Fisheries Committee on July 23rd, 2020

[Jason Hwang]

Mr. Fast, I would suggest that one of the recommendations from Cohen was around having an associate RDG position that would be responsible for implementing the findings.

One of the challenges that DFO has is the integration of a lot of the good work that happens within the department. I would say that helping with that integration, having some independent oversight, would really help with the accountability. I was a long-time public servant. Working in the space between what the political and public pressures are and the realities of what you can do with the money you have is very difficult, and it's hard to have a voice in terms of what is possible to change and make better. Having a place that can test that and check that can help us get the best that we can out of the department.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you.

How about the other two?

[Aaron Hill]

I would support what the other two witnesses have just said.

I would mention the other recommendation in the Cohen inquiry of splitting out the mandate of promoting salmon farming from the responsibilities of DFO, because it's charged with both. They have a conflicting mandate of conserving wild salmon and promoting salmon farming, which is untenable.

With respect to accountability, there's also a disconnect between the mandate to conserve wild salmon and the mandate to promote fishing. The wild salmon policy says conservation is the number one priority in resource management decision-making, but we don't see that operationally within DFO. The priority is fishing. That needs to be a top-down change in terms of priorities there.

[Jesse Zeman]

Briefly, as I mentioned around natural resource management, the three things are funding, science and social support. I'm going to really focus in on the science piece because there is an internal conflict within DFO in terms of who is the decision-maker and who makes decisions.

Science's role is to tell us what's available, what's possible, and how to get to that place. After we calculate all of that, science's role is to tell us what can be harvested.

Currently, the approach is, let's figure out a way to harvest things. There is no focus, or very little focus, on restoring fish populations or conserving them. You're constantly going to have this structural issue where you talk about fishing a lot and you don't talk about fish very much. I'm sure you can trace that back to the east coast cod. You can trace it back to interior Fraser coho and to Thompson steelhead.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have about 20 seconds.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Zeman, you talked about bycatch, gill netting or netting that was causing significant mortality. Can you very briefly comment on selective fishing gear that could be used to replace the net?

[Jesse Zeman]

Yes, absolutely. The biggest ones that everybody is talking about and we're trying to get promoted are things called “pound traps”. Essentially, the fish swim in; you can almost lift up a net and then pick out the fish that you're allowed to keep, and the rest end up in the river.

What Dr. Walters referred to in beach netting is the fish actually will hit other...and end up dead. Pound traps are being used on the Columbia,. They seem to be the way of the future and are our best hope to allow first nations, in particular, to continue fishing with mixed stock fisheries.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you. That's very helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Fast.

We'll now go to Mr. Hardie, for five minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses. This has been fascinating.

We read about the blob, which is a huge mass of warm water out in the Pacific Ocean. Depending on whom you speak to, that's what's forcing the really good plankton that salmon like farther north, leaving the salmon with a less desirable version of plankton.

That's going to be a tough nut to manage. Among the things, though, that we have a lot more control over.... We'll start with you, Mr. Walters. If we can't cool off the Pacific Ocean, what are the next best things we can do for the health of our stocks?

[Carl Walters]

The two main things now would be controlling fishing and controlling predation. Those are two things we can control, and for which we have very good direct evidence of large impact on the stocks.

In contrast to a couple of the other people's statements, we have radically reduced salmon exploitation rates along the coast generally. Management is not actually driven entirely by harvesting. There is certainly direct evidence of cutbacks in harvesting aimed at protecting particularly weak stocks and so on.

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

All right, sir, I'll have to—

[Carl Walters]

Right now, for me, the biggest single investment would be in reducing predation impacts.

Let me just add one quick point.

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

Very quickly, please, sir.

[Carl Walters]

Right now Steller sea lions are consuming about 300,000 tonnes of fish on the B.C. coast every year. The total fish and aquaculture production of all fish species in B.C. is less than that, about 290,000 tonnes.

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

Okay, thank you for that.

Mr. Hwang, one of the things we've looked at in the past is development, especially along the Fraser River. Individual projects are approved or assessed, but we don't get the sense that anybody is keeping good tabs on the cumulative impact of all these individual decisions that are made.

Mr. Hill, you're nodding. Perhaps you can speak to this a little bit more.

[Aaron Hill]

Yes, that's a very good point, Mr. Hardie.

There is an absolute failure to address the cumulative impacts on salmon habitat. The strategy, too, of the wild salmon policy is actually all about that, and the current wild salmon policy implementation plan won't get us there. It doesn't get us to the point of assessing the status of habitats and then setting targets for managing cumulative impacts.

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

Okay.

I don't know who could answer this one. Mr. Hwang, did you want to add something?

[Jason Hwang]

Mr. Hardie, there are a couple of things I would add to that.

One is that, at the Pacific Salmon Foundation, we do have a platform that is on the way to being able to do that. You can use this thing called the Pacific salmon explorer to see habitat pressures broadly. It doesn't get to the specific point you're talking about, which fully summarizes the cumulative effects, but at least we are starting to have technology to allow us to understand what we have.

But you're on a very important point, that we don't really have a target. What do we want for habitat? If we don't have a target, how do we know if we're where we want to be?

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

Yes.

[Jason Hwang]

So the targets are really important.

I have to emphasize that British Columbia is a key part of the equation. DFO has management authority for salmon and salmon habitat. B.C. manages land and water. Those are the same thing, and they have to co-operate to get the outcomes we need.

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

We hear an awful lot that DFO spends a lot of time managing the number of fish being caught, the fishing effort, but perhaps not enough on the effort to restore the stocks to actually have healthier fish and more of them.

Again, I don't know who can answer this one. What's needed to shift gears within the DFO so that it is actually looking at rebuilding stocks and not just managing what we have left?

[Jesse Zeman]

I would say, cut the scientists loose. Give them a role and have them set objectives for fish populations. The big failure in all this is that we don't have objectives for fish populations.

What we saw with chum is that when we do, DFO still opens fisheries when we don't meet the objectives. It's the role of scientists to say what the capability or the suitability is of a stream to produce fish, how many fish we should have in it, and how we get there. That's entirely a science role, and right now, inside the department, that becomes muddled with managers wanting to open fisheries.

This is raw science. In terms of the habitat piece you talked about, in terms of Canada's role, we have to get the environmental assessment process right. The easiest thing is to manage the land for fish.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Hardie. Your time is up.

We'll now go to Mr. Calkins for five minutes or less, please.