Fisheries Committee on May 4th, 2017

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Cohen was limited to looking at the Fraser River sockeye run, as we know, but I think he believed that all species on the coast mattered. It's very exciting to see the department reinvesting in the Moncton lab and the lab in West Vancouver and to see the engagement with the general public. The public has kept Cohen alive in some years when it wasn't front and centre. The public has kept wild salmon policy alive and is obviously fully behind the resources that the department has today. As a result, I think these questions are going to keep coming.

Could you comment on your expectations for the reinvestment in the lab on the waterfront in West Vancouver?

[Trevor Swerdfager]

The lab being referred to in West Vancouver has been there, as you know, for a very long time. It's one that is somewhat underutilized, as a nice way to put it. We have a significant capacity there that is not being used.

Minister LeBlanc has decided that a key priority for him is to create something we're referring to as science enterprise centres. One of them will be at the Gulf Fisheries Centre in Moncton, the other in the West Vancouver lab in West Vancouver. We expect that there will be substantial new investments in both of those facilities.

Inside the shell of the building, where today you see DFO people exclusively, our expectation is that in West Vancouver, for example, we will probably see people from the Vancouver Aquarium, from the province, and from the University of British Columbia. Actually, UBC people are already there now. We're going to expand our presence there in a significant way and try to bring Canadians more into touch with the science they fund and to create space for people, in that community and its surrounding areas, to interact with the science that we're producing, but with scientists overall.

We think this is an innovative way of doing business generally. We're going to look at it in those two centres. We really think this is going to bring us much more directly into contact not only with people in British Columbia but to some considerable degree in both Moncton and West Vancouver. We're going to bring the science community to those two places, but we're also going to bring those two places to the science community.

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Could you comment on how you will engage the public in tracking the Cohen recommendations and the way they are realized through the wild salmon policy?

[Rebecca Reid]

Last August, the minister provided an update on the status of the Cohen recommendations and in fact created a tracker, a document that showed our response. It's available on the website. It's quite a nice little infographic and easy to read. The intention is to continue to update that tracker document. My expectation is that we will provide further updates, probably this summer, on the status of our moving on the recommendations. That will be a live document; we will continue to keep it up to date.

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Something that I think was a result of the initial recommendations was limiting open net fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago on the migratory routes of the Fraser River sockeye. How are you ensuring a precautionary principle with regard to that recommendation and the possible impact of open net fish farms?

[Rebecca Reid]

B.C. has a very strong regulatory system in place to ensure the sustainable management of salmon farming on the coast. Within that regulatory framework, we have of course a number of policies and guidelines. An important one that I can highlight to you is the siting guidelines, basically a document that describes how to decide where to place a fish farm. I think this is a really important piece: choosing a good location for a farm that allows for the good production of the fish while also minimizing interaction between wild and farmed salmon. That's one example.

We have a very rigorous testing program; we have enforcement personnel who review documents and who go onto the farms. We have, then, a comprehensive program to ensure that this industry is well managed and maintained.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you.

Mr. Sopuck, take five minutes, please.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

One thing about being a fisheries biologist, and in a past life I was one, is how much fun it is to do fisheries research. It's often so much fun that the research continues forever, with very little happening on the ground as a result of the research. I would really hope that at some point the research, even if the data are inconclusive, points you in the right direction and that you actually start doing things on the ground. That's the reason our government instituted the recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program, which funded hundreds of on-the-ground projects: habitat improvement, fish passage enhancement, and those kinds of things.

I don't have much time, so give a quick answer. Is the ultimate goal of all this research to actually do something on the ground that will enhance salmon stocks?

[Trevor Swerdfager]

Yes.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you.

I did a quick look here. There's a report by the fisheries committee from 2004 that looked at the sockeye salmon run. To help you out, there were about 2.7 million fish taken; 35% was by commercial fishing, 17% by FSC fishing, and astonishingly only 1% by the recreational fishery.

Interestingly, when you do an economic analysis of fishing in B.C.—this is in 2011, and the report I just cited was from 2004—the 2011 numbers are that the total value of the harvested catch off the coast of B.C. is $2.2 billion, of which an astonishing $936 million was for recreational fishing, or 42%. If one can relate the 1% harvest to the 42% value of the entire fishery off the west coast, will your wild salmon policy have a fisheries allocation strategy? Will you ultimately provide the recreational fishery with not only the respect that it's due, given the value, but also the number of fish that they would need to fulfill their needs?

[Rebecca Reid]

To respond to your question around the wild salmon policy, we have a salmon allocation policy that's separate from the wild salmon policy. That salmon allocation policy essentially describes, species by species, how the fish will be allocated. The reason for my earlier hesitation about the numbers is that it absolutely varies by year.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

That's fair enough.

[Rebecca Reid]

If it's a very low year, then the majority of the fish will be saved for conservation or for food, social, and ceremonial purposes. The numbers you're looking for, therefore, are absolutely dependent on the returns coming back.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

I'm very well aware of that, but the point is that over time these numbers probably smooth out. I think the 1% figure for the recreational fishery is probably real. Having fished out there myself and been subject to the ridiculous fishing regulations that the recreational fishery is subjected to, given the very few numbers of fish that the recreational fishery catches and given the outsized value of that fishery to the economy of the west coast, I think something's out of whack in fisheries allocation.

My strong recommendation would be that you do a rethink of fisheries allocation to give the recreational fishery the respect that it is due.

[Rebecca Reid]

I think it's really important to point out that the allocation policy is species specific. When you look at chinook or coho, for example, the recreational sector has a priority access to those fish, compared with the commercial sector. That's not speaking about the food, social, and ceremonial, which comes off the top. When you look at Fraser sockeye, though, the commercial sector has the priority, not when we're talking about food, social, and ceremonial but between the recreational and the commercial sectors. You need to look at it from a species-specific basis. The allocation policy doesn't set an actual amount, but it's up to 5% for those species that don't have the recreational priority.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

It seems to me that the purpose of a public agency is to allocate a public resource for the highest public use. I would dispute the amount of fish that the commercial fishery would get.

I also would make the point that given the very small catch the recreational fishery takes from the salmon, it is the recreational fishermen who do basically all of the conservation work, as per the recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program. This is a group of people who are fiercely dedicated to conservation, far above and beyond what they take in terms of harvest of the resource.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you.

Mr. Hardie and then Mr. Donnelly.

Before we get to the end, which is approaching, we're going to put in another round, because we're scheduled for 10:15. This means I'm going to be strict about the five minutes and the extra round, as you know. We'll go five, five, and five, which has been par for the course since my interregnum. At that point, I'm going to ask for—

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

No. It's no reflection on your chairing abilities, Mr. Sopuck. You're a wonderful chair, to the point that I'm worried constantly.

I'll need a speaker from here and here for five minutes each. We'll do that third round.

Right now, we have Mr. Hardie for five minutes.

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

In deference to Mr. Sopuck's comments, if I look at the cost per pound of fish that I have caught, it's pretty shocking.

I share a lot of the concerns of my colleague Mr. Donnelly about the impact of fish farming. I am concerned on an ongoing basis about the gap between people like Alexandra Morton, and the people who are very passionate and very invested in examining this, and the department, and about just basically what's going on there. There seems to be some irreconcilable differences, and as long as they remain unreconciled, there are going to be questions from the public. I think that effort needs to be put into managing that a bit better.

With respect to the open net salmon farming—recommendation 19—the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans should prohibit this in the Discovery Islands. This is down as one of the things of interest; you're taking it under advisement. Will this in fact be implemented?

[Rebecca Reid]

There are a couple of answers to that.

The first is that we have not allowed any new farms into the Discovery Islands.

The second part is that there's a risk assessment going on, which Mr. Swerdfager may wish to speak to, that will answer some of the scientific questions we have about the plans for 2020, which is what the recommendations speak to.

[Trevor Swerdfager]

I can touch briefly on the risk assessment; I know you're conscious of time.

Essentially what we're trying to do is go through each of the pathogens, making our best effort to figure out how disease moves, as I said earlier, between wild and farmed. Within wild, we know there's an awful lot of endemic disease and a lot of endemic pathogens in British Columbia that have been there for we don't know how long, but for a very long time.

Essentially, the understanding of disease transfer mechanisms is an area we're continuing to expand on. As Rebecca has mentioned, we have an active risk assessment program under way now to look at these issues. So far we have not detected anything that suggests we have a causal link between any wild salmon population health issue and aquaculture.

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

And vice versa?

[Trevor Swerdfager]

We don't have anything that suggests wild salmon are infecting farmed salmon and causing farmed salmon problems in the disease context. There are some issues associated with lice transfer from wild to farmed.

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

In one of our earlier studies on the Atlantic salmon, a few of us were taken by the strategy in Quebec of doing river-specific plans. In other words, rather than having a region-wide plan, they do it river by river. The Pacific Salmon Foundation has apparently applied this principle to the Skeena system. Is such an approach being looked at for the Fraser system?