Fisheries committee  Yes, all our staff are independent from government.

Fisheries committee  They're independent from government as well. They're academics often, or from NGOs. Some are industry people. I believe on this one we had the aquaculture industry as one of our experts. No, that's on the other one. We had somebody from the shipping federation helping us with thi

Fisheries committee  Absolutely.

Fisheries committee  As commissioner I report to Parliament, and if Parliament, particularly if a committee from all three parties, indicates that an issue is of importance to them, it definitely rises in our level of priorities. We do a lot of scanning. We do something called strategic audit plannin

Fisheries committee  We did not look at that in this audit.

Fisheries committee  We didn't look at that issue because we were looking to see whether or not what was in place was being utilized. We saw marine mammal regulations that had been proposed since 2012 and had been sitting there. They only were implemented in 2018, as a result of our audit. Often, o

Fisheries committee  We know for sure that we found these 12 whales passed away in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The department would be able to explain more clearly all the different interactions that are occurring to bring those animals there. We were looking at whether or not the department was doing

Fisheries committee  Their conditions are more severe than ours, or at least prior to 2017 their conditions were better explained; they were regulated and in Canada it wasn't. Since 2017 we understand from the department there have not been any killings of North Atlantic right whales, but what we i

Fisheries committee  Again, it's up to Parliament to decide, or the department to decide, whether or not they need to have permanent regulations. The Gully MPA is somewhere in that region anyhow. It's off the coast of Nova Scotia. There's still limited fishing allowed in 75% of that MPA and no limits

Fisheries committee  In a previous audit that we did on the integrated fisheries management, or that one of our staff did recently, they did find that fishing gear is an issue. It's not just on the bottom; it's floating around. Getting rid of that stuff that gets released...it's almost fishing garbag

Fisheries committee  That's correct. We looked at all the different tools they had—the Species at Risk Act, marine protected areas—and at issues around commercial fisheries. We looked at the policy on bycatch. We looked at issues around the marine mammal regulations and the shipping and supporting of

Fisheries committee  We went in and asked, and they told us. My understanding is it's less than two handfuls of people who are trained to do this work.

Fisheries committee  They usually tell us everything we ask. If you look in the “About the Audit” section, you'll see the criteria we use. We ask questions based on those criteria, and we audit backwards, not going forward.

Fisheries committee  In many cases, and this is in general for almost all audits, they'll tell you they don't have enough resources. We usually don't go down that path, because everybody says that: “Yes, we could do more if we had more money.” Generally in our audits we don't go there. In the case o

Fisheries committee  As we said, in B.C. it's dealt with by DFO, but on the east coast each NGO operates differently. There was a very tragic case where somebody actually died after disentangling a large cetacean. This is serious. It's difficult work. People need to be trained, and they need to have