Fisheries Committee on Feb. 29th, 2024

[Jason Spingle]

The fishery is like any entrepreneurial business based on a commodity. There are ups and downs in the fishery. I'll quote again the speech from our chair at the rally in Grande-Rivière last week. He said he's faced difficult times because of quota reductions and/or price reductions and interest rates and fuel rates, but he's never really been faced with the situation where he's been told that basically he's done.

I appreciate where you're coming at, Mr. Perkins. It's good to see you again as well.

This fishery closed in 1994, and I think that goes back to Minister LeBlanc's decision. What I would say again is that there's a group of people who have lived—that's who they are, and that's where they're from—in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The offshore was given an opportunity to move. I would say, to quote a former DFO bureaucrat on another issue, they were rewarded handsomely with the resources in the South Labrador Sea, the shrimp and—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

As you know, I have limited time, and I have a couple of other questions for you, if I could.

Thank you.

[Jason Spingle]

Really quickly, I would say that there's always some risk, but people deal with the ups and downs. When you take away the lifeline—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

No, I get that, but I want to follow up with my next question.

DFO has been doing science on this for a while, and in most things DFO and the minister seem to act at a pace that's slower than the movement of a glacier. In this case, the redfish biomass was estimated, in 2019, at 4,300 kilotons, and now it's down to about 2,500, a 42% decline, according to the latest science, while DFO dithered over the last five years trying to figure out what to do.

In all of this that you've seen, why has it taken so long for DFO to recognize that there was a fishery here that was available to harvesters, from both the inshore and the offshore, that could be harvested, but we're five years since they hit that level, and they still haven't done anything.

[Jason Spingle]

Yes, I guess we were all hoping that the size would be more in line with what was known about the biology of the species. In saying that, I think that we probably should have started developing it more, for sure, earlier on, and certainly we need to start developing it now.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

DFO is supposed to manage the fishery based on a diversity of the ocean, a balance sort of idea, so that things don't get out of hand and we harvest things so that one species isn't impacting the other, but in the five years they've been waiting, it looks like what they allowed to happen was a decimation of the shrimp fishery while they couldn't figure things out.

How many times, whether it's 30 years ago with the northern cod and all these things, do we have to go through this in Atlantic Canada when DFO can't seem to get their act straight until it's too late?

[Jason Spingle]

No doubt there's a lag there for sure. We're accused of being too aggressive sometimes in the industry, I would say, but certainly there's often a lag. I think the poetic justice—not the justice, and I guess it's the opposite term here—is that we put on more and more grates to eliminate bycatch, to protect Atlantic halibut and redfish and all these species in 1994, and that very technology that promoted conservation is now part of the reason, arguably, that shrimp harvesters are at a commercial breaking point.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

What should the TAC be?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins. Maybe the witness can answer in another round.

Now we move on to Mr. Morrissey. Go ahead for five minutes.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Chair.

My first question is for Professor Robert.

Professor, from your research, when did you think the redfish stock in the gulf reached a commercial fishing biomass status?

[Dr. Dominique Robert]

It's a matter of length of the fish. The length at which redfish can start being fished is 22 centimetres, and that was reached three or four years ago for a fair proportion of the large cohorts.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Again, since you're not a fisher and you're not with DFO, from your research, can the stock currently sustain a higher catch ratio than has been announced?

[Dr. Dominique Robert]

Yes. The science advice says that the stock could this year be fished at a much higher ratio, but the difficulty, as Mr. Spingle mentioned, is to be able to extract the resource without catching the other redfish species and without catching other species of commercial interest like halibut or catching endangered species.

It would be difficult to increase the quota by a lot in a situation where the experience is lacking. We're just starting. We don't have the experience, and it would be, I think, difficult to get clean catches the first year.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you. Since this committee will eventually make recommendations on this fishery, would you recommend to this committee to recommend that the inshore fishery should be prioritized on the catch allocation over the amount announced by the minister?

[Dr. Dominique Robert]

It's difficult for me to say who should be prioritized. If I could give a personal opinion, of course, I worked a lot with inshore fishermen. I know well the fishing communities all around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I know very well how difficult the situation is, so—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Professor, who would benefit more, and which group has the least alternative options to survive economically, inshore or offshore?

[Dr. Dominique Robert]

Right now it's inshore, given that most harvesters have quota only for one species. Therefore the shrimp harvesters, if they can only fish shrimp and cannot fish anymore, are of course more vulnerable.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you.

In your comments earlier, I believe you recommended to extend the scope of this study to examine the impacts of climate change on other stocks. What warning signs are you alluding to?

[Dr. Dominique Robert]

As I was mentioning, the system keeps warming. It will keep warming in the short term and in the mid term as well. The cold-water species that we have in the gulf—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Professor, are you confident that we're seeing climate change warming in the gulf that is unstoppable at the moment?

[Dr. Dominique Robert]

At least in the mid term. We know that it's warming at the surface—that's climate change—but it's also warming in the deep layers from an inflow of the Gulf Stream. It's warming both at the surface and at the bottom. The warming is really fast right now, so the cold water species are set to decrease in abundance, which will lead to other crises if we don't do anything.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

These, I believe you would agree, are the species that are the most valuable to the inshore fishery in Atlantic Canada. Is that correct?

[Dr. Dominique Robert]

Yes, with the exception of lobster.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Do you see an impact on lobster?

[Dr. Dominique Robert]

It's a positive impact. Lobster is a species that reacts positively to the warming, but the cold water species—snow crab, northern shrimp and Greenland halibut—are in trouble.