Evidence of meeting #40 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 habitat.
A video is available from Parliament.
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Mr. Chair, I just have a question, since I believe this is the last day we'll be hearing from witnesses on the Fisheries Act. Could we get from the clerk, not necessarily right now but at some point, the number of speakers we have had to date and what groups we've heard from?
Conservative
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Mr. Chair, could I ask for clarification as to when the analysts are looking to have our recommendations in on this study?
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Robert Sopuck
I've been advised that the drafting instructions for the analysts begin next Monday, December 12.
Mr. Arnold.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Mr. Chair, I wonder if the clerk could give us an indication of how many pages of submissions have been sent in or how many they're putting through translation, so we can have an idea of what our workload may or hopefully may not be over the break coming up.
Conservative
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Excuse me, I wasn't asking about the report. How many pages of online submissions are being translated to be provided to the committee for consideration?
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Back to my earlier question regarding the analysts and the information that's needed, could you please be specific about what you'll be looking for as to the direction from each group with respect to this?
Conservative
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, but I'm trying to figure out why we're discussing this now. We're supposed to be hearing witnesses. We're concerned about the amount of time that our witnesses are allocated. This sounds like committee business, which we are not in. I would ask you to please move this along, so that we deal with what we're supposed to do.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
With all due respect, Mr. Chair, to our colleague across the way, as Mr. Donnelly has mentioned, this is our last chance before the weekend and before we move into this, so we do have questions we have to ask. It will be the last time we actually meet as a group. That being said, it's the last question I have.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Robert Sopuck
I think that out of respect for our witnesses it's probably getting time for us to end.
To all of our witnesses, I'm reminded of the saying, those with weak stomachs should watch neither law nor sausages being made. Drawing laws in our country is very complicated and we tend to get into these very arcane discussions about process. Necessary though they are, they sometimes take time.
I'll do a quick introduction of our witnesses.
We have Dr. David Schindler, Killam memorial professor emeritus, University of Alberta. By video conference from Vancouver, from the First Nations Fisheries Council, we have Brenda Gaertner. The Nunavut Wildlife Management Board is with us. By video conference from Toronto, from the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, we have Lesley Williams and Matthew Picard. From the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation, we have Zo Ann Morten with us.
I'll go in the order of the witness list and I'll ask Dr. David Schindler to be the first witness. Dr. Schindler, we're having some technical difficulties. We can't hear you.
Dr. David Schindler Killam Memorial Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Can you hear me now?
Conservative
Killam Memorial Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the House committee. It is a pleasure to appear before you today.
My experience with fisheries in Canada has spanned almost 50 years, roughly half as a university professor and the other half as a member of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or its predecessor, the Fisheries Research Board of Canada. In preparing for this testimony, I've read a number of your previous briefs. I think, rather than go into tiny detail about the flaws that were injected into the Fisheries Act in 2012, I'll simply say that I agree with almost all the briefs that you've received. The changes made in 2012 violate the very principles of ecology. One of the fundamentals is that you do not try to protect the species without protecting its habitat. I re-documented some of the evidence for that, and I think that will suffice.
Instead, what I'd like to do today is spend my time challenging you to take a broader look at the Fisheries Act, because even before 2012, it was clear that the Fisheries Act was not strong enough. If I look back at my 50 years of experience, we lost the cod stocks, have salmon in decline on both coasts, have declines in fisheries, all sorts of problems with pollution and alien species in the Great Lakes, eutrophication in the big lakes of Manitoba, and I could go on and on to the recreational fisheries.
It's clear to me that we need a stronger, not a weaker, Fisheries Act. Some evidence that if nothing is done about this we will have continued problems includes Site C, where the proponents' own environmental impact assessment simply says that they're going to largely disrupt upstream and downstream movement of major fish stocks. It's a given, based on a dozen or more studies done in Canada, that the fishery in that reservoir will be highly polluted with mercury to the point where it will not be available for consumption by indigenous people.
A second example is the proposed liquid natural gas plant. I happen to fish in that area, and that plant is in some of the very best fish habitat at the mouth of the Skeena River, the west coast's second biggest salmon fishery.
A third example is the recently approved Trans Mountain pipeline. No one ever mentions the many fish-bearing waters that the pipeline will cross carrying dilbit. It's not just a question of crossing them, but studies have shown that we know no way of cleaning bitumen or any other form of crude oil out of water flowing under ice. I can give you several examples from the Athabasca of disasters that have happened under ice in that respect. To me these are all clear examples that business as usual does not include sustainable fisheries.
A fourth potential example is the climate change action plan that's proposed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. Three of the four scenarios propose replacing fossil fuel power with 100,000 megawatts of hydroelectric power. That's considerably more than all of the hydroelectric power installations built in Canada to date. You could think of it as building 100 facilities the size of Muskrat Falls or Site C between now and 2050.
We know there have been problems with those two sites, partly ecological as I mentioned, but partly because they're in conflict with the guarantees made to indigenous people under Treaty 8. Again, most of those conflicts have to do with damage to fisheries.
I think it's time this act was strengthened. I have some recommendations in that regard.
The first thing I would recommend is based on my own experience with the fisheries research board and DFO. The fisheries research board was an independent organization not directly under the purview of a minister, which reported to a board of scientists who decided which were the scientifically important problems that were needed to manage fisheries in Canada. The organization was very lean and mean; probably 10% of the budget went to administration, whereas by the later years under DFO, it was more like 40% or 50%. It was possible, actually, to talk science to the leaders of that organization. It did not have the many layers of non-scientists who occupy the senior levels of DFO. It got to be very frustrating in my last years there to find that the senior officials in DFO could not understand even what you were talking about, and instead were urging you to work on scientifically intractable problems that really had very little bearing on the fisheries. So this separation of the research and regulatory arms, I think, is essential to having some clear, scientific guidance for fisheries management. It also removes the possibility of someone making a decision for other reasons and hiding the reasons under the cloak of science.
Second is to devote more resources to the fisheries. There were quite a few resources devoted to understanding fisheries in the late sixties and early seventies under the fisheries research board, and even in the first years of DFO, but in 1982, the constitutional deliberations decided that the provinces now have the purview for their inland fisheries. Those of us who worked at inland fisheries stations were told, “No, we're not allocating money for that. That's a provincial responsibility.” There was talk of duplication of effort. In fact, none of the provinces ever stepped forward with a research program that would replace what was being done by the federal government. Instead of duplication, no one was minding the inland fisheries store.
The cuts continued pretty well through my whole experience with DFO, and after that, which I learned from talking to my colleagues, the most severe cuts were from 2012 when almost the entire habitat division was cut. I believe the figure is 63 stations went down to 47, with 170 personnel lost, and seven fisheries libraries closed for a total savings of a little over $400,000. Reversing these changes and strengthening this scientific ability to manage fisheries is essential to our having a fisheries to manage in another 50 years.
Killam Memorial Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
I think it's fair to say that a strengthened science department could also be given the responsibility for monitoring Canada's fisheries which, frankly, are a mess right now, as recent experience on the Athabasca River shows clearly. Monitoring now is done by a hodgepodge of consultants and provincial agencies, many of them using outdated methods and with incoherent plans—