Fisheries Committee on May 10th, 2021

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Do you mean looking at open-pen salmon farming?

[Larry Johnson]

Yes.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Then this would be an economic activity you're considering pursuing.

[Larry Johnson]

Absolutely. One of our nations is going down the path of building a relationship and finding out for themselves and addressing their concerns, so we'll see where that goes.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you.

You also—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Sorry, Mr. Morrissey; your time is up. You're probably not going to finish the question or get an answer in the four seconds that are left.

We'll now go to Monsieur Trudel for two and a half minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses once again. I'm learning a lot from this absolutely fascinating discussion.

Dr. Beamish, do you think enough resources are being invested right now to reduce the impact of pollution and climate change on Pacific salmon populations? I'm also talking about their conservation.

Earlier you gave the example of Russia. Do you think Fisheries and Oceans Canada can learn from Russia in this area?

[Dr. Richard Beamish]

I think we have the resources and I think Canada should be inspired by Russia. We had a virtual conference a few weeks ago to look at the results of our two expeditions, and the agriculture minister of Russia welcomed us in our virtual conference. Russia is taking their reduction in 2020 very seriously.

We had the worst catches in 35 years. This is all countries. There has to be a common mechanism that caused the decline. I think it's the coastal ocean, as was brought up earlier, perhaps by Mr. Arnold. It's less the number of resources that we have but how we use them, and we need a focus to see a bigger picture.

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

Thank you.

Dr. Angel, in your opening remarks, you talked about the issue of employment. You mentioned that this was very important to ensure better conservation of salmon populations.

Do you think everything is in place to create and maintain jobs in this area?

[Dr. Eric Angel]

No. There's a great deal of work that could still be done to create jobs in this context.

This kind of economy that we need to transition to with respect to salmon involves a lot more looking after the salmon as opposed to thinking about how many of them we can get out of the ocean to sell. That's part of it still, absolutely, but we need to be rebuilding the ecosystems, both the ones on land and in the nearshore environment, where we can have some influence.

We have lots of opportunities to put people to work doing that. We need guardian programs. Our first nations are always out on the water before anyone else is, yet we struggle to find enough money to employ people doing that. Money can go towards having people out on the water, looking and paying attention to what's going on.

We need to be doing more science. DFO has a fantastic science department. There's lots of capacity in the private sector, and in our nations, we could be doing work there too.

There's tourism related to this as well. Salmon bring bears; bears bring tourists. There are all sorts of possibilities here. We're stuck thinking that we just need to get more salmon again so we can keep on fishing them as we were doing. We need to be a bit more imaginative than that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Trudel.

We'll now go to Mr. Johns for two and a half minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Johnson, as just a quick question, you're running a leading company on the west coast. It's the only cannery on the west coast right now. There were 80 canneries back in the day.

I know you've been a huge advocate for getting more investment into companies like yours, indigenous-led companies that are providing value added. Can you talk about how important it is that we invest in fostering and developing value added, especially in the new areas you're embarking on, like seaweed and kelp and other areas?

[Larry Johnson]

There could be a lot more funding put towards this type of aquaculture, whether it be kelp or—

I'm sorry, Gord. Can you rephrase that question?

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

In terms of your overall situation—your wild salmon, all of your wild species, as well as all the products that you're offering and where you're pivoting to now with kelp and seaweed—you've talked about the need for investment to add more value to these products, the importance of that and the lack of it right now.

Can you speak about what that would do if there was funding made available?

[Larry Johnson]

We could use more funding and capital funding in terms of developing aquaculture. We could use more funding for business development to establish partnerships with industry. FLRNORD could use more funding to hire more people to process applications.

I don't know if that answers your question.

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

Yes, that's where I was going. It was about how the support that funding could provide.

Carol, you've talked about your frustration with the department and the delay in decision-making. Just this year, you were in partnership with Uchucklesaht and you had smolts ready to go, but you couldn't get an answer from the department.

Can you talk about the impact of the delays in decision-making at the department and how that's impacting wild salmon and the opportunities that are there and the partnerships?

[Carol Schmitt]

Yes. It was extremely disappointing in the final minutes to have the department keep the eggs and do a fry release instead of allowing us to pick them up to grow them as S1s. Just so you know, for the Henderson project, we had a five-year private commitment to pay for the entire enhancement program. Released as fry, they will have 160 fish come back. Released as our S1s, there would have been 1,100 or more adult returns.

As for the frustration, I think Rebecca Reid stated that they rely on private and public involvement and participation because without it they wouldn't be able to complete as many projects as they do in the department. There are a lot of good things going on. However, it appears that for our private hatchery, once all these results have come in for the S1s, it's as though they've dug in their heels and they don't want to allow us to participate.

I don't know. All I can say is that given the results, it needs to be transposed in a bigger scale to rebuild the stocks, and should [Technical difficulty—Editor] After 40 years of enhancement, they're down to 70 fish. It means that in 40 years of enhancement, with a return of 260 on average. When they started 40 years ago, 200 fish were in the system. In Clayoquot Sound, all the chinook stocks are now at a high-risk level because the returns were so low.

I have demonstrated that if you grow them more naturally, they behave differently and you will get way more fish back because there is greater survival. I don't know. As I said, I am here today saying that maybe we need to set up a special committee to make these decisions in real time. I wrote to the department 18 years ago and stated that their 0.02% to 0.06% survival could be increased to 5% to 10% and all they had to do was change how they grew the fish. They have their results now, so here we are.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Johns.

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

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to ask questions of every one of you, and I'd like you to note the question. If you don't have an opportunity to answer it, I would appreciate it if you could submit a written answer, because I think this will be probably the only five minutes I get.

My question for you, Mr. Beamish, is on the studies we've seen on the ocean and the commingling of fish from countries that do ocean ranching—I will use the term loosely—such as Japan and the Russians. You haven't talked very much about the fish coming from Alaska, and I am wondering what's happening there. Can you talk about where these fish are going if they're not showing up in catches? If we're down 70%, are the fish moving somewhere else or are they coming back to the wrong stream? Are they showing up in our Arctic systems where they haven't shown up before? Could you just comment a bit on that?

Mr. Hurwitz, first of all, I'll extend my appreciation to you and everybody else. I've gone to so many hatcheries on the coast and visited with people, but I unfortunately never got to yours.

I want to talk about mobile marking facilities, because I don't think it's possible to have stationary ones. Could you tell us what the cost would be and how many hatcheries like yours, community-based hatcheries, could be impacted if we are going to do complete marking? How many of those hatcheries would be available, or how many of them could access a mobile marking system?

Carol, it's wonderful to see you here again. I was honoured to go out to your facility. I think Mel and I went out there at the same time. I want to talk a bit about fresh water versus salt water. I know that at the Marble River facility they actually rear some of the fish in fresh water, and they rear some in places like Quatsino Lodge, which has a pen there where they rear some of the chinook and get better returns. Can you talk a bit about the difference between rearing to a certain size in fresh water versus rearing in salt water?

My last question is for you, Mr. Johnson. We've heard from a lot of people who were talking about seals and predation. Some have suggested that we don't have to do a massive amount of effort on predatory seals; we just have to target the ones that are causing the most havoc. I'm wondering if you could elaborate a bit on that.

I'll just let you guys answer to the best of your ability.

[Larry Johnson]

I'll go first, on seals.

Our approach to them would be to deal with habitualized seals or sea lions within the system itself while we're collecting our brood stock and also to deal with them when we're releasing our fry in the estuary area. The third place would be while we're harvesting for our food for domestic purposes. We'd be able to deal with and protect our nets and investment, but our underlying principle is always to utilize the whole animal.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Hurwitz.

[Dave Hurwitz]

Ironically, the mobile marking trailer I've heard about for two years showed up last month, and we just used it last week. Prior to that, it was used in a Tofino hatchery to mark chum. I'm very excited that we now have a unit on the coast that is working. I'm very excited this week.

Regarding sea penning, I must say, with all due respect to Ms. Schmitt, that I swim rivers along with lots of other seasoned biologists, and we've yet to see an S1 in the wild, so this is definitely a life history that is more conducive to glacial-fed streams on the mainland coast, and she's used that technology to introduce them onto the island.

Unfortunately, facing climate change and warming waters, the S1strategy is not necessarily something that is natural, but as for the sea penning that you speak of, yes, we've done sea penning, and to take the fry from the hatchery at five grams and put them in a sea pen at the mouth is very, very important for imprinting to that natal stream. In two weeks they double in size, and we have exponential survival.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Beamish, do you want to take a shot at my question?

[Dr. Richard Beamish]

Fish that survive are the fish that grow faster and more quickly in the first months in the ocean. For those fish that survive the first ocean winter, there is mortality, but in general the brood-year strength is determined at the first ocean winter, based on how fast they grow in the coastal area.

With the fish that we catch, there is some overlap with U.S. fish, but in general, that's not quite true. There's chum salmon from Japan and Russia in the Gulf of Alaska, but if you're suggesting that there's competition from fish from other countries, I would say no, it doesn't exist.

By the way, we did find, through our plankton studies, that it did look like there was a lot of food available in the Gulf of Alaska, so that would not be regulating the abundance after they survive the first ocean winter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Calkins. Your time is up, but I think you may get some time yet before the day's session is over.

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