Fisheries Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2018

[The Chair, Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)]

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we will have a briefing on the reports of the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, spring 2018.

Before we begin the official part of it, I will welcome some fill-in members.

Mr. Albrecht, member for Kitchener—Conestoga, welcome. It's an area that I am very familiar with. I have family in that area and visit there often.

[Harold Albrecht, Kitchener—Conestoga, CPC]

Come and visit.

[The Chair]

I certainly will.

As well, we have somebody who is no stranger to this committee, Mr. Sopuck member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa.

Welcome back. I look forward to your participation.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Today, of course, we have the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, Julie Gelfand. Accompanying her is Sharon Clark, principal.

Ms. Gelfand, I understand you're going to start off with a statement, and then we'll go into a round of questioning. Begin when you're ready.

[Julie Gelfand, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General]

Okay.

Mr. Chair, I am pleased to be here today to discuss my report on salmon farming, which was presented to Parliament in April 2018.

I am accompanied by Sharon Clark, the principal responsible for this audit.

In our audit, we examined whether Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency oversaw the salmon farming industry in order to protect wild fish. This industry creates risks for wild fish, including exposure to diseases, drugs and pesticides.

We found that Fisheries and Oceans Canada did conduct research on these and other risks. We also found that the department determined where salmon farms could be located or expanded and under what conditions farms could operate. However, we found that the department had completed only one out of 10 risk assessments of key known diseases that it had committed to conducting by 2020 in response to the recommendations of the Cohen commission.

We have noted that the department announced last month that it has launched a second risk assessment to examine the risk of a piscine orthoreovirus, or PRV, transfer from farmed Atlantic salmon. These assessments do not include addressing the risks of new and emerging diseases.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada was also not monitoring the health of wild fish. As a result of the assessment and monitoring gaps, the department did not know the impacts that salmon farming was having on the health of wild fish. In our view, consistent with the precautionary principle, this gives even more importance to assessing actions that could harm wild fish.

We found that Fisheries and Oceans Canada did not adequately enforce compliance with salmon farming regulations. Enforcing compliance is important since the regulations are designed to protect wild fish.

As well, the department had not set limits on the amount of drugs and pesticides that fish farms can use to treat diseases and parasites. This is important because drugs and pesticides used in salmon farming can harm wild fish, especially those living on the ocean floor. The department also had no national standard for nets and other equipment to prevent escapes from fish farms.

These findings led us to conclude that Fisheries and Oceans Canada had not managed risks from salmon farming in a way that protected wild fish.

Among our recommendations we stated that the department should clearly articulate the level of risk to wild fish that it accepts when enabling the salmon farming industry. We also recommended that the department establish thresholds for the deposit of drugs and pesticides into net pens, so that harm to wild fish is minimized.

That concludes my opening statement. We'd be pleased to answer any questions the committee might have.

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you, and with three and a half minutes to spare, that's what we love to see. It leaves more time for questions.

We'll start off, of course, with the government side.

Mr. Hardie, you have seven minutes.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Gelfand and Ms. Clark.

Obviously aquaculture is a big, divisive issue on the west coast. People look at the economic benefits. They also consider estimates that 80% of the salmon being exported from British Columbia is farmed, which says perhaps something about the vitality of the industry there, or it may say something about the state of the wild salmon, which, of course, is a serious concern to the first nations and indigenous people, sd it's a very iconic species, obviously.

Certainly there are specifics around chinook salmon as the feed for the southern resident killer whales and the health of that stock.

On top of that, you overlay the fact that you have Canada's busiest port there, and shipping traffic is increasing.

The Cohen commission report recommended that aquaculture be basically taken out of the realm of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. There was, in Mr. Justice Cohen's opinion, a conflict between the application of the precautionary principle and an obligation—that's not the correct word—but certainly the role that DFO was supposed to have to basically promote the aquaculture industry.

Can you comment on that?

[Julie Gelfand]

That's a policy question. It's really up to Parliament to decide where the regulation of aquaculture should sit. Should it sit within DFO, or I've heard potentially it should go to agriculture, for example—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

—or have its own regime.

[Julie Gelfand]

—or somewhere else.

What I can tell you is we found in our audit that Fisheries and Oceans Canada is at risk for claims that it prioritizes aquaculture over the protection of wild fish. The reason you could say that it's at risk of this is that, for example, there's no threshold for action when wild fish stocks decline. There's no limit at which point the department then kicks into gear. There's no validation of industry self-reporting on the use of drugs and pesticides, no requirement to minimize the development of resistance to drugs and pesticides, no requirement to monitor the ocean floor underneath these pens, little enforcement of the regulations, and even the funding of research, you could argue.... We found this in our audit. The long-term funding is given to promote aquaculture; the short-term funding is to work on regulations.

I think it's at risk of being seen to be promoting because it hasn't clearly defined these limits so it is at risk.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Let me pose the question in a slightly different way.

Your report highlights quite a large number of gaps between what the DFO should reasonably be expected to do and what they are able to do. I think the capability is there, but the resources have gone through ups and downs over many years. With so much not being done, and so much not known conclusively, it would appear that the risk management regime that DFO is supposed to apply is shot full of holes, which certainly must run headlong straight into the precautionary principle and that obligation.

Would you agree?

[Julie Gelfand]

Well, I would suggest that one of our recommendations was that they need to articulate the level of risk to wild fish that it accepts when enabling the industry. They need to show us how they apply the precautionary principle. We made a recommendation to that, and I believe they agreed with that.

That's really their call.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

If I can interrupt you, what they agreed to, is the department applies the precautionary approach, where appropriate, as a subcomponent within an overall decision-making approach.

This seems to run a bit contrary to public expectation that the precautionary principle should reign supreme. First of all, make sure it's safe before you do anything. Clearly, the risk management regime in place right now isn't capable of determining whether or not these aquaculture operations are safe in and around the wild salmon population.

[Julie Gelfand]

Obviously, we've identified many gaps. If you're asking what the department should do, or how they respond, that's really a question to ask them. I encourage you to bring them to your committee and ask that very question.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

We have and I'm sure that my colleagues and I will.

In your audit, did you consider the role that might be played by organizations and, in some cases, individuals outside of the DFO structure? I'm thinking particularly of indigenous people, where we have long heard that local knowledge isn't necessarily given as much weight as perhaps it should be, given that those folks live there and have a material interest in the health of, not only the wild salmon stocks, but in fact, the aquaculture industry itself.

On an ongoing basis, I'm also concerned that the aquaculture industry demonstrates a very deep lack of transparency. When it comes to critics like Alexandra Morton, who would like to come in and do the testing on things like PRV, basically, she is thrown off the property every time she tries to do that. She has to go and buy salmon at Granville Island, I think, to do the testing. That's a concern.

Did that whole realm enter into your audit of this?

[Julie Gelfand]

My mandate is that all I'm permitted to audit is the role of the government in managing aquaculture, so the objective of our audit was to see whether they were properly managing aquaculture in order to prevent harm to wild fish. That was the audit objective and I'm only allowed to audit the federal government. I can't audit industry and I don't audit the aboriginal groups or any other peoples.

In the next audit, you'll see that, for marine mammals, we did talk about how NGOs do help and participate in disentangling large whales, for example. We mention that, but it's not something that we have the mandate to audit.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Hardie.

We'll move to the Conservative side.

Mr. Sopuck, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Commissioner, a number of years ago, when I was on the fisheries committee, we did a study of closed containment aquaculture and of course, we got a lot of people who came before us strongly recommending that the industry move to strictly closed containment aquaculture.

In your view, if there was a move to strictly closed containment aquaculture, would any of the issues that you flagged in your report disappear?

[Julie Gelfand]

Closed containment is already used to raise them to a certain size. I believe that is correct and then they're put into the pens. Closed containment also costs a lot of money. It uses a lot of energy. However, it would probably deal with many of the risks to wild salmon, just because there wouldn't be any contact anymore. It would be logical to assume that, if they were being farmed and there was no interaction with either the ocean floor or any other wild species, including wild salmon, that most of those risks would disappear.

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

Of course, in terms of the ocean floor, my understanding is that these net pens are moved on a fairly regular basis. From a study that we did those few years ago, I recall that I asked specifically about the ocean floor and the recovery time was about three years for the ocean floor. The effect of a net pen on the ocean floor is clearly temporary, just like a clear cut is a temporary event in a forest.

Given the state of wild fish stocks around the world, especially high seas ocean fish stocks that are in deep trouble, can we make the conclusion that every farmed fish that is sold is one less wild salmon that needs to be caught?

[Julie Gelfand]

I believe in our audit we indicate that approximately—and I'm going to say 50%, but it might be more—of the fish that we are consuming worldwide are farmed. This industry is an important source of protein worldwide and much of the fish that we're eating is farmed at this point. I can't go that far, but I can tell you it's obvious that farmed fish is important. I can't remember what paragraph it's in—right at the beginning.

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

That's fine. I accept that.

I think this is a devilishly difficult question; it is not easy, given for example that in terrestrial environments, when there are farmed elk we have the outbreak of CWD. I know that's not necessarily germane to this, but when wild animals are put in closed environments, there can be some issues.

That said, however, bison—a wild species—are raised in closed environments, and they seem to do very well. Among fish, the shellfish do well, and we have other fish, such as tilapia and we have this issue.

This is not an easy issue for anybody, and I'm constantly amazed at people who make absolutely definitive statements that a net pen must go based on very tenuous information. On the other hand, I think you have flagged some very important issues that need to be looked at.

Interestingly, off the coast of B.C., net pen aquaculture started in 1985, based on the limited research that I did. Yet in 2010, 2014 and 2018, the sockeye salmon runs in the Fraser were at absolute record levels, and basically in 2014 they blew the doors off, to use the vernacular, in terms of the number of wild sockeye salmon returning there.

Can you comment on this phenomenon, the co-existence of net pen aquaculture and great spikes in fish runs?

[Julie Gelfand]

No, we didn't look at that issue.

I agree with you that this is a complicated issue. This is an industry valued at almost $1 billion just in Canada. It's providing a huge source of protein, yet at the same time, there are risks to wild fish. I did not look at the interaction between them.

All we looked at was whether the department was managing this industry in a way to prevent harm to wild fish, because they're also responsible for the Fisheries Act and thus for managing our wild fish. That's the interaction we were looking at.