Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the committee for inviting me to speak.
I am a long-time fisherman from the west coast of Vancouver Island. My son and I own a longline groundfish vessel together that we fish in the integrated groundfish fishery. I have over 50 years of working on the water in a variety of fisheries, and I am a past vice-president of the Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters. I represent the longline fishery in a variety of forums in B.C., and I represent the commercial fishing industry on the West Coast Aquatic Management board, mandated under the Oceans Act in 2001.
I have been working for the Area A crab fishery as an executive director since 2009, and I am presently the acting executive director of a coast-wide crab association. When I first started working for Area A, I told them I was going to focus my efforts on integrated marine planning, which at that time was just starting to ramp up through the PNCIMA process—the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area, which encompasses the area in which these fishermen work: the Hecate Strait, Haida Gwaii, and Queen Charlotte Sound.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a mandate under the Oceans Act to facilitate and enable co-operative relationships among agencies, other governments, and stakeholders, including first nation and coastal communities, in developing an integrated marine planning process. I had already spent 10 years of my life working on building an aquatic management board on the west coast of Vancouver Island during the 1990s, which was mandated under the Oceans Act, to integrate marine governance with four levels of government for the west coast of Vancouver Island.
I believed, and I still do, that the only way to properly manage ocean space is by co-operatively organizing all the relevant governments and their agencies and stakeholders into this type of process in the north coast. The need to integrate fisheries into this type of process in the north coast had become critical, with the rising potential for significantly increased freighter traffic, wind and other alternative power generation being contemplated, the aspirations of first nations in the region to develop their own coastal and ocean marine plans, and a rising interest in developing protected areas, not only to protect unique habitats but also to provide exclusive opportunities for first nation food, social, and ceremonial fisheries, one of the stated objectives of the Canadian marine protected areas strategy. We were also seeing significant changes to the marine environment that pointed to climate change and associated ocean acidification impacts, which, research is now showing, have significant negative impacts on shellfish and other sea life.
The Area A crab industry, working closely with the Commercial Fishing Caucus, which was set up specifically to focus on marine planning by all the fishing interests in the region, spent a considerable amount of time supporting the initial PNCIMA process. The PNCIMA process was providing capacity for proper engagement of many interests that otherwise would not have had the capacity to engage, through an $8.5-million Moore Foundation grant in partnership with DFO.
The previous government, in 2013, killed the Moore grant, citing concerns about American ENGOs influencing Canadian government policy, particularly around the Northern Gateway proposal. When this occurred, the building momentum around integrated marine planning in the north coast of B.C., from our perspective in the crab industry, all but disappeared.
Out of the ashes of that exercise came the use of that money to support the provincial government and 18 first nations in the region in developing their own truncated planning process—the marine planning process commonly referred to as MaPP, which a previous speaker referenced. I call it “truncated” because the federal government specifically refused to participate and, by withholding its mandate, very seriously undermined the opportunity for integrated marine planning. Area A Crab and the Commercial Fishing Caucus continued to participate in MaPP, while other fishing interests withdrew, citing the lack of federal involvement, which manages fisheries, as the rationale for their withdrawal.
Area A and the remaining CFC partners took the position that we were better off supporting those elements of marine planning in MaPP that were important to fisheries, such as foreshore infrastructure and coastal community economic and social agendas, which were under the mandate of the provincial government. We also objected to the use of this planning process to zone marine protected areas under IUCN designations, because the IUCN designations specifically speak to fisheries management curtailment, and this planning process had no mandate, due to the absence of the federal government, to mandate these types of potential fisheries as closed areas. Our advice on this matter was noted but ignored, and these plans to this day continue to identify significant ocean areas as potential IUCN 1b areas, which means that, if gazetted, they would be closed to all fisheries except first nations food, social, and ceremonial fisheries. Many of these potential IUCN-designated areas include some of the most productive fishing areas in the north coast region.
After careful consideration of the workshop proceedings summarizing the input of scientists from around the world, it became clear that, in areas of the world where well-managed fisheries exist, MPAs are of little use, and in those jurisdictions, the establishment of MPAs has serious negative economic consequences to the existing fisheries while providing little conservation benefit.
In areas of the world where there is little or no fisheries management structure and where the species of fish in some of these areas are of a sedentary nature, MPAs have been shown to be useful.
In B.C., the commercial fishing industry was supportive, for instance, of establishing rockfish conservation areas, because it was obvious to those of us who fished these species—and I was one of them—that these more sedentary species would benefit from being in protected areas.
Ironically, in this latest debate around what is considered to be a worthwhile closed-area protection, these areas are not considered by the ENGO community or by the present review process looking at existing closed areas as part of the overall percentage of spatial protection to be worthwhile for inclusion because they do not fit the IUCN criteria which. From our perspective as fishermen, this is a ridiculous stance to take.
With respect to the Dungeness crab fishery, these animals live in an open-ended fluid environment. The early larvae life cycle lives in the water column and travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles on ocean currents. The second life cycle, the megalopa life cycle, is also highly mobile in the water column. It is only when the animals settle and stay on the bottom that they become more sedentary, but even then they have been known to travel great distances as adults in search of food sources.
Species like Dungeness crab would be very difficult to protect unless very large MPAs were created, and even then, the question is, protect for what purpose? The same question needs to be asked for a majority of pelagic ocean species that are presently being fished sustainably through proven fisheries management methodologies.
The management of Dungeness crab is done by season, size, and sex restrictions, through effort and licence controls. This method of management has been successful in maintaining healthy biomass populations of Dungeness crab for over 100 years along their Pacific ranges from California to Alaska.
The Area A fleet is further managed through tracking of all trap hauls through camera and GPS technology; its actual ocean footprint has been tracked right down to the individual trap for the last 17 years. Why jeopardize the viability of well-managed fisheries to pursue conservation goals that are unlikely to be effectively achieved through an MPA approach?
This is a major issue for the crab fishery, as the use of MPAs to lock out sand habitats as one type of unique habitat to limit human activity and maintain pristine environments is now on the table as a possible part of the MPA network design for the north coast bioregion. One area in the Hecate Strait being contemplated as an IUCN 1b designation has, in some years, contained significant crab catches. The potential negative consequences of locking out that area will create serious economic hardship for this fleet.
That being said, the Government of Canada has committed to five and ten per cent MPA protection in its EEZ within the next three years. We know that this is a political commitment that will be acted upon. Considering the facts I have just presented, the present terms of reference for designing and implementing these MPAs are, in our estimation, inadequate, considering the risks involved to the long-term economic and social viability of the fishery, with very little conservation benefit for us.
We are being told that we will be consulted and be allowed to give advice to a tripartite government structure consisting of federal, provincial, and first nations governments. There is no commitment to collaborative decision-making in relation to this file despite the Prime Minister's mandate letter which commits to this type of process. There are no conflict resolution principles within the terms of reference yet, yet it was obvious from the science workshop in Vancouver that the inclusion of structural adjustment funds to compensate for lost opportunity of traditional users of the resource was a critical component of the planning process.
The Australian example of providing structural adjustment at the end of the process of creating the Great Barrier Reef protected area was a glaring example of how not to design MPAs, yet the Canadian OAP has no terms of reference at the outset of the planning process to cover the conflict resolution, mitigation, and compensation components of this planning exercise.
The MPA strategy is being treated as a one-off process, not integrated in a meaningful way within an overarching integrated ecosystem-based governance structure. It is, in fact, ignoring the existing combined governance bodies that were set up to manage bioregions. On the west coast of Vancouver Island, DFO has deliberately sidelined the aquatic management board in the region, which was specifically set up to oversee the management of the ocean space within its mandate, and is setting up a separate consultative process that is bypassing this board altogether.
In conclusion, integrated marine planning is very important to maintaining the future health of Canada's marine areas. MPAs are only one tool of many that may be needed to achieve these planning objectives. In our research into this situation with respect to the development of MPAs, the commercial industry, in partnership with the ENGO community, hosted a major science workshop on MPAs two years ago in Vancouver.
There is growing evidence that MPAs are being oversold for their benefits, and it is well known in the field of marine planning that one of the major mistakes in this relatively new field is to treat marine plans as mirror images of terrestrial plans. Unlike terrestrial areas, marine areas are not static. They are highly variable and much more mobile than the terrestrial environment, and we need to take that into account when contemplating the possibility of locking out large areas of ocean space from human use.
We see the need for much more responsive and structured terms of reference for including the affected commercial industries in the MPA planning process. There is too much at stake for this industry to simply be part of a very loose consultative process that, at the end of the day, could very well see major negative economic consequences for our fishery.
At the same time, we must be mindful of the issues associated with climate change and what they will mean for our coastal communities and fishing industries as we deal with a rapidly changing environment.
We are more than willing to be constructive partners in designing a comprehensive and inclusive integrated marine planning process and to contribute the knowledge that fishermen have of the marine environment into the process in a meaningful way.
Thank you.