:
I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 24 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on October 19, 2020, the committee is meeting for its study on the state of the Pacific salmon.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of January 25. Therefore, members can attend in person in the room or remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website, and just so you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entire committee.
Given the ongoing pandemic situation, and in light of the recommendations from health authorities and the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on January 28, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain two meters of physical distancing and must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room. It is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when seated. You must also maintain proper hand hygiene by using the hand sanitizer provided at the room's entrance. As the chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting. I thank members in advance for their co-operation.
For those participating virtually, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.
Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of the floor English or French. With the latest Zoom version, you may now speak in the language of your choice without the need to select the corresponding language channel. You will also notice that the platform's “raise hand” feature is now in a more easily accessible location on the main toolbar, should you wish to speak or alert the chair.
For members participating in person.... I don't believe we have any doing that today, so I won't go through this, but between me and the clerk, we will try to maintain a proper speaking order as we go through.
As a reminder, all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. During questioning, it would be great if members could identify the witness they're posing a question to, because sometimes it is a bit confusing to know who should answer.
With us here today we have Robert Hauknes and Brian Riddell, as individuals, and Josh Temple from the Coastal Restoration Society.
Mr. Hauknes, you have five minutes or less.
:
I’d like to thank the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for inviting me to make a submission. I’d like to first provide my background in the salmon fishery.
I’m a third generation commercial fisherman from Prince Rupert, B.C. I fish with my father and brother on my father’s boat. My father started fishing salmon when he was 14 years old. He bought his first boat when he was 19, and has proceeded to make a successful fishing business over the years.
My brother and I started fishing as kids, when he was eight and I was 10 years old. We didn’t have very much to do in those first years. It was more about spending time with our dad, though we did learn a lot during that time. When we each started high school, we fished the whole summer for salmon. Once we graduated high school, we both started fishing the other fisheries that which my father participated in. We currently fish herring, salmon, halibut and sablefish.
I’ve been involved in trolling for salmon for over 30 years. I’ve seen how the fishery has changed over that time, from being open coastwide and able to retain all species of salmon during the summer, to area licensing and being able to retain only certain species, to risk averse weak stock management curtailing the timing and areas where salmon can be fished. Over that time, we’ve been involved in numerous charters to do DNA sampling on chinook and coho salmon to help figure out the run timing of the different stocks of chinook and coho.
Salmon fishing has always been a important part of our yearly income. Over the years, I’ve seen a slow decline in the income generated from fishing for salmon. My father has done his best to maintain a viable operation and has invested considerably back into fishing over the years.
When chinook salmon went to ITQ, we bought another northern troll licence in area ATF, because when the catch allocation was divided up, it was done by the average and we had never caught the average in any year that we had fished salmon. It was not based on catch history or participation in the fishery but by licence.
We purchased that licence, so that we could continue catching the same amount of chinooks that we always caught. Over these last few years, and the way that salmon is now being managed, it is exceedingly tough to generate the same income that we used to make. We’ve had to expand into other fisheries, so we can make enough money to survive, and pay our crew members enough in order for them to make a living fishing.
I realize that priorities change over time, and what one government values can change with the next government. Fish and licences are not property, they’re a privilege, at least that’s what the court says. However, when you’ve invested blood, sweat and tears into building a business, you shouldn’t be penalized, because those priorities have changed.
Reconciliation with first nations needs to occur. It, however, needs to be fair to everyone involved in the harvesting of fish. What doesn’t need to happen is the systematic erosion of the commercial fleet under the guise of reconciliation. Canadians are responsible for reconciliation, and commercial fishermen shouldn’t be the ones to bear the financial burden of that. Conservation can’t fall only on the commercial fleet, when there are numerous users and reasons why there are weak salmon stocks.
Habitat degradation, pollution, run-off from roads and residential development are some of the contributing factors to the decline in salmon; yet, there is no talk about restricting human development around salmon habitat only less commercial fishing. There has also been no talk about accurate catch accounting from the other user groups, those being first nation and recreational fishing. I believe that everyone has a right to salmon and fish in general, but there should be legislation requiring credible catch accounting.
There should be mandatory catch reporting similar to what occurs in commercial fishing. It is next to impossible to manage something if you don’t have accurate numbers of removals. The government needs to also invest back into doing the proper science and stock assessments needed to manage the different salmon stocks.
Right now, it is an inflexible best guess, where there is no in-season adjustment to the strength of the runs appearing. Officials make a preseason forecast, and if more fish show up than they expect, there is no increase in the available harvest, and the same goes for poor returns. They do not curtail the fishing effort. Poor data makes for poor management decisions.
I sincerely hope that the committee recommends investing in the science, and monitoring needed to maintain salmon stocks for future generations.
I’d like to close by saying this testimony was composed Monday evening, April 12, after receiving an email Monday morning, April 12, asking if I’d be able to appear before the committee on Wednesday, April 14. While I appreciate the opportunity to testify, a bit more notice would’ve been greatly appreciated, so I would have had more time to prepare.
Thank you very much for your time.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
It's a pleasure to be here today with the committee.
My name is Dr. Brian Riddell. I got a Ph.D. from McGill University and immediately came to God's country on the west coast, where I have worked on salmon restoration, salmon conservation, and fisheries management and science for 42 years now.
I am speaking today as an individual, but I should declare that I am still employed by the Pacific Salmon Foundation as their science advisor.
I do have a presentation that I have provided to the committee, but I expect you have not seen it yet. You will see that in the future. I am only going to speak to the highlights of that today.
The Pacific Salmon Foundation did speak to the committee last July 2020. I do want to support that presentation, as there are lots of useful comments in there. The individual was Jason Hwang. I think you really need to look at his key points for federal action as a reminder of what was said at that time.
A fundamental point for me is that it's fine to talk about the state of salmon today, but we really have to think about how we act for the future. An important point he made is that we really need to be thinking about our community's welfare 20 years out for salmon. It's not a short-term turnaround of an investment here.
The summary point I want to make for you today is that summarizing the state of salmon is not simple. There are over 9,000 populations of salmon. Mr. Hauknes made an extremely important point that the quality of our data is simply not sufficient. Whether it's catch, escapement or biological sampling, we are short on what we need.
Sadly, the state of salmon today is even poorer than what you heard last summer in the presentation. The particular point, as an example, is the return. The gold standard for salmon on the west coast is likely the Fraser sockeye salmon. You may not be aware that the return of Fraser sockeye salmon in 2020 was the poorest ever recorded. In 2009, the Cohen commission was caused because of the returns of Fraser sockeye salmon. Our return in 2020 was less than one-fifth of the return in 2009. You can't get much worse than that.
We have a very serious issue and it is on the minds of many people on this coast, as you've just heard.
I think the Fraser sockeye also exemplifies the difficulty of understanding the causes of the state of salmon. Fraser sockeye salmon rear in the streams and lakes of the Fraser drainage. They go through a highly disrupted estuary in the city of Vancouver and peripheral areas. They then spend two to three months in the Strait of Georgia, which is what we call the “near shore”. They go past the Discovery Islands, which are obviously in the media frequently because of the state of the open net-pen salmon farms and their transition. Then they go out to sea for two years and return.
The abundance we see on the return is the cumulative effect of all those factors. All of these factors interact, so we have a huge job when we talk about restoring the state of Pacific salmon and returning the abundance.
In the presentation, I provided you with a life-cycle diagram. You will all be familiar with the life cycle of salmon by now, but I think the main point I want to make here is that all their various habitats can interact to compound problems or they can compensate for problems. They all act independently. There's almost never a single factor that causes a change in the state of salmon, so we do need to have the monitoring systems in place so we can understand the good and the bad together.
Unfortunately, the state today is generally bad. I use the term “bad” to emphasize the point. There are variations between salmon populations, but generally it has never been really poor overall.
The challenge for us is what to do moving forward. What we're looking for now is strong leadership in acting to conserve these invaluable fish for British Columbia. It's not just for our indigenous peoples and their cultures, but for our social well-being and economy in British Columbia and for the B.C. ecosystems. The Pacific salmon returns affect many different industries. We need a commitment of resources in order to act on this, and we need a persistent effort. This will not happen overnight. I provide in my summary five actions, basically, to help guide us.
Ironically, we have a very strong policy statement that is the management framework to go forward. In 2005, we had the “Policy for Conservation of Wild Pacific Salmon”. It's a federal policy. It has not been implemented fully.
In that policy, there is a guideline that you have to protect the diversity and distribution of salmon first. We do not know how extremely the environment will change or what habitat changes will occur. You can only plan by managing the diversity of the salmon to protect future production.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and the esteemed members of the committee.
My name is Captain Josh Temple, and I am the executive director of the Coastal Restoration Society, a B.C. based non-profit dedicated to supporting wild Pacific salmon in the environment that they live in.
I'm honoured to join you today from the unceded and ancestral territories of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation in what is currently known as Tofino, British Columbia. I am the son of Arlene Rees and the late Ian Temple, brother to Lyndsay and Craig, father to Soleille and Kalum, and grandfather of Kali Temple. I am speaking my family and these lands into this meeting, as they ground me as a person, as a captain, and provide the framing for my understanding of the plight of Pacific salmon.
I have spent my life guided by the movements of fish, in my case a lifetime guided by the migrations of salmon. Born on the banks of the great Fraser River delta in the fishing community of Steveston, B.C. on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh land, and raised on the western shores of Vancouver Island, I studied the habits of salmon and endeavoured to catch them.
I earned my captain's licence while still a teenager and began a lifetime of service as a captain, a commercial fisherman and tourism operator. I did not know at the time, but I had begun a career in pursuit of a fish that was destined for trouble. I find myself in my later years not so much focused on catching salmon, but on ensuring that the family and people I spoke of have salmon to catch in the future. After years of witnessing the relentless decline of salmon, I created the Coastal Restoration Society and dedicated myself to supporting salmon restoration.
This committee is well informed of the causes that have contributed to the demise of the once-prolific runs of salmon on our coast and is apprised of the troubling fact that there has been little change in the trajectory of the decline. I do not appear before you today to belabour the point of habitat loss, pollution, overfishing, pinniped predation, aquatic invasive species or the residual effects that coastal industries continue to leave behind. First nations, scientists and habitat experts have all testified before this committee and provided overwhelming evidence to support these facts.
Instead I appear before you today as a Canadian citizen, a fisherman cum environmentalist, to emphasize that these same people are already engaged in the fight to save salmon from extirpation and have been deeply engaged in this fight for generations. We have responded to the science of salmon decline with articulate and efficient solutions with legions of dedicated restoration teams, hatchery technicians, activists and the guidance of thousands of years of first nations ecosystem management knowledge. We have created federal and provincial funding initiatives to support restoration initiatives. With thousands of collective minds focused on solutions and countless recovery and restoration initiatives under way, it begs the question, why are the salmon not recovering?
The answer is clear: salmon recovery is inadequately funded. With each intake of the BCSRIF or coastal restoration fund, dozens of viable projects that would aid salmon recovery are left on the cutting room floor. Funding priorities shift from year to year, leaving critical projects to languish or die. One might think that the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been allocated to salmon recovery over the years would have succeeded in reversing the trend, but they obviously have not. The fact is that there are no bad projects, only underfunded ones.
Mr. Chair and the members of this committee, if we are to meaningfully accept responsibility for the recovery of salmon, then we must hold ourselves accountable to fund the projects that have been identified as solutions for salmon recovery. We must acknowledge that we are on the right path, that our science and solutions are sound, but we fail in our attempts because we are denied the opportunity to deliver in the scope and scale that this solution requires. Without emergency funding on a scale that we have not received before, it is my responsibility to tell you that we risk losing salmon in our lifetime forever.
I have spent my lifetime guided by the movements of salmon. As I get older I am all too aware that where I am now is where I may have to stay should these movements cease.
In closing, I ask that we recognize that all of us—first nations, scientists, fishermen, government and environmentalists—are working together to hold the line on salmon extinction. Please utilize the powers of this committee to encourage all levels of government to allocate emergency funding to stop the relentless decline of salmon and allow us to finally gain purchase in our pursuit and latitude in our movement. I deeply appreciate your time.
Thank you.
Yes, as a matter of fact we are. We have identified through our work as a society that European green crab is a significant threat—and not only to the wild salmon habitat. There is strong empirical evidence from both first nations and scientific monitoring organizations that they're actually preying upon juvenile salmon as they exit their natal rivers and spend time in nearshore eel grass habitat.
Much work needs to be done to understand the evolution and the impacts of green crab here in the Pacific region. We are experiencing a tremendous outbreak here in southern British Columbia, particularly along the west coast of Vancouver Island. I can say that over the past 14 or 15 months now, our society has been deeply engaged with coastal first nations, the province, and DFO in the pursuit of a large-scale, industrial response for management and control of green crab.
Thank you to the witnesses who have joined us today.
I'd like to start with Mr. Hauknes. I understand that you had a very short time frame to prepare for this. This isn't a once and done proposition for you, sir. If you have other things you want to offer us, make sure you put them in a note to us and send them to the chair. They'll make sure that we get that information from you.
The focus of this study is the health of the stocks. When you've been out fishing in the time you've been able to fish, have you been able to catch fish? Are there signs that the stocks, when you are fishing, are good?
:
It's a really good question. I get asked that a lot.
There's not so much that we can do to fix the ocean. The issue is climate change. These warm periods that we've had are clearly occurring more frequently. They're more intense. The warm water that you speak of is not just warm—it's extraordinarily warm. It's three to four degrees Celsius above the long-term average. That's something that no statistician would expect to see, right?
These are strong environmental trends that are causing the decline, particularly of things like Fraser sockeye salmon. One of the reasons we're seeing differences in different stocks of salmon and different species is that they don't all use the ocean in the same way. The very poor returns of pink, chum and sockeye salmon are because they are the open ocean residents. Coho and chinook have different types of life histories and use of the ocean, so you can see better returns there than with some of the others.
There is no question that we have to understand the ocean so that we can advise what we have to do to protect salmon in the future, but you're not going to change the ocean until we grapple with climate change.
:
Thanks for that question, Mr. Hardie.
I do want to preface my answer with the statement that much further study is needed of the European green crab. We're very much at the preliminary stages of understanding not only the species and how it interacts with our environment, but also what's causing this rapid proliferation, especially along the west coast of Vancouver Island.
I will say that there seems to be a perfect storm of conditions occurring here in southern British Columbia, particularly along the west coast of Vancouver Island, which is contributing to the spread of the European green crab. In areas to the south—in Washington or in California, for instance—where the species has been in existence for far longer than here in British Columbia, they are not seeing that same rapid proliferation that we're experiencing here. We do not yet understand why that is.
To answer the second part of your question about other species that could potentially pose a threat, that also requires further study. However, we are seeing large pelagics that are becoming more common in offshore waters, such as the California yellowtail, and even billfish species like swordfish and striped marlin, and other species of tuna, like bigeye and bluefin, which could all potentially predate on some of the larger salmon or even the juveniles as they migrate through those more offshore waters.
In terms of what to expect and the impacts that some of those larger pelagics may have on salmon, it's very uncertain, but they certainly should be considered a threat at this stage.
:
Thank you. That's a very important question when we talk about restoration.
The very first thing we have to tackle in British Columbia is water management. In B.C. there is a 2014 act called the “Water Sustainability Act”. It actually includes a commitment to minimum ecological flows so the water is shared between the ecosystem and other uses. That needs to really be implemented as we get drier and drier summer periods and less snowpack, etc.
The other element is that we have a long history of land use and alteration that has to be addressed.
The third thing, which we very frequently forget about, is that where the land meets the water in our estuaries, these are extraordinarily highly developed in many cases. These are very important habitats where salmon have to spend up to even about a month and where they adjust to salt water and continue to grow before moving out to sea.
There are many actions that we know are important to salmon and that can be undertaken. We heard Mr. Temple refer to the actions to take. There's the B.C. salmon restoration and innovation fund money. All of these things can be invested, but there's a lot we can do in fresh water and estuaries before we worry about the open ocean.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for the important work you're doing on behalf of wild salmon.
We obviously had the lowest return in the Fraser River, the world's largest salmon-bearing river—I can hear you laughing, Mr. Chair, by the way—in recorded history a year and a half, or almost two years, ago. That was followed by what is now the lowest return in recorded history for wild Pacific salmon in the Fraser.
The government hasn't made any significant changes to the investment outside of Big Bar. They didn't have a budget last year. They didn't table one because of COVID. In the fall economic statement, they didn't address this critical emergency. We've been asking for the minister to declare a wild salmon emergency, because that's exactly what it is.
Mr. Riddell, can you talk about how important 2021 budget will be to addressing the wild salmon emergency? You talked about what could happen next year, the next five years and the next 10 years if we don't address this emergency immediately.
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Well, I wish I knew what will be in the budget on Monday. I hear there's an investment in wild salmon. I'm sure it will be very warmly received. Whether it's going to be adequate or not is, I think, another question, because I actually don't know anyone who has had input to the development of that amount of money.
The amount of money that is required has to involve a long-term commitment, and it will be substantial. There is no point in really hiding that. You have heard examples from each of us about all the things that could be done and the problems. There are many things to deal with.
I'm a commissioner for Canada for the Pacific Salmon Treaty, so I deal with Mr. Hauknes' issue about the allocation among various areas and the regulation.
We have lots of great people to know what to do. The problem is that we don't have great data. We need a commitment to understanding what is really going on. We heard about the DNA sampling. We have been doing that for a long period of time, but it doesn't build on the abundance of salmon. We have to do other things.
What we're finding is that the reliance on hatcheries is something we're going to have to look at very carefully, because I think the big unknown in salmon is—
I think it's important to note that the enthusiasm and the willingness and the science are all there. What is lacking, obviously, is adequate funding to support the variety and the multitude of projects that we all acknowledge need to be completed.
The question is where the money comes from. That question is far above my pay grade, but I can say that we first need to focus on habitat restoration, then invasive species control and then potentially hatchery production. Augmentation will fail if the habitat is degraded, and we cannot ensure viability if that habitat is replete with invasive species. It's a circle: restore the habitat, remove aquatic invasive species, and replenish via hatchery production, if necessary, which it looks to be.
This pathway is supported heavily by science and proven by highly successful localized salmon recovery projects. It's just a question of coming up with the additional pile of funding that we desperately need, if we have any hope of meaningful recovery.
Thank you, Mr. Johns.
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Mr. Johns, I think it's important to recognize the importance of first nations' traditional knowledge here.
As they are the original stewards of these lands, I think any partnership is set up for failure if we don't rely heavily on the guidance, information and traditional ecological knowledge of first nations communities throughout the range of pacific salmon.
In conjunction with first nations, we also need restoration organizations that have the technical knowledge that will complement the traditional ecological knowledge so that we can perform the type of large-scale industrial remediation projects that need to happen. We need science, obviously for the myriad of reasons that scientific study adds to the effectiveness of the collaboration. Then we need local community support and finally we need government support, because somebody has to pay for it and largely a lot of the work before the BCSRIF and the coastal restoration fund came into existence and the funding was generated from private individuals or within marine industries. Since then the province and the federal government have stepped in tremendously, and I think that we're on the right path; however, I think we can all agree on the fact that more is needed to reverse the obvious trend, which is decline, decline, decline.
I'm going to start with some questions for Captain Temple relating to the green crab and the delay in the BCSRIF funding that was applied for.
I know from talking to folks like Ryan Chamberland, on his dock in Sooke Basin, where I watched him capture green crabs, that there's no market for it, and there are catch limits for these invasive specimens.
I'm just wondering, Captain Temple, if you can tell me what needs to happen in order to make the green crab problem manageable. Is it more funding? Is it more capture? Is there a market? What are things that we can do?
Also, what are the real threats that green crab pose? My understanding from talking to folks on the coast is that the eelgrass is subject to being depleted because of these invasive species. Is that the only problem, or is there more to the story?
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Thanks, Mr. Calkins. That's a broad question, so I'm going to do my best to answer it as quickly as possible.
First and foremost, European green crab are recognized as one of the world's most deadly invasive species. They're ecosystem engineers. They have proven their ability to absolutely reconstruct nearshore ecosystems, as evidenced by what has occurred in the Atlantic regions of this country, where green crabs established themselves decades sooner than they did out here in the Pacific region. They not only target very critical juvenile wild salmon habitat in eelgrass beds but there's also empirical evidence of their getting up into the rivers and cleaning up salmon redds to prey on the eggs as well.
As I mentioned earlier in my first question and answer, they have also been identified on several occasions preying upon wild juvenile salmon as they're leaving their natal rivers and spending time rearing in that eelgrass habitat as well.
So it's very important that we understand more about how they are affecting wild Pacific salmon here in our region.
In terms of what more we can do, I think there's been a concerted effort by DFO aquatic invasive species and the DFO science areas, coastal first nations, and ENGOs like ours to truly understand how best to move forward and tackle the green crab issue.
There are many unknowns that require concerted scientific study, but in reality what we need to do to boil it down to its simplest point is to get as many green crabs out of the water as quickly as possible. We have to do that taking a cautionary approach because we have to understand the best methods for industrial targeted trapping, and I think some of the progress we've made over the last year and a half in understanding how best to proceed is going to be utilized very quickly.
I would just like to end on the point that while we would like to see traps going into the water as quickly as possible, we do acknowledge that there have been significant delays, likely caused by the fact that Canada and the rest of the world have been in a global pandemic and, obviously, keeping our citizens safe has taken precedence over and above anything else, but we are seeing significant progress and hopefully we'll have some good news in the coming weeks or months about getting traps into the water as quickly as possible.
Thank you.
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Yes. In commercial fishing we have a logbook that we have to keep. Every fish we encounter during that day is recorded. When we get to the dock, that logbook is cross-checked against what has been unloaded. We have to report that to a government agency at our expense.
In first nations and recreational fishing, there is data collection, but it is woefully inadequate on how much is actually being taken out. A lot of the food, social and ceremonial fish is not recorded. Recreational fishing is not recorded as well. Some lodges are doing some data collection and passing that along. With the recreational licence you do have to sometimes report. You get a survey and you do report what you caught during a month. But outside of that month....
When I went fishing in November, I got some prawns and stuff. I had to report that recreationally. But then if I went out trolling for chinook salmon in the summertime, nothing says I would have to report that.
My thought would be to increase the data collection so that you know what you're removing from the resource.
:
It's very important right now. For many years the ocean was a very stable supporter of salmon. We had many forecasting tools that were accurate to 10% or 20% of any returns. Those are now out by over 100-fold. We actually have many that we don't use anymore.
It's a big challenge, but to be able to decide the best way to move forward and where to invest your money, you have to understand how severe the effect is in the ocean and where this is occurring. As a best-case example, we could address providing more hatcheries if it was just a matter of producing more salmon. However, if you're producing salmon that are going out to the ocean and you know they're not going to survive, you'd be far better off to invest your money in the diversity of habitat restoration programs throughout B.C., support the communities and do small-scale hatcheries to restore community streams. Just as Mr. Temple said, use the community people to get the number of spawners out.
The salmon have multiple habitats, but the only one that affects all salmon is the ocean environment. That's why it's becoming more and more important in people's minds to understand it. To be honest, there's a woefully poor understanding of the connection between climate, oceans and salmon. We simply haven't put the effort into it. It's difficult to do, and Canada is not well prepared to do it because we don't even have a vessel that can do offshore fishing. We have a west coast trawler, but it's part of the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard can't allow it to go out to the central Pacific because it can't get back if there's an emergency, so the research we're doing becomes very expensive because we have to find vessels and the money to fund those vessels.
:
Do you mean enough collaboration just from the federal government? That seems to be a little at odds with the notion of collaboration.
There has not been enough effective collaboration with the Province of B.C. The Province of B.C. has responsibility for freshwater, the landscape, forest practices, mining, etc. We can't separate the two, so both governments have to work more hand-in-hand.
The opportunity for collaboration is huge. You have people everywhere concerned about salmon. It's not just Captain Temple on the west coast. The small communities there are greatly involved as well on the north coast. I started my entire career in Prince Rupert along with the complete dedication of first nations groups. There are many people who have the capability to collaborate and work on these projects.
However, we need a large-scale effort in order to avoid picking and choosing particular areas. We need a wide distribution of programs.
I'm going to split my time with Ms. May, because I know she always has a great question to ask.
I only have one question, and it's going to go to Dr. Riddell. However, I'm also going to give Captain Temple an opportunity to subsequently give us his feedback on this.
That's an interesting number you had, Dr. Riddell. The Pacific Salmon Foundation works with 345 different groups. I would imagine there are many others out there, between government agencies and non-government agencies.
Do you get the sense that anybody has oversight over the whole landscape to coordinate and maximize the efforts and the money going into all of these individual organizations, so that we're actually cumulatively getting the best value out of their efforts for the money we're putting in?
Chair, just flag me when I should stop.
I want to go to Dr. Riddell, but first thank all of the witnesses. I wish I had a bit more time, but I'm grateful for what I have.
Dr. Riddell, the figure you mentioned that really laid me flat was the three to four degree Celsius average increase over the long term in our water temperatures. That's related to, at this point, a one degree Celsius rise in global average temperature compared with what it was before the Industrial Revolution. We're on track right now to go to three to four degrees globally.
If the water temperature is already three to four degrees higher than our global average, do you know of any science that anyone has done that suggests salmon can survive even if we hold to the Paris target of 1.5 degrees, or as far below two degrees as possible? This is terrifying information.
:
Well, I feared your question, Elizabeth, but I think it's a very astute one.
Let me be clear: the three to four degrees is the maximum range. When you see the maps of the ocean, there are varying colours of intensity, but if you have extremes to that degree, then the other water is pretty warm—certainly more in the range you're talking about.
You bring up a very important point. We have all of these projections. We have global models. We have very little predicting what we're likely to see long term in the ocean. The ocean is highly dynamic. Even the Pacific has multiple different currents, and the salmon all use them in different ways.
We actually are putting together a large scale program under the UN Decade of Ocean Science and Sustainable Development. Our project is exactly what you just said: We want to build a program that links climate change to ocean impacts fishery resources and back to B.C.'s communities, because the communities ultimately are paying the price.
We can do that with salmon. They provide an ideal opportunity to do this work, but that work in the open ocean over multiple years will not be cheap. I don't think we can do it if we have—
:
I'll try to summarize it fairly quickly.
Before you used to have one licence that allowed you to fish from the Alaskan border to the Washington border. Then they went to area licensing, so the north coast from Pine Island north is one area for trolls. The west coast of Vancouver Island is another area, then the Salish Sea another for trolling. Seines have two licences: north-south; gill nets, that's Fraser River north coast, and then I believe Vancouver Island. I don't gill net, so I don't...but they went to different areas.
If you want to fish all of the areas, you have to buy three licences and stack those licences onto your vessel. Now they've gone to weak management, so you're even restricted further by fishing areas. When we have a chinook opening, we're only allowed to fish from Tian on the west side of Haida Gwaii and most of Dixon Entrance. It's a very small area that we're allowed to fish in now.
As far as managing declining stocks is concerned, we don't really see an increase in the fish we're allowed to retain. There just seem to be further restrictions on our ability to harvest fish. That's why they're managing a declining stock, because if more fish were available to be harvested, then you would see an increase in the commercial allocation, which we haven't seen in a significant amount of time.
Like all British Columbian members of Parliament and many British Columbians, I think we have a rising sense of panic that the salmon is in crisis, as Gord Johns has just said. We need to think about doing things differently. I've already made one key point about where I think we need to go on the climate crisis.
Captain Temple, Dr. Riddell, and if we have time, Robert Hauknes as well, if we fundamentally need to do something as dramatically different as dividing DFO in half and having a minister for the west coast fishery and a minister for the east coast fishery and some combination of them to deal with the Arctic. Captain Temple, if we could radically reform the way we are managing salmon headed towards extinction, as you were saying, what would we do?
:
It's an interesting question. Canada is a very small player in the hatchery production game. The massive programs in Japan and Russia and in elements of Alaska really produce a hundredfold times more fish than we do in that.
The problem is that the fish will mix in the ocean. When we went out and sampled in the Gulf of Alaska in the winter, we had fish from Russia, the Yukon River and Japan. These fish are highly migratory.
Then there are many science papers involving statistics that show competition between different countries' fish and our fish.
If there is a limitation on food supply—which I don't know is really demonstrated as well—it looks like there is actually competition between species and countries.
The other international point, of course, is the illegal fishing at sea, which seems now to be coming back a bit and is a concern, but that's a different question from the competition between salmon species.
I'm now going to ask questions of Dr. Riddell.
We've met before, as I'm sure you recall.
Dr. Brian E. Riddell: Yes.
Mr. Blaine Calkins: I want you to talk a little bit about this, notwithstanding Captain Temple's assertions that it doesn't make sense to build up hatchery capacity without having the habitat in place. I think you and I had a frank conversation, and could you remind me of what your thoughts might be about the department's current...I'm not going to say attitude but a word that might be synonymous with attitude.... Towards community-based hatcheries, whether those hatcheries are there for scientific use, for stock replenishment or for restoring breeding stock, is the department actually respecting the knowledge of the local community hatcheries and using them adequately, or could that be improved?
:
Well, I think it could be improved, but I mean hatcheries can have very different objectives. The major hatcheries that the salmon enhancement program has built were built to provide fish to commercial fishing and also to recreational fishing as they changed the species composition. They were not built to be conservation hatcheries, right?
Community-based hatcheries can be very effective, just the way Josh referred to them. You can return some spawning populations by having localized community hatcheries. Also, maybe you don't do work in one stream only through the community. You could have several streams alternating through time.
You really have to be clear on the objective of your hatchery before you really look at what's being done and what could be done. I think there's great opportunity in providing the diversity by using more community-based hatcheries. The push-back you get is that they can be more expensive, because you need to have more trained staff and more widely diversified facilities and so on. Or, you could build larger facilities again, but use “satelliting”, as we used to call it, where you could bring in different populations and move them back out to their home streams. I think we've learned so much about salmon genetics, physiology and genomics that we could use hatcheries in a much more directed way. That would be different than just producing large numbers of fish.
:
Well, unfortunately, what we're talking about here really is a mix of biology, sociology and cultures. This is not a straightforward thing that you should do this, yes or no. You could certainly do elements of this, and I have been promoting the consideration of mass marking, because I think to sustain our coastal communities and to have viable tourism and recreational fishing, we need to provide opportunity.
You can't just have closures, because you're going to lose the resource; you're going to have loss of infrastructure, etc. The decision has to be for the rebuilding of the natural populations that have conservation needs. Is there a sustainable level of harvest or mortality that could be sustained while you do that? You'll have to make a very explicit management decision that you will enable a limited mortality in order to sustain communities while you rebuild the populations.
Rebuilding is not going to be overnight. It could take 10 to 20 years, so you have to have a long-term perspective about our communities as well. It will have to be limited; it is not a panacea. If we think that the allowable harvest is 5% of a return—and it could be that low—then the scale of the fishery you can provide is going to be limited.
We can know these things; we can identify animals to their stream of origin and that, so we can do the assessments. It's a matter of how open we are to looking at a new way of doing these analyses and rebuilding. We need to think long term. We need to think about wild fish, but we have to consider our communities, I think, to make it saleable in the long term.
:
I'm not sure what you're referring to from PSF in the Nass. We've not done that. If there was such a study, it was a very old review.
There are many factors involved with this, because the Nass Valley is also very much less developed. There's a huge difference there, to start with.
Unfortunately, the Nass supports the concern about climate change and changes in the ocean, because the productivity coming back to the Nass right now is depressed compared with their recent averages—with one exception: in 2020, they had a very good chum return.
This is the challenge of Pacific salmon. You get these outliers, all of a sudden, that are really good or really bad. Overall, the Nass is very consistent with the Skeena, southeast Alaska, central Alaska, in that there is a declining production.
:
I can maybe start on this.
I think what you're perceiving is correct. In the scientific community, there is very definitely a split. Recent COSEWIC decisions about west coast salmon really criticized industrial-scale hatcheries. These are the large mega hatcheries, not the community-based hatcheries. The concern they have is that these large-scale hatcheries will produce large numbers of juveniles that will compete with the wild salmon that we're trying to restore, and that may not be positive.
The other side of the coin is that you can't just write off hatcheries. We talked with Josh that you can get down to very few fish in some streams on the west coast. Letting that go is irresponsible, because all you're doing is what we would call a “genetic bottleneck”. You are going to inbreed that population. What you would do is to use a conservation-type hatchery—maybe just for a short period of time—to restore some spawners in there to get the population production up.
Hatcheries are becoming quite a polarized source of discussion. I think it really depends on the problem you have and the tools you have available on how to address it.
Your perception is correct. There is a difference out here, and it really depends on what your objective is on what to do.
:
I don't disagree with anything we just heard there, except I want to point out that when you talk about Russia and others, they are producing a different species in the hatcheries—these huge numbers. They are not doing this with the chinook and coho. They have some hatcheries for those stocks.
We invested back in the early 1980s. We used to have hatcheries designed to produce large numbers of sockeye, pink and chum, and our program was changed to focus on recreational-type fish—chinook and coho. The huge numbers that we see elsewhere are really not comparable to what we're producing. Again, it's a different set of objectives.
Now, if you want to produce large numbers of fish that we potentially could harvest, I think there's opportunity—if the Pacific can produce them—for pink and chum. We have very successful chum hatcheries when the environment is good. We haven't done much with pinks: that's more the spawning channels. Sockeye can be too good. Our spawning channels there have different types of effects. They can have effects on the local populations, because the channels can be highly productive.
:
Yes, certainly. Thanks, Mr. Johns.
Through my work with the local Clayoquot salmon round table, which is, of course, populated by first nations, the province, DFO, the ENGOs, fishermen—both commercial and sport—I understand very well the workings of the local hatcheries. We receive regular reports and updates on their progress and how successful or unsuccessful they've been on gathering brood stock and what their funding situations are like.
We know one thing to be true. When the funding taps are turned off or are completely restricted to a trickle, the number of fish plummet in our local systems because our local systems here, at least the ones that the local community hatcheries have been working on, are highly dependent on the input from those hatcheries. Once the production and the funding are turned off, our numbers of chinook salmon particularly plummet to either close to zero or zero.
Without that funding that we talked about earlier, we don't have salmon returning to our local streams naturally in any meaningful way. We have small returns, but just in my lifetime I've watched those returns go from numbers in the thousands to single digits. Without the hatchery work that is being done by these amazing teams of community hatcheries, we wouldn't have any numbers of fish left in our rivers at all.
:
I don't think a new name would help. It depends on the action. We need the resources; we need the people. There are many people who will give you way too much good advice, so you need people who can really sort those out. There was a good question earlier about a 1,000 random projects that were all worthwhile locally. They didn't add up to recovery. You need to be thinking in terms of a bigger picture about how to effectively utilize taxpayers' money to restore salmon. It's not going to be easy. You're going to have to be prepared for some failures.
You have to study the issue in the ocean. I'm sorry to keep harping on that, but all these comments about things have changed over time. It's not because hatcheries are doing something different, it's because the environment has changed, or it's because we didn't sustain the local estuary. In Campbell River, you built a marina on top of the most beautiful eelgrass bed I've ever seen in my life. It still didn't stop it. That sort of thing can't continue.
If there's a way to improve things, it may be to give the money to a group that's dedicated to restoration, and do the best thing for it. Get a group that's going to build from knowledge, work together and gain experience. Include people like Mr. Hauknes who has a sincere need for income, and understands the complexity of the fishery.
There are many people who will give you time to do this work. We have to do things a little differently. A friend of mine says if you don't look at what you're doing, you just keep doing the same old thing. That is not very wise management if it's failing.
:
Thank you for that. Thank you, Ms. May.
I want to thank our witnesses today for appearing before committee, and sharing their wonderful knowledge. It's probably one of the most insightful meetings we've had in a while.
I will remind committee members that there is no committee meeting on Monday because that is budget day. On Wednesday the first hour will be on the final draft version of our report on moderate livelihood. We hope to get that finished. The second hour will be dedicated strictly to committee business. If we get through that quickly in the first hour, we'll have a bit more time for committee business.
Thank you to the staff, clerks, analysts and translators for putting up with us this afternoon.
I wish everybody a wonderful evening. I'll see some of my colleagues tomorrow. We'll see the rest of you back at committee next Wednesday.