Fisheries Committee on May 17th, 2016

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

I'm just curious to hear your opinion.

[Mark Hambrook]

I have to agree with Jerry—though we don't always agree, but are good friends—that the anglers have not had a major impact on the stocks. They're angling grilse, mostly males. That hasn't been a major influence. What has happened is that either through the marine environment...we're not producing the fish. Everyone agrees that the big issue is mortality at sea. We don't understand exactly what that mortality is, but we can identify items such as a huge grey seal population. In the case of the Miramichi, which is being hit a little bit harder than some of the others, we have a big striped bass population. Perhaps it's a food issue. We need that international work and, of course, internationalism is the job of our federal government, in reality. If things are happening in our river, we're going to take a lot of responsibility to see that something gets addressed within our watershed. But when it gets to international waters, we're out of our realm. We need the federal government to lead that charge internationally. I think that's where the responsibility lies.

[James D. Irving]

I would add to that, as we said, that we've done a lot of research; a lot of money has been spent over the years and we don't seem to be any further ahead. Everything appears to me to be in silos. We need a bit more comprehensive leadership at the top level in trying to pull these things together, because we seem to go around and around in a circle. It's discouraging to think that DFO thinks that getting the smolts is not a very strong solution. The smolts are going to stay in a tank for 18 months. We said, look, put them in a tank for 18 months; get the best genetics in the world; we're going to host a symposium with the best genetics people we can find this year or later this year. Come to New Brunswick; have it out with the best genetics guys or women in the world and if they come to the conclusion in a year from now that the fish should not be released, let's process them and give them to a food bank or the aboriginal community. But we do have to try, and we have to come out in the spirit that we're going to win, and not just say no.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

You have eight seconds.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

I will let it go. You were diplomatic in your response, but nobody belled the cat.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

With that metaphor, we go to Mr. Arnold for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll split my five minutes with Mr. Strahl.

My question will be fairly short, but I want to pose it to each of you. I think we've already heard the answer from some of you, but I'd like to hear from each of you. What would you like to see remediation work focus on going forward? Should it be it on the rivers or on the marine environment?

[Mark Hambrook]

I'll take the first shot at that if you like.

We know that the issue is in the estuaries in the marine environment. That's where the direction has to occur, but every river has something that needs to be done in fresh water. We'll continue to work away at that, but the new effort needs to be in the estuary and marine environment.

[Jerry Doak]

I would completely agree. Threats in the estuary are a problem. I think the striped bass can't continue to be overlooked. The origins of that go back to the mid-1990s. That may be a factor to explain. It's such an immediate, heavy concentration. Your heard Mr. Taylor say last week that during the escapement of smolt from the Miramichi out to the outer part of the estuary and into the open ocean, only 25% survive, whereas from the Grand Cascapedia, 60% of the smolt survived. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. We have something going on in that estuary and that needs to be dealt with. There's a perfect opportunity there to do some brokering and to get a commercial fishery open. The value of striped bass is higher than the value of commercial salmon and yet it's being protected. It's a sacred cow. It's a problem.

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

Are there any comments from the other two?

[James D. Irving]

Things we can do on the river, no question, will sensitize us to certain things. But the big thing is that we have to find a way to track the inventory, with a cheap, economical, scientifically correct way. It's like everything else in life. When you're in business, when you know the inventory, you know what's going to happen to your prices, you know what's going to happen to the supply and demand. This thing here is about tracking the inventory very effectively and efficiently. That's the critical piece to me. Then when we go after Greenland, or fight whatever fight we have to fight, we'll have some [Technical difficulty--Editor], not talk.

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

Finally, Ms. Fuller.

[Susanna Fuller]

Hello.

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

The question was, where would you like to see the focus of remediation work going forward?

[Susanna Fuller]

One of things that I think is very important, which may vary on a river-by-river basis, is to at least have an estimate of the relative mortalities from different things that we know impact wild Atlantic salmon.

In the Miramichi, the striped bass may be the issue. In other rivers there might be other issues. We can't look at this as one thing. The thing with Atlantic salmon is that it's not one thing; it's more death by a thousand cuts. We need an understanding of the relative mortality that we might be seeing as a result of different things.

We can estimate the mortality from the Greenland south fishery, for example. We can estimate relative mortality from striped bass in certain watersheds. We can probably estimate the relative mortality, and there are estimates out there for wild Atlantic salmon, as a result of the impacts of farmed salmon. I think that would be quite a useful thing. This may already have been done, but it would be quite useful because it would allow us to understand, if we are going to reduce mortality—which is what we need to do to recover the population—where the efforts need to be focused.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

Thank you for that.

We'll go to Mr. Strahl for a minute and a half.

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

Ms. Fuller, it's good to see you back. I had my question lined up for you and you disappeared for a second.

[Susanna Fuller]

Sorry about that. I didn't know what happened.

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

No problem.

One of the recommendations of the Cohen commission was to separate the promotion of aquaculture products from DFO. They have a bit of a conflict of interest where they're promoting aquaculture and also regulating it. We're supposed to see the minister respond to that in a comprehensive way in the next few weeks, so I guess we'll all stay tuned to see if that will be addressed.

If you're calling for a ban on net-pen aquaculture, is that immediate or a phase-out? What is the proposed timeline there, because we are talking about an industry that does provide a lot of employment opportunities in the region as well?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

Be very quickly, please.

[Susanna Fuller]

I will clarify that I did not say there should be a ban. I said that we need to really figure out the risks of the marine environment to wild Atlantic salmon. We need to adequately regulate and mitigate those risks and avoid them wherever possible, and we really need to look at much better regulatory systems nation-wide for farmed salmon.

We do not stand up to world-class regulations right now. I happen to know that because I've gone through a process in Nova Scotia where there was an independent regulatory review panel that came out with excellent recommendations. It's called the Doelle-Lahey panel. I would recommend that the federal government look at that as a basis for how we could regulate open net-pen salmon farming in a much better way.

Fully understanding the impacts on wild salmon is very, very important, both on the west coast and the east coast. If we think we're going to be successful in recovering wild salmon populations, we cannot ignore the impacts of farmed salmon.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

I must reluctantly bring this discussion to a close. Our time is up.

I'd like to thank our presenters for extremely interesting, professional, accurate, and timely presentations. They're greatly appreciated by the committee. It was all I could do to stop myself from asking questions. With luck, I won't be in the chair next time. Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed my time in the chair today.

Again, thank you so much for your presentations.

We will now go in camera for committee business, so we will suspend for a minute or so.

[Susanna Fuller]

Thank you.

[James D. Irving]

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]