Evidence of meeting #35 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 recording is available from Parliament.
Vice-President, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
We represent the majority of first nations in British Columbia. I think our last membership count was 110 out of 203.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Am I correct in my information that there are first nations that are involved in open pen aquaculture?
Vice-President, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
Yes, there are.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
How do they feel about your group working towards moving it to closed containment? Are they in support of that? Are they looking at that as maybe a problem for them?
Vice-President, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
The government has always been very warm to point out the number of first nations that are involved.
One of the endeavours that I've pursued in the past couple of years has been developing the first nations wild salmon alliance. I can say to you quite clearly that there are about 150 first nations that are clearly opposed to open net-cage fish farms. What has happened is that the Cohen commission makes it clear that the potential to infringe on the Fraser River first nations, right up to the headwaters, where the outward-migrating smolts have the potential to die at fish farms because of sea lice disease and what have you.... As you know as well as I do, that triggers the duty to consult.
What has happened is the government has put in place regulations and management practices where they did not consult with first nations at all, and there was a potential infringement on their rights. That's why I've been advancing to the DFO minister that we re-engage and we take this opportunity, with the commitments that the Prime Minister has made, to engage with first nations so that everybody can be mindful of everyone's rights and of what it means when you have a cumulative impact on a run of fish coming out of the Fraser.
Liberal
November 21st, 2016 / 4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Thank you to our guests who are here with us today. I found all the testimony fascinating, and respectfully, I really appreciate everybody's view on this. I'm going to direct my questions to Chief Chamberlin.
Chief Chamberlin, respectfully, you did say some things about our previous government not engaging with first nations, and I feel compelled to have to stand up and—while we're here for the Fisheries Act review—talk about some of the good things that we did.
Our government did engage with first nations. You mentioned in a previous question that there was some funding that was put forth. We signed 95 contribution agreements that provided funding for over approximately 165 first nation communities specifically with relation to fisheries. There was $7 million for the aboriginal aquatic resource and oceans management agreement that we signed.
We signed an MOU after the Fisheries Act was done in 2013 with Grand Chief Ed John, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, as well as regional chief and now-minister within this government, Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould, with respect to the first nations fisheries memorandum of understanding with the agreement that we would work collaboratively together and move forward together. We spent up to $465 million annually on salmon, and $23 million of that was spent within the province of British Columbia.
Chief Chamberlin, today we're here about the Fisheries Act review. Can you tell me how the changes to the Fisheries Act negatively affected or took away first nations fishing rights?
Vice-President, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
First, I want to respond to the comments that you just put on the table here. On the MOU that you described with the first nations leadership council, I was signatory to that as well, and it was meaningless. I don't mean to be offensive; I mean to be honest. It accomplished nothing, so let's be really clear about that.
In terms of the money that the previous government put forward on, let's say, aquaculture regulation development and management practice development, they didn't incorporate a single word that came out of those consultations with first nations. It was meaningless. Regardless of how much money the government can say it put out there for first nations, the very fact that there was zero accommodation as an output makes it a senseless waste of taxpayers' dollars.
I was at the lead table with the Fisheries Council on the regulation development and the management practice, so I know what I'm talking about there. In terms of any measure of accommodation, there was nothing.
In terms of how this is going to affect, or how it has affected first nations, certainly if we're going to be changing the definition of what we're going to protect, we need to look at what's happening today, but we, as first nations, and yourselves, as government, are also charged with looking out for many generations yet to come and that was found in the Tsilhqot’in decision. When we think about this now, when I turn my attention to the changes that have been made and defining an aboriginal right to fish as a fishery, and that only an impact to the fishery is going to trigger the protection of the environment, that is off base. It's inconsistent with the Supreme Court of Canada laws, what comes out of the Ahousaht nation case, what comes out of the Sparrow decision, and so forth.
What we're finding with the government is that, even though the Supreme Court has given very clear direction on first nations aboriginal rights on this particular topic, you're finding an end-around to try to define, limit, and find a way so we don't have to protect the very areas that are going to sustain the fish for the fishery. If we're going to just focus on a fishery rather than the protection of habitat, it's a very sad day in Canadian history.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
With respect to co-management, I had one of our local chiefs, Chief Joe Alphonse, who I grew up with and who is a very good friend of mine—
Vice-President, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
He's a good man.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
He is a very good man. I grew up with him. We had him speaking with Minister LeBlanc and we talked about co-management.
Today I'd like to ask you, in terms of co-management, if we were to move forward, if the right path forward is co-management, where would the final say lie? Who would have the responsibility of the final say in the fisheries in terms of co-management of a fishery or the areas?
Vice-President, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
If we want to envision co-management by first nations on a fishery in British Columbia, we have to first accept that there are incremental and cumulative impacts to the fish. That's not something we saw embraced by the previous government. I'm hoping it's one of the things we're advancing with the existing government.
Consider for a moment that there is no knowledge about where Chief Joe Alphonse's sockeye goes when it leaves the Fraser River. It just leaves the river. We have the Pacific Salmon Foundation doing some great work through the Salish Sea marine survival project, where they have tagged, tracked, and mapped outward-migrating wild salmon smolts. Now we have a sense of where they're going. If we could expand that coast-wide, we would develop a fundamental and important management piece for wild salmon in the most critical portion of its life cycle. I've advanced this with Minister LeBlanc.
If we could expand Dr. Kristi Miller's lab in DFO to do real-time genetic analysis, we could then do sampling of these smolts as they go out on their migration route and get real-time impact identification through her work.
Whether it's a fish farm, a mining operation, a logging operation, or a garbage dump that's seeping into the river, we can then identify what needs to be changed in terms of the early management of these fish, so that when they get out in more numbers to the ocean, there's a greater opportunity for them to return.
We're making use of leading-edge science. Who better situated to do that than first nations people who live in these isolated territories, have the knowledge of the lands and the rivers, and have the access to accomplish this? We could fulfill the goals that this government has now put in front of us in terms of science-based decision-making.
Mr. Simms, I can see you're getting antsy.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
I don't want to interrupt your train of thought because it was a good one, but we are a bit over time. Is there something you want to add in one sentence or less?
Vice-President, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
The First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance held a two-day strategic dialogue session on salmon. I can make that available. I really recommend that everybody here read it because it is the path forward from first nations across British Columbia. It also fits hand-in-glove with the existing government's commitments on virtually everything for first nations.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
Thank you, sir. We have to move on.
Next is Mr. Hardie, please, for five minutes.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for being here.
For Ms. Fuller and Chief Chamberlin, I have a quick question flowing out of the Cohen commission. Justice Cohen recommended that the DFO basically get out of the aquaculture business altogether. Do you support that?
Vice-President, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
Yes, unequivocally.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
If you have some “whys”, those could probably come up in another study I'm sure we're going to do.
To Mr. Bonnett, and Mr. Black, who hasn't had a chance to say anything yet, this is related to the other committee I'm on, which is studying another aspect of this.
Have you had any issues with navigation complaints about putting fences across your drainage ditches? If you can float a canoe on it, you know....
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Okay. We'll move on from there.
I would ask both of you to think about best practices for drain ditch maintenance and to consult with the other parties who have a stake in this, that is, the people who have a concern about fish habitat. What are best practices that can absolutely minimize the risk of damages in terms of timing, the way it's done, and all of that? I think it would be very worthwhile for you to do that and submit something to this committee so that we can at least initiate a discussion.
In terms of restoring HADD protections and all the rest, we heard early on and have heard in other discussions some of the reasons the changes were made. Those changes were made, basically, to assist municipalities in their public works.
Chief Chamberlin, I don't know if any of your communities got tangled up in additional costs and times for having to have a more stringent layer of analysis done on public works. Maybe you could comment on that. If we return them, we obviously would like to try to avoid the problems we had before. Were the problems related to the stringency of the regulations or were they simply related to the lack of resources in the DFO to process things in a more timely manner and to help municipalities avoid some of these costs that they clearly were facing as a result of the old regulations?
You can both answer that.
President, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
I can take a crack at it first.
Some of the issues we face are more about the nature of the application. You mentioned putting HADD back in place. The concern I would have with HADD being back in place across the board, or even if there were exemptions or special policies put in place for municipal works and drainage on farms, is that there's always the problem of interpretation at the local level.
That's where we saw a lot of inconsistency, depending on the DFO office. One would come in and say, no, there's no problem, go ahead. Another one would come in and it would be a whole bureaucratic process that you had to go through. I guess that would be the caution about just putting HADD back in place without having some clear and enforceable guidelines that spell out how you treat a municipal drain.
I'm going to switch hats. I'll go back to 25 years ago I was a municipal councillor and we had the same issue. If a culvert washed out in a storm event, sometimes, with the process for getting that culvert reinstalled, you might go six months with the road completely blocked off. But the damage was done. If you could drop that culvert in the next morning, it would be over. It was like—