Fisheries Committee on June 6th, 2017

[Jonathan Savoy]

I can't speak confidently about the involvement of international participants within Nunavut, but I do note that DFO's recent engagements with Nunavut have involved direct contact with the regional Inuit associations and organizations like ours. DFO has been holding a number of meetings and workshops to identify areas of interest for marine protected areas within Nunavut, and those have had significant involvement from people within the territory.

[Eli Enns]

There's a whole cast of characters who come around the west coast, including tho ones you speak of. We've created a process of engaging under certain ethical parameters so that the money they put into the system isn't creating too much influence towards their own personal agenda but working with the local interests of indigenous and local communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Enns.

Mr. Doherty.

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

Mr. Clark, could you tell me a little bit about your company's first nations engagement? I believe you have partnerships with some of the local first nations.

[Brian Clark]

Yes. We are directed by government as to which first nations require “big C” consultations, and those are the Tsimshian peoples along the coast and up to Terrace. We have agreements with all six of them, some confidential and some not. We do have agreements with all Tsimshian. The other first nations upriver we advise or give information to, but it's not true consultation.

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

Mr. Enns, you have a successful commercial fishery in your area—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

You can have only two questions.

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

Sorry.

—a company that is doing some great work. I was reading about it. It's called ThisFish, and it's a trackable system, from ocean to plate. Can you tell the committee about that?

[Eli Enns]

It's a fantastic program that's being led primarily by Ecotrust Canada. It's a chain-of-custody program in which you essentially have a bar code. The guy or the gal who fishes the fish tags the fish. It has a bar code, and it travels through the chain of custody to the consumer. The consumer is able then, if they're interested and they have time, to zap the bar code and then look into everyone who has touched that fish since it was caught, so they see where and when it was caught.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Doherty.

Thank you, Mr. Enns.

Thank you to all of you. This concludes our round of questioning and your presentations here today. I want to thank you.

As was mentioned, you have travelled a long distance, and we truly appreciate that. Towards the end of the year we will have a report tabled that you can see. We're travelling to the east coast this coming fall. I hope you look forward to our report at that time. We thank you again.

Mr. Wellstood, Mr. Clark, Ms. Ehaloak, Mr. Savoy, Mr. Enns, thank you indeed.

We're going to break for five minutes and have an in camera meeting following that. Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]