Fisheries Committee on Aug. 13th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I now call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 15 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. Pursuant to the order of reference of Tuesday, May 26, 2020, Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, February 25, 2020, the committee is resuming its study of the state of Pacific salmon.

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

Regular members know this by now, but for the benefit of our witnesses who are participating in a House of Commons virtual committee meeting for the first time, I will remind you all of a few rules that we like to follow.

Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like it does in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of floor, 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. 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 pick “raise hand”. This will signal to me, the chair, your interest in speaking and will keep the names in chronological order.

When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. The use of headsets is strongly encouraged. Finally, when speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. That's the one I have trouble with.

Should any technical challenge arise, for example in relation to interpretation or your audio, please advise the chair immediately and a technical team will work to resolve the problem. Please note that we may need to suspend during these times, as we need to ensure that all members are able to participate fully.

Before we get started, can everyone click on their screen in the top right-hand corner and ensure they 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.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses. As an individual, we have Dan Edwards, fisher, West Coast Aquatic. He is accompanied by Kathy Scarfo, president, West Coast Trollers Association. From Aero Trading Company Limited, we have Brad Mirau. From Whooshh Innovations, we have Vince Bryan, chief executive officer.

We'll get started now with the presentations from the witnesses.

We'll start with Mr. Edwards. You have six minutes.

[Dan Edwards, Fisher, West Coast Aquatic, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members, for giving me a chance to talk to you.

I'm a non-indigenous, third-generation fisherman living in the small coastal village of Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island. I spent 40 years trolling for salmon in B.C. out of this community. I spent 15 years as the chair of a salmon enhancement society.

I am the executive director of the Area A Crab Association, the largest crab fishery in B.C., which, thankfully, has seen record abundances in their fishery, although they are presently dealing with very depressed prices for their product, supposedly due to COVID, but due to the lack of transparency in the B.C. market. Who knows what the truth is on that front? I also own a groundfish longline vessel in partnership with my son and continue to be an active fisherman.

I was the executive director of an indigenous/non-indigenous non-profit board built on the principle of a double majority during the 1990s that helped to negotiate an aquatic management board for the west coast of Vancouver Island's Nuu-chah-nulth territory under an interim measures agreement under the mandate of the Oceans Act.

I went on a 59-day hunger strike to try to get help for B.C. fishing communities when the Fraser sockeye collapsed in 1999 and because Wayne Wouters, who was the deputy minister of Fisheries at the time, had suspended the negotiations to build the aquatic management board.

Out of the hunger strike, I got a commitment from Minister Dhaliwal to review the consultative process for salmon in B.C. The review was started by Stephen Owen. His dispute resolution group out of the University of Victoria came up with 49 recommendations to be implemented as a package; they were not to be cherry-picked.

Pacific region implemented four or five of those recommendations and twisted the recommendations so that the final framework for consultation was even worse than when I first got involved in the consultative process back in the 1980s. They completely cut out the community input, and the moment the aquatic management board was brought into reality under the mandate of the Oceans Act in 2001, a senior DFO official, who has since retired, told me that Pacific region senior management in downtown Vancouver stated internally that they now had to find a way to kill it, and they have done a very good job of doing just that. They refuse now to sit on the board as one of the governing parties.

I now live in a coastal community that has lost most of its infrastructure and its fishermen with respect to the salmon fishery. Without the vision of the aquatic management board, which is based on Nuu-chah-nulth principles of respect and that everything is connected, the implementation of the reconciliation agenda of the federal government is creating division and disunity.

As I work on my boat in Ucluelet harbour, first nations and non-first nations fishermen are being set up to fight each other right on the docks in our community over the remaining access to ocean chinook and coho, while the federal government gives the lion's share of the resource to the commercial/ recreational fishery with absolutely no transfer mechanism to deal with the disenfranchisement.

They have published an article in Sumatra that lays out how this a breaking of the human rights of the citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous fishermen, who are treated this way by their own government.

My longline vessel is tied up this summer after fishing for years for 15% of the landed value of the fish I caught, because of the unregulated market created by ITQ management regimes, of which much is now owned and controlled offshore. I can no longer afford to untie the vessel to go fishing. My daughter did her Ph.D. thesis on the situation with the halibut fishery. We have explained this very clearly to the FOPO committee over the last couple of years, yet Pacific region continues to minimize the concerns we raised about the management regime that has been used in B.C. to kill off the small, independent owner-operator fleet.

I am extremely angry about this situation. It is a management tragedy. The definition of a tragedy is when you learn too late that you should have done things differently.

I did not want to participate in this call when I first got the invitation. I asked Kathy Scarfo to do it. I am too angry and frustrated to speak anymore about a situation that, for 30 years, has been ignored by Pacific region. My head is bloody from beating against that unaccountable, terrible bureaucracy. I am reminded of something that a DFO enforcement person told me when I was occupying a DFO office in Tofino in 1996. He said he woke up every morning ashamed that he worked for this organization.

My advice—which I am sure has never been listened to before, but I'm going to say it again—would be to dismantle the entire organization and start again with proper government and real consultation, not the sham that is presently being used by this government department.

Real governance is needed—there are a myriad of good examples of how this is done in respect of the management of natural resources—and real transparency. Who exactly owns the Canadian resource? This can be done simply by directives from the federal government, and real reconciliation that respects both parties, which is the directive given by the judge in the last Ahousaht et al. judgment.

Taking anyone’s livelihood and giving it to someone else without compensation, which is what the government did in respect to my salmon livelihood by giving it to the commercial recreational sports industry, is breaking my human rights. The federal government has stated it will not do the same with the reconciliation process, as it would simply be more of the same bad behaviour that got us into trouble in the first place.

I truly hope they stand by that commitment. They did it once; the door is now open. As Dr. Don Hall, speaking as a representative of the Nuu-chah-nulth, told the court In the Ahousaht et al case, they gave away the resource that was traditionally fished by the commercial troll fishermen to the sports fishermen. Why would they not do the same thing in respect of our court-appointed indigenous fishery?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, those are my opening comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Edwards.

We'll now go to Ms. Scarfo for six minutes please.

[Kathy Scarfo, President, West Coast Trollers Association, As an Individual]

Hi. I get six minutes to wrap up 30 years' worth of fisheries management, fisheries marketing, buying. I am president of the area G trollers, which are not trawlers. They're the guys who run the single lines through the water, with hooks on them, in different places.

The fleet that I manage, which I have been proud to be a member and president of for 22 years, is a salmon fishery, predominantly chinook, coho and sockeye. We are the equity fishery with the U.S., so our catch is predominantly American. The Alaska fleet takes Canadian fish; we take American fish. We're the equity fleet. We harvest very little Canadian stocks, and that's very important because our impact on Canadian stocks of concern is marginal at best, and at times just about nothing.

The fleet is a small-boat fleet, ma-and-pa operations predominantly, and family operations, fishing five to 25 miles offshore. Over one-third of our fleet is, at the present time, first nations. We fish side by side with the first nations, and we have worked very closely over the years to develop different fisheries regimes and programs.

I think it's important to recognize that when we talk about the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, it is the Department of Fisheries, not just fish. Right now it feels like it's the department of forgone opportunities in fisheries. We have economic opportunities that are being forgone because the department is not managing fisheries as their primary mandate; it is more about juggling who gets to fish. We often hear the statement that there are too many boats catching too few fish.

No doubt about it, we have massive conservation problems. We have climate change, habitat inland that's not being addressed and not being invested in, and salmon enhancement programs that have been gutted. We know all of those things. On top of that, there are still existing opportunities that would enable us to maintain a somewhat viable fishery; but the juggling of who gets access to those fish, and the fact that decisions are not being based on what is absolutely critical in fisheries management—first and foremost, science and biology—is a major issue. Basically it is the department of forgone opportunities, and I can speak directly to that.

This year, with our fishery, our fleet would be having incomes of $80,000 to $100,000, had we been able to move forward with the COVID plan that we presented in April. Instead, guys are sitting on the water right now, not making enough income, because the department has put in a lure restriction that basically means that everybody else in British Columbia can use the lures that are catching fish, but we have to use the lures that aren't at this present time.

If we are looking at solutions to moving forward, the first thing to do is to recognize that the situation in British Columbia is a disaster, and we need that disaster relief. We need somebody to call it for what it is, and it is a disaster: 90% of the fleet is not going to survive; they're being forced into bankruptcy. I think, in this situation, we need that disaster relief and recognition because then we can start to address the real problem.

The other thing we need to recognize is that salmon are not caught on the east coast. This is a four-year cycle. This is something that can be rebuilt and can have a future. What we need, rather than lip service from the ministry and the department, is an actual sense of leadership and governance that is...to manage fisheries, and to try to do their best.

In the Pacific region that governance model, as Dan says, needs to be addressed. The senior management of the Pacific region do not believe in ocean fisheries. Yet everything we hear, and every piece of documentation and every response that you get to your recommendations from the minister, talk about economically viable and sustainable fisheries. There is no impetus and no sense of interest from senior management in moving forward on those opportunities.

Years ago we had a new government come in and say that they were going to allow the unmuzzling of our scientists. Well, they may have unmuzzled them, but now senior management are giving directives to the biology staff to not do very critical pieces of work that are absolutely essential to managing fisheries. We cannot have access to the biological staff and stock assessment staff. For example, this year, when we put in a fishing plan in the first week of April and only had a fishing plan at the end of July, with absolutely no background or conversations with stock assessment staff. Here we are, in season, trying to deal with that.

We need a department that is based on principles, some of which need to be fair and equitable, and on a transfer mechanism that is actually being used, because otherwise we are pitting user groups against each other to basically fight over the crumbs of what is left for opportunities.

There is an unlicensed expansion in the charter boat fishery, which is not a public fishery. These are people with a lot of money who can fly in and fly back out. They've been given priority. In our region, they harvest more fish than my first nations fleets and my commercial fleets combined in any given year, yet they don't live in the area and don't provide jobs for our local community.

Social scientists have taken over and are now running the department, without any guidance from the federal government as to what the vision of a fishery looks like. Are there too many boats, not enough fish? Absolutely. However, it's not too many boats in the commercial fishing industry directly. It's too many interest groups, which have competing interests, that cannot all be satisfied to the level the department is trying to satisfy them.

The department is in a conflict of interest. They are managing buybacks at the same time as managing opportunities, which means, basically, that you bankrupt a fleet and then offer them the lowest amount of money they're willing to take because they're forced into bankruptcy.

Transfer mechanisms, such as PICFI and ATP, are being ignored at this point, and fish are being removed from existing stakeholders. That's not reconciliation. Reconciliation is not borne on the backs of individual families and fishermen who are neighbours to the people they're trying to reconcile with. As Dan says, this is causing an emergency situation within our communities.

As we—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'll have to stop you there, Ms. Scarfo. You've gone way over the six-minute mark. Anything else will hopefully come out in the lines of questioning.

We invite all witnesses to send us a copy of their presentation. The committee will be able to look at that as well.

We'll now go to Mr. Mirau, for six minutes.

[Brad Mirau, President and Chief Executive Officer, Aero Trading Co. Ltd.]

Thank you.

I appreciate the passion of the witnesses who just spoke.

Thank you for allowing me to speak today. Greetings from Prince Rupert. My name is Brad Mirau, and I am the president and CEO of Aero Trading, a diversified seafood company operating in B.C.

I grew up in the commercial fishing industry in Prince Rupert. I started working on my father's salmon boat when I was eight years old, some 48 years ago. I was a deckhand and a skipper prior to starting work in the processing sector 35 years ago.

We're a fish processor of B.C. wild seafood, with two CFIA-regulated plants, one here that I'm speaking from in Port Edward, and the other one on the Fraser River in Vancouver. We participate in many fisheries, including salmon, but most of the other fisheries on the coast also. For some context, I believe we probably have the largest independent small-boat fleet in B.C.

As a processor, we exist as our fishermen do by having reliable access to a healthy and sustainable resource. We live or die by this simple access. The fishing industry may seem basic on the surface, catching fish and feeding people, but there are so many factors, some within our control and some outside our control, that make our industry complex and difficult to manage or predict. I don't think anybody in the commercial industry expects access when true conservation is on the line. I've sat at many tables over the years and I've never heard the commercial fishermen or companies demand access when we have real conservation problems.

Issues such as climate, ocean nutrients, habitat, fish farms, weak stock management, predators, past overfishing and perhaps even under-fishing are just a few of the challenges the industry faces now. The only way to make sure that fish stocks remain healthy is if there is an adequate long-term plan, safeguards in place such as proper and robust science, stock assessment and a transparent management policy that is fair to all user groups.

In speaking to you today about the state of the salmon, I'd like to tell you some of the major changes I've seen during my career.

We built our Port Edward plant in 1986. We experienced rapid growth in production and for years we operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We employed more than 150 people, 80% from the indigenous communities surrounding Prince Rupert, from Lax Kwa'laams, Metlakatla and Kitkatla. Today we employ fewer than half that number.

Many jobs have already been lost within the salmon sector, and I suspect many more will be lost if our salmon catches continue to decline. The consequences of this are very dire for our entire infrastructure that has been built over the years on the coast. Many of the fishermen and companies exist because they're geared for a multi-fishery existence. Removing one fishery is like removing a leg of a chair, and eventually you will have a collapse. We've already experienced many plant closures in B.C., and I suspect we will see more of these. Unfortunately the hardest hit areas will be the smaller coastal communities, where there are already fewer employment opportunities.

Throughout these former exciting times in the fishing business, there was this undeniable sense of optimism, accomplishment and camaraderie that was a joy to have experienced. Those same feelings even extended to DFO and all their staff way back then. In short, the industry was much more predictable and cohesive, and very fun to be a part of. Today, sadly, those relationships in our industry are strained, and the trust has decreased measurably.

I'd like to mention also that throughout this long period of decline of salmon and access in B.C., I have made so many trips to southeast Alaska to visit friends who operate plants there. There were so many similarities to our operations and catches and, in fact, we do share many common stocks of fish since we are so close geographically. Fast-forward to today, and the similarities are mostly gone.

Walking the docks in Prince Rupert or other coastal communities in B.C., you will find fewer fishing boats and many of these vessels are in a state of disrepair. There is not enough money being earned to maintain vessels adequately. You will also encounter many salmon fishermen who are increasingly jaded, feeling beaten down by years of struggling to survive. They feel disconnected now from the decision-making and basic communication from DFO.

Yet, only a few kilometres north in Ketchikan, Alaska, you will find a large fleet of beautifully maintained salmon boats with hundreds of young fishermen who are enthusiastic about their future. Many government or government-backed programs exist for them to buy vessels and licences, or to upgrade their equipment.

It should also be noted that many of these boats you see tied up in Alaska are actual Canadian fishing vessels that have been sold to American fishermen because fishermen here have been unable to make a living.

Thirty years ago we thought we could rival Alaska in salmon production, but today we're just a shadow of what we once were. The question is, why? Why have we ended up here now in B.C., faced with declining salmon runs and reduced access, while Alaska continues to experience billions of dollars in economic prosperity from its fisheries and, more importantly, its fish stocks appear more healthy and sustainable than ours? I can't say that I know the answer, but could it be that they spend more on stock assessment and science, have a more transparent management regime, have no salmon farms and have higher harvest rates on salmon runs? These are just a few points we must consider when trying to formulate a plan for our future.

I don't wish to beat up only on DFO. In fairness to them, they have a lot on their plate. A lot of their employees work very hard, but over the years they've taken on too many responsibilities that are political in nature, and they do have a conflict of interest. The fishing fleet feels this.

In closing, I'd like to offer a couple of suggestions.

Our industry, sadly, may have to acknowledge that, in the short term, we simply may have too many salmon vessels chasing diminished stocks or diminished access. The necessary time required to rebuild may simply be too long for fishermen to hang on. In this case, the federal government should offer a fair price to fishermen to retire their salmon licence. However, do not make them bid against one another to see who is the most desperate. Allow them to retire with some dignity. These are the government's own words.

I'd also like to see control in the populations of predators, such as seals and sea lions. I realize this is a controversial subject, but I have seen reports that they consume more seafood than the entire commercial sector combined.

I'd like to see more salmon enhancement programs like Alaska has. It doesn't make sense to me that we don't enhance our stocks. I'd like to at least see a good study of this.

I do have aspirations and hope for our salmon fisheries in the longer term. I hope that one day we can walk our docks and see a vibrant, young crop of fishermen, and can have a great salmon fishery again. It's been done elsewhere in the world. The fishing industry is a can-do industry. We should be able to rebuild and put things back on track.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We'll now to go Mr. Bryan for six minutes.

[Vince Bryan, Chief Executive Officer, Whooshh Innovations]

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee today.

We understand that you invited us here because of our work with salmon, including at the site of the Big Bar slide on the Fraser River. We want to speak to that as an example of the innovative solutions available to the Pacific salmon conservation and recovery efforts.

With the state of our iconic Pacific salmon, they need our help, and it feels right that the U.S. and Canada have partnered and are working for the recovery of salmon and fisheries in the west, including the Fraser River, historically one of the great Pacific salmon rivers in all the world.

We have been working exclusively on fish passage solutions for 10 years all around the world. We believe that improved passage is the single most important thing we can do today to assure the fish's future everywhere in the world. Our mission at Whooshh is to provide fisheries managers worldwide an entirely new toolset that more affordably addresses fish passage, recognizes the impact of changing climate conditions, accommodates highly variable water levels and acknowledges that the traditional options available simply have not worked well enough, and are not easily changed, to give the native fish species their best and fastest chance for spawning success.

The importance of the Fraser River to the ecosystem of the west’s Salish Sea, the resident orcas in its waters, the first nations on both sides of the border and those sport and commercial fishermen who rely on robust returns for their livelihoods reminds us daily of the importance of our mission. As a company, we are tackling not only a problem of enormous complexity but also a problem that must be solved quickly for all of humanity. Big Bar highlights what can be done and how quickly it can happen when decisions are made, new technologies are adopted, resources are made available, and stakeholders and contractors come together to ensure that there is safe, timely, efficient and effective fish passage.

Whooshh Innovations' headquarters are located in Seattle, Washington, on the waters of Puget Sound about a five and a half hour drive from the Big Bar landslide in British Columbia. DFO contracted with Whooshh on April 15, 2020, to provide passage for four species of salmonids, with our passage portal to enable them to continue their upstream migration in June 2020.

Our Whooshh passage portal allows for volitional and more natural migration without handling or energy-sapping ladder steps causing stress prior to reaching their spawning grounds and impacting their fecundity. It is not our original salmon cannon, which requires one to hand-load fish into the system, but a more elegant and automated solution.

The passage portal also collects data about every fish that passes through the system, including 18 images of every fish taken from three different angles. Our fish recognition technologies are capable of measuring and sorting fish automatically within a fraction of a second. It allows the selected fish to migrate past the barriers, whether natural or man-made, regardless of their height.

The system at Big Bar includes six tubes of five different sizes to accommodate all sizes of the four species of salmonids. Each tube is about 150 metres long. The passage portal capacity can enable passage of tens of thousands of fish per day, or approximately 30 fish per minute. While the system requested and deployed at Big Bar is seasonal, annual, long term and permanent deployments are often recommended.

The magnitude of the challenge at Big Bar cannot be overstated. The rapids you see in the photos might look to be a manageable two- to three-feet high, but when you are on site you realize that those rapids are 10- to 15-feet tall and that the water is moving faster than you have ever seen water move before. When water runs like this it becomes immediately clear that natural fish passage is not an option. The burst swimming is simply not enough.

For those who are working on site, the Canadians can be proud of all the work that the long days, the co-operation and the foresight shown by the project partners there. The rockslide at Big Bar is an enormous slice of a 200-foot cliff that slid into and fell across the 180-foot width of the river at that point. It is technically a more difficult problem than Hell's Gate that requires the latest technology solutions and innovative thinking. The goal of everyone is to provide passage this year and then every year to come.

We hope that Whooshh passage portal changes the map, allowing for real-time fisheries management decision-making. It is intended to future-proof fish passage against the impacts of changing climates such as warmer water and variable water levels from floods or drought; prevent the spread of invasive fish species through selective fish passage; and offer a SMARTer solution with more comprehensive and current data to make fisheries management decisions, such as seeing when pinniped injuries are impacting the fish travelling upstream.

Why do all of this? Because the impact of not deploying such solutions quickly is felt for decades, if not for centuries. If we have learned nothing else in this age of COVID, we can take away this much. It is far less costly to act early and aggressively, and to capture near real-time data than to delay and be faced with a doubtful future and no certain solutions. At Whooshh, we envisioned a better outcome for native fish species years ago, and we are happy to help bring cutting-edge technology solutions to Big Bar today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Bryan.

We'll now go to committee members for a round of questioning. We will remind members that the last half hour is for committee business.

We now go to Mr. Arnold for six minutes or less please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being available today.

Mr. Edwards, you talked about a pilot program for co-operative aquatic management with the federal, provincial, Nuu-chah-nulth and local governments. Can you tell us how, when and why the program seems to have been abandoned?

[Dan Edwards]

We created the board back in 2001, after 10 years of work with the communities, the Nuu-chah-nulth, and the federal and provincial governments. The federal government spent a couple of years putting a large budget together to negotiate that board into existence.

As I said in my opening comments, there was never any support from the central agency for this board. They stated very specifically to me five years later that they in fact decided to try to kill it, particularly because it didn't fit the central management model that they still have in place in B.C.

That board is still in existence—I'm still a part of it—but it's lost its budget. The federal government has refused to put any money into it and they refused to sit at it. We've asked them several times to reinvigorate their commitment to it. They refuse. The board is now moribund. It's almost non-existent.

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

What were the goals of that board with the groups involved?

[Dan Edwards]

The goal was to be a part of the management strategy for the marine resources for the Nuu-chah-nulth region, which is most of the west coast of Vancouver Island, to work in partnership with other regions and with the central government to properly manage both the biological side of the resources in the region as well as the socio-economic objectives that were really critical. This was particularly in light of the fact that we were seeing at that time, back in the 1990s, as Brad has stated, a drop in the value and the access to the salmon.

We tried very hard to put principles in place saying that we were going to engage in the management side of it for both socio-economic and biological scientific rational reasons for dealing with the fish, the salmon, and other resources in the area.

That was the point. That was the management strategy.

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

Thank you.

I guess the next question here is for Mr. Edwards, Ms. Scarfo and Mr. Mirau.

You've all talked about what appears to be a broken system. Some of you have mentioned that consultation seems to be a sham. We've heard this from east coast fishers as well.

Is the consultation process working as it used to, or where are the roadblocks? What do you see as the challenges?

[Dan Edwards]

Kathy or Brad, you go ahead. I've already said what I've said about this situation.

[Kathy Scarfo]

I can go if you want.

Basically, there is no real consultation. I think that's across all sectors that have been mentioned.

We actually had an emergency meeting with the first nations in our region yesterday. Dan was involved and we discussed the fact that the aquatic management board is no longer functional because of pulling [Technical difficulty—Editor]. The stakeholders in the region still believe in the guiding principles and that maybe we'll just pick them and run with them ourselves.

The consultation process has been a sham. Basically, you sit through a process where I've seen managers sit and read a newspaper because they know how useless it all is. It doesn't matter what recommendations go forward. Once it gets into senior management's hands it's already a predetermined fact.

On this year's COVID plan that we put forward in April, we worked with first nations, local communities and buyers, and we said, given the situation that we're facing with world markets and getting people in and out of these communities, how can we do it? This was COVID-related. We got nothing—absolutely nothing.

Even in the last few weeks I've had to phone the minister's office, MPs and MLAs, everyone, just to get a discussion with our local managers because our guys are out there using the wrong lures and they won't let them change.

You have to recognize some of these things. The fishing industry here has lost a lot of its participation already. The fleet—

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

Thank you.

I'd like to hear from Mr. Mirau on this as well.

[Brad Mirau]

I wouldn't want to tar every advisory process with the same brush, but I'll describe it this way. In the north 10, 15 or 20 years ago, DFO and the fishing industry would get together for breakfast. We would sit around a table, in no particular order, and we would have an exchange of ideas and formulate plans.

Skip forward to within the last five years, and they no longer are allowed to have a coffee with us. We have to go into their office. They sit on one side of the table, we sit on the other, and it's much more confrontational. But there's a clear line: they are them and we are us.

The complaint I hear most often from my colleagues, as well as fishermen, is that DFO people do not return their phone calls, emails or texts. They don't make announcements when they say they're going to. There's just a sense of a disconnect, and I get it that they want things to be the way they were, but—

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair; I did not mean to interrupt, but I have not been receiving the interpretation for almost a minute.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm not getting any translation.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

So we are not receiving the interpretation because of the quality of the sound. I'm not sure whether it's possible to stabilize the sound so that it's easier for the interpreter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Let's try going forward, because that six minutes were over anyway when we had that point of order.

We will continue on.

Madame Gill, if it's still not working, please let us know as quickly as you can, and we will try to have it corrected.

We will now go to Mr. Hardie for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.

Over our deliberations, we have heard a lot of conflicting evidence, not just in this study but in other ones. We hear on the one hand that fish stocks are low, that catches are miserable, but at the same time, every time there's some management of the catch, then we hear that the ocean is practically teeming with fish.

We heard this particularly with respect to the hatchery fish out of Washington state down off the mouth of the Fraser River and down into Puget Sound.

Dan, from your observation as a fisher, what's the state of the stock out there? Are you able to catch fish if you're allowed to?

[Dan Edwards]

I haven't fished salmon for 15 years now after doing it for 40 years. I fish other fish. Some of them are in good shape, and in some ways they are managed fairly effectively.

The salmon issue, from the fishermen I know who do fish salmon—and this has been the case, as Kathy's mentioned—are targeting out here 80% or more American-bound fish. A lot of those fish are being enhanced in the southern U.S. There are all kinds of those fish in the water. A proper management strategy, which would have been an abundant-based model that would allow Canadians access through the treaty, would allow us significant access to that.

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

We will go through the access issue, which, of course, has been the focus of a lot of our discussions in the past, but I'm interested in the health of the fish.

Mr. Mirau, are the fish that are being caught healthy looking? Are they bigger or smaller? What does the quality of the fish look like that are coming into your plants?