Fisheries Committee on Feb. 1st, 2024

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

What is that maximum amount?

[Adam Burns]

It depends—

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

It depends on the type of offence and the context, for example.

[Adam Burns]

Exactly. There are a few—

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

Is it a lot of money?

[Adam Burns]

It can be a lot of money, depending on the situation. The judge determines the exact amount.

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

Okay.

Do you think that, most of the time, the fines are sufficient to act as a deterrent? It must be said that, for some very wealthy offenders, paying $100,000, for example, is like a drop in the bucket. Perfection is impossible, but do you think fines act as a deterrent in most cases or are they just symbolic?

[Adam Burns]

As far as we're concerned, this comes under Parliament, which brought in the Fisheries Act, as well as judges, who have to render their rulings in each case.

It's not really up to me to do that analysis.

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

Are you not consulted by judges when it comes to determining the gravity of the facts? I imagine you provide them with testimony from time to time.

[Adam Burns]

No, I'm not a legal expert. That's really a matter for the prosecution services.

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

I have one last question for you.

During our last exchange, I spoke to you about the principle according to which, in Quebec, money seized on the black market by a police officer is reinvested in the fight against drugs, for example. The money is put back into the system that is affected by the penalty.

Have you given any thought to my idea of redistributing the money collected in the form of penalties to fishers who are suffering the consequences of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, for instance?

[Adam Burns]

Under the current process, the money collected in the form of penalties is paid to the government, and it is the government and Parliament that decide where the money will be spent.

Again, it's not for me to comment on that.

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

Don't you think that might be a good idea?

[Adam Burns]

I don't have an opinion on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens. Your time is up.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Burns, perhaps I will ask you my last question. We've had lots of testimony throughout this study around the use of electronic logbooks. The last time you were here, I asked questions through the chair to you about the use of electronic logbooks. You talked about the work happening to move forward with this system so that data is better accumulated for us to have a better understanding of what's happening, in fact, with illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing.

We've heard from many witnesses talking about different technologies, some talking about concerns, some talking about the work moving forward, and it sounds like a lot of pieces need to be in place to be able to move forward to have this implemented. I'm wondering what your thoughts are. Are there any updates since you spoke about this before Christmas? Are we moving forward with this?

[Adam Burns]

Yes, this will be a key part of implementing the fisheries monitoring policy, but specifically on the technologies related to e-logs themselves, there are a couple of fisheries where mandatory use of e-logs is in place and others where.... Indeed, for all fisheries we would now, I believe, accept the use of e-logs, but it's not mandatory.

One of the obstacles is getting the necessary applications in place in order to collect that data. We had embarked exclusively on third-party provision for this. Because the results of that third-party provision of the apps is such that there are some fisheries that are not covered by available e-logs, we're assessing the path forward on that in order to ensure we can, indeed, implement e-logs across fisheries, because it's not a one-size-fits-all. There are various data requirements and other things depending on the fishery, so it's not just whether there's an e-log application; it's whether there's an e-log application appropriate to collect the data necessary for a given fishery.

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

Okay. There's another layer, then, of making sure that this data is able to accumulate the appropriate information required. Is there any consultation with fishers on how to best see that being implemented? Where are we with that?

[Adam Burns]

Yes, we work with the fishing industry as well as the various data users to ensure that our logbooks collect the necessary and appropriate data to support the informed decision-making in a given fishery. Really, e-logs are about taking those data needs and transitioning them to an electronic means of capturing them, so it's that second part of creating the application that would collect the data that we've already identified as being necessary. The data elements that are necessary are something we do work with industry on, and now it's a matter of working with various developers to ensure that we have available applications.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron. We went a little bit over.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Brock.

I have two quick questions for Mr. Burns.

Does DFO consider conservation as the primary objective of its policy, regulations and objectives?

[Adam Burns]

Conservation and the proper management and control of the fishery are the key aspects of our management regime.

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

That's a top priority. Okay. Thank you.

Moments ago, after you stated you don't have FSC reporting or data, that you don't retain or obtain that data, you then said a few seconds later that FSC catch rates are very low. How do you square that circle? If you don't have the data, how do you know it's low?

[Adam Burns]

We know through various means of observation of the level of activity of FSC fishing by nations, the means by which they're engaging in that FSC activity and—

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

You're using anecdotal information to run fisheries.