Fisheries Committee on Jan. 30th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I call this meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number 94 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Before we proceed, I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. Please address all comments through the chair.

Before we proceed, I simply want to remind members to be very careful when handling the earpieces, especially when your microphone or your neighbour's microphone is turned on. Earpieces placed too close to a microphone are one of the most common causes of sound feedback, which is extremely harmful to interpreters and causes serious injuries.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on January 18, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses. We have on Zoom Mr. Greg Witzky, executive director, Fraser Salmon Management Council. We have Murray Ned-Kwilosintun, executive director, Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance, and representing Coastal First Nations-Great Bear Initiative, we have in person Trevor Russ, director, policy and programs.

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

I will start with Greg Witzky to begin, please, for five minutes or less.

[Greg Witzky, Executive Director, Fraser Salmon Management Council]

Thank you, sir. Thank you again to the committee for inviting me to speak. I did back in 2020 as well.

As I said, my name is Greg Witzky. I'm the executive director of the Fraser Salmon Management Council. We're a mandated assembly of 76 first nations in B.C. who work along with DFO to try to create and support nation-to-nation government structures for management, governance and conservation of all Fraser salmon.

I also worked closely as the project director when the Big Bar landslide occurred back in 2019. Funding from the government helped us do that. It was a success. Additionally, I'm a mid-Fraser indigenous delegate on the international Pacific Salmon Commission's Fraser River panel.

Today, I'm going to go over some key priorities with you and then offer a few proposed solutions to address those priorities.

Most of the illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing that gravely concerns the indigenous peoples in B.C. occurs in the marine and the approach to mixed-stock salmon recreational fisheries—or “rec” for short.

DFO enforcement monitoring of the rec fishery does not effectively cover the vast open waters where over 300,000 of these rec fishers are free to roam as they see fit. There are many anecdotal reports of sport fishers never even seeing a single fisheries officer or a dockside observer during the entire season, which can be open for 12 months in many cases and in many areas.

Krill surveys along with the iREC electronic surveys are utilized by DFO as a primary catch-monitoring program. The program relies on the rec fishers to report their catch voluntarily and accurately. However, human nature shows us how voluntary reporting behaviour does not work out as planned.

Fishing for the larger-bodied salmon, along with the broader introduction of mark-selective fisheries in recent years, has meant that many small salmon or unmarked fish are disregarded, resulting in massive amounts of unreported mortalities. There are currently no regulations in place that limit the amount of chinook that the rec fishers are allowed to catch and release. In recent years, that amount has significantly increased, yet DFO insists upon giving increased access to rec fishers without having the appropriate technical data and monitoring activities needed to support those openings.

It begs the question: Why would high-level DFO decision-makers support this knowing that most Pacific salmon stocks have been steadily declining over the past 25 years?

We work closely and collaboratively with DFO, but our voice is getting lost when it gets to the federal level in Ottawa. Hopefully my opinion will be viewed as an important step forward to help us cease these unreported and unregulated fisheries.

I do have some solutions to propose. Considering the enormous area of B.C.'s Pacific coast and the inability of DFO to effectively manage and monitor the fisheries, additional time and area closures are needed to conserve and protect endangered salmon populations from becoming extirpated. There should be outright closures, meaning no fishing for salmon in a lot of areas.

Currently DFO has allowed most areas to remain open to fishing for salmon. However, rec fishers are not allowed to keep the salmon. The salmon are still harmed when they're released.

Rec fishing activity in the main migration corridors of stocks is subject to conservation research. It should be reduced and allowed only in certain coastal areas where the local wild stocks are strong or there are some small hatcheries that can support it. There must be adequate stock assessment programs within the main migration corridors to ensure that any targeted harvest of these stocks is sustainable. Currently on the south coast inlet fjords populations, the data is limited, so we really have no idea what the populations status is and whether it can sustain any amount of targeted harvesting.

Doing this will allow for easier monitoring by fisheries officers. If everybody is more or less crowded together in an inlet, it will give cost reductions for the rec fishery monitoring if DFO can be in a place where the fishers are not spread along a vast expanse of ocean front.

I would say the length of time the rec fisheries are open must be reduced. For example, in Washington State chinook rec fishers are limited to two or three days opening at a time during the whole season. They're not open without adequate enforcement either. The catch monitoring and test fishery data programs need to be in place in order to monitor those pockets of fisheries that occur during the whole season.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Witzky. We're now going to have to go on to the next presenter for five minutes or less.

I'd ask Mr. Ned-Kwilosintun to go for five minutes or less, please.

[Murray Ned-Kwilosintun, Executive Director, Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and everybody. Thank you for having me.

My name is Murray Ned, executive director for the Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance. My ancestral name is Kwilosintun, and I'm a member of Sumas First Nation.

Our organization provides advocacy and technical support related to fish, fisheries and fish habitat to 30 first nations along the lower Fraser River in British Columbia.

In preparation for today, I inquired about the definition of “illegal, unreported and unregulated fisheries”. What I got back was broad and general, so it seemed the meaning of these terms is more a matter of interpretation rather than a formal legal definition. I'll offer my interpretation through the lens of articles 4, 5, 18, 19 and 26 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

At the international scale, I've been a commissioner for the Pacific Salmon Commission since 2013. I was appointed by the Minister of Fisheries and not my own nation or the first nations of British Columbia. At that venue my formal obligation is to Canada, not first nations.

The integrated fisheries management plan is the instrument used by the DFO in the Pacific region to manage salmon fisheries. First nations are only recognized as advisers who can make recommendations, not decision-makers. Similarly, the Pacific Salmon Treaty process doesn't recognize first nations as representatives with authority over their own territories and resources.

There are many examples in the past year of decisions made through these regimes that did not respect UNDRIP and our own indigenous laws, and I'll share a few here.

U.S. commercial pink fisheries intercepted Fraser-bound sockeye, while at the same time there was no Canadian commercial total allowable catch or FSC due to conservation concerns. The U.S. initially retained sockeye, including stocks of concern, and then discarded dead or live sockeye in subsequent fisheries, compromising both conservation priorities and our own first nation priority access.

Licence conditions for the lower Fraser first nations targeting chinook for FSC made it mandatory to discard all sockeye bycatch, dead or alive, even though there were provisions for some sockeye retention through DFO's low abundance exploitation rate modelling. Discarding and wasting fish is against the historical and current laws of our lower Fraser first nations.

The international Alaskan District 104 fisheries continue to intercept Fraser River sockeye, including stocks of concern. These are all the points given here. Fraser River chinook stocks of concern were intercepted domestically in marine mixed-stock recreational fisheries, while conservation of these stocks and overall FSC needs were unmet. Canadian commercial trawl fisheries intercepted Fraser River juvenile chinook, including stocks of concern. Countless salmon redds were damaged by recreational fisheries that allow hundreds of people access to tributaries of the lower Fraser during critical salmon migration periods. Recreational catch and release fisheries resulted in significant chinook and coho mortality, the very same fish we're trying to conserve for the Fraser River.

Our nations acknowledge that there are challenges with our members, who may be involved in illegal, unreported and unregulated fisheries as defined by Canada. However, we also know that Canada's governance and management systems are not protecting salmon from much more significant impacts, even while regulating them. The reality is that DFO is the only body with the Canadian legal authority and capacity to enforce their own laws, many of which are inconsistent with our inherent laws and construed now as illegal, unreported and unregulated.

In closing, I invite you to review our revitalizing indigenous law for land, air and water project to learn more about the legal traditions of the people of the lower Fraser as they apply to watershed management and fisheries governance.

I also invite you to partner on our lower Fraser centre of co-operation and collaboration, which we are developing. It will be a venue for all levels of government, stakeholders, NGOs, academia and industry to convene. Currently all of these parties operate in silos, and we believe a central complex is needed to address the salmon crisis and climate change and to improve management of the lower Fraser region and of salmon in general.

Thank you for your time. Hoy chexw Siyam.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

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

[Trevor Russ, Director, Policy and Programs, Coastal First Nations - Great Bear Initiative]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Trevor Russ, and I am the director of policy and programs for Great Bear Initiative Society, also known as Coastal First Nations with the acronym CFN.

I'm also a member of the Haida nation and have been a fisherman my entire life. I have fished commercially in many federally regulated fisheries and continue to fish under my rights to provide food for my family, friends and community.

I'd like to take the chance to thank the committee for inviting me here to speak on the study of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. The Haida nation, Metlakatla First Nation, Gitxaała Nation, Gitga'at First Nation, Kitasoo Xai'xais Nation, Heiltsuk first nation, Nuxalk Nation and the Wuikinuxv Nation, whose territories include over 40% of the marine waters and coastline in British Columbia, are the member nations of CFN.

Approximately 23,000 people live here, with close to 50% being first nations peoples. Our organization has been together for over 20 years and has had great success in working with federal and provincial governments on key land and marine policy issues.

We read through some of the previous evidence that has been given to this committee, and there appears to be a basic misunderstanding of the economic and other rights of first nations and how those rights relate or contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in Canada. We wish to clear up these misunderstandings.

For all our member nations, fishing has always been integral to our way of life, including sustaining our food security, culture and thriving economies. Under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, first nations' food, social, ceremonial and commercial rights are protected. One of our member nations, the Heiltsuk first nation, had their constitutionally protected right to trade herring spawn on kelp on a commercial basis affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Gladstone.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which recognizes rights that constitute minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world, recognizes the inherent right of first nations to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources they possess and imposes an obligation on Canada to give legal recognition and protection to those lands, territories and resources with due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the first nations concerned.

As you're all aware, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act affirms the UN declaration as a universal, international human rights instrument with application in Canadian law and requires that the federal government, in consultation and co-operation with indigenous peoples, take all measures necessary to ensure that the laws of Canada are consistent with the UN declaration.

Against this backdrop, first nations have shown time and time again that it is not the exercise of our inherent and aboriginal rights that is illegal. It is Canada's efforts to deny and suppress them. The notion that any fishery we undertake pursuant to and in accordance with our laws, legal systems and systems of governance is illegal and unregulated, whether authorized under the laws of Canada or not, is demonstrably false.

Our member nations have always governed ourselves, our territories and our economic and other relations pursuant to and in accordance with our robust and complex laws, legal systems and systems of governance. This has enabled our member nations to live prosperously and sustainably within our respective territories since time out of mind.

Our member nations have always patrolled, monitored and defended our territories against those individuals and entities, first nations and non-first nations, who violate our laws and seek to illegally exploit and profit from our territories and resources.

Until recently, our inherent and constitutional rights went unrecognized, and the laws, legal systems and systems of governance of our member nations were denigrated and disrespected. In violation of our inherent and aboriginal rights, Canada has historically taken the incorrect and deeply offensive position that, if our member nations' fisheries were not conducted with their blessing and under their laws, they were illegal and unregulated and that, if Canada did not regulate or monitor fisheries within our territories, there would be anarchy.

Despite this, we and our member nations have remained ready and willing to work with the federal government on a nation-to-nation, government-to-government basis to reconcile the rights and jurisdictions of our member nations with those asserted by Canada.

In July of 2021, our member nations together with CFN signed a transformative fisheries resource reconciliation agreement, known by the acronym FRRA, that commits Canada and our member nations to collaborative governance and management of fish, fish habitat and fisheries, including financial support to increase access to commercial fishing licences and quota for our member nations.

We see approaches such as the FRRA as one avenue that first nations and the federal government can take to begin reconciling their respective asserted jurisdictions.

The federal government itself has recognized this through its UNDRIP Act action plan, which, among other things, calls for Fisheries and Oceans Canada to pursue fisheries-related collaborative governance opportunities through nation-to-nation, Inuit-to-Crown and government-to-government negotiations.

Ultimately, how indigenous nations will choose to exercise their inherent and aboriginal rights and reconcile their rights and jurisdiction with those asserted by Canada will be up to them as an aspect of their inherent right to self-determination. The federal government must ensure that any related efforts are supported administratively and are sufficiently and predictably resourced.

In the interim, it is in the best interest of reconciliation for the federal government and stakeholders to avoid inaccurate and sensationalist accusations involving first nations in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in Canada. The further criminalization and vilification of first nations looking to exercise their most basic inherent and aboriginal rights is not the answer.

First nations—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I'm going to have to interrupt you there, Mr. Russ. You're over by almost a minute.

We'll now go to our rounds of questioning.

Before we do that, I want to remind members that we have to leave some time at the end to approve some budgets and do some committee business, so we'll probably end around quarter to six. We only get to go until six o'clock. That's all the time we have available to us.

I will tell members now that I will try to be very strict on the time, because if I let one go over, somebody else will lose their time on the other end.

We'll go to the questioning now with Mr. Small for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming today to our study.

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

Your website states that DFO was “failing salmon and the people who love and depend on them.” Would you mind explaining that statement to the committee, so we can get a better understanding of that, please?

[Murray Ned-Kwilosintun]

I'll try to be brief.

I have a lot of DFO colleagues who have a genuine interest in protecting salmon, so I'll start with that. However, I think the structures that I shared with you have been not very conducive to protecting salmon. I'm talking about the integrated fisheries management plans. I'm talking about the Pacific Salmon Treaty. These are mostly processes and structures that are all about harvest and all about socio-economics. It's pretty hard to protect and conserve salmon when the main focus is on socio-economics in harvest.

What else would I say about that?

Frankly, as I mentioned in some of my comments, first nations have not been privileged to have decision-making authority in these processes. Maybe with the United Nations' declaration, this would be a provision to advance our opportunity to have those rights and be decision-makers with the Province of B.C. and the federal government.

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

I listened to your opening remarks, Mr. Ned. You talked about the U.S. interception of salmon bound for B.C. rivers.

Is there any way of knowing and quantifying the amount of salmon headed for B.C. rivers that are taken by U.S. fishermen?

[Murray Ned-Kwilosintun]

Absolutely. That's what the Pacific Salmon Commission was established for. That's what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was established for. They can provide those statistics.

I didn't want to bore you with those in my speech. I could have put those together for you, and I'm willing to do that for you if you like.

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

Based on your experience with the Pacific Salmon Commission, is there a solution to fish that may be taken in an IUU manner across the border? Is there anything that can be done to bring it under control, if that's the problem?

[Murray Ned-Kwilosintun]

I believe so, but there has to be political will between Canada and the U.S. and Alaskan fisheries to make change and make conservation a priority over interception of those fish, while trying to target others that are getting bycatch. There is a significant interest and concern there.

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

What have been some of the roadblocks to sorting out this issue in the past? Would you be able to fill the committee in on some of the struggles you face with the Pacific Salmon Commission in ironing out these issues?

[Murray Ned-Kwilosintun]

There's a pretty large context of regulation and legalities under the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Each decade, there's an opportunity to negotiate the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Because there are five or six chapters to be negotiated, the challenge is the trade-off between the chapters and the specific species. Unfortunately, there will likely always be a loser and that loser will likely be salmon in most cases.

What I'm trying to tell you is that there is opportunity, but it's very marginal in terms of being able to protect all five salmon species for Canada in the Pacific Salmon Treaty as part of those negotiations. There's always going to be a trade-off, unfortunately.

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

In your opinion, are British Columbia's first nations adequately represented on the Pacific Salmon Commission?

[Murray Ned-Kwilosintun]

No. Currently, there are approximately 30 first nations participants. They're not all aboriginal, but they contribute the aboriginal interests. Frankly, they're funded about $185,000 annually for their operations to convene at two of the annual Pacific Salmon Commission meetings, so that in itself doesn't provide the capacity necessary for nations to participate effectively.

As I mentioned earlier, we're only obligated to meet Canada's interest at this time. We're only obligated to report to Canada. We don't have a formal method to engage with the 200-plus nations in the province of B.C. Do we want to? Yes. We believe we have an obligation to do that, but in the current regime we are operating under, there's no provision for resourcing and not enough personnel to do that work.

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

Before I finish off, my last question is also for you.

Do you have a percentage by species of all five species of salmon that are destined for Canadian rivers, B.C. rivers or rivers in the nations being taken by American fishermen? Do you have that stat? What you would estimate that amount to be?

[Murray Ned-Kwilosintun]

I can't articulate that with good clarity right now, but I'm certain we can do that work with either the Canadian caucus of the Pacific Salmon Commission or with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. As an indigenous person, I wish I could grapple with those numbers right now, but I would have to work with our Department of Fisheries and Oceans and salmon commission colleagues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Okay. If you could supply that to the committee in writing, it would be a great help.

We'll move on now to Mr. Hardie for six minutes or less.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here, because you represent a very critical public stakeholder we need to hear from.

I'll begin with Mr. Witzky.

You are advocating for more closures to deal with the IUU issue. Draw the line. Connect how more closures of fisheries will help deal with illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

[Greg Witzky]

Thank you. That's a good question.

The reason I'm advocating for more closures is.... As I mentioned, right now, it's so wide open across a vast amount of area that DFO cannot effectively monitor. In order to know what's being caught, they need to interview people and approach fishers, which you can't do.

To me, by putting everybody into a closed area in an inlet that groups people together who are fishing, DFO can easily stick within those inlets, produce the results it needs and get the catch allocations, because not everybody out there is truthful and honest. There's a lot of bycatch. We're talking so much bycatch that the smaller fish are dying from mortalities such as being wounded when they're hooked, dragged around by their mouth and bleeding. An orca eats them, or they just die from bleeding out.

Even with all of our wanting to reduce.... When first nations erect fisheries, it's a holistic approach. We need the habitat taken care of, along with the water temperatures and drought levels. The fish don't stand a very good chance anyway. One more step to help is knowing exactly what's being caught and reported.

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

Thank you for that.

[Greg Witzky]

We don't have that information.

Thank you.

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

Mr. Ned, you mentioned the rules from UNDRIP and what we understand about the FSC fishery. When it comes to enforcement, are you convinced that enforcement officers are well enough aware of indigenous rights under UNDRIP and FSC to be able to separate illegal activities versus activities that are in fact quite permitted? Have there been areas of confusion there, or is everybody pretty rock solid on the rules?