Thank you, honourable chair and committee, for inviting Watershed Watch as a witness to this important review. We are honoured to be part of the process.
I am here today with Mr. Randy Christensen, who is our legal counsel. I manage our connected waters campaign, which focuses on a specific fish habitat issue that I want to ensure the committee is aware of. I have the benefit of working on the ground with community members passionate to restore their local waterways.
When my family migrated to Vancouver 14 years ago, I learned the incredible life story of salmon. I was completely inspired, and before I knew it, I had dedicated myself to conservation and protection of these incredible species and their habitats. I've been doing this work for eight years in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.
My organization, Watershed Watch Salmon Society, advocates for B.C.'s wild salmon and the waters they swim in. Wild salmon are powerful cultural icons in B.C., and there is strong public support from across the political spectrum for the conservation of salmon and their habitat.
Today's presentation highlights a large amount of salmon habitat in the Lower Fraser that is affected by over 250 kilometres of diking and related flood control infrastructures. The Lower Fraser River was once one of the world's richest mosaics of Pacific salmon habitat. While still valuable, it is heavily degraded through urbanization, agriculture, gravel mining, and continued industrialization of the river. Dikes play a major role in flood control and irrigation in the Lower Fraser River, with about 500 flood-boxes and gates on tributaries and sloughs, as highlighted on the maps we've shared with you.
Waterways that once flowed naturally into the Fraser are now severely restricted, creating dead zones with low oxygen levels, poor water quality, limited flow, and disconnected salmon habitat. Few floodgates ever open, and fewer still have fish-friendly pumps or appropriate gates to allow for salmon passage.
We estimate that 1,125 kilometres of current or potential fish habitat are affected within more than 100 waterways. These waterways provide important nursery habitat for young salmon before they head out to sea. Many of the salmon populations being impacted are important to the people of greater Vancouver, but many are very depleted and in need of rebuilding.
Flood control infrastructure is having a dramatic cumulative impact on the quantity and quality of salmon habitat in the Lower Fraser. This is partly because flood control structures are so numerous, and partly because they are usually found on the lower reaches of streams, affecting all upstream habitat.
Unfortunately, this fish habitat is not being treated as such under the law. Much of this infrastructure was installed before the habitat provisions of the Fisheries Act were enacted. But despite the 1977 changes to the Fisheries Act, ongoing operations, maintenance, and upgrades are often treated as exempt from the law. For the most part, federal, provincial, regional, and municipal authorities have all avoided addressing fish habitat in these areas. Current flood control standards do not consider fish passage or overall ecosystem health, and DFO provides very little oversight of the impacts resulting from flood protection.
So what's the solution? A large percentage of the flood and water control infrastructure that we are concerned about needs refurbishment in the upcoming decades. Much of this work will be supported by federal infrastructure grants. We believe the federal government should require that any future flood control projects be made fish-friendly.
Additionally, a moderate investment to establish a Fraser Valley salmon and dike fund, to allow for cost-sharing of fish-friendly upgrades, would assist municipalities and farmers and create major improvements for the fisheries. We suggest, as an interim solution, establishment of a 10-year fund, with expenditures of $5 million per year. This fund would help with incremental costs of restoring fish passage while improving flood control in the highest-priority areas.
I'll now turn it over to Randy Christensen to discuss how the Fisheries Act can and should play a role in addressing the issues I've described.