Evidence of meeting #33 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fisheries.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
We're just about out of time, Ms. Hendriks, but would you like to respond very briefly?
Vice-President, Freshwater, World Wildlife Fund-Canada
Very briefly, I hope—and I put my faith in this committee—that you put the Fisheries Act in a place that ensures we don't have collapses of fisheries like we've had in the past.
Liberal
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few questions.
I'll come back to the cumulative impacts, but I want to raise an issue. I received a letter from the Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance, dated November 3. It was addressed to the minister and to you, Mr. Chair. I was cc'd on this. They have brought up the issue of feeling that there isn't enough time for adequate consultation with their members. They represent first nations from Hope to Vancouver, an area along the Fraser River, which is one of the greatest salmon rivers on the planet. There are a number of first nations there.
Their concern is that with the deadline being the end of November, they feel there's not enough time to provide adequate consultation for all of the different nations along the river and not enough time to organize a response on such an important topic. I hope the committee will look at and respond to this letter. They suggest moving the deadline to the end of March of 2017.
Certainly I've brought up that concern. I've received numerous requests from witnesses right across the country to be part of this process. I hope that you, Mr. Chair, and the committee will respond to their frustration and their concern.
I also have a concern about having four witnesses at this committee. Because we have so few committee meetings to hear from witnesses that we maximize the number of witnesses we can hear from, I was hoping to take advantage of this. Today we're hearing from four; I think we probably would have had time for six. That's certainly a concern I'd like to address going forward: that we take advantage of the short time this committee has chosen to adequately hear from as many Canadians and organizations across the country as possible.
Returning to the issue of how to improve the act in terms of the cumulative impacts, I want to go to the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper witnesses to ask them to perhaps finish where they were at.
If you've already finished, I could move on to the WWF and hear their comments.
President, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper
Thank you. I don't think we have much else to add.
I think our point is twofold. Under the current act, with the changes, we don't have a lot of tools in the Fisheries Act to look at cumulative impacts. The one tool that we did have under subsection 36(3), the test for “a deleterious substance”, has been changed through the regulations such that it can be exempted at the provincial level or industry can exempt itself.
I think it's a really great point to focus on cumulative impacts, because that's where the real damage will occur.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you.
Ms. Hendriks, did you want to provide some comment on how the act might be improved to deal with this?
Vice-President, Freshwater, World Wildlife Fund-Canada
Yes, I would point to the lack of monitoring and the importance of monitoring and transparency in understanding where the measuring stick is. Also, in each watershed, how do we understand holistically the impacts on the watershed? How can we look back and understand the impact over time? It's about having tools to be able to do that.
There are solutions out there. I hope the government is encouraged by this committee to explore the solutions that are out there to promote a holistic look at the watershed.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
In the remaining time I have, to the Independent Fish Harvesters' Federation, Mr. McDonald brought up a good point and said that even on the Atlantic coast he feels the owner-operator and fleet separation policies may not be working as well as he would like.
I think that on the west coast, we're not even close to that. We have ITQs, individual transfer quotas. The issue in the past has been essentially the concentration of power and accumulation of licences, i.e., fish and access to fish. In other words, excluding other fishermen from fishing is the issue.
That's a real problem. I've heard loud and clear about the issue about slipper skippers, those who have little to no interest in the fishery and are perhaps interested just in their financial benefit. We're talking about a philosophy of how we allow....
What I heard clearly was fish are part of the commons. They belong to the people of Canada, and they want access. That's what I think we're discussing. Who should get access? In the remaining seconds, Mr. Allain, could you comment on that?
Executive Secretary, Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters' Federation
I think our point is that the Government of Canada has more than conservation objectives for its fisheries. Fisheries are a resource. They are adjacent to communities that have the capacity to harvest them for broad social and economic benefits to those communities, and they need public policy instruments to ensure that happens. By focusing exclusively on conservation and ignoring these other aspects, the Government of Canada is not able to deliver on its broad suite of objectives. It took us a long while to go down that road of ITQs, but it doesn't serve the purpose. It doesn't give the results in the broad suite of objectives the government has.
Scotland regained control over their fish resources in the last two years. First they had a review of their fisheries policy, because they found that access to the adjacent resources was not in Scottish hands but in corporations that were elsewhere. They said they had a wide suite of objectives. The current system was not serving that, so they wanted a broad consultation on how they should change things, and one option they're not going to consider is what's there now. They are the first government to do that. We went down this road in the 1990s. It's essentially neo-Liberal ideology and economic theory. It hasn't worked. Hopefully Canada will follow Scotland and step back from that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
Thank you very much.
Mr. Donnelly, I'll address your issue in just a few moments, since we're officially into overtime and allowed to be there.
First of all, I want to thank our guests for being here today. Thank you to Mr. Gawn, Mr. Allain, Madam Laurie-Lean, Mr. Ruthven, and Ms. Hendriks, and for joining us by video conference, Ms. Tully and Mr. Mattson. We appreciate your time today and the expertise and the testimony you bring.
Mr. Donnelly brought up a point about the witnesses and how we're doing thus far. A lot of the invitations we've sent out, suggested by you, have not been responded to yet. Some of them have said no. I don't want to get into details as to who they are right now, but since we have some concern around the table, I would suggest that in the first hour on Wednesday we have the minister to talk about the supplementary estimates (B), and in the second hour we hope to conclude our study on Atlantic salmon.
Following that, can we use five to 10 minutes to discuss the witness list? I did say to Mr. Sopuck in the last hearing, when the minister was present, that we would talk about it. It is not written in stone. We can be somewhat flexible. Therefore, I ask you to do one thing as a homework assignment: can you bring me two or three names that you would like to bring forward? I would like us to talk about it in camera. We'll talk about some of the witnesses we would like to bring in addition, if we have the space. By Wednesday we may be able to conclude that some spaces are available for people who wish to be witnesses.
Go ahead, Mr. Doherty.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Mr. Chair, are you able to provide us with the list of witnesses who are not responding? We might be able to contact them if they are indeed witnesses—
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have just a quick question. Do we need to go in camera for that, given the motion?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
Yes. We're doing the Atlantic salmon study. What I suggested was having it on the back end of that study, which means we would still be in camera. If you feel you want it to be public, you can put forward a motion to that effect at that point.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
Is there anybody else on that issue? Are we okay with that?
Bring just a couple of names, and we'll see where we are at that point. We will have an update. Actually, when we start, I'll bring an update as to who has responded and who has not.
Thank you to our witnesses again, and thank you, colleagues.
The meeting is adjourned.