Fisheries Committee on Oct. 24th, 2017

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

Getting back to the monitoring and enforcement portion of it, some of these areas that are going to be protected aren't complete no-take areas. Should or could the traditional harvesters, whether they're first nations or commercial fishermen, be enabled to do some of this enforcement?

For example, I've heard of the rockfish conservation areas in British Columbia. The commercial fishermen aren't allowed in. They're GPS-tracked and there are cameras and so on. They've actually turned on their cameras to show that they weren't fishing and went into a closed area to record and videotape non-commercial vessels that were illegally fishing inside those areas. Should those activities continue and also be part of the management and enforcement process?

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

There again, we're mixing monitoring and enforcement, but in many ways it's inevitable. We have to think about this. If we're going to allow limited take of either fish or shellfish within marine protected areas, then I think we have to be prepared to have a proportional level of monitoring and enforcement. We can't expect there to be uniformed officers with side arms everywhere, so I think we have to make use of local people who know the area to monitor both what's going on with the ecosystem and obviously what's going on with exploitation of the resources.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold.

We have Mr. Johns, please, for seven minutes.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Thank you for testifying today.

Witnesses have explained that baseline data and knowledge about local environments, near-shore habitats, and many species are often lacking. This baseline data is not only important in choosing suitable MPA sites, but also in measuring success. How can Canada improve its marine monitoring practices and funding levels?

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

This is a point that I tried to make earlier. We would all like to have more money for everything, but I think a lot can be done by using existing resources and encouraging partnerships, initially on the scientific side between DFO and the academic researchers, and also by bringing in local communities to help with some of the baseline monitoring. Citizen science is something that's really taking off. There are a lot of very interested and motivated people out there who have a lot of energy and time to devote to these things.

What we need, then, is to coordinate and do this in a systematic way so that the information they collect can be used for baseline monitoring.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

That said, what are the most significant gaps in marine scientific monitoring that we need to address?

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

The most significant gaps are in understanding year-to-year variability in the abundance of different species: how many there are this year, and how many there are the following year, and how that relates to changing weather or changing climate. What is the normal range of change we can expect that we wouldn't necessarily have to attribute to human effects, but to something in the longer term, like climate change?

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Should the establishment process for MPAs be different in areas for which there is insufficient baseline information?

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

Looking ahead to 2020, I would suggest that a precautionary approach is probably a good way to proceed, but there again, this brings in the whole monitoring thing as something that should be part of the whole process of establishing an MPA. We should have a plan for the development of baseline monitoring. We should do something of a gap analysis with regard to our understanding of “baseline” in these areas and make that part of the management plan itself to increase our understanding of the baseline.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

You've answered this, but I'm going to ask you to expand on how local and traditional knowledge can contribute to accumulating knowledge about local environments. Maybe you could speak a little more to this.

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

Certainly. I think that can help us an awful lot with making decisions on boundaries and also on take and no-take zoning within MPAs. Also, as was mentioned in discussions on earlier questions, local knowledge can be really important and can make a big contribution to monitoring. It doesn't take much to organize local people to monitor their own backyard. They have a personal investment in that.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

In your view, do the current criteria and process used by DFO to identify and establish MPAs ensure that the intended biodiversity conservation benefits will be achieved?

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

I think the boundaries will enclose the area that we want to protect and the species and the ecosystems that we want to protect, but , in my view, right now the selection criteria do not really ensure the long-term sustainability of these marine protected areas. We need monitoring and enforcement for that.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

You've talked about the precautionary principle and how it plays into Parks Canada's decision-making process. Can you speak more about that role and about how it pertains to establishing national marine conservation areas and terrestrial national parks?

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

I think that probably the most important point to make about taking the precautionary approach to things is that even if we don't know anything at a higher level, we understand the importance of an ecosystem or an area for its representativeness of a region or for the fact that it is relatively untouched but could be disturbed in the future.

There again, we should not be limited by our knowledge of the detail of these areas before making decisions about boundaries, but at the same time, we should not be excessively using the precautionary principle just to put boxes around things.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

You've answered part of this, but I want you to expand again about how much weight is currently given to local and traditional indigenous knowledge within the MPA process, and does it vary depending on where the MPA is located?

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

I would probably defer to DFO for questions on that, because it really comes out of the public consultation process, and I think that can vary from one area and one region to the next. It's important to be inclusive, but I can't really comment on how much weight is actually given to input from indigenous communities and local communities into final decisions about where boundaries occur and how MPAs will be zoned.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Johns.

Ms. Jordan, please, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Dr. Juniper, for being here. I guess this is quite early for you this morning.

I'd like to start my questions by asking you to define “offshore”. What's your definition of offshore?

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

My definition of “offshore” is “beyond the edge of the continental shelf”, and that means waters deeper than 200 metres.

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

What about areas that have waters deeper than 200 metres that are closer to shore? There are some.

[Dr. Kim Juniper]

Yes, there are some very deep fjords and some deep holes much closer to shore.

In many ways, the offshore comment also refers to distance from exploiters of resources and distance from sources of pollution and other human disturbance. Putting this roughly at the edge of the continental shelf gets us outside of where most concentrated human activity occurs, but that doesn't protect any of the deep holes that are closer to shore. That's the point I was trying to make.

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

I thought your comments were interesting when you said that what we need to protect is closer to inshore—but you know, in order to meet targets, we'll probably look at offshore—and that it's important to protect our coastal communities. I guess one of the challenges we're finding throughout this study is that coastal communities depend strongly on the fishery. To have a marine protected area and to protect the community don't necessarily go hand in hand, because the community relies so heavily on the fishery.

I'm wondering if you could expand a bit on how you figure an MPA is protecting a coastal community, when a coastal community relies heavily on a fishery.