Fisheries Committee on April 24th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 63 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. This meeting, as you can see, is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022.

This is a reminder to all to please address your comments through the chair. Screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted.

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'm informing the committee that all witnesses or participants by Zoom have gone through all of the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Before we proceed, we have one quick matter to attend to regarding our upcoming study of foreign ownership and corporate concentration of fishing licences and quotas. The clerk has prepared and distributed a study budget for your review. If everyone agrees with the proposed budget, we need to adopt the following motion:

That the proposed budget in the amount of $27,000, for the study of foreign ownership and corporate concentration, be adopted.

(Motion agreed to)

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on January 18, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of ecosystem impacts and the management of pinniped populations.

I would like to welcome our first panel of witnesses. Representing the Arctic Research Foundation, we have Tom Henheffer, chief operating officer, and Adrian Schimnowski, chief executive officer. Representing Carino Processing Ltd., we have Dion Dakins, chief executive officer.

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

We'll go to the Arctic Research Foundation first.

I don't know if one of you is doing it, or if you're splitting your time for the opening statement, but you have five minutes or less, please, starting now.

[Adrian Schimnowski, Chief Executive Officer, Arctic Research Foundation]

Good day, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. We would like to start by thanking you for this opportunity to speak on the important issue of ecosystem impacts and management of pinniped populations in Canada.

The Arctic Research Foundation is a non-profit charity that enables and catalyzes community-led science and infrastructure projects in Canada. We work with communities to build networks of NGOs, universities, researchers and governments to fund and deliver programming, while providing access to ships, green energy-powered mobile labs and other equipment. ARF is the only organization in Canada with a fleet of six fully equipped research vessels specializing in nearshore and uncharted marine areas. You can find this information on our three large ships in appendix B of our written brief.

Our work is wide ranging, from hydrographic mapping to ecological map monitoring, food security innovation and transporting indigenous community members to harvesting grounds where elders can pass traditional knowledge on to youth. We have a great deal of experience working in the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific waters, and working with indigenous hunters, trappers and fishers, who are directly impacted by government policies on fisheries and ocean mammals such as pinnipeds.

Throughout this committee's study, several witnesses have noted gaps in data on pinniped populations, their diets and their broader impacts on ecosystems. Representatives from DFO admitted significant knowledge gaps to this committee. This is consistent with what we have heard in our consultations with communities and researchers, and what we have seen on the ground during our operations.

I'd like to quote Jackie Jacobson, an Inuk leader in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, who is the MLA for Nunakput and a member of ARF's board. He said, “In Husky Lakes, seals are killing trout, so if we see a seal, we shoot it, but there's a complete lack of resources for scientific studies, and we don't know the population numbers. We just know that the fish aren't biting.”

I'd like to now turn it over to Tom Henheffer to continue.

[Tom Henheffer, Chief Operating Officer, Arctic Research Foundation]

Thank you.

Jackie's sentiment is similar across the regions where we work. However, there is a much larger problem that needs addressing.

Scientific and environmental knowledge gaps have become endemic in the Arctic. There is a dangerous lack of waterway and flood-plain mapping, a poor understanding of beluga health in the Beaufort Sea, a shortage of studies on ice freeze and breakup in Great Slave Lake, and a broad lack of research into microplastics contamination and invasive fish species, to name just a small fraction of issues facing Arctic marine science. These challenges are compounded by the fact that scientific research is far more expensive in the Arctic than in the south.

However, DFO and the federal government at large continue to underfund this critical work. To give one example, our largest ship is the research vessel Nahidik II. It is the only full-sized research vessel dedicated to Great Slave Lake, the Mackenzie River and the Beaufort Sea. This year, for the third year in a row, it will be staying in dry dock due to a lack of federal investment in marine science. This is despite ARF subsidizing its operations with $1 million of our own core funds and calls from the region's hunters' and trappers' committees for proper federal science funding.

Moving back to pinnipeds, Canada lacks a clear picture on the extent of the damage they cause throughout our waters. What is clear is that the issue is being exacerbated because DFO has not been conducting fulsome fish stock assessments in much of Canada. The department announced it was completely cancelling fall fish stock surveys in certain regions last year, for example, and has consistently failed to properly assess stocks in most of the Arctic. That is a triple shot of a dangerous lack of funding for these studies.

The most recent stock assessments on DFO's website are from 2020. Of the 180 stocks listed, 21 are from the central and Arctic region. Only three species are categorized as healthy, cautious or critical, and the remaining 18 are listed as uncertain. Only three of 18 of these fish species are able to be categorized.

This lack of knowledge is unacceptable and unnecessary.

A core part of assessments in their current form is trawling with large vessels and massive nets. This process is expensive and environmentally damaging. Proven technologies exist that can get the same or better results done at a minimal cost with minimal environmental impact.

For years, Scandinavian countries have been using bioacoustics mapping equipment, similar technology to that found in fish-finders, and the hydrographic equipment used to map seabeds to effectively conduct fish stock assessments. We use this kind of equipment on our ships every day, and the methods for adapting them to stock assessments have been proven effective in other jurisdictions. These surveys could be made even more accurate, while also providing meaningful employment to local fishers, by ground-truthing through small-scale trawling from low-cost local boats.

Our recommendations are that the federal government do the following: Immediately create a pilot project for fish stock assessments using bioacoustics equipment and local trawling, where appropriate. Increase investment in Arctic marine science to match investments in the rest of the country. Add a northern top-up to grants for marine science in the Arctic that reflects the increased expense of operating ships in that region. Meaningfully engage local fishers, hunters and trappers, and indigenous wildlife stewards in wildlife management strategies. Continue to place more power in the hands of northern communities by ensuring that they are able to direct how Arctic science grants are spent.

We have the ships, the technology, the methods and the expertise to solve one major aspect of the pinniped problem by resuming fish stock assessments in an affordable, minimally invasive way. The other issues we’ve mentioned have similar solutions, although we don’t have the time to fully address them in this form. What they do all have in common is the need for action from the federal government.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

You went a little bit over, but I wanted to make sure we heard enough of your statement.

We'll now go to Mr. Dakins, who is presenting for Carino Processing Ltd., for five minutes or less, please.

[Dion Dakins, Chief Executive Officer, Carino Processing Ltd.]

Thank you very much for this opportunity.

Carino has been processing seal meat, oil, hides and other by-products since 1958. We need a stable supply of harp, hooded and grey seals. The health of our business is intimately linked to healthy seal populations, particularly harp seal populations.

If we genuinely care about seals, we must come to grips with an increasingly glaring and alarming truth. Responsible management of this ever-growing seal population is essential to protect our ocean ecosystem and the species that inhabit our waters, and to conserve and protect the seal, itself.

We must dispel the myth that a responsible and humane seal harvest threatens the seal's sustainability. In fact, the seal harvest is an environmental necessity for the long-term health of the seal herd and the species on which it preys. We must treat all species as being equally important. To sacrifice one in order to protect another is both misguided and irresponsible.

DFO's own science makes clear that, at their current numbers, grey seals will cause the extinction of four commercial fish species in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. The ecosystem cannot survive this kind of imbalance, nor can the seals. We must restore the balance.

In 2002, the harp seal fishery was the first in Canada to adopt the precautionary approach to fisheries management. This means that management decisions must err on the side of caution when scientific knowledge is uncertain. It also means not using the absence of adequate scientific information as a reason to postpone action, or fail to take action, to avoid serious harm to fish stocks or their ecosystems. This approach is widely accepted internationally as an essential part of sustainable fisheries management, yet for years we have used that absence of adequate scientific information to deny the devastating impact of historic seal numbers on commercial fish stocks and the marine ecosystem off our coasts.

Existing DFO harp seal science tells us that since the population has risen above 5.4 million, females, on average, are 20 kilograms lighter in February—a critical point in the gestation cycle—and 1.7 centimetres shorter in body length. Females are, on average, two years older before they have their first young, and late-term abortions are up by 200%. Furthermore, ice-dependent seals, such as harp seals, are more susceptible to the effects of climate change when their populations are higher. At current numbers, grey seals will cause the extinction of four commercial fish species in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The 2022 report of the Atlantic seal science task team told us:

...the food, feeding and migration data for the harp and grey seal populations in Atlantic Canada [is] woefully inadequate to accurately determine the role seals play in the Northwest Atlantic Ecosystem....

...the lack of current comprehensive data collection on feeding, diet and migration throughout the seasonal and spatial range of seals, especially the harp seal population, is likely contributing to the lack of credible scientific evidence.

...the high population abundance of grey seals and harp seals, which are at or approaching historic levels, are having a serious impact on the ocean ecosystem in Atlantic Canada. The extent of the impacts cannot be determined with the limited information held by DFO Science.

Based on caloric requirements, Norwegian science estimates that harp seals consume 3.3 metric tons of fish per year. DFO estimates 1.1 metric tons of fish per year. In Canadian waters, the herd consumes somewhere between 8.36 million and 25.08 million metric tons of fish each year. Commercial fisheries on all coasts of Atlantic Canada, including northern waters, yield less than 750,000 metric tons.

Regardless of who is right, such ravenous and continuous predation by seals is threatening fish stocks. There's an urgent need to review the Norwegian and Canadian estimates, including the underpinning science, and reconcile the difference.

Inuit elders have told me, personally, that harp seals are displacing the ringed seal in traditional areas, negatively impacting food security and the health of individuals. At our plant, we are seeing claw marks on young beater harp seals. Our quality control experts believe that the females are trying to wean the pups earlier than historically normal.

Harp seals need sea ice to reproduce—ice that is threatened by climate change. In 2016, scientist Garry Stenson et al. authored the article, “The impact of changing climate and abundance on...Northwest Atlantic harp seal”. It states that “the general decline in pregnancy is associated with increased population size, including the rate of late-term abortions”. As well, it says, “Harp seals appear to respond to relatively small variations in environmental conditions when they are at high population levels.”

It follows that reducing harp seal population numbers will improve their odds of surviving the impacts of global warming and climate change.

Bringing balance to our ecosystem serves the interest of all the various entities dependent on its survival, including the seals, but we must act and now.

Thank you for the opportunity to say some truth on this critically important issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Dakins.

We'll now go to our first round of questions.

I'll go to Mr. Small for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you to the witnesses for taking the time out of their busy schedules to become part of the study here.

My first question, Mr. Chair, is for Mr. Dakins.

Mr. Dakins, what's the number one factor that prevents us from redeveloping the sealing industry and taking the existing quotas that we have?

[Dion Dakins]

From our perspective, it's about the market access link to our products. If we had unfettered access to an adequate number of markets, we believe that we could re-establish the trade. Underpinning that, I think, the necessity here is to understand the magnitude of the situation in terms of the sustainability of fish stocks and the sustainability of the seal herd itself. There are indications that the seals themselves will no longer able to maintain the population growth and health they presently have if it's allowed to continue to go unchecked.

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

Mr Dakins, you mentioned the discrepancy between Norwegian science estimates on the amount of fish consumed by harp seals and the estimates by Canadian science. There's a large, unknown mortality in northern cod. Do you think that DFO science is deliberately downplaying the effects of harp seal predation?

[Dion Dakins]

I won't make a claim that it's deliberately being done, but I think, as the other testimony indicated, that there are gaps in the science. I think we need to invest more in science to understand the real interactions. We don't know if we're talking about an elephant in the room or a herd of elephants in the room. We have not invested enough to understand the interactions between harp seals and cod stocks in aggregating areas.

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

Mr. Dakins, we know that harp seals are kept in captivity and studied in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, by DFO. They know how much these sedentary seals are fed. If these seals were in the wild fending for themselves, completing their thousands of kilometres of migration per year, they'd need to consume way more than they're being fed currently.

Do you know how much these adult harp seals consume each year?

[Dion Dakins]

I visited the marine science centre in 2008 with Dr. Pierre-Yves Daoust, who is the veterinarian who helped us reshape the marine mammal regulations for the three-step process.

At the time, I asked the caretaker how much each of these adult seals was eating. He was very proud to inform me that he had returned the seals to a healthy body weight from the previous care of the earlier caretaker, who had been feeding them in excess of three metric tons of pelagic species per year. That's whole fish down the throat of the seal. It doesn't account for any belly biting or discard. At that time, the seals had grown to obese proportions where they couldn't even get out of the pool anymore. The new caretaker cut the seals back to 2.2 metric tons of fish per year to achieve a healthy body weight for a seal in captivity.

We presently use one metric ton as the amount that seals eat in Canadian waters, yet we encourage the ASSTT to review that data, and we're not able to access it. There's a real question on my behalf about the sincerity to evaluate the numbers that we presently have at hand. I'm pretty sure everybody here who has a pet knows how much they feed it per week, per month and per year, so I'm pretty sure we'd know what we feed those harp seals in the swimming pool down in Logy Bay.

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

You mentioned about lower body weights, smaller sizes, miscarriages and things that indicate....

Do you think that's indicating that the seals are underfed in the wild and that it's the beginning of a mass starvation of the herds?

[Dion Dakins]

DFO science itself says it's linked to availability of prey and the size of the herd.

All of those facts and figures come from DFO science. The alarming one is that late-term abortions are up 200%. A female harp seal, based on her body condition, can decide at any point through the gestation period to abort. That's what they're doing. Young females are aborting because they're underweight and they're shorter in body length.

The claw marks that we're seeing in the young of the year seals that we harvest are ever increasing. Again, our experts who do the grading in the plant believe it's because the mothers are trying to wean the pup off earlier, perhaps because they don't have enough body weight to wean them through the whole cycle.

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

Thank you.

To the folks in the Arctic research council, Mr. Henheffer or Mr. Schimnowski, do you think that the ability of DFO to fall back on the precautionary approach is allowing DFO not to work harder to show the predatory effects of pinnipeds?

[Tom Henheffer]

I don't think there's any question that DFO is working very hard. We work very closely with DFO scientists in most of the work we do. The problem is a lack of funding. They don't have the funding to do the work which needs to get done, plain and simple. There needs to be more money put into it.

I have emails here, and I won't say from whom, but from a number of different DFO scientists, saying they basically had to scrape and scrimp to do the science that has already been done. There hasn't been federal funding for that. They had to find outside funding sources. There's a real problem with their ability to get the work done, plain and simple.

It's not for lack of trying and not because they're covering it up. These are good, hard-working scientists who want to provide good science, but they just don't have the funding to do it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Small.

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

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I'm going to continue questions with the Arctic Research Foundation witnesses. Thank you very much for appearing today.

My constituency is Yukon, so I do have an interest in Arctic issues, given my region. First, I would like to know a bit more about your organization, its history and its partners in the north, and also about your relationship with DFO. Could you just continue with what you were talking about?

[Adrian Schimnowski]

The Arctic Research Foundation is deeply rooted in working with communities in the north. We have six research vessels that are stationed throughout the Arctic. We rely closely on the communities in developing research programs, whether it's supporting DFO researchers in the region or universities. We look at it as layers of many organizations.

We approach our research vessels almost like Mars rovers. If we are working in an area, we're going to cover as much ground as possible, whether it's hydrographic research, SEARCH research, fisheries research or oceanographic research. We layer everything, so we get as much information as possible, because it's expensive to operate in that region.

[Tom Henheffer]

What we do differently is nearshore work and work in uncharted waters. You might have heard of us because we were the organization that helped find the Franklin expedition.

You need that kind of small Mars-rover type of ship. The big icebreakers can't get into these areas. They can't get into the ecologically sensitive areas where lake water or river water meets the ocean, where Inuit and northern indigenous people actually hunt and fish and are going after seals. That can only be done with shallow draft vessels that are specialized to operate in riskier areas.

As far as we know, we're the only organization that provides these ships, yet we don't get a penny of federal government funding at the moment. One of our main ships is not running this year in Great Slave Lake, Mackenzie River and the Beaufort Sea, which means that science work that needs to be done there.... Two very important marine protected areas are in the Beaufort Sea and the local hunter-trapper organizations in the communities desperately want work done there. They want bathymetry and they want stock assessments because they're worried that, when the quotas revert, it's going to devastate their fishing industry.

Those are some of the areas where we work and some of the really pressing issues we've seen.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

It sounds like there's a lack of funding both to DFO for its work in the north and to potential partner organizations like yours.

Do you see this as a lack of focus on the north versus the other coasts, or is it part of a more general overall lack of funding?

[Tom Henheffer]

Absolutely, it's a lack of focus on the Arctic.

Great Slave Lake is ecologically one of the most important places in this country. It's the canary in the coal mine, and it's extremely productive in terms of animals. That's where you go to find out how fresh water is flowing into the Arctic. You look at Lake Winnipeg or Lake Ontario and they've been studied to death, but Great Slave Lake is barely mapped at all.

Our most recent research vessel that we just deployed is in Great Bear Lake. It's the first research vessel in Great Bear Lake—period. There have been no studies done there. This is just on inland lakes. This isn't even getting into the ocean.

We have studied lots of the traffic ways through the Northwest Passage. Those are well charted with the big icebreakers doing that work, but that's not where people are out fishing and hunting. That's not where you have the mixing of the sediment from the different regions. It's critically understudied.

Part of the reason we've been successful is that our work is in five-year to 20-year cycles. It's long term—not just going in for a year or two or three and seeing what happens. You need to have that long-term stable research in order to really get useful information. That's really challenging under the current funding models.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

Recognizing that time is going fast, what can you tell the committee about the relationship between pinnipeds and fish stocks in the north? I know you have a lack of data, but is there anything you can tell based on either stories or research that you do have?

[Adrian Schimnowski]

We are not research scientists, but we work closely with the communities and we listen to the hunters and trappers. Often what we see is that you are what you eat. Hunters are seeing different types of fish being replaced by shrimp and the size of the seals is different. They are sinking when they are supposed to be floating when they are hunted.

Connecting with the community and listening to the people who are on the ocean, in the rivers and on the land.... They see the sudden, abrupt changes. They see the changes with climate change. They see the changes in migrations.

We really need to layer that traditional knowledge and that knowledge on the ground equally with research opportunities and infrastructure. It can't be just snapshot research. It has to be a total-ecosystem way of managing. Snapshots are a way of the past. That just doesn't work, so we have to look at that ecosystem as a whole.

The people who live in the north—the communities—are an important part of that ecosystem, just like we all are now. With the seals and the fish, there's balance. We don't see the balance changes, but the people in the north do. Involving true, meaningful programs will create that different focus in research.

[Tom Henheffer]

If I could add on to that very quickly—