Fisheries Committee on Nov. 28th, 2016

[Trevor Taylor]

Yes, please, bring us into the light. The Fisheries Act is a very.... I can't say even say that it's a very matter-of-fact document. With all due respect to Mr. Sopuck's observation about ministerial discretion, it does rely, and very much so, on ministerial discretion. Some might argue that this is okay in a benevolent dictatorship, but I don't know that it has much place outside of that. Others' absolute discretion is not something that we particularly like lots of days, right?

Everybody needs principles to guide them, and they need to be legislative principles. I was a minister, and I also sat in opposition for a period of time. It would seem to me that the Parliament of Canada is just as important as the ministers, and the members of the Parliament of Canada and their views on legislation and how industries, fisheries, and oceans and whatnot should be managed are just as important as the views of the ministers. I firmly believe that. We elect a House of Commons to establish broad principles to govern our land and our water.

Ministerial discretion exercised outside of broad principles is like driving down the highway and seeing a sign saying “maximum 50 to 70.” What does that mean? We have a sign that says “maximum 60,” or we have a sign that says “maximum 100,” and it tells us clearly what we are allowed to do. We need the principles. We need to understand why.... The people who manage the fishery in Canada.... I talk specifically about the marine environment, the fishery. People here are talking about the impact of the Fisheries Act on farmers and whatnot. I have nothing to do with that. It's not that I don't care, but my life has been the ocean.

We need principles that define how you should view conservation and how you should view harm to habitat, and not just serious harm. Can you imagine...? Many of us have siblings. For example, let's say my mother said to me, “Trevor, don't you do serious harm to your sister.” Well, now, I'd probably push that envelope a little ways. Well, I can hurt her a little bit, according to that.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Trevor Taylor]

No, seriously.... I know I'm making light of it, but we need more clarity around this. The Oceans Act provides us with principles. It talks about the ecosystem approach. It talks about the precautionary approach. It talks about integrated fisheries management and integrated oceans management. None of that language.... That language is foreign to the Fisheries Act. There's a passing reference to it, without any clarity.

Again, to go back to Mr. Sopuck's observation—sorry to take up your time—part of the reason—

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

I was going to jump in there, Mr. Taylor.

[Trevor Taylor]

Okay. I'm sorry. I'll stop.

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

I do appreciate your specifics, and also your humour. I'm sorry, but we have limited time.

I'll turn to Ecojustice and Ms. Venton.

Can you talk a little about what wording you would like to see in the Fisheries Act with regard to cumulative harm? It's one issue that the committee has talked about, but in terms of wording and specific recommendations.... Also, I would encourage all witnesses to provide their recommendations in writing, if they haven't already done that.

Ms. Venton, maybe you could elaborate a little on the wording of cumulative impact.

[Margot Venton]

Sure. I think there are many places in the Fisheries Act where you could specifically insert consideration of cumulative effects.

There's the idea that I believe we just heard about: the notion of the guiding principles. For example, you could specifically insert into the discretion to authorize harm to habitat an express requirement. As an example, we'll use the existing structure that you have in the act right now. We have section 6, which currently sets out just four criteria a decision-maker thinks about when they make a decision to authorize serious harm to fish.

Let's assume that there's a provision such as that for decisions to authorize harm to fish habitat, which, as I've said before, is a provision that we think should be a stand-alone provision in the act. The things you would have to consider when doing this would include that consideration of the cumulative impact to fish habitat. We also think there should be some other thing—either it's a provision or maybe it's in a regulation or another stand-alone provision—that deals expressly with cumulative impacts.

The real challenge is that you also must have criteria or some way to evaluate that whole cumulative effects idea, because in the abstract it's kind of overwhelming, like, what does that even mean? That's why we're recommending that DFO.... This is something that we talked about under the specific heading that you should consider cumulative impacts. DFO should, before they turn to individual authorizations, have something to measure those authorizations against. That would be a watershed level assessment or an ecosystem level assessment that would say, look, here's what this watershed can handle and here's the place we think the threshold is. When you consider cumulative effects in that section 35 authorization it has to be measured against some work we've already done to assess what is the threshold, that is, how far can we go before we're affecting the way this thing functions?

Is that clear? I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's specific enough.

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

It's helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Ms. Venton. We appreciate it.

We have to move on now. It's the end of that round.

I brought this up earlier, folks, and I'm going to have to clarify. It is www.fiskistofa. It is the Directorate of Fisheries, an agency of the Ministry of Industries and Innovation. The directorate's task is the monitoring of fisheries and the daily administration of the fisheries management system in Iceland. There you have it.

Now we'll go to Mr. Finnigan, please, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the panel for appearing today.

My question will be for either Mr. Sutton or Mr. Cusson.

Regarding the Atlantic salmon, how would you describe the changes that occurred from 2013 until now? Has there been any damage or any problem with that? If we are to return, whether it's to the previous act, what would you say could be done to protect the Atlantic salmon at this stage?

[Stephen Sutton]

Thank you.

I think one of the issues with the changes made in 2012 is that proving that there has been harm or damage is very difficult, as was already brought up by somebody. It's very difficult to actually observe, in some cases, what those damages might be.

We have seen examples where there has been obvious damage to what we believe is key habitat, which has been reported to DFO, and DFO has come out, looked at it, and said, yes, that doesn't look very good, but unless we can prove that there have been dead fish—and we don't see any—or that habitat alteration is permanent, there's nothing we can do at the moment. It seems to be “wait and see”. The question is, when does something become permanent? Rivers do have a tendency to repair harm to themselves; it may take years, or it may never happen. At what point can you say it's permanent? In the meantime, while we're watching and waiting to see what happens, there's harm to fish happening.

We believe that when there's harm or damage caused to habitat, when it's clear that the damage has been caused, and when there's a reasonable expectation that the habitat alteration or damage has resulted in some impacts on the salmon population, that should be a point at which somebody steps in to say, “That needs to be repaired.” They need to say that we don't need to wait for that to be proven to be permanent, whatever that means.

In terms of that sort of an example, we would like to see that idea that it must be permanently removed. If it's causing an impact on salmon, then that's a problem for us. It doesn't matter if it's permanent or if we actually see the dead fish or not. We know enough about salmon and the way they use habitat—and experts in DFO do as well—to know or to have a reasonable expectation to know that there has been an impact when we see those sorts of things. Whether you can actually prove it by showing dead fish or not shouldn't be an issue.

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

Thank you.

Following up on that, Mr. Sutton and Mr. Cusson, you've pointed out a couple of things that affect the salmon, one being the warming of the spring waters that flow into the river. Miramichi is my area, so I know that's been an issue in terms of the warming of the pools. The other thing you mentioned is escaped salmon from aquaculture. Those are two large industries in my area.

In regard to warming of the spring waters, to me you're pointing either at forestry, agriculture, or some of those practices, and probably construction also, with building roads and all of that.

A couple of weeks ago I was very proud to announce the CAST project in Miramichi, which is a group of organizations that includes DFO, the Government of Canada, and universities, as well as the forestry and aquaculture sectors. In your words, how does that fit together? Is there a problem there?

[Stephen Sutton]

Our point there wasn't to single out any particular industry. What we are concerned about are what we call non-lethal effects on fish. There are many industries—aquaculture being one, and forestry might be another—that have impacts on salmon that don't actually cause the salmon to die right there in a way that you can see.

Our point around that was that those things at the moment are not actually covered under the Fisheries Act despite the fact that they do have significant impacts on salmon populations. We would like to see those things brought under the Fisheries Act. Some of those things have significant impacts in certain areas. I think that would help give clarity not only to us but also to those industries as to where they stand and would maybe help to provide some way forward for finding solutions for some of those things.

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

On the aquaculture, we know there are issues with pesticides and with escapees and that. Maybe one day we'll be where there is no problem, but in the meantime, as you said, there is damage.

How can we keep that business going? Is moving it on land or the closed pen the only solution? In the meantime—because there is damage, and we know that—how can we, in the long term, coexist with that industry without harming the salmon?

[Stephen Sutton]

As far as salmon conservation is concerned, moving it onto land eliminates the issues, more or less, but I don't think we're quite there yet. Also, there are significant industries in various areas where it will continue. I think a stronger regulatory environment, whether it's provincial or federal, to ensure that those sorts of impacts are actually being addressed—and I'm talking about the actual impacts, not necessarily the activities that cause those impacts—is one way.

In the meantime, I think there's plenty of work to be done outside the legislation, work between governments and conservation, to find solutions to some of those things. I do believe we can we do things a lot better. Whether some of those things would fall under the Fisheries Act or not may not matter in terms of finding those solutions collaboratively.

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

I'm sorry that I'm always asking you. It could be Mr. Cusson or maybe somebody else would want to answer. I'm sorry, Mr. Chair.

On the Miramichi, for instance, the mill industries have all gone. You're saying that a lot of the damage happens inland, yet we know that only 3% of the salmon return. How much more can we do? Even if we do everything right on land or within the river tributaries, there is a lot more happening out at sea. With the act, how can we make sure that we get good returns?

[Stephen Sutton]

I think there's no doubt that there's something happening in the ocean with salmon that we don't fully understand yet. That certainly is having a major impact on returns.

I think our strategy at this point is to ensure that we are doing everything we can to minimize the known human impacts on wild Atlantic salmon, whether it's in fresh water or in the ocean environment, and to try to figure out in the meantime what it is that's going on out there and whether there's anything we can do about it. The issues we've identified and the suggestions we had about ensuring that the act is actually addressing the human impacts that we know about and understand is a very important part of that equation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Dr. Sutton.

Thank you, Mr. Finnigan.

Mr. Arnold, go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses today. There's a large number of you and it's great to see a full house. We really appreciate the input.

I'll pose my first few questions to Ms. Venton.

Ms. Venton, you mentioned that your group is a charity. From where do you receive your funding for your operations?

[Margot Venton]

That would be a really.... Let me just say that all of our money comes from individual or group donors. We don't receive any government money, and we don't take any direct corporate sponsorships. As I mentioned in my introduction—maybe it was only in my written notes—we do have approximately 20,000 individual donors throughout the country.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Are those individuals or other organizations?

[Margot Venton]

Those are just our individual donors. We're also supported by foundations. Generally, those are our two large sources of support.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

Have you or your organization ever undertaken actions against government?

[Margot Venton]

As I said, I've been in a number of legal cases that have involved the interpretation, application, and enforcement of the Fisheries Act. Some of those have been against DFO for, in our opinion—and, in some cases, the court's opinion—the failure to properly implement the act.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

Further, in your submission today, you said:

This serious harm to fish provision is not expressly about habitat protection. The scope of protected habitat is limited by the requirement that it be habitat of a commercial, recreational, or aboriginal fishery.

For some reason you left out of the quote “or to fish that support such a fishery”. I'm just wondering why you left that part of it out, because I can't think of a fish or fishery anywhere that doesn't support, in some way, commercial, recreational, or aboriginal fisheries.