Fisheries Committee on May 3rd, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Good evening, everybody. I now call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 28 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on April 21, the committee is meeting on its study of frozen-at-sea spot prawns.

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 nd remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Just so that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entire committee.

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 either 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.

I would now like to welcome our witness for today.

We have, from the B.C. COVID-19 Active Fishermen’s Committee, Jim McIsaac, managing director; from the Pacific Prawn Fishermen’s Association, Michael Atkins, executive director; from the Prawn Industry Caucus, Emily Orr, lead representative; and from the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union-Unifor, James Lawson, president.

We will now proceed with opening remarks.

Mr. McIsaac, you can begin, for five minutes or less, please.

[Jim McIsaac, Managing Director, BC COVID-19 Active Fishermen’s Committee]

Thank you very much for the invitation to speak to you today.

I come to you from my home in Sidney, on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples on Vancouver Island.

I wear several fisheries hats, including the secretariat of the B.C. COVID-19 Active Fishermen's Committee.

My heritage is Scottish: on one side from a fishing community in the Orkney Islands, and on the other a farming community in southern Ireland. The fishhook dates back at least 22,000 years. It predates the plow by millennia. Fishing runs deep in our collective DNA.

I grew up fishing on the B.C. coast in recreational, commercial and food fisheries. I have fished from Portland Canal on the Alaska border, to Juan de Fuca Strait, out to Rennell Sound on the west coast of Haida Gwaii, and into Tribune Channel in Knight Inlet, and I have commercially fished prawn.

Fishing paid my way through university where I studied mathematics, physics and philosophy. Since leaving university, I have co-authored a number of fisheries research papers. The latest one, on access rights, went to print last week. I have also been involved in multiple advisory processes: shrimp, crab, groundfish, herring and salmon.

The COVID-19 Active Fishermen's Committee is made up of 26 members and reports out to 150. It has held over 50 meetings since the pandemic broke. It works in four areas, trying to ensure that fisheries and harvesters survive COVID. They are relief programs, market support, flexibility and fisheries management, and health and safety community protocols.

In late January, we were made aware that tubbing, the freezing of prawn tails at sea in tubs of water, had become an issue for DFO. Certainly, we thought this was a mistake.

This issue had not been raised by DFO in the last prawn advisory board meeting last November. In fact, it hadn't been raised as a major issue going back in all the records we checked. The practice of tubbing has been used to sell prawns locally for the last 50 years.

We invited DFO to the COVID meeting on February 10 to discuss the issue. Prawn fishermen told DFO of the importance of this market and about the need for clarity now, especially when we're ordering tubs and taking orders, for what may be characterized as an illegal product. DFO responded that they had heard us loud and clear, that they were working on a solution, but they couldn't commit to a definitive answer or a timeline.

DFO attended our committee meeting two weeks later, February 24—no change, no clarity, no means for compliance offered. Even worse, it wasn't clear if there was any regulatory room to collaborate to find a solution that would allow tubbing this year. They could not provide any definitive answer on where this was going.

A small group met with DFO on March 10. We discussed the legal opinion. DFO had their own legal opinion that did not agree, and it could not be shared. We met again on March 26 where we discussed written industry protocols, which DFO characterized as helpful interim guidance. DFO was clear, at least to the extent they could be, that there were two issues that were not compatible with tubbing: minimum prawn size as set out in the IFMP; and “readily determinable” as set out in the general fisheries regulation.

We pretty much begged them to lay out a means for compliance. They would not do this. In short, they do not believe that tubbing can meet the regulations as they are now written. They have been equally clear that C and P action this year would be to inform and educate, and enforcement would be at the discretion of the officer. Next year, there will be no discussion; it will be enforcement.

One estimate says 600,000 pounds of tails were sold in tubs in 2020. At $15 a pound, this is $8 million to harvesters. The average price when sold to processors was $4 a pound. That's more than a 50% loss in income.

Because of COVID, the public is really interested in local food. Connoisseurs have flocked to spot prawns. We expected the tub market to grow again this year.

What is clear is that DFO thinks it is necessary to eliminate tubbing in the future. There is no doubt that this will directly impact harvester viability.

DFO also wants to eliminate IUU fishing—so do fishermen. Does DFO consider stopping direct sales the easiest way to stop IUU fishing? I don't know. Instead of stopping tubbing, DFO should be supporting legal catch getting into local markets.

Putting a legitimate fishery on the line to stop an illegal fishery is a bizarre management strategy. It's amazing that any harvester can survive under this existential threat from the regulator.

Thank you for listening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. McIsaac. That was almost dead on the five minutes.

We will go next to the Pacific Prawn Fishermen's Association.

Mr. Atkins, when you're ready, you have five minutes or less, please.

[Michael Atkins, Executive Director, Pacific Prawn Fishermen’s Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, fisheries standing committee members.

My name is Mike Atkins. I'm the executive director of the Pacific Prawn Fishermen's Association. The PPFA is a non-profit organization with an elected board that represents the 245 commercial prawn licence-holders, 25% of which are first nations.

I am here today to inform you of a drastic reinterpretation of the fishery general regulations by some DFO Pacific region staff, and we are urging you to recommend to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that the reinterpretation is flawed.

The issue is these tubs right here: one pound of tails in a plastic tub. The DFO Pacific region has recently deemed that the freezing of prawns in a one-pound tub is no longer compliant with subsection 36(2), which states:

No person who catches and retains a fish under the authority of a licence issued for the purpose of commercial fishing shall have...fish in possession if the fish is skinned, cut, packed or otherwise dealt with in such a manner that...

(d) where size limits are applicable, the size of the fish cannot be readily determined.

The PPFA, based on legal advice—which I have attached—is of the view that the size of prawns packaged in tubs can be readily determined. Upon immediate inspection of the tub, many of the prawns can be measured in their frozen state, and the remainder can be easily thawed in less than two minutes and 30 seconds, thus meeting the requirement of “readily determined”.

I tried to share a video and was told that it wasn't possible, but the video is titled, “Thawing frozen prawn tails with a deck hose”. It can be found on YouTube, and it shows us doing just that, thawing a full tub of prawns in less than two minutes and 30 seconds.

The practice of freezing prawn tails in tubs of seawater has been employed for 50 years, and it was endorsed by the DFO at the time of its introduction. The prawn fishery lands approximately $45 million worth of product each year and provides hundreds of well-paying jobs. The inability to freeze prawns in tubs would have serious economic consequences to the fishery. The harvest of undersized prawns is not a conservation issue, and this is supported by a peer-reviewed science paper by DFO staff. The minimum size is in place for economic reasons, which is why there is no size limit in the recreational prawn fishery, only in the commercial fishery. Again, I've attached supporting documents for your reference.

The PPFA is working co-operatively with the DFO Pacific region to resolve this issue. The PPFA has developed a set of industry protocols—once again attached—that will allow the practice of tubbing to continue for this year. However, we have been told that it is not a long-term solution. The practice of tubbing is key to market demand and the financial sustainability of the fishery, and there is no appetite from industry to discontinue the practice.

Thank you for your time, and we hope that you share our interpretation and the previous DFO interpretation that freezing prawns in tubs does meet the definition of “readily determined”.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Atkins.

We'll now go to the Prawn Industry Caucus.

Emily Orr, you have five minutes or less, please.

[Emily Orr, Lead Representative, Prawn Industry Caucus]

Thank you very much.

My name is Emily. I am the lead representative of the Prawn Industry Caucus. I'm also the business agent for the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union, a director for the commercial fishing caucus, and a member of the COVID-19 Active Fishermen's Committee.

I have fished prawns commercially for 12 years. I began with my father when I was 19, and worked my way up to running the boat myself, so I do have some experience prawn fishing and prawn tubbing. I have fished in other fisheries as well, but prawn remains dear to my heart.

I am very privileged to be here to represent active commercial prawn harvesters, and the work of the PIC is advocacy and representation for harvesters.

As we've heard already today and over the past few months, this reinterpretation by DFO of prawn tubbing—that it no longer meets its definition of what “readily determined” looks like—is incredibly troubling to this industry and the Canadian public.

The interference with the general community's access to a common property resource by buying seafood harvest directly from the vessels is an attack on the basic foundation of the community, which is access to food from the food producers. We are very much hoping to have some logic and reason brought to this issue, and we're very grateful to this committee for taking time to focus on this issue.

Given that there's been a lot of detail provided already about how we've arrived at this issue, and what the timeline has been since learning of the DFO's reinterpretation, I'll focus my comments more on what this reinterpretation would do to impact commercial harvesters.

The fishery is typically quite short and lasts only 40 days. Harvesters that can freeze prawn tails for sale to the domestic market have the ability to prolong their income, and achieve a greater price per pound than what is paid by the wholesale market. That increased profit is due to the additional time and effort that is required to package those prawns in smaller portions, as compared to a wholesale offload that is happening daily in the live market, or for bulk loads of frozen product that is going overseas.

That connection to community that is also achieved by local people being able to purchase prawns directly from their harvesters is really important to the fishing community, and it's important to the people who live close to the docks that they're able to access that food.

When we talk about the longevity of the income, in terms of spreading the opportunity across a year outside of that 40-day season, it's really important to consider that many harvesters, especially in the last couple of years, have been faced with very low prices for wholesale prawns. When they're able to sell individual tubs to the community members, they're achieving a much greater profit for their product.

This last year has definitely saved many harvesters, allowing them to go to either breaking even or to actually being able to make a profit. Some harvesters have come to me and told me that if they had not been able to sell their frozen prawn tubs over the winter to their community members, they would have gone backwards.

There's a terrific cost to going fishing. To make a profit, several thousand pounds need to be caught right off the bat in order for the expenses to be looked after before anybody will make money. Being able to sell prawns, frozen in tubs, is something that is incredibly critical to the viability of fish harvesters.

In this situation, we're very much hoping for a review of this reinterpretation and one that can provide an avenue for us to support C and P in its responsibility to uphold the regulations, and one that also accepts the freezing of prawn tails in tubs.

We have proposed that a condition of licence be added that defines what “readily determined” means, and then provides wording that would request, and require prawn harvesters to thaw tubs of prawns in a set amount of time—less than five minutes, for example—upon an inspection request by C and P.

We feel this is a very reasonable way forward to resolve this for everybody and for all parties to move on, and we're very much hoping the work of this committee will facilitate that.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Orr.

We'll now go to the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union-Unifor.

Mr. Lawson, welcome back to FOPO. You're up for five minutes or less, please.

[James Lawson, President, United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union – Unifor]

Thank you for this opportunity to speak today.

My name is James Lawson. I'm president of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union-Unifor, a representative of the Prawn Industry Caucus and a prawn fisherman.

DFO's mandate includes maintaining the sustainability of fisheries and working with fishers to enable continued prosperity from fish and seafood. Prawn tubbing is not a sustainability issue, and it is in direct opposition to enabling our prosperity and the prosperity of others who purchase our prawns.

As a prawn fisherman, I adhere to regulations, including trap limit, minimum mesh size, daily single hauls, time and area closures and the spawner index, to maintain the sustainability of the stock. When a trap comes aboard, if a small prawn hasn't already escaped through the appropriately sized mesh, it goes onto a grading table, where we handle each individual prawn to ensure that it's not bearing eggs and is of appropriate size. We also sort out the other species, if present.

Measuring devices are always close at hand. We put in great time and effort to make sure that we provide a quality product and maintain the sustainability of our stocks. We don't want to keep undersized product. We certainly don't want to have it aboard for a week or more, risking penalties.

If conservation and protection wanted to exercise their right to board my vessel and check for undersized prawns, they would have ample opportunity. It could be done using a sample off the grading table, taking a sample out of the live tank, taking an unfrozen tub off the freezer plates, or thawing a frozen sample in little to no time using a deck hose, kettle or hot water from a tap. It's insulting that conservation and protection could look past all of this to reinterpret the general fisheries rule for just one fishery, and then say these penalties are at the discretion of officers for the season. It will be a great risk to process in this manner without DFO officially stating it will be legal to tub prawns this year.

I encourage industry-made solutions, but this issue has many small and simple solutions. It feels like we are being coerced in the making of binding decisions ourselves. I do not think enforcing a tub ban would stand in a court of law. I think it would be a big waste of everybody's time and money. The solution could be as simple as a reasonably sized transparent container.

Is there nothing to be said for precedence? This has been done for decades without problems. There was no recent spike in undersized prawn infractions that would be cause for reinterpretation. You'll do nothing but hurt the markets of prawn fishermen. Frozen tubs sold in my hometown were my most valuable product last year, beating my most valuable export prawns by four dollars a pound. Many fishermen, including me, were planning to tub a lot more this year to provide more prawns to our home communities. People are willing to pay a good price for superior product when they know who caught it and where it came from, and know that it's not an inferior product imported and found on a grocery store shelf.

Prawns have always been valuable in local markets. They were further explored as a viable option last year in response to the COVID pandemic creating export market uncertainty. I don't know the official figures, but local tub sales were said to grow tenfold compared with previous years. This is a great success story of local seafood being available to local markets. It is economic prosperity. It is food security. It humanizes us and makes us proud to be able to provide for people we know, giving a visible attachment to our labour.

If prawn-tubbing is taken away, it means British Columbians may only be able to access prawns in season, if they live close to a boat who's delivering live to the dock, or from a restaurant who is buying live prawns, or obtaining some sort of poorer-quality frozen product. People like to eat prawns year-round. The best way to preserve them is frozen in tubs of sea-water. That is the superior product that restaurant owners will purchase for their meals outside of May and June.

Taking tubs away leaves us only with the export market for vessels who freeze at sea. There are many examples of how that can hurt the bottom line of fishing businesses when the primary market is not favourable, as it now due to the pandemic. It is strange that DFO is presently considering a date change based on availability of local markets while simultaneously taking away another.

This proposed ban is not about sustainability. It is not working with fishermen to enable the continued prosperity of us or those who rely on or enjoy the product. It is of detriment to food security. It singles out one fishery in a long-standing regulation. Let us be a success story with a strong local market. What is happening is not right. It serves only to devalue catching prawns and make them unavailable to us.

I'd like to end this before it even begins.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Lawson. You were right on time.

I will say, Mr. Lawson, that the interpreters were having some trouble hearing you properly. Fortunately, I think they did have your written statement, so they were able to do the translation.

For the question round, the interpreters are suggesting that if you turn off your iPad or laptop video and just leave on your sound, they might be able to pick up the sound better and be able to translate appropriately.

That concludes our testimony. We'll now go to questions by members of the committee.

Mr. Bragdon, you have six minutes or less.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to each of the witnesses for your testimony, insight and expertise.

I can't help it, Mr. Lawson, but seeing you actually on the boat while you're doing testimony before committee, there's just something that seems so right about that. Anyway, good job, and thanks for taking time for doing what you do best to talk to us here at committee. We appreciate it.

I want to start with a question. It can go to each of the members before the committee.

I would be interested in your perspectives. The change in the interpretation seems to be felt, as we've heard testified, right across the industry and across the sector. Have any of you been consulted by the minister or DFO before this change came about? As part two of that, were you given any advance notice that they may be looking at reinterpreting the regulations?

I'll go across the panel with that. I can start with you, Mr. McIsaac, and then work across.

[Jim McIsaac]

I would say no—no prior knowledge of this and no consultation prior to the change being made.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay.

Ms. Orr.

[Emily Orr]

Thank you.

It was quite a shock to hear about it. I heard about it more as a rumour. It was unconfirmed what DFO's position or intention was until we were able to work towards a meeting.

Once I heard that it was in fact true that DFO was looking to interpret the regulations, I pulled up the prawn advisory board reports from the past three years. At no time has C and P delivered any specific report or flagged this matter for the prawn advisory board to review, nor have they flagged the issue of retention of undersized prawns as something at issue, so this comes, as you might imagine, as quite a shock.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Ms. Orr.

Mr. Atkins.

[Michael Atkins]

Yes, I can provide a bit of clarity on what exactly happened.

The PPFA, along with C and P and fish management, had developed a committee to discuss traceability and ways to limit illegal product entering the marketplace. It was during our fourth meeting, a few months in, when the fishery officer asked about the tubs. It was at that time, on the following day, that we were notified that this regulation was being reinterpreted, and that was the issue. It came up organically. There was no warning whatsoever and really was frustrating when we were at the table to do great traceability work for the industry.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Atkins.

Mr. Lawson.

[James Lawson]

No prior warnings for me: It came as quite a shock.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay.

I see, Mr. McIsaac, that you have your hand back up. I'd be glad to hear from you again.

[Jim McIsaac]

I have just one comment. I've been made aware there has been some enforcement action on exactly this with the recreational sector recently in the last six months. I'm not sure if that is behind this.

It was for a recreational fisherman who had frozen his prawns in tubs. I don't think there was any intention to sell that in the market, but that was how he had saved his prawns. He was told that was not correct and was charged with that. That might be something that's also driving this.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you.

Ms. Orr.

[Emily Orr]

Thank you.

It may be helpful also to note that C and P does provide, in the post-season review meeting, a report to the prawn advisory board numbering how many violations they've found in the season.

For 2020, there was no reference to retention of undersized prawns. In 2019, there were eight categories of violations encountered. Prawn size is listed as one of them, but with no reference as to whether it was frozen-at-sea prawns or live prawns or prawns found at a fish processing facility.

That's to give some context to this and how we're presented with that information.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Orr.

For each of you, have you reached out to DFO or to the minister's office? If so, have you received a reply or a justification for the decision? Have you heard back from either DFO or the minister regarding that?

We're starting with you, Ms. Orr, and we'll work from there.

[Emily Orr]

Thank you.

We did speak with DFO on this. We have been requesting meetings and speaking with Neil Davis and discussing the issue. We did write a letter to the minister as well to request assistance in bringing resolution and some logic to this issue.

What we've been told is that for this year, DFO is willing to overlook the regulation in terms of not finding violations for prawn tubbing, but that after this year, there will be no more grace period. The response we've been given is that we're allowed to tub this year, but not after that, and that's sort of the end of the conversation in that regard.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

They're still providing uncertainty.

Mr. McIsaac, do you have anything you'd like to add on that?

[Jim McIsaac]

We worked with the region for a couple of months trying to get some kind of resolution with them and some kind of means for compliance on that. Not seeing that, we reached out to the minister's office. They came back and said, basically, that it would be pretty much status quo for this year and that there would be work with the sector over the coming year to bring something different in for next year.

In saying it's status quo, they did say that it would be at the discretion of the C and P officer as well.