Evidence of meeting #28 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
I believe we missed an hour, so I would say for that time that we missed, so it's adding on an hour.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Yes, before bells for the votes tonight. We have votes tonight.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Thank you.
It's been moved by Mr. Donnelly that the committee extend the time today to conclude at 6:30.
On that, Mr. Hayes.
Conservative
Bryan Hayes Conservative Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to do that. Today is House duty day for me, so I'm expected back at 5:30.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Is there anything further on the motion?
We'll call the question on the motion.
Those in favour of extending the committee today?
Those opposed?
(Motion negatived)
Thank you, Mr. Donnelly.
Mr. Donnelly, you had the floor. You were questioning our witnesses here today, so I'll give you the floor back.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I believe I had posed the question before the interruption regarding one of the main findings in the RSC report, which was that open-net pens have far greater potential and realized negative consequences to marine biodiversity than closed containment facilities.
I believe Dr. Hutchings, you were engaging regarding that. I was asking about the impacts of open-net farming systems on marine biodiversity, and specifically on wild salmon.
Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University, Royal Society of Canada
Yes, thank you.
With respect to open-net sea pens, as I indicated in my presentation, there have been a number of documented instances and cases of consequences particularly to local environments as a result of things such as the release of antifoulants, pesticides, vaccines, and other debris and waste that have collected on the bottom.
On the potential for disease to be produced and potentially to be transferred to wild organisms, and on escape events as well, these are the types of things that the panel felt would be mitigated by closed containment aquaculture facilities, particularly those based on land insofar as escapes could be readily preventable. There is technology in place such that, with appropriate water filtration systems, vaccines and pesticides are not required to treat the salmon. Disease does not appear to be an issue. There also appears to be the technology to reuse 98% to 99% of the water with appropriate filtration systems, and also to take the waste and use it for hydroponics, greenhouses, and so on. There appears to be technology in place to mitigate many of the documented environmental consequences of open-net sea pens.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
This committee is looking at the feasibility of looking at closed containment and possibly moving to closed containment, if it was deemed economically viable.
Do you have any kind of a position or a suggestion about the industry making that transition? Should it be full or partial, or on the west coast or the east coast? Should it be over a transition period of years? Do you have an idea of what kind of a transition that would look like?
Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University, Royal Society of Canada
Of course I am a scientist, and I have been reminded as such.
Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University, Royal Society of Canada
What I will offer is the following.
I can't really offer in terms of timeframes, but what I can say, as a fish biologist in this country, is this. We have an extraordinary richness of freshwater fishes across Canada. There are countries such as Finland.... I was there three weeks ago visiting a seafood processing company that is taking advantage of closed containment yellow perch, lake whitefish, and pickerel—what they call pike-perch, but it's related to our pickerel or walleye. And we have many freshwater fishes in this country that are very amenable, or appear to be quite amenable to closed containment land-based aquaculture. It might be simply a case of these being additional markets, additional opportunities for people who would not need to live on the coast to participate in the aquaculture industry.
That's from a biological perspective, insofar as freshwater fishes appear to be more amenable, or as amenable as perhaps some others to this form of technology.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Dr. Hutchings and Dr. Fleming, for appearing before us. We appreciate your testimony and the contributions you've made over the years to fisheries and fish science in Canada.
Let me begin by saying I suspect it's hard to please fish biologists in terms of what managers do, like governments. I imagine you're hard to please because you look at things through a different lens than those who govern do. But I'm hopeful at least that you see some encouraging signs in terms of the approach that Fisheries and Oceans Canada is making.
For example, on the sustainable fisheries framework, are you completely pessimistic, or are you optimistic about where we're going in terms of our ability to manage in a sustainable way?
Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University, Royal Society of Canada
That's an extremely good question. I'm very glad you asked it. The panel indeed concluded that we have some very good policies in place. The sustainable fisheries framework, which you just identified, is indeed a very sound piece of policy. It reflects in fact the fisheries policies that are being undertaken in Australia, New Zealand, Norway, parts of the EU, and certainly in the United States.
However, having said that, having acknowledged that we have good policies in place, what the panel concluded was that while we're making some progress, we're not implementing the policies as rapidly as we might otherwise do. Given that other countries in the world appear to be making some progress in areas where we could be making progress. As for where I think we would be making progress if we were implementing these policies, the panel felt that if there are impediments to the implementation of policies, those impediments should be addressed.
But I would just reiterate that this policy framework is a very good one if we implement it to its full degree.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Feel free to jump in, Dr. Fleming, if you ever want to add on to this issue.
In your report I think you referred to as maybe an impediment—although I'm not sure if that's the word you used—the absolute discretion that the fisheries minister has. Can you comment on that.
Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University, Royal Society of Canada
To backtrack slightly, again one of the issues that the panel was asked to address was to assess the degree to which Canada is fulfilling, or has been fulfilling, its national and international commitments to conserve marine biodiversity. The panel observed that other countries appeared to be making progress in areas where Canada appears not to have been making progress, and not just recently, but maybe for at least the last two decades. So the panel concluded that there must be something of an institutional nature that perhaps might be reducing the rate of policy implementation. One of those might be the discretion enjoyed by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans insofar as the Fisheries Act is not a prescriptive piece of legislation but allows for wide discretion.
For comparative purposes, in the United States they have an act called the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which is highly prescriptive, defines what overfishing is, defines what the Secretary of Commerce must do if a fishery is deemed overfished, and so on. Basically if overfishing is taking place, then in essence the secretary's hands are tied to some degree insofar as a rebuilding plan must take place.
But we don't currently have those stipulations in Canada. It's probably an impediment for the minister as well. It might well be deemed that the ministers might in fact prefer to have that discretion reduced to some degree, but that was viewed as an issue.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Your conclusion was or is that a new Fisheries Act would be a good thing, one that provided for less absolute discretion at least and was more prescriptive in its approach to how fisheries are managed?
Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University, Royal Society of Canada
The panel concluded that it could be in the form of a revised Fisheries Act or, indeed, in the form of an enacting new legislation, perhaps along the lines of the U.S. Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
This next question is on a completely different topic, and I know we talked about this a number of years ago when we were on the east coast talking about the lack of recovery of northern cod. I was talking to some Norwegian legislators last week, and they were not fisheries experts but they told me that the cod have returned to Norway.
Maybe, Dr. Fleming, you know more about this, but can you tell me if that's true and why you think it's true, when are we still struggling to recover the biomass on the Grand Banks for example?
Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University, Royal Society of Canada
I can certainly address that.
Certainly it is true today that the northeast Arctic cod, which inhabit the Barents Sea, feed there in the Barents Sea, and then spawn along coastal Norway about this time of year, are doing extraordinarily well right now. Upwards of half a million metric tonnes are predicted to be caught this year, and the stock there is in better shape than it's ever been.
One of the things that differs between the Canadian situation and the Norwegian situation is that in the late 1980s both countries were sort of in tough shape from a cod perspective. What Norway did was to put immediate restrictions on catch. What that appears to have done is that it limited the catching of immature cod.
By that time, by contrast, in the Canadian context most of our fish that we were catching were immature cod, cod that had never reached sexual maturity, and that's simply because of a lack of abundance of larger, older cod. In a sense, we sort of dug a bit of a hole for ourselves, a biological hole that the Norwegians did not dig. So that would be one reason why their cod stocks have recovered to such an extraordinarily good level at present, but there are other reasons as to why northern cod have not recovered as rapidly as they might otherwise have done. There are positive signs; they've just been very, very slow coming.
Conservative
Professor of Biology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Royal Society of Canada
I think Jeff covered most of it.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Good. I think my time is up. Thank you very much.