Fisheries Committee on Oct. 20th, 2009

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

--would you support the convention?

[Tom Hedderson]

I can't ask.... In any of those conventions.... Could I ask if the objection process was binding? Could I ask that? What about the two-thirds majority? Was that good or bad? What I'm asking the government is how in heaven's name you could let that responsibility of incursion on our sovereignty just rest with one minister.

That was my point. My point was made. I got a response back in which the minister indicated that no, things are bubbly-boo now, so no change is required--

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

No, that's not what she said--

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for taking the time today to come and meet with us. The committee will take a five-minute recess as we stop for the next--

[Tom Hedderson]

Thank you. It's always a pleasure, and I thank members on both sides for their questions. We'll go from there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

We'll call the meeting back to order.

I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome our guests today.

Mr. Brodie, I believe you're going to lead the presentation here this afternoon. I'm sure you heard us earlier when we talked about the timer and the timeframes that constrain us, so without further ado, Mr. Brodie, I'll turn the floor over to you. Would you like to introduce your associate as well, the gentleman who is with you?

The floor is yours, Mr. Brodie.

[William Brodie, Senior Science Coordinator and Advisor, Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

With me today is my colleague from the Department of Fisheries and Ocean's science branch in Ottawa, Mr. David Gillis.

On behalf of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, we welcome the opportunity to speak about the science within the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, NAFO, and also the important role of Canadian fisheries science and scientists within that organization.

Within NAFO, science and scientific advice is produced by a constituent body called the Scientific Council. Based upon their advice, the NAFO Fisheries Commission adopts measures to ensure the long-term conservation and sustainable use of the fishery resources in the NAFO convention area, which comprises both Canada's exclusive economic zone, the EEZ, and the NAFO regulatory area, the NRA, beyond Canada's 200-nautical-mile limit.

I'd like to start by providing the committee a brief overview of the Scientific Council, its function, and how it accomplishes its mandate. Within NAFO the Scientific Council is one body, which is equal in status to the other two bodies: the Fisheries Commission and the General Council.

The Scientific Council is responsible for a number of functions. They provide a forum for consultation and cooperation among the contracting parties—the member states of NAFO—to study and exchange scientific information and views on fishing activities and the ecosystems in which they occur. They study and appraise the current and future status of fishery resources, including environmental and ecological factors affecting them. They promote cooperation and scientific research among contracting parties to fill gaps in scientific knowledge. They compile and maintain statistics and records and publish or disseminate reports, information, and materials pertaining to the fishing activities in the NAFO convention area and their ecosystems. They provide scientific advice to the Fisheries Commission and coastal states as requested.

To address its mandate, the Scientific Council has established four standing committees.

Fishery Science, or STACFIS, is the committee that conducts the stock assessments that are the basis for the actual advice, which is then formulated by the Scientific Council.

Research Coordination, or STACREC, is the committee that provides a forum for the discussion of scientific research and studies in the NAFO area and compiles fisheries statistics.

Publications, or STACPUB, is the committee that oversees the publication of scientific information, including NAFO's Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Science, a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on environmental, biological, economic, and social science aspects of living marine resources and ecosystems of the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

Fisheries Environment, or STACFEN, is the committee that provides reviews of environmental conditions and advises on the effects of the environment on fish stocks and fisheries in the convention area.

Each contracting party of NAFO is a member of the Scientific Council and may appoint representatives, who may be accompanied at any of its meetings by alternates, experts, and advisers. These scientists generally participate in all the work of the Scientific Council and of some or all of its standing committees.

As a general rule, the Scientific Council provides its advice by consensus. All reports provided by the Scientific Council are published by the NAFO secretariat and are made available on the NAFO website as soon as possible after the Scientific Council meetings are concluded.

In addition to its standing committees, the Scientific Council establishes working groups and study groups as necessary to deal with specific terms of reference. Such groups created recently include a working group on an ecosystem approach to fisheries management and a study group on management strategy evaluation for Greenland halibut. These groups draw on a wide range of invited expertise, including scientists, fisheries managers, and industry representatives, including as necessary participants from countries that are not contracting parties of NAFO.

The Scientific Council provides advice to the Fisheries Commission on 18 stocks of fish and invertebrate species. These include species such as cod, flounder, Greenland halibut or turbot, redfish, capelin, shrimp, and squid. Some of these stocks, such as those on the Flemish Cap, are located entirely outside the Canadian EEZ. Other stocks, such as those on the Grand Banks, which are found both inside and outside the Canadian EEZ, are called straddling.

In addition to those 18 stocks managed by the Fisheries Commission, the Scientific Council is also requested to provide advice to coastal states on certain stocks. For example, Canada and Greenland agreed to submit joint requests to Scientific Council for advice on the northern Greenland halibut stocks in the Davis Strait-Baffin Bay areas. The Scientific Council reports on the status of all the stocks for which it receives requests and provides responses to requests for the total allowable catch or management advice, usually over a range of options. Where possible, the Scientific Council tries to quantify, or at least provide information on, the risks to the stock for each of the specified TAC or management options.

In addition to TAC advice, the Scientific Council is often requested to provide advice on issues other than TAC, such as an evaluation of existing or proposed management measures--for example, mesh size used in some fisheries, potential closed areas or seasons, etc.

The Scientific Council usually meets three times per year, generally for one to two weeks each time. The council meets for two weeks each June in the NAFO headquarters region, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, to evaluate most of the stocks and respond to the various requests for advice. It also meets during the NAFO annual meeting each September, where it is often called upon to answer questions from the Fisheries Commission pertaining to its advice on the stocks. As well, the Scientific Council meets each October or November in conjunction with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, known as ICES, to provide advice on shrimp stocks throughout the North Atlantic.

There has been much recent discussion about the amended NAFO convention. Although the amendments to the 1978 NAFO convention are not expected to significantly change the way the Scientific Council conducts its business, some of these amendments will clearly be important for the Scientific Council to consider in its work and in its provision of advice. Particularly noteworthy to the Scientific Council are the amendments that state that contracting parties shall adopt measures based on the best scientific advice available, apply the precautionary approach, take due account of the impact of fishing activities on other species and marine ecosystems and in doing so adopt measures to minimize harmful impact on living resources and marine ecosystems, and take due account of the need to preserve marine biological diversity.

During the NAFO process that led to the adoption of the amended convention, the Scientific Council was fully engaged throughout and provided its input into the sections of the amended convention relevant to the council's mandate and activities. In addition to the four points noted above, one important organizational consideration was the continued recognition of the Scientific Council as an equal constituent body within NAFO.

The existence of the NAFO Scientific Council as a scientific body within NAFO contrasts it with an adjacent international fisheries management organization, NEAFC, the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission. In NEAFC, the commission requests its scientific information from an external source, ICES; within NAFO, the existence of both scientific advisers, from the Scientific Council, and management, from the Fisheries Commission, allows extensive collaboration on issues such as implementing the precautionary approach and protection of such vulnerable marine ecosystems as those of coral and sponges.

In fact, joint committees involving members of the Scientific Council and the Fisheries Commission were instrumental in achieving substantial progress and implementation of key measures on both these issues. At the recent NAFO annual meeting, the ad hoc working group of fishery managers and scientists on vulnerable marine ecosystems produced several recommendations on closed areas for the protection of corals and sponges, which were then adopted by the Fisheries Commission.

The work of the NAFO Scientific Council is also important internationally in the field of fishery science. The council regularly holds symposia that draw experts from around the world and publishes these findings in editions of the NAFO journal. It also conducts various special sessions that focus on topics such as introduction of new stock assessment methods and tools to Scientific Council participants. It also works collaboratively with such organizations as ICES by forming joint working groups to examine wide-ranging species, such as shrimp and seals, and such issues as deep-sea ecology.

The chairs of the Scientific Council and its standing committees often represent NAFO in other international fora. It should be emphasized that the Scientific Council is not a research organization per se, so it does not conduct its own research projects, nor does it have the funding to allocate for such work. However, the relevant research that feeds the stock assessment process is carried out by the contracting parties of NAFO and brought to the Scientific Council for peer review. As noted earlier, the council does have a standing committee in which research projects can be discussed and coordinated among contracting parties.

Mr. Chairman, Canada takes its role in the Scientific Council very seriously. At any given time, Canada is likely to have two or more chairs within the Scientific Council. In fact, three of the past five chairs of the council have been Canadian scientists from the DFO science branch in Newfoundland and Labrador, and also chairs of the standing committees and well over half of the 18 stock assessment designated experts; these are the scientists responsible for taking the lead roles, conducting much of the analysis, synthesizing the available information, and presenting the individual stock assessments within the Scientific Council.

In support of its NAFO scientific commitment, Canada--DFO's science branch--conducts two major multi-species, ecosystem-based trawl surveys on the Grand Banks every year, in addition to substantial oceanographic research and other surveys aimed as species such as capelin. This work represents an ongoing science commitment in excess of $5 million per year, which has contributed to the building of invaluable biological and oceanographic databases for many stocks dating back to the early 1970s or before.

The results of these surveys provide vital information on abundance and distribution and biology that underpins the Scientific Council stock assessment process for many species and stocks. Without these surveys, which cover the areas of the Grand Banks inside and outside Canada's EEZ, many straddling stocks would have significantly less data for the Scientific Council to analyze.

Canada continues to invest heavily in ongoing and new scientific research on the NAFO stocks: $11 million over three years, 2006 to 2008, invested in new science projects under the international governance strategy umbrella to increase knowledge of offshore marine ecosystems and to enable sound management decisions concerning resources within these ecosystems. Much of this funding has come to researchers working on stocks on the Grand Banks for specific studies on Greenland halibut, skate, yellowtail flounder, redfish, capelin, and marine mammals.

Following the completion and success of this program in 2008, Canada renewed the funding for this program and it was made permanent. Canada now invests $4 million per year on an ongoing basis for science in support of international governance. This funding, combined with new funding for projects in 2009 and onward, has been directed at the study of corals and biodiversity, improving stock assessments, and precautionary harvesting strategies for Grand Banks cod and flatfish.

Canada is also engaged bilaterally with many NAFO countries on scientific issues, and it has recently signed a memorandum of understanding for scientific cooperation with Spain. Funding provided under this agreement has led to much new cooperative research in areas such as reproductive biology of Greenland halibut, annual multi-species surveys in divisions on the Grand Banks and Flemish Cap on a Spanish vessel, and joint participation in a large-scale, multi-year study directed at vulnerable marine ecosystems in the NAFO regulatory area on the Grand Banks and Flemish Cap. This work is realized through multi-million dollar collaborations.

It is important to note that Canada's investments are very generously leveraged by Spanish investments. All this research is, or will be, peer reviewed through the NAFO Scientific Council.

Mr. Chairman, in closing, we would like to acknowledge the vital role that the Scientific Council advice plays in the management of stocks under NAFO's mandate, and we are encouraged by recent advice from the council on the recovery of some stocks. Canadian scientists have a long history of taking lead roles in the work of the Scientific Council, and this is continuing today.

DFO remains firmly committed to conducting the best possible research on the NAFO stocks to ensure that the Scientific Council has the data necessary to provide its advice.

Thank you, and I apologize for going over my time, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Mr. Brodie.

Mr. Byrne.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

Mr. Brodie, on the decisions related to NAFO within this year's meetings of the Fisheries Commission in Bergen, were you pleased with the outcome of those results, particularly with Greenland halibut and 3M cod? I understand the Fisheries Commission decided to accept the largest possible range of advice and did not necessarily stick with the precautionary principle. If you are pleased with it, would you prescribe that as a model for DFO to use internally within domestic waters, that fishermen should be able to expect DFO to accept catch limits that are at the far end of the range of scientific advice?

[William Brodie]

In the case of Greenland halibut, the Scientific Council provided catch options at two levels based on requests received. Under one of these catch options the stock showed an increasing trajectory. Under the other catch option the stock showed a stable catch trajectory. Both of these options were provided by the Scientific Council, with a recommendation to go with the lower catch option if the objective was to rebuild the biomass more quickly.

In the case of 3M cod, the council provided advice at four different catch levels ranging from zero to a relatively high level of fishing mortality. I think the range of catch options provided in that advice was from zero to 12,700, with a recommendation to go to just over 4,000 at the lower end of the range. The decision that was taken at the Fisheries Commission was for 5,500, which was at the low end of the range. Under all the options provided for 3M cod, the Scientific Council noted that an increase in biomass was projected at all those catch options, and they favoured the low end of the range for quite a number of reasons based on the rebuilding of the stock.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

You noted that NAFO does not conduct research activities of its own. In fact, contracting parties decide to conduct those activities and then voluntarily submit the research findings to the Scientific Council, if I understand correctly.

We heard from your minister that the provisions within the revised NAFO treaties, specifically article VI, paragraph 10, are very important in order for NAFO to conduct scientific activities inside the 200-mile limit. If NAFO doesn't conduct scientific activities outside the 200-mile limit in the regulatory area, why would those changes be required in the convention to allow NAFO to conduct scientific activities within the 200-mile limit--extended in the entire convention area?

[William Brodie]

As I noted, the Scientific Council doesn't actually conduct the scientific research. This is generally done by the contracting parties under a cooperative arrangement. But Canada doesn't need anybody's permission to conduct surveys in its own or outside the 200-mile--

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Canada does require permission at the moment of countries--contracting parties or any other flag state--to conduct scientific activities within its exclusive economic zone. The provisions within the revised convention supposedly, according to your minister, meet the test of necessity to allow NAFO to conduct scientific and ecosystem studies within Canada's exclusive economic zone, yet NAFO does not conduct any scientific activities at all; it's only contracting parties.

It seems like a bit of a contradiction. It seems to be a rather forceful instrument to allow something to occur that never occurs anyway, either inside or outside the exclusive economic zone of Canada.

I'll refine my question a little bit. What is currently stopping Canada from allowing scientific collaboration with other contracting parties--or any bilateral or multilateral relationship with other countries--to conduct scientific research inside 200 miles? Why do we need to have this written into the convention? Under the convention it allows for a lot more than just scientific and ecosystem research; it allows for specific management measures.

Can Canada invite Spain, for example, to sign the memorandum of understanding, as we have outside of 200 miles...? Could we do so for inside 200 miles right now? I think the answer is yes.

[William Brodie]

That's correct. Canada can invite other contracting parties, other countries, into its zone to conduct scientific research, but only with their explicit permission and under very strict conditions as to what scientific research is to be carried out. We can also cooperate with those contracting parties and participate in the research, if we so choose.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

So if I understand you correctly, this committee was told that this provision was necessary to give Canada the legal option to invite other countries to cooperate on valuable scientific activities inside the exclusive economic zone. But what we're hearing now is that this is not actually the case. We can do that now if we so desire through the signing of bilateral and multilateral memoranda of understanding or treaties.

What's puzzling me is this: if that was the basis on which this was derived, why are management measures included? We're going well beyond the realm of scientific discovery. The convention specifically includes management and enforcement measures. That's quite off-scale with what this committee was told was necessary.

[William Brodie]

As a scientist and a member of the Scientific Council, I can't comment on the management or regulatory measures. Those are not issues that we deal with. I can say that in the drafting of the articles related to the Scientific Council, the Scientific Council was fully engaged and aware of the provisions listed in that article, as they pertain to article VII of the Scientific Council.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you. This testimony is quite revealing to us. We were told it was absolutely essential for conducting these vital scientific surveys and cooperating, multilaterally or bilaterally--it actually already exists. The revised convention is not required.

NAFO did sign an agreement to restrict the bottom-dragging, the auto-trawling, for sponges and molluscs in certain areas outside of the continental shelf. Right?

[William Brodie]

Yes, it was in effect outside the 200-mile limit, on the edges of the Grand Banks, mostly on the Flemish Cap.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

But if it's also on the nose and the tail of the Grand Banks, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, Canada has jurisdiction over the management of sedentary species for the full extent of our continental shelf.

If NAFO is now imposing a ban on auto-trawling, on bottom-dragging, to protect sedentary species, Canada already has jurisdiction for the management of sedentary species on the full extent of the nose and the tail of the continental shelf, even beyond 200 miles. What you're saying to me, then, is that NAFO has adopted a measure that will impose a management regime, a restriction on auto-trawling, bottom-dragging, on certain areas of the nose and the tail of the Grand Banks. This is clearly a Canadian jurisdiction. Sedentary species are a Canadian jurisdiction when they exist on the nose and the tail of the continental shelf. Can you elaborate on that? Can you verify it, deny it? Do the restrictions on auto-trawling, bottom-dragging, occur in certain areas of the continental shelf of Canada?

[William Brodie]

The measures that were adopted at the recent annual meeting apply to several areas in the regulatory area outside 200 miles. Most of these areas are on the NAFO Flemish Cap.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

But do some of them occur on the nose and the tail of the Grand Banks?

[William Brodie]

Yes.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Then NAFO has just exercised a management measure in a Canadian jurisdiction. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, we clearly have jurisdiction over sedentary species that exist on our continental shelf. This has now been surrendered to NAFO.

[William Brodie]

A group of fishery managers and scientists met to consider this. The Scientific Council was requested to provide information on the location of vulnerable marine ecosystems in the regulatory area, including specific information on corals and sponges. I chaired this meeting. We reviewed the information from the Scientific Council and decided to put forward some recommendations to offer protection, according to international convention, to some of these areas of high concentrations of corals and sponges. These measures were agreed to by consensus and then adopted by the NAFO Fisheries Commission. That was the process as I understand it.