Evidence of meeting #4 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 work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Hardie.
Before I go back to the Conservative side, I want to remind members that the analysts are trying to note all the information. When we get anyone talking, especially up close to this end of the table, it's very annoying. I don't want to have to start calling out names, but I will if I have to.
We'll now move to the Conservative side with Mr. Fast for five minutes or less, please.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to go to the report dated December 1.
You stated here earlier that there were 60,000 fish that were assisted past the slide, of which very few survived. A total of 140,000 went through, so that means another 80,000 went through naturally. Do you know how many of those 80,000 survived?
9:55 a.m.
Regional Director, Fisheries Management, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I don't have the exact figures in front of me per stock. We know that the additional fish moved through at lower flow rates and got through on their own, but they still may have been stressed somewhat.
We looked, as we do each year, at the number of fish that reach the spawning grounds.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
10 a.m.
Regional Director, Fisheries Management, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Yes.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
It says here that 30,000 fish per day were monitored passing unassisted through the slide. Were there 30,000 fish per day going past there? Is that a typo? Can you explain that?
It sounds like it's inconsistent with the testimony you gave earlier that a total of 60,000 were artificially assisted past the slide and 80,000 made it through naturally.
10 a.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
That total upstream salmon passage past Big Bar at that time, according to the numbers I have, was about 275,000 Fraser salmon. Natural passage was 245,300 and transported was 60,000.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
I thought you said there was a total of 140,000 that actually made it past.
10 a.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Well—
10 a.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
These are the numbers I have, and my apologies if I misspoke before.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Okay, then, I'll ask you to get back to us with clarification. We want to know how many were assisted and how many went through naturally.
The other question is this: When did this slide actually occur? We know when someone noticed it, which was someone doing river rafting, but do we know exactly when that slide happened? I understand there's an indication that it could have been in 2018?
10 a.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
We believe it was in November 2018.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
I'll go back to my suggestion that had there been regular monitoring, whether by drone, by foot or otherwise, or the identification of key critical areas that were perhaps at risk, and the regular monitoring of those, it would have identified this problem earlier and you could have actually had more time to remediate and reduce the risk to the salmon population.
10 a.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Yes, if we had known, we could have started earlier.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Yes.
Why did it take five months to issue the RFI? The RFI was issued in November, but you already knew in June that we had a crisis here. Why five months? Did it take that long to craft the parameters of the RFI?
10 a.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I'm sure Jen will want to jump in, but the incident command system was in place until the end of September. At that point, we demobilized and moved to project management. It was then that we started looking at what's next and realizing we needed more expertise to help design a plan.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
It sounds like you were overwhelmed with the critical nature of this problem.
10 a.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
We were entirely focused on doing everything we could at the time to resolve the problem, and we were very optimistic that we would be able to do so.
10 a.m.
Regional Director General, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
We are disappointed that we weren't more successful. Absolutely.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Let me get to cost. Have you identified what the total cost will be to remediate the slide?
10 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I don't think we're in a position to say what the total cost is at this point, because it's evolving daily as we go through. We can talk about what we're estimating to spend before the end of this fiscal year, if that's a helpful answer.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
If you have an estimate of what it will take to get you to the end of the fiscal year, it seems to me you will have already done some planning of what happens beyond and what that cost would look like.
March 10th, 2020 / 10 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
We're still estimating exactly what the total cost will be to remediate. We're anticipating that the federal portion of the spend by the end of this fiscal year will be in the range of $24 million. That continues to change as we go through our work. That doesn't include the provincial portion. Then there is an additional approximately $20 million we're anticipating spending between now and the end of May. That's the federal portion, not including the provincial portion.