Fisheries committee  I would echo the comments of my fellow witnesses. I think that DFO managers need to allow scientists to communicate directly with those decision-makers and allow the briefing notes and materials that they prepare to go unadulterated to the minister. We've documented numerous exa

Fisheries committee  No, it's not, and that's an example of DFO's not affording the legal rights that it had available to it. The collaboration agreement between DFO and those industry veterinarians said that they could not delay publication for more than one year. The information commissioner foun

Fisheries committee  I think co-governance, or what DFO sometimes calls “collaborative governance”, needs to be implemented by agreements with clear terms of reference. My fellow witnesses have talked about an indigenous perspective, and in particular with traditional knowledge of indigenous communit

Fisheries committee  I think the Fisheries Act could use significant revision with respect to how evidence and the powers of the minister are exercised. I don't think that there's a problem with judges making decisions. In the significant fisheries decisions that I'm aware of, all on judicial review

Fisheries committee  I think we'd see fewer decisions being overturned on judicial review if DFO managers were providing the minister with a more fulsome and objective representation of the evidence before her. In all of the instances that I'm aware of—the two PRV decisions and the Discovery Island

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Arnold, for your question. Very briefly, I can provide three examples in addition to the example with the HSMI diagnosis that I referred to earlier. The first is suppression of a diagnosis of HSMI in 2016. Dr. Miller-Saunders and her team had diagnosed HMSI using

Fisheries committee  Sure, I can do that. The access to information documents illustrate that DFO and industry rewrote the press release suppressing Dr. Miller-Saunders's diagnosis. The second example is with respect to Tenacibaculum. During the Discovery Islands consultation, scientists within DFO

Fisheries committee  I thank you for your question. The previous witness spoke about collaborative governance with first nations. I think in Canada that's a model that can bring another voice to the table. Certainly in the CSAS process, it is one that excludes first nations despite their duty to co

Fisheries committee  Thank you. With great respect for the work of this committee, I strongly recommend that this committee's work be a first step and that this committee recommend that an independent third party further investigate DFO and DFO managers to make recommendations for the necessary refo

Fisheries committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair. Thank you. My name is Sean Jones. I've been legal counsel for Wild First on finfish aquaculture issues for over six years. I'm appearing today on behalf of Wild First. I thank the committee and its members for conducting this important study into scien