FISH Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES PÊCHES ET DES OCÉANS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, October 30, 1997

• 0907

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. George S. Baker (Gander—Grand Falls, Lib.): The meeting will come to order. Our order of reference is Standing Order 108(2), consideration of The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy, TAGS, relating to chapter 16 of the report of the Auditor General of Canada, October 1997, and fisheries policy in general.

This morning we have, first of all, Captain Wilfred Bartlett. He is from the community of Brighton, in the Green Bay area. We have also scheduled and we may have before our time is up Mr. Herman Carter, who is vice-president of the Newfoundland Fishermen and Allied Union Workers, from the Bonavista North area.

Captain Bartlett is very well known on the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador because for many, many years he sailed the coast of Labrador, right up to Nain in the northernmost point, fishing the elusive turbot.

Captain Bartlett, we'd ask you to make a statement to the committee concerning fisheries policy, after which committee members from each of the political parties.... We have the New Democratic Party, the Progressive Conservative Party, the Bloc, and the Reform Party of Canada, and of course representatives from the Government of Canada sitting here at the table in Ottawa.

First of all, we'll ask you to say a few words, Captain Bartlett.

Captain Wilfred Bartlett (Fisheries Spokesperson for Green Bay): Thanks, George. It's nice to see you again. It has certainly been a while now. I'm glad you got the appointment as chairman of this committee.

As you know, the fishery is in an awful state today, and I'm speaking today as an impartial person. Whether there's an extension to TAGS or not will not benefit me in any way.

Should there be an extension to TAGS? That's the question, I think. My answer would be no, but we do need a compensation package that will look after the people who are affected by the closure or collapse of the northern cod fishery, and it should be a lot different from the two previous programs, NCARP and TAGS.

• 0910

I'll start off with some of the problems with NCARP. With the NCARP program, people with the least income from cod ended up with the most benefits, and the people who relied heavily on cod ended up with less compensation, all because NCARP was based on the amount of UI a person collected.

Most fishermen in my area had top UI stamps from lobster and capelin and ended up with top benefits, while there were a few who didn't have lobster licences and because of the decline of the cod had low stamps.

Using myself as an example, I fish strictly groundfish. The last year I fished, I had one low stamp, which brought my NCARP down, and there were people close by me who fished on lobster and got top benefits.

As you leave my area and go north to the White Bay area, and up the Northern Peninsula and all down the Labrador coast, you see people who ended up with the minimum, all because cod and salmon were their main fishery. They had no lobster nor capelin, let alone the rest of it.

The people who were affected the worst, I guess, were up in Makkovik, Labrador. I'm quite familiar with the fish there, with I think twelve or thirteen years on Makkovik, where there was a moratorium two years before the fishery was closed down. These people had a job to qualify because they had no catch whatsoever.

For example, I myself have landed 600,000 pounds of cod in Makkovik, and in 1990, two years before the moratorium, I didn't catch 500 pounds and I had to go south and north to be able to do it. There was a moratorium up there two years before it was announced.

Also, there were a lot of people who received money from NCARP who had no attachment to the fishery whatsoever.

Then we go into TAGS. We had TAGS, and the money started going out to whatever company could come up with a hare-brained scheme to train people for non-existent jobs. Hundreds of people in my area were forced to take training they didn't want and in most cases had no intention of working at it, all because they had to take training in order to keep the compensation package.

Then you have the Fishermen, Food and Allied Workers Union that received tens of millions of dollars that were used for only one purpose: to keep their membership together and provide much larger income solely for community leaders and shop stewards.

A prime example is the sentinel fishery. I attended a meeting out in my area about the Sentinel program fishery, and on the first page I was disqualified from taking part in the Sentinel program fishery, although I had a good history of fishing cod, all because I wasn't a paid-up union member. So I was disqualified, and they were using public money to fund this experiment.

They also knew about the abuse in the system and did nothing about it. This is why there's so much resentment in a lot of our communities, because of the abuse of the system not created by the fishery people but by the bureaucrats in Ottawa, or in some cases the politicians.

For example, John Crosbie, in my opinion, destroyed the fishery, and I'll always blame him for driving the final nail in the coffin. But to a lot of people in Newfoundland, he's a hero, all because he came out with a compensation package where people, in some cases, were better off. A lot of people were not better off.

The point is that the new compensation package should be run by people in this area who know the issues and by people who don't have hidden agendas. The amount of compensation should be based on the amount of money a person is losing because they are not allowed to fish cod. This would have to be up to a certain maximum. It should also take into consideration that some fishermen have switched to other fisheries—that is, crab and shrimp—and are doing quite well and do not need compensation.

There are also a lot of fishery people who got dropped off TAGS because of the stupid criteria that someone up in Ottawa came up with, such as that 25% of your earnings had to be from cod, with a minimum amount of $3,000 per enterprise. I know of two people in my area who fish out of a 16-foot boat who were disqualified, although 23% and 27% of their harvests came from cod, which was the most they could get in that area because there were no cod there to catch. They did very well in the amount they caught.

• 0915

There was also a fisherman from the Long Island area who fished the islands off the Great Northern Peninsula. All his life, all he ever fished was cod. He got disqualified because in 1991 he wasn't able to come up with $3,000 worth of fish. The person who was doing the appeal on the committee was a car salesman from Grand Falls who knew nothing about the fishery. He didn't even know what a turbot was.

In closing, I would like to say that despite Mr. John Efford's statements about there being more value of fish going into the market today than before the moratorium—and Ms. Jones, the independent member for Labrador, made a statement a few days ago about all the activity on the Labrador coast—cod was always the king, in my opinion, and always will be, as the staple fishery. It's very important to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Therefore everything must be done to rebuild this fishery to its top potential.

If we don't, we'll never learn a lesson from the destruction of the cod. All you have to do is look at what we are doing to other stocks. If you look at the turbot fishery, we lost our turbot fishery 10 years before we lost the cod fishery. We're trying to scrape up the last breeders. That's off in the Beaufort Sea, up north. We're trying to scrape up the last breeders up there. So we've learned nothing.

If you look at what has happened to the capelin, our capelin stocks are decimated, but is there any reduction in the quota each year? No, we'll fish capelin until every one is gone, although they are very important to everything that's in the ocean.

If you want to look at the crab fishery, which everybody wanted to get into this year, this year they upped the quota. The fishermen in my area, which is a very lucrative area for crab, had to give up because they couldn't catch their quota because there's no crab there to catch. They are saying in another year or two the crab fishery is going to be over as well.

Well, George, that's all I have to say on these issues right now. I could go on for hours and hours, as you well know, but I'll give you people a chance to ask some questions.

The Chairman: Thank you, Captain Bartlett.

I have just a point of clarification before we go to the questions. What you're suggesting is no more TAGS. You say the TAGS program should end and a form of compensation should be given in the communities to allow people to ease off the program. Do you have any advice for the committee on reduction of fishing effort? That's the other part that goes hand in hand with it.

You refer to the turbot fishery and the groundfish, and you refer to destroying the fishery today up north of Labrador. Could you elaborate for the committee and tell them just who is fishing the turbot and who has fished it inside the 200-mile zone, licensed by Canada—who you claim is destroying the fishery? Are these small inshore fishermen who are Canadians or are they foreigners?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: What happened to the turbot fishery off Labrador, in my opinion, and the cod fishery, was they were destroyed by the shrimp trawlers, which fished that area 365 days a year, and in most cases these were foreign trawlers that had very little benefit to Newfoundland. Very few dollars came to Newfoundland.

It was destroyed in this way. When you are fishing shrimp in the same depth of water as cod and turbot are in—and I'm talking about small, immature fish.... I'll use an example. A crew member who fished with me was out on one of the shrimp trawlers one winter. The next summer he said to me, “Skipper Bartlett, I know why there's no turbot up off Labrador now.” He said, “We were out dragging shrimp last winter, and with every tow we would drag up 15,000 or 20,000 pounds of small turbot and dump it back in the water again.” That is 15,000 and 20,000 pounds from one tow from one vessel.

How can anything stand this? This is pure destruction. In my opinion, it's still going on today. In fact, this year the government has issued more licences to draggers to go out and catch shrimp. Whether they are local shrimp fishermen or foreign shrimp fishermen, if they are doing that kind of destruction, to me it doesn't matter, it has to stop. As I mentioned before, most of the fishery that has been done has been done by foreigners, but we have done a lot of it by ourselves, with the dragger fleet.

The Chairman: Captain Bartlett, no, my clarification was today, at this very moment, in the area you're talking about, where you claim the turbot are born, if I interpret what you're saying correctly, where the spawning ground for the turbot is, there are two rules. Who has to put out a seven-and-a-half-inch mesh? The local fishermen. The five-and-a-half-inch mesh is for the foreign-controlled draggers today who are fishing that area. Aren't they fishing for Canadian companies, Captain?

• 0920

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: They very well could be. I'm not too much up on what's happening there. I know there are some vessels there chartered by Canadian companies. But that shouldn't be.

In my opinion, if you want a straight answer, the turbot fishery should have been closed down when the cod fishery was closed down. Are we going to be forever having to go up north to Baffin Island, off Cape Chidley to fish something that we could fish in Notre Dame Bay or Bonavista Bay, or on the Banks? This is a question that has to be answered.

I think the question that has to be addressed now is, should this fishery be closed down or not?

There's another question you asked me before, George. It was about the compensation package. My understanding today—I don't know whether or not I was misled—is that this was strictly about TAGS. I wasn't prepared for some of these other questions, but I'm prepared to answer what I can.

Back to the TAGS program, I didn't mean that TAGS should end as such, but consider the name. NCARP was changed to TAGS, and everything else. You can put whatever name on it you like. But what I'm saying is that the way these programs were administered in the past has to change so that the benefits go to the real people who need it. This is what has to happen.

I think it can be done much better if it's done in a localized area. People in my area know what's going on with the abuse of the system. They know the people who are affected by it more than somebody in Ottawa knows them.

I don't know if that answered your question correctly, George.

The Chairman: Thank you, Captain Bartlett.

We'll now go to questions. We have questioners here from all of the political parties in the House of Commons: New Democratic Party, Progressive Conservative Party, Bloc Québécois, Reform Party, and Liberal Party. We'll go first of all to the Reform Party of Canada. Our first questioner will be Mr. Duncan from British Columbia.

Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, Ref.): Good morning. I enjoyed your presentation very much.

Let's look at your last comment in which you talked about delivering money at the local area for compensation and how this would be the way to best deliver and target the people so there wouldn't be abuses.

I'd like you to elaborate a little bit. Do you have an existing organization in the local area that would be appropriate, or would this require, in your opinion, a new organization? If it would require a new one, would you see it as being something that would be almost entirely volunteers?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: I would have to answer yes to your last question. It would have to be volunteers. It would have to be a new organization. You have to get people there who have no hidden agenda. There should be people who are concerned about what's happening to rural Newfoundland today. They should try to do something to help these communities from falling by the wayside.

Look at one community now, Robert's Arm, where 25% of the population has left that community this past year, which is devastating to Newfoundland.

Mr. John Duncan: Do you see these volunteers as being people who would be elected?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: I don't know. It's a difficult thing to see how you would elect them. I haven't put much thought into this. If someone had come to me a month ago and told me to design a program for this, I could have sat down and designed one. But right off the bat, you don't think about this stuff when you think Ottawa isn't going to do it anyway. Ottawa will run that its own way and that's it.

It has to be done by community leaders who are impartial and people who are satisfied with devoting a bit of time to the betterment of the communities. Maybe church leaders or leaders from different organizations could be involved in this.

How you would get this committee set up, I don't exactly know. I haven't put much thought into it.

Mr. John Duncan: Okay. In the absence of having thought about it a lot then, would it be reasonable in most of these communities to take the elected officials who are currently the community leaders and ask them to design the delivery system and be responsible for the program?

• 0925

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: That's a difficult one, because I see some good community leaders out there and I see some that are not so good, because often it depends on how many friends you have in your family when it comes to getting elected.

So there's no question that somebody like yourselves would have to draw up a criterion as to the type of people who would sit on this committee, or whatever. It could be done with advice from people like me, or other people out there that have no agenda to do.

I'm retired now. I have nothing else to worry about—right? I'm not concerned about making a million dollars from that, or whatever. There are a lot of people out there, in my opinion, in the same situation. They've lived their lives, they've devoted a lot of their life to their communities, and they want to see these communities survive. Their whole agenda would be to see these communities survive in the best possible way, and they would not have some hidden agenda. That's the kind of people you need to head these committees.

How you may go about it I don't know. Maybe they could be selected in some way—it's an option—or maybe there could be some election process. Then again, if you have an election process, it doesn't always work.

Mr. John Duncan: I guess the bottom line for all of us is that if you had taken the moneys that were spent under NCARP and TAGS, and if you had delivered those dollars at the community level, I think we can all readily imagine that the results would have been tremendously different and many times better. So I appreciate your comments there.

I'm very concerned about your statements on the state of the other fisheries. Do you see any semblance of recognition of this problem coming from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans? Are the scientists raising alarm bells, or is this passing unnoticed in those quarters?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: I made a presentation to the Atlantic Groundfish Advisory Committee approximately ten years ago about the state of the turbot fishery. It was free for all at that time. Any foreign country could come in and fish it. It was what you called an underutilized species, where we had to give away what we wouldn't catch.

This committee made a recommendation that day that it would be taken off the underutilized species list and would be placed on a fishery that's in a bit of a problem. As soon as it got to Ottawa, to Fisheries and Oceans, they overturned that, and it still went under the underutilized species, where we're allowed to let foreigners come in and fish the last turbot out.

Nothing has changed today. If you look today, with Fisheries and Oceans, there's still plenty of turbot out there, still for all. You have to go 500 or 600 miles to catch it, whereas I could catch it half a mile from where I live. So if that doesn't tell the story, I don't know what does.

When you talk about the capelin, I never saw a capelin land on a beach in my area last year. The people in my area never got one to eat. Still for all, the capelin is healthy—right? So nobody is seeing the signs.

The same with the crab. Last year, in 1996, fishermen raised the alarm about the crab. They were getting a bit hard to catch. What did DFO do that year? They raised the quota.

So there are no alarm bells. Nothing is getting through to DFO in Ottawa, for some reason or other, and as long as you can put one person to work to get a few bucks out of it.... As John Crosbie said, I couldn't shut down the cod fishery because FDI and Nat Sea would go belly-up, so I have to fish it right to extinction.

As long as this is going ahead, nothing is going to change.

We should have let FDI and Nat Sea go, in my opinion, and saved the cod fishery. But we still don't have any change today. We've lost our fisheries, and there's not one person left for it from DFO.

The Chairman: Before we go to the Bloc, Captain, do you see Mr. Herman Carter there? Did Mr. Herman Carter show up to give some testimony?

• 0930

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: No, I'm sorry, there's no one here but a couple of people from the media.

The Chairman: Thank you.

We'll now turn to the Bloc. Mr. Bernier.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier (Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine —Pabok, BQ): I want to greet the witness. I will try to be brief because I know there are other members from Newfoundland who are anxious to ask questions to our witness.

My question will also deal with the witness' view that the compensation money should be administered at the community level. I want to go one step further. Between 1993 and 1997, after being asked many times to decentralize, the Canadian government signed agreements on manpower training with most provinces. You say that the compensation package could be administered by people in the community. I'm wondering whether the provincial government could be the one getting to administer the funds, just like in Quebec where the provincial government prefers to be the one managing the funds coming from Ottawa. The federal government might be more willing to make an agreement with the provinces because they already have a MOU. The province could then make an agreement with the various communities.

Let me give you an example. In Quebec, we have the Société québécoise de développement de la main-d'oeuvre that is responsible for manpower development in the province. In each of the administrative regions, in each area, members of the community are asked to sit on a working group that is responsible for developing policies. Do you think that a similar structure could receive and administer the funds from such a program in the future? Thank you.

[English]

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: I would have no problem with the money being administered to the province as long as the province went out into communities to consult with people and to let people be involved in what's going on, administering it all from St. John's. I think different areas of the province have to be involved in it for it to work.

That's my opinion, and I guess a brief answer to your question. Are you satisfied that I've answered all your questions on that one?

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Yes, you did answer my question. I understand why you are so sceptical this morning. I can tell that you still have doubts it will work and so do I. When I see Brian Tobin at the helm, I can't help but wonder. I trust you will demand a local group be put in charge of overseeing program delivery, if ever you get a similar manpower training system. So, hang in there!

[English]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Bernier.

We now turn to the New Democratic Party. Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Eastern Shore, NDP): Hello, Captain Bartlett. I represent the riding of Sackville—Eastern Shore, which includes the eastern passage and the Sheet Harbour area.

You mentioned FPI and Nat Sea. I tend to agree with you that if the ITQ system hadn't come into place, we wouldn't have half the problems we have now within the fishery.

You were saying that dumping is still going on. I've been saying that for quite some time. Some people still don't believe me that the dumping of by-catch goes on as we speak today.

My question is, in your opinion is it still happening more than it ever has been in the fisheries off the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: That's a question I can't answer. I guess the only thing now that would be dumped, if you're talking about on the coast of Labrador, would be in the shrimp fishery, because that's about all that's going on.

The turbot fishery is being done by gill-nets, where the small ones would be released anyhow; they wouldn't be caught. They say in the shrimp trawlers there's no by-catch whatsoever, but I would have to be on that vessel before I would believe that. I can't see how you can catch shrimp when you can't catch a cod or a turbot the same size.

I mean, I am not absolutely sure that dumping is not going ahead. I know in the capelin fishery we are dumping approximately 60% of more of male capelin, so it's still going on in that fishery.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay.

• 0935

I have a concern with the individual transfer quota systems and the way they're in place now. We know that 50% of the resources off Atlantic Canada is in the hands of corporate control like FPI and Nat Sea. I'm in agreement with you that we should let those go and keep the community-based allocation fisheries similar to Burgeo or Black Tickle or wherever these community bases are in order to support the fisheries on their own and keep those people in those communities.

When the ITQ was developed you could just see the pressure on the fisheries envelop them. In your opinion, is that a good system? Does it work fairly, or should it be scrapped and another system devised?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: I agree with you on the point that the ITQ system destroyed our fishery. You have two large companies on the northeast coast of Newfoundland and 1,200 fishermen caught half of the cod quota and 10,000 caught the other half. If it had been in my power to do so, I would have scrapped the 1,200 offshore fishermen and left half of the quota in the water, and we would still have a healthy fishery today.

The ITQ and the offshore companies created the big draggers. They destroyed everything that was out there. The amount of fish they brought in wasn't the problem, it was the amount of small fish and everything else that was dumped.

If I have a quota of so many tonnes of fish and small fish are worth 20¢ a pound and large fish are worth 70¢ a pound, what am I going to do? I'm going to keep dumping and dumping until I can load that vessel with 70¢-a-pound fish. That's the nature of the beast. That's what happened to our fisheries, and it has to stop.

There's another statement I want to make. There's no such thing as too many fishermen in Newfoundland. That's not the problem. The problem is the technology we're using to catch the fish. If the dragger technology were thrown out we would not have a problem with our fishermen and our communities would be healthy. As I said, 1,200 fishermen took half of the cod and destroyed our resource.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Stoffer. We're now going to turn to the Progressive Conservation Party representative in our committee and then to the government side.

Captain Bartlett, before I do that, let me ask you this question on the present quotas for this fall in area zero. Do you know where area zero is, Captain?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: Yes, I guess zero would be way up north.

The Chairman: It would be about 80 miles north of Cape Chidly. It would start right in the passage. If I were to tell you that this fall, developmental quotas have been assigned to foreign crews using foreign draggers with five-and-a-half-inch mesh—not at the cod end but in the drag—to fish for Canadian companies for turbot, what would your reaction be to that decision?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: My reaction would be the same as it was ten years ago, George. As you know, I've been quite active on several committees that have been trying to save our fisheries in Newfoundland for quite some time. One of the most important was the Newfoundland Inshore Fisheries Association. I got to meet a lot of scientists and a lot of people through these committees. We were told by the scientists that the turbot always breed up there in the zero zone. When they get to a certain size they come into Newfoundland waters and lay there for a while. When the time comes to breed they go up in those waters again.

We destroyed our turbot stocks in Newfoundland and now we're sending vessels up to what they tell me is the spawning grounds to clean up the last fields up there. So I don't have to tell you how I feel, George. You know damn well how I feel. I feel this is ridiculous. Nobody in DFO has learned a lesson from what we've done to the northern cod stocks.

The Chairman: We now turn to the Progressive Conservative Party, Mr. Matthews.

• 0940

Mr. Bill Matthews (Burin—St. George's, PC): Good morning, Captain Bartlett. It's interesting to hear from you. I would just like to follow up on Peter's question on technology and so on.

When former fisheries minister Tobin and former human resources minister Axworthy made the announcement on the TAGS program in St. John's, Newfoundland, I remember Mr. Tobin in particular distinctly said the five-year period would be used for gear type study and technology study to see if there needed to be some gear type adjustment and technology refinement. Are you aware of any such studies or any initiatives by DFO in technology or gear type refinements in the last three or four years?

Mr. Captain Wilfred Bartlett: No, there's been nothing. It's a dead issue. It seems the government doesn't have to deal with it. I served on a committee two years ago about sustainable communities and marine ecosystems and we travelled to eight different communities around the province, as far north as Makkovik, Labrador. This was a burning issue in just about every community we went to. We've a fishery that has been devastated. Everybody has pointed a finger at technology. Everybody has asked for a study into gear technology. It was one of our strongest recommendations that this study be done. The government has come out so far and it has rejected this recommendation and to this present day it has done nothing to study gear technology.

The other big thing was to do a study into why the fishery collapsed, which I think would be coming up with the same question. Everybody needs to know why the fishery died. We who were involved in it all know, but the general public out there doesn't know. If you don't find out what killed it, how are you going to correct it from happening in the future? This is the big question that came back from that report.

Mr. Bill Matthews: Thank you very much. You're really concurring with my thoughts, I guess, because we talk so much about a fishery of the future, but if we were to wake up tomorrow morning with our cod stocks regenerated, our total groundfish stocks regenerated, we would still be using the same gear types and the same technology to devastate the whole kit and caboodle again. I guess that's the point. We have wasted three or four years and virtually done nothing. Yet all we talk about is the fishery of the future; which will be identical to the fishery of the past.

I want to pursue your comments on NCARP and TAGS and the compensation. If I read into what you said, basically what you say is those the program was supposedly designed for ended up benefiting less from the program because the cod fishery in essence was on a decline for years before the moratorium was announced. So your earnings were reduced and consequently people in the cod fishery, I know in my own area, say at Lawn and Lord's Cove, where there were really fishery collapses, groundfish collapses.... The cod trap fishery failed for a number of years, and consequently those people didn't have any earnings, but when it came to NCARP and TAGS they were the people who received less benefits.

Is that what you're saying? I just want to clarify this, because I'm sure some members of the committee didn't really understand what you were saying. Really, those who were fishing cod and saw their earnings decline over a ten-year period ended up receiving less benefits from NCARP and TAGS. Am I right and that is what you're saying?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: That is correct. I don't know anybody in my immediate area who did receive top TAGS, because the majority were lobster fishermen and capelin fishermen. They had only those stamps.

I can recall Cabot Martin phoning people in Cook's Harbour when John Crosbie announced $225 a week. He asked the question down there if these people were satisfied with $225 a week. Do you know what they came back with? That's more than we've earned the last five years, because all the cod were caught. There were no cod there to fish, so they would have settled for $225. It would have been better than what they are getting now. That shows you the devastation up on the Northern Peninsula.

When you come to Makkovik, I think for a couple of years they didn't even qualify for NCARP because they couldn't show any earnings from cod in 1991 because they couldn't get one even to eat, although historically they were totally cod and salmon fishermen.

So you are exactly right. The next program has to be designed to pick up the slack. If a fisherman is in an area where all he has to fish is cod and he can't fish it, then he has to be looked after. Those are the most important people who have to be looked after.

• 0945

The Chairman: We're getting close to the end of these questions. We then switch to the government side on the next round of questions for the next witness.

Mr. Matthews, do you want to add one more thing?

Mr. Bill Matthews: I have just one more question about the delivery of a future program, to Captain Bartlett. I've listened very intently to what you've said. Captain Bartlett, we have those regional economic development boards now out and about the province, and I met with a board a few weeks ago. This board has identified numerous economic development opportunities in the area they service, and so on.

I'm just wondering, I don't know what the impression in your area is of those regional economic boards, but would you anticipate that they possibly could be the administrator of a new program? I'm just bouncing it off you. I sort of hear where you're coming from, but when I look at an elected town council I doubt very much if it would even want to go near such an event. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that, because I know a lot of these boards have identified very good economic development projects that would create employment in their areas, but what they're lacking is the means to put this together. I'm wondering what your thoughts might be on some kind of a development program as a part of a new program to replace TAGS.

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: I agree with you on one thing—that it shouldn't be up to town councils. If you're going to develop a program where local people in the area are going to look after it, it has to be done on a regional basis, not by communities. There are already some larger communities, I guess, like Ramea and places like that, but not in an area where I'm to, where there are a lot of smaller communities. But it would have to be done on a regional basis.

As to the economic boards, I have a question mark there. Although I served on a provisional board for a year, it wasted a lot of time, in my opinion, and took a full year to set up the criteria to elect an economic board. I'm very pissed off with it. I wouldn't go back on an economic board the next time around. I don't know what the problem was, whether it was too much government interference or what was slowing the process down. To date I haven't seen too much action when it comes to developing jobs. They've done a lot of talking, but I haven't seen any action, and from where I sit I like to see action. Anybody can talk and talk, but you want to see some action.

Maybe they could do some work on it by setting up an independent committee, because I see a lot of people on these committees who are there for their own personal agenda, as you see on a lot of these committees. I'm very much worried about some of these. I'm sure there are some good ones in the province and some not so good, as you would say about development associations that were ahead of these.

So I have some doubts. There would have to be more discussion, I guess, on it.

The Chairman: We're almost to the end of our time. Mr. Lunn, you had one short question, and then we'll switch to the next witness and the government side.

Mr. Gary Lunn (Saanich—Gulf Islands, Ref.): I want to thank you for your comments, Captain Bartlett. I enjoyed what you had to state. It sounds to me, after listening to you, like heads should roll at DFO.

I agree with you that we have to make sure that in any future program the end users are the ones who are receiving the benefits, and that it's not gobbled up by bureaucracies and people with their own agenda.

I also want to go one step further. I'm convinced in my own mind that had the amount of money that's been spent on NCARP and TAGS gone to the end user, had the people like yourselves been directly involved in the administration and how it gets used, we wouldn't be in this mess today.

I believe people in Newfoundland do not just want an income supplement. They want to see a solution to this problem. I wonder if you have any suggestions on what you see down the road on this, so that there is no need for an income supplement program or any other type of program. How can we get to a solution at the end of the day where either the fishermen are displaced or they get back into the industry in which they can have a sustainable fishery and a living?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: That's a difficult one. I can't give you a short answer on that one. It would depend on when the fishery is open again. If you talk to a lot of fishermen in my area, there were plenty of fish out there, the year the minister decided we couldn't even have food fishing because there wasn't enough there.

• 0950

Until something is clarified, I think, and until somebody can answer the question of whether the fishery is going to open in two years, five years, ten years or never at all.... I'm sure there are a lot of people out in the communities who wouldn't be hanging around if they knew that the cod fishery was never going to come back. But these people have everything they worked for all their lives.... I'm talking about the people who are in midlife. The young people can jack up and go on, but there are people who have everything they've worked for all their lives in this community, and it's very difficult to give it up and move somewhere else where it's very difficult to find a job. Those are the people who have to be looked after.

Now if the fish don't come back I can't see the government looking after them indefinitely. I can't see it. There must something else we can come up with. I don't know what. I just don't know, right? I wish I did.

The Chairman: Captain Bartlett, would a good start be to get rid of all those foreign licences?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: A good start would have been that we shouldn't have had the foreign licences for the last ten years. Every one should be gone. Even our local draggers should be banned. We could get back to the type of fishery where we can select the fish, where we can catch fish without destroying other species or destroying the small fish.

Until we get back to that and until we rebuild our capelin stocks.... And look at the damage we're doing to the shrimp fishery, which is a main food fish of the cod, turbot, seals and everything else. All these things have to be taken into consideration if we want to rebuild our cod stocks.

But in my opinion DFO is not doing anything to try to rebuild the cod stocks. At the very same time they're saying that they're trying to get them back, they're destroying the very food they depend on for a living.

So somebody with some sense has to sit down and look at this whole program and decide what must be done so that we can rebuild our cod stocks and our other stocks, our turbot and everything else, so that the people of Newfoundland, the Maritimes, up the Labrador coast and Quebec can make a living like we did for 500 years.

The Chairman: Thank you, Captain Bartlett. I presume the same thing applies for the new squid quotas given this year to five foreign nations inside 200 miles. Do you completely disagree with that as well?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: I always did. When the squid fishery opened in Newfoundland we got at least three times as much per pound of squid as we're getting today. There is no end to the market.

Today we can't sell them. Why? Because we're allowing these countries to come over in our water and catch them themselves. If we allow every country in the world to come over and catch our crab, our fish and everything else, we're not going to be able to sell anything. It makes common sense.

There shouldn't be anybody except Canadians fishing our waters.

The Chairman: Thank you, Captain Bartlett, for your time today. You've contributed a lot to these deliberations.

We will switch in a few moments to St. John's to hear witnesses and then up to Nova Scotia.

• 0953

• 1007

The Chairman: Order.

We now move to St. John's, Newfoundland, for further witnesses. We notice that a prominent member of our standing committee is present in the room in St. John's, in the person of Lawrence O'Brien, the member for Labrador.

Mr. O'Brien, maybe you could introduce the witnesses we have from St. John's today.

Mr. Lawrence D. O'Brien (Labrador, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I have with me today Marcel O'Brien. Marcel is from L'Anse-au-Loup. He's been a fisherman all of his life. Marcel has an otter trawl. He's fished in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the otter trawl fleet. Currently, he's a fisherman in 2J, in the crab zone. He has a shrimp licence in 4R in the gulf. He also hopes to be a partner in northern zone 2J, in the shrimp fisheries. Marcel has been actually quite involved with the fishermen's unions, fishing activities, the Labrador Fishermen's Union Shrimp Company, and so on, over the years. It's certainly my pleasure today to introduce to you a good friend, a cousin of mine, and a great fisherman, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Marcel O'Brien, would you like to make a statement, sir? In the committee room in Ottawa we have members from all of the political parties in the House of Commons here to listen to you. Perhaps you would like to make an opening statement, and then we'll open it up to questions.

Mr. Marcel O'Brien (Chairman, Fisheries Community, St. John's, Newfoundland): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

I'd like to make an opening statement before we get into the questions, and I'll deal with some of the issues, especially TAGS.

Over the past several years, since the closure of most of Atlantic Canada's groundfish fisheries, there have been enormous changes in the complexion of the fishery for all fishers. The TAGS program has relieved many of the hardships that would be associated with the industry collapse if this income support program was not instituted by the federal government.

This is not to say that the TAGS program does not have its problems and has not resulted in social and economic turmoil for affected areas. TAGS has, for the past three years, sustained the communities around the coast of Labrador—and indeed all of Atlantic Canada—both socially and economically. In doing so, TAGS has provided an element of security to these communities, which otherwise would have died with the decline in the groundfish stocks, a result more of government mismanagement than overfishing. However, all aspects of the fishery have to share in the responsibility for the failure of the Atlantic fishery. TAGS has avoided the breakdown of the community framework that has been built up over the past several centuries.

• 1010

In addition to personal preservation, the TAGS program has allowed for the survival of a vibrant business community in all coastal communities of Labrador and Atlantic Canada. The institution of the TAGS program has provided families with a fast and hard lesson in fiscal management while living on a fixed income in the form of income support. This will allow families to be somewhat more fiscally responsible in future business opportunities, whether in the fishery or outside the fishery.

The training component of the TAGS program has allowed for an improvement in the social fabric of all afflicted communities. It has given fishers and plant workers the confidence to participate in consultation with all levels of government that may have otherwise not occurred.

TAGS has, over the past several years, provided for the preservation of coastal life. However, it has also been a hindrance to the development of the local economy. Some fishers have become complacent, and have given up the desire to work in favour of income support in the form of TAGS. This past summer saw fishers stop fishing once they approached the income threshold, particularly in areas that the cod fishery was open to commercial activity.

Individuals are being robbed of their self-esteem and work ethic as a result of being forced from their work through no fault of their own. Fishers would much rather have been active during the duration of their TAGS qualification, rather than sitting at home collecting a cheque on income support. Many fishers have been abusing the TAGS program as a result of not being required to be actively working during the qualifying period. This has been transferred to their fishing activity, and has today resulted in many inactive fishers who may have been active if it was a condition of their qualification.

The TAGS program is only a small part of the problems plaguing the fishery, particularly in Labrador. There have been fisheries developments for the past several years, thanks to the efforts of both levels of government; however, Labrador has not benefited as it should have from these developments. For example, the turbot fishery in northern Labrador has been prostituted for the past number of years, but Labrador plants still remain idle while turbot is shipped to other parts of Newfoundland, Atlantic Canada, and even overseas. Labrador fishermen are facing the problem I alluded to earlier regarding TAGS, while mainland fishers are catching fish adjacent to our shores.

Shrimp has been allocated to foreign interests with Canadian faces for the past twenty years, with only minimal benefits accruing to Labrador residents. This year, in 1997, DFO finally gave inshore fishers access to shrimp resources only miles off the Labrador coast, but there is still no distinct quota for Labrador residents. I submit to you that this would not happen anywhere else in the world, let alone in Canada. I suggest that this committee look at giving a distinct quota to all regions off the coast of Labrador, with species to be caught at the fishers' will, not at the will of DFO bureaucrats.

There is currently an arbitrary line drawn between the straits area of Labrador and the southeast coast dividing 2J and the Labrador portion of 4R. This line serves only to divide the fishing populations of Labrador. It would be more appropriate for all fishers involved if all Labrador fishers could access the resources adjacent to the coast. This would not increase the number of fishers involved in the fisheries in that area, but would allow fishers who could access an existing licence to increase the viability of their fishing enterprises.

For instance, a snow crab fishery currently exists in Labrador, but all fishers from the straits area are excluded from participating unless they enter into an elaborate leasing arrangement defined by DFO. It would be much more appropriate if DFO allowed some sort of overlap system, wherein fishers from one area of Labrador could hold a licence in any other area if they can't gain access to the licence through any means possible or available to them.

All the existing policy does is divide the different areas off Labrador, resulting in the trade-off of Labrador marine resources, which appears to have been the mandate DFO over the years. Labrador resources are not for the taking. They are for the benefit of the people of Labrador first, and any surplus can most certainly be shared with the rest of the province, the region or country, but only after Labrador residents are taken care of and are allowed to fish for a living rather than being at the mercy of income support.

I feel any fisher should be able to fish a licence in any area if he can access the licence, and the policy should reflect this. I think DFO policy makers should be the people with fishing experience. Otherwise, they are making policy for people, with no regard for those affected. And consultation should mean listening to the views of those you are talking to. It should not be as it is now, recording one's views for the trash can.

• 1015

We need major changes in the personnel of DFO, people with new ideas and a willingness to listen to people.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. O'Brien.

Before we go to our first questioner, a point of clarification. Mr. O'Brien, are the foreign workers who fish shrimp mainly from the Faroe Islands, from that nation?

Also, regarding the foreign vessels and crews that are up on developmental quotas off the northern coast of Labrador, would you know where those vessels come from? There are about three foreign nations up there.

First of all, on the shrimp, are they mainly from the Faroe Islands? Would you know how they get their work permits? Is this by ministerial permission?

Mr. O'Brien, would you know the answers to any of these questions?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: They are mostly Faroese who are there now, and they have been for the past number of years. I've been involved with the shrimp fishery as a part of a shrimp company for the past 20 years. They are Faroese and they just come in. They work out an arrangement with the government and come in and lease their boats to Canadian companies. The majority of the crews would be all Faroese and they would take a few of the Labrador residents or Canadian residents just to make it, I suppose, legal for them to be able to fish in our waters.

The Chairman: So you don't know how.... Quite obviously, you have the best fishermen in the world on the Labrador coast. I'm just wondering about the technicality of continually allowing foreign nations to send workers to your shores in Labrador if we have Canadians who are able to do the work. It obviously violates the Immigration Act in some way.

Would you know if there is a special arrangement with the Government of Canada to allow this to happen?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: No, I don't know if there is a special arrangement to allow this to happen, but I do know that most of the officers on these boats are from the Faroe Islands. Even though we have qualified and capable people like Labradorans and Newfoundlanders—Canadians—they can't seem to make any headway, because they are constantly being told by the skipper and by the owners of these boats that they are not capable of operating these boats.

The best they can hope for right now is if some of our crew was to become a mate. That's the topnotch guy from Newfoundland. Other than that, they are deckhands and factory workers.

The Chairman: So, Mr. O'Brien, your point is that while the Canadian taxpayer pays people to sit at home doing nothing, these foreign crews are operating. Is that correct?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: That's correct.

The Chairman: We'll turn now to questions. New Brunswick—Mr. Hubbard.

Mr. Charles Hubbard (Miramichi, Lib.): First, I'd like to get a little bit of a concept for our committee about your actual business or activity with fishing; for example, the size of your trawler, the number of people who work with you on it, the value of your gear, what licences you fished this past year, which licences you have that you did not fish, and probably just a general idea of how much revenue a trawler like yours would generate for the province of Newfoundland in a given season.

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: I've been a fisherman constantly for the past 25 years. The vessel I have now is a 55-foot-long boat and the value of the boat and the gear is approximately $2.5 million.

I have several licences. I have a licence to fish shrimp in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in the Escoumins channel. I have a scallop licence to fish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I have some groundfish licences, but obviously there is no.... I won't say there's no groundfish to catch. That is probably an argument for another time. But there is a closure on the groundfish fishery in the gulf. I have a crab licence for the 2J area. Would that crab licence be out of the DFO regulations now? I had to enter into a joint partnership with somebody in the 2J region. Even though I'm a Labrador resident, I wasn't allowed to hold a crab licence for a certain section of Labrador, so I had to go out and pay big dollars to purchase that crab licence. It's still costing me money and I'm always having to pay extra money just to use it, even though I went out and brought the licence and had to put it in the name of a person living in that particular area.

• 1020

I've been involved in the crab fishery now for the past four seasons. With the downturn in the crab fishery, now I'm gearing up to go back into the shrimp in the gulf in the spring, and the shrimp and the northern cod, and hopefully I will be able to take part in the crab in the northern 2J area. But as it stands right now, I can't take part in these fisheries.

As the regulations stand now, I have to make up my mind by now whether I'm going to take part in the shrimp fishery or in the crab fishery. If I take part in the shrimp fishery, I can fish the fishing season, but if I wanted to go into the crab fishery, I'd have to trade off my boat to somebody on the Labrador coast for 12 months. I wouldn't be allowed to return then to the north part of Labrador coast nor to my own fishery in the gulf for another 12 months after that.

The regulations are such that a person can't fish the fishing season. For instance, this summer, if I was allowed to and used the licence that I had, I could have fished for 26 weeks, but instead, because of the regulations, I was only allowed to fish for six. I got six weeks of fishing when I could have fished for 26, with six men directly involved in the crew and two people on shore, like the other workers. I've been employing eight people. And in regard to this whole TAGS thing, nobody can really live on six weeks. I need a minimum of $300,000 income to make it a viable fishing enterprise for myself and the crew. This year our gross was $180,000.

If I were allowed to fish the season that I have the licence to fish, I could have had a gross of probably $500,000 and we would all not only survive, we would all probably make a little bit of money so that we could spend a bit to do repairs on the boat. We wouldn't have been on the TAGS and we wouldn't have to be on the TAGS, and we don't want to be on the TAGS.

We want to work and we want to fish. Fishing is what we're good at. We are professional fishermen. We're probably the best in the world, and very proud to be fishing. But when you're falling behind, not allowed to do what you are supposed to do and capable of doing, and have the licence to do, it makes it pretty hard.

Mr. Charles Hubbard: With the snow crab, when you speak of the short season, is it because of the quota on the snow crab?

Secondly, I'd like to follow this snow crab business a little bit, because it's been a very lucrative fishery for the past few years. Other fishermen are very jealous of the snow crab fishermen. It seems some captains and some mates, at least along the gulf, are earning big money in a very short period of time. In terms of your snow crab, is this where the problem in terms of generating income is, that you have a quota and the snow crab prices have fallen somewhat this year?

Captain Wilfred Bartlett: We have a snow crab quota. Most of Newfoundland now is involved in ITQ. The prices are really down. Parts of New Brunswick and Quebec still have very good prices, but for us the maximum price for crab this year was $1 a pound—and it was from $1 down to 75¢. The quota per boat varies from 150,000 to 180,000 pounds per boat. It could supplement our fishery right now if we were allowed to take part in the other fisheries, but for just one fishery, you can't do it; you can't survive on it.

• 1025

Mr. Charles Hubbard: Mr. Chairman, it seems that both witnesses this morning are extremely critical of DFO. This is amazing in an industry that needs so much cooperation between the participants and those who are managing the activity.

Am I hearing incorrectly, Mr. O'Brien, that you are very critical of what DFO are doing; that it's poor management; that there needs to be a reassessment of the management effectiveness of DFO? Is that the message we're hearing?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: Yes, you're absolutely right. I'm very displeased with DFO and the policies and the policy makers—especially the policy makers. I have no problems with policy; we have to have policy. But when there are people putting policy in place who have no knowledge of the fishery, no regard for the fishermen, it's absolutely ludicrous.

I think really if we had people making the policy in DFO who had some knowledge of the fishery and where we're coming from, what we're doing and what we need to do in order to make a living, we could move forward and do something. There's no willingness there to listen to fishermen.

I've been involved on a number of committees talking to DFO over the years, probably for the last 20 years. We've gotten out of the meetings sometimes feeling very good and thinking that we've accomplished something, only to find the next day that we've probably gone back farther than we were when we started. They really don't have any knowledge of what is needed. They're too far back in the past. The policies of 100 years ago don't apply to us today.

Mr. Charles Hubbard: I'm amazed at this type of statement, because I would assume that most DFO officials are out there on the water, on the wharves, or participating in your communities, that there is a great amount of reaction and interaction between the two groups. You seem to picture DFO as some group from some other planet who aren't really involved with the reality of what the fishery's about. Is that true? Am I hearing something that's—

The Chairman: Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: They may not be from another planet, but they lead us to believe that sometimes by being so out of touch with the people and the fishermen. The only thing I can find that DFO is really good at is trying find a way to get you into court, instead of trying to find a way to work with people so that this doesn't happen.

The regulations have changed; the regulations they have don't apply to today's fishery. I can't be anything but critical of them, after so many years of frustration and not being able to work with them. We should move forward so that we can progress as the fisheries change. As the fishery changes, we have to change with it. We have to come up with new ideas, new means. Everything has to change. Right now, that's not happening.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Hubbard.

Some of the court cases I presume you are referring to, Mr. O'Brien, are the one hundred skippers who are now charged with this blueback business. That's another one.

Let's go to Mr. Lunn from British Columbia. From the Reform Party of Canada, Mr. Lunn.

Mr. Gary Lunn: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, Mr. O'Brien.

I'm interested in some of your comments. We've been hearing from witnesses and also have been speaking with many people on the phone. I can tell you that I'm greatly concerned from what I hear, not only from yourself but also from the bureaucracy within the department, about where we're going.

I'll touch on a few points this morning. First of all, I'm not sure whether it's TAGS or the DFO that is the problem. One of my concerns is that in any future programs of any type, the money that is allocated by this government has to get to the end-user. As you're probably aware, there's a lot of money that went to the union specifically. We're hearing all kinds of allegations like that. We have to ensure that does not happen, that we cannot be supporting anything in any way, shape or form.

The other concern I have is that we are no closer today to a solution to helping the fishing industry in the Atlantic than they were when TAGS was brought in. We have to be looking towards a solution, exploring all types of other industries from seals to these other fisheries, in making sure we do have a sustainable fishery so that there is a livelihood that can be sustainable in Newfoundland.

• 1030

Obviously the other big issue is these offshore licences, quotas, etc. If there are loopholes and they are getting around them by leasing those Canadian companies, then we are going to have to make sure we close those.

I heard your comments that you've been moving around. You have different licences in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for shrimp and scallop and crab in other parts. Where do you see a viable fishery? Where should this committee be exploring the options other than the offshore licences? I think we can recognize there's a real problem there and we can address that, but—

I guess we lost you.

[Editor's Note: Technical difficulty].

The Chairman: There we go. Can you hear us again, Mr. O'Brien?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: We can hear you now.

Mr. Gary Lunn: You'll have to talk to your cousin there and tell him not to pull the plug next time.

In any event, where do you see a possible future for the fishing industry in Atlantic Canada? What options should this committee be exploring? There's no point in having more sequels and more sequels if we are not going to get to a solution to this problem.

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: That's right. We've been having enough of these hearings now, on different things. We should all be experts on it all, really.

The local fishermen, the local plant workers, they are the people who have to be more involved, and they have to be listened to more. Right now when the committee holds meetings or when they go around looking for information or suggestions, they are going to the union, they are going to these different groups. The fishermen and plant workers and all these people are always left out. They are not being heard. They never got heard under the TAGS before, and they are not being heard now. The frustration is building up. They don't know where to go.

Mr. Gary Lunn: I want to interrupt you for just one minute. I appreciate that we have to have involvement, and I'm in full agreement with that. We have to get closer to the people, closer to the source. But my question to you, specifically because you are a fisherman and obviously very involved in the different ones, is for this to be a sustainable industry, what resources do you see us as exploring, resources that are going to be sustainable? Obviously the cod fishery is questionable—will it recover, and if so, by how much—but there are many other options, I understand. There's the seal industry. As a committee we could be exploring many other industries within the industry to ensure there's a sustainable fishery. What resources do you see this committee pursuing?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: There are a lot of fisheries. The seals are one big thing. We really have to do something about the seals. The seals are out there in vast numbers now. We can't do anything. You can't do anything in any fishery now. If you are involved in the trawl fishery now.... When we started fishing at that 20 years ago, when you were taking back your gear and your nets and it was coming up to tidal water you didn't see a seal around. Now you are in competition with the seals to try to get it aboard, picking it up so the seals are not picking it out of the net as you are taking it back.

So we have to do something. The seals are becoming a real nuisance to all fishers. DFO is involved and everything. We definitely have to do something about the seals. We have to add to the quota, double or triple it, or go beyond that. We have to get that, and that's going to be something we have to spend some money on and get the fishermen involved.

The porcupine crab on the Labrador coast could be a big fishery. This year the scientists at DFO had an opportunity to spend some money on research to see if this fishery could go ahead. The fellows involved in the deep water turbot fishery are bringing up these porcupine crabs in vast numbers. They're not allowed to bring them to shore for processing. They have to throw them back into the water. Right now, instead of being able to supplement their income, it's a nuisance to them. They have to move from areas where they're to. This could be something that'll help out.

• 1035

The scallop fishery in Labrador should be used to its potential. Because of the regulations I mentioned just now, and the policies of the DFO, right now there are no boats allowed in the northern part of Labrador to fish for scallops. They have to use boats from other areas. They can't use boats from, say, the Strait of Belle Isle because the regulations won't allow them to. They have to enter into this one-year agreement. So things have to be changed so that they can take part in that. In the whelk fishery, it's the same thing.

We have numerous fisheries we can't take part in through northern Labrador and in the gulf because of the regulations now. If fishermen were allowed to take part in the fisheries and get a licence to fish the species we have, TAGS, or whatever is going to replace TAGS, wouldn't be a big issue, because fishermen would be out there fishing. They'd be earning a living, a lot more than they could earn otherwise.

Mr. Gary Lunn: What I'm hearing is that we need to allow licences for the species available, but if we gave all the fishermen in Newfoundland licences to go fish these other species, are we not just following down the same path we took with the cod fishery?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: I don't think so. You're not talking about the whole number of fishermen fishing the same species. If you had eight or ten species to fish from, there would be different fishermen involved in fishing the with different species.

As well, a number of older fishermen now want to retire. They would love to retire. That would cut the numbers down drastically. If the willingness was there on the part of the government to buy out some of these licences and retire the older people, you'd probably cut the fleet in half.

Mr. Gary Lunn: Thanks very much for your comments.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Lunn.

In terms of whelks—I imagine that's what you were talking about, the whelk fishery—is there such a thing as a whelk-pot? How do you catch the whelks?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: A whelk-pot is like a scaled-down version of a crab-pot.

The Chairman: You could use a salt-pork bucket, couldn't you?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: Yes. Some people have been using salt-pork buckets, with great success, too. Right now, in fact, the salt-pork bucket is taking over from the traditional whelk-pot.

The Chairman: With that, let's move to the government side, and the member from British Columbia, Mrs. Leung.

Ms. Sophia Leung (Vancouver Kingsway, Lib.): Good morning, Mr. O'Brien—and his cousin, Lawrence. I'm from B.C., so I find your information very informative. Thank you.

You mentioned that the government's assistance will affect people's incentive. Is there any possibility for special training for people who are in a very devastated situation? If there are different kinds of incentives we can give to the younger fishers, would you comment on that? Second, are there any planned conservation programs?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: I'm sorry, but you're not coming through well. Would you repeat that?

Ms. Sophia Leung: Okay.

First, what kind of an incentive training program can government help set up to make unemployed fishers more active and to enhance their self-esteem and dignity?

Second, what kind of program does the government give you in terms of conservation, trying to anticipate the reduction of the different items you mentioned? Is there anything you can suggest?

• 1040

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: On conservation, right now no training is available for the fishermen at all. There hasn't been any training for fishermen with regard to conservation that we could hope for. The only thing we can get out of DFO when it comes to conservation is if you go out and break the law, they'll take you to court for it.

For instance, even last year a number of fishermen were given extra quota to go and fish the crab from Labrador to bring in extra work for the fishermen so they could qualify for EI. Towards the end of the season, or a little bit after the season, everybody found out they had to go to court because they went 500 or 600 pounds over their quota.

This is the kind of conservation training we're getting. Right now, I'm one of the ones who is ending up in court in the next couple of months for going 600 pounds over a quota that was given to me by DFO to go out and get some extra weeks of work for fishermen. There's no training there. There has to be something there for people.

On your other question, there are going to have to be a couple of different types of training for the fisheries workers. You're going to have to have training for plant workers. There are non-fisheries and fisheries-related. All of these training programs would have to be in consultation with the affected workers, really.

Ms. Sophia Leung: I asked about conservation because in B.C. we do have very successful examples in Campbell River. Maybe we could discuss that with DFO.

The Chairman: It's a good suggestion.

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: Anything that would help would be appreciated.

The Chairman: If I understand you correctly—and the committee has to understand what you just said—you had a quota for fish. You went out and put out a net. You caught too much in the net and now they're charging you for catching the fish. Is that correct?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: Yes. Not only me; there were 12 fishermen. Mind you, it was an exploratory quota that was given to the crab fleet in 2J, and there were 34 fishermen involved in this exploratory quota. We had to catch it over a two-week period. We were allowed to bring in 13,000 pounds per trip to give the workers some extra work. Some of the fellows got 13,000 pounds, or you were a little bit less than 13,000 pounds, and some of the fellows might have been a few hundred pounds over. There are fellows down as low as 500 pounds to 1,000 pounds over their allotted limit.

When we came in, we in fact were told that we could have brought more in. The plants and DFO officials called us when we were on the way in with our quota. I brought in my quota of 13,600 pounds. I was 600 pounds over. I was told I could have gone back and taken more.

Two months after I sold my 13,600 pounds, I received a summons to go to court because I was 600 pounds over the 13,000 pounds. I find out now that there were 12 other people charged, assigned to the same company.

The Chairman: You're in the same boat as all of the 100 skippers who were charged after they had a licence to catch blueback seals and after the fact, after they sold it, they are now being charged by DFO for selling the pelts. The meat is okay, but for selling the pelts they are now charged by DFO. So probably they have training programs in jail, Mr. O'Brien. Maybe that's—

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: Maybe the training programs should go to the people who are laying charges.

The Chairman: There you go.

Mr. Stoffer, and then we'll go to Mr. Bernier.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I have a couple of questions for you, Marcel, with regard to dumping. You say you have a 55-foot boat and you're out shrimping. I won't specifically ask you if you're involved in dumping, but it appears that if you had dumped over the side that 600 pounds you had brought in that you're being charged with, then there would be no charges against you. Is that correct?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: That's correct.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay. That's simply scandalous.

• 1045

Second, it sounds, although you didn't say it, like you would be in favour of a community-based co-management of the fisheries.

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: Sure I would.

And about the dumping, if I may say this while we're talking about it, they had a regulation in place this past summer. In Labrador we fish from four different zones. And once the quota was taken from one zone, instead of us being able to move to the other zone, they wanted us to take our gear back, bring it into port and get DFO to count the pots and make sure we had the right number of pots. For example, if some fellow had more than his limit, they were going to bring him in and get them counted so he could get charged again and didn't bring it out...any crab that you had in your pots you would have to dump.

For example, I'm allowed to fish 500 pots. If I have 15,000 pounds of crab in those 500 pots, I would have to dump it. That was the regulation. We fought it and got it changed, so that we wouldn't have to dump it. But, you know, it took us two weeks to deal with Lawrence and his people to get DFO to change their mind on something that was, in my opinion, as dumb as that.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: It appears to me that maybe somebody was smoking those pots.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Peter Stoffer: As well, along with what Mr. Hubbard said from New Brunswick, although you didn't ask for it and you may or may not be aware of it, I've been very adamant in my call for an inquiry into the practices and policies of DFO. Do you agree that an inquiry would go a long way...? And it's not necessarily to have what some people think of as a waste of time and money, a witch-hunt. I look to it to in fact find out what happened and what policies we can put in place to correct the problems that have existed in the fisheries. Then we can move forward with this. Do you agree that an inquiry would be very helpful?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: It would definitely be helpful if once it's completed there's some action taken on it.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Mr. O'Brien, my last question for you concerns your mention of licence retirement. I'd like to go along with what Ms. Leung from British Columbia said. I'm in agreement with a licence retirement. The limit, of course, would be debatable, maybe 50 or 55 years of age. But with respect to retraining the younger people in the communities, we have heard that in some communities, in a town of 200 people, five of them were trained to be salon hairstylists, which of course to me is an apparent waste of money.

Do you agree that a complete and focused training program for young people, with other aspects of education or vocational skills or something, would go a long way in assisting these young people to find new careers, careers other than the fishery?

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: The way the training programs were set up in the past was the biggest problem with the fishers and fish plant workers, because there was no training program set up that looked after their interests or at what they were interested in. Most of the training programs were just ones on the go like you were talking about, the barbers or hairstylists or whatever. There was nothing very meaningful and there was really no time put into it.

We definitely need a training program, but we must have something that is going to make a person want to get involved in it, so that he can either.... Whether it's related to the fishery or instead of the fishery, it can't be something that's just there to use up a bit of government money and a bit of time. Most of the people who got involved in the training programs last time were people who were forced to by DFO or by whoever was managing the TAGS program. They said people had to take part in the program or else they were off TAGS, they didn't qualify any more.

I've been trying for the past number of years to get training programs into my area for people who want to take part in it, like fishing, in order to expand their expertise, because there are always new crew members needed and if you have to take on a new crew member like they are right now, with no experience at all...they don't know anything about the fishery. But I've been unsuccessful in that. Every time you mention it to them and tell them they have to go to St. John's for 15 or 20 weeks.... It should be home-based so that the people can get their hands-on experience at home.

As far as the retirement part, if we want to get the people out of the fishery, the retirement age probably should be somewhere around 50 years of age, because between 50 and 55 years of age is where we have our biggest number of people. From 55 and beyond, the numbers are smaller. So if we really want to get the numbers down, we have to get the age limit down to about 50.

• 1050

The Chairman: We've run out of time. We will go to some more questions and witnesses in a few moments.

Thanks very much, Mr. O'Brien, for coming down from Labrador to give us your expert testimony. We look forward to talking to you again. It's been a great contribution to the proceedings of this committee. We're looking forward as well to Mr. O'Brien coming back to be a member of our committee. Thank you very much.

Mr. Marcel O'Brien: Thank you very much; I appreciate it.

The Chairman: We have a motion we want to get through because we have nine members here. We need a mover for this motion. The motion is that in the first report of the subcommittee on agenda and procedure the committee request an order of reference to travel to Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia the week of November 23 on the management of the fisheries, and that said committee be composed of two Reform members, one Bloc, one NDP, one Conservative, and five Liberals, and that the necessary staff do accompany the committee.

Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce, Lib.): I so move.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chairman: We will come back in another ten minutes for testimony from Nova Scotia.

• 1052

• 1106

The Chairman: Order. We will now reconvene the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

We now go to Sydney, Nova Scotia, and our witnesses are Mr. Kevin Squires, the secretary of the local fishermen's group, and Jeff Brownstein, the president of Local 6 of the Maritime Fishermen's Union.

Gentlemen, can you hear us all right?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein (President, Local 6, Maritime Fishermen's Union): Yes, we can. Thank you.

The Chairman: We have representatives here on our committee from the New Democratic Party, from the Bloc, from the Reform Party of Canada, from the Progressive Conservative Party, and of course from the government side as well. We'd like you to make an opening statement or statements, following which we'll ask you a few questions.

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: Greetings, honourable members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. I am grateful for this opportunity to share with you some of the concerns of inshore fishermen and women and their communities. There are very many things I would like to raise with you, but I know that you are here today to look at TAGS.

I'd like to talk about TAGS in its broadest sense; that is, the Atlantic Groundfish Strategy and the long term vision that TAGS should really lead us to.

There are too many editorials in the Globe and Mail and too many bureaucrats in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans promoting the distorted view that all of the problems in the fishery are caused by too many fishermen chasing too few fish. We need our representatives in government to look at the fact that fleets were built, and the large plants to accompany them, in a manner that could not be sustainable. This was done by our own government with large subsidization and led to groundfish moratoria, massive unemployment and the near destruction of the very communities that pioneered the settlement of Canada.

In the early 1980s enterprise allocations of fish were given to the large corporations chosen by the Kirby report. These were given not because of any history in the fishery but because these corporations guaranteed that they would catch all of the fish and employ lots of plant workers. Unfortunately, those very plant workers are now the larger numbers of recipients of TAGS and are facing severe hardship.

These enterprise allocations were the beginning of the privatization of the fish stocks, which have continued to do nothing to conserve the fish while they have continued to create problems of overcapitalization in boats and in the buying up of someone else's quota.

ITQs were then forced on the fishermen here in the early 1990s. I say “forced” because in this area inshore mobile groundfish licence holders were given a ballot to vote for or against ITQs for cod, haddock and pollock. Of the ballots that were sent in, more of the licence holders were against ITQs, but DFO was determined to implement them anyway. It decided that all of the ballots that were not returned must be votes for ITQs, so we got ITQs.

• 1110

Then it sent out ballots for ITQs on flatfish, which is what this fleet fished for the most part. They were threatened by DFO that if they did not opt for an ITQ, then they might get very little quota. National Sea already had 50% of the flatfish quota in this area, although they actually had very little history of fishing flatfish. Again, the ballots did not show a majority for ITQs, but DFO implemented them on the grounds that the ballots supporting ITQs would get over 50% of the quota.

This is all to illustrate the point that there is a definite agenda to privatize the fish into fewer hands, while guaranteeing that effort levels will always be at least 100%. This also brings with it the need for more policing, in the manner of monitoring and observers, at great cost to the fishermen. Quotas have to be so accurate for conservation's sake. We have all seen too much damage done by quotas that were wrong.

The long-term solution to TAGS is not to continue as we have before. I submit to you that the greatest gain to the people of Canada will come from the fish being shared more equitably by the type of multi-species inshore fleet that accounts for the majority of fishermen here in the Maritimes.

Questions of capacity reduction should be addressed in each community management area. For example, here in Sydney Bight we have one community management board.

Some areas have a bigger problem than others. In this area we did not have an over-capacity in our under-45-foot class of vessels, which we call inshore. Our fish got wiped out by bad management and much bigger boats.

In this area we have had equal dependencies on groundfish and shellfish. There are many other species we depend upon as well. In fact, when TAGS came out, many fishermen here wondered why they couldn't qualify, since they had significant histories in fishing cod. The fact was that they had slowed down their cod fishing when the cod got smaller and scarcer and farther offshore, years before any moratorium. It is painfully obvious now that the moratorium came too late.

Inshore fishermen, many of whom had made the bulk of their living fishing codfish, shifted their effort to lobster and to other species, and now they are not receiving TAGS benefits regardless of whether or not they qualified. This is the kind of fleet that you want to keep fishing, if we are not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Bigger has not been better in the fishery. Do not blame the smaller multi-species and hence more cost-efficient vessels for the damage done by the bigger boats and by corporations who do not have the same stake in sustaining the resource that communities of fishermen and women do.

The biggest disappointment with TAGS was that little money by comparison was spent to buy out the real effort in the fishery. DFO science, as well as our own Sentinel fisheries program, are showing no promise in Sydney Bight and the eastern Scotia Shelf for any recovery in groundfish in the near future.

We still have fishermen in trouble who would like another chance at a buy-back. But you should aim the money at the real effort. In particular, the best effort reduction would come from buying out the larger mobile vessels and retiring their individual transferable quotas. These quotas should be held for the multi-species fleet, to fish them competitively, subject to the rules of their own community management boards, when the stocks finally do recover.

In the case of buy-backs of multi-species licence holders—the ones who have the big groundfish histories—these fishermen should not be forced to leave the fishery altogether, as they were in the last round of buy-backs. A good deal of effort could be reduced, and at less cost, if these fishermen could remain in the fishery for any species other than groundfish. As it was, by selling their other licences, there was no reduction in effort in these other fisheries.

• 1115

The government has to accept its responsibility in the demise of our groundfishery and the commitment it made when TAGS started. People continue to suffer and they don't have to be attacked or criticized because the TAGS program did not work miracles.

The problems are still there and there has to be some real action to fix them. Retiring fishermen with a reasonable buy-back is only fair and practical. Retiring the bigger groundfish specialists will help the most people, as well as the resource itself.

The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy has to be a very different strategy from what it has been. Communities of fishermen will take better care to ensure their future for the sake of their children and grandchildren, as they have done in the lobster fishery, where the controls are effort controls not quotas and where peer pressure makes for better observance of the rules as well as a more stable fishery.

To continue down the road of privatizing the fishery is to ask to make the same tragic mistakes over and over again. Multi-species inshore fishermen could hold the key to a brighter future if only you'd stop giving away the fish to people who can't keep promises, based on what looks good on paper. You, honourable members of Parliament, have a great responsibility to recognize what has gone wrong with the fishery, how many people have suffered, and how better and different management could sustain more fish and more fishermen and women and our coastal communities.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you. I presume the gentleman we just heard from is Mr. Squires.

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: No, I'm sorry, it's Jeff Brownstein, Maritime Fishermen's Union.

The Chairman: Local 6 of the Maritime Fishermen's Union.

Mr. Squires, would you like to make an opening statement?

Mr. Kevin Squires (Secretary, Local Fishermen's Group, Sydney, Nova Scotia): Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee.

I have 20 years of fishing experience and almost that many years of organizational experience in working with fishermen's groups. We used to worry about the large issues of management of the resource, organizing fishermen and those kinds of things, but lately we've been just trying to maintain our position in our communities. We've been taking over our wharfs. We've been receiving more and more weight due to cutbacks and downloading of responsibilities. So there's been quite a change in the last few years.

I have no direct involvement in TAGS myself, nor does the community in which I fish, so it's fair to ask why I'm here. I guess that's why I referred to the fact of the downloading of costs that we've experienced. Any programs that are put in any part of the fishery necessarily affect every other part of the fishery. That's really what we're observing as we've been required to bear more and more costs.

Whatever is done with the TAGS replacement as it's developed has to be done very carefully and with an eye to not only how well served the people who depend so heavily on that program will be, but what effect it will have on the rest of the fishery.

I think Jeff referred very well to that earlier when talking about what the buy-back segment of that program should be. We have to really concentrate on the fact that whatever that program is will speak directly to what the fishery of the future will look like.

I can briefly sum up what I want the committee to consider. What picture do you see for the fishery of the future? Do you want a fishery that will depend very heavily on a single species or a single set of species, as the groundfishery has in the past, and when that fishery gets into trouble will require the buy-backs or compensation schemes we've seen going back to Kirby and we see at present and will presumably see into the future through TAGS? Or do we want to support the kind of multi-species fishery that's more dependent on small boats, less dependent on large inputs of capital and much more able to change between species, change its fishing patterns and change its own expectations? The small boat multi-fisheries fishery is the one that can maintain itself. It has a longer-term commitment to its communities and is much more valuable to those local small communities.

• 1120

That's what I think is the challenge for the committee to do: to recommend replacements for TAGS, or an ongoing part of TAGS, which will serve to enhance and build up a future fishery that is more dependent on a multitude of species, as opposed to putting all our proverbial eggs in one basket.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Squires, and thank you, Mr. Brownstein.

We'll now go to questions. We have each one of the political parties represented here in our committee.

Before I do, could I ask you for clarification on one point. Mr. Brownstein, where do you fish from?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: I fish from St. Anns Bay. If you know the beautiful Ingonish and Cape Smokey area of Cape Breton, it's just south of there. It's in the middle of the east coast of Cape Breton Island.

The Chairman: Mr. Squires?

Mr. Kevin Squires: I fish in a much more beautiful part of the bay, out by the Bird Islands, out of a small community called Big Bras d'Or.

The Chairman: Next to Bras d'Or Lake?

Mr. Kevin Squires: Yes, that's right.

The Chairman: Let me ask you before we continue, just as a matter of interest, do you know what I'm referring to when we refer to the silver hake box small-mesh gear zone?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: I'm familiar with it, yes.

The Chairman: Do you have any opinions on what happens there, whether you agree with it or not?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: I'm not qualified to speak about it. The only thing I could say is we certainly have concerns with what has happened to our mackerel, which are a species that goes through that area. They winter off the United States and then they come back here in the spring and fall and summer. Our fishery has really gone down in the last number of years. It's something we do depend on quite heavily. That's the only concern I can point out right now.

The Chairman: Yes, and what you're talking about is the interception by foreign vessels and what they call the “experimental quotas” at the entrance for Norway and Sweden and so on. They go through the Sydney Bight and they spawn in the Gulf of St. Lawrence area. Is that correct?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: That's our understanding. That's correct, yes.

The Chairman: That happens around the end of May, does it?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: That's pretty close, I would say, yes.

The Chairman: So you're concerned about any activity that would interrupt the movement of mackerel as it has been interrupted in the last several years.

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: That's the one concern we have that our area could be affected by that, yes.

The Chairman: We'll turn now to questions. The Reform Party of Canada, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

On this whole area of community-based quotas, and maybe I'm not using the right terminology, do you have some living examples of that now? I understand something has been done with snow crab somewhere in the Maritimes. I'm wondering if either of you are familiar with that and if you are, if you could describe it.

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: Certainly when I was referring to community-based quotas, what we have had in the last couple of years, in working with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, is a tremendous downloading of management in the ground fishery, particularly in the large fixed gear fleet. It's a large fleet number of vessels, but they are small vessels.

What has happened is that, for instance, in our own area along the eastern coast of Cape Breton, taking in the entire coastline, we have the different fishermen's organizations, which sit together on a fixed gear council. We put our management plan into force. We have a sanctions committee that meets immediately by conference call or whatever means we have to address people who are breaking the rules, who are not following the rules laid out in our management plan. Once we agree to the quotas with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, we are overseeing how those quotas are fished by our inshore fleet.

I don't know if that answers what you're looking for.

Mr. John Duncan: Yes.

Did Mr. Squires have any comment on this?

• 1135

Mr. Kevin Squires: I might be able to think of what you're referring to, which would be some of the snow crab management that has taken place around northern Cape Breton. I'm sort of telling you hearsay. I think I have an understanding of it, but I'm not exactly clear on the details.

In any case, in those communities where there has been a great deal of pain suffered because of the lack of the groundfishery, at the same time, a number of people in those communities are doing very well from the snow crab fishery. Obviously, there's going to be pressure to repair some of those discrepancies.

The communities have developed the means of sharing snow crab fishery. It's really difficult here to go through all the details. Suffice it to say that there are good examples of where communities have responded when they've been able to look at a given resource, such as the snow crab, and when they were able to look at the need within their community in terms of how best to share that out and maintain their community with fishing activity for other people within it. So to my knowledge, it has worked very well.

The other point I think that should be made is that the whole issue of community quotas is not one in which much of a history has been allowed to develop, because quotas are a fairly recent phenomenon in a lot of ways.

We do have a good number of examples—it would be very difficult to describe here—where community-based management has worked, whether it's just local controls, local agreements on the amount of effort people want to put in, or local agreements on how and when they will fish. Those exist.

Despite the desire that appears to always inform the Department of Fisheries and Oceans plans to go by strict economists rules, there are community-based rules that have worked very well. I think what we're asking for—demanding—is that because of the history of the failed fishery, we should have the opportunity to try to develop some community-based management methods.

Mr. John Duncan: On the community-based methods, you're a proponent of multiple-species fishing as well. Do you see that community-based management as lending itself to a thrust toward multiple-species management as well?

Mr. Kevin Squires: I think so very much. It would obviously be more complicated because every fishery is conducted by a slightly different means. The fishery itself would define what the community was.

The lobster fishery, in our case, is managed and conducted very locally. Similarly for the mackerel fishery and the groundfishery, the community that people would normally operate in will be a bit larger, but I think the people who fish themselves will recognize what those communities of interest are.

As Jeff mentioned earlier, there is already a board of people in the Sydney Bight area, which obviously takes in a lot more than one or two small communities, who have gotten together to develop some of those processes.

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: If I may add, our Cape Breton management board is overseeing the fixed-gear groundfishery. We're also talking at the same time about extending this to multi-species. All the inshore fishermen's organizations, as the communities themselves, are dependent on many species. We're not just a group of lobster fishermen or groundfishermen, we are multi-species fishermen, so we are talking about extending this.

We see the need for an ecosystem approach from the Department of Fisheries with the fact that one species impacts upon another. In the Fundy fixed-gear council, they're doing tremendous work right now in the Bay of Fundy area, around Digby and that, in looking at an overall, multi-species management board for the Bay of Fundy.

Mr. John Duncan: All of this of course is tremendously complicated because of this ongoing sort of separation of the fishery between inshore and offshore. How do you propose to resolve that with community-based management?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: As I was saying in my paper, to be quite frank, a lot of the fish were stolen from the communities. When I say that people historically fished them, I'm talking about going back far enough.

• 1130

All these ITQs and EAs and everything—when they're looking at quotas now, they're talking about a very recent, very narrow time period in history when in fact the offshore was booming. Now the offshore of course is very much out of business, because there was never enough fish to support them in the first place.

So there are some conflicts. I'd like to see something in place to give more of the fish back to the inshore fishermen, who are certainly capable of going out and fishing them and spreading the resource more equitably. Until that happens, we're forced to deal with the allocations that we have, and we're still proceeding with our community management boards on that basis.

Mr. Kevin Squires: There's a further problem, other than the inshore-offshore conflicts, which in a lot of ways aren't quite so serious or immediate as they might appear to be from a distance.

One of the other problems that we're running into and will serve to really complicate the development of community-based strategies is the fact that recent and longer than recent term policies from the department of fisheries have served to separate the fishery by species and that has really tended to break up communities, or will tend to break up the basis on which we can develop community-based management.

There has to be, as Jeff referred to again, an ecosystem approach, a broader approach. We all use similar boats. We fish from different ports but ones that are very similar in nature and size and location. There are a lot of similarities, but when we get broken up completely by species and the department of fisheries develops agreements with fishermen who are perceived, it appears, to have a simple and single dependence and involvement in one species, that has tended to break down the community nature of the fishery.

The Chairman: We now turn to the New Democratic Party of Canada and their spokesperson, Mr. Peter Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I just want to inform the members of this committee that there's another person in Nova Scotia who works tirelessly on behalf of the coastal communities, and that's Ms. Ishbel Munroe. I have in front of me a copy of the latest Coastal Communities Network, and I just want to repeat something that's in this little booklet. I'm sure you would agree, just basing it on your opening speech.

Network members are currently meeting with MPs and MLAs across the province to gain support on issues like lighthouse preservation, community-based co-management and rural community sustainability.

The reason I'm saying that is that you're not just concerned over the fishers and their livelihood and conservation and preservation of the stock. This network is also set up for the viability and long term solutions for the communities themselves. Is that correct?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: It started many years ago; for instance, in Canso back around 1990 and the late 1980s, when their plant was closed. Here we had the blatant example of perhaps the oldest fishing settlement in Canada, the fishing town that has processed fish for 400 years at least, and all of a sudden their quota was taken away and shifted to the one big plant in Lunenburg. It brought people to realize, wait a second, communities have no attachment to the fishery that is right on their doorsteps. They have no control. They have no authority over it, and it can be taken away and moved and communities are going to become completely destroyed by this.

On the prospect of having fewer players in the fishery, perhaps there are members of Parliament, perhaps there are people in this country who want to see the maritimes emptied. I'm not sure. I hate to think something like that, but the fact is that there are not enough employment opportunities right across this country.

This fishery is one thing that, if properly managed, could maintain a good deal of sustainable income. I'm talking about without subsidies, without anything. If we had more control over multi-species fisheries that we fish in the inshore, then the employment opportunities and the opportunities to the people of Canada could be much better.

We are fighting for the whole community. Nobody has a stake in the community as much as people who are depending on their children and their grandchildren going fishing after them.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you very much for that.

You had also mentioned the history of the corporate subsidies that happened and the experiments. I refer to the early 1980 experiment of National Sea in Lockeport, where the provincial and federal governments at that time gave millions of dollars to Nat Sea to turn inshore fishers into plant workers. Now we see the failure of that system, where huge subsidies went to these corporations, and in many cases they're probably still receiving these subsidies. In the end, it is the plant workers and inshore fishers who suffer greatly now with this TAGS program.

• 1135

The perception in most of Canada right now is that TAGS was a waste of money. The immortal words of our Prime Minister were that these people just sit around and drink beer all day long. Being from there myself, I found that remark very offensive for my fellow citizens in the Maritimes.

I just want to indicate in this paper as well, and as we know, on my trip throughout the Maritimes, the DFO observers on the small boats...in some cases, the individual fishers will be charged $256 for the privilege of having a DFO observer on their boat, which of course is just another way of saying if you can't afford to fish, then get the heck out of here.

I just want you to reiterate what you said earlier about the corporate experiment and the subsidies that went to these companies, these large corporations, and about the ITQ systems and the complete, disastrous failure it has been for the community coastal networks of Nova Scotia and for the rest of the Maritimes and Newfoundland as well.

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: Here on this coast of Cape Breton, I can assure you that most of the recipients of TAGS were plant workers for National Sea in North Sydney and especially in Louisbourg, where a plant was rebuilt in the late 1980s, with $200 million of taxpayers' money going into that plant. It closed two years later. There is no sign of that plant ever opening again. The only plants left open are the small inshore plants that go way back in history.

There's something else that you twigged in me that I'm forgetting.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Would it be the observer?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: Yes, it was the observers. As for the observers, what we're looking at is the same kind of policing.... Yes, if you have large mobile vessels, they are capable of going out there and doing so much damage in such a short time to the fishery and to the habitat that there is a need for something like observers and intensive monitoring on these kinds of ships.

But now they want the same things to apply to the inshore. And as I illustrated in the lobster fishery, people do not break laws in the lobster fishery because the peer pressure is enormous. We all have a stake in keeping this fishery going. It's a community-based fishery. What we need is less management for enforcement and more on the side of effort controls, more on what the fishermen are willing to have as the rules and follow, so that you have more peer pressure and you have boats that are not capable of doing that much damage and don't need that type of policing, which in fact puts us out of business. The cost of it puts us out of business.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Stoffer. Now we turn to the Bloc and Mr. Bernier.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I thank the witnesses for being there this morning. I want to follow up on the train of thought that you two started exploring. The future of fisheries is in multi-species fishing. Fishermen should have access to more than one species.

I would like you to tell me how the processing plants go about buying your landings. I represent the riding of Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok, the nose of Quebec. The only system I know is the one implemented in the Gaspé Peninsula. I know for a fact that all plants there are specialized and process each a single species. The most common problem we have is where a fisherman's landings is mostly cod but with some turbot. The plant that processes salted or dried cod either doesn't know what to do with the turbot or takes too long in forwarding it to another plant.

I would like you to explain how things work in your area. Do you have specialized plants? Is each individual plant able to process various species? There might be a missing link. I have suggested to government before that something you could call a landing haven be established in several of our small communities. Fishermen would go there to unload their landed fish. The fish would be sent out to the buyers from those landing points.

• 1140

In my view, there is presently a link missing between the fishermen and those buying the fish. There is too much specialization. Someone should be in charge of directing landings to the right markets.

Can you explain to me how things work in your area, how fish is forwarded to markets?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: Yes, sir, I will try.

[English]

We have multi-species fishermen, but to say that we are fishing multi-species.... The nature of the resource we are dealing with is that we never tend to have too much variety at one time. The variety will shift over a number of years. We have seen our smaller local plants and co-operatives—some of the ones that process in, for instance, northern Cape Breton, not far from Îles-de-la-Madeleine—processing lobster, shifting from processing different types of ground-fish. They used to process cod, haddock, pollock—different fish.

Most of these plants still have some variety. Turbot is not something that's very near shore. Our inshore plants will process a few types of ground-fish. If they're not processing lobster they are certainly actively involved in marketing lobster and snow crab, or the other different types of crab. They're involved in marketing different species if not in the actual processing of the fisheries.

But I do agree, and they will agree, that they try to keep the small plants as diversified as they can to be able to handle the different species, because that's the nature of it. In one area you'll have ups and downs between one species and another over a few years.

Mr. Kevin Squires: If I can add to that, the important point to be made is that small plants, small fishermen operators, as we contend and have seen and have done ourselves, tend to be more adaptable, more versatile, ready to move from one piece of activity to another.

In the case of a small plant, if that means putting in a different fish-processing line, they seem much more capable of doing that than, for example, the plant Jeff referred to earlier, the Louisbourg plant, which was known, I think, as one of the world's most modern, up-to-date ground-fish processing plants when it was refurbished. Unfortunately, it hardly operated at all. It was seen within the corporate structure to be much more economic to mothball it and to move the equipment elsewhere.

That particular plant had a history in the past of processing herring at times, of processing ground-fish at times. I believe as well that in the past National Sea operated in Louisbourg as well, purchasing lobster.

So our experience, and what we have seen, is that people have become increasingly specialized. Then, when a problem occurs, they merely close up and move away.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I agree with you that the smaller plants are more adaptable for administrative purposes. You must admit though that if you are selling frozen cod to markets where you have to compete with the big North-American processing plants, in Boston, for example, you must go to bigger plants to take advantage of economies of scale.

I will try to understand your point of view and ask another question about your small processing plants. Is part of your landings for what is called the fresh market? Most of the time, the fish goes to the frozen market. But according to most marketing studies, prices seem to have hit a ceiling. Prices are the same year after year on the frozen market in Boston, while prices for fresh fish, fish that has never been frozen, keep on increasing. Consumers prefer fresh fish and are willing to pay more to have it.

Are fisheries in your area able to adapt to this new consumer trend?

[English]

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: I think in the processing sector, particularly in the smaller plants, we have seen, for instance, fast freezers now much more available on a small scale than they used to be in the past. I think these smaller plants are still capable of supplying both the fresh and frozen markets, particularly in an area like southwest Nova Scotia, which is so handy to Boston and to the United States market. They'll be shipping any amount, whether it's fresh or frozen. Whatever the demand is, I think they're quite capable of handling it. In fact, when National Sea's plant closed in Louisbourg, the company still had a line processing flatfish in North Sydney, but decided to move that line to its one big plant in Lunenburg. National then closed all of its smaller plants. They weren't that small, but they were closed anyway.

• 1145

What we have now is a smaller plant in Louisbourg that is buying all the flatfish that are still being fished by inshore mobile vessels here in Cape Breton. They are able to process it fresh or frozen, and then they get it on the road quickly.

The Chairman: Thank you, gentlemen.

I have a general question for both of you. You made reference to people who were on TAGS. Do you think these people are expecting a follow-up on TAGS? Do you think people are expecting TAGS to continue beyond May? Do you have any ideas at all on what form that follow-up should take? Do you have any ideas on the reduction in the catching effort? Where should that be directed? Do you have comments at all on these two subjects?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: Very much so.

First of all, let me be clear that when we talk about recipients for TAGS, with us being involved with an inshore fishermen's multi-species organization, most of our fishermen and most of the members of our organization are not in fact receiving TAGS. Many of them did qualify, but they're still in the fishery. We certainly do have some who have been forced out of the fishery because of the demise of the groundfishery, and they are suffering. But they're really a smaller part of our membership.

The large numbers of people who are receiving TAGS still are plant workers, but I'm not qualified to speak for them. I certainly empathize with the drastic situation they're in, but I'll leave it up to them to say that they would still need something. The prospects have not totally improved, obviously. I'll leave it at that.

On the other side, in terms capacity reduction, again what I'm saying is that we absolutely need a buy-back program. We have not begun to reduce the capacity. I'm saying that we need to reduce. The ones that should be bought out are the larger mobile vessels in places like Isle Madame, which had a large groundfishery there that was a trawler-based, dragger fishery. The plant has been torn down. The people who worked on those boats don't have any hope of going back to fishing again. For the offshore fishery that took place here in the groundfishery, there's no hope of it coming back in the foreseeable future, whereas the multi-species inshore fishery still has some hope.

So what I'm saying is that I'd like to see the capacity reduced in the larger fleets that were specialized, so that we don't continue this boom and bust cycle and the need for things like TAGS. Instead, encourage the small, multi-purpose fleet. At the same time, if there is need—and I acknowledge that there might be in some areas—to reduce capacity in fixed-gear fleets in southwest Nova Scotia, for instance, and not so much here, I would say that would be best left to the community management boards that already exist to handle the management of the groundfishery in those areas. Let them decide, as we could here, who should get the preference when the fish come back, and who should be able to go out after the groundfish first.

Mr. Kevin Squires: You've made a very important distinction there, too. The question is very important in terms of that part that asked about effort reduction. Let's be really clear about what has happened in the past.

I'm one of the reduced ground fishermen. I had a groundfish licence in the past, but it was eliminated in the years leading up to the TAGS program. It wasn't subject to any buy-back. It was considered that I hadn't used it or shown enough groundfish activity to show that I should continue to hold that licence. Apart from that being a personal problem or a personal example, the point is that I didn't have much in the line of landings in groundfish, but it was one licence that allowed the Department of Fisheries to say it eliminated one groundfish fisherman. Well, they didn't eliminate any active participation in the fishery. By and large, effort has not been reduced by the process so far.

• 1150

What really needs to be done is reduce some effort. When you look around at how the fishery is prosecuted, it's being done by the large mobile fleets. That's where the real effort is. So means have to be found to take those pieces of effort out of the fishery. As far as eliminating five, ten, a hundred, or a thousand inactive fishermen or fishermen of low activity, you're not taking much effort out.

The Chairman: We'll go to Mr. Matthews for a final question.

Mr. Bill Matthews: I've really found your presentations interesting. I represent the riding in Newfoundland that encompasses the entire south coast region of Newfoundland.

I found your comments on the community-based management quite interesting, and particularly your multi-species licences. The first question that comes to my mind on that is what's your observation on harvesting pressures? We keep talking about sustainable fisheries. I wonder what the move to multi-species licences does to harvesting pressures. I wonder what your observations are, and if you could help the committee with some comment on that.

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: I have a couple of comments.

First of all, in our community management boards, when we talk about how to prosecute the fixed-gear groundfishery—you know, hand-line, long-line fishery, gillnet fishery—we're talking about effort controls. There are trip limits and there are effort controls, how many tubs of gear a person could have on their boat or how many gill nets, and how many days at sea. We think these are better ways to control harvest than with quotas, which might be realistic or might actually force people to do things like discarding or dumping, which certainly has created a lot of harm in the fishery.

On the other hand, as to the multi-species, the whole thing about that is that people lay off. As we pointed out here, we have people who, whether or not they qualified for TAGS—and many of them didn't—simply shifted their effort onto other species that were more sustainable and a better income earner at the time. So if you have a fleet that can go from one species to another, it puts less force.

What we don't need and what DFO has continued.... And Kevin told us of cases of this “use it or lose it” policy. In fact what we're doing, especially with the introduction of individual transferable quotas and privatizing the fishery, is rewarding the criminals. We're actually giving the people who fish the hardest and did the most damage exclusive rights to a future fishery.

It's as if we're saying to someone that if he robs so many banks, he should be entitled to go and rob so many banks again in the future. We're penalizing people who laid off the fishery, who went to another species when that fishery was in trouble. So it's the opposite of what we should be doing to promote conservation and sustainability.

Mr. Bill Matthews: Thank you very much for that.

The entire south coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, as I'm sure you realize, has been basically shut down. We have communities that were built on the banking schooner fishery and then went to the deep sea. We have communities now that are struggling for survival, and we do have some signs of regeneration along the south coast in the southern zones, I guess maybe environmentally warmer waters or whatever.

What would be your advice to us or to DFO as these stocks regenerate? Who should be allowed to utilize that resource? Should it be the communities that traditionally were founded and lived off that resource? We're soon going to be in that phase if the regeneration continues to be positive, but I wonder what your thoughts are. What advice could you offer us on that?

Mr. Kevin Squires: I think the very important point that has to be taken to that debate is that we're not the people to say how that should be done in the future, and neither is the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The people on the south coast of Newfoundland who have depended on that fishery are the people who should decide who takes care of that fishery in the future, and not to be determined, again, as we referred to earlier, because of a five-year or a seven-year back history.

• 1155

The weight of votes has in the past number of years been given to who has done what in the last five or the last ten years. As Jeff has referred to very accurately, it's been rewarding the criminals.

Those communities that have lived there for hundreds of years should have the say in deciding, from their own point of view, who have been the best caretakers, who have shown the best husbandry practices of the fishery, and they're the ones who should decide how it should happen in the future.

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: I would like to add something to that, to say that we were looking last year at a possible reopening of the groundfishery in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, including the area 4B and Sydney Bight that we're in here. In fact, what happened was we argued that science did not necessarily support a reopening, although the FRCC had recommended it, that there might in fact be troubles if we opened a winter fishery, that it might impact too heavily on our local stocks here in Sydney Bight. We found out that one out of every six fish that were tagged in the offshore fishery in fact were of our local origin. So we argued that the fishery should be opened on only a very limited scale to the inshore, fixed-gear fleet.

We had agreement from Newfoundland, from Prince Edward Island, from the gulf coast of Nova Scotia, as well as Cape Breton, and from the gulf coasts of New Brunswick and Quebec. The major organizations all agreed that this should be reopened only for a fixed-gear, limited fishery and sentinel fisheries.

In fact, the minister, Mr. Mifflin at the time, said no, that it would only be open on historical shares, giving so much to the offshore and the midshore, that had only a very recent history in the fishery anyway.

So then we had to argue that the fishery should not be reopened. Finally, with thousands of fishermen together represented by these organizations, we were able to stop the fishery from reopening on the wrong grounds.

The Chairman: Would you gentlemen agree that, as a first step to a reduction in catching effort around the coast of Nova Scotia, the Japanese licences for tuna, some seven of them this fall for bluefin, should be cancelled, or be investigated with the possibility of being cancelled, and that the entire group of licences granted to foreign vessels, whether they're employed by Canadian companies or not, in the silver hake box for so-called underutilized species, should be cancelled?

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: I am not familiar enough with the issues, I'd have to say, particularly with the Japanese tuna licences, or even the silver hake boxes, except of course for what I was saying before, our concerns in the mackerel fishery. There is certainly a large tuna fishery that many inshore vessels are dependent on here in Nova Scotia, right around Cape Breton and everywhere, where these gentlemen would be absolutely concerned over any new effort, particularly if you have bigger ships.

The only thing I really want to say is that we need to go back to much more local control of the fishery. The communities and inshore fishermen have lost all their control of the fishery, and all these decisions are being made in Ottawa and other places. You will need to consult a lot more in the local areas, as to the local impacts.

The Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much for appearing before this committee today and for your contribution to the committee's work.

Mr. Jeff Brownstein: Thank you very much. We look forward to doing it again.

The Chairman: Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, November 4, from 3.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m., in Room 701, concerning west coast fisheries. We will have a video conference from Vancouver and Victoria, and perhaps two witnesses as well concerning the west coast may be at the committee meeting. The meeting is adjourned until that time.