Evidence of meeting #109 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fish.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Julie Gelfand  Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
Philippe Morel  Assistant Deputy Minister, Aquatic Ecosystems Sector, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Jaspinder Komal  Executive Director and Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer, Animal Health Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Hilary Geller  Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment
Deirdre Kent  Director General, International Assistance Policy, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Sue Milburn-Hopwood  Assistant Deputy Minister, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
Rob Prosper  Vice-President, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation, Parks Canada Agency
Wayne Moore  Director General, Strategic and Regulatory Science, Department of the Environment

11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB

It seems to me that that would be a major factor. It's like crop rotation or a clear-cut forest being allowed to grow back again. Our study showed that the benthic organisms did come back.

Getting back to the—

11:40 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

Sorry, Bob, I can tell you that DFO does set conditions for site locations and expansions. They have prohibited new and expanded sites in areas of high salmon migration. They have done that. They set conditions to monitor and control diseases and pests. They also do fish health audits and sea lice inspections, so they are doing that work.

11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB

Yes, that's all fine, but the only question that matters is whether wild stocks are being affected That's the only thing that counts.

Getting back to your biodiversity report, on page 3 you looked at species population declines in Canada. The source you used was the World Wildlife Fund Canada. Since it is an activist group, that is a very suspect source in my view. For example, you say that “Fish populations declined 20%”. That's a broad generalization. I find it ironic that the sturgeon, a species I've done research on in a previous life, is the iconic species that you've used there, yet the Fraser River sturgeon populations are estimated to be at 60,000 fish, and in Manitoba, the sturgeon populations, through terrific conservation work, are increasing dramatically. This is such a broad-brush table, how could we even consider this to be accurate?

11:40 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

We indicated in paragraph 3.8 several public reports that have highlighted Canada's biodiversity challenges. These reports are publicly available. We are simply providing you with them for context or perspective. They are not one of our findings.

11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB

Again, it's in your report, and people are going to assume that all fish are down by 20%, all reptiles and amphibians are down 34%, all big game are down 43%. I can tell you that white-tailed deer are almost at pest proportions in much of Canada. Again, these kinds of generalizations really aren't helpful.

Thank you very much.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Mr. Bossio.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON

As always, it's a great pleasure to have you here, Commissioner, at the committee.

I would like to challenge you on a couple of areas around sustainability and the SDGs, and what our government is doing, including our focus on inequality and some of the challenges that we face as a society around that, and competitiveness, and demographic changes, climate change, including the environment and biodiversity in these areas.

How do we address some of these? I think it goes much broader than the focused lens you've put in here, especially when we talk about a whole-of-government approach around equality, the Canada child benefit, the guaranteed income supplement, the tax cut, the Canada workers benefit, the massive investments in affordable housing, and applying a gender-based lens to the budgets, investment in child care, the increases in parental leave.

On the competitiveness front, you have the massive investments in infrastructure and innovation, and the impact they have on helping our industry to become more competitive and productive, creating greater economic growth. On the indigenous front, you have the ending of drinking water advisories, massive investments in education, affordable housing, health care, and languages as well.

On the climate change front and the environment and biodiversity front, you have the $1.3 billion invested in the protected spaces, the $1.5 billion invested in the oceans protection plan, the price on carbon, the investments in public transit. Once again, you have the innovation in green technology, the investments in infrastructure on water and waste water. It goes on and on.

As you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. A lot of these investments and policy developments of ours are going to take time to bear fruit. You note that Statistics Canada has developed a data framework to measure results on the 232 global indicators, but hasn't compiled that data yet. You have also pointed out that in budget 2018 we have proposed providing $49.4 million over 13 years, starting in 2018-19, to establish a sustainable development goals unit.

Would you not agree that these investments and this whole-of-government approach, the massive consultations that have gone on with the provinces and indigenous communities, etc., in all of these different areas really do point to our moving in the direction of the sustainable development goals? The plan that will be developed by this new unit, I think, will point to these investments that we're making.

11:45 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

We have to be really clear here. I was looking to see whether or not the government was prepared to implement...and we had seven specific criteria. Was a there commitment and responsibility identified? Canada got a tick mark for that. Have they established a governance structure for a whole-of-government approach to this? Have they done engagement and consultation with Canadians? Have they done the planning? Do they have a measuring system, a monitoring system, and a reporting system? Those are the seven things we were looking at.

You'll see in our report that we identified the five lead departments. In fact, they were identified by the government. We indicated what the five departments had done. Many of them had started to match what they were doing to the SDGs. What we are looking for, what auditors general are looking for, is this. You've signed on to these. Have you developed targets for the ones that apply to Canada? Have you identified what is high risk to Canada? Have you identified targets for that? Do you have a plan to achieve them in all the areas?

What the government has done to date is it has said, “We're doing a feminist systems policy. That links to SDG X. We're doing climate change. That links to SDG 13.” What I guess auditors would look at is this. You've signed on to the objectives. Look at all of them; look at all the targets. Decide which ones will be Canadian targets, and develop a whole-of-government plan, including working with the provinces and territories, and with Canadians, in terms of consultation and engagement in order to get to the overall objectives.

This is not to say that government is not doing a lot of work that you could link back to this. It's going from the work you're doing in linking it back, versus starting from the SDGs and deciding how we are going to meet the high-risk areas for Canada.

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON

As we've discussed with regard to some of your previous reports, a lot of the data and actions that we're taking aren't reflected within the reports because of the nature of the reports. This is not a criticism of what you're doing at all, in any way, shape, or form, but I guess what I'm trying to get at is that since then, with the new investments that we've made in budget 2018, it's too early yet to really be able to provide an accurate picture as to what we're doing overall as a government. Just as with our climate plan and achieving our 2030 goals, it's going to take a number of years before we start to see that come to fruition.

11:50 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

Well, as auditors, we were looking for that planning framework, right?

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON

Right. I realize that.

11:50 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

Have you got the engagement? Have you got the resources? Have you done your communication? Has somebody said, “This is important”? Also, then, have you got your measuring and monitoring system? That's what auditors general have agreed to do around the world. This was our contribution to that.

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON

Thank you, Commissioner, as always.

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Mr. Fast.

11:50 a.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here, Commissioner. It's good to have you back.

You've voluntarily raised the fact that both Washington state and Alaska have effectively phased out open net-pen salmon farming. Upon what basis were those decisions made? Do you know?

11:50 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

That is not something I looked into. I simply stated a public fact.

11:50 a.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Let me then drill down to what's happening in Canada. You raised some concerns about the monitoring and about some of the lack of knowledge there is within the federal government with respect to the challenges facing salmon farming. Are you suggesting that the science with respect to the declining salmon stocks is not yet complete?

11:50 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

Science is never complete, right? You can always keep studying things.

We did find that the government was looking at some of the science on disease and parasite transmission, the effects of drugs and pesticides, and the genetic interaction, so it's not as if they were doing no science. They are doing some science. When we looked at the governance structure around diseases, drugs and pesticides, escapes, and enforcement, we found some significant gaps, which we highlighted in the report.

11:50 a.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Just for the record, because there are people watching across Canada, perhaps you could highlight what those shortcomings were.

11:50 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

We found several.

In terms of monitoring the health of wild fish, at this point the department had made a commitment to complete 10 risk assessments for the principal farmed-fish diseases. They had only completed one out of 10. We also found that between the CFIA and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans it was not clear whose role and responsibility it was to deal with new and emerging diseases. There's one issue around known diseases, but what about the new and emerging ones? It's not clear which department would be responsible for that.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans did not know if regulations on the use of drugs and pesticides were sufficient to protect the health of wild fish. As I said earlier, there were no limits on the use of drugs and pesticides, and they did not know if they needed regulations to assess the cumulative effects of drugs and pesticides.

As I've already said, they had no threshold for action when wild fish stocks decline; no validation of industry self-reporting on the use of drugs and pesticides; no requirement to minimize the development of resistance to drugs and pesticide; and, no requirement to monitor the ocean floor. On issues related to enforcement of aquaculture regulations, we found that discrepancy that I also mentioned around the research.

We've made some recommendations to the department.

They should articulate the level of risk to wild fish that they are willing to accept when enabling the industry, and they've accepted that. Also, they have to complete their risk assessments of the key diseases, and they have a plan for that. They also have to figure out how to to handle new and emerging diseases, which was one of our recommendations. As well, they need to update a program to audit the farmed-fish health, which they've agreed to do. They need to publish information on diseases, parasites, drugs, and pesticides, because that information was not being made public in a timely way. Also, we made a recommendation that they start speaking to their counterparts in the Atlantic region to think about national standards for equipment.

11:55 a.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Thank you very much.

I'll give the rest of my time to my colleague Mr. Albas.

11:55 a.m.

Conservative

Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner and your staff, for the work you do for Canadians.

Just quickly, you mentioned that there's been some prioritization by DFO to do industry research versus doing research that would be of more public value on wild salmon. You've made a few references to their not necessarily having owned up to their obligations under the act. Do you feel this is a case of regulatory capture, or is there just an overly cozy relationship right now in terms of priorities? Is it just a case of economics, that you can do more science with fewer dollars because there's industry support? I'd like to get a sense of where the department is on this.

11:55 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

Are you speaking specifically about research?

11:55 a.m.

Conservative

Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC

I'm speaking specifically of a very well documented situation where a government organization that is supposed to do work for the public ends up being captured and does work on behalf of an industry, rather than acting as a referee. I don't think that's necessarily the case, but given that I have not done the work that your office has, I'd like to hear whether you think that is an issue in the case of western open net fish farming.

11:55 a.m.

Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General

Julie Gelfand

I'll be as quick as possible. I've already indicated that I think the department is at risk of people claiming that it might prioritize the industry over the protection of wild fish, and I've already explained why they are at risk of that.

In terms of the research, to be very specific, we found that the department provided short-term funding for research that focused on informing policy and management decisions. In contrast, the department provided long-term funding for collaborative research to advance the sustainable aquaculture industry. In our view, the department needs to provide long-term funding for research on the effects of aquaculture activities on wild fish. That's in paragraph 1.25.