Fisheries Committee on April 13th, 2022

[Timothy Sargent]

We certainly have a lot of information about ice conditions. We publish a daily chart on ice conditions, which I look at pretty much every day. I have it right in front of me. The Coast Guard has a whole group of people who do that. It's obviously very important for mariners.

Are there capelin that are actually coming up onto the beach to spawn? We don't necessarily have people standing there watching for them. We certainly have a presence in the Charlevoix region. We have CMP officers and others.

Sylvain, do you want to speak to our presence on the ground—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Actually, I have limited time here.

With regard to the property of weir fishing versus the other kinds, such as seiners, I presume, or whatever, in terms of timing and productivity, is it not possible—to go to the core, I think, of Madame Desbiens' reason for wanting this particular session—to have an earlier start for the weir fishers, or is it that if you do it for one, you have to do it for all of 4S and 4T?

[Timothy Sargent]

We can certainly have an earlier opening for the weir fishers if, as we come out of the advisory committee, that's something that folks are comfortable with...and then the minister currently makes the decision. Yes, we can certainly open the weir fishery earlier.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Now, once the fishery is open, is there a catch limit or a time limit on how long the fishery can go on once it's open?

[Timothy Sargent]

No. For this fishery, once it's open, they can go out and catch as much as they want and take as long to do that as they would like. It is a fishery, though, that only happens for a very short period, so you'd better catch them around the spawning. Once they've spawned, they'll come offshore and then ultimately die, so you can't wait until July, if they've spawned in May, or even June.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

With respect to all of my colleagues, I'm wondering why we're having this emergency session when in fact it's so late that the sort of start that Madame Desbiens was looking for is long gone and likely not.... Well, there won't really be much of a material earlier start, even if somebody today made the decision to go out and start fishing.

I guess the one sticking point, Mr. Sargent, is that you said that this is pretty much the only capelin fishery that has a set date, and that all of the other dates for the start of the fishery are determined by conditions. I wonder why that could not happen with this particular part of the fishery.

[Timothy Sargent]

Tony, do you want to speak to the opening dates for all the different component fisheries here, and how that works?

[Tony Blanchard]

As I said earlier, yes, it is determined in the other areas for the fleets based on the condition of the capelin and the availability of the capelin. That's something that could be considered in this one as well. I think that may be some of the discussion that happens at the advisory committee meeting.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

At this point, though, if the weir fishery is allowed to go forward and they're allowed to catch as much as they can, this would obviously be an advantage to that form of fishing over the other forms. Is that correct?

[Tony Blanchard]

Technically, yes, but it's a very small portion of the overall catch, usually.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Usually. All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have no further questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that, Mr. Hardie.

We'll now go to Madame Desbiens for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll try to calm down a bit first.

Mr. Hardie raised an important point when he said that it's too late for the Quebec capelin weir fishers anyway. I said that at the outset. I even said it when I asked for this emergency meeting, because every day counts.

The idea is to harvest a limited quantity of capelin each day and sell them fresh. The rest are processed as they go.

Each day represents income that will not come back later. That's why every day counts. Those two fishers are going through some tough financial times right now. Last year, they lost half their fishing income because of the capelin opening date constraint.

What I'm hearing is that Quebec's capelin weir fishers are the only ones held to an opening date, while all other fishers help themselves based on the arrival and availability of the resource. In addition, I'm being told that it's impossible to grant them special permission to fish starting tomorrow.

On what basis are you preventing this fishery? More importantly, how are you going to live with the idea that neither of these two fishers may be around anymore next year?

How can you live with that?

[Timothy Sargent]

Mr. Chair, we can certainly look, and we are looking, at what people think about the idea of opening that fishery on April 1 next year and what that would imply. The advisory committee will discuss this, and if they have a favourable view, it will go to the minister and she can make a decision at that point.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

We will now go to Ms. Barron for two and a half minutes.

Go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Something I didn't mention is that although the west coast is now my home, my roots are in Newfoundland. Although I am what many in Newfoundland would refer to as a townie, my family every year excitedly got in our cars and drove to the beach to see the capelin as they washed up on the shores, so I can appreciate what we're talking about today.

I want to expand a bit around forage fish such as capelin, mackerel and herring. We know they are vitally important to the abundance and health of our marine environment and coastal communities, and also to the livelihoods of fishers who rely on them. We know they're an important food source for many species, including whales, sea birds and even fish that are caught commercially.

Unfortunately, we have seen that some forage fish populations have been overfished in years prior. We know that unless there is action to manage them sustainably, there will be irreversible harm to the future populations and, as well, the fishers' livelihoods will be lost in the process.

Can you speak a little about the important role of forage fish? Can you let us know what steps you will take to set quotas or pause fisheries to rebuild these important species to ensure a sustainable future for both our marine environments and the fishers' livelihoods?

[Timothy Sargent]

As the member notes, forage fish are a key element of the food chain. They prey on small marine creatures and then are themselves preyed upon by larger creatures.

I want to be clear for the record that certainly harp seals do consume capelin, as capelin is an important part of their diet. However, we don't have evidence to suggest that this is the key determinant of capelin populations. I want to place on the record that we think harp seals eat capelin, along with a whole bunch of other things.

In terms of the measures we're taking on forage fish—and I'll turn to Adam at this point—we have a policy on forage fish because of their importance in the marine ecosystem.

Again, I'll have Adam speak to that, if that's okay, Mr. Chair.

[Adam Burns]

Within the sustainable fisheries framework, there are a variety of policies that would apply to forage fish, including the precautionary approach framework and the rebuilding plan components of that for stocks in the critical zone.

More generally, it's always particularly important for us to carefully consider the science advice and the stock status of forage stocks, for the reasons the member noted in terms of their critical role in the ecosystem. That is at the core of the minister's considerations and some of the recent decisions she's made, which have been mentioned here today.

In the case of the capelin decisions that are forthcoming, those important considerations will also be front and centre, because, as you know, the recovery and health of the ecosystem are very fundamentally linked to the health of forage fish stocks within that ecosystem.

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

Thank you.

Chair, do I have time for another question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

No, I'm sorry. You don't.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the acknowledgement that harp seals eat capelin, among other things. They'll eat your kitchen sink, I think, if they're hungry, and they'll consume everything. They are eating everything in the ocean.

In this case, you've acknowledged that weir fishing has little impact on the overall TAC or the stock, and that you're open to flexibility in the future. We were hoping there would be a little now, but I understand the process you have to go through.

Basically, as we said earlier, the TAC seems to have been set mainly at around 8,000 or 9,000 tonnes recently. The fisheries management plan says that the catch level for the fishing of capelin in this area, fishing mortality, has no noticeable effects on the capelin population.

In the absence of acoustic sounding—that important part of the science of knowing the size of the biomass—I take it that we're just doing what we've always done in terms of the TAC rather than seeing what we can do going forward, since apparently fishing has no impact, and predation and other issues must be driving the levels. We haven't gone back to those days in the 1970s when it might have been 200,000 tonnes that were being caught.

[Timothy Sargent]

Mr. Chair, as Sylvain said, we have some new things that are going to come to the stock assessment. We have a combined index of the stock state, and we have done some predictive empirical work. As I said earlier, it's a stock on which our information is not as good as we would like. As I said, it's relatively short-lived. It can be volatile, or at least the data that we see are volatile. We have some other indicators, like environmental conditions, that we think are important. We know less about this.

Of course, with the precautionary principle, that would be a reason for us to be cautious about additional fishing effort here. Just because we don't have a lot of information doesn't mean that we can go off and allow people to fish as much as they want. We have to be cautious here, in light of the data. We have some, but it's not as good as we have for some other fisheries. We admit that.

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

Mr. Chair, I appreciate that. I am a bit of a broken record, but without the acoustic sounding knowledge of the biomass, it's impossible for the fishers who fish this to get an eco-certified international stamp, which would help in the development of the export market. We don't seem to really have a good handle on where it is.

As long as we keep getting a reasonably sized capelin catch around these levels, that seems to be how we manage it, and it would seem to me that a serious plan would treat capelin in this area the same as we treat it in the other part of Newfoundland, which is by doing acoustic sounding. Is that a resource issue? Is it that the department doesn't have the financial ability to do that, or doesn't have the equipment to do it in the gulf?

[Timothy Sargent]

We certainly have limited resources, and we have to prioritize how we do that. We look at the size of the different fisheries and their economic importance when we make those decisions. We just can't do everything that we would like to do for every species.