Fisheries Committee on April 14th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 24 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 on the state of the Pacific salmon.

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

Given the ongoing pandemic situation, and in light of the recommendations from health authorities and the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on January 28, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain two meters of 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. You must also maintain proper hand hygiene by using the hand sanitizer provided at the room's entrance. As the 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 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 the 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 a more easily accessible location on the main toolbar, should you wish to speak or alert the chair.

For members participating in person.... I don't believe we have any doing that today, so I won't go through this, but between me and the clerk, we will try to maintain a proper speaking order as we go through.

As a reminder, all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. During questioning, it would be great if members could identify the witness they're posing a question to, because sometimes it is a bit confusing to know who should answer.

With us here today we have Robert Hauknes and Brian Riddell, as individuals, and Josh Temple from the Coastal Restoration Society.

Mr. Hauknes, you have five minutes or less.

[Robert Hauknes, Fisher, As an Individual]

I’d like to thank the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for inviting me to make a submission. I’d like to first provide my background in the salmon fishery.

I’m a third generation commercial fisherman from Prince Rupert, B.C. I fish with my father and brother on my father’s boat. My father started fishing salmon when he was 14 years old. He bought his first boat when he was 19, and has proceeded to make a successful fishing business over the years.

My brother and I started fishing as kids, when he was eight and I was 10 years old. We didn’t have very much to do in those first years. It was more about spending time with our dad, though we did learn a lot during that time. When we each started high school, we fished the whole summer for salmon. Once we graduated high school, we both started fishing the other fisheries that which my father participated in. We currently fish herring, salmon, halibut and sablefish.

I’ve been involved in trolling for salmon for over 30 years. I’ve seen how the fishery has changed over that time, from being open coastwide and able to retain all species of salmon during the summer, to area licensing and being able to retain only certain species, to risk averse weak stock management curtailing the timing and areas where salmon can be fished. Over that time, we’ve been involved in numerous charters to do DNA sampling on chinook and coho salmon to help figure out the run timing of the different stocks of chinook and coho.

Salmon fishing has always been a important part of our yearly income. Over the years, I’ve seen a slow decline in the income generated from fishing for salmon. My father has done his best to maintain a viable operation and has invested considerably back into fishing over the years.

When chinook salmon went to ITQ, we bought another northern troll licence in area ATF, because when the catch allocation was divided up, it was done by the average and we had never caught the average in any year that we had fished salmon. It was not based on catch history or participation in the fishery but by licence.

We purchased that licence, so that we could continue catching the same amount of chinooks that we always caught. Over these last few years, and the way that salmon is now being managed, it is exceedingly tough to generate the same income that we used to make. We’ve had to expand into other fisheries, so we can make enough money to survive, and pay our crew members enough in order for them to make a living fishing.

I realize that priorities change over time, and what one government values can change with the next government. Fish and licences are not property, they’re a privilege, at least that’s what the court says. However, when you’ve invested blood, sweat and tears into building a business, you shouldn’t be penalized, because those priorities have changed.

Reconciliation with first nations needs to occur. It, however, needs to be fair to everyone involved in the harvesting of fish. What doesn’t need to happen is the systematic erosion of the commercial fleet under the guise of reconciliation. Canadians are responsible for reconciliation, and commercial fishermen shouldn’t be the ones to bear the financial burden of that. Conservation can’t fall only on the commercial fleet, when there are numerous users and reasons why there are weak salmon stocks.

Habitat degradation, pollution, run-off from roads and residential development are some of the contributing factors to the decline in salmon; yet, there is no talk about restricting human development around salmon habitat only less commercial fishing. There has also been no talk about accurate catch accounting from the other user groups, those being first nation and recreational fishing. I believe that everyone has a right to salmon and fish in general, but there should be legislation requiring credible catch accounting.

There should be mandatory catch reporting similar to what occurs in commercial fishing. It is next to impossible to manage something if you don’t have accurate numbers of removals. The government needs to also invest back into doing the proper science and stock assessments needed to manage the different salmon stocks.

Right now, it is an inflexible best guess, where there is no in-season adjustment to the strength of the runs appearing. Officials make a preseason forecast, and if more fish show up than they expect, there is no increase in the available harvest, and the same goes for poor returns. They do not curtail the fishing effort. Poor data makes for poor management decisions.

I sincerely hope that the committee recommends investing in the science, and monitoring needed to maintain salmon stocks for future generations.

I’d like to close by saying this testimony was composed Monday evening, April 12, after receiving an email Monday morning, April 12, asking if I’d be able to appear before the committee on Wednesday, April 14. While I appreciate the opportunity to testify, a bit more notice would’ve been greatly appreciated, so I would have had more time to prepare.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Hauknes.

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

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell, Science Advisor, Pacific Salmon Foundation, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It's a pleasure to be here today with the committee.

My name is Dr. Brian Riddell. I got a Ph.D. from McGill University and immediately came to God's country on the west coast, where I have worked on salmon restoration, salmon conservation, and fisheries management and science for 42 years now.

I am speaking today as an individual, but I should declare that I am still employed by the Pacific Salmon Foundation as their science advisor.

I do have a presentation that I have provided to the committee, but I expect you have not seen it yet. You will see that in the future. I am only going to speak to the highlights of that today.

The Pacific Salmon Foundation did speak to the committee last July 2020. I do want to support that presentation, as there are lots of useful comments in there. The individual was Jason Hwang. I think you really need to look at his key points for federal action as a reminder of what was said at that time.

A fundamental point for me is that it's fine to talk about the state of salmon today, but we really have to think about how we act for the future. An important point he made is that we really need to be thinking about our community's welfare 20 years out for salmon. It's not a short-term turnaround of an investment here.

The summary point I want to make for you today is that summarizing the state of salmon is not simple. There are over 9,000 populations of salmon. Mr. Hauknes made an extremely important point that the quality of our data is simply not sufficient. Whether it's catch, escapement or biological sampling, we are short on what we need.

Sadly, the state of salmon today is even poorer than what you heard last summer in the presentation. The particular point, as an example, is the return. The gold standard for salmon on the west coast is likely the Fraser sockeye salmon. You may not be aware that the return of Fraser sockeye salmon in 2020 was the poorest ever recorded. In 2009, the Cohen commission was caused because of the returns of Fraser sockeye salmon. Our return in 2020 was less than one-fifth of the return in 2009. You can't get much worse than that.

We have a very serious issue and it is on the minds of many people on this coast, as you've just heard.

I think the Fraser sockeye also exemplifies the difficulty of understanding the causes of the state of salmon. Fraser sockeye salmon rear in the streams and lakes of the Fraser drainage. They go through a highly disrupted estuary in the city of Vancouver and peripheral areas. They then spend two to three months in the Strait of Georgia, which is what we call the “near shore”. They go past the Discovery Islands, which are obviously in the media frequently because of the state of the open net-pen salmon farms and their transition. Then they go out to sea for two years and return.

The abundance we see on the return is the cumulative effect of all those factors. All of these factors interact, so we have a huge job when we talk about restoring the state of Pacific salmon and returning the abundance.

In the presentation, I provided you with a life-cycle diagram. You will all be familiar with the life cycle of salmon by now, but I think the main point I want to make here is that all their various habitats can interact to compound problems or they can compensate for problems. They all act independently. There's almost never a single factor that causes a change in the state of salmon, so we do need to have the monitoring systems in place so we can understand the good and the bad together.

Unfortunately, the state today is generally bad. I use the term “bad” to emphasize the point. There are variations between salmon populations, but generally it has never been really poor overall.

The challenge for us is what to do moving forward. What we're looking for now is strong leadership in acting to conserve these invaluable fish for British Columbia. It's not just for our indigenous peoples and their cultures, but for our social well-being and economy in British Columbia and for the B.C. ecosystems. The Pacific salmon returns affect many different industries. We need a commitment of resources in order to act on this, and we need a persistent effort. This will not happen overnight. I provide in my summary five actions, basically, to help guide us.

Ironically, we have a very strong policy statement that is the management framework to go forward. In 2005, we had the “Policy for Conservation of Wild Pacific Salmon”. It's a federal policy. It has not been implemented fully.

In that policy, there is a guideline that you have to protect the diversity and distribution of salmon first. We do not know how extremely the environment will change or what habitat changes will occur. You can only plan by managing the diversity of the salmon to protect future production.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Mr. Riddell, I'm going to have to stop you there. We've gone over the five-minute mark. I do know that your testimony will be circulated to the members and, hopefully, anything you didn't get to say will come out in a round of questioning.

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

[Captain Josh Temple, Executive Director, Coastal Restoration Society]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and the esteemed members of the committee.

My name is Captain Josh Temple, and I am the executive director of the Coastal Restoration Society, a B.C. based non-profit dedicated to supporting wild Pacific salmon in the environment that they live in.

I'm honoured to join you today from the unceded and ancestral territories of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation in what is currently known as Tofino, British Columbia. I am the son of Arlene Rees and the late Ian Temple, brother to Lyndsay and Craig, father to Soleille and Kalum, and grandfather of Kali Temple. I am speaking my family and these lands into this meeting, as they ground me as a person, as a captain, and provide the framing for my understanding of the plight of Pacific salmon.

I have spent my life guided by the movements of fish, in my case a lifetime guided by the migrations of salmon. Born on the banks of the great Fraser River delta in the fishing community of Steveston, B.C. on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh land, and raised on the western shores of Vancouver Island, I studied the habits of salmon and endeavoured to catch them.

I earned my captain's licence while still a teenager and began a lifetime of service as a captain, a commercial fisherman and tourism operator. I did not know at the time, but I had begun a career in pursuit of a fish that was destined for trouble. I find myself in my later years not so much focused on catching salmon, but on ensuring that the family and people I spoke of have salmon to catch in the future. After years of witnessing the relentless decline of salmon, I created the Coastal Restoration Society and dedicated myself to supporting salmon restoration.

This committee is well informed of the causes that have contributed to the demise of the once-prolific runs of salmon on our coast and is apprised of the troubling fact that there has been little change in the trajectory of the decline. I do not appear before you today to belabour the point of habitat loss, pollution, overfishing, pinniped predation, aquatic invasive species or the residual effects that coastal industries continue to leave behind. First nations, scientists and habitat experts have all testified before this committee and provided overwhelming evidence to support these facts.

Instead I appear before you today as a Canadian citizen, a fisherman cum environmentalist, to emphasize that these same people are already engaged in the fight to save salmon from extirpation and have been deeply engaged in this fight for generations. We have responded to the science of salmon decline with articulate and efficient solutions with legions of dedicated restoration teams, hatchery technicians, activists and the guidance of thousands of years of first nations ecosystem management knowledge. We have created federal and provincial funding initiatives to support restoration initiatives. With thousands of collective minds focused on solutions and countless recovery and restoration initiatives under way, it begs the question, why are the salmon not recovering?

The answer is clear: salmon recovery is inadequately funded. With each intake of the BCSRIF or coastal restoration fund, dozens of viable projects that would aid salmon recovery are left on the cutting room floor. Funding priorities shift from year to year, leaving critical projects to languish or die. One might think that the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been allocated to salmon recovery over the years would have succeeded in reversing the trend, but they obviously have not. The fact is that there are no bad projects, only underfunded ones.

Mr. Chair and the members of this committee, if we are to meaningfully accept responsibility for the recovery of salmon, then we must hold ourselves accountable to fund the projects that have been identified as solutions for salmon recovery. We must acknowledge that we are on the right path, that our science and solutions are sound, but we fail in our attempts because we are denied the opportunity to deliver in the scope and scale that this solution requires. Without emergency funding on a scale that we have not received before, it is my responsibility to tell you that we risk losing salmon in our lifetime forever.

I have spent my lifetime guided by the movements of salmon. As I get older I am all too aware that where I am now is where I may have to stay should these movements cease.

In closing, I ask that we recognize that all of us—first nations, scientists, fishermen, government and environmentalists—are working together to hold the line on salmon extinction. Please utilize the powers of this committee to encourage all levels of government to allocate emergency funding to stop the relentless decline of salmon and allow us to finally gain purchase in our pursuit and latitude in our movement. I deeply appreciate your time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, sir. You had one second to spare; that was perfect.

We'll now go to our questioning, and we'll start with Mr. Arnold for six minutes or less please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses today.

Mr. Riddell, Justice Cohen delivered his report in November 2012, and the strategic salmon health initiative was established by the federal government four months later in March 2013 as a direct response to Justice Cohen's call for more science and potential impacts on the open net-pen salmon farming. Is that correct?

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

Yes, it is.

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

Thank you.

When it was established, the strategic salmon health initiative was provided with a four-phase mandate. Is that correct?

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

It was designed as four phases, yes.

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

Could you describe where the SSHI program is today, and have those four phases that were originally mandated been completed?

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

We have completed the second phase, which is a very large-scale data processing and analysis portion of the work. Phase 3 was to take the output of phase 2 and to direct experimental challenge facilities where you would use particular pathogens and subject salmon to them to see what the effect would be, whether it transmits disease, etc. Phase 4 is simply a publication and advisory-to-government phase. Phase 3, unfortunately, is unable to proceed because we have not got access to sufficient space to do the challenge studies.

The project did try to build challenge facilities through Vancouver Island University, and that failed at the very last moment for some reason. Today we closed the program with UNBC. We will have had about 62 scientific publications from it, but it will leave the uncertainty of certain challenge studies.

In that study we have found 15 new viruses that have never been recorded in B.C. salmon before. It's been very successful scientifically, but it leaves a number of significant concerns.

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

It sounds like it was a success through the first two phases, but all of a sudden in the third phase it's been short of resources to be able to follow through with the original mandate. Is that correct?

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

Mr. Arnold, it's not just resources; it's facilities that would take big resources. To do these studies properly you require containment, because they are pathogens. To proceed with phase 3 would be a very substantial effort to get going, and it would require quite a bit more lead time. We simply don't have that available now.

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

Am I to take it that the strategic salmon health initiative program is basically parked at this time?

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

Basically. Two weeks ago we did an international workshop with fish health researchers and ecologists from around the globe working on salmon pathogens, particularly with aquaculture. We did a review there to limit the number of pathogens that we've been studying and to try to get input from those attending about where they would put a priority in future work. The intention of doing that is that we will have to find new facilities. We've been studying 70 different pathogens over the years, and we're trying to get that down to three or four that are more important. It can be picked up again, but it can't really proceed a lot further without more facilities.

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

Thank you.

In your view has the SSHI work determined whether or not open net-pen salmon farms in B.C. pose more than minimal risk of serious harm to wild salmon? That was one of the conditions in the Cohen report.

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

We have said very openly that, yes, we believe the studies have demonstrated that. I would clarify that Cohen limited his comments to Fraser sockeye salmon. This comment would still apply to that. One of our real concerns is that we have to be concerned about all Pacific salmon, not just simply Fraser sockeye salmon. The answer to your question is yes, we believe there's strong scientific evidence for a limited number of the pathogens. But is it sufficient for us to say that yes, they do pose more than a minimal risk?

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

Do you agree with the assessments from the program?

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

Do I personally? Yes.

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

Okay. Thank you.

I would like to move on to Mr. Temple.

Mr. Temple, you've identified that there are many things affecting wild salmon.

Are you active in the fight against aquatic invasive species and their potential impacts?

[Capt Josh Temple]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold.

Yes, as a matter of fact we are. We have identified through our work as a society that European green crab is a significant threat—and not only to the wild salmon habitat. There is strong empirical evidence from both first nations and scientific monitoring organizations that they're actually preying upon juvenile salmon as they exit their natal rivers and spend time in nearshore eel grass habitat.

Much work needs to be done to understand the evolution and the impacts of green crab here in the Pacific region. We are experiencing a tremendous outbreak here in southern British Columbia, particularly along the west coast of Vancouver Island. I can say that over the past 14 or 15 months now, our society has been deeply engaged with coastal first nations, the province, and DFO in the pursuit of a large-scale, industrial response for management and control of green crab.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold.

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 to the witnesses who have joined us today.

I'd like to start with Mr. Hauknes. I understand that you had a very short time frame to prepare for this. This isn't a once and done proposition for you, sir. If you have other things you want to offer us, make sure you put them in a note to us and send them to the chair. They'll make sure that we get that information from you.

The focus of this study is the health of the stocks. When you've been out fishing in the time you've been able to fish, have you been able to catch fish? Are there signs that the stocks, when you are fishing, are good?