Evidence of meeting #96 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fishermen.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Apparently the lawyers do as well. They are looking forward to that bonanza.
Staff Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association
We're a non-profit law firm, so we don't actually rake it in, I'm afraid to say.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
You mentioned the lower Fraser River and that only 10% of the original habitat still exists. Do you have any recommendations on how that might be mitigated or changed, short of basically eliminating all of the commerce that takes place there?
Staff Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association
I definitely would not want to eliminate the commerce or the places where people live and work, but I think there are some places where there can be habitat restoration, as I mentioned when Mr. Hardie asked his question. I think there are some new provisions in the act that talk about ecological restoration for particularly sensitive areas, and I'm hoping the government makes use of these important provisions.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
I'll go back to you, Mr. Post. In your district are you are able to see where you may possibly have difficulty with flood mitigation or flood preparation with the changes that are coming? I am concerned right now that the temperatures are changing very quickly in the interior. We have a snowpack that is 150% of normal in some areas, and all of a sudden we have extremely warm temperatures and possibly rains following.
How are you able to deal with flood preparation with respect to the current act versus with the proposed changes?
Councillor, District of Kent
That's a difficult question. We are able to deal with flood preparation. However, without the management of the Fraser River for the last number of decades, really, it's becoming increasingly difficult. It's more of a regional strategy with the Fraser, but without bank protection or channelization, it's difficult to prepare for a flood.
This year there's going to be a really good test of how prepared we are. Going back to the 1950s—so 70 years ago—there was no access to our community by highway. On one side there was a highway but not over the Fraser River. There actually was a ferry that took people across. Today that ferry could not run because of the gravel bars that are there. The river is changing naturally all the time. We've been managing it for more than a century, but in just the last couple of decades, it has become increasingly difficult.
Mrs. Bernadette Jordan (South Shore—St. Margarets, Lib.)
Thank you, Mr. Post. I'm sorry. We have to move on. The time is up.
Mr. Donnelly, go ahead for seven minutes, please.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank our witnesses, Councillor Post and Ms. Nowlan, for being here.
Councillor Post, I was a city councillor in Coquitlam for seven years before doing this job, so I appreciate having you here and hearing your testimony.
Ms. Nowlan, I want to start with you. You covered a lot of ground in your 10 minutes or less, and I certainly appreciate that. I want to just follow up on your offer to submit written recommendations, which I think would be very helpful to go along with some of the issues you talked about, the cumulative impacts, environmental flows, rebuilding plans, accountability, etc. Can you provide this committee with specific written recommendations?
Staff Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association
Yes. Thank you. I'd be pleased to do so.
I know that a number of other conservation groups across the country have been collaborating as well. They have been working on proposed recommendations for legislative amendments, and have been actually talking already with the department and with—I assume, indirectly—the Department of Justice about these. So, yes, for sure this committee is moving quickly, and this bill is moving quickly, but we'll try to get it to you as soon as possible.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you.
Speaking of the department officials, we were just talking to them earlier, and the question of triggers came up, how the Fisheries Act might trigger an environmental review. That was an ongoing discussion.
I am wondering if you have any comment about what you would like to see in the Fisheries Act in terms of what existed and what doesn't exist now and perhaps a recommendation around triggers.
Staff Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association
I think in the previous regime, major project authorization under subsection 35(2) acted as a trigger for an environmental assessment. That seemed to work well, so I think that should be restored.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
There was already some discussion about small, medium, and large projects that can add to that cumulative impact within a watershed, within an ecosystem, or within watersheds within an ecosystem. Can you give the committee some examples of medium-sized projects? From being a city councillor, I know there are obviously housing developments and large bridges across rivers, but are there other kinds of projects in the medium category that this legislation would impact, obviously, in municipalities and villages and others that you could speak about?
Staff Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association
For cumulative impacts, maybe one example would be land use development like that in our very rapidly growing Lower Mainland area. Each individual house, depending on how close it is to a fish-bearing stream, may not have a large impact but it could be a medium impact, and if you add up a whole housing development, that certainly would have at least a medium impact. It's my understanding that local governments—and maybe Councillor Post can talk about this—after the HADD prohibition was removed, did not get as much help from DFO in looking at the impact of housing developments on fish habitat.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Reviewing those projects is really important. I think the minister did talk in some of the.... My Liberal colleagues referenced the additional funding in the budget to review that, which is helpful.
The last thing I want to talk about is that the environment commissioner just released, this morning at 10 a.m., a pretty scathing review of aquaculture. This amendment to the Fisheries Act doesn't talk a lot about aquaculture. I think it's because we're anticipating an aquaculture act coming in. Obviously, this is an issue of concern, especially for where I'm from on the west coast, because you have an impact of.... You have competing interests. You have competing mandates within DFO. On the one hand, they're tasked with conserving wild fish, which drives our commercial fishery and other fisheries, and they are also promoting farmed fish, which the environment commissioner is saying is putting disease into the waters, impacting our wild fish, and the department isn't even monitoring or aware of some of those diseases.
I'm wondering if there's anything your association could recommend for C-68 to strengthen that in this regard.
Staff Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association
I haven't had the opportunity to read the commissioner's report. It's a huge issue on our coast. I know it is in Atlantic Canada as well. Right around us, Washington state is now moving to land-based aquaculture and moving away from open net pen aquaculture. Alaska is as well, so B.C. is caught in the middle. We're still doing it. We haven't really fully implemented the Cohen commission recommendations, which took a precautionary approach to approving new aquaculture, as you well know.
I'm not sure what Bill C-68 can do about this issue. There are aquaculture regulations under the act currently, so we could take a look at that issue in more depth, but I do know that the government is looking at a separate aquaculture act, as you mentioned, which I think probably would be a good idea, given that there's a very inconsistent regime across the country right now.
Mrs. Bernadette Jordan (South Shore—St. Margarets, Lib.)
You have one minute, please.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
I have one minute.
I just was going to ask a final question about the public registry, and then maybe you could elaborate. I think you made a very specific recommendation that the optional areas be made mandatory. What would that look like, and how would that help the act?
Staff Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association
I think the Prime Minister gave a direction to every single minister in the mandate letters that government should be open by default. That's great. That is how it should be. That's how a functioning democracy works.
Therefore, I was surprised to see in this bill that things like guidelines and policies would not automatically be published on a public registry. They might be published somewhere else on DFO's website. That is true, and they are right now, but why not centralize all the available fish information and fish habitat information in one place?
It wasn't clear to me what the distinction was between optional and mandatory records, and I think many people are pleased that this registry will exist and we have new—not new anymore—electronic communication that makes these types of registries very functional and really of value to researchers as well as regulators. Why not put whatever you can into that registry?
Mrs. Bernadette Jordan (South Shore—St. Margarets, Lib.)
Thank you, Ms. Nowlan.
For the next seven minutes we're going to Mr. Finnigan, please.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to our guests for being here today and on the west coast also.
Mr. Post, this is just a question and we'll get to the real stuff later. In your opening statement, you said that when you do maintenance as a community or a city, sometimes you have to put in a culvert, things like that, and then you have to maintain the banks all along it. Once you've restored that, you said that you had to keep maintaining it. Eventually the banks would return to their natural state, I would assume. How long would you have to maintain that? I'm just curious about that.
Councillor, District of Kent
Quite often, Himalayan blackberry grows there and if you don't remove that, it can become really invasive and take over the whole bank. As well, there's reed canary grass, which can grow right in the water in some locations.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Speaking of that reed canary grass, I was just watching a show the other day about a frog in B.C. that's on the verge of disappearing.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Yes, that's the one.
I don't know for what reason, but just going to that reed canary grass, do we know whether by removing it we are damaging or doing something to other species? Have you been told that it is an invasive species? Is it a native species or is it something that you know...? You said that it would restore the water to clean, but do we know that it doesn't harbour other ecosystems? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.