Fisheries committee  Yes, I am in complete agreement with Mr. Donnelly. I want to add that the issue is really about addressing the cumulative impacts on salmon habitat, because they suffer death from a thousand cuts. I keep harping on the wild salmon policy, but strategy 2 of the wild salmon policy

Fisheries committee  You're right. There is a strategic plan, and it's called the wild salmon policy. What's special about it is that it has a set of strategies and action steps that include an accountability framework; however, none of the strategies have really been implemented. Strategy one is to

Fisheries committee  I do think there are opportunities to fish selectively. We need to know that we're only taking the harvestable surplus of a known stock that has a healthy harvestable surplus. That's why we need that better catch monitoring: It's so that we know what we're catching and where we'r

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Johns. That's a really great question. It's an important issue. There is an allocation in the budget in the billions of dollars—I forget the exact amount—for helping Canada meet recovery targets for land and water protection. That should definitely be applied to

Fisheries committee  Yes, it's absolutely essential. I think that needs to be made clear to landholders and municipalities and to people who can actually benefit from that and really make it happen, because it is essential.

Fisheries committee  I could take a go at it, if that's okay. I agree that it was...“bold” might be the right word, but you have to take it in the context of the brutal cuts to salmon management functions that we've seen over the last 20 years and the extreme crisis that we're in. While it was very

Fisheries committee  It's the same thing. We were not directly consulted about the specifics of the budget, but we put forward our asks about what we would like to see in the budget. We feel that they were reflected in the breakdown of what's in there. It's the implementation that really matters, and

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for having me here. I'm the executive director of Watershed Watch Salmon Society, and we advocate for the conservation of B.C.'s wild salmon and their habitats. I grew up around salmon and fishing. I have a master's degree in biology. Between my

Fisheries committee  Yes, I think there's general agreement whenever we talk to members of Parliament and to government that we need to move forward with green infrastructure and habitat restoration, like the flood control example, where we can have our cake and eat it too. We can have flood protecti

Fisheries committee  It's a mixed responsibility, and that's the problem. Federal, provincial and municipal jurisdictions are involved, and the decision about fish falls into a no man's land where everybody shirks the responsibility. We need federal leadership in implementing the Fisheries Act with

Fisheries committee  Absolutely. I think Mr. Zeman and others have spoken to that. There is a tremendous lack of accountability and transparency within the department and, as I mentioned, a disconnect between the priority in the wild salmon policy of putting conservation first and what we actually se

Fisheries committee  That's a very good question. I think part of the problem is that there have been some resource issues. As Dr. Walters and others mentioned, we need to actually be counting fish to know what we have in order to implement strategy one, which is assessing the status of the populatio

Fisheries committee  Yes, that's a very good point, Mr. Hardie. There is an absolute failure to address the cumulative impacts on salmon habitat. The strategy, too, of the wild salmon policy is actually all about that, and the current wild salmon policy implementation plan won't get us there. It do

Fisheries committee  I would support what the other two witnesses have just said. I would mention the other recommendation in the Cohen inquiry of splitting out the mandate of promoting salmon farming from the responsibilities of DFO, because it's charged with both. They have a conflicting mandate

Fisheries committee  I think you've said it well. There is a tremendous need for more resources. I'll talk about habitat. In terms of protecting habitat, some of the most exciting and positive things happening right now are happening through first nations-led land use planning, which is prioritizing