Fisheries Committee on Nov. 28th, 2013

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

You were talking about the invasive species, and you named a particular one, but I'd like a sense of how it's been going in recent years and what kinds of concerns there are. You hear a lot of American reaction to the Great Lakes and so on. What's your overall sense of where we're heading with the invasive species and how we are combatting them?

[Kevin Stringer]

It's interesting. We talk about the changes to the Fisheries Act, and people talk about various things. The one major addition that I think we've made in the Fisheries Act is the regulatory authority around aquatic invasive species. In 1977, which I think was the last time we changed the Fisheries Act and put in the habitat provisions and those types of things, it wasn't an issue. It was an issue, but it wasn't as significant an issue. What we're trying to do now in terms of fisheries protection is to have an overall program that manages threats to fisheries by understanding that threats to fisheries come from habitat, interruptions to water flow, pollution, overfishing, and aquatic invasive species. We now have the regulatory authority to establish a regulation to address aquatic invasive species, and we're working on a regulation. We've been working on it with the provinces. The reality is that the provinces have a lot of the authority with respect to managing aquatic invasive species. They're all across the country.

That regulation that we are drafting will speak to prohibiting the import, sale, possession, and transport of aquatic invasive species. There will be a schedule 2 list, and we're working with the provinces to establish what would go on that schedule and what would be banned, etc. We've had a science program for a number of years, but also established is a science network, something called CAISN, which stands for Canadian Aquatic Invasive Species Network, and we partner with them. There's an enormous amount of science work undertaken to address those things. There are ballast water regulations in place. There are a number of initiatives, and one of the things we're trying to do under our new program is pull all of those things together. While we've actually reduced in some of the areas, we've actually invested a little bit in aquatic invasive species, if only to try to connect all the different programs we have going. That's in addition to the specific initiatives we have on Asian carp, sea lamprey, and other initiatives like that.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

My sense is that it's become a much larger priority, and the sense of cooperation is there. I know that one of the things you hear more about is people bringing in their pet...I was going to say foreign fish, but fish from afar, wherever it might come from, and it's actually had quite a destructive impact on local.... I think in one of our lakes in Nova Scotia, in the Kejimkujik area, you see a lot of perch going up and trout going down, that type of thing.

I'm not sure what all of the reasons are, but it's become a priority such that, as you say, it's a cooperative effort. Do you see that continuing in the years to come?

[Kevin Stringer]

The Canadian Council of Fisheries and Aquaculture Ministers is a group that meets once a year and regularly. They have a few task forces and ongoing committees. Aquatic invasive species was established a few years ago and is one of the key places where we work very closely with the provinces, because we have joint responsibility for it, and we've worked with them on the regulation, but also on what we're doing to address what is indeed an emerging issue.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Kerr.

Mr. Stoffer.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

It's like déjà vu, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much for coming back.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming in. I have just a few questions for you.

I noticed the $4 million on the Asian carp. Is that in cooperation with the Americans, in terms of what they're doing for the Mississippi? Is it a joint effort in that regard? That's question one.

I didn't see anything on the lamprey eel out of St. Marys River, which is always a huge problem. If Paul Steckle was here, he would have asked that question. What is being done on the lamprey eel specifically?

I know this is rather unusual, but I actually watched a bit of the Conservative convention, and one of the unanimous resolutions it came up with was on the elimination—I'm paraphrasing now—of the FFMC. I'm just wondering if the government or the minister has given you any direction regarding the future of the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation.

On the Fisheries Act changes as to who defines commercial, recreational, and aboriginal.... There are millions of lakes in Canada, as you know, but who is going to get to determine what fish is recreational? The last time I was on this committee, we were raising the issue of freshwater habitat being used as tailing ponds throughout the country, through schedule 2 of the Mining Act. That was one of the concerns a lot of people had—fishermen, environmental groups, aboriginal groups—about freshwater habitat being used as tailing ponds. I don't see anything in the act that stops that activity from happening.

The last question I have for you.... Congratulations on the Zalinski. I'm glad to see it's being cleaned up. But what about the Queen of the North, the ferry that came down? I'm not sure if that would be Transport's responsibility or Environment's, but with all of those vehicles on that vessel, eventually that's going to have a leak problem somewhere. Are you monitoring that, and what is being done to mitigate that concern as well?

That's it. I thank you all very much for coming.

[Matthew King]

Perhaps I can start it off, and I'll look to others to....

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

I have more, but I don't have any more time.

[Matthew King]

I hope I got all of these.

With respect to the FFMC, I wasn't able to watch any of the convention myself, but the FFMC continues as a going concern. It's had its corporate plan, as it always must, approved by the Minister of Finance, and we're expecting revisions for 2014-15 soon. That's the short answer on FFMC.

With respect to the definition of fisheries in the act, I actually thank you for that question because we've heard quite a bit about it. We included these definitions, just to be clear, in a spatial perspective about how new paragraph 35(2)(b) of the act was going to be applied. For commercial fisheries, we defined them as fish that are harvested under the authority of a licence for sale, trade, or barter.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

I understand, and that's a fairly straight one—aboriginal. My concern was that when I lived in the Yukon, pilots there had lakes to themselves. Only they knew where these lakes were. There are thousands and thousands of lakes. Who determines which body of water is considered recreational?

[Matthew King]

We defined, if I could, just recreational fisheries as fish that are harvested under the authority of a licence for personal use or sport. So that takes us into the world of anything that is regulated by provincial governments, for example. But as I say, this and the aboriginal fishery definition are meant to give us guidance on how to apply paragraph 35(2)(b). It would take longer to get into this, but any fishery that meets these three definitions, or any fishery or habitat that's involved, that supports these three fisheries, would be subject to the paragraph 35(2)(b) authorization.

Will there be fisheries in Canada that do not support either a commercial, recreational, or aboriginal fishery? It's possible—not likely, but possible. In the event that we see those, run into those, then we'll deal with them on a case-by-case basis. But you know, you've raised a really interesting point, because I think.... It's so long that I've been in and around DFO, I think I've actually had this discussion with you before, a long time ago. The issue was whether or not a lake that had three trout in it would be considered a fishery and therefore require an authorization. I think it might have been a gas project or whatever.

But at the time, if my memory serves me correctly, it wasn't connected to a fishery because it wasn't connected to anything. It was like a pond. We went back and forth on that one forever. The difference between the old legislation and the new legislation is that we would deal with that case by case. But it would have to be line of sight between that pond and whether or not it supported a commercial, recreational, or aboriginal fishery. I don't doubt that it's faced with the same fact base. We deliberate for a long time, but the outcome very well may be different.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much, Mr. King.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Can he answer about the Queen of the North?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Your time is up.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

My time is up?

He wanted to answer on the Queen of the North.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Nice try, Peter.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Can you answer that quite briefly, Mr. King or Mr. Grégoire?

[Marc Grégoire]

Yes, I can answer it.

Of course, it's a concern, and it's a concern that has also been expressed to us by the first nations there, mostly by the Gitga'at, who live in the Hartley Bay, because the ship sank right beside there in March of 2006, I believe. But the situation is totally different because BC Ferries owns that vessel, BC Ferries is in operation, and BC Ferries is responsible for any pollution from that ship. Should there be pollution from that ship, it would be of lesser importance than from the Zalinski, because rather than having bunker C on board, the Queen of the North has standard diesel, which is of a lesser concern.

But still, if there was a spill, BC Ferries would have to deal with this, and we would go on site as federal monitor for pollution intervention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much, Mr. Grégoire.

I had to give Mr. Stoffer a few more seconds, but it was because he was watching the Conservative convention.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Yes. Merci beaucoup. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Ms. Davidson, please.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

And thanks, gentlemen, for being with us again. It's always a pleasure to have you here.

I just want to bring you back to vote 1(b) for a very quick minute before I ask a couple of other questions. I have a question on the Asian carp. You have $4.5 million of funding in these supplementary estimates. Can you tell me what that's going to be used for?

[Kevin Stringer]

Most of that fund goes to our central and arctic region. A lot of it goes to science. It's people in Burlington. It really has four areas. There's funding for prevention, which includes things like education and outreach. I'll give you a couple of examples. We're working with the Invasive Species Centre in Sault Ste. Marie on an Asian carp website that they're working on. It's those types of things. We have a partnership with the Royal Ontario Museum. We have a partnership in terms of outreach with the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. So prevention is one piece of it.

Early warning is a second piece. We did a binational risk assessment with the U.S., which goes to a question that was asked earlier. Yes, we are working with the U.S. on these funds. We did a binational risk assessment that said here are the five areas that we're most concerned about with respect to entry. We're identifying those areas and going around and establishing early warning pieces so that we're able to identify if they're getting in, frankly.

Response is a third area. We will have all seen in the newspapers and on social media that a gigantic fish was found in the Grand River, or wherever. We were out there immediately, putting nets in the water, checking eDNA. So there's a response quickly to be able to see what's actually happening, and doing some testing in terms of what is going on. We're working with the U.S. as well in that regard.

Finally, there is management and control, which thankfully we haven't had to do yet.

Those are really the main areas. You'll see the funding starts significantly and decreases over time. It's about getting some of those things going first, especially the early warning areas.