Fisheries Committee on Nov. 25th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 44 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.

There is interpretation for those on Zoom. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

Please address all comments through the chair.

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

In accordance with the committee's routine motion concerning connection tests for witnesses, I am informing the committee that all witnesses have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on October 4, 2022, the committee is resuming its study on the impacts of climate change.

I would like to welcome our first panel of witnesses.

Back with us once again, representing the Maritime Fishermen's Union, is Martin Mallet, executive director, and Luc LeBlanc, fisheries advisor. We have with us as well Robert MacLeod, president of the Prince Edward Island Shellfish Association, .

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

I will invite the Maritime Fishermen's Union to begin, please, for five minutes or less.

[Martin Mallet, Executive Director, Maritime Fishermen's Union]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee, for allowing us the opportunity to present again today on a very important file and the situation on the east coast.

My name is Martin Mallet. I'm the executive director at the MFU. I am accompanied today by my colleague, Luc LeBlanc, our fisheries advisor at the MFU.

I'll be doing my presentation in French.

The MFU, the Maritime Fishermen's Union, is an organization that represents over 1,300 inshore owner-operator fish harvesters in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Since its foundation in 1977, its mission has been to advocate for Maritime inshore fishers and their communities.

The most recent tropical storm that passed through Atlantic Canada is the second to have hit us hard in only three years. There was Dorian in 2019, and this fall there was Fiona. Climate change is no longer something to be predicted just for the future, because we have been living with it for several years now in our maritime regions on Canada's east coast.

Fiona is now recognized by experts as being one of the most intense and destructive storms in recent Canadian history. Our members in southeastern New Brunswick, the Gulf of Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton took a direct hit. Harbour infrastructure, waterways and fishing gear were all damaged to varying degrees, depending on regional circumstances and the trajectory of the storm.

I would like to share a few recommendations with you.

First, we think that DFO, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, should invest substantially in harbour infrastructure throughout the maritime provinces and Quebec, to protect wharves and fishing vessels against increasingly frequent and progressively higher storm surges. In particular, the ability of the seawalls to stand up against this type of tide needs to be reinforced, and the height of wharves increased to prevent them being submerged during storms. Actually, the wharves in our regions that had been renovated for that purpose over the last ten years mostly survived Fiona with only minor damage.

Second, the MFU recommends adding resources to the dredging program for navigation channels leading to fishing harbours. Silting in the harbours and navigation channels is a historical problem on New Brunswick's east coast and in part of the Gulf of Nova Scotia. The sandy geology of the region means that storms like Fiona and Dorian significantly exacerbate the situation and are increasingly preventing our fishing boats from getting out to sea. In particular, the MFU deplores the lack of dragging crews that are able to respond rapidly, especially in the case of silting during the fishing season. We therefore recommend that DFO create a rapid response team dedicated to emergency dragging of harbours and navigation channels with the ultimate goal of limiting economic losses to the fishing industry, whose operating seasons are short, most of the time lasting only about two months.

Third, since fishing enterprises are losing more and more operating days at sea because of bad weather, we recommend that DFO adopt a more flexible approach when it comes to fishing season opening and closing dates. In particular, we recommend that DFO add the fishing days lost because of bad weather to the end of the season, so the season is not reduced by these increasingly frequent storms.

Fourth, we recommend that DFO's efforts in conducting operations to recover lost fishing gear continue in the long term, in collaboration with the fishery associations. There will be more big storms in the years to come, which will exacerbate the problem of lost fishing gear, and we will have to make every effort to limit the impact of that gear on marine ecosystems and species.

Fifth and last, we recommend that a financial assistance program for fishing enterprises directly affected by Fiona be created. The fishing enterprises that harvest lobster in fishery area 25 in the Northumberland Strait suffered major losses this fall, because the fishing season was underway and that area was in the direct trajectory of the storm. We think this assistance program should help cover damage or loss of fishing gear, lobster traps in that case, as well as damage to boats and lost income resulting from days and traps lost.

I will conclude here, and thank you. We will be happy to answer your questions on this subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Mallet.

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

[Robert Macleod, President, Prince Edward Island Shellfish Association]

Hello, everybody.

I would like to thank everybody for inviting us to this meeting and giving us a chance to speak.

Unlike the Maritime Fishermen's Union, at the Shellfish Association we don't really have wharves or any gear to get lost in a storm, but we require a lot of access roads to get down to different rivers. Our equipment is our hands, basically. In the storm, Fiona, the tide was so high that it caused a considerable amount of the island to be closed down for the shellfish fishery.

We represent soft-shell clam fishermen, quahog fishermen, who require getting into the water to harvest, because there's no equipment other than your hands. These fishers lost two weeks of their season, which represented considerable income. With the higher EI qualifications, that was a critical time of the year when they were trying to get the rest of their stamps, because it takes all year to do it. You have to fish the tides. The tide before the hurricane was off. That week after that was when the tides were on, and the waterways were closed for two weeks. It was a significant financial loss to those fishermen.

As for the oyster sector, three-quarters of the island was closed, so there were a lot of fishermen who couldn't fish. In our case, our buyer wouldn't buy because the labs weren't open to do any tests on the oysters, and he wouldn't buy until he was sure that it was safe to ship. We lost a week of income also over this.

I don't know what the recommendations would be. You can't fix Mother Nature. On our part, as far as raising wharves or anything goes, some of our access roads definitely need work. A lot of the erosion is silting over our beds. The areas have to be de-silted as a result of these storms. We suffered a lot of financial loss. A lot of fishermen were hurt badly over this.

I'd like to thank everybody again for letting us take part. I'll be open to any questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. MacLeod.

We'll now go to our first round of questions with Mr. Small for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for taking part in our very important study today.

First off, Mr. Chair, my question is for Mr. Mallet.

I heard you speak about a requirement for a significant investment to reinforce existing infrastructure. It seems, based on your experience, that reinforcing that's taken place in the past has had some success. Would you like to speak a little bit more on that, please?

[Martin Mallet]

Thank you, Mr. Small.

I'll probably share that answer with my colleague here, Luc LeBlanc.

In the last ten years—and I'll speak for eastern New Brunswick and parts of Nova Scotia on the gulf side—we've had investment in many of our important wharves—those with anything between six and 75 boats per wharf—to raise the height of the ocean walls, the seawalls, and there's also been some work done around the internal wharf infrastructure. Among the wharves that were damaged in eastern New Brunswick, for instance, many of the wharves had minor damages. A lot of the tide levels were at a level that put most of the wharves were under water for a few hours, but even with that effect, most of the equipment was saved.

However, we have some wharves that had not received any investments for a long time. Many of the smaller wharves, especially those that have been divested through the DFO small craft harbours program, have not received these types of investments over the past 10 to 20 years. Especially in areas like Cape Breton, there are many of these smaller wharves. These are an issue moving forward, because how do you help this infrastructure when it is no longer within the authority of DFO to do anything about it?

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

How significant a portion of the wharf infrastructure would you say would be represented by the wharves that have been divested?

[Martin Mallet]

In eastern New Brunswick, there are maybe a few of these wharves. There are not many of them left after they were damaged in this area. The trajectory of this storm in particular was especially severe on the Nova Scotia side of things and P.E.I. In our case, we were largely saved by the fact that in the last few years most of our wharves had been invested in.

Luc, maybe you want to add.

[Luc LeBlanc, Fisheries Advisor, Maritime Fishermen's Union]

One particular piece of infrastructure that's really important is the seawall. Basically, the more robust the seawall is, the better it stops the storm surge. The storm surge is really what causes a vast majority of the damage. It's not wind. In some places—for example, in eastern New Brunswick—we have two seawalls now instead of one. They really help with the storm surge. They're costly pieces of infrastructure, but they really work. We saw an example of that during Fiona.

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

Having one seawall outside of the other one is interesting technology. You protect the second sea wall, which inevitably protects the wharf infrastructure.

[Luc LeBlanc]

That's correct. The first seawall basically takes the brunt of the storm surge, and the second one is there to pick up the rest. It really works.

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

Mr. Mallet, of the wharves in the area of the people that you represent, how many have been rebuilt or reinforced over the years, and how many remain that need to be worked on?

[Martin Mallet]

Luc, could you add to that question as well?

[Luc LeBlanc]

Particularly in southeastern New Brunswick, a vast majority of the wharves have been significantly worked on. It's less true in other areas of the Maritimes. In terms of proportion, probably 50% to 60% of the wharves have been invested in, and the others not so much. Once again, we can really see the difference between a wharf that has been invested in and and one that has not.

[Martin Mallet]

In many cases, for the federal wharves that have not been renovated in recent years, work was done to look into what type of improvements they should be getting in the next few years. In some cases, if they've not been worked on yet, there are plans that they will get some kind of investment in the coming years. When is that going to be? I can't reply to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Small.

We'll now go to Mr. Morrissey for six minutes or less.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Chair.

Martin, I like your recommendations. One of the issues that appears to be coming up is the availability of contractors to get the work done and to get the work out the door. We're facing that in P.E.I.

Could you provide a recommendation to the committee of other methodologies or other avenues to get harbour work completed? Could we use the port authorities more to speed up the process? Could you give me your opinion on that?

[Martin Mallet]

That's an excellent point. We've had a meeting in the area recently with the small craft harbour director at DFO.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

My concern is that although the government has committed to putting in hundreds of millions of dollars, time is the biggest issue. That's where I want you to give us some recommendation advice.

[Martin Mallet]

There aren't many of these contractors. That's one thing. The other thing, in some cases, is that they don't have an existing or long-term contract.

If there is an emergency and there's no contract open or active with these contractors, they can basically say no. This has happened for us in one particular case with one of our wharves. There was a need to do some dredging right after the storm, and the particular contractor in this case said no because he had something else to do.

Luc can maybe expand on that, but that was a very stressful situation.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Please be brief, because we're going between two departments, and I want to get to Mr. MacLeod on the shellfish fishery.

Is there a role for the port authorities in speeding up the process so that they can deliver smaller projects on behalf of DFO? Is that something you would be prepared to recommend?

[Martin Mallet]

I would recommend that.

The small craft harbours are generally the local fishermen leaders. They know their wharf. They know their channels. They know their area very well—better than anybody else, including myself and Luc. They know the exact things and equipment they need to do the work.

Potentially, some of these wharves could get together and get the type of equipment they need. They could get their own little group together to do this, as we're moving forward and getting these contracts together with DFO.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Martin.

I'll go to Mr. MacLeod. I'll call him Bob. I know him quite well.

Bob, the damage done to the shell fishery, especially the wild oyster fishery, is not something visible. A wharf is visible, and we can see the damage, but could you elaborate a bit more on the impact, which was significant, on the wild oyster fishers' income during that period of time? Could you give us a range for that number?

[Robert Macleod]

Thank you, Mr. Morrissey.

As I said, the oyster fishermen suffered financial losses. For instance, we were only in our second full week of the fall season when it happened. The previous week, a lot of fishermen had a really good week, probably four or five thousand dollars. The next week, when you couldn't sell, you had nothing. There was no income.

I was after Minister Fox here on the island, and Innovation PEI, to offset it. They gave us $1,000, but it took three weeks for us to get it, so it was pretty tight going for us financially.