Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to be a witness today.
I'd like to begin by providing a brief summary of my background.
I'm a fishery scientist who runs a small consulting company in Vancouver and I'm an adjunct professor at the University of B.C. My work focuses on the effects of dams and harvesting on the population dynamics of salmon, steelhead and trout. I've been an author on seven papers that have gone through the CSAS or PSARC review process. I have also acted a reviewer on a number of occasions.
I believe the main reason I was asked to appear before this committee is that I'm the senior author of the emergency recovery potential assessment for interior Fraser River steelhead that was reviewed under CSAS in 2018, which Dr. Reynolds just mentioned.
From my experience with CSAS, the review process of working papers is actually quite rigorous. I have not observed that unsupported bias from DFO fisheries management or outside parties have unduly influenced CSAS working papers or their final versions.
However, I have observed substantive meddling by DFO in the conversion of a recovery potential assessment report for interior Fraser steelhead into the scientific advice report or SAR. A SAR is intended to summarize the key findings of CSAS papers and serves as a central document that provides management advice.
There were two main conclusions from our final recovery report relevant to management advice. First, reductions in the abundance of seals and sea lions was deemed to be the most effective way of recovering steelhead populations. This fundamental conclusion was substantially altered by DFO when they wrote the SAR. For example, they stated there was no consensus that there was a causal relationship between the two—meaning a relation between steelhead and seals and sea lions.
This directly contradicts our final report, where multiple lines of evidence for the relationship between steelhead and seals and sea lions was presented.