Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the standing committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present on behalf of the Streamkeepers Federation on the review of the Fisheries Act.
My name is Zo Ann Morten. I am the executive director of the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation. I'm lucky to work with the thousands of volunteers who are dedicated to the protection and preservation of our local waterways and who work with DFO's salmonid enhancement program and the streamkeepers program. I also volunteer with these initiatives, with salmonid enhancement since 1988, and with the streamkeepers since 1993. I am the product of the senior LeBlanc's initiatives in 1977.
We would like to see a stated purpose for the Fisheries Act. Without this, it's hard to stay grounded as you read the sections and subsections of the act. A simple statement such as “this act is to protect our fisheries, fish, and fish habitat for generations to come” would help.
Changes to the Fisheries Act and the resulting changes to supportive policy and programming have caused concern for the protection of fish and fish habitat within the Pacific region. Let's put in place an act that will serve us for the next 40 years. Let's start with changes to the act that hold promise—areas to keep—as you begin to draft this new act.
The premise of conditions of authorization that are enforceable should make it easier to know where there has been non-compliance as the steps are clearly written out concerning what needed to be done and whether it was done.
We recommend that these conditions be extended to such policy as the previously written operating statements, with the addition of a need to notify concerning works being done. This could be a strong and useful tool for monitoring works and compliance with conditions.
The minister needs to be able to make those tough decisions, but the process needs to be open and transparent, with clear language as to who, when, where, how, and why the minister would authorize an undertaking that would compromise our fish and fish habitat.
We would like the assurance that the project itself is reviewed and that this tool is used sparingly. Like water, people too take the path of least resistance. Let's not use this tool without strong reasoning. We recommend that the minister have the ability to make the tough choices, with the expanded need to take into account the actual undertaking as well as to provide a public record of minister's authorizations. The parliamentary report could accommodate this.
Concerning the minister's ability to do programming, the recreational fisheries conservation protection program is being used as an example.
B.C. gained on this, as we had Department of Fisheries and Oceans community advisers, restoration biologists, technical help, and engineers who have built a strong stewardship community that has the capacity to engage in this granting process. Restoration works require a long-term commitment relationship among the proponent, the property owner, and the agency. We recommend that programs such as this come with a percentage of the budget being made available to government programming, so that government can engage more fully.
As to the provision of equivalency, while we feel that DFO through the federal government has the authority and responsibility and is accountable to protect our Canadian resource, there are examples of partnerships and shared responsibilities that work to empower others, where it makes sense, to manage the landscape in support of the purpose of the Fisheries Act. Monitoring of the standards and of the on-the-ground outcomes is vital to ensuring that working relationships, shared goals, and outcomes are able to withstand the test of implementation of the policy papers. Are DFO goals being met for the protection of fish and fish habitat?
DFO will need personnel to work with their partners to ensure that this is not a transfer of work; not a download, but a sharing of policies, resources, tools, and ideals to fulfill the mandates that all partners have. Through this, we will need a strong, defensible, enforced Fisheries Act, as the others are only able to take their own bylaws and regulations to court. We still need and look for strong leadership from our federal government.
We recommend there be a continued ability to share the responsibility for fish and fish habitat in cases in which other jurisdictions meet or beat the federal standard, while ensuring that the federal standard is comprehensive, strong, and adaptable to the diversity of fish and fish habitat across our country. We also support the ability to pull out of these agreements when the partner is not able to meet or beat the standards set out by the Fisheries Act and supportive policy.
Here are a few comments and recommendations from the community to bring into the present a strong, enforceable Fisheries Act.
We are looking to have “harmful alteration”, “harmful disruption”, and “harmful destruction” put back into the act. As we know and have heard again in these proceedings, fish do not always die right away after having an encounter with humans. I am envisioning an incident within a chinook-rearing habitat and trying to make the case that there was serious harm done to fish or to the recreational fishery. This is an animal that lives in fresh water for a portion of its life and then heads out to the ocean, returning to spawn anywhere between three to five years later. One would have a hard time saying that the returns were diminished by an incident.
Under the new act, DFO's involvement comes in only when there needs to be an authorization to do serious harm to fish. They are not notified of the multitude of changes taking place in and around our waterways on a regular basis. There was a time that the department was there to assist people to help them not cause a HADD, to help them work towards mitigation, to help them determine good compensation plans, to share their knowledge of local waterways, but as Canada grew, this task became too great, and streamlining processes were developed. We've heard of the hardship of farmers wanting to clean drainage ditches, and there were municipalities wanting to do this as well.
When the department reviewed the most common request for authorizations, around 2006, it became very clear that the majority of their time was spent on about 13 different activities being done routinely across the country. This is where the operating statements were written with clear guidance as to how to undertake these tasks so as not to cause a HADD.
A piece we found lacking in these was that there was no need to notify DFO when works were being done. This made it very difficult to monitor, to ensure that the steps put forward were indeed being followed and that they were working. These operating statements were removed when the new act came into place and were replaced by an online tool about working in and around waters to help guide citizens to know if they need an authorization, but these are through the lens of causing serious harm to fish in the CRA. Section 2.1 of the act speaks to habitat, but this gets lost in the instruction that says that section 35 is the main habitat protection provision against carrying out projects causing serious harm to fish. There are limiting words in that. With studies showing that over half the developers in North Vancouver did not know that their storm drains on the street were carrying the development waste directly to the local streams, I find it hard to imagine that the average person could self-determine if they might cause serious harm to fish or to a fishery, whether it be local or at sea.
Using the minister's regulation-making powers for compliance, we would like to see the past self-assessment tools be reviewed with HADD in place of serious harm, and the addition of a modern update. Proponents can check the boxes to indicate that they have read and understood the questions on the form, and when they are finished, they submit it. One copy would go to themselves so they know they have gone through the process, and one copy would go to DFO. The form would act as a notification to the department that activity was taking place. GPS coordinates would generate a map to indicate where certain activities are occurring regularly. This would help form a work plan for monitoring. How can we expect compliance when the authorities don't even know any changes are occurring in our watersheds?