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.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
My thanks to the witnesses.
I have a number of questions, and I'll ask you to keep the answers fairly brief so we can get through them.
Ms. Morten, one of the things that's come up any number of times is that we've been looking for specific examples of where the changes to the Fisheries Act actually resulted in something unfortunate taking place. You just mentioned one a moment ago. Is that the only example of something where we're dropping the ball?
4:55 p.m.
Executive Director, The Pacific Streamkeepers Federation
It's very difficult to say what changes have happened in that we haven't gone through a full salmon cycle since the act was changed, except for pink salmon. It's very difficult to say exactly.
We had a couple of examples. One is on the tributary to Maple Creek, where a 10,000-square-foot home with a 3,000-square-foot garage caused the person who owned that property to want to move the stream to another area. They were given authorization to do that and they said it wouldn't cause any harm to the commercial, recreational, and aboriginal fisheries. However, nobody paid attention to the fact that they wanted to change the fish habitat for a 10,000-square-foot home and a 3,000-square-foot garage. Those are the things I think we need to do: we need to look at the actual project that's compromising our fishery.
5 p.m.
Liberal
5 p.m.
Executive Director, The Pacific Streamkeepers Federation
I don't think it would have. I think there would have been enough eyes and ears out there to make a difference within fisheries.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Comment briefly on the state of the DFO, as I know you've worked closely with them.
5 p.m.
Executive Director, The Pacific Streamkeepers Federation
Well, I go to a retirement party about every day. People are leaving en masse. The corporate knowledge loss right now is absolutely huge. The people who came into Fisheries and Oceans Canada and are nearing the end of their careers at 30 years had a passion for fish and fish habitat and for the people. Now we are losing that corporate knowledge. They feel they are not able to protect anymore. They're feeling that they can't look people like me in the eye and say they're doing the best that they can. It's making a difference.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
There is a loss of relationships, too, I suppose, between DFO and the people they're supposed to be helping, advising, or overseeing.
5 p.m.
Executive Director, The Pacific Streamkeepers Federation
We have the SEP community workshops coming up in Quesnel, May 19 to 21, and hopefully you can come out to that. That's for the salmonid enhancement community to come out and celebrate with Fisheries and Oceans Canada all the great things that the community has done under Minister LeBlanc and now Minister LeBlanc's oversight.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you for that.
Ms. Gaertner, has there been any visioning about the role that first nations have in a modernized Fisheries Act environment?
5 p.m.
First Nations Fisheries Council
Yes, at the treaty tables or non-treaty tables about how we're moving forward in collaborative management, there have been opportunities identified throughout British Columbia on how better to work with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. That's why we're promoting the revised language to the act to modernize it and to include an opportunity for meaningful governance agreements with first nations.
You'll see in our appendix A that we have language for all of our suggested recommendations including the purpose section. In recommendation 7, we're recommending that the act enable the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the minister to enter into direct agreements with first nations governments in a manner that would allow them to facilitate collaboration among first nations, the province, and the federal government as it relates to the management of fish, fish habitat, and fisheries.
There has been quite a lot of thought around that.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Sure. I hope, as Mr. Donnelly suggested, that you submit all of that to us, if you haven't already. That would be useful.
One of the things we've been drilling into during this study is the origin of the changes, mainly to speed up public works, to reduce administrative burdens, and to take a 3,000 project backlog off of DFO's plate. On the one hand, we want to restore some things, but on the other hand not necessarily lose some of the beneficial aspects of the changes that really had a lot to do with streamlining processes and perhaps reducing the triggers for environmental assessments.
Do you have any comments on how we can get the protections in place, but still have a more streamlined and nimble system?
5 p.m.
First Nations Fisheries Council
I think one of the things is to be careful about death by a thousand cuts. You streamline, assuming that small projects have little effect, and that's an incorrect assumption. Small projects, many of them, can have very detrimental effects to migrating salmon and other fisheries. One has to be careful about that assumption.
The better way of looking at it is to provide meaningful guidelines under the Fisheries Act for the kinds of things that the minister should be doing. I'll stress that it's the November 29 submission that's before you already in writing, and it contains all the amendments we're suggesting. In that submission, we're suggesting that the purpose of the act is to give more clarity around what your goals are under the act, and we have a specific purpose section.
When making decisions under that, including for regulations, there are specific objectives that we're suggesting the minister be charged with meeting. That's going to provide the context that's necessary for applying the Fisheries Act in a modern way.
You're not wasting anybody's time—
5 p.m.
First Nations Fisheries Council
—and you're focusing on fish and fish habitat.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you for that.
I have a final question for Dr. Schindler.
You mentioned separating science and regulations. Can you expand on that briefly for us?
5:05 p.m.
Killam Memorial Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Yes, I think the separation of the two under the fisheries research board, which did science to best support Canadian fisheries and was entirely governed by a board of senior fisheries and freshwater and oceanographic scientists, produced very good science. That was then handed off to the departments as a piece of science, and that was incorporated into the decisions.
That first organization had variable overhead. We probably had seven staff, overall, for a scientific staff of 100 people. That changed when we were taken into DFO to about 50% support people of various sorts, and it confounded the expenditure of money for doing the science efficiently.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Robert Sopuck
Thank you very much.
Next, we'll have Mr. Arnold, for five minutes.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Witnesses, I'll echo the sentiments of the members around the room. We certainly appreciate the time you've taken to prepare your submissions and bring them to us. I also want to echo the statements from Mr. Donnelly about the time frame and deadlines that have been imposed on us here, such that we had to trim our witness list requests significantly. We're having a struggle obtaining the online submissions in a timely manner so that we can include them in our report. I certainly appreciate the time you've made, and I hope you can appreciate the value of having you here.
One of the first things I'd like to address is the act prior to 2012 and the act after 2012. I was familiar with fisheries issues, and one that I followed closely was the gravel extraction on the Lower Fraser River and the issues that were taking place there. In some cases, millions of pink salmon eggs were killed when portions of the river were dammed for gravel extraction.
I'm wondering, Mr. Schindler, if you have any history with that. If you do, then could you explain why the old act wasn't able to prevent that at that point in time?
5:05 p.m.
Killam Memorial Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
I don't have any direct experience with that. I expect it was probably the same thing that we experienced at all fishery stations. Problems were multiplying, and the number of staff expected to handle them was going down.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
The point I'd like to make is that significant issues were happening prior to the changes in the act. This act looked at clearing up some of the backlogs there.
Mr. Pickard and Ms. Williams, you mentioned the need for operational guidelines. I think we've heard more than once throughout the hearings that we need regulations, operational guidelines, and some objectives.
Could you perhaps elaborate on that? I guess we can't get into the specifics of what those guidelines need to be, but in general terms, what might be included in recommendations for regulations?
5:05 p.m.
Member, Vice-President, Environment and Sustainability, Sabina Gold and Silver Corp., Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada
Yes, with respect to the previously utilized operational guidelines, those helped resource development, primarily exploration and prospecting, ensure that they could utilize operational guidelines for minor works within the requirements. Those commonly include things like drilling on ice, water takings, even up to dock structures that may be required for landing aircraft. Those types of things were useful because we could scope our activities to stay in line with them. Then if we needed more significant activities, we could engage the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for letters of advice.
Those standard mitigations are still useful to us. Understanding them and ensuring they're available to all companies and all users would be very useful.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
Mr. Schindler, I believe I heard you correctly. You said that in our proposed transfer away from fossil fuels we may be looking at 100 projects the size of Site C or Muskrat Falls. Is that correct?
5:10 p.m.
Killam Memorial Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
That's what the math would say. They're proposing 100,000 to 130,000 megawatts of additional power generation between now and 2050. That would be three to four large dams per year. I don't think it can happen. My recommendation would be that this plan needs to be revisited.