Fisheries Committee on Nov. 21st, 2016

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

I'd like Ms. Fuller to have a chance to talk.

Is this an issue, perhaps, of regulations that need to be made better, or of more resources at DFO to handle the analyses that need to be done?

[Susanna Fuller]

I think it's a combination. There needs to be a reinstatement of resources. I think, though, that working with municipalities and understanding public works and being much more flexible and efficient in terms of.... That is exactly the problem. We shouldn't have to wait six months to get approval to replace a culvert.

That is all a regulatory process issue, and it can be addressed. I think there was lots of work with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to try to solve this. A lot of work was being done between 2006 and 2010 with stakeholders on better implementing the habitat sections of the act. That process all stopped.

One thing we had asked for as conservation and environmental groups was to have a multi-stakeholder meeting so that we could discuss issues with the agriculture federation and municipalities on how we can achieve habitat protection in a way that works for everybody. Unfortunately, the funding for the national fish habitat coordinating committee was cut, so there was no advice from environment groups and there was no approval level for that multi-stakeholder meeting. I've been involved in lots of multi-stakeholder processes and can say that sometimes you can reach agreement quite easily, if given the place to do it.

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

Thank you, Ms. Fuller.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much.

We're going to go to Mr. Donnelly for the final three minutes.

Since the clock shows that there is still 15 minutes to go before we get into committee business, I'm going to do as we normally do when we exhaust two rounds. We divvy it up among the three parties.

I'm looking at about four minutes for each question, but I'm pleading with you to please keep within the four minutes. I've been quite flexible thus far, but we really want to take a break and be able to come back at 5:15 eastern time.

Mr. Donnelly is next, then, for three minutes, and following that will be four minutes each to summarize.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to keep on that theme for a second and make a comment and then ask a question in my three minutes.

I come from a riding in the lower Fraser River, where much damage to the fishery has already happened—over decades, in fact—and it has happened because of permits for housing, commercial buildings, roads, bridges, etc. In the Fraser estuary, that very productive and critical area for fisheries habitat, some scientists say about 70% or more of the area has been lost because of cities, resource extraction, farming, etc.

It's important to look at this when we're talking about jurisdictions. I think cows and fish was mentioned, a provincial program, so that it's a provincial jurisdiction. We're talking about some issues that are in municipal jurisdictions, and then, obviously overlaying these, is the Fisheries Act, which is federal jurisdiction.

We're talking about things such as farmers' ditches or drainage ditches for housing that are being considered habitat now because of the past, when so much valuable fish habitat was degraded and is gone. It's paved over; it no longer exists. I think that's part of the issue that DFO officers and the department have to contend with.

I want to switch gears for a second, though, back to one of Dr. Fuller's recommendations on stock rebuilding plans. Could you elaborate, in the few seconds left, on what legalizing stock rebuilding plans would look like for you under the Fisheries Act? You mentioned the Magnuson-Stevens act, for instance.

[Susanna Fuller]

I think there's very good guidance already in the laws of the United States around rebuilding and also with the common fisheries policy in the European Union. We have commitments through the CBD, the Convention on Biological Diversity, to rebuild our fish stocks.

We need to put the words in our act. We should have a Fisheries Act that is responsible for rebuilding our fish stock. It's not too much to ask, and I think it would solve many of the problems around not listing under the Species at Risk Act because we don't want to shut down fisheries. I fully support sustainable fisheries, but the fact that we have no legal obligation under the Fisheries Act to rebuild our fisheries should be a bit shocking.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Mr. Donnelly, are you done?

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

Yes, I'm done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

That being said, let's go to what we affectionately call the lightning round.

We're going to go to the Liberals.

Mr. Finnigan, please proceed for four minutes.

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

Thank you again.

I have two or three quick questions.

With all due respect, Chief Chamberlin, are there any practices within your community that you think could be improved to enhance the protection of the Fisheries Act? If there are, could you elaborate on some of the things that you are doing or have been doing?

[Chief Robert Chamberlin]

To improve the situation, I'll use the clam digging as an example in our territory. We've been pushing DFO to open up other areas for clam digging, because we understand that places are getting over dug. There was a time when it was managed in a different manner consistent with who we are. The digging practice has evolved and so forth. We need to have that understood and have that put in place, so we can see the benefits of these stocks bouncing back again.

What we've been doing as the Musgamagw Dzawada'enuxw people to preserve our stocks is that we haven't fished them for a very long time. We've watched the steady decline in the Broughton Archipelago. We attribute this to the open net-cage fish farms. We're watching the government expand.... The previous government, against all good sense, expanded these fish farms.

Without the resources to participate, we're hamstrung to begin with. I find it rather fascinating to talk about bureaucracy getting in the way of us trying to do good work when the government had focused on streamlining and harmonizing everything so industry could do their work, but we're not doing the same when we want to protect the habitat.

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

Thank you.

I'll leave this open.

Do you feel that co-management of the act with the province or other entities is helping, or is this just duplication of a lot of red tape? Do you think that DFO should be managing the act itself, with the province following suit? I'll leave that open to Mr. Bonnett or to Ms. Fuller.

[Ron Bonnett]

Very quickly, I think that communication has to take place between federal, provincial, and conservation authorities. All three are going to be involved in it. We've gone far enough down that path, and that's what's happening. I think there has to be a better understanding of what the roles and the responsibilities are within the different regulatory agencies.

[Susanna Fuller]

On co-management, I think you'll see there are many coastal communities and fisheries that would like to have co-management, because it gives them a stake in the game and it increases potential for stewardship. When it comes to understanding both science and management, when it's just top down, there isn't a shared sense of responsibility sometimes.

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

I think it's accepted science that we do have climate change, and it's not going to get better anytime soon. With that we will have floods, and we will have bigger storms, bigger floods, and bigger acts of nature. When we go to write this new act, how or should that be taken into account? How can we mitigate these coming storms?

[Susanna Fuller]

On marine fish populations, I think we can take the lead from the United States on this. At least in the northeastern U.S., they have done an assessment of vulnerability of 86 fish stocks to climate change. They're taking that into consideration when they develop their management plans. I think we can do that in Canada, and we have many of the same species. We can look at the vulnerability of various species and habitats to climate change, and we can act in a precautionary manner, which is why I suggest that both the precautionary principle and the ecosystem approach be included in the act, because then we have a way of doing that work.

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

Should we also look at, for example, culling a certain species, if we need to, in the act?

[Chief Robert Chamberlin]

You could come and cull all the Atlantic salmon in B.C.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

I can....

[Chief Robert Chamberlin]

I'm going to invite some of my Mi'kmaq friends to come get their fish.

What I would suggest to you in terms of climate change is to not only look at the species that are going to be vulnerable but engage with the isolated and rural communities of first nations that absolute rely upon these resources to survive. They are going to be the leading edge of impact on global warming.

When we look at different migratory species of fish, let's find things and identify what we can reach out and touch and make better. Of course, that means close containment fish farms in B.C.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much, folks.

Mr. Sopuck, you have four minutes.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you. I was very interested in what our colleague, Mr. Donnelly, said when he described the destruction of habitat over some 25 years in the Fraser Valley. The point is that was all done under the old Fisheries Act. It was clear the old Fisheries Act didn't solve all the problems.

I should also make the point that the Salish Sea project was funded by our government. I worked closely with Dr. Brian Riddell and Mike Meneer of the Pacific Salmon Foundation to get that project through. I'm pleased that the current government seems to be continuing with it because it's a very good project.

Ms. Fuller, you made the point that you'd like to see the level of ministerial discretion reduced. Also, you're very much in tune with your colleague from the World Wildlife Fund, Elizabeth Hendriks, who, in her brief, talked about “removing the absolute discretionary power of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans in fisheries management decision-making”.

As an elected official, I'm shocked by both of those statements from your group and WWF. Whatever happened to the citizen's right to redress, the citizen's right to appeal a decision that a government makes? The final decision is not made by an elected official nor does it rest on the desk of an elected official. Where is democracy in this? This seems to be a common thread in the environmental activist community, to reduce ministerial discretion, which ultimately will reduce the ability of local key people, commercial fishermen, anglers, to seek redress from a government that makes a decision they may not like.

Obviously governments make decisions that people do not like, but at least citizens have the right of redress. Why do the environmental groups, by and large, want to reduce the role of elected officials in environmental decision-making?

[Susanna Fuller]

I would say that it's because we have seen when there's a lack of adherence to science advice. Perhaps if the minister at the time had made different decisions around the management of the cod stocks, many citizens would not have had to face the impact of that decision.

I did a lot of research. I'm trying to find management decisions that DFO had made. Try to go on a DFO website. It's getting a little better now but to find where management decisions have been made around fish stocks and the reasons why is quite difficult.

It is too easy for conservation groups, industry, whoever, to be able to lobby the minister on a particular decision and there needs to be a framework around how decisions are made and why.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Of course.