Fisheries Committee on May 30th, 2024

[Peter Westley]

Let me speak to this very concisely. I've been involved in a collaborative project looking at the size of Alaska salmon of all the species we had information on from across all the state—over 12 million individual records of size of salmon—and all salmon across the species that we have information on have declined in size. Chinook salmon in particular have gotten smaller. All the salmon have gotten smaller, especially after about the year 2010. That year was a real changing point for sizes. Things were kind of going up and down, but there was a precipitous decline in size.

The answer to your question is that it is not that fish are just maturing younger. The older fish are being lost and are not surviving. As fish grow, they potentially could just be growing faster, or maybe there's more food, and they could mature younger. But that is not what is happening. There's been a change in age structure that is likely tied to a change in genetics.

The ocean seems like it is increasingly dangerous. Fish that are programmed to spend a lot of time in the ocean are not surviving. We are losing those genes.

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

Thank you.

You talked about other forms of mortality. Just briefly, because I think I have only about 30 seconds left, what other types of mortality would you suspect may be having a significant impact that we could pull a lever on and make a difference?

[Peter Westley]

On the U.S. side of things, the Marine Mammal Protection Act has been incredibly successful. There are now way more nearshore marine mammals, such as seals and some other things, that used to be harvested by local people. That's not happening nearly as much anymore. There are way more seals than there likely have been in the ocean for thousands of years now because of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and because indigenous people have been displaced, erased off the landscape, and aren't harvesting marine mammals as much as they used to. That is something we have some control over.

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

Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold.

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

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you very much.

I want to maybe clarify some of the discrepancies, perhaps, that we've been hearing on ocean bycatch. I'm reflecting on when Steve Gotch from DFO talked to us. He was referring specifically to chinook bycatch, but he said the State of Alaska has very careful monitoring. Basically, it amounts to a few hundred fish a year that are documented bycatch, and yet we're hearing, really from all three of you and from different angles, that this is a serious and overlooked issue. Maybe it's related to the species, or maybe they're not monitoring everything.

I wonder if each of you can clarify what you see or what you perceive about the relative importance of ocean bycatch. Again, I want to be thinking about and focusing on solutions in how we engage on this.

Maybe I'll let you begin on this, Professor Westley.

[Peter Westley]

Thank you. Actually, I wanted to speak towards this earlier. This is a very important question.

This is my opinion based on everything I know around this issue. When we talk about ocean bycatch, we are almost always talking about the pollock fishery and bycatch in the pollock fishery in the Bering Sea, and that there is very.... I trust the data. I do. I absolutely trust the data. They are monitoring. There are people observing the catch on those boats. I think we have a very good handle on how many of those fish are being caught. Those boats are targeting walleye pollock, Alaska pollock. It's a massive fishery. They're not targeting the bycatch. The fishing industry does not want to be catching salmon, I assure you. They've been doing a lot to avoid salmon.

That being said, the scale of the fishery is so large that you inevitably still catch some salmon despite all the technology. We can do better and we can move in time and space, and those things should be looked at, but inevitably there are some fish that are intercepted and bycaught. I just wanted to clarify that.

I do think it is really important. I also, on the record, do not think that the pollock bycatch is the cause of the decline of salmon in the Yukon. It's not, but it's certainly not helping. One of my bigger concerns—and I can send this paper, where we looked at essentially emulating a fishery of sorts that was selective on size, like the pollock bycatch fishery is—is that you can also be favouring the maturing of younger fish. You lose the old fish that spend lots of time in the ocean because of the extra mortality that comes from bycatch. There are things that are pushing all these fish to be smaller and younger, which we know has consequences. The ocean is increasingly dangerous, and the pollock bycatch is one of those dangers.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

David, would you like to add to that?

[David Curtis]

I can concur with what I've read, which is that the management of bycatch, especially around chinook, has been a very important part. What I want to bring up is that it may not be the same for chum salmon, which are experiencing a decline—a dramatic catastrophic decline—in the Yukon River as well, although the evidence may not be there that these are chum from the Yukon River.

I agree with Dr. Westley. There's a big emphasis put on this. I don't think it's the primary cause in terms of bycatch. It is wasteful and is an unfortunate part of industrial fishing.... Well, not “unfortunate”: It's a terrible part of industrial fishing, to be honest. If it can be reduced, I'm all for that, and I think the various agencies in Alaska have been doing some really good work, solid work, to try to address that.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Chief Pitka, maybe you would like to speak to this as well.

[Chief Rhonda Pitka]

Yes, just briefly.

I agree with most of what Peter Westley said, but also, I think, one of the problems with bycatch is that they take out the food the salmon eat also, along with everything else in the ocean, and then they degrade the whole ocean, the bottom of the ocean. They take so much out, and they're very non-specific. Even if they don't specifically take out Yukon River chinook salmon, they take out the food that the Yukon River chinook salmon depend on.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Hanley.

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

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

I'll take the first two minutes, and then I'm going to share with Mr. Perkins.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You go right ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For all three witnesses here today—and I hope we can be non-partisan here to our home nations at this point—the Yukon River salmon are going to require policy and regulatory change across international borders—this international border and possibly others.

Do you feel that the U.S. and Canada have been collaborating effectively between themselves and with other nations that are potentially affecting Yukon salmon? Have they been negotiating or collaborating effectively? Or is it the lack of this that has put us in the state of a seven-year moratorium?

Chief Pitka, would you like to go first?

[Chief Rhonda Pitka]

Yes, I think the nations themselves could do a lot more work in collaborating on this issue, especially with those other nations that I believe Mr. Westley and Mr. Curtis mentioned. We need more information on the Russian hatcheries and the Asian hatcheries, and I think collaborating on their fisheries would benefit not only us but them.

Thank you.

[David Curtis]

I agree with Chief Pitka. I would also add that I think there is work to be done to continue the good efforts and good work that have been established with the dialogue between Alaska and Canada, and the fisheries, the people and the stakeholders. I think the panel has done some really valuable work. The treaty itself might need to be revisited in relation to new evidence and new science as they become available.

The dialogue is quite strong. We're neighbours and we get along very well. I think everybody's concerned about the same thing here.

[Peter Westley]

I guess, ultimately, I'm encouraged that the processes.... I think about the joint technical committees and the Yukon panel. The processes are there and in place. I'm encouraged by that.

I am disappointed by the most recent development. I think a well-intentioned, full-lifetime moratorium makes some sense biologically, but the process by which that was done has actually hurt some of those relationships. There's room to rebuild some of that trust. The state, the U.S. federal government, the tribal governments and Canada all need to equally be at the table, and I don't think that equality and equity have been shown yet.

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

Okay. Thank you very much.

I'll turn my time over to Mr. Perkins now.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses. This has been really fascinating and important study, but I would like to move a motion that I put on notice. Hopefully, we can deal with it quickly.

We all know that we recently had an emergency crisis to deal with. There was the closure of the crab and the lobster fishery in the gulf related to a right whale sighting and a dynamic closure, imposed by DFO initially, that broke the past policy and moved the dynamic closure into less than 10 fathoms of water.

I am happy that it was resolved, but I would like to move the motion I put on notice because I don't think we can afford to have this mistake happen again.

I move:

That, in relation to Minister Diane Lebouthillier’s decision to backtrack on a lobster and crab fishing ban in waters of less than ten fathoms in LFA 23C, the committee agrees to conduct a two-meeting study to review the minister’s decision, and agrees to invite: (a) stakeholders from the Maritime Fishermen’s Union; (b) Minister Diane Lebouthillier, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and Canadian Coast Guard, and Annette Gibbons, Deputy Minister of the Department of Fisheries and Ocean; and, that the witnesses be asked to appear before the committee for two hours each, and that such appearances take place before the committee’s study on derelict vessels, but begin no later than June 6, 2024.

That would be two meetings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Mr. Cormier, you have your hand up.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you.

I apologize to the witnesses, who will have to go through this again. Mr. Perkins could have waited to the end of the meeting to do this.

For the fishers and those listening at home, I want to be perfectly clear: This member, and all of the other Conservative members—even the leader—never said a word about this issue in the last couple of weeks. There was not a word about this stressful, terrible issue that we had to go through.

That being said, Mr. Chair, we want to get to the bottom of this issue. We want to know what happened during this crisis that we had to live through for one week. This was a terrible mess created by DFO officials, which our fishermen in my riding had to live through, and we want to get to the bottom of this.

Again, though, there was not a word from this member, from the Conservative Party or from the leader about this issue for the last week. Maybe they just want to get their little clip now and feel like they are the hero of the day.

Mr. Chair, again, we want to get to the bottom of this, and we will have some amendments to propose to this motion.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Cormier.

We'll now go to Mr. Arnold.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to correct Mr. Cormier's statement that not a word was said, because a press release was issued by the Conservative shadow minister on this issue.

I would like to make a small amendment to the end of Mr. Perkins' motion that the findings of the committee be reported to the House.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

Mr. Kelloway.