Fisheries Committee on May 15th, 2019

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

When the EU process you talked about was put in place, was there an impact on the costs associated with the market price of seafood now going through the legal channel? I'm curious what the impact is because I'm a farmer from central Alberta. When we put traceability requirements on beef and other things, there is a cost to a producer in the system for that. I'm not saying there isn't a cost-benefit relationship, but I'm just wondering what the cost was, if it were part of the information you gleaned.

[Julia Levin]

Our colleagues didn't look at that specifically, and a cost distribution conversation definitely has to happen with the players. One thing we heard from industry that has included traceability in their business operations, both internationally in those jurisdictions as well as domestically, is that the benefits of traceability far extend regulatory need and include.... Because seafood is so perishable and 30% of the product can be lost, it means that's not happening to the same extent. It means your supply chain just becomes efficient on whole new levels. There are interesting intrinsic economic benefits. Market access and traceability software are added costs, and different jurisdictions have approached cost-sharing between government and industry in various ways as well. That would be something for the task force.

[Lesley Wilmot]

A lot of our seafood is already exported, a fair amount of it to the EU and U.S. To be internationally competitive and have a market, many companies are already doing increased traceability.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

They're already certified.

[Lesley Wilmot]

DFO's catch monitoring program requires that a certain amount of information be shared with other countries that we are not sharing internally.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

I understand.

The chair is going to take my time. I have a lot of great questions.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

He's going to silence me, and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm not taking his time; I'm telling him he's gone over time.

Mr. Johns, you have seven minutes or less, please.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I'll keep on the same thread as Mr. Calkins. He talked about the benefit. We've seen traceability programs. On Fogo Island, they're doing really good work on this with the fish, and we're seeing that value going back to the fishers.

Are there traceability programs in the U.S. and the EU that have demonstrated that significant benefit?

I see a lot of our fishers, and this is a cost to them. It has a huge impact on a commercial fleet that is already struggling to stay afloat.

Can you speak about some of the modelling in other countries?

[Julia Levin]

Really interesting things have been happening around this concept of Fishcoin, the use of blockchain and how money is allocated to incentivize fishers to participate in the program. I can send more information on fishcoin, but there are different ways in which fishers are seeing the benefits of the increased financial cost to them of traceability.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I'm sure a lot of fish is being substituted. Obviously, lower value fish are being substituted for higher value fish. That hurts the fishers directly.

[Julia Levin]

Exactly. It changes market prices.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Who do you think would be the best, if there were a government department to take the lead on a national traceability program? Have you put some thoughts into that?

[Lesley Wilmot]

The issue is that imports are dealt with by one agency and labelling by another agency and, in order to implement this, it requires input all the way from the Canada Border Agency to DFO to CFIA. Right now, it really needs to be a larger group that comes together to figure out how to tackle it, because there isn't the regulatory or jurisdictional ability for any one department to address this.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I have a question for Kim.

Why do you think seafood traceability hasn't been addressed more successfully in Canada compared with the U.S., the EU and other parts of the world? I think Australia has also had some success.

[Kimberly Elmslie]

I think there are a few reasons. One is that it wasn't really a very well-known issue. I don't think Canadians were completely aware of it. When we first started doing the testing, we did it around the country to draw attention to the issue. It seems, from the response that we got from the public, they're shocked that this is what's happening. I think it's one of those things that weren't part of our psyche as a problem, but now that we're seeing that food fraud is becoming more prevalent, such as with honey, olive oil and these other products, we're starting to understand our food chains. I think we're a little bit disconnected from our food. Seafood is one of those things that changes hands many times and, by the time you get it on your plate, it's almost indistinguishable from what it was.

We have a fun game that we play for anyone who has come to one our university food fraud lunches. We put up two fillets and ask people which one is the salmon. We don't know, even people from the coast—not to out anyone here. It's hard to know because it is a disguised quantity. Then I think again about the complexity of whose jurisdiction it is. What regulations are required? How do we do this? There isn't a straight path to that.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have three minutes.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Obviously, in British Columbia right now, we're dealing with a lot of money laundering. This must be an easy thing to park your money: illegal fishing with human rights abuses attached to it. I mean, this is a lot of money. Can you speak to the amount of money that is possibly being pushed into this area?

[Lesley Wilmot]

Absolutely. The following is a global number, because we don't have a Canada-specific number. Again, it's from Sylvain Charlesbois. Food fraud represents a $52-billion problem worldwide and is allegedly worth more than the heroin trade and firearms trafficking combined. It is a huge global issue that does not get anywhere near the same kind of attention as the drug problem or trafficking. It really is a huge hidden problem.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

The B.C. government announced today that they're going to do an inquiry into money laundering, and I hope they take a look at this fish fraud, because, obviously, we're bringing in so much illegal fish.

Can you talk about the direct impact of fish fraud on our ecosystem in the oceans? You talked about illegal fishing. Can you maybe talk about some species that might really be under threat and especially close to Canada?

[Julia Levin]

To go back to the overall statistic, of the mislabelled substitutes that we found, we did find that 30% were vulnerable or threatened species, and that was a variety of species.

[Lesley Wilmot]

An additional 38% was unknown because the state of the fish stock was unknown. Of the health status of fish stocks that we know of, 30% were from vulnerable species.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

One thing I can imagine, just to go back to the cost of this, is that the GDP boost to our own country's fisheries would be massive. Do you know what that number would be if we stopped fish fraud? That is a significant amount of money that's coming into our country potentially illegally, and it could be put back into fishing communities and coastal communities. That traceability program should pay for itself.