Fisheries Committee on May 10th, 2021

[Dr. Richard Beamish]

Remember that I'm old and that I retired 10 years ago, but there are good people in DFO, and the work that I've been doing to look at what's regulating salmon abundance in the ocean has been in co-operation with DFO. We have a good working relationship. I'm quite comfortable working with DFO.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Dr. Angel, what's your opinion on this same issue?

[Dr. Eric Angel]

I wouldn't say that we've been consulted per se, but we work closely with DFO. I think there's absolutely work that we can get going on right away. We're doing a lot of that work already. This new money will make it possible to expand on that. As I already spoke about, we have an existing organization that Nuu-chah-nulth nations participate in that's set up to make the kinds of decisions that we need to make about how this money can be best spent, so yes.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Ms. Schmitt, do you think the government consulted with stakeholders sufficiently before preparing the budget that was tabled a month ago and allocating new funds to salmon conservation?

[Carol Schmitt]

I was aware of it through seeing emails come across my desk. With the local stewardship groups that I participate in, there really hasn't been any discussion about the money. With our enhancement, our information and our solution to rebuild the chinook stocks, the problem is that the department 100% controls who can participate and how you release the fish. Since their program is based on S0 releases, there's been a big resistance to our participation. For all the fish we've grown to date, we've had to rely on our own money and money from our community, which is 600,000 fish, which is a lot of fish, and the community has wholly supported it.

I would have to say that the relationship with the salmon enhancement program, because we're private and we bring a different strategy, has been.... As I say, they've been continuing with their same strategy for 44 years, even with the results that we've shown that can make a huge difference.

You can rebuild a stock in four years to over 1,500 fish, yet some of them have had five million fish released over 40 years, and they're at almost the same number as when they started 40 years ago. That is why I'm presenting here today.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Dr. Johnson, do you think the government consulted with stakeholders sufficiently before developing policies included in the budget?

[Larry Johnson]

I'm not sure that they consulted enough, but I can say that our treaty nations have a relationship built since 2011 with the department, so there is the ability to collaborate, co-manage, codevelop and co-implement plans. We certainly want to work with DFO to increase production, collaborate and try to create balance out there in the resources.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I'll ask you another question, Dr. Johnson. I'll go to the other witnesses if I have time.

Dr. Johnson, given the dramatic state of the salmon situation, do you think the amount of money announced is sufficient to implement a comprehensive strategy to safeguard salmon habitat?

[Larry Johnson]

That's a loaded question. I'm not sure whether enough is going to be enough, but more is always welcome. We can do what we can with what we have, and I would hope that we would spread the money out a little more, rather than it going to some of the big hatcheries that seem to usually get the funds. Maybe some more along the Vancouver Island, the west coast....

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Trudel.

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

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

Thanks so much.

We probably could be hosting this in our riding, given that four of the five members of this panel are from our riding. Mr. Beamish is just outside our riding.

I'm going to start with Mr. Angel.

To go back to West Coast Aquatic, you talked about the important role they play when it comes to reducing conflict and also in terms of co-management. Can you speak about what role DFO is currently playing at the West Coast Aquatic management board and what needs to happen in terms of investment?

[Dr. Eric Angel]

Sure. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, right now DFO is not participating in the management board. They provide some limited support for the salmon round tables to operate, and that's great, but they're not actually participating in the process of decision-making, and that's what we need from the department.

They began 20 years ago in that capacity, and then withdrew. We need everyone at the table to be able to make the kinds of decisions that need to be made. We need DFO back and we need the province there. We need all of the players there, but DFO really needs to show up for that.

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

To follow up, can you talk about what's being invested currently and what it looked like 20 years ago? What are the ramifications of the decisions that are being made right now by the department, by their absence?

[Dr. Eric Angel]

The funding 20 years ago was far more significant than what there is now. We operate on tens of thousands of dollars to keep things going.

The crisis with salmon is a complex set of problems. There's no one single cause. If you want to deal with a complex problem, you don't deal with it by just asking one person and doing one thing. You have to get everyone in the room and get them to figure out together, collectively, what the strategy is. That's what we do, day in and day out, through the salmon round tables and West Coast Aquatic.

With the things we were hearing about in terms of coastal ecosystems, we're doing that. We're collectively agreeing on the research project to go out to the nearshore ecosystems and figuring out how to gather better data and what's happening to the fish there. We're doing all of those things together, and that's the difference right now.

If you're going to spend all that money, my point is not to pitch for specific projects but to say “spend it wisely” and ask the people who are closest to what's going on how to do that.

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

We've heard about resources such as the Pacific Salmon Treaty mitigation fund. You cited that in your opening remarks.

Can you speak about how that's playing out for Nuu-chah-nulth and for the Area G trollers, for example? We know they've had a lot of concerns about the mitigation fund not flowing to them, yet they're not fishing close to what they were prior to the agreement.

Can you speak about that?

[Dr. Eric Angel]

The issue there is on this question of using that money wisely. That money was meant to come to the west coast of Vancouver Island to support the communities that were facing cutbacks in what they were allowed to fish. Very little of that money has actually made it here. We've been going after them over and over again.

We have fishers who are Area G fishers. They've lost a lot of catch and had their livelihoods suffer, and we've made some simple requests to DFO to have that money come to the region. I guess that's what I'm talking about in the larger picture: We need regional support for this, and West Coast Aquatic is there to enable that.

The mitigation fund is money that could have been going to the coast and could have been supporting salmon rebuilding for all these many years. It still could, if the department would simply make a decision around that.

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

Mr. Hurwitz, you talked about how difficult it is, citing the Tofino hatchery, at $8000. I know, talking to Joe Curley and Andrew Jackson, who are running the hatchery at Kennedy River, and you have your hatchery at Thornton Creek.

Can you talk about the few increases you've seen over the last 30 years and how that plays out for your operations?

[Dave Hurwitz]

Our facility was built in 1975. For a house on the west coast of that age, there's lots of maintenance, let alone when there's water running through it. We've done quite a bit of fundraising to maintain our facility and upgrade it to the highest level of biosecurity standards, so we are poised to move into the future effectively.

We're still facing threats like climate change. We need to increase the height of our dam. I have the ability to increase rearing capacity, but we need more water. I'd like to get more crews. Salmon are generally all spawning at the same time, so we could have more crews on more systems.

The money that we're looking for is not for carpeting and Xerox machines; it's for more people and making sure we have effective, well-maintained equipment.

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

You talked about other hatcheries, Tofino hatchery, for example, and$8,000 before they even get off the ground.

Can you talk about how this impacts morale, which actually...? Money unlocks volunteer hours.

Also, what would happen if we just stopped funding hatcheries? What would be the impact to those rivers and the systems where we live on the west coast of Vancouver Island?

[Dave Hurwitz]

For starters, because we all are small hatcheries—we're not federal facilities—you could just shut us down. There are no pensions, no union jobs. We put up to a quarter of our budget towards helping the Tofino hatchery in resources. They've been engaging lots of different volunteers, businesses, etc., just the way we do.

People have to understand that these are remote systems, and in those systems and the rivers that we enhance, there are only a handful of unlogged watersheds on Vancouver Island. These are not habitat issues, but the salmon are struggling.

I must say that through the tagging we've done—the marking—we see results from the hatcheries. I'm sorry, but we do. If it weren't for the hatchery effort and all these volunteers and businesses and locals contributing, there would be nothing.

[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.

Thanks to all of the witnesses for being here with this study. It's been going on a long time, yet there still seems to be so much more we need to know.

Mr. Beamish, if I could start with you, I want to thank you for your efforts towards understanding the open ocean survival with the expeditions that you've undertaken.

Could you, really briefly, tell us if there were any surprises that you found in that expedition regarding what species you found or the intermixing of stocks in that ocean environment?

[Dr. Richard Beamish]

The short answer is that almost everything was a surprise.

Specifically, we found that coho salmon were much farther offshore than expected. We found that pink salmon were at the southern limit of our survey. They should have been the most abundant species, and they were pretty close to the least abundant. Their distribution is going to be much farther south.

We found that pink salmon and sockeye and chum did not overlap and compete. We found a Chilko juvenile sockeye way out in the middle of the Pacific. We made estimates of the expected returns of chum salmon in 2019 and 2020, just based on our catches, and they weren't too bad. We've also made a quick estimate of what will come back to the Fraser this year. We're projecting that it would be a little bit better than the last two years.

Some of this isn't publishable science, but you asked me, and the short answer is that just about everything we found was new.

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

Okay, thank you.

Are there any measures we can take that will affect the ocean environment in the short term? We all hear that climate change is affecting it, and so on, but is there anything in the short term?

[Dr. Richard Beamish]

Again, it's a standard audience question. You hear commonly that we can't change the climate and we can't change the ocean so we're going to continue doing what we're doing. It's a tough answer, but in fact you can do something. If we understood the fundamental mechanisms regulating salmon abundance in the ocean, we would make decisions that would allow us to maximize ocean production.

I could give you some examples, but you guys want short answers.