Fisheries Committee on June 14th, 2022

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for appearing here today.

Certainly one of the interesting themes out of this is what does science mean? Are we all arriving at a common understanding of what science is—science as an exercise to integrate knowledge and evidence from all available sources without bias? It is on that theme that I have a few questions.

Mr. Trites, I was really interested in your recommendations around research clusters. I want to bring that out a bit more. I wonder if you could describe how a research cluster might work. Maybe you could use the example of how that might work with Pacific salmon in particular.

[Dr. Andrew Trites]

That you for the question.

The idea of a research cluster is to get the advice from those who fish, those who do research, those who do management and those who do cutting-edge research.

In terms of salmon, I'll give you an example. We were doing a study on killer whales, asking whether or not there is enough salmon to support southern resident killer whales. What struck me was that we held small workshops with sport fishing guides. Their knowledge of salmon far exceeded the knowledge I had obtained through scientific papers. They were instrumental in helping us design a study, along with whale-watching companies, and we put the two sets of data together. We found when we did our study that there was in fact four to six times more salmon available to the declining southern resident killer whale population than to the growing northern one.

To my mind, that's an example of where you can use the expertise of different stakeholders to help guide science, help design the studies and end up with results that one can collectively accept.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

Dr. Rangeley, at the end of your five minutes you mentioned a better bringing in of the indigenous perspective and indigenous knowledge. I wondered if you could elaborate a bit on how you see doing this.

[Dr. Robert Rangeley]

I think that's an important question on the methodology. While we have a number of commitments in Canada around indigenous reconciliation, and including indigenous knowledge systems in decision-making, there seems to be no real clear pathway for inclusion. I think very clearly—and I think everyone would agree—that in terms of understanding evidence from a long temporal scale from indigenous communities on the water through programs such as the guardian and watchmen and from other kinds of sources of evidence, there are valued contributions that should apply to the evidence around decision-making.

What I would ask is that this committee and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans be cautious of tokenism around how that kind of knowledge will be used or incorporated and figure out mechanisms to co-manage and co-govern with our indigenous peoples.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thanks.

Mr. Sean Jones, I know you spoke earlier on the co-governance perspective, particularly with the regulatory hat. I wonder if you could maybe further elaborate on the implementation of co-governance and incorporating indigenous knowledge.

[Sean Jones]

I think co-governance, or what DFO sometimes calls “collaborative governance”, needs to be implemented by agreements with clear terms of reference. My fellow witnesses have talked about an indigenous perspective, and in particular with traditional knowledge of indigenous communities. That's very important to integrate, but I think we need to remember that indigenous communities have their own scientific advisers, and they bring that scientific perspective to bear as well. That is a way of countering some of the inherent conflicts of interest in the process where we have an overrepresentation of industry.

Bringing indigenous folks to the table in a meaningful way, particularly in the CSAS process, would not only balance that presentation of the evidence but also help DFO fulfill its constitutional duties to consult and accommodate first nations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Hanley.

We're out of time.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Hardy.

Mr. Hardy, l'd like to talk about seals, surprisingly. I asked an Order Paper question in the House of Commons on the stomach content of seals.

The minister recently patted herself on the back in Newfoundland for stating the obvious, that seals eat fish. She somehow thought that was a revelation. Apparently they did at DFO; they thought it was a revelation.

I asked for the stomach content sampling by DFO, not specific to any province, since 2017 and all the details. I have 122 pages of the DFO response of June 10, and 107 of 122 pages are from Newfoundland and Labrador. There are a few pages on New Brunswick, but no sampling in Nova Scotia, Quebec and British Columbia.

I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that, of all that sampling, on the findings pages, it says that what was in the stomachs was “not available”. It took them anywhere between three to nine months to analyze the stomach samples, and in their report to Parliament, they're not willing to disclose what's in the stomachs. Maybe they did find Alberta beef and don't want to contradict their minister that seals eat fish.

My question for you is this. On the seal task team, did you get access to any data on the stomach contents of seals?

[Robert Hardy]

Yes, we did have a number of presentations by DFO scientists on a variety of species of fish and what was found.

If I could, Mr. Perkins, I'd just like to explain something to the people here.

Last year during COVID, we were following what was happening in terms of stomach sampling in Newfoundland. The protocol here in Newfoundland has been to use the same fishermen year in and year out, for a decade or more, from the same community, and at the same time of year, in the winter months of December and January.

Now, what I am about to say is probably a bit shocking, but I'm going to say it. I spoke personally to the fishers who collected the stomachs. These stomachs were left in the fishermen's boats, or right out on their wharves, for a period of months before they were collected by DFO. That's hard to believe, but it's factual.

I thought, well, maybe that's due to COVID. Maybe this is not the normal practice. But when I asked, they told me, no, this is what happens.

So in terms of stomach sampling and how to determine what a seal eats, if we were using fisher science, and fishers were trained to document what was in the stomach when it was freshly taken on board.... They can easily see and identify a herring, a capelin or a mackerel, because when the stomach is fresh, the fish are also fresh.

Can you imagine the degradation of the stomach after being left unrefrigerated for weeks and months on end? Yes, you can do chemical analysis later. Yes, you can determine that there was a codfish there. But I think the stomach analysis from both spatial representation and seasonality....

To say that there is no stomach analysis in Nova Scotia or Quebec is crazy. This can be done. Industry wants to do that tomorrow. They want to start this program tomorrow. They want to take seals—

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

Thank you. I have just a little time left here.

That is shocking, but it is consistent. Some of these numbers are from 2017, where it says it took them nine months to get to the stomachs.

In the rebuilding plans of DFO, in the integrated fisheries management plans and recommendation three, you talked about including seal predation. I take it from your responses that seal predation is not part of it. Is seal predation part of the modelling of our fish stocks in Atlantic Canada, or, for that matter, in British Columbia?

[Robert Hardy]

I think it comes under the broad term of “natural mortality”. We see a large percentage of unknowns when it comes to natural mortality. What happens to a smolt when it leaves the river? We're seeing fewer and fewer salmon returning. Are they caught elsewhere? Do they become prey of another fish species? Or are the seals, which are found in most rivers, taking a piece of it?

In terms of—

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

Sorry. I have one more question—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

No, I'm sorry, Mr. Perkins. You're 40 seconds over as it is. It would be punishing somebody else for you to speak any longer in this time slot.

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

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

I think Mr. Perkins and Mr. Hardy punished lunch a little bit.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

Mr. Young, you said something that I think deserves to be put up in bright lights. It was about the DFO acting as an “arbiter” versus a “regulator”. We've seen a number of examples of consensus-building on science, which includes stakeholders, who, by the very definition of that word, have a bias.

Should the conflict resolution piece be taken out of the DFO?

[Jeffery Young]

At some level, yes. There are a number of layers to this. The conflict of interest piece is particularly troublesome.

Ultimately, without clarifying what they are supposed to be doing and then having a mechanism to ensure that we're reporting on their success in doing that, it's just too easy to naturally move into a mode where we try to present what we do as consistent with what has been asked of us, and to remove that accountability where we can, and then ultimately we're not allowed to fail.

Without a measuring system to deal with that, this is the natural tendency. I don't actually fault the department for moving in that direction.

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

Unfortunately, for reasons of time, I'll have to move on.

Sean Jones, in Ian Bailey's article in The Globe and Mail, quoted Kevin Lamkey, the communication director for DFO, talking about the delay in releasing the science on PRV. He said in a statement that “under the Aquaculture Collaborative Research and Development Program all authors must agree to the contents of the paper before it is released”. As a result, in this particular paper's case, the delay was 10 years.

Again, on this business of collaboration, of course it's necessary, especially in the interests of a fair process, but are we being well served when, in the interests of collaboration, we end up with consensus that is often defined as the lowest common denominator agreement? Is this serving us well here?

[Sean Jones]

No, it's not, and that's an example of DFO's not affording the legal rights that it had available to it. The collaboration agreement between DFO and those industry veterinarians said that they could not delay publication for more than one year.

The information commissioner found that the intellectual property provisions of the agreement were extraordinarily broad in DFO's favour. My understanding is that Dr. Miller-Saunders volunteered to publish the paper independently and not use any of the intellectual property of the co-authors. DFO still withheld that information, in this case because they essentially gave industry a veto over what research could be released.

There are two problems there. One is these types of agreements with industry on collaboration. The second is how DFO managers selectively choose to ignore the powers that they have under those agreements to allow scientists to publish their work independently.

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

Dr. Rangeley, I haven't asked you a question yet.

Are we being well served by the CSAS model? Is the necessity to collaborate and come up with consensus holding back valuable research that, sure, could be challenged, but that challenge process is something that would be far more valuable to the public interest than just everybody off in a room somewhere and deciding what it is?

[Dr. Robert Rangeley]

Thank you. Absolutely, we have to follow the science, the best available evidence.

With the CSAS process, our concern is about the timeliness of that information. It presumes that individuals who aren't in the room during a CSAS meeting, for example, have nothing to add to the evidence. It also assumes that they are not affected by the consequences of the CSAS science process, and it's particularly concerning when the minister takes on that information and makes a decision, for example, on a stock that affects individual fishermen who did not see that coming. The previous question on mackerel was an example of that.

We're not seeing the evidence come through, and I would certainly take the opportunity to say that much of the evidence that's coming to the minister is quite opaque—that is, the basis on which the science decisions are being made, and they're not necessarily following CSAS. I would call attention to the recent decision to roll over the capelin quota, whereas not only did we not have evidence, but there's also clear evidence of a collapse of that fishery. It hasn't thrived for 30 years, yet there's no transparency on that availability of information.

I'm not advocating that consensus model, but rather a sound process on which the evidence that the minister is making decisions on is transparent. That's why we put in our recommendations something like a report to Parliament like they do in the U.S. in their reports to Congress. Accountability, responsibility and transparency are sorely lacking in many of the decision-making processes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, 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.

My question is for Christopher Jones, formerly of the DFO.

You may not be aware, so I'm letting you know that the National Assembly of Quebec has unanimously passed a motion calling on the DFO to compensate fishers who are victims of the sudden, unexpected decision to close the herring and mackerel fishery.

Based on your past experience, would you tell me how the DFO goes about this? How do they come to such a quick decision without telling the fishers?

Of course, the DFO manages fisheries, but we must never forget the human factor when making decisions.

Can you shed some light on that for me?