Fisheries Committee on Feb. 1st, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I now call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 16 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on October 19, 2020, the committee is meeting on its study of the state of the Pacific salmon.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021, and therefore members can attend in person in the room or remotely by using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. So you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking, rather than the entirety of the committee.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation, and in light of the recommendations from health authorities as well as the directives of the Board of Internal Economy on January 28, 2021, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain two-metre physical distancing and must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room. It is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when seated. Also, of course, they must maintain proper hand hygiene by using the provided hand sanitizer at the room entrance.

As the chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting, and I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

For those participating virtually, I would like to 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 floor, English or French. With the latest Zoom version, you may now speak in the language of your choice without the need to select the corresponding language channel. You will also notice that the platform’s “raise hand” feature is now in an easier and more accessible location on the main toolbar, should you wish to speak or to alert the chair.

For members participating in person, proceed as you normally would when the whole committee is meeting in person in a committee room. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer.

I remind you that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses. From the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, we have with us Ms. Bev Sellars and Mr. Frank Brown. From the Skeena Fisheries Commission, Mr. Stu Barnes is supposed to be present, but maybe he's not here yet. From the West Coast Aquatic Management Association, of course, we have Tawney Lem, executive director.

Ms. Sellars and Mr. Brown, you have five minutes between the two of you. I will let you divide the time among yourselves as you see fit. You're good to go now for five minutes or less, please.

Before you start, I will say that if we run into a problem hearing a witness or understanding, if it can't be translated properly by interpretation, we will interrupt and probably will have to cancel that particular testimony. If that happens, any of the witnesses are more than welcome to send in a written submission of their testimony, and it will be put in as testimony before the committee.

Thank you.

When you're ready, you're good to go, Ms. Sellars or Mr. Brown.

[Frank Brown, Senior Advisor, Indigenous Leadership Initiative]

[Witness spoke in Heiltsuk]

[English]

I am of the Heiltsuk from Bella Bella. We are the salmon people. Salmon play a key role in our lives. Around 10,000 years ago, Heiltsuk built salmon weirs after the last ice age and also transplanted them from salmon-bearing streams to non salmon-bearing streams.

My chief's name, Yi´m? a´s ?a´?i´ya?sila, talks about when our first ancestor came down from above as a half-man, half-eagle and landed on a salmon trap. What you see here is an artistic rendition of that name, which goes back to the beginning of time.

We have a sacred covenant with salmon back to the olden times when food was scarce and an ancestor went into the salmon world where Maesila was the salmon chief. This ancestor brought back teachings, laws and ways to be in relationship with salmon. Still today, this ancient relationship is recognized within our Heiltsuk potlatch ceremonies, where twins lead our salmon dance. Many of our existing village sites are close to salmon rivers within our territory.

When we transitioned from the traditional economy to the cash economy, our rivers in our territory were overflowing with salmon. Our old people said that you could walk across the salmon, because it was so plentiful. Now, today, they are nearly barren of any salmon. In their last count, there were five or six pieces on their return.

Over time, we adapted and adopted and had a fishing fleet of both seine boats and gillnetters. In our recent history, salmon was a major economic driver for our village, with millions of dollars generated through our local band store, fuel company, fishing fleet, fish plant and other spinoff benefits. We currently own a 50,000-square-foot fish plant that is now completely underutilized. We not only had a large fishing fleet but shore workers who depended on the plant for a livelihood.

This statement is representative of the majority of coastal fishing communities in British Columbia.

We chose not to participate in finfish aquaculture because we could not turn our backs on wild salmon. We have opposed finfish activity from 2003 onwards, when an Atlantic salmon hatchery was established in Ocean Falls. My granny Maggie's grandfather, Andrew Wallace, was the chief of this village. This place had an abundance of salmon. They called it Ocean Falls because the river sounded like the ocean, and again, salmon was abundant.

The decision to hold our relationship to salmon and not participate in finfish aquaculture because of the disease, escapement and habitat impacts has had a devastating toll on the Heiltsuk people and has had a major impact on our employment and economic and social existence.

We have taken from wild salmon and it is now time to give back and look after these wild salmon. We need to invest in habitat restoration and research to find out why these salmon are not surviving in the ocean. Could it be the big blobs, the ocean acidification? We need to plan and support these fishing communities. It's imperative. This needs to be addressed at local, regional and transboundary levels.

We need to reconcile our relationship with the earth before we can reconcile our relationship with Canada, which is one of the major political drivers of the nation-state of Canada.

We're going to continue to uphold our responsibility and we're willing and able to work with Canada to address the needs of the salmon. We want to uphold the doctrine of priority that was established through Sparrow, where conservation comes first; first nations' social, ceremonial and food requirements are second; and commercial and commercial recreation come third and fourth.

We need to transition from DFO central management to a more collaborative management system.

We need to transition to support indigenous participation in all levels of management and fisheries science.

We need to rework environmental standards, with indigenous people involved, look at projects on a cumulative basis, pay attention to enforcement of regulations and account for the real price of resource extraction and continued pollution.

We need to treat salmon with the respect they deserve as a culturally important icon of not only indigenous people, but all people in Canada.

We need to consider a managed harvest of seals and sea lions to reduce their impact as a threat to the survival of wild salmon in B.C., and provide economic opportunity to first nations harvesters as a part of an economic reconciliation initiative.

We need to ensure indigenous people in B.C. are equipped as allies on salmon issues with indigenous organizations from Alaska to Oregon.

We need to support the development of the national indigenous guardians network, to be the eyes and ears on the land and sea.

We need to remove open pen fish farms from the Pacific waters to give our wild salmon a fighting chance, and to save the genetic biodiversity of these wild salmon as a strategy to manage through the precautionary principle.

Walas Gixiasa. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Ms. Sellars, I'll give you a couple of minutes, because I know you did have part of an opening statement to make.

[Bev Sellars, Member of the Team, Indigenous Leadership Initiative]

Thanks very much for that.

My community of Xat'sull is approximately 550 kilometres north of the mouth of the Fraser River. My people have always depended upon the sockeye salmon and other fish that come up the river. In 1980, we saw disturbing changes in the salmon, and tried to sound the alarm to DFO. We saw worms, the quality of some of the salmon was not good, and over the years it's gotten worse.

DFO was insistent that this was normal, but unfortunately at the time, indigenous people had no voice in trying to change things. Maybe if we did, we might have been able to avoid the situation we are in now.

The Fraser River has been on the endangered list for over 25 years, and one would think that when it was placed on the list, it would be protected, but that didn't happen. It is still used as a dumping ground for all kinds of industries along the river. The salmon have to swim through the pollution to get to their spawning grounds.

As we said in our written brief, and as Frank said, over the centuries, indigenous people have developed an intimate knowledge of the land and waters in their territories. While science is important, without the indigenous knowledge, it is like trying to put together a puzzle with many of the pieces missing.

Anyone who has studied history knows that without indigenous people, it would have taken the newcomers much longer to establish a footing here. Without the indigenous knowledge, many of the newcomers would have perished in what they only knew as foreign land and waters.

At this critical time, indigenous people are needed again. It is time for indigenous people to take their legitimate place in managing the resources.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

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

[Tawney Lem, Executive Director, West Coast Aquatic Managment Association]

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for this opportunity to address you today.

My name is Tawney Lem, and I'm the executive director of West Coast Aquatic, a not-for-profit organization committed to increasing collaboration in natural resource management.

In the evidence presented to you in your December meetings and again today, witnesses have brought forward many concerns about the state of Pacific salmon that touch on fish abundance, fish health, habitat restoration, enhancement and marine conditions to name a few.

I'd like to talk to you today about something that I feel is going very right and that we need to be doing more of in salmon management. It's an understatement to say that the rebuilding and management of salmon is complex. Salmon don't stay within the lines of the human boundaries we create. The interactions and influences of and on Pacific salmon are from the tops of trees to the ocean, from my home on Vancouver Island to Alaska and back. Therefore, our systems of management must be equally integrated. This means a coordinated and collaborative approach within the branches of DFO; between federal departments; between federal, provincial, regional and indigenous governments; and with local communities and stakeholders.

This concept of collaboration in fisheries and ocean management has long-standing roots in federal documents, such as the Oceans Act, the wild salmon policy and more recently in fisheries ministers' mandate letters. The challenge has been to put these commitments into practice. Efforts on collaboration have started and stalled in the past. An example of that is the West Coast Aquatic Governance Board, which was the genesis of the organization I represent.

Formed in 2001 under the Oceans Act, with the terms of reference signed by all levels of government, this board looked at strategic and policy-level issues affecting the whole of the west coast of Vancouver Island. Unfortunately DFO has not had a representative attend the board in several years. A request will be forthcoming shortly, seeking the department's participation to refresh that board's mandate.

At the same time, there are some excellent examples of collaboration under way. On the west coast of Vancouver Island, in area 23, Barkley Sound, the 1990s and early 2000s were a time of conflict and protest where the predominant strategy was that of lobbying with win-lose outcomes. Groups went out on a limb to try something new. A salmon round table was formed where all harvest groups were able to come together, under the principles of improving sustainability, to develop joint fishing plans that reflect local values and maximize the value of everyone's catch. Its path has not been smooth nor easy. The table's achievement though is being a durable and persisting venue for making difficult decisions over the past 15 years.

The success of the area 23 round table paved the way for tables now existing on three quarters of the west coast of Vancouver Island, with new tables forming on the east side of the island and in other areas of B.C.

The premise of these tables is that everyone who has an interest in or the potential to impact the resource needs to be at the table in order for management to be ecosystem-based and to consider the interactions of habitat, hatcheries and harvest—in other words, an integrated approach. These tables are inclusive. They involve all harvest groups, all levels of government, stewardship groups and industries such as aquaculture and forestry. When considering how to collaborate, there is no one-size-fits-all model. Form must follow function, for example, the round table's focus on terminal fisheries and their related natal streams and watersheds.

They're organized at the scale of subregions or sounds. The round table principles, though, are scalable and are present in efforts such as building a salmon recovery strategy for the whole of the west coast of Vancouver Island and considerations for how to coordinate recovery strategies coast-wide.

I've shared the innovations being used on Vancouver Island and elsewhere in B.C. with the hope that they provide the committee with ideas for a collaborative path forward. You've heard from others about how important Pacific salmon are. Salmon bring people together. If we hope to save salmon, we must bring people together.

Thank you for your time today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Lem. You're a little under time, so that will work well.

I want to let the committee members know that the witness we were missing hasn't joined us yet. We will start our rounds of questioning. I would remind members that we have a hard stop at 5:30 eastern standard time. I want to try to be fair to everybody along the way. I will be very strict and stringent on the time allotted.

First, we'll go to Mr. Arnold for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to be here.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today. West coast salmon is becoming very important to all of us.

In our briefing notes, there was mention of an indigenous program review that was done by DFO in 2017, and there were recommendations that came out of that regarding indigenous knowledge on Pacific salmon and so on. One of those recommendations was to have A-base funding for indigenous knowledge and science. That means it would be a budget line, not a year-by-year program, something that could be counted on in perpetuity basically.

Mr. Brown or Ms. Sellars, have you seen any of that funding dedicated to any of that work?

[Frank Brown]

I haven't seen any of that funding you're referencing. It is a good idea. One of our colleagues, Ethel Blondin-Andrew, who was also a parliamentarian, was supporting the national fisheries advisory process. It takes time to trickle down. The Heiltsuk in Bella Bella haven't seen that funding yet. I can't speak for anybody else.

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

Thank you.

Go ahead.

[Bev Sellars]

Just from my area, we haven't seen any of that either.

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

Thank you. That's good to know.

Ms. Lem, you mentioned a collaborative approach with seemingly everyone at the table and the round table working in area 23, where everyone can discuss what's needed for the fisheries, the people who harvest the fish, our first nations and everyone involved.

Can you explain any possible reasons you can see for why that's not happening?

[Tawney Lem]

Do you mean why it is not happening in other areas?

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

Yes. There seems to be a siloed approach to fisheries management. There's no ability to get everyone into the same room at the same time so that we can all understand how much we need to work together to restore our salmon stocks. Do you know of any reasons why that's not happening?

[Tawney Lem]

I think there are probably a few. One of them, which you already mentioned, is that concept of a siloed approach. It's understood that government is big, but we are seeing evidence of that kind of working between departments and the branches of DFO, so it's taken a little bit of time but it is coming forward.

The other real difficulty is that getting people into the room itself is hard, and often, maybe, processes are brought forward as suggestions. They're needed to bring in a particular management problem in place, but in the absence of those relationships already being there, it could be difficult for that table to really take hold. In part, one of the things that we've really tried to emphasize is starting to create a bit of a culture, if you will, of collaborating, wherein the communication is made from the top all the way down, and of giving people some concrete ideas of how to bring these tables forward.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Brown, you mentioned in particular the multiple factors that are affecting our fisheries out there. One of the things that have been looked at is having more selective fisheries—more in-river, very selective for specific stocks and so on. Have you been able to implement any of those programs in your areas? Was it your nations that were putting forward those proposals, and if not, was there any reason you weren't able to?

[Frank Brown]

I have referenced the long history of our people on the coast. That's exactly where we were harvesting the salmon, through the weirs that I mentioned. Both rock weirs and wooden weirs were placed at the mouth of the river. We could selectively harvest salmon. That changed with the industrial revolution. Now the situation that we refer to with regard to conflict has come basically because of gear conflict between the seines and the gillnetters and the natives fighting over an ever-shrinking biomass of salmon.

I was suggesting that the doctrine of priority be enforced—specifically, conservation first; then food, social and ceremonial; commercial; and commercial recreational. That's what the legal directive is. With the in-season fishery, however, the economics almost always trump the decision-making around salmon management.

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

Thank you.

Does anyone else have a short comment on that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Hearing nothing, Mel, I guess that's it. You have about 10 seconds left. I don't think you can get much in and get an answer in that length of time.

We'll move on now to Mr. Battiste.

You have six minutes or less, please.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to our witnesses for their discussion. I'm coming to you from Eskasoni, the largest Mi'kmaq community in the Atlantic. We struggle out here too with salmon conservation.

One of the focuses you mentioned, Mr. Brown, was this term of environmental reconciliation. I'd like you to expand on that a little bit. Expand on what you feel we can do to reconcile some of the damage done to our environment and to the species that we have relied on for generations, since time immemorial. I'm wondering if you can expand a bit on your thoughts about environmental reconciliation and also some concrete measures that we can take.

[Frank Brown]

I believe it really goes back to values, when you put your value on only financial capital gain as opposed to taking into consideration the whole impact on natural capital through a development process. Based on carbon dating, our people were able to continue to exist in our territories for over 14,000 years. Canada as a nation-state is relatively young in comparison. There were reasons why we were able to survive. We have gone through climate change. We have gone through radical changes. We have gone through times of famine. We had our own laws and our own teachings, based on a long-term relationship with these resources, and fundamentally that idea of respect.

The Heiltsuk are part of the coastal first nations. From the central coast, north coast and Haida Gwaii, we've done a marine use plan. We subscribe to a conservation-based development approach where we look at doing things in a more sustainable way. We manage riparian zones near salmon-bearing rivers so that you have to be so many metres outside. Before, with logging on the.... I mean, we had the War in the Woods over this, to protect salmon. That's how highly we regard our salmon. We want to take care of it, because salmon takes care of us.

It's this idea of a reciprocal relationship and a fundamental shift in values that we need so that we as a society can move forward in a more sustainable way. It's imperative not only for the indigenous people of the coast, who have an intimate relationship with salmon. It's also an important biological indicator of the health of our marine ecosystem. If the salmon go, then we're not too far behind. I think we do have something, certainly, to offer this discussion.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you for that.

Ms. Lem, you talked about the culture of collaboration. One program that we have heard has been really well received by indigenous communities is the indigenous guardians program, and I feel like it's been successful because of the collaboration.

Could you let us know what your thoughts are on the indigenous guardians program and whether it's a working model? Does this in fact lend itself to what you consider the culture of collaboration?

[Tawney Lem]

Thank you very much for the question. We have seen quite a level of interest in the program here on the west coast. In part, that's because it recognizes indigenous and local knowledge and really bringing that information to the table. Yes, it does contribute to that cultural collaboration, because it has people who are local to an area being part of that solution.

I think one of the aspects of the guardian program that speaks to one of the things that's really needed is an investment in jointly developed research and science and joint monitoring. When it's conducted by one party in the absence of collaboration and the absence of others, sometimes that information isn't trusted, and then it's hard to bring that information forward to use in a good way for stock assessment, habitat restoration or enhancement.

The guardian program, in using that indigenous knowledge, in having people who are in those communities and close to the resource being part of that solution and having them work with sectors and others in the community, absolutely could be a path forward for that aspect of collaboration.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Just to expand on that, I really liked your point about the co-management of science. When we're talking about that collaboration, it's not just around enforcement but around actually finding solutions based on indigenous knowledge and western science. It's a kind of the “two-eyed seeing” approach, as we would view it in the Mi'kmaq culture.

Is that the kind of approach you're advocating for?

[Tawney Lem]

Yes, absolutely, and having all of those ways of seeing, if you will, is part of that solution. You mentioned that idea of enforcement. When the research is collaborative and when the solution and the plan are collaborative, people have a greater sense of buy-in. With that, there is greater following of a plan, with less need for that enforcement. What we also see is that where groups have created something together, they will enforce their own, if needed, to ensure there is a protection of what they have all built together.