Evidence of meeting #39 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 industry.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Thank you, Chair.
I have a question for Matt. You indicated that your industry, aquaculture, made progress with the changes to the Fisheries Act in 2012. Could you elaborate a bit on what allowed you to make progress as a result of the changes?
5:05 p.m.
Executive Director, P.E.I. Aquaculture Alliance
It was the HADD acronym, and I'm trying to think what it stands for. It was essentially changes in regard to the habitat group that was involved and needed to provide input, and some of the things they were asking for such as video surveillance of benthic monitoring and things like that. There was some duplication with some of the federal partners involved in leasing. It was the habitat group, Transport Canada and whatnot. With the changes after 2012, there's more streamlining involved in that. Any applications for smaller low-risk projects such as getting an oyster lease didn't need to go through as much of the strenuous process of dealing with the habitat group.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
What stage is that at, Matt? It's not in the growing. Is it in the development and expansion of aquaculture development that you're finding it easier now?
5:05 p.m.
Executive Director, P.E.I. Aquaculture Alliance
Yes, to be able to grow in a sustainable manner.
December 5th, 2016 / 5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
A number of witnesses before the committee have raised the lack of clarity in a lot of definitions or terminology within the Fisheries Act, previously and even today. Would any of the witnesses care to speak on that side of it, or on specific parts? I know the act is quite broad. I believe, Dr. Walmsley, you touched on it as well.
5:05 p.m.
Senior Environmental Scientist , Aquatic, Nova Scotia Power, Canadian Electricity Association
I think it has to do with serious harm, particularly. For instance, we have a facility at Nova Scotia Power on a river than has both inner Bay of Fundy salmon, which is a species at risk, as well as Gaspereau River salmon. “Serious harm” means death of fish as well as permanent destruction or alteration of habitat. What we find, obviously, is that fish going downstream are going through our turbines. We know there is a certain amount of harm there.
Harm for a species at risk versus harm for Gaspereau, which come down in the tens of millions, can't be the same. We're very much trying to—
5:05 p.m.
Senior Environmental Scientist , Aquatic, Nova Scotia Power, Canadian Electricity Association
It's not clear. We haven't defined.... We're sort of defining as we go along.
We go to DFO, and our definition and attempt to do the right thing rests on how we relate to DFO, what we can come up with in terms of stewardship and partnership, and how we can offset in terms of things like live gene banking. We wonder if one salmon is worth 10,000 deaths per.... I don't know, and I'm pulling the numbers. This is what—
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
You're making a good comparison.
In your testimony you made reference to having to report any fish mortality, but it's not quantified within the act. Am I correct on that? Is it one fish? If you see one dead fish are you supposed to report it?
5:05 p.m.
Senior Environmental Scientist , Aquatic, Nova Scotia Power, Canadian Electricity Association
Our understanding from Fisheries and Oceans Canada is that, if it's one fish, we should be reporting it. What it doesn't say in the act—it's not specific—is how and when you report it prior to that. What we've done is report for our thermal stations. We actually give the notification in advance, and we say that, anything over and above that, we will report to the emergency line. Otherwise, we would be phoning up the emergency line every single day to say we have a death of a fish or we have a death of whatever.
We feel it's important to have some kind of methodology in place, so that they understand what our impacts are and so that we can mitigate those. At the same time, it doesn't require us to be clogging up the emergency lines, which also are for Coast Guard safety and other....
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
Thank you, Mr. Morrissey. I appreciate it. Your time is up.
We now go to Mr. Doherty, for five minutes, please.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I just want to say thank you to the witnesses before us today. Time and again we've had panels. I thank everybody for taking the time to provide their testimony over the last weeks, but it is interesting having all industry here, because a lot of the testimony we've heard previously from environmental groups, and indeed from some activist groups, affirmed that the changes that were made in 2012 somehow made it much easier, and gave carte blanche to industy to go ahead and wantonly create projects.
For each witness who is here today, the changes that were made to the Fisheries Act in 2012 may have streamlined some processes, but in any way did they make it easier for you or your membership to go out, just start creating projects, and running amok, if you will?
I'm opening that up to all the witnesses.
5:10 p.m.
Senior Environmental Specialist, Canadian Hydropower Association
I would welcome that question. Thank you very much.
Since 2012, CHA but especially my company, OPG, has not experienced that. We have experienced more regulatory interaction with DFO around Fisheries Act authorizations. Requests for reviews are the big ones, so in this feeling out process, in the first few years of the implementation, we've had 30 Fisheries Act requests for reviews. We are getting the same outcomes that we would have had over the four to six months previous to 2012, but we're seeing those same outcomes in about four to six weeks now, the same levels of protection, the same levels of security.
As OPG, I wouldn't suggest that we are seeing less in terms of protection. To that point, we've have multiple on-site audits with Fisheries and Oceans staff confirming that we are maintaining those same levels of protection.
5:10 p.m.
Director, Environmental Regulations and Conservation Biology, Forest Products Association of Canada
It's the same for us. As I mentioned before, our BMPs are essentially the same post-2012 as they were pre-2012. What was an adjustment for us was the decrease in DFO employees. It used to be that you would pick up the phone and call your local office to ask a question. Now you're sent to the closest regional office. If you're in Manitoba, you're talking to someone in Burlington.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
It didn't make it easier for you to get your work done.
5:10 p.m.
Director, Environmental Regulations and Conservation Biology, Forest Products Association of Canada
Yes, exactly.
5:10 p.m.
Executive Director, P.E.I. Aquaculture Alliance
It made things a bit easier, or maybe not easier, but just got rid of some unnecessary challenges and avoided some time delays. Again, I'll echo what was said. It didn't have any sort of additional negative impact or less oversight either.
5:10 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
Mr. Gibson's company is also a member of CEA. His views are entirely consistent with the broad membership of the Canadian Electricity Association. The critical question is this: is the level of protection the same, or not, as prior to 2012? Our membership believes that it is consistent.
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association
Thank you.
Yes, I think streamlined is the correct way to characterize it. With respect to what the pipeline industry does and how it responds to protecting fish habitat and so on, we would say, as I said in our statement, that we reviewed this and there is no change in terms of how we operate and what we do with respect to this fish habitat issue.
What has changed, though, relates to timelines and projects, and it's an important change. The previous process would come into play near the end of project evaluations and so on. It became very cumbersome and very time consuming to try to get the authorizations from DFO. This dragged out the timing of projects. Now it's identified up front and dealt over, if necessary, to the DFO for a review. If it's necessary, then we'll do a review and follow practice.
From the pipeline perspective, there is really no change in terms of how we approach, through best practices, dealing with the fisheries habitat issue. It has streamlined by putting this aspect of a project up front, rather than having it at the back end and being dragged out over a long period of time.
I would say that, from an efficiency perspective, there has been a very strong improvement. From a protection perspective, there is no impact in terms of how we deal with things, even over the life cycle of a pipeline.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I appreciate the comments.
I just want to take a moment to say thank you to each of our witnesses. This is probably the last time I'll be on the mike.
Thank you to each of you who took a look at this and gave a measured approach in providing some very good feedback on areas where we could provide clarity that would make it easier for all, and on areas where we, perhaps, were deficient.