[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, October 19, 1995
.0911 
[English]
The Chairman: We are not doing Bill C-98 today; we are doing something different. We are back on the subject of the future fisheries, something that has seized this committee and indeed anybody who has had anything to do with the fisheries for the last numbers of years.
One of the questions that has been raised repeatedly in the past is, what is the vision that the department and the government has for the future fishery, specifically as it relates to TAGS?
Some members of this committee were concerned back in April that the TAGS program was constructed with a certain vision in mind - although it was never quite explained, other than that the fishery would have to have a 50% reduction in harvesting and processing capacity - and that the program TAGS was addressing a scenario that no longer seemed to be the case.
Mr. Laubstein was here on that particular day, and I am sure he remembers that day well.
The concern we had was that the department did not seem to be able to articulate a vision, if indeed they had one or if they could articulate it they were not prepared at that point to share it with us.
So we have gone on through the last numbers of months watching various inputs with respect to the health of the Atlantic fishery change, and quite frankly, most members of this committee have been at a loss to explain to our constituents and to the fishermen and interests in the fishing industry what exactly the government is doing. We know by way of program, but we do not know by way of vision.
After we requested that the deputy minister and some of his staff show up here so that we could better discuss this, I believe there were some announcements made by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans with respect to the future fisheries.
Do any of the witnesses at the back have a copy of transcript of the April 25 hearing? We will get that photocopied. Some questions may come out of the transcript of that hearing.
That being said and done, I will now turn it over to the deputy minister, Mr. Bill Rowat. Welcome to the committee. I know everybody at the table, but perhaps you could start off by going around the table and allowing everybody to introduce themselves and talk about their area of expertise, and then we will allow you to give the presentation.
Mr. Bill Rowat (Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): I think most of the people around the table are known to you: Cheryl Fraser, acting assistant deputy minister for policy in the department; Karl Laubstein, the director general for industry renewal; and Jim Beckett, who has been to probably thousands of these committees over a 30-year period.
.0915
Representing science this morning are: Jacques Robichaud, director general of resource management; Don Cole, director of Pacific fisheries; Mike Turner, who I think you have seen recently on the Oceans Act, the deputy commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard; and Don Dickson, the department's finance director general and departmental comptroller.
So we are represented in force today. Theoretically, we should be able to respond to most of your questions.
Mr. Chairman, I thought I would basically run through a brief text of highlights. I have given your clerk copies of the speech that the minister gave to the St. John's Board of Trade last Wednesday, which was on the subject of industry renewal and the fishery of the future and talked about a number of the announcements that were being made that day.
I will not try to scoop him or redo his speech, but I would like to go through it, roughly in point form, and hit on some of the highlights. I will try to do that in fifteen minutes.
The first point I would like to make is on what I will not be covering today. Our discussion today, as I understand it, is not to cover the whole of the department. It does not cover oceans; it does not cover our long-term sustainable development strategy in total; it does not cover the science sector in detail; it does not cover the Canadian Coast Guard; and it does not cover the issues in the industry services - small craft harbours, and such. We are quite willing to respond to those as best we can today, but we are focusing essentially on the fishery of the future and those kinds of elements.
To lay a bit of context in going through this presentation quickly, the department currently has a number of initiatives under way to restructure the department and to achieve renewal of the fishery sector. These include amendments to the Fisheries Act. They include access fees, cost recovery in some cases, a licensing policy review, Pacific round table, harvesting adjustment boards, administrative sanction boards, professionalization, and a refocus of departmental programs in these areas on core activities. In advancing all of these reforms, we have to present them in a broader context and we understand that. That is what we want to do for you today.
In our reform strategy, we are pursuing two quite independent, but complementary, objectives. First, we are working to achieve a restructuring of the fishing sector to advance our vision of the fishery of the future. Secondly, we have to reform the department's program of fisheries management to achieve significant savings while meeting our core mandate.
I have a few comments on industry renewal and the fishery of the future. We have done a lot of studies over recent years, and they have all identified fundamental structural problems in both the Atlantic and the Pacific fisheries.
There is excessive dependence on the fishery, chronic overcapacity in processing and harvesting, and an unsustainable pressure on most resources. These features have resulted in low and unstable incomes, marginal profitability, increased access requests and conflicts, socio-economic considerations taking precedence over conservation priorities, cyclical resource declines, high cost for management, income supplementation schemes and requests, dissipation of wealth and wasteful competition, and industry dependence on government to solve its problems overall.
The fishery of the future, as we see it, must be redesigned to overcome all of those kinds of shortcomings, or at least address them in some way and try to avoid them in the future.
There are many competing concepts of what the fishery of the future should look like, but everybody agrees to a certain number of basic objectives.
First, it must be environmentally sustainable, and this is something that the minister has been emphasizing - some would say like a broken record - over the last year. But you ca not say it too often, and you ca not address it too often. Essentially our management systems and harvesting practices have to provide for long-term conservation of the resource.
Secondly, it has to be a resilient industry. It has to provide adequate levels of income for the participants in the fishery.
Thirdly, it must be self-reliant, competitive, and viable without subsidy.
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The fishery of the future will provide good incomes to a small core group of fishers rather than being, as it has in the past, an employer of last resort. It will serve as economic mainstay for Atlantic Canada and its fishing communities, building on the wealth of the fishery resource, which has sustained the region for generations so far. It has to be built back to that. Pride and renewed independence will be restored to those who derive their livelihood from the sea.
What does this mean for the industry and how are we going to get there? A fishery will have the following characteristics:
- one, it will be smaller;
- two, harvesting capacity will be matched with the capacity of the resource;
- three, we will be moving to multi-licensed enterprises as a policy;
- four, there will be provision for inshore, midshore and offshore components. I would like to comment on that one. The minister made it clear in his speech that when the groundfish fishery reopens, first priority would be to the inshore. Not everyone agrees with that, but that was his stated policy.
- five, the fishery is responsive to market imperatives;
- six, it will be made of professional fishermen;
- seven, management systems will be developed jointly with fishermen;
- eight, there will be incentives to conserve and a disincentive to cheat.
All fleet sectors will have a place in the fishery but professionalization will ensure that a new ethic is achieved. Responsible fishing has to be adopted and practised throughout the whole east coast and west coast fisheries.
To achieve this vision of the fishery of the future requires an integrated array of policies and management strategies. In essence, there are five key strategies, and I will run through them one by one:
- first, we have to assert the priority of conservation;
- second, we have to foster the balance between the resource and capacity;
- third, we have to reform the resource access process;
- fourth, we have to promote industry viability;
- fifth, we have to manage through industry and government partnerships.
Let us go back to number one, to assert the priority of conservation. It has to be science-based; it has to be a precautionary approach. You will see that running through the minister's speeches and actions and the departmental actions over the last 12 to 24 months. It has to be built on responsible fishing practices and training programs. It has to have an effective enforcement and compliance regime. You will see some of these things coming up in the new Fisheries Act.
There has to be a removal of privilege to fish as a deterrent. In other words, if you break the law, you lose the privilege to fish or some portion of your privilege to fish. Again, you will see that in the new Fisheries Act coming up. There will be greater industry self-monitoring to try to achieve agreed performance standards. That is number one on the conservation element.
Number two, as I said, was matching the resource and capacity in the industry. Mr. Chairman, as you had mentioned earlier, the goal in groundfish and throughout the fishery is to achieve a major reduction in capacity. It is hard to put numbers on it. We use this number 50% reduction in Atlantic groundfish.
People ask if it is a reduction in licences, in people, in volumetric measure of boats and so on. It is hard to say exactly. We can give you three different answers based on those three different measures alone. The fact is, no matter how you measure it, there has to be a major reduction in capacity.
First, we will be tackling capacity reduction through licence retirement and early retirement through the harvesting adjustment boards. The minister made certain announcements on that last week. We have a series of specific round tables under way this fall in the Pacific region. Again, the focus there will be capacity reduction and new management approaches to salmon and the other species.
We are conducting the licensing policy review to reduce capacity, improve viability and prevent future growth of overcapitalization and overparticipation in the fishery. We are adopting a number of management reforms to promote balance between capacity and the resource.
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Where ITQs are appropriate, that is the way we would like to move with the industry. We will move in certain cases in the west to area licensing. We are looking at a number of measures with the industry. So that is number two, matching resource and capacity.
Number three is redefining resource access. As I mentioned earlier, we must in all cases identify what the core fishery is. We have to identify what constitutes the core enterprises in the fishery. In terms of resource access, again, we need to identify professional full-time fishermen with registration and certification.
Access fees, licensing fees - I think we will move to the term ``licensing fees'' instead of ``access fees''. We had a blunt discussion with the minister on that the other day.
The Chairman: That is a good idea.
Mr. Rowat: He tells me you people also feel we are confusing the hell out of everybody.
Licensing fees should reflect the opportunity to fish and defray management costs. Undoubtedly, we will come back and have a discussion on that.
Fourth, industry viability - what does that mean? It means a reduced number of participants where it is required, in not all cases, across the Atlantic or the Pacific. As I mentioned earlier, it means multi-licensed inshore enterprises. So in years where you lose on the swings, you gain on the slides.
It will require a revised UI system so that disincentives are not built in. People do not fish for UI. UI is a supplement to a core group of professional fishermen. It will require an integrated registration and reporting system. This is a major initiative. Cheryl can describe it if some of you have questions on it.
Essentially, this registration reporting system means we will all be using the same database instead of the current system, where many different departments are using different sources of information. It will require other major reforms to improve competitiveness.
Fifth is industry-government partnership, which I mentioned. What does this mean? We will have partnership agreements that allow for greater industry decision-making. It will allow for further cooperative activities, as we have had on sentinel fisheries in the science area for the last few years. These will have to be documented in our new Fisheries Act. We will have a number of amendments in that area to bring forward to you when we table that bill. It will mean far better integrated management plans worked out with the industry.
That, in a nutshell and far too cryptic a form, is essentially what we see and what is driving a number of the major initiatives in the department. We can come back to your specific questions.
Married up with that is departmental reform. As you are aware, the department is currently facing significant budget reductions. It will require a major change to the way the department does business and a major change in its programs. Departmental budgets are declining and will decline for the foreseeable future. We are not unrealistic about what the future holds.
It is apparent that reductions will continue and more radical changes will be required in the way we do business. There will be no time where we can wipe our foreheads and say it is done. It is part of our continuing future.
Reform is required for all our programs. It will be focused again on the core mandate of conservation and sustainable utilization. It will promote industry self-reliance and commercial viability and it will have as a precept operation at a minimal cost to the taxpayer.
Reform of the departmental program requires implementation of the following complementary strategies: one, elimination of low priorities and expenditures; two, increased licensing fees and cost-recovery; three, government-industry partnerships; four, promotion of greater industry viability; and five, legislative reform, which is an area where we will be having more discussions with you as we bring forward our various legislative proposals.
I could describe each one of those in more detail, Mr. Chairman. But in the spirit of saving time for questioning, I will stop there rather than describe those. So with that brief outline, and I am sure many of you have read the minister's speech from last week, we are prepared to answer your questions today on any element of that or in fact anything else we can do for you. Thank you.
.0930
The Chairman: We spent some time in the regions back in June, and we talked about the SEC criteria, which had fallen out of TAGS, and it caused quite a stir. Any talk of having defined core criteria - who is in and who is out - led to quite a bit of angst among some of the fishermen, particularly in Atlantic Canada.
I felt pretty strongly that at least the whole idea of defining a core fishery and defining who is a fisherman within the various fisheries had to be debated. It was a debate that had to take place, because until you get that debate done and you decide on what is the shape of your future fishery, who is in and who is out and what are the criteria, anything else you do is rather a scatter-gun approach to management.
So I want to ask you, I guess, two things. First of all, are SEC criteria for TAGS, which were floated as an idea for defining the core fisheries, still alive?
Secondly, you talk about professionalization. I still do not know what the heck that means. I was thrust into a meeting at Grand Manan Island and was told you should talk about professionalization, and I was not sure what I was going to speak about until after I heard some of the union guys from Newfoundland who were over trying to sell professionalization, and they got out of there with just their skin and that was about it. The fishermen at Grand Manan did not want to hear about the Newfoundland bona fide process and professionalization, because they felt they were all professionals and they did not need anybody else to come in and tell them or to define it for them.
How the heck do you go about a process of defining a professional full-time fisherman? Whose job is it, and how do you think that comes about? I do not know how you do it, Bill. How does that get done? Who defines it? Is it local groups, is it -
Mr. Rowat: Let me just deal with your two questions. Number one is on the SEC criteria. Back in May, when we were still working on the fishery of the future and the vision for fishery of the future, we defined then that we would move into a series of consultations over the summer months. One of those series of consultations was on licensing. We had numerous consultations right throughout the Atlantic with almost every group conceivable, and there was a lot of hot debate, as you may recall, I think certainly in southwest Nova Scotia, parts of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, and throughout the Gulf.
I think it is fair to say that people felt the SEC criteria that had been used should not be the criteria that defined the fishery of the future, and yet throughout, the majority, if not all, felt that you had to have some criteria that could define a core fishery. So it was heartening to find that fishermen themselves were saying we cannot have a fishery this big; it is got to be this big, and we have got to find criteria that will somehow define who those people are.
Generally speaking, they agreed that it would be people who were, however you define it, fishermen who had been long-standing in the fishery, who had been practising the fishery seriously for some years, who drew a majority of their income from the fishery, and there were a number of other criteria - for example, that they had certain key licences that made up their enterprise.
With those kinds of criteria, you then get into the hard part, which is what does it actually mean? What are the key licences? You have a discussion amongst different fishermen as to what the key licences are. You have a discussion as to what drawing the majority of your income out of the fishery means, and you have other discussions on what constitutes a bona fide fisherman.
What we found throughout those discussions was that there was a strong feeling that there were at least four separate zones throughout the Atlantic. One sock does not fit all, so we are proceeding, after going through that multitude of discussions, with drafting what we think are criteria that will apply to four areas: Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, southern Gulf, and Quebec. I think I have got those correct. Essentially, the fishermen in those areas felt that those were definable zones that would have quite separate and distinct criteria from each other.
.0935
The Chairman: Would South West Nova have the same criteria as Cape Breton?
Mr. Rowat: Conceivably, but hold on, this is where the fun will start. Now we are going into a round of consultations on what the numbers are. This is where further discussions and refinements will have to take place, because no matter what the parameters are of the zone you define, you will find fundamentally different views.
We are heading into a process of discussion and refinement. We will be going through a set of consultations over the next month or so, again to lay out as a starting point what we view to be some of the criteria that might be applied.
The Chairman: Bill, can I just stop you there. One of the problems we have as a committee is that many times members of Parliament do not have access to documents that are circulated widely when a consultation is done. It is kind of maddening when you meet with a fishermen from Chezzetcook, who talks to you as chairman of the fisheries and oceans committee or as an MP and you have no idea what he is talking about. You go back to the department, which tells you that the documents are secret, yet everybody who has ever fished seems to have a photocopy of them - everyone except us.
If you are consulting with hundreds of people, it is not a private document.
Mr. Rowat: No, absolutely.
The Chairman: Could we have whatever documents would be of -
Mr. Rowat: You should have them just as soon as we can produce them.
The Chairman: All right.
Mr. Rowat: I do not know what the deadlines are, but certainly over the next couple of weeks - We will get them to you as soon as possible. That is a good point.
With respect to your second question on professionalization, if you go throughout the Atlantic and ask what a professional fisherman is, in some cases you can be carried out on their shoulders and in other cases you can be drummed out. You will be lucky to get out with your life, as you said, in certain sectors.
Again, I do not think I am wrong in saying that throughout the Atlantic there is the feeling that there is such a thing as a professional fisherman. Some groups think they are there now.
In other areas and specifically in Newfoundland, I think there is a general feeling a lot can be done to improve the overall training of fishermen and set in place professional standards.
It would be presumptuous of me to lay out what the department thinks a professional fisherman is at this point. We have got a lot more work to do, and it will not be our call in the final analysis. This is something that will have to be worked out with fishermen's organizations throughout the Atlantic. It will have to be worked out with provinces, too, because the whole area of professionalism and training is certainly a shared jurisdiction.
The truthful answer is that we have not got an answer and we will not have one until we go through a lot more discussion with fishermen's groups.
Mr. Scott (Skeena): I have got a bunch of questions, but I will try to keep it brief.
Going to the retirement of fishing licences under TAGS, first of all we understand that the minister has made an announcement that money set aside for licence retirement is now going to be held back because TAGS is running a deficit. Could you give the committee an idea of how much money is being reallocated from the licence retirement or licence buy-back?
Mr. Rowat: I will rely on some of my colleagues to give you the rough numbers.
The reallocation that was announced last week by the minister pertained to this fiscal year. Essentially that announcement was to indicate, after discussions with various fishermen's groups, that it was to bring the books into balance for this year. If that was the basis of your question, that is what the announcement was all about.
Overall there will still be a significant amount of money available for the buy-back of licences. The announcement of last week indicated that roughly $30 million was made available to buy back something in the order of 250 licences as a round one in the licence buy-back program.
.0940
As the minister indicated, there will be a round two. At this point we have yet to define how much money would be available for round two or what the target number of licences would be to try to purchase in a round two.
What we are hoping for is that given the prices we have paid or will be paying for round one - . I think those are relatively modest given the value of the fishing enterprises that are being bought out, and we hope that will set the tone for future rounds. That is why we proceeded in a step-like fashion.
Overall, we have a lot of homework to do still to see over the five-year period of TAGS how the books will balance. At this point, I think when the last testimony was made to the committee, the overall TAGS program was out of balance something like $300 million, or slightly more than that.
Over the five-year period, to stay within the $1.9 billion budget, it meant that the funds available for the income component of it would have to come from a number of other sources: the buy-back, the green programming, the core training programs.
Karl, I am not sure whether at this point we can actually define over the five-year period what would be required to come from the licence buy-back to have the overall program balance. Have you any comments?
Mr. Karl Laubstein (Director General, Industry Renewal, Policy, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): No, the minister announced earlier, I think at the beginning of August when both Ministers Axworthy and Tobin announced the conclusions of the review, that they would have to come back in the fall to deal with the remaining three and a half years of the program. That, I think, will be sometime around the end of November.
Mr. Rowat: I had like to add one comment. There will never be a day when we can give you an absolute answer as to how the books will balance on this program, because the numbers and the people on the program will continue to change throughout the life of the program.
If, for instance, some of the economic opportunities in Newfoundland pay off very quickly, you could find a large number of people leaving the program. That then would bring the cost of the program very much down. It will depend again very much on how many licences we buy out and when we buy them out.
So the numbers will tend to shift, and optimistically, the numbers will shift down and the books will balance towards the end of the program. Essentially, we as government and government officials have to keep options open until the very end on how the books might be balanced. It is not unlike managing a business where you do not have all of the factors available to you, or you have changing circumstances throughout the life of the program.
Mr. Scott: Okay, but the bottom line is that when the program was announced there was $300 million earmarked for capacity reduction. Am I correct in that? My understanding is that is the way the program was designed.
Mr. Rowat: I think you are correct. It was in the order of $275 million to $300 million.
Mr. Scott: Right. Now the information that we have is that the TAGS program right now is running a $105 million deficit in this fiscal year, 1995. Is that correct?
Mr. Rowat: I think that is correct.
Mr. Laubstein: That is the last forecast from HRD.
Mr. Scott: Right. Now you are allocating money away from capacity reduction to cover that shortfall, at least some funds.
That was announced by the minister. He did not put a number on it, but he said the way they were going to make up the shortfall was that they have taken money away from retraining and from capacity reduction and put it over on the income support side.
Mr. Rowat: You are missing one key point here. Yes, we have earmarked some of the funds out of the licence buy-back program to cover it off for this year.
If in future years we find that in fact the program can be covered out of the original allotment for the income part of the program, then we can make up later for the licence buy-back component. That is what I am telling you.
Mr. Scott: What happens if it goes south on you? What happens if you do not get that opportunity?
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Mr. Rowat: We would have to permanently cut into the license buy-back program or into other elements of the program. There are about four or five different factors that could be brought to bear on a deficit problem in that $1.9 billion, including the overheads for the program, the buy-back, and so on.
Mr. Scott: Right. But the buy-back is one of the significant allocations of funding that should be tapped into.
Mr. Rowat: That is true.
Mr. Scott: I am coming back to your vision as you articulated it - or as the minister articulated it - which is the 50% reduction, although you do not really know what the 50% reduction means. It may mean a 50% reduction of licences. It may mean a 50% reduction of boats or of people. You really do not know what it means. On the other hand, it is going to be awfully difficult to meet that vision if the money allocated to do that or to assist in doing that has been taken away because the income support side of TAGS has a big deficit.
Mr. Rowat: I will return to a couple of points I made in my opening statement. Remember that reductions in capacity, no matter how you define them, can be made through a number of different avenues. Part of the program has always included the buy-back program and fundamental licensing reforms too. We will simply have to use the licensing reforms for what we do not get through the buy-back program.
In terms of licensing, recall that we are talking about the development of criteria to create a core fishery. And to the extent that you create your criteria and you end up with a core fishery so big - It depends on how stringently we and the industry set the criteria for creating the core. You can create a core of a certain size if you have loose criteria. You can create a core fishery of another size if you have tighter criteria, and you could have a very small fishery if you create very tight criteria. That is the challenge we have to bridge over the next two months with the fishing industry.
We do not have all the money we would like in terms of buy-out capacity, so it makes the issue of setting the criteria much more difficult.
Mr. Scott: Can you tell me how much of the $300 million allotment was taken out of licence retirements in this fiscal year in order to meet the deficit?
Mr. Rowat: Karl, do you have an estimate?
Mr. Laubstein: About $15 million has been taken out and reallocated permanently, but we are also using the other components to cash manage it. For certain things there is a time lag and there will be deferrals, because we have four components: income support, labour adjustment, industry renewal, and economic development. The only component that has always had a deficit so far is income support, because there are more people than expected. That has to be taken out of the other three. Sometimes for a particular act of programming there was a time lag so certain funds that otherwise might have lapsed were used. Or when cash management is done, funds are temporarily transferred from one component to meet the budget requirement of a given year, but we still come back. So far, it is $15 million.
Mr. Rowat: Mr. Chairman, could I have two seconds?
Mr. Scott, maybe he will not count it against your time.
The Chairman: I am not even watching his time because his questions are so good. I think they are pretty important.
Mr. Rowat: They get to the essence of it. I do not think the concept of how programs are managed has been clear all along. There is the issue of cash management that Karl raised. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of managing multi-year programs. There is no case you can forecast. We are no better at forecasting than industry is at forecasting five years out. There are always a number of variables that will tend to drive your program in any particular direction.
Like industry or businessmen, we try to narrow the band as we move through a multi-year program, which is a five-year program in this case. And, like businessmen, we also try to cash manage where we run into a problem early in the program, so that we do not say we are making a permanent reallocation. We try to keep our options open for later down the line when circumstances may change.
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For instance, if I run into a major problem in the department in any year, I can cash manage my way out of that problem by deferring certain other elements. I could ask Mike to defer some of his capital planning in the coast guard so that I would have extra cash to use this year for a certain problem. I can pay Mike back next year and he can do his mid-life refit on a vessel next year.
In all of these multi-year and multi-component programs there is a great deal of shifting of funds among different components of the program. We are keeping our options open and balancing it out at the end.
Mr. Scott: If I were a suspicious person, I would think the money that is allocated for licence buy-back is being reduced. We do not know to what extent. You are telling me that the whole five-year program will have to run its course before you will know exactly how much funding is available, or maybe you will have to be four years into the program before you will know for sure how much funding is going to be available for that component.
You have a vision for reducing capacity. I think almost everyone agrees that capacity reduction is necessary. You are also talking about increasing what you previously called ``access fees'' and now you are going to term ``licences'' or ``licence fees''. If I were a suspicious person by nature, I would think that in fact you are going to use the licence fees as a means of getting people out of the industry.
Mr. Rowat: I think if you look at the licence fee structure - and I would challenge you to do this - the licence fees that would be imposed are aimed at those who are earning a good livelihood from the fishery. I forecast that however we choose our criteria to define the core fishery, the licence fees we are suggesting and the way they are structured will be aimed largely at the group that will be in that core fishery and not at the people who will be in that band of non-core fishers.
The way they are structured now imposes higher fees for those who are earning a very good livelihood from the fishery. Those will be the very fishermen who will stay in the fishery. Believe me, I do not think that a crab fisherman in the Gulf earning $500,000 will be discouraged and quit the fishery because we are charging him or her 3% to 5% of the fishery. That is the way the licence fees are structured.
The Chairman: I am going to go to Mr. Wells.
Mr. Wells (South Shore): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Down in our area - and if I refer to area, I am going to refer to Mr. Verran's area as well, because our areas are -
Mr. Verran (South West Nova): South West Nova and South Shore.
Mr. Wells: Yes, I am from the South Shore. We have had our own round tables with our own fishing organizations because they are very frustrated with the consultation process. I think you have probably heard that.
They, and we, are interested in knowing what the department's five-year management plan is. What is your long-term vision as a department? You have been examining this for quite a while. How do you perceive the inshore and the offshore and the midshore? What mix do you see? How do you see the competitive fishery continuing and what is your opinion on whether or not the ITQ will become part of the inshore fishery in particular?
What is your vision of the mix between fixed gear and mobile gear?
Perhaps more importantly, a question that is been asked frequently is where the handliners fit in. I am sure you have been following the state of the handline fishery down our way for the last year. If what is happening continues they are going to be forced out, because they are basically being given insufficient fish to make a living.
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Again, I think the question Mr. Scott asked as far as licensing fees is concerned is a legitimate question simply because this is what the fishermen are saying. There are different methods being used in order to eliminate them. If there is going to be a downsizing, it should be done through the front door, not through the back door. If they are going to be taken out of the fishery, let them be taken out with dignity. Don't push them out.
The Chairman: Through bankruptcy.
Mr. Wells: That is right, and whether or not you realize it up here, that is the concern on the wharves down our way. There is a real suspicion of what you are doing and why you are doing it.
I think you need to put on the record what your five-year or ten-year vision of all these issues is - and when I say ``you'', I mean you as a department, because I am sure you have one. You must have a focus of what you plan to see at the end of the day. I have not seen what is going to come out at the other end, or what your vision of what comes out at the other end is.
Maybe if we can leave it at that and I can expand on it as you - .
Mr. Rowat: The first point I would like to make is that I wish we were so Machiavellian that we could actually have a plot. It is hard to get a bureaucracy, particularly a large bureaucracy, to function in an efficient way in order that we could do the things that people worry we are doing.
With respect to the vision for the future, I will just go back to a few comments I made during my opening comments. Our vision is also the industry's vision. We are attempting, as best as we can and on both coasts - on the west coast through the series of round tables; and on the east coast, where we had a round table and a large number of consultations on very many issues - to work with all components of the industry to develop a vision of the future for the industry.
All of you, particularly in South West Nova and South Shore - that is a tough part of the country in terms of trying to marry up certain kinds of issues - but in other parts of the country as well, have a fundamentally different philosophy of how a fishery should be managed. If you go to Newfoundland and ask how a fishery should be managed, you will get quite a different view than you get in South West Nova. So having the department working with the industry to develop a joint vision is almost an impossible task.
What I pointed out earlier was that with all of the consultations we have had over recent months and over the past years, we have what I think is universal agreement that there will be an inshore fishery and that there will be an offshore fishery.
The inshore fishery, as the minister has said, particularly for groundfish, will have a preference when the industry reopens. Both we and the industry agree - note this, because this is where we are going - that we are going to a much smaller fishery. I have said earlier that we do not know exactly what the number is, but we have said this number will be at a point where capacity matches the resource available. That means, by definition, a much smaller fishery on the east coast, and probably on the west coast as well.
You questioned whether or not there will be an inshore, midshore, offshore fishery. Yes, there will be all three as defined now under 65, 65 to 100, and over 100 for the three categories. The question becomes one of how much will be allocated to midshore or offshore. This fact I do not know. I know one thing for certain: every province and every sector will argue that at some point in the future, as we reopen fisheries, they should be reinstated at exactly the same level where they were when we closed.
I know that if the offshore had 20% of northern cod, that will be their starting bid when they are allowed back in. The minister has already said they are going to be last in line, so I suspect their 20% will be something we will be dealing with about ten years or more down the road, because the inshore is going to come in first.
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We have said the industry should be responsive to market imperatives. That is something the industry has brought forward to us. It is not something we have dwelled on. In fact, my own personal view on some of this is that they are businessmen and should be focusing on that issue themselves. Their profitability is secondary to the department. What we are worried about is the resource and getting the right number of vessels for the resource available.
Finally, we talked about the professionalization of fishermen. Again, this was something the industry brought forward and emphasized to us.
So our vision is the industry vision, to the extent that you can ever get consensus amongst a group. It will involve inshore, midshore and offshore, but I do not know the numbers as of yet.
You then talked about ITQs. Will we move to ITQs? The answer to that can never be categorical. I cannot say we will introduce ITQs across the Atlantic because I do not think ITQs are suitable for all fisheries in the Atlantic. There are just too many species and too many different circumstances to say that ITQs would fit them all.
One thing that is for certain, I think, is that a number of fishing groups themselves have had the opportunity to watch ITQs in practice over a period of years. I have talked about partnerships in the past. Many groups are very interested in the concept, so it is important that the government and my department work with those groups that are interested in introducing these kinds of concepts in order to put them in place.
I am sure you are aware of the benefits that come from ITQs and I am sure that you are aware of the ``disbenefits'' or problems of ITQs. We will introduce them where they make sense and where fishermen's groups will work with us to introduce them. We will try to make them work and overcome the problems with them. In your area specifically, there are examples of where they work reasonably well and there are examples of where they have been abused. I do not know that I can give you a much better answer than that.
You talked about handlining. I am not sure I am knowledgeable enough on that. My ADMs, DGs and directors tell me to do my own job rather than trying to do theirs when I start to ask serious questions in these areas.
With regard to licensing fees, you expressed a concern that a number of people, particularly those from your area, express. It is part of a grander scheme aimed at getting the small guy out of the fishery. I think if you look at the way the fees are structured, particularly at some of the decisions taken already by the minister to stay with the $30 for those people who are not drawing a large income from the fishery, as well as a number of the other measures, I think you will find the exact opposite of what you are arguing. I think you will find it is not aimed at overloading the small fisherman, but that is not to say there will not be increased costs for those fishermen.
If they hold a certain number of licences and they pay $30 a licence, when you top them all up they have got a fairly significant bill. If they happen to be drawing a good income from any one of those licences, that licence may in fact cost them more than it has been costing them in the past.
So undoubtedly each fisherman's portfolio of licences will cost them more. You have to look at each individual case to say whether it is going to cost them this much more, double or triple, or whatever. But it is part of the overall policy that you should be paying according to the kind of income and livelihood you extract from the fishery. That is what we have tried to do in structuring the fee structure.
Mr. Wells: Is someone else going to answer the question on handlining, then?
Mr. Jacques Robichaud (Director General, Resource Management, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): Mr. Chairman, on the handlining issue, handliners were not even licensed until a few years ago. However, what happened is that in the principle of getting data to ensure proper conservation, two regions - the Quebec region and the Scotia-Fundy region - specifically undertook licensing handlines for a simple reason. With handlining, you can have one person who goes in a boat to handline for a few fish. On the other hand, it can become a pretty powerful machine when things such as automatic jiggers and so on are put on, and you can harvest a large amount of fish. It is imperative to monitor this and have a proper pulse on the quantity landed.
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As for establishing criteria, Mr. Rowat indicated what some of the basic criteria are based on. As was also mentioned earlier, SEC is not a good criterion, but when SEC and the bona fide principle were developed in the southern Gulf, they did base themselves on some basic thrusts that are also present in SEC - i.e., first, the head of an enterprise owning the enterprise's boat and its operations; second, having key licences; third, having a dependency; and fourth, having an attachment. Those, in one way or another, come out. Someone who has bought a handline operation, for example, a boat that can have three or four people on board and -
[Inaudible - Editor] -
could be quite an investment, so it is a factor that we will have to count in there, although people did not specify what they are.
When you define those factors - whether it is a handline or whether a handline is considered a key licence, which will have to be so decided - there is also the factor that a person may have derived a large income out of it. This could then be a criterion.
Mr. Wells: What do you mean when you say ``large''?
Mr. Robichaud: It could be a level of income. For example, some people have easily landed 2,000 pounds of fish on some trips. That could provide a fairly large income depending on whatever the market value is over the course of a year.
Mr. Wells: I want you to quantify that by what you would consider to be a large income.
Mr. Robichaud: Oh, incomes can vary. A large income in SEC in Newfoundland, for example, is $3,000. In consultation with other areas such as the Gaspé, people felt $3,000 as a minimum was too low.
Mrs. Payne (St. John's West): I am sorry. That is 3,000 -
Mr. Robichaud: From groundfish.
Mrs. Payne: Dollars?
Mr. Robichaud: That is the dollar minimum in SEC criteria.
Mrs. Payne: Is that $3,000 per year?
Mr. Robichaud: They had to have an average landing of $3,000. That is what was used then. In consultation, even in areas of Newfoundland, people felt it was too low to establish a core. It should be higher. If you go to areas in Labrador, it may be even higher. In the North Shore area of Quebec, it could be too low. In the Gaspé, people felt it was too low.
If you go down in South West Nova, some people talk about the specialized fleet that pursues one fishery. They are not necessarily multi-species, so for a specialized fleet the value may be maybe $20,000.
So they vary, and no pulse has been given from industry on what the level should be. None have come forward to identify any levels - not one. All we have got as feedback, as mentioned by Mr. Rowat, is that the group should be smaller. Some of those enumerated four principles - the key licence, attachment, dependency, having invested in it even if it was only a few years ago - have all come out. But all they said by comparison is that SEC is no good. Some said the minimum is too low or too high, and that is where we are.
Mr. Wells: With all due respect, sir, during our round table they gave us a clear definition of what they feel are proper criteria. So I find it very interesting when I hear that they have not given you clear criteria.
Mr. Rowat: I would like to make one comment on that.
In some cases you will get pockets of people who will give you clear criteria and they are the criteria that will fit them exactly. But it is a question of getting the criteria in a larger grouping in order that you can achieve your policy objectives of whittling down the numbers that we are talking about.
For instance, we met the other day with the harvesters council and the minister put the question to them very clearly: you will give us the broad four categories that Jacques has spoken about, but will you start to put numbers on them as a whole? That is where you end up in a very interesting situation, because that is where the EFF, for instance, is made up of a number of bodies and a number of different geographic areas. They will not make the call because they have got a number of different groups who all, on their own, have a view of what constitutes a bona fide fisherman. If you add up all of those different criteria, there will be no change, because all of them consider themselves to be bona fide fishermen.
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This may sound a bit caustic, but it is not meant to be. Ultimately, the harvesters groups and the processing industry will agree to the broad principles, but in the final analysis they will not make the hard call. That is what they want the minister to do and that is ultimately, in my experience, what a fisheries minister has to do. He is the one who ultimately carries the can and everybody points their fingers his way to say they disagree with it.
Mr. Wells: Going back to the handliners - I know my time is getting short but I will come back to some of these questions - in your discussion you talk about key licences, so you do consider handline a key licence in some regions. Is that the gist of what you are saying?
Mr. Robichaud: At this time when you talk about key licences they are more likely to be for lobster, scallops, groundfish, mobile or fixed gear. As indicated, there are only two regions that took note of those who hold key licences, so to consider key licences unilaterally across the board has not been done.
I mentioned the amount of dependency people have on a licence with respect to income. If a person had made an enterprise out of it, it should be a consideration as well, and not necessarily just the fact that it is a key licence.
The Chairman: I think I know what Mr. Wells is getting at. I know it is very difficult to start drawing lines in the region and determining which criteria apply in which area, but I know the area of which he speaks down in South Shore and South West Nova. If you draw the lines to make the areas too big, you are going to disproportionately affect some people who make a living, or make a substantial portion of their living, handlining. I think they have heard it loud and clear and I have heard it loud and clear. I think they have passed it on to the minister, and I hope, as the people who are devising these plans, you have heard it loud and clear as well. When you are dealing with establishing those core criteria, the province of Nova Scotia may be too big an area, because the fishery is very diverse, particularly when you get down into the area of Mr. Wells and Mr. Verran.
Mr. Wells: If I could just try to flush out an answer again, when you got as high as $3,000 as an income, I am not sure if you were thinking that was a high income or a low income. When you were talking earlier about getting a substantial income or whatever, you did not quantify that, and I have asked you to do that. If you could, in your opinion what would be the number?
Mr. Robichaud: As I indicated, from consultations with people, we have the feeling that in Newfoundland it may be $5,000, for example, versus the $3,000. In the lower North Shore $3,000 may be enough. In Gaspé and the rest it may be $5,000. In the southern Gulf bona fides and in the specialist fleets in the area of South West Nova - shrimpers in the Gulf and groups of people like this, crab boats - it may be $20,000. Those are the kinds of ranges.
Mr. Wells: I am talking now about the smaller inshore fishery. What would you consider a reasonable sum at that level?
Mr. Robichaud: We have not had any feedback or figures on that. No one has commented on that.
Mr. Wells: As a department, you certainly must have some sense of what the people are making in that area in the fishery.
Mr. Rowat: Do you mean in South West Nova, in handlining?
Mr. Wells: Yes.
Mr. Rowat: I do not know, but we could certainly produce facts and figures. There will be facts and figures on it.
You asked Jacques what we feel constitutes a threshold number for whether people should be disqualified or put into a groundfish industry. We are not ready to answer that question.
There is a draft paper out for the Scotia-Fundy region, and I think it says that on average $25,000 overall is what a lot of people are making down there, of the key licences involved. I forget whether that is the average, the midpoint or whatever. That could be lobster, scallops, a bit of groundfish and so on.
Mr. Wells: Are you equating handline licences with lobster licences in that analysis?
Mr. Rowat: No, but I am saying you could have a portfolio of licences. Remember, the reason why there are four criteria and the reason why fishermen have emphasized not to use one criterion like income alone is that some people will be disqualified if you use one measure, and that is why we are talking about those four categories.
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Mr. Wells: I am trying to ensure that the person who may not be making a large income - and you still have not quantified what you consider to be a substantial income for fishery - but may have a capital investment is not excluded. He may be a bona fide core fisherman in all of the other listings, but may not have the income level you are speaking of, although I still do not know what it is. That is the issue I want to pursue.
Mrs. Payne: I just want to ask a follow-up question on Mr. Wells' questions.
You indicate the difficulty you are having trying to come up with the figures and incomes for various types of fisheries. I have some trouble trying to get my mind around that, because the department has all the records on the fish caught and the method by which they were caught, so why cannot you go to your data bank and get that information?
Mr. Rowat: We can do that and we can show all the numbers, but the key question, even when you have all the analysis of the numbers there, is not one of independent arithmetic. It is not an objective exercise, because when you have the average of what people are earning and you are going to use that as a criterion, even though you know how much people are earning, where do you set the level? That is the issue you will always end up in a major debate about with fishermen's groups.
For instance, let us say we went back to the union in Newfoundland and said that on average, when the fishery was open, the fishermen were earning $9,000 or $10,000 a year from groundfish and we have to reduce the number of fishermen. Let us say the department thinks anybody earning less than $3,000 by definition will be a marginal fisherman, will put in a B category, and over a period of years his or her licence will disappear. If we say as a department that $3,000 is that limit, even though the average is $10,000, the union would go out and consult with all its members and all hell would break loose. Many of their members would say they were earning under $3,000 but they were bona fide fishermen.
We cannot get a categorical answer from the unions because they do o't want to be unpopular in terms of dealing with their own numbers.
Mrs. Payne: That brings us to another problem. The unions do not represent all of the fishermen.
Mr. Rowat: Understood.
Mrs. Payne: My feeling is you should use the information you have, bearing in mind we have had a downturn in the fishery. But in my mind we should be going back probably a number of years before the moratorium came into place in order to get some kind of reasonable figure.
The unions do not even represent the majority of fishermen.
Mr. Rowat: That is a very good point. I was using that as an example. In Newfoundland the union represents a certain number of fishermen and maybe another small organization represents a certain portion, and then there are many fishermen who are just independent.
Our job is to try to consult them all in one way or another by formally consulting with the unions, holding open forums and so on. But the key question at the end of the day is that everybody has a different opinion on where that threshold is and how many people would be disqualified from the fishery. That is when they will all turn to the Minister of Fisheries and that is why you as MPs have such a problem, because you also have people who have a view on where that threshold should be set.
In the final analysis, whether you have two areas in Nova Scotia, one area in Newfoundland, one for northern Gulf, and one for southern Gulf, probably nobody will agree with the final number you choose for each of those four or five areas. You will simply never have agreement on it, and the minister, in the final analysis, will have to make the call as to what the threshold will be.
Mrs. Payne: I would like to go back to the earlier subject we were dealing with, on how the criteria are going to be set for the fishery of the future. I am not saying there is a Machiavellian kind of agenda here or anything like that, but I do worry that the amount of money available is going to dictate the criteria; in other words, if you are able to get enough money from this pot to buy back the number of licences you feel are necessary to buy back. I guess there has been no clear definition as to how many licences are going to be bought back at this point.
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Is the amount of money you can access going to set the criteria - how stringent they are going to be in terms of the number of licences you buy back? I guess the dollar value has more or less been put on them at this point because of the recent auction.
Mr. Rowat: There are two factors and possibly a third. First, as you say, the pot of money available will be a defining factor. As Mr. Scott mentioned earlier, if our pot of money shrinks drastically because we need it for income support, we will have less money to buy back licences. That is one factor.
The second factor is how the program was designed in the first place. We said that in the buy-back program we would not go out and simply offer $90,000 per licence. We said we would run an auction system instead.
When you run an auction system, you do not know how many licences you are going to get. By definition in an auction system, you go out for bids. When they come back some say they will sell for $90,000 and others say $700,000. You dicker and you come up with as many licences as you can get for the pot of funds available.
We chose to use the auction approach because that is what our consultations with fishermen indicated. Mr. Cashin in Newfoundland ran the process for us. We knew more or less how many we would get, but not exactly. We went out with our $30 million in the first round and we got 250, which I think was probably roughly in the order of -
Mr. Laubstein: Well, actually, we had always assumed - The last time I was here I said our target was up to 2,000 with an average of $120,000 per licence. That is exactly what we have in the first round.
Mr. Rowat: Yes.
Mr. Laubstein: So unless, as the deputy says, there are not any other funding constraints, it is going exactly as it was planned.
Mr. Rowat: With any luck we might find that people with whatever new dose of realism could actually be selling their licences for $5,000 less on the second round. We could purchase more licences and therefore get more capacity out of the fishery. It is conceivable that could happen. I doubt if the licence prices would go up.
Mrs. Payne: In any case we are still in a scenario whereby the amount of money and the number of licences that can be sold will have an effect on the criteria of the core fishery of the future.
Mr. Rowat: Yes, the more we can get out -
Mrs. Payne: That really concerns me. We do have the human element there, and particularly in Newfoundland. My riding is probably one of the worst affected. We now have a lot of people out of work there who are hoping they will get back in the fishery. That is the reason you have not seen large numbers of people wanting to dispose of their licences. Those who do want to are looking for a fairly high figure. In reality they do not want to leave the fishery, because there is absolutely nothing else to do.
I am not saying the fishery should be the means by which we employ people simply because it happens to be there. I do not think it should be that kind of fishery. I am in total agreement with the fact that the fishery should be one that can be sustainable, both in terms of the income derived from it and the stocks that can be sustained. But I am concerned about the way in which the department is looking at how the criteria will be set.
Mr. Rowat: We are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea on this one, because ultimately we ended up with way more people on TAGS than was originally envisioned. That happened for a whole slew of reasons.
You have seen the list of fisheries we have closed since 1992. I think it is fourteen or fifteen, if not more, so we ended up with far more people on TAGS.
Then the issue is that if so much money goes to your income component, it has to come from somewhere. If the budget is $1.9 million and cannot be exceeded, we are going to have to move some money from other components of the program. The equation does not work otherwise. That in turn will affect other measures.
You are quite right. What are the criteria going to be? If you want a smaller fishery, it depends on how stringent you make your criteria. That is exactly why these consultations are extremely difficult. It is because of the equation with the kind of resources we have and the parameters we have. These are tough decisions. Nobody really wants to make the call.
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Mrs. Payne: They are tough decisions, but I still think that if you have a vision of the fishery for the future the criteria should be set along those lines. Do not put the cart before the horse. Deal with the fishery as it has to be dealt with.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rowat: Okay.
The Chairman: I have a couple of questions before Harry's. I agree with Mrs. Payne. For two years we said as a committee we could not believe you could achieve the goals to reduce capacity that were set out in the TAGS program unless you defined up front what the core fishery was.
If you did not and you were not prepared - For two years we have been told the department was not prepared to do that and that this thing would happen as a result of the program. And we were told that as a result of the various components of the program the participation in the fishery, and therefore the capacity, would be reduced.
I remember, Mr. Rowat, having almost everybody who is now at this table at other meetings where we hammered away and walked out frustrated because the department told us this would happen as a result of the program.
I think what Mrs. Payne is expressing is almost this: damn it, we told you so two years ago and nobody listened to us. We said two years ago that is how you started it. It was the horse before the cart.
The concern now is that it appears, for whatever reason - because of downturns in the fisheries, no recovery in the fisheries, more participants than had been expected - as if it is now being fiscally driven. We now have this situation after being told for two years that you were not prepared to define a core fishery, that it would fall out of the criteria and the program, that it would reduce on its own, and that you were not going say who was in and who was out. But now you are saying it will be determined based on the program's inability for dealing with the groundfishery, on the program's inability to reduce capacity and participation.
Am I right?
Mr. Rowat: Not quite.
The Chairman: Am I close?
Mr. Rowat: Reasonably so, but let me -
The Chairman: Have you been hanging around with Doubleday a lot?
Mr. Rowat: No, I do not want to play cat and mouse on this one. Remember, all along we have said that in TAGS there is a buy-back component and a component for revising licensing policy. That is always been understood. I hope it has always been understood that the buy-back component was not nearly as significant as the licensing changes that have to come.
The Chairman: No. I think we realized that, but we asked about the licensing component for two years. You can go back to the record. For two years we have asked what the government is doing with respect to identifying the core fishery. Before you can adjust people to a point you have to define what the point is.
Mr. Rowat: Yes.
The Chairman: That is why Karl had a grilling the last time. It was on that point about where we are going to end up at the end of the day, knowing that it is a moving target. That is the difficulty.
Mr. Rowat: I think that is not a fair question in the following sense. You say you asked two years ago where you were going to end up with this. If you were looking for an answer from us two years ago in which we were saying the fishery is going to have 25,000 fishermen in it and in South West Nova and South Shore it is going to have whatever the number is - We should not have nor could we have said exactly what the fishery of the future would be in terms of numbers.
If I had come to this committee two years ago and said in South West Nova it will be 15,000 so forget your 23,000 because that is what the minister has said we are aiming for, you would have shot me for being so audacious as to actually give you a target.
Over the last two years we have gone back to the fishermen's groups on numerous occasions and tried to come up with what the definition is for each of those areas.
The way you have characterized your question is slightly unfair, because it -
The Chairman: I do not think it is unfair at all, because we go out in the communities. As for what we have said for two years, I am not going to stick on that point, but I do not think the question is unfair, Bill. For two years we asked where the process was, when are you going -
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I have one of the documents from way back. This was a grand scheme that was planned well, with very noble goals, but things change. Some of the inputs changed dramatically because there were too many people. More people applied than we had anticipated. It is a fixed budget that cannot be changed.
I remember sitting here and being told that things like skills training were going to help adjust so many people out of the fishery. Your department produced charts that showed on a year-to-year basis the number of people that they expected to take advantage of those components.
You had community development. You had older worker adjustment capacity reduction, community employment, green projects, relocation, skills training, and all those things. They were all components to arrive at a much reduced fishery, to take 50% of the capacity out of the fisheries or the groundfishery.
Most of those components, for probably very valid reasons dealing with real dollars, have been significantly altered, which was the point raised by Mrs. Payne and by Mr. Scott as well. If you take 30% or 40% of the dollars that are available as part of the plan to buy capacity out, to retire licences, and if you change that, it means that of necessity you are not going to have as many able people at the end. You are not going to retire as many people or adjust as many people if you start changing those components.
Am I correct there?
Mr. Rowat: Yes.
The Chairman: So I think where we are at is we are trying to get a handle on exactly what is driving - . I guess most of the assumptions that were in these documents are now changed. Most of the programs are changed. We do not know where the skill - .
We are trying to get a handle on where all of these people are going to be adjusted by these program components. Now that those components are changed or the funding on them has changed, is that what is driving or accelerating the requirement for the definition of a core fishery? Is that what is happening? I am not saying that is wrong, because we have always wanted a better fishery.
Mr. Rowat: No. In fact, I was going to make that point. The answer to that is yes, because all of these issues are clearly interconnected, as I think I have referred to before. To the extent that you cannot buy out capacity, then you have to ask yourself the hard question of how you are going to get it out. That can mean differences in the criteria you use. If you want to achieve a certain target of a very small fishery, everybody tells us that is absolutely necessary if we are to achieve all the goals we want.
The answer to your question is yes, there have been a lot of factors that have fundamentally changed the overall structure of the program. To the extent the money is not available to increase the level of that program, then all of the other factors associated with TAGS, including the licensing program, will have to change. There is no other way around it if you have major modifications to the program.
I said earlier that from 1992 to 1995, we went from one fishery closure to another seven or eight in 1993 and then another four or five in 1994.
The Chairman: So is it fair to say that the quicker the core criteria can be established, whatever the geographical basis of the core criteria is, the more likely it is that people will start using them? I do not see that people are using a lot of the programs that were in TAGS to adjust out.
There seem to be a hell of a lot of fishermen who are just sitting back and waiting and waiting. In your view, if those core criteria come together sooner as opposed to later, will that aid in getting some of the fishermen, particularly the groundfishermen, to start using these components that they do not seem to be using now to adjust out?
Mr. Rowat: Very much so. That is why I think the hard decisions on core criteria will have to be taken this fall or early winter at the latest. We have been at this now for the better part of 12 or 18 months, and as you are aware because you are part of the process around this table, it is a long, arduous call.
The final analysis is that if there is not complete consensus within the next few months, and there will not be, the minister will have to make the call on how many areas will be affected, how they are going to be differentiated, and in each of those areas, what the criteria are going to be that define a core fishery for your areas. I agree that the sooner the better, so that people know what their future is going to be.
The Chairman: My last question is just generally on TAGS, on the training component. When we did the post-mortem on NCARP we heard a lot of horror stories on that through HRD. It does not seem to be nearly as bad, but when we were down east we also heard from fishermen that the training is not terribly appropriate in some cases, and the requirement for active participation to have a plan in some cases, based on the individual or based on the community and the individual, just did not seem to work.
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Has there been this year, in an effort to balance the books for the current fiscal year, an agreement to reallocate some of the training dollars over to cover the deficit on the income support?
Mr. Rowat: I think that has been one of the components. I am a bit out of my bailiwick here. We should have some of our HRD colleagues with us to answer that kind of question. I think that to balance the books this year some training dollars were moved over. That was after the consultation with the industry groups, as you saw, as part of the announcement.
Mr. Laubstein: As you know, Mr. Chairman, there are five components: income support, which was originally budgeted at $900 million; labour adjustment, $550 million; industry, in the order of $300 million; economic development, $50 million; and $100 million for HRD administrative overhead. The second, third, fourth, and fifth are the areas where you have to reallocate in order to stay within the budget if you have more people.
Incidentally, the deputy talked about fourteen fisheries that are closed now. From one we have gone up to twenty-three, and another three will be added, to make it twenty-six fisheries that are closed.
What has been used so far to have this overrun on income support? Some has come from labour adjustment, training, or whatever. This is what they call ``active program''. Some has come from industry renewal, and some has come from HRD administrative overhead. It can come only from these areas if you have $1.9 billion, and it is the one component that, in a sense, drives it, because that is where the people are.
The Chairman: But, Karl, is it also fair to say that for some of those components there has not been the usage and the update on some of those problems? I am looking at green projects, where a fairly substantial amount of money was allocated but it just did not happen. The applications simply were not there to utilize the projected expenditure. This has been done after examining the actual usage of those dollars, has it?
Mr. Laubstein: You will recall, Mr. Chairman, our colleagues from HRD, the first year, particularly in active programming. If you mount a training program for $150 million, then it takes some time to get it off the ground.
Mr. Verran: I have a little ramble to make here. I probably have a question mixed in here and there that Bill or somebody else at the table could answer.
I am glad to hear you say that there are different views for different areas. One glove does not fit all. In the area I represent, which has a very viable fishery, at the mention of Cashin, that is it. They want to hear his name, but they do not want to hear anything this - what he has to say or what he has recommended - because it does not fit the area, South West Nova, that I represent. That is number one. I am glad to hear that, because until a short time ago there seemed to be a force there to try to push the Cashin report and Cashin thoughts on the fishery in our area.
We all talk about consultations and going around the province. I know that you have done that. I know the department has tried to do it, and in their own mind they have done it. But I am telling you that somewhere along the line there are people in the department who have made a very poor public relations job of it, because the general consensus - and Derek and I have talked about this on numerous occasions, because we keep getting it, time and time again - is that there is no consultation, except that they come to consult, but at the end of the meeting the consultation is our way. The recommendations, the thoughts, the views put forward by the people with whom you consult are not taken into consideration.
I am just being really realistic. I am not pointing fingers at anyone in particular. That is the consensus and that is the reality that Derek Wells and I have to face. It is a strong feeling, so something better has to be done by the department about the public relations in that area. That is very strong.
Number two I guess goes into the consultation. The thing I have is partnerships. Yes, we are in partnerships. We are going to do this together - but we are going to do it in our way, DFO's way. And the partnerships of the people who were supposed to be in partnership with it - again, their ideas and views are not adhered to.
.1040
This is the real world I am living in. Really, I do not go around my constituency in this suit. I am down in the fish plants and on the wharfs. Too often this stuff just slides off people in the department like water off a duck's back. But Jesus, if you are there it is reality; and you people just do not seem to understand the reality of what is taking place in the east coast fishery, at least in the area I am responsible for.
I am not being over-dramatic, because by Jesus, I hate to go down there to talk to the people, because it is all DFO and those things I have mentioned to you. I am not making them up. This is reality.
Handlining: we look at $3,000. We look at $5,000. Handlining is the tradition of the fishery on the east coast. Handlining is how it all started - the guys and the women who are fishing there now, their fathers who did it before them, and their grandfathers who did it before them. I am sure you know the history of it. These people started at 12, certainly at 14 to 16 years of age.
The realty in the handlining - . I know not thousands or hundreds but certainly several people, for instance, who have fished from the time they were 14, 15, 16 years of age. They are now in their mid-40s, 45 or 46. Because they were handlining during those years when you had to qualify for TAGS, they have fallen through the cracks. Even though they were out on a boat - they were on a boat with another skipper owned by another person; they were out there dragging their line - the boat did not make enough money to pay expenses or to pay them the salary that was required. They have fallen through the cracks, and they say, well, you do not qualify for TAGS. Yet there is another person there who has worked in the fishery for four years, and because they got into a viable part of the fishery, they qualify.
The emphasis I am trying to make here is not on the TAGS part. It is on handlining in the fishery in particular. There is no doubt about it, there has been a trend in the department for a number of years now to get rid of the little guy, to get rid of the handliners, to get rid of the inshore. Give it all to the offshore. We will have five companies and they are easy to deal with. No problem.
This is not my view. I am only telling you because I think it is important you know the views of the people who are in the fishery - traditional fishermen, poor fishermen. I just want you really to try to understand what I am trying to tell you in laymen's and fishermen's language. That is the reality of the way it is, and too often the people here in Ottawa do not seem to understand. They just have their own criteria and try to push them down at them.
Mr. Rowat: Let me deal with a number of points you have raised. I understand exactly the kind of frustrations MPs have to deal with, especially when they go home in the summertime, when you really get both barrels from every quarter.
Mr. Verran: I get it all the time.
Mr. Rowat: I personally am not unaware of this. I started my career in fisheries over fifteen years ago in Prince Edward Island, and in many ways the consultations and the discussions you have with fishermen's groups have not changed a whole lot, because you are dealing with people's livelihoods head on.
By the way, we are one of the few departments in the federal government dealing directly with the clientele where you affect their livelihood. Most of the other federal departments, if not all - maybe DIAND is the only other one - are at least one or two steps removed. That is one of the reasons we are on the top of everybody's hit parade - hit list, I should say - whenever you get into these discussions, particularly in your areas.
I have heard, and all my managers right across the country have heard, about the issue of getting rid of the small fishermen and narrowing down to an offshore of five companies to harvest the whole shooting match; it would simplify everybody's life. That is completely wrong. You can say that it is fundamentally wrong. If you get that in your ridings, people saying that is a plot, there is a Machiavellian plot or theme and the federal government's up to that, then that is wrong.
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The fact is that when the majority of the groundfishery reopens, there undoubtedly will be an offshore fishery. However, the minister has said, on behalf of the Government of Canada, that they will come last when the fishery reopens. The inshore fishery will come first. There is your first argument when somebody raises that with you.
Number two, given that there will be an inshore fishery with precedents, what is that inshore fishery going to look like? As we have said all along - and the industry agrees - that inshore fishery is going to be smaller. So if they say to you that it is all aimed at the offshore, that is wrong. It is an inshore fishery. What is that inshore fishery going to look like? It is going to have many fewer people. That is your answer.
Then you get into the delicate question, am I going to be in or out? Your answer there is that it will depend very much on the criteria of what constitutes the core fishery and a core fisherman. That is what we are working on and that is what is going to be extraordinarily difficult over the coming months when the call will finally be made.
All of you, including opposition members and members of the government - . I guess it is easier for the opposition members. For members of the government to defend the decisions of the government is going to be difficult, because those calls will not be popular. We know that now.
I cannot give you better answers than that, other than trying to tailor those policies and, when the decisions will finally be made, to avoid the kinds of issues that you are talking about, disqualifying core fishermen.
Trying to build the criteria in such a way that you define what is really a core fisherman is what you are getting at. I have got fishermen in my riding who are really core fishermen, but they might be excluded because of the nature of the criteria.
Well, we will try to fix the criteria in such a way that we shall capture them. Some will fall outside. We will have an appeal process of some sort.
By the way, you mentioned that a number of your handliners could not qualify for TAGS. Well, as the Government of Canada, we had a three-level appeal process. So to the extent that some people were tossed off TAGS or did not qualify, theoretically - and all I can say is theoretically - they should be able to come forward, make their case, and be captured somewhere in that appeal process.
As government bureaucrats, whether we are in Ottawa or in Scotia-Fundy, Halifax, Yarmouth, or wherever, we have no other way of dealing with it. You have to have a process.
These are not great answers, but they are the only ones we have. In that program we are dealing with 40,000 people, so it has to be a process.
May I comment on public consultations for just a second, because I have had a lot of experience in that over twenty years.
Public consultations, especially when you are in a department like ours and you are dealing with people's livelihoods, are that you have to go into a room, just as you do, and put a subject on the table. Inevitably, with fifty people in the room you will get a large number of views.
You can do one of two things. You can try to strike a deal with the fifty who showed up, or you can collect those views and go to the next meeting a few miles down the road and so on and so forth and collect all of the views as the federal government, or in the Scotia-Fundy region. You can then try to do a balancing act, make a proposal, and go back and do the thing all over again, fine-tune it, readjust it, and then come back and do it all over again.
That is what we have been doing. We have seen something like 2,000 people this summer in two rounds in Scotia-Fundy - globally, but also in Scotia-Fundy.
That is the only way I know of doing it. Because it is fisheries, it is always going to be contentious, because we are dealing head-on, as you know from your own ridings, with people's incomes.
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Mr. Dhaliwal (Vancouver South): Bill, I wonder if you could give a briefing to the committee on how things are going on the west coast in the round table discussions; what sort of timeframe you are looking at and when you expect things to come out of those round table discussions, which have been going on for the last two to three months, I guess - just to update us.
Mr. Rowat: The round table is essentially dealing with the commercial component of the fishery. There are in essence three different round tables, which we hope will lead to a final conclusion. In kicking off these three round tables with the commercial sector of the industry, the minister made it very clear that this time, after twenty years of talking about capacity reductions and so on, it will happen. He has been very blunt on that, and very blunt publicly. So all of us are on the hook to deliver something, including the industry, the department, and so on. Louis Tousignant, our director general for the region, and Cheryl and a few others, have been involved in that process very closely.
Step one was that in September we held a first round table. What Louis tried to do there is essentially say to the industry, what are the fundamental problems we are dealing with in the commercial sector in the west coast industry; let us not deal with a list of twenty-five; let us boil it down to what the one, two, or three key ones are.
First and foremost - and I w ill not go much further than this - is, guess what? Capacity; massive overcapacity in west coast commercial fleets. Falling out of that, then, is the second question of different fleet sectors - it is similar to the Atlantic - and what the allocations amongst those sectors are going to be. And there are a number of other questions. So in that first round table in September, let us not look for solutions; let us just see if we can agree on what the four or five key questions are.
Coming out of that, they did get an agreement on what they should be looking at. They defined their terms of reference.
Next week they will be heading into the second round table set of discussions and they will start to tackle all those questions and hopefully make some considerable progress on achieving a consensus on them, if possible. I have no high expectations for consensus anywhere in the fishery any time ever, but I think you can drive it in a certain direction.
Then Louis will bring back the results of that to the minister and basically say, look, I think we have it squeezed this far; what are my negotiating instructions for going back into the final analysis? He will give the minister and me an appraisal of where he thinks he is, then in November he will call the final one. With any luck, we will be able to narrow the issues down to maybe the two or three really tough calls.
Where capacity is concerned, it means inevitably fewer boats, fewer fishermen - the same story as we get all over. Again, at the end of the day the minister will have to take the call on it. I am convinced of that now. We will not see the universally acclaimed solution coming out of that.
As for timeframe, the third one will be in November. Hopefully by Christmas or early in the new year the minister would be in a position to make some sort of call on the key elements that will make up the new fishery for the commercial sector.
The Chairman: Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott: I have a few comments to make. First of all, I have to say, whether members of the committee believe it or not, I have some real sympathy for people such as Mr. Verran, you, Mr. Chairman, and Mrs. Payne. Having gone to Atlantic Canada and understood the depth of the problem there - .
You have had a fishery on the Atlantic coast, from what I can see, that has been subsidized by government to grow to the level it is at. You have a large number of people who were involved in the fishery for generations and who are now either in jeopardy or virtually out of the business because there are no fish left to catch. You had a large offshore component, catching the greatest number of fish; significant amounts of fish. The offshore component affects the ability of the inshore fishermen to earn a living, because when there is no fish - . The fish do not stay in one spot. They travel around. When there are no fish left to catch, there are no fish left to catch.
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To a large degree the expansion in those sectors was financed by the Canadian taxpayers through your department. Now you are turning around and telling these people you are going to increase their licence fees and there is going to be a reduction of capacity in the industry. A lot of these people, particularly the small operators, feel like the government is just trying to squeeze them out. Frankly, from what I can see, there is a real element of truth in that.
I listened to your comments with respect to licence fees. You called them access fees and now you call them licence fees. With all respect - and I do not expect other members of the committee to agree with me - I am going to call it a tax. You do not take a licence fee and increase it by 300% or 400% overnight. By your own words, you are tying the value of that to the landed value of the catch these people may be engaged in. In essence, you are saying there is capacity there to take additional revenue from these people, so you are going to do it.
Regardless of their income levels, these people all pay income taxes. Whether they have a business or have personal incomes, they are all paying taxes. I would suggest the increase in licence fees or access fees - I consider them to be taxes - is inappropriate, particularly given the fact the Government of Canada subsidized the growth of the fishery in Atlantic Canada to the extent that it certainly is a major contributor to the collapse of the fishery there.
Whether or not you agree with me, I would say that is the perception of virtually all the inshore and midshore fishermen in Atlantic Canada. They are looking at their livelihoods as being severely affected, if not gone, largely as a result of government policy. Now they are going to be asked to pay the price for it. I think that is going to be a very difficult one to sell in Atlantic Canada, from what I can see. I suggest to you that the department has other ways of dealing with this other than the way you are going right now.
On the west coast you talk about overcapacity. The department is maintaining policies - I will talk about the aboriginal fishing strategy - whereby you have created a new commercial fishery. It is not supported in law; there is no constitutional support for that aboriginal fishing strategy. All the court decisions to date have said there are no grounds for a commercial aboriginal fishery, yet the department maintains it. Aside from the divisions it creates in society, the us-versus-them attitude it creates, it is also impacting on the commercial sector.
We know the commercial sector in British Columbia has been asked in the past to accept less for reasons of conservation. We know the department has in some instances said it was going to ask us, for conservation purposes, to accept a lower catch on chinook, sockeye and so on.
We also know that the department has done, in my estimation, a very good job of fisheries management in many areas in British Columbia, and as a result of that we have had increased opportunities, until recent times. I believe in 1993 we had the highest return of sockeye in 70 years or something like that. So I think the management side of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in British Columbia has been doing a good job.
On the other side, you are creating these problems and then turning to the commercial fishermen and saying there has to be a downsizing in the industry there.
Furthermore, you have a large sport fishing commercial industry in British Columbia which, from what I can see, nobody has addressed. You see these large fishing lodges, and there is more and more of them all the time. From what I can see, there is virtually no effort to try to manage that by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. These operators and their clients are catching increasing numbers of fish, which is impacting on the ability to catch fish of the people who have been in the commercial fishing industry, in some cases for generations. They see this; they see their opportunities diminishing.
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It is not just because of that. We know there is over-harvesting by the Alaskans and we know there are environmental problems as well, but the main problem I see, from a political point of view, is that there is no recognition on the part of Fisheries and Oceans that these people have made sacrifices in the past in order to be able to stay in the industry, on the assumption that there was going to be a brighter day down the road for everyone. Now they see the department's aboriginal fisheries strategy, and when they see these large commercial sport fishing operations, which are basically unregulated, eating into the opportunities, they are very, very disappointed and unhappy with that.
I suggest that on the west coast the department ought to go back to what the courts have said in terms of the aboriginal fisheries strategy. I do not see how the department can continue to maintain that policy. It is going to do nothing but sustain problems that the industry faces there right now and it is going to be an everlasting source of irritation and frustration on the part of commercial fishermen in British Columbia.
The Chairman: Who wants to tackle that one on the AFS?
The only thing I want to say on the AFS, because we have had these discussions before, is that the courts have not said you cannot do it. It is a policy issue. The government has made a decision - and the previous government is supported by this government, I take it - on the AFS that they will have a test or special licences on a commercial fishery.
I just want to make it clear for the record that the courts have not said that you cannot do it and governments have decided that they can do it. I think the point is that courts have not compelled them to do it.
Mr. Scott: That is right.
The Chairman: The courts have not compelled them to do it, so it is a policy issue.
Mr. Scott: The courts have not compelled them to do it. But further than that, Mr. Chairman, there is no legislative authority to do it. This has never been brought to Parliament.
The Chairman: Why do not we deal with the legislative authority? I would be interested to know.
Mr. Rowat: Let me just deal with the aboriginal fisheries strategy for a second. First, you are very familiar with the Sparrow decision of 1990. That laid out very clearly that there would be a certain amount of fish set aside for food and ceremonial and social purposes. That is fine.
The aboriginal fisheries strategy, essentially picking up on that for something like 60 agreements in total throughout the Pacific, deals with agreements on fisheries management, Sparrow-related allocations for food, fish, and ceremonial purposes, and then other elements of economic development. That is the majority of the agreements we are talking about.
At this point I think there are only four agreements that deal with pilot sales. The rest of them do not deal with pilot sales. There are only four. As the chairman has indicated, those four were a policy decision of the previous government. In fact, the previous government had talked about expanding those pilot sales. This government inherited that policy, as they inherited a cornucopia of policies from previous governments, and for the last year or so, basically it has been held at those four pilot sales.
Third, there is another component, and that is that certain commercial licences be bought from the commercial sector and transferred to various native groups to be used communally. It is not as if you are arbitrarily stepping in and taking an allocation; you are actually compensating for that allocation and moving it to the native groups to be used as a commercial licence.
The Chairman: There is no increase capacity?
Mr. Rowat: Exactly; there is no increase capacity for both coasts.
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So the kerfuffle over the business of sales above and beyond the Sparrow decision is in essence four agreements. So let us keep it in perspective.
Now, the final thing I would like to say on this is that we have agreed to review the aboriginal fisheries strategy this year, and we do have a number of discussions to get started over the winter months. So I hope that puts it in the proper context.
I know and you know that allocation is probably one of the most contentious issues you can deal with anywhere in the country. I have marked down your accolades for how the fishery is managed in terms of establishing the resource base, and I thank you for the compliments. We rarely get -
Mr. Scott: In many cases, I would have to say it is been world-class fisheries management.
Mr. Rowat: Well, we appreciate the compliment.
Mr. Scott: But you can now go along with an aboriginal fishing strategy and you have not addressed my point that the aboriginal fishing strategy is not supported by any court decisions. As the chairman said, the courts never compelled the government to adopt that.
I would further suggest - and we have this on good authority - that the aboriginal fishing strategy was implemented and maintained without authority. There has been no legislative authority. The Fisheries Act, which binds the Crown, does not allow for a racially segregated fishery. You cannot do that by policy. You must go back to Parliament and get authority. That has not been done.
Mr. Rowat: I would argue that under the Fisheries Act the minister has the authority to define various fishing entities, either regionally, by gear sector or whatever. We will certainly check that.
Mr. Scott: Not by race.
Mr. Rowat: We will certainly check the authorities on that. If you are talking about - . Keep your definitions clear.
In terms of the actual harvesting of fish, if you are getting at the issue of why we did manage this summer on the basis of allowing natives to harvest at a time separate from the rest of the commercial sector, many of those are based on management considerations, the same way as we manage for management considerations in other parts of the country.
You and your colleagues, for instance, would be the first ones to come back and criticize the department if we could not tell you, with respect to those four pilot projects, whether we had the numbers on how many fish they actually caught in their pilot project.
If we were to have managed an integrated fishery, there is very little likelihood we would be able to differentiate and say, you caught four fish, you caught five and so on. We would not be able to do it. You would be back the next morning to ask, well, how many did they catch? We would say, we ca not tell you. You would say, it is mismanagement; you do not know what you are doing.
So there are management considerations, depending on how you differentiate the management of the fishery.
Mr. Verran has talked about handliners. There are longliners, seines and trawlers, the whole shooting match. They are all managed on a provincial basis so that we can keep track of the allocations we have assigned in each case. It is the only way to manage a fishery. You have to divide it up.
So I do not think you have to call on issues of racial discrimination or racial differentiation. These are just straight, flat-out management considerations.
An hon. member: The Fisheries Act -
Mr. Rowat: If we can find a -
The Chairman: We are not going to be able to debate. If you want to debate with somebody from Justice, we will get a witness from Justice here. We have had this issue up over and over again. If any member of the committee has an allegation that the minister or the department has acted without legislative authority, we should get some people in from Justice. We will have it debated and put that thing to bed.
We are not going to get it solved here, Mr. Scott, because we have already had that debate. I am not saying it is not one we should not pursue, but we do not have the Justice guys here or somebody from legal or legislative counsel. Maybe we could get them in and have a good debate.
Mr. Scott: I would just like to make one more point, then, Mr. Chairman. I would like to suggest that the committee might like to consider having somebody from Justice come in and explain -
The Chairman: Yes, we can do that.
Mr. Scott: I would also like to suggest that the committee might like to consider having HRD TAGS officials come in and talk about the TAGS program with this.
The Chairman: I agree on the TAGS stuff, because we have to be vigilant.
I have one last thing for the record, before I go to Mr. Wells, because I know he has a plane to catch. I want this thing put in perspective. What is the percentage of total salmon caught that comes under the AFS? We are talking about reported catch. Is it 3%?
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Mr. Robichaud: It is exactly 3%. But that combines all of it: the communal licence for food, ceremonial, and so on, as well as the pilot. About 90% is commercial and the rest goes to sport.
The Chairman: Recreation.
Mr. Robichaud: Yes.
The Chairman: So it is about 3%. It is 90% commercial, 7% recreational, and 3% through the AFS, including the four sales agreements.
Mr. Robichaud: Including the four sales.
The Chairman: Mr. Wells.
Mr. Wells: I am going to ask two questions, but then I am going to have to leave and read about the answers, if that is all right.
You commented on the minister's statement in his speech that when the fisheries resources rebuild, the inshore fleets will be given first access to those resources. I would like you to expand on that, on what you see that means. We talked about which inshore fleets. Maybe you could expand on that.
Early in your preamble, as I guess we can call it, you talked about revising UI to take out the disincentives. I would like you to give more details.
Mr. Rowat: At this point, just to deal with your last one first, revising the UI to deal with disincentives, unless Cheryl or Karl wants to venture into that area, I will not at this point, because I do not have a good enough feeling for the rules and regulations. I think you people have gone over UI before. I find it is one of the most complex issues anywhere in government policy.
About reopening the fishery, the priority for inshore to come first before offshore is something that will have to be worked out again with fishermen's groups. I see it as relatively straightforward in one sense: when we say ``inshore'', we essentially know what ``inshore'' means.
An hon. member: Less than 65 feet.
Mr. Rowat: Yes, less than 65 feet. That is fairly straightforward. The key question, though, is which gear group. Man oh man, if we think we have got dicey problems to deal with, that is going to be some fun.
What I would say is that principles are being worked out with both the FRCC and internally with some of our own people to try to get a handle on some kind of proposal to go out to the industry with eventually. But -
Mr. Wells: Perhaps I could just insert one thing. When I asked you initially about your department's vision and I mentioned four criteria, when you responded, perhaps inadvertently you did not comment on fixed gear versus mobile gear. That was part of the question initially as well.
Mr. Rowat: The only thing I would say is that when you reopen a fishery and you have lower numbers, out of fairness the historical numbers will have to be a fairly significant consideration. So if mobile, fixed, and whatever other gear types you have in the various size of vessels - whatever the historical sharing will be, that has to be a big factor in it. Then if a government decides that for some reason this gear type should be dropped considerably and this gear type favoured, you find some way to transfer fishermen in this group over into that group with a government program of some sort or another.
You cannot just open a fishery and say, I am sorry, but you were using longlining gear, or you were using mobile gear; mobile gear is no longer on, therefore you are out of the fishery. There has to be a certain fairness in who is using the different kinds of gear, and then you take your government decision to transfer from one to the other. You should not disqualify individuals based on the kind of gear they were using historically. Out of fairness, there should be a way to deal with that kind of thing.
I did not say that very well, but I hope you understood what I meant.
Mr. Robichaud: To complement, sometimes there are people who will point to another gear, saying this one is less friendly and this one is more friendly, and so on. With all the tests we have conducted on various gear types - and we have a lot of reports on those. As a matter of fact, a subcommittee of the Fisheries Resources Conservation Council is looking at that and will make presentations on tests conducted with fishery groups. Gear, with the tests and the proper technique, operated in the right fashion by a good code of conduct - most kinds of gear can operate in a friendly fashion.
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The Chairman: On the UI, what should we do? Bill, do you want to say something on UI?
Mr. Rowat: What I would say on UI is that as -
The Chairman: Is it part of the overall reforms that Mr. Axworthy's looking at, or is it being dealt with separately?
Mr. Rowat: It is part of the overall Axworthy reform, but out of that there should and will be, in our view, a component dealing with fishermen's UI, because it has always been treated as a quite separate element of that overall policy.
We think there is a basis to consider that as part of the overall package. It is being reviewed.
You would be better served if we had a separate session with HRD people here.
Mr. Dhaliwal: I want to go back to the point Mr. Scott made on AFS. You might recall, Mr. Chairman, that we had somebody from the legal department go through some of the ongoing judicial decisions, the Sparrow decision and a number of other items.
If we want to be updated, then that is fine, but I do not know if we want to rehash all of what has happened. Perhaps Mr. Scott was not here when we had someone from the Department of Justice to give us an update and provide us with the information.
The Chairman: No. That is right.
Mr. Dhaliwal: I think it was clearly established that the minister was acting within the legal framework and, under the Fisheries Act, can create fisheries. So I do not think we want to rehash that all over again. All of that has been done.
I think it is quite clear what the position of the Reform Party is on the AFS. We have heard it - and you have heard it, Mr. Chairman, quite often here - from the earlier fisheries critic. So we are quite aware of your position on the programs.
If we want to be updated, then I do not mind, but I do not want to rehash what we have already gone through.
The Chairman: I do not want to get into the debate again, but if Mr. Scott seeks an opinion, then we will find out the best way in which to get him that opinion. I do not want to hold hearings on whether or not the government has a legal right. It is not for this committee to do it. Maybe it is for other committees, but it is not for this one.
On the issue of the rights under the Fisheries Act for the minister to have that fishery, we can ask somebody from Justice to give us an opinion. I do not think it will be different from what we got the last time, but it is always worth putting on the record. If there is confusion out there about whether or not there is legal authority, then let us get it straightened out again.
Mr. Rowat: One way to deal with that would be for us to work with our Justice lawyers housed in our department. I could send you back a letter, or the minister could send you a letter, as chairman, and a copy to the members, outlining what he thinks the basis is.
The Chairman: Send it to the clerk.
I have one question, and then it is over to Mr. Turner, who has been far too silent today. It is very parochial. It has something to do with the future vision of the coast guard and your combined fleets.
There was an unfortunate article in The Chronicle-Herald this Monday with respect to certain individuals from the department. It said that the coast guard bases on both coasts - . Let me deal with my coast and my city of Dartmouth; the coast guard was said to be a candidate to be shut down with the consolidation and the merger of the fleets.
Needless to say, stories such as that cause a considerable degree of anxiety, particularly during a period of consolidation, amalgamation, and program review.
I have made my phone calls, and I was satisfied; however, for the record, Mr. Turner, could you tell us if that article was factual? Is part of the future vision for the coast guard that the Dartmouth base will not be there?
Mr. Mike Turner (Deputy Commissioner, Canadian Coast Guard): I am afraid, sir, that this is a good example of the kinds of problems we endure when media people go on fishing expeditions in government files. The reports that were in the media were in fact based on some very preliminary and early studies that were done almost one and a half years ago on the question of the potential to save money through fleet integration between, then, the two departments separately.
Of course, one of the items they looked at was the question of whether there was any duplication of base facilities that might be improved upon if the fleets were merged into one organization.
At that very early stage of the work, the consultants, without even seeing the facilities at all, simply said: well, there is a DFO base at which there are ships in Bedford Basin in Dartmouth, and there is another one down the shore in Dartmouth; then I guess we would need only one. Frankly, it was that simplistic an analysis.
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The reality is the coast guard ships will not fit at the Bedford Institute. There is not the water, and vice versa, you certainly ca not put all the research facilities of the Bedford Institute into the Dartmouth coast guard base.
So you have to take it in the context of which the initial study was done. It was a very broad-brushed, preliminary look at whether there was some potential for savings by integrating different facilities.
To come to your specific question, sir, we are in fact looking at where we may be able to reduce costs by having a more efficient operation and combining some facilities. We have set up a team to do exactly that. I suspect the outcome in a case such as you are referring to in Dartmouth, which I personally know well, having spent thirteen years there, will be a movement of certain parts of the activities between the two major facilities. I personally doubt that the outcome would be a closure of either. I do not think it is practical from the perspective of housing the fleet we have.
But we certainly are going to be looking very hard, sir, for ways in which we can save money, because we have very specific targets being allocated in terms of the fleet integration benefits, of course. We will be looking right across the country, not simply at the Halifax-Dartmouth area, and we will be looking to see how we can combine workshops, yards, service and support personnel, and so on, and berthing spaces, or perhaps change the way in which they are used, in each case, so as to get the best overall use of the facilities and come up with the maximum savings.
The Chairman: So what you are doing is rationalizing, and at this point there has not been any talk. The rationalization does not include at this point in time a plan to close one or the other -
Mr. Turner: There is no plan at this point at all. We are just now embarking on the actual study of what would be feasible and practical to do and how it should best be accomplished. I would expect it will be -
The Chairman: I am glad somebody who has had thirteen years down at the facility at Dartmouth is going to be having major input in that, and your friends and colleagues down at Dartmouth are quite happy that you are where you are today.
Mr. Turner: I will be down there next week, sir, and I will explain it to them personally.
The Chairman: That is great. Thanks very much.
Are there any other questions? That is it? Thank you very much for coming today, folks.
The meeting is adjourned.