Fisheries Committee on Oct. 9th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for pointing that out, Mr. Cormier.

Madame Desbiens, you have six minutes or less.

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

Mr. Chair, seriously, we're supposed to see the witnesses when they answer questions. I was not able to see the witnesses. I think Ms. Barron was also not able to see the witnesses respond. I'm not sure if there are others, but we're not able to see the witnesses respond to questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Did we see them when they gave their opening remarks?

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

Yes, but we don't now. We're also supposed to have access to the witnesses when they answer questions. I think Ms. Barron agrees with me on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Yes, I see her head nodding up and down in an affirmative manner.

We'll take a very short pause to see if we can straighten this out.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We're back. I'm told everything is all good.

Madame Desbiens, when you're ready, please go ahead for six minutes or less.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank our witnesses.

Of course, you're always highly interesting, competent and relevant to the our study.

If we have to present a little pedigree, I'll submit mine, which flows from the land, since I saw my father crying in his canoe thinking that there would probably be...

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair, and I apologize to Madame Desbiens for interrupting. It's just that the microphone wasn't on, so we weren't able to hear the beginning of what Madame Desbiens was saying.

Thank you.

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

In that case, I'll start again.

I thank the witnesses for coming.

If we have to provide a little pedigree regarding our experience, mine is closer to the land, since I saw my father crying in his canoe. He told me one day to eat cod and enjoy it, because if we stop the seal hunt, in a few years we'll see cod disappear from the St. Lawrence and just about everywhere.

Today we are reaching a pivotal moment when a moratorium that shook the entire fisheries and fishing community many years ago will be lifted. We hear that the moratorium on northern cod will be lifted. As with redfish, large shares of the new quotas are being given to offshore vessels. In the past, we were taught that this was a very aggressive fishing method for the biomass, which had the repercussions we're familiar with today. It seems we're not learning from past experience.

Minister, I'd like to know if you make any connection, if you see any correlation between the recent redfish quotas that were given, the historic shares that have been given to offshore vessels, and the fact that we're also giving them some for the northern cod fishery. Are the dangers the same? Is this as illogical, according to what we hear in the field, in both cases?

[Gerry Byrne]

Thank you very much for this question. I think it does have immediacy and value for the study of the northern cod, because, realistically, what we face in 2024—this calendar year, this fishing season—is the opening of two very iconic groundfish fisheries: not only northern cod, which was under a moratorium since 1992, for 32 years in total, but also redfish, for which unit 1 was under a moratorium since 1995.

Last year the total allowable catch of redfish in unit 1 was 4,500 tonnes. This year it is 60,000. At its peak in the 1960s, the total allowable catch of redfish in unit 1 was not far off 60,000 tonnes. To go to that magnitude in one single year, having faced a moratorium of just about 30 years.... I am challenged to understand the sensibility of that particular position.

Notwithstanding that, realistically, what we need to do is examine this: Have we learned anything in 30 years? Has the Department of Fisheries and Oceans learned anything in 30 years of moratoria? Well, one would say that the cause of the northern cod and redfish collapse was indeed because too many fishermen were chasing too few fish. There were too few fish and too many plants. There was too much capacity. There were irresponsible demands on the resource created by politics—everything from the resource short plant program to the advanced monetary and public investments in infrastructure.

Redfish is unique because at the time of its reopening 30 years later, very little infrastructure existed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There was infrastructure on the west coast of Newfoundland, where there was a viable redfish fishery that existed. There were plants. There are boats in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, inshore boats with mobile outer trawl gear, capable of fishing redfish, but what is the answer from the Government of Canada? Did they say, “We are going to control capacity. We are going to control the number of boats. We are going to control the ability to fish this. We're going to make sure the quotas are set at reasonable, incremental amounts, so that we can monitor and gauge the activity. We're going to allow our fishermen, who go fishing, a reasonably efficient and economically effective way to fish it”? None of the above were followed—none.

In this day, in the 21st century, for the Government of Canada to say, “We don't have enough plants, fishermen and boats in some locations, and we have no way to market this fish except for the few who have the ability to do this in western Newfoundland and southern Labrador, so we're going to allow more fishermen and plants into the fishery, get everybody involved and spend government money to do it,” while at the same time, those who engaged in the sentinel test fisheries and science fisheries are now restricted from ever being able to reasonably catch any of that redfish.... Mr. Chair, the best cheque to ever write is the one you think will never get cashed, and that's what the Government of Canada has done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens. There are only seven seconds left. You're not going to get a question in, let alone an answer.

We now go to Ms. Barron for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses. I wish I were there in person with you. This is an exciting day for me. To be lighthearted for a moment, this is the first time I've been surrounded by this many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians outside of Newfoundland and Labrador since my last family reunion, so it is exciting for me to be amongst all of you.

I say it at every single meeting, because how can I not? I want to reiterate how important this is. We know that this isn't just about fishers and their livelihoods, and marine ecosystems and protecting stocks, but also about the coastal communities that rely on the industry. My family moved from St. John's, Newfoundland to the west coast as a result of the cod moratorium, so I know first-hand the real implications for families, even if they are not fishers.

First and foremost, I offer the opportunity, through the chair, to you, Ms. Street, to both finish your opening comments and to more fully answer the question that Ms. Jones asked you.

[Dwan Street]

Thank you. I had been trying to say that, yes, we absolutely support indigenous groups having allocations and having access to the stock, as I said when I finished, but we don't necessarily feel that mobile bottom trawlers are necessary to get that fish out of the water. Many of our members in Labrador are indigenous, of course, and they fish northern cod and certainly do not support bottom trawling.

I think the issue here is the Liberal government's failure to uphold its promise on the first 115,000 metric tons of northern cod being allocated to our members in the inshore and to indigenous groups, so yes, obviously, we do support indigenous groups having access.

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

Thank you, Ms. Street.

Did you want to finish any of your opening statement, or do you feel that has come out already in the answers you've provided?

[Dwan Street]

I was one of the only ones lucky enough to finish my opening remarks, but thank you so much for the opportunity.

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

That's right; it was Dr. Carruthers who didn't finish.

Ms. Street, in your opening statement, you said:

Owner-operator harvesters are genuinely stewards of the resource. They take the long-term sustainability of this fishery very seriously, having lived through the moratorium. They've invested heavily in sustainable gear and quality handling techniques and have participated in a fisheries improvement project that recently received an “A” rating from international NGOs.

Can you expand on that a little and tell us a bit more about those comments that you made?

[Dwan Street]

Sure.

Out of the moratorium, here at FFAW we have a harvester-led science program. I'm sure Dr. Carruthers can speak to that in more detail. It's a sentinel fishery and it's harvester-led. It's been providing data input into stock assessment since the moratorium. That program has been very, very important to harvesters.

As we moved forward and the stock did move into a much healthier zone, even though it was still in the critical zone, we did see the TAC increase. We realized that the markets we had in the 1980s and 1990s weren't necessarily there right now. At FFAW we worked with a number of processors to ensure that handling on vessels was producing the highest-quality cod we could. We developed a set of protocols and ran a program for, I think, five years whereby harvesters in all areas harvested their fish, had a separate allocation and utilized these protocols to ensure that their fish was top quality.

We've been doing everything we can in that regard. We actually started the fisheries improvement project in 2016, I believe. Again, Dr. Carruthers can correct me on that. I was lead on that project for quite some time in my days in the science program here at FFAW. We did a lot of work. Again, there's the quality program, the handling, the working with plants on MSC certification and what it would take for our fish to be MSC-certified and be able to take advantage of those markets once we did have a TAC that was sufficient to land fish year-round.

Of course, in the 2000s, when we did have a very limited TAC coming in, the fishery was pretty much over in a few weeks. What we've been able to do, in instituting a series of weekly limits and management measures, is spread that fish out. We usually open late July or early August and run into a fall fishery, which right now is just about to close. We've been able to spread that out for the market.

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

Great. Thank you, Ms. Street.

I have only about a minute left, Dr. Carruthers, but I want to ask you if you have any final comments that you want to make. I know that you were the one who got cut off.

As well, in your opening statement you talked about the dense pre-spawning and spawning aggregations during winter months and the activity of large offshore draggers. I'm wondering if you could elaborate a bit on the implications of that.

[Dr. Erin Carruthers]

During the winter period and when they're in pre-spawning and spawning aggregations, fish are aggregated really tightly together. One of the heartbreaking things about this reopening of the fishery is that if you go through the papers of fisheries science from the 1990s and 2000s, you can actually see the fish stock collapse. You can see that in the 1980s there are distributions along the shelf edge, and then sequentially, each year, the number of aggregations drops out until it links out to nothing. Multiple papers published in the 1990s and early 2000s show this sequential collapse, so it's quite shocking that we aren't considering the spatial distribution, because it is evidence. Some truly excellent fisheries science came out of the cod collapse.

There's another thing I want to comment on with the time I have. Our fisheries improvement project is a comprehensive improvement project, and we've been improving the data that's coming in from the recreational fishery, which is a problem. We have these great line cutters, which means that people can responsibly release leatherbacks and other bycatch to the best possible post-release survival. We have removed tons of old gear that was left on the wharves in southern Labrador as part of our fisheries improvement project.

It's a comprehensive project. It's not simply what the status of the stock is. It's all the components that will be needed to make a sustainable fishery.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that, Ms. Carruthers.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to start off with Mr. Byrne.

Minister, the current fisheries minister was shuffled into her position because the previous minister had a penchant for not listening to Canadian harvesters. The current minister told Canadians—and I was there when she told harvesters—that she would be different and she would listen more.

Minister, when the federal fisheries minister met with the provincial ministries of the Council of Fisheries and Aquaculture Ministers this past August, were you and other provincial fisheries ministers heard by the minister? Did she listen to you?

[Gerry Byrne]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

We had a difficult meeting, for sure. It is a matter of public record that no communiqué resulted from the 2024 Canadian Council of Fisheries and Aquaculture Ministers because there was no consensus on the results of the meeting.

It was very difficult because the federal minister attempted to unilaterally set the agenda and would not accept discussion points arising from her federal and provincial counterparts. I said this quite openly and publicly, joined by the majority of other ministers who were at the meeting as well

Allow me to say that this is not necessarily unique to this minister or to a previous minister. This has been a structural impediment of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and its ministers for a very long time.

The ability to dialogue and collaborate is an absolutely essential component to fisheries management. Those who have big stakes and big investments in the game here—I'm not just talking about financial; I'm talking community, cultural, social, economic, financial and historic—often feel as though the department is very unilateral in its approach.

We've had institutions within the management of fisheries resources that allowed greater dialogue and feedback. I'll give one example, which was the fisheries resource conservation council. Coming out of the 1992 moratorium on cod and groundfish stocks—

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

I'll ask you to be brief if you could, Minister. I have more questions.

[Gerry Byrne]

The decision to remove and eliminate the fisheries conservation council in 2007 was yet another example of an administration that was simply not listening and not interested in dialogue.

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

Minister, if your premier makes an announcement, are you as the minister expected to uphold that announcement?