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.
President, West Coast Trollers Association, As an Individual
I don't think I could really comment. There is no foreign ownership in the existing fleet. As for whether there are illegal fleets within the 200-mile limit, I would tend to think that we probably have decent enforcement.
What we have seen in the last 20 years is a massive increase in the drag trawl fleet offshore. That obviously has an impact on salmon. Whether that ownership within the hake and that is foreign, I couldn't say, but I think that is a concern. We've gone from the small boat fleet to an increasingly large vessel fleet.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
This is going back to the exchange I have had indirectly with Ed. A lot of the discussion we've had really has a lot to do with who gets access to a finite resource, and a resource that now everybody agrees has been shrinking. What do we do?
What is your advice, as somebody who has a material interest in the health of the fishing industry? What do we do to build the stocks, right? Rather than argue over who gets to catch what's left, what do we do to actually build the stocks?
If anybody has a point of view, an opinion or a thought on that, just raise your hand, and I'll go to you.
Go ahead please, Brad.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aero Trading Co. Ltd.
You said to rebuild the stocks, but you started by asking about allocation, and I would say that I would like to have a broader fix to this. I think that if the federal government views itself somewhat as an employer of fishermen, in the sense that they've set policy over the years that has given fishermen jobs and licences, policies have changed. Allocation policies have changed. Reconciliation has changed—
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Brad, I'm sorry, but that's not where I'm going with the question. What do we do to rebuild stocks so that we don't need to have this discussion about who gets access to what's left?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aero Trading Co. Ltd.
More stock assessment, hatcheries and stock enhancement and control of predators would be a good start.
Liberal
Fisher, West Coast Aquatic, As an Individual
Yes.
I spent 15 years as the head of the salmon enhancement society here in Ucluelet. At the same time, in southeast Alaska, a similar situation happened back in 1979.
In Juneau, Alaska, they have a hatchery that produces, I think 50 million pinks, 10 million chum and five million coho and chinook. In the community where I live, they reluctantly allow us to raise 50,000 chinook. It's a complete lack of vision around how how to actually rebuild. That's been a real problem in B.C. for years.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Kathy, you were saying that with the Alaskan runs, you catch Alaskan fish and the Alaskans catch Canadian fish. The Alaskans seem to be doing well and we are not. There seems to be a disconnect here.
Are you saying that the Alaskan runs in fact are poor and the Canadian runs aren't? Tell us a little bit more about that.
President, West Coast Trollers Association, As an Individual
The fish go from Alaska down to Washington, Oregon and California. Those are the stocks that we're harvesting. We're not harvesting Alaskan fish. Alaskans are harvesting Canadian fish that would come to us within our area, so we reciprocate and harvest some of theirs as they go by.
Alaska is doing well. In Washington and Oregon, there are definitely stocks of concern. There's no denying that there are problems everywhere. However, they're seeing massive hatchery programs, massive investment and good opportunities on those fisheries for their fleets.
I think when you talk about rebuilding, you have to have a strategy to rebuild and you have to have a commitment and an investment. We've gutted those programs over the years.
Going to area licensing, we were supposed to increase the number of stakeholders in a given area, but we've abolished that, by not allowing people to feel that they have a future in the industry and make commitments as volunteers in many of those areas. In certain cases, we weren't even allowed to feed the brood stock we had because they would then be hatchery fish and not wild. There's a dispute between the wild salmon policy....
I think you have to deal with allocation in the meantime, because you're not going to rebuild salmon within a four-year cycle. It's going to take longer than that.
There are the allocation issues, and expectations that some groups have that they can continue to expand, such as the recreational fishery, which has grown exponentially time and time again over the last decade. There are expectations within the first nations that by reconciliation they will be seeing economically viable opportunities. We can tell within the commercial industry that economic viability is not something we're seeing for very many people within the industry. It's hit-and-miss, and it's going to be a problem as we go along.
Liberal
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Thank you, Chair.
Ms. Scarfo, you mentioned that the trolling fleet catches primarily American fish. The United States, I believe marks 100% of its hatchery fish.
Do you see a price difference between a fish that's marked as a hatchery fish and a natural spawned fish? Do you get a price differential on that at all?
President, West Coast Trollers Association, As an Individual
The simple answer is no.
Even at this present time, when I talk about forgone opportunity, we're not allowed to retain coho on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Even though biological staff over the years have said there is an opportunity, with a very marginal impact on Canadian endangered stocks. If we had a fishery that harvested, say, 20,000 coho on the west coast of Vancouver Island, it would maybe harvest one or two Fraser-bound coho that would be considered endangered, and usually there's some flexibility in that number when we manage other fisheries.
The situation right now is so absurd that we are being forced to throw back American hatchery coho in our fishery. We're landing coho in our chinook fishery that are hatchery marked and bound for the U.S., which we know are not an endangered species. That would provide some cushion in the diversification of opportunities, and we're having to throw them back. It just seems absolutely absurd.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Depending on the nature of the hatchery, whether it's a conservation hatchery or it's a hatchery that's designed to put more fish into the ocean, what you're saying is that we're returning some of those fish that were meant to be captured.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
I have a question for Ms. Scarfo, and maybe Mr. Mirau. There has been a lot of discussion about investments and how the department and the governments of the day invest their money. There's a litany of investments—some small, some large—on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans website, announcements made by local MPs and/or the minister. Many of these I look at and go, “I don't see these as being issues directly related to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans or the enhancement of fisheries at all. These seem to be tangential issues meant more to appease special interest groups.”
Would any of you care to talk about whether or not you think the department is actually investing in things that will make a consequential difference?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aero Trading Co. Ltd.
I can speak on that briefly. I'm sure that the larger the government, the worse some of the spending is, but I would like to see more spending on the counting of the fish because you can't catch what you can't see.
I will give you an example about the Alaskan fish being caught. Southeast Alaska will catch the chum that we won't catch. We're not allowed to catch them because the stock assessment is not there. Our DFO will not let us catch American chum in the Prince Rupert area because they have insufficient stock assessment.
We need more and better stock assessment on the grounds, counting of the fish, and monitoring of the fish, for sure.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Thank you.
I'm going to move over now to Mr. Bryan and his Whooshh system. It's a very interesting technology. You said that you capture about 18 images of a fish that goes through and that with the six tubes you could move about 30 fish per minute. That's a lot of technology you have at your disposal.
Are you able to detect whether or not a fish has a coded wire tag in it when it goes through your equipment?
Chief Executive Officer, Whooshh Innovations
Yes. We are seeing that and other tagging techniques that are being used on the Fraser.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
If you're able to capture that kind of information, then you must be able to determine whether or not a fish has gone through your system twice. Can you tell this committee anything about how many of the fish you send over the Big Bar slide return back through the slide and go through your system again? What is that percentage, if any?
Chief Executive Officer, Whooshh Innovations
We don't have that information yet. We are currently in a situation where we cannot get the data directly as a real-time feed to us, so it has to be transferred physically. We're a couple of weeks behind, so we don't have that information yet, but everybody's working on that.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Is that data collection at risk? Who will have access to that raw data when you're done with it? Do you hand it directly over to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or are you allowed to keep it with your own firm and disclose it publicly?
Chief Executive Officer, Whooshh Innovations
We are required to give it to the DFO.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
How many fish to date have you seen? Can you give the committee any indication of how many fish to date have you moved from below the slide to above?
