Fisheries Committee on Nov. 28th, 2023

[Jesse Zeman]

That's a loaded question, and not one I can probably give a great answer to. I think that broadly a lot of those issues are relationship-based issues, I would say, first of all. There's a lot of frustration around the status of salmon and sturgeon broadly across the province of B.C.

I think fisheries officers have regulations and legislation that they're supposed to follow. How that works as it moves further up the line from line officers is a world that, as I said, I'm not privy to. Enforcement is a bit of a black box to us. We don't know what the outcomes look like. We file reports, but we don't know how they move through the system.

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

What kind of liaison do you have with first nations? Are first nations involved with the federation? If so, talk to us about the liaison with the guardians who are out there enforcing or at least monitoring on behalf of first nations.

[Jesse Zeman]

Certainly. Since 2021, the federation partnered with over 49 first nations delivering about 10 million dollars' worth of projects. We have also provided guardian training to some of the communities across the province. We have a number of existing relationships, but not with all of the communities or all of the nations.

I think a lot of this world is understanding and appreciation. We just had Chief Bob Chamberlin at the Sport Fishing Institute of B.C. on the weekend talking about harvest reporting and harvest management.

I think a lot of this is really about relationships and moving forward on a positive path. Half of this issue is around the sustainability of salmon and trying to get back what we had. The other half is working out some historical issues. We're working on it is the best answer, and we do have partnerships with a number of nations across the province.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Hardie.

We'll now go to Madame Desbiens, for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Since this is more on the Pacific side, I'm going to ask the witness a question. After that, I'll turn my time over to my colleague Ms. Barron.

Mr. Zeman, have you received approval from the Quebec side? Have you had any contact with fishermen in the Gulf of St. Lawrence? Have you been able to discover similar problems on the Quebec side?

[Jesse Zeman]

That's a really great question. As the B.C. Wildlife Federation, we're also a member of the Canadian Wildlife Federation, so all of the wildlife federations, from one end of the country to the other, meet pretty regularly. We've actually had two in-person meetings this year, and the frustration is shared. The species are different. The types of fishing are different, but there is a shared frustration in terms of funding, mostly about outcomes and moving DFO to an outcome-based organization in the sense that we really need to focus on restoring our fish, whether it is codfish on the east coast or salmon on the west coast. There is a shared frustration.

The issues at a high level are often very similar. At a low level, the fishing opportunities and the fish are different.

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

In your opinion, if the fish are different, is the effect on the biomass and the resource as important on the Gulf of St. Lawrence side?

[Jesse Zeman]

I would say though that certainly the people are just as passionate. Yes, it is just as important from one end of the country to the other. Again, moving DFO to an outcome-based agency really could be an important goal for this committee in terms of delivering things on the ground.

We all know that we have issues with sustainability. The question is how we change that. More years of planning, more years of policy, more years of process have not and will not change that. We need to start getting onto some policy that's pulling some levers as it relates to sustainability.

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

So we need to protect the fishery as well as the resource. Have I understood correctly?

[Jesse Zeman]

Yes, those are worthy goals.

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

Mr. Chair, I yield the remainder of my speaking time to Ms. Barron.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You have a little over nine minutes total.

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

Excellent. Thank you so much to my colleague for providing me with extra time as I have lots of questions.

Again, welcome, Mr. Zeman, to our committee. I'm happy you are here to provide us with your wealth of knowledge and experience.

These are some of the first questions I want to ask about. The article you made available on the BCWF website is quoting you, saying “The BCWF is seeing reports of dumping involving thousands, possibly tens of thousands of fish, which is a symptom of illegal sales on a massive scale”. You go on to say, “The fish have spoiled suggesting that there are far more fish on the black market than there are buyers.”

Can you expand a little bit more on that particular piece? You have spoken more to the others, but maybe expand a little bit more on the black market and that there are more fish on the black market than there are buyers.

[Jesse Zeman]

Yes, that is just a function of the fact that, if you are obtaining a fish and looking to sell it and you can't get it moved quickly enough and it spoils, it ends us being dumped. That is a symptom of a challenge that I understand goes back for quite a long time.

When we've talked about it with some of our partners in the lower Fraser, no one condones that. No one thinks it is acceptable, but it sure seems there is definitely an underground black market around sales of fish. Certainly there was also some media about a sturgeon that was caught and taken away in a vehicle. That was on Global News a few years ago.

It sure seems like there is a black market. There has been lots of discussion, I heard, in the committee about some issues around crabbing, and the same for halibut. The reality is that it's happening and we are probably catching very few of the individuals involved.

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

Thank you.

Can you add a little more around what you were suggesting in your article concerning the fact that, when fish are on the black market, they haven't been inspected and they haven't been properly stored. I should rephrase that. We don't know if they've been properly stored, which can lead to an increase of food-borne illness.

Is this something you are hearing of or seeing in your day-to-day?

[Jesse Zeman]

Really, it's about messaging the public and the people who are the potential buyers, so they recognize that sustainable fisheries have ways of managing the fish. You end up with a quality product. If fish are being dumped, it's because they do not have the facilities to keep them cool or properly take care of the meat. Of course, if they're not taking care of their catch properly, you're going to end up getting sick.

That was part of the message to the people who are potentially buying these fish: If you don't know where it came from and how it's been treated, don't take the risk.

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

Thank you.

Can you also expand on the point you made in...? The wording here reads, “Authorities are hopelessly overmatched to deal with the problem, especially after Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) shut down its special investigations unit nine years ago.”

Can you expand on that?

[Jesse Zeman]

Yes. This is a matter of prioritization. We quite often find that our priorities don't necessarily align with the priorities of compliance and protection in terms of patrols—as I stated earlier here—or even the priorities of DFO. If this is a big issue and if it's important to the Government of Canada, we need to resource it. In disbanding things like the SIU, the signal we get as Canadians and as a group that cares deeply about these fish is that it is not important to the Government of Canada.

It's a matter of focusing, figuring out what the priorities are and resourcing them. It feels, right now—as it relates to IUU and, certainly, the culture shift in DFO—as if compliance and protection does not seem to be a priority.

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

For my final point, I want to ask for clarification on the article I'm looking at here—which was very well done, I might add. It talks about how “Addressing poaching requires significant resources.”

Can you expand on that a bit more?

[Jesse Zeman]

Yes. It's the same as it is in the rest of our lives. When people engage in illegal activities, they try not to get caught. As with criminals in other parts of our society, things often happen at night, under the cover of darkness. Again, if compliance and protection is reducing the number of night patrols, helicopter patrols and boat patrols, you're only catching a fraction of the incidents. If you don't have a presence on the river or the ocean, you're going to catch even fewer of them.

It comes down, again, to priorities. If we're not resourcing these things, or if we're cutting back on them, we're not going to catch people engaging in illegal activity.

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

Thank you.

I think it would be good to bring into this discussion the importance of wild Pacific salmon as a keystone species.

I am not sure whether the importance of wild Pacific salmon—not just in our marine ecosystems but also in the entire environmental ecosystem—to coastal communities, indigenous rights and food security is general knowledge.

Could you speak a bit about the importance of wild Pacific salmon, the key piece here being the prevention of illegal sales of wild Pacific salmon?

[Jesse Zeman]

Yes. It's a challenging question to answer.

In one sense, if we raise the social value of species like salmon, and if there is broad awareness that comes out of compliance and protection, in terms of how important these are to Canadians and first nations, how we take care of them.... Education is probably the first, best approach. We always talk about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure. I think raising the profile of wild salmon—having compliance and protection out talking to the public and to first nations about how to work together to take care of salmon in perpetuity—is a very important and missing piece.

That is something the Province of B.C. does through the conservation officer service. Its outreach is going to be very important moving forward, as we shift more to an urban environment where people aren't exposed to salmon or to the sustainability issue.

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

In relation to prevention, we know we're seeing the impacts of the climate crisis we're experiencing on wild Pacific salmon: warming waters, droughts and flooding. There are so many ways we are seeing the impacts of the climate crisis on wild Pacific salmon. In addition to that, there are further barriers and challenges for wild Pacific salmon when we see overfishing and illegal fishing. Open-net fish farming is another example.

Can you share your thoughts on the importance of our taking seriously the dwindling stocks of wild Pacific salmon that we're seeing, and of doing all we can to reduce the barriers and challenges being experienced by wild Pacific salmon?

[Jesse Zeman]

This is a tough one, but we deal with this with endangered caribou. We're getting to a point with a number of fish populations—interior Fraser steelhead and early chinook—where, I think, in this world we're always looking for a silver bullet and the one thing we can do that will change the outcome. The reality is that there's not one thing. We can't just pull one lever and expect wild salmon to all of a sudden bounce back. We have in-river water conditions and water flows in the summertime. We have pinniped predation. We have salmon farms, and there are cases of overfishing.

When you get down to small numbers, you can have stochastic events that literally just wipe out what remains. When we have 21 fish in a river, it's very easy for all 21 of those to just disappear. Our learning in the world of caribou is that you need to pull all of the available levers and you need to pull them hard.

We are definitely approaching a time when we can't talk about pulling one lever or another, about just removing some fish farms in the Broughton or just spending some money in the Thompson River or the Nicola River. It has to be broad-based. We have to pull multiple levers, and then we need to use the science that we have to adapt and understand which levers work.

We all want to be in a world where we can do one thing and it will magically fix the problem, but we're not in those times right now. We're in times when we need to start pulling multiple levers, figuring out what works and continuing on with it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron. Even though you had a little over nine minutes, you went over a bit, but we'll excuse you for that.

We'll now go to Mr. Arnold for five minutes or less.