Thank you, Mr. Chair.
On behalf of the Atlantic Groundfish Council and its members, I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to appear on this important study.
The council represents the greater than 100-foot groundfish enterprise allocation holders in Atlantic Canada. Members harvest over 45,000 tonnes of wild groundfish annually, supporting thousands of jobs at sea and on shore. Member enterprises are critical to the rural and coastal economy in Atlantic Canada.
The AGC coordinates Marine Stewardship Council sustainability certifications and fishery improvement projects for many fisheries. These programs provide premium market access by providing evidence that these fisheries are managed sustainably and supported by high-calibre science advice.
The primary goal of DFO science is to provide advice to inform transparent decision-making by the minister. Work conducted by DFO scientists is vetted and translated into stock management advice through the Canadian science advisory secretariat. The CSAS peer-review model is the envy of fisheries science processes internationally. When functioning properly, it delivers balanced, transparent and verifiable advice. While individual reviews may have challenges, this is not indicative of broad failures of the directorate. The AGC believes CSAS is well suited to its core purpose.
Our concerns with departmental science are directed at the inputs necessary for success and focus on fundamental fisheries science. Improvement requires attention to key areas, including stakeholder involvement, survey reliability, balanced investment, stock assessment capacity and objective peer-review processes.
Including industry and other stakeholders in the science review process is key to robust outcomes and broader acceptance of science advice. Industry brings a unique historical and current perspective often unavailable to departmental scientists, ENGOs and academic representatives, all of whom are experts in their own right. Industry participation creates an environment that leads to further co-operation and collaboration among these groups. Given that the data used in science assessments is often collected by industry, our inclusion is a necessity, and disallowing this participation will result in significant lost knowledge.
Delivery of information via complete scientific surveys is a necessary component to the provision of robust science advice. The capacity of the Canadian Coast Guard to reliably deliver the necessary platform to collect this information has been challenged by a combination of aging vessels, deployment scheduling and new vessel failures. Multi-year gaps in survey coverage are now becoming the norm. This has undermined DFO's ability to ensure that information collected on new vessels is comparable with those of the past, jeopardizing decadal time series.
Poor research vessel fleet management leads to less certainty on stock status, unknown stock trends and increasingly erratic advice. Fixing this problem must be a priority.
Core areas necessary for good fisheries management, including stock assessment science, have been overlooked or remain underfunded. Recent staffing efforts focused on populating new programs have resulted in a drain from existing ones. This means more vacancies in key stock assessment positions and gaps in analytical capacity.
Concurrently, DFO has increased the reliance on these same under-resourced work units. Legislated requirements and highly technical stock assessment frameworks mean stock assessment scientists are now being tasked to do more with fewer resources. Priorities are routinely dropped and shifted to accommodate new requests. Balanced investment is needed.
Becoming a proficient stock assessment scientist requires years of training, which is offered at a limited number of postgraduate institutions. Some skills can be learned over years of on-the-job experience and with mentorship from existing experts. Creating an environment where institutional knowledge can be passed to the next generation of stock assessment experts should be fostered by the department, alongside employee retention strategies to keep newly developed expertise in stock assessment positions.
CSAS reviews are often populated by personnel from within the local work unit, creating an environment of positive reinforcement and precluding fulsome review. External reviewers are increasingly difficult to identify, because of time demands, limited expertise and a lack of compensation. This creates an environment of cursory reviews as opposed to the scrutiny envisioned by the CSAS structure.
Input received by the department from reviewers during the assessment process can be challenging to record and action, because of significant delays in providing documents for participant review. Improved rigour of the CSAS process can be achieved by providing financial compensation to reviewers and improving the timelines for the review and posting of the materials arising from CSAS processes.
Stock science advice has a level of uncertainty, which is considered and incorporated when harvest management strategies and harvest control rules are developed through advisory and science processes. Once agreed, these harvest control rules provide future predictability on quota change and future harvest decisions.
With increasing frequency, ministerial decisions are departing significantly from this process, promoting arbitrary reductions in the absence of established scientific process or support. This must be addressed.
We ask that you consider the key recommendations presented in our submitted brief, as we feel that they are integral to improving the development, communication and utilization of scientific advice.
The importance of robust science has never been higher. We are in a period of profound change in the marine environment, driven by the large-scale forcing of climate change. Reliable scientific advice is key in ensuring that the oceans of tomorrow, while different from those of today, will remain a sustainable source of the low-carbon protein needed to feed a growing world.
We thank you for considering our input and welcome any questions or comments.