Fisheries Committee on June 7th, 2010

[Marc Lanteigne]

That would be in zone 12, the southern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

[Sylvain Paradis]

In other words, if stock levels remain at a minimum of 38,000 tonnes and never fall below that threshold, there are no limits on the amount of fishing that can be done, provided this threshold, or boundary, is respected. This year, since stock levels moved into the critical zone status, the minister announced that if strict measures were taken, any further decline could be arrested and stocks could be given a chance to regenerate and recover to acceptable levels.

There was no such boundary established for cod stocks, which continued to decline. We can always blame the situation today on grey seals or on some other factor, but the reality is that stock levels may have fallen to such a low point that they may never recover.

The precautionary approach has enabled us to view the fishery in a whole new light. We now know what constitutes a healthy stock and we can manage the fishery to exploit optimum economic potential, while practising long-term conservation. As a result of this approach, we have reversed the trend and are aiming to bring stocks back into the healthy zone.

You were wondering how, given variations over time, we can determine a sound reference point. I think we now have a good reference point. In any event, this approach has certainly proven to be an amazing tool for us.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you very much.

I believe, Mr. Lévesque, you'll have to write a book for him and make sure that he gets all the information that he requested.

Mr. Donnelly.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have three more questions. I just want to pick up where I left off and get clarification about the decision for last year versus this year on the TAC.

Am I correct in saying that last year, with the precautionary principle in place and the science providing guidance, the minister made a decision to go with a higher than recommended TAC, and this year she decided to go with a lower than recommended TAC? I'm just wondering if that's fair to say. Or did the minister's decision reflect the department's scientific recommendations?

Second, given what this committee heard on our Quebec and Atlantic provinces tour on snow crab, many fishers and their associations didn't feel included in the process--or at least what I heard was they didn't feel included in the decision-making process. I'm wondering what elements of the community consultation process you think could be improved so that they don't have that feeling of disengagement, and so on.

Finally, Mr. Bevan, you mentioned in your remarks that the ocean temperature and conditions are changing in the southern gulf, and I'm wondering if you can put your finger on what you attribute those changes to.

[David Bevan]

Last year, if I recall, the precautionary approach was not in place for that decision. There was advice. It doesn't come in as an absolute number; it comes in as a range, with what the risks are and so on with that advice. But it was not against the backdrop of moving the stock below conservation limits. The limits are set according to the size of population necessary to prevent long-term damage to the stock or danger that the stock will crash.

That's what they have now. They've defined the healthy, cautious, and critical zones. And the response this year was necessary to keep us out of the critical zone and move us from the cautious back towards the healthy. That wasn't there last year to help guide decisions--

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

But was last year's decision within that range?

[David Bevan]

It was within a range that the science provided us, which indicated that if you go here you're going to have a possible risk of a larger decline than if you go at this point. But there was no question that we were in for a decline. There was no question about that whatsoever. It was a matter of looking at the risks and the probabilities of having to take a more difficult decision in 2010.

The decisions were informed by science, but this year the risks were just too high to not take the action needed to keep the stock out of the critical zone.

I think as far as the associations feeling they are not included goes, clearly we go through a long process involving the science and the advice, but I think it's a question of the transparency of the decision-making process. As I said, there's no process under law that defines how these things should take place and how they should be communicated, etc.

We're also dealing with very short timelines, especially this year with no ice in the gulf, which meant the fishery had to proceed early in order to avoid white crab. Had we not done that, it would have been difficult to prosecute the fishery this year, because we were running into the moulting process very early in the year as compared to in past years.

Why it's much warmer this year than in past years I'd have to leave to climatologists and oceanographers. We just have to deal with the reality we're faced with. We were trying to manage a seal hunt with no ice in the gulf. All the herd was way off Labrador and unable to be reached by people, and that's just the reality we're facing.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Does the department have access to science in order to determine why the temperatures are going up?

[Sylvain Paradis]

We have all kinds of monitoring activities to look at salinity, temperature, currents, and so on. The big challenge is that while the department embraced an ecosystem approach about four or five years ago, to be frank, it's a worldwide effort. Everyone's trying to start to understand the multitude of factors affecting the stocks, the productivity, the reproduction, and so on. We're just at the stage where we're developing models to understand those dynamics.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you very much, Mr. Donnelly.

Mr. Kamp.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, thank you for appearing. As always, you provide some good information. I just want to follow up on some odds and ends.

First of all, I'm assuming that you're quite or very confident in your catch information. Or is there any possibility that there's some illegal or unreported or unauthorized catch going on with snow crab in the gulf?

[David Bevan]

In the gulf, I don't want to talk about ongoing investigations; I'll just refer to historical ones.

We have seen, not necessarily in the southern gulf but certainly in the gulf, situations of collusion between skippers, observers, dockside monitors, and plants, similar to what was observed to have taken place recently in Newfoundland and Labrador. These are issues.

We do have a good monitoring, control, and surveillance system. We have high levels of observer coverage. We have vessel monitoring systems, dockside monitors, and a number of other mechanisms to keep control on it. We're confident that we have pretty good control on the catch, and we are monitoring closely. But I would also say that whenever you have these kinds of circumstances--you do get a lot of pressure on people to pay the bills, and they try to find ways to do so--we end up with investigations taking place and with legal proceedings.

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

If you have a commercial TAC of 20,900, for example, what do you think the catch might be in reality? What's the degree of accuracy there, do you think?

[David Bevan]

I think we're within a few percentage points, so it's pretty accurate, but there are going to be people who try to take advantage of it. The individual cases can add up to a substantial amount when you're looking at whole companies and groups of fishermen working to avoid it. But we're pretty confident that we're providing the right kind of deterrence. When you see fines that approach a half-million dollars, and more to come, I would point out that you're looking at a system that should provide some reasonable deterrence.

In addition to that, if they want to sell to higher-end markets, certainly in Europe now, they're all going to have to be subject to catch certification to verify that the catch was legal, etc.

Those things are going to contribute to compliance in the future.

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

To follow up on what Mike was talking about, I assume that the advisory committee produces some kind of document at the end of...or as part of the process. Would there be anything in the current legislation or policy that would not allow that document to be provided to the minister along with your advice?

[David Bevan]

The advice we give usually will include reference to, obviously, the stock status report. We summarize it in the memorandum and in the briefing material, but there is reference to the stock status report.

On the outcome of the advisory committees, generally that takes longer to publish than the time we have--i.e., between the time the advisory committee takes place and the time we need to get the fishery open. So it does get published, but it's not something that can be used to help inform the minister to the same degree as a scientific stock status report.

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

I'm asking that because I think it's one of the things we heard in testimony; they told us that they never knew for sure that the information they provided didn't get filtered in some way that they wouldn't have liked. I think they said it was very difficult for them to ever go and find out what the minister really did hear in terms of advice from her managers as opposed to this advisory committee, and just how different it looked at the end of day. But we can talk maybe more about that.

The other issue that was raised out there is one that I'm not even sure I know how to explain. One fisherman talked about the commercial biomass, which I assume you estimate through your trawl survey and so on. And then you go out and fish--say, 20,900.

I see in one column in this chart that was provided something called “residual” biomass. I'm not sure how you estimate that.

This individual talked about lost crab, that every year there was lost crab. Can you try to help me understand what he might have been referring to there?

[David Bevan]

We do a fall survey in the bulk of the area. The fall survey will estimate the number of males that are over 95 millimetres across the carapace. That would be the commercial biomass that would be available to the fishery. Then the fishery is prosecuted, and they'll remove or they'll ask for almost 21,000 tonnes. Some people would look at the biomass before the fishery, subtract the fishery, and the biomass that results from that should be a numerical value. It's just straightforward math.

Crabs in their terminal moult live about six years, and that's without fishing. They're going to die. The age structure and so on will give you some idea, but you also get natural mortality caused by a number of different factors. That's not easily predicted by science, because you have trends, but that's the “lost crab”. It's the crab that will normally die over the course of the time period between surveys. Not every crab that's not killed in the fishery is there to carry on. They have a natural life cycle.

Did you want to add to that?

[Marc Lanteigne]

I would just add that there is also residual biomass when the survey is conducted after the fishery. We assess the crab that is not being caught in the fishery, as David Bevan just mentioned. That crab is not lost, by the way. Managing a resource is about sex and kids. You need some crab to have sex to have kids. You need to leave some animals on the bottom to reproduce. It's important that these crabs be there, so they're not lost animals.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Byrne.

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

Marc, one of the things you've impressed upon us as a committee is that you have been refining the scientific process and that this refinement has led to greater certainty, even though there has been some uncertainty in recent years. What you're suggesting to us, which I think we're absorbing, is that the refinement of the scientific process allows for better decision-making.

Could you tell us, in an ideal world, what you would do differently to improve science over its current practice?

[Marc Lanteigne]

The science that we do for snow crab at the moment--

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

If you did not have financial resource limitations or restrictions, if you could do something that would really markedly improve the actual understanding of the circumstances of these stocks or species, what would you like to see happen?

[Marc Lanteigne]

It would probably be to maintain the research we do on the crab movement and the relationship between the males and females--vis-à-vis how many females and males we need. That work is going on, but it's not something that can be achieved within a few years. We'd need probably five to ten years of research to achieve this.

In terms of stock assessment for snow crab, I still believe it's one of the best you can find in Canada, and probably around the world. Our crab assessment methodology is the envy of many countries.

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

Through the mobility studies, we're picking up new information now, and it's very helpful to us. Is that an expensive process? You say you have a resource commitment for a short period of time, but if you could have an extended data set it would be more helpful. Just describe that to us. What would be required?