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I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting 98 of the House of the Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.
Before we proceed, I will 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, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation, for those on Zoom, you have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of the floor, English or French. 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 a microphone are one of the most common causes of sound feedback, which is extremely harmful to the interpreters and causes serious injuries.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on February 8, 2024, the committee is commencing its study of plans to prevent violence during the 2024 elver fishing season.
We have with us today officials from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. I welcome Annette Gibbons, deputy minister; Adam Burns, assistant deputy minister, programs sector; Brent Napier, acting director general, conservation and protection; and Doug Wentzell, regional director general, Maritimes region.
Thank you for taking the time to appear today. I know it's not your first time here before committee. You will have five minutes or less for your opening statement.
I invite Ms. Gibbons to make her statement when she's ready—
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I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
I just want to clarify what happened here. In no way do we want to shut down this meeting. This took five minutes to pass. Everything that we were passing right now was on a motion I was debating last meeting when we adjourned. We want to hear from officials.
I think the comment from my colleague Mr. Perkins was a little bit out of order, but, Mr. Chair, I think we can get on with this meeting right now. There was no attempt to shut down this meeting. It was just to be able to resolve some business that we were not able to resolve at the last meeting.
Again, I don't expect an apology, but I think the member should apologize for the comment that he made.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The officials from the department and I are pleased to be here today.
I'll start by saying that Fisheries and Oceans Canada is committed to the conservation of American eel, with sustainability and orderly management being priorities for the elver fishery. This is an extremely lucrative fishery, Canada's highest value by weight, and as such it attracts significant illegal harvesting.
This happens in hundreds of rivers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, often at night and often in isolated places that are not easily accessible. This makes it very difficult to monitor and fight illegal elver harvesting. It is also an easy fishery to get into with few barriers to entry. All that is needed is a dip net. There is no specialized training, vessels or other equipment.
There are vast, intricate and lucrative supply chains available following the point of harvest. Therefore, it's an extremely appealing species for those who are involved in this illegal activity. This presents compelling and challenging risks to conservation of the species and to public safety.
[Translation]
Inspections, observations and reports to Conservation and Protection indicate that significant quantities of elvers are being caught illegally. It is estimated that the total catch far exceeds the total allowable catch, compromising the conservation objectives of the American eel in Canada and threatening the conservation and protection of that population.
The elver fishery has become the scene of unacceptable behaviour: harassment, threats and violence among fishermen and towards fisheries officers, with a number of confrontations and violent incidents even posing an immediate threat to public safety and the management of this fishery.
Conservation and Protection and its law enforcement partners have received numerous complaints of violence, trespassing, property damage, weapons and organized crime offences, kidnapping and other significant public safety risks.
[English]
Faced with these unique and complex enforcement challenges, my department dedicated more fisheries officers to the commercial elver fishery in 2023 than we did for any other commercial fishery. We were pulling officers from other parts of the country to support our officers in the Maritimes, and obviously this isn't sustainable for so many reasons.
Ultimately, for the safety of our fisheries officers and the public and for the sustainability of the species, the elver fishery was closed in 2023 through a ministerial fisheries management order. This is the second time the fishery has been shut down in the past four years.
[Translation]
In recent years, numerous discussions between the department, licence holders and other stakeholders have demonstrated the need for new tools and approaches to effectively manage and control the elver fishery. In the absence of such changes, it is highly likely that the 2024 season will follow the unacceptable trend observed in recent years.
[English]
Since the closure last year, my department has been working with industry, first nations and other stakeholders to chart a path forward.
[Translation]
During the course of this review, the changes required became clear, including improved access for indigenous communities, a new regulatory framework to oversee and authorize the possession and export of elvers, and a series of operational changes in the management of the elver fishery. Many of the necessary changes rely on the adoption of new regulations, including the design and implementation of new traceability systems to track elver movements.
[English]
While we have made a great deal of progress in all three of these areas, we're not quite there yet.
For that reason, earlier today the wrote to current licence-holders, including indigenous organizations and first nations, to share her view that it is not possible to have a safe and sustainable elver fishery in 2024, and, therefore, the fishery should not be opened. The minister also invited licence-holders to share any relevant comments they may have to help inform her final decision.
Not opening the fishery this season would support law enforcement and conservation objectives in the near term and allow for the design and implementation of regulations, management measures and traceability tools to better control illegal and unauthorized harvesting in future years. Once the 10-day comment period is over and all input has been considered, the will make a decision on the fishery for 2024.
I am optimistic about what we can achieve through the co-operation of all those interested in this fishery, a combined focus on the conservation of this species, reconciliation and a collective commitment to safe and orderly conduct.
Thank you.
This is, indeed, a very dark day for the fishery. This department and six ministers, in eight years, have mismanaged this fishery almost like no other. In 2000, you did a complete shutdown, as you're doing today, of the elver fishery because of poaching, because of illegal harvesting. The industry said how to fix it, and this department did nothing since then—absolutely nothing—to fix it.
Help me understand the rationale of a ministerial decision, and presumably a recommendation from the department to supports it, that thinks that taking the people who abide by the law off the river deters thousands of illegal, international, criminally financed harvesters who are poaching and destroying the fishery.
How does taking legal harvesters off the river help stop the poaching?
:
With due respect, Deputy, that's just bunk. Every licensed harvester is assigned to a specific river with a specific DFO licence, with that on their nets. Everybody else who's not on those rivers is a poacher. It's easy to identify poachers. I do every night when this starts.
They're already fighting over river space. They're setting up nets now. You have just made it worse. The has just made it worse, and Mr. Wentzell has just made it worse, with a lack of ability to enforce the law.
I'll ask it again, because you didn't answer the question: How does removing the licensed elver fishers, who have a 9,000-plus kilogram TAC, when almost 100 tonnes of elvers are being poached and exported out of the Toronto airport—and your enforcement people know where all of that is coming from—stop poaching on the river? Just give a quick answer. How does it stop poaching on the river?
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We do collaborate really closely with enforcement partners, both RCMP and CBSA but also local police of jurisdiction as well as provincial enforcement counterparts.
What I would say is that the bulk of our collaboration involves two key streams. One would be the sharing of intel. This would be any information that we have that supports our colleagues and other enforcement bodies to carry out their roles and mandates, as well as coordinating capacity. When we need support, if there's a particular incident that we feel falls within the mandate or jurisdiction of other police forces, we share that information. That dialogue happens daily, and there are also structure tables that do that information sharing on a regular and frequent basis.
Just for clarity, fishery officers have a lot of authorities under the Fisheries Act to respond to fishing up to the point of first sale. In instances of violence, of trespassing and of some of the terrible incidents we've seen in this fishery over the last year, we rely heavily on our enforcement partners, including the RCMP and the police of jurisdiction, to respond to those.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm glad to see you back in your chair.
I also thank the witnesses for being with us, and our colleagues for proposing this study.
I was made aware of this situation almost two years ago already. The people we met on that occasion were deeply affected by what was happening. Some thirty years previously, they had developed this elver market, which is, my goodness, little known, and worked hard to try and build it up, eventually succeeding in making it a somewhat lucrative business. In the end, however, they came to tell us that they couldn't fish any more, because they were afraid to. Indeed, it's a fishery that takes place at night, but they could no longer approach the area because they were being threatened and intimidated.
So we're talking about people who have set up an important initiative. As anyone in business knows, this involves personal effort and, often, financial risk. These people are now grappling with that situation.
What's more important in this context: granting licences, finding a way to remove this tension, or increasing security as much as possible? Are all these answers right? I put this question to all the witnesses.
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The minister's announcement today was made because we see that the tools we have used to date are no longer successful in ensuring the conservation of the species, or public safety.
There are three areas in which we are making changes.
First, there's the allocation for first nations. That's something they've been asking for. We've made changes to that over the last couple of years and we need to continue to consult with first nations on their participation in this fishery.
Secondly, there's regulatory control of the catch. Currently, the department only has the right to regulate what happens on the rivers, that is to say the fishery itself. However, we don't have the authority to intervene in the subsequent trade of these catches. So, if we see something, but we can't determine where it came from, it's difficult to intervene. Regulations covering the entire value chain are therefore very important, and would make it possible to monitor the position of elvers throughout the value chain, right up to export. We are working very hard on this point.
Thirdly, there's fisheries management. A traceability system would enable the department to have more data and information on catches and what's going on, in order to better protect the resource.
We're moving forward on all three fronts at the same time.
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I look forward to that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As I was saying, Mr. Chair, unfortunately, the behaviour of my colleague resulted in an unsafe working environment for both our peers and the staff—in particular, the translators who have to listen to the yelling and name-calling through the microphones. I will please ask my colleague, and colleagues, to perhaps take a breath when they are feeling angry, particularly without full information, and reflect on how we can communicate in a more respectful manner.
With that, thank you for allowing me to say that within the time I've been allotted.
I would like some clarification, please, Ms. Gibbons. I'm trying to understand. In particular, there was a letter sent to licence-holders, and the very first paragraph in the letter says, “I am writing to inform you of my intention not to renew any elver licences for the 2024 season”. The statement that came out by DFO, however, states that there are consultations happening.
From my perspective, these two conflict with one another. Can you please clarify?
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Thank you for clarifying, Ms. Gibbons.
With respect, can you...? The wording in the very first sentence was, “I am writing to inform you of my intention not to renew any elver licences”. If you were an elver licence-holder, how would you interpret that very first sentence? I know that if I were an elver licence-holder, I don't know that I'd even read the rest of it. I would just immediately assume, “Well, I guess the season's closed. They've made the decision.”
Can you perhaps speak to the decision by the to have this as the very first sentence in the letter to the licence-holders, and perhaps reflect on how this may be shutting down the conversation, or the consultation as you're referring to it, before it's even begun?
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Let's look at the other supply chain. That's the justice supply chain.
It's already a year from when the last out-of-scope fishery took place. Out of the hundreds and maybe thousands that were on the river, we have 60 approved charges so far. Nobody's gone to court. Do we need more resources in the courts? Do we need some sort of strategy to get these dealt with?
When you have this much money literally swimming up the river, enforcement or even the threat of some kind of legal action isn't going to be much of a deterrence. They will take the chance. The only thing that might work is when people start getting their property seized or end up doing time in jail. It's a year later and none of this has happened.
What are you doing to pull in all of the partners that should be working in a synchronized way and be far more efficient at dealing with this?
I have one other question. You can answer that one and then answer this one too. Are enforcement officers afraid to enforce the law?
I'll take some of my time to give notice of a motion, hoping for good faith from all.
Given the significant decline in shrimp biomass, the low allocation of redfish to the shrimp fleet, particularly the small fleet, the possible demise of the shrimp industry and the lack of concrete alternatives and concrete support, and the repercussions suffered by fishers, fishers' helpers, processing plant owners and employees, as well as coastal communities and businesses, given all this urgency to act, I move:
That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee undertake a study of the criteria used by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to set redfish quotas, in particular those announced by the minister on January 26, 2024, in order to assess the extent of their effects on the shrimp fishing industry; that the committee allocate at least two meetings to conduct this study; that the February 27 meeting be allocated to hear from the minister and senior DFO officials so they can answer the committee’s questions for two hours, and that the February 29 meeting be allocated to hear from any witnesses the committee deems necessary; and that the committee urgently report its findings and recommendations to the House.
We will be issuing a press release today to say that there will be consultations for the upcoming season. I think people understand the government's goal of reconciliation with indigenous peoples; we've been talking about it for a number of years. I think even non-indigenous commercial fishers in any other fishery also understand that there are different concerns about the fishery that need to be discussed.
Once again, we're talking about consultations. But when it comes to consultation, especially with first nations, it's often said that it has to be nation-to-nation. And yet, some groups find themselves outside these discussions. Therefore, are these consultations going to be done with all groups at the same time, or only with one group at a time, like the first nations, the commercial fishers, and so on?
Couldn't we, for once, get everyone in a room and talk together? That's what the word “reconcile” means to me. Is this something you've been thinking of doing, that is to say, getting all these groups together in the same room to discuss the future of this fishery, as well as all the other fisheries that cause a bit of trouble regarding reconciliation with first nations?
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Could you? God bless all of the 60 to 90 for doing that and taking it on.
The incredible thing is that DFO has added 443 people to HR, putting HR over 800 people in that time. They have over 1,200 people now in corporate services, finance and administration, a huge growth in the bureaucracy in Ottawa.
Meanwhile, in regard to the great focus on enforcement, enforcement is key to any sustainable fishery and without it you cannot have a sustainable fishery. The priority of the department , under the six ministers and now your leadership, is to put it on administration and not on enforcement. Why?
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That would be Mr. Kelloway if that's okay.
In terms of traceability, I look at this whole situation like a tire, and then you have the spokes. The spokes are the solutions or the remedies or the things we want to put in place to prevent illegal actors from harvesting and exporting. Traceability was brought up today—that's one.
In the last round of questioning I got in my Maine question, but I think this is an opportunity.
Let's take a look at Maine. What have they done in terms of traceability, but what are the other things that make up their plan of attack in terms of enforcement and in terms of focusing on collaboration with indigenous people? Also, what is their overall plan to negate what is happening in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick? What could we learn from them, and are we actually focused on that as a best practice?
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Thanks for the question.
Yes, we've been working closely with the State of Maine, and our fisheries management team has built our approach off theirs, in terms of the regulatory measures and the work towards a traceability system. The member is absolutely right—Maine has had a number of different closures of their fishery over the years, and it's taken them about six years to develop what they have right now. We do have some added complexity from a Canadian context in terms of the size of the fishery, in terms of indigenous consultation and in terms of different jurisdictions.
The State of Maine manages the harvest, the buying and selling, all of those elements, so we do have a few added components that we need to work through. However, we're certainly not reinventing the wheel. We've been able to learn a lot from the State of Maine, and we're very grateful for that.
I'm wondering about the future of fisheries in general. In Quebec, in particular, we're having a good slap in the face, as we say back home. We're closing a fishery because it's too illegal: that's the gist of the situation. They've closed the mackerel fishery, they're almost closing the shrimp fishery, and the redfish compensation isn't enough. We're wondering whether redfish will survive in the long and medium term. At the moment, a whole range of problems means that we're three shakes away from saying that we're in the middle of a fisheries crisis. Faced with this prospect, the fishers who are listening to us don't have any alternative solution, and they don't have many anchor points to bounce back on the business front. Indeed, these people are in business, they earn their living, and there are villages that depend on that.
The elver case is a bit of a special case, where there's a lot of intimidation and “dark” markets. How do we prioritize the survival of the fishing economy when we look at this picture? What makes it urgent to act? Is it the need to protect the resource? Is it the need to keep fishers in place and preserve an economy that contributes to the country's GDP? What should the priority be? Is it people's safety? I put myself in your shoes and wonder where you stand.
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We're extremely aware of the importance of fisheries to coastal communities, make no mistake. We know very well that the fishery is paramount to the economy of these regions. That's why, in our policy frameworks and fisheries legislation, we take into account the socio-economic impacts of fisheries in everything we do.
There's no doubt that there's a lot of pressure on species and stocks. This is due, in part, to climate change. There's a lot of talk about it these days, particularly among fishers. In general, there are other pressures too. We try to mitigate them in all the policies and measures we adopt, including the owner-operator policy, which aims to ensure that benefits are shared in communities.
The redfish decision did include a section to support shrimp fishermen, who are going through a very difficult time. In each of our decisions and more global policies, we think about the impact on communities and their fishers. We try to do what we can through our decisions.
Perhaps, Ms. Gibbons, I could get you to answer my previous question around the learnings from the 2019 conflicts around the lobster fishery.
Naiomi Metallic is an associate professor and chancellor's chair of aboriginal law and policy at Dalhousie University. She was here recently speaking to us in relation to the illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, which, of course, is completely interconnected with what we are talking about today.
In some of the testimony that she provided, she shared the concern that some of the discussions have been one-sided, often equating indigenous fishing with illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. She pointed out that:
This entirely overlooks that we are talking about constitutionally protected rights that require respect and implementation by governments, especially so given Canada's passing of the act on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
I'm wondering if you can provide some comments and thoughts around that. I'm happy to get further written information as well after the fact.
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There are certainly a lot of learnings that come out of really difficult situations like that.
Doug was managing our region during the height of a very tense period and may add some important observations. They were managing in the moment and figuring out how to diffuse the tensions, but I think that, over the longer term, we focused on a few things.
The most important one is understanding what indigenous communities are looking for in terms of access to the fishery and finding ways to support that. We have done a fair bit of movement on moderate livelihood through rights and reconciliation agreements in the last few years and also through these moderate livelihood fishing plans, which are not formal agreements but are understandings and kind of set out a vision for the community in terms of how they would like to be involved in the fishery and for the department in finding a way to support them to move toward those objectives. That's a really important piece.
We recognize that there's great interest and that there may be impacts on non-indigenous communities when changes are made in terms of indigenous participation. We have frequent dialogues, and we've recognized that we have to be open about what we are doing and why we're doing it and take the time for those conversations.
I will say that, in my own exchanges with fish harvester associations in moderate livelihood regions, if you will—and this can play across the country on reconciliation more generally—my observation is that people really do want to try to find a way to reconcile and to provide more realization of the objectives of indigenous communities. There is genuine support for that. There may be differences in approach and phasing and those sorts of things, but there is that support.
I often meet with the leadership of fish harvester associations, and they show a genuine willingness to find solutions and work with their members to be able to bridge some of those divides.
I think what I would say is that everyone realizes that these are groups that are living side by side and fishing side by side. They're working together on wharves, and they really want to try to work together in harmony. They have many success stories that they will share on both sides, and that's very encouraging to hear.
We have to keep at that. We have to keep those dialogues going, and we have to do it in a way that's respectful of both groups.
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Okay. I'm going to take a bit of a change of pace, if I could.
Dr. John Reynolds, who's the chair of COSEWIC, was before this committee last year, and I asked him about elvers. Some of what I've read in your responses to the industry has been that we have to be very cautious, that we can't increase the TAC to give more access, because we're going through a species-at-risk and COSEWIC process, although there are enormous and plentiful elvers on the east coast.
I asked if they could separate, through the SARA and COSEWIC processes, the elvers where there is a challenge in Ontario and the St. Lawrence, because of the damming of lakes and that kind of thing, versus the east coast, where that doesn't happen. He said yes, it is for two reasons: One, they are in more abundance and we can separate that in the process, and two, they probably have slight genetic differences, although they are all born in the same place.
Why is it that when the previous minister wrote me back on that issue, she said there was no way to do that?
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Every day last year.... Here's just a sample.
The minister and Mr. Kerr were emailed by the industry with specific reports of poaching going on in the rivers. They have live, active cameras. These are not the hundreds of rivers that aren't licensed, which had poaching. They're these rivers.
They never got a response once from DFO or DFO enforcement. Not one of the people on here was arrested, including the case I brought up last week, where the fyke net was stolen by the elver fishery. That was reported to DFO and no charges were laid against the individual who stole the net, even though it had a GPS tracker on it and a DFO licence. Why is no enforcement happening when the industry complains?
One of these rivers, the Sackville River, is two minutes from your enforcement office, yet nobody ever came.
I mentioned that the officers who are seen.... The public sees some of the enforcement action, but it does not see all of it. There are elements both at the facilities and at the exit points, and then the intelligence that's being gathered as well. There's a whole continuum. It's not just of the officers appearing on the water, but also those gathering intelligence and trying to understand where the elvers are going, which is an important part of it. Then the deterrent impact is stopping it along the way.
At source, of course, with the number of streams it's far more difficult to stop it. That's why we strategically deployed resources throughout the chain to try to disrupt that activity throughout the chain.
My comments are along the same lines as Mr. Hardie's. We want to believe that regulations will change things, but we all have enough experience to know that there's nothing easier to get around than a regulation.
Personally, I'm afraid that the most honest people, those who don't flout the regulations and have developed fishing by the sweat of their brow, are the ones who are penalized. As I said earlier, this is also the case in other types of fishery. They're always the ones who are penalized: their fishery is closed down and their licences taken away, even though these people often behave in an exemplary way. I find this frightening, because in the end there will be frustration, anger and intimidation. We're going to end up in an irreversible impasse.
In this context, and in a state governed by the rule of law like ours, what makes you think we can change things in the more or less short term?
My question is for Ms. Gibbons. This may be a bit of a repeat, but perhaps you can refine it a little bit for me.
It's clear that Fisheries and Oceans is not responding to all of the reports that are coming forward around poaching, based on the information we're receiving. How is it decided which reports to respond to?
Can you walk me through that process of when a report is received, the actions that are taken, or the lack of action, moving forward?
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In terms of the strategy, the officers are out in communities on the rivers, and people see them. They get a little bit of a sense of that.
In general, I think there's a certain amount of information that's shared in the public interest, and then there's a certain amount of information that, from a risk-based enforcement perspective, is maintained within conservation and protection.
In terms of what will happen with the tool kit, we're moving really quickly. We hope to continue on quickly through the regulatory process and meet all of the requirements that we need to be able to bring in new regulations and to continue the conversations with the harvesters, licence-holders and indigenous communities on their interests.