FOPO Committee Meeting

Notices of Meeting include information about the subject matter to be examined by the committee and date, time and place of the meeting, as well as a list of any witnesses scheduled to appear. The Evidence is the edited and revised transcript of what is said before a committee. The Minutes of Proceedings are the official record of the business conducted by the committee at a sitting.

For an advanced search, use Publication Search tool.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the accessibility of this publication, please contact us at accessible@parl.gc.ca.

Previous day publication Next day publication

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, May 8, 2003

1300

The Chair (Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.))

Dr. Ransom Myers (Chair of Ocean Studies, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University)

1305

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

1310

The Chair

Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.)

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Bob Wood

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Bob Wood

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Bob Wood

Dr. Ransom Myers

1315

Mr. Bob Wood

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP)

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Dr. Ransom Myers

1320

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Mr. Reed Elley (Nanaimo—Cowichan, Canadian Alliance)

1325

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Reed Elley

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Reed Elley

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Reed Elley

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Reed Elley

Dr. Ransom Myers

1330

Mr. Reed Elley

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Mr. Bob Wood

1335

Mr. Reed Elley

Mr. Bob Wood

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Bob Wood

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Bob Wood

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Bob Wood

Dr. Ransom Myers

Mr. Bob Wood

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy (Matapédia—Matane, BQ)

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

1340

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Dr. Ransom Myers

1345

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Dr. Ransom Myers

The Chair

Ms. Patricia King (General Manager, Fishermen & Scientists Research Society)

1350

1355

1400

The Chair

Dr. Martin Willison (President, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society--Nova Scotia Chapter)

The Chair

Dr. Martin Willison

1405

1410

1415

The Chair

Dr. Martin Willison

The Chair

Dr. Martin Willison

The Chair

Dr. Martin Willison

The Chair

Dr. Martin Willison

1420

The Chair

Mr. Bob Wood

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Dr. Martin Willison

1425

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Dr. Martin Willison

Mr. Peter Stoffer

1430

Ms. Patricia King

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Patricia King

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Patricia King

Mr. Peter Stoffer

The Chair

Ms. Patricia King

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

1435

The Chair

Ms. Patricia King

Dr. Martin Willison

The Chair

Mr. Reed Elley

Dr. Martin Willison

1440

Mr. Reed Elley

Dr. Martin Willison

Ms. Patricia King

Mr. Reed Elley

The Chair

Dr. Martin Willison

The Chair

Dr. Martin Willison

The Chair

Dr. Martin Willison

1445

The Chair

Mr. Myles Kehoe (Myles & Associates)

1450

1455

The Chair

Mr. Myles Kehoe

1500

The Chair

Mr. Myles Kehoe

1505

1510

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Myles Kehoe

Mr. Peter Stoffer

1515

Mr. Myles Kehoe

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Mr. Myles Kehoe

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

1520

Mr. Myles Kehoe

The Chair

Mr. Myles Kehoe

1525

The Chair

Mr. Myles Kehoe

The Chair

Mr. Myles Kehoe

The Chair

Mr. Myles Kehoe

The Chair

Mr. Myles Kehoe

The Chair

Mr. Myles Kehoe

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil (As Individual)

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

1530

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

1535

1540

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

Mr. Bob Wood

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Bob Wood

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

1545

Mr. Bob Wood

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Bob Wood

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Bob Wood

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

1550

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

Mr. Peter Stoffer

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

Ms. Teresa MacNeil

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

NUMBER 037

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Thursday, May 8, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

· (1300)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.)): I call the meeting to order.

Our first witness is from Dalhousie University, Professor Ransom Myers, chair of ocean studies with the Department of Biology. Professor Myers and I have already talked a little bit about his testimony. He's going to proceed to touch on a few issues and then answer questions.

It's yours, Professor.

Dr. Ransom Myers (Chair of Ocean Studies, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University): Thank you very much.

Let me just go over a number of issues quickly, and then we can return to them if you want.

First, on the state of science in DFO, in recent years DFO science has in some ways improved. They're more open. It's very easy to get data for university researchers in their program set up, called DFO subvention grants, so that it's much easier to work with science in DFO. I'd say particularly in this region, under Michael Sinclair, the local science director here, it's much better than it was certainly a decade ago. This is a huge improvement. I work all the time with many DFO scientists, and it's much easier now to go back and forth.

What hasn't improved is probably the number or the proportion of working scientists in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I think it's been declining over time as new programs like the oceans branch have been introduced. More people are doing non-science issues that rely on scientists. So I think the actual proportion of the budget effectively going to science has decreased over time in terms of working scientists who are actually doing the work.

The second issue I'd like to talk about has recently been in the news. It is proposed that either the Newfoundland government or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans improve the cod by having cod grow-out, to basically enhance the cod by rearing eggs and putting them out.

There is a huge amount of literature on this. It has been worked intensively for over a century. There's been a huge amount of careful work, particularly in Norway. More than 100 years ago this was tried in Newfoundland, and it simply has not been shown to be an effective method for any marine species that I know of, and particularly for cod.

I mean, it's a nice idea, and it would be good if it worked and was cost-effective, but it simply doesn't. In Norway you can rear up cod to this size and release them, but the economics are such that it totally, totally doesn't work, particularly if there is any amount of cod left in the system, because they'll compete with the cod.

So the available evidence suggests that this is actually not an effective means at present to enhance the cod stocks or any other marine species--and not necessarily salmon in all cases, but there are some cases where it may or may not. Often it doesn't work for salmon, where it's much simpler.

I also was asked by your staff member to quickly discuss the role of fishermen and scientists. There are some issues that I would trust the opinion of fishermen on more than any scientists. For example, a fisherman who has worked in an area for a long time knows when and where, and can spot discrimination from the behaviour of the fish--where they spawn, where they feed, what they eat. Fishermen often have a much better handle on this information that scientists do. This has been shown over and over again.

There are cases where fishermen can work closely with scientists to effectively estimate the abundance of the fish stocks. This is much harder. The case where this has been done is in Newfoundland for the herring fishery, where the scientists in Newfoundland have worked very closely with fishermen to set up a survey on herring. This has been going on for over 20 years. It's an excellent survey, using standard equipment for this one species using gillnets. It's very effective.

But this has been developed collaboratively over a long period of time. It is much harder to trust opinions outside of scientifically designed surveys of how much fish are there. It is very hard.

So if fishermen working closely with scientists can do a very good job, I think maintaining a fishery at very low levels simply for collecting information is probably not a reasonable thing to do.

The last issue I would like to quickly address is the issue of how the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has addressed native rights in the allocation of effort to fisheries. This is a constitutional issue, but what I can address is how the buyout has worked. I would argue that it has not been good for the taxpayers, it has not been good for the natives, and it has not been good for the fishermen as a whole, except for the ones who obtained a very large amount of money for their licences.

DFO has bought licences at inflated prices, driving up the prices for other fishermen, non-native fishermen who wanted to remain in the system. Thus, they don't like it, it's used up taxpayers' money, and so it's not good that way. As well, there's the large amount of money that will potentially go...and what will be owed to the native in terms of their treaty rights, if settlements are made, so it's not necessarily good for them.

Overall, then, this policy has not been an effective means of addressing the constitutional issues that have to be addressed by the government.

· (1305)

The Chair: Professor, do you have any comments on seals and on snow crab?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Yes.

On seals, I should say that when I was an employee of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans I developed some of the techniques that are now being used. I have always been a supporter of sustainable field harvest. I was partly responsible for making sure that the hooded seal didn't get listed as endangered over ten years ago.

However, I think in terms of the role of harp seals, the seals' effects on the cod stocks in Newfoundland have not been demonstrated. From a very practical point of view, I don't think the Canadian people would allow a cull simply to potentially improve the status of the cod in Newfoundland, based upon available data.

So it's an unknown. The scientific link, I think, is uncertain. It's uncertain because we do not understand how the seal may indirectly be affecting the survival of juvenile cod. What we do know is that in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, when the number of small pelagic fish, herring and mackerel, is high, historically the survival of baby cod has been low. So the abundance of these small fish may be inhibiting the recovery of the cod. This is the most solid data we have on the non-recovery of the cod stocks.

If seals are actually affecting the abundance of these small fish, culling the seals may have the reverse effect of what you would want in terms of enhancing the cod, and you would have a detrimental effect. This is a theory; no one knows why the cod aren't recovering as they should, even though we have only recently really quit fishing them.

So as a very practical matter, I don't see culling the seals as justified on scientific grounds, and I don't believe Canadian people will accept culling seals simply on the chance that it may or may not enhance the cod.

On the snow crab, the recent terrorist and racist attacks in New Brunswick were reprehensible. If reports of the minister meeting with these people after this act...if these reports are true, to change the quota is I think totally wrong. These were terrorist acts, and I think they were unacceptable to most Canadians.

The Chair: I wasn't referring to the acts, Professor, but to whether you have any comment on the amount of snow crab and whether it was justified to lower the quota, for example.

Dr. Ransom Myers: Okay.

Lowering the quota, designed to preserve the snow crab, and based upon the scientific data that was available, I think it was reasonable. I'm not saying, if we took a closer look, that the assessment over time won't change, but it was a best honest effort for the long-term benefit for the fishers. Therefore, the reduction of the quota, not the allocation of the quota that was left, was the right thing to do.

Perhaps I can explain a little bit about the critical issue of snow crabs. The snow crab fishery, in terms of total allocation, is one of the best fisheries in the world, the way it's managed in Canada--not in terms of allocation among fishermen, but that's another issue--in that only the males are taken, but enough males are left in the water to fertilize the females and to smooth out the variations in abundance you have over time. By cutting back the quota, the idea was to allow enough males to fertilize the females, and to leave enough for the next year. So the regulation of the snow crabs, by this limit of only taking males and not taking too many males, is inherently sustainable and is a very sound way of managing the fishery.

The total quota is basically to smooth out the abundance over time for the benefit of the fishermen and to allow the females to be fertilized. So overall, I think it's a very wise and very good management policy that Canada should be proud of.

The other issue, of who gets the quota, is not a scientific issue.

· (1310)

The Chair: Great. Thank you very much.

We'll begin with Monsieur Roy.... He just left.

We'll go with Mr. Wood.

Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You were just saying that DFO has a great relationship with scientists. Is that because you used to work there and you have a great relationship? Because we've heard that, in a lot of cases, DFO doesn't utilize a lot of scientists who might not have the kind of close relationship you have with them.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I used to work for DFO. I left because there was an attempt by an Ottawa bureaucrat to censor a paper of mine. I resigned that day.

Mr. Bob Wood: Good for you.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I have presented expert testimony on three court cases against DFO, and I'll do so in future if I believe it's right. I have never not criticized the department if I thought they were wrong, and I have praised them if I thought they were right.

Of course, if you praise them you don't get in the newspapers. If you say they're doing something right, no one will print it.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Dr. Ransom Myers: It's impossible to say something nice about DFO and get in the newspaper. But they do occasionally do things right.

So there's no more outspoken critic of DFO than me and yet I find that I can work with them, that they fund my graduate students, and that I can get data when asked. There are all kinds of cases in terms of.... They have money, and they have ships, and they don't necessarily.... For instance, who gets the limited ship time? Giving it out is always a contentious issue. But I would say the relationships have improved over time with DFO.

Mr. Bob Wood: You were saying that the way the cod is set up is not going to work. Why is that, in your mind? You touched on it briefly, but perhaps you could elaborate a little bit.

In your mind, why do you think in Newfoundland that particular program that was announced a couple of weeks ago is not going to work?

Dr. Ransom Myers: There are several things. I was talking about the enhancement of the wild cod stock by taking eggs and rearing them up and then releasing the babies in the water, not capturing the babies and growing them up to a larger size. Growing them up to a larger size may in fact work; it's an economic question.

The reason I say that enhancing the cod won't work is simply empirical. It's been tried very carefully in a lot of circumstances. You can rear the cod, do the technology, and release either developed eggs or larvae or little cod, but it never makes economic sense, and very rarely has it been shown to actually increase the amount of fish.

It's simply empirical. The simple reason is that you simply can't rear enough eggs and fish to make it worthwhile economically.

Mr. Bob Wood: Can it be recovered, and if it can, how would you do it?

Dr. Ransom Myers: In terms of the recovery of the cod, I think the only thing we know is that if we quit fishing them, that's the only thing that will enhance the probability of recovery. That's the one action that I'm sure will increase the probability of recovery. Other than that, I don't know of anything, using available evidence today, that will increase the recovery of cod in Newfoundland.

Now, the cod on this coast is a little bit more complex because the seals are different. Gray seals eat larger cod. You could potentially make the argument that here grey seals' effect on cod is much stronger, but again, they don't primarily eat cod, and I'm hesitant to make that recommendation based on available data.

· (1315)

Mr. Bob Wood: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Myers, for your presentation. It's always good to hear a sobering view that's different from what we have heard. Yesterday in Newfoundland we heard from three gentlemen who are absolutely convinced that a cod grow-out is the answer. You've offered a different view. That's one of the great things about this committee, the ability to hear those different points of view.

However, in your professional opinion, is the number of seals in the Newfoundland and Labrador area specifically possibly preventing the recovery of the cod stocks?

Dr. Ransom Myers: It's possible. The evidence one way or another is simply not convincing. I simply don't know. I'm certainly not convinced by any evidence I've seen.

I must say, since I don't view it as a practical issue--because I don't see the Canadian public being willing to have a cull--I have not put a huge amount of effort into it. I simply don't see it as a practical issue that I can address.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Of course, one of the concerns, or the perception, is that it's easy for DFO to tell fishermen not to fish, but they don't tell seals not to fish. As you know, $6 million is being spent on some sort of seal study. To use the vernacular, they're going to “see what seals eat”. We know that they eat fish, but....

The concern, of course, is that if people like you are saying that from the best available knowledge the best way to see recovery of the stocks is just not to fish them, then of course the question has to be, what about foreign overfishing? Fish swim, as you know, and they transit the 200-mile limit. A lot of foreign vessels, for example, have a lot of groundfish and cod stocks in their holds.

The difficulty government has is that if we tell domestic fishermen not to fish, and do very little to prevent foreign overfishing, then we're going to have that contrast of views. So I'd like your opinion on that as well as the Marshall decision.

You've indicated a view that I haven't heard in awhile, that it maybe wasn't a great idea the way it was handled. But I've been to Membertou and Eskasoni and Burnt Church, and actually I've seen changes, a very positive attitude and changes in those reserves.

I'm of the belief, even though I'm in opposition, that Minister Dhaliwal, when he was the Minister of Fisheries, actually handled the file quite well. Maybe I'm of a minority view there, I don't know, but from where it was before to where it is now--and you're right about the taxpayer maybe getting the best bang for their buck, and inflated licence prices--in my perception, and correct me if I'm wrong, I saw those reserves the way they were before Marshall and I see them now afterwards, and things have improved, in my view.

Dr. Ransom Myers: Let me go to foreign overfishing and the Marshall case.

My point was not that it was handled badly, but in terms of the purchasing of licences it could perhaps be improved. That was my point. It wasn't a blanket statement either way.

My guess, based on U.S. experience--I've done lot of consulting in the U.S. on native fisheries issues--is that what seems to work out under these conditions is that the natives get typically 15% or 20% of the resource. This is just an empirical statement, but my guess is that in future this is what will happen. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't happen, but this is what will happen. I think we could improve, but I didn't mean it as a blanket criticism of Dhaliwal.

On foreign overfishing, there were two recent reports carried out on this issue. The first, contracted by the World Wildlife Fund, was done by me and one of my graduate students, and will be released shortly. It's on how we can set up and improve control over foreign overfishing. There was another independent study carried out by Dalhousie Law School under contract with the governments of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and the Canadian Fisheries Council. That's not released, though; I've seen it but I can't comment on it.

There are two methods we can use legally, based upon existing international law, to control foreign overfishing. I think the best and most positive way is to use a provision in international law that allows Canada control over animals that live on the bottom.

Now, outside the 200-mile limit, Canada has no control over the fish that swim in the ocean. Those simply are governed by other rules. But anything that's on the shelf outside the 200-mile limit on the tail and the nose, Canada does control. The deep sea corals, the urchins, the lobsters, the crabs, the scallops--all the life that's attached or that walk on the bottom is under Canadian jurisdiction. Canada has complete control over those.

This allows a very simple mechanism to control any foreign trawling that occurs outside the 200-mile limit. Canada has the right, and in fact the duty by international law, to control it, simply by saying that in order to do any trawling outside the 200-mile limit for any country, you have to get a permit, and then you have to demonstrate that you do not damage essential fish habitat, deep sea corals, sponges, etc.

Canada could do that right now by international law, and that's the only way I know of, except rule by international law, that this could occur.

So instead of complaining about foreign overfishing, there are international agreements that allow us to deal with it immediately. However, it would require us also to deal with damage to fish habitat within the 200-mile limit, to be consistent. Simply having a policy of controlling trawling damage to the bottom and having anyone who has a permit to demonstrate that it's not going to damage fish habitat, it's within Canadian law, and within international law, and it would allow Canada to immediately have control over any trawling outside the 200-mile limit. And that should be done.

· (1320)

Mr. Peter Stoffer: As a final question, Mr. Chairman, on areas such as the Hamilton bank off Labrador, and the Sable Island gully, say, we know that Minister Thibault's about to announce--and fairly soon, we would hope--that on protection of the Sable Island gully, we're not sure whether or not he would allow selective fishing, through hook and line or whatever, in that area.

On the marine protected area, do you support the initiative in order to give the fish...? For example, the Hamilton bank area would be a no-fish zone. We don't go there at all, and we allow the fish to recover in those types of habitats. Would you support those types of initiatives? Or would you support what some people are saying, that in an area such as the Sable Island gully you could allow only selective fishing under the most environmentally sustainable method, such as hook and line?

Dr. Ransom Myers: In general, I think, marine protected areas are an essential part of fisheries management if for no other reason than we need to have areas that aren't damaged and where we have some idea of what natural conditions are like. So I completely support the use of marine protected areas. However, they're not a panacea. You still actually have to control fishing mortality.

So I certainly support them, but they're not enough. Perhaps limited hook and line fishing could be allowed in the gully, but I haven't studied it enough.

I know one of the issues is bottlenosed whales being caught by pelagic longlines. That is a potential issue.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Elley.

Mr. Reed Elley (Nanaimo—Cowichan, Canadian Alliance): Thank you.

I'm interested very much in your comments about DFO and native fishing. I am the member from Nanaimo--Cowichan, where pretty soon we will have the first urban treaty in Canada's history. Part of that treaty is a reallocation of fishing rights, where certain areas will be designated as a native-only fishery. To do this, DFO proposes to buy licences from non-native fishers and give them to native people, not to increase the number of fishers; it's simply a buyback again. We have already had a significant buyback on the coast, that's taken a lot of people out of the industry, and now we're moving into this.

I must say, it's very problematic for us in the riding. It's problematic for me as a member of Parliament and it's problematic for me as a father who has three native children. I wish I could see this as solving some problems.

You did say--and speaking honestly, I thought you backtracked, sir, when you answered Mr. Stoffer's question--that the way they handled it here, as I wrote it down here, was “not good” for anybody.

· (1325)

Dr. Ransom Myers: In terms of the buying back, yes.

Mr. Reed Elley: Okay. So please tell me, from your experience, why this is not good for anybody, and help me with this in terms of what may take place in my situation, in my riding.

Dr. Ransom Myers: The question is, how do you reallocate fishing rights in the most equitable, non-confrontational way?

Mr. Reed Elley: Exactly.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I'm not thinking about whether it should or should not be; it's just the law, and we have to do it.

In terms of economics, by having a buyout to the highest bidder, negotiated by DFO over a very short amount of time, without taking out of the control of actually the native fishing groups how they might want to do it...so the native fishing groups aren't actually having control over how it's being done. It's being done by an outside organization, negotiating on their behalf. I think that's an issue that could be improved.

In these cases, if it's inevitable that fishing rights are going to be reallocated, then negotiation should be carried out with the participation of both parties as opposed to having an outside organization do it all at once. So if you had so much money to reallocate--

Mr. Reed Elley: Can I stop you right there? I think there's something very important here.

What the government is going to do in terms of land settlement is willing seller, willing buyer. Now, of course the government is buying up tracts of land on that basis, to include in the settlements. That's somewhat problematic too, because of course it means that the native people themselves are not involved in transactions.

Now, would you suggest, then, that perhaps the fishery allocation should be a lump sum payment to native people under the treaty, for fisheries, and that they then engage in the transaction to buy licences from non-natives?

Dr. Ransom Myers: If it were set up with the agreement of the native groups, it might be a more economically efficient way to do it in terms of less...so that the money didn't have to be spent all in one year, and there were some long-term negotiations. Whenever you have a large amount of money that has to be spent in a short amount of time, and there is no limit to what's available, it's simply bad in terms of a bidding war. It creates harder feelings than need be.

Mr. Reed Elley: I think you're right, because of course in the DFO's...and I'm sorry, we're doing some west coast stuff, but it does apply out here too. In terms of the Fraser River fishery, where there's been a native-only fishery for a number of years, the way DFO has handled that has caused so much tension amongst native and non-native fishers rather than help bring the industry together. Before this, they were quite at peace with each other; I mean, 30% of the fishery was native people, and they were good friends with the non-native fishers. They made big bucks and everything. Then all of a sudden you have DFO coming in, and the government, going against court decisions, saying otherwise, and simply causing this terrible problem between races rather than solving it.

I don't want to see that happen in my riding.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I agree. Again, the key is that having someone else do the negotiations for you is in both cases probably not optimal for everyone concerned. So having it with...if the native groups would agree, to understand that this money actually comes out of their pockets in the long term, and it's not in their best interests to have the licences overbid.

On this coast there are examples of aquaculture projects being funded that probably won't work; basically, too much money paid for some issues.

· (1330)

Mr. Reed Elley: Thank you for clarifying that.

The Chair: Professor, perhaps I could ask you a couple of questions as well.

What's the most prolific seal species in and around Newfoundland?

Dr. Ransom Myers: In terms of numbers, it's harp seal, by far.

The Chair: And what do they eat?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Their diet is primarily small pelagic fish, particularly arctic cod, which is not a commercial species. That's their primary diet. The number of cod, over time, ranges from 2% to 7% typically. They eat other things as well, but they basically eat fish about this big, about the size of their mouth. They can eat fish larger, but typically that's the size they eat.

The Chair: We've been told they don't eat the fish, they rip the stomach out, or they rip the liver out. They have a mouth big enough to do that, don't they?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Yes. They sometimes may do this, but I don't know of any scientific evidence that shows this. Everything I know of shows that their primary diet is relatively smaller fish, the size of arctic cod.

The Chair: So if there were absolutely no cod in the ocean, if it disappeared off the face of the earth, the harp seal would continue to survive and grow because it eats other fish.

Dr. Ransom Myers: Yes. And crustaceans, but primarily fish.

The Chair: But they will take cod if they can catch them, I guess.

Dr. Ransom Myers: They will certainly take cod, and cod certainly forms part of their diet. In many ways, an adult harp seal, which is quite a small seal, which is different from the primary one here, the grey seal, is about the same size and has a similar-sized mouth to a fully mature cod. So in a sense, these two species are almost more competitors than predators when they're of larger size.

The Chair: Okay.

Did you take part in any way in the designation of certain species of cod--we were given the names yesterday of Atlantic area and Laurentian cod--as designated under the Species at Risk Act?

Dr. Ransom Myers: I did some of the background research, but I actually didn't take part in that committee.

The Chair: But you're aware of it.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I am aware of it, and I would agree with their decision. It was done fairly, and it probably should have been done some years ago.

The Chair: All right.

To go back to seals, do you still support a sustainable seal harvest?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Yes. That's economically reasonable. I'm not an animal rights activist.

The Chair: When you say “seal harvest”, would you apply that to all species of seals in Canada or just the harp seal or...?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Well, there really is only a market for the harp and hooded seals, and in the north some of the northern species of ringed seal. There's virtually no market, I think, for the grey seal and harbour seal.

The Chair: Okay.

Any other questions?

Mr. Wood.

Mr. Bob Wood: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was just confirming my thoughts with my colleague Mr. Elley, and I'd just like your opinion on this. I don't know if this is true or not, but this is what we heard.

In Quebec--and pop in here if I didn't get all of this, Reed--we talked to a fisherman by the name of Mr. Cyr, who fishes off the Magdalen Islands, and he was experiencing a decrease in his stock. He thinks--it's his idea--that it could be the tides. The tides are a little bit different, lower than they have been in previous years, and it's driving the fish out to deeper water. He attributes this to the ice floe up in the north that's melting and coming down and making the water a little colder, which is driving the fish out to deeper waters.

Did I get that?

· (1335)

Mr. Reed Elley: Yes, with a decrease in food.

Mr. Bob Wood: Right, a decrease in the food chain.

Does that sound logical?

Dr. Ransom Myers: It may be logical, but I'm certain it's not the main issue with the cod.

Mr. Bob Wood: No, no.

Dr. Ransom Myers: There are always the environmental influences that affect the abundance and distribution of fish, but I don't really think the smaller environmental factors of the changing of the tide are really the key issues the fishery is facing.

Mr. Bob Wood: Okay.

Dr. Ransom Myers: Now, it may explain why the cod he fishes have changed their distribution, but it doesn't explain the overall pattern, that we have cod declining everywhere. There's no environmental explanation I know of--“environment” meaning a change in the tides or the weather in large-scale patterns.

Mr. Bob Wood: It wouldn't be driving the food....

Dr. Ransom Myers: There's always a change in the food supply, but I wouldn't think so. There are critical issues that we don't.... We really don't know why the cod aren't recovering, but I don't think it's the tides.

Mr. Bob Wood: Well, no, but it was an interesting conversation, and since you're the chair of ocean studies, I thought it would be a good time to get an answer.

Thank you.

The Chair: Monsieur Roy.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy (Matapédia—Matane, BQ): You say that there is no environmental explanation, but is the question really being asked? Let us take the example of what happened recently in Newfoundland. The beaches were littered with piles of cod whose gills had frozen. This was most certainly an environmental phenomenon. There must be some environmental factor that contributed to the decline of the cod. Overfishing, even over a great many years, does not account all of its own for the problem we have today. Obviously, overfishing is most probably the main cause, but we have been told that the water has become colder, that the winter was very very harsh and that the water became gradually colder, even in the Gulf of St-Lawrence. You are a scientist, but other scientists tell us that with global warming and the melting of glaciers there has indeed been a cooling of the water temperature.

If cod finds itself in cold water, things like what we have seen in Newfoundland happen.

[English]

Dr. Ransom Myers: The environment, meaning tides and climate, always affects survival of fish, and occasionally, relatively rarely, actually kills adult fish, as we saw in Newfoundland. However, there's no credible explanation that I've seen in terms of environment causing either the collapse of the cod or the failure to recover, although the environmental change certainly does affect variations in abundance, both locally and in terms of the total.

Cod has been fished in Newfoundland for 400 years, 450 years, 500 years, and cod abundance has changed over time, but there's no evidence that there's ever been anything like this collapse--in that 500-year history, often where we have good records--that the environment would explain.

So the environment, yes, affects abundance and distribution of cod, but it's not the primary explanation for what we see.

The Chair: Professor, just to go back to overfishing, foreign overfishing, your evidence was that there should be no fishing of the cod, and that would be the best way of recovering the species, even though, at least for the last ten years, that hasn't proven to be true. That would presumably mean there would be not overfishing but no fishing of the cod by foreign fleets as well.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I would agree. If Canada decides to fish no cod, it should be possible by international law to curtail all foreign fishing as well that impacts on cod--if you can get NAFO, the international body, to agree. It should be possible under these conditions.

The Chair: Good.

Now, I'm not a fisherman, so I'd just like to ask you to clarify your evidence regarding your suggestion on how we could take immediate action on foreign overfishing by protecting the species that live on the floor of the continental shelf adjacent to Canada. You said that this would stop all trawlers, theoretically. Is that because trawlers drag the bottom?

· (1340)

Dr. Ransom Myers: Yes.

The Chair: All right. So let's say we stop all trawlers. That wouldn't necessarily stop all fishing.

Dr. Ransom Myers: That's true. What I was proposing was that this is the only simple legal way, within international law, that Canada can act unilaterally on. It wouldn't stop gillnets, for example, or longlines, but it would require anyone foreign, and actually domestic as well, to obtain a permit in order to drag the continental shelf. It's the one lever I know of that Canada has to curtail foreign overfishing by draggers. There are other ways of doing it--

The Chair: Any enterprising foreign fisherman who wanted to get around that would simply either come up with or invent a way of skimming, shall we say--not really touching the bottom.

Dr. Ransom Myers: That might be possible for some species, although not for the flatfish, which are very valuable, on the tail of the banks, where you can't catch them. For some of the species, though, you could use mid-water trawls, or trawls that do not touch the bottom. That is the primary method of catching walleyed pollock in Alaska, for example. They do this so they won't destroy the halibut resource.

In Canada we decided to largely eliminate the halibut resource, but in Alaska they decided to fish sustainable, and they're mainly using trawls. I don't know of any evidence that suggests that this is an economically viable way to catch the primary species of interest, the gadoid or cod-like species and the flatfish species on the nose and tail of the banks.

The Chair: I'm sorry to keep on going, colleagues, but I'm flipping back and forth here.

You were quite clear on what the harp seals eat. Speaking as a professor--indeed, as a chair of ocean studies--why is the minister then, if I understand it correctly, spending $6 million to find out what seals eat?

Dr. Ransom Myers: I don't know. I mean, there are new methods out there that can help clarify this issue. For example, a professor in my department has developed a method to look at the fat. You take a seal, and take a hunk of fat out of it, and break it down: This came from cod, this came from shrimp. It allows you to reconstruct.

So there are new methods that will potentially allow us to draft the question that I think you asked about the cod stomachs. Now, that study doesn't cost $6 million. I don't know where the $6 million is going, but it's not going to me. That's a lot of money.

But we do actually have a lot of data on cod stomachs from over the years.

The Chair: On seal stomachs.

Dr. Ransom Myers: Oh, sorry, seal stomachs. A lot of seal stomachs have been analyzed over the years.

The Chair: Right.

Did you want to ask a question?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Yes, just very briefly.

Sir, you had mentioned that there is a new openness or willingness on the part of DFO scientists to work with groups such as yours. In your opinion, does DFO science have the manpower and the resources financially to do an effective job of what we ask them to do in terms of figuring out what the hell is going on in the water?

We spoke to some fishermen in committee, and I'm beginning to hear a basic distrust of biologists. In fact, when I say the word “biologists” to some fishermen, if you could see their faces--as you said earlier, Mr. Char, if you could only record facial expressions--it's not very pleasant. I always thought there was good rapport between science and fishermen, but in some cases there was this disconnect, and almost a level of mistrust.

In your opinion, does DFO have the resources or the people in order to do their job effectively?

Dr. Ransom Myers: In terms of the science, I think the amount of science that DFO scientists have been capable of doing has been going down over time. If you go to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, where people study the tides and so on, and you go down the hallways you'll see that more than half the scientists there are retired and are coming in for free.

DFO science is a shadow of what it once was, and I don't think it has actually the capacity to address some of these issues. So an honest answer to these questions is, I don't know. I think it will continue to be that way for some time.

· (1345)

Mr. Peter Stoffer: The reason I say that, Mr. Chairman, is there are some people who believe that with the downturn of science and the downturn of resources to the science branches over the years, it has actually possibly precipitated a loss of knowledge in terms of the downturn of the cod, the effect of the seals, etc. There seems to be that link.

If you look at the graphs, when science started to go down that's when we had serious problems within the fish stocks as well; there's linkage. BIO was, and in many cases could be, one of the finest institutions in the world. But it's not what it used to be.

Dr. Ransom Myers: It's not. It used to be a world-class institution with its marine ecology lab. It studied all of these things that we did, and did it well. Even their bread and butter, their assessment techniques, are not modern. The most modern techniques are simply not being used in terms of the assessment in DFO. There have been so few people hired in many areas in recent years...and you know, the old guys can't think new thoughts, often.

The Chair: Certainly I've been accused of that.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Dr. Ransom Myers: No, I wasn't accusing you.

The Chair: Professor, thank you very much. We very much appreciate your testimony.

We'll now call on Fishermen and Scientists Research Society, Patricia King, general manager; and the Nova Scotia chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Martin Willison, president.

Welcome, Ms. King. I don't know if you're trying to trick us here; I looked at your paper and there are only two pages--but it's tiny print.

To both witnesses, I wonder if you'd be kind enough to keep your presentations to about ten minutes each, if possible, so that we have a goodly amount of time for questions, and then in the answers you could amplify whatever you want.

I would call on Ms. King to proceed. Thank you, and welcome.

Ms. Patricia King (General Manager, Fishermen & Scientists Research Society): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the committee today about the Fishermen and Scientists Research Society, which I'll be referring to as the FSRS, and on how it has impacted on improving the quality of DFO science.

The quality of DFO science and research has been improved by the participation of fishermen in fisheries research. By involving fishermen in fisheries science, DFO scientists are now able to both access a wealth of information that fishermen have and implement research projects that otherwise would not be possible without this cooperation from the fishermen.

Fishermen are now working with the scientists to set the research priorities and design how the research will be done, and are actually doing the data collection. They have become scientists on the water.

As a result of this collaboration, there is a lot more trust between the fishermen and the scientists, and a lot more trust in the results. The fishermen feel they have a better understanding now of how science is done and how the results are used, and they have a lot more faith in the results because they have actually been out there collecting the information themselves, and have had the chance to peer review the results.

The FSRS has proven an extremely effective vehicle for promoting collaboration between fishermen and scientists. The FSRS is a non-profit organization, incorporated in January of 1994 with the primary goal of collaborative research and coeducation among fishermen and scientists.

The FSRS bylaws do specifically prohibit the society from undertaking any lobbying or positions on management or allocation issues. It is very clearly laid out in our objectives that we are here to do scientific research, good independent research, and promote communication. We are not here to deal with those management conservation issues. We want to provide good, valuable, scientific results to the fishermen, the scientists, the managers, and the other stakeholders so that they can make better-informed decisions.

We currently have 298 members, over 200 of whom are fishermen from a variety of gear sectors and fisheries. We have scientists--from the government, such as DFO--and the academic community as well as the private sector. We also have other individuals from throughout Atlantic Canada and around the world who are members, interested in promoting the objectives of the society.

The specific objectives of the society are to collect information relevant to the long-term sustainability of the fishery; to promote communication between fishermen, scientists, and the general public; to participate in research projects of other institutions, for example the work we do with DFO and such universities as Dalhousie; to analyze and disseminate information; and to provide training to our members so that they can participate in the research projects. And as I mentioned before, our objectives clearly state that we are not a lobby group; we are here to focus on science and communication issues.

The structure of the FSRS includes an executive committee; a scientific program committee, which is comprised of fishermen and scientist members responsible for deciding which projects we will undertake and how those projects will be implemented; and a communications committee. We also have a staff, which consists of myself as manager, a research biologist and data analyst, and field personnel.

The staff maintains the day-to-day operations. As I mentioned, we do have a scientific program committee that is responsible for developing the various scientific projects.

Now, the scientists on that committee do provide guidance in developing the scientific protocols with the fishermen. However, it's important to note that the fishermen do have a key role in identifying what the research priorities are.

I remember, when we first started this organization ten years ago, if I asked a fisherman, “What's your concern about what you're seeing out there, what do we need to study, what science should we do?”, they would invariably say, “Ask the scientist, that's his job.” They didn't have confidence in themselves that they knew what needed to be done in science. Now fishermen are coming forth with ideas, helping to design how we are actually going to do this research, to make sure it's good, effective research that they can believe in and the scientists can believe in.

An example is the lobster recruitment study that we currently have under way. It has 150 fishermen throughout the Scotia-Fundy region collecting information from special project traps every day of the lobster season. This is all volunteer effort on the part of the fishermen. They are volunteering their time, their equipment. They are helping to buy the project traps. The value of their contribution is incalculable.

But here is a project where it was a fisherman's idea to say, okay, we need to find out more about our juvenile population, about what is coming into our legal lobster fishery, so that we can answer questions on whether we have doubled our eggs, for example, and other issues that were coming up in science. He brought this to our scientific program committee, and now we have this huge wealth of information coming in every day of the lobster season, which the DFO scientists can now use in their assessments. They've also been able to use this data in new ways so that they can improve their assessment process--again, improving the quality of the research of DFO.

· (1350)

For example, Ross Claytor, one of the scientists at BIO, is now using this data set to develop a new model for estimating exploitation rates of lobster, something that could not have been done without this cooperation from the fishermen and their participation in science.

To just touch on our communications strategy, the objective, as mentioned, is to facilitate and promote effective communication between fishermen, scientists, and the general public, and also to increase awareness of and participation in the projects we've undertaken, expand our membership, and build community profiles.

As I mentioned, we do actually have an international membership, with members from as far away as Australia. We are seen as a model of how to get fishermen and scientists working together, a model that's being used internationally. People are joining as members so that they can learn from our experiences and apply it there. We're working closely with the Maine Lobstermen's Association, who are looking to implement basically the same way we do with our recruitment study. They funded a workshop up here to learn how we were doing it.

Our communications strategy is facilitated through such things as our annual conference, a two-day conference held every February in Halifax where we have presentations on the results of the projects we do. As well, we bring in guest speakers from around the Atlantic provinces and elsewhere in the world so that they can share their knowledge and we can all learn from each other.

We also have a quarterly newsletter, Hook Line and Thinker, available on our website among other information about the society. Our website is “www.fsrs.ns.ca”.

Of course, one of the best ways to encourage communication between fishermen and scientists and have them learning to communicate on a more common level is through participation in the projects, actually having those fishermen and scientists sit down--without cursing and swearing at each other across the table--and say this is how we're going to do this research, and this is the trap design we should be using. People are amazed when they come to a meeting and see that these guys can sit down, have a beer, and talk in a very reasonable manner now. So communication and trust has definitely been built over the last ten years.

Another critical thing to promoting communication is our field personnel. We've been lucky to access funding through the science and technology youth internship program for the past number of years, and we've just hired two more interns through that program. That allows us to have that grassroots presence. So we have people out in the field working with the fishermen on a daily basis, collecting their data, presenting their results back to them. There's always a two-way flow of communication.

I'll give you a brief idea of the scope of the research we have undertaken. We've been involved, for example, in the 4VsW sentinel program since 1995, and we currently have a joint project agreement with DFO. One of the exciting things about this project as relates to improving the quality of DFO research is that because we have fishermen doing this research, we now have data from an area that DFO could never collect data from with their survey traps. Because of the size and gear used on the survey vessels, of course, it could not get into the inshore strata. Now we're using longline vessels, some of them fairly small, using fixed gear, and they can survey that area.

So for the first time ever, we have this new data set. It is being used in stock assessments. It's improved the amount of data we have and the quality of the data we have, which of course improves our science.

We've also implemented a broad-condition sampling study, a predator-prey relationship study, tagging studies for cod, haddock, and halibut off the eastern shore of Nova Scotia, coastal oceanographic monitoring, and another very valuable one--the collection of fishermen's knowledge.

One of the early frustrations we were always running into when we started this society was fishermen saying, “I saw that coming. I could have told you that. I saw this out here, if only you had listened to me.” The scientists were saying, “I hear what you're saying, but it's not scientifically proven. I can't put it in my assessment because it's not collected in a scientific manner; it's anecdotal.” So through this project we were able to chart sensitive habitats, juvenile and spawning areas along the eastern shore, by interviewing 200 fishermen about their traditional knowledge and having them plot it on maps, right on the charts. That is now being digitized. The scientists are now starting to use that information in their research.

· (1355)

It's a great way of collecting fishermen's traditional knowledge, and it shows that the scientists are recognizing the value of that knowledge and how it can improve the science we're doing by accessing that knowledge.

We also do lobster research, with the lobster recruitment project being our largest-scale project. With DFO's budget and personnel constraints, I'm sure you can all imagine there's no way DFO could have coordinated something across nine different lobster-fishing areas without 150-some fishermen out there collecting lobster data every day. Thanks to having this volunteer effort of these fishermen working with the science, that makes the difference.

We've also done weight versus carapace-length studies. We do a lot of at-sea sampling, particularly in conjunction with DFO, sharing the results with DFO, and we participate in other industry-driven studies.

In terms of a couple of the lessons we've learned, we've learned that, yes, both scientists and fishermen are real people, and yes, we can sit down over a beer and have a productive conversation focused on science. We can leave our other interests at the door, and we can work together, but it is a process of coeducation. We've actually given training to scientists to teach them how to talk in a more user-friendly language. They've actually had us come in and do that, critiquing their oral and written presentations so that we can improve the communication. Communication is vital on a day-to-day basis to keep these groups working together.

To touch on a question you had about that trust, yes, we have made huge strides in building trust, but the funding, the budget, is a huge challenge on an ongoing basis--trying to find funding to maintain the day-to-day operations of this organization; to have enough staff in place to be out there working in the field with the fishermen to collect the data and then to do the data entry and analysis; and to buy the necessary equipment and take on all the research.

There's so much research we'd love to do, both the fishermen and the scientists, but because of financial constraints that's not possible. That ties in with the budget decreases in DFO. It's becoming more and more challenging for them to take on the science.

I'm now not so much seeing an increasing mistrust of scientists--the trust is now there, we've built it, and they want to work together--as I am seeing a mistrust of the system that keeps taking money out of science when we all realize that more science needs to be done.

Thank you.

¸ (1400)

The Chair: Absolutely terrific. Just great. Congratulations. Just the whole idea of this society is so useful, so welcome, and so needed. Too bad we don't have enough money for it, but maybe we can do something about that.

Mr. Willison, please go ahead.

Dr. Martin Willison (President, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society--Nova Scotia Chapter): Thank you.

I'm a professor of biology and environmental studies at Dalhousie University. I'm the only professor in the university whose appointment lies equally between the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Management.

In a formal sense, I'm here representing the board of the Nova Scotia chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, but my remarks are not in any way limited to this particular perspective.

In preparing for this presentation, I've relied on both my own experience and conversations with friends and colleagues who have worked for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans or who have had many interactions with the department. I'm not presenting here my own perspective alone.

As the work of Daniel Pauly and others clearly shows, the upper trophic levels of ocean ecosystems have suffered enormous reductions in biomass due to centuries of fishing. As a result, the ocean ecosystem structure has changed, and is changing, fundamentally.

This is the situation in which we find ourselves today. One question in front of us is, how well prepared is DFO and its science branch to deal with providing advice in a situation in which ocean community structure is undergoing fundamental and unpredictable change?

In my opinion, the practical application of fisheries science has not yet caught up with this ecological reality. DFO is still organized around an assumption about the state of the oceans that is essentially false. Marine fish populations are not as robust as had been assumed; they can crash and not recover.

I suggest that one of our problems in fisheries science is that we still have this view that what actually happened can't really happen. Well, it really did happen, and fisheries science needs to catch up with that.

It is, in my opinion, critical that members of the Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans recognize that the situation of the science branch is part of the problem in DFO. The science branch has not been able to properly address or articulate the fundamental problems that beset the fisheries, and as a result their ability to provide advice has been restricted. My intention in addressing you is to draw your attention to this. Hopefully, I can also propose useful ideas about how to address this problem.

Please note that I've written all of this out, and I'm leaping through parts of it in order to get to the things that I find are more critical.

The Chair: Dr. Willison, you can be assured that we'll review it word for word. We appreciate the fact that you're tightening it up somewhat so that we have some opportunity for questions.

Dr. Martin Willison: Right.

As a result, fisheries science itself is intrinsically subjective. This is something I'm very interested in--what's wrong with science itself. One of our problems is that we tend to think of science as being highly objective. Most of it is not.

I'm a long-term scientist. I've been a scientist virtually all of my life, and I know that science is predominantly very subjective. All applied sciences are absolutely subjective. The subjectivity relates to the nature of the questions asked, not the answers given but the questions asked, and we have to recognize that.

I want to leap forward to illustrate with examples of what I'm trying to say, because examples usually allow us to understand the point that's being made.

I want to first start by quoting a good friend of mine, Dr. Ken Mann. Ken is in his seventies now, and he was director of the marine ecology laboratory at Bedford Institute. Ran Myers, who spoke before me and is a colleague of mine, mentioned Ken, or mentioned the marine ecology laboratory and what a great laboratory it used to be. Ken was its director when it existed. It was eliminated. He is now a scientist emeritus with DFO.

The Government of Canada gave him a merit award, and his widely used textbook, Ecology of Coastal Waters with Implications for Management, is now in its second edition. So Ken is a very well-known and widely respected scientist.

I asked him, “Ken, what would you say if you were there?” Actually what I said was, “Why don't you go talk to the committee?” He said, “No, Martin, I'm going to keep my head down.” He's in his seventies. Why would he be keeping his head down? That was the first thing I asked myself, but not him; why wouldn't he do this?

He said:

For the longest time, the Marine Environmental Science Division, to which I am attached, was not included in the Science branch.

It's the science branch that provides the scientific advice for setting catch quotas. In other words, when DFO was overseeing the collapse of the cod fishery, marine environmental science was officially of no relevance to the fishery. That was what was going on. Marine environmental science was in a different division and they didn't provide advice.

Ken also wrote:

In the 1970s I was regarded as something of a maverick for advocating the ecosystem approach to ecology--now ecosystem-based fisheries management is an in-phrase in Ottawa.

Now, you'll recognize that, right? Ecosystem-based fisheries management is in? Well, Ken was talking about this back in the 1970s, before he was even director of the marine ecology lab, and long before that lab was closed.

Then he goes on to say:

In 1978, during a lecture tour of Australia, I took a lot of flak for advocating an ecosystem approach to the Great Barrier Reef, now it's possibly one of the best managed reefs in the world.

It's the good old Canadian phenomenon that we export expertise, it gets adopted somewhere else, and then later on we have to re-import it from where we had originally taken it.

It's worth noting, by the way, that the Great Barrier Reef is now a marine park, but it's a park in which fisheries continue to be exploited. As a representative of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, I'm very interested in marine parks. We should recognize that parks are part of the fisheries. Don't let us imagine that we should do the old thing and set that to one side because it's not really relevant.

In fact, when I proposed to come here and speak, I was asked, “But where's the relevance?” The relevance is that actually within parks, at least in some parts of the world, we still catch fish.

Ken also wrote:

My coping strategy in old age is to note who is currently my immediate boss and be sure to be accountable to him/her, but otherwise

--and I want you to note this--

to keep my head down and do my best to keep the next generation of marine scientists well informed about advances in the field.

Other scientists I have talked to also refer to this pervasive culture in DFO that results in the “keep my head down” response among scientists. This is a military analogy, and it's appropriate, but the military culture is completely antithetical to the pursuit of science. Science advances only because scientists are able to challenge existing paradigms and argue openly, without fear, all of the possible alternatives.

Let me note that I have Ken's permission to provide you with these quotes. I wrote and asked him if was okay for me to say this, and indeed it was.

¸ (1405)

I now want to talk about other and particularly young scientists. I know several young scientists within DFO. One young scientist informant told me that the cultural norm in DFO is to not rock the boat, and that this cultural norm intimidates scientists. It was suggested that the primary question the science branch should be tasked with is, how have fisheries changed marine ecosystems? That's what the scientists should be asking, how have fisheries changed marine ecosystems? If you ask scientists to do this, they will start to give you the kinds of answers you need to hear.

To do this would also help overcome the pervasive denial among old-timers that the management system itself has failed. They deny that there is something wrong with their management system. But there is something wrong with it.

I also heard that there is very limited capacity for scientists to have input into fisheries management and that this leads to a sense of frustration. Scientific input is so tightly controlled through the resource allocation process, known as the RAP sessions, that they can't really say what they need to say. This RAP process is done stock by stock, so ecosystem-based science has no avenue for input. To do this would raise the morale of the scientists and improve the quality of communication. One of my informants reported being told to “not speak about your opinions outside the department”. Young scientists are told to keep their mouths shut.

With respect to management of fisheries and oceans...or, no, let's leap over that bit.

There are, of course, many opinions on the nature of the trouble that begets the oceans. When these opinions are based on primary observations, they are always valuable. I understand that you were told this morning that it's an important thing to do, to listen to local ecological knowledge, to absorb local ecological knowledge. I'm strongly in favour of that. This does indeed need to be done.

I'd like to talk briefly about a couple of cases that will help to illustrate this, one of which I know more about than the other.

The first one, which I know less about, is seals and cod. I'm glad to hear that Ran Myers was here before me and spoke about this, so I can move over the first part and go down to my fourth paragraph on seals and cod.

The current popularity of blaming seals for our woes is well illustrated by what happened at Smith Sound this year. I imagine you're familiar with this. This is where lots of cod floated to the top, frozen dead. Frozen cod floated to the surface in large numbers and the dead fish were harvested by the local people. A relatively small number were taken by seals. Some people believe the seals had chased the cod to their deaths, and this opinion was given credibility by a DFO science spokesperson.

The numbers clearly belied this, however. There were too many cod and too few seals for that to have been a reasonable explanation. I mean, it was reasonable from the point of view of the people who were looking at it and trying to think of an explanation, but it wasn't reasonable based upon hard science.

Debbie MacKenzie, who is here sitting behind me, proposed alternatively that hypoxic--that is, low oxygen--conditions at the bottom of Smith Sound might have forced the fish to migrate into freezing water. The choice for the fish might have been between suffocating to death or freezing to death.

Now, I don't know what the truth is, needless to say. You can't say what the truth is unless you do some decent science. But the decent science must be based on the appropriate range of questions, not a limited range of questions.

We know that hypoxia is a common condition in enclosed or semi-enclosed waters close to human settlement, but as far as I know, this very reasonable hypoxia hypothesis that was put forward by Debbie MacKenzie has not been tested by DFO. Instead, Debbie has been treated as a problem--I imagine she will confirm this if you want to ask her--because she has opinions that differ from the ones that are politically acceptable within DFO.

My point is that if marine environmental science and fisheries science were actually properly integrated, I think the environmental conditions in Smith Sound would have been examined already. That is, there would have been somebody out there already doing the obvious--measuring how much oxygen there is in the bottom; asking questions about why the cod actually aggregate there; and why they froze. They shouldn't have frozen, not really; they have antifreeze and shouldn't freeze. So what was it about those cod that made them die?

¸ (1410)

They died last year, too, and they died the year before, although not in such large numbers. We didn't have environmental marine scientists out there; we had stock assessors out there, and they didn't ask the right questions. Science is very subjective, and we need to let the scientists be free, free to ask the appropriate questions, and not muzzle them with respect to the questions they ask, as we do now.

Let me now turn to corals and fish habitat. I realize I'm eating up quite a lot of time here, and I'm sorry, but this is something I know a lot about. I was directly involved in--and in fact I spoke previously to this committee about the issue--deep sea corals and their suitability as fish habitat, and how important it is that we protect them.

The closure to fishing of an area directly south of Nova Scotia in order to protect corals was a direct result of the fact that I wrote to the minister in December 2000 and said, “Do this, and this is why you should do it.” I copied it to Wayne Easter, who was chair of this committee at that time, and I also sent it to the regional director general. Things then unfolded after I explained all of the rationale.

It is amazing to me that DFO had not dealt with this issue previously. It wasn't that we didn't know they were there. In the 1800s we knew there were deep sea corals off Nova Scotia. In the 1800s we believed they were important for fish. But DFO science hadn't actually done anything about it.

Marine ecology is founded partly on coral reef ecology, so I can say with confidence that corals provide habitat for fish. Even if I can't answer detailed questions about how, when, and where, I can say with confidence that it's true. I don't need to have all of the fine details in order to be able to say that you have to protect habitat if you're going to have fish.

However, what actually happened with corals is really eye-opening. In order for this issue to be taken seriously by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, in 1997 the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, working on advice from hook and line fishermen...and it's exactly the kind of thing Pat was talking about, fishermen interacting with scientists. But where were those scientists from? Not DFO. No, they were not even university scientists. They interacted with members of the Ecology Action Centre, who contacted me, brought me into the process, and a small research grant was obtained. From where? Not from DFO but from the Nova Scotia Museum. That kicked off a major change in the way in which we managed habitat.

But look at what it was--a small, local, environmental organization that got a grant from a museum in order to deal with an issue of fundamental importance to fisheries. It's disgraceful, to be honest with you, that we should have a situation in which it needed that kind of movement. There was no federal involvement. This was a provincial initiative to protect a federal responsibility that was done by a local community organization, because the scientists within DFO were never asked to consider the questions, “What about the habitat? What about the coral?”

They could have done it. They could have done it decades ago. But because the science is organized around the idea that there are individual stocks, that you assess the size of the stock, and that then you divide the quota, you don't think about anything except the individual stock. That's what the scientists do because that's what they're asked to do.

That's a failure in the manner in which the department is organized, around thinking that is too narrow-minded and based on assumptions that are false--that is, the robustness of the ocean.

Let me move to the end. I have a series of recommendations for you. There are four of them. Let me tell you what these are.

I recommend first that you provide an opportunity for DFO scientists to present opinions directly to you and the public. Do not do this through the filter of DFO. It won't work. This parliamentary committee itself or the minister's advisory committee might be a suitable vehicle. DFO science staff are unlikely to speak to you directly by means of this forum.

Let me ask you, has any DFO staff scientist come and talked to you here?

¸ (1415)

Not publicly? Okay.

Why not?

The Chair: I think we have somebody coming in Moncton, do we not? We have one scientist coming in Moncton.

Dr. Martin Willison: Is this an official spokesperson or an unofficial spokesperson?

The Chair: Well, why don't you tell us; the name is Dr. Mikio Moriyasu.

Dr. Martin Willison: No, I don't know him.

The Chair: He's head of the snow crab section.

Dr. Martin Willison: Okay. He's the head of a section.

The Chair: And I think that makes your point, that he's the head of a section.

Dr. Martin Willison: Yes, and you'll get the official line, but you need to hear from the guys who are actually there, the ones who are there disturbing. They're the ones you need to hear from, because they're the ones with contrary opinions, rather than the official line.

Now, this idea isn't mine. This idea comes directly from Ken Mann, who was not willing to come and appear before you. He told me, get them to do this, get them to go and talk to the staff, and not through DFO, because then they'll only hear the official line. He said you should find out what the unofficial line is from the people who are in there, in the science branch, so that you can find out what's wrong with the science branch and why it isn't addressing the appropriate questions.

So that was my first recommendation, and it came from somebody else.

Second, I recommend that you ensure that the science branch is not as beholden to fisheries management as is currently the case. I'm a strong supporter of the oceans branch and the oceans approach. I think DFO is improving as a result of the oceans strategy, or potentially will improve, and has improved as a result of the passage of the Oceans Act. We're on a good track there. We need to make sure, though, that the science branch provides good service. Most of the science branch efforts still go to fisheries management, not to oceans, but if more of it goes to oceans, I think we'll move more in the right direction.

So that's my second point. That will allow more marine environmental science to get into the agenda and less of it focused on single-stock management.

Third--and this is my idea, one I recommend strongly to you--create a cadre of individuals whose jobs fall between the separate solitudes within DFO. The various branches communicate with each other poorly and don't understand each other well. This can be overcome by having people whose job is to have a foot in more than one camp. I call these “integrators”, and these integrators should be in oceans and science, science and fisheries, and oceans and fisheries.

I'm an example of somebody who's an integrator. I have one foot in the Faculty of Science at the university and one foot in the Faculty of Management. As I say, I'm the only person who does that. I'm the only person who goes to the seminars in the Faculty of Science and then goes to the seminars in the Faculty of Management and says, “The scientists have something to tell you guys over here in management about that, and vice-versa.” You need people who do that.

As far as I know, in DFO there are people who do this informally, but there are no people whose jobs are specifically to act as intermediaries between the different sections. So they should have some of those.

I do know one young person recently appointed there who is doing this. Whether it's her job or not, she's actually doing this. She was in fact the author of the report from the Ecology Action Centre. That's another good sign, that somebody who wrote the Ecology Action Centre's report on corals got hired by DFO and is now acting as somebody in this intermediary position. That's a good sign. But let's formalize that, and not do it informally.

The last proposal is encourage DFO to evolve so that habitat conservation and the ecosystem approach are given sufficient attention in all matters relating to marine management, including fisheries management. In this regard, DFO should pay particular attention to developing a strong and positive working relationship with other government departments, such as the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Here, of course, I have my CPAWS hat on. The national marine conservation areas approach is, for example, one of the most hopeful signs I have seen that we can now begin to move in a more positive direction with respect to oceans management and fisheries management, these two being integrated. Canada's oceans strategy, although burdened with implicit contradictions, is another such hopeful sign. So I do hope that DFO will begin to work in a positive and collaborative manner with Heritage Canada in the creation of national marine conservation areas.

¸ (1420)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor, for that insightful presentation.

I will go with questions now.

Mr. Wood, any questions?

Mr. Bob Wood: Not right now.

The Chair: All right.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'll start with Mr. Willison, and then I'll move on to Ms. King.

You wrote an article, sir, which we have a copy of, on March 13. It says quite clearly:

Despite declining fish landings, about a third of all fish that are caught are needlessly dumped over the sides of fishing boats. That's not counting the destruction of sponges, corals, and other “marine trash” that is literally shovelled overboard....Government subsidies often encourage these wasteful practices.

If you were the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, within Canada's economic zone what would you do to stop that? Would it be the elimination of dragging technology, going back to more hook and line technology, or do you have other viewpoints on this?

Dr. Martin Willison: That's a very good question, and I'm not sure I can give you an answer that is necessarily exactly what you would want to hear...well, it may be what you would want to hear. I don't absolutely know. However, yes, dragging, relatively speaking, is a wasteful technology. It's not possible to eliminate bycatch in such a case, particularly not the bycatch of habitat-forming animals. I mean, there are these excluders that they can put on, but the excluders don't stop the damage to the habitat-forming organisms on the bottom.

So, yes, there's eliminating or reducing mobile gears, particularly ensuring that they're used in habitats where they do minimal damage such as on the tops of the banks, for example; much less damage would be done there than over the edges of the banks.

There are other fisheries that are relatively wasteful. Pelagic longlining, for example, is a relatively wasteful technology, and I think we could improve that. Harpooning for swordfish is one example.

One of the things that I've thought of and that has never, as far as I know, been implemented is that some of the stock assessment work could be done for the hook and line fisheries. It's now moving down to the more sustainable fisheries, such as benthic longlining. All of the stock assessments that are done for benthic longlining are still done using trawling as the way in which you assess the stocks. I think it would be far better to actually assess the stocks using hook and line technology.

Fishermen down in southwest Nova, for example, constantly tell me that you can't catch two haddock for every cod; they have this quota that you can take two haddock and you can take one cod, but that's because there are two haddock for each cod. When you run a trawler through and you catch them all, that's the relative ratio. But the catchability using hook and line is determined not by how many fish there are but how attracted they are to the bait.

So if you want to know how to assess the ratio of cod to haddock for a hook and line fisherman, you have to assess the stock using a hook and line method, which you could do in a sentinel fishery, and then you divide it up that way.

In other words, you need to do the science in an appropriate manner for the fishery that you're promoting. At the moment we do the science in a manner that is effectively best geared to dragging technology, not best geared to hook and line technology.

I assure you, there are still hook and line fishermen. I'm supportive of hook and line fishermen, but there are still those guys throwing them overboard.

¸ (1425)

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Sir, you and your comrade had mentioned the Great Barrier Reef, and how there is some fishing activity within that park. If and when the Sable Gully gets protected status, with your experience, and that of your colleague's, would you recommend to the minister, if you were advising him, that some form of fishing would be allowed within the gully? Or would you make it, as some people are referring to, a completely no-fish zone in order to give the fish, like those of the Hamilton bank in Labrador, an area where they can be protected and don't touch them?

Dr. Martin Willison: My answer very clearly would be no fishing inside the gully. It's not a very big area. It's not as if you're closing off.... I mean, we're talking about a big postage stamp, but a postage stamp, relative to the size of the Scotian Shelf as a whole.

The postage stamps that we need to create in order to have adequate protection of fish stocks must be bigger. Science says you could certainly close down half of the ocean and catch more fish than we do now by exploiting it all. I mean, the models are just no problem. They show you that perfectly well. So why would you take one little postage stamp and say, “We're still only going to take just the core of that little postage stamp and exclude it from there”? If we're going to make a step in this direction, let's do it properly and adequately.

I have no doubt at all that no fishing anywhere within it would make the best sense. The only reason you wouldn't do that is a political compromise in order to try to quietly oppose to the point that they'll allow you to get at least some way there.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay.

Madam, I just want to say that your presentation was one of the more positive we've seen in the last year. It's funny, but when women appear before the committee representing fishing interests, we seem to have a great...like your smile there.

But I do have a serious question. You had asked about resources. If one of us were to tap the minister on the shoulder and ask him if had his chequebook on him, what would be the amount we'd be asking for in order to maintain the great cooperation you have between fishermen and scientists? We know a lot of that exists, but we also have heard that there is still angst between the two. You're trying to create--well, you've been around for awhile--an organization where we break the walls down, have a beer.

And I like the idea of going for a beer, by the way.

¸ (1430)

Ms. Patricia King: We have a keg at our annual conference.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: All right, let's get at 'er.

What do you need in terms of resources?

Ms. Patricia King: Well, it would be great to have an annual grant of about $150,000 to know that we can do the basic stuff we are doing now. It would maintain our basic operations and the staff we need, and then we could continue to try to tap into funds for special projects.

For example, we heard, as a result of the sentinel review, that the money cut from the different sentinel programs throughout Atlantic Canada is supposed to be going into a new cooperative science fund, and that's $1.6 million. We were already running a very efficient sentinel program. Actually, ours is underfunded by $50,000 already. So we're hoping to tap into some of that money to top up our sentinel program so that we can maintain it and not have to cut it, which is what we're facing, being $50,000 short, and to also tap into that source of money as a potential way to maintain this operation.

So out of $1.6 million, if we could have $150,000, it's not asking for a lot out of that pot. It would allow us some security. It would allow us to lever other money as well. When we try to go after money from other funding agencies, it always helps if you have some money in the pot already to do the sharing arrangements.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Ma'am, in your examples you showed mostly Nova Scotia examples, but is it possible, with the right amount of funding, this could be expanded to make it, say, an Atlantic Canada, Nunavut, Quebec type of thing, or something similar around the west coast?

Ms. Patricia King: It's interesting that you ask that. This past November, Worldwide Wildlife Fund Canada organized a speakers tour for us, where we went out to B.C. to teach them how to do this. They want to set this up. They invited us out as part of their speakers series and we did a series throughout the fishing community and at the Pacific Biological Station to explain how we did it and how they could go about setting it up.

In terms of animosity and trust, they're basically where we were back in 1993, when we first started working on this.

They asked us originally, before they invited us out, if we would set up a chapter out there. We explained to them that one of important things about this organization is that it has to be grassroots-driven. On your board of directors, on your committees, you need the fishermen and the scientists from the areas in which you're doing your research. So we told them we wouldn't set up a chapter but we would help them set up their own. It had to be driven from their area.

We have also done presentations in Newfoundland. They're looking at using us as a model, and for a number of years have been trying to figure out how they can implement something like this. But we've also said to them that for me to go in and run their organization for them wouldn't be as effective as me helping them develop their own.

So you would have...maybe you could call them “chapters” of the FSRS around Canada, and some sort of umbrella. You would each have your own separate research priorities, research mandates, and your own committees within your own geographic area to make sure the grassroots presence is maintained.

We don't want to get so big that we're trying to take on too much. Then you get into, well, here the snow crab fishery is important, here it's lobster, here it's this, here it's that. You don't want to get so big that you lose your focus.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chair: And you don't want to get so big that you have to move into 200 Kent Street.

Ms. Patricia King: Exactly. Nothing against living in Ottawa, but....

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Roy, do you have any questions?

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Yes. I was just about to raise my hand, Mr. Chairman.

This is not really a question, but I look at what is happening and I find you do extraordinary work. But I must say that it seems to me your society plays a role... It is as if one needed to create a society between a minister and his flock in order for them to understand each other and to get along.

I have a problem with this in our society. It seems to me that scientists, among others, who are paid by the State should be beholden to citizens. In real fact, scientists paid by Fisheries and Oceans are beholden to the fishing industry and the processing industry.

I have in my riding one of the Fisheries and Oceans institutes, the Institut Maurice-Lamontagne. I have to tell you that ever since it was created, it has been very, very difficult to break down the scientific wall—and I relate with what the gentleman mentioned earlier—and it seems part of the culture of scientists not to communicate with the public as long as there are no guaranteed results or without being able to speak without absolute certainty and even then, always with lots of qualifications.

Indeed, this is an attitude for which I blamed the head of science in Ottawa when she came before us. I told her that she never says anything that is not in the conditional mode because she never seems sure about anything. It makes it very difficult for the public because the people want certainties and scientists are unable to provide any certainties as you explained very well.

You talk about young scientists. The Institut Maurice-Lamontagne is a very young institute in the scientific area and the happenings on the inside that you explained are very true. I personally know some of these young people. There is one who lives on the same street as I. He goes door to door with me every year for the Canadian Cancer Society and I know him very well. The situation they have inside is extremely difficult. And it is the same everywhere. It is true at the Institut Maurice-Lamontagne in the fisheries area, it is true in forestry research and also within the large universities. There is a boss and the boss takes ownership of your research and he makes decisions. This happens in Fisheries and Oceans and everywhere else.

What you describe is absolutely true but it is a mindset that needs to be changed and I believe Ms. King is succeeding in changing this culture. It would be a good idea to export your type of society to Quebec and other regions where there are Fisheries and Oceans scientists.

This was my only comment.

¸ (1435)

[English]

The Chair: Would anyone like to comment on the comment?

Ms. Patricia King: It was interesting. When we first started this there was a pilot project done in 1993 where there was a series of meetings. A fisherman and a plant owner who represented fishermen went out and took two scientists with them. These scientists--Kees Zwanenburg and Peter Hurley--were going out on their own time. You may have heard of them; they're from BIO. It was a lot of their own initiative. They had to sell their bosses on the idea of, well, let me go and do this. At first it had to be on their own time; it was their own initiative to get this going. Then eventually the higher-ups started buying into the concept and allowing people...okay, if it's society-related you can do it as part of your job.

It did take some time to build that, and it was only thanks to those initial scientists who were willing to take the risk and go out on their own, on something they believed in and worked with us on, that helped make this all happen.

Dr. Martin Willison: I agree with Patty. In fact, if I were to give Patty a list of the people that I know and interact with well, it would be very similar to the list she would give me. There is a limited number of people who, of their own volition, because they believe it's the right thing to do, are the ones who interact with the public and are really engaged. Most people are doing it as a job.

Unfortunately, I think the culture of DFO is such that it's very difficult to get yourself into that position. Only the special people can do that and only those who are willing to step outside the box a little bit and who may be willing to take some flak, as Ken Mann put it.

The Chair: Mr. Elley, do you have any questions?

Mr. Reed Elley: Just a brief one.

I just heard from my assistant in Ottawa that Roger Grimes, the premier of Newfoundland, has just held a press conference. In the press conference he's indicated that he wants shared jurisdiction of the fisheries, that both federal and provincial governments would administer the salt water fishery and that it would be entrenched constitutionally.

Do you think shared jurisdiction, provincially and federally, would in any way help the atmosphere in DFO?

Dr. Martin Willison: I personally rather doubt it, but that would depend so much upon the nature of the government in a province. I think there would be times when one could imagine a province where it would work, but unfortunately the downside would be that every now and then you would have a provincial government that would really not work collaboratively with the federal government on it, and you'd end up with a battle over resource allocation. I think it would be more problematic and not a good idea, personally, but I can't say I have ever thought of it before.

¸ (1440)

Mr. Reed Elley: It would probably give Patty's organization a whole lot more work.

Dr. Martin Willison: Yes, that's true.

Ms. Patricia King: I am thinking more of the taxpayers' money and not the bureaucracy, and it would be harder for me to access funding.

Mr. Reed Elley: Maybe.

The Chair: I have just been advised--it's my fault, I guess--that we absolutely must vacate this room by four. That is one hour and 20 minutes from now and we have two witnesses to go. So I am going to have to terminate this fascinating....

Professor, is there any chance you could give us that list of people you were thinking of? You were saying you could exchange lists, the two of you. Was that figuratively or literally?

Dr. Martin Willison: I was talking with Patty that in fact there is a smaller group, but you would like a list of people we would recommend within DFO to have a chat with?

The Chair: Yes.

Dr. Martin Willison: I'd be delighted to do that.

The Chair: Would you, please? You don't have to do it now. You can just provide it to the clerk.

Dr. Martin Willison: Sure. Can I have a day to make up the list? I might call a few people.

¸ (1445)

The Chair: Of course. And thank you very much for two excellent presentations.

I'll call on Myles Kehoe now.

Welcome to you, Mr. Kehoe. When we were last in this area we heard from you and your colleague, and we were very impressed with the testimony. We were disturbed by it and we didn't forget about it. I remember seeing you on television and the issues that were brought up at that time. So we are looking forward to you giving us an update. Hopefully, you have some positive news, but I guess we'll find out in the 20 minutes that you assure me it will take for you to do your paper.

Please, go ahead.

Mr. Myles Kehoe (Myles & Associates): Okay. Thank you very kindly for allowing Michael and I to present this brief to you.

First of all, since our presentation to the House of Commons last year we've established contacts and shared information with key researchers in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, and the United States.

In July 2002 members of the National Energy Board were asked to present some information on the environmental affects of these military dump sites on the licence areas and we were refused--just point blank refused.

In August 2000 our petition to the Auditor General of Canada under section 22 elicited a non-technical and non-scientific response from the Ministers of Fisheries, Natural Resources, Defence, Foreign Affairs, Environment, and Health. No immediate action was taken to ensure that deep sea dragging or petroleum resource activities will not disturb these chemical, biological, and conventional dump sites off our coast.

These non-specific responses were identical to those sent to your committee here, Mr. Chairperson, and to the Auditor General's office. It was stated also with the spokesman for Environment, Paul Topping.

On September 18, Myles & Associates, along with DND Headquarters Lieutenant Chris Hough, Judith Bennett, and Mr. Kyle Penney, staff officer from DND here in Halifax, presented on the topics to the CNSOPB working group. Our focus was the fact that Hunt Oil revised their environmental impact assessment to include seismic testing--that would be compressed air waves directly over a military priority one class dump site. This site was one of several identified in DND's commissioned report. They say there was anecdotal evidence suggesting that mustard gas was in one of these sites.

Hunt Oil, in its EIA report, estimated that Sydney Bight is the home of 16,000 tons of mustard gas, 7,500 tons of lucite, and numerous barge loads of nerve gas, most of which are uncharted.

In January 2002 Hunt Oil's representative said on CBC Radio that basically this was no concern to his company. At this same meeting we learned that National Defence had instituted a warfare agent disposal working group to study these issues and had allocated $9 million for the project. The timeline was five years to identify, catalogue, and conduct risk assessment on a site-by-site basis. The project has no remediation components. DND Headquarters is aware of Hunt Oil's and Corridor Resources' plan to conduct activities in these areas within the year.

Although we recommended to the CNSOPB that DND information environment staff officer Kyle Penney be the lead officer in Atlantic Canada on this topic, the board-appointed scientific review panel invited instead a member of the fleet diving unit who had absolutely no expertise of any kind on these types of dump sites. That was quite shocking to us.

The findings they gave to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board were that “no additional action is required”. That is completely unfounded and really just alarming to me. This recommendation was subsequently accepted by the CNSOPB's ad hoc board and the board itself. It sets a precedent here for the regulatory boards in Canada that we had all better start looking at very closely.

Myles & Associates applied and was granted intervenor status to the EnCana project. It was like a public review hearing scheduled in April. EnCana basically withdrew and stopped the project, so we didn't comply.

We sent a list of nine questions. I gave the secretary, Mr. Chairperson, a folder like this with all our references in it, and I would appreciate if all members get a copy of it.

Over the past years, access to information requests to various government departments have yielded to us important information. We have learned that Canada produced shells and bombs charged with chemical agents besides thickened mustard. They also used an anti-corrosion coating inside and outside of these shells.

We must remember when we're talking about these munitions dump sites that we had three different types of dumping. Approximately 20% of all munitions in Canada had chemical or biological munitions in them. Out of that 20%, the majority were in shells. The shells had a rust coating on them inside and out. The steel of shells is different from the barrels.... First, that was dumped in the barges here off Halifax, that 3,000.... But then you had your bombs. A lot of it was in bombs. Bombs deteriorate secondly, but the steel shells are possibly just starting to deteriorate now, and that's a big problem. Research all over the world would indicate that.

¸ (1450)

To complicate matters, European and anecdotal Canadian evidence suggests that these munitions were not dumped in any particular dump sites. They were dumped over the side.

We also presented archival information on the injuries resulting from munitions drifts. We are very concerned still about the dump sites off the Magdalene Islands, but since then we have found out that in that whole area of the upper gulf we have a lot of dump sites that should be looked into. Nobody is actually charting any of them.

We suggested to the CNSOPB that experts on drift and siltation over marine chemical munitions dump sites be contacted for scientifically accurate estimates of the nature and magnitude of this problem. Instead, the board appointed a public review panel that had absolutely no experience in the type of corrosion on these shells. They actually had no various configurations of buoyancy, escapement. They had very little or no knowledge at all of sediment samplings around chemical dump sites to assess the depth or perimeters of toxicity of the sediment.

The Minister of National Defence assured our members of Parliament in December 2002 that DND shared information of ocean disposal sites with the CNSOPB for the use of their approval process. Why they are not sharing it with the rest of Canadians and with the fishing industry, which is out there all the time, is completely baffling to me.

In spite of this assertion, they just went ahead and opened up those zones for oil exploration activities. Furthermore, the Minister of Fisheries responded to concerns of our members of Parliament by ensuring that the creation of exclusion zones around these sites may occur as part of DND's action plan.

DND is responsible for charting those sites. DND is completely incompetent in this jurisdiction. I fully believe that, because we have a 3,000-ton mustard gas site off Sable Island here that we have coordinates for and it is not charted. They have no plans to chart it.

We learned late last year that Environment Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans reviewed the public review process and Hunt Oil's EI reports, and basically they did not even look at the military dump issue, which is completely startling to me. They should have.

Environment told me they looked at birds only and nothing else. Fisheries and Oceans did not look at the dumps whatsoever. We have a real problem with what they're actually doing out there.

Neither federal department provided any comments on the topics despite the jurisdictional responsibilities of health and safety to fishermen and the marine environment. They have full knowledge of the issue because they're working on a joint group in Canada right now with DND, so they would have knowledge of these dump sites. By not doing it, they're lapsing in their responsibilities under the Oceans Act, in my belief.

Last November when I was in Europe I had the great pleasure of talking with Dr. Tine Missiaen at the Renard Centre of Marine Geology at the University of Gent. Dr. Tine was co-coordinator of the international workshop on chemical munitions dump sites in coastal environments held at the University of Gent in 2000. This workshop brought together international experts in the fields of marine chemical munitions dump sites. Their recommendations and conclusions are contained in recent publications, which we have documented in the book. You can get the documents if you so choose.

In light of the responsibility to the environmental petition and the recent regulatory approvals of the petroleum resource exploration directly over chemical weapons and munitions sites twelve miles off the coast of Cape Breton, we take this opportunity to compare European experiences on this topic with our country's.

Disturbance of munitions. In the 1990s thousands of small chemical and toxic explosive devices washed up on the shores of Northern Ireland and Scotland. While I was over there I was talking to people, and what's quite alarming is that your committee and the rest of Canadians were told many times that we didn't have information on these topics. Everybody in Scotland knows about them. People don't even let their kids on the beaches any more. Fishermen know about them. Why are we in the back woods here in Canada? I don't understand. It's alarming. When I was over there people were telling me they just don't let their kids on the beaches any more.

¸ (1455)

In response to my petition the Minister of Fisheries indicated that the Offshore Petroleum Board and Natural Resources are the agencies responsible for marine pollution resulting from offshore exploration. Neither agency has demonstrated knowledge or experience or has the resources at hand to deal with accidental exposure to crews by chemical weapons unleashed in the marine environment. We have no experience; we have no backup if this stuff starts washing up on our shores. We will find in future documents that some things...not necessarily chemical weapons, but a lot of emissions have been washing up for years.

Exposure to fishermen of chemical weapons. Large numbers of incidents were reported by Danish fishermen in the Baltic Sea--450 incidents reported since 1976. They have policies now where fishermen are compensated if they find shells and things like that, just so people will understand. In Sweden, where such policies don't exist, there are hardly any reports. There are some, but not enough.

The official Government of Canada's response is that no incidents of material from dump sites being caught in fishing gear are known to have occurred in Canadian waters. Well, I don't think they are talking to the right people because career fishermen have totally different experiences, and, actually, so does National Defence. They were doing cleanup operations in Newfoundland. They are looking at different sites all around Atlantic Canada. We have some problems, and we have had some in the past. Military ordinance has been washing up on shores in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia for years, and fishermen have been gathering them.

We have DFO boats that actually gather--when they are doing their tests for different reasons they have come across them and just tossed them overboard. Their crews were told to toss them overboard.

Rationale for the avoidance of munitions dump sites. Attendees at the 2001 Gent workshop heard that a number of scientists and organizations believe it is best to leave these dump sites undisturbed, especially in deep waters. In 1994 Helsinki recommended that chemical weapons dumps in the Baltic Sea be left undisturbed and concluded that it poses no immediate danger to the marine environment, but since then there have been numerous reports--I have a whole suitcase full of them--that the large number of incidents reported in the area surveyed totally contradict those findings.

Scientists feel there is much more work needed. There are too many uncertainties. For instance, the dump sites are not known. We don't understand the marine environment; we don't understand the drift, where they are, what kind of siltation. We have to look at the different kinds of currents, the siltation, the water quality before we start really understanding these dumps.

In March the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board granted full regulatory approval for exploration activities directly over a dump site in 200 feet of water 12 miles from a populated area. Great. Smart move.

DFO recently opened the--

The Chair: What populated area is this?

Mr. Myles Kehoe: Glace Bay.

DFO recently opened the southern gulf of St. Lawrence to dragging activities in full knowledge that these areas hold huge amounts of UXOs of all kinds. The risk posed to the fishing crew and the marine environment is unacceptable. International fleets were issued permits to fish here off Halifax, off Sable Island, and different parts--it's in your book. The permits were given for silver hake. In one of those sites there are 2,800 tons of mustard gas--1.2 million pounds. I personally phoned DFO once I got this little chart from them and tried to discuss it with them. The man told me never to phone him again. Period. That was here at the Bedford Institute.

In late 2000 Canada was asked by DND to sign a letter of indemnification should any unknown munitions be encountered in their proposed Deep Danuke project. They totally denied...they would not sign it.

Security concerns--and this is a real exciting one. In responding to my environmental petition to questions from your committee, Defence Minister McCallum stated that “security and safety concerns should preclude the release of exact site locations”. Lieutenant Chris Hough of DND told Radio Canada news that concerns of terrorism for September 11 meant that they couldn't really tell people; they couldn't chart them.

This closely mirrors the secrecy all through the whole process, since they put it there in the 1940s, to 1984 when it resurfaced as a question from the Department of Transport to them.

The interesting thing is that I went to Europe and I got lists of all kinds of dump sites in different countries. In Russia, Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavian countries, Norway--they're all charted.

One of the scientists in Europe gave me a number to call in the United States. I got 158 pages of all the dump sites in the United States, with their coordinates, with all the nuclear subs down and everything. We say here in Canada that we can't tell people where these dump sites are. Who is really running the show here? Is it the oil company or is it DND?

The MEDEA report is a very interesting report. We contacted National Defence when we found out about the report. We told National Defence to get the report and read it because there was some alarming information in it.

One of the key things in their report is that the potential threat to human health and safety includes the consumption of fish contaminated with arsenic, the capture of mustard lumps in troll nets by commercial fishermen, and the exposure of crews to chemical weapons agents during oil and gas exploration activities. We still said, boys, do what you want over these sites; we don't really care.

More safety concerns. The MEDEA report explains that the Baltic Sea experience clearly shows that if bottom trolling occurs, we're going to have some problems with mixing this stuff up. This U.S.-authored report further states that in the Russian Arctic seas there are no reports of fishermen encountering chemical weapons. That could be because a lot of those are charted.

That's what we're asking. We're asking very simple things. The 2001 Gent workshop describes sites that can be reached at low tide, and everybody knows them in the local population. I went over there and was amazed. It's open. People discuss it; they deal with it. Here we just hide from it and hope it goes away.

The Royal Swedish Coast Guard, the Irish Coast Guard, and government agencies on the Isle of Man issue information to fishermen about chemicals and conventional munitions. They show photos. They show first aid treatments and everything. I spoke to all of those folks, and it's very simple; we are completely in the dark ages here in Canada.

As a parliamentary committee, we urge you to ascertain the exact reasons why our government has adopted this cone of silence on this issue. Please press for the immediate identification of suspected chemical and conventional sites on civilian navigable charts. All you have to do is mark “Warning, danger area”. It's very simple. Your committee may wish to ascertain security status on the archival records of chemical weapons disposal at sea operations ordered by our government--actually the House of Commons--from 1945 to the 1970s.

Effects of chemical agents on the marine environment. The research proposed that the--

¹ (1500)

The Chair: You are at 18 minutes.

Mr. Myles Kehoe: Already? I'm going to put this down.

We have a real problem in Canada because our Department of Fisheries.... We are asking the House of Commons to intercede here. We're asking you to go to the Government of Canada and stop these oil and gas exploration leases around our coast in certain areas.

If I can get all these documents, and we pay for it all ourselves--I'm embarrassed that our government is making us pay for any access to information file we get. We do all the work ourselves, my friend Michael and myself. We get absolutely no help. We ask our scientists to help us. They refuse to talk to us. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans avoid us like the plague. And yet they're allowing all these things to happen.

In this document you're going to find that National Defence even thinks there is a link between these dump sites and the death of our fish species. We are seeing in other parts of this document that all the scientific community in Europe is starting to think we have some major problems with it entering the food chain, that it's entering the benthic system.

It's quite alarming. We had Department of Fisheries back in 2000 put out a press release that said they were baffled; they never heard in Canada that the fish were all dying. Well, check where the dump sites are. Check what's down there. Check what those things can do to fish.

Further directions.... We're going to skip all that because you guys have it and you're in a rush here. We're going to go to our recommendations.

We have some on page 11. First of all, we want--we're actually demanding the immediate charting of suspected chemical weapons and conventional dump sites on civilian navigable charts, as is the practice in Europe, Russia, Japan, and Australia. It's kind of neat, because Canada right now, if you listen to our foreign affairs department, is quite heavily involved in charting and documenting all the ones in Russia with the Americans. Who the heck is doing it here in Canada?

We recommend the establishment of exclusion zones for bottom fishing activities, petroleum resource exploration activities, around charted and suspected sites, until National Defence gives the okay. There's a big question here. The question of liability may arise if Parliament or the offshore regulatory boards have this information and the warnings but fail to act in a prudent fashion and human health and the environment are affected.

The third recommendation is for research by reputable independent agencies on the effects of chemical and conventional munitions and their breakdown products in the marine environment, especially in light of the preliminary reports associating fish mortality with toxic agents and their breakdown products.

We're also asking for monitoring of Canada's charted and suspected marine munitions dump sites by scientists recommended by Dr. Tine Missiaen from the institute in Belgium. We're looking at something that could create a confidence level here. It's standard international protocol. Japan does it, Australia.... We could really have some proactive work going on here.

We respectfully suggest that these steps occur before any petroleum resource exploration development or transmission be permitted to proceed off the coast of Atlantic Canada. We must remember that DND has been in the media many times indicating that they do not know and there is absolutely no scientific information indicating what seismic testing is going to do to any of these dump sites.

We have a film here--and we're going to get a copy and send it to you--with a DND official with his mouth open saying, “Well, I don't really know.” And we're still allowing this to happen. It's completely crazy.

We recommend, through this committee, intervention by the Parliament of Canada or the federal Supreme Court to reverse the recent regulatory approval by the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board and for exploration activities in the munitions-laden waters around Cape Breton until such risk assessments are provided by DND. We must add that European scientists should become involved in this with DND, because they have been covering it up since 1946, and that cover-up has to stop, as it has in most other countries.

¹ (1505)

The Canada-Nova Scotia Petroleum Board may have acted irresponsibly by granting regulatory approval for Hunt Oil and Corridor Resources for exploration activities over areas of charted and suspected chemical and conventional munitions. The precautionary principle may be a point of law, especially in view of potential liability and indemnification issues.

I wish to conclude with the sentiment of leading European scientists on this complex topic. Creating public awareness is of vital importance, and you ask any scientist in Europe and they will tell you that. Here, they just hang up the phone and say, don't ever speak to me again.

People are uncertain. There's doubt. There are reactions. The problem deserves the best of our capability both today and in times to come. We owe this to society in the future. Now more than ever, caution and common sense have to prevail.

We are honoured to speak here. I didn't think I'd have to rush through this, this quick. The fact is that I'm going to take a shot even at you guys. I believe the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans should be a lot more proactive on this issue. We have major problems on the west coast and on the east coast of Canada. We have to address them properly.

We have fish stocks out there that are dying hand over fist. We have dual-sex crab the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is doing tests and surveys on that nobody's talking about. You can't get the information. To get it you have to access information. That's completely nuts.

We have crab that light up at night. Great. Let's eat them. We have areas of fishing where there are so many problems down there that we're not really looking at. We have all kinds of issues that DFO, Environment, the Department of Health--they all have to start working together and being open.

We access tons of files. In the files they say don't send anything to Myles Kehoe until it goes to National Defence first. Let's get serious. This is an issue that we all should be working with and trying to help each other on.

Get the European scientists involved. We're asking your committee to ask National Defence to completely get involved with this, and the scientific community in Europe has told me personally, many of them, that they would be only too glad to come over here and help us. They called it hallucinating. When we told the chief scientist in Europe that Hunt Oil told them it's okay to do seismic testing, they called it hallucinating--“What is happening over there?” That's quite a thing.

We have an issue. My people are fishing people. They're all completely devastated because of what's happening in the fishing industries of Atlantic Canada. We have people rising up all over Atlantic Canada. We should be looking at this.

Our Department of Fisheries have to get off their butts--excuse the expression--and start looking at more than just.... When you ask them about the fish dying, the larval stage of the fish dying, they say “overfishing”. Well, what foreign fleet overfishes larval stages of cod? Seals don't even eat them. They're at the bottom, where some of these dumps are.

We have a problem. By being negligent, by not looking at this issue as a “could be”, they're irresponsible under the Oceans Act. They are supposed to be protecting fish and fish habitat. They are the ones responsible for charting sites. If they have a site off Halifax that has close to 3,000 tons of mustard gas and they are not charting it, and we have a foreign fleet fishing a Canadian quota, with Canadian boats in Canadian waters, and it's not charted on those charts, who's responsible for them if someone gets hurt?

We have problems, folks. We have to start looking at it.

¹ (1510)

The Chair: Can I stop you there now?

Mr. Myles Kehoe: I'm finished.

The Chair: It's so we have a chance to ask some questions. Thanks very much for the update.

We'll go to Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: As long as I've been a member of Parliament, I've heard of Myles and his associate's work in this regard, and I must say I'm always amazed at the passion he brings to this issue and the relevance he brings to the debate in terms of fish habitat protection.

Sir, you've said before that DND has allocated $9 million for the project to study this issue--the warfare agent disposal working group. You said their timeline is five years to identify, catalogue, and conduct risk assessment on a site-by-site basis.

Are you recommending to the committee that until that work is done and complete there be no seismic testing or oil and gas exploration in the areas they're looking at for possible dump sites?

Mr. Myles Kehoe: I recommend that, but I also recommend that there be absolutely no dragging operations of any kind in those areas and no diving of any kind.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Is it also your testimony then that until we can identify where these sites are, more or less they should be go-away zones? Don't come near them in terms of any activity at all? Until we have either the best available science or technology in terms of how to deal with these things.... You mentioned some indications are to just leave them, don't disturb them, leave them where they are. Some people have indicated to me before that maybe we somehow bring them up to the surface and dispose of them on land somehow. I'm not quite sure how that would happen.

In all of your research that you have done up to this point, you should be congratulated for taking this on.

What should we do?

¹ (1515)

Mr. Myles Kehoe: Mr. Stoffer, I was horrified when I read in the paper one day and heard on the media that a first nations community with government funding, with Human Factors Application Inc. and IITRI in Chicago, was going to come up to Cape Breton and clean the military dump sites in the Bras d'Or lakes and around Cape Breton--the mustard gas. I completely couldn't believe what I heard.

I immediately contacted the scientific community in Europe and the alarm went out. They sent us all the documents they had, saying don't touch them. By disturbing them we can be causing more.... What we don't realize is that the Canadian government is probably looking at encapsulating some of them now as we speak. In some parts of Italy they looked at encapsulating them with cement. There was a London convention that met last November on the issue here in Nova Scotia, and there are no reports out. They were probably looking at the same issue.

To disturb those sites--it might be okay to disturb some of them. If you knew it was just bombs, you could try to get them out, but they don't know. National Defence is looking right now at 1,200 sites off Atlantic Canada. They have one heck of a project.

The priority sites--we have a big dump site that is said to be in the Bras d'Or lakes. I can swim to that site, folks. It's a thousand feet down, but it's in the Bras d'Or lakes, for God's sake. We asked National Defence and everybody to make a priority of some of these sites; there should be a priority list put on that they look at these because of the effects it could have if something does muck up. Nobody is doing anything about it.

Some were recovered just after the war by the Germans to recycle the brass. We don't even know what's in all of these dump sites out here. If this was a bomb, the military would take it and they'd paint the top of it. Then they would know there were chemical or biological agents in it. We had lots and lots of them. A 60-pound mortar shell had 30 pounds of liquid chemical weapons and 30 pounds of TNT, basically. But then you look at the chemical weapons. The UXO sites themselves pose a huge hazard in the marine environment with the arsenic. That enters the subsoils, and that can affect fish species eventually.

So there are things like that where we really do advise getting the scientists over from Europe to help us. They are willing. But leave them there for now and stay away from the sites.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: You have said several times that we need to have the European scientists help us. Is it your contention that scientists in Canada--for example, with DFO or other departments--are either incapable or unwilling to--

Mr. Myles Kehoe: DFO is not only incapable, because they don't have the scientific credibility around the world to deal with them, but their labs cannot deal with it. That's in your docket. DFO states in these hearings of the committee that their labs can't touch the stuff. They don't know how to deal with it. National Defence has said in public that they can't deal with it. They don't know about it.

So we have to get people from Europe to help us. We have been at this for a long time, and, boy, you phone scientists all over the place here in Canada and they just don't know. These people have been working on it. Oil and gas exploration activity happened in Europe a long time ago--the process. We are just starting it here. We produced most of the chemical weapons in the world at the time and we dumped most of them at sea--it's all out there, everywhere, and the shells are just starting to corrode now. We might have a catastrophe that we have to get a handle on. We really do, folks.

The Chair: Monsieur Roy, do you have a question?

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Yes, but it will take only a minute, Mr. Chairman, because the Committee on Fisheries and Oceans heard from this group last year when we met here. We since got a new chairman but we discussed this subject in this committee. We were even supposed to bring in people from National Defence on this issue. We were supposed to do a follow-up but as was explained yesterday, the committee did not reconvene until December, I believe, for reasons you may know. By then, we had a lot on our plate.

What you have stated is true. I too gathered information from scientists. With regard to mustard gas, it seems indeed that this ordnance has been buried under a fair thickness of sediment in many cases and that working on these sites or disturbing the sites... The gas, obviously, is not liquid at those depths; it is more like Jello, if you need an analogy. So there is no way at this time for it to get out. So disturbing a site could give rise to a much more serious problem because there is quite a thick layer of sediment over these shells. So the best is not to touch the sites because we do not have the proper methods for removal.

Furthermore, I had asked you a question last year and you did not answer it this time. I asked you about radioactive sites. I believe these radioactive dumps are an even greater danger than those you have discussed because they are all over the place and they are much more dangerous than mustard gas. It is even more true—I mentioned it last year—on the West Coast. The amount of radioactive waste dumped into the ocean on the West Coast is much greater than in the East.

What you are talking about are what I could call conventional munitions and I would like to have information about radioactive waste dumps. I do not have it and you probably do not have it either because I have been unable to obtain it. I was told at National Defence when I contacted them that even they do not know where most of these sites are. Private companies have dumped this type of material and even National Defence does not know where these sites are located.

¹ (1520)

[English]

Mr. Myles Kehoe: Yes, we have been looking at that. We just found it by accident. The information I get, sir, is that we do have nuclear spent rods from St. Paul Island to Canso. They were dumped some time ago. It could explain why DFO is doing lots of studies on the dual sex of crab, because that's exactly what will happen. Most people will not talk about it. I don't know enough personally myself. I'm meeting with somebody in a couple of weeks who worked in the industry who is going to try to explain to me how it could affect things.

We had places like Chalk River. Why were they dumped here? You have to watch what people tell you sometimes, and you have to check 10 or 12 sources. But Chalk River, in 1997, destroyed a lot of mustard gas that wasn't supposed to exist. What it was doing in Chalk River, I don't know.

Any information I do find I will gladly give it to you. We're only two people, Michael and myself. We do a lot of work on this. I found a naval--and the person who told me, I will tell you, was a retired...he had a top security clearance with National Defence in both Canada and the United States. He personally told me that he was aware of and was on the boats when they dumped it from St. Paul Island to Canso. Canso is on the mainland of Nova Scotia.

So I have great problems with that because I really don't know how to address it. I don't.

The Chair: Mr. Kehoe, have you been invited to take part in this disposal working group or offer the information you have or anything like that?

Mr. Myles Kehoe: I don't think so, sir. I'll be very frank. Anything we find out we immediately send a copy to National Defence. It's our responsibility as Canadians. We are looking at this strictly as a health issue.

As I said before, we have spent thousands of dollars accessing files, and it's kind of stupid that we're doing this for a health issue that's affecting all of us and people are just charging the heck out of us. We have to raise that money by borrowing and begging people for it. It's not right. It really isn't right.

The information we get we share with anybody who asks. When we phoned the National Energy Board and sent them faxes to present to them, they just flat out said absolutely not, period. They wouldn't even do anything else. That's alarming. It really is.

The scientific community, when I went over there...the sun started to shine. Every single person I talked to had the time for me. They faxed me information. My daughter is in university over there. They made sure that--

¹ (1525)

The Chair: Over where?

Mr. Myles Kehoe: In Scotland. I was in Scotland and I was communicating from Scotland to all the different countries.

They were unbelievable. You meet with people, they drive you places, and they help you out. Can we help you? What can we do? Can we come to Canada? How do we do that to help you out? Here, it's like--

The Chair: Mr. Kehoe, have you made any headway with the House of Commons defence committee?

Mr. Myles Kehoe: I don't even know who they are.

The Chair: You've not presented to them? You've not written to them?

Mr. Myles Kehoe: We send letters and faxes to everybody. If you read the internal documents we get, I'm like the plague. They basically don't want to talk to us. We're just a thorn in their side. If they can't cover this up....

In 1984 there was supposed to be an investigation and a review of this. It was totally covered up by National Defence. DFO has known about it since 1984. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources--I spoke in Halifax eight years ago with the head guy at Natural Resources on that committee about this issue, and he told me then that he knew about the dump sites in Italy that they were encapsulating with cement. Now he's on this working group and they're making believe this is new.

This is not new, sir. The people on the inside have known this for a long time. My personal feeling is that they know its affecting the fish. They are also scared because of the compensation for things. If you read NATO's reports, they warn about that, that governments won't want to address it because of financial commitments.

The Chair: Good. Thanks again for the update. Would you please keep us posted?

Mr. Myles Kehoe: Sir, I'll more than keep you posted. I would like your committee to keep me posted as well.

The Chair: We shall do so, absolutely. I'm going to talk to the chair of the defence committee as well.

Are you going to send us the video?

Mr. Myles Kehoe: I will. It's excellent.

The Chair: Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

Might I call on Ms. MacNeil from the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, please.

Welcome. I believe we saw you the last time we were here. You had all kinds of charts behind you, or something like that.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil (As Individual): No, I participated two years ago, but through teleconference from Sydney.

I should begin by saying that I am not from the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board.

The Chair: That's a good beginning. My information is incorrect. Where are you from?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: I am an independent citizen who was appointed last year to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board to serve as a commissioner for a public review commission with respect to the exploration and drilling for three licensed areas offshore Cape Breton.

The Chair: That's a mouthful.

¹ (1530)

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: I would be pleased to repeat it a little bit. When I was invited by the committee to attend today, I wasn't convinced I had a lot to say; however, I am glad to be here and glad to answer any questions you might have.

I thought I might begin by just giving a little clarification of the tasks I completed. It's now a year ago.

The Chair: Okay. Please do.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: This relates very much to what Mr. Kehoe was just saying, if you realize that he was talking about these dump sites relative to the threat perhaps relating to seismic testing for offshore oil and gas.

I am talking about three licensed areas offshore Cape Breton. This is not very clear, but as you can see in that outline, the island of Cape Breton, the licensed areas are to the east-southeast and to the west-northwest. This is the area between P.E.I. and Cape Breton.

The Chair: For the record, do those sites have numbers?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Yes, they do.

The Chair: Could you identify them for us?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Corridor Resources Limited has the licence number 2368. Hunt Oil has two licence areas, 2364 and 2365.

The Chair: And those are the ones you're going to talk about?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Those are the subject of the public review commission I chaired. So it's really pretty important to make clear who I am, because I really am not an expert in these areas. I was given the task of being the sole commissioner for the public hearings and that's what I did.

My terms of reference of the assignment centred on the effects of potential oil and gas exploration and drilling activities in these three licensed areas. My review concluded last March. There is a report and it's on the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board website. It's very easy to access.

I didn't think you'd want me to go into the nuts and bolts of what I heard and what I recommended, but I just thought I'd give you a general view.

The activities encompassed seismic surveys and a whole range of activities with respect to exploration and drilling, not development. So it was pretty limited.

My terms of reference required me to prepare a summary of the views of the public and interested parties. They did not ask me to make recommendations about whether the proposed exploration and drilling activities should proceed. It was not my job. But I did, I would like to think, bring in as reliable a view as possible of what I heard said by the various parties.

What else should I tell you?

I'll mention three principal issues that might be useful for you, and I know your concern has to do with the fishery, so I'll try to hold to that area. I'll mention three general concerns.

One was the risk of damage to marine resources from conducting oil and gas exploration in shallow near-shore waters. These licences extend to the shoreline, so we say offshore, but it's to the shoreline. That was a common theme. Just what is the risk in shallow water?

Those opposed to exploration argued that most of the progressive western countries with offshore oil and gas prospects had either banned near-shore exploration or had imposed rigorous legislative requirements for opening up such areas to exploration. Those who favoured the activities provided evidence of near-shore exploration at Bay St. George, Newfoundland. They also cited evidence that numerous wells were drilled off the shores of Cape Breton in the 1970s and so on. All I'm trying to do here is tell you we had the arguments from both ends of the spectrum, those opposed and those in favour of going ahead.

A second area of concern was the use of terms that are not commonly understood. I'll give you one example, the word “coexistence”. You hear it a great deal, the idea that the fishery and the gas and oil industry can coexist. But when you listen to how that term is used, it means quite different things for each party, and I'll just read what I wrote here last night.

The fishing industry argued that coexistence is already in place. It has accepted offshore oil and gas exploration and development on the Scotian Shelf and has no major objections to such activities in the Laurentian Channel. So if it's far enough offshore, the fishermen are saying they've already allowed for that kind of coexistence.

In both those places, the fishing industry acknowledged that some areas must be set aside exclusively for exploration and development, and it argued that the government and the oil and gas industry should accept that, in turn, some areas need to be set aside exclusively to support the fishery. That was a principal theme of the fishery interests. They are saying, “We've given our lot out there offshore, way offshore; now, please, gas and oil industry, give us our lot inshore.” That's the kind of argument they're making. So that's what they regard as coexistence.

On the other hand, the petroleum industry, the business community, and the construction industry also favoured coexistence but with quite another interpretation. Using the same example as the fishery, they argued that current cooperation between the fishery and the petroleum industry on the Scotian Shelf demonstrates that coexistence can be successful. They're seeing it as something that goes on together, whereas the fishermen say, no, you take that part out there for gas and oil and we'll take this part in here for fishing.

¹ (1535)

A third example of a concern is the idea that there's a lot of room left for inquiry. This was not an inquiry I conducted. It was a public review. What are people saying vis-à-vis those licences? It was not an inquiry. There's a heck of a lot of room for inquiry as distinct from discussion--the significance, for example, of sublethal effects on marine life. Sublethal means it doesn't quite kill them but it does a lot of damage. This is an enormous question around which there's need to bring together scientific and local knowledge. This is one of the major sticking points in any intelligent effort to deal with the question of what is permissible ocean activity.

There is considerable agreement that seismic activities cause sublethal effects among fish and invertebrates, such as hearing loss, damage to internal organs, particularly damage to swim bladders, and perhaps even stress. But the big question is about the significance of that damage. Yes, it does damage, but is it significant? Is it to a small population or is it to a very large population? Is it something that lasts for a very long time or is it very temporary? These are amazingly still wide open questions as far as I was able to discern.

Those opposed to seismic testing point out that the scientific community has no knowledge about its potential effects on the species of fish and invertebrates in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Sydney Bight. That's what we call the two areas in which the licences lie.

So we do not have enough information, those opposed said. The Corridor and Hunt oil companies insisted that only a relatively small proportion of the population of any given species would be adversely affected. Well, which is it? That's, of course, the big, big, dilemma. We can go along for quite a long time, I'm afraid, with those.

I'll just say a little bit by way of conclusion--conclusion to my introduction. I reached this sort of a conclusion. It is certainly not earth-shattering or surprising. The messages I received add up to an amazing amount of uncertainty. There were those contending that exploration and drilling would have only a negligible impact on the fishery and marine ecology, and those were contending that there's not nearly enough information, so therefore we should do nothing. Yet there were widespread areas of agreement. I actually cited 20 of them in my report where there's quite a bit of agreement between all parties. I cited seven areas of disagreement, and those were primarily around the quality of the underlying science. Can we depend on what we know? There seems to be a lot of work to be done scientifically.

The other area is about the ability to predict effects generally, and how appropriate is it to predict an effect that is true in say Scotland or Norway as distinct from how it applies to the waters that are quite shallow in our area where these licences are?

The third one is about how to get the needed knowledge. Do we get it from laboratories, or do we get it by monitoring real-life situations?

From all of this I concluded that the uncertainty had to be confronted. We need much more expert examination. However, I did recommend that they proceed, not with exploration and drilling but rather with the questions that were brought up at the hearing, and bring a lot more scientific knowledge to bear, and also bring to bear a lot of the views of the people who presented to me.

There is some very excellent work being done by voluntary groups--and voluntary groups sometimes could even be fishermen's associations--and they showed themselves to be, although not sitting in each other's laps--the oil companies and the various interests--able to talk to each other. So part of my recommendation was that they establish an ad hoc group for a period of time while these questions were being dealt with more specifically, until there was some reasonable level of satisfaction that they should either not go ahead or that they should go ahead.

¹ (1540)

From what I read in the paper, and, gentlemen, that's all I know--I have no connection with this--they have decided to proceed.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. MacNeil, and thanks for the personal clarification on the hat you wore.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: I think CNSOPB would like me to make that clarification, and I'm always glad to make it.

The Chair: Good.

[Translation]

Mr. Roy, do you have any questions?

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: No, just a comment.

I believe the last time we heard from Ms. MacNeil was by video-conference—you just started in the job—but we have the same or a very similar situation in the Gulf of St-Lawrence.

Your recommendation to set up a temporary group, a group of stakeholders is probably the best solution because otherwise the information does not get out and people are ill-informed. Therefore, they get all worked up based on false information and these rumors spread like wild fire.

So I believe in such a situation the only solution is to set up groups of stakeholders, including environmentalists in order to provide the best information possible. This is what we intend to do in the Gulf at the present time.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Monsieur Roy.

Are there any comments on that?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: I'd just comment that this always sounds like something really nice to do--get the groups to sit down and talk--and unfortunately it doesn't always succeed. But I do not know what the alternative is.

So through the period of the review I conducted, we had the good fortune to be pretty well all locked in the same building day after day--not literally; we didn't live there overnight or anything, but we spent a lot of time together. It was mid-winter, and it was quite interesting to see how conversations did develop between opposing views--never sufficient, I suppose, to end up in a completely happy state, but I think better than when we started.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Wood.

Mr. Bob Wood: Ms. MacNeil, you're saying the recommendations you found fault with or made...the ones you disagreed on in your recommendations...did it ever happen? Have they just taken your report and put it on a shelf? What happened?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: No, I actually don't believe so. When you looked at all the data after you got home with it and saw how much was said and who said what, I found that by and large there were 20 areas of agreement. So I listed those. If you had a chance to see the report itself, they are listed. There are, however, about seven very fundamental and important areas of disagreement, and they were generally along the lines I told you--how much is enough information and so on.

They were really only asking me for what people said; they weren't asking for a recommendation per se, but what I generally recommended was take these areas of uncertainty and try to push them as much as possible to the point where we have more certainty, and in the process use a back-up group, a reference group, made up of representatives of these various interest groups who appear. The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board has indeed convened that reference group.

Mr. Bob Wood: They have done that, have they?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Yes, and they have ended. I think they have ended at a bit of a stalemate, but, again, I bet you there are people in this room who know more than I do about how that ended, because once I was through it was a good thing to stop watching.

So I am satisfied that they have acted on my report. Whether I am satisfied with what they concluded is beside the point because I wasn't making a recommendation.

¹ (1545)

Mr. Bob Wood: No conclusions.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Yes. Does it make sense to you?

Mr. Bob Wood: Yes.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: The two companies were there as well, and part of my advice to them was to rewrite their proposals--because they had a temporary lapse in their licence while this process went on--to take into account, to the fullest extent possible, what they heard at those hearings.

Mr. Bob Wood: Did they do that, to your knowledge?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Yes, to my knowledge they did, but of course I haven't seem them.

Mr. Wood: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you Mr. Chair

And thank you, Madame, first of all, for listening to all the various groups. I attended one of them, and it can get kind of raucous sometimes with opposing views. Of course, people expect you to do more than you're mandated to do.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Well, everybody expected me to make a decision.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: And I can appreciate the fact that you were not mandated to do that.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Furthermore, I didn't want to. I don't think I'd have taken that job. I live in Cape Breton and I'd like to live there for a few more years.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I can appreciate you wanting to now stand back from anything and just sort of observe it through the media.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: I feel I conducted a process, which indeed was pretty heavy some days.

Is Myles Kehoe still here?

Still, I think it was a very constructive process.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Sure. Anytime people get into a room and talk about issues I think is relevant and important.

Of course, one of the frustrating things that I have experienced, that I have witnessed, is the fact that leases are granted to companies long before there are discussions among different opinion groups. That is the biggest problem I have with the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board--which you're not part of--granting these licences, or leases, I should say, before the people themselves have a chance to state their opinion. I only wish--and I state this on the record--that your arena for discussion was done long before the granting of any leases. I just make that as a statement.

I'm going to put you on the spot. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to. But I notice by your last comment today--you said you read in the media that the decision may be to proceed in the fall. Would you agree with that, or would you suggest that possibly, if you were to make a recommendation--if you had the power to do that--you would suggest to them that maybe they should just wait until the groups have further discussion, until there is more scientific evidence to actually ascertain clearly and with all the confidence of all the interested groups...until there is further dialogue and discussion before they go ahead with the seismic testing?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: I've enjoyed the fence on which I've been sitting for a while.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I've been watching you on that fence.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: If I answered your question, I'd end up saying, what does Teresa MacNeil, citizen, believe, as distinct from Teresa MacNeil, former commissioner. That's not an easy distinction to make, because if I read it in the paper tomorrow---

Mr. Peter Stoffer: You can tell me outside privately.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: I really believe in the process of getting people genuinely to sort out the pros and the cons. I know nothing about how that process was conducted with the reference group, but I can't imagine that they were far from agreement. I would like to think that they would have stayed the course. If everyone was being honest--and I would bet you a dollar they were 90% honest. Until they were 100% honest, stay the course a little longer until there's agreement. If it's totally impossible, then the politicians have to make a decision.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: One of the assets, of course, is the perception that quite possibly your commission was a smokescreen to appease the people, because it would give them a chance to say their piece, and then the powers that be could say no, we've consulted, we took evidence, we took advice, but we're still making the decision anyway.

I don't think you personally would have allowed yourself to be used as a pawn in a smokescreen type of event.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: No. And to me, as a citizen, there is one very, very interesting question that is not answered yet. That has to do with juvenile crab. It was told to us so often that it takes about 10 years for a crab to become commercial size. They go through something like 13 stages. Let's say there was seismic activity this fall, and it could be that the very, very, very juvenile crab are affected; we won't know for quite a while, and then we won't know what did it.

However, there's some research going on in Newfoundland right now. If I had anything to say to this committee about this whole scene, it's for heaven's sake, don't be shortchanging the research on the fishery. So often, as bad as it is--and right now it looks like pure black--it's the one ongoing industry. It's a long, long, long-term industry. It has to be protected. Research is so very important.

¹ (1550)

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Madame MacNeil, the reason I say this is the fact that there is a perception out there that if the government doesn't allow, for example, the seismic testing and oil and gas exploration to proceed, it would appear in centres like Houston or others that Nova Scotia would not be a friendly place to do business because they put up all these regulations, and these pesky fishermen and tourist groups and coastal communities, who have a traditional way of life for hundreds of years, are concerned about their security and their safety. Yes, you are right. Many fishing groups agreed, reluctantly, that offshore oil and gas--although not in the Georges Bank. It is always surprising how the Georges Bank could have been protected without having to go through a commission like yours and that something as sensitive as the inshore area of Cape Breton would not have been.

A lot of the groups have told me that their perception is that the governments, provincially and federally, do not want to appear to be a roadblock to future oil and gas exploration because the editorial papers and many business groups say that's the future of the province and that's the economic engine of our future. The problem I have is that that plan...oil and gas reserves may be 30, 40, 50 years, whereas fishing could be indefinitely, for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: So if we had sufficient evidence that this is not destructive...because this is not really about spills; at least, the exploration side is not about spills. There will always be accidents, but primarily this is about the shock wave of seismic testing and the effect on marine life.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: We don't have all the information.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: It doesn't seem to me, with all of the work that's been going on with gas and oil in the world, that this should be such a mysterious area.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Just a couple of questions. You looked for Myles Kehoe.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Yes, because I enjoyed Myles Kehoe, or we fought, or whatever we did, day after day after day. We had our ups and downs.

The Chair: That answered my question, which was, did he present to you?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Yes, he sure did. And as of course you could hear, he is amazingly attentive to this file, and I think he is making progress with it.

The Chair: Do you reflect his views in your report?

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: Yes, I do.

The Chair: All right. Perfect.

Well, thank you very much. We very much appreciate you taking the time to come. Best of luck in Cape Breton.

Ms. Teresa MacNeil: In being a citizen.

The Chair: That's right.

Thank you. We're adjourned.