Evidence of meeting #32 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 fish.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
Obviously, there's been a lot of talk about the salmon allocation policy review.
In your view, could this affect the opening and closing dates for recreational fishers like you?
Serengeti Fishing Charters
Absolutely. It would be the biggest thing to affect it in my lifetime.
My understanding is that they're looking to put a cap or quota system on our chinook and coho fishery. That would most likely result in a mid-August, beginning-of-August or even late-July closure on certain species. Some places, as mentioned before, don't even open until August 31.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
If the opening date, for example, was pushed back, what would it mean for your business, your family and coastal communities like Port Hardy?
Serengeti Fishing Charters
It would be devastating, obviously, especially since August is the busiest or second-busiest month in Port Hardy for fisheries—between July and August. If, all of a sudden, you take half of that out, it would halve our revenue. It would halve our ability to make a living for our families. Most of our costs are fixed, too. It would almost make the business unsustainable.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
Over the past few years, we've had this big increase in technology everywhere, obviously, and a number of resources at DFO.
Has the way they've been able to communicate opening and closing dates gotten better or worse in recent years?
Serengeti Fishing Charters
It's worse, in the sense that the integrated fisheries management plan for this year, for example, isn't coming out until June 30. In the past, it would have come out in March or April. Alaska announces their chinook limits for the year in March.
In my season, I have guests showing up on July 1. I can't tell them with 100% certainty that they're going to be allowed to keep a chinook. I could tell them in the past that they would be able to, but I can't tell them for sure now because the IFMP for this year doesn't come out until June 30.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
We hear a lot here in Ottawa these days about there being a new government.
Have you noticed any changes in how DFO makes and announces decisions since Mark Carney became the Prime Minister?
Serengeti Fishing Charters
No, I haven't yet. I'm hopeful because I know he was elected on an economic priority, and the public fishery contributes, as I said earlier, the most to the economy of the coast among all the fisheries combined. I hope so. The mass marking announcement was a welcome thing for our community.
Other than that, I would say, “Not yet, anyway”.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
My next question is for Mr. Griswold.
Can you explain why the Fraser River sockeye opening was so late and the catch opportunity so limited despite the near record returns here in the past summer?
British Columbia Salmon Purse Seiners Association
Well, the timing of it wasn't necessarily late. It usually happens around the first week of August. The problem was that the forecast for 2025 was approximately a quarter of what returned, and part of the problem—a significant part of the problem—was that there was a component of the Fraser sockeye with the late runs, which were essentially all expected to die in transit there.
There have been problems with late-run sockeye for many years, starting in 1996 and 1998, and the management plan basically assumed that these fish were going to die. It was sort of the marching orders that the Pacific Salmon Commission had given, and a significant problem was that those fish did not die this year. They survived. They survived very well, but the management—
Conservative
British Columbia Salmon Purse Seiners Association
No, they did not. They were looking at a magic date of September 13 in the Fraser River as the date that said that anything that passed by Mission after September 13 was going to live and everything before that was going to die. Therein lies part of the problem. If they expected that all these fish were going to die beforehand, might there not have been an opportunity to harvest those fish that were not going to survive, in addition to the surplus summer stocks?
That is a sort of double jeopardy for the commercial fishing fleet, because we're paying two times. We're paying once because there's the assumption that the fish are going to die, and then we pay because we lose that access. To get back to it, there—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Patrick Weiler
I'm going to have to jump in here, Mr. Griswold. We're over the time, but there are going to be some opportunities to expand on that answer going forward.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Patrick Weiler
With that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Klassen for six minutes.
Liberal
Ernie Klassen Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Thanks so much.
Thanks to the witnesses for being here.
Mr. Griswold, in your speaking notes that you submitted to us, you say that in 2025 “it became known that the 2025 run size far exceeded the preseason forecast”.
When was the forecast prediction made known? Also, can you talk a bit about how the forecast is created and when it became known that the actual run was different?
British Columbia Salmon Purse Seiners Association
The forecast is generally presented to the fishing community from the Pacific Salmon Commission in February. The forecast is derived from a bunch of different scientific analyses. A lot of it is based on the returns to spawners from the brood. There are other considerations, such as projected marine survival and freshwater survival. There's a small enumeration that is done on a couple of runs, but it all goes into this big mixing pot and out of it comes the forecast.
The forecast was derived primarily because it was considered to be.... As you know, the last few years have not been very kind to Fraser sockeye. Things were not coming back very well.
Well, 2025 was a big surprise, and we began to see the beginnings of the survival, the increase in marine survival, with the earliest component, which was the early Stuart run that came back approximately seven times greater than the forecast.
Then the other runs started to follow suit, not quite to that same extent, but everything, every component of the Fraser run—the early Stuarts, the early summers, the summers and the lates—came back significantly greater than the forecast, so by the time the middle of August came along, we had a big run.
Liberal
Ernie Klassen Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Thank you.
Mr. Summers, will the announcement about mass markings that you alluded to, and PSSI, be helpful to the recreational fishers?
Serengeti Fishing Charters
Absolutely, they will be, too. They obviously need to be coupled with other things. For example, the minister announcing that the salmon allocation policy may remain unchanged would be one of those, because if we don't have opportunities, there won't be volunteers for these hatcheries to do all this. Every hatchery that I know up and down the coast has hundreds and hundreds of hours of volunteer work from public fishers going there and helping out. If they don't have an opportunity to catch those chinook and keep them, I doubt that you'd see that kind of volunteer engagement as well.
Liberal
Ernie Klassen Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Mr. Summers, you did talk about fishing being the economic driver in the small west coast communities. Obviously we want to ensure that the fisheries and the small family businesses carry on. Have you seen a decline in the industry, or are you only forecasting that there will be a decline? How can we prevent a decline from happening?
Serengeti Fishing Charters
There's definitely been a decline since 2019 when the Fraser River 52 restrictions came in. No longer can I fish five minutes from the dock until July 15. I have to run for an hour to an hour and 10 minutes. Locals who have small boats under 25 feet don't have the ability to run up to where I've run to to go fishing. It has really restricted even locals to go and have the ability to catch salmon five minutes from the dock for the majority of the summer.
Liberal
Ernie Klassen Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Mr. Chu, you talked about the killer whales; we all want to make sure that we keep the population going. How does this affect your industry? Do the current policies around the killer whales, from your perspective, need to be revised?
Vancouver Sports Fishing Guides Association
I've said that right now a big section of the north arm of the Fraser River is closed, so we can't fish there during prime fishing season. They're proposing to close the south arm as well, and then force us into the middle, between the two closures, so everybody will have to fish there.
We should adapt the American policy of a bubble zone, which they have in Canada now. We used to be at 400 metres, now we're at 1,000 metres if killer whales are involved. You can't have a static closure for three months hoping that whales might show up there to feed, and keep us out of there, and then have us move 1,000 metres away if there's a killer whale. The eight whale monitoring associations out there have only reported one sighting of the southern resident killer whale, on September 13, 2024. There hasn't been a sighting at the north arm since 2019, when they closed it. There was one sighting in 2024 during our fishing season in September down at the south arm. Up to this date, there's been one sighting of killer whales up by Keats Island, which is in the Howe Sound area, and they were transient killer whales, not the southern resident killer whales.
Yes, we want to protect the whales, but we should move to that bubble zone and not have static closures. That's what we're trying to get across to DFO.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Patrick Weiler
Thank you very much, Mr. Klassen.
Mr. Deschênes, you have the floor for six minutes.
Bloc
Alexis Deschênes Bloc Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Griswold, in your opening remarks, you talked about how you had to reluctantly resign from the Fraser Panel in 2025 because you felt that Canada's commercial fishing sector was caught up in a process that you felt was compromised. Why did you write that?