Evidence of meeting #22 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was mpas.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies, BC
Would that be as effective as a closed area?
Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, As an Individual
It might or might not, and the devil is in the fact that when you exclude fishing from areas, it provides a more robust evaluation of what the effects are.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies, BC
Has any country the size of Canada ever been able to effectively monitor and enforce the direct effects of marine closed areas?
Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, As an Individual
Well, California has for example. We—
Conservative
Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, As an Individual
Well, the length of California is no short distance. Along the length of the California coast, there are 124 marine protected areas.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies, BC
In previous evidence that I've seen, the net benefits of the coastal protections have been unmeasurable on the outlying areas.
Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, As an Individual
There again, we have to be cautious. When you say the "outlying areas", there's more than enough evidence now that those protected areas established in California lead to conservation value of the species within those protected areas.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies, BC
That seems to be disputable depending on the witness.
Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, As an Individual
We have published papers that demonstrate that unequivocally, but no, the detail is what you.... In your question, you said “in outlying areas”, which is a different question.
The question of whether those protected areas are affecting regional responses of species has not yet been evaluated, and that's one of the critical questions: what are the overarching effects of the MPAs?
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies, BC
Thank you.
Mr. MacDonald or Mr. Sullivan, quickly, in your opinion, after years of being on the water and in the industry, would you say that proper integrated fisheries management plans could do as good a job or a better job than closed areas?
University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes, it's my opinion from my experience that IFMPs are the way. We already have them in place. We have the tools, the advisory boards. That's the tool that we should use, and if there are, like I said in my introduction, static areas that need protection for static ecosystem health, we should use an MPA for that, but we should manage the fish that move in and out of that MPA through our IFMPs.
Executive Director, Newfoundland Aquaculture Industry Association
What he said, yes, that works for me. It makes sense. That pretty much summarizes it for me too.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Patrick Weiler
Thank you very much.
Next we're going to go to Mr. Klassen for five minutes.
Liberal
Ernie Klassen Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Thanks so much. I'm going to split my time with Mr. Morrissey. I think it's the last round here, and Mr. Connors just asked Mr. Carr if he could submit those reports in writing that he referenced in the last answer.
Mr. MacDonald, I love to hear the passion in your voice about ensuring that the younger generation continues in this industry and how we can rebuild this industry.
I really appreciated the comment that you made about a made-in-Canada approach, and I'm wondering if you could just expand a little bit on that from your experience and perspective.
University of British Columbia, As an Individual
What I was trying to get at with the made-in-Canada approach was that while we committed to international obligations and we want to make sure we meet them, I don't think we need to implement them in a way that is standardized internationally. I think we can look at what we're already doing. That's why I mentioned that we want to protect what's currently unprotected.
Our species and our stocks that we harvest are already protected and managed through our IFMPs. Each different fishery has super-robust management and oversight and monitoring. I think we should really take that into account as we go forward in that MPA process. We should make sure that the things that need MPAs to be protected, whether it's sponge or deep-sea corals, are protected, but if there are species that can be harvested without impacting the conservation objective for that site, let's make sure that within those closure areas, we should be allowed to have those fisheries, and that should be written out in our IFMPs.
In the early implementation of certain sites in the NSB, we have a lot of examples that are not doing that. There's a conservation objective in a specific area, and fisheries that don't interact with it are being shut out.
I can actually say that we did have one good example of how it can be done. The offshore MPA off the west coast of Vancouver Island is the largest MPA in B.C. Protecting the sensitive benthic area and deep sea vents was put into the development process. Originally, the albacore tuna fishery, which is a surface troll fishery, was not going to be allowed because they didn't want to have any commercial fishing. Once they realized that we fish in three feet of water and they're protecting benthic zones that are in 9,000 feet of water, the albacore tuna fishery was allowed in that MPA, as it should be.
If we can use that sensibility across the board through the NSB and the other processes in the south coast, I think we can find a happy medium.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Thank you.
Mr. Carr, you listened intently to the answer Mr. MacDonald gave to Mr. Arnold's question. That's going back a bit. Could you give an opinion on that?
I believe Mr. MacDonald stated that there is methodology you could use to achieve some of the objectives without the rigid approach of MPAs.
Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, As an Individual
There is one thing I was going to mention, and I'm not sure if this is because I was largely agreeing with some of the comments he was making.
When people think of MPAs as fisheries management tools, which I'm not a fan of necessarily, they think of them as a way of determining the amount and location of species that are harvested. Generally people think of MPAs as fisheries tools, but MPAs also provide other opportunities. This actually goes back to the question I had earlier, which is that one of the biggest challenges in managing fisheries is to be able to distinguish whether the changes that you're seeing are due to fishing mortality in space and time or to environmental variation.
In terms of environmental variation, as you've heard from others, climate change is the biggest threat to fisheries anywhere on the west coast of North America, so how do you evaluate whether the changes that you're seeing are due to climate change or to fishing pressure?
These spatial areas that do and do not allow fishing are the most direct way that we can evaluate whether the changes that we're seeing are due to climatic effects or fishing effects. That typically is to the benefit of the fisheries, because in the classic examples in California, where we saw the demise of the red urchin fishery in northern California and the loss of the recreational abalone fishery in northern California, it was clear from comparing the responses of those species in and out of the MPAs that those losses were driven by climate and not by overfishing.
That's just one example of how the tool can be used.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Patrick Weiler
There will be another opportunity to ask questions afterwards, so maybe just hold that thought and that question can be answered later.
Mr. Deschênes, you may go ahead. You have two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Alexis Deschênes Bloc Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC
Mr. Chair, I'm going to let Mr. MacDonald answer Mr. Morrissey's question.
University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes, I think Mr. Carr has a lot more experience and background in the specifics of that.
What I would say is that we should manage fish with fishery policy and fishery management. If there are certain ecosystems that we want to protect, then static closures can be good for that, but managing fish harvesting with static closures is not the answer.
Bloc
Alexis Deschênes Bloc Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC
I'm going to keep the discussion going with you, Mr. MacDonald.
Here is the question I have.
How do we make progress on the protection of marine areas in order to protect biodiversity?
Everyone agrees that there is a link with the sustainability of fisheries. How do we move the issue forward with the support of fishers and stakeholders? How do you see that happening? How do we move forward?
Much of the focus is on the need for a socio-economic analysis. Fishing prohibitions can be adjusted in an effort to reduce the economic impact. I understand that is something that can help guide the process, and it makes perfect sense, but economic consequences remain nonetheless.
In your view, how do we obtain the support of fishers or the aquaculture sector?
University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes, absolutely. It's something that we need to figure out as we go.
I would say, from my perspective, there's been a serious breach of trust in the implementation so far with DFO and Parks Canada and the way the process has gone.
Starting in 2018.... You had a witness last week who did an incredible job getting hundreds of fishermen in a room in B.C. That marine planning team, with Grant Dovey as one of the leaders, created a map layer for every single fishery. We went site by site, moved boundaries and made compromises. It is an incredible body of work with thousands of years' of fisherman knowledge going into it.
That was submitted between draft one and draft two. Don't quote me on the numbers, but I think it was a 75% reduction in economic impact. They actually exceeded all of the biodiversity targets for every single one of the 300 and some odd sites in draft one. That was submitted after an incredible amount of work.
In draft two, from our perspective, we saw that none of our recommendations had been taken into account. Actually, draft two was worse for the fisheries than draft one. What we then found out was that going forward, rather than implementing it as one plan that we could have feedback on from the beginning and know what our outcome would be 10 years from now, so that we could have a secure industry to invest in, it was going to go site by site.
In the first couple we've had so far of that site-by-site process, the feedback that we've given has not at all been taken into consideration. We need to make sure to rebuild that trust.