Fisheries Committee on April 27th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I now call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 64 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.

As a reminder to all, 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 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 January 18, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of the ecosystem impacts and the management of pinniped populations.

I would like to welcome our first panel of witnesses. As an individual, we have Mr. Glenn Blackwood, retired vice-president of Memorial University of Newfoundland, by video conference. Representing the B.C. Commercial Fishing Caucus is Jim McIsaac, managing director, also by video conference. Representing the David Suzuki Foundation, we have Kilian Stehfest, marine conservation specialist, by video conference as well.

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

We will start the statements with Mr. Blackwood for five minutes or less, please.

[Glenn Blackwood, Vice-President, Memorial University of Newfoundland (Retired), As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That's my official job title, I just retired, but over the past two years I took on the challenge—a bit reluctantly at first—of looking at a seal science review through a process that created the Atlantic seal science task team.

We were seven people who participated in that, and I've sent a package that will be translated and passed to you later. Unfortunately, during COVID we couldn't have public meetings and we actually never met as a committee, but we had great representation from Nova Scotia, P.E.I., and Newfoundland and Labrador, and a representative from the Magdalen Islands, who unfortunately, due to work commitments, wasn't able to complete the process and left us after a few months. I should mention that we had representation from New Brunswick as well from the Atlantic Salmon Federation.

What I'm going to talk to you about today is basically a short summary of that report and how it changed some of my views with respect to seal populations, and some of the challenges we faced in looking at lots of science. This was science in which, in some cases, there's enough evidence, if you will, that seals are having a major impact, like on 4T cod, and in other cases, the samples taken by industry are completely different from the samples taken by DFO science in terms of geographic area, time of year and stomach contents. I'll talk about that a bit later on as well.

I grew up on the northeast coast. I've chaired the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation. I was an ADM of fisheries, and my family has a long history of making a living from the sea. I'm no stranger to seals, but I had been away from it for a while. I find it a very polarizing issue, and one that people take sides and dig in on. A friend of mine once said the fishery is dog eat dog and vice versa, and seals can be just as polarizing and just as controversial.

In chairing the committee, I had to balance the very passionate pleas from the industry that something be done right away.... Also, what we were doing wasn't making recommendations on the size of seal population or what they feed upon. What we were doing was identifying why DFO science at the time got different results from what the industry got.

Over two years—unfortunately it took a bit longer than we thought, largely because of the COVID restrictions—we did come to agreement as a group, and we did nine recommendations to hopefully close that gap. I understand that DFO is working on those recommendations, but they will take a while to implement.

As I said, in other areas like grey seals, we have a lot of evidence already, and where the industry is and where DFO is on this is not that far apart.

I think that's close to five minutes, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Blackwood.

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

[Jim McIsaac, Managing Director, B.C. Commercial Fishing Caucus]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for the invitation to speak to you today.

I'm truly privileged to have grown up on this coast and fished on this coast all my life. It paid my way through university, and when I graduated, I was offered a teaching and research position—but I kept on fishing. My heritage is Scottish on my father's side, from a fishing community in the Orkney Islands, and Irish on my mother's side, from a farming community in County Meath. I'm George Patrick and Anne's son, James. I come from food production naturally.

I'm going to talk about four things: some of the impacts of the 1970 Fisheries Act pinniped protection measures on salmon, eulachon and shrimp; ecosystem-based management at Parks Canada; EBM at DFO; and the need for EBM to shift at DFO.

I'm going to follow the slides, which I believe were distributed to the committee members.

I took this picture last November in Cowichan Bay. This wharf was put in by fishermen eight years ago, and sea lions took over almost immediately. Between 300 to 400 sea lions spend September through November each eating 10 to 16 kilograms of returning salmon per day. Mariners cannot safely use that wharf.

DFO enacted Fisheries Act regulatory changes in 1970 to fully protect seals and sea lions. Prior to this, there was a five-dollar bounty on seal and sea lion noses in British Columbia. This graphic shows exponential growth then levelling out of the harbour seal population in the Strait of Georgia. The sport fishery is also graphed on this, and it shows an inverse relationship. Some sectors are licensed to protect their livelihoods from pinnipeds—not fishermen.

Sea lion population growth over the last 50 years continues to rise, as seen in this graphic here. They now consume more fish than the entire wild fishery—almost double. The decline in salmon catch started in the early 1970s. The fishery had a $1.2 billion restructuring in 1995-98. The most recent modelling data shows that the seal and sea lion biomass is still going up.

Along with salmon, the number of commercial harvesters has declined from 21,000 in 1990 to 5,000 just a couple of years ago—again, an inverse relationship to pinniped growth. Now we are reducing the salmon fishery even further, closing another 60% of the fishery. Seals and sea lions have a very diverse diet, and more than salmon are impacted. They eat over 54 different species.

I was at Knight Inlet this time last year. This is one of the most remote places on our coast. The eulachon run this time of year. Various species follow the eulachon in—seals, sea lions, porpoises. This photo shows a pod of porpoises herding eulachon, then having a feeding frenzy. First nations set up weirs in the river to harvest eulachons and produce grease—gold in these parts. Sea lions make their way up the river and harvest eulachon. Last year they found their way into the weir and feasted overnight. Like salmon, the eulachon population has been declining since the early 1990s. Sea lion and seal consumption of eulachon is estimated at 60% to 70% of the returning run size on our coast.

In the middle of the 1990s, the B.C. shrimp fishery was one of our most valuable fisheries—10 million per year just in Queen Charlotte Sound. The shrimp fishery has a bycatch of eulachon. In 1998 DFO blamed the shrimp fishery for eulachon decline. Seals and sea lions consume over 250 times the current shrimp-eulachon bycatch limits. DFO has kept the $10 million Queen Charlotte fishery closed for the last 25 years. Today, our shrimp fishery is worth less than a million dollars, meanwhile, our neighbours, Washington and Oregon, have a $300 million-plus shrimp fishery.

Parks Canada takes their role of ecosystem management seriously. They manage all species, including human activity. They have eradication and cull programs that keep ecosystems in balance. DFO endorses ecosystem-based management along our coast, but their main focus is managing harvesters. Their risk-adverse approach is to close fisheries first. Ecosystem-based management needs to be more than this.

If we want to eat fish from our ecosystem, DFO needs to manage more than just people. They need to be more like Parks Canada and do true ecosystem-based management.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

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

[Kilian Stehfest, Marine Conservation Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm a registered professional biologist in British Columbia, and currently employed as the marine conservation specialist for the David Suzuki Foundation. Prior to joining the David Suzuki Foundation, I spent 10 years as a research scientist studying temperate marine and coastal ecosystems.

I'm here today to provide a science-based perspective on two issues which I believe are fundamental to the committee's study of the ecosystem impacts and management of pinniped populations.

Firstly, I would like to address the belief that there is an overpopulation of pinnipeds on our coasts as the motion for this study asserts. This belief is generally based on the steep growth experienced by many pinniped populations in the second half of the 20th century. However, to fully understand the current status of pinniped populations, we must look beyond the narrow snapshot of steep growth often presented by proponents of pinniped culls.

In the middle of the last century, many pinniped populations were severely depleted as a result of decades of commercial harvesting and predator control programs. In the Pacific, for example, harbour seals have been reduced to 10% of their historical abundance. The steep growth seen after the species received protection is therefore not the sign a population explosion but rather a population recovering from over-exploitation. Since their successful recovery, most pinniped populations have been stable at or near historical levels with very little change in the last few decades.

Populations that have been stable for decades at or near historical levels are clearly not exhibiting signs of overpopulation. It is worth noting that the numbers of pinnipeds we are seeing today have coexisted with healthy and abundant fish stocks in the past.

The second issue I would like to speak to is the notion that simply because pinnipeds consume a certain volume of the fish stock, reducing the number of pinnipeds would benefit that stock. Marine food webs are far too complex for such a simplistic approach to work. On the west coast, for example, a pinniped cull is being proposed to restore Pacific salmon populations. However, the most recent diet data from the Salish Sea shows that harbour seals prey on 57 different species. Each of these 57 species represents a pathway for the unintended consequences from a pinniped cull to ripple through the food web with potentially devastating impacts on the ecosystem and the very fish stocks we are trying to restore.

One of those possible unintended consequences is an increase in the Pacific hake population. Pacific hake are the most common prey item for harbour seals in the Salish Sea, making up 24% of their diet on average, compared to 3.5% for chinook and 2.2% for sockeye. We know that Pacific hake prey on juvenile salmon, which means that a pinniped cull could actually lead to an increase and not a reduction in the mortality of Pacific salmon.

While my examples focus on the west coast, the underlying drivers, which are the inherent complexity of temperate marine food webs and the generalist feeding habits of pinnipeds, apply elsewhere. This is why comprehensive reviews of culling programs from ecosystems across the world have found that unintended consequences for the target species and the wider ecosystem are commonly observed.

A cull of pinnipeds to benefit commercially valuable fish stocks is therefore a gamble with the health of coastal ecosystems of epic proportions, and with questionable prospects of achieving the desired outcome. The unpredictability and riskiness of this gamble is compounded by the significant and rapid changes we are already seeing in coastal ecosystems as a result of climate change. These changes are not only affecting the survival and recovery of commercial fish stocks, like salmon or cod, but are also having an impact on pinniped populations from the reduction of sea ice, intensification of disease outbreaks and decreases in prey availability.

Pinnipeds aren't only impacted by climate change. They also play an important role in climate change mitigation. A study published just last month in a leading scientific journal showed that protecting and restoring wild animal populations, including pinnipeds, can significantly enhance the natural carbon capture and storage capacity of ecosystems.

The best way to safeguard Canada's fishery for future generations in the face of climate change is therefore to maintain healthy, diverse and resilient ecosystems. The culling of pinnipeds with unpredictable outcomes would be counterproductive to this goal.

Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to answering any questions.

I am happy to provide you with any of the source materials I have cited in my opening statement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

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

We'll begin with Mr. Small for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Stehfest.

If the pinniped population increased drastically, what would they eat?

[Kilian Stehfest]

Thank you for the question.

As I mentioned, they eat a huge variety of prey, which is what makes it so hard to predict what a reduction—

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

I'm sorry. If the population of pinnipeds doubled, what would be the impact on the species they prey on?

[Kilian Stehfest]

There would be an increase in the consumption of prey, but as I—

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

Thank you.

The other thing is, if the population of seals decreased, wouldn't you think that, inversely, the effects on the fish they prey on would be reduced?

[Kilian Stehfest]

Not necessarily.

As an example from the west coast, Pacific herring make up 22% of harbour seals' diet, yet there's a positive relationship between seal abundance and herring recruitment, because the seals keep a predator for herring in check.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, my next question is for Mr. Blackwood.

Of the nine recommendations in the task team's report, which is the most important, in your opinion?

[Glenn Blackwood]

The most important, I guess, is the seal diet sampling and stomach sampling that would need to take place in the offshore area throughout the range and the full migration route of harp seals. We have a seal that covers a range of about 1,500 or 1600 miles, and we're sampling near shore in the winter when there is no cod and capelin, primarily.

The recommendations were good and I think they were designed to close the gap between where DFO science says there is no impact on that part of the ecosystem, and fishermen and other stakeholders who truly believe that there is.

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

Thank you, Mr. Blackwood.

In the U.S., and more specifically in Washington and Oregon, a lobby was formed to have the Marine Mammal Protection Act amended to allow the euthanizing of seals on the Columbia River.

Again, Mr. Blackwood, the question is for you. What can the Canadian government do to lobby the U.S. to make a similar amendment to the MMPA that would help markets open up for pinniped products from Canada?

[Glenn Blackwood]

That's sort of outside of my range. You're on the marketing side, but obviously the Magnuson act in the U.S. and the acts in Europe that closed borders to seal products shut down the fishery that we had for several hundred years, basically. Right now there's not much of a fishery at all.

Meanwhile, seal populations have grown in the time since the 1970s from a couple of million animals to 7.6 million animals at the moment. That distribution of population change has caused seals to show up in places we haven't seen them, like in rivers. We are not capturing their change in distribution and their change in feeding with the historical sampling program on the near shore.

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

Again, for Mr. Blackwood, the U.S. has been euthanizing pinnipeds in the Columbia River, yet two years ago our government banned the euthanizing of nuisance seals here in Canada. The reason for so doing was that we were told there were threats of trade sanctions against our seafood.

If the Americans are euthanizing nuisance seals, when they amended their own Marine Mammal Protection Act to let them do it, does it makes sense that our government banned that same practice? Is it a real threat?

[Glenn Blackwood]

I don't know the numbers that were being euthanized previously. I think it was primarily in the aquaculture industry and other areas.

At the current population levels of grey seals and harp seals, nuisance seals or rogue seals—the individual animal—are having a bigger impact on an existing operation than the total population. There's no conservation issue with respect to seal populations in Atlantic Canada that I'm aware of. Most populations are at or near the highest level ever observed. Some of these populations are the largest of that species in the world. For an individual animal, I don't see it as a conservation issue. I think the Magnuson act is largely a political issue.

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

Mr. Blackwood, given that several countries hunt pinnipeds and whales, and they don't fear sanctions in the U.S., is the threat of sanctions against Canadian seafood products in the U.S. based on something that's real, or is it just something to try to influence politicians and lawmakers?

[Glenn Blackwood]

I'm not an expert in that area at all, but I will say that there's a real concern in industry and governments that there would be an impact. As you say, Norway and Iceland harvest seals and whales, and most of the NAMMCO member countries continue to harvest those marine mammals in a sustainable way—not a cull but in a harvest. I don't see a problem with that.

I would like to see an industry develop around the product, because it has been a resource for many years. It's a shame if it's just wasted.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Small.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to everybody who's joined us today.

Mr. Stehfest, I'm going to probably dwell mostly with you in this round of questioning, because your organization and its namesake, along with a lot of celebrity activists, have definitely had a major influence on general public opinion. I would point out your use in your comments of the word “cull”. This is something we very specifically tried not to reference. In fact, we've been talking about “harvest” where there is a use for the animals once they are harvested.

I want to present some empirical evidence and to get your comment on it. Norway found a way to make their pinnipeds go away. They're very coy about how that happened, but we have heard that their cod stocks have been rebuilding quite nicely.

In Atlantic Canada, pinniped populations continue to grow to the highest levels ever seen, according to some we've heard from. Our cod stocks, after all these years—30 or 40 years—still haven't gotten to the point where we could say they're stable. Can you comment on that empirical evidence and what it says to you?

[Kilian Stehfest]

I have to admit that I'm not very familiar with the Norwegian data you've referenced. What I will say is that humans have been culling or conducting predator control of pinnipeds for at least a hundred years, yet there's not a single scientific study or any evidence that it has ever benefited fish stocks. If you have one, I would like to see it. However, from my review of the scientific literature, I have not come across that. I think that says something.

Even studies, for example, on the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence cod, where they said a 65% reduction could prevent the local stock from going extinct, clearly specified that there is the potential for unintended consequences. It did not address that. That's just a very common feature of the discussion about significant reductions in pinniped populations to benefit a fish stock. We simply cannot predict the outcomes of those actions.

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

Getting back to evidence from people who are on the water and are trying to make a living from the fishery, what has the Suzuki Foundation heard from indigenous organizations or commercial fisherman like Jim McIsaac for that matter? Do you talk to them, and do you factor what they observe into the position that the foundation is taking?