Fisheries Committee on Oct. 26th, 2017

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

Do the two groups talk? Does the Department of Fisheries and Oceans talk? Do they share information back and forth collaboratively? I believe our colleagues during the testimony on the road trip last week heard time and again that there seems to be a disconnect between the two groups.

[Kevin Stringer]

The answer is yes. If you're talking about the people responsible for inland protection in our department and the people responsible for oceans protection, they are part of the same sector. We do ensure that they work together. It continues to be a challenge to make sure that everybody is connected. They have different tools, but we're committed to making sure there is comprehensive protection and that those groups are working together.

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

Bill C-55 empowers the ministers of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, Natural Resources, and Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard to be able to immediately step in and designate areas or have influence on areas in terms of interim protection. Could you give an example of how the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs or the Minister of Natural Resources would step in to designate an interim marine protected area, and perhaps some suggestions or criteria as to what would allow them to do that?

[Kevin Stringer]

I think it's our minister that would be able to designate the marine protected area. The authorities for the NRCan minister and the...I guess it's now the CIRNA minister, Crown-Indigenous—

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

They have the authorities to stop activity.

[Kevin Stringer]

That's correct.

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

Is that without consultation, or immediately?

[Kevin Stringer]

I think it requires a regulatory process. The regulatory process requires that there be consultation and that there be a resource assessment, an assessment of the economic impact.

[Jeff MacDonald, Director General, Oceans and Fisheries Policy, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

If I could add to this discussion, I would say that in the normal development of marine protected areas, we work with Natural Resources Canada and INAC, especially with regard to resource assessments. That's part of the process prior to the establishment of an area of interest.

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

In terms of interim protection areas and marine protected areas designated as no-take zones, are they 100% no-take?

[Kevin Stringer]

We have different tools. Right now there's no requirement for no-take. There's no requirement in the MPA. The minister spoke to establishing a panel to talk about standards. Some people have said they think there should be a standard with respect to oil and gas or with respect to various elements, or what percentage we need to protect, or what management standards to use, etc., but right now there's no requirement for no-take in the Oceans Act for the MPAs.

In the national marine conservation area legislation, a certain percentage of it needs to be no-take, but it doesn't say what that percentage is.

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

In testimony we've heard from first nations and non-first nations groups. As a matter of fact, our colleague, Mr. Morrissey, brought up a great point earlier this week, which was that we have non-first nations and first nations that have lived side-by-side for generations. Both consider themselves to be traditional. This is their traditional livelihood. I appreciate that this is a delicate subject, but I know we are being inundated with letters and I would assume our colleagues are also being inundated with letters and comments. How do you assure that both sides are being weighted favourably so that our traditional fishers, both non-first nations and first nations, have the opportunities to continue?

[Kevin Stringer]

We have to do it through process. It is a challenge as the process is moving along. We have regular processes where we engage. We have our own protocols in terms of consultation, where we engage with indigenous groups, and we also engage with local fishers and local fishery groups. There is traditional knowledge—traditional ecological knowledge or indigenous knowledge—that we take into consideration that needs to be considered seriously. There is also local knowledge from people who have fished in an area for generations that also needs to be taken into account.

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

My remaining time will go to Mr. Arnold, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Mr. Doherty.

Earlier this morning we heard the minister refer to the belief or perception that a marine protected area is basically a national park in the ocean. There are similar beliefs among the public that in a national park the same issues or the same guidelines apply as in a marine protected area.

National parks are basically no touch, no take, no wildlife management. They are totally hands off, even for park staff. How do you propose to manage MPAs under those rules when we have issues such as burgeoning seal populations that are impacting other fish stocks in and outside the MPAs and when striped bass populations are exploding in certain areas? How do you propose to manage within the MPAs if the public's vision is that an MPA is a national park on the water?

[Kevin Stringer]

That's partly why it takes, on average, seven years to complete a marine protected area. It is a hugely complex ecosystem. There are many activities that take place. We need to understand what it is that we are trying to protect and to have a good sense of whether it is corals and sponges, a sensitive spawning area, an important area for various species, and what the impacts are that could impact that and, therefore, what we need to protect.

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

How do you deal with that if those species move?

[Kevin Stringer]

MPAs can be established and MPAs can be changed. It's a regulatory process, but we've generally sought to identify areas that we believe are going to be important—corals and sponges and spawning areas—that we've known about for generations and that are going to be there for the long term. That is an issue.

We have to make sure we have a suite a tools to be able to deal with areas that have a changing distribution of species as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Stringer.

The bells have just begun to ring.

I think we have enough time here, folks. Are we okay with seven minutes?

Mr. Cannings, go ahead for seven minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for sticking with us here. I'd ask one question of Mr. Stringer or whoever wants to answer it.

I will pick up on this idea of minimum standards, which I asked the minister about earlier. We are setting these MPAs aside for biodiversity, conservation, and endangered species protection. I think everybody would agree there have to be some minimum standards, or why bother doing it?

One of the things you would have to exclude—and I think if you walked down the street and talked to anyone, they would agree—is bottom trawling, which would be like going into a national park with a bulldozer and removing everything from the forest or wherever. We have very small no-take zones in existing MPAs. Scientists tell us that at least 75% of an MPA should probably be a no-take zone. We have evidence from around the world that a lot of the MPAs can't be distinguished from fished areas because they're so poorly managed. I'm wondering why these minimum standards aren't put into Bill C-55.

I'm not talking about things that we need to decide. These are egregious. There might be some resources that we could use, but I think everybody would agree that something like bottom trawling should be excluded from a marine protected area, or why are we doing this in the first place?

What are your plans around that? What would it take to do that? We've heard a lot about enforcement. There are a lot of questions around that and about why we're not setting these minimum standards right off the top.

[Kevin Stringer]

The minister spoke to the issue of minimum standards since it has become an issue as we've moved forward with a focus on the 5% target and then the 10% target. As we've done that, we've realized exactly what you've raised. It has been raised as well by environmental groups and others for the last 20 years that standards need to be in there.

Interestingly, in the international forum, the minister was at the UN. He was at the Convention on Biological Diversity annual meeting last year. He was in Malta. In the discussion around marine protected areas, the focus continues to be on percentages—5% and 10%—and getting beyond those, etc., but the focus is becoming more on effectiveness. There is more of a focus on monitoring, evaluation, and standards.

That is something, as the minister has said, that we need to take a look at. We will have a group take a look at whether we already have some tools to address standards in the Oceans Act. We probably do. Should it be up to the committee and Parliament to decide whether standards should be in there? It is certainly something the minister is taking seriously, and we're also taking seriously the idea of determining appropriate standards.

It is complex, so we think it's going to take some time to look at, but that panel can't take a long period of time, because we do need to make sure we're addressing those concerns as we're establishing new marine protected areas.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I have one further question, then, and it is about the advisory panel that's being set up. What kind of legal force would that advice have? I used to sit on COSEWIC, and in the Species at Risk Act, there was language around the advice from COSEWIC. I'm wondering if this advisory panel would have a similar role.

[Kevin Stringer]

It's still to be determined, but my sense is—and correct me if I am wrong here, Jeff and Philippe—that this is an advisory panel to advise the minister of what we should be doing on standards, what types of standards we should have in place, what types of approaches, who should be brought, what legal means, what policy means, etc., as well as what areas for standards. It would just take a look at it and then provide advice to the minister and to parliamentarians. Is this right?

[Jeff MacDonald]

Yes. The authority in the Oceans Act is under section 33, which envisions consultations broadly and includes the opportunity to seek advice from experts on this particular matter.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay. Then it's not envisioning an advisory body that would say, “In this marine protected area, you should have so much of a no-take zone here” and—