of inshore fishermen who know—and I make a bit of a historical reference. When the large industrial seiner fleet was fishing in the gulf in the 1960s and 1970s, they were taking 200,000 to 300,000 tonnes of herring out at the edge of the Laurentian Channel. Every fisherman in the southern gulf knows to this day what kind of a threat that sort of midshore, offshore fleet can have to all of us. So they have a community of interest there, and it's logical that we have a broad-based organization like ours in the southern gulf, and it's logical that we have a common licensing system that, I think, is broadly embraced by the fishing communities.

Even the FRCC, the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, noted, when they did their lobster study, that you have lobsters radically local, in the sense that by and large you won't see them in the gulf. They don't move much more than maybe 20 miles from where they're spawned and grow up, as far as we know. But the FRCC sees a production system that is bigger, where the larvae within the systems in the southern gulf can float quite considerable distances. But also they refer to the whole area and the ecosystem as a lobster production area.

• 1120

So there are various things like this that Mike has articulated very well to make us feel we have a community of interest. As the deputy here has noted, when Corridor Resources comes out with these seismic testing opportunities unbeknownst to us, it does reverberate throughout the southern gulf. It was very questionable that DFO in Moncton did not even have the mandate or the resources to even be aware of what was taking place. They did not have any authority to examine it, to question whether such testing should be allowed in sensitive inshore grounds.

One of the members referred to the Sydney Bight. If you recognize Cape Breton Island, take a line through the middle of it and take it out to the 3PS line, then that's what 4Vn is. It's not all that body of water. It's the Sydney Bight area, that whitish area around Glace Bay, Sydney, Louisbourg, North Sydney, and so on. That's what 4Vn is.

We'd like to make this point to the committee. We feel, and have felt for some time, that 4Vn really should be in the gulf region—it's the logical place for it to be. Almost all our stocks winter in 4Vn. As the gulf ice is up, the stocks move into 4Vn and they winter on the edge of the Laurentian Channel, and 4Vn should be in the gulf region—I'll say it again.

I also think, Madame Tremblay, that the Gaspé, the Bay of Chaleur, all of the Gaspé should be in the gulf region. We deal with the fishermen on the Gaspé when we're talking about Newport up to Percé and Gaspé itself, that side, the Bay of Chaleur side of the Gaspé. The fishermen fish on our Miscou Banks for herring. We share common areas for snow crab. It's the logical one to be in the southern gulf.

The southern gulf region has been cannibalized over the years. When it got started it had the whole Gulf of St. Lawrence. Maybe it does make sense to separate the northern and southern, because by and large the Laurentian Channel cuts the gulf in two and there's not the same ecology in the northern section at all as you have in the southern section. But in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence it should all be one unit. It isn't, for political reasons. Quebec is Quebec. Quebec has some political clout that we don't have in Moncton or the Acadians don't have in Ottawa, and so there is a Quebec region that takes in the Gaspé. But from the fishermen's point of view—and we know it and we deal with it all the time—the fishermen on the Gaspé coast are the same as our fishermen. They fish the same banks, they have the same interests, and they should be under the same management regime, point final.

The Chair: You're going to have to pick it up a bit, or we're not going to get through the paper.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: I'm going to pick it up here. I'm sorry. This is a pet topic of mine, because we did go through this business of the inanity—I don't know what the proper word is, Mr. Chairman. Taking the gulf region and downgrading it to an area office in the middle nineties was a travesty of the way the fisheries should be managed in Atlantic Canada, and it has nothing to do with whether we like the people we deal with in Moncton or not. It just doesn't make any sense, and a lot of us went through a fair amount of hassle as a result of it.

I'll skip some sections here in the interests of time, Mr. Chairman.

Inevitably, the gulf region is going to be identified with an inshore fishery, since that is what predominates in the southern gulf. Back in Romeo LeBlanc's day, it was the inshore fishery that was calling for the establishment of the region to begin with. Future planning of the southern gulf fishery must make a bona fide inshore fishery its centrepiece.

• 1125

For example, the four key cod stocks are presently at depressed levels. There's no reason to believe they won't eventually repopulate the gulf, but when they do, there is no way it should be fished as it was in the pre-moratorium days. There's no need for a concentrated specialist offshore-type mobile fishery for our gulf cod stock—absolutely no need of it.

There's now a multi-species inshore fleet that's quite capable of taking any recovered cod stocks as part of their general fish portfolio. Over the course of a year, they can take cod not in concentration but across the whole southern gulf—which is part of the advice the scientists gave us—and they can take it in inshore ground.

We're confident about putting forward an alternative cod model, because—and we make this point over and over again—we have had a remarkable recovery story in the herring fishery in the southern gulf. It had been fished to virtual extinction in 1980 by offshore industrial operations. But the herring was returned to the inshore fishery in 1981 and has since become a fairly stable fishery of 80,000 metric tonnes a year.

I've never had a chance to look at it in detail, but I've had some opportunity to move around Europe, and I don't think there's been a reversal like that anywhere in the western industrial world—where a pelagic stock of that size reversed its decline, returned to the inshore, and is being managed in a productive and sustainable way. It's quite interesting.

I think people look at the cod recovery in the same terms. With logic and sensible management, the DFO region was restored. We have to note, however, that some of the coast guard boats were decommissioned last year. We couldn't believe that was being done, right in the middle of the whole Marshall problem. But they've now been restored, and we commend the people responsible for that.

We did note in our paper here, and I think the question was already raised, that the gulf region is restored. But the resources aren't necessarily coming to the region the way they should. That's fisheries politics. We say it very clearly here, and we'll say it again. Only 9% of science resources go to the gulf, although it has 35% of the fishing value. It doesn't seem to make sense.

As well, the gulf region is the de facto centre of most of the post-Marshall adjustment problems. The overwhelming majority of the Micmac coastal population, as much as 80%, is found in eastern New Brunswick and the southern gulf of St. Lawrence.

You have to remember that Eskasoni, which is the biggest reserve, is inland, on the Bras d'Or Lake, not on the ocean. And Shubenacadie, in Nova Scotia, is also a sizeable band, but it's inland as well. In terms of coastal native populations, we have about 80% of them in the southern gulf. Those are the native people who we expect will be fishing.

Once this thing settles down, I can't quite picture too many people in Shubenacadie fishing. If they're going to do it, they'll move to a coastal area; they're not going to be fishing from Shubenacadie. I see eyebrows raised, but that's my prediction and I'll put it to you. For the time being it's a different issue. We realize that.

There is one more matter that causes us to reflect on the nature of fisheries politics and why the region was deconstructed and then partially restored. This has to do with the professionalization proposals of the Southern Gulf Bonafide Fishermen's Advisory/Management Board—which is really us, the P.E.I. Fishermen's Association—and the Gulf Nova Scotia Fleet Planning Board. We have developed a fairly dynamic approach to further professionalizing our inshore fleet. This approach was developed in concert with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans here in the region, under the rubric of partnership and joint project proposal. That was originally done around 1997.

• 1130

Everybody in the country says they embrace professionalization, but there has never been support for that project. Today, there's some reason to believe we'll finally get something implemented. But it's been four years now, and a lot of the energy and dynamism is gone from it. We think professionalization is a victim of this whole business of internal politics and ideology at DFO. That's inevitable, because it's in the fishery itself—big time.

If there are any questions, I will be glad to consider them. But I'll close with that, Mr. Chairman. We refer here to the text of the Southern Gulf Research Network. We've covered that a little bit, and if you want to come back to it, we can cover it some more.

Our president, Ron Cormier, is with me. He may not have been introduced. He's a fisherman, so he doesn't get to write these texts; he lets me read them and then he calls the shots. Maybe there will be other things he wants to say.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Ron Cormier (President, Maritime Fishermen's Union): Just a brief comment, Mr. Chair. One preoccupation of the fishermen Mike and I represent is the inconsistency of the departments in addressing certain issues.

As you know, we are multi-species licence-holders, and different fisheries represent different issues. Since Marshall in 1999, it seems the department has put some of those issues on the back burner. But let me assure you that those issues still have to be addressed. They're very important to the multi-species licence-holders.

We have a multitude of examples: vessel replacement has been talked about for the last five or six years, but it has not been addressed; lobster mechanisms, in terms of our lobster industry, have also not been addressed. There are many other examples, such as protection.

So there's an inconsistency in addressing certain issues. As I said, maybe it was the Marshall decision in 1999 that put everything on the back burner. But let me assure you, they are very important.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Ron and Mike.

Before my questions on the professionalization approach, Mike, I expect you participated in the Atlantic policy review and I expect this was brought up there. My own concern is that the policy review may, in effect, be a way to justify what is already being done—or not being done. We will be meeting with them as a committee, but what's your view?

Mr. Michael Belliveau: I'm reassured that you're going to meet with them. One of the things we said about that review at the outset was that it didn't seem to be driven by the elected people in the country at all. It seems to be an internal thing from Ottawa—an outgrowth of all the other miscues, such as moving the gulf regions to Halifax, or espousing a partnership program that didn't work for the inshore fishermen, or identifying too much with the ITQ system. There are these things that they ran into.... Between 1993 and 1997-1998—I don't know, it's for some historian to actually comment about really what went on in that institution. I don't blame them, they lost the cod. After our first peoples of this country, what comes next? Cod. We lost the cod, so it's a trauma for everybody.

• 1135

This policy review seems to bring a new transition again. Lord knows where it's going to go this time, but it's coming from within the bureaucracy. It doesn't really seem to be led by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

The Chair: What you're basically saying is that with the Atlantic policy review, this committee should take it very seriously and make sure we have our input. I'll leave it at that for the moment, but I know one of the difficulties that I'm having as chair is that the process is moving so fast that we haven't been able to find the time to spend on it. That's a problem.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: I can't agree with you more. You have to look at it. It's moving way too fast, and most of the fishing constituency, I think, can't even understand what's in there. You can't do it. The language is code. It's like reading tea leaves, a lot of it, as to where it's going. It's absolutely imperative that the governing people of this country get involved in that process.

The Chair: Thank you, Mike.

Mr. Duncan and members, we will have to be fairly concise, because we are rapidly going to run out of time today.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Once again, thank you.

I've got three questions and I'll ask all three, so we can get through this. I think they're fairly straightforward.

In your written presentation you talked about oil and gas, and your statement is that southern gulf fishermen must search out the Oceans Act people in Halifax who are preoccupied with the Scotian Shelf development. I'm looking for clarification, because I didn't ever appreciate until this statement that the Oceans Act people were the responsible party for oil and gas when it comes to DFO. So is that based on an assumption or is that based on some authority or something that you're aware of?

My second question relates to this matter with area 4Vn, which I think we heard DFO witnesses say ecologically does make sense. Maybe you could just give us a hint as to what complexities there might be on the other side of the ledger. Is there a whole set of fisheries licensing or something that would greatly complicate bringing that into the gulf region?

The third question relates to your optimism on the 4T cod stock. I'm just wondering if it's more than sheer optimism and looking at what happened with the herring fishery. Is there some sort of ad hoc evidence that you're actually seeing?

The Chair: Thank you, John.

Now if the answer could be as concise, we'd be away.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: With the oil and gas, we had to go to Halifax to have any people involved with the new oceans section of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans take a look at it. It's the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board that has the jurisdiction for petroleum, but the gulf is not Nova Scotia, it's Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick and Quebec, and it makes a lot of sense that a board be examined for the whole southern gulf, a different kind of board, if you're going to have petroleum at all in the southern gulf.

• 1140

On the second issue, the 4Vn, I'm glad you asked it. One of the reasons 4Vn would work in the gulf, in my judgment, is that it too is predominantly an inshore fishery. There are about 600 bona-fide-type fishermen in the 4Vn area, and they're members of ours—not all of them, but a good portion of the members of our own organization have found that there is something in common with the fishermen in the gulf. Inevitably, there would be turf wars and so on, but from the point of view of the fishery, my understanding is that most of the fishermen.... I'd be careful on that. I don't know for sure whether most would support it, but I know our people have always felt it would make sense.

As to the 4T cod optimism, everybody's concerned with this problem of natural mortality, what is going on in the gulf system. They're even starting to say some things about the herring—we're wondering a bit about that. But assuming there's no ecological catastrophe here, there's no reason why the cod shouldn't recover. There are 100,000 tonnes of biomass still out there—it's not as if there are no cod. There are around 100,000 tonnes, I believe, of age three plus cod still in the water. The problem seems to be that they produce the spawn, but the small ones don't seem to be surviving, and we don't know what causes that. So maybe when the grey seals all find something else to do, we'll see a recovery of the cod.

The Chair: Thank you, Mike.

Madam Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hello Mr. Belliveau and Mr. Cormier.

Mr. Cormier, we already met with you not too long ago. You took the trouble to travel to Ottawa to inform us of a problem that seemed fairly important to us. Was there any follow-up to your trip to Ottawa?

Mr. Ron Cormier: No, not really. There was no follow-up other than what I read in the media. As you know, the federal government told us that they would increase funding. We were not given any figures nor any general idea of how they were going to deal with the situation, yet we are still waiting. I hope that we will see some positive action in short order.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: You said then that time was of the essence because the fishing season was starting, but up to now, there has been no concrete response, to the best of your knowledge.

Mr. Ron Cormier: No, not to the best of my knowledge.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Fine, thank you.

On page 5 of your brief, Mr. Belliveau, you mention that you are doing well with respect to prices, but you are faring very poorly when it comes to the science side. You refer to the Bedford Institute, to the Maurice Lamontagne Institute and to the St. Andrews' Biological Station. Would you like to have an equivalent institute in your region, in Moncton, for example?

Mr. Michael Belliveau: It is hard for me to say. The fact is that there are institutes in Halifax, St. Andrews, Rimouski and Mont-Joli, but there is currently nothing in Moncton.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: But do you think that that would be a significant dynamic element for...?

Mr. Michael Belliveau: Yes, it would be good to have something like that in Moncton, even for the city of Moncton. It would create new ideas, jobs, etc.

• 1145

[English]

Even if I see the chairman chuckling, I wouldn't care if it was in Charlottetown, quite frankly, now that he's built his bridge there. He's not going to get me on that one. I'll support him for Charlottetown or whatever. Shediac is even better.

The Chair: Madam Tremblay?

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Do committee members have a problem if the TV cameras come in for a minute while we're meeting? I said they had to wait until coffee, but they have a deadline. Does anybody have a problem with that?

Tell them to come in, and we'll just keep on going, Andrew.

Thank you.

Mr. Wappel is next.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm interested in your comments about the structure. I have a map here with which you are undoubtedly familiar. If I'm looking at a map and I look at the gulf region, as a layman I would say that it would include 4T. It's on page v called “Statistical Review”, in the English version.

I would say as a layman that the gulf region would include, in general 4T, 4S, and arguably 4R, although that's pretty close to Newfoundland. It's off the shores of Newfoundland. Now, within 4T, we clearly have Gaspé and, I take it, Iles de la Madeleine.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: Yes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: All right. I just asked the previous witnesses and...Gaspé and therefore, I presume, Iles de la Madeleine are not included in what we've been calling today the southern gulf.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: It's the management structure.

Mr. Tom Wappel: It's management. Now, on page 3 of your presentation, you said that it—the fishery—is an ecosystem and is felt to be one by thousands of inshore fishermen. You used the example of herring seiners fishing the Laurentian Channel.

Do I understand correctly that you would agree that for ecological fishing purposes 4T as it's currently drawn here is correct and should include Gaspé and Iles de la Madeleine? Is it your submission that for political purposes, not ecological purposes, Gaspé and Iles de la Madeleine have been severed from what you would consider to be the true ecological fishery of the southern gulf region? Is that your position?

Mr. Michael Belliveau: Absolutely.

Mr. Tom Wappel: And you don't like that? You don't think that's a smart way to structure it?

Mr. Michael Belliveau: One of the things is that we have so many issues on the table, and that's an old one. That was done in 1984. It was Minister De Bané, one of your former colleagues, who did that.

Mr. Tom Wappel: You're still mentioning it in your presentation.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: We mention it because it's logical. Gaspé should be in the same management region as should 4Vn. It's absolutely logical that it should be, but it's not.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Wappel and Mr. Belliveau.

But you're saying it's for the management of the resource.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: C'est ça. If I could comment, when he mentions the north, 4S and 4R.... Take cod as an example: 4T cod seems to be a discrete stock. It populates the southern gulf in the spring and summer, moves out in the fall, and then moves to 4Vn. It doesn't cross the Laurentian Channel. That's just one species as an example of why the southern gulf makes sense as a unit and an ecosystem.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Belliveau. That's helpful.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and again, thank you, gentlemen, for appearing before the committee.

Mike, on page 6 of your brief, you mentioned being supportive of “an integrated approach to the region's marine resources”, one that recognizes the “community of interest”. Would that also mean the community of interest in terms of management, that is, in terms of co-sharing or co-management of the resources as well?

Mr. Michael Belliveau: What do you mean by “co-management”?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: You talk about a community of interest. A lot of fishermen we speak with say they would like to have a greater say in how they're being managed. They want management of a cooperative nature, not necessarily from the top down, but more everyone working together. Using the knowledge of the scientists, using the knowledge of the fishermen, and recognizing the authority of DFO to have the ultimate say in management, they would like to have more say in a cooperative manner on that management. Is this what you're referring to in terms of community interests as well?

• 1150

Mr. Michael Belliveau: Yes, there is....I derive the terminology, actually, from the labour movement, when they talk about community of interests and so on in terms of organizing. There is a community of interests among the fishing community in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. It's tangible, recognizable, and felt to be such.

Most of our dealings have to do with the management authority, which is DFO, so we should be dealing with one management authority in...well, it's in Moncton now, but one gulf region management authority, all of us, in this community of interests. I cited this example of the professionalization because professionalization was a project that came from the fishermen's organization. We formulated it. We articulated it. We knew how we could do it and couldn't do it. We negotiated it with DFO in Moncton, and it got lost in the bureaucracy beyond Moncton.

To have this kind of co-management, you also have to have enough authority in the region to negotiate and to make the kill on certain agreements. The difficulty with the partnership ideas of DFO wasn't that they were all wrong; it's just that they never had a structure or a concept of how to enter a partnership with 3,500 bona fide insured operators. We did, actually. We were naive enough and idealistic enough to think that we could actually enter into such a partnership arrangement, and in the end the bureaucracy had more trouble than we did conceiving of that. I'm not sure whether that addresses your question.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. LeBlanc.

[Translation]

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you, Mr. Chair. If I may, I would like to ask a question of Mr. Cormier.

In the presentation that Mike made earlier, he spoke of his fear that there was a lack of services for francophones at the Halifax office. Personally, I think you are absolutely right and accurate in your portrayal of the Halifax office, with respect to the issues regarding big companies, and the whole question of culture. But this issue that a number of my constituents bring up, is the Halifax regional office's inability to process their requests in French. As Mike stated so well, we have a very French culture in our region. Do your union members mention this, Ron? Do they share these worries?

Mr. Ron Cormier: In some cases, yes. The fishers that we represent like to receive information and services in their own language, for the most part. It certainly has created problems in the past. We believe that having a regional office where we could be served in French or in both languages would be of great service for our members. It is certainly a matter that our fishers have mentioned.

[English]

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you, and I have one very quick question to Mike or to Ron.

We saw recently some controversy about sharing of the snow crab resource. My own view is that there should be a permanent sharing mechanism for snow crab with inshore fishermen, the members of your union. The co-management agreement is expiring next year, I believe.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: This year.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: This year—the five-year co-management agreement.

What, in your view, is a long-term solution to stop the uncertainty every year of whether or not inshore fishermen are going to have access to that very valuable resource?

The Chair: Mr. Belliveau.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: Our argument in the Maritime Fishermen's Union in this case here.... We have members around the whole region, but in this case we're representing our New Brunswick members. New Brunswick inshore fishermen don't have access to snow crab at all—zero, zero access, zero licences. It's a species that's on our inshore fishing grounds, and it's on that basis....

We wouldn't want to call it a “mechanism”. We don't want to see a mechanism after this year. We want to see a share of the area 12 snow crab resource.

• 1155

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Is that a share in terms of a zone, Mike, or a permanent...?

The Chair: Dominic, we have to move on.

Mr. Keddy.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: I have a quick question. We're running out of time here in a serious way.

You had discussed management authority, and that's a slightly different angle from where I'm coming from. With the delivery of services by DFO and the movement of at least the majority of those services to the Halifax office, are you also seeing a decrease in the services that are offered at your local DFO offices?

For instance, in Nova Scotia, everywhere in the province, a lot of the services have been moved to either Halifax or Yarmouth. For your lobster tags, you can't go to a local DFO office and get your lobster tags. You have to go to Halifax, or you have to go to Yarmouth. You can't go to your local DFO office and renew any licence, even if it's just an inshore clam license; you have to go to Halifax. Are you seeing the same thing?

Mr. Michael Belliveau: There's some centralization, but some of these things are short-lived. I think the tag business, for lobster tags, is all going to be done by outside agents, and it's actually being tried this year in the gulf.

Mr. Ron Cormier: If I could make a comment, Mike, they've got some kind of pilot project going on. From what I heard the thing is being put on the back burner because of some kind of mechanism not working in terms of how you're going to pay for those tags. What they do is they send you your tags by mail. You have to pay for your licences now just before you receive your conditions of licence. As to paying for the licences, they wanted to do it through a banking system. Unfortunately, they found some bugs there, and apparently it's not going to be working as expected this year. Maybe next year they'll be able to iron out the bugs, and it will benefit the fishermen.

The Chair: Do you have a short one, Gerald, or is that it?

Mr. Gerald Keddy: No.

The Chair: That's it.

In your submission, gentlemen, you said in closing...this was raised with me by Mr. Wappel:

In closing, we have said very little with respect to the actual operations of the Gulf Region. This would be more productive in a less public forum.

Are you suggesting that if we had an in camera session, it would be a good idea at some time?

Mr. Michael Belliveau: Yes, with the understanding that...what Mr. Stoffer raised.... The reality of this business is that—this is a bit longer than what you were expecting, but—

The Chair: No, it's not; not from you, Mike.

Mr. Michael Belliveau: We find that the fisheries management authority as such is under attack. We don't necessarily agree with an ideology that wants to disable the state's capacity to manage a common-property resource like the fisheries. We're very hesitant about saying things in public forums that will be used to support somebody else's ideology. So yes, we would—

The Chair: All right. We'll keep that in mind, and that may be a good idea, Mike.

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your presentation. We'll take a five-minute break—only five—and turn to.... If we could come up together....

We'd better go with New Brunswick. Is Joseph LaBelle here? If you could, please come forward for the next presentation, Joseph. Then we'll have Mr. Anthony Davis and the representative from the University of Moncton together, if we could.

• 1200

• 1213

The Chair: We'll call the meeting to order.

Mr. LaBelle.

[Translation]

Mr. Joseph LaBelle (Executive Secretary, New Brunswick Fish Packers): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Joseph LaBelle and I am the Executive Secretary of the New Brunswick Fish Packers. Our association represents 23 of the biggest fish processing companies in the province. We operate both on the shores of the Bay of Fundy as well as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. As such, we do business in both of the regions, the two administrative regions involved, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Our production focusses mainly on crab, snowcrab and rock crab, lobster, shrimp, herring roe, smoked herring products and marinated products. Almost all of our members are exporters.

[English]

As has been pointed out very well by the other people who appeared before you today, the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence is a very small area. It's ecologically very small but extremely important to us. As processors who depend on what comes out of that ocean, we're very concerned about understanding what is going on there and what the interrelationships are. We're also very concerned that the management decisions that are taken with regard to that resource should be taken from the perspective of that overall ecosystem.

I haven't been involved with the seafood processing industry as long as some of the other people who have appeared before you, but I can sympathize with this committee as it tries to track down the difference between administrative regions, to identify who administers or manages one particular stock, to find out how that ties in with the NAFO districts, and so forth. It is very complex.

We are involved in the Southern Gulf Research Network. We are very enthusiastic about that kind of approach, one that brings together all the people who have an interest. It also brings together people who have something to contribute to understanding what's going on out in the water.

• 1215

We firmly believe that those people who are benefiting from the use of that resource have some responsibility to contribute to the understanding of it. Our industry is perhaps not as profitable as we would like, but our operations do generate returns for our owners, and the operations do generate returns for the fishermen.

This is from a common resource, a collective resource, for the people of Canada. We feel that as an industry we have a responsibility to be contributing to the understanding of that resource and to understanding what our impacts are. We would hope that all interveners or all people present in that resource would take this same approach.

We depend on understanding what we do and how it impacts that ecosystem, and what other people are doing. I know a number of times this morning you've heard discussions about oil and gas off Cape Breton. Not so long ago we had some discussions with senior members from the department and they were expressing the surprise with which the people of Cape Breton had reacted to the development of the Corridor Resources leases there. We expressed to them that they should not be surprised because the dynamics and the reality within the southern gulf and the possible impacts of different kinds of activities within the southern gulf are completely new. We don't understand exactly what seismic would do or what oil and gas exploration or production would do. We do know some things from what went on in the Scotia Shelf, but that is a completely different eco-structure, a completely different system.

Not only do we have the oil and gas issue that is immediate in Cape Breton, but there are more and more people who are looking to use the limited amount of ocean space. We're going to require mechanisms to arbitrate. I use that word very precisely because it will come down to a question of arbitration.

There are some activities that are going to be mutually exclusive. We have to figure out collectively, among all the users, and also with the government with its responsibility for the long-term stability and long-term productivity of this, how we're going to do that.

Without having the advantages of an oceans branch per se in the gulf, it does make things difficult. Those people who are operating from the Scotia-Fundy area, and those people within our regional office here in Moncton who do have an interest in the oceans are trying very hard; they're working very hard at accommodating the oceans implications for the gulf.

But it lacks that focus. Again, as a number of interveners have pointed out, the realities of the Scotian Shelf, for example, are very different from what goes on. The species are different, the types of operations are different, and the ecological questions that are out there and have to be answered are different.

We're very enthusiastic, as I said, about the Southern Gulf Research Network, because it provides a forum for us to bring together a lot of different interveners with different perceptions. We consider ourselves fortunate here with our science branch in the gulf because there is a history or a tradition here of combining biological information, oceanographic information, and information from those people who are out on the water and those people who are processing the resource.

So there is room made for what has been called traditional knowledge in a lot of species, but at the same time having to back that up and balance it off from the different perspective of pretty cold, hard numbers.

Hopefully the Southern Gulf Research Network can allow us to take the very limited resources that the department has, that the industry has, and that our academic institutions have and focus them on understanding some of the basic science questions that are out there, some of the basic interrelations that are out there, how we as a fishing industry impact on those stocks and how other users impact on those stocks.

Our association is a firm believer in the precautionary approach that says if you don't really understand what you're doing, then you'd better tread lightly until you start understanding a bit more.

The other issue on the oceans side that is going to be interesting is that there are different levels of decision and management for that limited space. How do we accommodate all the different interveners? I'm sure in your work you've come to see that the users of the ocean are varied. What we require or what we're looking for is very varied. We need some sort of mechanism and structures so that we can say a particular area or a particular priority will be attached to fishing, or to marine protected areas, or to certain areas where only certain types of fishing operations or other operations will be allowed.

• 1220

We do have to accommodate things like cables and road access and construction projects like the Confederation Bridge. How do we manage that so everybody has representation, but also how do we make it workable?

We believe there needs to be an area set aside, or a certain space, that says this is a commercial fishing space, and within this we believe strongly that the fishing industry has to increase its partnerships with DFO, not withdraw them, but increase the partnerships with DFO—how to effectively manage that.

I was a bit surprised this morning when there were comments about the pace with which the Atlantic fishing policy review is proceeding, because a lot of these same issues we mentioned this morning are covered in that paper. From our perspective—and we participated in the policy review and made our submissions back in March—we require some sort of clearer framework on how the whole process is going to work, how the decisions are going to be made, and what is the longer-term stability of those decisions.

In order to operate a processing facility today...it's a very large investment. You can only make those investments based on your access to the resource. So when you have uncertainty as to what the decision-making process is, if you have administrative disconnects because we don't have an oceans branch or we have this line that goes through here, it makes it very difficult over the long term for us to plan and for us to make the investments.

As I mentioned before, we're looking within that commercial fisheries area for support mechanisms, and structures and management mechanisms in a spatial area, that are going to allow us to better understand the specific species and are going to ensure we have adequate mechanisms to ensure we are making the most out of the limited resource we have. And this, again, would always be within the limits that are set by a careful approach to exactly what stock is available and what stock is there.

We see the Southern Gulf Research Network as not only doing biology, but also looking at different methods of approaching the fishery, different methods of exploiting the fishery, that will increase its value and at the same time accommodate those particularities we have.

We don't, in the gulf, have large processing enterprises. We have medium-sized processing enterprises. A lot of that is related to the fact that we have high-value products. Crab, and lobster and herring roe are extremely high-value products, so the economies of scale can be smaller than we would have in the traditional larger factories.

The other condition under which we operate is the fact that almost all the fish we obtain come from boats under 65 feet, and of course with the separation of fleets policy, the processing operations are economically disconnected from the harvesting operation. So that provides us with a slightly different dynamic from some of our colleague organizations or our sister organizations in other provinces.

In terms of the actual structure of the way the department is set up, I don't think we have much concern with the support functions, the personnel, and the finance functions, etc. That's a question we believe is best handled by the management of the department. But when it comes to looking at ecosystems, I think it's very important that the department structures be set up in such a way that ecosystems can be considered and managed.

After that, yes, there are all kinds of political considerations of where you draw lines and how you make the equations, but we come back to the fact of saying that the resource and the ecosystem that supports it have to be understood and have to be managed as an overall package. This is particularly so because of some of the history we've had with some of our species, and the ups and downs and the mistakes we've made in management, and also some of the success stories we've had in managing resources to make that happen.

That's basically the presentation.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. LaBelle.

We'll go to questions.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: I think the main questions you're really pointing to in reference to DFO are about two things. One is related to the administration of anything related to oil and gas being run out of Halifax, which is problematic, and the other one is that your ecosystem is chopped up jurisdictionally. So I think the message to us is clear.

• 1225

Do I take it that you subscribe to adding area 4Vn to the gulf region?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: I think one of the difficulties in the administrative structure is going to be that each of the species can be different. It's a different reality. If we look, for example, at the mackerel fishery, that is one stock that goes from New Jersey up into the gulf and then back down to New Jersey. I don't know where you'd give that a home. There are certain aspects of 4Vn that I think are very much more related to the ecosystem and the biology of the southern gulf, and it would probably be more adequately protected if it were run from one ecological administrative area than from another. I don't know if that answers the question very well. It depends on the species, what perspective we're using, and what question we're asking.

Mr. John Duncan: On the administration of oil and gas, it's obvious that there's dissatisfaction with it being run out of Halifax. Do you have an alternative model in mind?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: The first problem we have with the oil and gas approach is that it is directed by CNSOPB, the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, from a petroleum development perspective. We haven't seen as much interest in looking at the impacts of that overall ecosystem and the overall economic impacts. We feel that before you start going into an area that is as fragile as the gulf, you have to understand what are the trade-offs and you have to be making decisions from a knowledge base.

We feel that the southern gulf is an ecosystem unto itself. Whether it's oil and gas, management of the crab stock, or our approach to recreational fisheries for groundfish, those issues have to be addressed within the southern gulf and within the ecological system that is there, and not just by a petroleum development board that is more related to or has more background from the offshore and the Scotia Shelf than it does the gulf.

Mr. John Duncan: So you would subscribe to the idea that it would be essential to develop an environmental impact statement for any proposals for oil and gas.

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: Most definitely. We don't want to go out there and fish without knowing what the impact is, and we don't think other people should be going out there and engaging in new economic activities when we don't know what the environmental impact is going to be.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

Madame Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. LaBelle, you stated that you are a processor. How is it that decisions or ecosystem problems affect you, since you are supplied from regions where there is a catch? Whether it comes from one place or another, as long as you are being supplied, how is it that any decisions made affect you?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: We depend...

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: You stated that you were concerned about some decisions that may be taken.

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: We depend on the stability of long-term supply. Our companies are located in New Brunswick. They depend for the most part on the members of our associations that work in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, even though there are major facilities in the southeast.

It is critical for us that we ensure that the ecosystem can support continuous and sustainable production, and also that the fishery resources be managed in such a way as to protect first of all the long-term viability, and then the stability of the stocks. It is very difficult to function when one year there are 20,000 tons, then the next year 5,000 tons, followed by 17,000 tons the following year.

These days, to establish markets, you need to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars over three, four or five years before the new market becomes profitable.

If it is too cyclical, if the management is done in a very cyclical way, in addition to the natural cycles of the resources—these are management issues—then it becomes very difficult to achieve profitability and to get the return expected if the resource is well planned and well managed.

• 1230

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Further on, if I understood well, you stated that we would need to limit access to the ocean more and more, and that we would have to arbitrate in cases where activities are mutually exclusive. Could you please develop what you mean, exactly?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: Traditionally, there were those who fished and those who transported goods. Today, there are natural resources under the ocean that are being developed. There are communications lines, gas and oil pipelines running under water which restrict what can be done in these areas. There is also sport fishing, which we need to consider and which is becoming more and more popular. There are the recreational uses of the ocean which we must consider. And finally, there is the fishery and transportation.

Now, it is not only a question of using the resource, but also of protecting it. Are there harmful methods of fishing in some regions which should be prohibited? Are there places where all human activity should be banned outright? How can we develop a framework to make these types of decisions? The people need to be represented in this process. There needs to be a framework in which these decisions can be made.

Contrary to my colleague from the MFU, I believe that if the State can establish a framework and the basis on which decisions must be made, then a lot of the decisions can be made by assemblies of stakeholders. I am talking about a type of planning council. In our opinion, that is why the Oceans Act exists. It is the ocean side of DFO that must assess these strategies and structures through which people will be able to participate.

As I mentioned, we expect that they will take into consideration the unique nature of the gulf in the structure of the oceans division, when enforcing the Oceans Act.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Thank you very much.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. LaBelle.

Mr. Assadourian, please be very quick.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: Thank you very much.

Since 1995-96 the Nova Scotia government has issued about 40 permits. Were you ever consulted, or did you make your presentation to them before they issued the permits?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: No—

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: That's my first question. I have a few short ones here.

You said you had 25 or 30 companies that you do fish packing for. Are they aquaculture companies or are they just open-sea fishers?

Would it make any difference to you where the fishing boundary is located? You said most of the companies you do business with are from the New Brunswick area, so what difference would it make where the head office of Fisheries and Oceans and other subdivisions in the system are located? It wouldn't make any difference as far as I'm concerned, since you do fishing only here in this area.

Those are my three questions.

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: Our association has not been consulted formally on the oil and gas issue. Our understanding is that the only really active lease is one that's off the northern part of Cape Breton. It's in the zone 19 crab fishing area, which is just off Ingonish. The other leases that have been issued are on the Scotia Shelf. I could not find any reference to any consultation with our industry for the gas and oil wells that were drilled in the seventies in that same area, just outside of the new Cape Breton lease. So in answer to your first question, no, we have not.

The CNSOPB process seems to have concentrated mostly on the Scotia Shelf, and it has not really gotten around to looking at the part of Cape Breton that is now in question. There was a fairly large participation of the fishing industry in the Georges Bank moratorium on exploration, where that was determined to be a very rich fishing area and the primary use of that area would be for commercial fishing rather than for oil and gas.

• 1235

In terms of the kinds of processing we do, most of our activity is wild-catch fishing, as I mentioned. These are the species we work with. We have some members who have a very active participation in salmon, which makes it very interesting because they have to deal within their organization with the whole controversy of wild catch versus aquaculture salmon. This happens particularly in the Bay of Fundy. The weir fishery in the Bay of Fundy provides a very specific and high-quality fish for certain types of processes, but the weir goes exactly the same place you'd want to put a salmon cage, so it makes for very interesting debates within that organization and within our association. We feel that's good, that's healthy, because you have to come up with a reasonable business decision and you have to accommodate both.

We have other members who are actively exploring other species of aquaculture, but right now the vast majority of our operations are wild-catch species.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: How many people do you employ?

The Chair: Sarkis, sorry.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you. I'd like to speak to Mr. LaBelle for a bit—

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: There was one further question, why it makes a difference. I am a member of 27 fisheries advisory committees. There is an advisory committee for every species and every area. There's a huge process of advisory committee consultation and science review committees. I think if we're going to look at the gulf, and if we want to have the participation we feel is required in helping manage that, you have to be geographically located so that people can get there without huge expenses, and without huge staff and retinues to get around to these advisory committees.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. LaBelle.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Mr. LaBelle, thank you for your presentation. Again, to reiterate what Mr. Duncan said, do you believe there should be environmental assessments prior to any oil and gas leases being granted?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: Yes, we do.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you. Secondly, sir, you mentioned the precautionary principle, and you're right, we should all be operating on that principle, but a lot of people we've spoken to, who I speak to as well, are very concerned, and they believe that DFO does not do a very good job of operating on the precautionary principle. What's your view of the way DFO is managing the fisheries resource, either locally, regionally or nationally, in terms of operating on the precautionary principle? Do they do a good job of doing that? Is it a fair job, or are they just not adhering to that principle at all?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: I think it's spotty and it's not necessarily consistent. It depends on species and the historical relationships that are there, and it depends on the political relationships that are in place.

In our work we obviously deal very closely with the science branch here in Moncton. We're very pleased with our relationship with the science branch. But failing the framework for understanding who gets access to the fish, failing some sort of stability in the long term in terms of splitting up or sharing out a very limited number of fish, we often end up with a less than transparent decision-making mechanism. At times we scratch our heads very considerably to understand how a particular decision was arrived at, and we are concerned at times what the possible impacts would be.

We've gone through periods where stocks have been in a bad way. We've learned the hard way in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that you have to be extremely careful about those stocks.

So we have a longer-term horizon. We don't have all the different people who are after us, as they do in the department.

To respond specifically to your question, it's not progressing as fast as we would like its integration or its implementation. In terms of its impact right now, it depends on the species, the area, and the particular political relationships that are there.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. LaBelle.

Mr. Keddy, last question.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: The question was raised a few times on 3Pn from Sydney Bight across. As a representative of the processing part of the industry, do you believe that boundary was set because of DFO concerns, or was it set because of industry concerns? A lot of that industry coming out of Louisbourg is based actually in 4X.

• 1240

What's your comment on that as an industry person?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: We always have interesting conversations with our colleagues in the other provinces.

There is a lot of activity from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in that area. We have a particular interest there because we have a particularly large herring allocation for a midshore fleet. The midshore seiner fleet gives us fish we can use for the food fishery, rather than for other uses, rather than just roe.

We have some concerns over some of the political back and forth that can happen between regions. Again, it may be more appropriate to look at not just the map, but the particular species. If it's a gulf stock that's in 4Vn, then let's manage this part of the gulf stock. If the Scotia Shelf is stocked of a particular species, let's manage that unit according to biology.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: The other concern you raised, and I want to question for a second, is your idea of the Oceans Act as representative of a multi-stakeholder fishery. That includes the processors, the fishermen themselves, the aquaculture people, the oil industry, everyone.

I think if there's been a failure of the Oceans Act so far—and we've already gone through the lack of regulations in detail—it's that it doesn't bring enough of this to the table, enough of the multi-stakeholders in this industry, people who are out there whether they're fishing or not. Everyone is not at the table at the same time, so every opinion is not heard.

Do you agree with that, or do you see a more refined or clearer direction we should go in with the Oceans Act?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: Obviously, we think the government has a responsibility to all Canadians for the continued, most productive use of our oceans, continued in the long-term perspective.

There has to be a framework. There has to be a gridwork under which the government can clearly make its political decisions known. We shall give priority to sustainable uses of that ocean. That could be the decision. Or we shall give priority access for sustainable operations for 90% of the ocean, and we will have 3% or 10% or 5% that's going to be available for oil and gas.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: And marine protected areas.

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: And marine protected areas and recreational areas. There are a whole lot of people who want to use that.

But that requires some very clear decision-making on the part of the government. It is not just a question of getting people around the table, because some of these users are mutually exclusive.

It's something like the allocation of fish. There are so many tonnes of fish. You can have as long a meeting around the table, but if everybody wants all the fish then somebody's going to have to make decisions. We would rather see a structure where the criteria, the framework, are there. Provide the oceans people within DFO, or provide DFO, with some criteria from the government perspective in saying this is a policy decision at the government level, and let them operate from that rather than letting the sort of—

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. LaBelle.

Mr. Lunney, one question.

Mr. James Lunney: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LaBelle, you mentioned a few minutes ago that you were a member of 27 advisory committees in different fisheries. Earlier we heard you make reference, and we also heard this in earlier testimony from other witnesses from DFO, to the Southern Gulf Research Network. That is supposedly a group of about 30 different interests.

There are a lot of voices speaking to fishery issues in the area. Can you tell us, is this the same 27 groups we're talking about, or are these different? I think there's quite a different focus here in the research initiative network.

I missed the opportunity to ask that question earlier to other witnesses, so can you tell us something about this new Southern Gulf Research Network? Is it a new voice? Is it a conglomerate voice? Is it a new initiative? How long has this group been meeting? Tell us something about the research network.

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: It's a relatively new initiative that was as a result of having a lot of different voices that are looking at specific issues or looking at specific species.

The research network is wider than that. It brings together people who don't necessarily participate in fisheries management issues, such as research specialists in the academic community. They don't often have an opportunity to participate. They have funds and a lot of knowledge and understanding of some of the basic biological questions we're asking and an understanding of some of the basic food science technology questions as well in terms of improving the products. So it's a broader base than what we get through the advisory committee process. It's collectively looking at how we can get the maximum bang for the resources we have in looking at the oceans. We have a lot of research capability in our universities. How do we make sure that what they are studying ties in with some of the other issues that the fishery, Fisheries and Oceans, and the social development organizations have as well?

• 1245

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. James Lunney: Can you tell us how long this group has been meeting?

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: It has been meeting since late 1999 or early 2000.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Lunney.

Mr. LaBelle, thank you for coming. You gave us great information.

Mr. Joseph LaBelle: Thank you.

The Chair: I just wish we had more time. I think we're being overly ambitious today.

Our next group is Anthony Davis from St. Francis Xavier University, Mr. Chouinard from the University of Moncton, and Mr. Cawthorn from the Atlantic Veterinary College.

We'll hear the three presentations, and then we'll turn to questions.

Who wants to start? Perhaps we could start with Mr. Davis, who is first on the list. Go ahead, the floor is yours.

Mr. Anthony Davis (Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Studies in Aquatic Resources, St. Francis Xavier University): It is perhaps kind of telling that the three people from the research and education side of things get grouped together, or collapsed together, we could say.

I've written a two-page document, which I assume you're all going to get a copy of, having delivered it here today. I'm not going to speak directly to that. You can read it.

I want to mention that I think the southern gulf research coalition idea has to be appreciated as a proactive initiative in a setting that in many instances features reactivity, policy-making in a reactive mode to events. Of course, it's events that rule a politician's life, from the point of view of where your attention ends up being invested and things you can't actually predict.

The intention of the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence coalition is not to add to the burden of committees or that sort of stuff. Rather it's to be a creative step forward that enables communities of interest, if you will, or stakeholders within the southern gulf ecosystem, who in many instances have found themselves to be in contention over their specific vested interests.... The research network is a place where we can focus on a dialogue around the ecosystem and the human component within the ecosystem. We're not just talking about biological or oceanographic systems here. We're talking first and foremost about people and their specific interests. This network offers an opportunity for some creative work that hasn't been done in the past, and in my judgment and in the judgment of some of my colleagues, that is well past due. So it's creative and proactive.

If I were to leave you with a message about the research coalition, it would be that it's proactive, it's innovative, it's new, and it offers the possibility of doing some substantial contributory work, on the one hand, in the area of research, and on the other hand, perhaps more importantly, relationship building among communities that have historically been at each other's throats.

• 1250

I personally, in my own research career and in a lot of my writing, would be characterized as a fairly stellar critic of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, its management, and in fact the meaning of that management system for human beings and human lives. You just have to reflect for moment on the evidence Jim Jones presented to you respecting the value of licences and ask yourself the question.

In Mabou, Cape Breton, what does it mean if the lobster fishery is the backbone of how you make a living in the coastal fishery? What does it mean to have to now come up with $300,000 to $350,000 to access a class A lobster licence, where of course before you had to come up with $125,000 or $150,000? What does it mean in Bal Gro if you have to now come up with $700,000? What does that mean for recruitment to the fishery? What does it mean for family dynamics? What does it mean if you're a father with one class A licence and you have two children who want to go fishing? How does that translate in a dynamic human sense, let alone what all that might mean, and perhaps represents, respecting the Department of Fisheries and Oceans presumptions about how to best satisfy the requirements of the Marshall decision?

As an anthropologist who has done a lot of work in Nova Scotia fisheries and other fisheries, I would hope that our elected representatives—I also speak as a citizen—would be concerned about how these things translate. It's not just about department structures; it's about what these things mean, and certainly as they translate into human lives.

I would hope you'd leave here with some ability to reflect on that. This isn't in my paper. I would also hope that you would ask yourself the question, as you talk about fisheries, who are these people? It can be such a cold and surgical discussion. Who are these people, though? For Atlantic Canadians and for Atlantic Canada, who are these people?

The issue in oil and gas, with the persons I work with on the gulf side, is fundamentally that they've never been involved in any kind of consultative process. They have never been asked...and when they have attempted to enter into the discussion, they have been dismissed. We wonder why there is cynicism with respect to what it means to be a citizen in this time. From their experience—and I'm reporting it directly—it means not to be a citizen, because you do not have access to a voice, let alone determination, to even be asked in a meaningful way. That's one of the main concerns in the harvesting communities with which I've been involved, not just, by the way, non-native but also among Mi'kmaq. They are not being asked. Of course, they may actually have the big stick now, from the point of view of intervention. Who knows?

So we have here on the table, with the southern gulf research coalition, taken an opportunity to actually do some very creative and imaginative work, to bring into the process the research capacity and expertise that is seated in the region's many universities—they all ring the southern gulf area, more or less—and a lot of that capacity has yet to be effectively mobilized.

Of course, from the point of view of the universities—I don't speak here as an administrator, although I could—there's always interest in accessing more funding for research and for related educational kinds of initiatives.

I just wanted to make a few other observations. In March, 1999, I went to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea's annual conference in Montpellier, France. It was a rough trip. International fishery scientists from around the world...all the leading people were there. At the end of this meeting, on the last day of the last session, there was a panel discussion on fisheries management. For some reason, the senior Department of Fisheries and Oceans person, who was supposed to be on that panel for Canada, could not attend. Instead there was a senior CEO from one of the major remaining Atlantic Canadian fishing corporations in his seat representing Canadian fisheries management. It was an international meeting. There were representatives from the EU, from the United States, from all over the place. What do we get? We get a CEO. There's an overhead, with quickly scratched-in names and a little Canadian flag.

• 1255

A voice: Who was it?

Mr. Anthony Davis: Let's just say it was a senior executive with a company that now runs FPI, Fishery Products International.

My point is simply that that person was placed on that committee by one of the co-organizers of this meeting, who happened to be a senior fisheries science person with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans—Scotia-Fundy—who I'm sure you met while you were in Halifax.

This reflects one of the central issues I think around the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and has nothing actually to do with the quality of some of the science and the orientation in terms of research of scientists. This is what I would refer to as the departmental culture; that is, the world view that's embedded in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans from a management perspective is more or less hand in glove with particular interests, and has been historically, within Canadian fisheries. In that hand-in-glove relation, I think we have lots of evidence, both biological as well as, if you will, social research, that clearly shows that that relationship is at the heart of the collapse of the cod, the overexploitation of natural resources, and the gross irresponsibilities associated with that. I would refer you to a paper by Jeff Hutchings published in Science last year, if you wish to have that kind of authority.

Having said that, I would say within, for example, the southern gulf ecosystem region, we have here a real opportunity in the sense of being a nursery for some critical species. No one here has mentioned white hake as a groundfish species. The St. George's Bay area of the southern gulf is the nursery, the last refuge of white hake. There is no other place.

We have an opportunity here to think about, for example, the future, as cod stocks or as groundfish stocks start to recover. It's totally unnecessary, to echo in part Mike Belliveau, to imagine mobile, non-selective mass harvesting fishing technologies applied within this ecosystem—in fact in any ecosystem, but within this ecosystem it would make no sense at all.

Hopefully, the members of this committee would be alerted to that and to the connection between how past research and present research potentials in terms of collaborations can build the kinds of coalitions, can rebuild the trust between these various players and institutions, that are essential for an effective future fisheries—not just management but a fisheries and a sustainable-livelihood economy.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Davis. We'll turn to questions later.

Mr. Cawthorn.

Mr. Rick Cawthorn (Director, Atlantic Veterinary College): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. My remarks will be brief because you're travelling to P.E.I. and you'll have the opportunity to visit our institution tomorrow afternoon.

We began to work on lobsters at the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island in 1994 as a direct request of the post-harvest sector of the fishery led by the Canadian Atlantic Lobster Promotion Association and Clearwater from Bedford, Nova Scotia.

The concern was that approximately 10% to 15% of the landed value of lobsters is lost after the fish are harvested. So our challenge is to apply 150 years of traditional veterinary medicine to wild fisheries such as lobsters.

What do dogs and cats have to do with lobsters and shrimps and crabs? Well, that information from dogs and cats provides us with the basis to look at lobsters.

After seven years and several hundreds of thousands of dollars of research, we still cannot tell you exactly what is a healthy lobster, but we are getting there. The information we develop and disseminate is designed to complement the information utilized by the management and assessment biologists in Fisheries and Oceans Canada. I have the good fortune to have several classmates who are in Fisheries and Oceans Canada, such as Mike Chadwick. I consider them to be good friends and also world-class professionals.

• 1300

Our role is to look at the health of individual lobsters, crab, such as snow crabs, and also the northern shrimp fishery. From an individual basis, you can begin to work on populations. We utilize basic and applied research, educational programs....

Mr. LeBlanc, one of your constituents, Mr. Comeau from Burnt Church, is our newest graduate student and is looking at the molecular genetics of larval lobsters. Can we determine where larval lobsters go when they drift with the oceanic currents?

There is also technology transfer. We have developed an ultrasonic probe that allows us to determine meat yields instantaneously in live lobsters and eventually in the snow crabs. This was developed at home but also in partnership with a company from Paradise, Newfoundland. For those of you who don't know, it's just outside St. John's. That is a world-class piece of innovation.

We have also developed a labelling system that allows us to put labels on lobsters, crabs, mussels, oysters, and quahogs for authenticity, tracing, and brand-name recognition right from the boat to the consumer.

Our impacts are regional. We work in all five provinces of eastern Canada, including the province of Quebec. The lobster fishery in the Magdalen Islands is about $25 million landed value a year, which is comparable to what happens in Newfoundland and Labrador.

We have national impacts. Our probes can be utilized in the crab fishery in the Pacific northwest. We also work in the European Union, Scandinavia, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

What is the impact of the Long Island Sound lobster fishery collapse on Atlantic Canada and the fishery in Quebec? When you come to the island tonight you'll see an article in The Journal Pioneer where I was interviewed last night.

We are going to Long Island Sound, specifically in three weeks from now, to develop a collaborative research program with the people at the University of Connecticut, because we import millions and millions of pounds of live lobster from the United States. We process them on the island and elsewhere in Atlantic Canada. What does it mean when we import lobster from an area where we know the fishery is collapsing from a variety of factors? Parasites may be one of them; the environment, whether it's toxic sludge or global warming, is also very important.

We have created a business plan, which may sound a little different coming from a university. We've been mentored by people like Clearwater, 3M, and other companies like that so that we can develop a business plan. Our five-year business plan has an annual budget of $1 million per year. Right now we have approximately $350,000 a year committed.

We are going to apply to the Atlantic Innovation Fund, and we have private sector funding, ranging anywhere from $1,000 to a very large sum of money. We have a commitment from Fisheries and Oceans, from the Province of Prince Edward Island, and also a verbal commitment from the Province of New Brunswick. We don't have those commitments yet from the other three provinces.

For $1 million a year, in an industry that has a landed value alone in lobster of $1 billion, it's not a very significant investment. But our role is to enhance the wild fisheries in eastern Canada for the benefit of the common good.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Cawthorn.

Mr. Chouinard.

[Translation]

Mr. Omer Chouinard (Professor, K.C. Irving Chair in Sustainable Development Studies, University of Moncton): Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I will be brief because I know that you will be travelling elsewhere, but also because much has already been said.

I simply want to come back on certain points that I feel are important. First of all, as a researcher at the University of Moncton, there are some specific items that I think need to be considered. I do environmental research for the most part, however it is linked to the whole issue of ecosystems and the fishery.

First, I would like to give a brief historic overview. We often hear about the two solitudes: Acadian francophones and anglophones. The English-speaking population, as we know, is also made up of a number of cultures if you take into account the Scottish and the Irish. Research and studies that have been undertaken in different universities have come to the same conclusions. Take two researchers: a researcher in social sciences, who is currently the vice-dean of social sciences at the University of Ottawa and whose name is Joseph-Yvon Thériault, and a researcher from Memorial University who, studied at McGill University. Professor Thériault did his studies at the Université de Paris. They both came to the same conclusions, without consulting each other: In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, traditionally, historically, communities were weakened considerably because of the whole issue of fishmongers that took money without putting the equivalent back into the communities, and consequently, the Gulf required a specific approach. There you have the historical economics and politico-sociological perspectives.

• 1305

On the other hand, if you look at the more scientific studies written by Dr. Harris in 1990, even though he does not refer to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, he basically recommends the following position: Our approach to the fishery was wrong and we must give more importance to the food chain and ecosystems. This applies as much to the Gulf of St. Lawrence as to other regions.

Therefore, in the past, people have been recommending the integration of knowledge in the fishing industry, an integration that would consider equally historical factors, geographical factors, economic factors, biological factors, biochemical factors, and physical factors, to name but a few.

If we look at what has been done since then, we can see that there have been some decisions made by politicians who had the courage to do so. In 1981, for example, the Minister of Fisheries, Roméo LeBlanc, had the courage to state that the Gulf of St. Lawrence was an ecosystem and that it should be treated as such. It is not often that politicians display such courage. This man recognized, simply by listening to the comments coming from the fisher community at that time, based on the traditional knowledge that people shared, that this ecosystem, as an entity, was important.

It took the Gulf of St. Lawrence crisis... I remember that at that time, there was a request from the inshore fishermen to exclude trawlers from the area known at that time as Shediac Valley, the area found between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, because they said that there were a great number of small fish. This request was made for approximately 10 years. Eventually, trawlers larger than 50 feet were excluded from this area.

I had the opportunity of working for the Province of New Brunswick before becoming a university professor and I realized then that the federal government, during the cod moratorium of 1992, came in with statistics that demonstrated that from the 1970s to the 1990s, 80% of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence groundfish stocks were reproducing in that area. This is what I mean by “traditional knowledge”. The inshore fishers knew this. They had been telling scientists for a long time that we should not be letting those big boats in. But the government answered back that their information didn't fit with the mathematical models. So there was this incompatibility between the local knowledge, the traditional knowledge that people had and the scientific knowledge. There was this gap between the two.

What we are saying then, is that there needs to be co- operation between the disciplines because some methodologies are more qualitative and others are more quantitative, and both must be studied in parallel; we need to build bridges between the two. In my opinion, this is currently where there is a lack of understanding, it has to do with the science side, and this is where we need to do more work. An ecosystem approach will help in this respect, among others.

The other point that I wanted to make, is the fact that earlier we referred to the issue of specialization. The ecosystem approach demonstrates that specialization does not work because the reproductive system of fish is cyclical and there is an interdependence between the different species. This has been demonstrated.

I come from a fishing community in Chaleur Bay. I remember very well, in my family, we ate 11 different species of fish. That was normal. We started in the month of April and went through until December. When December came, it was not because there was no more cod left in Chaleur Bay—it is on the outskirts of the cod stocks—but because the ice kept us from getting into the harbour to fish. There was still plenty of cod in the Chaleur Bay to be fished.

All this is to show you how the ecosystem has been destroyed. Today the stock is so small that the fish have to leave the Gulf. There was some migration back then, but much less, and there was a much more even distribution of the resource.

• 1310

I can also tell you that in the late 1950s, I myself took part in this fishery. From 1957 to 1961, when I was young, I went off to fish for squid in Chaleur Bay. People may not know it, but there was squid in Chaleur Bay, a species which is prised today. But because of the industrial fishery, deep-sea fishing, this migration has ended. In my opinion, this is what a specialized species approach leads to, compared to an ecosystem approach. It leads to the obliteration of species after species.

Another subject that was talked about, was the importance of research institutes or research groups. I agree with this, and I must insist on the linguistic aspect. People referred to the traditional knowledge of the fishery. I described what happened in the cod fishery earlier. The same could be said for the lobster fishery. If you want to gather traditional knowledge, it has to be gathered in the language of that person, because as the saying goes, translators are traitors. It is difficult to translate exactly, in exact words, what someone wants to say. In my opinion, it is essential that we consider this.

Earlier, representatives talked about the size of the Acadian and francophone population in the Gulf of St. Lawrence region. They said that this group represented about 50% of the population. I feel that these are things that should be taken into serious consideration.

The other point that I wanted to emphasize pertains to traditional or local knowledge. I am currently working with the research team that is focussing on the entire country and this team is talking about making a link between science and local knowledge and we are all making just about the same observation: there truly is a gap between the two and we must make an effort to close this gap.

The lobster fishery is an important aspect. I will discuss this issue because I find that, at present, the federal government is being far too lax when it comes to the lobster fishery. Lobster fishing has been going on since the Marshall decision. I am not questioning the right of the Aboriginal people to fish, a right which, in my opinion, is fully justified, because Canadian society put these people in reserves 240 years ago and what these Aboriginal communities have had to endure is unbelievable. However, it is the inshore fishermen who have the traditional knowledge pertaining to the lobster fishery. If you examine the history of the lobster fishery since 1971, ever since we began obtaining figures, you can see that while there have been cyclical crises over the years, the fishers have proposed alternative measures to try to remedy the situation to ensure that this type of fishery is even more viable. When I say viable, I'm talking about life, about respect for living things. Some people refer to this as “sustainable”, but I don't like this term. I find that the word “viable” is much better.

I would like to remind you as well, for example, that during my brief experience as a lobster worker—I began working with fishers in 1975—there was talk, at that time, about the spacing between the bars and the escape vent of the lobster cages. It was not until 1996 that the government decided to apply this regulation. In my opinion, the justification for such a measure had been proven by the fishers who could show that, traditionally, they respected fish habitat by leaving larger spaces and by allowing the lobster to escape.

The same thing occurred with respect to the legal size of the lobster. The organization I was working for in 1978 was advocating an increase in the legal size of the lobster. When did the organization adopt such a position? Very late in the game, only in the 90s, and the entire gulf agreed to adopt such a measure only recently. There's a gap between science, management and traditional and local knowledge, In my mind, this gap must be bridged.

I would like to go back to the issue of Aboriginal fisheries. The government's attitude is very simplistic. I was among those who, last year, advocated better management of this fishery by the federal government. It is, however, important that this be done not only by issuing permits or licences alone. We must also accompany these fishers. We must also accompany the Aboriginal fishers. As I said, considering that it took more than 100 years to establish the regulations, we must, in my opinion, ensure that the Aboriginal fishers are accompanied for five or ten years by those with traditional knowledge. That means that we need a training fund. If you rely exclusively on permits and boats, after five or ten years, you will come to the conclusion that they were not used properly, which will heighten prejudice. People will say: You see, we told you that they didn't know how to fish; we told you that they didn't fish properly. In my opinion, therefore, this is an issue that must be resolved.

• 1315

On the last point, I would like to mention that I agree with all those who have said that, in the Gulf, we need a multi-user approach. However, we need to be extremely careful when it comes to ecotourism, protected areas and natural gas exploration. We know that the Gulf of St. Lawrence is one of the richest areas for crustaceans. In my opinion, the direction that we are taking now is dangerous and ill-founded. I am not sure that that exploration is not taking place too rapidly.

I would join with the previous speaker in saying that the lobster fishery has maintained the vitality of many coastal communities in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and I feel that there has been too little research on that species. In 1972, it was announced that lobster would be left to the inshore fishers and that the herring and cod fishery would go to the industry. We have seen what happened once those resources were given to the industry: there was a monumental collapse.

The inshore fishers were told to take a more professional approach, to develop regulations, to try to get organized so as to better regulate this fishery. I think that the inshore fishers have made tremendous progress to try to regulate and take a professional approach to this fishery. They need more support and funding, as I told you earlier, for training and education, in order to improve relations between the Acadian and Aboriginal communities which, traditionally, have been allies. Today, with the government policies, they are on their way to becoming enemies.

Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen. I do apologize for having to group you together. I think if we had it to do over again, we would have a round table where everyone started in the morning. In any event, that's the way it goes.

We'll start with Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to all of our witnesses. I agree with the chairman, we could benefit from hearing more from all of you and having a little more time to delve into these issues.

I think one thing all committee members might agree on is that we've been convinced by what we heard this morning of the uniqueness of the southern gulf region for a lot of reasons that have been spelled out: scientific, geographic, oceanographic, biologic, cultural, language. You've spelled out a lot of reasons for the uniqueness of the area. I think we're all agreed that we need better understanding of the ecosystem, and we want to make sure that's protected.

It's interesting that you'd say that the oil and gas discussions so far largely ignored citizens in a meaningful way. Coming back and dealing with the offshore petroleum board and with developments that are happening seemingly very quickly without a lot of public consultation, I think it really is a worthwhile and a very profitable endeavour that the whole community and all stakeholders are talking to each other. I just wanted to ask, picking up again on the southern gulf research network, is there a voice? Who's speaking for this network? Dr. Davis, are you speaking for the research network today?

Mr. Anthony Davis: No, I'd say I'm just a member of it, but I'm an ardent supporter of the notion.

Mr. James Lunney: Sure.

Mr. Anthony Davis: It's a project in formation, so there is as of yet no clear administrative heart to the thing. There's some concern about those issues. Certainly I don't necessarily want to see it seeded within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, because there's too much baggage. I'd like to see the possibility of a collaboration that starts out with fresh air and engages some openness and gets some of the stones off our back.

Mr. James Lunney: Exactly. I'd like to see the cause of the good idea people advanced. I think one of the things we want to refresh and renew in Canada is the concept of actually listening to each other, listening to all stakeholders.

I was interested in the comment about links between science and local knowledge. Really, if we do listen to one another, I'm convinced we can come up with better ideas. So I want to encourage you in that progress, whatever is going on in that, that you can somehow bring it together and continue that process to advance the cause for the best common public good. I think that voice can be heard, and I really applaud you for being here today to express those views.

• 1320

The Chair: Madam Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your presentations. They were very interesting. I hope that we will receive a written version of what you have told us.

I have a question for the gentleman who spoke about lobster. I read in the newspaper that blue lobsters had been caught off Newfoundland. That seems to be an extremely rare event for Newfoundland. In the Magdalen Islands, it is nothing unusual, but it seems to be a rarity in Newfoundland.

Can you tell us why these lobster are blue? It is a colour that our political party is very fond of.

[English]

Mr. Rick Cawthorn: We see a few blue lobsters on Prince Edward Island. It's just a colour type. It's the same as having blue eyes in humans. They're very, very rare. In Great Britain they used to breed blue lobsters specifically as a way to mark the lobsters they were releasing into depleted habitat for tagging purposes, for replenishment.

In Newfoundland, in that article you saw, they claimed one in 20 million was blue. On the Island or from others stories I've heard, it's one in three million. I have no idea who keeps track of that number.

We have five blue lobsters in one of our tanks at home. Depending on circumstances, you may see them tomorrow. They're as blue as this package. Blue lobsters are freaks, but people very much appreciate seeing them.

We have a couple of orange lobsters. We have a couple of lobsters that are orange on one side and dark on the other, split right down like a knife. So the blue lobster is a very strange animal.

The Chair: Sort of like people of blue.

Madam Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: There is something that I would like to understand better. Mr. Chouinard, why do you seem to feel that specialization is incompatible with ecosystem management?

Mr. Omer Chouinard: It is for environmental reasons. Specialization implies not taking into account the food chain and interactions among the species. I think that the Harris report demonstrated that very well in 1990. I believe that it was a lesson for everyone. We saw that what cod ate varied from season to season. They might eat shrimp, crab, capelin, moulting lobsters, herring, etc.

Once fishers were told to specialize in shrimp, crab, capelin or herring, what happened? People had to do that to make a living. They had to work hard. They had loans to pay back. These were not just traditional fishers, as I told you earlier. My father used to catch 11 species of fish. People were no longer going to catch species as they became available. They had to be in a directed fishery all year long, which took that resource away from the cod. All of a sudden, in the early 1990s, people wondered why the cod were so skinny. People said that maybe it was because there were not enough being caught. They found all sorts of reasons.

Harris gave us an excellent answer: we were not taking into account the food chain. Cod lived on all sorts of other species that were being taken out of the sea one by one because of the specialized fishery. Species interact with one another. If you talk with someone in the ground fishery, he will tell you the following story. He will tell you that the stock in area 4T was fished not just once, but six times. People would wait for the fish, which were caught when they came through. It would start in area 4VsW because the cod were seen coming out of the Gulf. Then the people in 4Vn got their turn. There was a directed fishery in 4Vn. Then it was on to 4T, where there were all types of fishing gear. There were boats from 65 to 100 feet, boats under 65 feet, boats under 45 feet. Then there were the longliners and gill-netters.

• 1325

In the spring, when the fish arrived in Chéticamp, all the fishers from the Magdalen Islands, from the Gaspé, from the Acadian Peninsula and Prince Edward Island would go to Chéticamp and then follow the fish. When the cod arrived around Shediac Valley, they still fished it. Everyone was after that cod. The fish would go around Orphan Bank, which is not far from where you are. They would go there, not far from Bonaventure Island. The fishers would gather there. The fleets from the Gaspé, the Magdalen Islands and the Acadian Peninsula would all go there. When the cod left there, they would again go by Shediac Valley. Again the fishers would go after the cod, and the fleet would push the fish along again to Chéticamp. There were boats waiting that had special permits to fish in 4Vn, then the fish went out into 4VW. And people wondered why the cod were thin. Anyone who was chased around like that all the time... The inshore fishers, on the other hand, waited until the fish came their way. They found at one point that they were no longer getting any in their six-inch netting. They were told to make the holes smaller so that they could catch the cod.

That is how senseless the policies were. I used the cod example because I had an opportunity to work with an inshore fishery organization. I worked for the New Brunswick government, and that is what we observed. When we looked back at the cod history, we saw that what had been done to that stock was terrible. That is the reality of specialization, in contrast to the whole issue of integration in an ecosystem.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Do I have any time left?

[English]

The Chair: A very short one, Mrs. Tremblay, and we'll have to tighten up the answers too.

[Translation]

Mr. Omer Chouinard: We are talking about the complexity of the ecosystem.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Mr. Davis, you are an anthropologist, is that right?

Mr. Anthony Davis: Yes.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: You mentioned that at the beginning and I took some notes. Who are these people? Since the beginning, we have been going around and hearing about this southern gulf. People say that the Gaspé region should be an integral part of it. I am able to accept that in my mind. I could read all the reports you have on it.

Mr. Anthony Davis: In your heart, also.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I do want to agree on the theoretical level, but who are these Quebeckers that do not want to be in the southern gulf? We need to take that into account as well.

[English]

Mr. Anthony Davis: Are you asking me that?

They're people, and certainly as citizens in this country they would have a right to express their prerogative about who they would want to be part of and who they wouldn't. Certainly every group of harvesters I've ever been with, when they gather from all over the place, find that there's a lot of common ground. So if their Québécois identity or attachment supersedes that of their involvement within fishing and coastal fishing and the shared experiences that translates into with respect to others in similar situations and having similar backgrounds and experiences, then so be it. I think people will express their prerogative.

In the same sense, we had some comments made about Acadians. I'm a Nova Scotian, but I come from a part of Nova Scotia that is in an exclamatory sense Scottish, and both Presbyterian and Catholic, but not exclusively—there's a bit of Irish mixed in—and then there's the odd Acadian as part of these communities, as well as aboriginal people, of course, and others, more recent immigrants. All that is meaningful to people. But I think at a more fundamental level you find that the ways in which people make their living and the kinds of experiences that arise out of that background also provide a common ground. I certainly have seen that over and over again.

In the end, if that line that separates Gaspé from northern New Brunswick somehow translates in an identity fashion—that this is more meaningful to me than the fact that I may share language and some social history and culture with the people on the other side of that line, or farther down, or in the province of Nova Scotia, or I don't share language but I share livelihood experiences—then it would translate. I mean, certainly they have the prerogative to make those choices, and I would suspect that prerogative would be expressed.

• 1330

The Chair: Well said. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

There's just one point of clarification I wanted to point out to Mr. Chouinard. I think I'm correct, Mr. Chouinard, that when you said food chain, you meant fish food chain. When you were talking about the Harris report, it was the fish food chain you were relating to. Sometimes we get confused.

Mr. LeBlanc.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be brief, because I see the pizzas have arrived, and they're going to get cold.

[Translation]

I have a very specific question for Mr. Chouinard, and I thank him very much for his presentation. We have known each other for some time. I feel that you are doing important work and I congratulate you on it.

Mr. Chouinard, you said that, in your opinion, there is not enough research being done on lobster. I share that fear, since it is very important for our region's economy. Why do you say that? If you were a manager in the fisheries department, what would you suggest they do to increase resources or expand this important research on lobster?

Mr. Omer Chouinard: I don't want to contradict myself, but when I talk about lobster research, I'm referring in particular to the interaction between the fishing of lobster and other species. Lobster is also a migratory species. What we know very little about...

I recall that in the 1970s, for example, fishers said that lobster left the Shediac Valley area, where there are small cod, they also left the Kouchibouguac National Park area to move down, when the water warmed up, to the Cape Tormentine area. They were laughed at by some scientists. They said that the lobster migrated... In the early 1960s, Dr. Wilder wrote that lobster move within a radius of between three to five miles. What he really meant to say was that lobster return to a habitat extending across some three to five miles. What he said was taken as gospel and the matter stopped there.

However, now, scientists from Fisheries and Oceans, such as Dr. Chadwick, have noted that lobster genuinely does migrate. Lobster migrates much faster than we once thought, when water temperatures require it. For example, in the Cape Pelé and Cape Tormentine areas, that you know very well, where the water is no more than 23 fathoms deep, lobster don't tend to remain there for the winter. They move to deeper water in the Shediac Valley to winter in the trenches where the water is warmer.

Consequently, we are talking about the interaction of lobster with water temperature and with other species. There are fishers who tell me that they are happy that the cod have gone because they preyed on lobster.

And do you know why? It's because fishers have become very specialized. If fishers had been allowed to fish a broad spectrum of species, they would not be saying that. Their permits were taken away from them. I think that the systems that are currently being implemented divide people.

Earlier, the member talked about specialization. Administrative structures also divide us. In my experience, in Chaleur Bay and in the Northumberland Strait, fishers are more than willing to work together. There are no provincial boundaries here. People realize that there is interaction.

When I was a small boy, my father and my grandfather told me stories. I come from the Bonaventure area, for those of you who aren't aware of this. They used to tell me that when there were no lobster or herring to be had off the coast of Gaspé, people from Miscou would catch herring and smoke it. There were small-scale local smokeries, which produced smoked herring. People from Miscou used to bring smoked herring to Port Daniel and Anse aux Gascons. So you see, there's always been co-operation.

What is interesting, is the interaction between marine ecosystems. I believe that we should increasingly be looking at this issue now. Our various jurisdictions are keeping us apart, at least in terms of fisheries management. There is no respect for...

A Voice: [Editor's Note: Inaudible]

Mr. Omer Chouinard: That's right.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Chouinard.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you very much. I have three quick questions.

Mr. Cawthorn, as you know, the Government of Canada has announced a whole bunch of money for research. Did they announce to your organization, the AVC, any additional funds for lobster research?

Mr. Rick Cawthorn: No. Regarding the recent announcement of funds from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, those are directed primarily towards aquaculture. Our contribution agreement for three years with Fisheries and Oceans was signed late in the fall, so we haven't accessed those funds. At the same time, Doctor Davis, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Fisheries, has been to Prince Edward Island in the last few weeks talking about more cooperative programs between Fisheries and Oceans and the universities, so there may be more opportunity.

• 1335

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Mr. Chouinard, I'd like a yes or no from you on the following question. Do you believe, especially for the ecosystem, that prior to the granting of any oil and gas leases in the gulf, or anywhere else, there should be environmental assessments done before the lease is granted to any company? Yes or no?

Mr. Omer Chouinard: Yes. But more than that, I think

[Translation]

even if we conduct environmental impact assessments, this is often done on a putting-out-fires basis. I think that that is not enough. We have the technology to do this today. We know that we can do better today than we did in the past. The environment is an issue and we must adopt a precautionary approach. I personally think that a precautionary approach means that when we're not sure, we should hold back. I think that's the way to go.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much. We didn't have Mr. Keddy. Gerald.

An hon. member: I had one more question.

The Chair: You're going to have to do it later.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There's been an interesting discussion here, and there are almost too many points raised to comment on, but there's an issue that's come up here that's being avoided at the same time. That is on the basic overall DFO structure. It was discussed a little bit, but.... I'd never blame it on DFO; I always blame it on the politicians. At the beginning of the process some politician makes a decision somewhere along the line. They also take advice from bureaucracy and people in the front lines, hopefully, but basically I think it's reversed to blame it on DFO.

If we look at going back into a fishery that's a multi-species licensing, we could do two things, but there's going to be a political cost to it. Number one, we could put people to work year round or more year round. We could cut out that cycle of simply catching a species and going on EI for the rest of the year.

The Chair: Is there a question here, Gerald?

Mr. Gerald Keddy: Yes.

Number two, and this is for all of us who are politicians sitting at the table, we would be able to help the resource itself by having multi-species licences, or people who held more than one licence.

Number three, we would reduce the number of fishermen on the water in the short term. Maybe in the long term that would prove differently. We went the other way historically. We went from having a group of fishermen in Atlantic Canada, in the big picture in the gulf, who I think numbered around 20,000 back in the 1940s and 1950s—

The Chair: Ask your question, Gerald, or we're going to have to move on.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: Yes.

Do you think people would pay the political cost of that?

Mr. Anthony Davis: I don't think there is one. I think in fact what you've spoken reflects in part a myth. Take, for example, in part of the riding that you represent—

Mr. Gerald Keddy: Yes, Lunenburg, Queens, and Shelburne County.

Mr. Anthony Davis: That's right, yes. I'm speaking specifically now about work done in Shelburne.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: Yes.

Mr. Anthony Davis: That area, in terms of fishing demography, was filled up by the mid-nineteenth century. That is, if you look at fishing families, the same percentage of people stayed in fishing thereafter from those families, because there was all the out-migration. You must know the history of your area. Fishing places in Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, all over the place, have featured out-migration as a way of being for their young people, especially since—and yes, all rural communities do that, but I'm thinking now of just coastal communities—the mid part of the nineteenth century when the space became filled. It's about one in every two persons, and a large percentage of women from those families.

• 1340

The more important issue, if you want to broaden it a little bit, quickly, is that creating sustainable economies means that you use the resource in a way that's creative and that extracts the largest portion of end value for the supplier of the resource—meaning the nation or the harvester or what have you. Unfortunately, in Canada, if I may be so bold as to offer a generalization, but particularly in Canadian fisheries, we have the tendency to act like idiots when it comes to treating the real value that is represented in those resources.

I'll give you one example. Bluefin tuna is landed in a few places in the southern gulf. The harvester walks away with $20,000 for that fish, let's say, and everyone thinks, what an amazing price for a fish. That fish is worth $200,000 in terms of its final value. We retain about one tenth of the final value of that resource.

You can go through practically every one of our resources, not just fishery resources, and arrive at a similar kind of equation. If you want economic diversity, stability, and you want to make it 12 months a year, it's not just a matter of harvesting the resource, it's a matter of how you use it. In part, that's what the lobster research centre is also about. Where is the investment in that side of things in this country? Where's the fisheries concern about that side of things?

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Davis.

Mr. Chouinard and Mr. Cawthorn, we will have to cut the discussion.

It's an interesting mix of people and organization in the southern gulf research network. Do you produce any reports or minutes?

Mr. Anthony Davis: I believe you have the—

The Chair: We have what it's made up of, who are we and stuff—

Mr. Anthony Davis: Yes, a primary foundational document. If you go through the various sections of this, for example, the “who are we”, all of these qualities arose out of the January 2001 meeting. So I think that was a fairly significant next step kind of meeting. Prior to that it was a looser dialogue that was going on. So we see gradual movement toward clarity and firming up of...I hate to use the word “mission”, but if we understand that as a way of describing it....

The Chair: Okay. Thank you very much, and I do apologize for having to cut the discussion.

We will break for five minutes and grab pizza and return with Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr.

• 1343

• 1355

The Chair: Could we come to order?

Thank you for your patience, Mr. Saint-Cyr. The floor is yours. Go to your presentation and then we'll go to questions.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr (Director General, Fédération régionale acadienne des pêcheurs professionnels): Mr. Chair, just for your information, Saint-Cyr is a French name and is not written “St” but “Saint”.

I was in Ottawa yesterday evening and I'll be in Vancouver tomorrow and let's just say that being here with you today has upset my schedule somewhat. This is the first time that I have appeared before a committee without a formal presentation. The last time I appeared before this committee, you were looking at the issue of Aboriginals in Miramichi. The Supreme Court ruling was relatively recent, the committee was keen to get the view of commercial fishers.

Indeed, today, I should still be in Ottawa, at the Canadian Marine Advisory Board. By all accounts, this committee is discussing some very concrete issues which are very important for our fleet. Nevertheless, since the Canadian Marine Advisory Board meets twice a year and since the standing committee was holding its special meeting here today to discuss the situation of the structure of the Gulf, I felt that it was appropriate to meet with you in order to give you an opinion on this issue.

I can well understand why Ms. Tremblay might be a bit confused when she tries to look at the management structure of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in a rational way. Indeed, when you come in from the outside with a rational mindset, it can be a bit difficult to understand the whys and wherefores of the current structure.

Nevertheless, Mr. LeBlanc's father, the Honourable Roméo LeBlanc, who is a very well-known figure, set up this department of Fisheries administrative management unit based on a completely rational principle. The basic principle in creating the Gulf region was the uniqueness of the Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystem. As the Minister of Fisheries, he came to the conclusion, that in light of the uniqueness of the Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystem, it was an excellent idea to create an administrative management unit to oversee the management of this ecological and ecosystemic unit.

The gulf is not only unique in the nature of its ecosystem. It is also unique, as several people pointed out this morning and at the beginning of the afternoon, in terms of the type of industries operating in the Gulf. I would just like to point out that I represent what Mike Belliveau referred to a little earlier as “corporatist-type fleets”. I don't agree with this description. I represent independent fishers who used to be inshore fishers and who, beginning at the end of the Second World War, were offered major support through government policy, development programs, various systems and funds which were set up to develop the fishing industry in New Brunswick and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The same thing happened in Quebec at about the same time, and even in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I am referring to schemes that were implemented by governments to encourage fishers to use new fishing techniques, new types of vessels, to motorize their boats and to move over to trawl nets. The productivity of fishers was a major concern at this time.

• 1400

Nowadays, those fleets belonging to the Fédération régionale acadienne des pêcheurs professionnels are often described as specialist fleets. They are described and also criticized, although we don't necessarily see things in the same way. As Mr. Chouinard mentioned earlier on, it is often government policies which have been responsible for dividing fleets. If fishers were given a choice between being specialists or fishing a wide variety of species, I can assure you that they would choose the second option, because they have experienced ups and downs in practically all species that they fish.

For example, we have a fleet of 20 shrimpers which were originally built not to fish shrimp, but redfish. In the late 1960s, redfish stocks collapsed, and it was at this time that governments, with the help of fishers, developed crab fishing.

As early as the late 1960s, there were signs, not of a complete collapse in cod stocks like the one we went through in the early 1990s, but rather a depletion of cod stocks in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. We had a cod-fishing fleet which had been developed by major financial investments by governments. We were forced to develop a different type of fishing for these fishers, because there were not sufficient quantities of cod to support this fleet. This is why we developed crab fishing throughout the same time as shrimp fishing.

Shrimp fishing took a long time to become a viable business proposition. The profitability of crab fishing was greatly exaggerated. I have figures here to back that up. Indeed, this type of fishing can sometimes be very lucrative, but it is an extreme boom-and-bust industry.

In terms of some owners of fleets of crabbers, some will probably tell you that they also own plants. They must be very rich if they have been able to invest in plants. But, in 1989, they made a choice. They saw plant owners who had cashed in on the most lucrative period of the development and expansion of crab fishing, bail out of the Acadian peninsula, because they were convinced that the crab-fishing industry there was finished. We saw that average of 26,000 tons of crab fished in the 1980s go down to... For several years, until 1985, the average crab catch stood at 26,000 tons. Between 1985 and 1989, this figure went down from 26,000 tons to 7,000 tons. The New Brunswick fleet—that's my home fleet—used to catch an average of 18,000 tons a year. This figure fell to 3,000 tons. When the catch fell to 3,000 tons, compared to the 18,000 tons just a few years before, fishers made a decision. They believed that they possessed the skills, in close co-operation with the department and scientists, to bring stocks back up to a viable level. Indeed, this is what they achieved. However, in 1989, they were almost the only ones to believe that crab stocks in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence could be brought back to a viable level.

There are two parts to the history of the crab-fishing industry. The first of these, which is the socio-political part, is not very interesting, to put it mildly. The second part, which is more interesting, deals with the scientific aspect and the experiments that had to be conducted to turn things around and bring them up to their current state. I think that this is a fine example of co-operation between very committed stakeholders—of course, their livelihood depended on it. As I said, it is a fine example of the sustainable and viable fishing of stocks and the scientific knowledge that can be developed when adequate resources are made available.

• 1405

Under the AFAP, the Atlantic Fisheries Adjustment Program, they began by investing in science and later, when the joint management agreement was reached, they continued to invest in science, because they quickly realized that without a detailed scientific study, it would be difficult to maintain a sustainable and reliable stock of any type of fish.

We, like several other groups, are obviously sorry about what happened to fish stocks, in particular cod stocks, but although some would like to brand us as the main culprits, I think that we all have to assume part of the blame. That includes the government, and fishers, be they inshore, midshore or offshore, and also operating companies. We all got a bit caught up in the excitement of expansion after the 200-mile area was implemented and the promising future of fishing that we were told about. Everybody was in a very optimistic mood in the mid and late 1990s. You only have to look at the department archives to see that the Science Branch published forecasts on projected cod stocks. Stocks were growing. At the end of the 1980s, that was the carrot that was dangled.

To come back to the issue of co-operation between fishers and scientists, I think that this was a great experiment, which has been ongoing since 1989. This shows us the importance of management units, which have a full understanding of the dynamics of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the goals and the mindset of fishers and who are able to take concrete steps and to co-operate with groups of fishers.

Mr. Belliveau of the MFU and myself have not often agreed. We often have differences of opinion, but in terms of the issue of the Gulf, we agree entirely that things should not have been done the way they were. The management unit was dismantled twice. First in 1984, by Mr. De Bané, who was the minister at the time. He wanted to give officials from his province, in this case, Quebec, slightly more power. Secondly, in 1996, the Maritime region was set up under the heading of rationalizing budgets and resources. Lastly, there was major downsizing, which was invoked at the beginning of the 1990s. The government, which always reacted slightly later, thought that downsizing was a prudent decision given the backdrop of budgetary restrictions.

If you take the trouble to look in the archives, you will find correspondence from our organization, and not only from inshore fishers' organizations, when the Gulf region was dismantled. Our organization, which at the time was the APPA, changed its name in 1996 because our structure changed too. We are now the FRAPP, but we are the same organization. We have existed since 1968. We have always supported... We were part of the group, which met at Memramcook at a major symposium which led to the creation of the Gulf Management Unit. We have given ongoing support to this management unit.

• 1410

We have always worked very closely together, even if there have been some periods of tension with officials from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. In light of the fact that I am addressing a group of politicians, I know that you all read the newspapers and that you are well aware of this matter. If there is to be tension, which is almost inevitable given that our roles put us on different sides of the table, we prefer this tension to be with people who understand our culture and our way of managing things.

I can't say that we have the same relationship in Halifax. It is a matter of language. That is the most obvious reason. Personally, I am bilingual, but many of our members are unilingual francophones. Unilingual francophones are not confined only to Quebec, but are to be found also outside Quebec. The Acadian Peninsula is a case in point. This means that in a situation like this, if decision makers are unilingual anglophones or they have passed their test... I don't know what that's called. I used to be a federal civil servant, so I should remember. There are public servants who are supposed to be bilingual, but who, in actual facts, are not and who, when a fisher addresses them in French, they will tell him to wait and will pass the case on to someone who understands French, but who is not a decision-maker. That causes real communication problems between department customers and decision-makers. That has not always been the problem in the Gulf region.

There is also the issue of access. For fishers from the Acadian peninsula, getting to Halifax takes twice as long than going to Moncton. As you know, there have been changes made over the past few years, and the department is now attempting to recover its costs rather than cover them, which means that travel expenses are extremely costly to our fishers' organization. When decision- making centres are moved farther away from where fishers work, which in our case, is northern New Brunswick, it represents an additional cost for our fishers' organization.

Unfortunately for the fishers' organization, the room they have for increasing their dues is taken up by the DFO. My organization doesn't get any subsidies. It's entirely funded by its members. When we founded this group, a crab-fishing permit cost $2. There was no co-management, no monitoring at the wharf, no observers at sea, no access rights.

The five elements I've just listed on average, per crab fisher, cost between $30,000 and $50,000 depending on the level of the quota and that's even before you've put any fuel into your boat, bought the food, done the maintenance of the boat and so on. Before going off fishing, those guys have to pay out between $60,000 and $100,000 depending on the seasons which means that, as permanent employees of a fishermen's organization, if you ask them to pay higher dues again to compensate for the number of meetings and the travelling involved, you are very poorly regarded because the room for funding has already been taken up by the monies they now have to pay out.

In 1999, we were quite happy when Minister Anderson came to announce that the Gulf region would be set up again. But after looking at the situation, we found out that we were not given back what we had lost. We were given back part of what we had had. Before it was broken up, we had a plenipotentiary region. It was an administrative region like the Laurentian or even the Scotia-Fundy region. When we got it back, there were parts of it that weren't showing up on our screen. Some will say: yes, but does it show?

• 1415

Of course, for us, as a fishermen's organization, the most important thing is the management of the resource because that affects our operations on an ongoing basis. It's the sinews of war, if you will. That's where you decide on quotas, access to the resource, level of access and so on. That's also where you decide which management measures would be the most appropriate.

A department that doesn't have the right tools, that doesn't have enough human or financial resources cannot serve its client base as effectively as a region that has the necessary budgets. The higher the budget, the more flexibility there is, within that budget, to respond to the needs of the client base. The smaller the budget, the more you have to tighten up the corsets of the managers in that region and the less flexibility they have to answer our needs.

[English]

The Chair: If I can just interrupt for a second, Mr. Saint-Cyr, I would like to thank our operators. We had a long night last night. We went until eleven, and they have to catch a plane.

Thank you very much.

Go ahead.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: So, for us, it's important for the Gulf region to become once again a plenipotentiary region with all the human and financial resources necessary to operate on the same level as the other regions. I think that the figures and summaries tabled this morning by Mr. Jones will indicate clearly enough how important fisheries in the Gulf are. It's important for that region to have the budgets and the human resources necessary to respond to the needs of our industry.

The FRAPP is active, not only in terms of demands, interests and so forth but also in the research network in the southern area of the Gulf. In your documents you'll find one entitled Strategic Plan for the Southern Gulf Fisheries. That's what the people involved in the discussions will eventually... There again, this is still at a draft stage because the fishermen's organizations are also suffering from restricted budgets. We don't necessarily have all the human resources we'd like to have to bring to fruition all the projects we'd like. We're looking for alternate sources of funding.

Our strategic plan is there. When we see the amounts of money put into research for the Atlantic economy, it's rather hard for us to accept that the fisheries sector is not participating in the research.

I hope it's clear in everybody's mind in this committee that for the Atlantic, the fisheries are a strategic economic sector. It's a key sector, both socially as well as economically and industrially. In areas like the Acadian Peninsula, it's the backbone of the whole economy. If the fisheries are going badly, the whole regional economy suffers. We felt that during the employment insurance reforms and even before that with the quota crash. It really hurt the Acadian Peninsula.

As you know, in the fisheries area, there are many factors over which we have no control, especially the rate of exchange, because we are exporters. As for all the other sectors in the Atlantic fisheries industry, we export our products. So the exchange rates really affect the viability of our operations.

As for the resource, with the close co-operation of scientists, we try to have the most stable levels possible, but that's not always possible; there are always cycles with ups and downs. As for the markets, it's the same thing. This year, we expected the price of crab to be high. It wasn't; we lost a dollar a pound. The shrimp market has also weakened. Why? Because there's a lot of shrimp on the market and that is putting pressure on the down side. So there are all kinds of factors over which we have no control. However, we believe there are elements we can control. There are also destabilizing factors. In our opinion, if we agree on a strategy we can adopt, there will be fewer destabilizing elements for the industry.

• 1420

As for research, there's not just pure research, there's also management sciences which, in my opinion, could greatly help the fisheries sector in planning its activities and development strategy. That's why we've elaborated a proposal for a strategic plan that will involve the universities and people from all sectors of the industry.

As I was the last one to be given the floor, I of course had the opportunity to hear the points made by the others. I also had to sit through statements that lead us to believe that that is what reality is and that there is no other reality than that. We don't have the time to do that and this is not the purpose of this hearing. I believe the purpose of this hearing is to see whether, yes or no, the Gulf region should have its own structure, if it should be re-enforced, if it is adequate or not at this point in time.

We talked about exploration, crab sharing, all kinds of things that are not directly related to the matter at hand, in my opinion. I don't want to go back over all that. I'm simply expressing a wish to appear before this committee, whether in Ottawa or here, if the committee actually looks at the matter of managing the offshore fishing. We would also like to have an opportunity to explain why the fisheries are managed and why we cooperate with the department the way we do now, why we've accepted co-management agreements, why we've accepted individual quotas, what practical effect that has had. We'd like to be able to explain how our fisheries were managed before and what practical impact that has had on the industry, on safety at sea, on working conditions, whether in the plants or on the boats, and so on.

There are many management measures which, implicitly or explicitly, were criticized this morning. In passing, we were given the good old nudge, wink-wink. I wouldn't want to react to that today, because it would be superficial. I believe some of our decisions were wise and others were not. We are part of a group that recognized the errors of the past and that wants to evolve towards sustainable management of the fisheries. That should go through a federal administration that shows open-mindedness, that works in solidarity with the industry it is supposed to serve. That also means getting rid of paternalism and politics in the management process. That doesn't mean we don't believe that our representatives can't be involved in the decisions. I'm not naive enough to think that could ever happen because it will never happen. But we are conscious that you do have that responsibility to your voters.

If the members of the committee want to discuss matters concerning fisheries management, as supported by our group, if they have questions on how things are done, they should at least give us the opportunity to explain why we're doing things the way we are, what the origin was and how things have evolved and come to the point they are at now.

In winding up, I'd like to talk about a subject that's not directly tied into that. It's the Oceans and Environment Branch. Even if we weren't very articulate on the matter of oil exploration in the Gulf, it is something that concerns us enormously right now. It's even a source of anxiety especially for our crab fishermen because they're exploiting a relatively stationary resource. They're very worried about the damage unbridled exploration could do in the Gulf.

• 1425

The fishing industry doesn't seem to have much weight in the political decisions made in that area. I simply want to join my voice to those you've heard already on that matter.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much.

I'll turn to Mr. LeBlanc for a quick comment, and then Madam Tremblay.

[Translation]

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I don't have any questions. I think Mr. Saint-Cyr covered important ground. I much appreciated his comments on the situation in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the matter of midshore fishery. I congratulate him for his presentation and thank him. I apologize for his having to wait, but we did appreciate his presence very much. Personally, I really appreciated his comments. That's all I had to say, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: Thank you, Mr. LeBlanc. While we're here, face to face, I'd like to say that we've met, but not necessarily...

I know that because of your voters, you're in a stronghold of inshore fishery. You have all kinds of ways to answer their needs. I hope we'll have an opportunity, anyway, to explain the dynamics of our fisheries and that you will show open-mindedness vis-à-vis the problems we're trying to manage, also, ourselves, because it is not all that simple. Before you make any decision, it would be interesting for you to know both sides of the coin so as to be able to make enlightened decisions. Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Saint-Cyr.

Madam Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Saint-Cyr, I'd like to leave here today with a very clear understanding of what was, what happened and what will happen and what should happen.

In 1981, the Gulf zone was created.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: That's right.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Did that include the Gaspé Peninsula?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: That included the whole Gulf including the western shore of Newfoundland.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Including the western shore of Newfoundland. Now, that's clear.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: The Gaspé, the North Shore, the whole Gulf—

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: The North Shore also?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: The North Shore. The whole Gulf—

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Now that wasn't in the ecosystem. We were told the ecosystem was divided in two.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: No, no. We're not talking about the southern part of the Gulf. We're talking about the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: We're talking about the whole Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: In 1981, the Gulf region was responsible for the management of the Gulf fisheries.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: The Gulf, that's it?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: That also included the North Shore—

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Was there a Laurentian region?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: No, the Laurentian region was created in 1984.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Don't get me all mixed up right away.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: In 1984... [Editor's Note: Inaudible]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: So, in 1981, we have the Gulf that includes the North Shore, Anticosti Island, the Magdalen Islands, the whole Gulf here, including...

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: As your English-speaking colleagues say, the whole shebang.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Okay. Now, we have that. In 1984, up pops Mr. De Bané.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: That's it.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: He's still Minister of Fisheries, still with the same government, still with the same Prime Minister, but he changes his mind.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: That's it.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: That's not the first time something like that happens, mind you. At that point, what happens? What's taken away from the Gulf?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: Well, its unity is taken away from it, that's for sure.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Quebec is taken out.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: Well, Quebec is given back its status of plenipotentiary region.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: That's when the Laurentian region was created.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: It's the Gulf region.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Oh, it remained the gulf region.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: It's the Quebec region, sorry, but from now on it will be sharing management with the gulf region.

I will give you an example, Ms. Tremblay. The gulf shrimp is exploited by people from Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland except that the lead in that particular matter is the Laurentian region. So it's really the Laurentian region that calls up the advisory committees, that prepares the advisory committees, that is in contact with the representatives of the shrimp stakeholders, in other words that coordinates the activities concerning shrimp management.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Now that's how it works today, isn't?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: Yes, today. It started back then, in 1984. As for snowcrab management, the gulf region has the lead on that one, it's the leader on that one, it has first responsibility in managing the crab.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Is it the same for the crab taken off Rimouski?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: No, that's another region. Now we're talking about coastal regions.

• 1430

We're not going to get into that because we would be here two whole more days. With all the regions that were created in the gulf, we have problems in New Brunswick: We don't have access to those regions. Their midshore stocks and only certain provinces have access. We lost a lot of our history in that and we're not happy.

That's how it all started. The gulf people were rational, logical and based themselves on the unity of the Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystem. Then you got the bureaucrat's political considerations coming in. There were a lot of officials in Quebec who did not want to move; they wanted to recover their private preserves. So they managed to convince their minister that it would be a good thing to create the Quebec region; they had a long list of reasons to create it. So they created it.

In 1996, they came up with the new Maritimes region that now would be supervising the gulf region. For us, it was like after 1981. All the meetings were held in Halifax. The senior officials were all anglophones. In the 1960s, before the Official Languages Act, everybody... Anyway, we had problems with that.

In any case...

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: In 1996...

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: In 1996, not only was the gulf region reduced to being a subsidiary of the Maritimes region, but the western shore of Nova Scotia wasn't part of the gulf region anymore: now it became part of the Newfoundland region.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Fine. Another new region.

[English]

The Chair: We have to move on, Madam Tremblay. One last question to sum up.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: So that's where we're at, Ms. Tremblay, in terms of structure.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Saint-Cyr, thank you for coming today. How many individual fishermen are in your association?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: Over the 34 years?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Right now.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: At the present time, it varies from 400 to 600.

In 1996 we also did our own restructuring. Instead of having one association we are now a federation of four associations. We have a crabbers association, the members of which are boat operators, licence-holders. We have a shrimpers association. There are two in the northeast. All the midshore used to be part of the same organization, but that would be too long to get into.

We have some shrimpers who have their own association, part of the federation. We have a fleet of seiners, only five of them now, and actually only two of them now are still independently owned; five others have been sold to companies. If you want to know why, it's going to be a pleasure to expose that.

We have a deckhand association, the Association des membres d'équipage du nord-est du N.B. They are the largest group in terms of numbers because they are the people who work on the boats. They have their own association but are represented on the board of directors of the federation.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: As my last question for you, sir, we hear a lot about the precautionary principle and how management practices should be using the precautionary principle with obviously the resource in mind. Does your association believe that the DFO is doing a good job in regard to using the precautionary principle when it comes to management of the resource?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: That's a pretty broad question.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: It's a yes or no question: are they doing a good job, yes; if they're not, no, and why?

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: I would say that in the crab, up to now, they have. In shrimp, they have. I'm not too impressed with not so much the science aspect but with the management of the herring. And I'm not too impressed with the management of the cod stocks right now. Would that answer your question?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Yes.

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: Okay.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Stoffer.

That's it. All in, all done.

Madam Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: During his presentation, Mr. Saint-Cyr mentioned a document. Do we have that document? I went through my stuff quickly but—

Mr. Jean Saint-Cyr: It's in the document signed by Dr. Chadwick. Unfortunately—

• 1435

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Excellent.

[English]

The Chair: Yes, Madam Tremblay, we know of that document. It was in the first presentation.

Thank you very much, Mr. Saint-Cyr.

With that, we'll adjourn the meeting and catch the bus and be on to Prince Edward Island.

The meeting is adjourned.