Fisheries Committee on June 6th, 2017

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

Thank you.

Do you have a recommendation for this committee on how the federal government could engage the port and ports and industry in the MPA process, given that we don't seem to have a defined process?

[Chris Wellstood]

That's correct, in that the approach is very haphazard and very opportunistic, I would say, toward port authorities or commercial entities, and that brings along challenges. The other thing is that if a port authority gets invited, there's one chair at the table, and that's the port authority, and there are many other interests around the table. The value of that voice around the table gets diminished by the number of seats around the table, the amount of airtime that you get. The CEO of the Prince Rupert Port Authority hinted at designating the international traffic lanes as areas that are managed differently from marine protected areas, and that they could basically meet each other. But to put a marine protected area over a traffic lane, and then legislate towards protecting the habitats basically makes the future uncertain. You don't know what's going to happen well into the future.

To answer the question, a process would be to validate the position of a port authority and commercial interests in an equal manner with other interests.

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

In the last few minutes that I have I'll turn to the NPC. I have a bunch of questions, but I think you outlined or talked about pristine areas. Have these areas been mapped? If so, can you tell us if they constitute a percentage of the area, or what percentage of the Canadian Arctic Ocean?

[Jonathan Savoy]

We don't have mapped areas of pristine regions within Nunavut. Generally, in relation to the rest of Canada, there's much less activity currently in Nunavut, and I note that it could be interpreted as being pristine just due to the lack of activity compared to other areas.

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

Do you think you could draw a line around those areas?

[Sharon Ehaloak]

Everything in the Arctic is pristine. We're one-fifth of Canada's land mass. We have critical habitat. We have to have a balance between job security, food security, our high costs, and our demographics. So from a commission perspective, achieving the balance, listening to the communities and where their values are, one could say that every area across Nunavut would have, if you want to define it, a pristine area or areas of importance.

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

That's a good point. We didn't talk about the definition of “pristine”. But if everything is pristine, are there any threats, then?

[Sharon Ehaloak]

There a number of threats. We know, for example, that ice is land-like eight months of year. There are recognized transportation routes between communities for harvesting and the ability to get out on the land to do harvesting, going from community to community. For important areas, such as where there are walrus haul-outs or ice floe edges where seals are pupping, if icebreaking or disturbances were taking place at particular times of the year, it would have a negative impact.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much, Mr. Donnelly.

Thank you, madam.

For clarification, Mr. Wellstood, you talked about the IMO. Do you mean that the International Maritime Organization has designation for those lanes?

[Chris Wellstood]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Okay. Thank you very much. I just wanted to clarify that.

Now we go to Mr. Finnigan for seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the panel for being here.

I'm on the other coast, the east coast, but I was born in Vancouver, so I'm on both.

I guess we're all in favour of MPAs to protect the marine life and the tradition that has gone on from time immemorial, as you said, Mr. Enns, but we also spoke about land protection. Although that's probably not part of the MPAs, are we moving fast enough on that front in coordinating both the land and water?

I ask anybody to comment on that. Are we balancing the two, or are we behind on one front or the other?

[Eli Enns]

I think we're at about 11% on the terrestrial target, and we're at 0.9% on the marine target until the end of this year, I imagine.

I think on the terrestrial side we're doing okay.

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

You're doing okay.

Go ahead, sir.

[Jonathan Savoy]

Thank you.

Without going into the larger terrestrial protection issue, I just reiterate our comment that in some cases there is a need to protect terrestrial portions of marine mammal habitat through marine protected areas—for example, walrus haul-outs. They exit the sea at certain locations and a terrestrial portion would be beneficial in that case.

[Eli Enns]

That is a very good insight, because the marine protected areas and the terrestrial side, from an indigenous perspective, have to communicate with each other better.

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

To follow up on that, we know that the resource has started to dwindle on some fronts especially. In your experience, and your tradition, and in everything that you're seeing with what's happening today, what would you say is the biggest reason? Is that man-made activity? Is it over-exploitation of the resource, or is it also climate change?

What is the biggest issue with protecting our waters and seals?

[Sharon Ehaloak]

From the commission's perspective, I don't think we can comment on the portions or the balance. I can tell you that climate change is having an adverse effect. It's changing the ice conditions. As we all know, there are open waters. We have a significant amount of traffic now coming through the Arctic that we never saw before, and it has had controversial impacts, some pro, some con, from communities' perspectives. We see that from the information provided to us through our community consultations.

There's a demographic change. I can't really give you the balanced answer, but clearly there are changes happening. We see a number of new species coming, both marine and on land. We see impacts on our caribou. We now have grizzly bears, grolar bears, and wolverines in different impact areas. We have the Greenland sharks coming up. We have killer whales, whales in areas that we've never had them before.

I'm now located in Iqaluit, but from where I'm from in Cambridge Bay, we never used to see whales there. We never saw grizzly bears. We've never had an invasive or predatorial species on Victoria Island. We do now. We now have polar bears and every kind of whale.

So everything is changing—the multi-year ice, the ice patterns—at a very rapid pace.

[Eli Enns]

Yes. From a Nuu-chah-nulth perspective, the heart of the problem is a dysfunctional world view, a world that sees things in pieces, a disconnected world view.

In our language, heshook-ish tsawalk is our way of understanding the interconnection of everything. I think whether it's climate change, or economic practices, or marine protected areas, at the heart of it we have to shift our world view to understand that everything is interconnected.

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

So in your view, going back millions of years or however far—your elders could probably add a lot of information on this—there's no doubt that climate change exists. It's here. It's not just a trend in time. We've never seen that before. As you said, it's all interconnected.

Would you say that we also need to look at that aspect of it when we're considering protections like MPAs?

[Eli Enns]

Yes. In our language, qwii-qwiq-sap is the process of transformation that is happening. My elders assure me that the natural world will adapt. It will be fine in regard to climate change. We have to stop getting in its way. We have to stop doing harm. First, do no harm: this is the philosophy we bring to the work we do.

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

Before I move on to the next question, I want to make sure I get this one in. Meegwetch: does that mean “thank you”?

[Eli Enns]

In Anishinabe it does, yes.

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

I hear it used on the east coast also.

I know it's not related to this, but it's an international thank you, right?

[Eli Enns]

It is. It's becoming a trans-Canadian thank you.

Meegwetch.