Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries
Issue 3 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 19, 1998
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries met this day at 9:30 a.m. to consider the questions of privatization and quota licensing in Canada's fisheries.
Senator Gerald J. Comeau (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: I would like to introduce the new clerk of the committee, Marie Danielle Vachon, who takes over from Paul Benoit. My understanding is Paul Benoit has now gone on to teaching, or one of those loftier professions. Welcome, Marie Danielle.
Today our witness is Mr. Henry Surette, a director of the West Nova Fishermen's Coalition. Towards the end of the meeting, Member of Parliament Peter Stoffer will appear to provide a few comments on this subject as well.
I also welcome Brian Giroux, the Executive Director of the Mobile Gear Association of Nova Scotia.
Mr. Surette, do you have an opening comment?
Mr. Henry Surette, Director, West Nova Fishermen's Coalition: Mr. Chairman, I am honoured to be here. I have a lifetime of fishing experience. I will try to present it to the committee as best I can.
In the past 40 years, all I have done is fish. I have represented fishermen in the last 15 to 20 years on a voluntary basis, even though it means a loss of time and fishing days. That has just been the norm for me. There was a need in the fishing industry. Fishermen do not like to get up and speak their minds. They like to kick barrels on the wharf, but when you bring them to a meeting, they will not speak their minds, although they might curse when they get home. I simply got mad and took the front of the stage to do the job the best I could. Although my background has been fishing, I have been a little bit of everything, including an inventor and altar boy.
When you see a commercial on TV about family abuse, you realize that you must take it upon yourself to report anything you see that is not acceptable in today's society. It is the same thing in the fishing industry. I cannot just sit home and let the fish die and not speak my mind. Fish dumping is going on every day in all sectors. It is high grading to no end.
I was involved in the first round of negotiations on international trade quotas and was dead set against them, but I lost. They said it would help fix the fishery, but it has not done that. Can anyone explain to me what qualifies the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council to be the custodian of our fish? Last year alone we dropped the quota by 25 per cent of the cod because of high grading. There will be more cod caught this year, but they will not be landed.
The priest told us a Bible story a few weeks ago where Jesus was on the shore and jumped in the boat and asked Simon and Peter to put out their nets. They caught two boat loads of fish in one net, all the same kind. That does not happen on the ocean. You put your nets out, and they fill up with a variety of species. However, you only keep the ones you want, the ones that fit your quota. Until we change that practice, cod stocks will never come up. They will go up and down to fit the needs of the day. That is not good enough for me when you have a group of hand liners that are allowed two trips in a year. If we had the fish that a few boats dumped, you could keep 50 hand liners fishing every day for a whole year. It is sad, and it should not be.
My village is unique. In my lifetime, there has only been one person arrested there, and his father was not a fisherman. The rest of the community is made up of decent people. They leave school early -- I do not mean at 2 o'clock, but early in life -- to go fishing. They take pride in themselves; they work to get a new car, and then the next thing they do is build their own house. When it is finished, most of them get married, move in and raise a family, and stay there. If you take the fish from the community, that village will not be there.
There is more to fishing than we see on paper here. It is more than a livelihood. It is a way of life, and it is something that I will never be able to pass on to my son because I am not allowed to bring home any more codfish in my life; I cannot bring even one fish home to eat.
I had an ITQ so small that I had to get out. The great plan of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was to eliminate the little players and to pass their quotas on to the few big players, which is fine. It was my choice to sell, but I will explain why I did it. I had a small quota, so we went on ground the first summer we had an ITQ, waiting for the banks to open after being closed for three months. I got there with great hopes of having good catches. We tried a 20 minute tow. We had more haddock than we could land for the year in 20 minutes. I knew then and there that I had to sell because I could not bring myself to dump fish for the rest of my life. I gave up -- I put my head down and said, "Boys, this is it." I came home and thought about it. We fished for the rest of the summer because we had so many bills that we could not afford not to. The same thing is happening to the people who bought my quota. They do not have enough numbers of one species or another, so it goes overboard. Can you tell me how a government can call that sustainable development? That is slaughter. How can I come here and point the finger at people when I did it myself? I am not very proud of it, but it was a summer where we tried our best to get away from the other species.
One night, I was towing for flounders, not directing for any cod, haddock, or pollock. A friend of mine called me and said, "I have a bag of fish, if you want it." We needed a few codfish to finish our trip. I went over, and he had 35,000 ground-fish. He was looking for flounder and could not find any. He gave me a bag of fish which was about 5,000 pounds, and he dumped the rest, then shot away again looking for flounders. He did the same thing again. This still goes on today. How can you ever have an increase in fish when this goes on? I have received calls from 15 or 20 people who told me stories that would make you wonder, but it is, "he said, she said." You get my point.
What have I to gain from this? Absolutely nothing. I cannot land one more fish. I have everything to lose, because I have my lobster fishing gear out on the ground, and I am sure that some dragger will probably retaliate and do me harm. I took a chance, and I do not care. I cannot let this happen. It is the same as family abuse. I cannot let this fish abuse go on without telling someone about it.
Again, I will come back to the FRCC. If the management plan does not change, what will they do? Guess again? Every year, they keep guessing. We should bring the pollock down next year and the cod looks better? That is not the way to work.
You cannot just arbitrarily put observers aboard every boat. That would ruin the fishery. It would not be fair to them to put observers on every boat. You only need an observer aboard one boat to record the fish caught on that trip. Take it from there. Multiply it by 150 and see what you come up with. You do not need to count every fish. Just multiply what you see aboard three boats and you have a pretty good idea of what is happening in this fishery.
It is happening in every fishery. In Southwest Nova, the hand-liners work on dollar value. They are allowed $3,000 worth of fish, not pounds' worth. Whatever they land comes aboard and it is kept. My friend who fishes in another district of hand-liners has to high-grade because he is allowed 1,000 pounds of cod, 1,000 pounds of pollock and an amount of haddock. When he reaches that number, his lines are overboard and he is catching whatever he has to. You cannot tell the fish not to bite your hook or not to jump in your net. That is what happens.
We have one of the better systems for not destroying fish. We have a dollar value on our fish and the guy is allowed X amount of dollars. That works very well, Mr. Chairman. I am sure it could work for every other fishery if you put a dollar value on their fish and let them land what they catch. It is being caught and dumped anyway so you might as well let the guy come in with the fish.
Some people were trying to be honest in reporting what they had on board and they were charged for having the wrong species. We are punishing the honest people. What can we do but dump it? We are not allowed to dump it nor are we allowed to bring it in, but we caught it and it is dead. That is a serious problem. We have to change what we are doing.
There is another major problem in our fishery. We all know about it and no one wants to address the problem. The President of the United States is going around getting big support to bomb Iraq. You ask what that has to do with the fishery? The world is supporting him on bombing Iraq and that action will kill a lot of innocent people. Why can we not do the same thing about killing the seals? Why can we not get world support? We need to take care of a few million seals.
The lobster fishery in the Gulf is going down. What do you think the seals eat in the wintertime? There are no fish in the Gulf, so the seals eat lobsters. Everyone is wondering about the depletion of the lobster stock. It is going down because there are many more seals. On the Madeleine Islands, they found many lobster tails on the shore. The seals are hungry and they eat.
I went last summer to Cape Breton. At home we have a seal on every rock. There, they are fighting for space. It is unreal. We can fix many problems by culling out the seals in greater numbers. Maybe we can get an aircraft carrier and do a little job on them.
I have been fishing for a long time. I am just about through, but I have passed it on to my son. He and his wife are expecting a child in May. Hopefully, it will be a son and he will pass it on to him, as my father passed it on to me. My father passed a licence on to me; I cannot do that for my son. I would not feel so badly if it was done right, if everyone was playing by the rules. You cannot blame them, though -- they have to make a living, too.
One fellow told me that his quota is not that big but he must dump fish until October to make sure he catches all of one species or another. He might start now and never reach his quota before October. Imagine how many hand-liners you could keep going with that fish.
The stories that I have heard over the last week or two make you wonder where everyone is. DFO is saying that they have people counting fish on the wharf, and they do. Every fish that comes off the wharf is counted. No one is counting the ones that are dead in the water. A dead fish is a dead fish; I do not care if it is counted or not. It is not helping anyone. I really cannot add anything more.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Surette, for your presentation.
Senator Stewart: Mr. Surette, can you tell me where you live?
Mr. Surette: It is a little village called Pickney's Point, 10 miles from Yarmouth, between Wedgeport and Yarmouth.
Senator Stewart: You say that the stories that you have heard over the last few weeks have been horrendous. Mr. Surette, I have been a member of this committee now for 12 or 14 years, and, aside from the eloquence of your statement, I cannot say that I have heard anything new from you. I have heard the same thing year after year after year in this committee. Nothing has been done.
You give a certain version of it but we have even more shocking stories in the records of this committee. I remember one ex-dragger captain who quit because he could not tolerate what was going on, particularly with the high-grading. He was told by his company to hail the dock on a certain day, that they would not be geared up to handle his boat on the day before or the day after. That was his time slot. He was to go out and adjust his catch by high-grading, so that when he hailed the dock he would have the most valuable catch available in his hold.
So this is not a new story. The question is, what has been going on over the years?
I noticed that you referred several times to hand-lining as an alternative. You seem to be saying that if more emphasis were given to hand-lining, we would be making more advantageous use of the fish stocks. Is that your argument?
Mr. Surette: No. My argument is that our method of doing business is assessing dollar values, rather than pounds, of fish. One can do the same thing to any dragger or on any gear sector -- give them a dollar value and let them bring in what they catch. It does not matter. I am not an anti-dragger, I just want to ensure that the fish that is caught is landed and counted.
Senator Stewart: Would you therefore assign a dollar quota to the fishermen, not a pound quota?
Mr. Surette: Exactly.
Senator Stewart: How much restriction would you impose upon the number of persons eligible to have a dollar quota?
Mr. Surette: For a test model you could try one small company and give them a dollar value to see how it would work. You would not blanket the whole fishery with a dollar value quota, but try a test model on a small dragger company that has two, three, four boats, and see what you come up with. The real numbers are a blend of fish.
Senator Stewart: Am I correct in thinking that, regardless of the type of quota, you are in favour of a quota system?
Mr. Surette: You must have a number. One cannot let it go wide open. Within the quota system, however, it is not what is landed, it is what is caught that is harmful.
Senator Stewart: You make such a good case that, in a sense, you beg a question. If your case is as good as it appears to be, do you know of an argument against it? Whether it is a good argument or not, have you heard an argument against the approach that you are now advocating?
Mr. Surette: No. DFO knows how we handle the hand line fishery in Yarmouth County and it is working quite well. Why not expand it?
Senator Stewart: I have a slightly different question. You are in an area where some fishers are interested in catching the blue fin tuna. Have you had any personal experience with that fishery?
Mr. Surette: Yes. It is one of the most exciting fisheries I have ever seen. It is not a fishery, it is a glorified sport. I have hand-lined a codfish, but when you have a tuna, 500, 600 pounds on the other end of the hand line, that is excitement.
Senator Stewart: Is it true that there is a great concentration of ownership of blue fin tuna licenses, that five or six people in your area own all of the area's licences ?
Mr. Surette: Yes. In the last seven or eight years, the people with money went out and bought the licences before anyone knew what was happening.
Senator Stewart: There are about 32 licences in the area, but they are owned only by five or six persons?
Mr. Surette: Yes, exactly.
Senator Stewart: I do not know whether it will be true this year, but in years past, Senator Landry used to say that the Japanese ate fish with their eyes, not with their mouths. I do not know whether that was true in the case of blue fin tuna, but I know that they were particular about the quality of the fish.
Presumably, if a fisher caught a blue fin tuna that he figured was unlikely to demand a good price on the wharf, he might very well let that fish go and try to get a better quality fish.
Is there high grading in the blue fin tuna fishery?
Mr. Surette: I would not say there is a significant amount of high grading. The fish are harder to get now and fishers are only too glad to get that fish on board. With a limited number of people, they get a fair price for most of their fish.
Senator Stewart: We were told years ago that, at a certain point, far more tuna were shipped out of Nova Scotia than were landed there. The story was that fishermen were smuggling fish ashore. That was eight or ten years ago. Is it true that that no longer happens?
Mr. Surette: No it does not, because the penalties are stiff enough that no one dares to take a chance. If you are caught with a tuna there are severe penalties. Not only that, but if a buyer is caught with tuna, he pays a stiffer penalty so he does not wish to be caught with an untagged fish. That is not a problem anymore.
Senator Robertson: I am interested in the quota that you catch; is that for all of the fishermen in your zone?
Mr. Surette: Just the hand line group.
Senator Robertson: Therefore, would everyone in this group have a multi-species licences?
Mr. Surette: Yes. If you obtained a cod licence, you are allowed to catch all the other species.
Senator Robertson: How do the fish plants handle this? When you are not doing this, you must be high grading and throwing them away. Do the fish plants cooperate in processing all the different species that you have? How many different species would you have?
Mr. Surette: You would have cod, haddock, pollock and hake, a few halibut, but not a whole lot.
Senator Robertson: Basically the species that the plant can handle?
Mr. Surette: That is not a problem.
Senator Robertson: How many other zones besides yours do this?
Mr. Surette: None that I am aware of.
Senator Robertson: Are you the first ones?
Mr. Surette: Yes. I went from day one and said this is the only way to go, it would save fish and it did. We are just trying to expand this method of fishing because it makes much more sense.
Senator Robertson: Do the other fishers who are not hand lining have multi-species licences as well?
Mr. Surette: Yes.
Senator Robertson: All multi-species licensing. Have you any idea how many fishers in the Atlantic fishing fleet have multi-species licences?
Mr. Surette: Anyone who has a ground-fish licence is allowed to catch multi-species.
The Chairman: I am not sure if we are correct on the terms or the definition of "multi-species". Is not multi-species something like being allowed to catch lobster and groundfish? Am I getting this wrong?
Mr. Surette: Groundfish includes cod, haddock, and pollock.
The Chairman: That is multi-species; not multi-licence?
Mr. Surette: Yes.
Senator Robertson: Therefore it includes lobster.
The Chairman: Multi-species refers to different fish.
Mr. Surette: That is multi-licence.
The Chairman: Okay, I am sorry.
Senator Robertson: Different licences.
The Chairman: I just wanted to get the definitions right.
Senator Robertson: You would have a licence for lobster?
Mr. Surette: Not necessarily just because have you a groundfish licence.
Senator Robertson: Practically speaking you would have two licences then?
Mr. Surette: Yes.
Senator Robertson: In the Atlantic fishing fleet, approximately how many are on this managed fishing quota?
Mr. Surette: The numbers of licences in Atlantic Canada I would not know.
Senator Robertson:How many would be high grading? Would half the fleet be high grading?
Mr. Surette: I would say anyone who is not under our management regime in Yarmouth County is high grading, whether hand-lining, long-lining, gill-netting, a dragger, or anything else, because that is the way that the regime is set up. It is a must for them to survive. I would not know anyone who is not doing it.
Senator Rossiter: What you are saying is, I believe, that the plants could process all of the fish if you took in everything that you caught. On the other hand, is it not market driven; will they not take only what they have a market for at the time?
Mr. Surette: That is part of the reason why the fishers do high grade and it is market driven, but more than that it is that, in landing all the fish of one kind, they cannot go out and catch the other kind. If they are low on this amount, they must make sure they do not come with more of that fish before a certain time of the year so that they can land all of their fish.
Senator Rossiter: A high grade is demanded or else the fisherman must find another place to sell those fish to someone else who can use it, or will use it?
Mr. Surette: There are very few privately owned draggers; it is mostly companies now. They do send the boats out for X amount of fish -- I imagine for the species that they want for the day.
The Chairman: Just a quick supplementary. You are bringing in an element I had not heard before. Are you surmising that, Mr. Surette? Is it speculation or something that you are quite familiar with?
Mr. Surette: It is something that I am quite familiar with.
The Chairman: It is a dimension I had not heard before. The impression that I had today was that the quota was the cause of the high grading, the management regime, and not the plant. I just want to make the point that I had not heard that comment made before.
Mr. Surette: I was not going to bring this up, but a fellow who runs a boat for a friend of mine, the captain of a dragger, in his first trip last year he had an observer on board and in his first catch of the year he had 35,000 haddock. The plant was not too pleased with that because he was landing a lot of haddock on the first day of their year. He said he had to land them because the observer was on board. I took it from there.
The Chairman: I will not pursue that right now.
Senator Butts: I want to try the same problem from another aspect. Let us talk about quotas. You are for quotas as long as they are on dollar value. Is that correct?
Mr. Surette: Exactly.
Senator Butts: If I say quotas for the draggers that you are talking about, the problem with their quota is that it is only for one fish , or is it that they have already caught their quota for one fish and they must then dump it over? Which is it, or is it both?
Mr. Surette: It is both, I think.
Senator Butts: What is your cure to a quota for the "big guy" as you call him?
How would you fix this quota business since you want a quota but you want your quota on dollars, right? What will you do with the quota for the dragger?
Mr. Surette: Again, you must find out what is really being caught and then you could answer that question easily by making your test model, as I told you before, and coming up with numbers or ways other than what I have just mentioned. I do not know how you would do it.
Senator Butts: You do not want their quota to be for a specific fish. Is that correct?
Mr. Surette: Not the total numbers. I know what you are saying and I appreciate it. I do not have all the answers because I do not even know what numbers are being caught. If we had those figures I could come up with a plan, but to just come up with the numbers being landed does not reflect the true number being caught.
Senator Butts: It is true that they are dumping. You talked about dumping. Why are they dumping? Is it because they have already caught their quota of that fish or is it because they do not have a licence for that fish?
Mr. Surette: It is that they do not have the numbers left for the year, or whatever it happens to be.
Senator Butts: They have caught their quota?
Mr. Surette: For that species, and they must keep dumping until they get the right species that they are assigned for the year. In the meantime, they must do what they must do.
Senator Butts: They must dump. How do we cure the dumping? Do we give them a larger quota or do we give them a quota for another type of fish? I am looking for the cure.
Mr. Surette: The cure is in dollar values.
Senator Butts: Dollar values for everyone?
Mr. Surette: Yes.
Senator Butts: For every kind of fish?
Mr. Surette: Exactly, and you figure out what it is worth on the market.
Senator Butts: So we will just put dollar values on quotas, we will not specify species, just a dollar value on your whole load?
Mr. Surette: Haddock are more valuable than cod. People will direct for haddock and make it all haddock. The market will generate that. You could come in with a million pounds of haddock tomorrow and the price of haddock is down to 50 cents a pound.
Senator Butts: We have agreed then that we can all have quotas and we will just be on dollar values, not in species.
Obviously you are for them being transferable so you could give it to your son, right, so it is a transferable quota?
Mr. Surette: Any licence is transferable.
Senator Butts: You want that continued though?
Mr. Surette: Yes. I already completed the process and transferred it to my son.
Senator Butts: Can you sell it to the big guy? Is it that transferable, or is it just within your family?
Mr. Surette: You can sell a licence because it was yours in the first place. I am certainly not against selling licences because that is how the industry evolved. People tried fishing and walked away from it. They sold the licence to the next guy; that is business. In the groundfish industry, the big boys bought all the little guys out and that was business, too. People took a chance. The big boys bought up all the quotas and there is nothing wrong with that.
Senator Butts: You do not object to that?
Mr. Surette: No, because that was a choice that I had and that we all had, as fishermen. Namely, to sell those licences.
Fishing is big business. If you do not have a big plant or a big company behind you when you are starting out, it is pretty hard to start up, even in lobsters now. The price of an outfit for lobsters is $300,000. Most young guys cannot afford that on their own so they have to go to a company for help. That is how you get started; with the backing of the big boys.
Senator Butts: To summarize, then, you are in favour of ITQs as long as the "Q" has a dollar value on it?
Mr. Surette: We have to change our method of fishing, that is all I am saying -- not fishing, per se, but what we are catching. That would make more sense to the groundfishery than anything else. The fishing stock would increase tenfold within five years because it would not be dumped for no reason -- it would be landed and counted. We could then print sustainable development brochures because the fishery would return. You will not direct your boats to catch haddock if they are only worth 50 cents a pound.
Senator Perrault: You could freeze the catch.
Senator Butts: My problem concerns your objections to the FRCC. Their vision document of 1994 said many of the things that you are ready to agree with here today. It is all about a rights-based approach to the fishery so that an individual or a company has a right. It also talks about the right to buy quotas. All these things are contained in that FRCC document.
The Chairman: I think you are talking about the FCC, the Fisheries Council of Canada, rather than the FRCC.
Senator Butts: Yes; that is correct.
Mr. Surette: That is a different group.
Senator Butts: All these documents talk about exactly what Mr. Surette is talking about. That is why I have difficulty understanding what he wants changed, apart from the dollar value on the quota.
Mr. Surette: I do not want to go through life knowing that dumping is happening day after day.
Senator Butts: Your concern is the dollar value, then.
Senator Losier-Cool: It also involves free enterprise.
Senator Stewart: When we talk about your area or zone, could you tell us the limits? I will give you an example. Is it, for example, from Brier Island down to a point on Cape Sable Island? Where is it geographically?
Mr. Surette: We represent fishermen from Brier Island to Cape Sable Island but in our management regime of groundfish the area involved is Yarmouth County.
Senator Stewart: All right. Do you have any idea of the value of the catch taken by the different major gear types in Yarmouth county -- that is, the big draggers against the hand liners, et cetera?
Mr. Surette: No, I would not know.
Senator Stewart: Would you say that the big draggers landed twice as much or three times as much?
Mr. Surette: Do you mean more than the hand liners?
Senator Stewart: Let us say the 36-foot boats, the relatively small boats.
Mr. Surette: It has to be a million times more.
Senator Stewart: All right. Tell me if I am wrong, but at times you seem to be advocating that you have a hankering for the small boat fishery. You are not condemning the big draggers but, presumably, you used a relatively small boat yourself. How big was the boat?
Mr. Surette: It was a 45-foot boat.
Senator Stewart: And, presumably, your son is using the same one?
Mr. Surette: Yes, the same boat.
Senator Stewart: You are saying that that is the type of boat for which the dollar value quota fits real well.
Mr. Surette: It does not matter what size of boat you use. If you are assigned $1 million worth of fish and that is what you bring in, the size of the boat does not matter. I said it before and I will say it again: A dead fish is a dead fish.
Senator Stewart: I, too, come from a fishing area. Our fishermen are not as lucky as yours. I am in the gulf. I hear a great deal of argument, which I tend to like, that we should not think of the fishery simply as an industry but that we should think of fishing as a way of life. When you start talking about fishing as a way of life, you almost inevitably begin to think that the relatively small boats -- that is, the 36- or the 45-footers -- are better fit to sustain a good way of life than are these huge industrialized draggers. That is why I was asking you that question.
I am not asking you to come out against the dragger industry, but am I correct in thinking that you believe that the kind of fishery which would involve the relatively small boats is at least as good on the water and probably better on the land -- that is for the type of community it sustains -- than the draggers? Is that fair?
Mr. Surette: That is a hard question because I am involved in the dragger fishery. I was a representative of the dragger sector for a few years. There is only one boat over 65 feet in Yarmouth County and in Southwest Nova. There are not a whole lot of boats over 65 feet.
Their catching capabilities are quite high and they need a lot more fish to survive, which they have done.
Senator Stewart: They have upgraded the boats, have they not?
Mr. Surette: You would be surprised at the capability of a 45 footer. It is 10 times what it used to be because of the technology and the power of the engines.
Senator Stewart: This transition in the boats was never noticed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans?
Mr. Surette: I made a presentation to the Nova Scotia loan board about 15 years ago. I told them they were building a monster with all these small draggers they were building. They said, "No. We have to build these boats because the industry is booming." They would not consider my input, but only three years later they had to start buying these boats back. There were short-term jobs in the boat building industry, which was booming, but then it bottomed out.
Senator Stewart: I come to my last question. Assuming that in your area you went to the dollar-value quota, have you any idea of what the dollar value would be for one year for someone with a boat such as your own? Are we talking $100,000 worth of total groundfish catch, or $200,000?
Mr. Surette: In southwest Nova Scotia last year, I think the boats only made two trips of $3,000 per trip, like hand-liners, so it is very minimal. It used to be a whole summer's job and now it is only a trip or two.
Senator Stewart: You have told us that there are no big draggers in Yarmouth County. Are you saying simply that the fish are not out there or that some other type of gear is taking the fish?
Mr. Surette: The quota is divided into sectors, and the dragger sector had a major share. Then the gill-netters have a major part of it. Then the smaller guys, the hand-liners, only had a very small number. I do not think these numbers can be exceeded just because they are hand-liners. That is what we did in the past when we created paper fish.
Senator Stewart: What I am trying to discover, Mr. Surette, is whether, if your approach were to be adopted, a fisher in Yarmouth would have an adequate annual income? That is what I am really getting at. You seem to be saying probably not but it would be better than now.
Mr. Surette: I am saying today that it will never come up to an honest living for a hand-liner as long as this high-grading goes on.
Senator Stewart: Thank you.
Senator Perrault: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Surette has made a good presentation. I think he has been frank, candid and honest. We need more of that in society.
I am from the West Coast but we have many of the same problems, such as the diminution of good species. They are just disappearing and thus there is something radically wrong with fisheries on the West Coast as well. You are suggesting that the dumping of so-called surplus species really deserves our condemnation and needs to be changed. I demonstrate my naiveté when I ask this: if all the species were brought to shore, is there no way they could be placed in storage, frozen for later processing? It is absolutely sinful, in a world where there is so much starvation, to waste a resource of this kind. Is there any way, regardless of species, that they can be saved so that their maximum value and their food potential can be exploited?
Mr. Surette: That is the other reason I am trying to change things. These numbers do not fit DFO's mandate in the regime of quotas, so they cannot land them.
Senator Perrault: Should we change that? Maybe this is an idiotic regulation.
Mr. Surette: As I suggested before, why do we not take one small company and make a test fishery for one year?
Senator Perrault: We should try some alternatives because this is shocking.
Mr. Surette: In this test fishery, you would have observers on board all the boats and every fish landed would be counted.
Senator Perrault: That is a good idea. It is certainly better than the status quo. Fisheries seem to be under stress all over the world. I know it is easy to say the fishermen are taking too many fish but testimony we have heard in various places, included Woods Hole Institute in Massachusetts, suggests that there are a lot of factors operating here. The supply of plankton is affected by diminution of the ozone layer. There is pollution, disease, and also the warming of waters which is disrupting the whole intermix of species. You certainly cannot condemn the fishermen for this problem.
Mr. Surette: No.
Senator Perrault: The seals, frankly, are a big nuisance on the West Coast as well. You cannot attribute the problem solely to the seals either, I suppose.
Mr. Surette: I mentioned that hand-liners in my district made two trips last year. If each fisher were given the same amount of fish as are eaten by 100 seals, he or she could make a summer's work.
Senator Perrault: They have a ravenous appetite. They are literally gobbling up our salmon on the West Coast.
Mr. Surette: We see it every day.
Senator Perrault: I sympathize with you. How many pounds does an average seal eat per day, do you know?
Mr. Surette: A seal eats forty pounds per day, but there are millions of seals. If a fisherman was allowed to kill 100 seals, perhaps you could give him the fish that 100 seals would eat in a year.
Senator Perrault: Logic would bring me to the same conclusion, but we have to start playing hardball on this. The stocks will just fade away if we do not do something.
Mr. Surette: We will be overrun by seals. Maybe you can bring them to Ottawa and use them for seals of approval or something.
Senator Perrault: I think you have brought some good, candid honesty to the meeting this morning and I appreciate it.
Senator Robertson: Mr. Surette, coming back to your sensible approach on dollar quotas in your own fishing zone, who would object to moving to that system on a total basis? Would anyone object?
Mr. Surette: DFO would object.
Senator Robertson: I see, but none of the fishers disagree?
Mr. Surette: I cannot see why they would because it would make more sense to them. It would be a lot easier to manage.
Senator Robertson: What about the big trawlers? Would they object? I do not have much sympathy for the big trawlers, but they would just have to adjust their marketing practices. They could do so without too much difficulty, and the fish plants could adjust their marketing. I just do not think we can afford to lose these fish. It is terrible. As Senator Stewart has said, we have heard this so many times and nothing has ever been done about it. They keep throwing away all the dead fish.
To add insult to injury, this committee was told by DFO officials that the quota system that they like, that type of management, is the most efficient approach. I do not know what they mean by that.
Mr. Surette: That is why I brought this sustainable development brochure with me. It throws everything out the door when you bring the truth to the picture.
Senator Robertson: I have a dumb question to ask. We all know that the seals are ravaging what is left of the fishery now. Years ago, before any of us were concerned about these matters, was it because fish were so abundant that the seals could eat so many without causing a problem? I am talking now about the time even before the culling of seals. There was always a natural equalizer, a balance, but the balance is all shot. Is that just because the fish have been all fished out?
Mr. Surette: No. It is because we stopped killing the seals in great numbers, and they just multiplied.
Senator Robertson: I would like to know what happened before we started killing the seals.
Mr. Surette: Killing of seals has been going on since Canada was a country. It was part of our heritage and we just stopped because it was presented in the wrong way to the public. The anti-seal people get more support against killing seals than Clinton will get next week against killing people in Iraq. That is sad.
Senator Robertson: That is another issue. I guess we are saying that there is no natural balance.
Mr. Surette: The seals have no enemies. They get up in the morning and eat the first thing that is there. They are not on a quota.
Senator Robertson: You have been very helpful, Mr. Surette.
Senator Losier-Cool: I have a short question on your opinion of the dollar value on the quotas. Is that your personal opinion or is that the opinion of the coalition that you represent? How many fishers are members of that coalition?
Mr. Surette: I think there are 245 ground-fish licences in that coalition.
Senator Losier-Cool: They will share your opinion?
Mr. Surette: Exactly. That is their management of this fishery. I know it started with me, but they adopted it and it is working well for preserving fish. We would like to expand it to the rest of the country. It makes more sense.
Senator Losier-Cool: Thank you.
The Chairman: Mr. Surette, you bring a vast amount of experience to this committee and that is much needed. Thank you.
Mr. Surette: Again, I thank you for letting me come up here. It has been an honour for me. I am only a small voice in the crowd but I can make a difference.
We had a lobster strike a few years ago and it was very serious. Markets were terrible. The price was bad. I told people at a meeting that I could do something about it. Everyone laughed. "What can you do?" I went to Europe and looked at the markets. To make a long story short, I came back and said that it is not the market that is the problem; it is transportation. I got together a company to build a transport that can haul lobsters around the country for a month. We have a plant in Chatham that can build these things. We have the biggest plant of manufactured lobster-holding systems in the world right now. We just opened the doors, but it will make a difference. Today I beg you to listen to what I say and we can make a difference in the ground-fish. I thank you for that.
The Chairman: Our last witness is Member of Parliament Peter Stoffer from Nova Scotia.
Mr. Peter Stoffer, Member of Parliament: Honourable senators, on behalf of the New Democratic Party and the people of my riding in Nova Scotia, I consider it a privilege and an honour to be before you today, especially when I consider that many of you are the ones who helped build this country to which I emigrated with my family in 1956. I thank you for that.
I am not a fisher. I am sort of on the outside looking in, but I am on the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans of the other place as the NDP critic. In the last four months, we have travelled extensively through Atlantic Canada and Western Canada. Our results are both very chilling and very enlightening. It has been probably the most emotional four months of my entire life.
Unfortunately, I must start off on a negative note. In my personal opinion, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is the most bureaucratic, out-of-control department that I have ever come up against in my entire life. I have worked in many federal departments, such as Transport Canada, during my years in the airline industry. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is out of control. I will give you specific examples of that as I go along.
Unfortunately, there are more DFO bureaucrats in Ottawa today than there were DND bureaucrats during World War II when we had 1 million people in uniform. I do not even think we have one million fish left out there anymore.
I speak also for Newfoundlanders who, for 450 years, managed their own fishery. Since joining Confederation 50 years ago, they have seen the Government of Canada, led by the various parties, completely destroy their livelihood. A present example of that is The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy, which arose out of desperate need and was greatly appreciated. Although the program itself was ill-managed, the funds were desperately needed by people in the smaller communities. They all received written letters that the program would be extended to May of 1999. They based their financial commitments on that letter. Last year, they were advised that this program would end in May of 1998 because it had run out of funds. You cannot do that to people. Now they have extended the program until August. We will be pushing them to meet their original mandate of May 1999.
Today I have been asked to comment on the impact that quota licensing and privatization have had on the resource. Regarding individual transfer quotas, a key part of the argument which explains the tragedy of the Atlantic ground fishery has been the movement away from community control of the inshore fishery. In the year 1242 the Magna Carta took away the right of the king to give fishing rights to whomever he chose. There was instead a public right to fish. That public right to fish is being very quickly taken away and put in the hands of what we call the powerful few.
A new system of property-rights-based fishery has replaced traditional practices. It is characterized by individual quotas, individual transferable quotas, and enterprise allocations, which together amount to the privatization of the common property of competitive fishery. The theory behind this system of quota licensing is to reduce the harvesting capacity in the ground-fish strategy.
The previous witness was very eloquent. I have tremendous respect for what he has done, especially with the lobster fishery. He deserves the Order of Canada for that invention because it really did help the markets and all those people in a time of crisis.
The area where Mr. Surette lives, Southwest Nova, is almost an island onto itself. Compared to the rest of Atlantic Canada, they have a long history of a diverse and wealthy fishery. There are concerns with the ITQ system. Some people favour the ITQ within the fishery; some do not. I am presenting my personal view and that of our party as to why we think the ITQ system is the wrong way to go.
Since their introduction of in the early 1990s, the ITQs and the enterprise allocations have had a devastating impact on both individual fishers and the small communities in which they reside. We have moved from proven, prudent, sustainable approaches to fishery to a corporate, high-tech approach to fishing. The results have been predictable. Large, high-tech boats can now catch in hours the tonnes of fish it used to take thousands of people weeks to catch. The consequences have been stock depletion and resource exhaustion. As the big corporate fishers buy out the licences and quotas of the small fishers, we are moving towards a new economic structure in the Atlantic fishery.
Recent evidence supports the claim that corporations now control over 70 per cent of the total allowable catch. The small fisher drawing a liveable income is now a relic of the past. One fisher with a grade 4 education told me last month, with despair in his voice, that the problem with the fishery is you can have seven guys each make $30,000 per year or you can have one guy make $200,000 a year.
We heard the same in Prince Rupert. A gentleman who fished for over 20 years has now seen his livelihood taken away to be traded on the stock exchange on Bay Street.
In my view, this is a fundamentally regressive development. It takes us away from the traditional view of the fishery as a public resource. It has effectively decimated a way of life and a culture that have thrived in Newfoundland and other Atlantic provinces for several centuries. In environmental terms as well, the trend to corporate-style fishing practices has been a disaster.
Indiscriminate trawling in search of high grade fish results in a temptation to discard a sizeable portion of the catch and amounts to a kind of strip-mining of the sea bottom. It is unethical in ecological terms.
The dumping about which the previous individual spoke and upon which you have eloquently asked questions, is abhorrent. It is the most ridiculous, insane practice.
I have heard from many people within DFO who say that their feedback from fishers is that dumping is good -- that dead fish then go to the bottom and crab and lobster eat them. Dumping increases the crab and lobster stocks. This is what DFO officials have told me. They never give that to me in writing, but this is what they have said to me. That shows how this department is out of control.
When you move to large scale corporate fishing practices, all of the best intentions of conservation management practices will not make an iota of difference. Clear-cutting practices in the forest sector reveal how little foresight and concern large companies put into the management of a resource.
To blame the individual fishers and fishing communities for problems with the resources is untenable. The real issue is one of replacing the fixation with short-term profits that characterizes so much of the modern economy with a concern for long-term community benefits and the preservation of the resource.
There is no question that there are people who are making money in the fishery, but they are few and far between. One of our concerns is that there are five major corporations on the east coast, the federal Fishery Products International, National Sea, Sea Freeze, et cetera. FPI and National Sea were developed by the government. They were set in place in order to create jobs at that time. Hundreds of millions of dollars went into these companies which unfortunately is now proving to be to the detriment of the stocks. They are able to control the fishery but unfortunately eliminate many people within the industry.
I have never accepted the argument that there are too many fisher people and not enough fish. There is too much capacity to catch those fish and not enough realignment in terms of what should be done.
As the World Watch Institute has recently concluded, the down side to the ITQ system is that it allows a small number of individuals or companies to buy control over the fishery. Small scale fishers are too numerous and too vital to coastal communities to be sacrificed in an effort to control over-fishing.
Coastal communities are essential to our culture. In 1995, in Catalina, Newfoundland, the school had 310 students; in 1997, they have 102 students. Where did they go? Where did their families go? They do not even have enough qualified people for a volunteer fire department. We witnessed two streets where every house was boarded up. These are houses that are worth anywhere from $40,000 to $50,000, and they could not even give them away.
This is what we have done, to the devastation of coastal communities. We reject the argument that one can move to central Canada or Western Canada to find a job. When one's ancestors are buried in the grave sites of communities which one must leave there to rot, I find that absolutely unacceptable.
On the issue of ITQs, various authors have written that in most cases rights of access, and rights over marine resources and marine properties should be conferred on fishing communities and not on individual fishers.
In conclusion, a number of remedial measures would help to solve the crisis in the Atlantic fishery. Amongst these are tightly enforcing our 200-mile exclusion zones from foreign fishing, taking the fish quota allocation decision out of the hands of politicians, giving it instead to independent or group members of the scientific community, moving to a community-based quota allocation system, and enforcing catch limits through the introduction of more severe penalties for illegal gear and band practices. In so doing, we should rid ourselves of the foolish, often repeated claims that excessively cold water or greedy seals are the root of the problem.
There is no question that the population of seals has exploded on both coasts. The exact figure of how much they eat -- we heard 40 pounds -- the DFO does not really know. They do not have any evidence on that. As a result of man's interference with the resource, the seals have been able to explode in population. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans believes that there should be a complete harvest, a sustainable quota of seals, and that all parts of the seal should be made complete use of for various markets, including seal loins, oil, meat and pelts.
It is time for us to recognize that the crux of the problem lies in harmful dragger technology, which causes huge by-catches and which damages the reproductive processes of the species.
We have heard compelling evidence that years ago ships would go off Baffin Island and Greenland, where they suspected that the cod would spawn, and catch the spawners. They did not even allow mom and dad cod to have their children, they took that away as well.
I have been calling for a judicial inquiry into the events of recent years and looking into DFO would be a good starting point. The same people who caused the downturn of the fishery are still within DFO. The same people who did an absolutely horrendous job managing the resource are still there.
I can provide a prime example of the incestuous relationship that DFO has with those in the private industry. On the west coast, Mr. Bob Wright owns the Oak Bay Marina. He also has an exclusive fishing lodge on Langara Island. Canada used to have a 12-mile fishing exclusion zone on the coast. He has a 12-mile exclusion zone on an island. No commercial fishery can go near that island. Mr. Wright is a personal friend of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. Ms Velma McCall, who worked with Oak Bay Marina, and who lobbied very hard for the sport fishing lobby, is now Minister Anderson's executive assistant on the West Coast. It is funny how this goes back and forth.
Mr. Wright has an exclusion zone around the island where fishers of Prince Rupert cannot fish any more because he has convinced various governments that sport fishing in his lodge brings more money to the economy, and more protection to the resource, than the commercial fishery does.
In reality, all the products for Mr. Wright's lodge are flown in. There is nothing for the communities at all. I am not talking about the small mom and pop charter outfit that has been there for 30 years, I am talking about an exclusive one that costs a lot of money to go to and provides very little economic benefit for Canada.
At the end of the day, it is my firm conviction that government must take clear responsibility for the errors and omissions in its policies in recent years. It is time to implement a sensible and sustainable policy which foregrounds the interests of the fish stocks and of the small communities which depend upon them.
As we often hear on the West Coast, "Who is speaking for the fish?" No one is actually speaking for the fish. Without the fish, we do not have fishers, without fishers we do not have coastal communities.
I recommend a video called Fishing on the Brink. It was done with hand-line fishers and highlights the occupation of the Barrington Passage and Shelburne County DFO offices in February of 1996. If you wish to have a copy, I can supply one for the committee. It is 45 minutes in length and I highly recommend it. It is very enlightening and you will understand what is happening to individuals and to their families.
In closing, I ask what kind of a country do we wish to leave for our children? What kind of a country do we wish to leave for our coastal communities? A country that many of you in this room today have helped build.
Senator Stewart: Am I correct in thinking that your constituency includes Necum Teuch?
Mr. Stoffer: Yes.
Senator Stewart: However not Ecum Secum.
Mr. Stoffer: There is no such thing as Ecum Secum. It is Ecum Secum East or Ecum Secum West. Ecum Secum West is in my constituency. There is a river there and they split. The people will tell you there is no such thing as Ecum Secum.
Senator Stewart: Ecum Secum West is your easternmost limit?
Mr. Stoffer: That is correct.
Senator Stewart: How much fishing takes place in that constituency? Let us say starting at the mouth of Halifax Harbour and east to Ecum Secum West?
Mr. Stoffer: I would say the Eastern Shore Fishermen's Association is more centered around Eastern Passage, the four X, four VSW zones. With no figures before me, I would say there are probably 300 registered fishers in that area.
Senator Stewart: You started your presentation by referring to the Magna Carta and to the public right to fish. I noted that and then I put down a question. Does this not imply that licences should not be required as a method of limiting the public right to fish?
Mr. Stoffer: I believe there should be some sort of licence system so as to put some form of protection within our stocks. Obviously not every single person can go out and catch fish and harvest the market. The markets, the economy, and the cost would predict that.
Senator Stewart: You are in favour of licences and conceivably even of quotas?
Mr. Stoffer: I believe in a community-based quota allocation, not an individually based one.
Senator Stewart: We are not going back to the Magna Carta then?
Mr. Stoffer: No. When I refer to the public right to fish I am also speaking in terms of sport anglers on rivers and things of that nature.
Senator Stewart: The previous witness was unwilling to say anything critical about the dragger, trawler type of fishing. Are you also as cautious?
Mr. Stoffer: I should be because I come from a union where many people work for those fleets. Many of my brothers and sisters of that union would hang me from the highest pole if they heard me saying I am against dragger fleets but, to be completely frank and honest, I am, absolutely. I do not like the idea of huge boats with huge nets being able to strip mine our oceans. Saying so causes political detriment to myself, but I am not here for politics, I am here to protect the resource and the people in the coastal communities.
Senator Stewart: It used to be that you could look at the length of a boat and that would give you some determination of its capacity to fish. As Mr. Surette told us, that turned out to be quite misleading because the boats got plumper and wider and far more sophisticated. Since you are opposed to draggers and trawlers, the big ones, where would you put the limit?
Mr. Stoffer: That is a question I have been asked, and I have been inquiring with our research department, but I get so many different answers. As the previous speaker mentioned, the capability of those smaller boats is very good with new technology, and with sonar, engine, and holding capabilities. I could not give you an honest answer.
Senator Stewart: If we cannot use that method of limiting, would you be prepared to say that Mr. Surette's prescription of a value-based quota is the right one?
Mr. Stoffer: In terms of markets he is probably correct.
Senator Stewart: What do you mean by that?
Mr. Stoffer: You must know what the fish is worth before you catch it. It may not be worth your while to spend all that money to catch fish and then to lose money bringing it in. You must know where your markets are, you must know what it will cost you, just like a regular business person.
Senator Stewart: Let us limit ourselves to the leading species of groundfish so that we are not talking about things that the cat will not eat.
Will you allow your community-based fishermen to throw away what the cat will not eat?
Mr. Stoffer: I find the dumping of any species of fish regressive, and I personally would not recommend that. find regressive and I personally would not
Senator Stewart: We have a good basis then for Mr. Surette's value-based quota, and I gather that you believe that that is the correct approach?
Mr. Stoffer: I believe he would be correct, yes, but with other changes to base that upon.
Senator Stewart: That would be the fundamental; you would have a community-based, value-based quota?
Mr. Stoffer: Yes, sir.
Senator Stewart: You made reference to the changes that were made almost 25 years ago on the East Coast, National Sea and Fishery Products International. Correct me if I am wrong on this, but my impression was that much of the rationale for that restructuring was to enable Canadian fishers to compete with fishers from places like Spain and Portugal on the high seas, beyond Canada's waters. Do you think that was a mistake?
Mr. Stoffer: In hindsight it has been a mistake, yes. I believe that at the time the principle of it was correct in order to make Canada more efficient; efficient plants, efficient methods of catching, efficient means of transportation and efficient marketing. The trick is like with tuna -- once you catch it it must be on the move immediately. I worked with Canadian Airlines for years and we used to send in 767 aircraft just to pick up tuna because you could get a tuna out of the water, onto an airplane, and transported to the dockyards of Tokyo within 24 hours. It needed to be that way because the Japanese required a high market and a fresh market. That was all to make it more efficient. Unfortunately, the new technology did not take into consideration the damage it would do to the resource. It was too much capacity at one time and it destroyed the resource.
Senator Stewart: You referred to the incestuous relationship between the personnel of DFO and major corporations. Could you give us an example or two from your own area?
Mr. Stoffer: Mr. John Thomas, the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Canadian Coast Guard, was also one of the leading hands in developing the alternate service delivery system of the DND dockyard workers for the DFO and everyone else. He now works for the Irving Corporation, which is bidding on all those contracts and has the inside track on them.
Senator Stewart: You mentioned DFO just sort of in passing in that example.
Mr. Stoffer: The coast guard was merged with DFO so he was under the auspices of the DFO. That is one example. There are many more. Mr. Tom Siddon, the former Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, owns Archipelago Surveys System -- I believe that is the proper name -- in British Columbia. That company got the sole contract to put observers on west coast trawlers.
Senator Stewart: Would you stay with the Atlantic area? What about any relations between DFO and National Sea, for example, or Clearwater?
Mr. Stoffer: We are working on the Clearwater one right now -- people who have moved back and forth -- but I do not have any written evidence on that now. As for other cases, I did not bring the specific names with me as I was unprepared for that question, but I can get them for you.
Senator Stewart: Perhaps if you could forward them to the clerk of the committee.
Mr. Stoffer: Yes, absolutely.
Senator Robertson: I often feel that the committee you work with in the House of Commons seems very much removed from the work of this committee, and I would suspect that most of the time we share the same concerns. Those of us who have been on this committee for a number of years work with a great deal of frustration.
My questions are totally different because I do not disagree with your presentation at all but I would like to have just a little information. report coming We followed your travelling and the hearings of the committee with great interest. Most of us who have been on those travelling committees agree that it can be very emotional. When is your report coming down? I, for one, am anxiously awaiting it.
Mr. Stoffer: We were hoping to release the report a week ago but we have experienced some delays.
As a committee, we have agreed that we will try to have a unanimous report. There are five political parties that have said to the people of the West Coast and of the East Coast that we will do this. The Reform on this side and the NDP on this side will come up with a package that will carry weight. The Liberals, Tories, Bloc Québécois, Reform and ourselves have been very cooperative in making a report.
A minority report sits on a desk and that is it. A unanimous report, however, carries more weight. It will prove to the people of the areas that we have visited, including Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, that politicians can do what we have said we will do -- namely, put our political differences aside. We should be dotting the "I's" and crossing the "T's" on that report today and it should be released within two weeks at the very latest.
Senator Robertson: Thank you for that information. We shall await it with great interest.
After you travelled and met all these residents of small communities -- that is, those that were left -- did you have the opportunity of calling fisheries officials before you again and saying, "What is going on?" Have you had an opportunity to put these hard questions to the fisheries officials now that you have seen the actual devastation out there?
Mr. Stoffer: Today, in our fisheries meeting, Mr. Larry Murray, formerly of DND, and Mr. Anderson are presenting. Our questioning to Mr. Murray would be about his qualifications and how a military person can take the senior position at DFO.
The Chairman: Mr. Stoffer, when will that meeting be held?
Mr. Stoffer: At 3:30 this afternoon. Our concern is that DFO needs a major restructuring. We need people like Mr. Surette and inhabitants of the coastal communities of Nova Scotia in there. We need people who know about fish, as they do, within DFO. We must have people who know something about fishing, for example, what it is like to be out in the water on a 34-11 at 80 miles offshore. That is a resource. We need people who know that fishers provide food for the country and risk their lives to do so. We need people like that making decisions not only about the fish but also about the community. We do not need military personnel who, as I have said before, could not tell you the difference between a codfish and a West Coast salmon. That is one of the questions we will be asking.
Senator Robertson: That meeting is today?
Mr. Stoffer: Yes, at 536 Wellington.
Senator Perrault: Will senators be permitted to attend the hearing?
Mr. Stoffer: I suspect that the clerk of the committee would allow that. I certainly would encourage you to attend -- that is, if I have any pull in that regard.
Regarding other officials of DFO, we have been trying to get the observer reports from the foreign trawlers. We have "X" number of foreign trawlers within our 200-mile limit. According to section 20 of the Freedom of Information Act, the minister, by law, cannot release those reports publicly. We have two lawyers on our committee who think that he can. He has said that he would provide them in camera for us to look at, but we cannot make them public. We are seeking legal advice to see if we can actually do that.
Canadian taxpayers fund the DFO. Canadians are also spending $3.4 billion on the Northern Cod Adjustment and Recovery Program and on TAGS because of DFO decisions. In the opinion of many -- especially those in central and western Canada who do not understand the devastating issue of Newfoundland -- that is money that is being wasted.
I believe that the taxpayer of Canada has a right to that information. They are hiding behind the fact that it is commercially sensitive. This is not a military game we are playing. We are talking fish. Why is there concern over that fish? We just want the information about the gear type, about who caught it, where it was caught and what they threw overboard. We are asking for that information because we have heard verbal evidence that observers were bribed and we want to clarify that information.
Senator Butts: I wish to go back to the beginning of your proposed solution -- that is, apart from personnel within the department. I am not particularly interested in that. I think the beginning of your solution is to recognize that we have a common property resource.
Mr. Stoffer: Yes.
Senator Butts: You then say that the common property resource should allow a quota to a community.
Mr. Stoffer: There should be a community-based allocation of the quota, yes.
Senator Butts: First, what do you consider a "community"?
Mr. Stoffer: I would say the communities of Louisburg and Burgeo.
Senator Butts: You are talking about a municipality.
Mr. Stoffer: Yes. For example, when we were in the town of Burgeo, all that those people needed -- and, these were people who volunteered their own time to build a fish plant -- was 5,000-tonnes of argentine, which is a type of silver hake, to employ 160 people for nine months. That is all they needed. DFO said, "No." At the same time we were there, we saw Russian and Cuban trawlers fishing for silver hake within eyesight of that community.
Senator Butts: You are talking about a municipality. Is it just the fishers and the processors in the municipality that you are talking about?
Mr. Stoffer: Everyone concerned with the resource. Obviously, not everyone in the community fishes, but everyone in the community has a heavy reliance on fishing and the money it brings into the local economy.
Senator Butts: You are talking about municipal politicians, church people, the board of trade, and so on.
Mr. Stoffer: Yes, all those who are major shareholders within the fishing community and have an active interest, but based on the fishers. If a mayor of a community knows nothing about fish but has good managerial and economic skills, possibly he could work in conjunction with the organization that is within that community.
Senator Butts: In that case, it would be a board that would have a quota?
Mr. Stoffer: Yes.
Senator Butts: Will they administer the whole system?
Mr. Stoffer: The coastal communities network of Nova Scotia would like to do that, yes.
If I may refer back to the town of Burgeo, Mr. Anderson confirmed that he will allow that town to have a community quota of 5,000 tonnes of silver hake, which was a real plus.
Senator Butts: There are few examples of this but there are good examples from the past. Management in the community was usually done by a kind of cooperative enterprise.
Mr. Stoffer: Yes.
Senator Butts: Does that fit under what you are proposing as a solution?
Mr. Stoffer: Yes.
Senator Butts: They will manage it and administer it?
Mr. Stoffer: Under the auspices of the DFO, yes. Fishing is a very competitive game -- Mr. Surette will admit this -- and if you can get what we call the 2-foot disease, namely, a bigger boat that goes a little faster so that you can catch a bit more, you will do that. Someone must be able to tighten enforcement of the quotas. Someone must control that enforcement.
As bad as DFO is, we believe that DFO still has the responsibility to manage the resource and to tighten enforcement. For example -- Mr. Surette can probably attest to this as well -- 15 years ago, when a fishery officer mounted your boat you welcomed him as an ally and as a friend. When they mount your boat now, they are armed with a weapon and you are fearful of them. It has changed the whole complexion of it.
Senator Butts: You do not have the confidence that all these people who have a stake in the community are able to manage it themselves?
Mr. Stoffer: No, not on an individual basis, only as a cooperative measure under what is called a coastal community network, commonly referred to as CCN.
Senator Butts: You have exhausted the exact plan that was presented by the CCN. That is great, because I am the one who wrote it.
Mr. Stoffer: You are from Cape Breton, senator. As you know, Cape Breton is not just coal, it is also about fish.
Senator Butts: In fact, it will not be in coal mining for long.
Mr. Stoffer: As you know, it is the people who come from or still live in the small areas who really understand what is going on out there. I believe that if you ask them for their advice, they will give it to you and that you should act on their recommendations.
Under the ITQ system, many people on the West Coast said that if they did not get involved in it by stacking their licences, they would not survive. It is either eat or be eaten. They have no choice but to do this. Otherwise, they will be out of the fishery completely. The system was set up and they invested heavily into new technology and new boats and they are into it. The people who favour the ITQ system are those who have heavily invested in it. They were told that this is the way it will be and either get in or get out. Having spent all that money, it is understandable that they would favour the ITQ system. In my view, however, it gives the resource to a handful of people and ignores the plight of thousands of others. It has already been proven that if the resource is heavily concentrated in the hands of a few, the resource is destroyed. After all, why are we in this crisis today?
Senator Stewart: I wish to go back to something that Mr. Stoffer said in answer to a question, and it relates to observers. Who performs the observer function on the non-Canadian ships off Halifax?
Mr. Stoffer: Our committee is just learning that. Mr. Baker would probably be able to answer this more accurately than I, as I am basing my answer on an assumption.
I believe that within our 200-mile limit the observers are from Canada. My concern with that is that we have also heard that the ship owners themselves hire observers outside the 200-mile limit. That falls under the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization agreements. I am sorry that I do not have a more accurate answer.
Senator Stewart: I thought you were going to provide the name of a particular company that was providing the service. Before you came to Parliament Hill, there was considerable controversy -- I think about three years ago -- concerning the awarding of the contract to provide observers. There was a real conflict between an observer company in the Halifax-Dartmouth area and an observer company from another province, and the observer company from the other province succeeded in getting the contract.
You said that you have heard that when observers get on these ships their capacity to observe declines. I see you nodding your head. When I say "these ships", are we talking about ships from Cuba, ships from Russia, ships from Germany, ships from Spain, or are we talking about Canadian ships, or are we talking about both of those categories?
Mr. Stoffer: I would say both, but you must remember that Canada has no dragger boats within our 200-mile limit.
Senator Stewart: You have heard this story, and I have heard it too. You want to get to the observers' logs; is that correct?
Mr. Stoffer: Yes.
Senator Stewart: Why do you think the observers would record in their logs information which would be inconsistent with their performance as observers in stopping bad practices?
Mr. Stoffer: These ships are given quotas and allocations. The observer would then verify what was actually caught. Now, of course observers sleep.
Senator Stewart: I am told that they get very sleepy.
Mr. Stoffer: Yes. We just want to verify whether there are any inconsistencies between what was caught and what was observed. It would be very interesting to know what was dumped.
Senator Stewart: You mean "landed" when you say "caught"?
Mr. Stoffer: Exactly. What was landed and what was dumped over.
Senator Stewart: But, unless there is a terrible slip up, an observer who is not performing honestly will not put information in the log which is inconsistent with what she or he is reporting as an observer.
Mr. Stoffer: That is something we would like to verify and we can only do that with what is reported in the log report. This is purely speculation on my part. We need those reports to verify that everything that they said was done was actually done.
Senator Stewart: How many observers has your committee heard?
Mr. Stoffer: We have heard three verbally.
Senator Stewart: And those observers indicated that they had all recorded malpractice?
Mr. Stoffer: The observers were not witnesses of the committee when they said that. They said that in the hallway. That is why I say it is only verbal.
Senator Stewart: Your committee did not take testimony?
Mr. Stoffer: No. It was done afterwards in the hallways where they spoke to us for 10 minutes. We plan to bring observers to the table in the very near future.
Senator Stewart: That would be a very good idea, from what I have heard.
Mr. Stoffer: We plan to do that. That is why I am very cautious when I say that there are improper practices. People in the fishing industry say many things. Unless they are willing to appear before the committee and say these things on the record, we cannot act on that.
The Acting Chairman: Mr. Stoffer, there being no further questions, I will say how much we appreciate your appearance today at this meeting. You have made a helpful and constructive contribution to the proceedings. I know I speak on behalf of other members of the committee when I say that we welcome other opportunities for representatives of the Commons and the Senate to work together in this way for the common good. I hope you have a good meeting this afternoon.
Mr. Stoffer: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly appreciated the opportunity to appear here today.
The committee adjourned.
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 26, 1998
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries met this day at 9:35 a.m. to consider the questions of privatization and quota licensing in Canada's fisheries.
Senator Gerald J. Comeau (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: We are continuing to examine questions of privatization and quota licencing in Canada's fishery as part of the mandate of the committee. This morning we will not be dealing with the issue of privatization but rather with the issue of the Atlantic salmon. The members of our committee expressed a great deal of interest in this subject.
[Translation]
I would like to introduce Mr. Jacques Robichaud, Director general, Resource Management Directorate. Mr. Robichaud, may I ask you to introduce your colleagues and make an opening statement.
Mr. Jacques Robichaud, Director General, Resource Management Directorate: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is not the first time that I am called upon to present a brief to your committee and to answer your questions. I want to assure you that it is always a pleasure.
[English]
Some fisheries are going extremely well, and others have more difficulty. In the last two years, we had some of the highest values of fish landings in the country. On the other hand, you have been discussing cod, so you know the situation there. As well, some salmon species on the west coast have some difficulty. Others are doing better. In the east, there is only one salmon species, the Salmon Salar, the Atlantic salmon. We do not have a coho, a chinook, a pink salmon.
I will now introduce my colleagues. Mr. David Meerburg is a scientific expert on Atlantic salmon and, as well, on Pacific salmon. He is part of the delegation to NASCO, the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, that works in the international fora as well as the scientific group that advises the North Atlantic Salmon Commission. Mr. Ken Jones is a manager specialist on salmon and seals, and he is also a member of the Canadian delegation to the NASCO. I lead the Canadian delegation and I am one of three commissioners.
The salmon species are different from many others that travel throughout the north Atlantic. There are European salmon that come onto the coast of Greenland to feed, and there are salmon along the northeast coast of North America that go up and feed along Greenland and come back to the rivers. It is a species that is born in inland waters, goes out to sea water, and then comes back to lay its eggs in fresh water.
I wish to open with a general overview of some of the components, then go into the interrelation the salmon issue, the management action, a little bit of the situation in 1997, and how we are proceeding for 1998.
We expected a low return of large salmon in 1997. However, the return of small salmon, which are the ones that go out the year prior not to Greenland but just into the Atlantic and then come back in after one year only, was unexpectedly low. In 1997, we moved in many rivers, and some of you may have read in the paper of an unexpected closure of rivers and a restriction on fishery, allowing only hook and release of the salmon.
Many people will ask, "Well, what about the commercial fishery?" The Labrador commercial harvest was only 44 tonnes, and it is well known that it has little impact on the small salmon return. Why? Because it is located off Labrador, and because the small salmon only go out to the Atlantic to the east and then come back in, it would not have been the cause for the low return.
I should like to pause here and mention that there has been a constant reduction of participants in the commercial fishery. Last fall, the minister announced a further retirement program for 13 more commercial licence holders on the Labrador Strait. Looking back 25 years, there were some 7,000 commercial full-time or part-time salmon fishermen making a living in the commercial salmon fishery. There are now less than 300 commercial salmon fishermen.
This has been done with the investment of some $70 million mainly from the federal government, but with some provincial contribution particularly as it pertains to Quebec where they have had the delegated administration of the salmon fishery since 1922. It is the only province that has a delegated administration of the Atlantic salmon. There is joint cooperation and some shared responsibility, such as enforcement, in other provinces, but the administration resides with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
There has been a large decline in the commercial harvest. For example, off Labrador, instead of being in the high numbers of 2,000 and sometimes nearly 3,000 metric tonnes, last year there was but 43 metric tonnes. As well, I should point out that the harvesters in Labrador are more than 90 per cent native. They are Innu, Inuit, or Métis. There is a balance to seek there in further reduction versus potential food fishery. A commercial fishery accounts for 30 some metric tonnes on the lower north shore of Quebec. That, and a little one in the Ungava, are the only ones left. We will show you a pie chart showing the comparative take of commercial versus recreational versus native fishery, ten years ago and now.
I will now address the reason for the unexpected low return of grilse. We knew the return of large salmon would be low because of the cycle, but the low return of grilse was surprising because the exit towards the sea from the rivers of small salmon in 1995 and 1996 was very high compared to previous years. We expected a large return. In 1992, the contribution of escapement to the return was two to three times greater than what we had seen in the preceding years. The production of smolt in 1996 was among the highest recorded on all six monitored rivers in Newfoundland. Smolt went to sea early in 1996, were in good health, and we thought that the marine conditions were very good.I will ask Mr. Meerburg to give a presentation on the science of this subject, focusing particularly on the workshop we had just a few weeks ago in Cape Breton with international and national experts on salmon, as well of the DFO scientists.
The sea survival in recent years had improved. The international scientific committee indicated in the advice they provided to the NASCO that the condition of sea survival had improved. While the smaller salmon go to sea and then come back in, the large ones go and stay off Greenland and come back one or two or three years later. The sea conditions in the Labrador Sea in 1997 suggested improved ocean conditions for survival.
In 1986, we landed close to 1600 metric tonnes of fish. Ten years later, in 1996, it was 290. One must be careful with these figures. It is not necessarily simply a matter of abundance. It is also due to the withdrawal, the buy-back of licences, and the retirement of licences. The graphs shows the proportion of what was taken by the commercial fishery in 1986 and ten years later. Commercial is big, recreational is smaller, and the total is about 1600 metric tonnes. The native part is smaller. As you decrease the landing and further the retirement of commercial, the commercial becomes a smaller percentage of the total take, and of course recreational is bigger. I am not saying there is more fish taken in the recreational fishery in 1996 than in 1986. However, because of the removal of the commercial, it becomes a greater player. Lastly, regarding the native fishery, again, I am not saying the native take is more than it was in 1986, but they have a greater share of the take because of the reduction of commercial.
Countries that contribute provide and gather data to be sent to the international scientific committee. They review sea conditions and other elements and provide advice to the NASCO. One component of that is the northeast Atlantic, which is composed of the European Community countries that do produce and generate salmon. Other countries, such as Norway, Russia, Iceland, Denmark, and Greenland, are not part of the EU. You have the Northwest Atlantic commissions, -- the North American and Greenland commissions, including Canada, the U.S., -- the EU, and essentially Denmark and Greenland. When some of the salmon on the coast of North America go up north, it obviously mixes with the European. Our salmon come back here, and the European goes back the other way. It is all managed under the North Atlantic Salmon Council, with specific commissions for the area in question.
These sessions are held in early June, and your management plans must be in place before then. We do not necessarily wait for the final resolution of the ICES. We act to get our management plan for the year as per the return of the previous year. Having seen what has happened in 1997, we are obviously in motion to do something about 1998, and we will present our action to the international community.
Within Canada, obviously, there is work to be done between the provincial authorities that issue permits, licences and tags and DFO, which is involved in the management. In Quebec, as I indicated, they manage. They have the delegated administration of fishery. You can see the interfacing and intermeshing that exists within Canadian science compared to the international science component, the organization that manages the North Atlantic salmon and their subcommission, then the Atlantic provinces and Quebec. Quebec has a delegated administration, the Atlantic provinces issue tags, permits and licences and manage in cooperation with DFO, and we do enforcement and closure and science and so on. One would call that a highly integrated approach.
The management decisions in DFO are based on the best available scientific advice for the management measures for Atlantic salmon. We work on an integrated approach with the users who have a recreational consideration, depending on the community. Fishing lodges and so on have an impact on coastal communities as the dependency on commercial salmon diminishes. It is reducing constantly. We also have integration as it relates to the native community as well and the fiduciary right.
More recently, we have all heard about the precautionary approach. My colleague and a few others just returned from a work session with the NASCO where a framework was developed as to what the precautionary approach for salmon means, talking about science, talking about management, and talking about aquaculture. Within a week, this framework was developed by participants from all the countries I mentioned earlier. Amazingly enough, we have a framework which we will be able to discuss with stakeholders and hopefully ratify within the NASCO council in June. It would guide what we call the precautionary approach, which is essentially certain conservation limits, a buffer so you do not go beyond the conversation limit, and some of the management targets that you would establish.
Because of the unexpectedly low return of one-year or grilse salmon, and the situation of other salmon, the minister called for a special meeting on sciences to try to review the reasons. I will not go into detail on that because Mr. Meerburg will be speaking to it shortly. In a nutshell, the workshop concluded that there are likely to be poor returns of large salmon in 1998 and uncertain returns of small salmon. Obviously, something is happening to the ecosystem.
The detailed stock assessment per river is to be completed and finalized within the month of March. In April, the international scientific committee produces the North Atlantic-wide assessment and forecast for 1998-99, and this advice is provided, as indicated earlier, to the NASCO for their meeting in early June.
What do we mean by an integrated approach? The first priority is conservation, and, of course, it will become framed into the precautionary approach to which hopefully all countries will agree in June. We must also give due consideration to our fiduciary responsibility to First Nations. Certain socio-economic considerations in the coastal communities must be included.
It is important to understand that in the salmon management in Quebec, they manage their river in what they call a ZEC, or "zone exploitation contrôlée". All parties are involved -- private interests, recreational interests, native interests, and so on -- in working to some form of watershed management board. Volunteers are involved to a great extent in re-establishing stream and river habitats and so on. Private citizens become involved because salmon come into the rivers. The cod species or lobster stay out in the ocean. Salmon comes into the river and has a different type of appeal to the citizen, so there is a great deal of volunteer work done. Of course, many of them are recreational fishers, so they do it for a purpose. Private citizens are also concerned about ongoing conservation efforts. NASCO recognizes that voluntary contribution, which has a high value if you were to translate it into dollars.
This integrated approach is essential to minimizing negative effects on First Nations and other communities and to deterring large-scale poaching and the protest fishery. You could cover every half mile of that river with enforcement by guards, but it would be very expensive. As well, the participation of the recreational fisher and others allows a presence on the river that assists in conservation and protection and deters poaching to the best extent possible.
My next topic is continued community and group involvement in conservation and restoration efforts.At the NASCO meeting in January, Canada supported and pushed for the development of the precautionary approach for management, science and aquaculture, and we hope to finalize the discussion with key groups. The Canadian approach will be ready in June, and we will certainly vote for what we present. The precautionary approach requires greater caution in the face of uncertainty but allows for the integrated approach.
We must take action. In light of what we heard, the minister had already indicated, when he did a further buy-back in the Labrador Strait last fall, that there was concern about the low return of grilse. Later on, as returns started coming to the Miramichi River, he indicated great concern and asked the group not to wait for the final details but to get involved in looking at avenues to further increase return to spawning ground. He worked with the DFO scientists for that workshop. There will soon be a series of announcements on further conservation measures.
Canada will seek, as I indicated, to further develop the precautionary approach and ensure that it is supported in June. When approved, it will set conservation limits and management targets for watershed moving from river and up into the ocean.
We do not have to wait until June to start taking measures. There has been a lot of discussion with the salmon advisory board on the island of Newfoundland, for example. There have been early discussions in Labrador. We will be back up there in March. As well, there is discussion in other maritime provinces and in Quebec. There is a moratorium on commercial fishery in Newfoundland and discussion of the possible extension of that moratorium. You may be aware, for example, there is no retention of large salmon in the maritime provinces and mainland Newfoundland. Retention of large salmon is found only in Labrador and in Quebec. For example, all they retained last year in Newfoundland was eight grilse. Potentially, there will be a further reduction in the number of fish kept. Those are areas where everyone must contribute to the reduction.
Discussions are underway in other areas as well. The first discussion will be on Newfoundland, not necessarily Labrador because we will be returning there in March. This must be done prior to the announcement of management plans, and they are normally announced at the end of April and May to be ready for June.
That concludes the presentation concerning the general overview. I am sure you will have many questions. I will now pass the microphone on to Mr. Meerburg.
Mr. David Meerburg, Senior Policy Program Advisor, Anadromous Fish, Fisheries and Oceans Science Directorate, Department of Fisheries and Oceans: Mr. Robichaud has covered some of the background and information contained in the brief that I presented, but I will go through the brief now. I will then be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
I am a biologist who specializes in anadromous fish with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans here in Ottawa, in the science sector. For those of you who are more familiar with groundfish and so on, anadromous fish are fish that spawn in fresh water and grow to maturity in the sea. That group includes not only salmon on both Canada's coasts but also species such as sturgeon, alewives, striped bass, American shad and smelt. Those are the species specialties with which I work.
In Eastern Canada, we have about 550 Atlantic salmon rivers in the five different provinces. Salmon in those rivers spawn in the fall. I will give you a short biology lesson here in case you are more familiar with groundfish than salmon.
The Atlantic salmon juveniles spend anywhere from one to seven years in the river before they go to sea. When they go to sea in the spring, they are called a smolt. They are about 14 to 18 centimetres long. The most common age for going to sea is about three years. I am putting this information before you so that you have some explanation of what we see in terms of spawning populations this year. The resulting adult recruitment will not take place until maybe four, five or six years down the road.
The salmon goes to sea as a smolt in the spring. If it returns after one year at sea to spawn, it is known as a one sea-winter salmon or a grilse. It has been at sea for one winter. If it spends two or more years at sea before it returns, it is known as a multi-winter salmon. These are the larger fish, the ones that are five kilograms and greater.
As Mr. Robichaud said, the grilse do not go far from Canada's coast. They stay in coastal waters. The ones that will become large or multi-sea winter salmon can go quite a distance. They travel as far as West Greenland in their feeding migration. There is small commercial fishery at West Greenland.
As a scientist, I was asked to serve as chairman at a recent workshop on Atlantic salmon that was held at the Canadian Coast Guard College in Cape Breton from February 3 to 7. This workshop was sponsored by DFO and brought together 32 experts from Canada, the U.S. and Europe. It involved researchers from federal and provincial government agencies, universities, and the Atlantic Salmon Federation. In addition to these Atlantic salmon biologists, there were also expert oceanographers and scientists dealing with other species that are either predatory to or prey on Atlantic salmon.
We considered two main subject areas at the workshop. First, we were asked to evaluate the extent of the low abundance in 1997 and to come up with reasons for why this low abundance occurred and to provide forecasts of what returns may be like in 1998. Second -- and quite separate from this abundance issue -- we were asked to review hook and release fishing and how it can be used as a conservation tool to reduce salmon mortality in the recreational fishery.
As Mr. Robichaud mentioned, the salmon return in most rivers was lower than anticipated, but not in all regions. Atlantic Canada and the U.S. were below the forecast levels in 1997. A few of the exceptional areas were some rivers in the Northumberland Strait in the Nova Scotian coast, as well as the Bay St. George's area of Newfoundland, where we saw good returns.
We monitor the juvenile production in many of these rivers that experienced low returns. This is done every year. In total, we are monitoring about 65 to 85 rivers for adult returns and about 20 rivers a year, spread throughout Eastern Canada, for the juvenile populations going out to sea. It is a more expensive process than monitoring the adult returns, so we cannot monitor quite as many.
When we looked at the juvenile production that produced this low return, we found that it was quite high. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has placed a lot of management restrictions on fisheries in recent years that have focused on achieving conservation levels of salmon spawning in these rivers over the past decade to decade and a half. Since we had good production of juveniles going out to sea, it did not appear to be a problem in fresh water but appeared to be something in the marine environment.
Although the low 1997 return was an unexpected downward shift, it was a continuation of a general downward trend that has been taking place for a number of years on many rivers. We looked at as many factors in the sea that could be contributing to the lower than expected return in 1997 as we possibly could. These included areas of fisheries exploitation, predator abundance -- including predation by birds, mammals and large predatory fish -- the food availability in the sea and how that would affect salmon returns, and diseases and changes in oceanographic conditions. With the exception of oceanographic conditions, we could not find any linkages with those other factors that we considered, although there was some indication that we should do further investigations on the potential impact of predation on Atlantic salmon in the sea.
In terms of our forecast for the coming year, we have expectations of low returns for large salmon in 1998 because this is the same smolt group as the grilse that returned in 1997. These smolt went out in 1996. A portion of the population came back as grilse in 1997, and in 1998 we will see the component that is returning as large salmon. Since we saw low grilse returns, we are expecting low returns of large salmon in 1998.
Since we were unable to pin down the reasons for the low grilse returns in 1997, we are not able to give a concrete forecast for 1998 on the grilse returns, so we are saying that things will be uncertain. Some of this work will be developed further in river specific forecasts for 1998 during stock assessment meetings that are taking place about two weeks from now in both Moncton and St. John's.
As regards our second topic, the issue of hook and release angling, we reviewed literature and brought in experts who have published information on Atlantic salmon hook and release angling from around the world. We developed a summary of the information from about 25 studies. We were able to note that the mortality attributed to hook and release angling was usually less than 2 per cent, with a few exceptions. Those exceptions were if the water temperatures were quite warm. If river water temperatures rose above 20 degrees Celsius and the fish were being angled, we had increased levels of mortality. It was not 100 per cent, but more like 20 to 30 per cent mortality.
One study compared angling on fish that had recently arrived in from the sea to fish that had been in for a number of weeks versus fish that had been in the rivers for a number of months before they were angled. There was a higher level of mortality in those fish that had recently arrived in from the salt water. There were also the fish that were angled almost at the fresh water-salt water interface at the top end of the estuaries.
We also looked at physiology studies of exercising fish in different water conditions such as very soft water versus normal. In most areas, the water is fairly hard, but we do have some areas of Nova Scotia where we have acid rain concerns. There no buffering capacity left in the water. The water is very soft, and there is little ionic activity. When we angle fish or exercise fish in those kinds of conditions, the lack of ions in the water seems to have some impact on their recovery from exercise and affects their physiology. Hence, we have more mortality.
We also looked at the handling practices by anglers. There are good ways and bad ways to release Atlantic salmon. If anglers are using the bad methods, then we have high levels of mortality. One of those factors was the length of time that a fish is held out of water. Studies we saw said that even holding a fish out of water for less than 60 seconds can dramatically increase the mortality level in the fish. Actually, the specialist physiologist from Queen's University at the meeting likened it to a marathon runner running a marathon for three or four hours and then, as he crosses the finish line, asking him to hold his breath for a minute or two. You can imagine that kind of analogy. You see many pictures in angling shows on television with everyone holding their fish out of the water. Certainly with salmon and trout, there is a concern if the fish is taken out of the water at all, and the guidelines should be such that the fish should be retained in the water and the hook removed when the fish is still in the water. The best way to do it is to cut your line and lose your fly, if you want to be most concerned about the safety of the fish.
The results of this workshop will appear as two separate stock assessment reports which are currently being edited and translated. They should become public in March and will be obtainable from our Canadian Stock Assessment Secretariat at DFO headquarters here at 200 Kent Street. As well, the secretariat maintains an Internet web site, and anyone around the world can download these reports as soon as they are available. For senators' information, if they are not familiar with being able to do this, if they have any questions on species other than salmon, there are reports on all the species available on the Internet which are downloadable from the web site. I have found that not many people are aware of that yet but have found it to be a very useful service when they do access it.
I will be pleased to answer questions about the workshop or any other salmon science questions.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Meerburg, for your excellent presentation.
Senator Stewart: I believe you said that there were fairly good returns to some rivers in Nova Scotia and in the Georges Bay area of Newfoundland. Is that correct?
Mr. Meerburg: That is correct, sir. In the Bay St. Georges area, the returns were not spectacular, but the survival level of the juveniles that went out was much higher and actually increased in almost every area that we measured. In other areas, the survival level of the smolts that went out in 1996 decreased to the lowest level we have ever seen.
Young salmon go out of the river when they are about this big. They go to sea for one or two years. We have counts in some rivers of those juvenile fish going to sea, and we have counts of the adults coming back. We can measure how many of them survived.
Senator Stewart: The percentage was high coming back.
Mr. Meerburg: In Bay St. Georges, that survival was unusuallly high, in fact, the highest level we have ever measured on that river. I believe it was the Highlands River on the Bay St. Georges area of Newfoundland. That was one of the exceptions to the situation we saw everywhere else. We monitored wild fish going out of rivers in Quebec, most parts of Newfoundland, and parts of the Miramichi River. In addition, we had monitoring of hatchery fish going to sea, so we know exactly how many hatchery fish are going out of the river and can count how many hatchery adults come back. When we monitored all those things, in most rivers we saw the lowest survival level we ever have seen.
Senator Stewart: You said there were some in Nova Scotia.
Mr. Meerburg: I mentioned the Northumberland Strait area of Nova Scotia up to and including the Margaree River. This would be from the New Brunswick border onwards to the Margaree.
Senator Stewart: It may be accidental, but the evidence would suggest that there was something peculiar about the terrain or the rivers, the acidity of the water. There must be some explanation for why some fish stocks did better than other fish stocks.
Mr. Meerburg: That is what we were looking for. We saw this to be an almost all-encompassing situation. The survival was poor throughout the north-east coast of Newfoundland, the south coast of Newfoundland, the north-west coast of Newfoundland, the lower north shore of Quebec, the Gaspé, the Miramichi, all the Bay of Fundy, and the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia. Everywhere we looked, things were down, with the exception of this one area. As I say, we do not have an explanation for that.
We do know, because we are monitoring the juveniles going out, that it was not the numbers of fish going out that was the concern. The fresh water habitat in many areas is producing as many smolts or juveniles as we have ever seen. In the Miramichi and Restigouche, since the early 1980s when the department started taking some very stringent conservation measures, we have seen great increases of the juvenile populations in the rivers.
Senator Stewart: Do you have any speculation as to the cause?
Mr. Meerburg: There is speculation as to why that one area of difference which would presumably relate to the timing of the migration and where some of those fish went. All these fish generally go to the same feeding areas off the coast of Newfoundland, and then, if they are going for two years, they go on up to Greenland. The only exception we have, Atlantic salmon that do not follow the same migration routing, are those of the inner Bay of Fundy, and they have never been found in the Newfoundland coastal area or Greenland. They are thought to stay in the Gulf of Maine, the Scotian shelf area.
Senator Stewart: Staying with timing for a moment, why would the timing be significant? It seems to be obvious that you are suggesting that some times are more precarious for these fish than other times. Why?
Mr. Meerburg: As you can imagine, the population of predators in the ocean is time dependent. They are numerous in some areas at some times and not numerous at other times. As well, the temperatures in the ocean change over time, and the changing temperatures in the ocean over time in different areas affects the food supply. We are not able to say why we had the low returns in these many rivers in 1997.
Senator Stewart: Let us go back to timing of the departure or exit from the streams. Why would the fish from the Margaree, for example, be early or late? You did not say which it was.
Mr. Meerburg: The Margaree is one for which we do not have information on timing.
Senator Stewart: Pick one for which you do have information.
Mr. Meerburg: We were looking for something in 1996 as they were going out that was unusual and would explain the 1997 findings, and, if we found that unusual thing in all rivers, we would have said that that is the factor that has great influence. In almost all rivers we monitored in Newfoundland, and I believe there were six of them, we found the smolts went to sea the earliest date we had ever recorded. When the Newfoundland scientists had that information, they said, "Aha, there is the answer. The fish went to sea too early to find the window of opportunity out in the sea." The biologists from Quebec came along and said, "We also had very poor survival in the two rivers we monitor in Quebec, and the timing they went to sea was absolutely on average." We were in a bit of a quandary. We were not able to come up with concrete answers to the question of why the salmon that came home in 1997 in general did not survive as well.
Senator Stewart: Did the fish from the Bay St. Georges area go out late?
Mr. Meerburg: The indication is they also went early. Almost all the fish around the island of Newfoundland, the six rivers we monitor for smolts going to sea, went early.
Senator Stewart: So it is a mystery.
Mr. Meerburg: Yes, sir, it is a mystery.
Senator Oliver: My question is for David Meerburg. I am not a member of the committee, but I have an interest in salmon and in the fishery. I am from Nova Scotia. I am interested in the bottom paragraph of first page where you said you analyzed the contributing factors, and you talked about predator abundance, birds, mammals, and large predatory fish.
I have talked to fishermen in the industry in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia about the cause of the decline. Without exception, they have told me that it is seals.
I should like you to tell me a little about seals, in particular, what kind of seals are there, how many seals are in the Atlantic, how big they are, how much they eat, and what they eat. Are they eating the grilse when they leave and before they can get up to Greenland to start feeding? I have other questions about seals, but perhaps you could start there.
Mr. Meerburg: We certainly did look at seals because fishermen, as you say, have talked about seals. There are six species of seals in eastern Canada. Two of them are limited to the Labrador coast, and those are ring seals and bearded seals. Harp seals and hooded seals, which are both pelagic species, spend roughly half the year in the Arctic and Greenland waters and move into Labrador and the Newfoundland waters and the Gulf of St. Lawrence in about mid-November to mid-June.
The other two species we have, which are primarily resident coastal species, are the harbour seals and grey seals, and they are found along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence throughout the year.
You ask how many we have. We have a lot of seals. There is an estimated 4.8 million harp seals, about half a million hooded seals, 160,000 grey seals, and somewhere less than 30,000 harbour seals in these areas, and these estimates are for 1996.
Scientists within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans do stomach content analysis on seals, and Mr. Robichaud may be able to fill in other information. We were specifically interested in the question of salmon. When we looked at roughly 10,000 seal stomachs, we found salmon in two of them. In one case, the seal had one small salmon in it, and in the other case, a grey seal from near the lower north shore of Quebec, near the mouth of a salmon river, had six, medium-size salmon in it.
Senator Oliver: What species do they feed on, then?
Mr. Meerburg: Most of the seals feed on other species. Perhaps Mr. Jones can answer this.
Mr. Robichaud: Ken Jones, aside from being a manager of salmon, is also manager of seals.
Senator Stewart: They are doing well.
Mr. Ken Jones, Resource Management Officer, Resource Management Directorate, Department of Fisheries and Oceans: The only seals which we think might have a big influence that we can demonstrate -- and we are looking at that more, as I understand it -- are harbour seals and grey seals. They are very opportunistic and will enter river mouths and take from aquaculture nets. In Labrador, we may be doing a study next year because some of the harbour seals will go right up a river and sit there, and that is where they will have opportunity. We examined about 6,000 harp seal stomachs and only found the remains of one salmon. Whether they are feeding on salmon is debatable. We know they are feeding on capelin and on Arctic cod, which has a lower value. They are taking a significant number of Atlantic cod. Whether they are taking salmon or not is not a big concern with our scientists now.
We have a concern regarding hooded seals because they track up to Greenland where the large salmon go. However, so far, all the evidence indicates that they eat deep-water species. Salmon are close to the surface, so there is a big question as to whether hooded seals do take any salmon.
Senator Oliver: How many pounds of fish a day would the harbour seal eat, and how many pounds do the average seals in the salmon territory eat in a day?
Mr. Jones: I could not answer that. It would be different with each species of seal. I am not an expert on that.
Senator Oliver: What about the harbour seals, then?
Mr. Jones: Harbour seals, until recently, have not been a big concern with us because their numbers are relatively low, but what has caused us concern of late is that they are being seen more and more up river. We are interested now because fishermen and anglers are reporting seeing them in holding areas up rivers. For example, in the Sandwich Bay of Labrador, there have been anecdotal of up to 100 seals up that river, sitting there, so now it becomes a concern.
The trouble with harbour seals is that they are scattered. We can monitor harp seals and hooded seals quite well because they concentrate to whelp and give birth. We can do pup counts and estimate from there how many seals there are. Harbour seals are not the gregarious whelping group that these others are. They go to little groups along the coast, so it is very difficult to monitor them.
Senator Oliver: In 1996, there were 4.8 million harp seals. How far south do they come?
Mr. Jones: They will come as far south as the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf area to whelp, even to P.E.I. and the coast, and then they will migrate back up north. That is when we hunt them. We will hunt them normally in March in the Magdalen Islands areas and in April in the front areas of Newfoundland, and then they will gradually move out northwards.
Senator Oliver: Do they go close to the territory travelled by the salmon once they leave the rivers and start moving up all the way to Greenland?
Mr. Jones: They should have moved up and out by then.
Senator Oliver: You are saying there is no interaction.
Mr. Jones: It is unlikely that they are feeding on great numbers of salmon, as I understand from information given to me by the seal biologists. I do not know if they had more to say on that.
Senator Oliver: Can you give me something about the size? I would like to know how many pounds of fish a day these average seals are eating.
Mr. Meerburg: Our scientists that deal with marine mammals have published a paper. In 1996, the estimate is that the four species of seals in Eastern Canada combined -- grey seal, hooded seal, harbour seal, and harp seal -- took roughly 3.8 million metric tonnes of food to sustain them.
Senator Oliver: How much do they weigh?
Mr. Meerburg: The seals themselves? I can probably look that up, sir. It is probably available in the report.
Mr. Jones: It will vary with species.
Senator Oliver: Do you know much one seal would eat in a day?
Mr. Meerburg: I am sure, sir, I can find that answer in this report.
Senator Oliver: As my final question, could you tell me how many seals it would take to destroy the smolts coming out of any one of the rivers in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick that were getting ready to go out into salt water, if, in fact, they were harbour seals that were sitting or lying in the rivers?
Mr. Meerburg: Seals can eat an awful lot of fish, but they seem to be very opportunistic feeders. They feed on what is available and handy to them. Salmon is not a very abundant species of fish in the sea. If you think of Nova Scotia rivers, right off the mouths of those rivers are populations of herring and mackerel and species that are much more numerous than salmon. As well, the species that go in and out of fresh water, such as the gaspereau, alewife and blue-back herring are much more numerous than Atlantic salmon.
It is difficult to answer your question because, as I say, when we look at the stomach contents, we do not find salmon. We have found the occasional gaspereau, and we have found many other species such capelin, mackerel and herring. It is hard to come up with an estimate of how many salmon seals are eating if you do not find salmon in the stomachs. You could say it is very low; but other people would suggest to you that if there are 5 million seals and each of them eating one salmon a year, that would be quite a bit of the population of salmon. That is true. In terms of a ballpark estimate, there are probably less than 30 to 50 million Atlantic salmon smolts going to sea. We have no good way of estimating that, but it is probably in that range.
Senator Oliver: You mentioned wild salmon and farm salmon. Have your scientists found any evidence showing that some farm salmon are diseased and are being released out into the ocean and that they could be killing some of the natural, wild salmon?
Mr. Meerburg: Our wild Atlantic salmon farming industry is concentrated in two small areas in Eastern Canada -- Passamaquoddy Bay in the Bay of Fundy and the Bay D'Espoir, area or Bay D'Espoir area in southern Newfoundland. Those are the two locations of the fish farming industry. In both those areas, we have some low populations of wild salmon presently, but we also have low populations and poor survivals recently of Atlantic salmon in many other areas in which there is no aquaculture. We are not finding escaped aquaculture fish coming back to the rivers. We do not find aquaculture fish in any of the rivers coming back to the Gulf of St. Lawrence part of New Brunswick or Quebec, yet we are seeing low survivals there. We are not seeing diseased fish in general coming back. We are monitoring returns of fish to rivers, and we are not seeing fish coming back that are carrying any of the diseases.
There is currently a concern in New Brunswick with a specific virus, and we have not found that virus in any other wild salmon stock. In fact, we are not finding it even in the rivers close by to the aquaculture industry in Passamaquoddy Bay and the escaped salmon coming into there. We have not found it in any of those fish either.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You are talking about salmon and other salt and freshwater species whose behavior is similar to that of the salmon. What is the french word for "shad"?
[English]
Mr. Meerburg: There was a translation put on that word by our interpreters. I had not seen the word before, but in my statement it is "alose."
[Translation]
Mr. Robichaud: It is "alose savoureuse."
Senator Robichaud: What is the relation between the reduction of these stocks and the population of salmon? Do the populations of these species fluctuate with that of the salmon? These species are similar, behaviorwise. I remember that in our area, when it was shad season, everybody wanted some, but nowadays this has changed. Is this species too limited for commercial fishing? If so, could the same happen to salmon?
[English]
Mr. Meerburg: That is true in many of our areas for shad fisheries. They are also down at the present time, but I do not believe it is true for many of our gaspereau fisheries which are showing generally average returns.
In our workshop, we did not look too much at these other anadromous species because they are very specific to certain areas of Eastern Canada. We saw widespread decreases in survival of Atlantic salmon in all of Eastern Canada, but in Newfoundland we have no shad, we have no striped bass returning, and we have no gaspereau in those rivers. We did not focus on those anadromous species that do exist in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Regarding those populations and the inter-relations between them and Atlantic salmon, we have never thought there was much strong interaction. In other words, a strong gaspereau population does not mean a weak or a strong salmon population, for example. We have never seen any correlation between those numbers of species.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: But wouldn't smelts be a source of food for salmon?
[English]
Mr. Meerburg: It could be in some cases. I would think it particularly would be a source of food for the outgoing salmon after they have spawned. They have been starving for five or six or eight months in the fresh water. They go to sea generally in the spring, in April and May, at the same time that the smolt population is going out to sea. They probably are a food supply for those kelts.
We had an interesting situation with the kelts. The smolts that went to sea in 1996 came back poorly, in general, in 1997. With the kelts, being the previously spawned-out salmon, that went to sea in 1996, we saw some of the higher survivals we have ever seen on those groups of fish. We saw that both in Newfoundland and in the maritime provinces. Whatever was affecting the salmon was not affecting the fish that were big. It was probably at some smaller life stage.
The smolts generally go off the northeast coast of Newfoundland to feed. We looked at this in much more detail. The main conclusion of our workshop, from our oceanographers and people with information that we had seldom heard before, is that there is a great change in the oceanographic conditions off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. That change is seen in temperature monitoring. There was a generally declining trend for a number of years. The temperature was getting colder and colder. In the past several years, it started to improve.
When we saw those temperatures becoming colder, we also saw a complete change in the composition of species. One indication of the change showed up in the diets of gannets, which are large sea birds. There is a colony of gannets on the Funk Islands off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. A fellow scientist from Memorial University has maintained stomach-sample analysis of that gannet colony since early in the 1970s. From then until the late 1980s, those birds were eating mostly mackerel, herring, squid, what one might call warm-water species. They were not eating very much, perhaps 20 to 30 per cent, of cold-water species. We never saw any salmon in their stomachs.
Starting in the late 1980s, we saw a complete shift in the diet of those gannets. We no longer saw warm-water species in their diets. Almost all their food was from cold water species including capelin and, for the first time, some salmon. The level of salmon eaten was only about 3 or 4 per cent, but it was something that we had not seen before. That has persisted through to the most recent years sampled where the species composition seems to have changed.
It is not that these birds have changed their habits or their liking for various fish. They eat whatever is accessible to them. The entire oceanographic conditions have changed. The species that used to be there are no longer there in the same level of abundance.
We saw this in looking at capelin, a cold water species which can, at times, be a food for salmon. Capelin are not doing the same things anymore. They used to come onshore on the coast of Newfoundland to spawn, usually in June. When water temperatures got colder, either the capelin did not come onshore or they came onshore very late, in late July or August. We saw the ocean water temperatures warm up over the past two years. Scientists expected then, if there was a very simple temperature relationship, that we would start seeing the capelin spawn earlier, and that has not happened yet. As a group, scientists who deal with the ocean off the north-west Atlantic are in a bit of confusion right now in terms of understanding what exactly is going on in the ocean.
I mentioned in my talk that we ruled out the issues of commercial fisheries taking these fish. We looked at the fisheries in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. That fishery last year took about 600 Atlantic salmon. We looked at the fishery in Greenland. They took roughly 12,000 Atlantic salmon, which is a relatively small number of North American fish and a smaller number than in previous years. We were looking for somewhere where the fishery increased, and we could not find anything. In the Labrador fishery, a very low number of fish were taken in the salt water.
Senator Oliver: What about the illegal fishery?
Mr. Meerburg: We looked at by-catch fisheries, if that is what you mean. We looked at ocean trawl fisheries. Over one million different sets were examined, and 49 salmon were caught in those groundfish trawls and whatever. If you think of it, with many of the fisheries closed, our by-catch problem should be less now than it was prior to 1992 when the groundfish fisheries in many areas were wide open and much bigger.
In terms of illegal fisheries, we could not see any evidence there. We were monitoring for net-marked fish coming back to rivers. We are seeing some net-marked fish in some rivers, indicating that those fish are going through some nets. These could possibly be legitimate nets set for other species, or there could be some poaching and illegal activity. However, we did not see any increase in the percentage of net-marked fish in 1997. In most cases, we saw a decrease from the previous years.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: Is what we see in the Atlantic North similar to El Ni<#00F1>o? Do you have enough data to think that this phenomenon could have an effect on salmon?
[English]
Mr. Meerburg: The El Ni<#00F1>o phenomenon is predictable and well understood. It is something that happens quite often. Warm water comes up into the North Pacific, and we can see it coming.
In the Atlantic situation, we have seen, more or less, a continual, general decline in temperature over the past 20 years. Because we are not seeing a routine event, it is hard to predict where it is going. Is it related to ocean climate in general? It probably is. The ocean climate and the climate around the world affects how the water circulates and how the temperatures are affected. It is probably related to Pacific conditions. The most recent El Ni<#00F1>o that we are seeing right now may lead to some changes in ocean temperatures in the Atlantic. There will probably be a delay. You do not see immediate effects in terms of oceanographic conditions. If something changes in the Pacific, it will not change in the same year in the Atlantic. The effect is gradual.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: My last question, and I will come back to the subject mentioned by Senator Oliver, the seals. They may not eat salmon as such but they eat a lot of other species and to use the words used by Mr. George Baker, seals certainly don't eat at McDonald's. They feed on what they find in the sea. Could this have a direct impact on the source of food?
[English]
Mr. Meerburg: Yes, sir, we looked at that. We said that if the fish are lacking in food supply in the ocean, and that is the reason for their poor survival, then those fish that do survive will probably show signs of lacking a food supply; in other words, they will come back smaller.
When we looked at the size of the fish coming back in 1997, we did not see that they were smaller at all. They were either average or, in many rivers, the largest we had ever seen coming back. We did not have an indication that there is a food supply problem for the Atlantic salmon.
Senator Robichaud: Only the fittest survive.
Mr. Meerburg: Yes, you are right. If there are very few fish out there, there still may be enough food for them to grow quite large. If mortality took place very early as they were first going to sea, the remaining fish then might have lots of food available.
We felt that we were able to discount the food availability aspect of things, but we were not able to discount the big changes in oceanographic conditions. We do not understand how, but it may be affecting the migration patterns of the fish. In terms of their preset timetable, when they have to be at a certain place at a certain time, they may be missing some window. This may affect their migration ability.
That is as far as we were able to go with it.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: Thank you, sir, for a very interesting presentation. Another fishing story. I should rather say a somewhat sad fishing story, I think. For something anecdotal, I can tell you that I grew up in the Acadian peninsula where we would take clams or cod for our pleasure and for pocket money. There was so much of it that our mum almost forced us to eat it three times a week because it was so common. Salmon fishing was only for the rich Americans in the Miramichi.
I would like to know what is the economic demand for Atlantic salmon across Canada. We know about cohoe and Pacific salmon but is there a market for Atlantic salmon? Outside the Atlantic region, is our salmon something people seek? I know I like it but I would like to know its economic value.
[English]
Mr. Meerburg: Atlantic salmon are very desirable for three different groups of people. Commercial fishermen are left to catch them because they can, in general, sell them. Historically, they have been able to sell them very easily. The recreational fishermen obviously want lots of Atlantic salmon in the rivers. The outfitting industries and the sports fishing industries are based on great numbers of people coming to the Miramichi River, the Restigouche River and others to catch these fish. As well, native peoples have a history of using salmon in all of Atlantic Canada. Everyone likes salmon.
However, I think you were asking whether it is saleable in terms of a commercial species. The issue is that the worldwide aquaculture production of Atlantic salmon has greatly affected the marketability of wild salmon.
The aquaculture industry started in the early 1980s. The big player in this is Norway. Canada is a relatively small player, but we do have a significant Atlantic salmon aquaculture industry in Eastern Canada and Western Canada. It also exists in Tasmania, Chile, the eastern United States, the western United States, in the Faroe Islands, in Ireland and in Scotland. It totals somewhere around 400,000 metric tonnes of aquaculture Atlantic salmon each year. That compares to our wild Atlantic salmon catch throughout the North Atlantic of somewhere under 5,000 metric tons. There is a larger order of magnitude in the aquaculture industry right now. We are talking about brand new fish that have never been on the market before. This has led to significantly reduced prices, both for the aquaculture industry and for people who fish Atlantic salmon commercially.
We have a very small Atlantic salmon fishery left in Greenland. This past year it was somewhere around 57 metric tonnes. In 1972, I believe it was 2,800 metric tonnes. This fishery has been changed as a result of regulation through the international North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization that Mr. Robichaud mentioned. They took their 57 tonnes of fish last August and September. Our understanding is that those fish are still sitting in freezers in Greenland because they are not able to sell them yet due to the prices on the world market. The price being paid is almost not worth the commercial fishery anymore. The aquaculture industry has made a big impact on the availability of Atlantic salmon in restaurants and in supermarkets literally around the world.
Mr. Robichaud: On the other hand, the impact of salmon on the economy, particularly as it pertains to the recreational industry, is much bigger. There have been examples of wild salmon at $2 per pound. I am referring to about 80 tonnes for the commercial fishery. Various estimates are floating around, depending on who you listen to, but it could go as high as $300 or $400 per salmon in the recreational fishery.
Irrespective of those various estimates, the aquaculture industry is having a big impact in certain communities that depend on the recreational sport of fishing and outfitting. There is also an impact on the natives. We are talking about 40 tonnes for the natives, about half that of the commercial fishery. Yes, the commercial fishery is smaller.
As you have seen, the biggest impact is on the recreational fishery. This has a big impact on the economy. As well, we are talking about a ceremonial and cultural impact on the natives.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: In the Atlantic region, we try very hard to develop tourism. When tourists come to visit us, they expect to be able to eat fish: but in the area which we are trying to develop, there is no more fish. There is hardly any cod left. And you pay crazy prices for other species of fish. Your answer demonstrates very well how concerned the people in Atlantic Canada are vis-à-vis the salmon. They think about what happened to cod and they have not forgotten.
Mr. Robichaud: If we want salmon, according to what Mr. Meerburg just said, it will have to be mostly aquaculture salmon. I sympathize with you. I come from the lower St. Lawrence and I used to go and find clams , that's how we used to call them, by their English name. It is true the situation has changed. I was referring though to the situation in the Atlantic and to the value of landed fish. If I had to talk to tourists and to invite them to come to the Maritimes, I would try to sell them other things like our shrimp which is plentiful. I would push crab and shellfish which we have in quantity. Thank God! there is fresh spring herring, as soon as the ice break, with a bit of vinegar and some onion. We still have that and that's good.
Senator Robichaud: And a bottle of good wine.
[English]
Senator Butts: In regard to the mortality rate with the catch and release, you did not mention low water levels.Is that covered under the warmer water?
Mr. Meerburg: Usually when we have high air temperatures, we end up with low water levels as well as high water temperatures. When we are looking at this, and quite often when the department is managing it, when we start seeing those low water levels, they are also coincident with the high water temperatures. The rivers are quite often closed completely to angling when it becomes severe for the fish.
Senator Butts: There has been a lot of trouble about that in the Margaree.
In relation to the tourism industry, or to any of the amateur anglers, myself included, is there literature that is put out by some department that will explain to anglers that they have 60 seconds to get this thing back in the water? I have seen many people fishing in the Margaree, and the fish did not make it back in a minute.
Mr. Meerburg: In 1984, when I believe Senator De Bané was the fishery minister, a hook and release program was started as a mandatory requirement for large salmon. At that time we funded the Atlantic Salmon Federation to put out a publicity campaign on how to do this properly, and they put out brochures throughout Atlantic Canada. Those brochures are still available, and those techniques are still in there.
More recently, this international body of which Canada is a member, the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, with its headquarters in Scotland, has come out with some very nice placticized brochures that will be available this year.
In fact, I talked to Bill Taylor, the president of the Atlantic Salmon Federation. He has written many letters of complaint to the producers of these television shows where you see what he considers to be very poor practice, such as people holding the fish out of the water for too long. He has made an attempt to inform them of the great danger they can cause to the fish.
Senator Butts: If we can get those in the tourism information booths, it might be helpful.
I have one other question which may not even be under your purview, but I wanted to ask it anyway. It is in relation to aquaculture. I have read a scientific study that talks about the much poorer nutritional value of aquaculture salmon. Do you have any information in that regard?
Mr. Meerburg: I am not aware of it because the food of aquaculture fish is usually made up of fish meal, which is very often the same types of fish taken from the sea that the wild Atlantic salmon would be eating. As well, they have incorporated all the appropriate vitamins. There is perhaps a slightly different flavour in the aquaculture fish because they are taken and slaughtered just as they finish feeding, whereas an Atlantic salmon that you are used to eating has not been eating for maybe one or two months on its migration back home and has less fat. The aquaculture fish has more white fat in their flesh.
The Chairman: I wondered how you would handle that one, because if you said one was better I would have asked which one between the West and East Coast salmon.
Mr. Meerburg: I have worked on both coasts, and I like all salmon.
Senator Butts: There was a study done at Dalhousie University comparing aquaculture salmon with salmon out of the St. John River. They said it was a mystery, but it is just another mystery in the fishing industry.
Mr. Meerburg: It is not my specialty, and I am not aware of the study. Certainly in the early years of aquaculture they were doing a lot of work on diet development and trying to find the correct diets to produce the fish most readily and efficiently. If it was the case a while ago, I am sure it is something they have worked on since then.
Senator Butts: This was about two years ago.
Senator Stewart: Does the European salmon come to roughly the same area, the Greenland area, and have European observers detected the same decline in returns?
Mr. Meerburg: The answer generally is yes, but only a component of the European salmon go as far as Greenland. Particularly, the ones that they call "springer salmon" in Scotland are ones that we do know go as far as Greenland. They are in a similar decline trend over the long term as are North American Atlantic salmon that go there.
When we monitor, and we do monitor each year, we sample the fishery at Greenland. Roughly, it is about 50-50, European versus North American, although that range can be anywhere from 40 per cent North American up to 70 per cent, depending on the year.
Senator Stewart: That suggests there is a general cause.
I wish to go back to the anomaly to which you referred. Did you mention the Margaree as one of the rivers to which the return was relatively high?
Mr. Meerburg: The Margaree is not one of those rivers that we have specific numbers on in 1997.
Senator Stewart: Can you give me one in Nova Scotia on the Gulf side?
Mr. Meerburg: Off the top of my head, sir, I cannot.
Senator Stewart: I was going to ask you to compare the performance of one of those rivers on the Gulf side with, let us say, the St. Mary's River, which is on the Atlantic side in Guysborough County. I am trying to ascertain if there is some specific local cause for the anomaly which you mentioned with regard to the returns of those fish on the Gulf side.
Mr. Meerburg: One of the differences with those Gulf rivers is that they are primarily fall run rivers, while on the Atlantic side rivers such as the LaHave and St. Mary's are summer run salmon rivers. There is quite a distinction in terms of the migration timing of those fish. As I am sure you are aware, the way our fall rivers on the Northumberland side work, in some years the fish are in almost after the fishing season is over. It is a very late run in some years, so there is a difference in the stocks and the migration timing.
The Chairman: This has been an extremely interesting briefing. We look forward to the workshop assessment reports which are to appear in March.
Senators, I know we could not get all the questions in this morning. I would invite you, if you have any further questions, to give them to me or to the clerk, and we will submit them to Mr. Robichaud and his group. I had a number of questions that I could not ask, so I will be doing that. We will be able to append the responses to our testimony.
Is that agreeable with you, Mr. Robichaud?
Mr. Robichaud: Certainly.
The committee adjourned.