Fisheries Committee on Dec. 9th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I now call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 14 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, October 19, 2020, the committee is resuming its study of the Pacific salmon.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of September 23, 2020. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. So you are aware, the webcasts will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I will outline a few rules to follow.

Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either “floor”, “English” or “French”.

For members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in a committee room. Keep in mind the directives of the Board of Internal Economy regarding masking and health protocols.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you're on video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. The microphones of participants in the room will be controlled, as normal, by the proceedings and verification officer.

As a reminder, all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. When you are not speaking, your microphone should be on mute.

With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do the best we can to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members, whether they are participating virtually or in person.

I now welcome our witnesses today. From the Ahousaht First Nation, we have Clifford Atleo Sr.; from the First Nation Wild Salmon Alliance, Robert Chamberlin, chairman; from the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation, Zo Ann Morten, the executive director; from the Stó:lo Tribal Council, Chief Tyrone McNeil, vice-president and tribal chief; and from the St'at'imc Chiefs Council, Arthur Adolph, director of operations.

We will proceed with opening remarks from our witnesses.

Mr. Atleo, you'll go first, for five minutes or less, please.

[Clifford Atleo Sr., Ahousaht First Nation]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to everyone.

I'm going to say a few words in our language very briefly, but I will interpret.

[Witness spoke in Nuu-chah-nulth and provided the following translation:]

On behalf of Ha’wiih from Ahousaht, I'd like to formally thank the House Standing Committee on Fisheries for the invitation to talk about a most important issue affecting the whole west coast of Canada.

[English]

In particular, our area is severely impacted by what we're talking about.

I'll give you a little background in terms of pre-contact. Most streams and rivers contained salmon in British Columbia. Some had sockeye, some had Chinook and some had both. Others had chum, coho and steelhead. Some had pinks. Larger rivers had all species. Indigenous people managed them all very well.

Since contact, the newcomers learned to harvest and process all the species. Canneries existed on the Skeena River, Rivers Inlet, Fraser River, Nootka, Ceepeecee, Kildonan, Port Alberni, Victoria, Prince Rupert, Bella Coola, Namu and Tofino Inlet. I did make a mistake in my written document, saying that I'm not aware of any canneries operating today. There is one. It's called St. Jean's. It is partly owned by first nations people from Nuu-chah-nulth.

In terms of my history with fisheries, I grew up in Ahousaht. Every family used to participate in a commercial salmon fishery. Our participation enabled our community to be self-sustained. We didn't have to travel far because we fished most of our local stocks. All species were plentiful. All indigenous nations were similar to ours. We trolled, we gilnetted and we seined. This was 60 years ago.

Over time, our participation was reduced, as were the run sizes of all species. In the 1980s, salmon farms were permitted to operate on inlets and bays of the west coast of Vancouver Island. It was around this time that the Canadian government used our trollers to target U.S. chinook stocks. The strategy was to force the U.S. into negotiating what became the Pacific Salmon Treaty. However, our west coast of Vancouver Island chinook stocks were impacted negatively by this strategy. Our chinook stocks have never recovered from that policy and the policies that allowed large numbers of open-net pen fish farms to operate in west coast of Vancouver Island waters. Other species that have suffered as well are sockeye, chum, coho, pink and steelhead.

The existence of salmon farms along the west coast of Vancouver Island migration routes have severely impacted rebuilding efforts of all species.

The management by our Department of Fisheries and Oceans has not helped either. The evidence is that with the newcomers, laws were enacted with good intentions, with conservation being rather prominent in legislation, only to have DFO fall way short of upholding the law. DFO has the authority to manage, with devastating results. This evidence of shortcomings in management has resulted in the current dismal state of salmon stock coast-wide.

Poor logging and inappropriate land use policies by the B.C. provincial government have contributed to the destruction of salmon habitat. Functional habitat is required for long-term rebuilding of all salmon stocks in British Columbia.

Poor action in addressing climate change by all governments is not helping either.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that. It's not very often we get a witness to close under the allowable time by a few seconds. I'm usually cutting people off before they're finished. Thank you for that.

We'll now go to Mr. Chamberlin for five minutes or less, please.

[Robert Chamberlin, Chairman, First Nation Wild Salmon Alliance]

[Witness spoke in Kwak?wala and provided the following text:]

Gila’kasla Hama’thlal Lal’kwala’tly. Wigya’xans hutli’laxa la’man wathdam. La’man wath’dam gyan no’kia kas Lal’kwala’tly.

[Witness provided the following translation:]

Greetings, gathered people. Listen to my words today. My words are from the hearts of my people.

[English]

I just wanted to follow Cliff's lead and speak in my language a little bit. I am imploring you to hear the words that I have to say today on behalf of the hearts of the people of the first nations.

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak to you today about the state of B.C.'s Pacific salmon. This is a critical topic to B.C. first nations, as salmon are a primary traditional food source and are constitutionally protected and recognized by Canada's Supreme Court.

In terms of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, wild salmon are considered or captured within a number of the areas, including food security, culture, traditions, education, environmental standards and territorial decision-making, which of course means free, prior and informed consent.

This current government is beginning to set a table for the implementation of the United Nations declaration, and free, prior and informed consent must be a foundational component, especially to the current Discovery Islands fish farm consultations and accommodations process; to embrace the details that have been provided by the first nations involved in this consultation to meaningfully implement the precautionary principle, especially given that none of the Fraser River first nations were included in the consultations that will further impact their aboriginal rights.

The crisis that is B.C. Pacific salmon simply cannot wait any stretch of time for the fulfilment of the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

With the historic low returns, notably to the Fraser River, this is clearly the beginning of a downward spiral to extinction, and I say this with no drama. Historic low returns equal historic low eggs being spawned in the Fraser River. Historic low spawning eggs equal historic lower juvenile salmon entering the ocean.

It is an accepted fact that only 1% to 4% of juvenile salmon return to be the next generation of spawning salmon, so we can reasonably and logically anticipate that we will experience further historic lows, continuing the downward spiral to extinction in the coming years.

DFO Minister Jordan recently announced this government's response to Cohen commission recommendation 19. The announcement included the determination that the open-net cage fish farms of the Discovery Islands area posed less than minimal risk or harm to Fraser River sockeye.

This determination was founded upon nine science papers that were so-called peer-reviewed through the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, CSAS. The CSAS peer-review process is horribly flawed and provides great opportunity for an extremely biased outcome.

Proponents—in this case, a fish farm company and fish farm industry associations—are involved in in every component, every step, of determining if the operations pose a risk to Pacific salmon, such as the steering committee developing the scope of the science, terms of reference, and discussion paper development, and the peer review itself can be unduly influenced by industry, as they can select who will participate in the peer review.

This is far less than the impartiality and objectivity that I and many first nations, commercial and tourism industries and Canadians who rely upon healthy and abundant wild salmon stocks would expect as a reasonable starting point. Decades of science that withstood international peer reviews were ignored, even though that process was far more rigorous and subject to a completely impartial review assessment and outcome.

Sea lice was to be a 10th science paper related to the Cohen recommendation 19 announcement in determining the minimal risk or minimal harm. Sea lice were omitted from this suite of science papers.

This is extremely concerning, as fish farms are located sequentially along key out-migration corridors of juvenile Pacific salmon and produce billions of larvae that reside in the upper water column where the juvenile salmon are to be found. Given that fish farms are located where there is good tidal flush, the juvenile Pacific salmon are brought in very close proximity of areas inundated with billions of sea lice larvae. Sea lice can physically kill juvenile salmon, but also change their behaviours, making them more susceptible to predation.

Regarding the sea lice conditions of licence, the three sea lice average is the trigger for treatment on a fish farm.

Three sea lice may seem like an innocuous number, but considering that each fish farm has 500,000 to 700,000 Atlantic salmon, the number of sea lice becomes staggering. There's also the production of billions of sea lice larvae as well. Within the sea lice conditions of licence, there's an identified out-migration window for juvenile Pacific salmon, this being from March until June. The conditions of licence are to provide special regulatory protection for juvenile Pacific salmon during this time. The conditions of licence are completely and utterly untethered from juvenile Pacific salmon that they are designed to protect, as DFO does not monitor the presence of sea lice on juvenile wild salmon whatsoever—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Mr. Chamberlin—

[Robert Chamberlin]

If a fish farm company is found to be out of compliance of the conditions of licence, you get a 42-day window—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Excuse me, Mr. Chamberlin.

[Robert Chamberlin]

Oh, sorry. I'm hearing my own voice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

That's because I have my mike turned on. You've gone over time, so we have to end it there with regard to the testimony, but hopefully anything you didn't get to say will be provided in the question-and-answer portion.

We'll now go to Ms. Morten for five minutes or less, please.

[Zo Ann Morten, Executive Director, Pacific Streamkeepers Federation]

I'd like to thank you for your invitation—oh, I'm hearing myself twice too. Is there a way to get rid of this?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, there's massive reverberation. I'm not sure why, but can we fix this before we move on? It's hard to follow the testimony.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Have any of the participants got a mike left on? I'm hearing my own voice back in my earpiece.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Nancy Vohl]

Mr. Chair, we'll suspend for a second, if it's okay with you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Okay, we'll suspend for a moment to check this out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Let's resume. We'll go now to Ms. Morten for five minutes or less and we'll see how it goes.

[Zo Ann Morten]

I want to thank you for your invitation to present on the state of the Pacific salmon.

I've been involved in many aspects of salmon, but my passion is with community engagement through the salmonid enhancement program, SEP. SEP involves enhancement activities as well as programming, such as Streamkeepers, Stream to Sea, community advisers, science branch, veterinary services, and resource restoration teams, which include an engineer and biologists. These were all brought together and built upon under the SEP banner since 1975 to assist the Pacific salmon.

As I listened to witnesses—and the Big Bar slide kept being referenced—I heard reference to the salmon being in jeopardy prior to this catastrophic event.

It was this knowledge that led to the rewriting of the federal Fisheries Act. The work done by this committee on the Fisheries Act assisted in the renewed federal act, with the meaning and intentions of rebuilding salmon runs and protecting salmon in their habitat. The Fisheries Act can be a strong tool, and we await the regulations being written and followed that will allow it to live up to its potential.

Going back to the Big Bar and the response to it, there was questioning around whether there had ever been a time in history where there was a slide of this magnitude. Hell's Gate was brought up. While I wasn't there in 1914, I did work on the Hell's Gate tram in summer 1974 and got to inform thousands of interested tourists about the slide and the efforts that went into the building of the fishway to allow for the safer journey of our amazing salmon after years—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Ms. Morten, the interpreters are asking that you slow down just a little bit. They're good at their job, but they need it to be a little slower.

[Zo Ann Morten]

I worked on a Hell's Gate airtram in 1974 and got to inform thousands of interested tourists about the slide and the efforts that went into building the fishway to allow for the safer journey of our amazing salmon after years or decades of being blocked by rock and turbulent waters.

The amazing part of Big Bar was the response, the coming together to fix it, the concern for the salmon. Politics dropped away, and survival mode kicked in. It took just five days to put together the 3G unified command structure, a very different response from that after the slide of 1914. Studies undertaken in 1937 may have led to a pathway to follow, but in my estimation it was the strength of the salmonid enhancement program that provided the knowledge and staff that would be needed. The ideas flowed about how to fix it, and some parts could be hired out: “Take this rock and put it there.”

For many ideas, the SEP program staff were vital. Existing hatchery staff were brought in to assist in building holding areas and transport tanks. The resource restoration engineers helped build fish ladders and boulder structures. SEP managers were seconded to oversee the day-to-day operations, and area directors who knew the area and the local people came to assist.

DFO Pacific region has a small number of staff, but they hold the unique skill set that understands salmon, water and landscapes. There was a team to turn to and lessons that had been learned.

It's my understanding that when the Big Bar slide happened, the Seymour Salmonid Society was asked to share their experiences of the slide that had blocked the Seymour River in 2015, saving hundreds of hours of research time.

As for communications, Big Bar was and is a big deal. People wanted to know what was happening, what was being done to fix this travesty. The communications tools that were put in place allowed for the participation of all to get a blow-by-blow account as to what was happening, what was being tried, what was being worked on. Never before have I seen such an effort to engage the public to help unravel the story.

This is a very complex problem that the public has a huge concern over. We know full well that salmon and their habitat are in peril. Where's the command centre? Where are the communications teams allowing the public to see what is being done for the sake of our salmon?

We have not become numb to the plight of Pacific salmon. It is the reason we are here today. It is why thousands of regular everyday citizens and some extraordinary citizens have stepped up and volunteered with DFO's SEP programming. It is why we want to help the federal government undertake the changes that the Fisheries Act was rewritten to address. We want to assist in the protection and rebuilding of habitat that will help fish populations recover.

Where is the 3G command centre for the salmon today, where the work is done just for the sake of salmon; where the urgency is real; where those who can, do; where acts, programming, policy and regulations are drawn upon to ensure that the response to flooding is not just the erection of salmon-harming dikes; where economic pressures are relieved by rebuilding our salmon resources, not by exploiting the last few; where environmental conditions are to strive for the best conditions for salmon, not look at the very minimum before their demise; when we stop damaging and losing habitat and instead look to protect and preserve first, and then rebuild and restore what is lost?

We recently almost lost a large part of the SEP programming through government reductions, and very soon afterward we needed the skill sets and passions that these very people have in order to respond to Big Bar. At this time, the number of resource people who understand salmon and salmon habitat is dwindling rapidly, and it is hard to replace them.

We will need to focus on recruitment and training in order to have the expertise needed for today and for our future. It will take every partnership, process and tool we have made and those yet to come if we truly have the will to address salmon rebuilding and protection. We have shown that we can work together for a common cause and have the pieces needed to create a pathway towards this goal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Morten.

We'll now go to Chief McNeil for five minutes or less, please.

[Chief Tyrone McNeil, Vice-President and Tribal Chief, Stolo Tribal Council]

[Witness spoke in Halkomelem]

[English]

Thank you for the opportunity to share here. I ask the interpreters to excuse me, as I don't have prepared notes to share with them.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee. In preparing to do that, I couldn't help but think of being about seven or eight years old with my late mother. This would have been about 1968 or 1969, something like that. My mom was having a conversation with two other ladies about her age. They were talking about how many fish they had put away for the summer.

The one lady responded 108, and the other one said 52, and my mom's response was 96. They chuckled at my mom because with a big family she had put away only 96 jars of salmon. Those would have been quart jars back in the day. My mom's response was that it was not 96 jars; it was 96 dozen quarts of salmon put away in one season.

Hearing this narrative about where we are with salmon in today's state, I can't help but think of growing up on salmon, as we did throughout our early years, right up until a point in time when the stocks started declining, and we had less and less access to fish.

Also, on the other end of it, we had some studies that showed us as Stó:lo people. What you know as the Fraser River, we know as the Stó:lo. It's the mother of all rivers. It's the food provider for us, the Stó:lo people.

When the first Europeans arrived on the shores, they calculated that we Stó:lo people consumed about 1,000 pounds of salmon per capita per year. They looked at other tribes around us, but we had by far the greatest consumption.

I'm thinking of those two baselines in a narrative of reconciliation. My community now consists of 1,000 people. Had we still been consuming salmon at 1,000 pounds per capita, that would be a million pounds per year. We are certainly not anywhere near that, due only to how DFO regulates us and manages the fishery as a whole.

I would really encourage folks to think about that impact of going from such sustenance to where we are now, where we would only have a chance to fish every weekend like we did growing up. If we have a wedding, we barbeque fish. If we have a funeral, we barbeque fish. If we have a birthday, we barbeque fish. Sometimes we barbeque or cook fish just for the fun of it, because it's in our blood. It's in our DNA.

Thinking of that from a reconciliation manner, Mr. Chair, I would think that in this day and era of reconciliation and of the declaration, folks like you and the department would be doing everything they possibly could to ensure that at a minimum our sustenance is met. In doing that, you have tools in front of you around the wild salmon policy, the Cohen commission recommendations and the precautionary principle.

The 10 principles are supposed to be driving the federal bureaucracy, particularly around the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Articles 18, 19, 24 and 38 really stand out for me, Mr. Chair.

It's about utilizing existing tools that the federal government has at hand through the department, and what can be done to prevent any harm, particularly man-made harm. We know that there are climate change factors that we can do only some things about, but we're in control of the man-made influences, particularly around the open-net pen fish farms and the migratory route around the Discovery Passage in particular.

You can't imagine the harm that those fish farms do on a migratory path. When our salmon are out migrating right by these farms and there are lice outbreaks on them, DFO allows a 42-day window for those farms to respond to the lice. In doing that, they are not monitoring the amount of lice that are on the wild salmon, period.

I think there's a missed opportunity in terms of not using tools that the people have available right here and now to better protect and to do everything you possibly can to minimize the man-made negative impacts on something that's so vital to us. It's more than a food source. It's a way of being. It's who we are as Stó:lo people and who other first nations are as well.

Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Chief McNeil.

We'll now go to Mr. Adolph for five minutes or less, please.

[Arthur Adolph, Director of Operations, St’át’imc Chiefs Council]

Thanks, Mr. Ken McDonald, chair, and vice-chairs, as well as the committee members, for the invitation to present before the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

My name is Arthur Adolph. I'm from the community of Xáxli'p, formerly known as the Fountain Indian Band, located 15 kilometres north of Lillooet and 365 kilometres north of Vancouver, overlooking the Fraser River.

I was chief for my community for eight years and a council member for 17 years. My career began after graduating from high school, when I enrolled in heavy-duty mechanics. After an industrial accident, I went back to school and received a B.A. in sociology and anthropology.

Early in my life, when I was eight months of age, my mother passed. Through custom adoption, Chief Sam Mitchell and his wife Susan, who were 66 and 65 years of age respectively, raised me. They immersed me and indoctrinated me in St’át’imc culture, traditions, way of life and authentic St’át’imc ecological knowledge, as well as our St’át’imc language.

My presentation will be from this perspective: the importance of the Fraser River sockeye to our St’át’imc culture, way of life and, most importantly, our food security and well-being.

Since time immemorial, in early spring we have the annual beckoning calls of ecological and phenological indicators that begin at the valley bottom with the blossoming of the buttercups and then the rose bushes, and, shortly afterwards, the distinct clicking sound of the grasshopper we call tl'ek'atl'ék'a to the mountain top with the melting “snow horse”, all of which resonates throughout our territory for the St’át’imcs' annual return to our fishing ground and fishing rocks.

Throughout St’át’imc territory, each one of our fishing rocks has its own distinct traditional name. Also at our fishing rocks are distinct rock markings left by the Transformers. According to our legends, Coyote, one of the Transformers, brought the sockeye from the coast to the interior, leaving his marks by our fishing rocks to remind us of his endeavours.

In the Lillooet area, the St’át’imc are well known for our wind-dried salmon, which is called sts'wan. Prior to B.C. joining the Dominion of Canada in 1871, this food staple was well known to the Hudson's Bay Company as well, which purchased substantial amounts for their staff stationed at the Kamloops trading post.

Sam Mitchell, who was born on June 2, 1894, and who raised me, stated that there used to be so much salmon at the Bridge River Rapids that you could almost walk across the river on their backs.

In regard to the abundance of salmon, Michael Kew stated that the heavy commercial catch was beyond the aboriginal catch. Kew also pointed out that there was an abundance of sockeye in the Lillooet area, and that over 23,580,000 sockeye passed by in the peak years and 5,050,000 in low years. CBC News reported on August 11, 2020, that the Pacific Salmon Commission estimated the pre-season Fraser River sockeye salmon forecast to be 283,000 sockeye for 2020. Last year's return of the Fraser River sockeye is 1.2% of the historic peak years of the sockeye return.

As you are aware, the Cohen commission was initiated by the federal government on November 5, 2009, to investigate the decline of the Fraser River sockeye. The Cohen inquiry concluded with 75 recommendations to improve the future sustainability of the sockeye fishery. One of the major components that we see is recommendation 3, which identifies the conflict with the DFO and in their mandate: promoting fish farms while protecting wild salmon.

I'll move to my conclusion.

In closing, using the analogy of big-box stores, it is not like if we cannot go to Costco, we have the alternative of going to Walmart. This is not so if the Fraser River salmon become extinct; we do not have another alternative. Our St’át’imc culture, traditions, way of life and well-being will all collapse, forcing us further into fourth world conditions within our own homelands.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Adolph.

I realize that you have more material in your notes that were submitted. Once they get translated, they will be circulated to all the committee members for future reference. Anything you didn't get to say will hopefully come out in the line of questioning.

We will now go to our questions.

Up first is Mr. Arnold, for six minutes or less.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

I'd like to start out with Mr. Chamberlin.

Mr. Chamberlin, on November 30, 2018, the B.C. government's Broughton LOU steering committee submitted its consensus recommendations. These recommendations included that a first nations-led monitoring and inspection program be immediately put in place to monitor fish health and screen for sea lice, pathogens, disease agents and so on.

My understanding is that the CFIA and the DFO do perform monitoring and inspections on open-net pen salmon farms. Why was the additional inspection and monitoring program deemed necessary?

[Robert Chamberlin]

First off, we need to acknowledge that there is a clear lack of any measure of trust between the first nations of British Columbia and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I'm not trying to be untoward or combative. I'm just stating what I've seen and heard many times over. As a result of that, there is a very high level of mistrust of science.

In terms of the DFO's monitoring of disease and sea lice on the fish farms, you have to understand that it's a monitoring program. They come by and they just check on the audit. They audit the fish farm company's work.

I'm mindful of a recent science paper that spoke about how numbers were higher when the DFO was around and lower when it wasn't. This is the kind of information that causes great consternation for first nations. We want independent monitoring and oversight, by the standards that we insist upon.

The DFO relies upon counting adult and sub-adult sea lice, but we know that the ones in a smaller life cycle will grow into adults, so we consider counting those, which the department doesn't do, as well as science and the methodology.