Evidence of meeting #15 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fish.
A recording is available from Parliament.
1:25 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aero Trading Co. Ltd.
I'm happy to reply in writing also.
I mentioned the example of DFO being responsible for fish farms as well as wild-capture fisheries. I believe there is the potential for massive conflict on decision-making with those two files.
1:25 p.m.
Fisher, West Coast Aquatic, As an Individual
There's another major conflict as well, and it has to do with the federal government's fiduciary responsibility to first nations. It's been very clear, in court cases here in British Columbia, that because of that conflict, when discussing the management and the allocation of resources within the fishing industry, the stakeholder interests need to be at the table. Otherwise, the Government of Canada and its bureaucracy cannot, without being in a conflict, actually represent our interests. That's a conflict.
1:25 p.m.
President, West Coast Trollers Association, As an Individual
I would like to follow up on that.
Yes, fish farms are definitely a conflict. Maybe they should be in the agriculture ministry and allow fisheries to be managed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I think the buying of licences, the transfer programs where DFO manages opportunity and then tries to manage buying licences at best value for dollar, is a major conflict of interest. They basically starve you out and then offer to buy your licence in a reverse bid where you compete with each other. That's just unquestionably a conflict of interest. As well, I think DFO being the lead in negotiations on reconciliation and also providing fishing opportunities and allocation should be removed from the department.
Just to follow up on that, I said something before about social engineering. Who, where, when and how fish are caught determines the cultural and coastal community quality of life in so many ways. If the department is now engaged in who, where, when and how to the degree that they are, more than, “There are fishing opportunities, and therefore let's figure out how to harvest them”, then you've changed the role of the department and they are in conflict with their primary mandate.
1:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Madam Gill.
We'll now go to Mr. Johns for two and a half minutes or less, please.
1:30 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Thank you.
Mr. Mirau and Ms. Scarfo, you talked about Alaska and the U.S. and how much they've invested in their fisheries, whether it be in restoration enhancement or particularly in monitoring and assessment. Can you talk about the scale of that? What does it look like? What's their investment compared with Canadian investment? Do either of you want to touch on that, or do you have any idea of what that looks like?
1:30 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aero Trading Co. Ltd.
I can provide something in writing later, but for the scale of stock assessment, I can tell you that almost every river system in Alaska is counted and monitored. You can see on their websites, for very minute streams and rivers, the counts for coho and chinook and pink and chum. You just don't see that in British Columbia.
1:30 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Mr. Edwards, we've talked about reconciliation. Even with the Nuu-chah-nulth court case, the judge said that the government went to the table knowingly empty-handed, with no intention of resourcing an agreement. Can you talk about what is necessary for reconciliation and the resources that are needed to follow through with true reconciliation?
1:30 p.m.
Fisher, West Coast Aquatic, As an Individual
Those are good questions, but the reality is that the government has had a mechanism for transfer for years, and has had principles around that for years. Back in the 1990s, those principles were reiterated very clearly that they enter into a buying-up of existing access. It would also include a transfer to first nations in order to make sure that the Canadian government, the Canadian people, was paying for reconciliation, and not individual businesses or enterprises, which would be unfair to those enterprises.
When the court case came about, the lawyers for the first nations were very clear in saying that there's a win here for their ability to catch fish, but they have to work within the framework of transferring properly from the existing resource to their fishery. They've been doing that to some degree, but in some instances, with chinook, the federal government in fact has transferred 5,000 chinook from the area G troll fishery without the requisite buying-up of the area G licences that justify that, which is exactly what they've done with the commercial sport fishery here in B.C.
When you do that, you undermine the existing fisheries of people who've had 40 or 50 years of capital, social, and financial engagement in a fishery. They've just ripped their livelihood away from them with no compensation. The need to do it properly is really critical, and because it's a court-appointed fishery, the Canadian government has to make sure that it actually satisfies the needs that were recognized by that court case.
1:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Gord. That closes up our questioning today with our witnesses.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for appearing today, and providing us with some valued information for the committee members when it comes to the writing of this report, and getting it finally completed later on.
I will give a moment now for the witnesses to sign off, so that we can go directly to committee business.
Again, thank you, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day.
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
We do know that today is the last meeting that was planned for our July and August meetings under the order of a vote, late in June. Basically, where do we go from here?
Right now, everybody may be under an assumption that the House will sit again on September 21, until we hear otherwise. We don't know if that will happen or not. We certainly haven't been told what the plan is. We don't know if we will be back to a normal committee schedule when that time arrives, or if we will have to find a time slot, going forward.
We don't know if we'll be able to do it twice a week, as we normally would, when the House will be sitting. We do know that it's limited time and limited availability of staff and resources to do this virtually as we have done twice in July and twice in August.
As well, we have to know what we start when we meet again. Do we continue with the salmon study, and get that done before we get into something else? My personal preference is to finish what we're doing. It seems to be a broad study, and we're hearing some great testimony.
I'd really like to see this one completed and presented to the House sooner rather than later, rather than skipping it, and going to something else and then coming back to this. I'd like to see it go that way, but I want to hear from the committee members to know what their wishes are.
Mr. Hardie.
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
We're looking at the witness lists that have been put forward to see whether, in fact, we have people we need to hear from, and sectors we need to hear from. Based on what we've seen so far, we would probably need two more meetings with witnesses plus one session with the officials, and perhaps we could work drafting instructions in at the end of the session with the officials. That would be a total of three meetings.
Mel and Gord, you also have your shopping list of people you wanted to hear from. If we haven't heard from them yet, we've gone this far, and we need to invest the time to make sure that it's done coherently and thoroughly.
1:35 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Looking at who we've heard from so far, I would agree that we need two to three more meetings after today. We have heard from one side on the salmon aquaculture issue; we haven't yet heard from the aquaculture farmers themselves in this study. We have some science that we haven't heard about.
I agree that I'd rather finish this study before we move on to another one. We need to finish this one so that it's rounded out. If we don't and we don't bring in a well-rounded committee list, we risk the chance of the report being dismissed as incomplete by some of the other stakeholders we haven't heard from.
1:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
I agree with Mel. If we issue a report in which key stakeholders have not participated and they come back and criticize the report and say they weren't consulted so how can these recommendations have any real weight or credibility, we will have failed. This promises to be a major report and set of recommendation that will hopefully move the protection and enhancement of our wild salmon stocks forward.
Again, I would think we would want to have at least three more meetings with witnesses.
Obviously our team will get back to you, Mr. Chair, with additional witnesses we hope will fill the gaps in testimony that still exist. Then perhaps, there would be one more meeting for drafting instructions.
1:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thanks for that, Ed.
There are still a lot of witnesses who have been put forward and haven't been heard from yet and aren't scheduled. I think you're right on who we need to hear from and how broad this should be.
Gord.
1:40 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
I support what Ed was saying in terms of three more meetings and then one more with staff coming back to us. We are in agreement with that.
1:40 p.m.
Bloc
Marilène Gill Bloc Manicouagan, QC
I just want to add my voice to that of the other party representatives.
Clearly, in terms of representation, I absolutely agree that all stakeholders from the different sectors should be able to express themselves so that this seems to be a complete and proper study. For the sake of consistency, the number of sessions we will need in order to be able to fully hear from each of the witnesses from the different sectors will be fine with me.
1:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
I don't see any more hands raised.
I am hearing consensus on continuing with the salmon study to get it finished, with maybe three or possibly four more meetings, including the officials. I like the option of bringing the officials back after we've heard from all the witnesses, because then we can maybe counteract what they said at the beginning or hit them with what we've heard thus far, before we do the actual writing of the report.
The only thing I would suggest, probably for timelines, is keeping an eye on when we can get our meeting set on the schedule. Once we find out what's going on with the House, we'll get our request in early before other committees. That way, we might get on the docket earlier rather than later. We'll keep the committee members informed as we go forward of anything we hear on the option of when we can do our meetings, and the time slots available, to get a consensus of what suits everybody.
Is everybody okay with looking at it in that manner?
With the witnesses, we'll see who's available and when they're available once we see what meeting slots we can fit in. As I said, if we need three more meetings, four more meetings, let's queue this one up before we get into something else. I think if we leave it too long, we'll probably lose the flavour of some of the recommendations we'd like to see going forward to the department.
Mel.
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you for looking into getting us in early if possible. I think we see a situation on the west coast that's very dire right now with regard to the salmon. These people need help. For the industry, the economy and the indigenous and non-indigenous, it's a big issue, so I think we need to carry on with this, get it wrapped up and get those recommendations in.
Thank you.
1:40 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Beech Liberal Burnaby North—Seymour, BC
No, I didn't, but it's nice to see everybody. The last couple of days have been very informative.
1:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
They have been. I think this entire study has been eye-opening, if nothing else, and I would like to see a real good report presented to go back to the House, the ministry or whoever is going to answer to it and try to do something.
I will go back to Mr. Donnelly's comments of the other day. We have the opportunity of doing a good report, making good recommendations and parking the political stripes at the door or outside the room, whether we're doing this virtually or in the House. I look forward to that and to a good report.
Gord.