Fisheries Committee on March 10th, 2020

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Okay. It's my understanding that there is a camera there. If there is, can the department make it available to the public to view?

[Rebecca Reid]

That's something I'd have to inquire about. I didn't know there was a fixed camera.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Okay.

Will remediation work be completed by March 31, the 2020 target date? Do you believe that—

[Rebecca Reid]

Do you mean complete rock removal?

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Yes.

[Rebecca Reid]

No. I showed you that model. The model essentially showed that we don't believe it will be completed by that date.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Okay.

In terms of the timeline of events, I want to ask about the decisions that were made in the weeks following the discovery of the slide and the early response. My understanding is that there were people involved early on who believe that blasting could have been done safely in the June-to-July time frame, but instead of removing rock the focus was really limited to transporting the fish.

Can you explain why the decision was made not to use blasting in June and July?

[Rebecca Reid]

Absolutely. First of all, I have to say that this site is extremely unstable. There is rock falling constantly. Safety was a massive concern.

The other thing is that you can't blast and have fish at the same time. When the fish are passing, you are not able to blast. At that time, of course, there would have been fish in the river. It would have been extremely unsafe to undertake any kind of blasting activity. It's only now, during the winter, when there are no fish—we're monitoring daily to make sure there are no fish—that we are able to blast.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Can you explain why the on-site work was paused from September to January—to my understanding, it basically came to a standstill—given the importance of salmon to our coastal communities and how significantly the slide has affected the salmon returns? Was the decision made by the minister to stop on-site work?

[Rebecca Reid]

There were two distinct phases in this work. We had the summer work, the highly urgent incident command system, which was in place until the end of September. It was demobilized after that, after the majority of the fish had passed.

We then went into a project phase. At that point, we started to get a sense of the success of the summer work. Our understanding of that success evolved over a few months, to the point where we realized that we had not been largely successful. We realized that we needed more help and that we didn't have the expertise in the department to undertake the massive work that was required. We initiated a process to seek expert advice outside of the department. It took some time to put the contracts in place. The effort was to find the right people, to seek advice, to talk to technical advisers, to reach out and to then undertake the competitive bidding process.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Do you feel that lost a lot of time in terms of the efforts?

[Rebecca Reid]

The importance of planning can never be overstated. The summer work was extremely intense. It was impossible to plan for the winter over the summer period. We needed to take the time to plan properly so that we could do the work that was required.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Was there emergency procurement authority revoked at any point?

[Rebecca Reid]

I'll ask Jen to speak about procurement.

[Jen O'Donoughue]

During the summer months, the department did invoke emergency procurement authorities for some of the work we were doing in that July to August time frame. Since then, as we've been doing our planning, we've been working within the PSPC procurement authorities.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Just in terms of the site, what assurances do we have in terms of a future slide happening in the same place? Can you speak a little about the risk we're looking at in terms of the future?

[Rebecca Reid]

I had the opportunity to be on site, and I know that Mr. Beech was on site too. You just have to go there to see—

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

I've been there.

[Rebecca Reid]

Okay, so you know how unstable it is. There are big cracks.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Yes. In terms of engineering, what work is being done to help prevent future slides?

[Rebecca Reid]

I've asked that question. It isn't the focus of our work right now to stabilize the slopes—except in the slide area, which is being done from a safety perspective.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Mr. Johns, you only have five seconds left in your second six minutes, so we'll go back to the Conservative Party.

Mr. Fast, you have five minutes or less, please, when you're ready.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

All right. Let's get to it.

First of all, last year, obviously, the fish couldn't get past the slide area. You took steps to try to help them, I understand. How many fish actually got past the slide area through DFO's efforts?

[Andrew Thomson]

In terms of what actually got past, we moved somewhere in the neighbourhood of 600,000 fish, as I recall. But the numbers....

Sorry, the number is 60,000. I was one zero off.