Evidence of meeting #58 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 pinnipeds.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
We'll now go to Ms. Barron for three minutes or less to close it out, please.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Thank you, Chair. I want to fully utilize these three minutes.
For the first question, I wanted to follow up with Mr. Stabler. When we're talking about a sustainable seal harvest and utilizing the entire seal, do we have the current vessel capacity and equipment to be able to go out and sustainably harvest seals, and not just do a cull?
Director, Pacific Balance Pinniped Society
A cull was never in question. It's a harvest base and a progressive harvest base, starting off at 5,000 and moving incrementally forward.
Given the state of our current fisheries fleet, yes, we have more than enough crew and boats on standby. Our plants are sitting idle. They're empty because of the reduction in our fisheries production. We have the guarantee of several of the ringleaders of these plant foundations that they will work with us. They will process, they will freeze and they will distribute the product. It exists.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Do you agree with the argument that we need further investment in the gear, the equipment and the vessels in order to move forward with a sustainable seal harvest?
Director, Pacific Balance Pinniped Society
We do not need that on the west coast. We are completely self-sufficient. All we need is the green light.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Thank you.
I wanted to ask a quick question of Dr. Trites. When you were speaking about the rewilding phenomenon and about the seals and sea lions entering back into the marine ecosystem, I was thinking about wolves in Yellowstone Park.
I was wondering if you could speak a little further to how that applies to what we're talking about today.
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
What we're seeing around the world where wolves are being reintroduced—or beavers in Scotland—is the discovery that top-down predation is creating, in terrestrial ecosystems, greater stability and longer-term sustainability, biodiversity and productivity. I believe the same thing is under way in the Salish Sea, for example. We now have a dataset we can look at to examine these questions.
It is something that is occurring around the world. We haven't yet looked at marine ecosystems, but it gets to my side, which is the benefits that top-down predation brings, which I think most people have not given enough thought to.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
This is my last question. When we are looking at a sustainable seal harvest, taking an ecosystem-based approach and considering all the components.... There was a quick mention of the open-net finfish farms. I am wondering if you could speak to some of the harms you've seen of open-net fish farms in our surrounding ecosystems.
Professor, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I haven't seen any harms—
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
I'm sorry, Dr. Trites. I was going to ask that question of Mr. Stabler. I'm sorry for the confusion.
Director, Pacific Balance Pinniped Society
There's a myriad of silence around it. Some juries are still out. In my mind, it's not. They have introduced a couple of diseases. That's a recognized, known fact on the west coast. They introduced parasite loading that wipes the smolts out, basically. They load them up with lice to the point that they no longer survive.
On the actual farm footprint, underneath that farm, if you look at the sea floor before the farm goes in and you look at it a year later, you would think a nuclear bomb had hit it. It spreads out from that, but it's only such a limited extent.
Again, going back to the point, will removing all the farms make any significant difference when they're under this level of depredation? In my mind, no.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Ms. Barron. You got it in under the mark.
I want to say a huge thank you to Dr. Trites, Ms. Gauthier, Mr. Stabler and Mr. Pearce for sharing your knowledge with the committee today.
I will remind our witnesses that if there's anything they want to add in any way as part of their testimony, to please mail it in to the committee. We'll make sure to share it with the members.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Yes, definitely.
For the benefit of the committee members, I want to report back on the request to travel to Norway. I appeared before the subcommittee. I read in what we wanted to do and answered any questions they had, but when it came time to vote on it, the Conservative member voted against it, so we're on life support right now to do the trip. The unfortunate part of it is that we wanted to do this trip before we did a salmon trip for the pinniped study, to accommodate Mr. Small's study.
If you can do anything with your members, have a chat with them and tell them it's important that we get to do this particular study and travel to Norway.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Yes. I hear you're a real charmer.
The meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Enjoy your weekend.