Fisheries Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2018

[Julie Gelfand]

In many cases, and this is in general for almost all audits, they'll tell you they don't have enough resources. We usually don't go down that path, because everybody says that: “Yes, we could do more if we had more money.” Generally in our audits we don't go there.

In the case of the distressed mammals, however, they had a very small budget. When you think about how long our coastline is and how many incidents we have, they were down at around $300,000 a year for 900 incidents. It went up to $1 million, and they were happy about that, but that still seems quite small in terms of trying to respond to up to 900 different incidents across the country.

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

Just on the training, does that mean we have to look to other countries or jurisdictions? You alluded to the fact that they have to turn to the United States. Is that the case?

[Julie Gelfand]

As we said, in B.C. it's dealt with by DFO, but on the east coast each NGO operates differently. There was a very tragic case where somebody actually died after disentangling a large cetacean. This is serious. It's difficult work. People need to be trained, and they need to have national standards.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Donnelly.

We'll move to the government side, and Mr. Finnigan for seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here.

How long have we been collecting data on whales or other marine life collisions, deaths or injuries? Did we have much data in the past?

[Elsa Da Costa]

The program began in 2006. Just to clarify your question, you're asking about data on distressed or collision—

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

Incidents.

[Elsa Da Costa]

They've had data since 2006 or 2008, but the data is collected regionally. We found that the data wasn't really consistent. Every year the nomenclature isn't clear. The type of incident reporting isn't clear. The data is available, but it's not very consistent, so it's hard to really poll it to make an assessment. The DFO website allows national reporting online for the public on some of these incidents.

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

It seems over the past few years.... A prime example is 2017, when the number actually peaked and around 17 right whales were killed on the east coast in the gulf area, specifically in the Bay of Fundy.

Can you explain why? Is it that we have bigger boats and more gear, or is it to do with climate change, the warming waters and the whales maybe feeding in different areas than they used to? Do we know why this is happening?

[Julie Gelfand]

We know for sure that we found these 12 whales passed away in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The department would be able to explain more clearly all the different interactions that are occurring to bring those animals there. We were looking at whether or not the department was doing its job to protect marine mammals. Overall, what we found was that really they hadn't done much until that incident.

Then, all of a sudden, things kicked into gear. That's when they passed the marine mammal regulations. That's when they finished a whole bunch of action plans. It was after the severe incident that the departments started working better together and actually acting on that.

There is the whole issue of marine mammal regulations. In the U.S. they have an act to protect marine mammals, and in Canada we don't have a similar act. Those are some of the things your colleague was talking about earlier. We have to be able to show the U.S. that we're implementing many of the same policies in order to protect marine mammals in our waters as well.

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

On that subject, this summer we had a few minke whales, but as far as right whales are concerned, the only dead whale that I know of was one found three weeks ago off the coast of Maine. Have we imposed the same conditions on the Americans regarding cleaning up their act?

[Julie Gelfand]

Their conditions are more severe than ours, or at least prior to 2017 their conditions were better explained; they were regulated and in Canada it wasn't.

Since 2017 we understand from the department there have not been any killings of North Atlantic right whales, but what we indicate in our audit is that we found an increase in collaboration between all the departments. So at least it shows it can work, right? You have the Coast Guard speaking to the vessels. You have Transport Canada going out and ticketing them if they're going too fast. You have the science coming from DFO, etc. They can work together to do it, or at least that's what we found for this past summer. But, again, we have not audited all those new measures. Those were announced either during or right after our audit.

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

As far as talking about MPAs goes—I know we referred to it a little earlier—in the gulf there's only one area of interest, I think, at this stage. That wouldn't have much impact on reducing whale collisions at this stage. What we did was impose new regulations as the incidents happened.

Do you think there should be a permanent regulation or is reacting to a problem and then kind of easing away the way to move forward in your opinion?

[Julie Gelfand]

Again, it's up to Parliament to decide, or the department to decide, whether or not they need to have permanent regulations. The Gully MPA is somewhere in that region anyhow. It's off the coast of Nova Scotia. There's still limited fishing allowed in 75% of that MPA and no limits on marine traffic.

What essentially happened in the gulf was that they closed some fisheries and this created hardship for some of the fisher people. We have to recognize that it's quite severe. They closed fisheries. They made regulations. They slowed down the ships. That's what they did in order to protect the marine mammals. We have to be in line with the U.S. regulations by 2022.

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

What about cleaning up the bottom? A lot of the entanglements are left traps, ropes and nets and stuff from past fishing. As you said, it is a very dangerous job to try to free a mammal when it's entangled. We lost a life in New Brunswick last year because of that.

Do you think it would be a good idea to have some kind of program to try to clean up the bottom? There's a lot of trash out there.

[Julie Gelfand]

In a previous audit that we did on the integrated fisheries management, or that one of our staff did recently, they did find that fishing gear is an issue. It's not just on the bottom; it's floating around. Getting rid of that stuff that gets released...it's almost fishing garbage that's all over the place. It's kind of related to the plastic issue in the ocean. Trying to capture those is important.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Finnigan.

We go now to Mr. Arnold from the Conservative Party for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, thanks to both of you for being here.

The study is looking at marine vessels and commercial fishing and yet it's titled “Protecting Marine Mammals”. Why was the scope so narrow if you were looking at protecting marine mammals?

[Julie Gelfand]

It's really a question of our resources as to how many issues we can deal with at one particular time in that audit period. It's really dependent on the size of the team. We pick the biggest risks that we can see. That's how we select.

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

Who determines the scope?

[Julie Gelfand]

It's determined by the audit team and we have conversations with the department.

[Elsa Da Costa]

And external advisers.

[Julie Gelfand]

And external advisers. We have specialists we speak to, to help us figure it out. Normally with the scope, what often happens is we're presented with a menu of different issues that we could select, but they say we can only do two or three of them. So it's which two or three. We ask experts to help us with that.

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

Who provides that list, the menu?

[Julie Gelfand]

Our staff does it as part of the research in the planning phase of an audit.