:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, I have been at these tables many times in the past, but this is the first time I've been at this end of the table, not the other end. I hope that some of my transgressions with earlier witnesses are not going to be visited on me today.
So that being said and done, I would very much like to thank the committee for allowing our groups to appear today to address them, and to request their assistance on an urgent basis on some issues that are affecting the fisheries on all coasts of Canada.
I wear two hats here today: one is as the executive director of the Canadian Sablefish Association, and I'll speak to that in a moment. The other is as sort of the coordinator of the Canadian Fisheries Working Group.
The Canadian Fisheries Working Group is an ad hoc group of fishermen's organizations from across Canada—both coasts—who have come together over concern about the implications of a lack of policy by the federal government after the Larocque decision of June 23 of last year.
With me today, representing some of those interests, is Robert Haché from the Acadian Crab Association, as well as Phil Eidsvik from the Area E Salmon Gillnetters Association, and Geoff Gould from the Area A Crab Association in British Columbia. I also am very pleased to have somebody I work closely with who will be making her own presentation, and that is Christina Burridge. She will be speaking more about her group in a few moments.
The reason we're here, members of the committee and Mr. Chair, is that something important and maybe momentous happened on June 23 of last year. Over the year, there's been a long-standing and expansive process by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to try to augment its budgets through the use of fish; that is, using an allocation of fish to pay for departmental activity. That practice has always been highly controversial, and I was actually a member of the government that probably started that practice many years ago.
We were cutting budgets and trying to eliminate deficits, so we started to reduce budgets in areas like fisheries management and fisheries science. We tried to find a way, without getting it directly from the A-base budget, to fund these necessary activities. So we turned to fish. Although in the beginning it was a small amount of fish to pay for a small amount of science that could not be covered, over the years it has gradually grown to significant dollars in fisheries, in most of the fisheries across Canada.
Indeed, the department has become quite adept at turning fish into money, which raises a number of concerns that I don't think we should be addressing here today. However, one concern relates to whether or not the practice is in accordance with the Financial Administration Act or is properly reported to Parliament. But most important for today is the Larocque decision, which clearly said that the use of the allocation of fish to cover departmental expenditures was outside of the jurisdiction of the minister. The question is whether the minister continued to do it after that court decision.
Most importantly, once the June 23 decision came down and clearly indicated that the department could no longer use an allocation of fish to pay for things like science and management, there was stunning silence from the department. We didn't hear anything from the department other than that it was business as usual. We knew from the court decision that it would be illegal from that point on to use an allocation of fish to pay for departmental activities. We also knew that it was illegal to coerce or to cajole fisheries organizations to have them use the fish, turn it into cash, and then give it to the government to be used to augment resources.
So most of our fishing organizations tried to get some policy from the government. We asked the department at the time, “What do we do? We need in-service surveys. We need surveys for stock assessment so that we can have a sustainable economic yield in our fisheries. What are you going to do?”
From June until today, the department has been silent. The department has told us it's business as usual. We have joint project agreements, which are important for the co-management of the fishery, some of which—as is the case in my fishery in sablefish—have expired. I sat down with the department and I said, “What do we do? We don't know who has to pay for what. Are you going to pay for the science?” And the department once again said, “We don't have a policy.” Well, the policy has started to come together, and it's a policy that is fraught with chaos, difficulty, and trepidation for those of us who have to live with it.
What we do know from the government, from the department, is that they've done an assessment, and they say that the value of quota, which had been used to pay for things like science and some management in the department, is probably at around $28 million or $30 million annually. My sector alone paid over $2 million last year, $1 million of which was an allocation of our quota to pay for science—which we believe is the proper responsibility of the Government of Canada.
We know that the government itself, the department, says it's about $30 million, but the appropriation in the budget, the number that comes up in the budget, is less than $11 million. That means that only one-third of the science, which was being done at a base level last year, pre-Larocque, will be able to be done with an appropriation from Parliament. This means that two-thirds of the base science that the department had determined in the past was required—the minimum required to economically and sustainably manage these fisheries—will be paid for.
That leaves a giant, gaping hole. It means that the department is going to have to pick who wins and who loses, without any framework of how you allocate that very diminished resource.
Will it be done by who's got the prettiest fish? Will it be done by who's got the best relationship with the DFO official? Will it be done based on need? Or will it be done with a degree of equity, parity, and transparency?
We've asked these questions. Stunning silence has been the response.
We're here today to speak to you—and we're really pleased that you've seen us—about the value of science, about the importance of Parliament appropriating the proper amount of money so that the fiduciary and legal responsibility of the government is fulfilled in managing this public resource. We are appealing to you to go back to your colleagues in Parliament, to the department and to Treasury Board, and to try to influence cabinet to give a full appropriation from Parliament to cover the value of the quota that had been used in previous years to cover things like science and management.
We are telling you that in the absence of a full appropriation, there will be chaos somewhere. I don't know where. I don't know which fleet. I don't know if it's going to be on the east coast or the west coast. But I do know something will suffer.
We're being told by DFO that they can't do it now, so if we want to do it, go ahead. Sablefish is an example. We do a yearly survey. That yearly survey works for us to try to assess the health of the stock and it tells us what our TAC can be. The department comes back and says this to us: We can no longer fund that by quota; and by the way, we really think we need to do this only once every three years; and by the way, if we only do it every three years, what you're going to get is a very conservative estimate of the size of the biomass; and by the way, that means a lower TAC.
A lower TAC means less money to fishermen, fishing communities, processors, and other people who work in the fishery, but it also means tens of millions of dollars less for the Government of Canada in foregone tax revenue. At every level we need this addressed. If you don't like the fact that we need an expenditure, you need to look at the return for the government and the people of Canada that a vibrant fishery on all coasts will bring.
We're here today to tell you our stories. We're here today to tell you that what we need is support from this committee for a full appropriation from Parliament. It's probably going to be anywhere from $20 million to $30 million to cover that in this year while the department effectively gets its act together and comes up with a policy and a process to deal with the fisheries on all coasts of Canada; to determine what is an appropriate level of science and who should fund it; and to come up with a framework that is transparent and fair, that has parity as its centrepiece.
That is why we're here, and I want to thank you for allowing us to come here.
We'll be splitting our time at the table, Mr. Chairman, with a few other people.
I'd like to turn it over to Christina Burridge now so that she can introduce her group and give her comments.
:
Good morning, Monsieur Blais and committee members. Thank you very much for inviting us here.
I'm here for the B.C. Seafood Alliance. I have with me Mike Featherstone, who is the vice-president of the alliance. He's also the president of the Pacific Urchin Harvesters Association, and he's the co-owner of Ocean Master Foods, which is a value-added processing plant in the lower mainland.
I also have Chris Cue. Chris is the senior director of fishing operations for the Canadian Fishing Company, the largest seafood company in B.C., also a significant licence-holder. He's the elected seine representative for areas A and B salmon, and he's the elected seine representative for the Herring Industry Advisory Board. He's also involved in groundfish and halibut.
So between us, you have representatives of most of the fisheries on the west coast. I hope you'll give my colleagues a chance to speak very briefly to the issues in their fisheries.
The B.C. Seafood Alliance is an umbrella organization. Our 17 members represent 90% of commercially harvested seafood in B.C. That's about $750 million in sales annually.
We believe that sustainability and profitability can and should go hand in hand. We advocate for effective, efficient fisheries management that allows our products to be competitive in both the local and the global seafood marketplace. And I should tell you that this is a world where a chum salmon harvested in northern Japan, filleted in China, and sent to Vancouver sells for less than that of a fillet from one our own fish.
In order to be competitive in this world, capture fisheries, which by their nature are uncertain, need stable, ongoing access and we need a predictable, regulatory regime. Without this, harvesters and processors cannot invest to meet the needs of the marketplace and will be unable to attract new entrants to the fishery. In our view, this stability must be founded upon solid science and research, because these are fundamental to the future health, stability, and economic viability of the industry.
In January 2007 we wrote to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans expressing dismay over the lack of information from DFO on how it intended to deal with the implications of the Larocque and APPFA decisions, both in the short term and in the long term. We reminded the minister that we had a conference on co-management in 2002 and that one of the recommendations coming out of that, agreed to by DFO, was that DFO should clarify the governing policies and legalities of co-management funding mechanisms and provide clear direction to managers in the field about their use.
As a result of arbitrary practices on the east coast, we now have a situation on the west coast in which the formal policy of encouraging co-management of fisheries between representative commercial fishing organizations and DFO through various avenues, including using the proceeds from a specified allocation of fish to fund so-called “incremental” research and management activities, has been overturned.
I think you need to understand that this allocation is not free fish; it was agreed to by fishermen that it would be taken out of the commercial TAC. We wouldn't call it the perfect policy—that's why we made those comments in 2002—but it was based on a cooperative approach and it did work reasonably well for most of the last decade.
In our January letter we asked the minister to instruct the department to cover the costs of ensuring that fisheries could operate normally in 2007 while developing a new approach in conjunction with industry that would conform to the law of the land, would be fair to users of the resource, would be achievable over the long term, and would deliver the benefits that Canadians expect and deserve.
This hasn't happened. Instead, what we've had so far this year is a series of last-minute, ad hoc decisions that are patently inconsistent, unfair, and unsustainable. They are decisions that have pitted fishery against fishery, and they've strained everyone's working relationship with the department. This could hardly be otherwise. We understand that the Pacific region estimates the use-of-fish expenditures last year, 2006, at a minimum of $10 million, possibly as high as $15 million. This year they have $3.5 million to contribute to those activities.
The court decisions have put the west coast industry into turmoil. DFO hasn't been able to provide any indication of how it intends to cope or what mechanisms are available to us. We've been told that we might not hear about the new policy framework until July. Well, by then most of our fisheries are either complete or fully under way. Simply from the gap, we find it hard to believe that the policy could be anything but inconsistent and unfair.
Actually, we agree with DFO: DFO does not have the tools or the resources to manage fisheries effectively in the 21st century. I think we would disagree with DFO that Bill is an acceptable way to provide them, but that's another topic altogether.
I think it's really important that you understand that funding for science and research is already inadequate, even before the court decisions, but the demands on science are only going to grow. There's the Species at Risk Act; there's the trend in fisheries management to ecosystem-based management; and last of all, there's the market demand for independent third-party verification of sustainable management, which will require significant additional resources.
I want to take a quick look at four west coast fisheries. I'll start with roe herring. That fishery contributed in the past about $4 million a year to science and research through agreed-upon voluntary forfeit of catch and was used primarily for a roe quality testing program and for stock assessment. At the last minute—our fishery opened in March—DFO provided $900,000 in funding for both activities, though not all that $900,000 went directly to the two activities previously funded.
We need the roe testing program because it's the only way we can maintain our reputation as the top supplier of roe to Japan, and that's our only market. This year the roe testing program was barely adequate, and the stock assessment was inadequate. Next year we're told that DFO will be unable to fund the roe testing program, and stock assessment will only be partially funded.
Without these two activities, the multi-million-dollar investment funded jointly by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's CAFI program and industry to reposition Canadian roe in a dramatically changing marketplace will be jeopardized. The fishery in recent years has been worth somewhere between $50 million and $100 million, so it's a quite significant fishery that's at risk here. We have 1,550 licence-holders, and that makes DFO's suggestion that this should be funded through voluntary contributions impractical and legally unenforceable.
Since the chairman is telling me that I'm running out of time, I'll very quickly mention hook-and-line dogfish. This is a fishery that has been losing its market, its only market, in the European Union because of attempts by European conservation groups to protect European dogfish. It has to have Marine Stewardship Council certification. In order to do that, it needs a stock assessment, and that's $375,000, which DFO doesn't have, for the first year, and $70,000 after that.
On area A crab, I think Geoff Gould is going to speak to that later. Again we have a situation where the fishery is not able to deliver its full potential because of the shortfall in commitments to fund soft-shell crab sampling.
Very quickly, on salmon, we've had test fishing in place for decades. For the last 20 years or more, it has been paid for through use of fish. The Larocque decision means that cannot be done. We already saw curtailment in test fisheries and harvests last year. We don't know how it will work this year. And as one other example, we have $500,000 that was raised last year through use of fish, and for enhancement and remedial work on Cultus Lake sockeye. That work is essential to increasing the harvest level on late-run sockeye. That money is sitting in the bank. It cannot be used.
:
I think Bill is here because the department lacked the policy framework to correct Larocque. The Fisheries Act, I think, is here not because it's been well thought out nor because it's had a broad consultative process. There's been no consultation—zero. There's been no consultation. They pulled it off the shelf. It had been a failed bill in the previous government, and they said we need to give the minister the authority to take fish from the public and use it without an appropriation from Parliament to pay for these things. It's the only reason that I can see that a new government would come forward without consulting.
Bill gives a mechanism for the government to do something that is questionable at best and that Larocque said the minister does not have the authority to do. I don't think we should easily give those authorities to the crown. I think you have to be very cautious when you impinge on the public right to fish; the resource is not a crown resource, but a public resource, and that's vastly different. This bill tries to talk about a whole bunch of other things, but the crux of the bill is to absolutely do that. That is something I'm fundamentally opposed to, and so are most fishermen.
The problem is that they've not only funded science and management through this nefarious process, but they have also funded associations, so we have associations of fishermen out there who now have no mechanism to run their operations. Some in the department are going around trying to get support for Bill by saying that if you pass it, forget all the bad things, because we can amend it to be good things. As a former chairman of this committee, I think that's an impossibility, but they're saying that if you do it, there would be a mechanism to fund your association. I find that a particularly weak argument to support a bad bill.
The fundamental thing is that in the absence of policy coming out of the government, and in the absence of legislation that I think is supportable, we have a funding shortfall of probably $30 million in a very fragile industry. Some of the weak fisheries will not survive, or, if they do survive, we will be penalized in the marketplace because we will not be able to prove, as Christina said, that we are fishing sustainably.
:
Peter, I'll answer that question if you want.
I'm with the Area E Gillnetters Association, a salmon association on the Fraser River. We have a problem with a stock that was almost listed under the Species at Risk Act, but wasn't.
I did get some pictures. This is the lake where the fish swim and spawn. It's a very small lake, and heavily populated, as you'll see from the pictures, with boats, marinas, golf courses, and water parks.
The stock that goes in there is about 5,000 fish in a good year, swimming in a stock of 10 million to 15 million sockeye. The 10 million to 15 million run very healthy, but the small stock of 5,000 fish is unhealthy. So they need to do some rebuilding of the stock with some hatchery work, and some other stuff like that.
The government came back to us last March and said, well, if you guys don't come up with $500,000, you won't be able to fish on the big stock at a level that's appropriate. Last year, it represented somewhere between $100 million and $150 million in fishing opportunity to our fleet—and I'm speaking of the salmon fleet as a whole. So we fishermen agreed among ourselves that we didn't really have much of a choice between $100 million over here or in coming up with half a million dollars over there. So the government agreed to issue us what were called scientific permits, intended for scientific research.
In August, a full two months after the Larocque decision, a bunch of our seine vessels went fishing and caught $1 million worth of sockeye salmon, and went to the processors who paid the fishermen for fishing it. The processors then paid an association with the money. Then the association transferred the money over to another association, which was supposed to transfer the money to DFO, without going through Parliament for the appropriation process, to fund the hatchery and the other stuff to rebuild this particular run.
We're being told right now that unless we find a way to release that money—What happened is that our association clearly knew it was illegal and raised the thought, are our directors involved in this or complicit in an act that could either lead them to be sued or charged with some type of criminal conduct? We didn't know. So we wrote to DFO and asked if this was legal. The response was that the money had been frozen. The fish that should be being rebuilt right now are in danger of being released, where we know they're probably going to suffer nearly 90% mortality. And four years from now, we will have that $100 million or $200 million fishery with very little fishing in it—maybe there will be $10 million worth of fishing then.
And again, DFO is saying “Guys, find a way to get us some money”. The whole thing is very confusing. But certainly there was “Pay the bill, guys, or you're not going to fish”. That was very clear.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[English]
Welcome to our witnesses.
It's an interesting discussion we have before us today. We're talking about science, conservation, and sustainability. I don't think anybody around the table questions that we need science to deal with the fishery today in order to be sustainable and effect appropriate conservation levels.
We also heard from Christina Burridge that it's a very competitive world. We have competitors on the other side of the world who can produce and provide a product to our own market for a fraction of the price.
We're dealing with a dynamic that changes extremely rapidly. If you look at the history of the fishery in the last few years, tremendous change has been forced on the fisheries. We all acknowledge that.
Regarding the whole issue of science, there are lots of different types of science, and DFO is putting more money into science in the general sense.
For the benefit of the committee, I'm wondering if you could help us. We talk about the types of scientific activity: sentinel fisheries, test fisheries, stock assessment, and science surveys. Could somebody do a rapid discussion of these?
If anybody around this table has been involved in test fisheries, we'd appreciate some comments, if you have any.
:
I can give you a quick one on the herring that we just went through. We have an extensive herring program. In the past, we went out for the whole month of March and did charter systems, where you test the fish, put it in and it goes back to the biological station for overall stock assessment.
What happened this year was that at the beginning of February, we were finally given what I'd call a donation of about $300,000 to do a condensed version. They called it the roe quality test program, but instead of doing it for the whole month, we got about 12 or 14 days out of it. It wasn't enough to give us the reality of what was in the water for that month. It was condensed right down.
Christina said $900,000. A lot of that went to DFO personnel, who sort of took over from our herring conservation to take the dive surveys that were done only on a sporadic basis. They weren't fulfilling the whole science that we have.
When it comes to herring next year, we're going to have a smaller TAC, since we didn't fulfill our need for science because of the late timing of getting approval for the costs of our charter program.
When it comes to salmon, we have charter programs that are out in the ocean and work their way back. They give us information on a steady basis about how the fish are showing up in the grounds prior to getting to the spawning grounds. Without that, we would have no way of knowing how many fish are coming, what the diversion rates are, or any way to set up a proper business plan regarding how to catch fish.
Without those systems in place, you are going to struggle until the fish get to the spawning grounds. That's not going to be a very good thing if there are too many of them there. We need that forward-looking science.
Since about 2000, we have done a soft-shell charter program. We test the crab to see when they're moulting. When they moult is when they mate. If we fish on the moulting crab, they're very fragile; we kill them. It's just silly to fish the moulting crab; they're not marketable, and it's illegal to retain soft-shell crab.
We started these charters around 2000. Prior to that the fishery was open for 365 days a year, and we were probably harming the resource. Fisheries brought in an ultra-conservative closure date of March 1 to August 1, months that the fishery would be closed to protect the moulting crab. We started the charters around the same year. We test the hardness of the crab shell and gather other useful data for fisheries: sex, injury codes, the size of the crab so we know the stock assessment, and that kind of stuff. As a result of these charters, on average, over the last five years we have attained an additional 67 days of fishing per season.
The opening, which comes by August 1, or sometimes as early as June or July, is when the bulk of the crab are caught. We probably harvest 80% of the crab catch in those first six weeks. The crabs come out of the deep and migrate into the shallows to moult and mate. If they're ready to go in June, which it looks like they might be this year, and you don't fish them until August 1, you have a chance of missing the entire fishery. This science is not just giving us additional fishing time; it's allowing us to fish the crab when they are harvestable and in their best marketable condition—clean, shiny shells with no barnacles, and stuff like that. It really helps in the marketing of them.
Just to show you the chaos that's going on, this year we asked the fisheries department for funding and they said they had none. We were open in January and February. Three of our fishermen who had done the testing in the past volunteered their time and their vessels and their crews' wages to do testing. We brought in the minimum amount of data that our fisheries person thought we should have, so we have some data this year. Now we're closed. We are in a situation where we have to test in May, June, and July if we want to open before August 1. Our fishermen are going to have to pay. They're not crabbing otherwise, because they're closed. They're going to have to use their own gear, their own boat, pay their crew, pay for their own grub, and pay their own fuel in order to test. Otherwise, they won't have a season. Running one of these boats is probably about $2,500 a day. You're looking at the fishermen going into their own pockets for a hundred grand or more, just so they can have a fishery.
The way the data is shaping up, if we open on August 1 we're going to miss them. The crab are going to be gone. After they've been up in the shallows fooling around, they take off. We don't know where they go, because we don't have that science. We can't catch them once they get out of the shallows. If we don't do that testing this year, we stand to lose the biggest portion of our fishery. The landed value in Prince Rupert is about $22 million a year. We could miss that whole thing.
If charters were properly funded by DFO, the approximate cost of a full charter package would be about $300,000. It's a small investment for a big return for the government.
:
Mr. Asselin, I guess I come at this from a number of perspectives. I was here ten years, so I understand, or I hope I would understand from being here, what the public interest is and the role of Parliament in appropriating funds to support broad public objectives and also execute its constitutional responsibilities.
Working in the fisheries in British Columbia, it's astounding that an industry that has built Canada on both coasts seems to have such low priority. I'm not saying just with this government, but by successive governments, even the government I was in, that somehow fish isn't so sexy.
If you're the man or woman or family or coastal community that relies on that resource for your livelihood, for your future, it's rather sad that governments generally don't put a high priority on it. This government and previous governments have had billions of dollars in surplus. They reinvest it. There was a farm aid program of a few days ago that was over $1 billion—a good investment for farming communities, and it's required.
We're talking about small investments in order to have a sustainable resource that every year can continue to generate or increase the generation of revenues in those communities for those families and to this government.
So it's hard to get the attention. I sat where Mr. Chairman is sitting, and I know how hard it is for this committee to get the broader attention of government. You have to get the attention of government on this. We are under, as Christina said, a microscope about how we manage our resources. We can lose a market in the snap of a finger, and when it's gone, good luck. Where are you going to find the money to get it back?
We have fought hard globally to show that we are sustainable producers. We've done that in spite of the fact that every single year government retrenches on what I believe is its legal responsibility to manage the public resource. And industry, because they're not very good at interacting with government, increasingly says it's okay if it's only a few more dollars.
The well is dry for some of these sectors. I cannot believe that $30 million, which is not a large appropriation by the Parliament of Canada to sustain this sustainable, renewable resource, is such a big deal. I can't believe it has taken so much time to get people's attention.
In answer to your question, I am saddened that it takes so much effort to get so little resource, coupled with the resource that comes from our fisheries, so that we can continue to contribute to those communities, to those families, and to Canada.
It's a small request, but very necessary.
You talked about a cooperative solution to get this thing done. It's quite simple: the minister has to go to the Treasury Board or to the finance minister and ask for the money to do the job that they're legally responsible to do. It's not that difficult. He just goes over, knocks on his door, and says, “I need money to do science, to do the surveys, to get this product out of the water and into the markets so we can have an economic livelihood for all three coasts and our inshore fisheries.” It's not that hard.
There has to be a reason he's not successful in doing that. Maybe it's because old habits die hard, if it's easy to get fishermen to volunteer and spend their money to do something that DFO is supposed to do, or still, post-Larocque, continue on with these habits because they're thinking nobody will get caught. It shows you that this department, in my view—and I've asked year after year for an inquiry into the practices and the policies of this department—has taken a terrific resource on both coasts and completely destroyed it.
In 1992, if you look at the cod fishery, there was a $4-billion readjustment for that fishery in Canada, and not one person in DFO was ever held responsible. Not one. It's like telling foresters they have to cut a bunch of trees and use those trees to pay for the forestry research, or telling other people in other industries—or telling MPs—you come to work for three weeks, you don't get paid, you volunteer your time. I wonder how we'd like it after that.
Isn't the solution quite simple? Isn't it that the minister needs to go back to the Treasury Board and to the finance minister and insist and demand that the money be there to pay for the science that needs to be done in order to assist your industries?
It's not that difficult. When I hear of the situation, “Well, we can't get the money right now, but we have a way of working with you—”. I think, Greg, you said that, that they want to work in some sort of manner with you, and you're asking, “What does that mean?” They'll get back to you. That's like a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, don't you think?
:
Mr. Cuzner, it's the wild west out there.
DFO gave a briefing to this committee, I think in January, as a follow-up note to a presentation they made in December. They clearly indicated—I'm not going to look for it now, but it's in my documents here—that once Larocque came out, they had stopped doing what the court said they did not have the authority to do.
But they continued to do it. In the case of sablefish, they went and funded a survey with $1 million on September 1 of last year.
They deny that this is in contravention of the court ruling. We have a letter in to the minister. I have waited two and a half months for a response, and I haven't even had an acknowledgement that the letter is in.
We do not want to sue the federal government. That is not my business. What we want to do is say, “You cannot be in breach of a court order; you cannot potentially be in violation of the Financial Administration Act.” And to the department we want to say, “You cannot mislead a parliamentary committee by saying things that aren't true.”
I'm not looking for money. Maybe I will be tomorrow, but today I'm just looking for the department to recognize that they got caught without the options on the table, and they need to have this responded to by policy. In the interim, because there's a lack of policy, all of the fisheries all over Canada are seeing uncertainty about where the science funding is coming from. That is going to jeopardize those fisheries.
:
They've clearly told us that if we don't have that money, there will be no stock assessment, there will be no reports, there will be no updating of the stock assessment model, and it will lead to a decrease in quotas.
So there is no way for an industry that has contributed millions over the last ten years for management and stock assessment—unless I went back to my members and said, “By the way, boys, everybody has to buck up”, even though 40 of them didn't even go fishing because the market has been destroyed by an IUU fishery, which is a global problem.
It just goes to show you how you can do everything right. Our industry has been recognized as one of the most sustainable urchin fisheries in the world. We've worked hard to maximize the economic value of that fishery. But you run into a problem in the market and all of a sudden you're left not being able to sustainably manage either from the conservation or economic point of view.
So really there is no method for us to gain that money back. And I think it is really unfortunate in our case that we've been involved in this co-management program for years and contributed millions of dollars. Now when we're in trouble, the government has basically told us, tough luck.
You've contributed millions for years, and every year, by the way, the department has asked for more and more money. It's not just what you agreed to when you first set up your fishery. It's every year there's an incremental increase, funding biologists, funding someone to follow us around where we go fishing every day. It's $600,000 a year out of a fishery, $5,500 a licence.
That's the red sea urchin fishery, but if you look at the geoduck fishery, we pay $50,000 a year for our licence to go fishing, to manage. We have three biologists, for example, who are on the payroll, who we pay for. This year, in spite of the fact that our industry was paying for them, they had to take them away from our industry and give them to the herring people because there were no resources for the herring people. So one fishery is paying for the biologists but then they have to go to herring fishery because there's no money to pay for them.
:
Going back to right after Larocque, I think we have to say that DFO took steps to comply. You know a national working group has been set in place to review all existing use-of-fish arrangements and to develop policy on future arrangements.
In fairness, in some of the fisheries you discussed here that were done after Larocque, the arrangements were made pre-Larocque and were already in place with industry. Some members are raising alarm about the government doing illegal things, but we're in a transition zone here; agreements were made ahead of Larocque, and we all have to adjust to that, including the department. I think that needs to be said. Mr. Cue, the arrangements for the fishery that you were describing took place well in advance of the Larocque decision, if I'm correct on that.
We've described here that the agreements vary greatly from one sector to another. I heard Mr. MacDonald mention east and west, and I want to bring in the great east-west divide here. The fisheries are very complex. They're different from those on the coast, and the arrangements are complex that way as well.
Add to those complexities issues of climate change. There is going to be a tremendous demand for more science in the oceans if we're going to be able to reach goals of conservation and sustainability. We needn't pretend that this is not a complicated issue, and it's going to be even more so, I'm afraid.
Add to that competition from other people who don't respect the same rules. Then we have ocean water temperature changes; regardless of what's contributing to climate change, it's happening. Cold-blooded critters—the higher-order animals there, the fish—are affected by those ocean temperatures, particularly the migrating species. Then there are the crustaceans. You've got changes happening up the coast of California. You've dolphins and minke whales washing up because of changes in the plankton, toxins in the water, and stuff like that.
Let's understand that we have a change in paradigm that you talked about, and there's going to be a demand for more science. I appreciate, Christina, the way you've framed this, recognizing that we're going to have to find a way to enter into this, but complicated as it is, it's unreasonable to think it is going to happen instantly; we're in that process.
Let me ask you this question, then. Obviously there's a discussion going on in the department, which has taken the position that there's a difference between basic levels of science that are required for conservation and sustainability and a higher level of participation. Scientific activities are not absolutely necessary to meet those goals, but additional science has been undertaken that proves to be a direct and exclusive benefit to the groups—i.e., the industry and the fisheries, with all due respect to the complications of your urchin fishery. I certainly would like to follow up on this illegal participation from an illegal unreported fishery involving a Russian fleet. We need to take action on these issues to protect our stocks.
I want to suggest to you that this distinction exists. Do you accept and agree with this distinction? Why or why not? Would you comment, Geoff?
:
Can I just respond to that? We do agree. We do agree, but it's the role of government, when unexpected things happen within their jurisdiction, to try to address them in a timely fashion and to mitigate against any negative consequences as a result of those actions. Fundamentally, there needs to be parity as well in the way they respond to those people who could be injured or to situations of potential injury. You mentioned that post-Larocque they were in a tizzy.
One of the reasons we pursued from the sablefish is that there's been an inconsistent response and policy. I'll quote from the same document, from the January briefing. It says, “The department has already undertaken to fund, through DFO A-base moneys, a number of science-related activities, which began in July 2006, including $2.2 million in post-season crab surveys.” They say that because of Larocque they had to fund the post-season crab surveys, but in our case they didn't have to.
All I'm seeking—because my background is public policy—is clarity, parity, transparency in public policy. The department's response in this interim period has not been that. And when you raise these things with the department they get angry with you, because they think you're pointing a finger. We're pointing out inconsistencies, hoping that we can work with them in order to resolve them.
On the issue of the interim while the department goes through this adjustment, what we need is clearly, Mr. Chair, a full allocation from Parliament to cover all of the science that would have been covered by an allocation of quota. Second, as Christina said clearly, we need a process undertaken to determine the base science that needs to be done, the fiduciary responsibility of the government, and the responsibility of industry—and we want a process that's transparent, so that we stop this one-offing within various sectors in our industry.
:
Thank you, Mr. MacAulay.
I wanted to respond to the question that because this has been going on for 15 years in salmon, and since 1997-98 in other fisheries, just because Larocque came down it was a big deal and we were just trying to accommodate ourselves. The reality is that it was a unanimous Federal Court of Appeal decision. Three of our senior judges in Canada said this was illegal. Despite that, the department authorized the harvest and sale of millions of dollars worth of fish in British Columbia. The fact that it was authorized pre-Larocque is really immaterial to when the fisheries took place. The fisheries took place after Larocque, in one case at least two months, in one case at least three months, and in the case of the herring money, the money was collected years ago.
We agreed to fund that fishery, $1 million worth of salmon. If we had not funded it, the department was saying you're not going to fish on $150 million worth of fish over here. Did we have a choice to catch $1 million worth of fish in return for a $150 million fishery? It's nice to call it voluntary, because we signed the papers, but tell me, did we really have a choice to sign the papers? The answer is no.
We have a lawyer working in our office, and every day he walked by the person who was administering that fishery and would ask how the illegal fishery was going. We all knew it was illegal. Everybody knew it was illegal. The department shouldn't have authorized it, but as fishermen we had no choice but to put up the money. I raise it today because we're still in the same box. The department is not doing the work necessary to rebuild this run. They're telling us this year our harvest rate is going to be very, very low because they don't have money to spend on it. Four years from now we're not going to have a fishery because they're going to let the fish spawn into the lake this year. It needs to be dealt with now, and I fully support what the other fishermen are saying.
We need the department to commit to all the science that was done pre-Larocque. It needs to be funded now.