Fisheries Committee on May 2nd, 2017

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Morlock, I'm going to go back to you again, because I maybe didn't phrase my question right the last time. I'm going to try again.

Can you tell me who the groups are whose science you support? You said that it's the taxpayer. Who is doing the science that you are going by?

[Phil Morlock]

It's done all over the continent.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

But by who?

[Phil Morlock]

They're not groups, ma'am. They should be—

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Okay. Who's doing the science then?

[Phil Morlock]

The Harte institute for Gulf of Mexico studies, the Province of Ontario, the Ministry of Natural Resources in Ontario....

I live at Algonquin Park, one of the world's great wilderness parks. It allows sustainable use under a very well-constructed management plan based on the Kentucky park system 40 years ago. The science depends on who conducts it and how it's reviewed. It's not that there is a static entity, if you will.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you. That does answer my question.

Do I have time for another quick one?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

You have a minute.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Okay. I'm going to go back to Dr. Woodley with regard to the five criteria that make a sustainable MPA.

One of the things we heard from another witness was that you'll probably just pick a big area because it'll meet your target, and it doesn't actually do anything. You're saying that a larger area is one of the principles of a successful MPA. I'm trying to weigh those against each other, looking at the Arctic specifically. The other witness said, “Oh, you'll just...,” yet that seems to be what might be a successful MPA. Is that correct?

[Dr. Stephen Woodley]

Yes. If you're trying to protect representative ecosystems, larger is definitely better. I think there is pretty good consensus on that. We know marine systems are dynamic and they shift, so larger is better.

We set up protected areas for a number of reasons, for example, to have representative benchmarks to protect particular sites that we know are of importance, such as sponge reefs; to protect species at risk; etc. It depends on why you're setting these things up. If you're setting up large representative ecosystems, as is the prerogative for Canada, then large is important.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

The time is up.

Mr. Donnelly, you have three minutes.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Cox, you gave interesting testimony. In your introduction you talked about your background and some of the benefits of MPAs or protection. You said also that you're not really sold on the idea of MPAs, and that they may have limited success.

I was struck by your example that you gave. It seemed counterintuitive to me, the example of the person in the RCA who caught halibut. Can you talk a little bit more about that? If they don't work, why was there so much halibut there? It strikes me that if it's a protected area, and you're saying that doesn't work or they have limited success, although this person went in there and was catching halibut, no problem.... Can you square that circle a little?

The other comment is on the precautionary approach, and I'll come back to that.

[Prof. Sean Cox]

Anytime you put a closure in place, you have fish coming in and fish going out. Halibut move both shallow and deep during the year, so when you put an RCA in shallow, which tends to be where they are, the halibut that have moved in there over the last couple of months have not been fished. They haven't seen any bait. They haven't been disturbed. It's all what people want MPAs to be. It doesn't mean that the halibut are not going to leave, but that's basically what happens. They accumulate over a couple of months, or it could even be a couple of weeks. It's that short a time scale for halibut. Anybody who goes in there is the first one in there. Anybody who goes fishing knows that if you're first, you're going to do really well.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Would the argument be that the area of protection needs to be larger?

[Prof. Sean Cox]

That was the point that Stephen just made. You have to make these things really large to get that long-term benefit within the area, but then the larger you make it the less spillover you get to benefit fisheries. Basically, the bigger they are, the more they're taking away from the point of a fishery.

My skepticism is in terms of benefits for fisheries.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

That becomes a political issue of how—

[Prof. Sean Cox]

It's very difficult, because as you make these things bigger, you start forcing fishermen into a smaller and smaller area. Then you get multi-species issues going on where you get higher bycatch rates because everybody is shifting around.

On the west coast, as I was saying, it's the gold standard in terms of multi-species—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

We'll have to stop it there. We're very tight for time. Do we have unanimous consent to go for a couple of minutes?

We have a couple of minutes left, Mr. Arnold, until 10:45.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

No.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

We're still dealing with the round.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Are we still doing the round?

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Yes.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

You said to keep going.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

No.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.