Fisheries Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2018

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

It's more of a comment.

I have probably five seconds to make the note that Kuterra, which is an operation on the west coast, says energy costs are not even in their top three major operating costs.

You made a comment about the energy costs being high. They don't even have it in their top three. Things have changed and they're going quickly.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Donnelly.

We're going back to the government side, Mr. Finnigan.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the commissioner for doing this important study.

I am from the east coast of New Brunswick. It's an important industry for my region. Having said that, was part of your mandate to look at the impacts of land-based versus the whole environmental impact that would bring, whether it's energy use, other environmental effects, or waste?

[Julie Gelfand]

No. That was not part of our audit. We did not compare land-based. We're just telling you what is out there in the public domain. We did not look at that.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

In New Brunswick and elsewhere, there have been several incidents of pesticide events and escapees. I'm really surprised to hear that there are no standards for escapees, for instance.

I'm from the Miramichi region where the original stock of authentic salmon still exists, although it's being threatened and the numbers are going down every year. That can always be a threat to that species. I'm really surprised by that.

Can you tell us why that hasn't been done? How come there are no standards or regulations to cover that?

[Julie Gelfand]

That's a great question to ask the department. What we can tell you is that it's operated differently on each coast. It's regulated differently. On the east coast, it's the provinces that are regulating aquaculture, and on the west coast it's the federal government.

The federal government and B.C. require their companies to follow standards for net support structures and for anchoring systems, but this is not the case in Newfoundland and New Brunswick, which are the two provinces that we looked at, because the provinces are responsible for licensing those operations. We actually made a recommendation that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada should initiate discussions with their counterparts in the Atlantic provinces to address the quality and maintenance of equipment to prevent fish escapes because, yes, there have been more fish escapes on the east coast than on the west coast. There are no national standards, but that's because there are two different levels of government.

I should just add that we didn't look at the issue of salmon aquaculture in Nova Scotia, and the reason is that the Auditor General of Nova Scotia has recently done an audit on that. If anybody's from Nova Scotia, that would be the place to look. That's why we didn't look at it, because it had already been looked at by the Auditor General of Nova Scotia.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

To me, that is where a lot of the problem lies. It's the administration and regulations, who does what, whether it's provincial or federal jurisdiction, and it's different in every province. Was that part of your recommendation, that we standardize who looks after what?

We hear a lot of the aquaculture industry saying that they should be under Agriculture because they do farming. If it's land-based, I can understand, but if it's in the water, I'm sure that there are other impacts from the DFO.

Do you think that would be a good, valuable recommendation, to make it one policy across the country?

[Julie Gelfand]

It would really be up to parliamentarians to decide that. That's your job.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

It would be up to us.

[Julie Gelfand]

My job is that once you tell me there is a law, I can tell you how well it has been implemented.

You could pick up a law that says we want monkeys to jump all over the buildings. Let's say you pass that law. I could tell you how well monkeys are doing jumping around the buildings, but I can't actually make a recommendation that says you shouldn't have monkeys jumping on the buildings. That's your job. You pass the law.

When Parliament passes the law, my job is to tell you whether or not it's being properly implemented.

In this case, I'm allowed to audit the federal government. I can make a comment in our audit, which we did and which said we can't really look too much at the east coast because the feds are not really involved very much on the east coast. It's mainly the provinces.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Have you looked at other countries and jurisdictions? How do we compare? Are we the bad industry? How do we compare with the industry in Europe and elsewhere?

[Julie Gelfand]

I don't believe we did very much benchmarking in this study. We audited our government and how well our government is doing implementing the rules that it has initiated.

[Sharon Clark]

Given the different situations with different countries, it was difficult to compare apples and oranges.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

In your opinion, do you think that we can regulate the industry to be sustainable and safe? Do you think it's possible? Can we prevent the escapes? Can we make sure there are no illegal pesticides? Can we monitor the waste on the bottom? Is that possible to a point where we could say that we finally got it and it can be done?

[Julie Gelfand]

That's a great question. We didn't audit that question.

We audited how well the federal government is implementing the regulations that it has already put in place. We've identified a series of key risks and we made a series of recommendations. If those recommendations were implemented, if we were monitoring all of these things and if we had regulations that we knew were working, perhaps we could get there.

It's not for me to opine on that. I can only tell you what's in our audit, and what we looked at was how well the federal government was doing implementing the aquaculture regulations that it has in place.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Are we increasing the land-based production side of it? Do you know if it's ever going to be a viable option?

[Julie Gelfand]

We didn't look at that. We do indicate in our audit that many fish farms start off with small fish in those land-based containment areas and then they are transferred into the big pens, but we did not audit that specifically.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you so much for your work.

[Julie Gelfand]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Finnigan.

Now we'll go back to the Conservative side for five minutes.

Mr. Arnold.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you both for being here today.

I'll cut right to the chase. How quickly are net pen aquaculture practices changing? How much is government trying to catch up to those changes and best practices? For example, on the treatment for sea lice, I've heard recently about moving the fish into a barge filled with fresh water to shed the sea lice, or hydrogen peroxide treatments. How much catch-up is being done and how quickly is it changing?

[Julie Gelfand]

Again, I can only audit the federal government's role in this, not necessarily the industry's role.

It's possible there are new techniques being used by the industry, but that's not something I can audit. I can only say, "Here's what the government said. Here are all the regulations. Are you following those regulations? Are you properly implementing what the government has already put in place?”

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

We don't know if the government is up to speed with the latest best practices—

[Julie Gelfand]

I don't think I can say that, but—

[Sharon Clark]

We looked at what they have in place to control for diseases and pesticides including sea lice.