Fisheries Committee on June 13th, 2017

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

Would you see the need for more marine protection in light of your comment about more demand on the ocean?

[Byng Giraud]

I think any British Columbian or Canadian is going to be interested in protected areas. I'm not an expert on MPAs and how one should put them together, but the notion of balance is what I think most citizens have in mind. They want to find that balance. They still want to be able to get a job, and they want their productivity, but they also want those beautiful areas.

I don't necessarily see that they're in conflict. I've worked in the natural resources sector my entire life and there are many ways to do this. I think from your perspective, as you design these things going forward, it's necessary to make sure that all those interests are represented. As I said, these types of things are a recipe for conflict.

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

Could you give us a little bit of an update on the LNG? I'm not sure when the first tanker is expected and where the market is at. I know this is a study on MPAs, but perhaps you can give us that side.

[Byng Giraud]

The market is not where it once was. That being said, Canadian projects are still moving forward. Ours is still moving forward.

The issue is simply finding that price. It's down in price. It was $16 in Japan for a while and now we're down to $8 or less in Asia. We simply have to make sure that the price of gas, plus the price of the pipeline, plus the price of liquefaction, plus the price of shipping are competitive with what's coming out of Louisiana.

There are some publicly-traded companies down there so we know their prices. We simply have to make sure our prices meet theirs, and it can be done. We have a surplus of gas. The Americans used to be our customers, but they are now our competitors, and I'm tired of selling stuff to the Americans at a cheap price. I think we should be selling it to Asia.

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

Do you have an expected date on the first...?

[Byng Giraud]

If we move into construction later this year or early next year—we don't have our final FEED estimates on construction time—I'd say it'll be 2020-21. We're still moving forward. Some of the larger projects have held off. Those are $20-billion investments, and we're $1 billion, so it's tiny.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Donnelly.

Well, folks, we have exhausted two rounds of questioning and, uncharacteristically, we're brimming over with time here. One of our witnesses wasn't able to make it, so here's what we're going to do. We seem to have this system that has evolved where you can ask a question if you want to volunteer. I would ask that you have one question with a supplementary, and then I'll leave it at that and go to the next person if anybody has any interest in asking other things.

Mr. Morrissey.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Chair.

If I'm listening to the testimony from you, Dr. Carr, what in your professional opinion would be the greater objective? Would it be simply achieving a target at a number of a percentage, or would it be combining that with a series of areas that actually achieve protection of resources that are facing competing interests in the sea? I like your concept of cluster and how they interact.

[Prof. Mark Carr]

That's a brilliant question. I'm glad you asked it.

I am not a fan of the target of a percentage of protected areas. That has largely been based out of political reasons for countries to move forward in this process, in this development of protected areas.

In the State of California, there was no target percentage that a protected area, as a network, was meant to achieve. Rather, as you alluded to, it was based out of this sort of grassroots, from the ground up. We know that each MPA needs to include multiple ecosystems. We know they need to include a certain area of each of those ecosystems. We know that we want them spaced a certain distance from one another. Whatever per cent that created was not a consideration. It was about the integrity of the system and the consideration of protecting representative ecosystems.

In fact, it goes back to my earlier comment that you see some countries, including the United States, where these massive protected areas have been created out in remote areas of the world with little impact on human activities, so it's pretty politically easy to achieve. In doing so, you can reach your target for your country pretty quickly, but those are not, I would argue, going to be as consequential as what we're talking about, where you're trying to embed a conservation tool into a working coastline like you have on both coasts of Canada—or on all three coasts of Canada, I should say.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

With regard to your comments, we've had competing testimony given on the total no-take zone versus a protected area with a managed commercial fishery.

I'm referring more to the east coast, where a number of fisheries, primarily in the lobster and crab industries, are now marine eco-certified, and where the fishery is managed to the extent that there's no concern about the resource of stock. Also, these have limited impact on the companion fisheries that are on the bottom.

Could you comment on designating some of these areas as marine protected but allowing proven commercial fisheries to exist in them?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

I think you have to be careful there. Recognize that the target for a sustainable fishery is to reduce the stock size down to a level such that you're maintaining sustainable take through time. You can do that by removing over 50% of that stock and still achieve a sustainable take, but you're doing that across the entire stock, not at particular locations. By doing that, what the consequence is for the ecological role of that species in the system is very different. You can imagine that removing 50% of a local population will impair the ecological role of that species in that ecosystem—there's no question.

In fact, there's an outstanding example. I don't want to get into too much detail. The lobster fishery off the coast of Tasmania was a sustainable fishery. With climate change, there was an invasion of a sea urchin into the kelp forests along the coast of Tasmania. In no-take reserves, the lobsters were of sufficient size and number that they could control those sea urchins. Outside of those reserves, where you were conducting a sustainable lobster fishery, you had nonetheless reduced the number and size of the lobsters to where they could not control those sea urchins. As a consequence, the urchins would remove the kelp forests, upon which a multi-million dollar abalone fishery was reliant.

It's induced by climate change, but it's an example of where even a sustainable fishery for one stock can potentially jeopardize the sustainable fishery of another. We learned of that only because we protected the functional role of lobster within those reserves to resist the consequences of that urchin invasion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Dr. Carr. Thank you, Mr. Morrissey.

Mr. Hardie, and then Mr. Donnelly.

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

Thank you.

Quickly, Mr. Giraud, on the shipping lane, when you come out of Howe Sound are you going to turn right or left, to the north side of Vancouver Island or down along the south?

[Byng Giraud]

We join the typical Vancouver port shipping routes, right there. When you come out of Howe Sound past Horseshoe Bay, you simply join the rest of the shipping route out to Ogden Point.

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

Dr. Carr, I wanted to give you more time on the whole issue of climate change, and within it, the invasive species.

Do you think that marine protected areas are some kind of a buffer protection against the impact of climate change, or will there be situations where climate change and the invasive species that come with it overrun whatever we were trying to accomplish with an MPA?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

That's an excellent question, and there are two parts to it.

In some cases, certainly, there is the possibility that invasive species that are changing their distribution in response to changing ocean conditions will invade and potentially alter what we're trying to protect within a marine protected area. The example I just gave indicates that sometimes by protecting the integrity of the species in those ecosystems, they can in fact resist some of those invasions. That's one thought: by protecting the integrity of the ecosystem you may make it more resistant to some of those consequences.

One important element of network of protected areas is with respect to how you try to accommodate the shifting distribution of species as a result of climate change. One of the biggest ecological consequences of climate change globally is that species are changing their distribution. They're doing that on land and they're doing it in the ocean. The question is, if all these species are going to change their distribution, what's the point of making protected areas that are place-based? The nice thing about networks is that what you're doing is protecting the place where those species are going to land. For example, on land, one of the big concerns with climate change is that when you create parks and the environment then changes, those species need to shift their distribution, but Los Angeles might be in the way. Good luck with that.

This is the popularity of this idea of corridors, which allows species from one protected area to shift to another protected area on land. The cool thing in the ocean is you don't need corridors. The way species shift their distributions is their larvae move and colonize areas of favourable environmental conditions. You can do whatever you want, outside of the protected area. Those larvae will hopscotch to another protected area and then what you're doing is protecting areas for those species, and helping them make those shifts that they need to make in response to climate change.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Dr. Carr.

I have to move on. We have five minutes left, and I have a few people for questions. Colleagues, perhaps we could keep this very short.

Mr. Donnelly.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Targets and timelines are political in nature, and the nature of our business. I would say with proper human use and activities, there would be no need for marine protected areas, ideally. Unfortunately, human activities are, I think, having a substantially negative impact on ecosystems. In terms of looking at targets and timelines and marine protected areas, the Government of Canada has committed to 10% by 2020.

What would be the one recommendation you would give to this committee for our report to the government on how we achieve that, with respect to timelines?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

I would argue to accommodate the necessary time frame required to bring people together to make that inclusive planning process. Moving forward on that at a reasonable rate is necessary because it takes a while to do, and you learn as you do it. Sorry, but you are breaking new ground with a science-based network of protected areas.

In the state of California we went from one section of the state to the other, and we came up with new issues that we had to think through as we implemented that planning process. It's going to take time. The sooner you initiate it, the better, so you have the time to do it right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Go ahead, Mr. Doherty.

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

Mr. Carr, who ran the consultative process in California and was there an advisory committee made up of different stakeholder groups?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

It was the State of California and the group that implemented it was the state resources agency responsible for natural resources. There were three components of that process, or I should say, four.

The group that has the authority to create a protected area is the Fish and Game Commission for the state of California. They have the authority to make fishing regulations, but there were three other elements of that. There was the science advisory team. Our role was to generate science-based guidelines. There were the stakeholder groups. Their role was to use those guidelines and to make a network. There was a third group that was referred to as the blue ribbon task force, which was made up of individuals like you. They were people who were considered to be very knowledgeable policy-makers. They oversaw the process of the science and stakeholders and then they actually generated their own preferred design too.

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

Can I just ask for a really quick clarification?

I think that you've said this a couple of times. I just want to make sure that we get it on record. Fish and Game, science advisory, the blue ribbon group, and then you had the stakeholders, who then determined where the MPAs were going to be, given what your target was.

Is that correct?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

Given the guidelines, that's right.

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

Did the stakeholders make the determination?