Fisheries Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2016

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today. I have a number of different questions from all over the place.

I'm going to start with Mr. Stringer, because I often remember your quote when we first talked about marine protected areas when you first appeared before this committee. You said it was both exciting and terrifying. I'd like you to give us an update on where we are in terms of the percentages and how we're moving forward with our MPA.

[Kevin Stringer]

Thank you for the question.

It continues to be both of those things. What I would say—and I think I said this at the time, as well—is what's most exciting about it is that it's truly galvanized the department and the stakeholders, and even the fishing industry and others, to say, “Okay, this is going to happen. How are we going to make it happen? What sorts of things are we going to do?”

I would say two things. It's quite different for 2017, which is the 5%, and 2020, which is the 10%. We are now going through an exercise of identifying the sensitive areas that we have already identified through science. Those are corals and sponges. These are key rearing areas and spawning areas, and we're looking at areas that need protection. We are also looking at what the best tools are for those protections, understanding that creating formal MPAs, marine protected areas through regulations takes time. We're going to have to use other measures for the protection, and that's the exercise we've been going through this fall.

We've also been talking to the fishing industry, the oil and gas industry, the shipping industry, and others to make sure they're part of the discussion. We've been engaging with environmental groups and academics, who have a lot of this information. That's been the exercise. It's also about trying to figure out what the criteria are that we need to say that we've done this, and to be able to say that this counts as x per cent.

In addition, there have been a number of specific closures. There was a significant canyon closure off of Nova Scotia, which was announced, I think it was in early September. There was Darnley Bay in the north, which was announced very recently. There have been others.

The other thing I would say is that it's not just DFO, even in the federal government. Parks Canada does national marine conservation areas, and they are working on Lancaster Sound, which would get 2%. That's a major one up in the Northwest Passage. Environment Canada does national wildlife areas, and they're working on Scott Island, which is at the north end of Vancouver Island.

We have structure and organization within the government. We're working with environmental groups, and with industry. We're trying to figure out how we get to that 5% and how we get the more formal MPAs in place by 2020.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Could you walk us through the process of engaging with the stakeholders on the MPAs? You mentioned fisheries, and you mentioned oil and gas. Do you just hold a public meeting? Do you reach out to them individually? I come from an area with a number of fishermen, and I would like to know how that process works.

[Kevin Stringer]

Taking Nova Scotia as an example, there is a process under way that brings together the fisheries organizations and other industries, and they've been meeting for many years. There's something called ESSIM, which stands for the eastern Scotian shelf integrated management plan. That has continued to meet, and it's become the core of what's been dealing with these protected areas. They've been working on MPAs, but they're also working on different areas for closed areas.

We're going to have a challenge, because in previous days, we used to take seven years. We'd identify the areas that needed protection: here are 14 different candidate areas, what do we think; where are the interests, etc.? It would take years and years. We've given ourselves one year to do this. It's a huge challenge. People do feel hurried, and they do feel rushed. That being said, we do have the science to be able to do it. We are looking at different measures that help ensure that we're going to maintain a robust fishery and other industries. We are working as much as we can with industries going forward, but that is a bigger challenge than it was.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Okay.

I'm going to switch my questions now to small craft harbours. As you may be aware, the size of vessels is changing in the lobster industry, specifically. They're now a lot wider than they used to be. This is causing a lot of problems with our wharves in our small craft harbours with the amount they can now berth, the size of the berth, getting in and out of areas, and with breakwaters. When you look at wharves that need upgrades, do you take that into account? I think this is part of the problem that we see. They're not taking into account the changes that are happening in the fishery when they are upgrading the wharves.

Sometimes they run out of money before they run out of the project. I have one wharf in my riding where there's a three-foot difference, because they didn't have enough money to finish the whole wharf, and now the two sides of the wharf have a three-foot difference. They have ramps, which I question the safety of when going to and fro.

I'm wondering about the process when you look at small craft harbour wharves. How do you determine the best approach for the way the fishery is going?

[Kevin Stringer]

Thank you very much for that question.

I would say it is a huge challenge. We do try to integrate our small craft harbours group as much as we can with our fisheries groups, as well as to engage with the harbour authorities. The harbour authorities have made an enormous difference. Those are the folks who really know what the future needs are, so we work with them as much as we can, but I think we need to do better at that, ensuring that we're not just patching up, that we're actually preparing for the future.

I said that $75 million a year is the usual budget for this. The investment that this government made this year is $149 million over the next two years, an enormous difference in terms of being able to catch up and not just patch up, but actually think ahead.

The other thing I would—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Stringer. I have to leave it at that. Sorry.

[Kevin Stringer]

No, understood.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

We have to move along.

We have Mr. Sopuck for five minutes, please.

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

We had some very interesting testimony from Mr. Ron Bonnett, who's president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Canada's largest farm group, regarding the Fisheries Act. I'm going to quote his testimony. He said, regarding 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 the 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 [facilities] to their farms as well as lifting the threat of being deemed out of compliance.”

Mr. Bonnett went on to say, “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.”

Mr. Bonnett went on to say, “It is CFA's position that a complete revert to reinstate all provisions of the Fisheries Act as they were would be unproductive and re-establish the same problems for farmers and provide little improvement in [the] outcome for the protection and improvement of fish habitat. The current streamlined approach is working far better for all and efforts should continue this approach.”

Why was the agricultural community's experience, in terms of interactions with your department, so dismal before the changes were made to the Fisheries Act?

[Kevin Stringer]

I think you've heard from the agriculture community their views on why it was the challenge that it was. I'd say a couple of things.

One is it wasn't all dismal. We actually did have some class authorizations for agricultural drains in Ontario and in other areas, so we were working with the agricultural communities. I would also say it was true that there were a number of notorious, if you might want to say, instances where farmers were concerned that people were coming onto their fields and either making them clean out their drains or not letting them clean out their drains, or making them do it in a certain way.

In terms of that question, we've always sought to work as closely as we can with all groups.

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

I understand that, but as somebody who, as you know, is a fisheries biologist and represents a large rural area, I think, with all due respect, Mr. Stringer, you're downplaying the impact on municipalities and farmers across the country. We have testimony from the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, the AAMDC, which is the municipal association in Alberta, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities will be before us.

I deeply respect your expertise and testimony, but I would say that as somebody who represents the farming and rural constituency and knows pretty much all the farm leaders across the country, the experience with the old Fisheries Act was uniformly bad. I think it's partly because when a DFO officer shows up at a farm meeting with a flak jacket and a pistol.... Of course, we farmers love our guns, but that's a different story. We don't take them to municipal meetings. I would just say, with that experience, that no matter what changes are made to the Fisheries Act now, I would like the department to really reflect on that and ensure that doesn't happen. That's more of a comment.

I'll switch gears here. On a more positive note, with the fact that the department is hiring all of these fisheries scientists, what kind of process will you go through for the allocation of these scientists to the various programs? I think I may be speaking for the entire committee. As you know, we're doing a major study on the northern cod and the Atlantic salmon, two species of tremendous importance. Will you ever possibly see the way to assigning some of these new scientists specifically, a group to Atlantic salmon and a group to northern cod, so they don't just “work on what they want to”? I mean that respectfully because I love doing fisheries, it's great fun, but these are two species that are extremely important. Do you see the possibility of assigning a number of scientists to each one of those species, and that's all that they would work on?

[Kevin Stringer]

Trevor Swerdfager would probably have the specific answer to that. I believe some of them will be assigned to those areas. What I can say is it was a very significant amount of money: $40 million a year plus $1.5 million a year for freshwater. That does speak to the issues around fisheries protection, the freshwater part in particular.

Of that $40 million a year, more than half of it goes to stock assessment and related fisheries science. That's an area that has not had an investment in a long time. That is the assessments around cod, salmon, those types of things.

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

Is there anything for fisheries enhancement?

[Kevin Stringer]

The funding goes to fisheries. I don't know if it's enhancements specifically, but I do know that fisheries biology and stock assessment are more than half. There is a percentage for aquaculture, a percentage for freshwater science, and a percentage for ocean science writ large. It was very thoughtful about areas that needed the most work and we've been hearing from fishermen in particular where that work is needed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Stringer.

I'm going to have to go to the committee about this one. We have approximately five minutes left. Mr. Morrissey, you're up. Beyond that, to round out, we can go to Mr. Donnelly for three minutes, and then we have to take votes very quickly, which means I need to extend the meeting by five minutes. Do I have unanimous consent to proceed: five, three, and then votes?

All right, we're good, no objections.

Mr. Morrissey, you have five minutes or less.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you.

I have to reiterate the comments made by my colleague Mr. Sopuck. We have to get a lot better in dealing with farmers and municipalities on the interpretation of the act as we tighten it up. There were too many cases of borderline heavy-handedness coming from the department in dealing with these people who generally are trying to do the best job they can.

I want to go to small craft harbours and follow up with Ms. Jordan. In the money that you have going forward, could you elaborate a little on what's going to utilize $1.4 million? How is it going to impact on the capital expenditures going forward?

[Kevin Stringer]

Thanks for the question.

I'll start with where you started, which is around the agriculture but also the interpretation of the act. The last time the minister and I both said this. There is more room for interpretation around commercial, recreational, and aboriginal fisheries, and around serious harm to fish than there was in the previous version on habitat.

With respect to the $1.4 million—

[Tony Matson]

It's funding to support projects for small craft harbours using the funding for divestiture.

[Kevin Stringer]

A divestiture program was originally booked for Little Tancook harbour in Nova Scotia. It looks as if that particular divestiture is not going to happen, at least not this year. We're hoping that it will happen. It's a question of diverting the funds to a different project, which is in Quebec.

Two other small craft harbour items are in here, which are to approve funding for small craft harbour work in Naufrage and in Alberton. Those are projects we were hoping to do last year and we moved the funds to this year because it didn't get done in time and we wanted to make sure that work is done. I believe the work has been done in both cases, fixing the wharf and dealing with the breakwater.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Could you give a breakdown? You identified $5 million in grants, I believe.

[Tony Matson]

Yes, in these estimates we've asked for $5 million in grants and contributions. Most of it is for contributions. I can get the breakdown by initiative.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

You identified $1.6 million that you were transferring to capital. Could you identify what that was for?

[Tony Matson]

We can get you that information as well.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Okay. You're looking for that. We probably could go back.

Perhaps you could elaborate a bit more. It was Naufrage and Alberton, you said. Could you identify what the funding options were?