Fisheries committee  That's a great question. I do have a running spreadsheet, and in the world of salmon conservation we certainly talk about SRIF and some missed opportunities in terms of funding. How do we get there? We have Mr. Donnelly on the line, and I'm hoping that he can help straighten th

Fisheries committee  Madame Gill, thank you for the question. I think this is important, and maybe I should have said this up front. I've been working on some graduate research for the last seven years around funding for natural resource management. This is very germane. In terms of the role of sc

Fisheries committee  We have some of the top researchers in the world here in British Columbia. They love salmon and have an affinity for it. If the federal government invested in a chair at a couple of universities, I think you would see a huge return on investment through that.

Fisheries committee  Yes. You could talk to one of the big names—David Schindler, who recently passed away—and he would tell you that originally, before the days of DFO, the office in Winnipeg was full of scientists, and in a matter of years it was full of MBAs and very few scientists. That continues

Fisheries committee  I would say we should separate DFO science and species at risk from DFO management, and I think this is a reiteration; I can't remember who, but someone else mentioned it. Quite often there's a sense.... I've lived through the CSAS process around interior Fraser steelhead, in w

Fisheries committee  I'll step in quickly. I illustrated at the beginning the issues around endangered stock. The minister had set limits around fishing and a max mortality in Canadian fisheries of 5%. We don't even come close in terms of management. I think, for a number of these runs in populatio

Fisheries committee  That's a great question, Mr. Mazier. Mr. Haskell actually referenced this as well. Last summer we had the worst sockeye return in the Fraser River's history. We had 293,000 fish show up. We normally have 10 million. That's a 97% decline. It was so bad that the scientists in DFO

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to hear the words from Fin today. Thank you for the opportunity to be a witness from the traditional territory of the Syilx first nations. I'm the director of fish and wildlife restoration with the B.C. Wildlife Federation. The B.C. Wildlife Fed

Fisheries committee  If I had to give a grade, it would be an F.

Fisheries committee  Yes, absolutely. When we talk in the wildlife world provincially, if I want to know something about endangered mountain caribou, grizzly bears or anything, I can pick up the phone, send an email, or get a hold of someone and they will send me what they have. When we call the dep

Fisheries committee  It's definitely one part. It has to be done, but you take a triaged approach and you pick out.... I wouldn't do just one thing at a time. I would do multiple things and really get at it. It's part of the solution, but there's going to be no silver bullet for this problem.

Fisheries committee  There were applications to the B.C. salmon restoration and innovation fund the first year, and that was to transition. It's not a number, but I think it offers first nations in particular an alternative. The discussions that we've had with first nations is that we, cumulatively,

Fisheries committee  I would say, cut the scientists loose. Give them a role and have them set objectives for fish populations. The big failure in all this is that we don't have objectives for fish populations. What we saw with chum is that when we do, DFO still opens fisheries when we don't meet th

Fisheries committee  Yes, absolutely. The biggest ones that everybody is talking about and we're trying to get promoted are things called “pound traps”. Essentially, the fish swim in; you can almost lift up a net and then pick out the fish that you're allowed to keep, and the rest end up in the river

Fisheries committee  Briefly, as I mentioned around natural resource management, the three things are funding, science and social support. I'm going to really focus in on the science piece because there is an internal conflict within DFO in terms of who is the decision-maker and who makes decisions.