Fisheries Committee on June 10th, 2026

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Dalton, on striped bass, in your neck of the hood, on the Miramichi River.... All of us around this table have seen some videos of this river with big bunches of striped bass spawning everywhere. In the last couple of years, in this committee, we heard some DFO officials say that striped bass are not eating small salmon. It's not part of their diet. I think we all know that this is not accurate. We have evidence of that.

Why do you think that DFO is so—if this is a good word in English—rotten at decreasing the number in the striped bass population and saying that this is too much? The ecosystem is everywhere now. Why do you think DFO officials do not want to reduce the amount of striped bass in the ecosystem?

[William (Butch) Dalton]

I think it's a success story for DFO. It's one of few.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

It's a success story in the sense of a recovery.

[William (Butch) Dalton]

It's been a great recovery. There were 5,000 striped bass or even fewer. They've managed to recover the population. It's a population that's out of control at this point in time.

The study you're referencing is the 2% stomach contents of striped bass. If you look at and extrapolate that number, 2% of striped bass have smolt in them, but there are one million striped bass. That's a lot of smolt. That's all the smolt. We're seeing a 6% to 7% survival rate through the estuary.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Right now on the Miramichi River, if I'm not mistaken, there's a quota allocated to some first nations. Is it right that they did not even fish their entire quota?

[William (Butch) Dalton]

That's correct.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

What would be the best solution for you to decrease the population of striped bass on the Miramichi River? Will this be like what we're doing right now with first nations, except they won't take the whole quota? If they're not taking all the quota, will it be transferred to some other group or to a commercial fishery at some point?

What is your view on that?

[William (Butch) Dalton]

My view is to allow the gaspereau fishermen to keep striped bass as a bycatch. There are all kinds of mechanisms you can use. You can liberalize the fishery, allow more retention and change the slot size.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

If I'm not mistaken, last year the gaspereau fishermen were allowed to keep some of them, but it was at the last minute.

[William (Butch) Dalton]

Yes. It was a short window.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I have a quick question. Are you all thinking that if we were to reduce the amount of striped bass that we have in your particular river, we would see a huge increase, or at least an increase, in the return of salmon in the next couple of years?

[William (Butch) Dalton]

If we don't have that as part of a management strategy, we're not going to see a change. You can't count out habitat restoration, climate change and other factors affecting Atlantic salmon. However, it's a particular concern in the Miramichi.

Without a reduction in striped bass, I would argue, even with a supplementation program—whether that's a small to adult supplementation or increasing the number of juvenile salmon we put out through conservation hatcheries—we're not going to see any difference. It has to be part of the equation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. That went well over time. I'm sorry.

I want to let members know, before I go to Mr. Deschênes, that there is a vote being called. We have 27 minutes left. I want to know what the committee wants to do.

Do members want 15 minutes to vote, or do you want to vote in here? Do you want to go back to the House? What's the unanimous consent here?

We can stay here, vote and take another 10 or 15 minutes, because if you're voting on the app, you don't need a full 15 minutes.

What do you want to do?

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

The vote will be after 7 p.m.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We can finish this.

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

The vote's not until 7:09.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

That's good. Okay.

Go ahead, Mr. Deschênes, for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Mr. D'Amours, thank you for your impassioned plea. You explained very clearly the importance of saving Atlantic salmon and everything associated with it. You're very familiar with the Restigouche and Matapédia rivers. If I'm not mistaken, you caught your first salmon at the age of six. So you've been navigating those rivers for quite a few years. You mentioned half a century. What have you observed?

[Pierre D'Amours]

What's interesting about the Restigouche River, compared with the Miramichi River, is that striped bass had never been present in the Restigouche River. When we look at historical data and the scientific studies conducted by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, we realize that striped bass had never been found west of the Baie des Chaleurs, so striped bass is an invasive species in the Restigouche basin; it had never been there before. I checked to see how true that was. Since I'm very good friends with the Mi'kmaq, I went to speak with Mi'kmaq elders, and they told me the same thing. There had never been striped bass in the Restigouche basin.

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

So you're saying that this isn't the recovery of a species that previously existed. Based on traditional Mi'kmaq knowledge, it had never been present.

[Pierre D'Amours]

There had never been any. To be even more certain, I went and spoke with my fishing guide friends who have been on the river for a long time. I know guides who were on the river at the age of 10 with their fathers, and their fathers had been on the river with their own fathers for another 60 years. So we have 120 years of history passed down from father to son. All of these men had never seen striped bass in the Restigouche River.

So when we talk about the Restigouche River, we're not talking about the same phenomenon as the Miramichi River. We're talking about the presence of an invasive species. There had never been any striped bass in the Restigouche or the Matapédia.

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

And now, are you seeing a lot of them?

[Pierre D'Amours]

Last year, in some pools, we could count as many as 2,000 striped bass.

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

That's in one pool.

[Pierre D'Amours]

Before coming to see you, I stopped on the Restigouche bridge, and I could already see clusters of striped bass in the lower part of the Restigouche.

Earlier, you asked the representatives of the Fédération québécoise pour le saumon atlantique a question, and they said that small salmon are being eaten at sea. I can tell you that small salmon encounter striped bass that move upstream into the Restigouche estuary. If the salmon aren't returning, it's because many of these small salmon, which should be heading to Greenland, are already being eaten by striped bass, which shouldn't be present in the Restigouche in the spring.