Thanks a lot, and thanks for the invitation to make a presentation. Some of you might wonder what farmers have to do with fish, but hopefully by the end of the presentation, you'll get a bit of grasp on it.
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture, for those of you who don't know, represents farmers right across the country. We're Canada's largest farm organization and represent about 200,000 farmers through general farm organizations and commodity organizations across the different provinces. Some of these farmers are all too familiar with the Fisheries Act in its previous form.
The experience that many farmers had with the Fisheries Act, unfortunately, was not a positive one. It was characterized by lengthy bureaucratic applications for permitting and authorizations, and a focus on enforcement and compliance measures taken by officials coupled with a lack of guidance or outreach on the purpose of these measures or information on how to navigate through the process.
Many farmers were then relieved when the changes that were made just a few years ago drastically improved the timeliness and cost of conducting regular maintenance and improvement activities to their farms as well as lifting the threat of being deemed out of compliance. That being said, I think we could find ourselves with an important opportunity to look at how protection can be enhanced in a way that works on the ground for those who earn their livelihood from productive natural resources.
Before I get into some of the proposed solutions to enhanced protection, it would be useful to explain a little further some of the challenges that farmers faced before changes were made to the act.
Most farmers interacted with the Fisheries Act and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans during the creation and maintenance phases of man-made physical works such as drainage ditches and irrigation canals. Periodically, these require maintenance to compensate for the sedimentation and vegetation growth that occurs. These features allow for the continued productivity of agricultural lands across Canada, and were never meant to be fish habitat.
Nonetheless, they fell under the Fisheries Act, and farmers found themselves forced to comply with all the rules that also applied to natural streams and rivers that provide quality fish habitat. There are also many accounts of inconsistency in enforcement, monitoring, and compliance across Canada with different empowered organizations, which led to a confusion and indiscriminate approaches to enforcement and implementation. Even at the individual level, there were different interpretations of the act based on one's familiarity with agriculture.
Throughout the life cycle of a physical work like a drainage ditch, regular maintenance requirements often triggered a long process to secure permits and authorizations. That added to the costs for farmers and uncertain timelines led to difficulties in scheduling the work.
With the arrival of phragmites, an invasive species that thrives in drainage ditches and is a significant problem in many parts of Canada, many farmers are forced to conduct maintenance activities more often. It was when these activities for maintaining drainage ditches triggered the harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat provisions, also known as HADD, that significant barriers and costs to farmers appeared.
Many farmers found HADD authorizations to be long and administratively burdensome, with the threat of enforcement overwhelming. Farmers, as well as municipalities, who rely on functioning drainage, were often frustrated by the process, particularly if the ditch did not contain any fish. At the heart of the issue was that human-made waterways were treated the same way as natural streams and rivers. These weren't made with any purpose of providing fish habitat, and in numerous cases had no fish presence.
It is CFA's position that a complete revert to reinstate all provisions of the Fisheries Act as they were would be unproductive, would re-establish the same problems for farmers, and would provide little improvement in outcome for the protection and improvement of fish habitat. Human-made water bodies such as drainage ditches simply should not be treated as fish habitat.
We feel that there are more constructive and efficient approaches that will serve to provide for fish habitat protection, yet also work on the ground so that barriers, costs, and frustrations do not mount in agriculture and rural communities. The current streamlined approach is working far better for all and efforts should continue this approach.
The CFA supports proactive and collaborative approaches to promoting fish habitat conservation and creation, rather than the strict and inconsistent enforcement of regulations. Overall, any changes to the current Fisheries Act should be considered as to how they will support outcomes-based conservation rather than a process-oriented approach.
Farmers are stewards of the land, and they aspire to leave the healthiest environments for their farms to the next generation. Many find intrinsic value in supporting biodiversity and water quality on the land, and the actions that have been taken by many exemplify this fact. At the same time, farmers recognize that they are contributing to the public good and services with little to no compensation provided.
There are ecological goods and service programs that have proven highly successful in meeting local environmental priorities, whether they be biodiversity, wetlands retention, species at risk, water quality, or others.
I'd like to take this opportunity to share just a few examples from my own farm of growing stewardship actions that have improved fish habitat outcomes. Through Growing Forward 2 and species at risk funding, we were able to access incentive programs that contributed to the improvement of fish habitat. More specifically, through the provincially delivered environmental farm plan and the Species at Risk Act, we put fencing in to keep our livestock sufficiently away from water courses, which has increased water quality and fish population.
In order to provide fresh water for our cattle, we installed a solar powered off-stream watering system. This has led to the rehabilitation of the stream that runs through our pasture areas. These are just two examples from a single farm in northern Ontario that illustrate how stewardship approaches have improved fish habitat in agricultural landscapes through means other than a regulatory-based approach under the Fisheries Act.
Ecological goods and service programs offer an excellent vehicle that should be explored further to improve the quality of fish habitat on or near agricultural lands. These can be implemented at the community scale, at the watershed level, or at the province-wide level, as P.E.I. has done. Manitoba has committed to the implementation of the alternative land use services program. In P.E.I.'s case, this program has set out to address water quality issues, and it incentivizes agricultural producers to maintain healthy and biodiverse riparian areas and setbacks from streams.
Farmers have access to best management practices that provide clear guidance to change management practices that have a positive environmental impact, often in response to regional priorities.
One of the potential areas that deserves additional thought is how to better address fish habitat requirements at the landscape and watershed level. In considering the scale of agricultural production and the types of projects that would be implemented on the farm, it is not reasonable to require permits, authorizations, habitat offsets, or other fee-based arrangements for every potential HADD disruption caused by drainage ditch maintenance.
Many small projects can add up to a cumulative impact on the landscape scale, and there should be in place the right incentives and tracking to ensure fish habitat is supported through ecological goods and services, and other programs that work with agricultural producers.
In implementing the Fisheries Act, the department should more clearly look to assess the risk damage to fish habitat by particular types of projects. Currently DFO looks at low-impact and high-impact projects, but the risk of a project disrupting or damaging fish habitat should be a part of that equation.
All of this, coupled with greater distinction between natural and human-created water bodies and the recognition and support of stewardship approaches, would lead to a workable fish habitat protection strategy for farmers. Providing guidance through best management practices and working through incentive-based programs and stewardship for farmers can accomplish significant protection of fish and fish habitat in human-created water infrastructure in a collaborative manner that regulation and the threat of enforcement simply cannot.
Thank you again for the opportunity to present.