Environment Committee on May 7th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

I'd like to call meeting number 54 of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development to order.

We have appearing today at this point only three witnesses. We're waiting for the fourth. We have by audio from the Northwest Territories, Mr. Evan Walz, acting assistant deputy minister, Environment and Natural Resources. Accompanying him for backup are Jamie Chambers and Lynda Yonge.

As well, by video conference from Sidney, Nebraska, we have from Cabela's Canada, Mr. John Tramburg, vice-president; and from Winnipeg, Darin Brecht, director of finance and e-commerce.

We're going to proceed in that order. We have some advance notice that we may need to conclude here by around 10:15 if the information is correct, so we'll keep that in mind as we're proceeding through questions and answers.

Mr. Walz, if you want to proceed with the 10-minute opening statement, we'll then go to Mr. Tramburg and Mr. Brecht in that order. Then following that we will go to committee members for questions.

Mr. Walz, go ahead, please, for 10 minutes.

[Evan Walz, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Environment and Natural Resources, Government of the Northwest Territories]

Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members.

As you mentioned my name is Evan Walz. I'm the acting assistant deputy minister of operations for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources with the Government of the NWT.

I'm joined today by Jamie Chambers, head of our field support unit, and Ms. Lynda Yonge, our director of wildlife.

Before I get going I wanted to say thank you to the committee and its staff for their flexibility. We had to bump our dates once and the committee and the staff were very accommodating. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to share with you our views on the cultural and economic significance of licensed hunting and trapping in Canada.

Wildlife populations in the NWT have sustained people here for thousands of years. Caribou, moose, muskox, bison, polar bear, grizzly bear, black bear and Dall sheep are some of the more prominent game animals found here. As well, there are many species of waterfowl and fish. Bear, coyote, lynx, mink, beaver, marten, weasel, and otter are just some of the additional wildlife that have been and continue to be trapped in the NWT. These species are essential to the health of many people, especially those living in smaller, more remote communities.

As many of you know, the population of the NWT is approximately 44,000 people. About half of those residents have aboriginal or treaty rights to hunt and trap in the NWT. They do not require a licence to exercise those rights. Aboriginal rights holders can also receive a general hunting licence, or a GHL, which allows them to harvest throughout the NWT subject to provisions of land claims as well as laws of general application.

The intent of the GHL is to allow aboriginal rights holders to continue harvesting throughout the territory until such time as all land claims are settled and access is governed through resulting agreements. General hunting licences are available only to aboriginal rights holders, and there are few restrictions on harvesting by those holders.

Mr. Chair, in 2013, 52% of aboriginal people in the NWT over the age of 15 reported that they participated in hunting and fishing, and 17% reported that they participated in trapping. Although the number varies somewhat by size and remoteness of communities, aboriginal communities reported that between 50% and 94% of households obtained 50% or more of their meat and fish from country foods, so you can see how important hunting and fishing are.

All people who do not have an aboriginal or treaty right to harvest in the NWT require a licence to hunt here. Residents who have lived in the NWT for at least 12 consecutive months can obtain a resident hunting licence, which allows them to hunt big and small game. During the past 10 to 12 years, an average of about 1,200 residents purchased resident hunting licences each year. That represents about 8% of the non-aboriginal population over the age of 15.

This number, 1,200, has been fairly steady but represents a decline from the previous 10 years when the average ranged somewhere between 1,600 and 2,200 resident licences sold each year. This drop, we believe, can be largely attributed to the serious decline in the barren-ground caribou herds, one of the major species that are harvested here. The decline may also be linked to aging demographics, urbanization, immigration, changing attitudes towards hunting, a decline in available time given other work pressures, etc.

Between 10% and 30% of households in predominantly non-aboriginal communities report obtaining 50% or more of their meat and fish from country foods. So even in the non-aboriginal communities you can see that hunting and fishing are very important. For many non-aboriginal residents of the NWT, hunting is a way of life that has been passed down from generation to generation.

A recent study on the value of nature to Canadians has estimated that residents of the NWT spend approximately $12 million a year on hunting and trapping activities here. People who do not live in the NWT for at least a year can still obtain a non-resident hunting licence, which allows them to hunt big and small game, but they need to access and make use of a licensed guide and outfitter to hunt big game.

There are eight outfitters currently licensed to provide big game outfitting services within the Mackenzie Mountains. Game harvested by non-resident hunters through these outfitted hunts include Dall sheep, moose, mountain goats, wolves, wolverines, and mountain caribou. Meat from the harvest is often distributed to aboriginal communities.

It's estimated that the outfitting hunting industry provides about two and a half million dollars a year to individuals, businesses, and governments in the NWT. It has also been estimated that it employs somewhere between 150 and 170 people as outfitters, guides, cooks, helpers, etc.

I'd like to chat a little about trapping.

Virtually all trapping in the NWT is done by aboriginal rights holders. A special licence to trap can be issued to non-rights holders, but only at the request of an aboriginal community and, typically, for someone living a subsistence lifestyle or providing for an aboriginal family. A non-resident or resident licence does not allow the holder to trap for bears in the NWT.

Over the years, we've seen that participation in trapping is influenced by a variety of factors, including fur prices, employment levels, and other employment opportunities, but more often by the cost of trapping equipment, fuel, supplies, etc.

We define active trappers as those who participate in and sell their furs through a program we have here in the Northwest Territories called the Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program. There are some individuals who may operate outside of that program and who trap and use fur for their own use. They would not be captured in the statistics I'm going to walk you through here.

The number of trappers participating in the GMVF, or Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program, for the 2014-15 season was just under 600 at 593. The total value of furs submitted to auction, again for that same season, was about $686,000. Once we add the prime fur bonus, which is an element of the GMVF program, trappers in the NWT received almost $890,000 for that season.

The number of people trapping in the NWT has decreased since the early eighties, but has levelled out to be more stable in recent years, ranging typically from 600 to 740 participants per year. That number has been relatively constant for the last eight years.

One of the greatest challenges to maintaining that number is the availability of economic opportunities and wage employment in some of the smaller communities. In the NWT, trapping as a full-time occupation is now rarely seen. It's often a secondary or a tertiary source of income for households and is often just part of the annual cycle of activities that generate food and income needed to sustain the lifestyle.

I mentioned earlier that market prices often affect trapper participation. By way of example, in 2006 artificially high fur prices, driven largely by China purchasing fur at a premium price, resulted in more trappers participating in the following year in virtually all regions of the NWT. The only exception to that was in the northern Arctic, where the popular species marten was not available for harvest.

Mr. Chair, and committee members, our government operates a number of programs, including trapper training and Take a Kid Trapping, to support continued participation in this lifestyle. As you can imagine, the benefits of this lifestyle often have non-economic value.

In summary, hunting and trapping in the Northwest Territories have very important cultural, social, and economic value. The activities are parts of northern and aboriginal cultures, and they help to connect people to the environment and to the land. They also provide high-quality food, which is linked to better human health in northern communities.

As a government and as a department, we strongly support this activity. We believe it links the land and environment to the health and cultural well-being of citizens.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you very much, Mr. Walz. You're well under your time, so I appreciate that.

I'm going to move to Mr. John Tramburg, vice-president of Cabela's Canada.

Mr. Tramburg, go ahead, please.

[John Tramburg, Vice President, Cabela's Canada & Outdoor Services, Canadian Division, Cabela's Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the opportunity this morning.

As previously stated, I serve as the vice-president of Cabela's Canada and Outdoor Services. As you would imagine, being a vice-president of Cabela's Canada includes providing oversight and leadership of our corporate office located in Winnipeg, our seven retail locations, and our e-commerce site. Mr. Darin Brecht is our director of finance and e-commerce, and he will speak shortly.

At Cabela's Outdoor Services, a group here in Sidney, Nebraska, we book hunting and fishing excursions literally throughout the world, particularly in North America.

Cabela's was truly thrilled to join the Canadian landscape a few years ago, and I'll speak to that from an industry perspective. We view Canada as truly aligning with the heritage and values of our customers who we've grown up with over the last 50 years. Our data had proven that a variety of Canadian customers came from Canada into our northern stores, thus prompting us to look further north as an expansion opportunity, which we did.

In our view, our industry has a passion for the outdoors that extends well beyond selling merchandise. In the words of our founder, Dick Cabela, many years ago, we sell fun. What we've come to learn about the Canadian landscape is that we sell fun and many goods that are deemed necessities by a variety of people who look to our products as a way to live their life.

As we open every new store, and in every existing store, we place a manager who is solely responsible for connecting with our local communities through booking our conference rooms free of charge to local organizations, coordinating fishing excursions, and helping to ensure outdoor lifestyles connect with and extend even further into local communities.

Our expansion has been well received. To date we have seven locations across Canada. In a few weeks we will open in Moncton, New Brunswick, and then this fall in Calgary. Next year we will be represented in Ottawa, as well as in Abbotsford, with a few more store on the drawing board as we continue to expand throughout the country.

Our growth is fuelled by Canadians' passions for the outdoors, a connection that goes beyond a retail transaction to being a way for people to live their personal lives in everything they do.

Our employees are referred to as outfitters. Something we look at, beyond the fact that they know their merchandise, is that they can live their lives and connect to our customers. If you enter the fishing department of one of our locations, you will find Canadians who truly know the local lakes, what is biting at what time, and what not to use. Those are the people we're looking for to be great outfitters in our locations.

As we've grown up in Canada over the last couple of years, we've customized our retail assortment based on what we've learned specifically from what our Canadian customers have asked us. We've expanded our trapping assortment. That didn't exist a few years ago. We've learned to add that. We've revised our hunting and soft goods assortment to be more reflective of the conditions for which people need products.

We continue to improve daily, weekly, and seasonally in different assortments. As an example, we opened our Nanaimo, British Columbia, location last year and changed our fishing assortment, as you would well imagine, rather considerably. To that store alone we added over 4,000 SKUs, or different product types, for fishing, based on what we had heard from our local communities.

As much as we are focused on opening up east to west, in Abbotsford as well as in Ottawa, we do serve a fair number of our remote communities in Canada. Our direct-channel business, or e-commerce, which serves customers through a catalogue business as well as an Internet site, www.cabelas.ca, ships a variety of packages into such areas as the Northwest Territories.

On a personal note, I had a chance to live in Canada for three years, in Winnipeg. Our family experienced the best of the Canadian outdoors from Lake of the Woods pickerel—Darin will talk about his personal experiences, but Darin and I have had a few good times on Lake of the Woods—to Manitoba geese, Saskatchewan white-tail, and Alberta moose. My family, my friends, and I were truly impressed with what Canada has to offer. Canadians' passion for the outdoors is truly unique and is ingrained in their lifestyles and their heritage.

Cabela's customers' passions and our passions for the outdoors are very similar across North America.

I'm going to turn to Darin at this point, who is our director of finance and e-commerce, to talk about not only his personal experience but also the hundreds of thousands of customers who visit our website, and what they're looking at.

[Darin Brecht, Director, Finance & E-Commerce, Canadian Division, Cabela's Canada]

Good morning, and thank you, Mr. Chairman and honourable members, for the opportunity to speak to you today.

My name is Darin Brecht. I'm the director of finance and e-commerce for Cabela's Canada. I'm going to talk briefly not just from a retail perspective, but from a personal perspective, as a Canadian citizen.

My father's side is from the municipality of Viscount, Saskatchewan, and my mother is from Alonsa, Manitoba. Hunting has played a pivotal role on both sides of my family, in our history and in our roots. I grew up with stories of life on the prairie in the distant and not-so-distant past, when you consumed what you grew in good times and you supplemented from the land, the forest, and the water around you in less prosperous times. My father and grandfathers all held a high level of respect for wildlife and the land they hunted and trapped on, and they instilled a deep and important lesson in each of us about the role we play in protecting our land and sustaining the wildlife for generations to follow.

John has told you that at Cabela's we look at ourselves as selling fun. I've always looked at us as selling fun and as being a company that sells a connection between our past and our future. We sell that first BB gun or twenty-two rifle that a grandfather is going to buy for a grandchild or the first fishing rod a dad is going to give to his daughter. I want it to be said that we sell a link to a simpler time. If the number of licences sold over the past 10 years is any indication, we live in a time when hunting and fishing are declining among Canadians. As more Canadians move from rural to urban centres, our youth are offered interests and preoccupations other than the outdoors. As baby boomers age, there is less knowledge and love of the outdoors transferred to their children and grandchildren, and we will see a further decline in the number of hunting licences and in the experiences of the outdoors by our youth and our children's children.

We don't see one solution to this decline. Instead, we believe that part of the solution is for corporations such as ours, in partnership with local outdoor associations and governments where possible, to help provide our youth, both inner city and rural, the proper level of outdoor educational programs that will provide experiences and opportunities that they otherwise might not have.

The level of sustainability of our wildlife resources is also of concern, as evidenced by the closing or elimination of hunting seasons for certain species in our provinces. We believe it's important that outdoors people in all provinces work with our government leaders to ensure we provide proper structure, harvest reporting, and limits on harvests, so that there will be abundant wildlife for our children and their children for generations to come. It will require a great deal of courage and leadership at all governmental levels—municipal, provincial, and federal—to ensure that our heritage and culture of hunting, trapping, and fishing in Canada are maintained for now and the foreseeable future.

I'll turn it over to John to conclude.

[John Tramburg]

Environmental sustainability is not only critical from a retailing perspective but also, for Darin and me and a variety of our outfitters across our company, a matter of who we are. It's what we do in our spare time as well as in our professional lives. Lifestyles across generations are woven into the outdoors. Hunters, fishers, and trappers are emotionally connected to their heritage now and will be into the future, and teaching environmental stewardship to our children is absolutely critical, as Darin mentioned. That involves talking about a fair harvest and operating within the guidelines set forth in each province to ensure that we're taking game correctly and ethically. We need our governments' help in safeguarding our heritage now and into the future.

Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you very much for the opportunity today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

I want to thank all of our witnesses.

We are still awaiting Chief Allan Adam from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. He has not yet arrived, as we can see, but when he does, we will defer to him for his statement.

At this point we'll move to Mr. Carrie for the first seven-minute round, and I think he's sharing his time with Mrs. Ambler.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Brecht, I was wondering if you could let the committee know if you have an idea of how hunting contributes to the Canadian economy.

[Darin Brecht]

For the Canadian economy, I can't quote specifics. I looked at a document yesterday, which was somewhat dated. What was interesting was the decline in licences in Canadian provinces. I'm going to generalize here, and I apologize, but it was a pretty lengthy document. It was a federal document, by the way. It quoted data from 2004 to 2008. I think it was written in about 2010. What was interesting was that the decline of licences in Canada was somewhat offset by the increase in tourism by Americans and Europeans coming for hunting services.

John could probably add to this. He heads up our outdoor services department, which provides hunting trips, fishing trips, and so on, in Canada. From a tourism perspective, this has greatly helped what we call outfitters, hunting guides, fishing resorts, etc. We have seven stores and two more coming. We sell hunting, fishing, and camping gear. Obviously, from a retail perspective, it adds to the Canadian economy. From a pure tourism perspective, from a pure cross-border perspective, I can't quote numbers, but from what I saw in the federal document, it was quite an extensive contribution.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

What are some of the significant differences between licensed hunting in Canada and that in the U.S.?

[Darin Brecht]

I can't quote on that.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

John, do you know? Can you comment on that?

[John Tramburg]

It's a very good question. From my experience, without quoting specifics, I would view the Canadian outdoorsman as much more focused on hunting as a percentage of penetration. Just anecdotally, I would say it's significant.

If I could circle back to Darin's comments, just to give a little bit of scope, I would say we view the outdoor industry in Canada as a multi-billion dollar industry with potential for that to increase.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Okay.

I think you mentioned restrictions on hunting and fair harvest. Are those some of the challenges people in Canada have to overcome when they are involved in licensed hunting and trapping?

[John Tramburg]

I'm sorry. I don't believe I mentioned that.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I think Darin mentioned that there are certain restrictions on hunting in Canada, and you mentioned the importance of fair harvest. I was wondering what you see as obstacles to licensed hunting and trapping in Canada.

[Darin Brecht]

I am speaking not as an officer of the company but as a person, a citizen of Canada. We read in the paper, quite commonly, that there are restrictions. For example, yesterday I read in an article from April of this year that moose numbers in eastern Ontario have declined some 21% since 2012. There are a variety of reasons for that, but it certainly does put a downward pressure on the number of licences that you are going to be able to issue to hunters in a variety of provinces just due to the decline of the populations.

I can't speak to the reasons. Those are for the specialists. The decline does affect our business, and it does affect hunters on a personal basis.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you.

I'd like to go to Mrs. Ambler for the last three minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today.

I took particular note, Mr. Walz, of your comments with regard to families and the cultural and social significance of hunting in the north. In particular, I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about the Take a Kid Trapping program. Part of the reason I am asking is that, as a member who represents an urban riding, I still understand the value of connecting children with nature. I know that my son, who is a teenager, does not wake up until noon if you don't get him up, except when his grandfather and uncle take him fishing. Then he is up at five o'clock, and he is ready and raring to go.

Could you tell us a bit more about that program?

[Evan Walz]

In the Northwest Territories, the maintenance of that lifestyle is so important. We have embarked on programs like Take a Kid Trapping or trapper training.

I am going to ask our head of field support, who has his feet firmly in the field, to speak to it a little bit. It's all focused on trying to support and maintain that traditional lifestyle.

With the chair's indulgence, I'll ask Mr. Chambers if he can elaborate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Mr. Chambers, go ahead. We have about one minute for your response.

[Jamie Chambers, Head, Field Support Unit, Environment and Natural Resources, Government of the Northwest Territories]

Thanks a lot.

The Take a Kid Trapping program is partnered with our department and two other departments here. The way it is set up, it can be tailored to young children, grades 1 to 3, for day trips, or to middle-school kids for three-day trips. The schools always work with local aboriginal people or harvesters. The kids stay at their cabins and learn survival skills, such as how to make a fire. They typically trap for muskrats through the ice, or for beaver. It is all done with safety in mind.

There is also a group of high-school kids who go out for as long as two weeks at a time. Our renewable resources officers, who are conservation officers, also go out and work with the people providing the service and with the kids. At the end of the day, it's a pretty positive experience all around, and although the kids may not take up the trapping lifestyle, at least they have been exposed to it. It gets them out of their communities and gives them another option that is available in northern Canada.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

That's wonderful. Thank you. It sounds as though the children have a lot of fun and they learn some practical skills as well. Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

We'll move to Mr. Bevington for seven minutes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Good morning to the witnesses.

Mr. Walz, you alluded to the big problem we're facing when you spoke about the barren ground caribou. Perhaps you could describe to us what that has caused in terms of the harvesting of those animals, the kinds of arrangements that had to be struck with first nations, and the restrictions you put on hunting that species in order to protect it. That's one of the things we're trying to understand on this committee—the industry, but also the impact on animals and on the environment—since this is the environment committee.