Fisheries Committee on March 24th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 22 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 for its study of the state of the Pacific salmon.

Of course, there are lots of guidelines for us to follow. We all know from the public health authorities what we're supposed to do if we're here in person or in contact with anyone else, so I'll skip along, but as chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting. I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

For those participating virtually, I'd like to outline a few rules to follow.

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I would now like to welcome our witnesses. From the British Columbia Institute of Technology we have Dr. Rosenau, doctor of philosophy in biological sciences. From the Living Oceans Society we have Karen Wristen, executive director. Finally, from the Pacific Salmon Foundation we have Emiliano Di Cicco, fish health researcher.

I'll remind the witnesses that they have up to five minutes for their presentations. I will be fairly strict on time, as we want to get to questions as well, of course.

We'll go to Mr. Rosenau first. Go ahead, when you're ready.

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau, Instructor, Fish, Wildlife and Recreation Program, British Columbia Institute of Technology, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Marvin Rosenau, and I'm honoured to talk to you today. My background in fisheries work goes back 40 years locally, nationally and overseas within and outside of governments, including in academic and scientific venues as well as in management and policy and the courts. I am now an educator with the fish, wildlife and recreation program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and I specifically concentrate on fish and aquatic sciences.

My personal view is that the current salmon collapses that have occurred in southwestern B.C. and the Fraser River have largely been driven by impacts associated with fish farms. However, with the recent announcement of 19 farms being removed from the Discovery Islands smolt out-migration routes, along with the decommissioning of the Broughton Archipelago fish farms several years ago, the DFO is moving in the right direction. I praise Minister Jordan, this standing committee and others for making these bold moves.

Today I will focus on habitat destruction and the failure of DFO to address this issue, and that's my theme. Species and ecosystems cannot survive and thrive without properly functioning habitats, and thus I pose the following questions. Are there sufficient and appropriate rules in place in Canada to protect these salmon stocks and species in B.C. from habitat damage, for example, through Canada's Fisheries Act? Are the existing rules being implemented properly, either at the referral and approval stages for new projects where potentially deleterious impacts might occur, or where random violations might take place and fisheries officers need to initiate an investigation and the triage decision folks need to go forward with charges or directed remediation?

It's my position that, notwithstanding the recent upgrades in the Fisheries Act via Bill C-68, which was very good, in my experience over the last 30 years using the act, there is no reason to believe there hasn't been sufficiently good legislation, regulations and policy to protect fish and fish habitat. However, the implementation of these rules has sometimes been woefully inadequate. This can be due to a lack of will in the internal DFO decision-making process, sometimes due to a failure in understanding what constitutes destruction of fish habitat, and there's often a failure in regard to how to restore or mitigate damage.

Staffing capacity at DFO habitat protection in British Columbia continues to be a major issue. The loss of the Prince George DFO habitat office and some of the closures in the Quesnel, Clearwater and eastern B.C. offices exemplify this problem.

My opinion, having worked on this issue for many years, is that habitat protection is the most difficult part of fisheries management, and to do it properly always requires a lot of work and tough decisions. If they're doing their jobs properly, agency habitat decision-makers have to constantly tell developers, farmers, loggers, miners or the hydroelectric industry that no, they can't do that, and that rarely occurs.

The capitulation to proponents becomes the norm, due to pressure both within and outside of government. Roberts Bank Terminal 2 in the Fraser estuary and the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project are current examples of this scenario.

Habitat protection and enforcement staff and the fish and fish habitat protection program, FFHPP, decision-makers in DFO often feel personally and professionally vulnerable to criticism. They try to do the right thing: protect habitat. My observations and my own personal history is that superiors often come down hard on employees who try to take legally and scientifically defendable positions.

As an example, there has been a spectacular failure to protect large amounts of salmon habitat in recent years regarding the removal of flood-land forests in order to develop farmland in the areas between Mission and Hope on the lower Fraser River in B.C., and I think you might have some figures to see. In my opinion, many of these activities in what we refer to as the heart of the Fraser have been clear violations of the habitat provisions of the Fisheries Act. However, DFO has not charged any landowners under the act that I'm aware of, and up to a thousand hectares of prime Fraser River juvenile salmon-rearing habitat have been or will be lost because of inadequate enforcement or bad triage decision-making in the FFHPP.

DFO has failed to properly interpret the science and/or the law, and/or has simply refused to enforce its own rules in this instance, and this is just one example.

In conclusion, Canada has lots of good rules for salmon that are adequate to protect fish and habitat, but the government needs to concentrate on applying its existing powers, and not politically interfering with but supporting line staff in terms of increased capacity and the various ways I've just discussed.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, sir. That was pretty well dead on the time allotted.

We will now go to Ms. Wristen, for five minutes or less, please.

[Karen Wristen, Executive Director, Living Oceans Society]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wonder if we might consider reversing the order here. I have had the opportunity to discuss Dr. Di Cicco's evidence with him briefly, and mine will make more sense after his.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Okay, I'll do that.

Mr. Di Cicco, you can go for your five minutes or less, please.

[Dr. Emiliano Di Cicco, Fish Health Researcher, Pacific Salmon Foundation]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all the members of the committee for inviting me here. It's a big honour for me to be here today to attend this session.

I've been told to say my statement is going to take five minutes and 50 seconds, so hopefully I'll be able to say it all.

I would like to introduce myself. I'm Emiliano Di Cicco. I'm a doctor of veterinary medicine and I have a Ph.D. in fish pathology. I have worked in this field for over 15 years, and for the past six years in British Columbia.

In 2015, I was hired as a fish pathologist and project manager for the strategic salmon health initiative, also known as SSHI. The primary objective was to assess the contribution of pathogens and diseases to the decline of Pacific salmon.

We have evaluated more than 50 infective agents across 30,000 salmon sampled over the last decade as the basis of the most comprehensive investigation of infection and diseases ever undertaken in wild salmon. We have identified several infectious agents that appear to impact the health of salmon in the wild, with effects that can be as great as the well-known effects of sea surface temperature.

Just to give you a few examples, we found that piscine orthoreovirus, also known as PRV, is associated with condition and survival in chinook and coho salmon. This virus, introduced to B.C. from the Atlantic Ocean about 30 years ago, is also prevalent in salmon farms. This is an important aspect to keep in mind, because viruses carry the potential to rapidly evolve, and just like the current situation with the coronavirus, the availability of a high number of hosts favours viral replication and facilitates the development of more dangerous variants.

As a pathologist working in the SSHI, I led the two main studies on the effect of PRV infection in British Columbia. The first study identified the disease called heart and skeletal muscle inflammation, also called HSMI, associated with the PRV in farmed Atlantic salmon in B.C.

Considering that the weight of evidence worldwide indicates that PRV causes HSMI in Atlantic salmon, we therefore recommend that PRV be treated as a pathogenic agent regulated under the Fisheries Act.

In the second study, we found that PRV can also induce a related disease in chinook salmon, called jaundice anemia. This disease has also been described in Chilean coho, and our wild salmon carrying a high abundance of PRV develop similar pathology to what we described on farms. Finally, B.C. salmon sampled within 30 kilometres of a salmon farm showed the highest rate of infection by PRV.

A similar situation has been revealed for another bacterium, called Tenacibaculum maritimum. It appears to be responsible for significant mortality on salmon farms and likely plays a role in the health and survivorship of sockeye salmon, chinook and coho.

Importantly, this bacterium has been found to be abundant in the water around active salmon farms during outbreaks, and the risk of infection in Fraser River sockeye salmon is highest as they pass by farms in the Discovery Islands.

One of the 15 salmon viruses newly discovered by our team is the nidovirus, which is related to coronaviruses. It infects gills—the respiratory tissue of salmon. We see this virus most commonly in fish released by our federal hatcheries. Preliminary results indicate that this virus may play an important role in the survival of juvenile salmon upon entry into the marine environment.

However, there are some agents that impact the survival of wild salmon that are naturally present in their ecosystems. An example is a small skin parasite that causes white spot disease in juvenile Pacific salmon in fresh water and appears to have a significant carryover effect upon ocean survival.

The agents I just mentioned are not the only ones posing a risk to our wild salmon, but they are among the most significant and consistent across species.

In recommending management actions, we can only mitigate factors that we can control, most of which will be anthropogenic. When it comes to diseases in salmon, the main lever we can control is cultured fish, including salmon farms and hatcheries. We have the power to control when and how cultured salmon are grown and their abundance relative to wild salmon. We can regulate the type and level of infection that would be tolerated. In this context, a closed containment system for salmon farms is strongly recommended.

Furthermore, there is a risk associated with hatcheries releasing a large number of Pacific salmon, which may not only compete for a dwindling food supply with wild salmon, but could represent an additional source of transmission and evolution of diseases. Therefore, proactive monitoring and regulation of the health and condition of hatchery fish before release into the ocean is essential. All testing should be available publicly to provide confidence in our management system.

As my last remark, I would like to say that the expression of disease associated with a pathogen is often triggered by environmental conditions that a fish experiences. We should expect that diseases will increase in frequency and impact as the climate situation worsens. The cumulative impacts of stress and diseases are likely not simply additive, and there is no doubt that the direct and indirect effects of climate change are impacting the survival of salmon in freshwater estuaries and the ocean. This is why rapid action to deal with fish pathogens and diseases is not only recommended but necessary. We have no time to waste. We need mitigation and restoration now.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Di Cicco.

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

[Karen Wristen]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

When I was first invited to speak to the committee, I was going to speak to you about sea lice, because it's a subject on which I've published rather extensively. I expect, however, that you've heard quite a bit about them by now, and there's something entirely new that I want to talk to you about instead today.

Dr. Di Cicco touched on it. It's a new study that has come out of the SSHI dealing with a bacterium called Tenacibaculum. Because that is a mouthful for late in the afternoon, I am going to henceforth refer to it by the disease it causes, which is “mouth rot”, if you'll forgive me for being a little unscientific about it.

What I want to talk to you about concerning mouth rot is the significance of the finding. You will all be familiar with the Cohen commission's failure to find what Justice Cohen referred to as “the smoking gun”. I think we may have found it.

This bacterium has been determined first of all to infect wild juvenile salmon and to have, in the words of the SSHI, “population level impacts”. This is what we were looking for all along in terms of being able to quantify the risk to sockeye salmon, and to the Fraser River sockeye salmon in particular.

What's even more important about the findings is that the SSHI was able to spatially determine where this was taking place. By testing actual samples of wild fish along their migration route, they were able to determine that the infections were occurring within the Discovery Islands region, that the bacterium was present on the salmon farms there, and that survival was being impaired to the extent of 87.9% of migrating sockeye.

That's a very important bit of information, and it directly contradicts the conclusions of one of the nine risk assessments the Department of Fisheries and Oceans conducted to inform the minister about her decision on the Discovery Islands.

I want to spend a second to take you back through that risk assessment for mouth rot, because it's important to see what happened there. The department concluded that there was a high risk of an outbreak, that it was very likely that this disease would break out on a salmon farm, but also that it was very likely that juvenile salmon would be exposed to the organism. What they didn't know—they concluded it was highly uncertain—was whether or not sockeye could become infected as a result of exposure. Not knowing this, they went on to decide that neither the abundance nor the diversity of Fraser River sockeye would be impacted beyond a negligible extent.

All of those conclusions are now proven wrong. First of all, concerning the likelihood of infection, it's a certainty of an infection. Secondly, concerning the severity of the impacts, no one one would call 87.9% a “negligible impact”.

This is one example of how tenuous the DFO risk assessments are. The science to underpin them simply has not been done. Here we have it done, and the risk assessment goes out the window.

The next important point is what happened when this information was sent up the chain of command in DFO, or more precisely what didn't happen. Dr. Miller-Saunders advised senior management on December 15, 2020, just before the minister's decision was to be made, that she had new modelling results and new evidence that was highly germane to the decision to be made.

When committee members ultimately get my written documents, you'll see that I've copied into them verbatim from an ATIP result that we got searching for the correspondence around the communication of these findings. It's really interesting to note that Dr. Miller-Saunders gave to her immediate superiors a complete lay description of the findings, so there could be no uncertainty as to how important the findings were.

She said, in her initial email on December 15 at one in the afternoon, that “our models have revealed population-level associations with survival and condition with this agent”—being mouth rot—“for Chinook, coho and sockeye salmon”.

She also pointed out that she'd been discussing these findings and the work that was being done to arrive at these findings with staff for more than a year, so this is nothing coming out of the blue at them.

An excerpt from the lay description that Dr. Miller-Saunders provided made it clear. Contributions from Discovery Islands salmon farms dwarf those from other salmon farming locations. Farm-source infection pressure peaked at 12.7 times the background infection levels for this agent. The model resulted in an 87.9% reduction in smolt survival. It was very clear.

The summary paragraph at the end of that lay description laid it out even more clearly: “Our models raise realistic and serious concerns about farm-origin transmission of”—mouth rot—“to Fraser River sockeye salmon and population-level impacts to Chinook, coho and sockeye.” Although “there remains uncertainty”, she says, “it is the bulk of evidence, rather than any one particular model, that should give pause.”

The summary goes on to say, “Taken together”, the results identify mouth rot as “one of the most likely candidates for population-level impacts on wild populations, and present evidence that infections in the Fraser River sockeye may originate from salmon-farm sources, especially in the Discovery Islands region. Given knowledge about the depressed state of Fraser River sockeye stocks, the evidence we have presented suggests extreme caution and further research are required.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Wristen. We've gone well over the five-minute allotment, but hopefully anything you didn't get out will come out in the rounds of questioning to start very shortly.

I would remind committee members, if you can, to identify who your questions are for, as it will make it go much more smoothly and you'll get more value out of your time.

Mr. Arnold, for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. It's important to all of us on the committee to get as much information as we can.

I'll start with Dr. Di Cicco.

Where the Cohen commission focused on Fraser River sockeye salmon, the committee's current study is examining the state of all Pacific salmon stocks. Justice Cohen used the term, and I quote, “more than minimal risk of serious harm” when he defined the threshold of risk or harm the government should apply when managing impacts of open net-pen salmon farms on wild Pacific salmon. In your opinion, is there scientific evidence that open net-pen salmon aquaculture in British Columbia poses more than a minimal risk of harm to wild Pacific salmon?

[Dr. Emiliano Di Cicco]

We have to approach this in two ways. There is definitely worldwide evidence that aquaculture operations have impacts on wild populations when they coexist in the same region. We're talking about here in the west coast, and the same thing applies in Europe. As Karen Wristen just mentioned in her previous statement, it's a cumulative sum of the different parts that actually raises the question of whether there is actually such a minimal impact or much more than that.

We have to consider a few factors in this aspect. First, we have evidence that fish farms carry a plethora of agents, agents that can be a threat to Pacific salmon, and in this case it can even be wild Pacific salmon, and they can be carried in concentrations, so the Tenacibaculum case is one of them, but this can be applied to several different agents. In this case, the farms can work as an incubator for this agent, but at the same time they can work also as a reservoir.

There was a case we did on VHS, which is a virus that can be retained by the farm as a reservoir and infect herring, which is a food source for salmon as well.

The other thing to consider is that wild salmon swimming by, like sockeye salmon at Discovery Island, and wild salmon living nearby, for example chinook on the west coast of Vancouver Island, have a higher probability of picking up these agents that are released in high concentrations from the farms. That's another risk factor to watch in the puzzle.

Then we have evidence that some of these agents can actually induce lesions and disease, just as we see in farmed fish. An example would be PRV—

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

I hate to cut you off because I'm sure there's much more you can add. In your opinion, is there evidence that open-net pen salmon aquaculture poses more than minimal harm to wild Pacific salmon?

[Dr. Emiliano Di Cicco]

If you put all the evidence together, yes, there is more.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to move on to Dr. Rosenau now.

Dr. Rosenau, 2005 and 2006 were brood years for the record-low run in 2009 and the record-high run in 2010, respectively. What significant factors would account for such a wide range in returns from those consecutive brood years?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

Hi Mel. How are you doing?

I'm assuming you're referring to sockeye.

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

Yes, I'm referring to sockeye.

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

Fraser River sockeye have four-year cycles. There's typically a very large brood year every four years, which is dominated usually by Adams River fish. It seems like there was a perfect positive storm for the group of animals that went out for the 2010...so that would have been the 2008 smolt out-migration. Perhaps the fish farming industry—and I am a proponent of the theory that fish farms have an impact—may have dealt with some of these diseases, specifically sea lice. In any event, 2009 would have been a small run. With the perfect storm of good oceanographic conditions, perhaps the fish farms and whatever diseases were at a minimum, so that's why we can have this flip flop.

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

Thank you.

I will move on to Ms. Wristen now.

I'll start with the preamble. I know you have a background in law, so I'd like to ask a legal question. In its 1997 decision in Comeau's Sea Foods Ltd. v. Canada, the Supreme Court stated that the minister of fisheries and oceans holds the responsibility to “manage, conserve and develop the fishery on behalf of Canadians in the public interest”.

Ms. Wristen, do you agree with that statement from the Supreme Court?

[Karen Wristen]

Yes, of course.

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

Thank you.

I'll go back to Dr. Di Cicco now. Do the findings from the nine strategic health risk assessments apply to all wild salmon populations and the risk from aquaculture operations?

[Dr. Emiliano Di Cicco]

No, they don't. The title of the assessments says that the assessments were based on the sockeye salmon and aquaculture in the Discovery Islands, so they don't apply to all the species and they don't apply to all the regions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold, your time is up.

We'll now go to Mr. Hardie, for six minutes or less, please.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for attending.

This is very revealing information today.

Dr. Di Cicco and Ms. Wristen, we've taken the move and we've shut down—or we are in the process of shutting down—the operations in the Discovery Islands. A key question for me is whether there is remediation work that needs to take place at those locations, or if can we just let them pull up their gear and go away.

[Dr. Emiliano Di Cicco]

It's a question for whom?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I'm sorry, we'll start with Dr. Di Cicco.