Fisheries Committee on April 26th, 2018

[Dan Gibson]

Thank you.

Through you, Madam Chair, the question we have been back and forth on with the Fisheries Act for quite some time is about the management of fisheries or the management of every single fish. That's something we've continually posed a question about.

When we're managing a fishery, there's an understanding that with a resource there is some incidental take or incidental exploitation. With large power generation, we're using—in the case of hydroelectricity, anyway—water as a fuel source, and we're putting it through our turbines. We can show definitively that the amount of mortality is low but that seasonally some mortality or some incidental harm may occur.

Whether that's impacting the population level is a separate question. We have always maintained that when we are having a reasonable, non-detectable impact at the population level, we would like to have it governed as a resource rather than have to get a permit for the potential for harm to every single fish.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Do you think it would be acceptable to have some kind of compensation for that incidental harm, say through habitat banking? Can you comment on that a bit?

[Dan Gibson]

I agree. The quantification is difficult at times simply because you're having to seasonally account for what species may or may not be encountering your facility, but on a larger, strategic basis, compensation or habitat banking could absolutely be used as an effective tool for offsetting those potentially harmful impacts to a species on an individual level.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay, thank you.

I want to move to HADD. You talked about exemptions, etc. Could you expand on the types of exemptions, or rather the types of activities that deserve exemptions?

[Dan Gibson]

A great example might be some of our nuclear power facilities, where we are responsible for the stormwater treatment and collection of stormwater on our plant sites. Where those stormwater catchments are placed, we have to service the stormwater management ponds. If those ponds become colonized by cyprinids or a minnow that is highly tolerant to salt and so on, is that now treated as habitat? We believe there is room in the act to designate an exemption under those rules. Where those pools or those areas were not intended to be frequented by fish but fish have colonized them, we would still like an exemption to be able to service those areas.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

I just want to make sure I heard you right when you talked about impact assessments. I got the feeling that you do these impact assessments, and then basically they're not accepted, or in the forum. Was I hearing you correctly?

[Dan Gibson]

That's a good point. The public interest is taken into account in the impact assessment, and where a positive decision is made under the Impact Assessment Act, we believe that should streamline the approvals process under the Fisheries Act. That's just a logical step.

We'd like to see that enhanced in the sense that the Fisheries Act should take into account the public interest as well, whether that be carbon emissions reductions or something else, depending on the type of your project. We believe there's space for the public interest in proposed subsections 34.3 or 34.1 of the act.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay, next you talked about problems within jurisdictions. I almost got the feeling you were suggesting there are too many bosses and not enough workers. Could you enlarge on that?

Part of that is, if there's a problem in there with a number of different levels of government, is part of the problem also the aspect of aboriginal impacts? I mean, we all know there's a duty to consult, but I know that in my part of the world, quite often it's really not about consulting at all. It's just, how big is the cheque?

Could you comment on all those in general?

[Dan Gibson]

In the space of water management, this is a big piece to some of our concerns with the act. There are very complex and diverse opinions around water management, whether they be those of stakeholders or landowners, and whether they relate to navigation, pleasure craft operating, fisheries, or aquatic ecosystems. We have many pieces of legislation in Ontario alone. For that matter, we've canvassed nationally. You'll hear this a few times from delegations. Nationally, there is a vast amount of regulation and governance over water management, and we believe that the minister should be careful when treading in with a mandate flow. There is a lot of current, existing legislation on the books on that, which we want to bring attention to.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

In essence, I thought I heard you the first time saying that, basically, there's a lot of governance there, and maybe too much at times.

[Dan Gibson]

It adds to the complexity, yes. We would want the minister to ensure that the department is consulting those other levels of government and control bodies before issuing mandates.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

I'm running out of time, and I have just one last thing. You talked about adding flexibility. I also wrote down “habitat banking” there, and I know Mr. Morrissey talked about it. Maybe you could talk a bit about the kind of flexibility you'd like to see added in there.

[Dan Gibson]

I'll finish the case study. In this case study we moved away from like for like. We moved into non-like for like, but we actually had better conservation and recovery outcomes through the case study of the Pickering nuclear habitat bank. We believe we achieved greater outcomes by getting more into a banking scheme and moving away from a like-for-like replacement, which is the old transactional piece of the Fisheries Act.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr. Gibson.

I'm moving now to Mr. Stewart for seven minutes, thank you.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you very much to the witnesses coming forward today. Because I'm from the west coast, I'll be asking Ms. Venton the most questions. Thank you, Mr. Gibson.

I was very interested to hear your testimony, and thanks very much for all the work you've put into this. Of course, I'm very familiar with your organization, and would like to thank you generally for all the contributions you make to Canada.

You mentioned at the outset of your presentation that you noticed five weaknesses in the act, or things that should be corrected. The first one I got was adding the idea of conservation to the act's purpose, and the second was adding clauses concerning the cumulative effects of habitat loss.

I have two questions, and please feel free to expand and don't feel rushed. First of all, I don't know if there's anything else you'd like to add about the two conditions—the two weaknesses related to the act's purpose or the cumulative effects of habitat loss. Then I'm also interested in the three other concerns. Perhaps you could elaborate on those.

[Margot Venton]

Thank you for that question.

First of all, I think I've said a lot on the purpose and the changes necessary to ensure that we address all the cumulative effects of fish habitat loss.

With respect to those last proposals, on making sure that the act is a tool for assessing cumulative effects, the bill as you all know proposes adding a public registry. That, we think, is a very useful tool, extremely important for improving the transparency of decision-making within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, for a whole bunch of reasons.

Also, this registry could be a very useful tool to enable the assessment of the state of fish habitat in a particular lake or estuary. However, it's only going to be a useful tool if we include all the instruments that are relevant to that place. Right now there's a short list of things that will be included, but it won't include such things as habitat that is sanctioned under regulations. In an estuary where there are multiple fish farms, for example, you won't necessarily have that information come up on the registry, and as we know from Tuesday's report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development there's a big problem with fish habitat and fish farms, particularly in British Columbia.

Those kinds of things all need to be in some place where everyone can see them and where DFO has them all together and can use them as an assessment tool.

Turning to other areas that I haven't had time to touch on and will speak about in our brief, climate change needs to be a consideration in the Fisheries Act somewhere. It's one of the major threats to fisheries production, particularly for species such as salmon, which as you know is of huge concern on the Pacific coast.

Also, we need to ensure that environmental flows are protected under the Fisheries Act as an aspect of fish habitat. My colleague from West Coast Environmental Law spoke a little about that on Tuesday.

We have proposed one particular tool that we think would be quite useful, which is adding a clause to the obstruction provisions to allow for a member of the public to request that an obstruction be removed or that a potential obstruction of fish habitat be investigated, ensuring that DFO would have to at least investigate and respond.

We think this is a nod also to the vastness of Canada and the real challenge we have seen within the department of having enough resources to be out in the world actually looking at what's happening in fish habitat on the ground. We need tools to enable Canadians to participate with DFO in this important job, just because Canada is so big, really.

The final provisions that we think need to be strengthened are those with respect to stock rebuilding. We think it's amazing that those provisions have been introduced in the act as a concept, but we need to make clearer that there are end goals for healthy fish stocks that need to be added into the act, to make that provision more functional for ensuring that stock recovery actually happens.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Thank you.

On a topic related to the bill, Washington State has begun to move offshore fish farms onto land, and I know this happens in a number of jurisdictions. We've had spills from fish farms of effluent that is very dangerous to the community.

In my view, this is something that should be examined and perhaps pursued in British Columbia. Do you have any thoughts on moving offshore fish farms on land?

[Margot Venton]

I think moving to closed containment is the only responsible thing to do at this point in our understanding of the impacts of fish farms on wild stocks. The report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development released on Tuesday was quite shocking. At the end of her press conference, the commissioner said that this was one of the most alarming audits she had ever done.

We simply don't fully understand the impacts that fish farms are having on wild salmon. We have crashing wild salmon stocks in British Columbia, as you know. This is a travesty for coastal communities and first nations who rely on these stocks, for a variety of reasons. Until we can prove that those farms are not harming wild salmon, in my opinion they shouldn't be in the ocean. We've seen such action taken in countries around the world, including in the United States and in Norway, where fish farms originated.

Yes, then, I think at this point it's the only responsible thing to do. Until we can get to a point that we're certain fish farming in the ocean is safe, they shouldn't be there.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Thanks. I have 48 seconds.

Perhaps you could tell us a little more about the international jurisdictions relating to closed containment. Where will we go for the best examples of what to do?

[Margot Venton]

My understanding is that both Sweden and Norway have recently brought in restrictions on open net fish farms. In Sweden they have to do with areas where there's sensitive fish habitat. In Norway I'm not sure if they've particularly designated where fish farms won't be allowed. Both jurisdictions are considering moves to closed containment.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Okay. That's fine.

Thank you very much for your time and your testimony today.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

We're moving now to Mr. Hardie, please, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you both for your testimony here.

I'm going to just pose a question to you, with an invitation to follow up with some thoughts once you've had a chance to consider it.

We've become sensitive in some of the other studies we've done to a proper balance between legislation and regulation. The legislation hardwires something in, and once it's there it is relatively difficult to change or amend as conditions change. Regulation, of course, is a bit easier to deal with. You made me think of it, Ms. Venton, when you talked about the introduction of stock recovery and whether or not that's a hard-wired issue or something that again, as conditions change—through climate change, for example—needs to be better parked in regulation. If you could look at this legislation through that lens and get back to us with some recommendations as to what appropriately belongs where, that would be good.

Ms. Venton, I wanted to get a little more reflection on cumulative impacts. You started an answer, and you ran out of time. Do you remember what that was, and do you want to complete it?

[Margot Venton]

Sure, and I added a bit of it in response to the question from Mr. Stewart.

I was talking about the need to ensure that the public registry includes all the instruments that authorize harm to fish habitat. Under the act, there are a variety of ways HADD can be sanctioned. For the registry to be truly useful as a tool to notify Canadians about what's happening on the [Inaudible--Editor] waters and also to be useful as a tool for DFO, we have to make sure all that information is available. At the moment, there's only a limited subset of information about what kinds of authorizations to harm habitat will actually be included in the public registry.

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

One issue that has come up in some private conversations—and I presume, in the fullness of time, here—on the cumulative impacts, is the concern that the last one in is going to get tagged with the cumulative sins of the ones who came before. Can you postulate some kind of regime where, in fact, this can be better managed and more equitably dealt with across the entities or individuals who have cumulatively contributed to the problem?