Evidence of meeting #130 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was habitat.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Yes, it's coming. It's being sent to everyone now.
Does everyone have it?
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Mr. Chair, can we quickly take a few moments to look at it as a team?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Yes.
We'll suspend for a moment while they do their little get-together to talk about the motion.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I support the motion.
I just want to add an amendment to the motion: “The study is not complete until the following witnesses appear”.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Is it unanimous?
(Amendment agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Is everybody in favour of the motion as amended?
(Motion as amended agreed to)
I want to thank the officials for being here today and for answering questions from the members.
We'll suspend for a moment as we switch to our next panel.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Welcome back.
For our second panel, we have, from the Canadian Wildlife Federation, Mr. Nick Lapointe, senior conservation biologist, freshwater ecology. From the Mining Association of Canada, we have Pierre Gratton, president and chief executive officer, and Danielle Morrison, director, regulatory affairs.
Thank you for taking the time to appear today.
Each group will have up to five minutes for an opening statement.
I believe, Mr. Lapointe, that you will go first.
Nick Lapointe Senior Conservation Biologist, Freshwater Ecology, Canadian Wildlife Federation
Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee.
The Canadian Wildlife Federation, or CWF, is a national conservation charity. We work to conserve Canada's wildlife and habitats for the use and enjoyment of all through education, action and outreach. We work in collaboration with hunting and angling groups, indigenous communities, environmental partners, industry and our more than 250,000 supporters to accomplish these goals.
CWF was deeply engaged in both the 2012 and 2019 changes to the act and believes that both helped improve it.
Examples from 2012 include adding duties to report violations, a new prescribed works tool to regulate common projects, and expanded prohibitions to include activities that cause harm.
In 2019, a key change was restoring the prohibitions against the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat and the death of fish by means other than fishing. Other amendments improved inclusion of indigenous rights and knowledge and required consideration of cumulative effects. The purpose of the act—to protect and conserve fish and fish habitat—was also clarified. The legislation is strong, and CWF doesn't believe further amendments are needed at this time.
Despite the strength of the Fisheries Act, after five years the department is not achieving its purpose. Major challenges remain, stemming in part from DFO's limited implementation of their tools and obligations under the act. We work closely with the department on conservation solutions and we recognize many excellent programs, including DFO's fish habitat science and the Pacific region's salmonid enhancement program. At the same time, small projects continue to harm fish habitat. Little is being done to enforce or otherwise address known violations of the Fisheries Act, particularly for barriers to fish passage.
The first concern I want to highlight is the cumulative effects of small projects. Each year the department reviews thousands of projects, but issues only 100 to 200 authorizations, dismissing harm from the others as low risk. The footprint of the other projects is definitely smaller, but they do cause harm. Because there are so many, the accumulating harm is a major issue. Small projects are individually reviewed, which takes a lot of DFO staff time and results in only informal approval by letters of advice. This inefficient process delays projects and creates costs and uncertainty for industry. The worst part is that this system is not leading to good outcomes for fish and fish habitat.
We don't think the solution is to make small project management more complex. Tools added in 2012 and 2019 were designed to address these issues, but they are not being implemented. Small projects would be better managed by prescribed works regulations, which could create an automatic permitting system to reduce DFO costs, cut red tape, provide speed and certainty for proponents and enable compensation models when harm is accumulating.
For big projects, proponents need to provide offsets to compensate for harm, but this happens for only a small number of the projects reviewed. For small projects that do cause harm, a fee-in-lieu system should be implemented through prescribed works regulations. This would allow DFO to combine fees from multiple small projects and dedicate them to fund communities working to address restoration priorities. This solution can be implemented now. In the long term, a third party habitat banking system would provide expanded conservation and economic opportunities. Work to develop that system should begin immediately.
The second point I'd like to highlight is the need for a national fish passage strategy to address the fragmentation of our waterways.
With DFO's support, CWF has led assessment of fish passage issues in Canada and developed a national database of all dams and other barriers to fish. We found that on average, there's a potential barrier every three kilometres on our streams.
Most of the economically, recreationally and culturally important fish in Canada rely on migration paths between bodies of water. Wild salmon, American eel and other migratory species have disappeared from much of their traditional range because of barriers. The department has appropriate powers under the Fisheries Act to address this, but they are not fulfilling their obligations. We documented over 35,000 dams in Canada. Fewer than 300 of them have fishways.
Other countries, including the U.S. and in Europe, are far ahead of Canada in fixing this problem. In recent decades, more than 10,000 fish barriers have been removed in Washington state alone, as compared with fewer than 300 in B.C. Fish responses to these projects have been incredible, with salmon recolonizing their habitats and herring populations increasing from hundreds to hundreds of thousands in just a few years. A national fish passage strategy would include removing barriers and requiring fish passage at such active facilities as hydroelectric dams.
CWF is eager to support the committee and department in achieving the purpose of the act.
I look forward to any questions. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Lapointe.
We'll now go to Mr. Gratton for five minutes or less, please.
Pierre Gratton President and Chief Executive Officer, Mining Association of Canada
Thank you. It's a pleasure to appear before the committee.
Like my colleague, we too have been involved with the Fisheries Act and the various reforms over the last several years. In part, what I want to share with you is the history of that engagement and the struggles we've had with the implementation of the Fisheries Act through the various reforms, because implementation problems cost everyone.
When the 2012 reforms were put in place, we were assured by officials at the time that any sort of section 35 or authorization in process would be grandfathered, that we wouldn't have to worry, and that we wouldn't lose time and have to restart. Sure enough, a couple of years later, we were told, “Well, actually, we weren't right about that. You have to restart.” We had to go back to the beginning. That delayed the development of authorizations.
The process of getting officials familiarized with the new legislation in 2012 took a while. However, I will say that after a few years, it actually started to work pretty well. While there was a perception that the protection of fish under that regime was weakened because of the inclusion of commercial, recreational and aboriginal fisheries—aboriginal, at least where we work, is pretty much a catch-all—none of the protections for water bodies containing fish wherever we operated were in any way weakened.
What we did find is that the department eventually figured out how to implement the new act and did so pretty effectively. For a few years, we found that we had a pretty efficient regime, which is why we did not support the reversal to what was essentially the pre-2012 regime, when the government came forward with Bill C-68. We accepted it. It was obvious it was going to happen, but we cautioned them very strongly to prepare for implementation. We also emphasized that the act should not be brought into force until they had the compliance tools developed and put in place. That advice, unfortunately, was not heeded. We are now five years later and still waiting for those tools to be put in place.
Why is this a problem? Project reviews and authorizations are time-consuming for proponents and the department. Without a core set of compliance tools in place, DFO will be caught in a vicious spiral of not having enough capacity to respond to project-specific reviews for larger projects, thus not being able to spare resources to put the tools in place. Demand will exceed the department's recently increased resources. The result will be growing complaints and delays and overwhelmed officials struggling to deal with too many applications at one time.
It's in the best interest of fish, fish habitat and Canada's economy to adequately prepare for coming into force, which they did not.
This came into being. Five years later, we have very few draft codes of practice. The prescribed works and waters regulations have still not been put in place. We continue to be told by the department that it's complex. Well, if it were so complex that five years later they're not in place, why did you put this into the act in the first place? You should have thought of that before doing so.
For such things as culvert replacements, beaver dam removal and the installation of low-span bridges, we've started to see some codes of practice put in place, but we're still lacking an awful lot. Frankly, it's frustrating for proponents, but it's not good for fish either. If it takes months to get an approval to replace a culvert, those are months during which fish may not have access to spawning grounds. This harms fish habitat. It harms fish productivity. Nothing benefits from this.
As we look at your review, we caution, again, that the focus really has to be on good implementation. The department has to start doing its job, and doing it effectively. They need to accelerate the development of compliance tools and codes of practice, develop a plan with timelines to implement the prescribed works and waters regulations, and increase coordination among provincial and territorial governments and with federal departments, since, for example, the transport and navigation provisions and Fisheries Act provisions can intersect and sometimes contradict, so they need to be talking to one another.
What's probably most important—and the hardest thing to do—is driving culture change that reflects the urgent action required to accelerate clean growth. Transport Canada has done a good job since Bill C-68 of putting in place the measures that affected them. DFO has not. However, it can be done. We found that Transport Canada has a culture of “We have to get this done. We can't be a barrier to responsible growth.”
DFO has to change its approach, because fish and the economy depend on it.
Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you.
We'll now go to rounds of questioning.
Mr. Arnold, you have six minutes or less.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, all of you, for being here today.
Mr. Lapointe, you talked about cumulative effects and the impacts of them. Could you elaborate a bit further on where you see those impacts?
Senior Conservation Biologist, Freshwater Ecology, Canadian Wildlife Federation
Yes, I can, absolutely.
I think there's a challenge because the department, so far, has seemed to interpret that addition of cumulative effects into the act to mean consideration of the broader effects on the landscape when it issues an authorization.
The part we're concerned about is the accumulating effects of all of the projects with small footprints that the department allows to happen. It doesn't use the authorization process.
The department works to minimize that harm, but it happens regardless. They're not considering, managing or addressing that accumulation of harm. That's what we're concerned about.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Okay. Thank you.
You also recommended that no further changes be made, but the regulations out of the act haven't been implemented properly. Could you give an example? Where is this holding up projects or impacting fish?
Senior Conservation Biologist, Freshwater Ecology, Canadian Wildlife Federation
As one example, I think my colleague Pierre outlined that there have been no prescribed works regulations passed since 2019.
I think only one was passed after 2012. This is an efficient system that would, for the vast majority of projects, eliminate the need for project review and allow proponents to immediately implement their projects after registering them. It would also follow best practices so that a culvert is replaced with a full span bridge that passes fish. It would really focus those resources not in the bureaucratic review of projects but in the implementation of things that work for fish and fish habitat.
That's one of those key regulations that remain mired in consultation and engagement without progress and without any implementation.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Can you give us an example, or a rough average, of the time frame that is required to do a project now, five years after the act actually came into force?
Senior Conservation Biologist, Freshwater Ecology, Canadian Wildlife Federation
My understanding is that it can be three to nine months for the smaller projects that are informally, and I would say improperly, managed by the department, so there's a moderate delay. I'm less familiar with the larger projects and the delays that Pierre was referring to, but those are significant projects and they can be complicated to manage.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
I believe a lot of these projects can only be done at specific times of the year because of fish spawning movement and so on. Is that correct?
Senior Conservation Biologist, Freshwater Ecology, Canadian Wildlife Federation
That's right. There are timing windows.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
You really have a small timing window once a year, so if the project application passes that point, you're done for another year.
Mr. Gratton, I want to switch to you. You mentioned focusing on good implementation. I think you're probably going to say a lot of the same things that Mr. Lapointe has said, but can you give examples of how much time might be expected for a larger project to be approved?
