Fisheries Committee on April 26th, 2018

[Margot Venton]

I'd say the starting point for equitably managing that question is to actually start grappling with the totality of the authorizations for fish habitat destruction that are being issued. We need better information earlier in order to avoid that place. What's happening now is that DFO, as far as I understand it, doesn't have a good handle on the totality or the state of fish habitat. We're seeing responses once we hit that tipping point.

Gathering all the information and keeping track of what you're doing in a watershed ideally will lead to better management earlier. In an ideal world, if you have a framework for cumulative effects, you could, for example, have regulatory instruments that say, “in this lake” or “in this area” or “in this estuary, this is where we think the tipping point is.” Let's equitably distribute opportunities earlier and just be clear about where those tipping points are.

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

I'm going to interrupt here because I have one more question.

It seems as though there's an analogy to municipal land management, really. You zone land, and you accept only so much of something, and there you go.

Mr. Gibson, I take the point that you're concerned about the impact of killing a fish versus having an impact on a fishery, but I'm concerned that one fish becomes two fish becomes three fish, and before you know it we're now chasing a problem instead of being out in front of it.

Can you best describe an agreeable balance here? Yes, of course, an intake is always going to have an impact on fish, but talk to us about what you would be prepared to do in terms of proper measuring and monitoring so that the situation doesn't get away on us.

[Dan Gibson]

That's an excellent point. I'll reflect back on your comment about the prohibition and then the regulation.

The regulation that is already on the table with DFO is your position statement on fish mortality, as well as your position statement on existing facilities that govern energy generators. That's where we think some of this balance can be struck, on the regulatory side. We understand that prohibition is what it is, but when we get down to the implementation side, we think the balance can be struck there. We have a good track record in terms of our effectiveness in monitoring the impacts we're having on our watershed or in how we're managing the water in our watershed. We have effectiveness monitoring plans that get carried out every year on a lot of our regulated rivers.

Speaking specifically to the local jurisdictional concerns from the Minister of Natural Resources, it would take more time to answer that question, but absolutely, there's a willingness to achieve a balance from industry.

[The Chair]

You have a minute and 30 seconds.

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

Lovely.

Mr. Gibson, you were talking about your case study on habitat banking, in which, instead of applying some remedy where the damage was happening, you went someplace else and did something that one hopes was bigger and even better.

Ms. Venton, I saw you nodding throughout that. Do you agree that this is a reasonable and rational approach?

[Margot Venton]

It depends entirely on the context. Certainly, as I understand the proposals from a habitat banking perspective, the idea is to move toward allowing habitat to be restored or enhanced in an area that isn't necessarily exactly where the habitat disturbance is. Depending on the context, that could be appropriate. Obviously, if that's a particularly sensitive area, this may not be an appropriate solution because you'll need restoration on site, but in certain circumstances, absolutely.

I think what we need to be careful of, however, is how far we're going to let that go. I would be concerned if we were going to, say, write off an entire area or an entire ecosystem and say we're going to fix an ecosystem three or four watersheds over. That might be an inappropriate extension of that concept, but theoretically there needs to be some flexibility to look at where we can maximize the productivity and health of ecosystems. There may be circumstances in which that's appropriate.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much, Ms. Venton.

I'm going to Mr. Arnold for the final five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you both for being here today.

First, I want to clarify something that's been put out there. In fact, I asked this question early on when we knew this was coming up, by submitting an Order Paper question to the government in 2016 on the changes to the Fisheries Act in 2012-13. One of the specific things I asked was what harms or proof of harm to fish or fish habitat, attributed to the previous government's changes to these two acts, existed.

Even after the fisheries minister was here at committee on Tuesday, we still have not seen any proof of loss of habitat or harm to fish, so I want to first dispel the mistruth that there was lost protection. That's first and foremost. I want to know for myself. I put the question to the government and was never provided any proof of loss, even though I've asked multiple times.

Ms. Venton and Mr. Gibson, how do we remain competitive as Canadians or as Canada when we have probably the most restrictive management processes, I would say, almost anywhere in the world? Maybe it's not everywhere.

When we're competing with countries or organizations internationally that don't adhere to the same strict guidelines, principles, and regulations that we have here in Canada, how do we remain competitive? How can that fit into this bill? Either one of you can answer.

Mr. Gibson, you look like you're ready.

[Dan Gibson]

I will say that, obviously, we're always struggling for balance in the proposed legislation. I think it would be a comment from most of our associations across Canada that balance is what they hope to have.

I'll speak specifically for low-carbon energy generation. We know that domestically it is a source of growth for our economy, and we don't want to hinder that through overly burdensome legislation. Also, for our energy exports, we have a lot of neighbours to the south that are looking to get off of certain forms of energy, and they'd like to import Canada's clean, renewable energy. Those are things that we would continue to advocate for through our parents organizations. The Canadian Hydropower Association is a big champion of our energy exports to the United States as we help them get off coal and other forms of generation. That would be our advocacy piece on that front.

Ms. Venton.

[Margot Venton]

I think I would start by perhaps clarifying that it's simply not true that Canada has the most restrictive environmental regime of any country in the world. It's not even remotely close to true. There have been several very authoritative reviews of the—

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

I said “most”.

[Margot Venton]

Yes, but among OECD nations, we rank almost last in the strength of our environmental regulation. If you look just at the example the environment commissioner looked at on Tuesday, our regulation of fish farms, for example, is falling far behind that of other fish-farming nations.

With respect to fisheries, the Magnuson-Stevens fisheries protection act in the United States goes far farther than what we have in Canada with respect to the requirement to proactively assess the health of fish stocks and to do an environmental assessment comprehensively, under their national environmental assessment regulation, of all fishing plans. They have much stricter rules on designation of marine protected areas and essential fish habitat.

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

You're saying that we need much more restriction here in Canada.

[Margot Venton]

The premise of your question is just fundamentally wrong. In the big picture, it's obviously important to be able to regulate—

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

You're implying that we need much stronger restrictions than we already have here in Canada.

[Margot Venton]

No. I'm actually just clarifying that the premise of your question is wrong.

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

Maybe there's not two-way communication here. I'm not sure.

In your background, you did a lot of research on waste water or sewage in Canada. How is it possible that cities such as Montreal, Quebec City, and Victoria, B.C. continuously dump millions of litres of untreated sewage into our fisheries, yet there is no action taken to prevent that or to, I guess, restrict it in the future?

[Margot Venton]

That's an excellent question. I think there should be stronger action. It's another example of how our regulatory system is not as strong as regulatory systems in other countries. It is—

[The Chair]

Thank you very much, Ms. Venton. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to cut you off there.

I want to thank our witnesses, Mr. Gibson and Ms. Venton, for appearing today.

Also, thank you to our guests today: Mr. Stewart, Ms. May, and Mr. Fraser.

The meeting is adjourned.