Mr. Speaker, as the member of Parliament for Langley, which is a community on the Fraser River, I am proud to address this most serious issue in the House of Commons today.
If we are to discover the root causes of the 2004 Fraser River sockeye salmon disaster, which is a very appropriate word, the department's fisheries management practices must be exposed by a judicial inquiry bestowed with the powers and independence found in the Inquiries Act, which includes witness testimony under oath.
What we must avoid is a time-consuming toothless review that is beholden to the minister for its authority. Our government tried this approach in 1992 and 1994 following similar salmon stock depletions and look where we find ourselves today.
A judicial inquiry is a must and to not have it would be, in my opinion, a serious dereliction of duty by the Government of Canada on behalf of the people, especially those whose survival hinges on the fishery, including aboriginal peoples.
The facts are that out of a total count run of 4.4 million, more than 1.8 million salmon disappeared from where they were counted at the counting station on the lower Fraser at Mission this year and the spawning beds upstream.
Four major factors are being touted as the cause or causes for the 1.8 million missing salmon: first, warm water; second, a miscount; third, overfishing at sea; and fourth, overfishing and poaching in the river.
I would like to discuss these issues and bring to the attention of the House another factor that may have played a role, which is silt buildup, a significant problem in the Fraser River through Langley and Maple Ridge and may have contributed to the warm water theory.
Finally, it cannot be ignored that the common denominator for all these factors, including the warm water theory, is to some degree the mismanagement by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Mr. Speaker, I forgot to mention that I will be splitting my time.
The DFO has claimed that unusually high water temperatures in the Fraser kill some sockeye by acute thermal shock or by heat induced disease. The fisheries department says that 21° Celsius is lethal to sockeye, while other data suggests a toleration point up to 24°. Due to hot weather, the Fraser River was about 4° higher than the normal of 16° this summer, resulting in high fish mortality.
While this act of God theory seems credible scientifically, we must consider that there certainly were not 1.8 million dead fish floating on the Fraser River this summer. I do not recall any sightings of dead fish on the Fraser and I live there. I ride my bike on the beautiful trails along the Fraser River and I saw no dead fish.
This issue is of particular concern to interested parties in my riding of Langley. On November 12 of this year I had the opportunity to meet with the mayor of Langley township, the Fraser River Port Authority, Fort Langley business leaders and the Kwatlen First Nations.
As a group, we toured the Bedford Channel and the Fraser River. A primary issue of concern is the man-made backup of silt deposits. The silt starts filling in from upstream where a gas pipeline was installed across the Bedford Channel. There has not been any maintenance of that channel and we now have literally changed the topography for the worse.
It is a very serious situation on the upstream tip of MacMillan Island where 10 to 15 acres of land have disappeared into the Fraser River. This slough is being caused by a change of the current in the river which is a direct result of silt buildup in the Bedford Channel. In some places the level of silt is so high it has impeded the flow of the river. I could literally wade across that channel, where usually a boat would be required.
It could also be argued that the flow is so low at some points that the salmon have difficulty passing through. They are spending more time in shallower and warmer water and this could be costing them their lives.
The silt buildup has also become a navigational problem for watercraft. The high silt levels are man-made problems. Shallow water flow means higher water temperatures in hot weather. Higher temperatures means dead fish. This is a maintenance issue. This is also a mismanagement issue.
The salmon habitat is suffering from the spread of urbanization, forestry and agriculture, yet the provincial and federal governments have no clear vision for sustaining wild stocks.
The B.C. auditor general, Wayne Strelioff, said that the province should take more aggressive action to sustain wild salmon and report on the provincial role in the management of wild salmon.
Mr. Strelioff also said that B.C.'s ability to ensure the sustainability of wild salmon is handicapped by the lack of a clear vision on priorities and the inability of the two governments to produce a common strategy or develop clear goals and objectives.
Strelioff teamed up with Canada's Auditor General who also criticized the lack of a management plan. The Auditor General's report says, “This is the fourth time since 1997 we have reported on a salmon related issue and we continue to see little progress in managing key risks”. It continues to state:
Overall, we are not satisfied with the progress made by Fisheries and Oceans Canada in responding to the recommendations we made in the three previous audits in 1997, 1999, and 2000. While many stocks are abundant, some Atlantic and Pacific salmon stocks are in trouble. We continued to identify significant gaps in managing risks.
Again, this is a mismanagement issue.
With regard to a possible miscount of the number of fish that were counted at 4.4 million by the Pacific Salmon Commission, a sonar equipped boat crosses back and forth across the river 215 times a day at Mission to provide a count of the adult fish. Did it err? A judicial inquiry would be needed to determine that.
With regard to overfishing at sea, in 1988 the public commercial fleet delivered 1.8 million in gross escapement at Mission which resulted in 1.4 million sockeye on the spawning grounds. In 2004, in staggering contrast, 2.6 million in gross escapement resulted in only 200,000 to 300,000 in the spawning grounds.
The numbers simply do not make a valid argument. If part of the blame were to lie with overfishing at sea, it would be the management of the fishery that allowed the overfishing, that would have to come under scrutiny. This is a mismanagement issue.
Now with regard to overfishing in the river itself. While DFO's regional director of fish management, Don Radford, has acknowledged that native poaching increased in 2004, it is very important for me to note that overfishing, or not reporting stocks, is not a problem that is the exclusive domain of the aboriginal fishery. Illegal fishing charges have also been laid against members of both the commercial and sports fisheries.
There are many factors that would allow for an unchecked number of salmon to disappear via that route, including that in 2004 aboriginal fishermen enjoyed legal access to fish processing plants, including two new plants in the lower Fraser aboriginal reserves, and commercial freezing operations. Aboriginal fishermen also have legal access to unscrupulous fish brokers and a legal ability to transport fish in semi-trailers across the Canada-U.S. border and into Alberta.
As well, it appears a hands-off enforcement policy in certain areas of the river also facilitated the harvest, transport and processing of unreported stocks by all fishermen.
Much blame has been laid on the wall of nets used by aboriginal gill netters on the Fraser, but it is important to realize that the drifted gillnet fisheries between Mission and Hope were authorized by DFO as part of negotiated agreements. That makes it a fisheries management problem, not an aboriginal fishery problem.
This summer, members of the B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition in Langley staged a fisheries protest by turning their Canadian flags upside down, the universal marine message for a vessel in distress. The fishermen were protesting the apparent inequality of the aboriginal gillnet agreement which allowed for 50% of the fish caught by natives for food, social and ceremonial purposes, to be sold commercially, while other commercial fishermen have been asked to dry dock their nets. That is a mismanagement issue.