Evidence of meeting #5 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 work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
February 8th, 2022 / 12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Thank you, Chair.
My question is for Madam Murdoch.
You referenced a restoration unit. Could you elaborate and explain what the unit entails?
12:35 p.m.
Senior Director, Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Thanks very much for the question.
With some of the new capacity under the PSSI, we are going to be building on what we have now, which is a relatively small salmon habitat resource restoration unit that provides technical advice to outside agencies around salmon restoration work. I mentioned earlier that we'll be looking at creating and standing up within the next fiscal year a full centre of expertise on various aspects of technical knowledge and information. We're making sure it's available to others around salmon habitat in order to inform habitat restoration work.
That will be part of broader efforts that we're going to be doing under a salmon stewardship directorate.
Thank you.
12:35 p.m.
Senior Director, Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
That's right.
12:35 p.m.
Senior Director, Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
It's building on a small group we have right now under our salmon enhancement program. It's expanding that quite significantly.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Could you elaborate on the infrastructure that was compromised during the flooding? Who owns the infrastructure?
12:35 p.m.
Senior Director, Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I spoke briefly to the fact that DFO has federal infrastructure that was impacted, particularly in—
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
What infrastructure was that, Ms. Murdoch? Describe the DFO infrastructure.
Then could you elaborate on the infrastructure outside of DFO that was destroyed or compromised?
12:40 p.m.
Senior Director, Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Sure.
I may see if Mr. Fanos can speak more effectively on this. In a nutshell, it was a number of our salmon enhancement facilities.
Mr. Fanos, did you want to speak more specifically?
12:40 p.m.
Director, Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Program, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Yes, I'll speak specifically and quickly.
Facilities in the Chilliwack and the Spius, which is the Nicola watershed hatchery operation and restoration channels, for example, were directly impacted by the flooding events and needed repairs.
A number of other partner restoration projects that are funded through different avenues like BCSRIF, for example, also received some impacts associated with the high water flows and will need to be considered for repair.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
The only direct infrastructure that DFO owns is primarily attached to salmon habitat not in the area of flood control. Did I interpret you correctly?
12:40 p.m.
Director, Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Program, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Yes, that's correct. The actual dykes and the infrastructure for flooding and drainage are all wholly owned either by the provincial or local authorities.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Ms. Murdoch, you referenced a licence retirement plan. Could you elaborate on that? Is that primarily for salmon?
12:40 p.m.
Senior Director, Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Under the Pacific salmon strategy initiative, there are actually four pillars. Our conservation, stewardship and collaboration pillars are most relevant to this discussion around flood response. We actually have a whole area of focus around harvest transformation to work with indigenous, recreational and commercial fisheries. Projecting out what are likely to be much more modest opportunities for harvesting salmon over the next two to three cycles, or 10 to 15 years, we can work with each group.
On the commercial side, some significant closures were announced last year. We're consulting right now on long-term closures. Recognizing the impacts it has to fishers, we are working with them right now on finalizing the details of a license retirement program, which will be voluntary, but open to commercial salmon license holders.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Senior Director, Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
That's right.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
As referenced earlier, how will the the updated Fisheries Act, which this committee reviewed some time ago, impact the rebuilding of infrastructure going forward?
It will influence it.
Who wants to answer that? Mr. Fanos?
12:40 p.m.
Director, Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Program, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I can take that. I appreciate the question, Mr. Chair.
The Fisheries Act changes had a couple of different prongs of influence on what we're seeing here today, one being the regulatory authorities, the reinstatement of HADD, and the regulatory authorities that we have on the scale and scope. There is engagement programming. We have grants and contributions programming that we work with indigenous partners on. The indigenous have a participation program, as an example, where we try to facilitate funding opportunities to support indigenous engagement in the departmental activities related to habitat.
There are other changes around the proactive planning piece to restore lost protections and get in front on a more proactive scale working with others like the province and the local authorities to have better outcomes for fish.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
It is. Thanks, Bobby.
On my list it says we will go now to Mr. Fast, but I notice Mr. Small is back, so I'll leave it to you two gentlemen to decide which one of you is going to use the five minutes or if you're splitting your time or whatever.
Mr. Fast or Mr. Small, please, for five minutes or less.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to ask Ms. Murdoch about the Pacific salmon strategy initiative.
When minister Jordan announced the PSSI, she repeatedly stated it would be “built from the ground up”. That was her quote.
Today we've heard from you that the PSSI is the government's primary response conduit for fish affected by the floods. Obviously the PSSI is up and running, so what is the current status of the PSSI? Can you give us a ballpark figure of the PSSI, whether it's 10%, 20%, 50% established?
Could you provide some information?
12:45 p.m.
Senior Director, Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I'm happy to respond.
As you know, minister Jordan made that first announcement in June right before the salmon commercial fishing season. We spent much of the summer and then post-election period, the later fall and early winter, engaging at a broad level on the salmon strategy initiative.
We've now launched into what we call our early implementation identifying some key priorities and action areas of work under each of the four pillars and consulting quite broadly with first nations and the provincial government, the Yukon government and other parties on moving forward both in the short term on some immediate action area.
As I said, we didn't envision what would happen in the fall in terms of the floods. We do think PSSI is well positioned to lead our flood response going forward.
