Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to speak again. I won't give you a refresher on the B.C. Wildlife Federation, because we've been here a number of times in the past.
This year, the B.C. Wildlife Federation and its partners restored over 350 hectares of wetlands and streams, conducted a number of salmon habitat restoration projects and installed 71 beaver dam analogues. Over the past two years, we've helped remove nearly 45,000 kilograms of garbage from the Fraser River tidal marsh. Our partners include first nations, ENGOs, local communities, private landholders, the Government of Canada and the Province of B.C.
The 2019 modernization of the Fisheries Act provided a number of positive amendments, particularly around rebuilding plans, alteration and destruction of habitat, environmental flow needs and the return of the HADD provision. However, the application of the Fisheries Act is perhaps more important than the Fisheries Act itself.
In the world of conservation, the future of salmon is dependent upon outcomes, not process. This year, for Fraser River sockeye, we had the second-lowest return on record, with a final end season estimate of 456,000 fish. That's 100,000 fewer than what was originally predicted.
With the second-lowest return on record, one would expect additional enforcement efforts to protect this dismal return. However, Pacific Salmon Commission data indicates that legal fisheries, such as test fisheries and food, social and ceremonial fisheries, caught just over 6,100 fish. The United States, our treaty partner, reported zero fish caught. In addition to that, Canada reported 15,000-plus sockeye in what DFO calls “other” fisheries. DFO defines other fisheries as fisheries that may include “unauthorized directed retention or unauthorized bycatch retention in fisheries directed at other species”.
The 15,000 fish is an underestimate, as those numbers are primarily from fisheries managers, not fisheries officers. We know this because fisheries officers were virtually non-existent on the mid-Fraser. DFO enforcement spent 1,000 hours patrolling the mid-Fraser in 2022. In the past, it was 1,000 more than that. This year, it was around 100 hours. To my knowledge, there were no night operations or helicopter operations on the mid-Fraser, but there were a number of reports of poaching.
In November 2023, we spoke to the committee about illegal, unregulated and unreported catch and similar issues within DFO. A number of fisheries officers who were passionate about fish conservation have now left compliance and conservation and protection entirely or have left DFO, and some have recently left the Canadian government to work for the province. Additionally, a number of managers in the conservation and protection part of DFO came from the Canada Border Services Agency. This has eliminated advancement opportunities for DFO staff, but more importantly, it has put those who know very little about fisheries conservation and protection in charge of enforcement.
As we said in November 2023, I believe the committee has a number of questions to ask DFO conservation and protection about historical data related to officers on leave, turnover and the number of night patrols and helicopter and boat patrols on the lower and mid-Fraser River over the past five years. This would give the committee a better temperature check on the changing effectiveness and culture within conservation and protection. The number of fisheries officers in Lillooet, Williams Lake, Quesnel and Prince George is now fewer than half of what it was in 2011. Without enforcement, the Fisheries Act is merely a paper tagger.
There are similar issues in relation to quagga and zebra mussels, as well as whirling disease.
Thanks for your time.