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.
President, Association des crabiers gaspésiens inc.
It can't be effective. I'll give you an example. There is an ice fishing opening committee, but only one area, in some harbours, gets dredged. It's like that everywhere.
The more stakeholders there are, the more little problems don't get resolved. Some fishers have seven or eight boats, which amount to maybe 1% of the quota, but they had trouble getting their boats into the water this year, which is hurting them. The vote doesn't really represent the catch volume.
Bloc
Alexis Deschênes Bloc Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC
Therefore, the committee proceedings complicate matters.
Otherwise, when the DFO and the Coast Guard make the decision to open the fishery on a given date, does it work? Do they have that capacity right now?
President, Association des crabiers gaspésiens inc.
Of course, they don't have the perfect tools, as Mr. Cormier said earlier. They never have the right icebreaker, for example, or the budget isn't big enough for the frog to do its job earlier.
This year, the tug wasn't even available. It had been in Paspébiac for a month, it was not at all available and there was nothing to replace it. Everyone was relying on the amount of ice in the gulf, but the ice is disappearing fast. The weather is extremely hard to predict, even for how fast the ice melts. That's why efforts should be made to set an icebreaking date. If it's known, it might be better for them too. It would be easier to plan if there were a date.
Bloc
Alexis Deschênes Bloc Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC
What happened this year, in concrete terms?
President, Association des crabiers gaspésiens inc.
The icebreaker was supposed to come in early March. There's still a big icebreaker, the one that goes to Belledune, that came to do the initial work, but it can't go past a certain point. The one that was supposed to come in early March came on the 5th or 6th. It cut a channel, but it can't get all the way to Shippagan because there's a bridge that blocks it. You need equipment like the frog or the hovercraft, which can also come in because it has a deep draft. It did its job, it left, but the tug wasn't there to keep the channel open, and nobody seemed to know what was going on.
Bloc
President, Association des crabiers gaspésiens inc.
The ice closed up. It froze again. The second icebreaker was forced to come and redo the work. After that, we had to wait for the hovercraft, and all that time, there was still no equipment to keep the channel open.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Patrick Weiler
Thank you, Mr. Deschênes.
That completes our first round.
We're going to start our second round of questioning with Mr. Gunn for five minutes.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you, Chair.
Ms. Collier, you were talking about the delays and the failure to open the sockeye fishery despite near-record abundance back in 2022, and it happened again this past summer.
From your vantage point, do these decisions being made at DFO have any correlation with abundance, science and evidence, or does it seem that they're being made based on ideology or other factors?
Commercial Fish Harvester, As an Individual
I have no idea how those decisions are being made, but once upon a time, abundance meant opportunity and access. Abundance no longer means that. We'll see huge runs of fish, yet we will not be able to access them.
Part of this is that some of the information needed comes from test fishing; we can monitor test fishing and see the numbers that are coming back. In the past, we could usually use that as a fairly good gauge as to whether or not the fishery was going to open, but now we can't. It's very unpredictable. Sometimes the numbers are good but we don't get an opening, and sometimes the numbers are not so good.
You mentioned the 2025 sockeye fishery. I know you discussed that a lot in the last panel. For reference, the area H trollers—the hook-and-line fishery—did not get any openings for the 2025 season despite that historical run.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
Wow.
Is it fair to say that fishermen and their families are okay with closures and restrictions if they're genuinely based on conservation concerns but that, on the other side of that coin, if there is abundance, people should be allowed to get out and fish?
Commercial Fish Harvester, As an Individual
Absolutely. Nobody wants to fish if the fish aren't there, because it's not economical and it's not good for the population, but if the abundance is there, we don't understand why we're not able to fish.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
Have you noticed how the way the decision-making process around these openings and closings has been communicated to you has changed over recent years? Can you give us a 30,000-foot view and take a look back in time?
Commercial Fish Harvester, As an Individual
Sure. I have two really good examples.
Before 2019, our chum fishery in area H consistently opened on March 28. It happened like clockwork. The fisheries are managed by fishing days, and there's a peak of a run, so you have to fish x number of fish days before the peak and x number after. Guys would find out when that peak was, and then they would look at the test fishing and use that to gauge whether or not they should get their boats ready and to gauge when to expect fishing, when to plan their businesses and when to go.
After 2019, we had a historically low chum run. Ever since then, there seems to be a new arbitrary opening date of October 12, not that that's an official thing, but it's what's on our notices. The lead time between our notices and the actual opening date could be five days, three days, eight hours or 10 hours. It's always fluctuating.
We no longer know where the goalpost is; we can't look at test fishing and use that as a reliable measure, so we have to sit there and wait. We have no idea how close we are to being able to go or not, because we don't know what that threshold is.
Another really good, quick example is area F. It's a troll fishery up in Haida Gwaii. Before 2019, again, our chinook opening used to be consistently at the end of June or in mid-July, and now it's a month later. Since 2019, it's been in August, and that has a huge economic impact. We used to fish when the run was at its peak, so we could go out, fish our quota in a couple of weeks and go home. Now it takes us a month or more, so the overall cost of access is higher with fuel.
It's also no longer as viable for small fishing boats. During the peak of the run, the fish are in smaller seas that are more protected, have better weather and are closer to ports. Now, later in the season, the fish are in bigger seas that have much worse weather, are far more exposed and are days from the nearest port, so small boats have a hard time making it work economically. To give you an idea, our vessel used to be a medium-sized vessel in the fleet, and now we're the little guy.
I have another example from area F that includes figures, should time allow, and talks about what those delays look like economically.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
You spoke of the financial impacts on your family of this uncertainty around when a fishery was going to open and close. What is the human impact of these delays in decision-making and the uncertainty surrounding them? How has that impacted your life and that of your family?
Commercial Fish Harvester, As an Individual
It's stressful. It's really hard to plan a season and make a business case. The overall mental health of fishers in general, including in our family, has gotten worse because we don't have predictability and reliability. How do we plan our business? How do we plan our income? How do we plan our financial situation throughout the year? How do we plan when to go and not go, especially when our fishing grounds are so far away?
It's a big risk to get our boats ready to go out, spend all that money and invest in our gear when we're not even sure if we're going to be able to fish, so it's definitely a mental health situation.
It's also hard on our kids to never really know what's going on. They're very resilient and they're used to the lifestyle, but it is really tough when all of a sudden dad jumps up from a soccer game and is gone for a couple of weeks because we had no idea and then all of a sudden we have an opening.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Patrick Weiler
Thank you very much, Mr. Gunn.
Next, we're going to go to Mr. Klassen for five minutes.
Liberal
Ernie Klassen Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
We collect a wealth of information from all of you.
Hearing your stories, Ms. Collier, I get the sense that the industry must be a difficult lifestyle for you. Obviously, we hope to make it a little easier.
You talked about how in 2022 the date was given so late and at such short notice. I think you said you had less than 12 hours' notice and you had converted your fishing boat to go to another licence that you have.
How far apart are the two licences for the fishing areas you were talking about, and how long is the travel time between the two?
Commercial Fish Harvester, As an Individual
In my opening remarks, I spoke about an area F fishery and an area H fishery.
Area F is around Haida Gwaii, and it takes me about a week to get there. We can get to area H within about a day, but to travel to the mouth of the river where the opening was that year, took two days from my location.
When I say we changed over gear, we changed over to our scallop fishery gear, which is a local fishery. The gear takes us two to three days to swap out.
Having an eight-hour notice doesn't even allow me to change the gear in my boat.
Liberal
Ernie Klassen Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Were you able to change the gear over that year? How did that affect your catch?
Commercial Fish Harvester, As an Individual
We did not fish sockeye that year. We were not able to change our gear. Plus, as I said, the initial release was only for 123 fish, and I can't even justify the cost of fuel for only 123 fish. Economically, not being able to fish our salmon season that year cost us about a third of our annual income.
Liberal
Ernie Klassen Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
That had quite an impact on you, for sure.
You also talked about fisheries requiring in-season decision-making. Can you expand on that? Could some decisions be made a little sooner so that they aren't as last minute from your perspective?
Commercial Fish Harvester, As an Individual
Yes. I don't understand exactly what is feeding these decisions, where the pinch points and delays are, and why things can't be done more quickly. Before 2019, it seemed that decisions were made in a timely manner, and now they are not. I don't know why that is.
The reason in-season is so important is that the salmon are moving. Since 2019, a lot of the opportunities that we've been given have come after the fish have gone south. If we don't get that timely opening, we literally miss the fish, because they continue moving out of our area and they're no longer there in numbers that are economically viable for us to access. That's why it's so critical that we have those faster decisions.
Liberal
Ernie Klassen Liberal South Surrey—White Rock, BC
You alluded to 2019. Prior to that year, were decisions made earlier than you've seen since then?
Commercial Fish Harvester, As an Individual
Yes, they seemed to be made earlier. They seemed to be made with more information, and everything was more reliable and consistent.