Fisheries Committee on Feb. 8th, 2022

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I don't think there's going to be enough time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We'll get back to you again later.

Mrs. Desbiens, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the clerk and the whole team for their understanding.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

My birthday gift came quickly. How wonderful.

I have a question about recommendation 14 in the committee's fifth report. The recommendation reads as follows:

That the Government of Canada recognize that the situation in British Columbia facing fish harvesters is urgent, and that relief will be necessary to support commercial, recreational, and Indigenous harvesters as these communities rebuild the fisheries.

The recommendation addresses the emergency supports that commercial, recreational and indigenous fish harvesters need.

Do you have an assessment plan in place?

Are the supports targeted?

Have you been able to provide specific and effective support in a targeted manner?

[Sarah Murdoch]

I will just jump right in, if that's all right, Mr. Chair.

Yes, with regard to the closures announced last year, particularly for the commercial harvesters, as well as the ones going forward and anticipated over the longer term, we are currently meeting with commercial harvesters on the west coast—salmon fishermen—and talking to them both about what we think those longer-term closures will need to look like for the next one, two or three cycles of salmon in order to rebuild and restore those populations to a sustainable level, and also how we can help mitigate the real impacts on them. A key component of that will be a licence retirement program. We are just consulting right now with fishers on that in looking to have it launched prior to the start of this fishing season.

Thank you.

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

Thank you.

Have you put a figure on the economic impacts, as well as the effects on Pacific salmon markets outside British Columbia? Did the flooding affect the supply of salmon on Canadian and foreign markets?

In Quebec, concerns have been raised around the ability to conserve this wonderful salmon for consumption. People love eating salmon. Will this affect supply going forward, in the same way certain foods are becoming scarcer on store shelves right now?

[Sarah Murdoch]

I did mention in my opening remarks just how many of these populations unfortunately are already under consideration for COSEWIC, particularly in the lower southern portion of British Columbia—our sockeye and Chinook. Sockeye largely have been targeted, as have other salmon species, for commercial harvesting, for both the domestic and the broader market. We have seen downward returns in many of those for some time. We are working with fishermen not only on fishing opportunities, but on how to best set themselves up in terms of resiliency going forward.

I would say, yes, just like the Big Bar landslide, which I know you have looked into as a committee as well, unfortunately the floods are now another natural incident. I think it points to the need for climate adaptation and just the recognition that opportunities for fishing commercially on salmon will be quite variable, and we need to be working with industry to manage and weather that storm ahead. That work is already under way and will definitely be continuing over the next few years under the PSSI.

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

Do I have a bit of time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have two minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Murdoch, thank you for that very informative answer.

Is it possible that the export side of this resource market could be diminished to satisfy domestic demand or demand from the Quebec market?

Are you considering a decrease in exports to ensure we have enough of this wonderful fish for the domestic market?

Is that something you are studying or planning to do?

[Sarah Murdoch]

I may need to get back to you in, if that's at all possible, in writing regarding that specifically. I'd like to talk to or discuss this with my fisheries' management colleagues.

I would say that salmon over the last several years have become a smaller and smaller share of the fish harvested on the west coast. Obviously, salmon have a huge cultural and historical importance and are important to first nations, commercial fishers as well as recreational fishers.

As for the overall percentage share that salmon represent in the commercial harvest and in GDP, that has reduced quite significantly, so I think there is a story here around diversification into other products and other fisheries. As for the actual breakdown of export versus domestic consumption of our Pacific salmon, I'd like to respond in writing, if that's okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Okay.

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

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

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing.

Ms. Murdoch, I want to talk about dredging. Although the flood devastation in the Fraser Valley was immense, it could have been so many times worse had the Fraser dikes been breached by this atmospheric event.

Your presentation addressed the steps that will be taken to restore and protect fish habitat, effectively after the fact. The focus of the study is actually “risks flood control/mitigation systems...pose to wild salmon runs”. The Fraser River dikes run all the way from Hope down to Richmond, and if they were breached, the devastation would be many orders of magnitude greater. It behooves us as decision-makers to turn our minds to how we harden our infrastructure—in other words, to our diking and drainage systems.

One of the problems in the Fraser River—and if you speak to the mayor of Abbotsford he'll confirm this—is that the current of the Fraser River is being redirected. Sandbars are building up, redirecting the currents up against the dikes themselves, undermining them. I believe the term that's used is “avulsion”. In any event, the integrity of those dikes, which are many decades old, is being eroded. I believe that DFO and levels of government across Canada are going to have to put their minds to how to protect our communities against these events that will become more frequent.

To get to the dredging issue, obviously DFO is deeply implicated in the dredging of rivers.

Have you turned your mind to the possibility of increasing the dredging to ensure that the flow of the river doesn't further undermine the integrity of the dikes?

[Sarah Murdoch]

Mr. Chair, I would just say that we are looking to take a medium- to long-term view of this. Obviously there was an emergency response phase, but we do need to be planning for future climate events and how we adapt.

I'm going to pass this to Mr. Fanos who's much more familiar with the different types of infrastructure and projects that may likely be considered, and our role in it as a key regulator to protect fish and fish habitat.

[Brad Fanos]

With regard to the work that the department does with other local jurisdictions, the Vancouver Port Authority for example, around dredging in the Fraser River, we're actively involved in the annual maintenance, if you will, of many of the channels, particularly as it relates to navigation.

When you look at the opportunities for broader flood protection in the context of climate adaptation—and I think we're all familiar with the work that's happening in the greater Vancouver regional district at the various local levels around the concerns you've just flagged and raised with respect to elevation of the dikes and the risk for broader flooding and economic and personal impacts—and the departments involved in the planning exercises currently under way to assess the required mitigations, some of it would be and potentially could be dredging, but others could be dike design, movement of dikes and access for drainage around dikes. So there are quite a number of mitigations. The department is engaged particularly with B.C.. which has obviously got some lead jurisdiction here in how they're designing and maintaining and upgrading these particular systems. So we work in collaboration with the other local and provincial authorities, and in this case the Vancouver Port Authority, to look at all those opportunities with respect to mitigation for the longer term climate adaptation needs that we're seeing.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Fanos, you mentioned that you're looking at a number of mitigations. If it's not dredging, you mentioned moving the dikes, but that is horrifically expensive. In fact, if you look at just British Columbia alone, for the diking improvements that will have to be made, including seismic improvements, the cost is in the many, many, many billions of dollars. When you run that across Canada, we're talking probably about $1-trillion bill eventually. With those kinds of expenses, it seems to me that a cautious and careful approach to dredging might at least in the interim be a resolution to this challenge.

I had a chance to tour the Fraser to see the condition of the dikes, and you can see the erosion that's happening. It's happening from the currents that are being redirected by the sandbars that are not being dredged at this point in time.

Does DFO have a default policy of some kind that dredging is generally frowned upon unless there is an emergent issue to be dealt with?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Sorry, Mr. Fast, we've gone over the allotted time.

I would say to the witnesses, if you could provide an answer to that particular question in writing, it would be appreciated.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In deference to Mr. Fast, yes, I'd like to hear an answer to that question, and particularly on whether or not dredging would also have a damaging effect on salmon runs.

Mr. Fanos, you were almost ripe to get into it there, so away you go.

[Brad Fanos]

Thank you.

Yes, I thought it was a good opportunity to maybe explain some more.

First, with regard to role the department has in dredging—and then I'll move into some of the impacts that could be associated with dredging—we're not the lead for water management, for flood management and for drainage. This is a provincial jurisdiction. We really work in collaboration with others. Our role is approval of the dredging as we're looking at the impacts on fish and fish habitat from a regulatory perspective. We support the thinking and the work that's going into what are the best prescriptions to manage flood and drainage in the Lower Mainland. Again, it's a secondary role to provide advice one how that might impact fish and fish habitat, so again it's provincial jurisdiction and local government's.

With regard to the impacts on fish and fish habitat, absolutely, when we look at these projects and these mitigations, if it's dredging, we look at the various impacts we could be seeing, whether it's on juvenile or adult species and habitats in those locations. There could be spawning habitats or rearing habitats for important species that could be impacted. There are times of the year that are particularly sensitive when fish at different life stages are in the water. There are significant potential impacts on fish and fish habitat associated with dredging. It's in-water work, so it's disturbing their habitats. It may be disturbing individuals. It could harm or even kill individuals depending on the time of year the dredging is done.

It's a serious piece of work; it's important. We have a lot of expertise. Over the years we've worked with various local governments to ensure that dredging is going on, because it's required and critical for a variety of reasons, not only for flood management but also for navigation. Absolutely, we're actively engaged to conserve and protect the fish and fish habitat values that are in those systems.

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

That leads to another question with respect to fish. I mean, we've been obviously focused on salmon, but there are other species in the river.

Has the flooding impacted other species? If so, which species are they? Second, do flood control measures also impede, for instance, the access to spawning for other important species up and down the Fraser?

[Brad Fanos]

We certainly have a keen interest, as you know, in the salmon, but there are other species, freshwater species, such as sturgeon, and there are several listed species in Sumas, for example, with Nooksack dace and Salish suckers. So there are other species that are potentially impacted by the flooding events.

As we said earlier, many of the impacts of the flooding will be hard to determine at this particular juncture. We're going to have to do assessments over time to look at the channel morphologies and at the stock assessments from a fish perspective to understand what stocks might have been impacted. Absolutely, there is quite a diverse array of potential impacts.

I should note that these are natural events that often impact habitat features, for example, scalping gravel away that fish might want to spawn in, but they also generate new off-channel habitats and spawning habitats, so there is a positive and a potential negative feature to these kinds of hydrologic events that you're seeing.

With regard to mitigation, yes, the Fraser, as you've kind of alluded, is a critical migration corridor for many upriver salmon species, not just Pacific salmon, but also resident species, so there are potential impacts on those. By the nature of the Fraser River itself, I don't think that corridor looked to be having any impacts with respect to those migratory patterns, if you will. It was more those adjacent systems that drain into the Fraser that were really impacted by that, the heavy rainfalls and the increases in hydrologic flows in those particular systems.

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

Great. Thank you for that, Mr. Chair.

[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.

I'd like to follow up on what I was talking about earlier, but in relation to the St. Lawrence River and what might apply there.

I bring it up because these types of problems could also occur in the St. Lawrence River. As we know, climate change is a complex phenomenon with many surprises in store. The river could be affected by events that could threaten certain species.

In Quebec, we have experts who study the St. Lawrence River.

Would it be possible for us to have some latitude in terms of managing the river's resources? At the very least, would it be possible to have a consultation committee made up of Fisheries and Oceans Canada representatives and scientists who specialize in the St. Lawrence River, the idea being to help advance the thinking and planning around this issue?

[Sarah Murdoch]

As you know, both my colleague Mr. Fanos and I are from Pacific regions, so we're not very familiar with the details of what's going on in the St. Lawrence. I would just say I know that, in a national context, climate adaptation is something we're considering across all of our program areas.

I don't know, Mr. Fanos, if you've got some specific info regarding what's happening in that region.

[Brad Fanos]

It's a good question. I think what I would add is, yes, absolutely, we don't have any detailed knowledge from Quebec or the St. Lawrence area, but we do know that there are many other jurisdictions in Canada that have experienced flooding events as we've seen, and there's some expertise throughout Canada, be it in Edmonton from floods there, and in Winnipeg and locations. So I think there are examples, like you say, whether it's St. Lawrence and others, that we're going to draw from in that medium- and long-term planning for sure.