Fisheries Committee on May 4th, 2017

[Rebecca Reid]

I'm sorry. Is this a question around salmon farming or just about—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

No, not salmon farming. It's basically the management and assessment of health.

[Rebecca Reid]

Okay. I understand.

In the wild salmon policy, salmon stocks are defined as essentially...they're called “conservation units”. Basically, units are genetically distinct. They're managed at that level—a pretty low level, a distinct level—where we can understand at the individual unit level the stock status and its health.

When we go up to managing fisheries, we need to aggregate up, because there are over 400 of them. It's way too complicated, but we do look at it from this smaller conservation unit level when we're considering the impacts for a particular stock or population. In that, we establish escapement goals on a system-by-system basis, which I think would equate to what you're describing for Quebec.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

On the approach to obviously preserving, protecting, and enhancing the sockeye salmon population up and down the Fraser River, how broadly do you go in looking at the whole system, not just at that one stock but at the stock that feeds that stock? What strategies and what considerations are taking place to take the biosphere, if you like, into consideration in preserving the health of those salmon stocks?

[Rebecca Reid]

I think the question is really about how much of an ecosystem-based approach do we take when we're managing fisheries, correct?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Yes.

[Rebecca Reid]

I think that is definitely an important aspect of the work. It's complex when you try to expand out to the ecosystem in trying to understand all the various inputs that are impacting on the health of a particular stock. That is, I think, always a source of research and investigation, but we do our best to collect various inputs or variables when we develop our management plan to take those into account. That is an important aspect of the overall management of fisheries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you.

Mr. Donnelly, please, for three minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I probably I won't have time to dive into a number of these responses, but I'll try to get the questions out. Maybe we could carry this over into the next round.

Ms. Reid, you talked about marine survival, in that you're putting the department's attention there. Obviously, ocean conditions, climate change, and desertification affect food for salmon, and we know that other countries probably catch our salmon, but the issues that are on our continent and under our domestic control are habitat destruction, pollution, warming waters, and flow levels in the rivers and tributaries of the Fraser. There are specific recommendations from Cohen on those: recommendation 42 for habitat destruction, recommendation 53 for pollution, and recommendation 74 for warming waters.

I want to talk a bit about those. In terms of habitat destruction in the Fraser system, we know that roughly 75% of habitat in the estuaries has been destroyed or lost. Also, much of the lake habitat in the system has been affected. For instance, the Coquitlam River and the Coquitlam Lake have been cut off for 100 years with the dam.

Recommendation 42 talks about the recommendation being out of date. I think we've talked about this previously. Once the Fisheries Act is restored—and I know that's a leap the government has to take to do that—will these actions on the habitat policy come into effect?

[Rebecca Reid]

My suggestion in answer to that question is that we do need to wait for the minister's response to this committee's report. At that point, I think you're going to get a better picture of what that looks like.

At this point, I'm not able to speculate on the types of changes or responses that we can expect.

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

I was saying “if” they do. It was a hypothetical. If they do come back and restore those, you want to wait and see.... Okay.

On the warming water side.... Well, before I go to that one, I'm interested in recommendations 43 to 47 and 54 to 55, which talk about recommendations dealing with the Province of British Columbia. These seven Cohen commission recommendations, as well as recommendation 52, were deemed within their purview. What was the province's response on these recommendations?

[Rebecca Reid]

The province did provide a response—a few years ago now—and has responded positively in a couple of ways.

One of the recommendations was around the water act that was under review. That has been completed. Another recommendation was about the riparian areas regulation and how DFO and the province work collaboratively. That piece has moved forward as well.

On the responses the province provided, I think DFO has been working with B.C. co-operatively to integrate and respond as it fits into our responsibilities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you.

Now we're into our overtime period, apropos the season, and I'm asking colleagues to please stick within the five minutes. I'm going to be rather strict. We promised our guests that we'd be done by 10:15, so I'm going to try to get close to that.

I understand that we're going to you, Mr. Finnigan, for five minutes, please.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you to the panel for being here with us today.

I have a question that's a bit different. We know that the Atlantic salmon and the western salmon are quite different. I think the Atlantic salmon has been referred to as a “large trout”, but is there any sharing of information that can be beneficial to both coasts? If so, in what ways?

[Trevor Swerdfager]

Yes, there's a fair bit of information sharing. Some of the core biology of both Atlantic and Pacific salmon is shared, but not a lot, though, because in the Pacific case, as you know, yes, they do grow bigger, but then they die. In Atlantic Canada, they keep going back to sea.

Essentially, in a large part of the core physiology, the biology, and some of the foraging behaviour and so on, there are some similarities. There is a huge species differentiation.

In terms of some of our conservation techniques, a question was asked earlier about the business of run-by-run or river-by-river kinds of things. As you know, Mr. Finnigan, we are exploring that concept in a little more detail in New Brunswick and the northern part of Nova Scotia, so I would say that the answer to your question is “in part”.

There are certainly lessons to be learned going in both directions insofar as management and definitely on some of the science. Also, on some of the technology associated with tracking and understanding these animals, for the most part that's an identical question. We're exploring an awful lot in common there and moving gear and technology expertise in both directions from an experimental design point of view.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Ms. Jordan.

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

Thank you for appearing today. I found this quite interesting. Of course, being from the east coast, it's a different area for me.

Mr. Donnelly made a comment about 20 million fish and said that was down. When I think about the Miramichi River and what we're dealing with there, 20 million fish would be great. My question is, how do you judge your stock assessments? Is it river by river? Cohen is obviously addressing the Fraser River specifically, but when I look at other rivers that are down a heck of a lot more than 20 million, I wonder how DFO prioritizes where they're going to put their resources and look at the concerns of other areas.

[Rebecca Reid]

I can start on that.

First of all, that 20 million is an aggregate number. When you think about the Fraser River, you see that there is a large number of runs, in fact, that will come back to tributaries. Aggregate-wise, you can come up with huge numbers, but it will vary system by system. As I was describing earlier, with the wild salmon policy and the identification of conservation units, there you get to a more detailed level of understanding of a particular run of fish, and we come up with goals for each of those runs. We call them “escapement goals”: how many fish do we want to go back and spawn?

We've gone through an exercise in the Fraser River of defining those escapement goals. Once you have those goals, you can do an evaluation of how close we are to meeting those goals, how far away we are, and where the risks are. You do the risk assessment with the data you have, and then you can come up with a way to monitor, track, and measure the progress or the viability of the returns of those particular fish. Then you have a better sense of how the various units are doing and, to go back to managing a fishery, you can take that into account when you allow fishing to occur at certain times and places. It is really those inputs that allow for the proper management of the fishery.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you.

Mr. Arnold, for five minutes, please, very quickly.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to go back to the one question I had earlier on the impact of subdominant versus dominant years; I didn't quite get a clear answer to it . At this point, is there any indication of greater impact on the subdominant years?

[Trevor Swerdfager]

No.

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

Okay, so it seems there is no correlation there. Thank you.

Regarding the Alaskan fisheries catch and the impact of foreign fisheries catch on B.C. salmon stocks, has anything been identified there? A couple of years ago the Alaskan fisheries had a huge catch in our chinook fishery. Has that been correlated to the sockeye fisheries as well?

[Rebecca Reid]

We don't have good information about the impacts on sockeye in that respect, the incidental or the unintended harvest of sockeye, but we do have a Pacific salmon treaty with the United States. We're renegotiating the chapters of that right now, and one of the chapters is on sockeye.

We have a very strong working relationship with the United States, including Alaska, on the management of those stocks, because they cross boundaries. We invest in them heavily and manage them very carefully.

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

Thank you.

This one is going to get down to more specifics on the sockeye fishery or actually on the Adams River run, which I have fished in the Thompson River. That river is clear water. We can actually stand on the shore and watch the fish migrating upstream. They are two feet off the beach in clear water. We can see them coming through in groups, in schools, and sockeye are schooling fish. Sometimes you'll see a group of four or five fish. Sometimes it will be 40 or 50. Sometimes it will be 400 or 500 fish all in one group moving through, and then you can sit there for two hours and there are no fish.

Have you done anything to sample those fish to find out if they are possibly all from the same progeny of parents or the same area, the same time zone? It seems to me it would be fairly easy. Maybe I'm too much of a layman, but you could actually stand there on the beach, wait for a school to come through, throw in a drift net, sample the number of fish and find out whether or not they're all from the same genome or not to find out if those fish stay together the full time out in the marine environment, through the river and lake environment. It's an incredible opportunity to study.