Fisheries Committee on July 23rd, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I now call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 13 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

Pursuant to the motion adopted by the House on May 26, 2020, Standing Order 108(2), and the motion adopted on June 1, 2020, the committee is resuming its study on the state of Pacific salmon, with today's focus on the Big Bar landslide.

Today's meeting is taking place by video conference. The proceedings are public and are made available via the House of Commons website. So that you are aware, the webcast will show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

Regular members know this by now, but as a reminder and for the benefit of our witnesses who are participating in a House of Commons virtual committee meeting for the first time, I should remind you of a few rules we would like you to follow:

Interpretation in this video conference will work very much as in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor sound, English or French. As you are speaking, if you plan to alternate from one language to the other you will need to also switch the interpretation channel so that it aligns with the language you are speaking. You may want to allow for a short pause when switching languages.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike.

Should members have a point of order, they should activate their mike and state that they have a point of order.

If a member wishes to intervene on a point of order that has been raised by another member, I encourage him or her to use the “raise hand” function. In order to do so, you should click on “participants” at the bottom of the screen. When the list pops up, you will see next to your name that you can click “raise hand”. This will signal to the chair your interest in speaking. We'll keep the names in a chronological order, as long as I look at my screen and see the “raise hand” signal.

When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. I try to enforce this rule as much as possible. Please do this at all times.

The use of headsets is strongly encouraged.

Finally, when speaking, please speak slowly and clearly.

Should any technical challenge arise—for example, in relation to interpretation, or if a problem with your audio arises—please advise the chair immediately so that we can stop the meeting and get it straightened out as soon as possible.

Before we start, can everyone click on your screen in the top right corner and ensure that you are on “gallery” view? With this view, you should be able to see all the participants in a grid view. It will ensure that all video participants can see one another.

As Nancy mentioned, Ms. Elizabeth May, from Saanich—Gulf Islands, is joining us again today. Whether she is in Ottawa or at home, I'm not sure.

Welcome again, Ms. May. We're always glad to have your input.

As witnesses, we have as an individual Mr. Carl Walters, professor emeritus, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia. From the BC Wildlife Federation, we have Jesse Zeman, director of fish and wildlife restoration. From the Pacific Salmon Foundation, we have Jason Hwang, vice-president. From the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, we have Aaron Hill, executive director.

We will now start with Mr. Walters, for six minutes or less.

When you're ready, sir, the time is yours.

[Carl Walters, Professor Emeritus, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, As an Individual]

Thank you. I wasn't given any terms of reference for what you wanted me to talk about, so I'll talk fairly generally about what has happened with Pacific salmon.

I've been doing research on Pacific salmon populations for over 50 years, and my research has focused in particular on trying to understand why there have been severe declines in many salmon and herring populations. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has responded to these declines by closing various fisheries, but those closures have not reversed the declines. Many DFO scientists blame the declines on environmental factors that we can't control, such as climate change, but in recent years I've come to believe that the declines have substantially been due to massive increases in marine mammal, seal and sea lion populations and their predation impacts. The number of seals and sea lions on the Pacific coast today is probably double what it was for the last several thousand years, when first nations peoples harvested them intensively. We're in an unprecedented situation in terms of predation risk for salmon.

As an avid sport fisherman since 1969, I've been particularly dismayed over the years at the collapse of the Georgia Strait sport fishery, one of the most valuable fisheries on the Pacific coast. When I first started fishing in the Georgia Strait, there were close to a million angling days of fishing every year, with a net economic benefit from non-resident tourism of over $60 million a year for the local B.C. economy. That's more valuable than the commercial sockeye fisheries of B.C. That fishery has declined now by over 80%, mostly between 1980 and 1995, and there's been no retention of coho salmon at all for over 20 years.

When those declines first started in the 1980s, scientists like me blamed the problem on overfishing. We advised former fisheries minister John Fraser to introduce more restrictive regulations, which happened, and the commercial troll fishery closed completely. However, the stocks just kept declining. Then we started blaming hatchery production and other factors, such as warming water, but the stocks continued to decline anyway.

None of us suspected that marine mammals might be a cause of these declines until a major paper came out from DFO scientists in 2010 showing that the seal populations in the Georgia Strait had increased by about tenfold between 1972 and 2000 in a pattern that was pretty much a mirror image of the decline in the Georgia Strait sport fishery.

Today there's a big controversy. We see two major explanations for why those declines occurred and why the stocks continue to be low. One of them is climate change, and increasing water temperatures in particular. The other one is the increase in seal predation. Our data show that the amount of juvenile salmon eaten by seals each year in the Georgia Strait is enough to directly account for the decline. There are almost as many juvenile chinook and coho going into the Georgia Strait every year as juveniles as there were back in the 1970s, but they're not surviving their first year in the ocean.

We can't prove that the consumption that we calculate of those juveniles by marine mammals is what we call additive. We can't prove that if you took away the predation, the fish would survive. It could be that other mortality agents would kill just as many of them, because there's still something wrong with the ocean. It would be a large-scale management experiment to reduce seal populations through commercial first nations harvesting in order to see if we can restore at least some of the economic value of that sport fishery and perhaps benefit other really endangered stocks, such as the interior Fraser coho salmon.

More broadly, we've been doing research recently suggesting that the big increases in Steller sea lion populations in our waters outside the Georgia Strait have likely been at least partially responsible for the Fraser sockeye declines that triggered the Cohen commission and are very likely responsible for collapses of two of our major herring stocks on the west coast of Vancouver Island and in the Haida Gwaii area.

I've recently helped the Pacific Balance Pinniped Society develop proposals for commercial and first nations' harvesting of seals and sea lions, aimed at reducing these pinniped populations to about 50% of their current levels and keeping them nearer the levels we think were present when first nations people were harvesting them on a sustainable basis. Those proposals went into DFO two years ago, and the department has been sitting on them for over two years with one excuse after another for not taking any action. This is understandable, considering how controversial any proposal involving marine mammal harvesting is on the Pacific coast.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Mr. Walters, I will have to interrupt you. Your time has gone over. Hopefully anything you didn't get to say will come out in the line of questioning.

[Carl Walters]

I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We'll now go to Mr. Zeman from the B.C. Wildlife Federation for six minutes or less, please.

[Jesse Zeman, Director of Fish and Wildlife Restoration, BC Wildlife Federation]

Thank you for the opportunity to present.

I'd like to discuss the future of Pacific salmon using my experience with interior Fraser steelhead, in particular the Thompson and Chilcotin fish. The history is that the fishery went from a catch-and-kill fishery to a catch-and-release to no fishing.

The trouble with these fish is they comigrate—

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Pardon me, Mr. Chair, but there's no interpretation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I wasn't getting it either.

Can we start again when you're ready, Mr. Zeman?

[Jesse Zeman]

Thank you for the opportunity to present.

I would like to discuss the future of Pacific salmon, using my experience with interior Fraser steelhead, in particular the Thompson and Chilcotin fish.

The history for angling was a catch-and-kill fishery, then a catch and release, and then no fishing at all. The trouble is that these fish comigrate with pink and chum salmon, and in the worst years, steelhead experts estimate that half of these fish were caught in a net as bycatch, and up to half of those died. Populations were considered in severe decline in the mid-1990s, when 3,000 to 4,000 spawners made it. There were an estimated 62 Thompson and 134 Chilcotin fish this year. They're endangered.

In 2017, the alarm bells were going off and we were in crisis mode. Despite this, DFO still opened net fisheries on the Fraser. ENGOs pushed for an emergency assessment under the COSEWIC, which was undertaken. In 2018, COSEWIC announced that two of these populations were at imminent risk of extinction and that the main threats include bycatch of adults by net fisheries targeting Pacific salmon, as well as poor ocean conditions.

That triggered the Species at Risk Act process. As part of this process, there's a science advice document. It was put together by three scientists: one from the province, one independent, and one from DFO. It went through the peer review process by the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, and later freedom of information feedback indicates that it was vetted by 42 experts and managers. This document has never been released to the public.

After the RPA, the recovery potential assessment, correspondence was obtained from the province, going to DFO, which says the DFO summary is no longer scientifically defensible. What we've found through FOIs, freedom of information requests, is that the peer-reviewed science document findings had been edited in a science advisory report ostensibly to downplay the effects of nets on steelhead.

In 2019, the federal and provincial governments created a recovery plan. B.C. recommended that protecting 95% of these fish would require a period of 84 days without nets on the Fraser. DFO committed only to a 27-day moving window. In September, DFO killed its first two steelhead in its test fishery. On September 16, the Province of B.C. closed its statistically insignificant trout fishery on the Fraser, likely as a quid pro quo with DFO, only to find the next day that DFO had opened an economic opportunity fishery for pinks using beach seine, allowing chum to be retained. It should be noted that at that time, DFO had calculated a 1% probability of meeting its escapement target of 800,000 chum in the Fraser, and it still allowed fish retention.

DFO again used its own model, which was later and before found to be invalid, to justify opening this fishery. We had to file an ATIP request to find out what had gone on behind the scenes inside of DFO for the entire two-year process, and we were told it would take 822 years to get our ATIP back from the federal government. This was refined down to two and half months, and it will take two years to find out what went on behind closed scenes.

For this year, in 2020, the plan is the same: The steelhead experts say you need 77 days without nets, and DFO's plan is to take the nets off for only 27 days. That means we are pushing these fish into extinction.

At this point, the science advisory report is the only document available. The peer-reviewed science is still not out and we still don't have our ATIP. That is the DFO that people in B.C. know. There are dozens of structural and cultural issues within DFO that have resulted in a failed ministry and agency.

Steelhead are not the only victims. Interior Fraser coho were put on life support in the 1990, and a number of our chinook and sockeye runs are headed for the same place now. DFO's response has been to change the fisheries regulations and manage these fish to zero. This has failed our fish and the people who care about them.

Here are some things that can be done to stop the bleeding.

You can fund habitat restoration. There are only six restoration biologists for the entire province of British Columbia. They have no base budget.

We can move to selective fishing methods. Not only are steelhead a victim of nets on the Fraser; so are salmon, and I'm sure over the next year we'll find that sturgeon are being driven into a decline that is largely attributed to nets. Nets need to go.

On poaching, there are pictures of endangered chinook and steelhead and at-risk coho in illegal nets that surface almost daily. They are reported to DFO, and no one even calls us back. Charges are rarely pursued. Fisheries officers have become experts in cutting gillnets out of the Fraser, as opposed to protecting salmon from poachers.

Fisheries monitoring must be improved for all sectors. There is no illegal harvest accounted for in run reconstruction models, and we are aware that fisheries-related induced mortality of Fraser chinook are not even included in the river. What that means is there are thousands of fish, if not tens of thousands, that are killed in the Fraser every single year, which, according to DFO, never even existed.

We can deal with fish farms, we can deal with pinniped predation, we can deal with fish passage, and internationally we can deal with ocean ranching to reduce the number of hatchery pink and chum fish that are being dumped into the Pacific on an annual basis. These are all things that can be done.

DFO is culturally and structurally broken. It is a fishing management agency. It's not accountable to the public. Getting data from them is almost impossible. We are constantly referred to ATIP because people are worried they will lose their job if they share data with the public that was paid for by the public. Scientists, habitat staff and enforcement staff are rarely listened to. The prescription of the day is fishing, fishing, fishing.

Now, on the broader picture around natural resource management, whether it's water, air or fish, you need three things. You need funding, science and social support.

First, funding has to be dedicated. This facilitates leveraging, line of sight for ratepayers and an ability to plan on annual, five-year and 10-year bases.

Science's role is to set objectives for fish and habitat population to identify threats and barriers and establish the allowable catch. That is not management's function; that is a science function.

Finally, there's social support. The agency needs to be accountable and transparent and to make decisions based on evidence, and those who care about the resource have to see themselves as part of the process. That is what DFO should look like, and currently couldn't be any further from.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Zeman.

We'll now go to the Pacific Salmon Foundation and Mr. Hwang for six minutes or less, please.

I would remind the witnesses to please try to speak slowly. We have interpreters who are trying to keep up. For me on the east coast, I naturally speak much faster than a lot of other people, and I find it difficult to slow down at times, but remember that there's an interpreter at the other end trying to translate this for people who want to hear it in their first language.

Thank you.

[Jason Hwang, Vice-President, Pacific Salmon Foundation]

Good morning, everyone, from Kamloops, British Columbia. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here today.

I have some opening points.

There is a major problem in front of us. To align with some of what Mr. Zeman said, what we are currently doing is not working for our Pacific salmon. Many of the populations are in serious conservation decline. What slipped under the radar last year, because of the attention going to Big Bar, was that it was the worst coast-wide Pacific salmon return ever. It was the worst sockeye return on the Fraser ever; worse than what triggered the Cohen commission of inquiry. Failure to take action now is likely to result in many of our Pacific salmon populations following a path similar to what happened to our east coast cod, and we all know that story.

In terms of thinking about what to do, we have to take a long view. Recovery is going to take time. I don't believe there are simple answers, but it is possible to take actions to make things better for our salmon.

There are some good things happening. I think some of the recent funding programs that have gone on—going back, the RFCPP under the Conservative government and the Oceans Protection Plan under the current Liberal government—are positive things. In particular, most recently the B.C. Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund is positive, because the collaboration between the federal government and the provincial government is the kind of thing we need to do.

However, we need to recognize that the problems are big and they're long term. This funding over five years, while it is useful, is not of the kind or scale or duration that we need to solve the problem. Other things, such as restoring lost protections, represent a positive step, but we need to follow up with action.

I think it's important to recognize that salmon ecology is really complicated. There aren't simple answers. There are issues with predation; there are issues with habitat; there are issues with fishing. There are subcomponents to these issues, and there is no single thing such that if we do that thing, everything will be better.

A way I like to look at what we can do for salmon is to think about the ocean as the big driver of what enables salmon populations to swing up and down. This is part of a natural cycle. It is probably changing because of climate change, but we as people can do things, managing what many biologists call the three H's: harvest, habitat and hatcheries. I'm going to speak to these in a little bit of detail.

Combined with these, I think we also need to think about having information and data, and we need to continue with the science to understand what's going on.

I'll speak to these all very quickly.

In terms of harvest, we know that harvest has been reduced. We heard this from Mr. Walters already this morning. We know that access and opportunity are very important to the constituents. However, we need to start to think about how we unlock access to this fishery. It's currently locked up, primarily because weak populations are co-migrating with populations that are stronger. We need better information, better management science, better monitoring and better assessment so that we can access the fisheries and the populations that are healthy and protect those that are weak. Participants in the fishery—first nations, public and commercial—have capacity to bring to the table.

Turning to hatcheries, I would say that not every hatchery is the same. What I would suggest we need right now is attention to conservation-focused hatchery capacity. This is different from producing fishable catch. It is different from dumping a lot of fish out into the ocean and hoping that something good happens. This is a very specific thing designed to bolster weak populations while we figure out what the problem is and make things better. A rush to increase hatchery production is unlikely to get us the outcomes we want.

I think we do have an urgent need for conservation-focused hatcheries. We need to turn those on quickly, for reasons such as Big Bar. It's going to take tens of millions of dollars, and we need to run them for two decades.

Turning briefly now to habitat, we need to protect what we have, we need to fix past damage, we need to be strategic and not reactive, and we need to be coordinated and not siloed. There are many good things out there in terms of what we can do for habitat, but we are not taking the kind of action that we need to take.

I have a number of recommendations that I will follow up with in writing, but we really need to start establishing watershed-based habitat plans and delivering on those kinds of things.

In terms of monitoring, assessment and data, to summarize, we can't manage what we don't measure. We're not monitoring enough and we're not measuring enough. We need to pay attention to ocean ecology and science so that we know what's happening out there.

In summary, the overall management system is not working. The sum of the parts is not allowing us to understand what's going on, put them together and solve the problems. We are saying the right kinds of things. We have the Cohen commission of inquiry and we have the wild salmon policy, but we are not getting the outcomes we need. The Government of Canada needs to set goals for salmon recovery and sustainability and take responsibility for achieving those goals and taking appropriate action.

In summary, significant new investment is required into the three “H” levers—harvest, hatcheries and habitat. New dollars need to go into DFO as well as to collaborators and partners. The management system needs to be revitalized. Consideration should be given to an independent oversight body to complement the work that DFO and other regulatory agencies are bringing forward.

I will stop there. I think I kept within my six minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You were right on the mark at six minutes. I appreciate that. Thank you.

We'll now go to the Watershed Watch Salmon Society.

Mr. Hill, you have six minutes or less, please.

[Aaron Hill, Executive Director, Watershed Watch Salmon Society]

Thank you very much for having me here.

I am the executive director of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society. We're a small salmon conservation charity. We've been identifying problems and engaging in solutions in wild salmon management for about 22 years.

I have been here for about a dozen years. I have a graduate degree in biology, focused on salmon. I worked for several seasons as a fisheries observer and technician in various commercial and recreational fisheries. I was born and raised in northern B.C. My father worked as both a commercial fisherman and a recreational fishing guide. I love to fish and I love to bring salmon home for my family. My organization and I also strongly support indigenous fishing rights.

Our job is to represent the public interest in wild salmon conservation in B.C., which is the dominant component of the public interest. I didn't realize that when I started working as a conservation advocate. I had an idea that only a minority of the general population really shared our values around conserving wild salmon and their habitat. However, we commissioned a public opinion poll in the run-up to the 2011 federal election, and the results floored me. For example, only 8% of British Columbians agreed that “the government should be allowed to let small, endangered salmon runs go extinct”. Other questions in that poll showed, as have other polls since, strong public support for wild salmon conservation and restoration.

We badly need this right now. It's very grim out there, as the other witnesses have described. In the past, when one set of salmon runs came back in small numbers, usually another would come back strong, but in the past decade there have been fewer and fewer bright spots. In most rivers across our province, healthy salmon runs are now in the minority. In many rivers everything is depleted.

We know the problems. You've heard many of them already this morning: viruses and parasites from salmon farms; overfishing; the harmful effects of salmon hatcheries; habitat destruction and pollution; and of course climate change, which is upending water flow and temperature patterns and degrading the salmon's food sources. All of these problems have been exacerbated by the chronic management dysfunction that Mr. Zeman spoke to and that has been described, along with remedies, in a long series of public inquiries and official policy papers spanning the past several decades.

The solutions are there. I will just touch on a few places where you might want to start.

First, the government could implement the broad recommendations of the Cohen inquiry. It cost taxpayers around $35 million. Contrary to the spin, most of Justice Cohen's 75 recommendations have not been implemented. They could start with the recommendation to remove salmon farms from the Discovery Islands by 2020, which is this year. We also need quicker, stronger action on this government's mandate letter commitment to transition the salmon farming industry to closed containment so that the viruses and parasites won't be harming wild salmon. We need to build on the successful model created by first nations and the provincial government recently in the Broughton Archipelago.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Nancy Vohl]

Mr. Hill, would it be possible to bring your microphone closer to your mouth?

[Aaron Hill]

Yes. Is that better?

[The Clerk]

Thank you.

[Aaron Hill]

Okay.

We also need to implement the wild salmon policy. It's an excellent piece of work, and Justice Cohen agreed. The policy's action steps involve assessing the status of our salmon populations and their habitats and implementing rebuilding plans for the endangered ones, but 15 years later it hasn't happened. The current official implementation plan won't actually get us there. We should study and mitigate the risks of salmon hatcheries. We should do it through the use of a biological risk assessment framework, as promised in the 2005 wild salmon policy.

Again, this has only been half-done, and our hatchery practices are causing harm to wild salmon, and doing it at great expense to taxpayers.

Overfishing can be reduced by transitioning to what we call “known stock” fisheries, which take only the harvestable surplus of identifiable populations, and by implementing such best practices as effective catch and stock monitoring, verifiable catch reporting—

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Chair, the interpretation is still problematic. The French interpretation is constantly interrupted because of sound issues. If possible, the interpreters should be given a bit of time to adjust their equipment so we can hear them.

[Aaron Hill]

I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I didn't get any translation on that, Madame Gill. I don't know if the translators are available, or is translation taking place? I didn't get any translation, Madame Gill.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Exactly. I don't have any interpretation either.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have a minute and 42 seconds.

[Aaron Hill]

I was talking about overfishing. Many salmon monitoring programs have been cut to the bone, and we shouldn't be fishing if we don't know how many fish we have.

There are tremendous opportunities around habitat restoration. One great place to start is with the 1,500 kilometres of formerly prime salmon habitat that are being needlessly blocked by decrepit flood control structures in the lower Fraser Valley. Restoration projects create good jobs, create salmon habitat and, in this example, make our communities even safer from flooding. We need to do much more. We need to stop destroying habitat to begin with.

We should also protect endangered salmon populations under Canada's Species at Risk Act. That is what it's for, but so far, every single proposed listing has been rejected simply to preserve unsustainable fishing opportunities.

Finally, this government did a great thing by strengthening the Fisheries Act. Now they need to implement their own law and our national sustainable fisheries framework by coming up with recovery targets and rebuilding plans for endangered salmon and steelhead populations.

The bottom line is that we need the government to serve the broad public interest, because masses of people across our province, from across the political spectrum and from all walks of life, want their children and grandchildren to go out and see and catch salmon in their local waters for many years to come.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Chair, I don't want to interrupt the witness a third time, but I heard the interpreter say she was having a lot of trouble given how quickly the witness was speaking. Witnesses who don't provide speaking notes should be asked to slow down. That applies to the rest of the meeting as well. Thank you.

Mr. Hill, my apologies for interrupting you repeatedly, but it's important that I hear everything you're saying. Thank you.

[Aaron Hill]

Mr. Chair, I would be happy to forward my speaking notes immediately if that would be helpful.