Evidence of meeting #112 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was audit.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Could we instead say, “undertake up to two meetings at a time scheduled by the committee's subcommittee”?
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Would you be more comfortable if we changed the date to March 31? I realize we don't have a lot of sitting weeks in February and March.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
4:25 p.m.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
We don't need an amendment. The mover is agreeing to the change.
4:25 p.m.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
Yes, change it to March 31.
All those in favour?
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
4:25 p.m.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
You used up all of your five minutes.
Just to be clear, I think if it was something distributed by the clerk or the analyst, it has to be in both official languages when it's passed out.
Going back to the government side, we have Mr. Fraser for five minutes or less.
4:25 p.m.
Colin Fraser West Nova, Lib.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll be as brief as I can.
Thank you, both, very much for coming. I appreciated your work on the report and your coming today.
I want to ask, first, just a question with regard to your conclusion in the audit that DFO and CFIA had put in place some measures to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases and parasites from farmed salmon, but key elements were missing.
I'm wondering if you can expand on what elements were missing from that, and also what measures are in place to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases and parasites that actually are in place.
4:25 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
I'm sorry, could you repeat the first part of your question?
4:25 p.m.
West Nova, Lib.
You indicate in your report that DFO and CFIA had put in place some measures to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases and parasites from farmed salmon but key elements were missing.
I'm wondering if you can let us know what key elements were missing from that information.
I guess I'll leave it there and then ask you a follow-up.
4:25 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
As I said earlier, the department is doing quite a bit of research into a variety of issues related to disease and parasite transmission, the effects of drugs and pesticides, and genetic interactions, etc., so they are doing some work on that.
Some of the things that are missing include not monitoring the health of wild fish. It's very difficult to know whether or not you're having an impact if you're not actually monitoring the health of wild fish.
Another gap would be the fact that they'd only completed one out of the 10 risk assessments. They hadn't assessed whether regulations regarding their drugs and pesticides were adequate to minimize harm to wild fish, so they don't actually know if the regulations are working.
No thresholds were defined for excessive drug or pesticide deposits into the net pens. There was no assessment whether rules were required to control the cumulative effects of drugs and pesticides at multiple sites in a particular area.
There was no requirement, as I mentioned earlier, for companies to monitor the ocean floor to determine whether things like lobster were being harmed.
There was no requirement for companies to minimize the risk of drug and pesticide resistance and no validation of industry self-reporting on the use of drugs and pesticides.
There were a lot of gaps in this area that were concerning in terms of the potential spread of diseases and just controlling the effects of these drugs and pesticides.
4:25 p.m.
West Nova, Lib.
You touched briefly on the measures that are in place to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases and parasites. Can you expand on what measures are in place that you've found to be effective?
October 23rd, 2018 / 4:25 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
They do have this strategic health initiative to look at the causes of diseases. I mentioned all the research that they are doing.
Do you want to add a few things?
4:30 p.m.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General
Just in terms of what controls they have in place, they do have licence requirements for fish farms, and there are controls around that. One of the elements that is missing is the program for auditing the health of farmed salmon in B.C. It is out of date.
4:30 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
It was 2006 the last time it was updated.
4:30 p.m.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General
Yes, we found issues there.
The department had limited laboratory capacity to provide timely surveillance test results, and then there was the issue with CFIA that we discussed earlier.
4:30 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
In one case we found that the test results were given almost a year later. That's quite a big gap.
4:30 p.m.
West Nova, Lib.
My time is limited, so I'll move for a moment to the fish escape provisions that you talk about. I note there's a big difference between the number of fish escaping in British Columbia compared to the two Atlantic Canadian provinces that you looked at. What do you attribute the big difference to be?
4:30 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
The big difference is that in British Columbia, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans requires companies to follow its own standard for net support structures and for anchoring systems. That is not required in Atlantic Canada. It's pretty clear that the standards for these anchoring systems and for the nets are higher and tougher, I would say, in British Columbia than in the Atlantic provinces.
4:30 p.m.
West Nova, Lib.
Okay, and you say they're not required in the Atlantic provinces. It's up to each of the provinces to put in place those regulations—
4:30 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
That's correct.
