Fisheries Committee on Oct. 31st, 2006

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

As a point of interest on this monitoring and the cameras, in general would you feel it came as something imposed by DFO, or was it something that came up through fisheries organizations so that they could extend the fishery?

[Paul Sprout]

Frankly, I think it was both, sir. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans made it clear that we had to account for all catch. We had to. We cannot have fisheries in which people go out and catch fish and discard fish and we don't know what's happening. That is not sustainable. It won't represent conservation.

The department set a principle. We said we had to account for all catch. We then asked the industry to advise us on how they might best achieve that objective.

Further, when they did come forward with ideas, we tried to be flexible to try to minimize the cost to them. That's how we arrived at what we arrived at.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you very much. It's obvious on both sides that you have to have the DFO officers and monitoring, or possibly the stocks could be in trouble. You're telling me the fishermen might take a few more than they should.

[Paul Sprout]

I know that's hard to believe.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you very much, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. MacAulay.

Mr. Ouellet.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You stated that we must supervise fishermen with video cameras in order to prevent them from throwing fish overboard. However, given that they are now getting a fair price for all of the fish they catch, is it your belief that we will soon no longer need to supervise them because they will no longer be throwing fish back?

[Paul Sprout]

We're trying to avoid that possibility. We think that by putting into place the catch monitoring system we have now and by having the fishermen participate in the catch monitoring, we will be able to document the catch and we may be able to re-examine what is required from a catch monitoring perspective, but over time. Initially, we think the standards have to be clear and unequivocal and they have to be complied with, because we believe that if we don't do that, we put at risk the ability of the stocks to survive, particularly the bycatch. As a consequence, we put into place clear catch monitoring rules. The fishermen are required to respect that. Again, it's an issue, I think, of coming back and re-evaluating that and determining whether further adjustments are necessary.

So that flexibility is there over time.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

What are the sports fishermen afraid of? In your brief, you state somewhere that the recreational fishermen are somewhat worried about these new rules. If I understood correctly, the new guidelines are not removing more fish. Simply, instead of throwing the fish back, they are kept. So what is the fear of the sports fishermen?

[Paul Sprout]

That's a good question. The sports fishermen are concerned because from their perspective they have an important fishery that harvests some species of groundfish. For example, there's a halibut fishery on the west coast and there are other groundfish fisheries on the west coast where recreational fishermen harvest groundfish species. What they're concerned about is the fact that they want to allow their fishery to grow, to increase. They're worried that a commercial integrated groundfish fishery will make it more difficult for their fishery to grow. Their fear is that over time the commercial integrated groundfish fishery will affect the ability of the recreational fishery to increase its participation and to increase its catch. So that's an issue they have and one we're discussing with them.

As the minister noted in his decision, he said this is a reform of the commercial fishery; it is not designed to deal with intersectoral allocation issues. So that has been our response to the recreational fishermen. But their fear or their concern is, as I've noted, that they want to grow their fishery, they want to increase their catch, and they're worried that the integrated commercial fishery will make it more difficult for that to happen.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Economically speaking, amateur sports fishermen who go to the area to fish make an important contribution. Have you taken a position in favour of protecting fishing-related tourism, which, to my mind, is of great importance to the West Coast?

[Paul Sprout]

You're right, the fishery is very important from a tourism perspective. It provides great value to the British Columbia economy and we're very mindful of the value of this fishery. So we do want to protect and conserve both the recreational fishery and the commercial fishery, and we think it's possible to do both. The argument the department is making is that the reform to the commercial fishery is a reform for conservation reasons. It's designed to try to make the fishery sustainable over time. To deal with the recreational fishermen, we're saying “We understand your issues, we understand your desire to grow, and we need to sit down with you and talk about how that might be done in a reasonable and fair way to the other participants.” And the other participants include the commercial fishery and first nations.

So those discussions will have to occur, and we intend for those to occur, but we will take into consideration the point you have raised, which is that the tourist value is very high for the recreational fishery.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Personally, as a proponent of management through sustainable development, I obviously find your plan very interesting and very worthwhile. I hope that this pilot project will deliver results.

Do you also verify first nations' catches? Or are you simply letting them go about their fishing without any monitoring, as has been the case in the past?

[Paul Sprout]

No. It's important for us to document their catches as well, and the first nations that are fishing commercially have to achieve the same standards as non-natives, so they have to report their catch; it has to be accounted for. They have to have cameras or observers on board like everyone else. It's the same standard for all participants when it comes to the commercial groundfish fishery.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Do you wish to ask another question?

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

My question is a very simple one: how is it that we have reached this stage in the enforcement of this measure? In 2004, there were problems. In 2005-2006, you established... And here we have a proposal for yet another three years. Did the Department in fact fall asleep at the wheel?

[Paul Sprout]

No, I don't think so. First of all, it took three years, that's correct. But it took three years because, first of all, it's complicated. Second, it's controversial, and third, we really wanted to work with all the participants to bring them along in the journey from where we were to where we needed to go in the future, and that took time.

We also wanted, to the extent it was possible, to have as many participants as possible outside the usual commercial fishing interests. That included the communities, for example, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It included NGOs, recreational fishermen, and first nations.

So the process did take time. Yes, that's true. But we think it was time well spent, because we think the result is comprehensive. It is admittedly complicated, but it has the potential to really address the problems that were present prior to 2003 and to be durable. In other words, this could be a sustainable approach that would allow the groundfish fishery to go forward for the long term, we hope.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Merci, Monsieur Gaudet.

We'll go to Mr. Kamp.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Sprout, for coming in and for a good presentation.

You make a convincing case that the status quo wasn't acceptable. So you talk about having to find a new way. Can you tell us if other new ways, besides this one, were considered?

[Paul Sprout]

Yes, they were. We looked at a number of options in considering the approach that was eventually adopted. Those were debated and discussed over the course of the three years, from 2003 to 2006, and the current approach was eventually adopted.

One of the things we looked at, for example, was just continuing the status quo, which was having monthly limits, trip limits, and so forth. But when we looked at that, we determined that if we continued that, we'd be stopping fishing early and that we'd actually be leaving target species in the water. So if you were a halibut fisherman, you'd be stopping your fishery when you still had catch left to catch but had exhausted your bycatch, so you couldn't fish any more. That wasn't very palatable to most commercial fishing interests.

We also looked at variations on that. We looked at whether we could, for example, extend monthly limits or trip limits to somehow get around the problem that I just described with the status quo. But in all cases, what we found was that nothing seemed to produce the results that the current approach seems to be able to produce. Every time we found a potential solution, we found potential problems.

That's why gradually, and over time, the industry moved to this comprehensive approach, saying, “We cannot not fix this piece by piece; we will have to do it comprehensively.” It was at that point that they then turned to look at the bigger, broader changes that eventually came to be called the groundfish pilot.

Initially, you can appreciate, the commercial interests preferred to look at other measures, and did. But because of the rationale I've just provided, they decided in the end that the reform that was necessary was the one that the minister adopted.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Is it safe to say that the principle of monitoring, particularly with either onboard or cameras, was non-negotiable?

[Paul Sprout]

It's safe to say that the principle of catch monitoring was non-negotiable, yes. That's safe to say. That was a principle or a guideline that we adopted in 2003, and it said, specifically, that all bycatch had to be accounted for. That's true. We did say that.

We did not say that meant that they had to introduce this particular measure. That was negotiated, that was discussed, and so forth. But we were clear that it had to be accounted for.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Is it true that in previous years you didn't really know the number of rockfish that were caught? Do you know this year, and do you have any idea how it compares? If conservation of rockfish was sort of a key problem here, did we make some headway, do you think, in terms of catching fewer?

[Paul Sprout]

We think we made headway. Previously we had proxies for the rockfish harvest. In some cases, we guessed. In some cases, we had observers on board so we could count the fish that were kept and the fish that were discarded. We extrapolated for the rest of the industry and hoped we were right. In other cases, we did stock assessment surveys, and then by deduction we tried to determine how many fish could have been harvested. So we had a variety of methods--with uncertainty.

We think that in 2006 we have a good handle--maybe a very good handle--on catches, particularly bycatches. This is going to allow us to compare what we think was being caught in the past.

Our view today is that we are catching less rockfish in 2006 than before. We think that's happening because groundfish fishermen are changing how they fish. They're avoiding areas of high rockfish concentration, because now they're accountable for it.

We think the bycatches are down. We know the accounting has improved, and we believe that TACs are being respected. We have much more confidence that this is the case than we did in the past.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

If I'm a fisherman with a ling cod quota or something like that, and I don't have much money to buy additional rockfish quota, I'm probably going to work pretty hard at going where there are no rockfish. Is there the danger of small-boat fishermen maybe going where they can't go safely in order to avoid the bycatch issue because they can't afford to buy quota for that?