:
Good morning, everyone. I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 92 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.
Before I proceed, I'd like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members.
Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic. Please mute yourself when you are not speaking.
There is interpretation for those on Zoom. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French audio. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.
Please address all comments through the chair.
Before we proceed, I simply want to remind members to be very careful when handling the earpieces, especially when your microphone or your neighbour's microphone is turned on. Earpieces placed too close to the microphone are one of the most common causes of sound feedback, which is extremely harmful to interpreters and causes serious injuries.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on January 18, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of illegal, unreported and unregulated fisheries.
I would like to welcome our witnesses today. We have, representing the Canadian Committee for a Sustainable Eel Fishery Inc., Mr. Stanley King, acting president. Representing the Group of Professional Pelagic Fishermen from Southern Gaspé, we have Ghislain Collin, president, and representing MDA we have Dr. Minda Suchan, vice-president, and Leslie Swartman, senior director of government and public affairs.
Thank you for taking the time to appear today. You will each have up to five minutes per organization for your opening statement.
I will invite Mr. King to begin, please.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm grateful for this opportunity to inform this committee on IUU harvesting in the Canadian elver industry. It's a problem that desperately needs to be addressed.
I'm here representing the Canadian Committee for a Sustainable Eel Fishery, which is a group that advocates for the conservation of American eel stocks through sustainable fishing practices and scientific monitoring. My family has also fished elvers for more than 25 years.
The Canadian elver fishery is unique. Fishing happens at night on select maritime rivers. Fish are sold live to foreign markets and exported to China. Illegal harvesting has steadily increased in recent years, but exploded in 2023, when licensed fishers were outnumbered 10 to one by poachers.
This fishery is particularly appealing to unlicensed fishers, as the barrier to entry is low. In recent years, the price per kilogram has increased considerably. That aside, the real draw for poachers has been the lack of enforcement. In 2023, DFO estimates that 45% of the overall quota was stolen by unlicensed harvesters, yet enforcement efforts to curb this poaching were noticeably absent. Among these poachers are bad actors, backed by organized crime. Our normally peaceful industry has recently seen kidnapping, robbery, assault, gun violence and an overall disruption to the peace. To date, the response from both DFO and the RCMP to this organized crime ring has been almost non-existent.
Poaching became so rampant in 2020, and again in 2023, that the prematurely closed the fishery, costing those fishing legally their livelihood while poachers continued to fish unfettered. In a few short years, the industry has gone from one of the most well-regulated fisheries in Canada to chaotic and unsustainable in its current form.
One thing all stakeholders can agree on is that DFO is mismanaging this fishery. All commercial licence-holders, the six chiefs of the Wolastoqey First Nation in New Brunswick, the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq Chiefs and the provincial governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have all publicly stated that DFO has not done enough to curb poaching in the elver fishery.
Licence-holders have made countless reports of poaching and provided DFO with vehicle descriptions, licence plate numbers, the names of reported buyers, the addresses of reported holding facilities, and even flight details for upcoming export shipments of black-market fish. DFO enforcement took no action on these tips.
In one striking case, one poacher advertised on Facebook when and where he would be illegally buying elvers. We forwarded this information to RCMP officers, but again, no action was taken.
This lack of enforcement is especially frustrating on one particularly important river, Chester's East River, which is home to the longest-running scientific study on elver abundance in North America. This industry-funded study provides critical data that informs the DFO science on the health of elver stocks and the sustainability of our industry. We expressed to DFO that above all, this study needed to be protected from poachers. Despite our pleas, DFO did not protect the East River study from poachers. The study could not proceed, costing us valuable data.
There are two confounding factors to solving the challenges facing the elver fishery.
First, this is not a homegrown problem. Illegal elver fishing sits at the crossroads of a transnational organized crime network. Eels are so important to the Chinese, who are the primary buyers of Canadian elvers, that elvers are one of only 17 commodities protected as a national security concern by the Chinese government. Chinese buyers readily buy black and grey market elvers from anyone and pay in cash, which has opened the door for global organized crime.
The second challenge is the growing demand from indigenous people for access to the fishery. Our members have a long track record of supporting greater indigenous access. To ensure the sustainability of the industry, we feel strongly that access must be licensed by DFO. As of 2022, 28% of the overall quota is designated to indigenous harvesters, yet thousands of additional indigenous harvesters access the fishery without a DFO licence.
What's the solution?
The government needs to take immediate action on the following three points.
First, we need to implement a traceability system, similar to that in the U.S., to make it easier to identify unlawfully harvested fish.
Second, we need meaningful enforcement with meaningful consequences. The industry can no longer withstand token gestures of enforcement with shockingly low penalties.
Lastly, we need the federal government to stand behind its commitment to provide greater indigenous access to the fishery through a willing buyer-willing seller model. We have willing sellers.
To close, we have faith in our new and hope that a fresh perspective will bring positive change to the industry, but the next elver season is only three months away, so we must act quickly.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.
I'm not here today to make accusations against anyone in the fishing industry, but rather to criticize the methods of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which exacerbates the inequality between Quebec's fleets and those of the other provinces, damages the resource, which is mismanaged and not data-based, and disregards the issue of tax evasion.
I will begin by explaining the differences between commercial herring and mackerel fishers from Quebec and those in the other provinces. No catch-reporting measures are in force in the other provinces, except for trawler fleets. The Quebec fishery is highly regulated. Hail-ins, logbooks and dockside weighing are a part of commercial fishers' everyday lives in Quebec. The same regulatory inequalities also affect seaweed harvesters, for example, who are forced to leave Quebec and work in New Brunswick, where harvesting laws are less restrictive.
Here's an example. I fish for herring in Carleton-sur-Mer, on Chaleur Bay, where fishers from Quebec and New Brunswick work the same fishing ground. To preserve the resource in Quebec, my catch is limited to 22,500 pounds of fish per week. I'm also required to shorten my nets, and there are spawning areas where fishing is prohibited. If I catch my fish on Tuesday, I have to take in my nets before the following Sunday. If I exceed the 22,500-pound limit during the week, I am sanctioned and have to pay a fine.
It's frustrating to be the only commercial fishers from Quebec making an effort to preserve the resource while others fish without being subject to controls and ruin our resource. Then we're abandoned as soon as the government no longer needs our data.
Nothing is being done despite all the comments, questions and recommendations I have submitted to the senior officials responsible for both resources, herring and mackerel, in Moncton and Halifax for all of Canada. What's worse is that, after two years of meetings and discussions with the members of that committee, meetings in which I have actively participated, criticizing these illegal practices that harm our resource and our livelihood, representatives of our organization are expelled from meetings. All the remarks they make are deleted from meeting minutes for arbitrary administrative reasons, even though our organization has a history of being a fishing leader based on our catch reports.
I strongly urge you to read the brief that the Regroupement des pêcheurs pélagiques professionnels du sud de la Gaspésie prepared and submitted to the committee in 2021, criticizing this situation, on which no action has been taken.
This inability of senior officials to make decisions deprives their own scientists of invaluable data that would help them properly do their work, conduct studies and perform other tasks. It also perpetuates the inequality between Quebec fishers and those in the rest of Canada and causes irreparable harm to the Regroupement des pêcheurs pélagiques professionnels du sud de la Gaspésie, which relies solely on the resource, by failing to properly manage those data and the mechanisms for protecting a fragile resource. This is tantamount to wilful blindness to the illegal practice of tax evasion.
As I observe this lack of action and this inequality, I see that other fishers associations, mainly in Quebec, have the same problem as we do. Redfish fishers are an example of this. No decision has been made to lift the moratorium. They are already fishing for redfish in the Maritimes, and fishers have already developed their markets. Quebec fishers are once again put at a disadvantage.
In conclusion, I ask that the Government of Canada shed light on this problematic situation in Canada's fisheries, which puts Quebec fishers at a disadvantage and deprives the Canadian government of revenue. The Regroupement des pêcheurs pélagiques professionnels du sud de la Gaspésie is still awaiting compensatory measures for the closure of their fisheries.
Thank you.
I'm the vice-president of geointelligence at MDA, and I'm excited to be here with you today to talk about the health and preservation of our world's ocean ecosystems.
Headquartered in Canada and publicly traded on the TSX, MDA is a global leader in the development of space technology and the country's leading space company. We are well known for iconic space technologies such as Canadarm, as well as the RADARSAT family of earth observation satellites. As a partner to the Government of Canada and other nations, MDA-built radar satellites have been collecting and providing data and insights about the health of our planet for decades.
According to the United Nations, illegal fishing is the planet's sixth-largest crime, with 20% of the over 90 million tonnes of fish caught globally each year being captured illegally, which steals billions from the global economy, damages precious ocean ecosystems and does serious harm to the food security of coastal nations. The important impact of the ocean ecosystems that surround all of us cannot be overstated. The real and devastating impact of the massive illegal activity taking place every day on our oceans cannot be overlooked and must not be left unchecked.
MDA's own RADARSAT-2 satellite has been used for monitoring fisheries for more than 15 years. In partnership with Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Global Affairs Canada, we have been utilizing our satellite technology to detect vessels engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
Radar satellites can take images of the earth, day or night, through all weather conditions, giving us complete insight into what is happening on our oceans' surfaces. By combining radar satellite imagery with our maritime insight analytics, we are able to locate and track fishing vessels that have switched off their location transmitting devices in an attempt to evade monitoring, control and surveillance.
A month ago, my team and I joined our Canadian government partners in the Philippines, where we trained 75 analysts from 14 Filipino government agencies and departments to use MDA dark vessel detection technology. This effort is a key part of Canada's Indo-Pacific strategy, with a focus on supporting oceans management initiatives delivered through Canadian-made satellite technology. At MDA, we know that the work we do in space can improve life here on earth and in our oceans, because we see the impact that our data has on daily life.
Our new commercial earth observation radar satellite constellation, CHORUS, is being designed with a specific focus on maritime surveillance applications, including dedicated vessel detection imaging capacity to collect an area equal to 40% of the global exclusive economic zones daily. In addition, CHORUS will support the detection of bilge water dumping, monitor coastal erosion and the effects of climate change, and support disaster response in the event of all marine oil spills, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes.
We hope that our contribution to the Canadian-led international efforts to stop illegal fishing will provide the world the tools and transparency to see precisely what is happening on our oceans. We are grateful for the partnership with the Government of Canada to prevent illegal fishing activity.
Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today. I look forward to your questions.
:
We fish elvers and ship them live. We export them out of the country for growth in aquaculture facilities. Now, 100% of our fish, whether they're legally caught or illegally caught, are shipped to China. That's where they're grown out to market size.
They have an insatiable appetite for this protein source. They will buy as much as they can, and they want to protect this commodity. They need fresh elvers to come every year to make sure that they have enough for their population, and they don't really care how they do it.
They have partnered with organized crime and criminals. They will show up with bags of cash for black-market transactions, and they have basically undermined our fishery and our local economy. They're stealing tax dollars. They're stealing jobs. Our fisheries are getting shut down. The criminal element has basically threatened and intimidated a lot of the legal fishers to quit. We've had employees quit over this.
One employee in particular.... The industry, as a whole, employs a lot of women who have families. One fisher for us, who has been fishing for 15 years, has two small children under five. She makes her yearly salary in this industry, and has for 15 years, but she will not return to work this year, because she said it's too dangerous and she has to keep her kids in mind.
We have this transnational organization. It's global crime, and nobody will pay attention to it. We call the RCMP; we give tips and we call DFO's C and P—the enforcement wing of DFO—and nobody will do anything. It's costing Canadians jobs and tax dollars, and it's going to cost them this industry if DFO doesn't get its act together soon.
:
That's a good question, and I think you'll be surprised by the answer.
We all know that indigenous communities want greater access to this fishery, whether they have a licence or not, so that represents the bulk of the illegal and unlicensed fishers, but it's not just local indigenous actors. We've seen people from Maine....
I'm sorry. I should preface this by saying I fish in Nova Scotia, on the east coast. We're fishing next to people who have migrated to our coastline to fish from New Brunswick, from Maine and from Toronto. We've talked to people from B.C. who have told us, “We heard that we could make some quick money down here, and that there's no enforcement, so we've come to do that.”
It's like a cottage industry now. People will come and fish illegally, because they know there is no enforcement action.
Thank you to the witnesses for being with us today.
I'm sorry if my pronunciation isn't great, but this is for Ms. Suchan from MDA.
It's very nice to hear about what you guys are doing, in terms of detecting dark vessels. I was even surprised to hear that you are already doing some work with DFO.
I missed something somewhere. Can you give us a situation? For instance, how do you detect those vessels? Do they have some kind of chip in them, or whatever? Those vessels are going unnoticed. How do you detect them with the tools you have?
It's a long shot, but I'm going to ask you this question. Maybe you're aware of this. It's not about ships. It's actually about whales.
We have a situation in my region with the North Atlantic right whale. Since 2015, we've had their presence in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Each time there's a whale in a certain area, we close it to fishing, so we don't have any entanglement and dead whales.
Is there something in your satellite devices we can use to detect whales, not just boats?
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're doing a wonderful job, by the way.
I'm sure this will surprise people: My questions will all go to Mr. King.
I'm following up on MP Barron's questions. As you know, every night I was home during the legal elver fishing season. I was going out every Friday and Saturday night at midnight, looking at the rivers to see what was going on. Every river I went to—many of which are not even licensed elver rivers, not designated by DFO—had poachers on it. I had many constituents whose properties were being defiled and destroyed as poachers parked and utilized their.... I had single mothers threatened by people.
I understand it's a sensitive topic. I had death threats during this time, as did my wife. There was a lot of criminal activity, from the U.S., Quebec and all over, but there was also a lot of indigenous illegal fishing. I talked to them and saw them first-hand.
How long has this been going on?
Mr. Collin, I want to go back to the issue of the fishery in Quebec.
The mackerel and herring fishery, which is your fishery and is closed, was a measured and measurable fishery.
What would be the solution for you to stay alive?
Could we suggest a sentinel fishery for you, using a hook and line, for example, which would have a lesser impact on the resource and would be much more habitat-friendly? We could even compensate you for your trouble.
Instead of offering you monetary compensation, we could pay you to take measurements, participate in a sentinel fishery and earn a modest living, while continuing to take appropriate measurements.
Is that a solution that appeals to you?
I'm asking lots of questions. The first thing I want to clarify is that when I say DFO, I'm talking about those in decision-making capacities and also those who are making the decisions around how to allocate funding. Ultimately I know there are lots of good people doing good work in DFO. There is just not capacity to be able to take this on, in many ways. That is a big problem that needs to be resolved, and it needs to be funded appropriately.
What I'm trying to understand and wrap my head around, if I can be frank, is the treaty rights of indigenous peoples and how that plays into this. I don't think I'll go any further into that, only just to state that I have some serious concerns around the fact that we're seeing this repeated pattern in which we have non-indigenous and indigenous people pegged against each other. We have no clear avenue for seeing DFO take the lead on ensuring that everybody has the same information, that everybody is able to work together, and that there are accountability mechanisms that ensure we're conserving this species.
I can definitely empathize with the concerns of those locally who are worried about the species, worried about their livelihoods and worried about their communities.
I just wanted to clarify that.
I'm going to leave it there and pass the remainder of my time over to Madame Desbiens, if that's okay with you, Mr. Chair.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Mel Arnold): Absolutely. It's your time.
Today I think we've had a really good, candid conversation.
I want to speak to elver for a moment. I can't add anything to what other parliamentarians have said, and you have said, Mr. King, in terms of the severity of the issue from a safety, security and economic perspective. It's been clearly laid out, and you've done that quite well.
I want to go to solutions, and you've highlighted many of them. Before I do that, I want to speak to the fact that, clearly, DFO has a fundamental role to play here. That goes without question. I also think, and we've seen this in other testimony, that CBSA has a role to play here, as, I dare say, does the RCMP. I think we need to have the RCMP come to this committee. I believe we've asked, but I think we need to ask again. I think it's really important. We don't direct the RCMP to do the work. At the same point, we need to have it here to speak to this really fundamental issue of what's happening in Atlantic Canada, in particular New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
I want to go to an example that's often brought up by folks in the elver industry around following the best practice of Maine. You spoke of traceability. I wonder not only if you can unpack the traceability for a second, but also if you can talk about other things Maine has done to mitigate.... They haven't completely squashed illegal poachers. I'm wondering if you can speak to the Maine example and what the lessons are that we could learn, in particular in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
:
Thanks for the question, Mr. Kelloway, and thank you for your interest in the topic. We know you've been interested previously, and we appreciate that.
Maine used to be way behind the Canadian system. We were really leaders in this fishery, and then it blew our doors off. It has hopscotched us, and now we're way behind it.
They have implemented a few different ways to limit illegal harvesting. One is a robust traceability system, using swipe cards. We know, from the time the fish are caught at the river, when they're swiped in, who they're sold to and who buys them again. Often, there are a few buyers before they're exported. The traceability issue, the chain of custody, is always transparent. That does help identify illegally harvested fish.
Maine has also done something interesting. It has partnered with a lot of first nations and made it a group problem. Everybody wants this fishery to run smoothly, because it benefits everybody. It benefits the fishers and the communities, whether it's an indigenous community or a non-indigenous community. It benefits the government's bottom line. It's a resource that we can take advantage of—that's the best way I can put it—and utilize. We can take care of it, and it can fund a lot of good stuff.
:
You're absolutely right.
Two years ago, in order to generate more first nations access, they asked for proposals to voluntarily surrender elver quotas under a willing buyer-willing seller model, which has been the government's stated path forward on how to generate more first nations access. All the licence-holders submitted proposals in good faith. We want the fishery to work. We did an independent market analysis.
There was a resounding “no” from DFO. Actually, they didn't even respond. They waited for a whole year before they even responded to us and said, “No, it's too expensive. We'll ask you again to lower your price, please. We'll ask again in a few weeks.” We all waited for a second round of proposals, but they never came. They said, “No, we're going to pull the plug on that. We're not going to bother. We're just going to expropriate it.” That's exactly what they did.
:
A human rights group is starting to focus on Chinese seafood processing, because of the use of Uyghurs and others in slave labour, etc. That's another avenue that I think we need to investigate.
I would not want to be an enforcement officer out on the river, with hundreds of people doing illegal things. It is dangerous. It occurs to me that if there's no money in it, the problem will go away. What do we do to take the money out of it?
One thing we heard in earlier testimony is lack of intelligence—the lack of knowing who, in fact, is benefiting the most. It's not the people on the river. It's the people up the totem pole from those people. This includes provincially regulated processors, which are probably handling some of this stuff and turning a blind eye. I don't know.
What about intelligence efforts? Can you sense anything like that going on?
:
Absolutely. As long as it's above the water and not under the water, along coastlines and even on certain land areas, we are also able.... Radar technology can come in and monitor certain activity as well.
There are various land and maritime applications. I've been focused a bit more on the maritime opportunities, but certainly it's along the coastlines as well.
We have different types of radar that go out there and can detect different sizes, so the size of the object, the size of the ship, the size of the boat and the material of the boat all dictate how our radar can detect and image that, as well as bringing other types of data in.
Sometimes, for our radar satellites, we have a very broad area, but we can bring in other satellites, like optical satellites or higher-resolution satellites that come in and can get more detailed information and more specific imagery to help with the situation as well.
[English]
Mr. King, I think I'll end with you.
I really want to thank you for being clear about describing the problem.
I'm really concerned also about the threats that were made, which Mr. Perkins described—to him and his family, and presumably to others—for those who are attempting to document illegal sales. That should not happen. That certainly speaks to the seriousness of this issue and to our need to ensure that we have strong recommendations to put in place the documentation and enforcement measures that are needed.
This is a bit of an “out there” question, probably. Are there market opportunities for adult eels in Canada? Is that something that's being explored? I'm just wondering if there's any interest or opportunity, given that everything goes to China.
:
Traditionally, before the elver industry started about 30 years ago, all of our eels were captured as adults and sold as adults. Now, the price for that today has made the fishery not worth the time.
However, a collection of elver licence-holders have been trying to get our own aquaculture facilities off the ground in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, to grow these fish here, create jobs and create more revenue. We believe we can do that, and it would be beneficial.
We've invested millions of dollars in this already, and we are getting close; however, the idea is stalled, because nobody is willing to invest. Nobody wants to be a part of an industry with such turmoil and uncertainty. How does anybody know if there's going to be an industry next year, with these kinds of things?
These problems have spun out into the side projects of value-adds that we could do but are stalled on.
I have one of two motions on basically the same topic that you're going to hear about.
You will have received my notice of motion a couple of days ago. There's a preamble included with the motion that doesn't get included officially with the motion. I'll read it. It says, “Given the urgent need for steps to protect Canada's wild fish stocks while supporting the potential for aquaculture to contribute to local economies and to the world's demand for high quality protein, and in the spirit of fair process....”
Those were the motivations behind the motion. There will be some amendments suggested by my colleague to clarify a couple of things—most particularly that there'll be a focus on the west coast, because we don't want to have unforeseen spillover effects of this on the east coast; and, secondly, to ensure that the wording is correct in terms of what we do as a committee and how we transmit that for follow-up and action.
I'll read the motion as you have it, and then it will be open to amendments.
A voice: We can also send it electronically, but we'll...
Mr. Ken Hardie: No, no. It's “IBM”—“it's better manually”. There you are.
I will read it as it was submitted in the notice of motion, and then it will be open to amendments. Is that okay?
That the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard dedicate two meetings to hear from the aquaculture industry the steps they will take to eliminate all harms to wild fish stocks of their operations, and
that the committee present the findings of these hearings to the Minister to inform her decisions on the nature and scope of the transitions the industry will make to achieve this goal, and
that the government issue a response to these findings.
That's the motion as transmitted in the notice of motion, and to your pleasure, Mr. Chair, I think Mr. Kelloway has some amendments to suggest.
I do have some amendments to make here, so I will provide them very slowly.
In the second paragraph, after “That the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard” would be added “on the west coast”. In the second paragraph, “to eliminate” would be changed to “to minimize”.
To the third paragraph, which starts with “that the committee present”, we would add, “its findings to the House and, pursuant to Standing Order 109, request that the government issue a response”. That would replace “the findings of these hearings to the Minister to inform her decisions” and the remainder of that sentence.
On the amendment, I'm going to just say, with this caveat, that I have amendments, because I have concerns over the content of the motion itself. However, I will speak only to the amendment right now, in the hope that I'll be able to speak to the motion when we loop back around to it.
With respect to the three points that Mr. Kelloway just brought forward, the first one, “west coast”, seems like an appropriate addition.
I am 100% against taking out “eliminate” and trading that for “minimize”. Otherwise, I'm happy with that, but I will say I have some concerns that I want to speak to over the motion in general. As for the specific amendments, I do not agree with taking out “eliminate”.