Fisheries Committee on March 10th, 2020

[A voice]

Zeros matter

[Andrew Thomson]

Yes, zeros matter—my apologies.

As Ms. Reid spoke to, we did an extensive period of monitoring in terms of tracking those fish and their success rate in reaching the spawning grounds. We learned over that research something very valuable. The energy expended by the fish to try to overcome the slide area, and the physical injuries that some of them took, resulted in very poor success rates of the fish actually reaching the spawning grounds.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Let me get down to that. Are you suggesting that, of the 60,000, not all of them survived?

[Andrew Thomson]

Very few survived.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Effectively, the run was cancelled last year. Is that right?

[Andrew Thomson]

Effectively, the survival rate to the spawning grounds was very low.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I heard you say that you didn't start blasting earlier because of fish in the area. Is that right?

[Rebecca Reid]

That's correct.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

We lost them all anyway, so why didn't we blast, knowing full well we were going to run out of time this year to get that work done? If the justification for not blasting earlier, as Mr. Johns asked, was that there were fish in the area, we know that based on what you tried last year, very few of those fish even survived, the ones that got past. There were only 60,000.

Tell me why we wouldn't have done blasting at the time.

[Rebecca Reid]

I can't imagine a scenario in which we have fish in the water trying to migrate and we're blowing up rock right beside them. To me it is inconceivable that we would kill the fish by blasting. I think we tried a number of ways—

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

They died anyway. Isn't that right?

[Rebecca Reid]

We tried a number of ways to protect those fish by transporting them, by supporting them. We were unsuccessful but we made some very significant efforts to save those fish.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

You said the blasting will not be complete by March 31. Is that right?

[Rebecca Reid]

That's correct.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

That's not because you're running out of money, because you have money until May.

[Rebecca Reid]

That's right.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

We're still going to have a problem there.

[Rebecca Reid]

That's right.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

There will be incomplete work.

[Rebecca Reid]

Yes, and that's why—and I went through this extremely quickly—there are a number of contingency measures we are contemplating to support the fish that are obstructed at high water.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I was just going to ask you to tell me about those contingency measures, but I believe Mr. Calkins is going to ask you about that.

Thanks for letting me know that.

Why is a river of such importance not being regularly monitored? We have drones available to do this. This is the most important salmon river, arguably, in the country.

[Rebecca Reid]

I think it's an important conversation to have. This is an incredibly remote area. It's taken us months to build a road to get down there. Technology exists now, presumably. For drones and for other things there are safety issues. People have asked whether we should be monitoring the entire river, and I think that's something that needs further discussion.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Could you please take that back? I think it's a reasonable suggestion to make that we monitor at least this particular river, and there are others as well. By the way, I'm not blaming you for this. This slide simply drives home the point that perhaps we've missed an opportunity to do better.

[Rebecca Reid]

We do anticipate other slides in the future.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

All right.

Let me just talk about the costs. You have enough funding until the end of May. Is that correct?