Fisheries Committee on Oct. 30th, 2018

[Basil MacLean]

I believe you're right in your comments on not taking some of the traditional knowledge of the fishers or the people there.

In terms of the closing of the fishery, DFO's mandate is to manage a fishery, not to close it. It should be managed so that it doesn't have to get closed. In 2017, things happened, and it was closed. It's important for people to realize how we got to 2017. It was mismanagement, if I dare say that, that brought us to 2017 and all the deaths. There were decisions made about quotas and how that was executed. It was a perfect storm, I guess, that brought everything into the Gulf of St. Lawrence at the same time and cost the sad death of those whales.

If I could rewind the clock and go back, there were some proper management pools put in place for a lot of the fleets that were entering the snow crab fishery. It's a tough question to answer. A lot could have been done in terms of the length and scope of the ropes, which I think we curbed in 2018, but the fishery went on for a long time.

The right whales were in the gulf prior to 2017. Nobody should fool themselves by thinking that they were new in the gulf in 2017. They were there prior to that, and I don't believe we had any deaths. I stand to be corrected.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Something obviously changed.

[Basil MacLean]

Something changed, but in 2018, it changed again, and we didn't have deaths again.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I think that because I did waste a little time at the beginning, I should move on to another question here, but I take your point. Fisheries should be managed so they don't have to be closed, but that's our history in Canada.

Look back to July 1992 when John Crosbie closed the northern cod fishery. Things had been allowed to progress to a point where it collapsed, and boom. It's an on-off switch.

Mr. Paish, with respect, you're calling for evidence in science, which is a good thing, but DFO quite often finds itself in a position of having to apply the precautionary principle. There's a lot they don't know. We could spend a lot of money on science and evidence, and they'd probably tell you they still don't know conclusively what's going on.

With the application of the precautionary principle on coho salmon, particularly as it affected the sports fishing industry, how would you have changed what DFO did, still providing for the whales and for the forage that they needed? Did they go too far? I guess you're going to say yes, but what advice would you give to live up to the precautionary principle in the absence of all of the evidence that anybody would like to see?

[Martin Paish]

I can answer that question.

First off, I would have adopted a multi-faceted approach. I would have actually focused and invested some energy on recovering chinook populations, rather than just focusing on reducing catch.

We have a tremendous amount of evidence already in the Pacific fishery that further reducing chinook catch was not going to be an effective strategy to provide more prey for southern resident killer whales. This is advice that was offered by the scientists and fishery managers who were there. I can easily forward this committee the findings of that workshop.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

It's not intuitive.

[Martin Paish]

The reason it's not intuitive is that there is an assumption that recreational fisheries are catching a tremendous number of chinook in the region, which they are not. We're already dealing, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with the most restrictive management measures on salmon fisheries anywhere on the coast of British Columbia. We already have slot limits in place to protect age classes that southern resident killer whales are there—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

If the chinook isn't really that important to the sports fishing industry, what was the harm? I'm sorry. Have I missed something that you said?

[Martin Paish]

It's not to suggest that they're not important; it's to suggest that salmon fishermen are willing to go out and deal with restrictive regulations in order to do the right thing, and we've consistently done that.

What I would suggest to you, Mr. Hardie, is that closing fisheries is easy. Closing fisheries is cheap. Closing fisheries presents really wonderful optical solutions on maps that do great things to pacify vocal ENGOs and to deal with social media. The more difficult and more effective approach is to adopt a long-term strategy that DFO's own experts are telling them is what's going to solve the problem. That's the solution.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Quickly, Ms. Schmitt, I want you to comment on the point that my friend Mr. Doherty raised on the size of fish that comes out of your operation. We were told earlier today that the cultured fish don't grow to a size that's really useful to orcas: 90 pounds is good; 30 pounds is marginal.

Have you actually rated as to size the fish that are coming back mature from your operation?

[The Chair]

Respond in a minute or less, please.

[Carol Schmitt]

Yes. In the four release datasets that we have—two for Phillips River, one for Sarita, and one for Nahmint—Nahmint River and Phillips River both saw reappearances of six-year-old chinook that were over 30 pounds.

Any hatchery enhancement manager has always said that the minute we start enhancing the use of S0 chinook, that's the end of our tyee chinook, which is the opposite of what you're being told. The S1s, grown properly, no straying, we had few to zero jacks and we saw a lot of five [Inaudible—Editor] fish.

[The Chair]

Thank you. The time has expired.

I want to thank all the guests for appearing—

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

We have—

[The Chair]

Actually, we have four more people. We have to set up for the second hour.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Yes, but we still have three minutes. We should at least get another short question.

[The Chair]

We'll lose it at the other end. Okay.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Paish, you brought up a very valuable point.

Speaking to my honourable colleague across the way who was looking for an answer, I'd tell DFO and the bureaucrats to do their job.

Among the upper Fraser chinook, the spring 5-2s and summer 5-2s have been listed as stocks of concern for multiple years, yet we don't have a hatchery north of Kamloops. We continue to use copy and paste for innovative fisheries management plans on these fish specifically. They're using data from a fishery at Dome Creek, which is in my neck of the woods, that has been outdated and that failed 20 years ago. DFO continues to use that data.

Mr. Paish, I'd love to hear more comments on the 5-2, whether it's spring or summer 5-2, and on the need for us to increase attention to those species.

[Martin Paish]

In the short time frame, it's very simple: 5 sub 2 chinook and 4 sub 2 chinook are chinook that return to the river at a large size. We have been told, and I believe it makes sense, that southern resident killer whales like to target larger chinook.

The bulk of the hatchery closures in the Fraser have taken place on hatcheries such as Dome Creek, Willow River, and Spius Creek that focus on those larger chinook.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Any of the hatcheries we have that are run by volunteers have been targeted and shut down. Isn't that correct?

[Martin Paish]

Both DFO production facilities and community development projects, all of the volunteer and the DFO-funded hatcheries, have basically been closed. When I talked about targeting our efforts on specific stocks of chinook that southern resident killer whales need, those are the stocks.

We need chinook salmon in the spring, in May, June, July. We need chinook salmon that are large. Those are the stocks of chinook that traditionally these whales would have fed on. There's a whole bunch of reasons why sub 2 chinook salmon, or all sub 2 salmonids, are struggling in the Fraser River right now, whether they are Thompson, Chilcotin, or steelhead—your committee has probably talked about those—or whether it's interior Fraser coho.

Mr. Hardie talked about a precautionary principle application on Fraser River coho that took place more than 20 years ago. The recreational fishery was brought down to a less than 3% exploitation rate on those fish. They still haven't shown any signs of recovery.

Closing down fisheries isn't going to work. Making more chinook salmon available to whales through the application of hatcheries and focus predator control is what's going to work.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Mr. MacLean, Mr. Bird and Mr. Paish, and to Ms. Schmitt and Mr. Tutty on teleconference, a special thank you to you all.

Ms. Schmitt, my clerk said that you jumped through hoops to be able to do this today, so let me say that we appreciate your time and effort. Thank you.

[Carol Schmitt]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair]

We will suspend for a couple of minutes.

We'll get started.

I'd like to welcome our guests to the second hour of our committee this evening.

From the Canadian Ferry Association, we have Serge Buy, chief executive officer. From the Shipping Federation of Canada, we have Sonia Simard, director, legislative affairs. By video conference, representing the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, we have Carrie Brown, director, environmental programs.

Welcome to everyone.

We'll start off now with your seven-minute opening statements.

First we'll go to Mr. Buy.