Fisheries Committee on Feb. 8th, 2024

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 97 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the Standing Orders.

Pursuant to a request by more than four members of the committee under Standing Order 106(4), the committee is meeting to discuss a request to undertake a study of the concerns surrounding the elver fishery in Nova Scotia.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, committee members, for enabling this discussion today.

Over the last two months, we've had sporadic opportunities to ask some questions of various officials about their plans to deal with the upcoming season of the elver fishery, in hopes of avoiding all of the issues that we saw in my community and throughout Nova Scotia and New Brunswick last year.

For those who are watching and who don't know what an elver is, it's a baby eel. It's a very expensive fish. It's the most expensive fish there is. They sell them for about $5,000 a kilogram, and they're caught at the mouths of rivers as the rivers enter the sea in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Maine, principally.

They come in at night, for some reason, on the high tide, when it's dark. They're caught by using a dip net or what's called a fyke net. There are, I believe, 12 DFO-licensed harvesters for this fish.

This season is a quota-based season, so as soon as an individual harvester gets their quota, they're done. Even though the elvers start arriving in Nova Scotia in March—although the season generally starts in April and goes until June—there are elvers still on some of the rivers in July. They come at different times of the year in New Brunswick; they come a little later than March.

The various licence-holders are assigned a specific river, depending on when the elvers come in and when they get the catch, yet last year, after only 18 days of the season, as we know, the Minister of Fisheries shut down the season for the licence-holders, while poaching continued on the rivers. It became a big public safety issue, more so last year than in the previous couple of years. I just want to outline what it was like.

Picture yourself in the beautiful riding that I represent, on the south shore in Nova Scotia, on St. Margarets Bay, the bay that Peggys Cove is on. You bought your dream house. Your dream house is right at the mouth, where the river, which may be 10 to 20 feet wide, enters the sea. You might have a little beach at the front of your little Cape Cod house, and you enjoy the tranquility of all that and all the fun that comes from having access to the fresh water when the tides go out and the river comes in, and the salt water as the tide comes in.

Many years into your ownership, a few years ago, about midnight, because that's generally when people fish elvers, when the tides are coming in, people start showing up on your property. They start crossing your property. They park their trucks on your property, and they're there all night. You go out and ask them what they're doing, and they tell you they're fishing, even though they're on private property. You ask them to leave, but they refuse to leave.

This goes on for a few nights, starting in March. That's only a few weeks from now, and it will happen again in March. Because they're fishing, you phone DFO. DFO's numbers for enforcement are available on the web and in the book. You phone them up, and you leave messages, because it's at night and there's nobody there. Nobody ever calls you back from DFO.

Then you see that nobody ever shows up from DFO, even though you've called, so you phone the local police detachment. Usually, in my part of the world, that's the RCMP detachment. You phone the detachment. You start phoning the RCMP, and you start asking the RCMP to please come to deal with these people who are trespassing on your lawn, because, when you wake up in the morning and they're gone, there is an incredible mess. They fish with lights on their heads, so they're bothering you at night while you're trying to sleep. They're making noise. In the morning, there are remnants of food, remnants of used toilet paper and remnants of what toilet paper is used for on your property. That's every night, for months.

You phone the RCMP so many times that the RCMP says, “If you keep calling me and complaining about these people on your property, I'm going to come and arrest you for filing too many claims with the RCMP.”

A few miles down the river in Hubbards, a single mother is there with her teenage daughter. The same thing's going on on her property, except they're wearing khaki gear at night. One of her neighbours was walking her dog—this happened last spring—and asked what they were doing. They said, “We're fishing.” They said, “You can see the DFO sign here that says you're not fishing.” They took out a pipe and beat him. Further down the river, rival gangs of criminal organizations actually started firing guns at each other for turf on the river.

Meanwhile, the legal licence-holders could not get on the river—and the legal licence-holders are assigned to specific rivers—and they have motion-activated cameras on all the legal spots. Not every river in Nova Scotia is a legal spot, but almost every river has elvers. They have cameras with motion detection, and they take live pictures and video, so they know when people are there during the day and at night, and they never saw a DFO enforcement officer, ever, at night, when the fishing of elvers was going on, both legally and illegally.

Every day last year, from the beginning of the season, I got a copy of the emails sent from the licence-holders to the Minister of Fisheries, to the director-general of fisheries for Nova Scotia, and to C and P enforcement, and of the photos of the individuals as well as identification of their vehicles. Never once did anyone return anyone's calls, and never once did C and P ever do anything about it. This was going on at the Sackville River in Halifax, three minutes from a DFO C and P enforcement office. Complaints were made, but nothing ever happened.

A licensed elver fisher had what's called a fyke net—the other way of doing this. This happened in Shelburne county last year, and he had a GPS tracker attached to his net. He went to the river, and his net was gone, so he turned on the GPS tracker. He said, “Oh, I can see it. I can drive. It's at a house.” He drove up to the house in his pickup, and there's a pickup truck in the driveway with his net in the back. The owner of the house came out and said, “What are you doing here?” He said, “I'm here to pick up my net.” He said, “It's not your net. It's my net.” He said, “That's my net. DFO requires me to have my licence number on the net. There's my licence number.” The guy went into the garage, took out a baseball bat, came out and started beating on the guy's truck, smashing his windows and smashing his mirrors off. Then he went into his truck, backed it into this guy's truck, pushed it out onto the street and took off. He went to another place and damaged the truck. This got reported to both the police and DFO, the locations and where the net was. DFO never went to charge the person or to get the property back. It was stolen right out of the river.

This went on every night for four months while the elvers were running, and it's getting worse.

The industry has been meeting with DFO and just asking them for their plan for river enforcement, and they won't do it. They won't share it, and, in fact, in meetings in the last week, they said they're not going to provide any more support legally than they did last year.

Given all that, I think it's urgent that this committee do a study and call these agencies to account before this committee as to why they are not increasing their enforcement of the law and of the act.

I don't know if we circulated the motion. Oh, it's being handed out.

I would propose:

That, given reports concerning the illegal elver fishery in Atlantic Canada and violence that occurred in the 2023 fishing season—

That should say, “elver fishing season”.

—the committee agree to hear plans prepared by the federal government to prevent further incidents of violence this fishing season; the committee agree to hear testimony from the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, with departmental officials responsible for law enforcement—

Obviously, that's C and P.

—the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP; that the committee draft a letter at the end of the study with its recommendation to the minister invited [named here]; and that the committee agree to begin this study at its next scheduled meeting.

The rationale for the next meeting being next week is that there are already illegal nets being placed on rivers today. The season will not start for a little while, probably not until April. The minister hasn't announced when the season starts yet, but urgency in ensuring that there is an enforcement regime to maintain law and order on the river is necessary now. We need to have the officials now. That's the reason for the urgency on this. I don't think, from my part of the world in the fishery, that there is any more pressing enforcement issue than this, currently.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

Mr. Morrissey, you have your hand up.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Can we suspend for a few minutes?

I agree with everything that Mr. Perkins said, but could we suspend for a minute or two, while we review his motion?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

I realize the motion was just redistributed, so we'll recess for a few minutes.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Thank you, everyone. We will reconvene.

Mr. Morrissey.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I've concluded my comments, Mr. Chair. Thanks for the suspension. I believe Ms. Barron is—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Translation is coming through on the English channel in French on mine. I'm not sure what happened. I was getting English in one ear and French in the other, so now I'm really confused. Could you start again?

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Chair, I have a problem also on my end. Can you just keep talking, please?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Yes. I'm hoping translation has it sorted out to the correct channel. It looks like I'm getting a thumbs-up from Mr. Kelloway.

Go ahead, Mr. Morrissey.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I believe Ms. Barron is going to read in an amendment to the motion. I'll wait. I'll defer and make comment after that.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Ms. Barron, did I see your hand up?

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to get it documented, so that we could send it out to everybody.

I just want to suggest a few amendments to the motion that's been circulated. Thanks to Mr. Perkins for his work around this.

The amendment that I'd like to make is:

That, given reports concerning the illegal elver fishery in Atlantic Canada and violence that occurred—

Here I would like to add “in the elver fishery”.

—in the 2023 fishing season, illegal harvesting and widespread misunderstanding of indigenous moderate livelihood rights

Then it would continue on with the remainder of it as is, except for one addition of “Deputy Minister” instead of “Minister”.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Where was the last piece to be inserted? “The elver fishery in the 2023 fishing season”.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Yes, so it reads:

That, given reports concerning violence that occurred in the elver fishery in the 2023 fishing season, illegal harvesting and widespread misunderstanding of indigenous moderate livelihood rights

Then it goes on as previously written.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

The member read her motion very quickly and the interpreter didn't have a copy of the corrected motion, which caused a bit of a problem with the interpretation.

Could the member please resume reading the motion?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Ms. Barron, if you'd like to go again, can you speak slowly and clearly as to where it's being inserted?

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Yes. It's the Newfoundlander in me. We speak quickly.

The other thing is that we can circulate an email version, if that's helpful. I realize it could be confusing. I'll try again. It is:

That, given reports concerning violence that occurred in the elver fishery in the 2023 fishing season, illegal harvesting and widespread misunderstanding of indigenous moderate livelihood rights

The remainder stays the same, except for the addition of, in front of “Minister”, “Deputy”.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

In which section where it says “minister”? The Minister of Fisheries is mentioned, and then it's “recommendations to the minister”, so the word “minister” is in there twice.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. That would be the first “Minister”—the first reference to the minister.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Am I understanding that you're recommending a change, that it be the deputy minister who is invited instead of the minister, or is it in addition to the minister?

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

It's a change to the deputy minister.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

That's instead of the minister.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I thought you wanted this within five days.