Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister and officials, for coming.
The first meeting I had with your predecessor was shortly after I was elected in 2021. I know that you, Minister, are new to the role, as is the deputy. At the first meeting I had in November 2021 with your predecessor in her office, with the deputy minister and most of the ADMs for the department, I raised my concerns about the department's approach to the elver fishery. At that time, I said there was a lot of poaching going on, and the department wasn't enforcing the rules.
The following year, in 2022, the department received numerous complaints from the licence-holders with evidence of poaching going on in the rivers. When they phoned C and P to report poaching going on in the rivers, C and P asked the licence-holders if the poachers were first nations, and, if they were first nations, they were told not to go and do anything.
I warned the minister then that it would get out of hand. As people knew that this species, with a $5,000 price tag per kilogram, was now entering the black market, that would bring considerable concern. We raised it again in the winter.
I'm becoming known as “Mr. Elver”. Ask some of your colleagues on the finance committee. I think I spoke in the filibuster there for about an hour and a half on elvers.
Timothy Kerr, who runs C and P in Nova Scotia, in the late winter and spring of this year said that they have enough resources to enforce the law. In March, a month before the season opened, the department was getting daily reports of poaching already on the rivers—including from my neighbours, two minutes from my house. The department ignored it. It went on. The season started. Daily reports, with photographic and video evidence, were given to the department. It was out of hand.
There were thousands of illegal poachers this year. I had warned the minister that this would happen, and it happened. I asked the minister to do something, and I asked the Liberal members to do something. They asked what they were supposed to do. What you're supposed to do is enforce the law. Pick a river, bring in the RCMP as backup, and do the job.
The result of that, and the minister's only response, was to shut down the elver fishery for the legal elver harvesters, ending their season after 18 days and allowing all the poachers to stay on the river.
Do you know, Minister, that the poachers were still on the river this summer? Nothing was done. Absolutely nothing was done by DFO. They were on private property. The RCMP wouldn't come and deal with it, because they said C and P had not called them.
Why is it that your department does not enforce the law?