Fisheries Committee on June 6th, 2006

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

The difference between 2004 and 2005 was not considerable. Could you perhaps briefly describe what it was?

[Paul Sprout]

I would argue that it was considerable.

In terms of action on the ground, I don't have the figures on the number of fishery officers in 2004. Between the lower and the upper river, we had around 57 or 58 fishery officers permanently stationed in the Fraser in 2005. In addition, we transferred a small number of fishery officers on a temporary basis during the summer season to augment the permanent numbers I referred to. We were operating about 57 fishery officers in 2005, plus the ones that we transferred in temporarily. We're trying to achieve the same level of fishery officer effort in 2006.

The other thing that happened in 2005 is we received additional operational money. The operational money allowed us to do overflights, with helicopters and fixed wing, vessel patrols, and so forth. We had substantial activities relative to 2004. From our perspective at least, 2005 was a significant bump in terms of actual work on the ground, in terms of overflights, and so forth.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

The interesting thing is that there are going to be significantly more fish this year than there were in 2005. There was no commercial fishery in 2005; the only fishery you had to contend with was the native food black-market fishery. This year you're anticipating a run of 17 million fish. There may or may not be a commercial fishery, but there's sure as hell going to be a lot of fishing effort in the Fraser River.

In my view, the effort in 2005 is simply not going to be enough to manage properly or to control illegal activities that will probably be quite rampant in the Fraser this year.

[Paul Sprout]

Well, you're right that 2006 is going to be a different year from 2005.

You're also correct that, God willing, we are predicting a strong return of Fraser River sockeye. We hope to have a strong commercial fishery and a first nations fishery.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Let's consider the Chilliwack office, for example. How many folks do you have in that office, roughly? I'm not going to hold you to it exactly, but roughly?

I have just a short series here, Chair, if you don't mind.

[Paul Sprout]

I'll have to ask whether Jim can respond to that question.

[Jim Wild]

I think it's about five.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

About five?

[Jim Wild]

I'm not positive. I'll confirm and get a message back to you.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

All right, you have five guys in the Chilliwack office, and their patrol responsibilities on the river would range where?

[Jim Wild]

Depending on their patrol, they might go right up into the canyon.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Up into the canyon? And how far downriver do they go from Chilliwack?

[Paul Sprout]

Langley covers off down below there, so it's not that far below.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

For the benefit of the committee, how many kilometres is that?

[Paul Sprout]

The run into the canyon would be an extensive one. It could be 80 kilometres.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

So you have five guys who are covering 80 kilometres of the Fraser River where the illegal activities in the past have been rampant. Five guys really wouldn't cover a day shift, would they, let alone nights and weekends?

[Paul Sprout]

But it won't just be five officers. That's the point I was raising earlier. We are proposing to transfer in on a temporary basis officers from outside the Fraser to assist those individuals in that section of the river. In addition, we're proposing to augment the operational budget so that we can do overflights, helicopter flights, and so forth, so that we can try to make the 80 kilometres a more manageable size through access to helicopters, overflights, and so forth. And we would transfer in fisheries officers from outside that area to augment the staff temporarily during the summer. It is going to be a challenge; I acknowledge that. But that's the plan.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

But if, for example, you have five guys there and you augment the number, you can't be sending people out into the Fraser Canyon who don't have experience on that part of the river. Mr. Wild has been there; you've been there. I'm sure you're going to agree, it takes experienced people to navigate that part of the river. Mr. Kwak was in here last week, and I asked him the same question. You can get lost there in the web of islands, quite easily. I've done it myself; it's an easy thing to do. So you need experienced people in there.

A lot of this activity is night-time activity. You can't send one or two guys out there in the dark of the night to deal with some of these thugs who are fishing illegally at night. There has to be a sufficient number—probably a half dozen guys, anyway. How are you going to effectively patrol that large area with five fisheries officers augmented with a few people from outside? How can you possibly do it?

[Paul Sprout]

It is a challenging area, to be sure. I think the first thing is, the individuals we would propose to transfer in there will be trained fisheries officers—they will have done whitewater training, and so forth. Additionally, the officers who actually live in the area will be the ones who are mostly connected with doing the canyon work, where frankly the water conditions are very challenging for those who have never observed the canyon. It's a really exciting but difficult area to work in; we'll be using the most experienced staff in those key locations. The other staff who will be rotated in there will be experienced staff; these will be officers of long tenure, well regarded, and so forth, working under the general direction of the more experienced staff, to the best of our abilities to try to manage that site.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Sprout, and thank you, Mr. Cummins.

I have a couple of quick questions at the end here that I'd like to get some clarification on.

Listening to the witnesses and yourselves on the gravel extraction, it was interesting that really none of the witnesses have said they've been absolutely against the mining of aggregate on the riverbanks. There have been a number of questions about the process. So I think you have a process that for all intents and purposes has frankly failed.

There are a number of questions about that process. First of all, there is a lot of discussion about how you minimize and avoid risk and manage it, but in the scope of the project, under the original environmental assessment, the scope under section 3(1) clearly read:

The scope of this project includes construction and removal of the temporary access road that includes causeways and the bridge, and extraction of up to 50,000 cubic metres of gravel from Big Bar.

Given that—and I recognize your comments earlier, Mr. Sprout, that conditions change, and the water levels were too high, and there was too much current, and you did take safety into account as a factor—how do you change your original environmental assessment? What's the process for changing it? Can you simply change it on the fly?

[Paul Sprout]

It's because we do need to adjust to the circumstances, for safety reasons and for resource reasons. For example, the initial authorization permitted the operation to continue until the middle of March, but a decision was made to stop before that. Why? Because of conditions that we observed over the course of the week that the operation was in place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

So my point is that there is a process in place to allow for changes in environmental assessment within very short timeframes and that would be in place for every environmental assessment that's made. Is that correct?

[Paul Sprout]

For gravel removal operations, as I've indicated, the short answer is yes. The longer answer is that we make assumptions about gravel removal operations. We go to the grounds to see what is actually happening, and then if we have to make an adjustment based on what we see on the grounds, we can make an adjustment. In this case, we did. An adjustment was made within one week, including stopping operations. But the issue I've taken from the members is that maybe we need to ask ourselves whether we should have permitted it in the first place. And that's what we're taking away in our review.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I have two more questions, and I'll try to be quick, because we're certainly going to be jammed for time here.

In your screening reports for Big Bar, you also mentioned that four other sites were screened and developed as well. Could we have the screening reports for those four other sites as well, please? And along with that, you mentioned there was an assessment done of the redds, where the salmon spawn, at Big Bar. Could we have that report as well? You said a number of those redds were empty when you did the assessment, but we've not seen any redds that were empty in any of the evidence that's been presented to us. So I think that would be important.

Finally, and I asked this question of the last group, pink salmon spawn every two years. There seems to be a willingness in all parties to look at the extraction of aggregates, so that's not the question. The question I have is why would you allow for the removal of aggregates during the spawning season when you could very easily have your gravel extraction occurring in a non-spawning year?

[Paul Sprout]

I think the rationale for that is that the gravel accumulation occurs on an ongoing basis, and there's a concern about only harvesting gravel in an off year or in an even year and having to take very substantial quantities in a short time. You'd be effectively doubling up. Right now, we take gravel every year. If you only did it every other year, which is what you've noted, you'd be doubling the amount of gravel that you'd be removing in one year.

For example, let's roll back Big Bar and let's pretend Big Bar is next year. Instead of taking 50,000 cubic metres, we would be taking 100,000 cubic metres. So the issue is, how feasible is it to take 100,000 cubic metres from one site in a narrow window of time, taking into consideration when you can access the site because of safety issues, and when you have to leave the site because of other salmon that are present in the system that are not pink salmon? So the challenge is how to distribute the gravel removal over a reasonable period of time.

Again, the basis upon which we are doing this is based on a science assessment. This is the recommendation that we're following.