Fisheries Committee on April 28th, 2022

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

I'm sorry, Mr. Taylor. I'm from Quebec.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We'll ask Madame Desbiens to start her question again. I won't dock her that time.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Taylor, given you knowledge of the system, what solution do you think could be applied to increase the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' consideration of scientific advice?

[Greg Taylor]

I think Canada has a system in place that would be extremely effective in turning science advice into good management decisions. It's just that managers have not implemented it.

We have a policy structure in place that would allow good science to influence decisions, but, as I say, it has not been implemented. That's why I would propose, as some other people on the panel are also proposing, that you have to have some sort of independent body to monitor the implementation and monitor the science.

Mr. Hardie was quite correct. There are often different versions and different interpretations of science. Stakeholders have to be involved. There has to be some consideration of how to implement science. We have that in those policies. What we don't have is transparency, like Mr. Zeman says. We don't have that kind of oversight that we need. We need more involvement of first nations.

We have the basic structure. We do not have the follow-through, and we do not have the independent monitoring or oversight that's required to ensure that it is done.

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

I was saying to Mr. Zeman earlier that there could be an ombud or auditor general who would independently ensure not only that scientific advice is communicated, considered and implemented, but that it is an overriding factor in the decision‑making of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Are we in agreement on that?

I'm talking about scientific advice, indigenous knowledge and, of course, on‑the‑ground knowledge.

The question is again for Mr. Taylor.

[Greg Taylor]

Yes, in terms of first nations involvement on the ground, I think that's critical.

As I say, I'm working with first nations right now. What I find is that they are often at the mercy of DFO data, DFO science and the DFO interpretation of that science. They lack the capacity and the dollars to interpret and to do their own science and ensure that their territories and the fish stocks within their territories are being managed according to the best science. As Dr. Whitney alluded to, that science involves their own traditional knowledge as well and being able to incorporate that.

I think first nations need more resources and more independence and, other than people like me or consultants who are also working off the corner of their desk on a shoestring, they need the resources to be able to do the job. They are the managers of their resources. They can't do the job that needs to be done if they are dependent upon what we're all describing here, what all the witnesses are describing: a broken DFO system. First nations are truly at a disadvantage right now in the current system, I believe.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

I will remind members of the committee to please identify who your question is for, because you're losing time simply by staring at the screen.

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

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

Thank you, Chair.

Building off some of the information that Mr. Taylor was speaking about, I was hoping to direct my question to Dr. Whitney.

Before I do so, I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today.

Dr. Whitney, I really appreciated many of the comments you made around the importance of indigenous knowledge, the capacity for utilizing this indigenous knowledge and early identification of issues and avoiding tokenism. These are all really important points.

I was hoping that you could expand a little more on how, in your organization at the Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance, scientific data sits alongside indigenous forms of knowledge. Can you provide some examples and how that works in practice?

[Charlotte K. Whitney]

Absolutely, and thank you for the question. It's very important and integral to the work we do.

I think I spoke in my opening statement to the value of indigenous knowledge as a space with a much longer-term view and understanding of resources and ecosystems, driven by the people that have lived there for thousands of years.

One of the things that I think we often really appreciate and value in that knowledge system is, as I spoke to you about, an early trigger, an early issue identification. That's something that is really critical and I think relates well to the staged principles around the first specific principle. One thing we find in practice is that the nations we work with and for will raise those issues and identify an opportunity, a concern, and in our case a collective concern for central coast nations working together.

That then drives further western science, potentially, and research, as well as synthesizing and gathering further indigenous knowledge to drive management decisions, and then, if you think about a feedback loop, monitoring and evaluation, and then improving or adapting those management decisions accordingly.

Those two different knowledge systems—western science and the data that can be derived from that knowledge system—can really go hand in hand or—I think many people have used this term—there's a “two-eyed seeing” approach, where indigenous knowledge and western science can really work together to drive management decisions as well as research.

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

Thank you, Dr. Whitney.

[Charlotte K. Whitney]

I see that my colleague, Alejandro Frid, also has raised his hand.

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

Thank you, Dr. Whitney. I really appreciate the information. Perhaps your colleague could provide some additional information in written form. I have some other questions I wanted to get to, but I so appreciate your very well-described way of incorporating indigenous knowledge into all the processes we undertake. Thank you.

In my next question, I was hoping to speak to you, Mr. Taylor. It's nice to see you again.

I wanted to ask you to expand a bit on how earlier this year Watershed Watch and SkeenaWild published a significant report around the Alaskan interception of B.C.-bound salmon. One of the things that stood out in this report was that it was recognizing the limitations of the available data and saying that there were many holes and that some of the data was decades old.

Can you speak to this and perhaps speak to some of the challenges and expand on our previous conversation around this, please?

[Greg Taylor]

Certainly. This issue of Alaskan interception goes to the core of what we're talking about. Much of the information in our series of seven reports on the Alaskan interception of B.C. salmon did not come from DFO. It came from Alaska's Department of Fish and Game and the Pacific Salmon Commission. The DFO is not a holder of the best or most complete data or science. That certainly was telling.

What's more than telling is, as we've often said, these interceptions would not be happening in Alaska if these were Alaskan fish. It's only happening because they're B.C. fish. The difference is Alaska's jurisdiction and state constitution would not allow this to happen in Alaska. We don't have that sort of thing in Canada, as I was saying before, where we have either independent oversight or a legal framework where you must incorporate science in managing fisheries.

Also, one of the real core problems we had was that we could identify interceptions of Canadian fish in Alaskan fisheries. We know they're severe. All over the coast, we've drawn a map now showing those impacts throughout the B.C. coast. Can we tell you what the impacts on those individual stocks are? No. The reason is that none of those policies under the sustainable fisheries framework have been implemented. The key of these is the one Dr. Riddell wrote on the wild salmon policy. It's not being implemented anywhere, so we don't know the status of most of our Canadian populations. We don't know their benchmarks—that is, where they're at risk and where they're not. We don't know what the recovery plans should be when they are at risk. We just can't measure impacts. We know the catch now and we've identified the catch, but we don't know the status of our own stocks.

That's such a complete failure of Canada to do the basic job of understanding our core fish populations and the status of them. It's gobsmacking. It's something I addressed when I talked about the Marine Stewardship Council certification. That's why they pulled it. We aren't doing that core basic science. It really condemns DFO's management. What really frightens many of us is that this is in place at a time when climate change and the climate crisis is impacting fish.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron.

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

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate everybody who is attending this morning.

My first question is to Jesse Zeman.

Jesse, I brought up your situation in the House a couple of years ago. I'm just going to quote from the article on the BCWF website:

DFO Rejects Science, Risk Extinction of Steelhead Runs....

“Thousands of pages of federal government documents obtained under Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) reveal that scientific advice on these endangered steelhead populations was undermined, edited and hidden from Canadians by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans,”....

That's in your own words, Jesse.

I just wanted to ask this for the benefit of us in the room here. What did you discover that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was doing to the science around steelhead?

[Jesse Zeman]

Thanks for the question.

I did touch on this briefly in the presentation. Specifically, what comes out of that ATIP—and of course, these are not my words; this is what was revealed by DFO employees—is that, first of all, the chair, who is a DFO employee, said that he was concerned that the scientific integrity of the process had been impaired. There are documents revealing that the assistant deputy minister's office gave a directive to modify some key points related to allowable harm. Also, DFO management—not DFO science, and this is the critical piece again—created its own run timing model.

First of all—and you need to be a bit of a geek on this stuff—they could not get the model to converge. There's your first red flag. The second red flag was that the model looks like this, and essentially what the model says is that there are no steelhead in the Fraser River until September 1. I have pictures of steelhead that were killed hundreds of kilometres up the Fraser in August two years ago.

Again, if you don't like the science, you make up your own. I believe they're still using their science to brief the minister, even though that science was thrown out through the CSAS process.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Jesse, for that.

We just recently saw a science-based fishery that could have opened rejected by the minister and, really, the DFO top officials. The science is clear, but they're still making their own decisions.

I'll move on to Brian.

Brian, it's good to see you again. We've appreciated the work you have done over these many years with salmon but also in the angling community. I have some friends, like you, who have been around for a long time. It used to be that the angling community, the conservation community and the department worked hand in glove, together, to get good science and to get good expertise on the water to make good decisions. What is that relationship like now?

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

I think the opportunity is still there. The collaboration varies with the particular question and the time.

We in science now generally talk about an activity called citizen science. There are multiple levels of this now because the first nations don't want to be considered citizen science. They have their own science opportunities. We have a number of scientific communities that really need to collaborate with some of these things. The department cannot collect data at the micro-scales that citizen scientists can. First nations, in this case, can collect data in very specific locations.

I think the information you were talking about, Bob, was really referring to work around the Strait of Georgia and Juan de Fuca. We call it the Salish Sea.

I'll give you a really great example of how powerful involving communities can be. If you do a government survey of this Strait of Georgia, it's a 10-day survey sampling 80 sites. If we use citizen science by engaging community people with vessels, we sample the entire Strait of Georgia with the same number of sites, in a single day. The opportunity there is that we can do multiple samplings, and we can sample it at a time and space scale that is impossible using large vessels. There are all sorts of opportunities for these collaborations.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

If you are saying that this is something we should strive towards, where is that relationship at right now?

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

I think the relationship is still there. It's just a matter of whether there are questions that can be addressed by using that collaboration. Do we have an agreement on how we would undertake it? I think the opportunity for the department now is that, with the new money through the Pacific salmon strategic initiative that Mike Staley referred to, you can engage these groups that provide excellent information, particularly using our new technologies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Zimmer. You have gone over your five minutes.

We'll now go to Mr. Hanley for five minutes or less.

Go ahead, please.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the witnesses for the fascinating testimony.

As a public health physician, especially having been managing the public health response to the pandemic in the last couple of years, I certainly recognize many of the similar themes about the distinction between the science and making sure the science is there, and the many factors that influence a policy decision.

The first question I have is for Mr. Staley.

You talked with some diplomacy about the muted science that occurred during the Harper era. I think it's important to be very clear about how destructive that was not just for fisheries science but also in general for promoting and practising evidence-based policy in the federal government.

Specifically, you also mentioned the Pacific salmon strategy. This is important for me as a Yukon representative. I wonder if you could discuss the role of science in the Pacific salmon strategy and how you hope to see science and traditional knowledge advance the work that we need to do to implement the strategy.

[Michael Staley]

Thank you for the questions.

On the last one, I see it as.... The first nations in the communities that we serve are on the ground, and they are the holders of their information and their science, as has been pointed out by others here today. We see that this has to be dealt with respectfully, not only in passing, for lack of a better word, but also in feeding up to or collaborating with the information, the issues and interests of others.

I don't know the answer to the first question for sure.

I'm involved in an experiment right now on how that might work with the Fraser Salmon Management Board and the collaborative agreement. To date, it hasn't touched the ground nor gotten traction, in part because it's a new thing. As we all know, DFO is challenged with changing quickly. That's how I see the second part of your question.

On the first part of your question, yes, I experienced working with first nations through the first part of this century and basically the withdrawal from the field of science and data. For many of the stocks that we work with, there are big holes in the databases around spawning enumeration, the quality of that, even the quality of some of the fisheries enumeration.

As I said in my opening remarks, I'm heartened to see that we've recovered some of that, but unfortunately, when you're managing some of the longer-lived animals, you need a longer-time series, and we, unfortunately, have that missing piece.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Staley, I'm going to have to cut you off because my time is so limited.

I want to go to Dr. Riddell.

You also mentioned the Pacific salmon strategy. What are the opportunities for really taking some of these lessons and applying scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge to the Pacific salmon initiative?

[Dr. Brian E. Riddell]

I have to apologize because I really cannot answer your question.

I have not been able to participate in any consultation about the PSSI. I hear rumours of it, because I managed the entire stock assessment staff for the Pacific for about 10 years and I still have lots of friends and co-workers. I hear rumours, but nothing more than that. I really have no basis on which to answer your question at this time.