Evidence of meeting #27 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was shrimp.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
In terms of mackerel, can you please give the committee some examples of where harvesters could collaborate and add to science?
Executive Director, Maritime Fishermen's Union
In the case of mackerel and any of the species of interest that we fish, we have thousands of boats on the water every year for fishing mackerel or fishing lobster or fishing whatever species. It is a very cheap platform for DFO to use, if they want to, to go out there and gather some more information and data.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
I've had fisherman say to me, personally, that they could be fitted out with special sonar and sounder equipment so that they could become involved in live acoustic surveys being submitted anytime the boat leaves the wharf.
Executive Director, Maritime Fishermen's Union
Absolutely. We've made some progress at that level. I would say that in the last two or three years, in terms of the sonar equipment, we've had some boats set up to start looking at the spring herring stock, for instance.
But it's almost 20 years too late.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Is DFO science keeping pace with the changing environment in terms of where and when the at-sea surveys are being completed for mackerel?
Executive Director, Maritime Fishermen's Union
There's a lot of goodwill within the science community in some departments within DFO. There is an acknowledgement that the changes we're seeing in the marine ecosystem right now are very important and moving really fast.
The bureaucracy behind changing the way we do science and the funding that's needed to specifically look at fishery science are lacking. There needs to be more flexibility in terms of the timing for when some of these surveys are done, and extra science needs to be done to try to measure how to change the science protocols for stock assessment so that they can adapt to the changes in the behaviour of fish.
Right now, we're doing science with a human calendar or schedule, whereas we should be following the schedule of the fish.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
That's fair.
Do you think that ENGO groups, such as Oceana, are gaining more seats at the decision-making table at the expense of harvester input?
Executive Director, Maritime Fishermen's Union
I can testify that, over the past 10 years, I've seen more and more ENGOs being represented around the advisory tables in most if not all of our fisheries.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Do you think that these ENGOs are impacting decision-making on things such as closing the mackerel and herring fisheries, and specifically, are they influencing the creation of the new stock assessment models?
Executive Director, Maritime Fishermen's Union
They are having some input within these meetings. We know that they are meeting privately with the minister and her office as well. What's being discussed there, we do not know.
However, when you look at some of these ENGOs and where they're from, they're funded from international sources in some parts. Some are more local ENGOs. We have some good collaboration with some, but in other cases, I do not believe they have the health of our small, rural communities in their best interests.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Absolutely.
Monsieur Lanteigne, you talked about the positive meetings that you've had and consultations in terms of advisories and the setting of quotas. You went out of the meeting with a certain feeling, but the decision that was made was completely different from the direction that you were left with when leaving the meeting.
Who do you think could have altered the direction of that decision-making after those meetings and before quotas were set?
Director General, Fédération régionale acadienne des pêcheurs professionnels
I'm sorry. That's my fault.
Director General, Fédération régionale acadienne des pêcheurs professionnels
Mr. Small, you just named one of the options with ENGOs around the tables—playing games when we definitely don't know exactly where they're heading. You have more and more of them around. We don't know how implicated they are with the department, but that's definitely an option that we would highly suspect.
There are some other management issues that we don't know about. It's very strange for us when we are hit with those, because we don't necessarily expect that to happen and, all of a sudden, there's a ministerial change there. It's very hard to know what has happened. That's why we're saying there has to be more and more transparency around those advisory tables.
If you look at my notes, I even placed that in there. Most of them don't even have minutes. What was discussed the year before? There are not even the topics of the day. It changes all of the time. The head of those guys is also changing all of the time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
I'm going to have to cut it off there. We've gone over time.
We'll now go to Mr. Hanley for five minutes or less, please.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate all of the witnesses' testimony. It is indeed hard to know where to begin, but I'm going to start on the west coast. If time allows, I'll move to the other side.
Mr. Bos, like Mr. Morrissey, I'm thinking of what the themes are for thinking forward. I'm hearing about adaptation to current challenges, the need for more transparency, the need for more connection and partnership with both industry and recreational fishers, and the need to integrate social science.
I am also interested in these examples of where things have really worked well. Mr. Bos, you mentioned the Sooke chinook enhancement initiative. I wonder if you can talk more about how we can elevate and use that example.
What are the steps to see how we can use that excellent example of collaboration and success in other areas? Also, reflecting on Ms. Barron's comments on being involved in the Pacific salmon strategy, how can we be involved to make that ultimately a success?
President, South Vancouver Island Anglers Coalition
Thank you very much indeed for the question, Mr. Hanley.
My initial response to that is that I feel there is a great opportunity at the individual level to reach out between the communities—indigenous and the different communities of business, angling and tourism—and work together to build a friendship and then work together to develop programs that work.
The difficulty with the current intergovernmental discussions between indigenous people and the rest of the community is the different tiers. We see that with salmon planning that the integrated harvest planning committee no longer has much involvement with the first nations because they are sitting separately with government to discuss. I feel this person-to-person friendship needs to be built up.
As Mr. Paish mentioned in his point regarding the PSSI, I really feel that we need to be part of building the cake—not be the icing on the cake.
One positive that we see is that there are round tables where everybody, including first nations, sit at the table and have discussions on harvest or environmental. There are round tables in the lower Fraser area and some are emerging on the west coast of Vancouver Island. These are very positive steps forward. That's the basis on which I make my answer. It has helped us to work hand in hand with the local first nations for our Sooke project. We've had remarkable success with that.
Thank you for the question.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you very much.
In view of time, I want to go to Monsieur Lanteigne.
You spoke very well at the outset about the multiple challenges that we face and that DFO faces.
I wonder whether you think that DFO as an organization has fundamentally changed over the years or whether it's just a matter of keeping up and adjusting a strategic approach to compete with today's multiple challenges?
Director General, Fédération régionale acadienne des pêcheurs professionnels
Those are excellent questions.
I would say that it did change. There are so many staff changing at the department. From one phone call to the other, you don't have a clue who you are talking to. I'll give you quite a good example of that.
An advisory committee has been put in place for the return of the redfish fishery. I think we have had three or four of those meetings and every time it is a new head. Somebody is there. Who is this person? What's his background? What does he or she think? It's always like that, so you have to restart the story all the time to try to find out exactly what that person thinks and what she has on her mind because some of them do have very high influence in decisions.
I think there is not a straight policy somewhere that has been built so that we can build and construct around that. It keeps changing all the time and from one day to another, we don't know where we're going.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Hanley.
We will go to Mr. Zimmer now, for five minutes or less, please.
Conservative
Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My questions will be for Mr. Bos.
You have worked on countless projects to bring back viable salmon habitat and increase salmon abundance on Vancouver Island. The Sooke River has benefited from your enhancement efforts to increase the natural spawning population. You have worked co-operatively with first nations, local businesses and the angling community to make positive change for our salmon populations, yet we hear that rather than DFO assisting your efforts, we have seen senior management seemingly only get in the way.
How does DFO actually assist you in your organization's efforts to help increase salmon populations?
President, South Vancouver Island Anglers Coalition
There are two parts to the answer to your question.
The first part is that I have an extremely good working relationship with the ground-level staff who work on permitting, who work on production of the fish in the hatchery and the coordination of deliveries, etc.
The project referred to is all paid for privately and we do pay the department for the work they are doing, but the level of help and support is great there.
The second part of my answer is the fact that there are opportunities far beyond the one pilot project in the Sooke Basin, and we have already identified one where we have first nations and all stakeholders willing to work together and with funding potentially in-house. We seem to have hit a roadblock with the department not wanting to work forward with it, and trying to divide the collaboration of first nations and stakeholders together and implying that they won't move forward with the project.
It seems strange to me that we have a successful project in one location, which is imminently scalable and can move to other sites, and it's not supported by the department. It doesn't make any sense to me.
Conservative
Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC
I don't know if I heard you correctly, Mr. Bos. We have actually seen an increase in DFO's budget over the last six years by 42.3%.
Does DFO actually fund your work?
