Fisheries Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2018

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

It's quite obvious by omission here—

[Julie Gelfand]

I audit the federal government.

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

I understand that.

The whale watching regulations are federal regulations, so I'm going to conclude that, by omission here, your view is that the whale watching industry does not have any effect on marine mammal resources—

[Julie Gelfand]

Please don't do that.

I could not audit those regulations, because they were not in place. They were proposed in 2012 and they were implemented in 2018. I have not had time to audit them.

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

Okay. Well, I'll state for the record here that the people of Churchill are extremely concerned about these marine mammal regulations. The population of belugas there is 55,000 and increasing, and the federal government is imposing a great hardship on these communities. I will be dealing with this over the next few months.

I'm also disappointed in your report that you conflate marine mammals. You just talk of them in general. Obviously, you're talking mostly about cetaceans, but marine mammals include cetaceans and seals. I think it's misleading when you use the words “marine mammals” and you do not divide them into the marine mammals that they actually are—cetaceans and seals—because the situations for cetaceans and seals are completely different. Your audit does not make that.... You use the words “marine mammals” interchangeably.

Also, you talk about the depletion of marine mammal food resources. This committee, on numerous occasions, has talked about overabundant seal populations. In terms of your report here you completely.... I actually wish—and again this is not your fault—that this report had been an audit of protecting and managing marine mammal resources, not just protecting, because we have incredibly overabundant seals in many areas.

You talk about the depletion of marine mammal food resources. I'm looking at a study here by Dr. Olesiuk of a creek near the Puntledge River on Vancouver Island. He concluded that three dozen seals killed 10,000 adult chum salmon. That's 36 seals killing 10,000 fish in the fall spawning run. The number of harbour seals on the west coast has gone from 10,000 in the 1970s to 105,000 now. It shocks me that nobody talks about the overabundance of seals as actually the main threat to the food resources of cetaceans.

Would you provide a comment on that? Why did you omit the effect of an overabundance of seals on the food resources of cetaceans?

[Julie Gelfand]

Paragraph 2.8 of our audit clearly indicates what we focused on. We focused on whether the federal government had adequately protected marine mammals in waters under the jurisdiction of Canada from threats posed by marine vessels and commercial fishing. We did not include the harvesting of marine mammals.

The audit focused on the direct threats to marine mammals. This is what we audited, threats posed by commercial fishing and by marine vessels.

These audits can be huge and we only have a certain number of people, so we always pick a certain area that we're going to audit. We did not look at acidification of the oceans. We didn't look at all the issues. We looked specifically at whether they had adequately protected marine mammals from the threats posed by marine vessels and commercial fishing. That was the purpose of our audit.

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

I would argue very strongly, then, that your terms of reference were clearly inadequate, because the elephant in the room in terms of Atlantic salmon, cod, snow crab, the salmon resources off the west coast are super-abundant and exploding seal populations that probably have a greater effect than, of course, any recreational fishing. The recreational fishery takes a minimal amount of salmon, and the commercial fishery obviously takes more. We are talking about 36 seals taking 10,000 adult fish. The super-abundance of seals are the elephant in the room that nobody wants to discuss in terms of the effect that exploding seal populations have on other species.

You talked about marine protected areas not doing anything for marine mammals, and I can certainly see that, because the marine protected area is a three-dimensional structure as opposed to a terrestrial area, which is two dimensional and infinitely more difficult.

Perhaps one of the reasons that marine protected areas are not doing the job of protecting marine mammals is that they're established for other reasons. I'm thinking of, for example, the benthic area, the glass sponge reefs and so on where shipping is allowed and obviously with no effect on the glass sponges.

Can you elaborate on why, in your view, marine protected areas are not doing their job? I would assume you're talking about not protecting cetaceans.

[Julie Gelfand]

Marine protected areas, we clearly indicate in our audit, did not significantly contribute to the protection of marine mammals. We clearly indicate that not all marine protected areas are established for the protection of marine mammals. There are all kinds of reasons. In some cases, it's seabirds that are the reason we have marine protected areas. It has nothing to do with the marine mammals.

What we did find was that there were three marine protected areas that DFO did establish specifically for the purpose of protecting marine mammals, and in those we found that there was still quite a bit of commercial fishing and navigation permitted in these three areas.

But you're absolutely correct that they're not all developed for that reason. Some are. The Saguenay park is the one that is best known.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Now we go to Mr. Donnelly for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll just go to one of your final comments in your opening remarks in which you say, “The measures recently put in place have been reactive, limited, and late.” Then you go on to say, ”The clock could well be running out for certain species such as the west coast southern resident killer whale which has been listed as an endangered species for 15 years, and whose population is now down to 74 individuals.”

I'm wondering whether your audit looked at the impact of tanker traffic on the southern resident killer whale.

[Julie Gelfand]

The audit did not look specifically at that issue. We were looking at species at risk and we were looking at marine protected areas. We were looking at shipping. In the case of the scarcity of Chinook salmon, the southern resident killer whale is one of the biggest issues identified in the recovery plan and in the action plan, but we did not look specifically at any one species and one issue. Marine traffic is clearly indicated to pose risks to whales and other marine mammals.

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

Vessel traffic would include, obviously, oil tanker traffic.

[Julie Gelfand]

It would include any kind of—

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

If the government is looking at tripling the amount of traffic in an area frequented by the southern resident killer whales, that obviously would have an impact on the whales the government is trying to protect. That's just a general comment.

You say, “no action plans were completed on time” and that in 2017 half “remain incomplete”.

How is that? I know you're probably going to tell me you're not able to answer, but did anything in your audit uncover rationales as to why there's so much inaction on this?

[Julie Gelfand]

This is why we indicated that many of the measures were reactive and late. In the section on our audit concerning the species at risk, you'll see many cases in which recovery plans were late, action plans were late.

Really, why they're all late is something you need to ask the department rather than me. We indicate that they are late; for the reasons, you'd ask the department.

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

Was it a surprise to them, or were they obviously aware of this and considered it just a course of business for them?

[Julie Gelfand]

You'd have to ask them.

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

All right.

This is a similar question. It was brought up that of 14 endangered or threatened species there are no specific measures in place to save 11 of them.

It seems that the government waits for a disaster, and I think you point this out. It's either when there is some kind of huge outcry from the public or something that's so obvious that they take action. I think that's what you pointed out. They did act after the right whales were in the news a lot.

[Julie Gelfand]

That's correct. We looked at all the different tools they had—the Species at Risk Act, marine protected areas—and at issues around commercial fisheries. We looked at the policy on bycatch. We looked at issues around the marine mammal regulations and the shipping and supporting of distressed marine mammals.

What we found when we went in to audit them was that they told us they were starting all these new things. We were auditing, however—we always audit backwards—and our reaction was that all this time passed and there was nothing. Then all of a sudden—poof—all these things are happening. We indicate all the actions they've taken, but we clearly indicate that we have not audited them, because they're so new that we can't audit them.

It was our conclusion that they hadn't been doing a lot to protect marine mammals until there was a severe situation, and then they kicked into gear.

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

Thank you.

My colleague brought up the point you made that very few people are trained to help. I think you gave a response to that, but I'm wondering how you determined that.

[Julie Gelfand]

We went in and asked, and they told us. My understanding is it's less than two handfuls of people who are trained to do this work.

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

You were able to ask questions like that, and then they would tell you things, but some others you can't ask—or you didn't ask—like on tanker traffic, for instance. Those sorts of questions are different, but they'll tell you certain things that you ask.

[Julie Gelfand]

They usually tell us everything we ask. If you look in the “About the Audit” section, you'll see the criteria we use. We ask questions based on those criteria, and we audit backwards, not going forward.

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

They'll tell you, but do they tell you a rationale for certain things?