Fisheries Committee on May 7th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

I call this meeting to order.

I'd like to welcome our guests who are joining today by video conference, Mr. Mike Melnik and Mr. Bruce Tufts.

We generally allow about ten minutes for presentations or opening statements—there's a maximum of about ten minutes. Then we move into questions and answers. There are time constraints around the questions and answers for our members, so if you could, keep your comments as concise as possible to get in as many questions as possible from our members.

Having said all of that, thank you very much for joining us.

I'll let Mr. Melnik begin, if you want to make your opening statement at this point in time. Then we'll proceed to Mr. Tufts.

Anytime you're ready, Mr. Melnik, the floor is yours.

[Mike Melnik, Managing Director, Canadian Sportfishing Industry Association]

Thank you very much.

I want to make sure the mike level is okay, because we had some issues with it before. Is everyone able to hear me okay?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

We can hear you fine, Mr. Melnik, thank you.

[Mike Melnik]

That's perfect. Thank you.

First I'd like to extend my gratitude to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for inviting the Canadian Sportfishing Industry Association to appear before the committee this morning via video conference.

My name is Mike Melnik. I am the managing director of the Canadian Sportfishing Industry Association, the CSIA.

The Canadian Sportfishing Industry Association is a not-for-profit organization that, as its name suggests, is comprised of Canadian companies and organizations that manufacture, sell, and promote products that help Canadians enjoy recreational fishing. From rod and reel manufacturers such as Shimano Canada to national retailers such as Canadian Tire, to television personalities such as Bob Izumi, the CSIA speaks on behalf of the recreational fishing industry, an industry that annually generates billions of dollars for Canada’s economy.

The health of our industry and to a degree the health of the economy relies on a sustainable, science-based fishery, open and free access to public waters, and a growing participation in the well-established Canadian heritage activity of recreational fishing. One of the keys to healthy recreational fishing is open access to the many quality fishing opportunities that exist in Canada. Without these opportunities, not only does recreational fishing suffer, but so do the related jobs and the economy.

The CSIA works hard to promote recreational fishing to Canadians through national fishing week each summer and throughout the year via mainstream and social media channels. Also, our association’s government affairs chair, Phil Morlock, represents the industry and the interests of recreational anglers on Parliament Hill. Mr. Morlock is a founding member of the Outdoor Caucus Association of Canada, which acts as liaison between the all-party Outdoor Caucus of Canada and the fishing, hunting, trapping, and sport-shooting industries.

We realize that this committee’s study includes a number of important issues. Because of time constraints today, I thought the best use of my opening remarks would be to focus on our association’s observations concerning the positive impacts of recreational fishing on Canada’s economy and on the physical and mental well-being of Canadians.

Over the past decade, the CSIA has produced two reports on the impact of recreational fishing to Canada’s economy. The most recent survey or report was released in 2013 based on the following sources: Survey of Recreational Fishing 2010 by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and also previous editions; Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources; Statistics Canada; provincial and territorial government websites; Travel Activities and Motivations Survey 2007; and of course sources within the Canadian recreational fishing industry.

The CSIA’s 2013 economic report entitled “Keep Canada Fishing” concluded that approximately nine million Canadians, more than 25% of the population, fish recreationally. It also concluded that recreational anglers spend approximately $8.3 billion annually to support their passion, and as a result they create jobs in tourism, transportation, retail goods, boating, vehicle sales, and much more. We have provided the committee with digital copies in both English and French of our “Keep Canada Fishing” document.

As you will note in the document, we present the economic facts of recreational fishing in a fun, relatable format with a number of comparisons. For example, did you know that anglers annually spend on fishing as much as Canadians spend on beer, and more than is spent at Tim Hortons nationally? Did you know that more adult Canadians fish than they play golf and hockey combined? Or did you know that an additional 300,000 Canadians bought a resident fishing licence in 2010 compared with in 2005?

When compared with commercial fishing, in 2010 anglers spent slightly less than five times the total value of commercial fishing—$8.3 billion compared with $1.7 billion. It’s a fact: recreational fishing has a powerful and positive impact on the Canadian economy, and the good news is that participation levels are growing.

The recently released results of the Canadian Nature Survey by the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Task Force on the Value of Nature to Canadians support our conclusions. In a 12-month period, the task force surveyed 24,000 adults over the age of 18. According to the results, 22%, or 5.5 million adults, stated that they participated in recreational fishing during the 12-month survey period. And 36% were women.

Also, each angler spent an average of 27.3 days fishing during that 12-month period. The last fact alone underscores that recreational fishing isn’t a casual activity that Canadians take up once or twice a year when on vacation. We believe it proves that Canadians are passionate about recreational fishing.

I would like to take a moment to address the physical and mental health benefits of recreational fishing. Through our national fishing week promotion each July, we are in touch with hundreds of thousands of Canadians through mass media, social media, and local grassroots events.

To illustrate the reach of national fishing week, allow me to share a few highlights from 2014. We had over 200 media outlets air or run our public service announcements free of charge. Over 100 media outlets held national fishing week contests in major, medium, and small markets. We gave away over 600 rods and reels, courtesy of our members, through media contests such as morning show radio contests or television talk show contests. We gave away 10,000 Catch Fishing books through local events such as fishing derbies and family events. In total we received likely at least, if not a lot more than, $3 million of in-kind exposure through print, television, radio, and digital channels.

National fishing week was created 15 years ago by the former executive director of the CSIA, the late Rick Amsbury. I have been in the lead role of national fishing week since the beginning, and every year I receive hundreds of first-hand accounts from excited Canadians who have just gone fishing for the first time or for the first time in a long time.

This past summer our Facebook page was full of photos posted by parents, children, grandparents, and grandkids showing them smiling and laughing while holding a fish and, in some cases, one of the rods and reels they won through one of our media contests. Consider this just for a moment: all across the country for an hour or two, because of recreational fishing, all screens were shut off by thousands of people, allowing families and friends to spend time together in Canada’s great outdoors chatting, laughing, and fishing.

While this may be anecdotal evidence of recreational fishing’s health benefits, it has the power to bring families and friends together in the outdoors to talk, to laugh, to share, and to create lasting memories. I believe it is reasonable to conclude that recreational fishing is good for the body, mind, and soul.

I encourage you to visit our website www.catchfishing.com and our Facebook page, which is under Catch Fishing, to see the positive reaction we receive from Canadian anglers of all ages.

Recreational fishing is important to the economy. We believe it’s important to the health of Canadians and we, as the CSIA, are eager to work hard with like-minded individuals, organizations, government bodies, and universities to promote and protect recreational fishing.

Again I would like to thank you for inviting me and the CSIA to appear before the committee this morning.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much, Mr. Melnik.

Mr. Tufts, the floor is yours whenever you are ready to proceed.

[Dr. Bruce Tufts, Professor and Fisheries Biologist, Freshwater Fisheries Conservation Lab, Queen's University, As an Individual]

Thank you.

First I would like to introduce myself. My name is Dr. Bruce Tufts. I am a professor at Queen's University. I'm a researcher. I teach fisheries biology, and my research area is fisheries biology. One of my areas of expertise is recreational angling. I've been at Queen's for over 25 years. During my entire career I've worked on different aspects of recreational angling and many of the conservation issues associated with that. I have recently written a major review paper in this area. So that's my background.

I have two important things that I would like to talk about today. The first one is something that points out the difference between commercial fisheries and recreational fisheries. One of the big differences between recreational fisheries and commercial fisheries is that the fish are caught individually. This means that anglers get an opportunity to select the fish that they're going to keep and they get an opportunity to select the fish they're going to put back. These days more anglers are putting back fish and releasing them alive than they are keeping them. While this may seem like a small difference, it's actually tremendously important, because it provides a foundation for sustainability. I think the biggest difference that I see between commercial fisheries and recreational fisheries is that, because of this process called selective harvest and live release of fish, recreational fisheries have the potential to be entirely sustainable, and many recreational fisheries these days are sustainable, which is in stark contrast to many of the commercial fisheries around the world.

This is the first thing I wanted to point out. I think it's extremely important. It speaks to the future of recreational fisheries in Canada and their potential.

The second thing that I wanted to talk about is a major review paper that I've written in the last year that talks about the economic impacts, conservation impacts, and social importance of recreational fishing.

Mike Melnik has talked about the economic value of recreational fishing in Canada, but one of the things I would like to point out as a scientist is that there's also tremendous potential to improve the economic value of recreational fishing in Canada. It's a sustainable activity. Whether we're looking at the east coast, looking at Atlantic salmon; at central Canada, looking at walleye fisheries and other inland fisheries; or other coastal fisheries, the steelhead fisheries on the west coast, all of these fisheries have issues that could be improved upon. There are numbers out there, such as those produced recently for Atlantic salmon, that show that, if the fishery was brought back to the peak levels of several decades ago, we could actually increase the economic value of those fisheries by, in the case of Atlantic salmon, 50%. So a value like $128 million, which is the value of the Atlantic salmon fishery, could be increased to almost $200 million by improving the fishery.

If we're looking across Canada, we see other situations, many of them where we could improve the economic value of the recreational fishery. In inland Canada we still have commercial fisheries for species such as walleye. It's been shown that in every instance, when you compare the numbers for the value of fish to the commercial fishery, you end up with less than a dollar a pound or a few dollars a pound. When you look at the value of those fish from an economic standpoint to the recreational fishery in the Canadian economy, the values are more like a hundred dollars or several hundred dollars a pound for those fish. The numbers are staggering. There are orders of magnitude differences between the value of a fish towards the recreational fishery versus the commercial fishery.

If we go to the west coast, there are also examples where, because of fishing practices, we have unselective harvest or unselective bycatch of species like steelhead. In other salmon fisheries, steelhead are an unintentional bycatch and are killed when they could have tremendous economic value if they were left in the recreational fishery.

I'm not going to get into any more examples, but all across the country, if we dig and look in detail, we see examples of where we could raise the economic value of recreational fisheries, and they are also a sustainable activity—very important thoughts for the future.

Another thing I want to point out is that in our recent review paper we looked at the conservation impact of anglers and the fact that, in many ways, anglers' dollars and anglers' time support science and conservation efforts for fisheries across the country. They're not just benefiting sport fish, they're benefiting habitat and ecosystems, which has benefits for non-sport fish species as well. Anglers become the main drivers of the conservation efforts that affect all of our aquatic ecosystems. That's one important point.

Another important point is that anglers' dollars, and in many cases efforts through logistical support, drive a lot of the science on aquatic species and aquatic ecosystems. We looked at the number of publications on sport fish and aquatic ecosystems versus those on non-sport fish. The numbers are hundreds and thousands of times higher for studies on sport fish. In many cases the dollars from those studies come from anglers' licence fees, they come from anglers' contributions to non-government organizations, and those studies are supported by volunteer time of anglers. That's a huge impact on science.

The last thing I want to talk about is the social benefit. In scientific circles these days, and in the scientific literature, there's something called nature deficit disorder. As we become more urbanized as a planet, and as a country, many people become so disconnected from nature that it's been described now as a disorder. As Mike Melnik pointed out—and we talked about this in our paper—the enjoyment that youth have going out learning what it is to catch a fish not only takes them away from their computers and their other electronic devices at that time; it also then provides a connection with aquatic resources and with nature that will be very important in the future. If we're going to look after aquatic environments, it's anglers and the young stewards who are coming along who will be the ones to put up money and effort, and to make sure those aquatic resources are defended.

That's the end of my talk for today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much, Mr. Tufts.

Now we'll move into questions and answers. We'll start with Mr. Cleary.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

Mr. Melnik, Mr. Tufts, I can totally relate with some of the points you made in terms of the positive impact that recreational fishing has on the economy, has on mental well-being, and has on our society. I picked up my BlackBerry, and the picture I have on the backdrop is a picture of a fire on a beach in Gambo in central Newfoundland—I'm an MP from Newfoundland and Labrador—with an orange sky, the best kind of sky, in the background.

Whenever things get a little stressful, whenever people like Mr. Sopuck speak here at committee—

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

—I open up my phone and I go back to that moment in Gambo in central Newfoundland.

On a serious note, I take at least a week, seven days, even in an election year, with my two sons, and a tent, and an axe, and a truck. I go to central Newfoundland, 20 miles in the woods, and we just connect. There are no cellphones. Even if you did take them, they wouldn't work. So I can relate. I think it's fantastic.

I have a serious question for both of you gentlemen. It is about the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and what more it could be doing to support the recreational fishery in Canada. What more could it do? What is it not doing? What are the weaknesses? Specifically, what more could federal Fisheries and Oceans be doing to support the recreational fishery in Canada?

[Dr. Bruce Tufts]

Mike, would you like me to speak first?

[Mike Melnik]

Sure.

[Dr. Bruce Tufts]

I'd like to point out that I go to fisheries meetings around the country and around the world. There are actually fewer and fewer of us scientists who work on recreational fisheries and the science associated with recreational fisheries in the country. In fact, I have very few university colleagues who work on recreational fisheries. A few of them have worked on recreational fisheries on and off in their career. There are virtually no people, maybe with one exception, who I would know in Fisheries and Oceans who do any science associated with recreational fisheries, and there's a lot to do. So that's one thing.

The other thing I would like to point out is that we have a history as a country in which commercial fisheries had tremendous importance and recreational fisheries kind of took the back seat. I think we're now entering a time when, really if you take a hard look, recreational fisheries have more economic value, they're sustainable, and there are many places where recreational fisheries and commercial fisheries are somewhat in conflict.

As I said, there's bycatch of steelhead on the west coast. There are walleyes that are divided up between the recreational fishery and the commercial fishery in central Canada. There are decisions that could be made there to make some of these species sport fish dedicated to recreational fisheries. We could change the types of harvest on the coast to make sure that sport fish actually can get through, that they can get past the gillnets that are intended for sockeye.

There are a lot of things that could be done. I would suggest it's almost a point where there should be a thorough evaluation of all the different ways that recreational fisheries could be protected and enhanced.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Go ahead, Mr. Melnik.

[Mike Melnik]

Thank you for the question. I'm glad Dr. Tufts is here to talk more about the scientific side. I'd like to just address the promotional side of recreational fishing.

That $3 million that we receive in kind from the media—and we're talking CTV, national media, local media, radio, television, print, social media—is generated by our association on a $50,000 budget. We do it all. I joke about it every spring; I get on my hands and knees and I beg the radio stations, the TV networks, magazines, Sun Media, Postmedia, to please give us some ink, some air time to promote recreational fishing.

We're happy to do it. We believe in promoting recreational fishing. But I think it would be nice to see some government funding to promote recreational fishing, whether it's through our association or on your own, through the DFO or through tourism, whatever the department may be. I don't think we do a great job of that in this country.

We need to tell more stories like the one you just told about the picture on your BlackBerry, the personal stories about how fishing has affected us positively, not just economically, not just because of dollars and cents but because of that family connection. I remember taking my three kids fishing for the first time. I didn't do any fishing. I was untangling lines and putting worms on hooks and taking fish off. But man, we had a blast. Those memories are things that will last forever and ever. But people don't think of fishing as the number one thing to do when they're looking at the options. I think we need to do a better job of promoting it.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Great. Thank you very much.

I'm going to pass it on to my counterpart here.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Good morning, Mr. Tufts.

I was fascinated by what you said about nature deficit disorder and the fact that the economic value of fish in the commercial fishery is about a dollar a pound versus the value in the recreational fishery, which is up to a hundred times more. I'm going to stay on the topic of recreational fishing.

Mr. Melnik, in your presentation, you said that each angler had spent an average of 27.3 days fishing during the 12-month survey period. You also said that 9 million Canadians had participated in fishing. Are there really 9 million people who spend an average of 27.3 days fishing every summer in Canada?

[Mike Melnik]

I was referring to the Canadian Nature Survey, the report by the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Task Force on the Importance of Nature to Canadians. In the 12-month survey period, of the 24,000 adult Canadians they surveyed, each angler on average spent 27.3 days fishing. That's not our survey, that's their report.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Very good. Thank you.

I just wanted to emphasize the importance of the industry. It's an $8-billion economy to which 9 million people contribute directly.

We need to ensure the industry's sustainability. But there's a problem that witnesses have often mentioned. They are concerned about invasive species. Protecting species' habitat is a federal responsibility.

In terms of what you've observed, what is your assessment of the invasive species situation? If we don't make a sustained effort to address the problem, what impact will that have on fish stocks and the recreational fishery?

[Dr. Bruce Tufts]

I am happy to speak to that. Certainly there are a number of different threats to our freshwater aquatic ecosystems and our coastal fisheries. Aquatic invasive species and habitat destruction are the number one and number two problems for inland fisheries as well as many coastal fisheries.

The point of my talk, I think, was really that it is surprising to me as a scientist that we have problems like this to figure out, that have such huge economic potential implications, and there are a few of us who are virtually alone in the room trying to figure these things out. I have colleagues in academia who work on invasive species, but I think one of the things government scientists could bring to the table when they are there is to have a focus, and to have issues they are trying to get to, such as how to enhance the potential of recreational fisheries.

These days, there is no one at the table from government helping to figure those things out. I'm sorry to say that, but I was told I could speak frankly at this committee.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Tufts, that's a harsh comment. You said there are no federal government officials at the table. That's putting it bluntly. Would you mind elaborating a bit further on the problem?

[Dr. Bruce Tufts]

Absolutely. And sorry, I didn't mean to say that in exactly the way it was said.

My point is that I'm talking about recreational fisheries here, as a scientist, and when I look at the people who are working on recreational fisheries these days in the country, it is a small group of people. There are people who work on this from time to time in academia, but in terms of recreational fisheries, there are very few people working on recreational fisheries. As I say, I don't have any collaborators who I can say, in the federal government who are still there, work in this area.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Tufts. Hearing that view was extremely important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you, Monsieur Lapointe.

Mr. Sopuck.

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

Thank you.

Thanks for the presentation.

Dr. Tufts, I very much agree with you in that the federal government does have a lack of effort in the recreational fishery. In fact, one of the reasons the Conservative members of this committee insisted on the study being done was to do an evaluation of the federal government's role in recreational fishing and to make recommendations for the future. The testimonies from both of you have been extremely helpful in that regard.

On that, Dr. Tufts, I gather that the walleye is considered the most valuable fish in Canada by and large, is that right?