FOPO Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 3rd SESSION

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Á

1105

The Chair (Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.))

Mr. Garth Mirau (Vice-President, United Fishermen & Allied Workers' Union)

The Chair

Mr. Garth Mirau

Á

1110

Á

1115

Á

1120

The Chair

Á

1125

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy (Matapédia—Matane, BQ)

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

The Chair

The Chair

Mr. Garth Mirau

Á

1130

The Chair

Mr. Garth Mirau

The Chair

Mr. Garth Mirau

The Chair

Á

1135

Mr. Garth Mirau

The Chair

Mr. Garth Mirau

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins (Delta—South Richmond, CPC)

Mr. Irvin Figg (President, United Fishermen & Allied Workers' Union)

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Garth Mirau

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Garth Mirau

Á

1140

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Garth Mirau

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

Mr. Garth Mirau

Á

1145

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

Mr. Garth Mirau

The Chair

Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.)

Á

1150

Mr. Garth Mirau

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Mr. Garth Mirau

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Mr. Garth Mirau

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Á

1155

Mr. Garth Mirau

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

Mr. Garth Mirau

Mr. Carmen Provenzano

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP)

Mr. Garth Mirau

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Garth Mirau

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Irvin Figg

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Â

1200

Mr. Garth Mirau

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Garth Mirau

The Chair

Mr. Garth Mirau

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

The Chair

The Chair

Captain Richard Misner (Chairman, Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation)

Â

1210

Â

1215

Â

1220

The Chair

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Henry Copestake (Managing Director, Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation)

Â

1225

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

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

Capt Richard Misner

Â

1230

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Loyola Hearn

Capt Richard Misner

Â

1235

The Chair

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Â

1240

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Henry Copestake

Â

1245

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Henry Copestake

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Henry Copestake

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Henry Copestake

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Peter Stoffer

The Chair

Capt Richard Misner

The Chair

Capt Richard Misner

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

Â

1250

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

Capt Richard Misner

Mr. Henry Copestake

Capt Richard Misner

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

Capt Richard Misner

The Chair

Capt Richard Misner

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Capt Richard Misner

The Chair

Mr. Henry Copestake

The Chair

Mr. Loyola Hearn

The Chair

Capt Richard Misner

The Chair

---

CANADA

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

---

NUMBER 011

l

3rd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1105)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.)): I'd like to call this meeting to order.

    Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we have a briefing session with the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union. This will take place from now until noon. I'd like to welcome Irvin Figg, president of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union, and Garth Mirau, the vice-president.

    We have a report, gentlemen, that we would like to adopt. It is totally non-controversial, but our rules require that nine members be here. So if you don't mind, and with due respect and advance warning, if I see nine members here, which may not occur, I'd like to interrupt the proceedings, put the report to the vote, and then carry on with our meeting. If I do that, at least you'll know what I'm doing and it's no disrespect to you or anything like that.

    You wanted to meet with us to discuss a number of issues of concern you had, so the steering committee decided that we would make a special meeting available, at which you would be able to make your presentations. So please go ahead, and then of course there'll be questions.

    Mr. Garth Mirau (Vice-President, United Fishermen & Allied Workers' Union): We would like to thank you for making this time available to us at short notice.

    I sent my notes over, and I think you've got them in front of you. I'm just going to touch on them and speak about the overall problems we see in the fishing industry, particularly pertaining to licensing and the number of studies, commissions, and plans, as it says at the start, that have changed the face of the fishing industry. There have been more studies of the fishing industry, probably, than of any other industry in Canada. We've had public consultations, private consultations, consultations everywhere about every single thing you can think of to do with fish, licensing, sustainability of fisheries, and all the other things.

    Most of the plans and commissions have one thing in common. Starting with the Dr. Sol Sinclair's licence limitation scheme in 1960, carrying on through the Davis plan in 1967-68 that actually removed the major part of the aboriginal commercial sector of the fishery, the Pearse report in 1982, Vision 2000 from 1989, which to this day has no signature on it--I've provided you with a copy of it, and I'll be referring to that--the Fraser River sockeye review in 1994, the ministers--

    The Chair: I'm sorry to interrupt. I know you provided us with copies of the documents, but we didn't have time to translate them into the other official language, so none of the committee members have any of the documents you're referring to. We will, of course, get them once they're translated and properly distributed, but so you're aware of it, there's no point in making reference to anything and expecting us to follow along, because we don't have it now.

    Mr. Garth Mirau: Thank you very much for that, Mr. Wappel. I'll start over.

    Dr. Sol Sinclair's study in 1960 was on licence limitation in British Columbia. There was a method of economic fisheries management, and since that time there have been 21 fisheries ministers. I think that speaks to a large part of the problem.

    The Davis plan in 1967-68 brought in A and B licences that effectively allowed access to all species in the Pacific region, while entrenching a limited entry for most people. The minister's comment regarding the plan at that time was that there were not enough millionaires in the industry, and this would fix that.

    The B licences came about because people had less than $10,000 in earnings. They were phased out after 10 years and resulted in a loss to the fleet that put the least pressure on the resource. That was mainly the low-income earners, aboriginals from aboriginal communities, who stayed at home and fished only to earn a living to feed their families. That eventually allowed stacking of those gill net licences to seine licences.

    The Pearse report in 1982 was called “Turning the Tide: a New Policy for Canada's Pacific Fisheries”. It was widely used to take fisheries out of the A licence, where people had access to all the fisheries. It took that away from the A licence, transferred new categories, and brought in quotas at the same time. It served to make the discussion of the common property aspect of fish a problem for conservation and other issues legitimate. That had never happened before that.

    The Vision 2000 document that came out in 1989 was a discussion paper called “A Vision of Pacific Fisheries at the Beginning of the 21st Century”. One of the most ominous phrases in the draft was:

A coordinated Pacific Fisheries Policy must...result in a long-term decrease in the commitment of government resources to Pacific fisheries management.... The costs...will have declined to 70 percent of the level of the mid-1980s and will be totally recovered from the industry in increased fees and royalties...by 2010.

    We're nearly there. The one thing missing in this was that nobody had a vision of exactly what those costs would be, where we should be looking to get the cost recovery, and how much cost recovery we should get. Does it cover off just management, habitat, or enforcement? Does it cover off all of those things? There's no vision of that anywhere.

    There was the Fraser River sockeye review in 1994 by John Fraser. The most remembered statement that came out of all the hours all the people had put into that review was a throw-away statement at a press conference that, “Another 12 hours of fishing (in Johnstone Straits) would have wiped out the run of sockeye”.

    We know that was not only patently untrue, but impossible. There was never a time when that opportunity was available to anybody. We're not talking about a tube here that's full. We're talking about a body of water that fish come to and swim through. There was never an opportunity for that to happen.

    There was the throw-away phrase in the 35 recommendations that came out of the report that DFO cherry-picked. I refer to page 33 of that report were they said:

We recommend that industry participants in the salmon fishery and DFO work together to investigate means of dealing with excessive fishing capacity.

    Out of that came the ministers round table in 1995 that looked at fleet restructuring and downsizing. I guess the phrase “too many boats chasing too few fish” came out of the Pearse report, Vision 2000, and the Fraser River sockeye report.

    The Honourable Brian Tobin initiated a forum for industry meetings to look at various options for dealing with the salmon fishery and the so-called overcapacity. After a series of meetings there were a number of recommendations. Some of the recommendations were only opinions, for sure, that there was never any consensus around those recommendations. But Minister Mifflin, the minister of the day, mostly ignored them.

    Next were the Mifflin plan of 1996 and the Pacific salmon revitalization strategy. The Mifflin plan brought in area licensing and a buy-back scheme that eight years later continues to be contentious. The plan was responsible for demonstrations, sit-ins, and lobbies, and included a coast-wide vote by fishermen that showed that 93% were opposed to the plan.

Á  (1110)  

    And finally, after a demonstration fishery in Johnstone Strait in 2002 around the huge Adams River run, and a number of fishermen went fishing and ended up being charged and went to court, there was a review of the 2002 Fraser River sockeye fishery.

    It was a misnomer from the beginning, an external steering committee led by the Assistant Deputy Minister of Fisheries of the day, Pat Chamut--very much external, in fact the person who had been at DFO and had been director general, assistant deputy minister, and had held a number of positions, all during the time from 1980, from Vision 2000 onwards. He led that. They made 14 recommendations that were accepted by the minister, one of those being the establishment of the salmon harvest planning process. That has happened now.

    This was one of the recommendations, the Institute for Dispute Resolution, which held wide hearings and wide consultations and made eight recommendations that were once again cherry-picked by DFO. This resulted in a vote by licence-holders only for representatives of the salmon harvest committees. For the first time in the history of the commercial salmon fishery, those who do not hold a harvesting licence had no opportunity to participate in the future decision-making process of the common property resource.

    We have a history in British Columbia of non-owner-operator fisheries, that people who fish for a living generally were accepted as giving advice on an equal basis as people who held harvesting licences. That, according to this, has now changed.

    I want to make it clear that this is not an exhaustive list of all the boards, inquiries, and reports initiated by DFO, but they all have one thing in common: none of them were supported. Not one of them was supported by industry participants of the day, whether that be harvesters, shore workers, or communities that depend on fish. They only found support from the processing and corporate sector, with some small number of fish harvesters supporting what they hoped would be more fish for themselves. But even that narrow and selfish view did not materialize.

    What all of the above have in common is that their implementation was opposed by a huge majority of those who depended on fishing for a living, including our coastal communities, and each of which caused untold hardships for so many.

    We have a number of issues facing the fishing industry today, particularly the salmon fishery. One of them of course is the salmon harvest committees. They're elected, but they're not democratic in that there was no process whereby people could vote for people based on what they believed. In the fishing industry, we have a history of knowing nearly everybody who's in the industry, nearly everybody who fishes on boats, over the radio or on the docks. But we know nothing about them: we don't know anything about their families, we don't know anything about where they live, and we don't know anything about how they think. So this process happened only on a name, and we think that's wrong.

    By the way, I ran for one of the harvest committees and got elected. I still don't think it's democratic, although everybody knows what I stand for.

    The second thing we're looking at in the salmon fishery now is that a number of DFO bureaucrats seem to be pushing at quotas. We think that's wrong. Quotas generally lead to those with the deepest pockets owning all the quotas, and those people who depend on fish for a living, particularly in outlying communities, disappear.

    The third one is that we need fisheries managers who are managing more than meetings. Department of Fisheries and Oceans senior managers now spend more time in meetings than anywhere else, and it's not about bringing anything positive to the fishery; it's about managing the people who are in the room. We think that has to change.

    We need more resources on the ground. Take some of those people out of those meetings and put them on the ground. Take some of the people out of 200 Kent Street. Don't take their jobs away on them; don't fire them. Put them on the ground to deal with fisheries, fish issues, and fishermen. Deal with coastal communities on the ground level and you'll have a completely different outlook.

    The Pacific Biological Station has deteriorated from number one in the world to what? They no longer have any resources to look at any of the issues.

    In 2002, when the huge return of Adams River fish came, the so-called late run, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was completely mystified about what was going on, not only why was there so much fish, but it had no idea how much fish there was.

Á  (1115)  

We heard so much talk about pre-spawn mortality, that it was going to happen, that it was bound to happen, but none of the stuff they talked about happened.

    Now, that's not one individual's fault, but it speaks of the resource extraction in terms of money that's been extracted from that facility, so that they can no longer do the kind of work that needs to be done to take care of fish resources in this country—in the Pacific region particularly.

    We need to respect the common property aspect of fish. Every day, there are more and more people looking at the problem as being a common property one, a so-called tragedy of the commons. Even individuals who just fish for a living have been kept off the water and are not being allowed to go fishing. There are no fishing opportunities. The people who work in plants haven't had work opportunities. The communities are dying because there are no fishing opportunities because of licensing, and they're starting to wonder, is common property the problem?

    I put it to you that common property is not the problem. The fishery, and the Pacific region, is healthy generally. There's been a commercial fishery in British Columbia for over 100 years. It's been managed from a common property aspect, and those fisheries are generally in good shape. We're talking about salmon here, and I would be the last to deny that there are some runs in some places that are in trouble, but certainly it's not because of the common property aspect.

    Of course, now we have the Species at Risk Act, which is certainly going to prove very difficult for us to work through, particularly around the Sakinaw, the Cultus stocks, and to a lesser extent the interior coho. The Sakinaw had three spawners come back to the system last year. What do you do with three fish? Is there a chance of ever rebuilding a run when you only have three fish to start with? Is there a chance of rebuilding the run when the residents around the lake are opposed to raising the lake level to get some nutrients and some more spawning area in the lake? Is there ever a chance of that happening?

    Some few hundred fish are predicted to return to the Sakinaw this year, but that's going to remain a problem. Cultus is certainly another story. For anybody who has never been there, it's a pretty place. As a pretty place, it attracts a lot of people; a fair population live there. They have lawns that they mow right down to the lake. At the same time they're mowing those lawns for their pretty gardens, they're using fertilizers and herbicides and all of the other things that we know kill fish and are detrimental to fish stocks. As well, there's a huge campground and a great number of recreational boaters there in the summertime, and there is runoff from the parking lots and all of that stuff.

    The river itself has been rechannelled. In order to get there, the fish have to swim through the Fraser River, which is also beginning to be a problem. There is a lot of runoff from farmland. They hope the fish will hold in the mouth of that river. There's lots of runoff from the farmland, once again fertilizers, insecticides, and all of that stuff.

    That has to be addressed. Realistically, it has to be addressed in some manner, in addition to just shutting down fisheries. Shutting down fisheries is not good enough. We hear about overfishing, but there's been no real definitive proof that those stocks are in trouble because of overfishing. We can show that they're in trouble because of milfoil. We can show that they're in trouble because of other species in the lake, because of the development around the lake and the rechannelling, but certainly not because of overfishing.

    Finally, we're looking at this Pearse-McRae report. Peter Pearse has a history of writing reports that remove the people who are at the bottom of the catching scale—if you will, the workers--from resource industries. Every single report that Peter Pearse.... I said to Peter when we made our presentation to that committee: “Why would we expect anything different? This is your history. You're not about to change your mind now.” I'm offended that the government didn't at least reach out and find somebody to do this who hadn't shown bias in the past.

    Before the rest of us have seen the preliminary report—which has not been released yet, as we asked the deputy minister yesterday—the BC Seafood Alliance is out pushing for the recommendations, and we don't even know what they are yet. At least the rest of us don't know what they are. It's a corporate-dominated alliance.

Á  (1120)  

    So all of the quota fisheries, which have resulted in loss of employment and lower wages for those working on the decks of the boats, have a huge impact on our coastal communities.

    You're all aware of the Atlantic fisheries policy review that just happened. I've got a copy of the results. I haven't had an opportunity to look at them. I looked them over. I'm going to tell you that in the west coast Pacific region, ordinary working fishermen, people who work in plants and who live in communities up and down that coast, would kill for this, rather than what we have.

    We put it to the minister yesterday that if—

    The Chair: Mr. Mirau, I'll give you a couple of minutes to look at that, which you said you hadn't had a chance to look at, while we do this little committee business.

    It won't take long.

    Committee members will have in front of them the second report of the subcommittee on agenda and procedure. I'm not going to read through it.

    We met on Thursday, April 22, and we agreed on a variety of issues and what to do in the upcoming meetings in May. There is a small typographical error in paragraph 7, and it should read in the fourth line, “discussion on the Atlantic fisheries report and the government's response and the document”. So rather than “Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review”, it would be “Atlantic fisheries report and the government's response”. That's our report.

    Monsieur Roy, s'il vous plaît.

Á  (1125)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Jean-Yves Roy (Matapédia—Matane, BQ): I simply wanted to say that to my mind, paragraphs 2 and 3 are identical.

    The Chair: You're right. We need to make a correction. It's up to you: we either delete paragraph 2 or paragraph 3.

    Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Whichever you prefer.

    The Chair: Then, I suggest we eliminate paragraph 3.

    Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: We need to do the same with the English version.

[English]

    The Chair: Oui, bien sûr. With that, we have paragraphs 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 is amended, 8, and 9.

    Would someone move the report?

    (Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

    The Chair: Mr. Mirau, I told you it wouldn't be long, so please carry on.

    Mr. Garth Mirau: Thank you very much.

    So I did have time to go over that.

    Quota fisheries have been implemented in British Columbia in a number of fisheries over the years, and some quota fisheries have been disguised as other things. For instance, in the herring fishery in British Columbia now we have pool fisheries. There your herring licence entitles you to catch this much fish, and in order to do that in the gill net fishery, for instance, you have to work with at least three other licences, so you need four licences to do that.

    DFO is encouraging the quotas and the stacking of quotas around that kind of stuff. The black cod fishery, the halibut fishery, and some of the groundfish fisheries that are hailed as examples of good fish management have resulted in removing people from the decks of the boats, removing those work opportunities from communities, and removing the licences themselves from coastal communities. Once again they go in the back pocket, if you will, of those with the deepest pockets.

    I want to say again that if you don't take the point of view that fish is common property, well, you may agree with that, but fish does remain common property in this country. We think that if anybody is going to rent licences and if anybody is going to force this kind of management scheme onto fishermen, it should be government that's collecting that rent and not the armchair fishermen.

    The herring fishery was implemented as an owner-operator industry. The licence was on the man originally except for some corporate licences. The ownership of those licences is becoming more and more concentrated, and the rental charged for licences now sometimes exceeds the value of the fish.

    This year in British Columbia, at a time of historically high stocks, we have a situation where the fleet couldn't harvest the quota because of stacking. Leasing of these herring licences and financing by the processors is the main problem. If you had to go to the bank to borrow money to lease these licences, they'd laugh you out of the building. But if you go to the company, the company does two things. They give you the money and then they assure themselves of the production. But what that does is drive up the price, so the people who are out there fishing don't have the same kinds of returns. Instead of going fishing with one, two, or three licences, whatever the case may be, they're forced to try to do more and more and more.

    In some cases this year they've stacked as many as eight or nine licences on a skiff, where the history of the fishery is that sure, there's a lot of fish, but there's only this much time to catch it in. Catching with gill nets is time-consuming. The most fish I've ever known--and I've fished herring myself since 1972--that one person shook into his skiff in one season is 62 tonnes in a fishery. That's one person. It's very unusual to be able to catch more than 30 tonnes. This year we had people looking to catch 80 or 90 tonnes, and it's absolutely ridiculous.

    There's one study--and it was by a commission, the Cruikshank commission--that was undertaken in 1991. A number of fishing organizations got together and financed that. A guy by the name of Don Cruikshank, who was a very successful processor at the time, went around and had consultations up and down the coast. He talked to working fishermen but he talked to the corporate sector too. He talked to people on the docks and he talked to people who just lived in the communities. To date, that's the only study by a major commission that has been done that's had the general support of fishermen.

    I did an overview of it, but suffice it to say that we were not happy as a fishermen's union with everything that was in the Cruikshank report. Now, there are some things in there that over time have proven to be wrong, but they were not wrong at the time it was written. The fishery has evolved and some things wouldn't work today, but generally speaking, that report was accepted by fishermen.

Á  (1130)  

    The Chair: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I notice it's 11:30. It's a rather unique situation because we only have until 12 today, and I'd like to give the members of the committee an opportunity to ask you a few questions. Do you think you could wrap up?

    Mr. Garth Mirau: I was going to cut this--I'm going to cut it--and that's why I'm not referring to my notes here.

    But suffice it to say that if the Cruikshank report had been implemented, a report that was supported by fishermen.... And I want to remind you that in 1996 there was a vote by fishermen on the Mifflin report, which was rejected by 93% of the people who voted. That's what I call democracy, 93% of the people. Every fisherman on the coast had an opportunity to vote and it was rejected, but it was implemented anyway.

    This is mostly the Cruikshank report; I haven't passed it out, but I'm going to leave copies of it along with the fisherman's paper here when we leave. Perhaps some people may be interested. We gave it to the deputy minister yesterday, and it was the first time he'd ever seen it. Had that been implemented, we wouldn't be in the position we're in now.

    We have another situation on the west coast that's related to licensing, and that's the removal of the moratorium on the offshore hake fishery. They're talking about bringing back an offshore processor to process Canadian fish and replace Canadian workers. Now, there are some problems in that industry, there's no question about it, but we can work our way through it. We'll never be able to work our way through that and that community will never survive if the moratorium is lifted on the hake fishery.

    The minister of the day, Minister Thibault, put a three-year moratorium on the offshore processing, and we're in the third year of the moratorium now.

    All of the things I talked about come down to trust; it's about trust. The trust between DFO and working fisherman, people who depend on fishing for a living, and coastal communities has been eroded to the point where there is no trust. Even the consideration of removing the moratorium on offshore processing speaks to trust.

    I think people who live in outlying communities particularly, because they don't have the same kind of representation.... You're not talking about a million people who live in Vancouver; you're talking about 3,000 or 2,500 people who live in Ucluelet, British Columbia. These are the only jobs left in that community, and without these jobs that communities dies. It speaks to licensing and trust with DFO.

    We're asking that this committee tell the minister we need a full public inquiry into licensing in British Columbia and that the minister commit to implementing what he hears, not what he hears from the bureaucrats--people who are tasked to cut the budgets, people who work in the offices of DFO--but what he hears from people who fish for a living and who live in those communities, so they can continue to survive.

    Thank you very much.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mirau.

    I just want to ask one question. You said there were 21 fisheries ministers. Could you just give me the timeframe?

    Mr. Garth Mirau: It was 1960.

    The Chair: That's to the present.

    Thank you, and yes, that does say a lot.

    Second, did I misunderstand you? You said the industry has been studied to death, or words to that effect. That's what you began with, and now you want another study, a full public inquiry.

Á  (1135)  

    Mr. Garth Mirau: I qualified that. We think we need a full public inquiry and want the minister to commit to implementing what he hears from the people who are affected, rather than implementing what he hears from people in the office towers.

    The Chair: You know that's very unlikely to happen, that a minister would commit to implementing something before he's even heard what it is because the inquiry hasn't happened.

    Mr. Garth Mirau: I understand that, but in the past, in all of the studies that have been undertaken by all of the commissions that have gone around and listened to people, what's been heard in the consultations has not been reflected in the reports that have come out or in the actions that have resulted.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Now, our usual procedure is not going to fit into the timeframe we have, so what I'd like to suggest, with the consent of the committee, is that we go to five-minute rounds. We have the Conservatives, the Bloc, the Liberals, and the NDP. That will give us 20 minutes at least, and then we could go back to the Conservatives if there's time before our next group of people comes. Is that acceptable? Otherwise, I have to go with what we've passed.

    Some hon. members: Agreed.

    The Chair: Mr. Vice-Chair, welcome.

    Do you have any questions?

    Mr. John Cummins (Delta—South Richmond, CPC): I'd like to welcome Irvin Figg to the committee.

    Mr. Chairman, as you may or may not know, Irvin is the new president of the UFAWU, and he follows a long line of very distinguished members of that, including the late Homer Stevens and Jack Nichol, and most recently, John Radosevic.

    As a point of reference, I would like to ask Irvin to extend the committee's good wishes to John Radosevic, who appeared before this committee on many occasions. He was always a very credible witness and certainly a very forthright and clear-speaking representative of the fishing industry in British Columbia. John will be missed and his contribution will be missed.

    Irvin, we sure look forward to a long association with you. So congratulations, and welcome.

    Mr. Irvin Figg (President, United Fishermen & Allied Workers' Union): Thank you. I'll extend those wishes.

    Mr. John Cummins: Thank you.

    One of my questions has to do with the notion, I guess, and the impact that COSEWIC and SARA could have on the salmon fishery in the lower coast this year. My understanding is that DFO has apparently managed to sidestep the impact of SARA and COSEWIC. Do you have any knowledge of what DFO's plans are, because if the programs of SARA and COSEWIC would have gone ahead, it would have fairly much shut down the fishery? And have you any idea just what DFO's response is on that?

    Mr. Garth Mirau: No, we don't have that yet. I'm attending a meeting on May 5 with Pacific region representatives, and I understand there has been some kind of a delay implementing some of the aspects of COSEWIC, and we'll be apprised of that and how that's going to affect the fishery, if possible, at that time.

    Mr. John Cummins: I understand your concern about the job losses in Ucluelet with regard to the hake fishery. My understanding is that the industry, the processors, the fishermen, DFO, and the province have agreed that a joint measure of 50,000 tonnes would be almost required this year. There's a 134,000-tonne quota. The existing processors are, at best, able to process about 30,000 tonnes of that 134,000-tonne quota, so what that means essentially is that you'd leave 100,000 tonnes in the water, which would be available, I guess, to offshore fishermen, under the law of the sea.

    Positioned...if you exclude the JV at this point, is that not going to put the fishing jobs themselves at risk here?

    Mr. Garth Mirau: I want to correct one part of that, Mr. Cummins. We didn't say that the JV necessarily should not happen at this point. Or if I did, I'm sorry, I misrepresented that.

    There's 134,000 tonnes available, you're right. The shore-based processors who are prepared to process at this time have said that they can't process all that fish.

    We have to look at what happened in mad cow disease last year. They used blood plasma as an emulsifier in their product, their markets dried up, and they disappeared.

    But we stand by this. If we continue to bring back the offshore processors, without giving the onshore processors the opportunities to figure out how to do their job.... The Brussels trade show is only beginning next week. It goes on for two weeks. Traditionally there has been no idea and there are no announcements ahead of time, or no knowledge even by the processors about how much fish they can do until after that trade show. And we think this is putting the cart before the horse by bringing back the offshore at this time.

Á  (1140)  

    Mr. John Cummins: My understanding was that the capacity at Port Fish was about 15,000 tonnes and the capacity at Wholey's was not quite 15,000 tonnes.

    Wholey's is just heading and gutting, and it's very labour intensive and they don't have that ability. I understood that this was part of the rationale for the province jumping on board on this application, to try to get the JV operating again.

    Mr. Garth Mirau: Yes. There is certainly a problem around this, though. On the JV, the offshore processors sell into the same market as the onshore processors. They don't work under the same rules and regulations on labour. Their costs are cheaper. They don't take care of their waste and put it all back in the water. There's an issue of pollution, an issue of WCB, and all of those things. It's not a level playing field.

    In announcing the bringing back of the offshore processors, at this time we don't think you're giving the onshore processors an equal opportunity here. When you sell the fish back into the same market, at whatever price, it undercuts the onshore processors. That's the history. It's not a level playing field.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Cummins.

    Monsieur Roy, pour cinq minutes.

[Translation]

    Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I listened carefully to your presentation. I sense that you blame DFO quite a bit for this situation. You've called for a public inquiry into the licensing process. I'm not exactly clear about what you want. Could you tell us, in five points, what you would like the department to do that it is not now and should be doing so that everything runs smoothly? You mentioned the owner-operator principle. However, I understand that in the majority of cases, owners are not operators as such. In fact, their employees are the actual operators.

    What are the five main demands you wish to make of DFO, or the five main principles you would like to see in practice?

[English]

    Mr. Garth Mirau: We would certainly like to see the owner-operator provisions implemented in the Pacific region. It has been the union's position ever since I've been around; I started fishing in 1972. If you talk about owner-operator provisions on any single dock on the coast, people perk up their ears and get interested. Generally speaking, the owner-operator provisions would have saved a number of communities, as we know them, and would put less pressure on the fisheries.

    We also have to give people access to fish that are not only on salmon licences. Since they started taking fish species away from salmon licences, they've removed $2.1 million worth of licences from the so-called A licence fishery. I've provided you with a study that was done last year.

    That's the value of the licence; it's not what they lease for. They lease for about $370,000 a year. If you put the money back into the fishery, we would suddenly have a fishery that was viable for people again.

    Remove the corporate ownership over time. We're not saying do it tomorrow. We recognize that you can't go back to where we were before. But I want to remind the committee that every single one of the regulations in place today were put there by people. They were in response to a number of things. Some were a crisis of the day and some were political expediency.

    Because I was issued a licence for $10 that's now worth $100,000, and in some cases $1 million, it doesn't say the regulation can't be changed, with those licences put back in the hands of owner-operators and spread around a little bit in the communities. I would see that as being the job of a public inquiry looking into what is good.

    What I say is not necessarily the right thing, I understand that. I recognize not everybody supports what I think is best. But I think it's important that DFO and the people of Canada have an opportunity to do what's right for the fishery and for the communities that depend on fishing for a living.

Á  (1145)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: In fact, the only solution that you're proposing is for the department to launch a public inquiry. As the Chairman was saying earlier, there have already been a number of inquiries into the fishery. You've heard us speak of the three-year moratorium on hake fishing that is coming to an end. In your view, do DFO's current proposals appear to be a step in the right direction and in keeping with the owner-operator principle? I know that this is an important issue on the East Coast, and that DFO intends to go forward with this proposal. Is the same true as far as the West Coast is concerned? Does DFO firmly intend to comply with the owner-operator principle? Is that the direction in which the department is moving?

[English]

    Mr. Garth Mirau: To answer your last question first, I think there is no will in the Pacific region to make those things happen. The Pacific region is interested in downsizing, fewer players, less managing to do, cost recovery, all of those kinds of things. They don't play well with the owner-operator. When you talk about cost recovery, though, the thing they're driving to, there is no understanding of what that cost recovery is for. Is it for management of the fishery? Is it for habitat protection? Is it for enforcement? Is it to pay for that building? What is cost recovery?

    The other thing is--and I'm glad you brought it up--this committee came to Ucluelet three years ago. The chair of the committee was there and a number of the members were in Ucluelet, and they listened to the people who live in that community. I want to remind the committee, those of you who were there, about the shore worker who was there and told you what the fishery meant to her, not as a fisher person, she doesn't fish, but as a worker in a shore plant. It means her life. That's where they've raised their family. That's where they live.

    By removing fishing opportunities, piecing off pieces of licences, bringing in the things like the offshore processing, you are assuring those people in that community that they can no longer live there. That is wrong. They deserve better than that.

    The Chair: Merci, Monsieur.

    Mr. Provenzano for five minutes.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.): Mr. Chair, I want to pick up on a comment you made in reference to how some of the matters that have been raised we've studied to death. I think there's quite a bit of truth to that. I don't remember the dates, but in 1998-99, Mr. Mirau, this standing committee did travel to both coasts and there were quite extensive hearings conducted on the matter of issues relating to licensing. I don't know whether your research has carried you to any of those prior reports of this committee. But I'm not sure that any public inquiry would delve into the issues you're speaking of any better than they have already been looked at.

    I look across here, I see Mr. Cummins, Mr. Stoffer, Mr. Steckle, Mr. Matthews, myself. We were all on the committee when we looked into those issues. Perhaps as a committee member I'm prompted now to go back and revisit the reports and recommendations relating to licensing. But I was wondering whether you, having made that request for a public inquiry, were fully aware of the efforts of the committee in regard to the licensing issues.

Á  (1150)  

    Mr. Garth Mirau: I'm aware of a number of presentations that have been put to the committee by people like me, and I think that's a completely different thing from what we're talking about here. After all, I'm a bureaucrat and I work for and represent a whole lot of people.

    What I'm talking about is a study, a commission, if you will, similar to the Cruikshank report that goes around the communities and talks to people who live in those communities, people on the docks.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Mr. Mirau, I don't mean to interrupt. We're trying to get through something here.

    I remember, and I think my colleagues will remember, we flew in by helicopter to small communities like Sechelt and Alert Bay and listened to people who were genuinely concerned in asking the question whether fishing was in their future. We looked at all the issues with respect to quotas and licensing, and a very extensive report and recommendations were made.

    I ask the other people on the committee, does my memory fail me here? I think what you're looking for has already been done in spades. I could be wrong on that, and I'm certain my colleagues will take me to task if I'm making an incorrect statement, but a fair amount of work has been done in that area and some pretty detailed recommendations made to the minister.

    Mr. Garth Mirau: I participated in the meetings you're talking about. I participated in one in Campbell River. But I think one thing you will have to agree with is that you don't get the ordinary fisherman—the guy who puts on his gumboots in the morning and goes out to work—making presentations to this committee. There's an opportunity at a commission similar to this but where you talk to people who are actually doing the work. That opportunity doesn't exist.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: That's not true. In Campbell River, you remember that one of the fishermen, a very ordinary person, took off his boots and offered them to somebody else. Do you remember? I see Peter smiling. That actually happened.

    We met during that round with the most ordinary of fishermen the B.C. coast could produce. I'm positive of that.

    Mr. Garth Mirau: It was in a completely different situation from what fishermen would normally attend. I too remember. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that it was Bill Cranmer who did that, the chief of the 'Namgis Band from Alert Bay. I think he said words to the effect that “If the people in this room could stand in these boots, you'd look at things differently.” I believe that.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: No. It was someone who was a fisherman who said, “I can't even afford a pair of boots”, and a guy jumped out of his boots and said, “Here, I'll give you mine.”

Á  (1155)  

    Mr. Garth Mirau: Okay, it's a different time, a different place.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: I remember it.

    Mr. Garth Mirau: Point taken.

    Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Anyway, it's not to take any focus off this issue, because it's so important. The committee hasn't been, and Parliament through its committee hasn't been, negligent in looking at these very important issues. That's the only point I want to raise.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Just on that point, in our Atlantic fisheries review very recently, at length we discussed the owner-operator principle, and our committee came to unanimous conclusions with respect to the owner-operator principle—very similar, I think, to what you're calling for. I think Mr. Provenzano is saying we've looked at the issue on the east coast and west coast in 1998 and 2003, and we're on the same page. I leave it at that.

    I'll go to Mr. Stoffer for five minutes.

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

    I think, Mr. Provenzano, that those are the two west coast reports we did. One was an interim and one was the final. You're right, we made some very good recommendations, which, if you read the government's response, were in most cases ignored—which is typical when you have a unanimous report. I think we've had 18 or 19 since 1997, on all coasts and inland waters, and they've been ignored.

    I'm not putting words in your mouth, but I'd like to know if I'm wrong or if I'm right, Mr. Mirau. In terms of the reports we have done and what we've heard from fishermen and their communities throughout the west coast, it appears that the privatization of a public resource continues. I've stated myself that Mr. Pattison's companies, for example, roughly control over 50% of the public resource in salmon stocks. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is not part of the aim of a public inquiry to get to the bottom of how that happened and what effect it has on shore plant workers, crewmen, and fishermen themselves?

    Mr. Garth Mirau: That's exactly right. That's what we're looking for.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Do you have anybody in mind that you would mention? On the back page you say you would like a commissioner with no political or fishing bias in any way, shape, or form. Would you have anybody in mind who would be acceptable—not to your organization, but to fishermen, aboriginal groups, and coastal communities throughout the west coast?

    Mr. Garth Mirau: That's a difficult question: to ask somebody to do a study that's unbiased. But I think we have some people who live in British Columbia, who understand British Columbians, who are also not connected to fisheries. We have a number of retired judges who are used to stepping back from their biases and dealing with the issues as they're presented.

    No, we would not be prepared to give a “for instance”, because we think that's the wrong thing to do.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay.

    Mr. Figg, first of all, I want to congratulate you on being selected as president of the UFAWU. If you could offer our congratulations to John Radosevic on his retirement for the work he has done on behalf of fishermen and their families, that would be very good.

    You mentioned in a letter you sent to us regarding concerns—if I may just get off track for one second, because I think it is important—about the BSE problem. Has your organization had opportunities to make representation, either to the fisheries minister, through the assistant deputy minister or the deputy minister, or to Agriculture regarding this very serious concern?

    Mr. Irvin Figg: Yes, we have, yesterday and even this morning. We talked to the ADM yesterday and to the ministry of agriculture, which doesn't seem to be able to really do anything to encourage these employers in that community to operate this year. That is the message from the employers: that they'd love to operate, and they would operate. It just appears at this time, given the losses they've had over the last year because of the BSE, that it just doesn't make any business sense with them right now.

    Regarding the department of agriculture, we've found by coming here that yes, we do not qualify. We don't fit into that slot for any of the aid that's stipulated for those who are in eligible commodities. However, it's been suggested to us that we stay in touch with them through a certain round table program they'll be having on ameliorating what has happened to these people.

    We met with HRDC this morning, but received a similar answer: that it's another thing that doesn't quite fit into the slots; that perhaps, should we get through all of those, there may be some way we could get the skills development or technological transition programs, or improvements that may allow these employers to operate this season.

    It's our belief that this season is make or break for those 300 people in that community of 2,600 people that has already gone through total restructuring because there's a lack of forestry and there's nothing really left there any longer.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay. Here's my last question, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. Mirau, you referred to the Atlantic fisheries policy review. A lot of the folks on the east coast participated in that. We thought at least the opportunity to speak before that commissioner was quite good, although one of the biggest problems facing us on the east coast was the trust agreements, about which I'm fairly sure you're aware. Although you didn't say “trust agreements”, you indicated the cost of licensing now is so prohibitive you can't get loans from the banks, so it's the companies that in turn purchase the licence.

    On the east coast what's happening is that if you have Corporation A buy a licence and put it into a fisherman's name, that fisherman is obligated through the agreement to sell his or her quota or catch to that particular company. The processors, as you know, state, “We can't be in business unless we have guaranteed access to the quota”, so they form these trust agreements, which DFO says officially they don't recognize, but they're not really doing anything to stop it.

    Is a similar situation happening on the west coast? How rampant is it? The image we get on the east coast is that this is under the table, but more and more people know about it; it's just happening all the time. Is the situation similar on the west coast?

  (1200)  

    Mr. Garth Mirau: Oh, it's way worse. DFO actually encourages concentration of licences in the hands of a few people and stacking of quotas to bring fewer and fewer people into the industry.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: And that accelerated from the Mifflin report of 1996, from what I understand, because of the stacking.

    Mr. Garth Mirau: In salmon that's true. For the salmon fishery, the Mifflin plan was supposed to provide more fishing opportunities for those people who were left. The corporate concentration, using DFO numbers, was supposed to decrease in the big boat fleet from 35% in 1996. It was supposed to decrease; it's now at 50%.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen, for coming to see us on short notice and giving us a presentation outlining some—I wrote down at least 10, and I'm sure I missed a couple but I know our researchers didn't—of the problems you wanted us to be aware of.

    One of the problems we have that you should be aware of is timeframes. We have a work plan that we just passed that will take us through the month of May, but the Prime Minister may have other work for us. That's up to him. We'll simply have to take it from there.

    Our committee will discuss your evidence and your requests, and we'll see what we can do. I want to assure you it will not be ignored. We'll try out best, given the timeframes we have, to take some action. If something happens and we can't do something or don't do something, I don't want you to think it's because we're not interested or because we haven't talked about it. It just may be that other items—to be specific, a general election—are taking our attention. There's nothing we can do about that.

    Mr. Garth Mirau: Through the chair, I'd like to thank the committee for having me here today and for listening and asking me very intelligent questions around the fishery, and on very short notice, I agree. Thanks very much.

    The Chair: Thank you very much again, gentlemen.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: I see that Mr. Roy is no longer here. The Cruikshank report and the fishermen's report are only available in English. I was wondering if we could have permission to circulate them to the committee even though they haven't been translated.

    The Chair: Well, Monsieur Roy is not here. They can certainly be left and those who wish to pick them up can do so. That was the idea. Then we don't have to make it an issue.

    We'll suspend for a couple of minutes to help our next set of witnesses get comfortable.

  (1204)  

---

  (1207)  

    The Chair: I want to call this meeting back to order. I want to give you as much time as we can give you, and we're now down to 55 minutes.

    We have with us today for a briefing officials from the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation, Captain Richard Misner, chairman, and Henry Copestake, managing director. This request comes as a result of a letter that was sent to us in which the federation outlined a problem they were having.

    So, Captain Misner, go right ahead.

    Captain Richard Misner (Chairman, Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation): Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation on behalf of the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation. I am sorry that we were not able to provide you with advance background material, but we are here on rather short notice. Nonetheless, we appreciate the opportunity to be here.

    I'd like to begin by providing a background on our federation and the Canadian code of conduct for responsible fishing operations. The Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation is made up of fishing industry organizations from across Canada who share a common commitment to the sustainable use of our marine and freshwater resources. In 1998, the industry therefore developed the Canadian code of conduct for responsible fishing operations as an essential step in the pursuit of this objective.

    The Canadian code of conduct for responsible fishing operations was developed as an initiative of Canadian fishermen, to demonstrate their commitment to sustainable fisheries management and to articulate how, as fishermen, they wanted to participate in that objective. This initiative was a uniquely Canadian approach to the implementation of the United Nations 1995 international code of conduct for responsible fisheries and represents a fundamental change in Canada's approach to achieving sustainable, conservation-based commercial fisheries across the country.

    Written by fishermen for fishermen, the grassroots development of the code remains unique in the world, with the broad-based involvement of all Canadian fishing organizations being the driving force behind the development process. The code has now been ratified by over 90 fish-harvester organizations from all regions and fishing sectors throughout the country, accounting for over 90% of the commercially harvested fish and seafood in Canada.

    There are nine principles in the code, which is the foundation for conservation. Based on these principles, 36 guidelines detail the requirements for the achievement of sustainable fishing operations. Selective fishing, catch monitoring, industry-government collaboration, research, and public and stakeholder education are issues covered under the guidelines.

    The ratified organizations make up the membership of the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation, which is the governance body for the code. The federation is directed by the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Board, whose members are selected by ratified fleets to represent a broad cross-section of the industry. Directors represent all scales of fleets from small family operated enterprises to factory ship corporate entities. They represent a cross-section of fishing gear sectors and all Canadian fishing regions. The board includes representation of native fisheries and strives to ensure that members are selected from all fishing provinces.

    Since the code was created in 1998, the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation was also intended to provide a channel for a new partnership with government and a new approach to the improved harvesting and management practices within Canada's fisheries. Successive ministers since Brian Tobin have endorsed our code, as have their provincial counterparts at two separate meetings of the Federal/Provincial Council of Fisheries Ministers. The code and its implementation were regarded as a framework or blueprint to guide co-management. Code implementation plans developed by the industry were to be referenced in integrated fisheries management plans and conservation harvesting plans, reflecting these plans as true expressions of co-management.

    As a national initiative, the code provides a common framework for all fisheries. As the governance body overseeing the implementation of the code on behalf of the industry, the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation can provide a resource centre for both industry and government regulators to establish a predictable, practical, and consistent approach to fisheries management in the true spirit of partnership articulated in the code.

    The broad-based involvement of the commercial fishing organizations across the country has contributed significantly to the attitudinal and behavioural changes that are essential in securing the future of Canada's fisheries resource. Canadian fishermen have been actively assuming responsibility for the sustainability of an important resource.

    However, this spirit of cooperation has been hard won and is now at risk due to apparent ambivalence of DFO in regard to responsible fisheries. Throughout the process of ratifying the code, fishermen across Canada expressed concern that DFO could not be trusted to act in good faith on these matters. With assurances from senior officials from the department, other board members and I worked to convince industry organizations that there had been a paradigm shift at DFO and that they truly did intend to manage the fisheries in the future in the spirit of cooperation articulated in the code, and that our organization provided a national overview to monitor these partnership relationships.

  (1210)  

    DFO has indeed professed its commitment in this regard in many publications. The recently published framework for Atlantic fisheries policy describes DFO's specific actions as including “encouraging the industry's continued implementation of the Canadian Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing Operations”.

    In the department's sustainable development strategy for the commissioner of sustainable development from the Auditor General's office, DFO lists among its success stories “Increased stakeholder responsibility and shared stewardship through support for the industry implementation of the Canadian Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing Operations”.

    Yet these now appear to be entirely hollow words. On May 1, 2003, the department informed the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Board that the responsible fisheries program was cancelled. This was done in complete absence of consultation. Until that moment, the department had provided all secretariat services to our federation and board and had controlled 100% of the budget. The result was that the federation was unilaterally abandoned without the resources to buy even a stamp--hardly the spirit of cooperation. After a great deal of pleading to the minister's office and within the department, we were eventually given some modest funding in December 2003, but this came with strings that prevented the application of the funds from being used to develop federation programs.

    In spite of this, we have survived and are indeed working on developing our programs. We have developed a draft strategy to utilize our code in the development of a made-in-Canada eco-label for Canadian fish and seafood products. We are grateful to the department of food and agriculture for their support in this project. We have developed tools to communicate through newsletters and over the web with fishermen across Canada. We have begun the process of establishing a charitable foundation to attract funds that can assist in responsible fisheries projects. Such projects could include funding assistance for basic science around fish stocks implicated in the new species at risk legislation. We would like to provide funding for research and development of responsible fishing gear. We would like to continue the Roméo LeBlanc awards for responsible fisheries that have been held in this building and at Rideau Hall during the last four years.

    We need the support of government and specifically DFO to implement these projects. While funding is a concern, this is by no means our primary concern. The real issue is that in cancelling the responsible fisheries program, DFO no longer has anyone accountable for the responsible fisheries issues. With no funded program in place, there are no human resources within the department to address these concerns either. We have identified this problem in two letters to the minister and successive meetings with his staff and departmental officials, but they all seem paralyzed. This paralysis is reflected in their handling of questions around the Roméo LeBlanc awards. While in May 2003 the department announced that the 2002 Roméo LeBlanc awards would be the last to be funded, in June 2003, then Minister Thibeault confirmed in writing that the 2003 Roméo LeBlanc awards scheduled for this year would be funded. However, when the department offered transition funding in November, the Roméo LeBlanc awards were specifically excluded from funding support. Since December 2003, we have asked Mr. Thibeault and then Mr. Regan's office whether the awards would be supported or not and whether the minister would participate, as ministers had in each of the previous four events. To date, these questions remain unanswered.

    The Canadian commercial fishing organizations that have ratified the Canadian code of conduct for responsible fishing operations are anxious to ensure that their code is more than mere words. Through the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation, they are now working to ensure that the principles and guidelines of the code are being implemented in their fisheries management plans and in their day-to-day fishing operations.

  (1215)  

    The international community has recognized and endorsed this unique Canadian approach to sustainable and responsible fishing operations. In November 2001, the FAO awarded the Margarita Lizárraga Medal to the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Board as recognition of this effective initiative.

    In their citation, FAO reported:

The Canadian Responsible Fisheries Board and its Secretariat were selected for their unprecedented grassroots approach to the development of a Canadian Code of Conduct based on the FAO Code, which is resulting in responsible fisheries management and new partnerships between industry and government.

    The Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation remains committed to this new partnership, but it can't be a partner alone. We need the participation of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. This is not to demand access to limited financial resources, but to support, and to offer this support, they must have human resources available who are informed on the subject matter and with whom we can work cooperatively to implement responsible fisheries initiatives across the country.

    To achieve this, a senior official from each region of DFO should be tasked with the accountability for the responsible fisheries file. Collectively they would form a responsible fisheries committee and provide a liaison conduit through which the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation and our board could communicate with the department. This type of committee was formerly in place, but it appears to have been disbanded.

    As the lead department on all matters regarding the fishery, they will be consulted whenever the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation asks to participate in programs of other departments. Agriculture and Agri-Food, Human Resources Development Canada, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Industry Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and the Department of the Environment all have programs that would apply to our federation if we were in an industry other than the fishing industry. But the fishing industry is presumed to have its own department and therefore access to our own resources. We need the support of DFO to approach all of these other departments about their programs. For that support, the department must provide informed and accessible personnel for our federation to work with.

    Our final request is that the minister commit to retain his involvement in the Roméo LeBlanc awards. In the past, ministers have always sponsored the dinner and provided a keynote address at the awards ceremony. This does not seem to be a very burdensome annual commitment. The department does, after all, fully fund the recreational fisheries awards, so it would seem odd that the commercial fishery should not be considered worthy. It is particularly odd in view of the fact that DFO has wide responsibility for commercial fisheries across this country, while the recreational fisheries are largely a provincial responsibility. Our awards would seem a rather modest acknowledgement on the part of the department of the contribution of Canadian fishermen to responsible fisheries management.

    The Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation and our board are made up entirely of volunteers. The government in its recent budget expressed their support and promotion of the volunteer sector and our contributions to Canada. We are therefore very concerned about recent implications from officials at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that our federation is not being supported because the industry has not contributed.

    I'm a practising fisherman. I'd be on the lake today if I were not here with you. I have participated in responsible fisheries programs since before 1995, and I can personally account for contributions of somewhere in the $12,000 to $15,000 a year it costs me to attend meetings like this and other functions. Other board members have made similar commitments. Over the past decade, those in the fishing industry across Canada have made enormous financial contributions to all aspects of fisheries science and fisheries management, and during this entire period the contributions of DFO have steadily diminished.

    As such, it is a total misrepresentation of the facts to suggest that the industry has not committed financially or otherwise to the responsible fisheries ambitions of our federation and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

  (1220)  

    Historically, the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Board has had a very effective and positive working relationship with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We are anxious to recapture that relationship, which garnered international praise for its innovation and effectiveness.

    We sincerely hope your committee can encourage the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to work with the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation to rekindle this relationship on a nation-wide basis, as is reflected in the cooperative spirit expressed in the Canadiancode of conduct for responsible fishing operations.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Captain.

    I have a couple of things.

    You mentioned a letter from the former fisheries minister, Minister Thibault, in which he specifically committed to the Romeo LeBlanc awards. Can you provide a copy of that letter to the clerk, please?

    Second, could you describe for the committee members exactly what DFO was providing, human resource-wise and money-wise, prior to May 1, 2003?

    Capt Richard Misner: I'll let Henry give you the figures.

    Mr. Henry Copestake (Managing Director, Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation): Historically, the program was started because the industry in Tobin's era suggested that we develop a Canadian code. Mr. Tobin undertook to provide a secretariat support for a responsible fisheries initiative, and they were very generous in terms of providing the personnel and time to do that. They provided the costing for meetings of the volunteer board and the volunteers who came to national workshops to attend and develop the code and to subsequently go through the implementation process.

    The federation was formed about a year ago. Again, there was some funding for legal assistance to put the not-for-profit corporation together, but not any funding to the corporation itself. The magnitude of this contribution has only been about $190,000 to $200,000 a year. In May--

  (1225)  

    The Chair: How many people were there in the secretariat?

    Mr. Henry Copestake: How many personnel?

    The Chair: Yes.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: The secretariat had a staff of three fairly full-time people plus a director general who oversaw it, but in addition to that each of the regions had a fairly senior person from either fisheries management or science or someplace who was responsible for that and actually formed a committee, and there were people with whom we could liaise in the regions about this.

    The Chair: Were these all DFO officials?

    Mr. Henry Copestake: They were all DFO officials.

    The Chair: The $190,000 to $200,000 was DFO money.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: It was DFO money. It was their money.

    The Chair: Then on May 1, 2003, all of this was cancelled.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: That's what we were told. If I can quote from our minutes, and these minutes were prepared by the DFO secretariat, it says:

The secretariat reported that as of this meeting, funding from DFO will cover only the 2002 Romeo LeBlanc Awards event and secretariat services with no operating budget. As well, the DFO secretariat would have a direct conflict of interest in providing support for the Board under the new Corporation as Departmental staff is constrained by their obligation to operate within the Department’s hierarchy protocols. It was recommended that the new Federation staff the Secretariat function independently. Concern was expressed that there had been no consultation regarding the funding cut.

    The Chair: There was presumably no advance warning.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: No. There had been discussions about setting up a sunsetting mechanism to allow the federation to get going, but nothing beyond that.

    The Chair: But this wasn't sunsetting; this was just a cut.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: That was what happened at our meeting on May 1. Subsequently, Captain Misner and several of the board members met with ministerial officials and I had several conversations with people in the department, and in October of last year we finally got told that we would have access to $39,000 to put this federation together. But when it came time to negotiate how this was to be spent, it came with strings on exactly what it was to be spent on. It was to open an office, to staff it with administrative personnel, but it specifically constrained us from involving programs like the Romeo LeBlanc awards. That was to do on our own.

    The Chair: All right. And the Romeo LeBlanc award, if I remember correctly, is usually given out at the end of April. What happened?

    Mr. Henry Copestake: Yes. We had in fact scheduled and advised the minister's office and the department that normally it is hosted by your counterparts on the other side. They had agreed to provide us with facilities and services on the Hill for April 21 of this year. We advised the department in November of that, and subsequently told Mr. Thibault and then advised Mr. Regan about that. As Rick said in his address, to date we've had no response from them regarding this issue.

    The Chair: So that brings everybody up to date.

    Does anybody on the Conservative side have any questions?

    Mr. Hearn.

    Mr. Loyola Hearn (St. John's West, CPC): I have a couple of brief ones, Mr. Chair.

    When you talk about your board, I don't mean a list of names, but who is on the board in relation to organization or whatever? Who are some of the people? Are they people we would recognize? Where are they from, etc.? Can you give me that type of information?

    Capt Richard Misner: It comes from the largest to the smallest. It comes from the Eastern Fishermen's Federation, and Melanie Sonnenberg, her fishery representation out of Grand Manan. It goes to the Shelburne County fishermen's group that has a quota allocation that they operate, it goes to the Fisheries Council of Canada, and it goes everywhere in between.

    I recognize some people, so it also goes to Ontario.

  (1230)  

    Mr. Henry Copestake: I should add that the representative from your province is actually Bill Broderick of the UFAWU.

    The Chair: Is there anything else, Mr. Hearn?

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: I think we should deal maybe with what the group does. I'm wondering what is it the committee does that the department, if it was really doing what it's supposed to do, wouldn't be doing.

    Capt Richard Misner: The problem is that in the past--and as a fisherman, I'll try to be honest about this, because I know it's a bit of a contentious point--government would tell you how you would conduct your fishery. Then the fishing industry spends all of its energy to try to figure out how to find the loopholes and how to get around the rules so they can survive and make as many dollars as they can profitably. That's how the industry has always worked.

    What we tried to do in this case was to work cooperatively, and this is why it was so important to be working jointly with DFO and why we went to so much trouble to explain to the fishermen--because this was the way it was in the beginning--that we had the support of DFO and they wanted to work in partnership with us. It took a long time. I can remember having fishermen...how blunt can I be about what fishermen say? They would very much say, “Are these guys trying to screw us around like they have before, or are they serious, and if they're not, this is a scam that's been going on for five, six, seven years.” I said, “I think they're serious. They want to work with us for a change. Instead of being confrontational, they want to work in partnership with us.” And we had that structure up until a year ago.

    We understand there are budgetary concerns and finances are tight, but all of a sudden the whole system is thrown out the window and you don't have any DFO partner to work with. As I said, we still have our people. They're very concerned about where this is going and what's happening. Why are we not having any meetings? Why are we not having anything to discuss? We did a conference call on this, and they're very happy that we're pushing on, but they're very concerned that DFO is not participating.

    That's the thing. We went through all of this process to show we had industry and the government working together. So instead of being confrontational, you ask the fishermen, what can we do? I've done this with a lot of them. I've had to argue with a lot of them. Don't tell me that your gear is better than the other gear. Don't tell me that you're a better fisherman than the other guy. I don't want to hear that. There's no such thing as a fisherman who can't do better than he did before, so let's all of us look at what we can do to improve the way we fish to protect the resource for the future. Everybody look at themselves; don't point fingers.

    They slowly started to evolve this, because it was seen that they were doing something to protect themselves. Also, it was the first time the government had not tried to dictate the rules but was actually asking them for their opinion. But all of a sudden we've lost the partnership and they're very concerned we're going back to the old system.

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: When you talk about improving the situation, one of the words kicking around the fishery these days is “professionalization”. Actually, the program is well underway, I guess, back home. In other provinces, the talk is it's coming to an area near you fairly soon. It's looked upon, I think, differently by different people. A lot of the average fishermen are wondering what it's all about.

    Are you involved with that in any way?

    Capt Richard Misner: For several of the people who serve on the board--and in the past as many as 50%, or even more than 50%, of the board have also been members of the Fish Harvesters Association. Bill Broderick is a member, as is Jean Saint-Cyr from the Caraquet area in New Brunswick. We've had involvement all the way along.

    The problem is—and what we tried to deal with—professionalization has some very specific rules. If you don't have a certain number of members, you don't qualify to belong. If you don't see something in a particular way, you don't qualify. It alienates big sectors of the resource.

    We tried to make sure we never got into that argument, so we could have people who were strong on the professionalization side. For people who were more independent and didn't want to be a part of the program, we tried to make sure we were a bridge between the two. We promote education, training, and all of the things that professionalization does, but we don't endeavour to get into doing those things ourselves. We allow for the fact that it belongs to something like professionalization, but there still has to be some kind of a bridge to deal with the overall policies on where the fishery will go.

    Unfortunately, you must know what you hear at home, and you must know not everybody feels the same way. That's the problem. If you take one side or the other, then you can't guide it.

    I've had meetings—not from your province, but from another one—where one of the people got up when I was speaking and started to complain about another gear sector. I stopped him and told him not to do that. I told him he couldn't do that because it was not what we were there for. We were there to try to find out what he could do to improve things and make it better, and he shouldn't point fingers. When I finished the talk, he came over and told me I was right. He said they had been fighting that fight for so long, he couldn't help himself.

    In your case, I went to school at the old College of Fisheries on Parade Street back in 1973, so I've been there a few times.

  (1235)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    To be clear, you were encouraged by Minister Tobin and DFO, at the time, to develop a code of conduct and then implement the code of conduct. You were working with DFO throughout this time. They set up a secretariat and gave you money. Obviously, I'm sure you believe your federation is doing a good job and will continue to in the future.

    Then they decided the direction should be that you should set up your own foundation, collect your own money, and ultimately, over time, pay for yourself. There was some discussion about sunsetting the secretariat and sunsetting the money, as you got on your feet, but what you found was that you were unilaterally, without notice, chopped. Am I clear on this?

    Capt Richard Misner: Almost.

    All right, Henry, go ahead.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: I think it's really important to understand the vital issue now is that there are no departmental resources involved in responsible fisheries. It means when they say they're going to promote the application on implementation of the Canadian code of conduct, they don't actually have any human resources, any human beings, or any bodies to do it. They don't have a program for it, so nobody there is doing it. For any work we want to do, it means we don't have anybody to even talk to on this stuff. It has become even more pressing than the issue of funding.

    The code belongs to the industry. The governance of that code is the responsibility of the Canadian Responsible Fisheries Federation. We should be the conduit through which the department would be liaising on this, and our board members from right across the country in their relative jurisdictions, but they don't even have any personnel because they don't have a program.

    The Chair: Okay.

    Is there anybody on the Liberal side?

    Peter.

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

    It's interesting, in two hours we've heard from two different organizations, and they both talked about the lack of trust in DFO.

    The Chair: It's not unusual.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: No.

    I think it's quite sad that you were given an indication that something was going to happen and then without explanation, or at least a phone call--for example, the LeBlanc awards--it didn't happen. The federal government, more or less, has said, “Okay, forget about it. We're going to do something else, and you guys do whatever.”

    Have you worked with the provinces, then, to initiate this? If DFO is going to have this attitude, then go right to the fisheries ministers in the provinces.

    Capt Richard Misner: Part of what we run into is that the fisheries resource, in most cases, is in the oceans. That's the largest part by far. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is the regulatory agency that oversees that. You don't get much reaction out of the others, because they say, “Well, why isn't the lead organization that's in charge of this doing anything?” So right away, everybody sort of says, “Well, wait a minute. If Fisheries and Oceans isn't participating, isn't doing anything, then why should we?”

    We've gone out and looked for funding from other agencies. We have found that there are moneys out there from other departments that are not necessarily as cash strapped as DFO is. They all say they can help participate in these programs, but DFO has to take the lead position. At this point in time in the system, there is nobody in DFO who is even talking about liaison with the industry in this capacity.

  (1240)  

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Sir, why do you think that is? Why do you think DFO has done this?

    It seems rather unusual that a minister would say yes and then no. There has to be a reason why they're doing this. Is it money? Is it that they may want to take a different tack?

    Capt Richard Misner: The first one is that we know the money is an issue. I think everybody knows that. The thing that is more frustrating to us is that we're not even getting people to respond in a lot of cases.

    In the case of the Roméo LeBlanc awards, when you bring somebody from a small community somewhere in this country, chances are they've never been in this city; they've never seen the Parliament buildings except maybe on television or on a postcard. When they come here to be acknowledged by their peers and by their industry as somebody who's done something worthwhile, it's considered very prestigious to them.

    I've spoken with a bunch of them. Because I'm one of them, they talk to me more than they do to Henry, who's a consultant working for us but who doesn't actually fish. The fishermen have a tendency to trust other fishermen.

    They come here and they go to the places where you work on a daily basis, and they're somewhat awed by the whole thing, to think that they're here.

    And now, to try to put this thing together and not even get a response, to not even get a call back to discuss the issue, is very confusing, and we don't really have an answer.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay. My other question is, do you have aboriginal organizations within your organization?

    Capt Richard Misner: Yes, we do.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: From across the country?

    Capt Richard Misner: No. Because the fishery is not predominantly aboriginal, we have one aboriginal person at large on our board. Associations are involved, and members of those associations are aboriginal. The largest part of the aboriginals, probably in the country--but it's a small fishery--are all through the prairie provinces, all those small fisheries that are out there. A lot of them are members of the board of FFMC. They have representation. They have people who speak for them. They know what's going on to some degree, but not a whole lot.

    I was out doing some stuff with small craft harbours only 10 days ago. For a lot of these fishermen, it's a supplemental income to whatever else they may do--they may also be trappers or whatever. They may fish only $10,000 to $50,000 worth of fish in a year, but it supplements their income.

    A large number of those people are involved. The one who is actually our representative on the board at the moment is an Inuit from northern Quebec.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay.

    I would like to clarify this for the record. Your organization strictly deals with the practising of the fishing methods, right, and the most responsible manner of protecting the resource?

    Capt Richard Misner: It's not all of it, but it's what we started out as.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: So in terms of responsible fisheries, I assume that means the way you handle yourself in the water, the way you care for the fish, the way you look after the resource, in cooperation, obviously, with other fishermen and government. Is that correct?

    Capt Richard Misner: Yes.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: The code is made up, as Rick described, of 9 principles and 36 guidelines, and an implementation plan really involves an individual fisherman taking those guidelines and saying, “How do we apply this guideline to our specific fishery?”, and then asking that the fisheries management plan or conservation harvesting plan incorporate those things into the fisheries management plan, and then reflecting that as the cooperative stance.

  (1245)  

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: The reason I say that is you don't, and correct me if I'm wrong, get yourself involved with the privatization of a common property resource, with ITQs, with the debate over whether fish should be transferred from this guy to this person and so on. Is that correct?

    Capt Richard Misner: No. We've actually made sure that fish allocation subjects are avoided by us because we know it's very contentious between different gear sectors. I usually joke about why they made me the chairman in the first place. The Atlantic doesn't trust the Pacific, the Pacific doesn't trust the Atlantic, so they gave the job to somebody who was in the middle. I fish in Ontario. And the other side of this is that if you know those fisheries, fixed gear does not trust mobile gear and mobile gear doesn't trust fixed gear. And where I fish in the Great Lakes I have both mobile and fixed gear.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: So does your organization work closely then with the Council of Professional Fish Harvesters?

    Capt Richard Misner: Not closely with them, no. We have representation, as I said, on the board, but we don't try to do the same things they do. We recommend in those guidelines and principles...it does say that training and so on are part of what should be done, but we don't cross into the territory of telling them how to do it or dictating to any particular sector or province how they should conduct their training.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Perhaps I'm missing something here. I would think, from an objective point of view, that quite possibly if your organization had, say, closer ties with them to discuss the issue, quite possibly as a joint force, moving toward the DFO and getting them to pay attention to the overall package....

    Mr. Henry Copestake: There are definitely complementary areas, but there are also areas where they have taken, in some respects, ideological stances that some of our members are not comfortable with.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: As an example?

    Mr. Henry Copestake: Our members include people in the corporate sector as well as people from the labour movement. There tends to be a focus around the human resources and the participation of the people actually on the vessel and not on the entire enterprise. We, on the other hand, are really representing the enterprises as a whole, be they large corporate enterprises or individual mom-and-pop operations with a lobster boat.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: So you don't enter into the debate then of the owner-operator principle of fleet separation?

    Mr. Henry Copestake: No.

    Capt Richard Misner: It's too contentious. If you try to bring that into the subject you'll have the Canadian Council...you get them as the big corporate entities and the small fishermen from an inshore operation, and they're at totally opposite ends of the spectrum from each other. And if you try to force them to come to an agreement, all you're going to do is start World War III. You're better off to say, “Let's avoid the question of who's going to get the allocation. Let's just try to solve the problem of whether we can improve the way we do things.”

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: My last question is, is it your contention that you're asking the committee to either write a letter or go to the minister to address your concerns?

    Capt Richard Misner: Yes, definitely, we would like to have participation of DFO back in the program. We want to have somebody we can work with so that we can carry this thing forward, because you can't do it...one or the other. Even government could always make the rules, but you can't enforce them all, because the fishermen, as I said, put more of their energy into trying to figure out how to get around the rules. When you get the fishermen involved in making the rules it changes their whole concept. Then they say, “Okay, this isn't government's rule, this is our rule, this is our resource. We have an interest in it, we are involved, and if we destroy it and if we don't adhere to our own rules, we're going to hurt ourselves.”

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: So it's fair to say that you believe in the principle of co-management.

    Capt Richard Misner: Yes, very much so.

    Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

    The Chair: Are there any other questions, colleagues?

    So you want our committee to get somebody to answer your correspondence; you want somebody in DFO with whom you can speak.

    Capt Richard Misner: I want somebody in the portfolio taking on the responsibility of dealing with us and the issues in the industry.

    The Chair: Right. And you want the minister to acknowledge and take part in the Roméo LeBlanc awards.

    Capt Richard Misner: Yes, we definitely do.

    The Chair: And you want the awards themselves funded by the department.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: The funding we're talking about is pretty modest; we're talking about supporting a dinner, really.

  (1250)  

    The Chair: How much?

    Mr. Henry Copestake: I think in the past—

    Capt Richard Misner: It's $35,000, I think.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: Yes, that included—

    Capt Richard Misner: Yes, if we could include the recreational fishery.

    When you have a mandate over us and you don't have a mandate over the recreational fishery, we have a hard time understanding why you fund theirs and not ours.

    The Chair: I'm just trying to figure out what you want us to write.

    You want correspondence answered; you want a secretariat, or somebody whom you'll be able to deal with; you want the DFO to fund the dinner, and to have the minister as the keynote speaker, as in the past, and it would cost roughly $35,000.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: Yes.

    Capt Richard Misner: Yes, that's what the DFO listed its cost as. We wouldn't have seen the cost, because unfortunately they say we always had all of this money, but it was completely inside DFO's discretionary systems. They decided what the budget would be and where it would be spent. We were only told what the bills totalled up to; we never actually saw any.

    The Chair: Okay.

    And as far as the foundation is concerned, you're content that you're on your own.

    Capt Richard Misner: Well, I won't say that we're content, but we figure that over a little bit of time and with a little bit of this relief, and having somebody to liaise with, we think we could probably get there on our own.

    The Chair: Good.

    Is there any follow-up?

    Peter.

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

    Sir, I ask this out of ignorance, because it may have come to our offices, but did you consider, when you were writing to the minister, also writing to the chair of our committee so that we could have that information,? We could quite possibly have gone to the minister long before your arrival here.

    Capt Richard Misner: We've tried other little methodologies and carbon copied off things to different people who we thought might help the process, but we maybe haven't always sent it to you—but we've done some.

    The Chair: Mr. Copestake and I have met on a couple of occasions. He did write to our committee, and I undertook to put it before our committee, and lo and behold, here they are.

    Mr. Henry Copestake: Yes, I think it's also fair to say that we're founded on the basis of this code. In almost every principle and guideline, this code talks about working cooperatively, and that is truly the spirit with which we want to approach this. But you can't do that alone. I have this image of us dancing the tango with DFO, and we're over on our side with a rose in our mouth and we're about to fall on the floor because they've just left town. That's basically where we're standing now.

    The Chair: Mr. Hearn.

    Mr. Loyola Hearn: Can we have copies of the code?

    The Chair: I don't know.

    Have you got copies?

    A voice: Yes, I can undertake to provide them.

    The Chair: Would you be so kind as to provide them in both official languages, if you have it?

    Capt Richard Misner: The call came through to me last week when I was on the lake fishing; I didn't get the word until late in the afternoon on Thursday, so from Thursday till now we had to get this organized and get in here.

    The Chair: Our researcher tells us that it's available on the DFO website, the Canadian code of responsible fishing operations, so we can get it through the clerk.

    As I told the other presenters, gentlemen, we'll do our best as a committee to consider your requests and to make a decision as to what, if anything, we'll do. We have time constraints, depending on what the Prime Minister's agenda is, but you've at least put your concerns on the record, and we'll do our best to deal with them before we, ourselves, have other things to do.

    Thank you so much for coming.

    I adjourn the meeting.