Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to participate in this debate, as I am sure you, sir, are probably delighted to be here to witness this debate today because it centres on your very area, the Fraser River.
I have some concerns about the interpretation of the resolution given by government members. I heard the parliamentary secretary talk about the concern he would have about the judicial inquiry because all it would do is pit one side against the other. I also heard him talking about the department and asked if we wanted the army sent in.
At no time in any of this debate or in the wording of the resolution have we talked about pitting one side against the other or about any disputes between the various users or stakeholders in the Pacific fishery. I want to clearly outline what the resolution is about. The resolution states:
That the House recognize that the maintenance of the sockeye salmon stocks in the Fraser River is crucial for conservation and for commercial, recreational and aboriginal users; that the government's investigation--
--which it slapped together and is still not off the ground by the way--
--into the collapse of this resource cannot be considered independent; that this resource--
Here is the key part, the crux of this resolution, the resource, and we could say all fishery resources in the country, but in this case it is the sockeye salmon in the Fraser River.
--has been mismanaged; that past decisions have been made without the proper science; and that, as a consequence, the House call on the government to establish an independent judicial inquiry to determine the cause of the collapse of the sockeye salmon stocks on the Fraser River.
The parliamentary secretary also said that the department had assessed various reviews to bring together recommendations to deal with this issue. What a pile of baloney.
First, very good studies have been done into this issue. We had the Fraser report because of problems in 1994. We have had several audits by the provincial and federal auditor general departments dealing with concerns about this issue. We also had a report tabled in 2003 by the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, which, by the way, went out to B.C. on the weekend.
Before I go any farther I would like to remind the House that I will be splitting my time with the member for Kootenay--Columbia.
During the latter part of last week and over the weekend, the standing committee went to British Columbia and held hearings on the concerns about the sockeye salmon stocks in the Fraser. Before I get into what happened at the hearings, I want to give a couple of examples of what we are talking about when we talk about the complete collapse.
This year, about 4.5 million salmon returned to the Fraser. Of that, only about 200,000 reached the spawning grounds, a minuscule percentage of what is necessary to guarantee a fishery four years from now.
With one particular part of that stock, the early Stuart run, with which you are quite familiar, Mr. Speaker, the powers that be within the department felt it necessary that at least 90,000 of that run should reach the spawning grounds. They made allocations to the various users, the food, social, and ceremonial fishery, the commercial fisheries and the recreational fisheries. They left the 90,000 salmon there to get to the spawning grounds.
However we saw a slight rise early in the year of the water temperatures, not what we saw later in the summer but the early run might have been somewhat affected. Therefore, to err on the side of caution, they added an extra 29,000 salmon to the escapement, which means that 119,000 salmon should have reached the spawning grounds. In reality, only 9,000 reached the spawning grounds, less than 8% of what was needed in order to guarantee any kind of a fishery in 2008.
We have seen people scrambling to explain what happened, not only in the early run but in the total run. They talked about water temperatures. We heard evidence from practically every stakeholder group in British Columbia during our three days out there. All of them stated that there was no evidence whatsoever that the increased temperatures had any effect on the disappearance of that number of salmon.
At no time did anyone see any amount of carcasses on the river, on the banks or being eaten by birds, all the signs that would be there if there had been a massive kill in the river. Could the higher temperature have had an effect? Yes, it certainly could. Could it have killed some salmon? Yes, it certainly could. It would have weakened the salmon anyway. Did it destroy 1.8 million fish? Absolutely not.
Where did they go? Most of the groups that came before us looked inwardly and said, “ mea culpa ”, meaning that it was their fault and that they all contributed. We know that is true to some degree but any amount of overfishing or misreporting would be a minuscule amount.
It comes down to the fact that someone has to get to the bottom of why so many fish disappeared. There could be a number of reasons. It could be overfishing, misreporting, water temperatures or predation. We do not know. However, more important, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans does not know either despite the fact that we had a similar catastrophe in 1992 and another one in 1994. Studies have been done. The auditors general have made reports, the standing committee has made recommendations but the Department of Fisheries has completely ignored everything.
When we asked for a judicial inquiry, the department, through the parliamentary secretary, said that an inquiry was not needed because the minister had set up a committee to study it.
Because of the pressure, the minister has pulled together an ad hoc committee, under all kinds of questions by stakeholders, but no one at this stage has a clue who will be on the committee. We have heard talk of about 30 or more groups being represented. Then there are talks about picking, choosing and involving others from the side, and yet the committee is expected to report by February or early March in order to make recommendations for the coming season.
Knowing where the members opposite come from, they know that is not going to work. Nobody else thinks it will work. None of the stakeholders thought it was a practical way to address the problem.
What we have is a committee, which right now is not even operable, and it is questionable at best as to what will happen. Even if it were to come out with a few recommendations about next year, which would be very important, our standing committee recommendations will be important because we must save next year's stock. If we do not, half the cycle will be gone. However in the long term we have to get to the root of the problem.
Mismanagement and lack of science is at the bottom of this. The responsibility for this rests solely with the department. The only way to get to the truth about what happened this year and what is happening generally is through a judicial inquiry, for which we have a lot of support.
It is very interesting that a motion at the standing committee this morning was turned down because the Liberals brought in five goons, who had never heard about this before, to make that decision. A number of them will be voting on this very issue again tonight and I am sure the same thing will happen. It will be interesting to see where our Liberal colleagues from British Columbia sit, or more important, where they stand tonight.
