Fisheries Committee on April 26th, 2021

[Dr. Kristi Miller-Saunders]

The increased survival of hatchery fish...?

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Yes.

[Dr. Kristi Miller-Saunders]

Yes. One of the things that we have done is develop a means to measure different kinds of stress in hatcheries as well. The way that we culture fish is fairly without habitat, essentially, and one of the issues that has come up is that hatchery fish don't behave the same and don't survive the same as a wild fish. If we can find ways of creating hatchery fish that have a very low level of stress and that behave more like a wild fish, we would potentially not only increase their potential for survival but we would decrease the domestication effects of hatcheries.

The FIT-CHIP applications could identify the optimal window of timing when salmon are ready to enter the marine environment so that we can identify the smolt window, and so that when they enter the marine environment they are able to deal with the change in salinity, which is a very stressful period of time.

We can identify whether fish are experiencing a viral disease state in the hatchery, for example, in a way that's non-invasive, that doesn't actually require the death of the fish to sample it. We can identify whether the practices that we use in hatcheries are stressful on the fish. If we start seeing indices of stress in the fish, we can mitigate those different activities to try to find the least stressful way that we can be growing salmon and releasing the healthiest and least-stressed fish.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Johns.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll go to Ms. Miller-Saunders again.

Are you concerned that the finding of mouth rot by your team indicates a greater risk to wild salmon populations than DFO believed to be the case when the risk assessment for that pathogen was done?

[Dr. Kristi Miller-Saunders]

Well, our finding is for Tenacibaculum. Mouth rot is the disease caused by Tenacibaculum in farms.

The work we did was after the CSAS process, so they did not have the same level of information available to them when they performed the CSAS process. I do think it is important, and as was said in every CSAS process, as new information arises, new scientific data, they will reconsider the level of risk that they have determined in the CSAS.

I do fully expect that the new data coming out of our program, which not only suggests that there is a population-level risk...and that's something that they weren't able to look at very holistically with empirical data in the CSAS process because they simply didn't have multiple years of data to look at variations of each of those agents with them and at survival. We had that data. We were able to do that. That makes us quite unique in terms of the research programs on our coast. Now that we know there is a potential population-level effect, they need to go back and look at their estimation of less than 1% impact on sockeye salmon.

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

Thank you.

In your view, were the nine risk assessments used to inform the Discovery Island decision correct in their conclusions that those nine pathogens posed less than minimal risk for wild Pacific salmon?

[Dr. Kristi Miller-Saunders]

I was personally involved only in the PRV CSAS and my colleague Andrew Bateman was involved in the Tenacibaculum, so I can't really speak to what went on in the room with all nine of those.

I can say that in the PRV CSAS, they were very heavily reliant on the challenge studies that have been performed in DFO. They were reluctant to consider one critical flaw that I flagged numerous times in the CSAS, which was those challenge studies used mortality and clinical signs of disease as the end point to be able to declare that PRV causes disease. Nowhere in the world has mortality been demonstrated in a PRV challenge, even in Norway.

Why would we expect that mortality and clinical signs of disease should be present in a challenge in B.C. when it isn't present in Norwegian challenge studies? Challenge studies for PRV generally rely on the incidents of the pathological lesions that occur in the fish. The early studies performed, which a lot of the CSAS were based on, didn't do a lot of pathology in their analysis.

I think there was an error on the side of the uncertainty in that they felt more certain in the results of the challenge studies than they should have.

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

Thank you.

If the minister were to ask you if she could say with confidence today that fish farms in the Discovery Islands pose less than minimal risk to wild Pacific salmon, what would your advice to her be?

Could she say with confidence that they pose less than minimal risk?

[Dr. Kristi Miller-Saunders]

If you're talking about minimal risk to sockeye salmon specifically in the Discovery Islands, I would say she should give pause and not make that sort of declaration until we have fully ironed out the role of Tenacibaculum in the sockeye salmon declines.

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

What is the science evidence that Pacific fish farms pose more than minimal risk to wild Pacific salmon?

[Dr. Kristi Miller-Saunders]

There are many different types of evidence. Certainly one that wasn't explored in the CSAS was the sea lice. Simon Jones talked about that briefly here. Certainly there are challenges with resistance to the drug and the ability of the industry to keep the lice levels down.

In terms of the work that we've done, our evidence centres around two pathogens—PRV and Tenacibaculum—but we're not done. Those are the ones that we've actually performed the models on to look at those risks. There very well may be others.

One thing we are embarking on now is looking at environmental DNA, which is a way of looking at the concentration of infective agents in the water column. We will actually be able to look at whether or not we can recognize the shift in the pathogen communities in the water column when farms are switching to a disease state before that disease state causes significant mortality. This would be potentially a tool that the regulator could use to determine what kind of mitigative actions they could take before there's major loss or before there is more risk to wild salmon.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold.

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

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

Thank you again, Mr. Chair.

I wanted to talk about the role of the province. One of our witnesses said something to the effect that the province of B.C. kind of vacated the field in certain areas, particularly when it came to habitat, and that we had one DFO officer in Kamloops trying to cover an amazing amount of territory.

Ms. Reid, does that sound like something that you heard along the way?

[Rebecca Reid]

I can't speak to the staffing levels in B.C., but I think that we are always challenged to have enough habitat people on the ground, given the significant territory they have to cover.

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

The staffing level was the DFO person in Kamloops, basically by themselves.

Let's turn this on its head a little bit. What's the role of the province, particularly in the inland waters, that complements or is supposed to complement the work of the DFO?

[Rebecca Reid]

The province has responsibilities for fresh water, with the exception of the management of salmon. When you're looking at agriculture, land types of decisions, water flow and water availability, those are areas where we do interact with the Province of B.C. It has responsibilities for steelhead management, for example, so there's another interaction. We work with the province from a habitat perspective quite carefully and significantly. We also work with it in the marine environment—for example, for aquaculture for our tenures. That's the interface between DFO and B.C. when it comes to land and water.

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

I don't want to put you terribly on the spot, but would it appear that the province is somewhat challenged keeping up its end of the work that needs to be done?

[Rebecca Reid]

As I said, there is a ton of work to be done. We work collaboratively with B.C. We have MOUs with it. We do our best to work together. The BCSCRIF, for example, is jointly funded, so Canada and B.C. together set those priorities and have put money aside to support this. I think those are examples of how we're working with it effectively.

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

Do they need help? Do they need more resources to provide a balance and properly complementary role to the DFO?

[Rebecca Reid]

I think you'd have to ask them that, but we've had some great working relationships with them, including at the Big Bar site, where they have been, hand in hand, helping us support that very significant project.

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

Again, over time and in a number of studies where we talk about the health of fish stocks, and particularly salmon, there have been a lot of discussions about activities that are going on: damage to riparian areas; residential and farming and industrial activities close to the banks of the Fraser River, etc. Is there dialogue between the DFO and the province when the province or some of the regional districts are looking at approving projects that could have a negative effect on salmon?

[Rebecca Reid]

We do have an MOU with the province. It has the riparian areas regulations that they put in place. They have responsibilities, as do we. DFO has responsibility for authorizing habitat destruction, so there is an interface between us where we need to work together. I'll leave it at that for now.

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

Is there a register of decisions that have been made that have resulted in habitat destruction?

[Rebecca Reid]

A register...? I'm not sure. Certainly we document all the authorizations that we develop. There is a database that collects that information, yes.