Fisheries Committee on Nov. 20th, 2025

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Central Newfoundland, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

Through you, Mr. Chair, for Mr. German, I'm going to paint a couple of pictures here right now. In the northern cod fishery this summer in Newfoundland and Labrador, we had harvesters who were working under weekly trip limits, who underestimated their catch. Now, the column in the logbook is marked “estimate”, so if they underestimated their catch by 10% while they were working within their weekly trip limits, three or four fisheries officers were at the wharf handing them a $1,000 fine, which they feel they can't really fight. I encouraged them to go to court and fight it.

That's one level of C and P. These guys seem to have a lot of support from their superiors to pick on these minuscule things.

Also, then, we look at the reports coming out of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where reporters purchased FSC lobster quite easily, and for C and P to say they don't have any knowledge of this or to turn a blind eye.... Why do we have a double standard in enforcement in fisheries in Canada, do you think, Mr. German?

[Peter German]

Thank you.

Again, I'll dip back into my policing background. If you don't feel that you can handle the difficult cases or are not getting the support to deal with the difficult cases, it's real easy to deal with the simple stuff and collect statistics, which is really what's happening in your situation.

It appears that the fisheries officers are working. They're giving out fines and so forth, but they're not being, in your example, effective, because they're not targeting the right areas. They're not targeting at a high enough level. Again, that goes to support. It goes to training. It goes to having the right expertise. It goes to support at a high level or from your supervisors, managers and so forth.

I don't have a specific answer other than that. You end up doing the simple work if, for whatever reason, you don't feel capable of doing the more important stuff.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Central Newfoundland, NL]

You spoke of organized crime accessing product, raw material. Who are they working with? Are they working with the inshore fishery, the offshore fishery, first nations or simply poachers off the street? Is there an organized set-up here for accessing product?

[Peter German]

Again, I don't have that specific expertise in the fisheries sector, but let me use the crab on the west coast as an example. I have made some inquiries in that area and have spoken to processors, consultants and so forth.

It is organized crime in that you have certain people who are doing the illegal harvesting, and also, then, in some way, they have corrupted particular processors, and they're dealing with those processors. There are various people in the chain, and that is a form of organized criminal activity. Even by the definition of our Criminal Code, it's three or more people. That's what we're looking at. They're involved in this.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Central Newfoundland, NL]

We heard Mr. Fox talk about habitat restoration and maintenance. If we're not protecting our breed stock, we can do everything in the world with our habitat, but if we're not protecting what's supposed to be breeding in those habitats, where are we going to get from where we are in our fishery right now? We've had a 25% reduction in real GDP, or in our GDP landings in Canada, since 2010, whereas Norway has increased its landed value 4.5-fold. If we're not focusing in the right areas, where are our fisheries in Canada going to end up?

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

We're getting close to the end of our time, but you can have a quick answer to that.

[Leigh Fox]

Just to clarify, was that for me?

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Central Newfoundland, NL]

Yes.

[Leigh Fox]

In one of the recommendations, we talk about net gain and recognizing that habitat restoration eventually, if it's permanent, becomes habitat stewardship. Protecting the habitat for the breed stock is part and parcel of good fisheries management. Restoration and stewardship go hand in hand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you very much, Mr. Small.

Next, we're going to go to Mr. Klassen for five minutes.

[Ernie Klassen, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Fox, I think we are all very concerned and want to ensure that fisheries are maintained for generations to come. Thank you for all the work that you do in this area.

Conservation is so important to long-lasting, stable fisheries.

How can DFO work together with the indigenous groups, some of which you represent here, to improve our conservation efforts while maintaining a strong fisheries industry for people who are making their living from this?

[Leigh Fox]

There's a lot of efficiency and effectiveness that can be built with the DFO working with first nations indigenous communities and rights holders across the country.

As opex budgets are constrained and reduced in the government's plan to increase capex spending and reduce opex spending, there's an opportunity to reduce the regulatory costs for DFO.

If it's an indigenous-led project—and that's not to say that if it's a indigenous proponent that consent should not be sought—it is a more likely outcome, if it's a nation on their traditional territory stewarding the fish habitat, that rights holders will be aligned with that as opposed to a project proponent that needs to go through a robust consultation process.

I think that it speaks to efficiency. Within the fish habitat offsetting system, which has a lot of potential to expand, there's a lot of private capital that would come in to do the work that government grants are doing and that philanthropic money is doing. With a robust system with a clear demand side in the proponents of large and small projects, that creates the market for creating the supply.

By both aggregating small projects and doing work for large projects, third party habitat banking is a real opportunity to capture some of those efficiencies.

[Ernie Klassen, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you.

The minister has stated on several occasions that we need to strengthen relationships between indigenous groups and the government especially.

I'm wondering if you could comment a bit on what you have seen over the last few years. Are we working on strengthening those relationships? How could we build them even stronger and better?

[Leigh Fox]

Thank you.

I can give an example of a proposed pilot project that we're working on that involves the DFO, the Government of Manitoba, first nations, ENGOs and private finance. It's looking at the opportunity to create a large bank of fish habitat offsets for multiple projects within the government.

This is in the very early stages, but it is an example of where you want to start at the very beginning. You want consultation and engagement to be early. You don't want it to come later. The opportunity is that, when indigenous communities and first nations are proponents, they're leading the way. It creates the opportunity for a more robust system to function and better fish habitat outcomes.

[Ernie Klassen, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. German, you talked about weak enforcement capacity.

Do you have any recommendations, within the budget restrictions that obviously we're all moving towards, of where we could be working within those financial restrictions? Are there any efficiencies that you could point out within the act?

[Peter German]

As we know, with most departments, human resources is your largest cost. You need your human resources to do the job that we're talking about.

I think what it really boils down to is targeted enforcement. What work are you doing, and what work should you maybe not be doing? It's really a matter of making choices. Certainly, that's what police do every day, and I'd include the fisheries folks in that.

There's always crime out there. There's lots to do, but it's a matter of properly targeting where you should and linking with other agencies that can support your developing those things, because there's expertise in other agencies that could probably be brought to bear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you very much, Mr. Klassen.

Mr. Deschênes, you have 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. German, I'd like to come back to an issue you discussed—money laundering. From what I understand, according to your observations, organized crime is acquiring licences.

What have you learned about this, and how is it happening?

[Peter German]

I'd go back to when I prepared the “Dirty Money” reports, as they're referred to, for Attorney General Eby, as he was at the time, in British Columbia. That goes back to 2018-19. The issue of the transfer of quotas and lack of transparency was really quite apparent at that time. That speaks to the issue of transparency being important.

What you often don't know is who really is behind something. We became aware of people buying fish quotas who had nothing to do with the fishery. It had become an investment tool. When you dig a little further, you find out that certain of these individuals have foreign connections of one sort or another. It raises more questions than answers.

To say that a particular individual is an organized criminal is going too far. We just haven't seen those prosecutions and so forth. It's really this lack of transparency and not knowing, and suspicious connections.

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

What benefit would organized crime derive from buying licences?

[Peter German]

As I understand it, it's more the quotas themselves. It's a commodity that can be transferred. It's no different from art as a commodity. A drug dealer can actually exchange paintings that are worth money. It's value. It's a transfer of value. It's all a matter of determining what that value is.

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

I would like to address the issue of the support required by fisheries officers—much like police officers—to fight crime.

How can we ensure that employers provide the necessary support to fisheries officers?

[Peter German]

Again, I have to be careful. I don't know enough about the nature of the supports they currently have. A person would have to do a study of that issue to see if that is a problem.

As I mentioned earlier, the office of a constable is in some ways a sacred office in our common-law tradition. A constable has the power to lay a charge and so forth. You need to have that independence. There's a certain independence that every constable has. A fisheries officer needs to have that same independence to be able to do their job, to not be interfered with, and to not have people looking over their shoulders all the time. It doesn't necessarily mean that the people looking over their shoulders are bad people. It's that you need to have that freedom.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Deschênes, but your time is up.

We have two three-minute opportunities for questioning.

Mr. Gunn, you have three minutes.

[Aaron Gunn, Conservative, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. German, you mentioned through your research stumbling across this illegal crab fishery that was happening off B.C.'s coast, and how processors were being corrupted as part of that process. From your research, how much digging did you have to do to uncover that? Through that process, did you encounter any instances of DFO or the RCMP pressing charges? Is this something that they are aware of and are not pursuing and not prosecuting?