Fisheries Committee on May 11th, 2017

[Jim McIsaac]

Certainly.

The oceans are connected, so what happens on the high seas impacts our EEZ. There's a proposal put forward to close the high seas as a large marine protected area. This would benefit inshore fisheries inside EEZs.

We don't have the governance structure to do something like that. I don't know if we would even want to go down that road, really. Our fisheries on the west coast are not just fishing inside our EEZ—we're fishing outside our EEZ. Our tuna fishery certainly goes outside. It's valuable space. There has to be better management on the high seas, but not a blanket closure.

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

I have another question, then. The FAO definition is fascinating—and Dr. Ban, you can maybe weigh in on this too—because the biggest difference is in the no-take zones. Is that correct? Is that the main...?

[Jim McIsaac]

No. You can have a fully closed area under the FAO definition. The essential difference between the two is that there's one objective for IUCN, namely that conservation has to take priority. Under FAO, it could be a fisheries priority that you're doing it for, it could be a conservation issue, or it could be something else.

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

So it depends on what you're trying to protect.

[Jim McIsaac]

Exactly.

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

Dr. Ban, do you want to comment on that?

[Dr. Natalie Ban]

I think that's correct. I think the other difference is that the FAO definition, as Mr. McIsaac just mentioned, didn't include the requirement for long-term legal protection. I think that's another key difference. The IUCN does require that, which is why, for instance, the rockfish conservation areas don't currently qualify as MPAs under the IUCN definition.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

That is the first round done.

I noticed, through no fault of anybody's, that we're throwing around a lot of acronyms. I've been scrambling to try to provide some clarity, as we are not all marine biologists. The closest we have to a marine biologist is not here today. Actually, he is one. I shouldn't say he's “close” to one.

I'm glad he's not here.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

No offence to him.

[An hon. member]

I'll tell him.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Yes, you can tell him and let him know. I'll hear it when he gets back.

An EEZ, exclusive economic zone, is the area where we as a nation have jurisdiction, under the Law of the Sea, for 200 nautical miles, and control over fisheries plus energy production.

PNCIMA has been talked about. It's the Pacific north coast integrated management area, on the northwest coast. How large would that be?

[Jim McIsaac]

It's about 102,000 square kilometres.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

It's 102,000 square kilometres, so you get the idea. It's also very famous internationally for its management.

TAC, as Mr. McIsaac mentioned, is the total allowable catch.

FAO, which Mr. Hardie pointed out, is the fishing and aquaculture organization of the United Nations.

[Jim McIsaac]

It's “food” and aquaculture.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Oh, it's the food and aquaculture organization of the United Nations. My apologies.

You see? I'm glad I brought this up now.

[A voice]

It's food and “agriculture”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Maybe I should just stop this exercise and let you do it: so FAO stands for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

IUCN is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

So there you have it. If any more acronyms come up, please bring them to my attention and we'll try to help you out.

Now we're into the second round, beginning with five minutes to the Conservatives.

Mr. Arnold, you will start, and you're sharing with Mr. Van Kesteren.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To Mr. McIsaac or anyone else who may have some more details, who bears the greatest cost when these MPAs are put in place? Could you identify, not necessarily today, specific fishermen or fishing groups and so on that are mostly impacted by the closures and the MPAs?

[Jim McIsaac]

That depends on the MPA and the fisheries that it impacts. For something like the Hecate sponge reefs, the main impact is on the bottom-contact fisheries, so you're talking about longline, trap, and crab fisheries. The trawl fisheries are certainly impacted there. Then, because of the way the MPA has been put in, it will also impact mid-water fisheries there. So yes, you can identify them.

One of the other issues, though, is that fish move. If you lock off an area now, what happens when another fish moves into that area? In terms of the impact with mid-water, the hake are moving further north, so that area there will become more important as we move forward in the global warming of our oceans that we're encountering.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Ban, could you let us know how much time you've spent in contact with the fisheries sector, as part of your research, so that you can monitor and judge the systems that they have in place?

[Dr. Natalie Ban]

Most of the collaborations I've had have been with first nations fishers, some of whom are commercial fishermen, some of whom only fish for food, social, and ceremonial purposes. I would say it's been off and on since I've been involved over the past 14 years, but I haven't had any deep collaborations with the commercial fishing industry. I have also worked with the recreational fishing sector through, for instance, that study I mentioned on the rockfish conservation areas in the Strait of Georgia.

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

Thank you.

This is just really quickly for all of you, and then I want to pass the remainder of my time over to Mr. Van Kesteren. Is Canada's west coast fishery shouldering more than its fair share with the MPA process?

[Christina Burridge]

Potentially, yes, because we already account for the largest proportion of closed areas, and we'll certainly be at 13.2% by 2020. We really believe that we need a process to identify what we need to protect, and then we should protect it. You will find that the fishing industry is always willing to be a partner in that, but we don't see the value in large no-take zones. We think we've already done a huge amount toward improving biodiversity over the last two decades.