Fisheries Committee on Feb. 13th, 2024

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You all appear so calm and we all appear so frustrated down here because we see a recipe for simply a repeat of what's been happening and escalating over the last number of years.

Regulations and laws are what they are, but there is so much money involved here that people will ignore them. I want to get your help in painting a picture for us of an enforcement action.

Somebody is fishing on the river. They don't have a licence. Enforcement shows up—either DFO or RCMP, or both. What happens? What are the enforcement options available to the officers when they apprehend somebody fishing without a licence?

[Brent Napier]

There is a continuum of options available. If the circumstances are safe to proceed.... You mentioned the RCMP. In those cases, I think we would look for authorization. Where it is absent, we would then move.... There's an inspection component to it. Inspection is a verification of compliance and making sure everything is as it should be. If it's not, we move into “we have reason to believe”. That's where the investigation component comes in. Evidence is collected, and so on and so forth. Then based on—

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

So on and so forth.... Does that automatically mean they're marched off to a paddy wagon somewhere and taken away, or do they just say, “Hey, take the rest of the night off, and we'll see you tomorrow night?”

[Brent Napier]

Again, it would be circumstance-based and based on the officer's discretion, but the magnitude of it would be proportional. It could be a warning, depending on the offence, all the way through to, as you mentioned, seizures and things of that nature.

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

If that's the routine, and from the sounds of things neither the enforcement nor all of the rest of the justice supply chain is really equipped to handle any large volume of apprehensions, it would appear that—I'm sounding like a Conservative here—we have a revolving door. We, unfortunately, have a situation where people say, “Gee whiz, that's not a good thing. Please don't do that again, and we will see you tomorrow night.”

That's the impression we have. Can you tell us we're wrong?

[Brent Napier]

Thank you.

I mentioned that the officers who are seen.... The public sees some of the enforcement action, but it does not see all of it. There are elements both at the facilities and at the exit points, and then the intelligence that's being gathered as well. There's a whole continuum. It's not just of the officers appearing on the water, but also those gathering intelligence and trying to understand where the elvers are going, which is an important part of it. Then the deterrent impact is stopping it along the way.

At source, of course, with the number of streams it's far more difficult to stop it. That's why we strategically deployed resources throughout the chain to try to disrupt that activity throughout the chain.

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

I'm sorry, but with respect, I don't see or hear much about disruption. Disruption would be hauling somebody off and taking the keys to their truck. I get the sense that the discretion being exercised does not result in that probably in the majority of cases.

I would like you guys to be as frustrated as we are. I would like to see examples made because that will send a far stronger signal to the community than new regulations, etc., which they will ignore anyway because there's simply too much money to be made and they are making lots of money from the sounds of things.

That's all I have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We will go to Madame Desbiens, for two and a half minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My comments are along the same lines as Mr. Hardie's. We want to believe that regulations will change things, but we all have enough experience to know that there's nothing easier to get around than a regulation.

Personally, I'm afraid that the most honest people, those who don't flout the regulations and have developed fishing by the sweat of their brow, are the ones who are penalized. As I said earlier, this is also the case in other types of fishery. They're always the ones who are penalized: their fishery is closed down and their licences taken away, even though these people often behave in an exemplary way. I find this frightening, because in the end there will be frustration, anger and intimidation. We're going to end up in an irreversible impasse.

In this context, and in a state governed by the rule of law like ours, what makes you think we can change things in the more or less short term?

[Annette Gibbons]

We certainly don't intend to penalize anyone. We understand the impact this can have on those who are licenced.

There are bigger issues, and we need to find a way to deal with them in the short term. The elvers will be arriving soon, so we need to do something in the short term. In the medium term, over the next few years, the plan is to modify our tool kit to include stronger tools, more binding regulations and greater participation by indigenous communities. We need to manage fisheries differently.

These are the three solutions we are looking at, and we want to make rapid progress.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

We will 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.

My question is for Ms. Gibbons. This may be a bit of a repeat, but perhaps you can refine it a little bit for me.

It's clear that Fisheries and Oceans is not responding to all of the reports that are coming forward around poaching, based on the information we're receiving. How is it decided which reports to respond to?

Can you walk me through that process of when a report is received, the actions that are taken, or the lack of action, moving forward?

[Annette Gibbons]

This is very much determined within the chain of command of the conservation and protection branch. If you agree, I will ask Brent to provide those details.

[Brent Napier]

As you can imagine, in addition to those, C and P at the detachment level receive countless...so there's a triage process that occurs. They look at species, risk, where the source is and a series of other criteria to help to support whether this is something that a fishery officer should look at, etc. That's the piece there.

When something is high risk, seems plausible and is something we should take action on, then officers are assigned to go out, conduct an inspection and move from that position.

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

This may be a bigger question, so I'll ask it quickly. We were talking about there being eight licence-holders, and I heard my colleague say that there are 200 to 300 harvesters. Can you explain to me the economic chain of how that all works out? I just want to understand.

Is there a lot of money being made here? Are the harvesters the ones making a lot of money, or is it predominately the licence-holders, which is the system that we tend to see in fisheries?

[Annette Gibbons]

The landed value of elver in recent years—and it has gone up over time—that went to the eight licence-holders was about $45 million. That did include a small portion, which was close to 24% last year, that went to communal commercial harvesters in indigenous communities, but the vast majority of that $45 million went to the eight licence-holders.

As I believe Mr. Perkins remarked, the eight licence-holders do hire people to go and fish on the rivers. We understand that there are about 200 people, give or take, whom they employ to do that. They each have their quota, their share of the quota, and then they can go and fish it according to the management regime that's been set by the region.

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

They're not making millions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Barron.

That concludes our line of questioning for today's meeting. I want to thank our guests: Mr. Burns, Ms. Gibbons, Mr. Wentzell and Mr. Napier.

Go ahead on a point of order, Mr. Perkins.

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

We are to go to 5:30. Perhaps the government and our side still have.... Within that, we can ask to split that time up and try to ask a couple more questions. The committee is scheduled to go to 5:30.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We have four minutes left.

Who's going for two minutes from your side? You can have one question each.

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

I'll start right away.

Ms. Gibbons, the decision today to, basically, not open the fishery or to not reissue the licences is said to be a $100-million decision. What justification do you have for that?

[Annette Gibbons]

At this point it is not a decision. It's not a final decision. It's a statement of intention and consultation.

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

The decision is that there would be no reissuance of licences this year. That's the minister's letter.

[Annette Gibbons]

Yes. The letter says the intention is not to issue licences this year, so not to open, essentially.

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

That's correct.