FOPO Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

¿

0945

The Chair (Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.)

Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron--Bruce, Lib.)

Mr. Loyola Hearn (St. John's West, PC)

Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.)

Mr. Paul Steckle

The Chair

Mr. Paul Steckle

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins (Delta--South Richmond, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

The Chair

The Clerk of the Committee

¿

0950

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

¿

0955

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

À

1000

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

À

1005

Mr. Tom Wappel

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

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NUMBER 047

l

1st SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿  (0945)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.): We'll come to order for our public session.

    On committee travel, the original motion was the committee would travel from April 20 to April 26, 2002, to study management in the Fraser Valley salmon fishing and aquaculture. At the liaison committee budget meeting the other day, it was obvious there are three or four committees traveling during the same week. We could pass it there, but the House leaders would say there are too many committees traveling.

    The following week is the week of the scrutiny of regulations committee, and John and Tom have to be there. I felt we couldn't do it that week.

    We put the motion through budget liaison saying “subject to change of travel dates”. The dates would have to be May 6 to May 10. It is the only time we can fit it in.

    Is it no good for you, Paul? What is happening that week for you?

    Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron--Bruce, Lib.): (Editor's Note: Inaudible).

    Mr. Loyola Hearn (St. John's West, PC): I won't be able to go, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.): I won't be able to go either.

    Mr. Paul Steckle: Are we playing second fiddle to someone else?

    The Chair: No. There were a number of other committees with travel already listed. They weren't being debated on that same day. They were already approved beforehand.

    Mr. Paul Steckle: What does it matter how many committees travel? If we have the offsetting balance on committee, I don't see what the problem is. Most of the time there aren't many people in the House anyhow.

    The Chair: The problem is the operation of the House. I know if it went to our House leader, it would be rejected. They have the final say.

    You can't be there that week. Can Gerald or someone else?

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: We could probably get someone there.

    On May 6 and I believe on May 7 I am tied up. There is a fisheries conference, actually, in my district for that committee. I can't join you on May 6, unless they change it. I have asked them to see if they could change the date to May 15. If they do, I should be okay.

    The Chair: The next week is out. If we do it after, the problem is I don't think we have time to get the reports written. We have to work around it. There is no way some other things can be juggled either.

    Can we move the motion? Is there a problem with the guys from the west?

    Mr. John Cummins (Delta--South Richmond, Canadian Alliance): Is it May 6 to May 10?

    The Chair: Yes.

    Mr. John Cummins: It is fine with me.

    The Chair: Can we move it, and see if there are any other things we can juggle?

    It's moved by Bill, seconded by Loyola.

    (Motion agreed to)

    The Chair: We sent an e-mail around.... Yes?

    Mr. Bill Matthews (Burin--St. George's, Lib.): Have we looked at some kind of a schedule? Have we looked at what we're going to do there, and when and where, in what location?

    The Chair: Yes. It's in the works. Andrew and company have been working on it. All the meetings would be in Richmond.

    Mr. Bill Matthews: Where?

    The Clerk of the Committee: They would be in Richmond.

    Can I give a brief sketch?

    The way the plan is working out is the members need to be in Vancouver by the early afternoon of the Monday. Almost immediately, we take off from there and do an overflight of Broughton to see the extent of the fish farming activity. There will be a diversion from there to look at how some fish habitat is being affected by activities on land. We should be back by late afternoon or early evening in Vancouver.

    The hearings are to be held, I believe, at the Executive Airport Plaza Hotel in Richmond. We'll be there for about three days straight. We should have room for the aquaculture hearings, which will be a revisitation to bring the evidence up to date.

    The last day probably will be on sablefish, and the follow-up with Mr. McGillivray from DFO on Fraser River salmon fishery management. We'll be flying out on the Friday.

¿  (0950)  

    The Chair: We'll be done Thursday night.

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: So if we didn't get there on the sixth, which is Monday... Is Monday the sixth?

    The Chair: Monday's the sixth.

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: We'd just miss the--

    The Chair: You'd just miss the tour of the Broughton--

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: So if we get out there for early Tuesday morning, we'll be there for all the hearings.

    The Chair: Yes.

    So that covers the aquaculture and the Fraser. What are people's views on this? The sablefish people are in to meet a number of people. Should we meet with them?

    Mr. John Cummins: I think so. I think the sablefish group could probably do their thing in an hour and a half, and I think it would be helpful.

    One other issue that I think is of some significance, and which has gotten a fair bit of play in Vancouver, has to do with the hovercraft at the Vancouver airport. The safety requirements at Vancouver airport require that a hovercraft be available 7/24. The reality is that the mud flats in front of the airport are only accessible by hovercraft, and not just any hovercraft, but a fairly substantial one, because if you get a northwest wind blowing, you have 80 miles of the Straits of Georgia and the water just piles up there and it can get pretty ugly.

    The situation now is that there was a new hovercraft put in place in Vancouver a little over a year ago, but the backup, if you could call it that--and it's probably the wrong term, because it has to be able to operate fully and fully take over the functions of the primary vessel--is 35 years old. When it was constructed it had a life expectancy of 15 years. Its situation now is so bad that if the fans shut down on the hovercraft and it had to settle down in the water, they say it would sink within an hour. The hull is just perforated with holes, the rain comes through the roof as well. It's simply not in good shape.

    That particular hovercraft has to go to coast guard examination this fall, and they say it won't pass this time. The coast guard has given a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, for the last two or three inspections. But it's to the point now where it would require a complete rebuilding, which is beyond the budget capabilities and probably would mean the price of a new one.

    So it's a huge problem. What it means is that come next October, the coast guard will not be able to provide 7/24 coverage in front of the Vancouver airport. The best way to describe that is to suggest that no one in this room could imagine an aircraft taking off from a major airport without having fire equipment available. This is just a given, that for takeoff and landing there's fire prevention equipment available. And with the hovercraft it's the same. It's an integral part of the emergency equipment and it's not going to be available.

    So the committee may well want to bring officials from the coast guard--

¿  (0955)  

    The Chair: It would be related to coast guard?

    Mr. John Cummins: Yes, it would be.

    The Chair: I don't know, we've been promising Alan that we don't want to deal with too many more issues.

    Mr. John Cummins: Yes, I know that, but--

    The Chair: What would it take, an hour, an hour and a half?

    Mr. John Cummins: Again, I think you could do it in an hour and a half, because I think that basically what the committee needs is an overview, just to be advised of it so that they're aware. And if you had some people from the coast guard in to give their perspective, I could make an arrangement, Mr. Chairman, to get some other people in to talk about it.

    Mr. John Cummins: The coast guard.

    Mr. Bill Matthews: They do own it?

    Mr. John Cummins: Yes.

    The Sea Island hovercraft base is located adjacent to the Vancouver airport on the south side of the airport on the middle arm of the Fraser River.

    The Chair: John, this is an international airport. Wouldn't there be international obligations for it to have...

    Mr. John Cummins: Yes. Precisely.

    The Chair: All right, we'd better do it.

    Mr. Bill Matthews: What's the price of a new one?

    Mr. John Cummings: It depends. They say an off-the-shelf is about $10 million, but I think around $20 million. Part of the problem is that there's been the suggestion, for example, that there was a hovercraft that was available from the Gulf of St. Lawrence region, but it was built as a pre-prototype and is not capable of operating in heavy weather. And it's just been sitting idle, because it can't operate in the Gulf of Georgia and it certainly couldn't operate in the conditions that can be prevalent in the straits, in the flats there.

    The Chair: Okay, we'd better try to get that in. That shouldn't be a problem.

    Loyola.

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: There are a couple of other meetings that are coming up, Mr. Chairman, that we might be made aware of.

    The Chair: Before you start, there is nothing else on the west coast. This would be under “other business”.

    Okay, Loyola.

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: The NAFO committee will be meeting in Copenhagen apparently from May 6 to 10. The Scientific Council is meeting in Dartmouth from June 6 to 20. The agenda is on the NAFO site. It indicates that as of May 15, that's the deadline for submission of scientific data and catch for 2001... So undoubtedly they'll be assessing how all the countries did and how they lived within the regulations.

    On this nose and tail thing that we talked about in Newfoundland, since we came up, and you've heard a number of questions in the House, some of the stuff that's not coming out overly clearly is the fact that the first boat that came in had a tremendous amount of cod, which you're not allowed to catch at all. Our people had to let it go back to Russia and hoped that Russia would charge it.

    On the one that landed this past week, again, the minister says everything is according to the rules. On the surface, that might be true except for redfish, which Bill is well aware of. There are no restrictions at all on redfish in 3NO; they can catch what they like, whatever size. Most of it is about the size of your thumb.

    What has not been explained, however, is how they can get a tonne of cod liver out of 15,000 pounds of codfish, when it's about a one-to-thirty ratio. So there's a big question mark there.

    The other question that they can't answer is how they had 80,000 pounds of fish meal when there was very little wastage showing, because about two-thirds of the product on board was unprocessed. They also kept 160,000 pounds of turbot heads, so they had very little offal to process. In order to get 80,000 pounds of fish meal, you'd need a half a million pounds of raw resource. So the question is where did they get the raw resource? I guess the most sensible answer would be a small fish that was caught and run through the meal plant, a fish too small to keep.

    And where did the rest of the cod go? They would need something like 60,000 pounds of cod, I believe, to be able to produce the amount of cod liver that they found. So it was small cod that was processed, or the 80 kilograms of product that was still in the boat that wasn't unloaded or listed on the manifest as cod.

    There are all kinds of indications that there is skulduggery going on. This is happening with boat after boat after boat. These are the ones that we see landing in Newfoundland right under our noses. So what's happening to the ones that are going back home or landing elsewhere?

    This whole thing is becoming a real farce, and unless Canada does something besides saying we'll talk about it at NAFO--they tried that last year--it's going to continue.

    I don't know what the answer is, Mr. Chairman. Hopefully, perhaps in the future, Mr. Chairman... Anyway, Mr. Chairman, it's an issue where people are starting to wake up to the fact of what's happening there. Our government is going to have to take action somehow or other, besides just fooling around.

À  (1000)  

    The Chair: Do we have any place where that information is available other than in the press, Loyola?

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: I have a copy of the manifest of the boat that outlines--

    The Chair: How big is it?

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: I have it here. It's a list of the product right from the boat itself.

    The Chair: Could Andrew copy it and send it to the committee? I think it would be useful to have.

    They couldn't lay charges, I understand?

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: According to the minister, he said yesterday they were still investigating, but the product that's listed like halibut, head on and gutted, witch flounder... Some species are under moratorium, but the amounts showing on the manifest are within the bycatch limits. The fish meal and the cod liver show otherwise. You don't get cod liver from halibut or from redfish. You don't get offal when you have a lot of your product still there unprocessed.

    So there are big questions not being asked.

    The Chair: All right. If you give it to Andrew, we could get it copied.

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: When you get it, you'll see some of it is blacked out. That was because the original copy was highlighted, and it came out like this. What is blacked out is shown here, so there's nothing hidden here. The only thing not listed, I think, and I'll write it in, is the fish meal.

    The Chair: All right, thanks.

    Is there any other business we need to be thinking of in the future? Okay.

    We wanted--and maybe we should make this a motion of the committee--to try to have Minister Thibault here prior to the break. Could we have somebody move that the committee invite the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to appear on or before May 2 to review the main estimates of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans?

    Mr. John Cummins: I'll do that.

    The Chair: It has been moved by John, seconded by Mr. Steckle.

    (Motion agreed to)

    The Chair: We were talking before the official committee started this morning about the estimates. I would ask if people could really go through them with a fine-toothed comb. If anybody has copies of the estimates as they existed in 1995, 1996, 1997, and you compare the two, I'm sure you will find the current-day estimates tell you virtually nothing compared with previously. I really think we as a committee... I understand our House leader is looking at some other, different way of doing estimates. The estimates, if they don't tell you what a department does, are not what they were intended to be. I raise that in people's minds; maybe they should think about that as well.

    One last thing before we adjourn is we've had, not a full-fledged written complaint, I guess, but a complaint from DFAIT. When they met with us in camera, Ms. Colleen Swords presented a paper. A direct statement from that paper has ended up in the press, not in--I don't know what you'd say--not in an assumption kind of way, but a direct statement from the paper ended up in the press. They are considering whether or not the committee really violated its in camera session. What's supposed to be in camera is supposed to be in camera.

    I will just lay before you that we've had a note of concern from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade that what was tabled in camera as a paper wasn't kept in camera. They are correct in saying what is in camera is supposed to stay in camera. So I'll lay that before you as well.

    Is there anything else anybody has? Mr. Wappel.

À  (1005)  

    Mr. Tom Wappel: On that point, Mr. Chairman, I believe I was the one who quoted directly from the paper in questioning some of the witnesses. There may have been others--

    The Chair: I don't even know who it was, Tom.

    Mr. Tom Wappel: I certainly remember doing it. My recollection--and perhaps we should review the blues--of their original meeting was that they had no objection to being in the open with respect to the paper itself. You, as I remember it, put the meeting in camera so they could be candid in their responses to the members' questions, but I believe Ms. Swords said directly on the record, if I'm not mistaken--and I could be mistaken--that they had no objection to the paper itself being in public.

    Then it was you who put the meeting in camera, so that there would be candid responses to our questions. I didn't--as I recall it--certainly for my part quote any responses to questions. I quoted the paper, which I believed they had no objection to being public, because they said it's a well-known international law policy of DFAIT. This could be just me doing revisionist history, but if somebody wants to look at the record, if they push this, I think I'm pretty close to the reality.

    The Chair: Okay. Thank you very much. That's good information, Tom.

    Mr. Hearn.

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: Just to make sure, Mr. Chairman, Tom is not out on the hook on this one, if I remember correctly, a number of us quoted from DFAIT because we couldn't believe their answers at the hearings.

    Also, when the clerk sent around the notice, he sent around a copy of the excerpt from the Telegram. The person who did the story said he had contacted DFAIT. So I'm not sure how much information the press might have gotten themselves, whether they talked to a source or not, if he was quoted.

    I think that paper was quoted in our hearings--or their comments, at least, were quoted quite freely.

    The Chair: Okay.

    Mr. Cummins.

    Mr. John Cummins: On Saturday, May 11, which is a day after the committee hearings end, there is an event known as the Port Guichon fishermen and farmers golf tournament. It has been known to be a rather raucous affair in the past. There was a time when they were good for only a course a year, and they would hopscotch across the lower mainland because of the activities beyond golf. But as we've become older, it's toned down somewhat. There used to be helicopters landing on greens and seal bombs used for golf balls and that kind of stuff. But it's much calmer. If you want to participate in that--it's a modest fee--let me know. I'm sure I could get you entry into the tournament. It's a lot of fun. There's a bit of a supper after.

    The Chair: I'd love to, but I have Thibault in my riding that day.

    Mr. John Cummins: That's on Saturday, May 11.

    The Chair: Okay. Thank you very much.

    I don't believe we have anything on the agenda for Thursday. We'll get the letter done and get it...

    The meeting is adjourned.