Fisheries Committee on Nov. 28th, 2023

[Jesse Zeman]

I think that, specifically as it relates to IUU, it needs to be focused on the ground. Admin time and spending time in an office does not help to get a presence out on the river or out on the ocean. You're going to need people in the field who are out and engaging fishers and talking to them.

The other part is outreach: building relationships with the public, stakeholders and first nations, and talking about sustainability and things like the app and encouraging people to use it.

In British Columbia and all across the country, you have hundreds of thousands of sets of eyes—if not millions—that are passionate about this resource. Having relationships with those members of the public, Canadians and first nations so they go out to be your eyes and ears is critically important.

I would say that getting officers on the ground so they can have a presence and they can do their jobs, and, secondly, building relationships with Canadians so they can be the eyes and ears are two of the functions that would be really important as it relates to C and P and IUU.

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

You say there's been a change in culture. Was it much better before?

[Jesse Zeman]

Yes, our discussions with former DFO officers are showing that the culture is the worst it's ever been. There's a lot of that being attributed to a change in bringing managers in from outside of compliance and enforcement and bringing managers in who are not passionate about the resource and passionate about fish. That is a challenge in our area provincially and federally. We really want to see people work for DFO who are advocates for fish and care about the sustainability of fishing first. That's really important to us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

We'll now go to Ms. Barron for two and half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to open it and see, Mr. Zeman, if you have any additional points that you weren't able to cover today that you wanted to mention to us as a committee as we move forward in this study.

[Jesse Zeman]

I think it would be really enlightening to see some statistics from C and P and to ask some questions. There are two metrics here: what compliance looks like and how many infractions we have.

The first one is what the presence is like out on the water and in the river. That's the biggest one. I would really love to see what the historical data is around how many flights we had on the lower and mid-Fraser, how many night patrols we had in the past and how many we had this year. I think that is a really telling metric in terms of what's going on inside the agency.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to ask a bit of a bigger question, because it comes up so often in our role on the fisheries and oceans committee. We talk a lot about fisheries and the importance of fisheries. Then we also look at, of course, the impacts on our marine ecosystems and how we find that balance. Increasingly so, this is becoming a more and more challenging avenue to navigate as we see the impacts of the climate crisis. We see people who are struggling with the cost of living crisis. Of course, the fishing stocks are reducing. It's a big, complicated issue.

I'm wondering if you could speak to the vital balance required in protecting our marine ecosystems and ensuring that the government supports transition plans or support plans for those who may be impacted as any of these transitions are moving forward.

[Jesse Zeman]

Yes, broadly, the needs of any resource management, whether it's fish, wildlife or habitat, are funding, science and social support, which is essentially government.

The funding piece is one of the critical pieces in Canada. When we look south of the border, they have dedicated funding mechanisms. They have funding mechanisms where dollars flow directly from the purchase of hunting and fishing gear and where dollars from resource extraction fund directly into compensation.

One other example is in the Columbia basin. Here in British Columbia is 30% of it, and then 70% is in the United States. Due to hydroelectric development, we have a compensation program that spends $5.5 million to $6 million a year trying to offset or compensate for the losses to fish and wildlife, including salmon. When we look south of the border, their funding is north of $500 million a year in 70% of the basin. I will add that Canada and British Columbia are net beneficiaries of the Columbia River Treaty.

The bottom line here in Canada is that we need dedicated, long-term funding to take care of our salmon. We currently do not have that. Salmon, quite frankly, do not operate on four-year time scales like our electoral process. When times get tough, the first thing that's cut is the environment. When times are good, the last thing that gets funding is the environment. Canada really needs to move to a sustainable, long-term funding model that is dedicated to taking care of our fish, wildlife and habitat. Unless we do that, I think things are going to continue to slide.

You did mention fish farms. That's also been a commitment of the Government of Canada: to transition out. We are definitely concerned that we're seeing signs that the transition may not happen or may get dragged out. I think the science is in. We need to do everything we can for our wild salmon. Transitioning to close containment or getting fish farms out of the water is certainly one of those pieces.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm going to make an executive decision now.

We have to go in camera for a couple of minutes to do something. We have about five minutes left for questioning. I'd like to split it between Mr. Bragdon and Mr. Hanley so we can complete that round.

Mr. Arnold is going to take the two and half minutes.

Go ahead, sir.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Zeman, in 2018 former fisheries minister Dominic LeBlanc went public about a picture he provided depicting an eight-kilometre-long net that was scooping up more than 400,000 kilograms of wild salmon in the Pacific Ocean. At the time, Minister LeBlanc said he wanted to name and shame the countries that were conducting massive, illegal overfishing operations. However, the country of origin of the ship in the picture was not made public.

Do you know if the incident of large-scale IUU Pacific salmon fishing you described is the same incident in the picture that Minister LeBlanc described in 2018?

[Jesse Zeman]

I don't know, and I think again this is an issue of transparency. We hear this stuff through DFO, but quite frankly if there was a ship that had B.C.-bound fish on it, and apparently hundreds of thousands and up to a million pounds' worth, I feel like that should be disclosed to the public, because Canadians deserve to know.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I believe it was in 2022, when there was no sockeye fishery open yet on the Fraser River, that we were seeing ads on social media for “fresh-caught daily” Fraser River sockeye, yet there was no commercial season opened. Then a few days later, when these issues were raised, there was a very brief—I believe one day—opening for Fraser River sockeye for British Columbian fishers.

Do you feel that brief opening negated the opportunity for compliance and protection officers to investigate and prosecute those posts and alleged illegal fishing sales that were happening at the time?

[Jesse Zeman]

My best answer would be that I don't know. I would say, as it relates to that opening in 2022, there were a number of missteps. I think there were literally hundreds of thousands of fish that the Pacific Salmon Commission believed hit the mouth of the Fraser River but didn't end up spawning.

As it relates to fisheries' openings and closures, there are some real challenges with the way the department manages that. I think we need to have very strict objectives in terms of when fisheries are open or closed. Right now it's left up in the air, so there's a lack of certainty, and uncertainty creates conflict.

I think as it relates to these kinds of openings and what you're referring to, where there are timing issues, I think we need to be really clear in terms of how and when we open fisheries and for what reasons, and how and when we close fisheries as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Zeman.

We'll now go to Mr. Hanley for two and a half minutes, please.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thanks, Mr. Zeman, for all of your testimony. It's been so important and informational.

On the question of funding and resourcing, I noted from our notes from the Library of Parliament that, as part of the PSSI, there's a commitment of more than $46 million over the next five years to combat IUU fishing in the north Pacific.

I'm just wondering what impact that potentially could have. Does that potentially hit the mark? Is it anywhere near what we need?

[Jesse Zeman]

Yes, I would imagine, since it's in the north Pacific, that will be tied to these foreign vessels coming in and catching B.C.-bound or Washington state-bound fish, so again I have to answer a question with a question. What was the result of the $46 million? That would be my question. Again, when it relates to enforcement, it's quite often a black box.

We report stuff. We don't hear how it goes in the end, and that's a challenge. Maybe there's an opportunity to have a bit more transparency around how many investigations, how many people were charged and those kinds of metrics. They can't just tell us how many nets were seized on the Fraser. They need to tell us what they did about it, and I think there's a bit of a black box there.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Much of what you've been describing about the state of wild Pacific salmon and the need for multiple solutions and that holistic approach reflects very much the themes.... I was just in Washington, D.C., with the Yukon delegation about the Yukon River salmon.

I'm just wondering what information, if any, you have going north, even into northern B.C., on the importance of illegal and unreported fishing. This is maybe for a last remark.

[Jesse Zeman]

It's not one part of British Columbia versus another. It's a full cross-provincial approach. Our fish do not know boundaries. They do not know borders. There's lots of discussion about marine protected areas as well. Salmon has been through it all. The front end of the Fraser right around Richmond and Vancouver is a fully industrialized area. We can't think the world stops and starts there. We have to think about a whole approach, which includes going all the way up to Alaska and into waters outside of Canada's waters for sure.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Zeman, for your participation in the committee work today. Thank you for appearing and sharing your knowledge with the committee as we go through this particular study.

I'm going to let you sign off now so we can take a moment to go in camera to do a very small bit of committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]