Fisheries Committee on May 7th, 2015

[Dr. Darryl Smith]

We actually have a fairly large involvement. We have a wildlife trust fund. It's about 45,000 hectares of land that we directly have purchased, I guess.

We work very closely in cooperation with other organizations. We're fortunate in Alberta with the Alberta Conservation Association, which is somewhat of a misnomer. It's actually tied to an MOU with government. Basically anglers and hunters make a contribution to it out of every licence sale. Through that organization and its professional staff working with our clubs, we have everything from education through habitat programs throughout the province. But it's very much a cooperative approach.

This is a large province, and the difference here is that the development is spread across it. We're not like Ontario, which fortunately, has basically the north and the west. You can go 400 miles north of me, and industry, agriculture, and urban growth are still there.

That's why I come back to why we need to focus on these few intact places. Let's spend our dollars where they have the greatest bang for the buck.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

When you're talking about development being a huge influence—negative, I guess—on the recreational fishing, is it because more land use policies need to be put in place? What needs to be done?

[Dr. Darryl Smith]

Unfortunately, the way our policies are, we haven't figured out a way to deal with cumulative effects. We have actually pretty good policies nationally and provincially.

Let's say you have a mine, for example. We have an environmental impact assessment process that deals with the problems locally. How do you deal with problems when it's the collective of many players on the landscape? We have not solved that.

I'll just take one good example. We've had roads throughout most of the boreal forest here for some 60 years. There are increasing numbers of roads. The road construction standards have gotten better, but we still have more roads and more silt getting into the streams, so we need to have policies that can deal with that type of collective effect from everybody. That means really a partnering with industry, municipalities, and recreationalists to do the best we can, because we're not doing the job right now.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

In other areas, we know the management of the recreational fisheries is a joint responsibility. In your estimation, is there good corroboration between the federal and provincial governments at this time?

[Dr. Darryl Smith]

I certainly know the head of the policy branch in Alberta, and I know he regularly meets with his federal counterparts, but again one of the problems is that the federal legislation deals with basically the stream bed, and the provincial legislation deals with the watershed and the habitat around it.

If we're going to be successful, we need integration of that ecosystem-based approach, which means more involvement provincially and federally, because right now we're treating each item individually rather than the collective ecosystem-based approach.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Huber, you're with the Thames River Anglers Association, not too far from my riding of Sarnia—Lambton, so I am familiar with the Thames River. What area of that river are you involved with?

[Robert Huber]

We work from the headwaters, north of Woodstock and Stratford, right down to where the mouth, the river itself, empties into Lake St. Clair. I fish a lot in Sarnia as well.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you very much, Ms. Davidson.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Am I done?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

You're all done.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

We have a new chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

You do have a new chair.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you, gentlemen, and welcome.

First, to Dr. Smith, you indicated, if I understood correctly, the lack of education where people don't really understand, probably, where our fish come from and where the fuel comes from. I believe you indicated that closing the fishery is not really the answer to the problem that's afoot. Possibly, if I understood you correctly, there's a bit of a problem with what's going on in the province of Alberta and across the nation as far as the regulations are concerned. Let's say there's sediment into the waterways that's hurting the fishery production. You indicated that all fish could be under threat, if I understood you correctly. I'd just like you to expand on that.

As well, you indicated that possibly the standards that are in place are not adhered to. The committee would like to hear you elaborate on that. I want you to indicate not only whether they are not adhered to but whether there are enough regulations in place.

[Dr. Darryl Smith]

Our focus right now is that we do believe that the regulations that are appropriate are actually in place. However, we spend a great deal of time, in our estimation at least, in terms of meetings, policy development, strategic direction, and all of that type of stuff, where really what we need to have is more people on the ground looking at where the problems are and fixing them.

In terms of the compliance monitoring component, certainly one of the changes in the federal fisheries regulation is of course the ability for self-regulation, self-monitoring, and all of those components. I don't think that's necessarily wrong. I come from a health care profession where we're self-regulating, so I understand that. But what we do need is more boots on the ground. Let's fix the problems that are already out there. It's not about new policy. It's going forward.

That's the compliance monitoring. It's in my brief. We simply need to do the compliance monitoring. I think in many cases it's simply that we do have people on the ground; if the problem's identified, they'll fix it. But that's a huge part of it.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

I believe what you're saying is that there could be a lack of education, too. Quite often no matter what you're talking about, whether it's invasive species or a number of other problems that take place, many times people do not understand what's taking place, or the harm that they're truly creating. If there was more education, possibly, and more boots I would imagine, too, but education in itself....

I'm suggesting to you that people do not wish to cause harm and truly wish to know when they're causing harm. I'd like you to elaborate on whether the education aspect is very important.

[Dr. Darryl Smith]

Yes. It's again a shifting of priorities from management strategies into things that actually do create change in society. I'm a firm believer in education. We have a very good invasive species monitoring program, an education program, in Alberta. It's very, very good. It's educationally focused, and it's the way to go.

It's the same thing with the industry. We need to spend a lot more time with industry in saying, okay, it's these small problems that we need to fix. The big things they're actually very, very good at. It's the small things; we need to solve those problems, which is education as well.

Anglers are part of the problem. We have anglers here who have difficulty identifying a westslope cutthroat trout from, say, a native rainbow trout, or our non-native rainbow trout. I mean, we need education right across the board.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Huber, you spoke about the four pillars. One of them was oversight, that more oversight was required. I'd like you to elaborate on that.

As well, you mentioned the advisory group that was put in place. What was the situation previous to that? Am I to understand that the advisory group gives you advice on what the catch should be? How are the regulations set, and what does the advisory group do?

[Robert Huber]

The purpose of the advisory groups was to create better stakeholder engagement between anglers, first nations communities, commercial fisheries, bait licensees, and even business owners, such as charter operators and tackle shop operators. Say there is a study done on a fishery and there are potential changes that could be made, whether in regulations, stocking allowances, or whatever. There is a council that exists to be able to vet those ideas with and to share those ideas.

Southwestern Ontario, having one of the largest populations of anglers in the country and one of the most significant economic contributions for angling activity, does not actually have that council in place. We are left at a grassroots level, trying to go after those things and create those networks ourselves because the organizations that split everyone apart didn't actually follow through on the commitment to create those councils, at least in our region. There are plenty in other regions of the province, but not in southwestern Ontario.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lawrence MacAulay]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Weston, go ahead.

[Rodney Weston, Conservative, Saint John, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to Mr. Huber and Dr. Smith, our guests today.

I want you to know that you are a part of a very important process. This fisheries committee and committees when they work are really the glue between people and their interests and government policy. What we have seen is that the recreational fisheries partnership program, which is very much a focus of our discussions today, raised by my colleagues from all parties and by us, came about because individual members of Parliament, notably Mr. Sopuck and other members of this committee, lobbied to get the program put in place. What it attempts to do is take the concerns raised by you, and by people whom you know and work with, and put them into policy.

Dr. Smith, I want to get right to the heart of a concern that I see commonly raised in my role as a fisheries committee member and a west coast member of Parliament. I represent the riding West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country. You made comments about fisheries officers' smaller footprint on the ground in Alberta.

Just a couple of days ago, we heard a completely different philosophical bias from anglers in Manitoba, who expressed the view that you couldn't have a fisheries officer on every foot of waterway. You need some level of enforcement, but the stronger promotion of habitat comes from enabling the anglers and the recreational community to—I'll quote Shakespeare—take up arms and, by opposing, end the harms and prejudices to the waterways.

Can you comment on that? In your world, where would you put the resources? Would you put them into fisheries officers? Would they bring back the streams, or is it the recreational community that is best able to do that?

[Dr. Darryl Smith]

My point is that looking at the streams doesn't solve the problem. You have to look at the land. Really, without looking at the watershed, which is looking at what's happening within the watershed....

If I were going to do a shift, we have an excellent enforcement from a fisheries standpoint of fisheries officers who look after anglers. What we don't have...in fact, if you look at, from Edmonton north, the Alberta Energy Regulator, which is responsible for public land, really has no people on the ground looking at what's happening: where our river crossings are, whether we have a pipeline going through, and what type of reclamation there is.

I am suggesting that we need to go to that ecosystem approach, and it's more than having the so-called fish cop. It's about having stewardship people on the land base. I am an angler. We have a hotline here in the province, and certainly if I see something that's wrong, I'll phone it. However, you need a fair amount of knowledge to understand what's happening, which goes back to the earlier questions of education. Certainly, we have a very major job to do in terms of looking at our land base, which affects our watersheds.

[Rodney Weston, Conservative, Saint John, NB]

May I direct the question in a similar way to you, Mr. Huber? If you believe, as I do, that we're never going to achieve perfection, but excellence is continuous improvement.... It's learning, it's adapting, it's incorporating best practices. It's going back to engaging the community and getting the community to do the best we can in these practices.

I don't want to lead you, but what's your sense about this? Do you see a tension between putting our resources into fisheries officers and equipping the recreational communities? Where would you put your emphasis in terms of creating habitat?

No one is saying we're going to take all our fisheries officers away, and certainly in British Columbia where there have been cutbacks it's been in administrative staff, not in front-line officers, to a greater extent.

At any rate, how do you feel about this very engaging discussion?

[Robert Huber]

It's an interesting topic, because it has evolved so much with the social media presence over the last couple of years. The fishing community as a whole and the ways that anglers communicate with each other are changing faster than any policies or anything else could evolve.

We firmly feel as a club that spending the money on education delivers a far greater value than enforcement, and you can put more conservation officers out there, but you're going to get a better bang for the buck by actually focusing on educating anglers and ideally creating better opportunities for access to fisheries.

Looking at the actual costs of angling, we've seen our licensing costs in Ontario skyrocket over the last couple of years, to the extent that seniors are now actually charged when applying for a fishing licence. So you might see, provincially in Ontario, a spike in the amount of licensing over the next little while. It's because there's an entire user group that never had to buy fishing licences before who now have to go out and spend money on them.

It's also about productive fisheries. If people know that they can go out and catch fish, they're much more likely to go out and buy a licence and buy equipment, go out on a charter boat, or do something that's actually going to contribute to that economy. If there's no fish there, people aren't going to go. I think it's a combination of those elements.

[Rodney Weston, Conservative, Saint John, NB]

You also mentioned that it takes a long time to rehabilitate a stream. In your comments earlier you talked about it maybe taking generations. In your opinion, does this recreational fisheries partnership program set us up to have that longevity of commitment that you need to rehabilitate a stream?