Fisheries Committee on Dec. 11th, 2024

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

So, as a nation, you don't have this recognition as equals with the federal government that would allow you to develop your own environmental management methods, whatever the case may be.

[Darren Porter]

I don't believe so.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, do I have enough time to hear Mr. Thomas's answer?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have one minute and eight seconds.

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

Did you hear my question, Mr. Thomas?

[Larry Thomas]

Is it the same question? Yes.

Thank you.

Actually, Kate and Scott hit on what I would say. I would just leave it. I don't have anything more. It was very succinctly answered.

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

So, when it proves to be more effective, decentralizing power and directing it as much as possible to the field would be an asset.

[Larry Thomas]

Yes.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thanks for that.

I'll now go to Ms. Barron for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today and for providing their expertise in this important discussion.

My first question is going to be for Mr. Porter.

Mr. Porter, just from our short conversation, it's clear that there's a lot more you can provide to us as a committee in terms of information that will help us in determining the best way forward with the Fisheries Act.

One item that you talked about in your opening statement was around having “consistent, equitable enforcement of the Fisheries Act”. Can you expand on that and provide us some examples of what you're seeing?

[Darren Porter]

Today in the Maritimes—this is pretty good news—the fisheries officers walked off due to political interference, an unsafe workplace and a bunch of other things. They're treated very similarly to the commercial fishers in Nova Scotia, which isn't very well, to be honest with you.

PPSC, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, constantly interferes with all cases to do with commercial fishing. Commercial fishing officers can charge us any time they want to, which is necessary in many cases. If fishermen are out of line, they need to be charged, but often the fishermen I look after are charged with clerical errors, right down to dockside monitors not entering their reports on time. Fisheries officers come down, convict them and treat them as criminals. Yet, on the contrary, we have no strictures on our biggest power producer, Nova Scotia Power, for not wanting to comply, and a blind eye is turned every day.

They kill fish on a constant basis. We report it; they don't report it. They don't get charged for not reporting it. It's in the act. It's very clear, so there's a discrepancy in the application of the act. There's a big discrepancy. Anything other than fishing has to go through a different process, and anything rights-based has to go through a different process. They just drop the hammer on commercial fishermen, regardless of what it is for.

There are no conservation concerns on many things but, at the end of the day, there's a big discrepancy in how this act is administered. Fish and fish habitat protection in Nova Scotia is non-existent. There hasn't been a charge in 13 years that I'm aware of. We ATIPed this six months ago. There may have been a charge in the last six months, but the last one was a logger—those guys are low-hanging fruit, like we are—and they think it's acceptable to do that.

You don't even have to listen to me; you just have to look at the facts. Look at what's going on. A simple ATIP will show who's being charged, and Canadian prosecutors are not putting forward these charges to convict people. It's very out in the open if you start looking.

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

Thank you.

Through the chair, can you clarify a bit any leadership you've seen on the part of the minister, or anybody in any leadership positions, around this discrepancy that you're seeing—in particular, perhaps, in relation to Nova Scotia Power?

[Darren Porter]

It's not just Nova Scotia Power. For example, the minister is constantly interfering in the area I represent. The Windsor causeway is a perfect example. This is a structure where the Mi'kmaq and a commercial fishery stand side by side on trying to get fish passage put through, and she is constantly interfering. It's not just her but the ones before as well in this government. They are constantly interfering with the fish passage and in the enforcement of that structure. It's constant.

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

Could you share what the impact is when we have the minister interfering with this work?

[Darren Porter]

The beautiful thing about this one is that it's all recorded. We have an integrated science program with the Mi'kmaq and the commercial fishers at Acadia University, as well as with the Province of Nova Scotia. Everything I'm talking about when it comes to the Windsor causeway is absolutely recorded on a database for 10 months of the year. These are facts, and there is nothing else.

They show that right now there's zero fish passage in Windsor—as of this week there's zero fish passage—and it's being allowed. It's an unauthorized structure, which means that it's out of compliance. They pulled the safety card, and of course I have the province in court over that right now, because it's just a mess. It's really showing that we have no protections other than on the commercial fishery right now.

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

Thank you.

Through the chair, you also spoke about expanding rights-based fishery around indigenous treaty rights. Can you tell us a bit more about your experience? You mentioned the big mine in Nova Scotia. I think it would be some good information for us to consider as we move forward with improving the Fisheries Act.

[Darren Porter]

It's a story you never hear about. The fishers I look after.... None of us fight with the Mi'kmaq. We fish side by side, and we work side by side. It's the untold story of the upper Bay of Fundy.

I believe that the moderate livelihood has potential to save the commercial fishery and vice versa. Without a strong commercial fishery, the Mi'kmaq don't have the leverage they need to get access to the resources for their communities. We have infrastructure, we have knowledge, and we are the largest independent industry in Nova Scotia, so we have economic power, within reason. We have a lot to teach the new entrants as well.

I believe that, if we ever work side by side, we can start getting the politicians and governments to start working on these other activities and perhaps, instead of shutting fisheries down and taking from one to give to the other, you could start improving the habitat, implementing the act and creating more fish and more fish habitat to enable all fishers to fish side by side, in harmony.

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

I think I'm out of time. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My questions will be for Mr. Porter.

I got an email today from the former chief of enforcement for DFO in southwest Nova Scotia. He's retired, but he was in enforcement for 35 years, and he said, “I'm ashamed of the DFO I worked for for 35 years.”

This is about the work stoppage we have today and the result of two enforcement officers being cleared and found to have done nothing wrong, but the department has still suspended them for 10 days, which is why we now have no enforcement on the water in Nova Scotia.

He said that having to have DFO's management findings overturned and ordered to be addressed was embarrassing, and that having an internal review into that conduct overturned by the DFO minister was insulting. He has little doubt.... He no longer recognizes the department he spent 35 years helping to build.

Do you find that's the attitude and the feeling of the enforcement officers, who are just trying to do their job and are being prevented from doing it?

[Darren Porter]

They're absolutely demoralized. This case is perplexing. I mean, I try to study it from both sides. I work with the Mi'kmaq; I work with commercial fishers, and I work with fisheries officers all the time. I've been trying to understand it to the best of my abilities. One independent review went one way, and one review went the other way. I don't really understand.

I just know that the officers are demoralized completely, and I know they're looking for other work currently. I've been trying to get my son, one of the only African-Canadian fishers in the province, to join the force—fisheries—and right now I'm thinking I shouldn't do that.

You know, the political interference.... I don't know about this case. I know about a bunch of other cases. In this case, I'm not quite sure yet, but the political interference on these officers and the stress on them and the danger.... This is real. Somebody's going to die in Nova Scotia this year, I'm assuming. It's going to be an officer, an indigenous person, a commercial fisher or somebody. Somebody's going to die. These people are under major duress, and it's being ignored.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to move on. You're an adult eel licence-holder and harvester.

[Darren Porter]

Absolutely.

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

Obviously, you're very aware of the minister's expropriation of 81% to 90% of the elver business, announced a week ago, which was given, in some sort of socialist thing, to employees, who will all earn less. A part of that is the conversion; out of the 239 adult eel licence-holders, there will be 30 opportunities to convert to elver, for a total of five kilograms per adult eel licence.

Do you think you can run a business on five kilograms of elvers?