Fisheries Committee on March 31st, 2014

[Kevin Stringer]

On lobster first, you're right. The lobster sustainability program comes to an end today. It's the end of a few years.

Over the years, we removed about 600 licences, removed about 200,000 traps from the water, established all kinds of new sustainability measures such as biodegradable traps, reductions in traps per harvester, and all these types of things, so it was a very useful program.

The panel reports—and there were two of them, the one from P.E.I. but also the one that came from the three maritime provinces—were very comprehensive and spoke to a number of different things. They spoke to marketing, spoke to the levy issue, spoke to a number of different approaches, and had five recommendations for the federal government.

The minister released something a couple of weeks ago, and she was at the lobster summit last week and spoke to it. We've accepted all five recommendations that came to us. They speak to ensuring that we have clear rules about how we work with industry providing a support function when it comes to rationalization, marketing, and those types of things as we have in the past, and ensuring that we have up-to-date modern information management systems in place.

We have accepted those recommendations. We said at the lobster summit last week, and in our statements generally, that leadership needs to come from industry but we will work with industry to make the change that needs to be done. I think everybody believes, as has been pointed out, that we're not getting full value for lobster. There are things that need to be done.

That lobster summit, which brought together governments and industry right through the value chain, is the sort of thing that needs to be done. They did discuss a levy process, which is being led by the provinces, and they did discuss marketing, but they also spoke about the federal government's role, and we've indicated that we'll be there for our part of that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

I'm sorry, Mr. Bevan, time has run out.

We'll move to a two-minute round at this point in time. We'll start off with Mr. Chisholm.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Time's flying. We have lots to talk about.

I wanted to talk about marine protected areas, in particular.

Canada has made a commitment to protect 10% of our marine areas by 2020. In 2012, the environmental commissioner's report was, I think it's fair to say, fairly critical of what we were doing to fulfill our commitments. Little progress had been made toward a national strategy. I'd like to ask you, are we going to meet that goal of 10% in 2010? Have you been working on a national strategy to pull together what exists now into some kind of a coherent strategy and plan?

[Trevor Swerdfager, Assistant Deputy Minister, Ecosystems and Fisheries Management - Operations, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

I think, first, to touch on the federal role, really there are three statutes that we use to establish marine protected areas, as you probably know.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Yes.

[Trevor Swerdfager]

The Oceans Act allows the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to establish some areas, the Canada National Parks Act allows the Minister of the Environment to establish national marine conservation areas, and the Canada Wildlife Act allows the Minister of the Environment as well to establish marine national wildlife areas. All three of those tools have been and are being used to varying degrees in a mix. The federal departments involved worked quite closely to identify chunks of the landscape, or I should say seascape, rather, that are of highest priority. So there's a lot of coordination among the federal community.

As part of the budget deliberations that you're engaged in here today, I'd also note that the government has renewed funding for the health of the oceans initiative, and so this funding base for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and for others with respect to marine protected areas has continued.

Insofar as the 10% target is concerned, I think that all participants in that process would recognize that's an aspirational target, and what one counts and one doesn't is certainly a matter of policy debate and discussion. Certainly the department is continuing to orient its efforts toward the achievement of that. The investments through HOTO and other things I think will move us along in that regard.

With respect to your question, finally, on the development of a national strategy, certainly we have concluded over time that probably it makes the most sense to work on all three oceans as opposed to a strategy that treats all oceans as the same, because they're not. The jurisdictional and management arrangements differ from ocean to ocean to ocean. Certainly the federal government is trying to take as consistent an approach as it can in its programming. But because the nature of the conservation initiatives in all three oceans differs, our focus—while maintaining national consistency—is much more ocean by ocean than on a single “one size fits all” in all three ocean contexts.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

So there won't be any national system?

[Trevor Swerdfager]

Well, there will be a national—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Sorry, we're way over time here, so thank you.

Mr. Sopuck.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Regarding the Pacific salmon run again, is it fairly safe to conclude, given that net-pen aquaculture has been going on on the west coast since 1985, and given the high run of salmon in 2010, and the expected terrific runs this fall, that the current management regime for net-pen aquaculture on the west coast is doing its job?

[Trevor Swerdfager]

I think in terms of drawing conclusions to a predicted run of salmon, and then tying that back to a management regime, what we'll need to do is see if the runs in fact come along those ways, and so on.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Fair enough.

[Trevor Swerdfager]

But having said that, I think it's true that the environmental regime, the management regime in place for aquaculture in British Columbia, largely in the context of the Fisheries Act regulations that the government passed some time ago, do in fact put in place very strong environmental safeguards, both in terms of the operation of the farms themselves and the movement of fish between and from farms. It would certainly allow one to come to a conclusion that the system is working well.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Okay, thanks.

I'm going to be really quick because there's no time, but I'm going to ask the question anyway. In terms of the east coast, the Atlantic salmon, what can we do to enhance Atlantic salmon stocks, given that some of them are not in very good shape?

[David Bevan]

We have is river-by-river measures, so we have conservation limits that we're looking at achieving on each river. We have seen significant differences in at-sea survival. If you look at the inner Bay of Fundy, those are very stressed stocks. They're endangered. We have not been able to find the exact answers as to why those fish make a one-way journey out of the rivers into the ocean and don't come back. Others are more productive. It varies by river. So what we're doing is considering each river individually and setting up the appropriate angling and fishing controls for that river in an attempt to meet the conservation levels. When I was involved with NASCO, we set up a collaborative agreement called SALSEA, Salmon at Sea. It's research to try to get a handle on what is going on in the high seas environment that's having an impact on Atlantic salmon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chisholm.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I'm going to ask you a few quick questions.

One, in response to that last question and particularly regarding the southern uplands Atlantic salmon, why was the decision made to bulldoze the Mersey River biodiversity station if there was any attempt to show a commitment toward the survival of the Atlantic salmon, particularly that strain?

Two, the reports on plans and priorities of the department indicate that there is a moderate risk that the department may experience challenges in responding to hazards and crises. This is regarding the coast guard. I wonder if you would please expand on that. The main estimates indicated a decrease of $31 million over two years for the aboriginal strategies and governance file. I wonder if you could also answer that.

[David Gillis]

The Mersey initiative was obviously part of the budget measures that we spoke about more generally earlier in the session. In a nutshell, previously we had three facilities that were contributing to our efforts to do research and to maintain the genetic stock of Atlantic salmon, especially in the inner Bay of Fundy in the Atlantic Canadian area, and we determined that we would be able to maintain that program with just two of those facilities. We were able to bring that efficiency to that program.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

You haven't yet. You bulldozed the plant. You haven't been able to bring the efficiency.

[David Gillis]

Particularly at Mactaquac we've been able to maintain the Atlantic salmon genetic program through doing more of the work at Mactaquac.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

You're out of time, Mr. Chisholm.

Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I have two quick questions.

One, the minister mentioned that 1,500 scientists are part of our operations, and I'd appreciate some comment on how those scientists are contributing, how we're leveraging their work. We have the West Van lab in the riding I represent, which I visited with the scientists. They're very proud of their efforts.

Two, there was a lot of discussion about the procurement strategy and the $360-million coast guard contract, widely lauded as a tribute to our national procurement. I wonder if you'd comment on the jobs and growth consequences of that. Although the contract was let to an enterprise in the riding I represent it's supposed to be good for the whole nation.

[Marc Grégoire]

We'll start with the fleet renewal. We have more than one contract. That contract is with the Vancouver shipyard. This is to build the large vessels, to ensure the building of all the non-armed vessels of the government, all the coast guard vessels over the next 30 years. We have other contracts that we will establish elsewhere in the country for the smaller vessels. We also have received money for the helicopter fleet renewals, so we hope to be signing contracts for the acquisition of new helicopters soon.

I have spoken already about the $360 million for vessel life extension. That will be spread out in various shipyards in the country.

[David Gillis]

With regard to the science program, very certainly science remains a foundational program for all the management and policy programs in the department. Recently our coverage across the department has expanded to 100% because our climate change programming is now having us play a direct role with small craft harbours and our friends in the coast guard that we had a very modest amount of interaction with in the past. It is a very broad program and it's broadening.

Leverage is a very important word for us these days. We do a lot of collaboration with other science providers both inside and outside the country, and it allows us to extend the resources that we have available for science to bring a much wider benefit to questions related to our mandate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Leef.