Fisheries Committee on Nov. 6th, 2025

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies, BC]

In your experience—and you have a lot of it—what are the effects on the on-the-water enforcement when changes to the enforcement and protection clauses are made in the act? Is there a training process or a consumption of time and resources when those things change in the act?

[Randy Nelson]

Yes, there is. I think the last changes were some positive changes to the habitat, but from what I hear, I don't know if the training has been completed.

Again, the act is close, but there's not the capacity to do the enforcement that needs to be done. I think we can do a better job with what we have. Opening it up, there are always things that can be tweaked and you can always make it better, but you could advance it so much more if officers were able to their job and had the support and the resources to do it.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies, BC]

From what I've heard, it sounds like the enforcement members would prefer to be in the field doing their job rather than in a training room or in training sessions. Can you talk about that a bit?

[Randy Nelson]

Obviously, the people who sign up to do fisheries officer work absolutely want to be in the field, but they also recognize that they have to be properly trained. In changing the act, the officers can probably understand the changes more readily than the system can. The managers in the system are often the ones who don't understand the changes and how to direct them down to the field.

More training is needed. The juice isn't worth the squeeze right now, in my opinion, in changing it. There are microchanges and improvements that could be made. The biggest change you could make is having officers be able to do their job with the proper resources and equipment.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Boudreau, you talked a lot about a blockage to the fish passage. Do you know if it's due to the structure owner being reluctant to change, or is it the difficulty in getting permits and approvals through a process that we've heard is extremely backlogged?

[Jeramy Boudreau]

It's all of the above, depending on the structure. A company the size of Nova Scotia Power has had 15 years to upgrade its blockage. That's plenty of time for permit approvals and design. It's less willing.

A more privately owned dam may not even understand. We have one that's owned by a heritage group and run by private landowners. They don't have a great understanding of what their obligations are. That one's more about funding and approvals. It really varies.

Going back to the enforcement piece, there's nobody holding these people accountable in any form or fashion. I think officers would like to be there, but if you have six or seven officers running 24-7, there aren't enough people on the ground to do any form of enforcement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you, Mr. Arnold.

Next, we'll go to Mr. d'Entremont for five minutes.

[Chris d'Entremont, Liberal, Acadie—Annapolis, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

As they say, all politics are local. It's good to have a couple of local folks in the meeting today to discuss the challenge we're having in the Tusket River system when it comes to gaspereau.

The first question revolves around the importance of gaspereau to the area. What does the fish do and how is it important to our larger fishery, which is, of course, the lobster fishery?

[Jeramy Boudreau]

Gaspereau is 95% sold for a bait fishery.

As most people on this panel know, herring stocks and mackerel stocks have been on the decline. Growing a fishery with a fast reproduction cycle to increase the level of that fish by 90% so we can increase the level of bait will take more pressure off some of these other fisheries. That's extremely important to look at because when you get into a position where all the pressure is being put on other species, it's harder on them.

[Chris d'Entremont, Liberal, Acadie—Annapolis, NS]

The challenge, as I understand it, is that as an association, you're stuck between two behemoths, two big organizations. On one side, you have Nova Scotia Power, which is the owner of the dam and controls the water levels and the fish passage on that system, and on the other side, you have DFO, which is supposed to permit and enforce what's going on.

How often do you think DFO actually talks to Nova Scotia Power or charges them for not providing the fish passage that they're supposed to?

[Jeramy Boudreau]

From the research I've done over the past 15 years, they've talked to them a fair amount. Since 2019, when FFHPP was formed, they've known about this problem and have been actively working with Nova Scotia Power.

As for charges, I don't think there have ever been any. There was a massive fish kill, which I'm sure you're aware of, Chris, and I hope the rest of you guys look into it. It was basically a slap on the wrist saying that next year, they have to do better. It was a major problem that 200,000-plus fish never made it to the spawning grounds. Nothing has changed, and that was in May 2022.

[Chris d'Entremont, Liberal, Acadie—Annapolis, NS]

Do you think that DFO has sufficient personnel? You're working with biologists. I'm sure you know who your folks are and who you're supposed to be talking to within the department.

Do you think they have sufficient personnel and funding to even do their work?

[Jeramy Boudreau]

No. Every single year we're dealing with a science program that's underfunded. Our season starts March 15 and runs until May 31, and every single year a two-person science team is waiting until April 1 to find out if one of their science people is going to be laid off.

As for enforcement officers, we all know about the elver fishery down there. That's a big one. Like I said, there are six to eight officers in all of Chris's riding in southwest Nova Scotia who deal with enforcement issues with boots on the ground. They're on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you man that out into 40-hour work weeks and have to pair fishery officers for safety reasons and you have eight officers, that's only four teams. There's no way they can enforce that.

We've called them seeing problems at hand, and there was not a single fishery officer who could act for 12 hours. We told them point blank, “Here is where you can go catch somebody who is buying fish illegally and here's where they are right now.” We could not get a fishery officer. They answered, but they'd all been on duty for 20 or 25 hours. They were all “houred out” and on their way home, so nobody could go catch these people.

Enforcement is definitely budget related, as are a lot of these other issues.

[Chris d'Entremont, Liberal, Acadie—Annapolis, NS]

How much of a challenge do you have with illegal fishing in those watersheds?

[Jeramy Boudreau]

It's a fair amount. We've seen people dipping directly into fish ladders. They back up with pickup trucks and dip gaspereau right out of these fish ladders. You call DFO and you call the hotlines and you get a voice mail. You might get somebody.

The enforcement officers in our area are great people. They want to help. As an association, they've given us a lot of their private cellphone numbers so we can call them directly when they're off duty, but they just don't have the manpower to do it, so the illegal fishery goes up. That means undocumented landings go up and tax dollars go down. It's a catch-22 where we're hurting the fishery and we're not even increasing the tax revenue in order to gain more fishery officers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you, Mr. d'Entremont.

Mr. Deschênes now has the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Boudreau, let's follow up on what you just said.

So you have made reports when you found that there was illegal fishing. You contacted fishery officers and there was no intervention.

Is that correct?

[Jeramy Boudreau]

That's it, 100%. We have documented times when we've sent emails and phone calls to and fishery officers as individuals. C and P officers always get back to us and are apologetic that they can't be there to help us, but they just don't have the manpower.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

You said that it was a budget issue, but that there were also other reasons.

Do fishery officers give you any other reasons that prevent them from taking action, aside from the fact that they don't have enough staff?

[Jeramy Boudreau]

Yes, there are a lot. On our side of it, with Nova Scotia Power, we believe there are some political aspects to that as well. It's a huge company, and upgrading the fish ladders is a massive cost. When it comes down to getting in the rivers to enforce section 29 with blockades of rocks and various different items there, that one is a lot of enforcement, but they're directed at the elvers, so that piece of it you could say is political. We're not given fishery officers to deal with our fishery, because they're chasing after a different fishery, which leaves them extremely exhausted.

About 90% of our fishery is within five minutes of the Tusket detachment, and we don't even see a fishery officer show up on the bank throughout an entire three-month season to check a log book.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

When you say that there would be political interference because there are interests with a major company—if I understand correctly, it's a Nova Scotia Crown corporation—is that an impression? Are fishery officers telling you that? What are you basing it on?

[Jeramy Boudreau]

We've heard from some in local politics that the problem in dealing with Nova Scotia Power is that it ties people up legally for a long time. They use the Fisheries Act to delay and delay. I think if there were fines laid and if fishery officers were able to be there more often, regularly.... We were at the dam one time, and there were 300,000 to 400,000 fish waiting to get up a ladder, and they never made it.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

I have two seconds.

Mr. Nelson, I have a quick question for you. You said earlier that statements had been made, particularly by fisheries ministers, that had repercussions.

Which statements and which ministers were you referring to?

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Give a brief answer.

[Randy Nelson]

I was referring to the elver fishery and fisheries minister Lebouthillier's comment about rampant racism within fishery officer ranks. That was simply an untrue statement, based on the facts that I've heard. That has repercussions across the entire country. It put fishery officers in a very poor light. The first nations jumped on it and ran with it. I believe even Prime Minister Trudeau made a comment on it. Those kinds of statements are absolutely crushing to the morale of officers in the field. It just can't happen.