Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members.
Thank you for the opportunity for Oceana to appear today on Bill C-68, and thank you for your continuing good work.
Oceana Canada is collaborating with the other environmental groups that have been in front of you as well. We're regularly consulting with first nations on how to strengthen Bill C-68. We support the priority amendments that you've heard from others on environmental flows and cumulative effects. First nations groups, in particular, have emphasized the importance of developing habitat banking in the act in co-operation with first nations, and of referencing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the act.
Our top priority, as Oceana, and our area of expertise is the rebuilding of fisheries. It's our view that Bill C-68 as worded is missing one really crucial element, and that's a duty to act when stocks, populations are depleted, with an aim to restore the fishery back to healthy levels. Other nations require this, which I'll show. Canada has committed to it in international agreements, and it already exists in departmental policy. We believe that enshrining this duty in law is the single most important thing we can do as a nation to secure the future for our fisheries and all who rely on them.
This is a word on who we are. Oceana Canada was established in 2015 as an independent, science-based organization. It's part of the largest international group focused solely on oceans in eight countries plus the EU. We believe the oceans are essential to helping feed the nine billion people projected to be on earth by 2050. By rebuilding Canada's fisheries, we can strengthen our coastal communities, reap greater economic and nutritional benefits, and protect our future. Oceana Canada wants the same things we think everyone in this room wants: robust, healthy, wild fisheries and all the cultural and economic benefits that come with them.
Turning to Bill C-68, for the first time since the Fisheries Act was created in 1868, Bill C-68 includes provisions specific to rebuilding. That's good. Unfortunately, as currently worded, the provisions fall short of what we know from global experience is necessary to effectively rebuild stocks. It falls short of our international agreements, and it will not keep us commensurate with other nations' laws.
Bill C-68 requires the minister to consider whether there are some unspecified measures to rebuild stocks that, in his or her opinion, are in the critical zone when making management decisions. I want to pause on that for a moment. “Consider” whether or not there is some measure in place only once the stocks are at or below the level the government's own policies and management measures are designed to never let it get to.
I've heard it argued that we shouldn't worry about this, that the regulations will be where this detail will be put in. We agree, of course, that regulations will be necessary, and that's where a lot of the detail can lie. We fundamentally believe the act has to provide clear guidance to those responsible for drafting the regulations and to stakeholders and rights holders on what the intent of those regulations will be. That guidance is currently missing.
What constitutes a measure to rebuild stocks? If there aren't measures to rebuild depleted stocks, what then? Rebuild to what? Is it to maximum sustainable yield or to upper reference points or just rebuild them back to the edge of the critical zone and leave it there? In what time frame? Bill C-68 falls short of the international standards, right at a time, too, when Canada is seeking to play a global leadership role in fisheries and oceans management.
I want to give you some quick examples from other laws around the world, edited for brevity. In the U.S. the law says, “Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.” It goes on to say that any fishery management plan, with respect to any fishery, shall contain measures necessary and appropriate to prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks.
In the European Union it says that the common fisheries policy “shall aim to ensure that the exploitation of...resources restores and maintains populations....above levels which can produce the maximum sustainable yield.” It goes on, “Multiannual plans shall be adopted as a priority...and shall contain conservation measures to restore and maintain fish stocks above levels capable of producing maximum sustainable yield”.
In New Zealand the law says the minister shall set a total allowable catch that enables the level of any stock whose current level is below maximum sustainable yield to be altered in a way and at a rate that will result in the stock being restored to that level.
In Japan the law says the state shall take measures “aiming at the maintenance or recovery of fishery resources to the level that enables maximum sustainable production.”
Canada has required this of nations in the new NAFO convention that we've signed on to. Some other nations and we ourselves signed on to it.
In each of these cases there are regulations and further guidance that's developed that clarifies how governments can and should take into account economic and social considerations, how to take into account interdependent stocks, and how to adjust plans when nature doesn't respond the way we think it will. That's appropriate and necessary. You can't legislate biology. But in each case, the intent of the legislation is clear: when stocks are in trouble, governments must respond, not “consider” responding.
Of course, this matters because the need to rebuild our fisheries has probably never been greater. We really have halted some of the worst cases of overfishing that happened in decades past, but many of our fisheries remain depleted, often decades after collapse. We are left in the vulnerable position now of being highly dependent on only a handful of species to support the bulk of the economics of the fishing industry, like lobster, crab and shrimp, obviously.
Canada's marine fish populations have declined, as you've heard, by 55% since 1970. That's over a half of our biomass of fish in my lifetime. According to DFO's most recently published numbers, there are only three rebuilding plans in place for the 21 stocks that DFO has confirmed to be in the critical zone. DFO often continues to allow directed fishing on stocks in the critical zone even in the absence of a rebuilding plan or management reference points. Northern cod, of course, which collapsed in 1992 and has been under a moratorium for 26 years, as this committee noted, is still without a rebuilding plan, and there is no identified upper reference point. Nonetheless, management decisions continue and allow fishing levels to increase on a fragile stock, giving it the dubious privilege of being the largest groundfish fishery, I believe, in Atlantic Canada right now, while still under a moratorium.
It is our view that this historical lack of priority on rebuilding, despite policy commitments to do so, and on implementing rebuilding plans is directly attributable to the lack of legislative guidance and a legal duty. This committee has the opportunity to fix that. There is strong evidence, I'll add, too, that adding a legal duty to create rebuilding plans makes a difference—a big one. For example, since the United States legally required rebuilding of depleted fish stocks, 44 stocks have been classified as rebuilt since 2000, generating, on average, 50% more revenue than when they were overfished. In the EU, the number of stocks with a total allowable catch, based on science to produce maximum sustainable yield over time, has gone from two, in 2007, to 53, in 2016. Cod, of course, once collapsed in Europe as in here, has recovered in the North Sea, in Norway, and in the Barents Sea.
Canada has committed to rebuilding international agreements like the United Nations fish stocks agreement, the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and the NAFO convention. It's already departmental policy. What we're missing is the legal guidance.
We recommend that you amend Bill C-68 by including a legal requirement for the minister to develop rebuilding plans when stocks have fallen into the critical zone; to set a target to rebuild stocks out of the critical and cautious zones and back to healthy levels as advised in the sustainable fisheries framework of DFO right now; and to include a timeline and guidance on timelines for rebuilding.
Obviously, this is not a silver bullet. This kind of duty needs to be matched by good science, good management, strong enforcement, and it should be done in partnership with the communities and people who rely on and are deeply connected to our oceans. Countries that have this positive legal duty to act have healthier and more stable fisheries than those that do not. Surely that's what we all want.
In our brief we will provide specific wording for the committee to consider.
We look forward to your support and discussion. Thank you.