Fisheries Committee on May 12th, 2016

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

You have five minutes, Mr. Morrissey.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, as a member of the committee, I am going to declare I have no biases when it comes to the Atlantic salmon fishery, but I'm curious, and I'm curious for a number of reasons.

I've read a lot of the reports and studies that have been done on the issue. It's an issue that has been around for a little over 20 years, as we're here now in 2015. From the charts given to us by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, it appears the stocks literally dropped off the cliff around 1990 and have flatlined to this date. In listening to reasons that may account for this, the only consistency that I've heard is “could be”, “may be”, “unsure”, and “ don't know”. I find it amazing that after 20 years, with the expertise that exists, we cannot identify more than two issues that affected this dramatic decline.

I'm directing my observations to Dr. Hutchings and I would be curious to get a comment from Mr. Roach as well.

[Dr. Jeffrey A. Hutchings]

Thank you.

In terms of the factors responsible for the initial declines, I think it's fairly well established that habitat destruction and alteration were of key importance. It was the placing of dams, erosion, and land or river use issues.

Number two was over-exploitation, both in the freshwater and in the marine realm. Compounding that, in some areas, such as the Southern Uplands, we had issues associated with acidification. There were at least, depending on the region, two or three things that led to the decline.

Then once population has been reduced to a low level, the question then becomes, what affects recovery? One thing that has helped is a huge cutback on the commercial fishery for Atlantic salmon, beginning in 1984 in the Maritimes and in 1992 in Newfoundland. Also in 1992 was the cessation of the cod fishery. There was a lot of bycatch of salmon in that cod fishery, so if you look at Newfoundland, you actually see quite a positive response in survival of salmon and in returning salmon adults.

This is why I caution that we must place our arguments in the region we're discussing. In Newfoundland, for the most part, with the exception of the Conne River on the south coast of Newfoundland, there has been a fairly positive response to reductions in fishing pressure at sea in terms of salmon productivity.

In other areas, such the inner and outer Bay of Fundy and the Southern Uplands, we do have the issues of an increased proliferation of aquaculture sites. DFO, COSEWIC, and lots of scientific evidence point to issues associated with aquaculture operations, because salmon are at such low levels of abundance. In other words, I think it's a fact that they're at such low levels that they have become more vulnerable to threats that much larger populations in the past would not have been so vulnerable to.

In terms of the key issues, one reason I quite liked your question is that it reminds me that one of the reasons I identified this mathematical model idea is that what we'd ideally like to do from a science perspective is partition or break up the survival of salmon throughout their life cycle and determine where the bottlenecks and problems are.

We can identify fishing, seals, habitat alteration, dams, the Greenland fishery, striped bass, and a lot of different things, but what we need to do is have those management decisions guided by science in terms spending a lot of money and a lot of effort on something that maybe affects half a per cent of the survival rate of salmon. Wouldn't we rather focus on something that affects 10% of the survival rate of salmon?

That's why I would make the recommendation—it's one of the themes in the back of my mind—that science can help inform management and political decision-making by identifying where the bottlenecks are and what could potentially be done. In other words, if you took some mitigation measures in one particular realm, what's the best that could come out of that?

There have been about 22,000 or 23,000 papers published on Atlantic salmon.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Twenty-three thousand?

[Dr. Jeffrey A. Hutchings]

Right. It's the third-largest number of scientific publications on any fish. The first is rainbow trout. The second is zebra fish. There's a lot we know. We know a lot more than what we don't know. I think we need to use a lot of the science information that we have at present to guide us, and I think we can use it to guide a mitigation strategy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Morrissey.

Mr. Arnold, you have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question will be for Mr. Roach.

We've heard that the value of Atlantic salmon to the Atlantic provinces and to Canada is approximately $150 million. Have there been any estimates of what a SARA listing might cost Canada or the Atlantic provinces? If a SARA listing did take place and we had to curtail other fisheries, other activities, with the restrictions that would be put in place by that, what might that cost us?

[Greg Roach]

To be perfectly frank, the committee did not do any investigations on that type of concept, so I don't have any information that I could put on the table based on the work that was done over the past year through the minister's advisory committee.

I think you're right that there would be other impacts. Now, what we did do—which isn't quite on a listing focus, but it's on another fishery focus—was put forward a number of recommendations to avoid both the intentional and unintentional capture of Atlantic salmon.

There will be a cost. The cost would be for personal-use fish that in come cases are legally allowed—this is non-first nations—in Canada, and others that are caught, or maybe poached, by other fisheries.

To your question, I do not have that information on what the costs would be to implement a listing in the areas where it's possible to list Atlantic salmon right now.

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

I have one thought on that, then: the cost comparison may be something worth looking at, the cost comparison of not doing anything or continuing on the path we are on and ending up with a listing versus trying to do something in the interim.

The next question I have is for Mr. Roach, but it's for Mr. Taylor as well.

As fishery and wildlife managers—not me—I see that we're very quick to manage the human impact, the human harvest, and so on, but very reluctant to manage the ecosystem as a whole. I'm talking in particular about predator management. As my colleague Mr. Sopuck mentioned, it's not just the striped bass but also the seals. What else is out there? Is there an appetite within the ministry and DFO to manage those predators as well? It seems like a relatively inexpensive path to see, as you mentioned, where the biggest bang for our buck is.

[Greg Roach]

I'll get started on that.

Again, I'll speak to the recommendations in the report. We were quite clear that we were recommending an increase in the harvest of striped bass, both the recreational harvest and the first nations harvest. We were recommending an increase in grey seal research and harvest. I know it's difficult in the larger scheme to try to predict what the impact of grey seals might be, or seals in general, but during the committee work we heard many testimonials over the course of our public hearings about seals that were congregating at the mouths of rivers, not just for smolts coming out but for the adults coming back in.

I know from personal observations at sea, during the days of the commercial salmon fishery, that if nets were not tended first thing in the morning, there would only be heads left in the nets, because the seals would fish the nets before the fishermen got to them. I personally believe there could be a very significant impact, particularly of grey seals but of other seals as well.

To try to get a handle on how much is difficult. A harvest of grey seals, perhaps, through first nations partnerships, and targeting areas that may be more prone to be impacting Atlantic salmon, was a recommendation that we clearly put forward in the report. We weren't avoiding that; we put it in there.

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

Mr. Taylor, is your group—

[Bill Taylor]

I would concur basically with what Greg Roach said.

Seals are likely a big problem for salmon in localized areas, as opposed to out in the gulf or the Labrador Sea. There are 10, 11, or 12 million seals out there now; there are only 500,000 or 600,000 Atlantic salmon left.

To Dr. Hutchings' point about a stomach analysis, seals might be a problem, but you'd have to harvest so many and do so many stomach analyses that you may never figure that out. There are lots of confirmed reports, particularly in river areas where adult salmon come in to certain areas that are choke points. Seals do take quite a toll, but it's a localized issue as opposed to a bigger, broader issue.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold. We appreciate that.

For five minutes, we now go to Mr. Hardie.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My focus has been more on the west coast, because that is where I am from, but the stories are about the same. When we look at the issue with the Fraser River sockeye, the smolts run the gauntlet past aquaculture and out into the deep water, and then things happen in the ocean. There are definitely concerns about the number and quality of fish coming back. I guess some of the questions will be common to both coasts.

Notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Sopuck has blown his chances for a Christmas card from the striped bass, the data seem to suggest there are a lot more of them out there. There seem to be a lot more seals, and Ms. Nodding was commenting on other predatory species around her area.

Why is this so? If the salmon population is falling, you would think that at some point there is going to be a tipping point, and the predators themselves would start dying off. Is that not the case?

[Dr. Jeffrey A. Hutchings]

It all depends on how much effort it takes the predators to prey upon their favourite food items.

For many fish in the ocean, you are absolutely right. There will come a point when the search effort, the handling effort.... What's the point? For seals, there are salmon. Fine, it is a nice, fatty fish, but there are not that many salmon, compared to herring, mackerel, and many other species they can exploit.

The difference with Atlantic salmon and Pacific salmon is that at a very predictable time of year, you have a lot of bite-sized fish coming out of a source point. Marine mammals are not foolish, so it doesn't take that many marine mammals to have a demonstrable impact on the mortality rate, because they don't have to expend that much effort in order to obtain the food.

I would say that in general you are absolutely right, but salmon, with their migratory patterns, are perhaps a special case in this regard.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Roach, some of the testimony we heard the other day commented on the state of health of the smolts coming out and heading out to sea, and that perhaps through whatever was happening on the freshwater side of their cycle, they weren't as healthy and robust as they needed to be to survive out in the open water.

Do you have any comments on that?

[Greg Roach]

Yes, that was something that was raised, particularly in the meetings related to the Nova Scotia rivers. One of the big concerns was health, maybe even related to things like aluminum. Perhaps the acidic rivers are freeing up some heavy metals that would then be taken up by the smolts and would make the smolts not as capable of surviving when running the gauntlet of the predators on the way out and then surviving once they get there. That possibility was raised.

On that perspective, the striped bass populations have increased dramatically in the gulf and in the Maritimes regions. That is something that is different today. Also, some of the other fish in some of the rivers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would go out in hundreds of thousands while the smolts were going out as well, so they would provide some cover, but those runs have changed. Now the smolts are kind of going out on their own, with a much increased population of striped bass.

When you put those two things together, it makes for a concern. The striped bass will go on to another species once they take advantage of the movement of smolts in the river. That is a concern.

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

Do I have time for another question?

To anybody, perhaps Ms. Nodding or Mr. Taylor, if you look at the landscape in the Maritimes, can you point to any best practices in aquaculture? It is not quite a smoking gun—maybe that is a little too dramatic, or maybe it isn't—but on both coasts they are certainly the focus of a lot of suspicion in terms of the health of the wild species. Are there best practices in your region that you can point to and say, “Look, if you are going to do aquaculture, do it like this”?

[Bill Taylor]

I will go first, if that's okay.

We have analyzed the regulations that are on the books. There is the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, which, like the Forest Stewardship Council or the Marine Stewardship Council, has a certification process that establishes best practices. Norway, by far and away, has the highest standards, and it still has problems with disease, sea lice, and escapes. More regionally for eastern Canada, Maine, by far and away, has the best practices.

Standardization of the regulations, as far as containment, disease treatment, pollution control, escapes, and all of that.... There are best practices, but even when you aspire to a Norwegian model, which is the gold standard, you are still going to have problems. That is why, as Mr. Donnelly mentioned, in the recent announcement the Norwegian government is recognizing the problems that open-net pen aquaculture has for wild salmon—the escapes, disease, and sea lice—and it is investing a huge amount of money into closed containment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hardie. We appreciate it.

We'll move to Mr. Donnelly to close things out.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, thank you to all our guests for providing this really important information.

Mr. Roach, in your opinion, why hasn't the department acted on the wild Atlantic salmon policy?

[Greg Roach]

I don't know if I could give a good answer to that. I suspect it wouldn't be unique for policy to be developed by any department in government and then for the realities of day-to-day management activities or priorities to take precedence over implementing that policy.

I don't think anyone deliberately said they're not going to do this. With all the battles that are fought within DFO and all the resource crunch pressures and increased activities that they're responsible for, I suspect it didn't hit a priority level. That's one of the reasons the need to renew and implement it was hammered by our report. It was due for renewal last year and it's something we flagged.

That's just a guess and that's my opinion. I don't think anyone deliberately said they don't like it. I think they were probably instrumental in helping construct it.

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

Thank you.

I think you've answered this, Mr. Roach. Mr. Taylor, perhaps you could jump in or clarify, but have the 61 recommendations that the committee produced been costed? Did the committee cost them? We asked that question of the department, so they're certainly going to look into it.