Fisheries Committee on April 29th, 2019

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

Mr. MacIsaac.

[Prof. Hugh MacIsaac]

I'd like to go back to your previous question.

In most cases you see a tight coupling of the number of invaders in a country and the size of that country's economy. The more you trade, the more invaders you get.

Many years ago, Herb Gray was the member of Parliament in my area. He asked an interesting question about zebra mussels. He asked why we are only getting zebra mussels now and not 50 or 80 years ago, because we've been trading with Europe for a long time. What you have to realize is that these species are not only spreading here, but they're spreading there. In this case, once these key invaders got into the northern European ports with which we have a lot of ship traffic, we had them come over. If you look at both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems around the world, you'll generally see a curve like this. I have seen very few cases where it levels off, but that's, of course, what we're trying for.

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

Thank you.

Quickly, vo you see a balance in the federal funding that's out there? If you're seeing none, maybe there isn't any balance.

[Gail Wallin]

I have to say there isn't the balance and there isn't the investment in prevention that there needs to be. Those two things need to be addressed.

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

Okay.

Who else do we have out there? Mr. MacIsaac—

[Prof. Hugh MacIsaac]

My second-last slide addressed that. I think it's a very—

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

Thank you.

Mr. Bouzan, on the eastern side of the country, what have you seen in the way of federal funding to address invasive species in Newfoundland?

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

—dogs are incredible at the border. In two minutes they can inspect any boat. People take a lot longer. They're not as invasive. We have them at two border crossings. Our boats come from the south. We get one Sea-Doo coming in a trailer and we're done in Alberta and you're done in B.C. because the boats go north and south. There were zebra mussels last year in Montana. It's coming.

Unless the agricultural sector gets together here, Lawrence MacAulay says we're going to go $15 billion more. In my area I've got the largest irrigation district, so you produce 20% of the agricultural product. They're all pipes. They're all pivots. That industry will be gone with invasive species.

People have to understand invasive species are a national issue. Unless we do it with money federally, we're done.

[Dr. Anna Warwick Sears]

In the Okanagan we're thinking of having a GoFundMe campaign to get dogs. That's the level we're at.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

They're fantastic. The dogs at the border crossings don't bother people. They'll inspect the boats in two minutes—two minutes for an invasive species.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Shields.

Now back to the government side.

Mr. Finnigan, you have five minutes or less, please.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the panel for being here.

I'm from New Brunswick, Miramichi specifically, where the river is famous for its Atlantic salmon. As you probably know, it's under stress. The numbers are going down. Close to 10 years ago I guess now, they spotted the smallmouth bass in Miramichi Lake, which is a tributary of the Miramichi River. Until now they've tried to contain it and they've also tried to fish it out, but they cannot eradicate it.

Dr. MacIsaac, when you have a problem you use everything in your tool box. To eradicate the smallmouth bass would cost about $1.5 million. The Miramichi salmon recreational fishery is worth between $20 million and $30 million a year. I know there's risk in using rotenone, but I think it has worked well, especially in small lakes where you can control the application. In my backyard we've used it to eradicate pickerel, which was also brought in by someone and it's also a lake that is a tributary to the Miramichi.

Where do you say we should balance the risk in eradicating a species like the smallmouth bass that would be very detrimental to the salmon?

[Prof. Hugh MacIsaac]

Whenever these cases come up you want to make an informed decision, and you have to be able to quickly call upon a variety of expertise to address the question. It may include hydrology. If we apply a toxin, where is it going to go next? Do we have endangered species in this system? If you do, then some of these tools, such as application of rotenone or something like that, you may immediately withdraw, simply saying the risk is too great for our endangered species. If you don't have those types of problems, then very clearly I would argue in favour of attempting to eradicate.

We had an unfortunate case a couple of years ago in Lake Winnipeg where they did try to eradicate the zebra mussel. Unfortunately, I think they didn't know the complete distribution of the species at the time and so that effort failed. But do you know what? They tried. So I have nothing but applause for what they tried to do, to see if we could keep that thing from getting into western Canada, but make sure you make informed decisions.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Yes, I agree.

Do you want to comment, Ms. Wallin?

[Gail Wallin]

Bass is usually introduced by fishers, so stopping people from releasing that fish and others is a really big solution too.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you.

The other thing you touched on, Dr. MacIsaac, was climate change. Again, going back to my backyard, the Miramichi, we have striped bass, which is a native species, but now because apparently the Gulf of St. Lawrence has been the fastest-warming body of water on earth in the last five or six years—that's what we hear—we know now that the striped bass has been spotted in Labrador, 1,000 kilometres north of its regular habitat. How much has climate change affected the spread of invasive species? If we could manage climate change, how important is that aspect of it?

[Prof. Hugh MacIsaac]

Climate change is a huge issue, and I realize that your government is doing its best on this. It's an enormous global issue to address.

Invasive species are an international, national or regional issue. In many cases, effectively managing an invasive species problem will be easier, clearly, than trying to manage climate change. All we can do with climate change is develop models like the one I showed—that last slide of the tunicate species—to try to determine where these things might go next, and if you don't want them in those areas, then you start monitoring, using whatever means you have available.

You might use settling plates. I know in British Columbia in the marine waters they use settling plates a lot to see what's out there. You can use settling plates. You can use eDNA. You can do lots of things to try to give you.... You can say you think an area is at particular risk, so let's put extra resources into monitoring to see if it does show up there.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Often when invasive species come in and thrive, it's because they don't have natural enemies, whether they're plants, insects or water, right? Has it ever been tried to bring in predators to try to control some of those? We do it in agriculture.

[Prof. Hugh MacIsaac]

I hate to tell you that often they do have natural enemies, and in many cases, if they didn't initially, then very shortly thereafter many native species will go after them. There are colossal disasters where humans have tried to introduce other things. We introduced the mongoose to try to control things like rats. Well, the mongoose is active at a different time of day than the rats are, so the mongoose ends up going after the wrong species. There are textbook examples in conservation biology of what not to do, and it's largely because.... I mean that's pretty basic. If I'm going to introduce a biological control agent, I want it to go after my target. Not knowing that one species is active during the day and the other is active at night, I mean, how much worse can you get than that? That's just totally incompetent.

[Dr. Anna Warwick Sears]

On the other hand, there are some things that have to do with genetic engineering of a bacterium and things like that, which have potential. There have been a lot of bad examples of natural enemies being released, but there also have been some cases of things working. There are some techniques that have to do with soil bacteria and things like that released to control mosquitos. They're working on something like that for zebra mussels, as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

I notice Jodi Romyn has her hand up to comment on that.

Go ahead, please.

[Jodi Romyn, Senior Manager, Invasive Species Council of BC]

Thanks very much.

I just wanted to add that, further to that, I'm not aware of many examples of successful biological control agents for aquatic invasive species, but there are a lot of great success stories for invasive plants, and a lot of great work that I know is largely driven through the federal government. I think that really is an area that could be explored further.

I know that in B.C. it's certainly one of the tools that we see as part of the tool kit, and one that's allowed some of our efforts to focus more on new eradication of new species. I do think that's something that could be considered more.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Ms. Sparks, you were going to comment as well.

[Deborah Sparks]

My comment is not on the biocontrol per se. We talked a bit about eDNA testing and monitoring, and I just wanted to also agree that we think that having this kind of data and screening pathways is important. I also wanted to mention the importance of having good risk assessment, so that you know what you're dealing with and you can set priorities. Beyond that is having a plan, having a response strategy in place. You already know you have a high risk, so what are you going to do when the problem presents itself? You don't figure it out when the species arise. You need to be talking with your partners ahead of time. Who are those people? That is the feds, but it's also the provinces and territories, our U.S. neighbours, indigenous communities, municipalities, researchers, NGOs. You want to bring all of those people into the fold so that you can be effective. You can use existing mechanisms. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You can create MOUs with other partners where they don't exist. You can look at the mutual aid agreement on Asian carp with all of the provinces and states around the Great Lakes as a really good example.

We definitely agree that you need your data and you need to do your screening, but beyond that, we all have to work together and have a good plan, because there's no single agency that's going to be able to do this job. I know we're talking a lot about DFO, but even DFO can't do it alone with all the resources in the world. We're definitely going to have to work together and be strategic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

Before I go to Mr. Calkins for five minutes or less, I will remind the committee that we have some committee business to do at the end. We can either add on a few minutes or finish up at 5:20 or 5:25. I will leave that up to the committee.

Mr. Calkins, you have five minutes or less, please.