Fisheries Committee on Nov. 20th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 13 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

I want to start by acknowledging that we are gathered on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people and express gratitude that we're able to do the important work of this committee on lands they've stewarded since time immemorial.

Before we get to today's study, members will all have received copies of the three proposed budgets for the different committee studies. I want to make sure it's the will of the committee that we adopt them before moving forward.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

With that, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is meeting to continue its study of the review of the Fisheries Act.

Pursuant to Standing Orders, today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. Members may participate in person or join us remotely using the Zoom application.

Before we continue, I would like to ask all in-person participants to consult the guidelines written on the cards on the table. These measures are in place to help prevent audio feedback incidents and to protect the health and safety of all participants, particularly the interpreters. You'll also notice a QR code on the card, which links to a short awareness video.

I'd like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you're not speaking.

With regard to interpretation, participants using the Zoom platform can choose between floor, English, or French at the bottom of their screen. Participants in the room can use their headsets and select the desired channel.

All comments should be addressed through the chair.

For members in the room who wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function.

The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can. We thank all participants for their patience.

With that, I would like to welcome our witnesses, who are both here today.

We have Leigh Fox, adviser on indigenous-led fish habitat stewardship with the RAD Network, and Peter German, president and executive director of the Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute.

We're going to start with opening statements from the witnesses for five minutes or less, starting with Mr. Fox.

[Leigh Fox, Advisor, Indigenous-led Fish Habitat Stewardship, RAD Network]

Good morning. Thank you, Chair and committee, for inviting me to testify at this meeting. It's my pleasure to appear today representing the RAD Network—which stands for restore, assert, defend—a national indigenous-led network supporting indigenous leadership and engagement in nature-based climate solutions.

I will start my testimony with a brief background on myself and the RAD Network's activities. I will then present four specific recommendations to the committee relating to fish habitat management, with offsetting, banking, and indigenous-led ecosystem restoration and stewardship as priority themes.

I grew up on the west coast of the country before moving to the Ottawa River watershed three years ago. I've worked in habitat restoration and stewardship in Canada and East Africa for the past 25 years, and I'm currently a technical, strategy and finance adviser to the RAD Network.

I am a former resident of Halfmoon Bay, in the chair's riding. If the chair or any of the committee members are familiar with Vital Kelp, a company based on the Sunshine Coast, the re-establishment of bull kelp habitat in Halfmoon Bay, Agamemnon Channel, and with the Tla'amin Nation is an excellent example of work that creates fish habitat through indigenous-led ecosystem restoration.

I would be remiss if I did not report to the committee that a sport-fishing boat I still co-own in Halfmoon Bay, the Blind Squirrel, does occasionally find a chinook by Epsom Point around sunset. This can anecdotally be attributed to good habitat stewardship at the local level.

In the present era of major project ambition, tightening of monitoring and regulatory budgets, and the inevitable impact on fish habitat, there is a need to identify opportunities for creating better fish habitat outcomes, regulatory efficiency, and certainty for indigenous rights-holders that their inherent and treaty rights will be recognized and upheld.

The RAD Network has worked with a group of NGOs and policy experts to co-create a series of high-level recommendations to the committee that were first presented by Stewart Elgie on November 18. The recommendations generated by the group will require a change in policy and or legislation to implement. I will review the four recommendations and highlight how indigenous-led habitat restoration, stewardship and banking are effective ways to achieve net gain habitat outcomes. Indigenous management of fees collected in lieu is also an effective option to evolve and expand the current policy and legislative frameworks connected to the Fisheries Act.

Recommendation one is return to net gain as the guiding habitat objective under the Fisheries Act.

Net gain could be operationalized in many ways and include a blend of restoration projects and intact habitat stewardship work. A net gain objective also mitigates critiques of underperformance of the DFO's present no-net-loss objective.

Recommendation two is to add third party habitat banking for better fishery and economic outcomes.

Third party habitat banking presents a critical opportunity for indigenous communities to lead restoration work in their traditional territories and act as a habitat bank delivering outcomes to multiple project proponents. This will support proponents' objectives, because there will be supply certainty for high-quality, permanent fish habitat outcomes that also meet the government's commitment to “building a renewed relationship with Indigenous Peoples that is based on the recognition of rights, respect, co-operation, and partnership.”

Recommendation three is to allow fees in lieu of offsets for better fishery and economic outcomes.

Fees-in-lieu is a system that allows proponents to pay for their offset needs versus investing in habitat projects and waiting for the results. There is an efficiency element that is likely attractive to both proponent and regulator. It also makes possible the aggregation of smaller offset payments to finance larger, more impactful fish habitat restoration projects. Deploying capital through a series of indigenous-led organizations would amplify the impact and legitimacy of this system.

Recommendation four is to address the cumulative loss from many small projects.

Cumulative losses of habitat from small projects that typically work to receive a letter of advice aggregate into habitat loss that is significant. This recommendation is premised on the robust adoption of recommendations one, two and three, which would give proponents of small projects a clear path to mitigate the loss of habitat.

In closing, I would like to urge the committee to include details of these recommendations in a final report and consider the larger opportunity provided by indigenous-led habitat banking, management of fees paid in lieu and net gain objectives. They all create conditions for better fish habitat outcomes, certainty, efficiency and permanence for project proponents, including provincial governments that are proponents of major infrastructure projects.

The recommendations also lower the cost of regulation and monitoring for the DFO.

Most importantly from the RAD Network perspective, these recommendations prioritize a rights holder-centred approach to restoration and stewardship of critical fish habitat across the country.

Thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee today. I look forward to questions and discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fox, and of course it's great to have a constituent presenting to the committee today.

With that, we are going to move to Mr. German for an opening statement of five minutes or less.

[Peter German, President and Executive Director, Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute]

Good morning, and thank you for the invitation to appear here today.

The Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute is an integral part of the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform, a non-profit located at the University of British Columbia.

I'm a former deputy commissioner of the RCMP. I worked alongside fisheries enforcement officers in my early policing career and was also a federal prosecutor dealing with Fisheries Act violations. My current expertise is with respect to money laundering and corruption.

I appeared before this committee in 2023, and I understand that evidence from that time has been rolled into the current review. I intend to touch on different but related issues today: enforcement capacity, organized crime involvement and money-laundering risks. Together, these issues pose a serious threat, not only to conservation and resource sustainability but also to public safety, economic integrity and community trust.

Over the past decade, enforcement of Canada's fisheries laws has struggled to keep pace with increasingly complex pressures. Fishery officers and conservation and protection staff consistently report under-resourcing, high-risk conditions and growing volumes of illegal activity. Several recent reviews and labour investigations have described officers facing armed individuals, intimidation, dangerous nighttime operations and significant safety gaps. Proper resourcing of those charged with enforcement is critical if we hope to make a difference.

Internationally, agencies such as the UN Office on Drugs and Crime warn that the fishing sector is structurally vulnerable to organized crime because of opaque ownership structures, international vessel movement and high-value commodities that are easily moved. Canada is not immune. Our experience with elvers, lobster and illicit vessel activity reflects these global patterns.

A particularly galling example of what is occurring involves the illegal harvesting of crab on the west coast and its sale to processors. This is a cash business, and the profits are huge. Although there has been enforcement, the fines are simply insufficient to curb the activity. Fines are simply viewed as the cost of doing business.

The involvement of organized crime shifts fisheries issues from being simple regulatory challenges to being public safety and national security issues. Organized crime is not a distant or hypothetical concern; there is now substantial evidence of the presence in Canadian fisheries of organized crime and money laundering, which is the back office of organized crime.

The concern is twofold.

First is the use of fishing vessels and export channels to move illegal goods or disguise the origins of illicit proceeds. The use of fishing vessels for illegal purposes raises the spectre of what we see taking place in the Caribbean and the response of the U.S. to drug boats.

Second is the use of licences and quotas as financial assets that can store or integrate criminal funds. Licences and quotas are valuable transferable assets. When beneficial ownership is not transparent, the system is vulnerable. The adoption of a beneficial ownership registry in fisheries, though still incomplete, and the federal government's recent commitment to a beneficial ownership registry for corporations reflect the importance of transparency. We cannot simply allow our fishery to be sold to unknown persons using unsourced funds.

Recent investigative reporting and intelligence from FINTRAC, our financial intelligence unit, also point to suspicious activity within the fishery sector, including underground banking networks and unusual patterns in licence-related financial activity. Unfortunately, fish quotas and boat sales are not reportable to FINTRAC. This is regrettable, as it eliminates an important source of intelligence.

The ongoing five-year review of the Fisheries Act is an important opportunity to strengthen five points: enforcement capacity, including capacity to deal with organized crime and money laundering; inter-agency co-operation and coordination with the RCMP, the CBSA and FINTRAC; beneficial ownership transparency for licences and quotas; data systems and a public registry in fisheries to enable accountability; and proactive tools, not just reactive enforcement.

In conclusion, Canada's fisheries are central to our environment, economy and coastal cultures, but weak enforcement capacity, documented organized crime activity and real money-laundering risks threaten the integrity of the system. Strengthening enforcement is not just about protecting fish: It's about protecting communities, ensuring fairness and safeguarding the long-term sustainability of one of Canada’s most important natural resources.

I thank you for your work. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you very much, Mr. German.

With that, we'll go into the first round of questioning.

Mr. Arnold, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank both witnesses for being here today.

Mr. German, I'll start with you. In 2003 you told this committee, “solutions require strong legislation and cross-agency co-operation. However, there is no point in creating regulations if they are not enforced, or if those tasked with enforcement do not have the necessary skills and resources.”

In our current study, the committee is receiving a growing body of evidence stating that the solutions for long-standing problems are in the Fisheries Act and corresponding regulations. The issue is that the laws and regulations are not being adequately enforced. When we consider the developments around illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of elvers in Atlantic Canada, when such harvests are not stopped, they provide the lifeblood for illegal black market sales. There are significant profits to be made. Failure to enforce in that one instance has a domino effect, as it creates other illegal activities.

In your opinion, what are some of the outcomes that can be expected when fisheries laws and regulations are not enforced?

[Peter German]

That sounds almost like a planted question, because I really appreciate the opportunity to answer that one. Thank you so much.

It wasn't a planted question.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Peter German]

Really, you're hitting on a very important issue there. Technical compliance is one thing, but operational effectiveness is quite different. That is really the issue that Canada is currently facing with the Financial Action Task Force review of Canada's compliance on money laundering. We are technically compliant in most areas, but are we operationally effective? The answer tends to be that in the money-laundering world, no, we're not operationally effective, even though we're compliant.

I would give the same answer to your question, sir. The fact of the matter is that organized crime is all about money. It exists only because of money. Organized crime will go wherever the risk is low and the money is good. If it's elvers today, that's where they will go. Once you have organized crime involved, money laundering just flows from it. As I mentioned, it's the back office. You have to deal with the money.

We often think about money laundering as being all about drugs or human smuggling, but there are so many other aspects to organized crime. Really, once organized crime gets involved in an industry, it's like a disease. It just sort of spreads. It develops networks.

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

Thank you. Our time is short.

In your opinion, can you describe what the predictable outcomes are when the illegal harvesting and production of something valuable is allowed to exist?

[Peter German]

Well, as with a lot of things, there's a tipping point, I would say. After a while, people expect.... Organized crime and money laundering will almost inevitably lead to corruption of one sort or another. You may find that there'll be corruption within your enforcement area or within the department. It could be anywhere along the chain. That's almost an inevitable result. More so, though, new ways develop, and they're not necessarily good ways to do business. If Joe next door is making money illegally and no one is stopping him, well, why don't we do the same thing? It's like a disease. It spreads.

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

Thank you.

When you were here with this committee in 2023, you talked about the issue of money laundering and so on. You mentioned that again this morning. Are you aware of what has developed in the Pacific region regarding the concentration of licences while harvesters have been waiting years for a beneficial ownership registry?

[Peter German]

I don't profess to be an expert on the fishery. I'm not current on exactly what's taking place, but my understanding is that not much has changed.

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

Thank you.

In your opinion, what should we expect to happen with fisheries licences in the ongoing absence of a public registry?

[Peter German]

I think we really need to get that registry up and running. We need that transparency, but we also need enforcement, and the enforcement is not just at the ground level.

If you equate it with policing, you have police officers who are answering calls during the day and they're coming to your house if there's some violence or domestic matter or whatever it might be, and that's the same with the fisheries officers. They're dealing with day-to-day affairs, but we're talking about some pretty sophisticated crime here, and you need people with the necessary expertise, or you have to link with enforcement agencies.

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

Thank you.

We've heard some pretty exposing testimony here at this committee over the recent few meetings about enforcement officers being told not to enforce, or potential direction from very high levels around this.

Do you think organized crime and money laundering has infiltrated our fisheries on all of our coasts?

[Peter German]

I really can't answer that one. I'm not aware of specific issues of corruption, but then again, I haven't been looking for them as such.

Look, there are a couple of things here. There's the conspiratorial view of life, and there's the cock-up view of life. One side would say that, yes, there's corruption in the department, because people aren't doing things. It could also be just a reluctance for whatever reason. Maybe people don't feel supported in the work they're doing. It could be any number of factors.

I'm thinking from the perspective of a police officer: “Why aren't you enforcing that?” It's not necessarily because I'm corrupt; it could be because I'm not getting the support I needed in one respect or another.

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

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you very much, Mr. Arnold.

Next we're going to go to the Liberal round. I'm going to take this six-minute round of questioning here.

I want to pick up on the line of questioning with Mr. German. I want to thank both of our witnesses for being here today.

Mr. German, you mentioned five key areas for the committee to be looking at, and one of those was on enforcement capacity.

Since 2021, there's been a promise to bring in a financial crimes agency in Canada. In the budget this year, there are moves highlighted to advance that, with more details coming in the spring.

Given some of the issues you've referenced today about the risks of organized crime and money laundering in the fisheries sector, as this financial crimes agency rolls out, what kinds of opportunities and what kinds of measures should be taken to ensure that some of these risks could be addressed through this new agency and through better inter-agency coordination?

[Peter German]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am not supportive of the federal financial crime agency proposal. I think it is not going to work and will not be effective.

My view is that you already have the RCMP there. The federal government should properly resource the RCMP to deal with this form of crime that we're talking about. The federal government does not have a natural constitutional role to investigate fraud and money laundering. That is a provincial responsibility.

With a financial crime agency, it would have to carve out a role as a national agency. With a proposed 150 resources—quite frankly, there were 200 resources working on one file in Vancouver on money laundering, so I don't think 150 spread across the country, taking away the back office that they require and the technical expertise, is the solution to what we're talking about here today.

I think the solution is about the fisheries officers themselves and linking up, as I mentioned in one of the recommendations, with those agencies that have the particular expertise. Creating a new agency, in my respectful opinion, is the Canadian answer, but it's not the right answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Great. Thank you very much for that.

Next, I want to move to Mr. Fox.

Thanks for being here.

You mentioned four recommendations that Professor Elgie also brought up a couple of days ago. I want to touch on the fourth recommendation, because that was not one we were able to get into, in the last meeting, about the need for fees in lieu for supporting habitat conservation, to deal with the cumulative impacts.

We heard some other testimony in the previous Parliament about the need to have letters of advice for projects that are in areas where you're not going to have a big impact. Really, the idea behind that is that we're dealing with smaller impacts, and it's very challenging to go through these processes at a smaller level.

I was hoping you might be able to speak to the importance of having this type of a solution instead of going about it that way, so that we're able to have an efficient process but one that is actually going to lead to habitat not only being protected but having a net gain.

[Leigh Fox]

Thank you, Chair.

I think you said at the end of your statement there that it speaks to efficiency. If you aggregate many, many small impacts—let's say a few square metres of fish habitat impact or one culvert.... If there are tens of thousands of those, that's a significant impact. I think that in order for the system to function well, fees in lieu is a great way to be able to aggregate that money, deploy it in larger, more impactful fish habitat projects, and then be able to have that system function in such a way that proponents are not, you know, overly stressed or overly charged in what the activities cost to be able to mitigate those impacts—that they're not being lost in the system.

You know, it's.... If you have major projects, the province is putting together a major project proposal, there are some major fish habitat impacts. That's, you know, all of the sunk costs or your capex costs for building out that project; you can justify that. If you're a small proponent and you have a log dump—you're a small logging operation—you have to put a logging road in, and you have a few culverts to do. There's a way to very efficiently collect the fees for that, and our advocacy would be to enable indigenous-led organizations or first nations to lead the larger restoration project that would utilize that money in an efficient way. You'd get the efficiencies of scale for the per-unit reductions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Great. Thank you. I have just one last question.

When we're talking about habitat compensation in the traditional sense, there's always an interest in having that habitat compensation done in the relative vicinity of the area of impact. With the ideas that you put forward here about net gain, banking and fees in lieu, how is your approach ensuring that it's going to restore habitat in the regional vicinity, if at all?