Environment Committee on May 6th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Armstrong.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I'm almost scared to speak. After you speak you tend to disappear on this side.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I'll give it my best shot here and see if I can manage to survive.

Dr. Whoriskey, I see by the sun shining there that it's another beautiful day in Atlantic Canada. I'll be home later tonight.

On fish, you mentioned that the Atlantic salmon literally hit the mortality rate where things become very troubling for them when they enter the marine climate. You talked about some steps that are already being taken by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to maintain the genetic nature of this wildlife.

What type of sustained funding that you mentioned on an annual basis would be required to maintain the genetic fish banks that currently exist? What type of money are we looking at there? Would you be aware of that?

[Dr. Frederick Whoriskey]

You're probably talking in the range, for the live gene banks, of a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year to maintain them for the 32 populations that are present in those areas. I would hope as well we'd begin to address some of the core problems, such as the habitat issue. They're disappearing somewhere out in the ocean.

Canada has already made a stab, kind of indirectly, towards that. Canada is a world leader in a technology called sonic telemetry. Various firms in this country have developed the ability to track animals out into the oceans. Through the Canada Foundation for Innovation international joint ventures fund and funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, a project called the “Ocean Tracking Network”, based at Dalhousie University, is beginning to wire critical points of the world's oceans and would be able to detect fish marked with those tags. Some of that OTN tracking ability is going to go into the Bay of Fundy, with the specific goal of trying to look at these endangered Atlantic salmon. What we have to do is get the additional funding to put into some of the fish coming out of these rivers so that we can track them into those areas, and that's probably going to be a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year as well, just for the technologies.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

My riding borders on the Bay of Fundy, and there's a great deal of coastline there. One of the recent things that has been done to help protect Atlantic salmon, of course, is the opening of the river gates on the Petitcodiac River. This is an issue that also brings socio-economic concerns, because even though the Petitcodiac River is in New Brunswick, some of the constituents in my riding are concerned that there will be some environmental damage from things coming out with that water. There's a dump on that river and some other things that may cause some damage to some different shellfish and groundfish in the bay, and they're looking for compensation.

Do you have any comments on the impact that opening those river gates may have on the greater environmental concerns of the Bay of Fundy?

[Dr. Frederick Whoriskey]

The project is proceeding in the correct fashion. They've decided to undertake a two-year trial. A monitoring program is in place to try to address some of those concerns. Rather than speculating and compensating somebody for an impact that may not occur, let's go and find out whether the impact is actually occurring in the first place.

I suspect, personally, that we are actually going to find things like the lobster fishery doing better rather than poorer, as has been suggested, once the causeways open up. At that point in time, I'd hate to be spending the taxpayers' money on a second salary for somebody who's making more money than they ever did in the first place.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you for your comments.

So would you say that some of the steps being take with this initiative may actually be a very positive and applicable use of the SARA legislation?

[Dr. Frederick Whoriskey]

I think this is a very positive step. Something in the order of 35% of the available habitat for inner Bay of Fundy salmon were located in the Petitcodiac River itself. This is an extraordinarily important keystone river for that particular complex of salmon, so this is very positive from the point of view of that benefit.

We know from a meeting I had just yesterday that already over 5,000 gaspereau have cropped up in the fish traps that have been monitoring in the river. They're already moving in there. There's a restoration that's going to happen naturally of that particular anadromous fish. That becomes bait for the lobster fishermen, which is a wonderful benefit for the area. So already it's having positive benefits, and they're going to have socio-economic benefits as well.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

So already, just in the short two weeks that it's been happening, we've already seen some positive ramifications from application of this legislation.

[Dr. Frederick Whoriskey]

Absolutely.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you, Dr. Whoriskey.

Mr. d'Eça, thank you for your presentation and submission, as I thank all three submitters.

I have some significant experience of first nations both on the west coast with the Nisga'a people and on the east coast, of course, with the Mi'kmaq people. Traditionally, knowledge is transmitted between generations orally. There's a deep oral tradition in both those populations on both coasts. I have no experience myself in Nunavut.

Is that the case in the Nunavut first nations populations as well?

[Michael d'Eça]

Yes, it's very much the case within Nunavut. It's an oral tradition.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

In regard to this oral tradition, you had mentioned the concern that many of the people who have this traditional knowledge are elders, and of course are going to be leaving us soon. Have there been any efforts made by anyone to do some recording of this—and of course they may be doing it in their traditional language—to preserve some of that traditional knowledge in Nunavut?

[Michael d'Eça]

Yes. There's a research centre in Igloolik, on Baffin Island, that has been, for many, many years, collecting traditional knowledge, known among Inuit as Qaujimajatuqangit. There are lots of individual efforts at collecting traditional knowledge right across the country, and certainly the same kind of thing is going on in Nunavut—nothing coordinated, but the major collector, I think, would be the Igloolik Research Centre.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired.

Bienvenue, Madame Boucher. Vous avez cinq minutes. You can share it with someone else if you wish.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I don't have any questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Scott, you can go ahead.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I have a question on that same trend, Mr. d'Eça. Would you think it would be pragmatic of us, as part of our SARA review, to make a recommendation that we should have some sort of coordination among all these different groups across the country that are recording traditional aboriginal knowledge and maybe have some expertise that we could go to on a routine basis instead of trying to find someone in every different part of the country? Would having it all coordinated be a recommendation you would see us including in the new SARA legislation?

[Michael d'Eça]

That kind of echoes the recommendation for this aboriginal traditional knowledge institute we are calling for. However, the nature of traditional knowledge is that it's often local. So yes, there should be coordination. There should certainly be standards for collecting traditional knowledge. Right now it is kind of wide open, so often a scientist or a scientific assistant will go and collect traditional knowledge. There are very specific ways--and I think they actually flow across different nations and different aboriginal groups--as to how best to collect that knowledge. So we need to systematically look at the collection of traditional knowledge in much the same way as we would look at the collection of science. It's not simply dropping in on a community and talking to whoever you run into about the species that's on your mind. It's a much more systematic and culturally sensitive exercise. So certainly there should be more attention paid to the collection of traditional knowledge.

We have a number of recommendations to you, but certainly one is the idea of an ATK institute.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

One of the concerns we've heard from several groups that have presented is with timelines, and how we have to do this very quickly and efficiently. I think Dr. Quinney mentioned that too. It takes forever, and there's a big bureaucracy buildup. But as parliamentarians, we have to find a balance between doing things as quickly and efficiently as possible and taking the time to consult. One of the things we've heard from several groups is that they feel there needs to be more consultation, particularly in the first nations group.

Mr. d'Eça, do you have any comments about how we can effectively put recommendations in SARA to effectively consult with our first nations population?

[Michael d'Eça]

First of all, I can tell you that the NWMB, an administrative tribunal whose public is for the most part aboriginal people, sympathizes with the kinds of concerns you are laying out in terms of consultation and in terms of being able to react quickly and so on.

I think an underlying problem, certainly in Nunavut, is consultation, and let's say, more generally, communication. It hasn't been there. It hasn't been put into place properly, so there is a mistrust of the act, where there probably ought not to be, where there are misunderstandings.

So yes, if the committee could do one thing, I would say try to get the act to concentrate better on proper communication and proper consultation.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you.

Dr. Quinney, just on the same subject, you spoke heavily about bureaucracy and how things are slowed down and how resources could be put to better use somewhere else. You also talked about how your organization would like to take part and be better consulted and maybe use their resources to our advantage. Again, balanced with that is that the more consultation is done and the more groups are included the more slowly things happen and the more bureaucracy there is. Could you discuss how we balance that and push through that?

[Dr. Terry Quinney]

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I accept your premise that the more consultation you have the more slowly things go. I think it's extremely important that the appropriate people, the right people, are adequately consulted. We have examples of really good consultation, not for SARA.

Sorry, I don't accept the premise. I think we can do this.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Can you give me an example of other legislation for which it has been done very effectively, so maybe we could look at that as a model?