Fisheries Committee on Nov. 1st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 39 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022.

Before we proceed, I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. Please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

In terms of interpretation, those on Zoom have the choice at the bottom of their screen of either “floor”, “English” or “French”. Those in the room can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

Please address all comments through the chair.

Finally, I will remind you that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on January 20, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of the North Atlantic right whale. We will hear from witnesses for the first hour and a half and then finish the meeting with 30 minutes of drafting instructions.

I would like to welcome our panel of witnesses. Representing the Acadian Peninsula Regional Service Commission is Jules Haché, member of the board of directors. Representing CORBO Engineering is Philippe Cormier, president. Appearing as an individual and in person is Mr. Gerard Chidley, captain of his own fishing enterprise.

Thank you for taking the time to appear today. You will each have up to five minutes for an opening statement.

I'll invite Mr. Chidley to begin, please.

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

Mr. Chair, a point of order. You know what I am going to ask you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Everything has been checked for sound and interpretation, so we're all good.

Go ahead when you're ready, Mr. Chidley.

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

It is for the well-being of the interpreters.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[Gerard Chidley, Captain, As an Individual]

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon, Minister, panel members and, certainly, the secretariat.

Thanks for the opportunity to appear as a witness on this very important issue for our industry. My name is Gerard Chidley. I'm an independent owner-operator from Newfoundland and Labrador. We own and operate a 20-metre fishing vessel on the east coast of the island. We are a multispecies licence-holder with a vessel crew of seven members. It's a family-run business and has been that way for 50 years, with 50 years of experience fishing on the ocean in many NAFO divisions and for many species. My certification includes a Fishing Master, First Class and a Master, Near Coastal certificate in the Merchant Marine.

In those years, I served in many capacities and chaired many different organizations and fleets. I have served as ICCAT commissioner, NAFO commissioner, chair of the FRCC, and industry chair of MUN and CFER. I've chaired our crab and shrimp committees and served on the inshore council for 10 years with the FFAW, of which I'm still a member. I've partnered with the Marine Institute, which is a division of MUN, in bycatch reduction trawl designs, as well as in energy efficiency studies on trawls and vessels to provide a more ecofriendly operation.

Early in 2021, I was made aware that there were discussions under way to look at reducing breaking strains on haul-up ropes to allow the rope to bust in the event of entanglement with right whales. I remember my first thought: right whale, wrong solution. I remember discussing this with some of my fellow harvesters and I thought that whoever came up with this had never spent any time on the North Atlantic fishing crab, cod, Greenland halibut or any other fish that required the use of haul-up lines.

In November of 2021, I wrote an email to some of our regional DFO people. I included some of our Newfoundland and Labrador federal members and some of our provincial people. I've shared that email with you for your reading enjoyment. The fact that this hasn't been viewed as a ridiculous idea is the reason I'm appearing before you today. I'm hoping to shed some light on the devastation this will cause our industry by answering, from my experience, any questions you may have.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, we work in a completely different environment on the east coast. We encounter every obstacle from ice to debris lost from cargo ships in storms.

Not many incidents encountered are reported. You may ask why that is. It's because we communicate with each other and provide positions of danger on a real-time basis. This is what we need to do to mitigate any possible right whale encounter before it becomes an incident.

Put a tracking device on the animal at first sight and broadcast the positions on a real-time basis. I have reviewed the sighting maps provided by DFO. We do not have a right whale problem on the east coast. Simply put, you may never have to deploy a tracking device. You will note that in my email, I spoke only to breaking strains, but the same applies to ropeless fishing gear. While most of us have individual quotas, we do not operate on individual pieces of ocean like patches of farmland.

I will highlight what I know to be major issues that threaten our resource if we go down this ill-conceived path.

Loss of fishing gear inflicts huge replacement costs on harvesters. There is ghost fishing at a time when money has been spent on clean oceans initiatives. There is a threat to conservation and sustainability of resources due to the immeasurable impact of lost gear and ghost fishing. There are higher fuel costs due to more trips being necessary to land product, as well as the impact on onshore employment when fishing trips are lost or reduced.

Certainly at a time when the environment is front and centre, there must be concern for the increase in the carbon footprint of fishing when more trips are necessary. In all of this, the unintended consequences of reducing the gear-breaking strains is that this gear can now be parted by small pieces of ice, and other small mammals will become entangled due to the smaller diameter of the rope.

Those are the notes I've provided for the meeting. I made some notes by hand so I could continue, because as I spoke a little faster, I still have a minute or so left.

As I mentioned, tracking the right whales provides many benefits, whether they come into our fishing zone or other zones. We use satellite tags to track bluefin tuna. Breathing animals would be easier, as they surface to breathe. The benefits are not limited to insight into the life cycle of the right whale; they incluse a real-time record of the migration routes and any deviations, accurate time of entry and departure electronically, the ability to broadcast real-time positions to ocean users and increasing co-operation from industry and other ocean users.

Last but certainly not least is the safety concern, which is of the utmost importance to us as vessel operators. Reducing breaking strains poses a huge risk factor if the rope parts while in the hauler. That's why we change our gear every four years. If the gear is frayed, there's always the risk that someone will get struck with it when the rope parts.

There were no meaningful consultations by DFO with industry on this issue, other than an invitation to participate in a Zoom call, where most of the allocated time was taken up by presentations and very little time given to engage industry. Being an optimist, I'm going to give DFO the benefit of the doubt on this one, and being an optimist, I will take the lack of consultations by DFO with industry on this issue to mean that a lack of sightings and presence in our fishing zones means a minimum likelihood for sightings or other incidents to occur, and therefore no action is necessary. The DFO whale group headed by Wayne Ledwell also agrees with this.

What is disconcerting is the lengths those organizations will go to in order to forward their cause with a seeming disregard for the impact on other ocean users and environments. What's equally disconcerting to me is that the governments of the day—that's not reflecting any colour—are willing to condone those antics, as they are extremely damaging to the value of our industry and in turn our rural economies.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I have to stop you there, Mr. Chidley. We've gone a couple of minutes over your five minutes, actually. I know that you've provided a copy of your statement to the committee.

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

[Jules Haché, Member of the board of directors, Acadian Peninsula’s Regional Service Commission]

Hello, everyone.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for giving our communities on the Acadian peninsula the opportunity to take part in this meeting.

My name is Jules Haché, and I am the mayor of Lamèque, New Brunswick, and a member of the Acadian Peninsula Regional Service Commission. The commission provides municipal services across the region, and represents 14 municipalities and 32 unincorporated territories.

Today, I will talk primarily about the importance of the fisheries to our communities. I will leave it up to our professional associations to make specific technical recommendations regarding right whales.

The fishing and seafood processing industry is a very important economic sector for the entire province of New Brunswick, and especially for the Acadian peninsula, a rural coastal region with about 50,000 residents. The social fabric of our communities is greatly influenced by this activity, and has been for generations. The sector is also supported by a well-respected research network and increasingly modern processing facilities.

As a result, any measures taken that have a significant impact on fishing methods are also likely to have major economic and social consequences for our communities.

According to a recent study by economists Maurice Beaudin and Marcel Lebreton, the impact of New Brunswick's fishing industry goes far beyond this sector of activity. We have close to 6,500 fishers and fisher helpers who work on 2,300 boats. These boats are anchored in 70 commercial fishing ports, so many of them are dynamic centres for services, employment, investment, community life, recreation and tourism. There are also about 60 processing companies that employ roughly 7,000 people, not to mention the companies related to the industry. In 2021, New Brunswick exported more than $2.2 billion in seafood products to more than 70 countries around the world, making the province one of the country's largest exporters.

In northeastern New Brunswick alone, where the Acadian peninsula is located, fishing and processing account for close to 4,400 direct and indirect jobs. These jobs alone represent $207 million in salaries and benefits. According to a study conducted by economist Maurice Beaudin in 1998, fishing and fish processing are by far the greatest economic drivers of our region, accounting for nearly a quarter of jobs and employment income.

Our professional organizations in the fishery sector, which have already appeared before this committee, have always been willing to participate in various initiatives to mitigate the impact of fishing practices on ecosystems, including the right whale. In 2018, the introduction of the first measures to protect the right whale created a real climate of general uncertainty. This uncertainty was felt by all the stakeholders affected, and by all our communities given the direct and indirect impact of this activity on our regional economies. As we stated then to the fisheries and oceans minister, who is also responsible for the Canadian Coast Guard, the Honourable Dominic Leblanc, at the time, we knew that the federal government had to take steps to protect the species. On the other hand, in this scientific equation, it is very important that socio-economic and human factors be given equal consideration.

Since then, the focus has been on imposing certain restrictions. We can agree that they have had some success in reducing the mortality of right whales resulting from fishing gear. These restrictions have nonetheless also had an impact on the fishing industry. Efforts should henceforth be focused on this industry, primarily by optimizing fishing practices under the current conditions in order to ensure the sector's viability and the security of the people working in it.

If we want to achieve that, cooperation between our professional associations and DFO representatives is paramount.

In addition, with all the initiatives it has undertaken in recent years to reduce the impact on marine ecosystems, the industry should reap the benefits of a positive communication strategy on the international stage. Sending out a constructive message about fishing industry efforts to coexist with the North Atlantic right whale would surely better maintain the integrity of our U.S. and international markets, and it would also showcase what's being done by the thousands of fishers in our regions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

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

[Philippe Cormier, President, CORBO Engineering]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, good afternoon.

My name is Philippe Cormier. I'm an engineer and naval architect, and president of CORBO Consulting Engineering, a New Brunswick firm founded in 2007 that employs approximately 40 engineering and architectural professionals.

As you know, in 2017, Gulf region snow crabbers were quite shocked to find dead North Atlantic right whales entangled in their fishing gear. Because I had worked regularly with fishers, the associations representing them came to me to find ways to reduce the impact of commercial fishing on that species.

From 2018 on, with help from the Atlantic fisheries fund, we carried out an initial three-year project and assessed 19 very broad solutions, which led us to quickly develop world-class expertise.

Without going into too much detail, we were among the first to test rope-free technologies for commercial fishing. We helped create the first low breaking strength ropes. We looked at existing fishing techniques and how fishing ropes behaved in the water—basically, all kinds of technologies and methods to help us mitigate past, current and future risk.

We worked with several snow crab and lobster fisher associations all over Atlantic Canada and Quebec, and brought to the forefront the ongoing efforts of Canadian fishers and the Canadian government to ensure that commercial fishing can coexist with North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Since 2018, a number of national media outlets have reported on this work, as have foreign media outlets The New York Times, the BBC, National Geographic, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, SeafoodNews.com and many others.

After an initial round of testing that cast a wide net, since 2020 we've been focusing our efforts on the techniques that we believe hold the most promise for risk reduction.

In 2021, with help from the folks at the DFO and the Atlantic fisheries fund, we became the first in the world to have a commercial fishery in closed areas using rope-free systems. During the 2022 season, over 20 fishers took part in a trial, catching over 203 metric tonnes of snow crab using 1,000 traps without any vertical rope in the water that could put marine mammals at risk.

While these trials have yielded very positive results, we still have several technical and logistical challenges to overcome before this option can be implemented on a larger scale. It's important to note that this tool should allow fishers who wish to do so to continue fishing in closed areas in the presence of North Atlantic right whales. It would be impractical, unsustainable and, most importantly, unsafe if this option were used outside of closed areas or fishing grounds not suitable for this solution.

Another technology we're putting a lot of effort into is the use of low breaking strength or weak link ropes. The theory is that this technology would allow a fishing line to break at a tension of less than 1,700 pounds, or 770 kg, whereas the lines currently used are nearly 20 times stronger.

Although we've crafted tools that support the use of low breaking strength rope, our results show that a few more years of research, development and testing are needed before we can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that this solution will not create any more risk than the current situation does for the North Atlantic right whale, the environment and fishing crews.

Finally, in partnership with the Acadian Croppers Association and the ghost gear fund, we're in the midst of a recovery operation, seeking abandoned, lost or discarded traps on the ocean floor that no longer have a buoy on the surface allowing us to easily locate and recover them. We believe that hundreds of thousands of these traps currently lie on the ocean floor.

I'd like to conclude by saying that there's no silver bullet to solve the problem yet, but we have covered an incredible distance in just five years. I can assure you that we're way ahead of our neighbours to the south. The secret to our current and future success can be summed up in a few points.

FIrst, the speed with which fishers decided to tackle the problem head on and their commitment to finding effective and sustainable solutions. In addition, the bond of trust that's developed between fishers, engineers, scientists and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The funding provided by the Canadian government and the provinces that made it possible to carry out these experiments. Finally, the time the DFO put into getting it right science-wise instead of imposing a regulatory disaster, which could have been even more damaging to the ecosystems than the initial situation.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

We'll go now to Mr. Small for the start of the question round.

Mr. Small, before you begin, I'd like to pass along on behalf of everybody in the room well wishes to your mom as she deals with some health issues.

You can now start. You have up to six minutes, please.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for your well wishes. Thanks to all the witnesses who've taken time out of their busy schedules to help us out on our very important study on right whales, which we care so much about.

My question is to Mr. Chidley.

Mr. Chidley, I know you have a tremendous amount of experience in the crab fishing industry over the years and you're familiar with the rope that's required to get your pots to the surface of the water and onto the deck of your boat. What's the breaking strain on the current vertical ropes that you use to retrieve your fishing gear?

[Gerard Chidley]

Thank you, Mr. Small. It's anywhere from 2,500 pounds per square inch to 3,500 pounds per square inch. That's basically the equivalent of a 9/16 polysteel rope or a 5/8 polysteel rope, and depending on the size of the vessel, it may go up a little bit from there, but not a huge amount.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Okay.

Have you witnessed this size of rope break under day-to-day operations, say, in deeper water or in rougher than normal conditions when you have to operate?

[Gerard Chidley]

No. Under normal conditions it was a tried and true practice for us.

The reason we use 9/16 polysteel rope is that it actually holds less current and has less drag. We can go to a heavier rope, but it doesn't give us any more advantage because we're fishing in five-metre seas, and we usually knock off fishing when the seas are around six metres. Our vessel is a 22-metre vessel and we do multi-day trips and we fish up to 260 to 270 miles from land.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

What would happen if you had to use rope with a weak link with a breaking strain of 1,700 pounds, based on your experience?

[Gerard Chidley]

We just wouldn't be able to retrieve the gear, because most of the average depth of waters where we're hauling is 100 fathoms. It's 600 feet of water. When you're looking at it, there are five or six [Inaudible—Editor] and the upthrust of the vessel alone.... It's very seldom that you end up on the Grand Banks with a sea state of less than two metres, so it's just not practical to use anything less.

We tried some smaller gear when we were gillnetting and we ended up having to go back to the 9/16 rope. That was so we wouldn't be providing.... Ghost fishing is the big issue. When you lose the gear, it's not only just the expense of the gear; the damage to the resource from ghost fishing is our main concern.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

In some areas of Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. Chidley, I understand that harvesters are fishing as deep as 250 fathoms. Is that correct?

[Gerard Chidley]

Yes. That's a common depth, actually, in the NAFO divisions 3K and 2J and in the northern part of 3L, and in some cases when we're fishing outside of Canada's 200 miles, we're down in that same depth of water. That type of rope then allows us to retrieve the gear out of that depth of water. It's a significant strain, and we cannot do it like.... Even dropping it down to a half inch, which is only a 1/16-inch drop, means that the rope will part before we get half the pots to the top of the water.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Given your knowledge of ropeless retrieval systems, what do you think are the drawbacks of this technology?

[Gerard Chidley]

It's similar to the talk about the breaking strain. If you were fishing in your own.... With farmland, if you're on your own farmland, you know exactly where you put your crops, and in shoal water like the gulf, using that gear may have its advantages. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the guys operate in a lot of shoal water. Where we operate in deep water, if you were operating in the area by yourself and there was no one else in that zone, then you have the potential to use that style of gear.

However, if you go out now the way we are—we're competitive because we're IQ fishers, with individual quotas—it's competition for ground, and it's not all at the bottom. The substrate is not all conducive to crab fishing and it's not conducive to cod fishing. We're probably only fishing 15% of the ocean floor that we have licence to fish, because that's the only substrate that's good for crab, and we have issues to deal with.

If you're the first guy out there and you don't have your gear marked properly, the next guy who comes out will put his gear right on top of yours because he doesn't know where it is. It's like a guy dropping a case when he comes in through the door. If the next guy doesn't pick it up and the first fellow trips over it, and the next fellow trips over it, you end up with a whole pile of bodies. Good luck on getting the first fellow out from underneath it, and that's the problem.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Do I have any more time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have 30 seconds.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Do you think that DFO has done all that it can do to consult with the fishing industry in your province, Mr. Chidley, or have they just simply chosen to use a one-size-fits-all approach and not put enough resources into making a policy that works for all regions?

[Gerard Chidley]

In my humble opinion, the fact that there were only Zoom calls held by invitation to look after such an important issue meant that the consultation process was faulty from the beginning, because over half the time was taken up just on presentations. There was hardly any industry involved in it at all, and for something like this, a major shakeup of the way we've been doing business, something should have been.... There are other ways of handling things, especially in areas where you don't have any sightings or incidents. The water's just too cold.

By the time the right whale decides to come to Newfoundland and Labrador, where he's going to go up through the Laurentian Channel, we're finished fishing anyway. We start in April and we're finished by July 31 and sometimes by the end of June. Most of the gear is out of the water at the end of June anyway, because we have harvested all of our product.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Small.

We'll now go to Mr. Cormier for six minutes or less, please.