Evidence of meeting #114 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 whales.
A recording is available from Parliament.
October 30th, 2018 / 12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Senior Scientist, Canadian Whale Institute
Yes, and they were able to.... The details, the diagnosis for each whale, are all available in the necropsy report.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Has there been any documentation done on those animals that died as a result of gear entanglement? I believe you spoke to it earlier, but I wanted to focus on identifying, especially in the Bay of Fundy, whether it is clear whether the entanglement occurred within Canadian waters or U.S. waters. Did it occur in gear off the United States coast versus in the Bay of Fundy?
Senior Scientist, Canadian Whale Institute
If the entangling lines are recovered from the whale when it's either disentangled or during the necropsy on the beach, if there are sufficient identifying characteristics on the gear.... The gear is measured, and the diameter of the rope, and if there are any buoys present and there are any licence numbers on the buoys, every effort is taken to try to track that gear back to the fishery, certainly not for blame but to try to figure out the problem.
In some cases, it's just a length of rope and it's not possible, but the rope that has been collected has been both of Canadian and U.S. origin from a number of different fisheries.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Morrissey.
Now we'll go to the Conservative side and Mr. Doherty.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our guests.
Is it safe to say—this is a broad question to our panel—that none of our witnesses are in favour of a predatory, a.k.a. seal, management plan?
Executive Director, Georgia Strait Alliance
We do not support a seal cull.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Okay—seal management, seal cull.
Do any of the guests on...? That's okay. Fair enough.
Chief Scientist, Orca Conservancy
I would support harassment of seals to prevent them from taking advantage of human-created bottlenecks, but not lethal removal.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
A number of groups, including first nations, are calling on our federal government to allow the harvest of sea lions and our coastal seals. I think our witnesses in some sense are being a little bit disingenuous in terms of their testimony today.
I'm going to move on to something else, because I think we are also missing the point in terms of the pollution issue that has been brought up.
Ms. Wilhelmson, you brought it up earlier on, but you've also said that there wasn't a lot of study that had been done to this point.
Even as recently as July, there were over 340 million litres of raw sewage approved to be dumped into the Ottawa River. We see that time and time again. We know that since 2017, about 215 billion litres of raw sewage has been spilled or leaked. It is the elephant in the room as well, too. I think something has to be done.
What is the issue in terms of studying this? Is it the dilution rate, or is there just an unwillingness from government to take action?
Executive Director, Georgia Strait Alliance
The issue isn't study. It's something that is studied a great deal. Certainly here in British Columbia at the Coastal Ocean Research Institute, there's a great deal of study that's done on the impact of microplastics and other contaminants on whales.
The reason I didn't focus on it is just because this is not something we can do tomorrow. We can't implement tomorrow action plans on stormwater, wastewater, agricultural runoff and the variety of other sources we know are a problem. That was my only comment.
I do think that here in the west coast we have to complete the upgrade of our wastewater treatment plants to advanced secondary, at the very minimum, faster than planned. I think this is a problem across the country, because our 2012 regulations on wastewater management allowed some communities to wait 30 years before they have to upgrade, and I think that's something we have to look at advancing and investing in. We know what some of the problems are. I do think it's a very complex conversation, and I think we could spend this whole two hours just talking about pollution.
Liberal
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I'd like to thank all the witnesses for their testimony.
I encourage each of you to look at the motion again, if you haven't already. If you have already submitted your written suggestions to the committee regarding what steps the government could take in terms of responding to this motion, that is great. If you've thought of anything today in this committee meeting, please provide that to us in writing. It would be helpful.
In my final minute and a half, I'd like to ask Mr. Michaud a question.
You talked about the need for a massive injection of funds. Could you elaborate a little bit about what amount you think is necessary? Could you summarize the top three actions that injection of funds could be put toward in dealing with the whales?
Scientific Director, Research and Education group on Marine Mammals
I did refer to a massive investment of funds that has been made over the last two years to the OPP, the oceans protection plan. I was not calling for a new massive investment. I was looking at that critically, wondering whether the investments were made in the best places. I was calling for the formation of committees on which would sit academics, DFO scientists and NGOs to direct these massive investments to their best possible use.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Sorry, Mr. Michaud, could I just clarify something? When you say massive, can you quantify that? Are we talking about hundreds of millions, a billion? You've seen that injection of funds. How effective has that been to change the result for whales on both coasts?
Scientific Director, Research and Education group on Marine Mammals
There were two recent massive injections of new funds. One, in the last budget, was $167 million for the three species, and about a year and a half before that, although I don't remember the numbers, it was much more for the OPP. A lot of that money has been injected very rapidly, with some improvisation on how it would be best spent.
Recently, this summer, there was a $3-million call for proposals for scientists in university, which was to be spent in the next five years. The call for proposals was done in the middle of the summer, with a delay of about a month.
My comment on the massive investment was that this should not be improvised. We have been waiting for years for such an investment, and unfortunately, this has been done in a precipitate way and with some improvisation. If we have good committees overseeing these investments, we could make much wiser investments.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you.
I want to once again thank our witnesses today for appearing by both video conference and teleconference. That's the first time we've had a committee meeting with witnesses where nobody was actually in the room other than committee members.
Thank you for your input and patience. Don't forget that you can submit anything in writing to the committee to be included in the report. Thank you to the committee members.
The meeting is adjourned.