MR. CHAIRMAN: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and members of the Standing Committee on Economic Development. We have with us today, as guests and presenters, the South West Fishermen's Rights Association. I wonder if we could ask the members of the association to identify themselves and then we will identify ourselves as members. We will get this hearing started, please.
MR. RON WOLKINS: Ron Wolkins, South West Fishermen's Rights Association.
MR. FRED SEARS: I'm Fred Sears, South West Fishermen's Rights Association.
MR. DON GRADY: Tony should be closer to the mike. He is Tony Cunningham, Vice-President of the South West Fishermen's Rights Association. My name is Don Grady. I'm an advisor to the association.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, gentlemen. Maybe Mr. Boudreau, you could begin.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Perhaps we could begin. Mr. Sears, I understand you are going to make some opening comments.
MR. SEARS: Well, I guess I was appointed, whether I wanted to be, or not. I am not the greatest person in the world, probably, to speak to a crowd but I do my best, I guess.
I guess this results from when I climbed the spar of the Bluenose which, as far as I am concerned, was something that I had thought I would never do, I looked at it a long time because that was only one of a lot of things that a lot of fishermen have done in South West Nova, to lead up to this meeting today.
It is getting very hard for me and what's left of the people that are fighting for our communities and the economic development within the communities. It is getting harder and harder every day for us because there are so few of us left that is willing to fight.
I guess the biggest thing is, I have come here today with some of the members from the association, hoping that maybe we can piece some things together for you and explain it the best we know how about what has happened to our fishery, and maybe give you some ideas to take back, to maybe change things, maybe to help it recover so that our communities, hopefully, will not become a statistic. That is what it seems like it is becoming to me; not only in Nova Scotia, I guess, from the media reports, it can go all over the Maritimes since the downfall of the fishery.
We have had other things come along that have temporarily taken its place but in the long term, I think, if the people that are supposed to be representing the fishermen and stuff for these coastal communities don't take a really hard and long look at what is happening in the fishery by being privatized, I think the economics of it is going to be a disaster to any institution in the future.
It is hard for me to really open up and tell you how I feel about what is going on. Maybe I can, before the afternoon is over tell what has happened, or you will understand what has happened in the communities that I was in to, what it has done and how much the fisherman is really getting from the fishery today, even though the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is allocating millions and millions of dollars worth of quota on paper, but the fisherman is being driven from the fishery. Actually, our fishery is becoming privatized to the point that it just belongs to a few individuals.
I guess there is a part that I - there will be pieces, maybe, that will be put in as we go along that will help you understand the way we feel about it and what is being done. I hope you carry the message back and do something about it because I think, as far as I am concerned, in the groundfishery, that we are right on the borderline of a disaster, that it may not ever recover in the area that I am in, no matter what science says from the Department of Fisheries.
When I have seen the devastation that I have seen in my lifetime in the fishery, I know it can never take that much punishment, that there will be nothing left for maybe even your children or grandchildren from that resource that is supposed to belong to the Canadians. It does not necessarily belong to me. It is just that I chose to be a fisherman. The way I look at the fishery, if you choose to be a fisherman tomorrow, I would be glad for you to come. If you can stand the cold, the pounding, and work when you are sick, and whatever - you know, it has been a really hard life for a lot of us.
For a period of time we were only classed as second-class citizens along the South Shore. I can remember, as a child, that we lived in poverty. Until I was about 20 years old, when the economics and things in the fishery started changing, and we started more or less looking at the market end of fishing and everything, and seeing that we were not being treated fairly in the fishery, we fought back, to the point that we started making good money from it. I think the disaster of it was that people that look at something that somebody makes money from, they like to get a hold of it. You know, they like to get control of it.
If we look back at the groundfishery prior to 1970, the coastal communities probably had control of catching as much as 80 per cent of the groundfish landed off of southwestern Nova Scotia or in the Maritimes, period. But by the mid-1980's, the government had given the offshore such quotas - you know, because the stocks had rebounded - they had given them such quotas at that time that they couldn't catch it anyway.
What happened is, with the quota systems we have today, as there has been a downfall in the fishery, the inshore fishery has nothing left but the big companies have fish quotas, still, that they can't even catch because the fish stocks are not there.
I will just give you an example. One fish company, in the three years prior to this year, had maybe 50,000 metric tonnes of one species of fish to catch but it only caught 25,000 metric tonnes of those species. On paper, they have access to fish that is impossible for them to catch.
It does not go further than that to say they can't catch. What have they done? They have turned to the private sector, whatever is left, and started selling this fish quota to the private sector in order for them to go fishing any more.
I know fish companies that entice small time fishermen to their companies and because of policy - I would have to say it is policy - based on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, that companies get access to thousands of pounds of fish. So if you want to fish for them, they will gracefully sell it to you for a small percentage of what it is worth, after it was given to them.
The economics, to me, is like, if I want to fish next year, it is great. I know one company in the area that I live in has access to half a million dollars worth of fish. It has access to half a million dollars worth of fish on paper. But in order for the fishermen in my community to go fishing, they have to turn around and go pay them for it, go catch it and then be coerced into a situation where you even have to sell it to them. The whole system is like a manipulation of the quota system and it is being drained from the backbone of the fishery to start with, which was the inshore fishery.
The way I look at it and a lot of other people do, from our point of view, that if someone doesn't soon do something, that there will be a very big crisis in the fisheries, other than the decline in the fish stocks along the South Shore.
With that, if you have any questions, or anything, that you would like to ask about the quotas or the stocks, implementation of them or whatever you would like to ask, maybe - if I
can't answer the question, Mr. Wolkins, Mr. Grady or maybe Tony could answer them. That is all I have to say right now.
It is really hard to understand because I have a lifetime of fishing going through the back of my mind and I can see the picture. It is all there. But I know I am only going to be able to give you bits and pieces of it and hope that you will understand it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Sears. I just remind the committee members - I should have said it earlier on - that we did make a commitment to Mr. Sears, as a committee - I think Mr. O'Donnell canvassed the various caucuses and members regarding Mr. Sears and the Fishermen's Rights Association's request to come before this committee.
As I explained, I guess, Mr. Sears, when you were up on the mast by way of conversation on the telephone - we are a very informal committee, or certainly will be today, and please don't feel intimidated. We want you to say what you have to say. Ron, or Don, whoever, if you guys would like to make some comments before we get into Q and A, that's perfectly all right. Or, Mr. Cunningham, if you would like to come up to the microphone and make some comments before we get into questions, that would be certainly welcome.
MR. WOLKINS: I would like to make a few comments. See, the DFO put this in place, actually, back in the latter part of 1995 and 1996. This was before the South West Fishermen's Rights Association got right back into representing the fishermen. The South West Fishermen's Rights Association does date back a long while but it stopped and we just re-enacted it again in 1996.
In those years, that is when this history, from 1986 to 1993, it was agreed to, through which DFO would say was the committee, a fixed gear advisory committee. But they neglected to say that when that vote went through, that they never represented 25 per cent of the fishermen. Once the fishermen got represented, they didn't want it but it was too late. So that is just a little point.
The history from 1986 to 1993 should also be pointed out to anybody that doesn't realize - especially for the small inshore handline vessel, which never had a licence until 1991, so his history is only from 1991 to 1993. So if I went out in, say, 1987, 1988 and bought myself a handline licence and didn't plan on going but said, I'll have it in case I ever need it and never went fishing, now I've got quota on that licence because from 1986 to 1991 history, it was classified as unidentified. All that quota was given out individually to the handline licence holders, although, some of those licence holders have never been on the water in their life. They now have a quota - a lot of them sit back and sell.
Another good example I could probably give you, I have been on 45-footers all by life as a crew member. I have done settling, I was first mate and I have been fishing all my life. I have been fishing now for 22, 23 years and done a lot of settling. We settled up - let's say I went out on a week fishing trip and we landed 50,000 pounds of cod fish, average $1.00 a pound. On a 45 foot boat, you take a 40 per cent boat share so that takes it down to 30,000. Take out your
expenses, $4,000 for bait, hooks and things to work your gear, $700 to $800, maybe $100 for your fuel and your grub. Back in those years, which wasn't very many years ago, off a trip of 50,000, a crew member could bring home anywhere from $3,500 to $4,500 and that is a six man crew. Out of 50,000 stock, of the resource, you are putting $25,000 back into your community.
Now with this ITQ system in place in Shelburne County - I don't know about other counties - but off a $50,000 trip now, a crew member would bring home approximately $600 to $700 because they are paying 40 cents, 50 cents, sometimes 60 cents a pound for these fish they haven't caught. The boat share still comes off the top and then out comes what you pay for your fish so really in the long line of it and nobody represents them, is the crew members. The crew members are mainly paying the price for the ITQs, especially for the larger vessels. The smaller vessels, if they have to go ITQ, yes, they are also paying for it. Individual transferrable quotas is destroying our fishery, it showed it in the draggers, in our area now the draggers don't stop, the draggers have built up, actually. We have two $3 million vessels tied at West Head Wharf, mega-ships I call them. They can go 365 days a year and they do, they go year-round to the wharf and they are gone again, coming in with 80,000 to 100,000 pounds of fish, and we can't go.
I always thought if a handline fisherman, which takes the least of the resource, could not go out and make a living, he has the best quality and makes the most out of the least of the resource, then nobody should go, it should be shut down. If our fishery is in that much of a state that a handliner cannot go out and make a living, then I think the fishery should be closed down. In my eyes, a hook and line fisherman is conservation minded in itself. If anybody in this room has ever been fishing they would realize that during spawning months, when fish are spawning and are most vulnerable to the dragging sector and the gillnetters and stuff where they bunch up, they will not bite a hook.
I have been fishing down on St. Pierre Banks, we went alongside the 70 foot to 80 foot gillnetters, it looked like a draggers net was hauling over the broad side of the boat because every mesh was full of the great big steakers. We shot out 40 tubs. We couldn't get 100 pounds on the tub and the ones we did get were just like they were lip-hooked because when we hauled them aboard the boat, the billfish spilled right out of them, they were feeding on this billfish and this bait chasing it and they were running right into these gill nets. They couldn't see them but they could see that hook with that bait on it and they didn't want it, they wanted the fresh stuff, apparently. That is just one aspect of hook and line where they get sick.
Another aspect is dogfish, they can ruin your whole trip, where a dragger just hauls back, picks his dogfish out and goes somewhere else. A longliner could destroy his gear so he has to come in. It is more labour intensive, it takes more people to do it and there is more profit to be made and be split out into the community, on hook and line fishery, other than dragging. I know one of the crew members on one of Taylor's vessels, he is a big-time dragger from home, they go out and come in with anywhere from 80,000 pounds to 120,000 pounds of haddock, cod fish, at $1,500 to $2,000 a piece. That is very little from the resource that is so valuable.
They say our industry is a billion dollar industry; for five people or six? It is not for the outlook of the communities. Our communities are going downhill all of the time. There is not much more you can diverse to, they have gone to shellfish - which I suspect now won't be long before it is on your community quota allocations also. The way I think the government is pulling that one off is when they fill out these logs - which has just been three or four years - let's say from Clark's Harbour, West Head, just around Cape Island, I would say there are at least 15 to 25 small outboard vessels fishing for lobster and now you see two or three. All those licences are on big, 45-footers, trying to diverse for the fishery so they can go fishing and lobstering at the same time. They have filled up these logs three or four years and when this becomes history they will say, oh they only had it for three or four years. They are going to get the biggest history of them all because those are the logs DFO has which are the same as the DFO logs they now have for groundfish.
I know my log, with the history they sent me, says I never went fishing for two years. I have income tax slips that said I went fishing, I paid income tax those two years but according to my history and I told DFO I would bring in tax slips from my groups and forms showing they landed these fish, they would not accept them. They said we can't accept that because they would say they caught lobster and marked it down for fares; they always have an excuse anyway. I have so much to say but I can't say it in such a short time. I guess I will let someone else do some talking for a while.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Cunningham, maybe you could come up to a microphone, one of your colleague's seats, perhaps.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: I have just been sitting listening and I am at a loss for words and that is something new for me, Cecil knows that, anyway I will stumble through it, best I can. I have been handlining a lot more years than probably you fellows are old, believe it or not, close to 40 years. My grandfather was a handliner, my father was, I am, and my son is, he never done nothing else in his life but handlining, so that is quite a history.
When it comes time to collect my history, I have three years. God knows what happened to all the rest of the years, they just disappeared, I wasn't there. I represented the handliners in the early 1980's at all of these meetings and some of the stuff I have heard and seen, the transfers I see, the dirty work I see, you guys would never believe it. I went to one meeting and asked for two handlining machines and they simply refused me but before that meeting was over there were 500 tons of fish transferred to the draggers that belonged to my handline section - 500 tons of fish, we don't even get that now, that is our quota for three years for codfish. The fishery kept going down and going down. I don't know, I have been on protests, I have come to these meetings and I keep telling people and telling people and they want proof. How can I prove it to you? Do you want me to take all of you up to Cape Island and take you on a fishing boat and show you how we work, what happens and talk to people about discarding and different stuff, the bottom being torn to pieces.
There were 100 handliners making a living in a little area and we done that for four or five years. All of a sudden two or three draggers found it out, this was only three or four years
ago, we called it the margarine ground. The draggers found it out that summer. We fished that for three to four years, 100 boats catching haddock. Right now I couldn't get you enough haddock to make a chowder, we have tried it, we tried returning to that area the last two to three years. The draggers were there, I saw them there and watched what they done. There was a load of small haddock there, they dragged amongst them with liners and stuff in the nets, I know what they had. It went on the market and the area is gone.
Now the ITQ has come up and I was one of the guys who walked into that building in Barrington Passage, you guys remember that deal, the first one as a matter of fact. We knew what was going to happen. I can't predict the future but I was pretty stupid if I couldn't predict that, what ITQs would do once they got in place. There are guys that went out down there that I know never ever went handlining that I can remember, or long lining, just dropped loads of fish.
This year I scalloped $8,300. You try to run a boat, make payments, off $8,300. The only thing that saved me was my wife works. I got by somehow, I don't know how but I worked by. We keep fighting and fighting and it is happening, my friend. It is happening and the fishing is being destroyed. When we went into that building they said no, the fishing will not be privatized. I know plants in my area, the first year this came out, they probably held 4,000 to 5,000 pounds of fish and now they hold tons because there are just to buy them up. A guy said that I couldn't go out for $8,000-odd dollars, I will save my fish. So there is a plant that will buy these fish, so they buy them and keep on buying them.
[1:30 p.m.]
Five years ago when I left in the morning they used to call us the mosquito fleet, Cecil would know all these yarns, we stretched for two or three miles, boats behind each other. Now I leave the fish grounds I can tie my steering wheel, I haven't even got to look at the radar because there is not a boat left, they have all disappeared, they have all gone. I think my dock alone had 53 boats that handlined, maybe now we have three. All of their quotas have been bought by the companies and sold out. I can't afford to buy them, probably I average 80 cents a pound for my fish and I am going to go out and buy them for 40 cents, so I am only going to make 40 cents. To me, that is not making much profit.
The fishery is being privatized, is being destroyed and I wish to God somebody would get off their butt, smell the coffee and do something about it. I don't know who but somebody soon has to do something or like Freddie says, we are going to have nothing. If the lobstering is great, I have been in lobstering. I was in it in 1970-something, my captain made $200-some dollars and I made $300-something that winter lobstering. I have seen the lobstering go and come back. If we ever get one slump in lobstering, we have no fisheries left, the companies own it. What are we going to do? I will think of more later on but I will turn this over to Don or somebody. Just please try to do something, I don't know what, just something.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Grady.
MR. GRADY: My name is Don Grady. I am a teacher by profession and I have been teaching at a little university in the Annapolis Valley, Acadia. Through the years we have had students at Acadia coming from all over Nova Scotia, but particularly from rural Nova Scotia and I think especially from the South Shore. Those young men and women have entered into the challenge of acquiring a university education because as they told me whenever I asked - and like many people on the South Shore, they told me sometimes when I hadn't asked them anything - they were there to get an education so they could go back home, work with their communities, and help their people to grow and develop.
Over that same period of time as a teacher at Acadia, I have had opportunity to watch the development of the fisheries and the disaster that the fisheries policy of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the bloated, exploitative nature of industrial fisheries. I have been watching in amazement at the outset and now in disgust at the systematic destruction of the fabric of life of these communities on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. When I say that I don't for a moment deny that the same process of destruction of the social fabric of community is happening elsewhere in Nova Scotia and in other so-called primary product industries.
Any member of this committee who comes from rural Nova Scotia and some who come from right next door to the great Halifax Regional Municipality can tell you, from their own experience, of the systematic raping of the natural resources of Nova Scotia, whether those natural resources are fibre forestry, fishery, steel, coal or farming. I daresay, if you listen carefully to what Captain Sears and Captain Wolkins and Captain Cunningham have said, the experience that they have had with the fishery can be easily seen in the fate of the family farm in Nova Scotia, in the fate of the small, independent, owner-operated woodlot and forestry industry and it is obvious on the record, Mr. Boudreau brings this with him every time he comes to a session in the Legislature, that the inestimable resource of coal and the inexhaustible potential for the making of steel in Cape Breton has been frittered away over the years.
I guess I get paid for reaching conclusions. Some of my students say I get to those conclusions perhaps more quickly and more emphatically than others might but what we are observing in the stories we have heard today from these fishermen is the story of the biblical principle, to he who has, it shall be given and from him who has not, it shall be taken away. There have been people fishing our waters for nine generations on the South Shore of Nova Scotia and elsewhere around the shores of the Maritime Provinces. Nine generations of fishermen have neither had the desire nor the ability to destroy the fishery resources.
For the largest period of those nine generations, until as recently as 1917 and 1920, the best efforts of hook-and-line hand fishermen have been unable to put a dent in the fisheries resource and yet, since 1979 - and particularly in the period from 1981 to 1995 - through the collaboration of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, a handmaiden, midwife to the destruction of the fisheries resource and the best efforts of the Government of Canada through the political representatives of the people of Canada who have permitted the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to develop a monstrous bureaucratic machine, through those joint efforts, what appeared to be inexhaustible resources have come perilously close to annihilation.
These men speaking today, I tease them a lot, but they are relatively young men. Tony likes to say, and says it very well, when I started fishing - he changes the dates sometimes, it depends on who is listening - 35 years ago, when I started fishing 40 years ago, when I started fishing with my father and grandfather, the problem wasn't whether there were enough fish so that we could make a living, the problem was whether there was a market for those fish and whether the price being paid for fish was enough to support a family.
We have done a lot of things in the Province of Nova Scotia since Confederation. Some would say it was an error to join but I won't get into that. Much of what we have done in the Province of Nova Scotia has been to fight a rearguard action against the capital attack of industrial thinking on the communities of our province.
We are very grateful to Mr. O'Donnell for his efforts with Premier Hamm and with members of the federal Standing Committee on Fisheries, for his efforts in making it possible for us to make application to this committee and to other committees to bring this message to our political representatives. It is my belief that the fishermen who have spoken today spoke in much the same way and with great effectiveness in a private meeting with Dr. Hamm who was kind enough to listen carefully and to say that he would recommend to this committee, and its chairman, and to the minister of this committee, that the members of the South West Fishermen's Rights Association get an opportunity to speak to you today. He also said that if, after the committee had heard from the fishermen and after the basis for the complaints you have heard today have been validated from the record, that if those two steps took place, he and his government would take firm, clear and effective steps to curb industrial and corporate control of the fisheries resource in Nova Scotia.
Am I making a speech, Bill?
MR. WILLIAM ESTABROOKS: You are.
MR. GRADY: Okay, I just want to make sure.
MR. ESTABROOKS: I am copying it down.
MR. GRADY: Well, there is no need for that.
MR. ESTABROOKS: Firm and clear, I got that.
MR. GRADY: I have some documents we brought with us that I would like to pass out to the members of the committee but I won't do that right now because it will just distract us from the dialogue I know you want to have with the fishermen. I will say this, if I may, there will be no last chance for the fishery in the same way that there will be no last chance for forestry in Nova Scotia, in the same way that there will be no last chance for agriculture in Nova Scotia, in the same way - I think that being sensible people we all must admit - there will be no chance for mining in Nova Scotia or for the industrial activity of steel fabrication and production in
Nova Scotia unless the representatives of the people of Nova Scotia step into these issues and into these disputes and weigh in with a very firm statement of jurisdiction.
We spent a lot of time - didn't we, Fred? - with people from the Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. Some of them, I believe, well-intentioned and sincere people. The first thing they told each of us when we met with them was, look boys, we know you are in a tough spot, we know it is not your fault, we know that it is corporate greed and federal bureaucratic infamy that have put you where you are but we have no jurisdiction in the fishery. The only jurisdiction we have is once the fish hit the dock. Well, I am here to tell you today that if you are interested, there are some very good documents. There was a masters' thesis done by a young gentleman named J.F. MacKay at Dalhousie University which reviewed the history of the fight over steam trawlers in 1917 and 1920. In that thesis, Mr. MacKay demonstrates from the record that the provincial jurisdiction over natural resources has not been removed just because many of the provinces, on a number of issues, have declined to press that jurisdictional control.
I am trying to think of a way of ending that doesn't raise the hair on the backs of your necks but sometimes I have a lot of difficulty doing that. Speaking softly, speaking to reason and speaking to the facts, we brought some and maybe in our discussion we can elaborate on them.
When Tony and Fred and Ronnie talk about what has happened to them in the fishery, they are not talking about something that is an inadvertent consequence of modernization. The fisheries are going away because forestry is going away because agriculture is going away because mining and steelmaking in Nova Scotia are going away. That is the sort of gloss on this issue that the Clearwater Fine Foods Corporation and National Sea Products, among others, would like to put on it; these men who are sitting before you, their time has come. There are no more fish so they can't fish them and they are just going to have to reconcile themselves to the fate of hundreds of thousands - I almost said millions - nay millions of Nova Scotians and Maritimers who, when the resource dries up or the commercial market place is removed from their access, are just going to have to retrain and remove. What we are observing in the case of the fishery is a very powerful and I think important case of occupational cleansing. That occupational cleansing is not incidental or accidental, it is part of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans deliberate policy of taking the 9,000 inshore fishermen who fished the waters off Nova Scotia in 1991 and reducing them to 4,000 inshore fishermen in 2000.
The next step in the plan - and we have been told this right at the table by Mr. Jon Hansen, the resource manager for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Scotia-Fundy Region - you guys are going to have to get out of the fishery. There is no room for you. You will have to leave. If you are down to 5,000 in 1990, we expect, anticipate - and he doesn't say this, but it is under his breath - and we will do our damnedest to make sure that in 2000 there are fewer than 2,000 of you.
Now what is the plan of action? You and others in Nova Scotia and Canada have seen the plan of action of the South West Fishermen's Rights Association. The plan of the association is to articulate the rights of fishermen under the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to have access to the fishery and to have exercised through government, on their behalf, their fair share of that resource.
Was it Fred or Tony who referred to the $1 billion value of the fishery? (Interruption) It was Ron. Where are you?
MR. WOLKINS: Right here.
MR. GRADY: Okay, the $1 billion fishery. I was at the table when the former Minister of Fisheries in the previous government quoted that figure with pride and Ron told him right then, excuse me, Mr. Minister, but where did the $1 million go? The minister said, well, my officials tell me, and then he started quoting vast amounts of money that were in this fishery, in that fishery and exports and exploitations. He said, does that answer your question, Mr. Wolkins? Ron said, no, sir, it does not. What you are telling me, really, is that $900 million worth of fishery value left the province and that those who have paid for that value were the owners of the large, corporate, industrial fisheries whose major instrument of acquiring a catch
is the dragger, the 20th Century equivalent of poisonous gas in an oven. The dragger, whose main feature is to catch the largest amount of fish in the least amount of time doing the maximum amount of damage to the bottom of the ocean and the ground and the marine habitat and to turn those fish as quickly as possible into export commodities.
I started by telling you about my personal history, as these men have, my personal history as a teacher and the people I have met in my 30 years of teaching at Acadia University who come from the small, rural communities of Nova Scotia. I don't want to say - I have been teased enough by my students - that nothing good ever came out of Halifax and Dartmouth but I do want to say that those who have come from the smaller communities of this province have demonstrated the quality of life and spirit and intellect and morality that make life worth living. Unless you gentlemen, in collaboration with South West Fishermen's Rights Association and other authentic community-based fisheries organizations, get to work and deal with this problem by providing access to the fisheries resource to these deserving, environmentally-aware and community-committed people, then you are simply not doing your job.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Grady.
MR. GRADY: Call me Don.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Don, thank you.
John MacDonell.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation. This agenda by DFO, to allow for so much of the resource to wind up in the hands of a few - and this has been going on a while - Mr. Cunningham, you mentioned about coming to these meetings since the 1980s, or a variety of meetings. I don't doubt, in all that time, you probably have been trying to relay the same message or similar message. I would assume that when you get to the year 2001 and you are still saying the same thing, and you haven't seen any change, that you are probably wondering if anybody is listening or cares, for that matter.
I have given this probably not as much thought as you have but some. I wonder if you have actually ever been able to come up with a reason that DFO seems to be heading in this direction. It doesn't make sense. To me, there can only be one way to go and that would be - if you were DFO, I guess, the only thought I had is that they want to get away from any kind of support for communities.
If they assume that the large, private interests will somehow provide all the jobs in those communities and that DFO somehow can step back away from the management of the resource with regard to these communities - and I can't believe that that is a big cost, if you consider the value of the resource and the idea that if you spread that value of that resource out to a wide variety of people, to a lot of people, rather than a few, and they are going into the corner store, they are spending their money, that allows a community to thrive, you can keep your school and you will probably be able to hang on to a doctor and, you know, all these things make sense,
whereas, if you allow the community to die, then you have got to put money there to attract people to those communities, to keep them there. That is a much bigger deal, as far as what it costs, tying up people's time, the bureaucracy, et cetera, so it makes a lot of sense to make communities as self-sufficient as possible, and they have got the resource right off their doorstep to do that. I cannot find a good reason to go the way the federal government has gone with the fishery. Have you?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: I think you might not like me for saying this, back early, politics. You vote for me and you have got a few tons of fish, hey, no problem.
MR. MACDONELL: Yes.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Buy your votes with fish. Politics. A lot, probably, in DFO with shareholders and stuff, in draggers, there probably still are, as far as I know. I know, back then in the 1980's, they were. I mean, I think a lot of people that are in politics, at one time, worked for Clearwater or one of those guys. You can correct me on that. I think I am right.
So it has a lot to do with politics, buying votes, back then. We didn't care. We weren't going to run out of fish. Do you remember what the guy said there that came across and dipped the basket, to the end of time? He was figuring on, in the early 1980's. As a matter of fact, we traded redfish to the Russians. Oh, all kinds of foolishness, you know, would go on behind closed doors, to cover up dirty work. All this happened, believe me. I know, I was there. As far as now, they just want to get rid of us. They don't care.
I was told a million and one - well, not a million and one times. I stretch stuff like Don. I've got to correct Don. I stole the old man's boat when I was 12 years old and went fishing, I'm 53, so 40 years, Don. Anyway. (Laughter) I was two years in Sudbury.
MR. GRADY: He is 41, going on 30.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Anyway, a lot of dirty work happened back then and probably still is but they just don't care. They want to cut the fleet down. Like I was told, it is a lot easier to control 10 large boats than it is 200 small boats. The wharf isn't keeping the breakwater up. Well, that is saving money. You know, let's get rid of Stoney Island, have one big wharf at West Head, or whatever.
MR. SEARS: Or Bedford Basin.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Yes, whatever. As a matter of fact, at one meeting, Jon Hansen, he looked at me and he said, Tony, I can do whatever I want to you and there's nothing you can do about it. Well, he's very wrong. I proved that.
MR. ESTABROOKS: Who is he?
MR. GRADY: He is Director of Marine Resources for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Scotia-Fundy region.
MR. WOLKINS: He's the one that said, "My job is secure, is yours?"
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Yes. See, he's got a nice job. Then you've got Ottawa, that I'm not a personal friend of, we're not able to do because we haven't got the money but you've got a lot of lobbyists. You know, a lot of guys lobbying Ottawa. I've been there too, to see what happened. They just don't care. "We've got to go."
They spent some money out. They wasted a lot of money. I mean, I could have done a lot better. Some of the licences they bought back from people, $30-odd million was spent the last time and that was a laugh, that was, what licences they bought back then. Stuff didn't mean anything. I think I gained 80-odd pounds of fish on my quota this year; $31 million and I got 80-some pounds of fish. That is a good investment.
At that time, we were trying to plead with them to let people keep their personal licences. They bought a lot of good licences back. They probably got the amount of fish, you know, a fisherman down - they just don't care. "We've got to go." They spent enough money. Let's destroy the fish. They don't care. They've got a nice job.
I mean, I was talking to Jon Hansen no more than a month ago. I looked at him. We were in the court room in Shelburne about my son on a protest of fisheries and I said, John, can you imagine you taking a rake, a large moss rake, or whatever, and going through the middle of your garden back and forth. You're going to destroy it, Jon. "What are you saying? I shouldn't till my garden?" I mean, that's the kind of - one time we were at another dragger's meeting and we said about raking up the bottom. Oh, he said, that's good because you have food for the fish. What's the good to set a family of 12 with 11 booted out and setting 12 plates to the table? The fish is gone. I mean, you get so much queer answers from him.
Back to you, they didn't care a long while ago. They got themselves into the position that they plan now to try to cover up what they did do. It was going to happen. I mean, we told them it was going to happen. You didn't have to be a brain surgeon to know what was going to happen if we kept doing what we were going to do.
I wouldn't go into a meeting and represent the handliners, they would say, look at me, you know, anybody going handlining, now they are proud to go handlining. But they simply destroyed it. They are still destroying it and they are trying to blame it on the small fishermen to cover up their butts.
Since I have been representing the handliners in the early 1980's, I have been de-promoted to $8,000 for my year's work. All the rest of the guys - and a lot of them sat there at that time, like Neil Bellefontaine and them - they were only little scabs. They have all been up now, they are all promoted. Jon Hansen is all promoted and I have been de-promoted. So they
got promoted for doing a job - destroying the fish and I have been de-promoted for trying to save them.
Back then I would sit there and argue with them and tell them, you know, we can't give these fish away and we can't do this. I remember one little French guy from west side sitting there one night crying, "Please don't do it." I'm talking about 15 years ago, probably, 10 or 15 years ago. But it happened, it is here and it is still happening. You can't make them believe.
I mean, I can go out and take 500 pounds of fish or 400 pounds of fish and come in. I've got a good day's work. If I can do that two or three days, I've got a good day's work. That's 1,200 pounds of fish, that's $1,200. I'm happy. But 1,200 pounds of fish to a dragger is nothing.
[2:00 p.m.]
I mean, I laughed a few months ago. I don't know whether you guys watched it, or not. They had a program on Land and Sea about dragging. I am getting off of your subject again but I'm trying to fill in blanks. They had a program on about dragging and how they went out and bought fish so they could go dragging and wouldn't have to discard. But you know what they used? A redfish boat.
Now, my buddy was up with me and Freddie, he fished on a redfish boat up until last year and he said, what are they talking about? We don't need no quotas. I mean, he said, what codfish we catch we take them home in a lunch pail. That program was set to look like they was going out and using a redfish boat. I mean, it's stupid and a lot of people probably believed it.
Something has got to be done. Like I'm saying, boy, they are trying to get rid of us. Think of any reason you want to think of and it's probably the truth.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Can I ask another question? It was something that Fred said earlier - if I can find the right spot - in the groundfishery, it is bordering on a disaster. I wondered, is that related to the way quota is allocated or is it related to the way we fish, or is it both?
MR. SEARS: Yes, well, part of it is, is like, it doesn't matter what you have. You can have a hen house but if you beat all the windows out in the wintertime, see if you have your chickens come spring. I mean, it's no different with the fishery.
Like I was trying to explain to one of the gentlemen today, it is like, I know an area right now where there are scallops on it. It is very lucrative if you can get in there to fish it because we get them in our lobster traps. You know, these scallops are this big. They have moss growing on the backs, this big, this long. Like, that bottom is still covered with coral and the various corals, a lot of it is soft coral. But in amongst it, there are all kinds of little fish that live there. Some people don't understand it. Scallops are probably one of their primary foods. They are small fish. That's what they live on.
As the areas keep being opened up to these destructive methods of fishing, then they destroy that habitat and then they try to move somewhere else. Even a scallop will try to migrate away from a place where it don't want a 5,000 pound bunch of chain come rattling around it and scooping it up. What percentage gets squashed, I don't know, but it's hard to explain to somebody the devastation that it can cause.
It is like, our federal Department of Fisheries is saying that they are developing all these fisheries. Well, okay, they have developed the silver hake fishery. Where did it go? Seafreez got a nice big quota. They never had a vessel fishing. I asked the Department of Fisheries, I said, I go fishing for a living, why wasn't I entitled to part of the quota? Well, you can't catch it. Well, I said, I could have sold it to the Cubans or somebody, the same as Seafreez or some of these big multinational companies. I said, I can sell it too. I said, I probably wouldn't have. I would have probably developed it or tried to fish it and made somebody a living.
I will give you just one for instance. In the 1980's, my primary income came from groundfishery. I had a 45 foot vessel. I employed, year-round, four men, other than myself, and that was four families. I would probably catch anywhere from $300,000 to $350,000 worth of fish in value. But you know something? I also had four families that made $35,000 or $40,000 a year and lived off of that small amount of fish.
At the same time, I was fishing out of Louisbourg, Cape Breton. That is when the big multinational companies was into it, big time. That is after the government had poured, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars into companies, boats, whatever. They built them up into a mega-fleet. I talked to the fishermen that came in on those vessels. They would land at port with $400,000, as much as $500,000 and their crews would go home with $1,500 apiece. That one trip of fish. The destruction that they done trying to get it, can you imagine? Just that 10 day period of fishing for them, that I could take five families and feed them for two years, and not destroy it and we would still have it. But that's the problem.
Whether this government wants to look at it and put a stop to the Department of Fisheries, or the federal government allowing to develop something that, long-term, is just a destruction to everything because, you know, they are talking about developing fisheries now out in - can you imagine? - 600 feet or 700 or 800 feet of water, where nobody has ever been. How do you know what's there? How do you know what you're going to destroy in that ecosystem down there? They don't really care. The bottom line is profits.
I have been involved with Tony here over the last five years, coming around close to five years for us. Sometimes it is very discouraging. You see this, like, your livelihood. It's not so much mine. I might be able to struggle and fight this as long as I can to survive but I know that none of the children around my neighbourhood - they are going to lose a way of life.
They say, why do you do it? Well, I said, it is my freedom. I left school when I was 13 but when I was 19 years old, I was married, had two children and I decided I wanted to go fishing on my own. I didn't need nobody anymore to tell me what to do. You know, I've been fighting a struggle. I've had uphills in the fishery, I've had downhills in the fishery, but we have always survived and been fairly happy with it.
What I see has happened over the last five years - that five years ago when Tony came up with the idea of taking over the Department of Fisheries building in Barrington - when I see communities all along the shore, even Cape Breton and everywhere, for a short period of time we all came together and we was a big threat. But I can tell you, it didn't take the federal government very long to find out where there was some people in there that they could buy off and then the ones that they couldn't, they sort of intimidated you with whatever way was possible to discourage you from proceeding any further with your issues that you have.
I could tell you some things you might not even think that it would be true. I wouldn't even - one on one, I might tell someone, but you know, things that the federal government, as far as I am concerned, was behind, that has been done to me for speaking out about this. I don't think they will ever stop me. I told them one time, I said, it didn't make no difference. The sad part of it is, I came from nothing and I ain't afraid of going back there.
All the children, you see them walk around and you hear about the children, they are in court, they stole this and they stole that, they do this and they do that and they do all these bad things. They do it for a reason. They don't have nothing else to do. When I was a boy or Tony was a boy, or any of us, 15 years ago, if a young boy came home from school and he wanted to make money, go down the shore, go in and bait trawls. We were a labour-intensive fishery. He could go down there in the evening and make himself $30. If he wanted to go anywhere or do anything, he was only down there three hours or so and he made himself spending money. Nowadays, they don't have that option anymore.
I've travelled around the province a lot. You go to these places, different places. The past four years I travelled around a lot - I'm not married now - and I would go out to lounges and things, like, even on the weekends. I have seen over the past four years - and I am sure Mr. Downe has talked about it within Bridgewater - I've been familiar with the area for the last four
or five years, quite a bit. I see people that spend money are not out there spending it anymore like they used to. They don't go to nightclubs. You only see people go out and shop and buy what they really want on a Friday night. The people are not going out and spending money. There is one reason, because it's not there.
If you look at Lunenburg, how much revenue was generated through Lunenburg that went to the people in Lunenburg, in 1980 to 1990 versus 1990 to the year 2000, if you have seen those figures, it would probably be unbelievable. You know, we travelled around a lot. We talked. Like, when the Lunenburg fishery was on, 20 years ago it was a big thing. Why isn't it anything anymore? Because there is no fishery left in Lunenburg.
I don't want to see my community, and it is no disrespect to anybody that tries for their community to bring in some kind of business - but to me, you are not going to convince me that we can just keep running to the federal government for money to set up call centres and this kind of garbage to keep our communities going. I think, to me - I'm not well educated but I don't class myself as stupid either.
When we have the natural resources that we have in Nova Scotia, we probably should be one of the strongest provinces in Canada, but to the rest of the country we look like we are a burden on them because we have a handful of people that's been fortunate enough - for some high-ranking officials in this country - to sign a piece of paper saying it belongs to them, whether it is our natural gas on the bottom of the ocean, which has a lot to do with what is going on in the fishery right now, indirectly, or it has not surfaced fully yet.
If we really want to look back at what happened when we had the situation of a moratorium in the cod fishery, was the cod fishery that bad when it was put on in those eastern areas? It was very convenient it was put on and all at once the oil companies rushed right out to do all of this work. Now we have all of these oil fields and everything pumping gas and oil but you know in that whole time, nobody went fishing so there was no liability to the oil companies of damage. They put that fishery under a moratorium and now if they do have a serious accident, they are not going to be responsible to the people that's always depended on a living from that fishery. There is no viable fishery there anymore so how can you sue somebody for something that is not viable?
They are starting to let the fishery open up more because they have already developed the oil fields. The sad part of it is, if I'm not mistaken, we heard about a lot of money being generated but I don't see a whole lot of it coming to Nova Scotia.
I look at the same principle is going to happen on the Georges Bank area, where I fished all my life, my dad didn't fish it but I can go back for six generations to my son who is aboard my boat and has been there for 15 years. I have grandchildren and I would like to see them carry on. What I think the federal government mostly looks at now is sure, you can promote to the people that this groundfishery is worth millions of dollars or $1.5 billion, but there is going to be a point come very shortly in the future that they are going to try to convince people that the gas and oil will be worth a lot more. It will be worth a lot more to the federal government but
I don't think it will be worth a whole lot more to the people in these communities around here, it won't be very good. There will be short-term jobs.
I have already been there and sat in on some of the meetings with the oil companies. I told the oil companies that in time every resource has to be developed if it is not going to destroy everything that's around us, but I said, what good is it to develop something that's going to give 2,000 people a job cleaning up your mess for four or five years, until you get your pipelines going, and then you don't need these people anymore; where are they going to go then? In this whole process, the thing we have depended on for hundreds of years is going to be destroyed and will it ever come back?
I think the problem with the groundfishery is, if anybody has any interest in it or in keeping the development that we have in the groundfishery, something has to change and has to change now. The fish stocks, whether the Department of Fisheries wants to tell you or not, the knowledge I have from fishing that ocean - and if you want to meet with some fishermen that's really, truly honest about the groundfishery to tell you what they have seen over that period of time, the same as I have, they won't tell you any different stories in what they have seen. It all relates back now to the promotion of destructive methods of fishing and we don't think, if we can't get a push somehow, it will get pushed far enough that we will see a moratorium, which we may be looking at anyway. A moratorium would be more convenient for the oil companies to drill.
MR. GRADY: From moratorium to mortuary.
MR. SEARS: That's the way I feel about it. I think a lot of the pressure that's being put on to eliminate us is based on the liability part to these big oil companies. If they destroyed the groundfishery because of a spill in an area, then the oil company may be liable to me, or maybe even to my children because they destroyed their future. If we are all gone and there is no fishery, then they don't have to be liable to anybody; nobody has to be liable to us, to our children or to our grandchildren. I'm not only talking about mine, you probably all have children or grandchildren.
Some people tell me in the fishing community, my children are not going to be related to the fishery and I said, what is he going to do? Will he be related to mining or related to logging or whatever? If the ordinary, working-class people lose access to a natural resource, to harvest it at an independent level - as myself in the groundfishery - then you are going to lose a really valuable asset to the community. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. O'Donnell.
MR. CECIL O'DONNELL: I would like to direct a question to Tony, I had discussed it with him before. First I would like to make a comment that I think that DFO would sooner deal with a handful of large companies than a great number of independent fishermen, it makes sense to me. To Tony, I guess it is safe to say that the cod fishery is not rebounding as quickly as anticipated. As a means of conservation, you explained to me that your daily catch for cod
has been decreased. Do you think cutting your daily, allowable catch on cod helps to rebuild the cod stock, or does this put more pressure on the cod fishery as dumping and shacking will increase? You explained to me with that little scenario you had about the trout pond, could you elaborate on that a little?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: I can't say the cod fishery is in great shape, not the haddock fishery or any of them. Don always says we answer questions the way we want to answer them. There is still hope, Cecil, yes. I seen the halibut fishery in a big slump here four or five years ago when they stopped the draggers from bringing in small halibut. We are getting the halibut fishery back around home, it has been looking really good lately, so it still can be saved.
The cod fishery isn't great but you saying about, well, give us more to catch and is it going to hurt any, well, I can't answer that. If they give us more to catch, naturally it's going to hurt a little but it's the way they can be caught.
MR. SEARS: Excuse me, Tony, I didn't want to interrupt you but there is one point that hasn't been made or I don't think anyone mentioned it. We would like to have more fish to fish for and I can't see the federal Department of Fisheries having a problem with that when literally, these big companies leave millions of pounds of fish in the water a year that is not taken. This has been said by the federal Department of Fisheries and the FRCC recommendations say that you can catch this level of them species out of the ocean without hurting the rest of the stock. Why can't we go catch it if it's not going to hurt to go catch it? They are setting a level of fish, whether it is 500,000 metric tonnes of cod to be taken out of a given area, you may own it, he may own some, or under the system we have today I will tell you one thing, we run into problems because we only have a small amount of fish for the association, we overran it. Each boat that fished only caught 4,000 pounds of fish, which is literally nothing.
We went to another sector of the fishery, which was a dragger fleet, but we don't believe in their method of fishing. I knew this man for years and Ronnie called him. He has access to a large quota in another sector of the fishery and said, anything I've got you can have. Any overruns I had from last year, you can have it to cover what you fellows went over, which was only a few thousand pounds of fish. If we couldn't get that fish the Department of Fisheries was going to eliminate us from fishing in an area - I am only talking a handful of fish - so he agreed to give it to us. The Department of Fisheries wouldn't allow that transfer to cover them stocks, even though they said that amount of fish could be taken out of that area and not hurt the stock. It was never taken, never exceeded.
I think if you look back on the records, there was one year in Scotia-Fundy there was something like 20 million pounds of haddock, pollock and cod not caught, that was recommended by the FRCC it could be caught and here we have people sitting home who can't even go to work. It's not right. I don't care, if they want to open the fishery and you want to go fishing tomorrow, great, we'll go fishing but when we are done, we'll all be done.
The point is, they can't regulate it to the point that they set up. They have introduced a type of fishery that is hard to explain to somebody, you set up a fishery and gave him 10,000
pounds of fish to catch, you gave him 30,000 pounds of fish to catch but you must remember one thing, when you privatize something you always try to sell what you have for the most money.
What hurts the most is that small fish ain't worth what big fish is and the economics don't work out. When you give somebody 30,000 pounds of fish and he knows he can make $30,000 from it, if he gets $1.00 a pound for the big ones but if he only gets 50 cents a pound for the 30,000 pounds of fish when they are small, he is going to cut his profits in half by catching the small ones. What happens is the small ones get dumped over the side of the boat and you continue to fish, or the scenario is, I only had 20,000 pounds of haddock to catch, 200,000 pounds of codfish on a piece of paper, so it's not uncommon for one of these vessels in that sector of the fishery to scoop up 20,000 pounds of haddock this small in one bang, maybe in three hours.
What they do is pick up a cell phone and ask, what does the market look like in Portland? What is the Boston market like? I have some scrod cod here, what should I do? And this is not no joke.
All the dealer has to do is call his broker - every one of them has a broker in Portland and Boston and these places - and in 20 minutes he can call him back and say, they ain't worth nothing, dump them. You can catch them later on this fall and maybe they'll be worth a few bucks. How can we protect a resource and have an economic fishery, something that is viable, under those conditions? We could sit here and talk for hours to try to make you understand, and I know maybe we seem like a bunch of radicals the way we go about things, but I am because it means a lot to what my children is gonna have when I'm gone, that's the thing.
MR. O'DONNELL: So Freddie partly answered me.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: It's like I said, Cecil, you know if you are from around home you have probably, if I am given a quota of fish - I will use small figures - 1,000 pounds of haddock and 1,000 pounds of codfish. I get up in the morning, go out and set my trawl or whatever, hand lining I can manoeuvre around them a little and all of a sudden I have 2,000 pounds of codfish and 1,000 pounds of haddock. So I have 1,000 pounds of extra codfish, what am I going to do with it? If I bring them in I will be fined, sanctioned, lose my licence, or I dump them. I know guys who have sat in my living room, the same as Freddie said, and I went out and had a pen of fish aboard, medium fish, small fish, and I know what the pen sold because I fished with the man, 1,800 pounds. All of a sudden they got into larger cod and he dumped them. Why not? That's fishing, probably freely, but he is limited to the amount of fish he can bring.
A lot of guys will have 10,000 pounds of cod and 50,000 pounds of haddock to catch. All of a sudden they catch the 10,000 pounds of cod, so they want to go to some other fish, like halibut, so they will run out and buy 500 pounds of codfish. They just start discarding because all they got was 500 pounds; 500 pounds of fish is keeping them in the water.
MR. GRADY: But you can see, Tony, how the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is doing the right thing. It is trying to prevent you brigands from dumping fish and in order to prevent you from dumping fish they impose sanctions, limits and cutbacks on the quota assigned to your gear sector. At the same time they are doing this, rigorously attempting to preserve the resource, they are allocating hundreds of thousands of tons of resource to the large draggers who are catching up enormous volumes of fish. The day that you dump 50 pounds of one species to keep going on the quota that you have left in the other species, a dragger is pumping over the side hundreds of times that amount of fisheries resource.
The DFO sits there as the preserver of the integrity and future of the resource and then it manipulates its own rules and regulations to encourage the destroyers of the habitat and the resource, while at the same time homing in on you and reducing your access to the resource year by year in every way. If there was a newspaper reporter present he could leave this meeting and say, the fishermen came and told us how they are shacking, dumping and throwing fish overboard. The one thing he might not mention is they have no alternative but do some of that to stay alive. He might not mention that while the fishermen are here truthfully telling you what they do on the water, the companies are blithely going about a monstrous amount of the same kind of destruction and are being rewarded by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I brought some documents that I will pass out.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: The other day I was talking to three fisheries officers in Barrington Passage, you would know all three if I mentioned the names, and we were talking about this, high-grading and dumping. He said, we told them this was happening and I said what kind of reply did you get and he said they want proof. The Department of Fisheries officers out in the field know this is happening. If we wanted to rig up and get two or three of them to put behind a screen somewhere they would sit down and tell you guys - they wouldn't come out front because they wouldn't have a job the next day - they would tell you guys just what we are telling you, yes it is happening; high-grading is happening; discarding is happening, they are just turning a blind eye. As long as those fish are not brought in on paper, that is what counts. I know because I have been to these meetings, if it isn't on paper, the fish are still in the water. The fish are still in the water, belly up.
Like Cecil was saying a few minutes ago - I always describe it to anybody who doesn't know anything about fishing and who has ever been trouting - if I had 100 speckled trout and I put 10 rainbow trout among them and said, I want those 10 rainbow but you can't catch the speckled, could you do it? That is the same thing as going out and trying to get 100 pounds of haddock among 10,000 pounds of codfish; you can't do it. If there is a guy out there who can do it, I will apologize to anybody because in my 40 years, I can't do it, Freddie has 30 years and he can't do it, so how can you do it? You can't do it, you have to high-grade, you have to shack. A lot of fishermen don't want to do it and a lot of them have been on television if you watched some of the programs we had on there. If I can bring old Calvin here, I won't mention his last name, he could tell you some yarns - Cecil knows him - that would make you cry, about fish they dump.
MR. GRADY: When someone from the South Shore tells you a yarn, he is telling you the truth. I just want to clarify that. These regulations are designed by DFO to achieve a very clear goal. We had the Director General of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Scotia-Fundy region, on the stand in a provincial court in Shelburne County and we asked him the following question: based on your testimony here today, Mr. Neil Bellefontaine what would you say is the future of the inshore hook and line fishery? He sat for a moment and then said, I don't understand the question, so I repeated it to him. Based on what you told us here today, on your professional work and on the application of the rules and regulations currently enforced by the Government of Canada in the DFO, what do you see as the future of the inshore hook and line fishery? Sometimes when you get people on the stand, you know they understand the question but they will say again and again, I don't understand the question, hoping that somehow or other, in repeating the question, you will wander away from it but he sat there and the judge said, Mr. Bellefontaine, and he said, none, Your Honour.
[2:30 p.m.]
DFO knows exactly what it is doing, knows exactly why it is doing it and knows exactly how it is working. The only problem for DFO is that there are strong-minded, independent, inshore fishermen, like the three fishermen who are here today, who are prepared to occupy and control a Department of Fisheries and Oceans district office for 23 days (Interruption) I am sorry, for 27 days. There are fishermen, like the fishermen who are here today, who will come to Province House to make a petition to the Government of Nova Scotia and who will chain themselves to the flagpole at the feet of Joseph Howe. We all know and admire what Mr. Howe did for consent of the governed and freedom of expression in our province, and they are prepared to enter into a protest fishery to take 25 vessels out on the water after they have been told that they are not allowed to fish any further this season and to challenge the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' arbitrary, oppressive regime in which the small fishermen and the small associations have their quotas go down for year to year and, in circumstances where, as you will see from Document 2 in that file I gave you, the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council reports that in that year, 1997, the year of the protest fishery, there were more than 22 million pounds of inshore groundfish quota - cod, haddock and pollock - uncaught in the waters off Atlantic Canada.
These are very patient men. We are not dealing with a complex problem whose relationships are mysterious that we, in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are working hard to understand to conserve the resource. We, and you, our elected representatives, are endorsing and presiding over the systematic destruction of an irreplaceable natural resource in favour of fast profit for fat cats.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Grady, we have a few more members who would like to ask some questions with your indulgence. Would that be . . .
MR. GRADY: I am sure you do. Again, Mr. Chairman, you will forgive me, but I have learned in my short life as an academic, that if you have a point to make, you have to get it in. The other two documents that are in that file are the 1997 report of the $22 million uncaught
quota in groundfish off our coast. The second document is a copy of an advertisement which has appeared weekly in the southwestern newspaper in which a corporate entity, a company of fish brokers, offers to buy and sell quota, anywhere you like, any amount you like, at an agreed price.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans maintains, through the Director General and others, that the buying and selling of quota, the brokerage of quota, is neither authorized, approved or permitted by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and that is going on in the weekly newspaper in southwestern Nova Scotia.
The third document - I am almost finished, Mr. Chairman - is a document that we brought into the case lodged by the Government of Canada against the fishermen for their protest fishery in 1997. The third document is a full copy of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, an international convention which was signed and acceded to by the Government of Canada in 1997 - the same year that all this was going on - and which provides in Article 6-18 for the priority right of access of traditional, aboriginal, inshore fisheries to the use of the fisheries resource.
I don't see how anyone having those three documents in hand can do anything other than to conclude that we are in the hands of a nest of thieves and that something has to be done to prevent it. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That is fine, Mr. Grady, Don. Mr. Chipman.
MR. FRANK CHIPMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I would like to thank you gentlemen for coming here today. To me you have a classic example here of David versus Goliath. I speak to fishermen in my area, particularly the inshore scallop fishermen, they have had the same problem and they have had the same, if you want to call it an area, taken away from them. They traditionally and historically, fished the Grand Bank, Georges Bank. I believe the International Court of The Hague gave Canada the finger which is the most lucrative part. Anyway, the Digby scallop fleet, traditionally and historically fished that area but back some time ago, it was limited to seven different companies and now the inshore scallop fishery is left to fish in the Bay of Fundy. I think there are 250 fishermen to make a livelihood in that small area. I know they have met with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans different times and tried to resolve the issue. In fact, I worked on their behalf some but I work on the provincial level and I have enough on my own plate without dealing in federal issues.
One thing I would like to know, and I guess I hear this said time and time again, that people don't like to be regulated by somebody who sits behind a desk and doesn't have any real conception of what goes on in their industry. If you could just give me a simple analysis, how many fishermen who go handlining would it take to displace one big trawler?
MR. WOLKINS: Our whole organization.
MR. GRADY: One hundred and fifty or more.
MR. CHIPMAN: Okay, so let's say you have one trawler that employs how many people and creates a livelihood for what, 10 or 15 people?
MR. SEARS: One of the large draggers, the most effective trawlers today, that are fishing, probably catches more or has access to more fish than 80 hook and line fishermen do in our group. I will give you, under the system that we fish in Shelburne County today, which is an underground ITQ system, there is a company called Canus Fisheries that is owned by a company in New York. They have control, under contract, through dummy companies, either eight or nine groundfish licences that fishermen in my community fished in the late 1980's and early 1990's until the groundfishery started on a decline. So what did they do? They started selling off the vessels because as a company owning a vessel and an individual like me, it is my livelihood and my business. I do everything the best I can and make sure everything is taken care of so I can survive but when you get into the company part of it, it usually costs the company about 20 per cent more to keep a vessel fishing than it would me because these people who run these vessels don't care about the vessels because it is nothing more than just a paycheque to them.
Anyway, what happened is, right now, under the system we have, Canus Fisheries, Maritime Fish, or whatever you want to call it, has access to close to 0.5 million pounds of groundfish which is more than was in the South West Fishermen's Rights Association with 80 fishermen fishing. As far as the Department of Fisheries is concerned, on paper it belongs to them. So what do they do with this? They go out around the community and they entice - if I want to go fish for them, which I did, I fished for them for 10 years - if I got 30,000 pounds of quota to catch allocated to me under an ITQ system or one of the groups, I can go to Canus Fisheries, they will match my 30,000 pounds of fish, let me catch 30,000 pounds of fish that is being controlled by the person that they belong to in the association, he controls it. So they let me catch 30,000 pounds of their fish if I will sell them my 30,000 pounds of fish that I have on paper but when you go to settle up for the fish or get paid for the fish, they like to take about 40 cents or 50 cents a pound off of that portion of the fish compared to what was on your own quota. So what you end up doing is, they entice you there, if you want to catch some fish for us, well you have to bring some of yours with you and you can catch some of ours but you pay us.
So literally, in turn, Canus Fisheries has $0.5 million worth of fish that is costing our community $0.75 million to fish for. That is what it is doing. Where is it going to stop? In this whole process, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, as far as I am concerned right today it is probably being done. Jim Barkhouse, I think, was the provincial Minister of Fisheries a few years back. We tried to get a meeting with him. He was spending more time in Cuba than he was spending anywhere. Why? National Sea, FPI and all the big companies we all know that they want to lease foreign vessels, foreign labour. They want to lease these vessels and bring slave labour within our 200-mile limit to catch quotas that they were catching for 10 cents a pound so their profits will go up again and then we are out of work. Even our own children are out of work because we have allowed some multinational company, somebody signed a piece of paper, oh, it's okay, you can release that vessel, you can bring in labour where these people are working six months aboard a boat getting paid a dollar a day. Ah, just keep it quiet.
MR. CHIPMAN: What I want to know, though, could you make a living handlining?
MR. SEARS: I made my living with my hands.
MR. CHIPMAN: No, but could you still make a living handlining?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: I do.
MR. CHIPMAN: You do?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Oh yeah.
MR. SEARS: The majority of the fishermen . . .
MR. CHIPMAN: That is the question I want to know. If you can make a living handlining, how much can you fish in a year? How much fish would you have to take to make a living handlining versus how much would a trawler take out of the same area.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: I would go up the Wharf Road probably, 25,000 pounds.
MR. CHIPMAN: You could do that handlining and you could make a living at that.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Oh yes. I would even take you in and buy you a meal off of that.
MR. CHIPMAN: So if you related the same thing to a trawler, how many fishermen, handlining, would it . . .
MR. CUNNINGHAM: He would be in back.
MR. CHIPMAN: No, but how many would it displace is what I am saying?
MR. SEARS: One trawler?
MR. CHIPMAN: That is right. How many people making a living handlining would a trawler displace? I am talking about livelihoods. How many individuals are we talking about being replaced here, trawler fishermen versus handlining.
MR. WOLKINS: One trawler fisherman could replace every hook and line fisherman in Shelburne County. It is according to the size of the boat you want to go to. If there is probably one trawler with three crew members, if you put him on side, I could probably put 15 handliners to make a year's work.
MR. GRADY: By the way, it is the equipment and the owner of the equipment that is making the money. One trawler, as Ronnie says, working 365 days a year, essentially wherever it chooses to drag, one dragger working 365 days a year, can catch the entire quota assigned to
all handline fishermen in Scotia-Fundy. That means all the handlining fishermen on the South Shore, all of them up along to Halifax, all the way down . . .
MR. CHIPMAN: What are you talking about in numbers? How many fishermen are you talking about?
MR. GRADY: How many tons or pounds of fish?
MR. CHIPMAN: No, you are saying that it will replace all the southwestern fishermen, the handliners, how many would there be.
MR. GRADY: At current quota for the handliners, 100 tons of cod, how many tons of haddock (Interruption) 300 tons of fishery resource (Interruption) available for 150 members to catch, 350 tons to a trawler, how many trips to haul in 350 tons?
MR. WOLKINS: Two.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Chipman, we have a few members here yet and we don't have a whole lot of time left. I would like to, with the presenters' indulgence, maybe Mr. Downe would like to ask a question here. I have him on the agenda here, and Mr. Dooks and Mr. Boudreau. It is very interesting.
MR. DONALD DOWNE: It is, Mr. Chairman. I want to congratulate the presenters for their presentation today. Being a resource person, we are all rural people here, and being a farmer and understanding that all of the resources play a vital role in sustaining rural communities in this province, I feel strongly about all resource sectors, not just one versus another.
Back when they brought in the ITQs, I remember reading material that ITQs are supposed to be of benefit to inshore fishermen. In my riding, South Shore, Lunenburg West from Voglers Cove right up through, we have a number of handliners. Herbert Newell and people like that will soon tell you what was intended but what the reality is for those people and they have been forced out of business or they are down in business.
They talked about the inter-transferable aspect of the ITQs and how that would be a benefit. In fact, the Senate committee indicated that that would be a benefit to the inshore fishermen which has been just the exact opposite. They have lost on that deal, simply because they can't afford to buy the quota, they don't want to buy the quota or they don't have the capacity to buy the quota. The bigger multinational, vertically-integrated corporations are buying that product because they can fit it into their overall cost schemes because they have either gone that big or, you know. So it becomes an economic issue for them.
You are talking a sustainability aspect, not only from a fish stock point of view but from a rural point of view. By the way, it is not bad having a call centre because not everybody fishes or farms, but there are other people who do like to work in other areas.
I guess what I am frustrated about is that, as a farmer, there are hundreds of farmers in the Province of Nova Scotia and sometimes it is easy if they keep everybody mixed up, that they can't deal with you. But when you get united or together, you have a common voice and it gives you a little more strength. You are all saying the same message. That has been hard in the industry to get everybody to say the same message. That is why, I think, being here today is important to us because there is a message of the inshore fishermen that is not necessarily being heard in all the circles where it should be heard.
That is why I hope at the end of the day, Mr. Chairman, maybe we can take a look at bringing somebody in from the federal Department of Fisheries to talk about these issues, and bring them forward. I think that is what these people are asking us to do. The Senate standing committee did not concur that ITQs cause concentration of quotas, which is exactly the opposite of what you are saying and I think you have some proof of that to be able to help us if we do have a chance to meet with them.
Two things. One is, how do you find the solution here? You are looking for more quota, but what is the solution here? Either shut down the offshore or find a balance between the dragger and the inshore? Is there a balance to be found? I would like a definitive answer, because I know we have limited time, but is there a definitive answer?
The other issue, if I could, just finding that balance, is that from somebody that is not in the fishery - I understand farming pretty good but I am learning about the fishery from my constituents - is, how do we retain that whole issue of sustainability in the long term, rural and the resource, under the current system? I don't know how that is going to work because I hear so many conflicting messages and that is what concerns me.
MR. SEARS: What you have to look at is, if you look at the big companies, if you go back - most of you've been around politics for quite some time. The biggest thing there was in the early 1980's, when they pumped all of these hundreds of millions of dollars into these big companies and stuff, and gave them these fish quotas to fish, at the time, was all of this job creation.
Now, you take, today, National Sea. Go find out how many fishermen they have on the ocean bringing in any of their fish quota. I will tell you what, 50 per cent, or maybe more, of National Sea's fish quota is being caught by these so-called super draggers that they're building now, these 65-, 70-, 80-foot draggers, privately owned. National Sea is selling them that quota, allowing them to catch it.
Anyone knows that large haddock will sell for $1.00 a pound, most any time of the year, fair market value, landed fresh to the wharf. Those independent draggers, because they don't have enough of their own quota, they go to the big companies and they will say, okay, sure, you go catch the quota. When you come in, they tell them where to go, where to unload it. Probably where the value of that fish that day on a fresh market was worth $1.00, they may only get 60 cents, or they may only get 50 cents for it. Why? Because they have control of it and they're making them pay for it.
They are surviving now but it is like, if you take a pack of dogs and fire a chunk of meat in there when they're hungry, let me tell you what, the strongest one is going to come out on top. The system that we have been pushed under is, whoever's got the most money. It's as simple as that, whoever's got the most money.
There are certain individuals right now, going out and buying groundfish licences with maybe only 30,000 pounds of groundfish attached to it by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They are paying $60,000, $70,000, as much as $80,000. Now, if I was a businessman, I have to go pay $80,000 for 30,000 pounds of fish, I've got to pay that back, I've got to look at my loan, I've got to look at how much my crew is going to take out of that - I've got to see how many fish I've got to catch before I can pay back that loan on what I borrowed.
If I bought it and tomorrow the Department of Fisheries decides, we are going to cut the quota in half again, well, I went out and bought 30,000 pounds of fish and then they are telling me this year I've only got 15,000 pounds of fish to pay my loan off with, they can destroy me. It is a system that the little one can't survive.
If I was an investor right now and I had $10 billion, I will tell you what. I'm smart enough. I would go buy the fishery up. I would go buy it up because it is a food source. It is something that everybody on this planet is going to have to have. It is something that big business always does. They're not looking at the point of view whether it is profitable now or not, but what they are looking at is how profitable it is going to be 10 years from now. They don't care or who they step on or what they do.
All we are doing within the communities, is running around, beating up on each other to try to survive. In turn, all we are doing is destroying each other. We are trying to survive. We are trying to buy out each other. They have set up the system as, if you can't buy him out, too bad. Somebody else has got the money and they will buy him. Everybody just keeps looking at it, economically, how much can I take, how much can I take? You know, as a person like myself.
MR. GRADY: Would you repeat your two questions, Mr. Downe?
MR. DOWNE: Yes. I don't know if I'm going to get a simple answer to the question.
MR. GRADY: Yes, you are.
MR. DOWNE: I guess, the sense I get is that the frustration of the ITQs for inshore fishermen has not worked to the advantage of the inshore fishermen, as much as it has worked for the advantage of the vertically integrated corporate, or privatization, is the term you use.
MR. GRADY: That's amazing. How could that be?
MR. DOWNE: What?
MR. GRADY: How could that be, that something that is presented, individual transferable quotas, give a property right to the potential for catching fish, make sure that property right can be exercised by every fisherman? How can something as beautiful as that work against the inshore fishermen? I'm teasing you, sir.
MR. DOWNE: Yes, I know you are, but that's all right, Don.
MR. GRADY: Thank you. It's because if you make control over the resource a property right, then you can expect the same thing to happen in the fishery as it does in so many other parts of our society. If you make it a property right, it will be sold out cheap by the little inshore fisherman. It will be bought up cheap by the brokers, the fish plant operators, the corporate and industrial fishing interests. And when it is bought up cheap by those interests, they will turn that interest, that control over the resource, into profit for themselves.
Now, some can say, well, that isn't the way it really works, Don, or that isn't the way it should work, or, does it have to work that way? The ITQ system, recommended by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and half-heartedly, I admit, endorsed by the Senate committee that review these matters, that ITQ system has been tried and failed in every other jurisdiction in the world.
In New Zealand, Indonesia, Iceland, Norway. In each of those jurisdictions, the very happy looking idea of turning control over access to the fishery into a good living for inshore, small-boat fishermen has failed utterly. In New Zealand, 15 per cent of the inshore fishermen who were in business in 1996, when the New Zealand effort to impose ITQ was put forward, have survived in the fishery. Largely, I should say - especially in the Nova Scotia context - that the majority of those inshore fishermen who have survived have been Aboriginal fishermen who wouldn't sell out their ranks.
Everybody else in the food chain, being practical people, has to feed the family, got to make some money. Oh, and I've got an individual transferable right to the economic benefit represented by 50,000 pounds, 60,000 pounds, 70,000 pounds of fish. What will I do? Well, I will go and fish it. When I do the mathematics, that doesn't work out. I can't make a living, when you factor in my costs to that benefit. What do I do?
Well, there is an ad in the Sou' Wester, appearing every week since 1997. This one is on Page 23. You have got a copy before you. There is a friendly brokerage company who addressed that ad to all gear sectors and all fishermen, under 45 foot included. His name is Russell Cushing, and he works out of an office in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, a wonderful town: I am prepared to pay you cash on the barrel head for your 30,000 pounds of fish. I will take over all the worries and I will reap all the profits from it.
I'm making too long an answer. To a pressed-to-the-wall inshore fisherman with little access to the resource, 30,000 pounds worth of fish, which he might be able to sell for $3,000 or $5,000, looks a whole lot better than going out year after year on the waters of the ocean, risking his life, to try to bring back U.S. $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 worth of fish.
Mr. Chipman, how many of the inshore fishermen can survive? I think both Tony and Fred told you, well, we can survive; but they are surviving, not on the economics of the ITQ, they are surviving on the commitment to Mr. Downe's premise, on the commitment to making the fishery a continuing part of the life of families and small communities in rural Nova Scotia.
You also asked the question - I remember it - how can you and government help Fred and the members of the South West Fishermen's Rights Association? The answer is very simple. You and your committee can follow Mr. Downe's suggestion and go forward with bringing the representatives of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and bringing the corporate representatives to this table, and letting them explain to you how wonderful the fishery is and how well it is working for them. (Interruption) Sorry, this is my last point, I promise.
The further thing you can do, and have the power to do, under the current jurisdictional regime for natural resources in Canada, is to take your jurisdiction over the product of the fisheries when it hits the plants and intervene at that level and say, plants can't own or control, plants can't manipulate, plants can't extort, plants can't buy out the fishermen, plants can't monopolize the resource, plants can't ship the profit from the resource and the jobs to make that profit away from the local communities. That is well within your jurisdiction.
I just hope you gentlemen and your colleagues in the Legislature - if I may say so, with all due respect - have the same independent, moral courage that the Premier of the province has. He did say to Fred, face to face - we were there - if this ITQ fishery is being run contrary to the regulations of DFO, to the profit of business interests that are not acknowledging the role of the communities, the people and the rights of the communities and the people of Nova Scotia, we, the Government of Nova Scotia, will step in, look them right in the eye - right, Fred? - we will step in and we will stop it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Downe, did you have a comment you wanted to wrap up with before we go to Mr. Dooks?
MR. DOWNE: Yes. I am scared to ask another question because . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Downe, just before you go on, we are now approaching the hour of 3:00 p.m. and perhaps with general agreement, we could go a bit longer. Maybe I could ask the presenters if they would - I am not an overbearing chairman - just be a little more brief in your responses because we would like all members to have an opportunity to at least place one question, if that is reasonable.
MR. GRADY: I guarantee you, Brooke. The same deal will hold.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Grady. We appreciate . . .
MR. GRADY: I will shut up, Brooke. (Laughter)
MR. CHAIRMAN: I didn't say that. (Laughter)
MR. GRADY: That will make it very much easier to get on with the job and get it finished. I apologize.
MR. DOWNE: I think I got the answer I wanted; I thank the presenters. The rural way of life is the lifeline of rural communities and the resource industries do play a vital role. But the answer to the question here is, really, the system is not working correctly at what was intended or wasn't intended. The inshore fishermen are hurting badly, and you support what I had suggested that maybe we should carry this further with the feds and, as you suggested, with the corporate side, to get the understanding of where they are, but also to bring forward your concerns that have been legitimately and very articulately presented here today to them. If that is what the answer to the question is, then I concur and I want to thank you very much for your time.
[3:00 p.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ron, did you want to say something just before we . . .
MR. WOLKINS: I just want to add a little something on. The history years from 1986 to 1993, which was implemented by DFO, if you look at those years when the history was implemented, that the average catch of the overall, under 45-foot fixed gear, 60 per cent of it was landed by longliners; 20 per cent was landed by handliners; and 20 per cent of that quota was landed by gillnetters. Now, if you took those same figures, not today, but I am talking back in 1978 when I went back and - I got those figures out of DFO after awhile, but today I bet that would be even different.
In 1998, when I got those figures - like I said, this was 1996; 20 per cent was landed by handliners - in 1998, the quota went - longliners were roughly about the same, but what they did, that is just a longline licence with the mainly bigger vessels. So the longline quota of landings is roughly around 60 per cent. The gill net was over 30 per cent, so they have gone from 20 per cent landings to over 30 per cent landings and the handliners were under 10, they were 20 per cent. So just on the landings alone, through DFO figures, shows that the smaller you are, you are going first and it would just roll right up the line.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Bill Dooks.
MR. WILLIAM DOOKS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen, I thank you for coming today. You don't have to convince me that what you are saying today is true. I know very well. I represent a coastal community, the Eastern Shore. I think you know some gentlemen down that way who do some fishing.
Certainly, there are some problems, there is no doubt. It all boils down to who is in control. You try to find a solution here today but I can tell you that there have been groups of fishermen lobbying this issue for at least the last 10 or 15 years and, really, nothing has changed.
The federal government boasts now about the fishermen being in control of their fishery. I don't know how true that is, but I can tell you that as I drive down the Eastern Shore, that I can watch or look at many wharves with their boats tied up. I also can tell you that I can go by mini fish plants, and because of the government's initiative to buy back licences or the TAG programs, or a number of other initiatives, that there aren't any fishing boats to provide fish for the plants and, therefore, putting out more than just the fishermen.
You talked today just about your industry. What about the plant worker? What about the many families on the Eastern Shore or communities in Shelburne that the plant was so very important? I tell you, gentlemen, we face the same issues all across Nova Scotia. If you are a rural representative right now and you represent a fishing community, you share the same concern. I tell you that you are in control. How many associations would there be in Nova Scotia?
MR. WOLKINS: Thirty-two. There's quite a few.
MR. SEARS: Thirty-something fishermen's associations.
MR. DOOKS: Yes. How many in Atlantic Canada? Hundreds, probably.
MR. SEARS: Yes.
MR. DOOKS: Newfoundland, and we'll talk about some in P.E.I. and probably some in New Brunswick as well. How many fishermen? How many inshore fishermen would there be that would belong to those associations?
MR. WOLKINS: A lot, but I want to mention one thing to you, you said about associations. All I am going to do is just go back - when they implemented ITQ, the first ones it was done to was 45- to 65-foot - we call the dragger fleet, in the late 1980's. At the time they implemented it, they had 480 vessels from Cape North to Grand Manaan, actively fishing. Last year, they only had 60-something vessels fishing in that same time. Tell me how many fellows have been put out of work just by that one? You haven't really taken a look at what is taken out of the small fishery.
Every time something is done, the people are losing jobs. Like, you, literally - the last few years - I don't know how you are going to keep absorbing it. The only thing - like I am saying, what we have right now, basically from Lunenburg County, west, the biggest fishery we have right now is the lobster fishery. If anything was to happen - you had a look at it. If we don't soon do something to try to protect this fishery, to build it back a little bit, so that if we do have an upset in this shellfishery, that we will have something to fall back on.
MR. DOOKS: But is working with an association . . .
MR. WOLKINS: No.
MR. DOOKS: Of course, there is one of your major problems. I know that. I bring that as an issue today. There are different associations with different issues or different points of view. I would suggest unity is important when you are fighting an issue or when you talk about lobbying; the more that you have the ability to lobby with, the more powerful a message you send. We do live in a democratic society. We still live in a wonderful nation. The question is today, why are bureaucrats pushing their agenda? I suggest the fishermen of Atlantic Canada should be pushing your agenda.
MR. SEARS: They can't.
MR. DOOKS: It is because the number of associations are fragmented. They are not working together.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: You go to one of those meetings, though, you've never been to one. I've been to them.
MR. DOOKS: Oh, I have been to association meetings, sir.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: No, with the fisheries?
MR. DOOKS: No, to local association meetings.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Yes, you go into the meetings. First off they'll tell you, we're gonna listen to you, but they're only gonna listen to what they want to hear because . . .
MR. GRADY: He is referring to DFO.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: . . . when you leave the door, it's what they say. They had the last word. I've been to a lot of them. Yes, we'll do what you want to do. Suppose you had an association with 200 members, $400 a member, the members hold tons of fish and you could scheme a few cents a pound off each one of the fish, you wouldn't be out there saying hey, we don't want ITQs. With an income like that, you would be quite crazy, plus what you can scheme, and I know they scheme because I know one guy who goes to a guy that runs an association. He says, you're ripping me off. He goes to the next association and gains 5,000 pounds of fish. The guy in the other association must have been holding them back.
MR. DOWNE: I think what Bill is saying here - I used to be involved with farm organizations and we had thousands of farmers in Nova Scotia. We had an umbrella organization but we had different commodities, whether dairy or chicken or egg or horticulture or beef, or whatever sector, bees. All the different organizations, they all have different issues but they have generic agricultural issues. When we sat down with the province, the minister, or we sat down with the federal minister, we had a united voice on certain issues we could agree to. I guess this is what Bill is saying, it is harder when you have 20 different viewpoints on the issue of fish sustainability or rural sustainability of the fishery than if you had two or one.
I guess the issue that we are talking about, not the structure, I understand what you are saying but from a political point of view, it is a lot easier sending out one message than sending out 30 different messages that conflict with each other. That is what is frustrating for us, I guess is what Bill is saying, in trying to get that message . . .
MR. CUNNINGHAM: I know where you're coming from, but what two are we going to pick?
MR. DOOKS: What I am trying to say is very pro your movement, per se, if you are a lobbyist and you want to bring back the fishery, because the fishery to the Eastern Shore is very important. We do not have the resource of mining there. We do not have industry. For that matter, we don't even have a highway. What I am telling you is we had fishing but the fishing is gone. As a young man in the community, I was certainly on the fishing wharf and I have been off Sable fishing and longlining. I understand your industry but what I am saying here today, it is passing us by and we have groups like yourselves that are trying to work but we have other groups that are quite comfortable where they are, I would think, groups doing it for financial reasons or whatever. What we need, yes, you are right, is one common voice to fight . . .
MR. WOLKINS: What we need, as far as I'm concerned, is people like you, MLAs to go out into your communities and talk to your fishermen and you'll find we give all the same message, not these leaders that walk around and go to these meetings to say the damn words up here in Halifax - self-interest hypocrites is what I call them, every one there to fill their ass pocket. That's you fellows' jobs. You represent your constituents, go out and talk to your fishermen. Say, do you think this the right way to go? You'll probably get all the same answers.
In Shelburne County I know fishermen, actually we had a one plan for all, we called it. We sent it out in Shelburne County. I had over, well, double our association numbers, people from other associations, signing it and sending it back to me. Fellows with great big histories. They wanted a plan like this which was the days at sea with a set number given to us by DFO, whether it's 30 days, 40 days, how many days you can go but you land what you catch. So whatever bites your hook, you catch it. You don't shack it overboard. There would be no incentive to shack because you're allowed to have it on so many days. But no, DFO didn't want that, nothin' doin'.
Some of them said they was happy. Well, if these fellows over here is happy, I said, yes, you talk to him. I said, how come his members are signing my forms? If they're so happy, you can talk to Gary Dedrick or somebody and they're going to say everybody is happy but when we sat there in 1997 and opposed this, we outnumbered them. We had 500-some-odd members and Shelburne County had 800. We outnumbered them, but never by association heads; we was tied but we had more members.
Gary Dedrick at that time never even had an association. I looked and he was sitting to the table. He started talking about the fishing industry. I said, well, Mr. Dedrick, could you tell me something? He said, what's that? I said, how many members you got? Oh, like Evan Walters who's another one of those history bums, I call them, well he's using some of my members. I
said, you're going to his organization? Oh no, no, like Gary, I'm starting my own. I said, starting your own? What in the hell are you doing to the table? I asked Peter Partington, what's he doing to the table? Well, he said he had an association. Well, I said, I'll have 200 here tomorrow.
Did it make any difference? They used his vote, which outvoted us 3 to 2, to put that history into Shelburne County and that's what broke us, because we had 560-odd members and they had 113 big mega 45-foot company boats. DFO said, well you can't agree, I'll give you two different management boards. We was the most powerful fishing community in Shelburne.
MR. SEARS: They gave two-thirds of the quota and they gave 500-something other fishermen . . .
MR. DOOKS: That will bring my comments to an end. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MR. SEARS: That's what they did. I sat through the mediation and these guys have too. We sat for three days out here in Bedford with a lady telling us, let's make believe and let's pretend. Linda Baker her name was. To make a long story short, we went through all this mediation and everything. We come to the conclusion we was going to have community management, go back home and draw up a plan. DFO, we said, well, we got to have a chairman so Michael St. Clair, who works for the Department of Fisheries, and Clarrie MacKinnon, they agreed to jump right in. You know, it's funny how it worked.
Anyway, they came to Shelburne County and finally they jumped up to the meeting and said nothing is going to be solved, we're going back to Halifax. They said they went back to Halifax and told the Department of Fisheries, after lengthy consultation with the fishermen in Shelburne County, that we couldn't come to an agreement so we suggest that you split it into two management boards. Do you know how long we sat down and talked about drawing up a management plan? Three and a half hours. So they run back and told Fisheries, split it up. So they turned around and gave 100-some-odd fishermen two-thirds of the quota that was allocated under a community management plan to do as they please with, and they gave the rest of it to 500-something fishermen.
So what it done is the next year a lot of fellows, we had to fish all competitively under the plan we had. You could only catch 10,000 pounds of fish so the promotion was, hey, don't go with them guys no more. On that piece of paper you can get 15,000 pounds of quota. So anybody that could get more by taking their history on a piece of paper, they left.
It went further than that. You had 250 handline licences in Shelburne County with 100 men actively fishing. There was no record, no logs of these fishermen here fishing but we have a doctor in Barrington Passage, we have backhoe operators - you name it, we have them - that have access and control of 3,000, 4,000, as much as 5,000 pounds of fish and we're talking 150 of these people that sat on one association with one person selling it, getting paid $40,000 a year to sell fish back to the fishermen. These people are business people and they just bought a handline licence to go fishing in their spare time. Now they've turned it around and they put it in their hands that they can sell it and do what they want with it. It's getting so it's not accessible to the people that's always made a living from this fishery.
I'm sorry of maybe the way I'm trying to get it across to you but it's a story that we've lived all of our life and we're trying to explain to you the last five years of our life. We don't think that our communities are going to survive under this kind of conditions another five years.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Fred. We had a couple more questions here. We will ask Mr. Boudreau to place his question.
MR. BRIAN BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, I will be as quick as I can. Of course, first of all I want to thank you for coming in today because fishing is, I am from Cape Breton, but it is a big issue there also. It is obvious that it is an issue in your community. I want to congratulate you, too, for the presentation you put in. I am only a rookie at this. Your presentation has been very educational for me. I want to thank you for coming in.
Just a comment, I agree to a certain point with my colleague across the table, regarding the united voice. I think what I am hearing here, it is more of a divide and conquer. If DFO is doing what I suspect they are doing here, then they are promoting conflicts between groups. I think as an elected official, I should recognize that and I can assure you that this one does.
MR. WOLKINS: Well, as a good example, I think Lunenburg, before this community came down in play, this community quota stuff, Lunenburg was big time against it but all of a sudden, their Fisheries reps came in with this slip, because they salted a lot of pollock and hake, they salted a lot of this fish, they came in and their quota - boom - jumped way up. Then all of a sudden they were happy. That is what they have done with these other different organizations, us, because we opposed them big time, told them right to their face what we thought of them, ours seemed to go way down.
We have some history fellows, one fellow in our organization got two history papers: one says he's got quite much and the next one, he's got none.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Now I go handlining. I hope some of you guys maybe know what handlining is. One says that I caught 5 tons of halibut in two years of handlining, my history, 5 tons. Good fishing, 5 tons of halibut. I caught one and he weighed 35 pounds. My history says I caught 5 tons. I can show it to you in black in white, in two years.
MR. WOLKINS: You see, that is one of our big problems. You talk any vessel that is over 25 metric tonnes, back in the years of history, it was mandatory - not all those years, actually I think it was the early 1980's it was mandatory - for them to send in the log. Most of those large vessels, especially the company boats, are right on the money, right down to every last pound of fish they land, it is accurate. Now anything under 25 tons, it was not mandatory for them to send in a log, they hardly ever sent in a log, like to DFO, they just logged the catches and it went to the plant and the plant would send it in. If I was a plant and I owned a bigger boat, well, I would just kind of shove that history over on that boat. They controlled the pencil. Like I said, I am missing two years on my fishing licence. I went fishing but I have no history there. You question DFO on these matters, they won't even look at you. That is one of our big problems. That is another big problem on the allocation. It should even go back further, before the 1980's and in the 1970's, when 75 per cent of the quota was owned by the fixed gear and 25 per cent was mobile. Now it is just universal. When Tony was there, when they were passing out the haddock from the fixed gear to the dragging sector, the draggers caught it and then they took the history on the fish they caught . . .
MR. CUNNINGHAM: The history was ours.
MR. WOLKINS: They took the history afterwards, after they caught the fixed gear fish, then they took the history on all of the amount they landed which, as far as I am concerned, DFO planned this long ago. They ain't stupid enough to do it overnight, so they will piece by piece. When you get all your pieces together, you have a good puzzle. That is how DFO works things.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thanks, Ron. Brian, you had another comment or question?
MR. BOUDREAU: A couple of questions, actually. I believe you are right. Government has to provide the answer here. When we are talking rural communities, I represent a rural community. Everybody in this room, I believe, represents a rural community. I think this problem was around long enough. What it really requires is leadership. Now unfortunately, I am not part of the government but the government today must take some leadership here. I guess one of my questions is, what has the current Minister of Fisheries, the provincial one, what has he done to date in regard to the fishermen down in the South Shore?
MR. WOLKINS: He hid.
MR. BOUDREAU: He hid. Well, he won't be hiding much longer.
MR. WOLKINS: He has had a few meetings with us and he has made some inquiries about even trying to make a long-term plan so that our community would try to buy fish from the offshore but do you know as this native issue and everything has come into play now, we can never afford it because the federal government has walked in and they paid . . .
MR. SEARS: It is $4.25 a pound for market value for quota.
MR. WOLKINS: We could never pay, if I wanted to buy 1 million pounds of fish for 100-something fishermen at $4.25 a pound, we could never cover the interest. It wasn't very long ago it was only a little over $2.00 but the feds walked in. Here, we'll pay this big amount, D.B. Kenney up there, like they are doing that way, went up there and bought a dragger out for the natives.
MR. SEARS: Ron, I hate to interrupt you but the sad part of it is, we have a natural resource that is not supposed to be owned by Canadians but be fished by Canadians. We have the federal government buying it and giving it to other people. The federal government is buying a resource back that they are trying to put us out of. What is the logic behind it? I scratch my head a lot of times but they promote to the people of this country that we have to get them out of it because there are too many of them and they turn around and buy it. It is crazy. You buy it out, you give it to somebody and you have people that have been at it all their life. You try and put them out of it because there are too many of you. There is something wrong somewhere.
MR. GRADY: That's the race card. The federal government is playing the race card.
MR. SEARS: I could tell you some stories about the racial issues of native and commercial fishermen, when in the last year, we have had - I've got nothing wrong with the natives. If they want to go fishing, fine, but I don't think that somebody should be given a $800,000 fishing rig when my son has put 15 years in the stern of a boat working with me, that he shouldn't have the same opportunity. They should be giving him a rig.
MR. GRADY: That's the race card again. You've got to watch that one.
MR. SEARS: What they have gone beyond that and done is, they have gone out and - they even came into the fishing community, a little place I fish out of, two weeks ago and escorted a native fishing boat, gave them traps and everything, brought them in, told them they could put them on the wharf and leave them out as long as they wanted to. Anybody on that wharf, which we were supposed to be taking over and be responsible for, for the most part, you more or less tell them, go to hell.
MR. GRADY: That is the race card.
MR. SEARS: You can do what you want.
MR. GRADY: Don't let them do it to you, Fred. Don't let the Government of Canada turn the inshore fishermen on the Aboriginal fishermen.
MR. SEARS: But they're not going to - no.
MR. GRADY: The same rights that you have, as inshore fishermen, are the rights that the Aboriginal fishermen have.
MR. SEARS: But that is what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the federal department, is doing right now. They are trying to provoke an incident, whether it is buying fish boats to give to them - I am pretty upset about it, yes. Why shouldn't I be upset about it? I've got not much education, worked hard all my life and try to be a fairly good person about it.
MR. GRADY: The DFO would be very happy for you and everybody else in the inshore fishery to hate the natives, fight the natives and to threaten them.
MR. SEARS: I don't.
MR. GRADY: That just keeps the monopoly of power in the hands of the bureaucrats in Ottawa and the federal politicians who don't give a damn about the inshore fishermen or their communities. It saddens me to say that to you, Fred, but you and I, Ronnie and Tony, have met with Aboriginal fishermen and with the representatives of the Aboriginal tribes here in Nova Scotia, and what we found is, they are our allies, not our antagonists.
MR. WOLKINS: That is what I was going to say. I was going to say that the government has jumped in and bought the Aboriginals all these licences and all this fish quota to turn us as fishermen against the Aboriginals and it is working in some places.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Brian, you had a further comment.
MR. BOUDREAU: It's just a comment, Mr. Chairman. You know, I can certainly identify with the frustration you have with DFO because I attended a meeting one time in Cape Breton where there was a project going on down there and the DFO scientists indicated that there was some concern by the local fishermen regarding the lobsters, you know, the negative
impact this may have. The DFO scientists stood up and said, don't worry about a thing because this thing, if it does leak out into the ocean, it is only going to harm the baby lobsters. I don't know how the heck you ever get to be a big lobster if we kill all the little ones. So I can certainly understand that.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I am looking for a motion from across the floor with some meat and potatoes in it. This is your area, this is your government and I would suggest that we need a motion here to get these people on the right track and provide as much help and support as we can to them, not only in the South Shore but right across this province. You guys are the government.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Boudreau, before we entertain a motion, I wonder, the member for Shelburne would like to make a comment. We will let the last question, perhaps, go to the member for East Hants. You indicated you had a question or comment, Mr. O'Donnell?
MR. O'DONNELL: Yes, we were just sitting here discussing how the fishermen should speak with one voice. I think that we, as a committee, should be speaking as one voice, not as our good friend across has kind of put the onus on the Tory Party. I can remember back when they were in protest at the DFO building and I, personally, called the provincial minister, who just happened to be Mr. Barkhouse, to come down and meet with these guys, and he flatly refused. Not only that, but we placed a call to the federal MP who happened to be Derek Wells, who refused, and we placed a call to the MLA at the time, who happened to be a Liberal.
MR. BOUDREAU: Just on a point of order, Mr. Chairman . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Order. On a point of order, the honourable member for Cape Breton The Lakes.
MR. BOUDREAU: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I can sympathize all I can with the honourable member across the hallway, however, today is the day that we are talking about, not two years ago or four years ago. You guys went out and campaigned heavily in the communities in this province and told the people that you had the answers. Now, provide the answers. You are the government today. We are looking for direction from you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, I might just add, as chairman, that - well, that is certainly not a point of order but it is a point, nonetheless, well taken. I think what we have to do, like we have done in the past, or as long as I have been chairman of this committee, is work together. We are an all-Party committee. Any member of this committee - the member for Shelburne is quite right - can make a recommendation; it doesn't have to come from the government's side. I think we all are able to comprehend the problem. It has certainly been a very entertaining presentation today.
Before we go to that motion, if we do, in fact, get a motion, I know that John would like to ask, perhaps, a question. Perhaps with the committee's and the presenters' indulgence, we will
let this be the last question. Normally we go to 3:00 p.m., but we certainly have no difficulty going longer.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: I guess, maybe, a couple of questions. It relates to something Mr. Grady said. One thing I want to tell Mr. Grady is, don't assume that because we are politicians, that we endorse the present system. We don't, or at least I can say our caucus doesn't.
I don't think I need to hear from every fisherman in Nova Scotia. I don't think they necessarily have to have one voice. I think there are too many competing interests and I think maybe DFO has allowed that to happen.
My only thought is, is the present system and where it is heading, fair? That is the only question I need to ask. The answer, certainly, looks like it is not. I think that is all we need to know, from what you gentlemen are saying.
Mr. Grady, you mentioned about the Premier's comment. That is where I am thinking, maybe, this committee should go because it was the Premier who suggested that these gentlemen and you come here. The Premier's comment was contrary to the regulations of DFO, so it presently is working contrary to the regulations of DFO, that sounds to me like it might be kind of a grey area.
Do you have any evidence of the actual wording of the regulations that indicates that they are going contrary - because it looks like something, it is easy to say but it might not be too easy to nail down and to get the Premier to act.
MR. GRADY: Is it all right if I speak, Mr. Chairman?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Oh, I would never dare try to stop you from speaking.
MR. GRADY: Thank you very much.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I might caution you if you get too lengthy.
MR. GRADY: Well, I'm not worried too much about that. Yes, the proof - sometimes it is difficult to catch a thief. Sometimes you have to do a lot of investigative things to discover a deep conspiracy that is under way. But as Ron has said, and so has Fred, and Tony as well, what we are describing is not a matter of mystery.
The DFO has regulations and those regulations are being violated by independent fish brokers, retired antique salesmen from Saskatchewan, a very lovely housewife whose husband is part of the Gary Dedrick conspiracy. It is on the public record for anyone to observe that the DFO is not only failing to carry through on its mandate and violating its own regulations, but that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is doing these things with a specific goal in mind. That goal is to try and control the resource, uniquely, to the corporate interests and to turn the
benefit of the use of those resources to those interests and at the same time, to clear the province of these pesky, independent inshore fishermen.
Now, if you are looking for a place to find that record on the record, look to the transcripts of the current trial that is under way in Shelburne County, involving one of the 15 South Shore inshore fishermen who were arrested by DFO while in the exercise of their constitutionally protected right of free speech.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: And it is who versus who, that trial?
MR. GRADY: At the moment, it is Regina versus Michael Cunningham. But Michael is the first of the 15 who has come to trial in Shelburne County and his case involves the presentation of a great deal of evidence from DFO representatives, themselves, from the quota brokers who are cheating by buying and selling the resource in the back rooms in Nova Scotia, along with good evidence by reliable fishermen who have testified as to their own life and process.
[3:30 p.m.]
Now, obviously, this committee is not in the business of reviewing court actions, but if you are looking for a place where there is a public record to demonstrate the truth of what Ron, Tony and Fred have told you, we would be glad to make that available to you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Grady, if I could just intervene for a second.
MR. GRADY: You had better start calling me Don again.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Dr. Don. (Laughter)
MR. GRADY: Just Don.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Don. I recall when Freddie and I had our little conversation . . .
MR. GRADY: People who want to label me with titles are people I don't get along with very well. Go ahead.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would just like to point out that when Freddie and I had our little conversation, when he was attached to the Bluenose there, he indicated at that time that he and his group, the South West Fishermen's Rights Association, or at least on their behalf, they have tried various activities. But the consequences and the actions taken were pretty much always the same. Nobody listened, nothing was done. I think it probably crosses all political boundaries, irrespective of colour. I am just thinking, Don, I have known you for a long time and I think, again, you demonstrated today that you are never short of words. Being the legal adviser . . .
MR. GRADY: Don't try to compliment me . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, I'm not trying to compliment you. What I am doing is asking you . . .
MR. GRADY: . . . by making a disdainful comment.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, you said earlier (Interruption) Excuse me.
MR. GRADY: I am never short of words? Don't talk to me that way.
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, excuse me, you said earlier, if you have a point, make it. So you made your point and I would like to make mine with your indulgence.
I would ask you, perhaps, not to put the ball in your court, but you are asking this committee - and it has been suggested by different members to do something. You are the legal adviser, you have met with the Premier, talked to the Premier. Of course, you attended the
hearing today and spoke quite eloquently. I would ask you, perhaps you could suggest a recommendation to this committee for consideration.
MR. GRADY: If there is a motion to be made before the committee, we would prefer that it be made by a member of the committee. You have heard from Fred, Tony and Ron, very eloquently about what needs to be done.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think the answer is, no. So we will go to the committee.
MR. GRADY: No, my answer is not no. Please don't put words in my mouth. My answer is, you and the other members of the committee - by the way, we are very grateful for the hearing you have given us today - have heard the recommendations that your committee members bring in representatives of interests involved: industry, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, perhaps other representatives of the Department of Fisheries of the Government of Nova Scotia. That is a sound recommendation. Rather than making it to you, I would endorse it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, that's fair. You know, we heard you explain the terms and the conditions of the ITQ . . .
MR. GRADY: Other members of the committee have said, we would like to go further with this in finding facts and in mapping out a way in which the provincial jurisdiction in this area can be exercised to the benefit of all of the constituents in this province.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think maybe Mr. Chipman would like to make . . .
MR. CHIPMAN: I am going over in my mind what type of motion we could make. I definitely would make a motion that we follow the recommendation of Mr. Grady that we invite the participants to come to a public - well, I should say committee forum, unless somebody else has a motion that they have worded that we could present.
MR. CHAIRMAN: So your motion is . . .
MR. CHIPMAN: That we follow the recommendation of Dr. Grady, that we get the principals to a meeting.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Federal DFO officials? (Interruptions)
MR. SEARS: Yes. Let the DFO answer to the questions or the problems that we have addressed here today. I sit here and I heard the same thing here just as the meeting started to wind down, through all the struggle. It always seems like there's a little bit of conflict between, even, the people that sit in these rooms, before we leave to go out.
I come here today - I don't care if you're NDP, you're Liberal, or you're for the Marijuana Party, I don't care. (Laughter) I came here for one reason. I came here for you fellows that are all sitting at this table to sit down amongst yourselves and think that you could
try to make some kind of a motion to someone that could help us out and keep going. We don't need to fight no more amongst ourselves. We're having a hard enough job with it now.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Fred. Mr. Downe, perhaps you would - I was thinking we want to be specific in our motion so the presenters know where we are going, instead of saying something generic.
MR. DOWNE: I think earlier today I suggested that we should bring in representatives of the Department of Fisheries, representatives of the industry, other than the group that is here because there are other players out there and we should hear their point of view. It was suggested the provincial Department of Fisheries, in their capacity, be brought in so we can have a view of what is going on and bring forward the concerns we are hearing. That is what I suggested earlier and I think Mr. Chipman has basically made that recommendation as a motion.
MR. CHIPMAN: Are you talking the Department of Fisheries and Oceans or the provincial Department of Fisheries?
MR. DOWNE: We talked about the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans but it was suggested that maybe the provincial - I think it was mentioned here - side as well. I have no problem doing that because it would probably enlighten some of the jurisdiction issues and maybe some of the other issues they are working on.
MR. WOLKINS: I think it should also be the fishing industry itself, it should be the corporate sector.
MR. DOWNE: I suggested that, the different disciplines. There is the corporate structure, you have the gillnetters, the seiners, you have other groups out there who maybe are interested in talking to us about some of these concerns, specifically related to the concerns that were brought forward here today, and that is the protection and enhancement of the opportunities for the inshore fishermen; that is really what we are talking about here, the sustainability of the inshore fishery. If that was what Mr. Chipman was really saying, that is what I was talking about and I would certainly support that motion.
MR. CHIPMAN: I guess what I am saying is we come from all three Parties - we don't have a marijuana member by the way - and we can get into name-calling and pointing fingers. My colleague for Cape Breton The Lakes, I can throw the ball back at him and say these are federal rules and regulations we are talking about, we are not going to do that. We are here to work together as a committee to support you and you have had support from the Premier already and I think we should carry this one step further and . . .
MR. WOLKINS: Go to Ottawa and . . .
MR. CHIPMAN: I don't know, make a motion, word me a motion. I will make the motion that we get the principles involved: the provincial Department of Fisheries, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the large companies involved, the ground fishermen.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Estabrooks, do you have a question on the motion?
MR. ESTABROOKS: Thank you for your presentation. I just seethe when I hear these men. Anyway, let's get to it. Let's bring DFO in here separately. Let's not bring them all in here at once, we have to line these guys up - not in those terms. We must be very careful of the fact - and Darlene would have to be the one to follow up on this - to bring people in from the industry. Let's talk to Clearwater, for example, as one example, bring just Clearwater for a session. Let's not confuse it with a whole parade of them, let's bring in some of the specific big players and make sure DFO isn't here when they are here. That's my suggestion.
MR. CHIPMAN: Mr. Chairman, if I could make a point, as I mentioned earlier, in my area, the inshore scallop fishery is in the same situation you are in. I think at some point we should hear their side of the story too because it basically fits in with what these gentlemen are saying today.
MR. CHAIRMAN: In all fairness, I think what we need is a specific motion and maybe Mr. Downe is going to put some specifics into the motion.
MR. DOWNE: Let's not slow ourselves down here. Why don't we make a motion that the first meeting, if possible, to meet with DFO officials, relative to this issue. I would suggest the chairman and vice-chairman allow members of the respective Parties to present groups that they would like to entertain and at the next meeting we can go through the list of names of organizations we would like to bring forward to the committee for review and from that we would decide who all would be coming in at subsequent meetings.
I think we are all in the same pot here, we are all talking about the same issues. To give us some time to think through the organizations we want to bring in - DFO is absolute, I think the provincial Department of Fisheries would be appropriate to have at a separate meeting - our respective groups could bring the names forward to the chairman and at the next meeting we can discuss which ones we want to bring in at what time. That way we look like we are organized.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion is essentially for the Standing Committee on Economic Development to bring in appropriate representatives of DFO to discuss this issue at a hearing, at our earliest opportunity. Is that fair, Mr. Downe?
MR. DOWNE: Yes and in that motion, there was that we would be bringing back to you suggested names of organizations and bodies to be reviewed at our next meeting - this is a cumbersome resolution here - but it was DFO and also the provincial Ministry of Fisheries is what I said.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Perhaps we could deal with the motion to bring in the appropriate DFO officials separately because at the conclusion of nearly every hearing we talk about future agendas and we could keep bringing up other names that would also be appropriate to the cause.
MR. CHIPMAN: I was going to ask if there would be a problem having the provincial department here at the same time as the federal department? I imagine the provincial department is certainly going to learn from the federal department.
MR. CHAIRMAN: One of our colleagues suggested we bring them in one at a time. Mr. Estabrooks had a concern about that.
MR. ESTABROOKS: Mr. Chairman, the motion Mr. Downe brought forward was that we were going to - I understood it this way - take this to my caucus to say to them that we, as a result of this presentation today, want to bring forward the names of prospective witnesses and that at the next meeting - which I see is scheduled and already has a presenter - we would bring in the list of names of people that we want. Is that not what you said, Don?
MR. DOWNE: Yes and to start the ball off, we all agree that DFO is a body we want to have at the table, so we can bring them in but that is the essence of it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: You have heard the motion. Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
MR. GRADY: Mr. Chairman, if I may, I would suggest for your consideration, when you get your motion in action and your list ready, as an analyst of the problem and a participant on behalf of the South West Fishermen's Rights Association, we respectfully suggest you save the best for last. That is to say that your committee hear from other interested and involved fisheries, fishermen and business organizations, then bring in the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the provincial Department of Fisheries. My reason for making that suggestion - I hope you don't regard it as inappropriate - is that we have learned a lot about DFO and how they operate. If you bring them in first, they will tell you a fairy tale and expect you to believe it. If you listen to what is happening to other fishermen and other fisheries involved, and corporate interests first, that ought to permit the committee to have the array of information required to sift out the challenging, most directing and important questions.
MR. DOWNE: The voice of experience.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Committee members, by the next meeting, January 30th we have LaFarge Canada coming in. At that particular time we will bring forward a list of names of potential witnesses appropriate and necessary to further explore this very important concern to the South West Fishermen's Rights Association. Is that agreed?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: John MacDonell.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: I just want to make a comment to the members of the committee, the same comment I made in Resources Committee last week and was wrong but this week on Country Canada it looks at draggers and the . . .
MR. WOLKINS: I will say that I was involved in that TV promotion that we put out, that is no more, if I had a good arm I could hit it with a rock, I am sure. It was probably a mile and a half from our coastline. We had divers and CBC men out there to be on Country Canada and it shows the diversity of our bottom.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: That is on Wednesday night, I just want members to be aware of that.
MR. WOLKINS: It is 7:30 p.m. Wednesday night. It shows strawberry soft corals down there that big.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. We really appreciate you coming in today, it has been a very informative and interesting hearing. We would certainly be pleased to welcome you back at another time.
MR. WOLKINS: You never know, I may be an observer at these other ones. Is that permitted?
MR. CHAIRMAN: We welcome observers, yes. As long as you are as quiet as the observers we had today, we would welcome you to bring more.
MR. ESTABROOKS: A motion to adjourn.
MR CHAIRMAN: We stand adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 3:45 p.m.]