Fisheries Committee on March 22nd, 2022

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses who are dedicating their time to this issue.

Mr. Estrada, describe, if you will, what you've noticed pre-flood over a period of time about the state of salmon habitat and salmon runs in the lower Fraser.

[Kevin Estrada]

The river is always changing, so we do our best to advocate for and to protect key and sensitive areas. During the last several years, we've advocated for regulated closures in certain areas for our fishery here—for the sturgeon fishery. There are always changes. [Technical difficulty—Editor] With the science we have, we're trying our best to protect those areas.

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

Mr. Hwang, you noted that you're located in Kamloops. I understand that while there used to be a DFO office there, or some people who would be monitoring and perhaps even enforcing activities on the rivers, between the federal government and the provincial government, are there resources there now or are we short?

[Jason Hwang]

Mr. Hardie, there are people. There's a DFO office that's reasonably well-staffed here.

Specifically, with regard to the response to this flood, my take is that the provincial and federal fisheries organizations were not prepared. They were not resourced to be prepared. They have not prioritized being prepared, and they have struggled to figure out how they can bring the resources they have at their disposal to the table to identify priorities and to work on what they can do to make things better for our fisheries resources.

It's not the fault of DFO or the Province of B.C. per se that the flood happened, but one of the things that was missed, relatively early on, was having a look at what nature handed us, and assessing opportunities to do what we could to reduce the effects, make things better, and try to save some salmon.

As other witnesses, Mr. Ned and Mr. Estrada, have noted, it was non-government entities that went out and did salmon salvage and fish salvage in the flooded fields in the lower Fraser. It was that PSF that was funding works that were identified by DFO restoration biologists as urgent works, but the government organizations did not seem to have the capacity or the ability to find the funds, to undertake those things that saved salmon in real time.

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

Mr. Chair, I would like to offer some time now to Ms. May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Hardie.

How much time will I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Three minutes.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Okay.

First of all, I want to thank the witnesses.

I also want to thank this committee for undertaking this very critical work. It's very likely that but for the work of this committee, we would see $5 billion go to do exactly what these witnesses have urged us not to let happen—fish-killing pumps and new barriers to fish that cause more trouble—so I'm very grateful.

I want to turn my question to Tyrone McNeil from the Coquihalla for his very significant evidence. In particular, I want to ask him if is aware of what I found out only a couple of years ago, that when pipelines are being built, there's an existing memorandum of understanding that says the Department of Fisheries and Oceans delegates all of its responsibility for protecting fish habitat to what used to be called the National Energy Board and now the new version of that.

To the territory of the Coquihalla, and to Tyrone, do you see DFO on the ground protecting fish habitat as the pipeline is being constructed in normal times, and especially when we've had a significant flood event such as the one we had in November?

[Chief Tyrone McNeil]

In another hat, I [Technical difficulty—Editor] first nations monitors inspecting with DFO's CER federal regulators. We have done over 100 co-inspections with the CER and may have done 20 with DFO.

During the flood event, DFO was invisible. There was nobody out in the field whatsoever. We had to bring our political wherewithal to bear to find out that it was the D.C. OGC that had authorization to issue permits under B.C.'s Water Sustainability Act to have Trans Mountain do activities a certain way. DFO wasn't at the table. They weren't at any of the meetings. They weren't in any of the correspondence. They were absolutely invisible, which really troubles me.

The MOU that you speak to, Ms. May, is a general relational MOU, that I'm aware of. I say that as chair of the indigenous advisory council to the Canada Energy Regulator. It doesn't delegate authority. It's relational, where CER is the lead regulator on the ground, and if they need DFO to ever be called in, that MOU allows them to call them in.

I hope that helps.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

If I may, I will turn to Jason Hwang from the Pacific Salmon Foundation.

How commonly understood, in the Canadian scene of regulation, is this concept of flood plains by design? Are we likely to see it? Is it getting much pickup?

[Jason Hwang]

Ms. May, prior to my role with the Pacific Salmon Foundation, I spent more than 25 years with DFO's habitat program. Some of the work I did was national in scope. The short answer to your question is that there is almost no traction to the ideas in the flood-plains-by-design approach that Washington state is using. There are a few pocket places or local situations, including some in B.C., where I'm aware that they are trying things, but it is ad hoc.

In my view, it really needs a push and support from the federal government to put the right kinds of incentives and guide-rails on federal funding, which can then be steered toward the kinds of outcomes that we know will be better.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Hardie.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. May.

Mrs. Desbiens, you have six minutes.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses, who have been very interesting. I want to once again acknowledge the interpretation service, which is invaluable.

I will talk to Mr. Hwang about what will happen next. We have to learn lessons from this situation.

I am also worried about the great St. Lawrence River, which is also home to a large diversity of fish and whales, among others. A significant amount of $5 billion has been announced, but I sense a lack of communication between people on the ground and government, especially the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Could Mr. Hwang shed some light on this?

Could a communication effort improve the situation going forward?

[Jason Hwang]

Madame Desbiens, I'll do my best to answer your question. I apologize. I was on the wrong toggle when you first started, so I only got the back half of your question in translation. I take it that it was about communication and how the $5 billion would be invested—using this as an example for other situations that could occur nationally.

I would say that the example of the B.C. floods really illustrates the challenge of planning, responding and investing in things that relate to flooding, which is a multi-jurisdictional and very complicated issue in the Canadian construct.

There is no easy solution. It's not like you can just point to one entity and say, “Over there, it's them. They should do it. They can fix everything.” There are indigenous rights that need to be considered. There are provincial authorities. There are federal authorities. There are local government authorities.

One important thing the federal government can do—because a lot of money comes from federal government sources to support flood planning, flood response and flood recovery—is to provide leadership and a guiding framework to help steer those investments towards things that could be what I'll call “smart”, in terms of future vision, and to find a better balance in supporting our people, our economy and our natural resources.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you.

I will let Ms. May have the remainder of my time, as I wanted to talk about the environment and predictability.

Ms. May, you can have the rest of my time.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you so much, dear colleague.

I'm going to turn back to Tyrone McNeil again. I really appreciate the clarity you brought to the discussion around the MOU with the Canada Energy Regulator.

What I wonder, if I have time for a follow-up on the last round, is this: How equipped is the Canada Energy Regulator on a scientific basis—on the knowledge that's needed—to protect salmon habitat and salmon restoration, especially in the context of the recent flooding? Were they equipped as an agency?

[Chief Tyrone McNeil]

In my opinion, Ms. May, nobody was equipped to respond effectively to the flood event.

The challenge is that the Canada Energy Regulator didn't play much of a role in the Trans Mountain activities, because the company, on its own, decided to stop the flow of oil. It wasn't mandated by the CER. Therefore, the CER didn't have authority or jurisdiction. It worked with Trans Mountain as a willing partner, as opposed to a federal regulatory body overseeing a pipeline. Then other provincial regulators stepped in, like the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission, and Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Turning to another aspect, there are so many of you who have spoken to this, but perhaps the question should go to ZoAnn Morten, as someone who is working with so many volunteer streamkeepers.

What lessons did we learn from the November floods? This could be taken into a number of other areas—as my friend Mr. Zimmer and other colleagues from British Columbia have seen—but it was volunteers who showed up in Abbotsford to sandbag, to protect a pump station and to stop it from being overwhelmed. What could we do better to harness the extraordinary energies of volunteers? They went out and rescued salmon from farm fields, and made critical decisions based on their own knowledge, but they were operating, essentially, outside of a multi-jurisdictional response to a major flood event.

[ZoAnn Morten]

Thank you, Ms. May. That's a fabulous question.

I hold the insurance policy for these groups. One thing I was concerned about was people going out into waters that may have been a little over their boot-tops. I had some concerns about that.

I was quite pleased to see that some of the rescue attempts were organized by people who knew what they were doing. They went out and collected those fish.

Something I did ask of four people from the department during that time was, could some of these fish be spawned and put into hatcheries and then be released as fry and fed fry at the end of the season? I was quite sad to get my first response last week. It was a no.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you.

I imagine that my time is over.

I thank the Bloc Québécois for this gift.

I think I will stop here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Now we'll move to Ms. Barron for six minutes or less.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

I just want to say that it's so nice to see members from different parties working collaboratively to ensure we have opportunities to ask these important questions of the witnesses here today. It's very nice to see.

For my first question, I want to ask Mr. McNeil if he could, perhaps, finish the thought that he had started in his opening remarks around “build back better together”. Perhaps he could finish his thoughts and expand a bit more on that.