Fisheries Committee on Feb. 6th, 2024

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

I'll probably have further questions.

Let's move on.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Thank you.

We'll now move to Madame Desbiens for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here and making time in their schedules for the committee.

I'll get right into it. A number of small shrimping businesses have basically just been put out of work. The news is making its way around. Already, we are hearing about shrimp harvesters putting their boats up for sale.

The quota set by the minister is much too small and has to be shared with big fleets that have hundred-foot-plus boats, when we know that small businesses and villages are the backbone of the fishing economy. At least, that's the case in Quebec. The whole village suffers when a boat is tied up.

The assertion is that we don't have the right data, but the best evidence seems to come from scientists and harvesters telling us that there are at least three million tonnes of redfish in the gulf. Redfish are a predator for shrimp, so apparently we have to harvest at least 300,000 tonnes annually to curb the growth of redfish. How, then, do you explain a 25,000‑tonne quota that has to be shared with big offshore fleets, while numerous boats stay tied up?

Then we're told that we don't have the right data or all the necessary data, while local economies are being jeopardized. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the decisions DFO is making right now, and I'm not the only one. Many harvesters are in trouble and they're very frustrated. When they find out that the data are incomplete, it's even worse. It hurts even more.

Mr. Williams, isn't there some sort of middle ground, something that could be done? How can we increase the quotas to give these people a chance to earn a living without hurting the resource? It's been clearly shown that redfish are prevalent.

[Todd Williams]

Thank you very much for the question.

I think there are a couple of points.

One is that the situation with gulf shrimp and the estuary is problematic, and the minister and department certainly recognize that. The total allowable catch would be lower this season as a result of where that stock is.

In terms of redfish, that is a stock that is coming out of moratorium. The minister has made the decision that it will reopen this year, and we're working diligently to do that.

With respect to large vessels operating in the gulf, there is no policy on preventing vessels over 100 feet from doing so. When we speak of monitoring, in some cases—I'm not saying this is a universal truth—monitoring larger vessels can be easier, in a sense, with at-sea observers, and collecting that data—

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

I'm going to stop you there, Mr. Williams. You took a good bit of time telling us what we already knew.

Of course, we can't stop big vessels from fishing, but history shows us that they are the ones who put the fishery at risk, if we look back 30 years. That's what worries people in the fishing community. I repeat, they know the sector better than all of us here. They take a reading of the situation every day. I don't think anyone is more motivated than they are to preserve the resource, so why don't you pay more attention to what they have to say? What can you do to give them a stronger voice?

[Todd Williams]

In fact, we are working with them. The announcement was just made by the minister a week and a half ago with respect to the redfish fishery. She announced a minimum total allowable catch of 25,000 tonnes, which can be increased based on the feedback and advice we get from industry.

In fact, just on Friday, I communicated with industry to review the minister's decision as well as the most recent science. In the coming weeks there will be an advisory committee meeting; we will work collaboratively with industry at that meeting to develop the fishery management plan, including monitoring requirements for this fishery going forward.

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

Thank you.

I hope an announcement will be made very soon, because the fishing sector needs predictability. A boat can't just be put in the water like that. It takes a lot of time, money and workers. It takes planning, so we are already way behind.

I'd like to know why only harvesters in Quebec, mainly pelagic fish harvesters, are required to report their catches? If you required all the harvesters to report their catches, wouldn't that give you more data?

Those boats are tied up, since the herring and mackerel fisheries are closed for the season, but couldn't you require more harvesters to report their catches?

[Todd Williams]

Certainly within the licence conditions, we have requirements with respect to the reporting of catches. I take your point, though. There is certainly inconsistency between fleets, between regions, and that's actually one of the things that implementing the fishery monitoring policy will help us discover. It will tease out those inconsistencies and help us find solutions to improve that data.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

We'll move now to Ms. Barron for six minutes.

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

Thank you, our new chair.

I think I'm going to direct my first question to you, Mr. DeMarco.

I found myself reflecting on something when I was reading this report. As many people around this table know, I'm originally from Newfoundland. My family were not fishers; however, we were deeply impacted by the cod collapse, so much so that my family, because of the shift in the economy, packed everything up in our car and drove from one coast to the other to start new lives because of the direct impacts of the cod collapse, even though we weren't fishers. I bring that with me in my work in this role, and it's one of the many reasons that I so appreciate the opportunity to sit around this table.

I noticed that you used that in your report as one of the rationales as to why it's particularly important that we're paying attention.

I'm wondering if you can bring it back for us and highlight those reflections. Tell us why it is essential that we collect data and have appropriate leadership and actions that follow, based on the data that's collected.

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Yes. If we don't learn from the past, we may be at risk of being doomed to repeat it. We don't see the likelihood of a repeat of the incredible negative impacts of the collapse of the cod, because there's no single fishery of that size and importance anymore in Canada, but if you look at all of the fisheries together, they're still extremely important, as I mentioned in my opening remarks. We can learn from that unfortunate story that came to a head back in 1992.

It's quite striking that now, in 2024, we still don't have a recovery. That's why I concluded my opening remarks by talking about the fact that it's much better to maintain healthy stocks than to allow them to deplete and then hope to recover them, because it may take decades if it's at all possible. We can learn from those mistakes in the past.

If we just go back seven years to the last time our Office of the Auditor General looked at this issue, it is troubling that some of the same problems continue. We just heard from Mr. Williams about inconsistencies. That was something we pointed out in previous work in this area. From my last product, we also had the introduction of the fisheries monitoring policy, which was promised in 2017. It came in 2019. However, as you see from exhibit 9.2, no fish, not even one species of the 156, have gone through the six steps of the policy.

We would like to see an acceleration of the efforts to learn from the mistakes of the past and to implement not only our recommendations from this past November but also our recommendations from 2016.

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

Thank you.

Your report provides us with some graphs and some information and a breakdown of data and information that was collected. I noticed that there's repeated mention that the evidence could not be provided. Can you speak a little bit more around what you saw in the examples of when and how information was not provided so that I can better understand that?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Yes.

I'll introduce our answer to that, and then I'll turn it over to Monsieur Normand for more detail.

Part of our role as auditors within the Office of the Auditor General of Canada is to check on these assertions made by departments. We had assertions about both timeliness and coverage regarding at-sea and dockside monitoring. What was troubling is that for some of the sampling we did, even when the department asserted that it did have the data that was needed, when we sampled it, we found many instances in which it wasn't there.

I'll ask Monsieur Normand to use one of the examples from the exhibits to help explain that.

[David Normand, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

Sure. Thank you for the question.

Basically, the approach we took was this: In the first place, we asked the department if they now have any systematic way of tracking whether the coverage and timeliness requirements of providing the data were met. We found there is no such thing as a systematic way of doing this.

Therefore, what we did was dig further by having the department open their books and search their records to find the answer to the question for us, though not for the 156 fish stocks. There are 130 that are subject to observer company data and collecting catch data from the fishing industry. This is an explanation for why the graphics you see in our report are a bit complicated: It's because we found many problems. To a large extent, we found that either the monitoring programs were not fully implemented or the department could not tell because the records wouldn't allow them to.

In a number of cases, the answer was, “Yes, we have the information, and here's the answer: The coverage was met.” In cases when the coverage was met in a timely way, we could not audit everything because it's too large a population. We took a sample. Almost consistently, while looking at those samples.... The purpose of samples was to generalize the whole population and have simple graphics in our report. However, that was not possible because, almost consistently, the audit found either more cases of non-compliance or more cases of the department not being able to provide the data.

At the end of the day, the data presented in our report is what we found for the negative cases, I would say. There could be more than that, but we could not get to the bottom of it.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Thank you. That's well beyond the six minutes.

We'll now move to five-minute rounds, starting with Mr. Perkins.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here.

Commissioner, I'd like to start with you.

I'd like to take a step back, especially for those who are watching and trying to figure out what the heck it is we're talking about here.

The goal is to get an integrated fisheries management plan for all major fish species so that DFO can manage our commercial stocks in a sustainable way. Is that correct?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Yes, sustainable management is the ultimate objective.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

It's the ultimate objective.

Can you do that if you don't have either the science or the catch data?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

We looked at the catch data in this audit. We may look at the science in another audit to come.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I'd recommend you look at our committee report on that.

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Yes, I've been following that.

On the catch data, we found enough deficiencies to prevent us from doing a lot in the second line of inquiry of our audit, which was to ask how well the data is used to sustainably manage fisheries. If we had seen good data, we could have made a better assessment of sustainable management. Because there are gaps in the data, we aren't confident in signing off one way or the other on whether the management decisions are sustainable.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Then catch data is like polling. It's a picture of what happened in the past. It doesn't necessarily tell you what's going to happen in the future. It may tell you the governing party is declining in popularity, but it doesn't predict with accuracy what's going to happen in the next election.

It's sort of like that. It's self-reported, for the most part. It's the catch data of fishermen on what they caught this year, last year and the year before. Is that correct?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

It's self-reporting, but there are also third party observers. There are different sets of—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Third party observers are primarily offshore, not inshore.

In most cases, in my understanding—and I'm not sure whether you're aware of this—DFO doesn't come down to the wharf and inspect inshore fishermen and their reporting logs. It's a self-reporting thing that gets collected by a third party and reported to DFO.

Are you aware of that?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Yes, that's the model they've chosen to operate. They could have kept it in-house and have, essentially, a fleet of DFO staff doing this sort of thing, but they outsourced it to the—