Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue 4 - Evidence, March 18, 2003
OTTAWA, Tuesday, March 18, 2003
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 7:06 p.m. to examine and report from time to time upon the matters relating to straddling stocks and to fish habitat.
Senator Gerald J. Comeau (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Before we hear from our witnesses this evening, members are aware that we had to cancel a trip to British Columbia to look at habitat. Would the members of the committee agree that we request that the Finance Committee have the financing for this in next year's budget?
Senator Cook: I so move.
The Chairman: Is it agreed?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
[Translation]
The Chairman: I am the Chairman of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
[English]
I am happy to have three distinguished guests from the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. For the viewing audience, I will introduce our three witnesses. We are pleased to have Mr. John Fraser, who has chaired the council since its creation in the late 1990s. Mr. Fraser is a native of Vancouver, where he practiced law until his election to the House of Commons. In Parliament, he served in key positions, including as Minister of the Environment and the Ministry of Fisheries. Mr. Fraser was the first speaker of the House of Commons to have been elected by his peers. At the time, I happened to be one of your peers who did vote for you. You could count on my vote at that time and continue to do so today. In 1994, he headed the Fraser River Sockeye Public Review Board and has represented Canada as an ambassador for the environment. He is a Queen's Counsel, an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of British Columbia. He holds Canadian Forces decoration, and has been awarded honorary doctorates in law for his contributions to environmental causes.
Our next witness is Dr. Jeff Marliave, a marine biologist who had made his career at the Vancouver Aquarium, initially as Resident Scientist, before progressing to become Senior Scientist, Director of Conservation and Research, Director of Operations and Vice-President, Marine Science. He has produced over 70 scientific and technical publications and has reared some 70 marine species of fish and crustaceans.
We also welcome Dr. Paul LeBlond, a professor of oceanography and physics at UBC until his retirement in 1996. Before joining the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, he was one of the original members of the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, or the FRCC for Atlantic Canada. He chairs the DFO science advisory council and the Science and Industry Advisory Board of the Institute for Pacific Ocean Science and Technology. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
I understand that the council has prepared a statement. I do not want to take up any more of your time. I welcome you here, gentlemen, and we look forward to your presentation.
[Translation]
The Honourable John Fraser, Chair, Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council: I am very pleased to appear for the first time before your committee. I have a lot of respect for the Senate. I am also pleased to meet again an old colleague of mine, the Chairman of the Committee.
[English]
Honourable senators, I want to express our appreciation for the invitation to come before you to talk about habitat and fisheries on the West Coast of our country. You have all received a copy of our presentation in both official languages.
The Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council was established in 1998, at the instigation of former fisheries minister David Anderson following an inquiry into the missing sockeye salmon some years before. It was considered important to have an independent committee to report to both the federal and the provincial governments and to the public on the state of the salmon and steelhead stocks, and the state of the habitat. We are not a committee that manages the fishery. It is not for us to decide how deep nets will be or what the allocation of fish will be or whether there should be a fisheries vote buyback and so forth. We do not infringe upon the ordinary administration of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans funds us. We are independent. The provincial government does not fund us, although we have had a close liaison and working relationship with the provincial government.
I have provided you with a list of all members of the committee. You will note that it is a widely based committee and there is considerable talent there, including scientific and fisheries experience and community experience. It includes three members of the First Nations in the Province of British Columbia. It is important also to realize that we have an ex officio member, Dr. Richard Beamish from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who is a renowned fisheries scientist in his own right. We have an ex officio member from the Aboriginal Fisheries Commission. The consequence of this is that our committee comprises experience, knowledge, scientific background, and a great commitment to the public interest.
We face an enormous challenge in respect of fish habitat issues in British Columbia. Salmon are very important to both the economy and the culture of British Columbia. They are very important to the culture of our First Nations and intensely important to those of us who live there, those of us who have lived there for several generations and those who are coming as newcomers and who will raise their children there.
The conservation of habitat is central to the conservation of our wild Pacific salmon resource. The salmon provide an economic base for First Nations and for a significant number of traditional commercial fishermen. Salmon are also important to tourism, recreation, sport fishing, boat-making, fishing supplies, and all of the things that go with the rapidly increasing economic importance of those activities.
There is a notion that because the revenue coming into the economy of British Columbia from the traditional fishing industry has been declining — that is, the wild fish industry — therefore, somehow, it is not as important to us as it once was. Consequently, people have decided that they ought to cut the budget of DFO, and they have and are doing it. They say the money might be better spent in something else, for instance, promoting aquaculture, because the revenue from aquaculture now exceeds the revenue from the traditional fishery. However, they forget that the wild salmon on the coast are the basis of the whole tourism outdoor industry and all that goes with it. That element of the economy of British Columbia is absolutely booming. If we do not look after our wild salmon, that segment of the British Columbia economy will be in serious trouble.
What do we mean when we talk about habitat? Anadromous fish — that is, all the salmon and steelhead — have to come into the rivers and streams to spawn. Those streams have to be clean. They must have good spawning gravels and fresh running water. There must be shade and protection from marauders, development and siltation. There must be protection from other things that spoil the habitat that is required for the fish not only to spawn but for the eggs to hatch and the fry to live in the water and slowly move out as they do in the spring or a little later — depending on the species — into the ocean.
This habitat is fragile. We are rapidly increasing population in British Columbia and that brings with it an enormous increase of development. Development is not all bad — some of it is very necessary, but it encroaches constantly on these areas of habitat.
We are not talking only about the fresh water habitat, as there is also the marine habitat. In the marine habitat, we have problems such as pollution. Over a period of about 10 years, up until a few years ago, ocean productivity was low as a result of the warming of water. Consequently, the waters in which the small fish had to grow were not nutrient filled. The great runs that we had looked at some years ago ceased to return except in much reduced numbers. That has all changed in the last few years; the large runs have returned. However, we have El Niño this year and we just do not know whether it will affect the productivity of the oceans.
We are not doing enough about the concept of climate change. We have had El Niños for generations; however, climate change is something else again. We are convinced that not enough work is being done on the consequence of climate change, if we end up with higher water temperatures and lower water flows. For instance, this year, our snowpack is about half of what it is normally. On the West Coast, we have not had the great winter you have had in the East. In a jocular way, we can say that is just fine, but we will pay a price for it later on in the year because we will not have the water that the fish need in the streams to come back. If we get a long, hot summer without rain and with the snowpack melting very rapidly because of early summer heat, then the fish will have to struggle up the streams. After a certain temperature rise in the water, they are subject to stress and disease and do not spawn.
Some people are predicting that if this becomes a continual situation due to climate change, the southern range of pacific salmon will have to move farther north. That is a warning. We have a lot of these stresses on habitat. Let us just look at the Fraser River in the lower reaches, from Chilliwack to the sea, which is a matter of a few hundred miles. If you look at a map, you see that the old small streams that once flowed in the Fraser from about half way from Chilliwack to the ocean are mostly now defunct. They are not raising any fish. From that middle point to the east, farther up the Fraser River, there are a great number of streams that are still very viable. The question is, how do we save them from encroachment, whether it is siltation, highways, subdivisions or other things, especially because the jurisdiction in all these matters is separated between the federal and the provincial and the municipal governments. There must be closer coordination in all of that.
There are also institutional threats to fish habitat. The provincial government, understandably, is trying to balance a budget. They also are doing everything possible to make it easier for industry and commerce and business to succeed. They are talking about changing the forest practices code to a results-based approach. Consequently, rather than having a regulatory system that says in advance what you can or cannot do, the shift is to looking at the ultimate result and deciding whether or not you did things the right way or the wrong way.
It is too early to say how this will all work, but it is something that we have raised with provincial and federal officials because the consequences of error in changing the approach are serious. We want to ensure that, in trying to make the regulations easier for people to get on with doing the things they have to do to give us jobs, we do not make the mistake of having a system that is so loose that our habitat is not protected. Results-based performance is all very well, and streamlining regulations is all very well, but it is very important that we know exactly what we are doing and what the result is.
I do have some positive comments about habitat. British Columbia Hydro, the main power producer in the Province of British Columbia, has been working with citizens' groups, and one of our members, Dr. Mark Angelo, who heads up an organization of citizens who are concerned about the state of our rivers and publishes a report every year on which rivers are most endangered. For a number of years they have been negotiating with B.C. Hydro to ensure that sufficient flows are coming down from the hydro dams to increase the productivity of these streams. That is an example of very positive work. It is also encouraging to others to realize that if people go at this thing in a civil way and can gather together in the same room, we can come up with some positive results.
However, we have a serious problem with respect to the resources available to habitat protection, stream restoration and salmon enhancement for two reasons. The provincial government — again because it is trying to balance a budget — has cut enormously in its expenditures. Consequently, a huge sum of money that was once available in the Province of British Columbia for stream enhancement, urban salmon habitat rehabilitation programs, forest renewal, and watershed rehabilitation, has been cut. At the same time, the federal fisheries department in British Columbia, is faced with a position from the headquarters in Ottawa, which states that they said some years ago that some of the programs set up to support salmon and the stewardship effort involving citizens in stream renewal and habitat protection would some day be phased out. In fact, the idea was that we would phase them out after the stewardship programs and the citizenship groups had found other forms of support. We have not found those other forms of support. We are now getting a combination of cuts in the operating budget of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on the West Coast. At the same time, the province is pulling back its contribution, and we are faced with many increasing challenges.
We are not talking about tens of millions of dollars or hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. We are talking about millions of dollars. It seems irresponsible to be proceeding with a cutback program when all of the evidence indicates that we need all that money. We needed it in the past and we need it now. Even if we do not ask for any new money, at least the money available needs to be there. As the public becomes increasingly incensed about the cutbacks, they will turn on the federal government and say, ``Look, fish, after all, is your responsibility.'' It is not just the federal government's responsibility. The provincial government, with its constitutional authority over forests, highways, mining, gravel, municipalities, hydro and water rights, has authority over just about everything you need for habitat protection.
The former government — and I am not a member of the party of the former government — was trying to meet that. I believe that the present government would like to do it, but they say they do not have enough money. Ultimately, everyone will turn to the federal government, because if something goes wrong with the fishery in British Columbia you always blame the federal government. That is the basis of politics in B.C. Whether or not it is fair, does not matter. That is what will happen. We are trying to establish in the minds of people in Ottawa that the federal officials in fisheries in British Columbia are bearing the brunt of this. I can assure you, we know. Many of them are trying to do everything they can to minimize the effect of this, but it is serious.
This council has never said for a moment that there should not be aquaculture, that is, the raising of salmon in nets in the waters on the Pacific coast. We have said that if you are to do it, then it must be done in such a way that the protection of the wild salmon comes first. We have a serious and unpleasant situation in British Columbia. In the Broughton Archipelago, a run of pink salmon returned some time ago. There were about 3.5 to 4 million fish. When their progeny went out in the spring of 2001, an independent biologist discovered that the smolts, that is, the baby salmon, were covered with sea lice. When the surviving smolts returned this autumn, they were 175,000 in contrast to their parents who returned at 3.5. million. We brought out several reports in which we said there appeared to be no other reason for this run to have been so devastated, except for the fact that they acquired lice from the fish farms in the area. Remember, we did not have this reduction anywhere elsewhere where there were not fish farms. We made our recommendations.
The provincial and federal governments are now paying a great deal more attention to this issue than they were six to twelve months ago. We hope that the steps that they are taking — and we can discuss that in detail when you ask questions — will be beneficial. However, as yet, we do not know.
Dr. Paul LeBlond, Member, Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council: Many of you are familiar with the fate of the cod in the Atlantic waters. There are similarities and differences between the cod fishery and the salmon fishery. It is easier to count the salmon because they come back into rivers and you can actually count them in the water. The danger of overfishing salmon is much lower than it is for cod, which are hidden from sight.
On the other hand, the habitat concerns for salmon are much greater. These concerns are not only in the ocean, where we do not know very much about what happens, but also in the near shore area where we have fish farms, and in the rivers, and in the areas that surround the rivers and the lakes. Thus, the whole of the province is the home of the salmon.
Scientists do not have a good understanding of the role of habitat in the success of salmon spawning. You have heard about the aquaculture dispute where people are arguing about whether it is lice or not lice. Again, a lot of basic information is missing. The Department of Fisheries is under-staffed and apparently incapable of finding all this information. As in the cod crisis, the science is too weak to counter the economic arguments. Therefore, one ends up with the problem that the political will is also weak and cannot be reinforced enough by the science.
There is a need for better understanding of what happens to salmon in B.C. waters.
Dr. Jeffrey Marliave, Member, Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council: This evening we heard very persuasive media coverage of the issue that we are discussing at the end of the presentation. It is clear that they deliberately try to portray the federal government as having a conflict of interest. This is a difficult issue within DFO.
You have to realize that there are a lot of people whose lives are dedicated to looking after wild salmon. There are people who have put their entire careers into demonstrating the feasibility of salmon aquaculture.
We have been dealing closely with the provincial government. Our report contains details relating to our council's recommendations, and what the provinces and farms are doing. The substantive difference is if you cannot fallow all the farms, then fallow as much as possible, accelerate your marketing and treat everything that remains. We were, perhaps, a bit naive because we are not experts on salmon farming. However, I had the privilege of attending the provincial government and UBC's sea lice forum at the Hotel Vancouver. All the international experts that they brought in — though they will argue strenuously that there is no proof — said, ``In the Broughton Archipelago, the risks are so extreme that you have to proceed with a plan; you should treat prophylactically.''
The province is not recommending this prophylactic treatment. To a certain extent, they are holding out the federal government as a good excuse. They are saying, ``Health Canada would not give emergency clearance for the drug of choice without all the diagnostic information we have.''
I have been looking at it with our own vets at the centre for coastal health. I am told that Health Canada is concerned about the health of human beings, not fish, and it is more or less a pro forma clearance that is never an obstacle to any veterinarian. Therefore, I think the provincial government is playing off against the federal government to a certain extent.
One thing that came out of the blue to me because the fisheries council has not been able to look into all the details is that while, clearly, DFO has at least the appearance of a conflict of interest between protecting wild salmon and promoting aquaculture, there has been some pressure to have the Canadian Food Inspection Agency step in. Perhaps the senate has already received some of this pressure.
DFO has proven the feasibility of salmon farming. The basic, pioneering research was done at the Pacific Biological Station. The tremendous expertise in terms of numbers of veterinarians, protocols and such for animal husbandry in Canada lies with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. It may be that from some august body like the senate recommendations could come forward to help resolve this dilemma in which DFO finds itself. There are some people within DFO who say that it is a conflict and DFO should get on with the wild salmon. I think the public accepts that as its original mandate. That is why Mr. Fraser says that the public will come back and kick the federal government because wild salmon are seen as the charges of the federal government to a certain extent.
The Chairman: I wish to make reference to comments raised by Mr. Fraser regarding some of the studies that have been done by the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. Many of its studies, references, recommendations and advisories are well worth reading. I am sure that much of this information can be found on the council's Web site, which is www.fish.bc.ca.
Senator Cook: I come from Newfoundland, the other side of this nation of ours. Does the mandate of the PFRCC differ significantly from the FRCC on the East Coast?
I would like your opinion as to whether the Department of Fisheries listens to your advice. I ask because Senator Cochrane and I are waiting with bated breath on the decision of the FRCC concerning the fate of the northern cod. That decision will be available next week. I am anxious about that to see what is coming down the tube.
Mr. LeBlond: Before becoming a member of the PFRCC, I was a member of the FRCC, which was created by Mr. Crosbie to advise the Minister of Fisheries on quotas of groundfish in Atlantic Canada. There are something like 50 stocks from cod to all kinds of flat fish, haddock and so on. The FRCC recommends a total allowable catch each year for all these stocks. The department's decision follows, or not, the recommendations. It usually follows them fairly closely.
On the other hand, the PFRCC is mandated to provide strategic long-term advice on the salmon fishery. We are not tasked with making recommendations on this year's catch because salmon arrive on the coast only a few weeks before the fishery opens. Therefore, it is impossible to make predictions and recommendations ahead of time. That is basically the difference, senator.
Mr. Fraser: With respect to Senator Cook's second question as to whether governments heed our recommendations, sometimes we do not think that they respond quickly enough. However, let us take a couple of examples where there is no question that they have been paying attention to what we said.
The first item is the Broughton Archipelago interaction between farmed fish and wild pink baby fish or smolts and the probability of sea lice from the farm fish to the smolts.
As honourable senators will know, this matter was raised and brought to the attention of the public by a private individual, Alexandra Morton. She is a trained fisheries biologist. On her own, she dip-netted wild smolts and found them covered with sea lice. That was many months ago. The furor created by this built up. As a conservation council, we properly decided that this was within our mandate because this was habitat and involved the state of the stocks. As a consequence, we held a consultation on Vancouver Island in October. We had very good cooperation from especially the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the provinces. We also had some representation from the provinces, from the farm industry and other people.
Out of that day of consultation, and especially based on the evidence given by senior fisheries biologists in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, we concluded that the inference could and properly should be drawn that there was a connection between lice on farmed fish and the lice that were getting on the smolts and killing them.
We made a series of recommendations. To ensure when the smolts go out in the spring, we fallowed all the farms in the Broughton Archipelago. If they would not do that, have a mix of fallowing and treatment, that would not only knock down the amount of lice on any particular farm fish, but that would kill the lice as well.
Have they done exactly what we said? No, not exactly. They did not fallow all the farms. They have arranged to have a channel from the mainland side of British Columbia, from the Broughton Archipelago to the sea, freed of any fish farms that have fish in them. At the same time, the federal government is engaged in a plan for constant surveillance and monitoring. The provincial government has a plan for increased attention to the state of the fish in the pens and reporting on them.
We cannot yet say whether this is sufficient, but it is far more action than was even contemplated six months ago. As recently as three months ago, there were plenty of people in British Columbia who did not believe anybody would do anything. In fairness, both governments have paid significant attention to our recommendations. There has also been public indignation and public comment. However, here is a case in which our action has been listened to.
For several years before last year, the sockeye runs on the Fraser River were in terrible trouble. For some reason, the sockeye were coming into the mouth of the Fraser River earlier and were starting up the river. As soon as they got into the fresh water, a parasite started to work on them. They were getting up the rivers to the spawning grounds before they were mature enough to spawn, but the parasite was killing them. The mortality rate on those runs was running anywhere from 80 per cent to 90 per cent.
Last autumn, when the big run came in, DFO and the Pacific Salmon Commission admittedly underestimated its size. However, that has happened before. They were worried that the same phenomenon might apply. This was the great run to the Adams River. Consequently, they established what some have termed was a too rigorous precautionary principle. They limited the figure to 15 per cent for catch by commercial fisherman.
There was a lot of criticism in response to that. Eventually, as they saw that the run was far greater than they had expected, that fishing restriction was relaxed. Happily, again for reasons we do not know, this enormous run of sockeye salmon got up on to the Adams River and spawned without the mortality.
We defended the decision of DFO and the Pacific Salmon Commission to err on the side of caution — at least in the early stages of the run. In advisories to the government, we said that this was because the past record was that we had this enormous mortality rate and the fish were not living long enough to spawn.
There was a crossfire. There was criticism of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in not adapting quickly enough to the fact that this was perhaps a bigger run and perhaps healthier. That debate will go on a long time. Others will bring that debate to you. That was an example of us pushing the precautionary principle. We believe the effort was started in the right way. Perhaps they could have adjusted their plan earlier.
A few years earlier, when the Honourable David Anderson was Minister of Fisheries, he brought in a strict approach to establishing protection for coho salmon runs, which we knew were in a depleted state. This did not mean all coho, but these were identifiable stocks of coho.
We encouraged the government to apply a strict precautionary principle in this regard. If a limited number of coho did not get to the spawning grounds in the areas where they were depleted and if they were all caught up in the commercial fishery of other species, then these particular stocks would run into extinction.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, with the backing of the then minister, did apply strict notions of the precautionary principle. Not only had we advised that approach, but also we defended it publicly. It is not always easy to defend precautionary measures taken when people will tell you that there are lots of fish out there. They will ask why you are sacrificing the catch of the more abundant stocks to save a few stocks. The problem with that argument is that that approach has been applied in British Columbia for decades and that is why in some places some of the stocks are depleted.
Those are examples of places where we took positions in our advisory. We also tried to support the government where we thought it was doing the right thing.
On the aquaculture subject, our advice to government was pretty blunt. We said, ``You have waited too long; much should have been done before, now you must act.'' We will only see this in a matter of time; it is too early to tell. Has the government done everything that could have been done or should have been done? We will find out in a matter of weeks or months. Certainly, they are doing something.
I do not wish to leave the impression that every time we send an advisory to both levels of government that they immediately do what we suggest. However, it is fair to say that both levels of government are paying more attention to us now than they did a few years ago.
Senator Cook: I am trying to the cod fishery to the salmon fishery on the B.C. coast. You say you have submitted compelling information that your fishery is predictable: You know when your runs are coming and you know how big it will be. We do not have that with the cod. Do you feel that there is adequate science at DFO dedicated to the fishery, either on your coast or the East Coast?
Mr. Fraser: I will not discuss the East Coast tonight. I had to deal with that once a long time ago.
For the interest of honourable senators, while I was fisheries minister years ago I was very concerned about the reports of the diminishing size of the cod that was being caught, while the same total tonnage of cod was being taken year after year. I thought that was a recipe for disaster.
When an independent advisory committee such as the Eastern Fisheries Conservation Council makes recommendations about conserving the existing stocks of cod, some people who want to continue to harvest the fist do not like the advice. There is a conflict. We have the same situation on our coast.
I believe we are being supported by the public and, in fairness, I have to say we are being supported by both levels of government, although the question of how effectively, especially with the Broughton Archipelago, time will only tell.
Senator Cook: Do you feel that there is an adequate science program within DFO to deal with the concerns that we have on both coasts?
Dr. Marliave: You have to remember that the northwest Atlantic Ocean has a far lower biodiversity than the northeast Pacific Ocean. We have more than two dozen species of rockfish; you only have a couple. Historically there has been much greater cooperation between the American and Canadian governments in looking at groundfish in particular on the Atlantic coast. DFO has put a tremendous amount of its resources into looking at the salmon resource. If you look beyond the salmon to the groundfish, speaking as a specialist for COSEWIC, I can warn you that we are in serious trouble because the databases do not exist to evaluate many of the species at risk on our Pacific coast.
Currently, DFO is attempting to put out this fire in terms of pink salmon and sea lice in the Broughton by committing $700,000 to the program they have set up. However, Dr. Davis admits candidly that he is not quite certain where he will get that money. There is an enormous problem on the Pacific Coast. The fisheries have not historically been worth that much beyond the salmon and herring, yet there is a tremendous diversity of species that are being exploited.
Mr. LeBlond: As to the question of whether DFO has an adequate science program, a blunt answer would be no. There is not enough knowledge. Even in respect of the salmon that come back to the same rivers year after year, one does not know how many will come back. We know approximately when but not how many. There is a plethora of other questions about their reaction to the environment, their interactions with other fish, et cetera, which makes the management very difficult. It is like driving in the fog.
Mr. Fraser: If you ask privately almost any of the better fisheries scientists on the West Coast whether they have adequate information and data for their needs and in meeting new challenges, they will tell you the same thing. The answer is that they do not.
There is another difficulty, especially in regard to the interrelation between farmed fish and wild fish. For example, a salmon aquaculture review was done between 1995 and 1998 with the cooperation of both governments. That review was supposed to cover most of the problems that could be anticipated in the development of fish farms, and it did cover quite a bit. It also made quite clear that fish farming was all right, given the then numbers of fish farms and the number of fish in the pens, but they were not going much beyond that.
Later, when the Broughton Archipelago situation surfaced and the whole question of sea lice came up, some people said that was all covered in the salmon aquaculture report. That report is hundreds of pages thick. Upon review, we found that there were only two brief references to sea lice and they had nothing to do with the relationship between farmed fish and wild fish.
This situation has exploded on us and we do not have any local science on the potential of the transfer of sea lice from farmed fish to wild fish on the West Coast of British Columbia. There is a good deal of informed opinion and scientific work from other parts of the world one this, but not in our own backyard where right now it is needed. I think you can get another list of similar examples.
Dr. John Davis will give you a very long list of recommendations pertaining to where we need more science work.
Senator Cochrane: This has been an eye-opener for all of us, I am sure. Your information is important. We can feel the urgency to do something. The salmon is important to your economy and to your culture, as the cod is to ours in Newfoundland.
Would you elaborate on the salmon enhancement initiatives that you mentioned, Mr. Fraser? What sorts of techniques have been used? What measures have proven to be the most effective?
Mr. Fraser: There was once a belief on the West Coast that if you build enough hatcheries and pumped enough baby fish out into the ocean, you could make up for any of the losses of stocks over the years as a consequence of careless logging or pollution in the streams or gravel removal or overfishing, et cetera. I confess that when I had a lot more enthusiasm than I had knowledge, I was intrigued by the idea that if you could produce enough hatchery fish you could make up for the losses and restore the stocks to their former abundance. That was not just with hatcheries. They also used fertilization of lakes, especially with the sockeye. They also created spawning channels to make up for the fact that flooding and erosion, which is a consequence of runoff after deforestation, had washed some of the streams away.
There was a combination of these things, and there is no question that, for a while, the whole salmon enhancement program in the Province of British Columbia proceeded on that basis. For a while the Department of Fisheries and Oceans could, on a cost-estimate basis, show that for the amount of money they spent in concrete and hatcheries they were actually producing more fish — especially sockeye because that is the most valuable species. Subsequently, they could provide a reasonable cost-benefit ratio to convince Treasury Board to continue funding.
This was also done in places other than British Columbia. Then, however, troubling information started to come forward.
The bottom line was that as the numbers of artificially raised salmon increased, and as these fish went out into the sea and returned and mingled with the wild fish, the genetic base of the stock in particular rivers started to change. For the most part, after an initial increase, they began to diminish — in particular, the percentage of wild fish compared with hatchery-raised fish diminished. The current view is that if that is not watched carefully, the genetic base of wild stocks can be destroyed. The consequence of that is to become completely dependent on hatchery fish, and they become a different animal.
Should all hatcheries be closed? The current view of those who are charged with responsibility in this is that they should not all be closed but that, now that we have better information and better science, they should be used much more carefully than they were 20 and 30 years ago.
Is there a place for hatcheries? There probably is. Are hatcheries themselves the answer to diminishing wild salmon? I would say no, not by themselves. The real answer to diminishing wild salmon is to ensure that the harvesting practices are such that the weaker stocks — that is, the less bountiful stocks — are protected, that the spawning areas for these salmon are kept in such condition that the salmon can spawn there, that the eggs can hatch and that the fry can exist in those waters during the months that they have to be in those little creeks and streams before they go to sea. It is a mix of things.
For many years in British Columbia it was argued that overfishing was not the cause of the decline of salmon stocks, that it was all due to pollution, logging, municipal expansion, et cetera. There was certainly plenty of that to go around, but without question overfishing did a great deal of damage in some places.
Today, there is far more attention being paid to ensuring that there is not overfishing. Certain stocks are protected on selected fishing patterns that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has set up. They are proceeding to apply the precautionary principle to the extent that fishermen are sometimes complaining because it is too rigorous and they do not get enough of the abundant stocks because we are trying to protect some others.
That is what salmon enhancement is all about. It is a combination of habitat, fishing practices, constraints on fishing catches in selected areas, and selective fishing — that is, screening out of the nets those fish that are endangered stocks. It is a far more sophisticated concept and approach today than some very well-meaning people had 20, 30 or 40 years ago — myself included.
Dr. Marliave: Dr. LeBlond would be able to better address the phenomenon of climatic regime shifts. The bad oceanography in the 1990s made it clear to the public in British Columbia that hatcheries are no panacea if the ocean will not support survival.
Furthermore, with the new COSEWIC listings for Cultis Lake and Sakinaw Lake sockeye, we must remember that for the better part of the last half century, because of extremely big runs like the Adams River sockeye, with mixed stock fisheries, the Cultis Lake run was being hit with 80 per cent to 85 per cent every year. The early Stewart run has always supported a Johnstone Strait fishery, which hit the Little Sakinaw run very hard.
When you add hatcheries to the mix, this creates more super runs that lend to these terrible mixed stock management problems that are undoubtedly driving weak runs to extinction.
Mr. Fraser: Lesser runs.
Dr. Marliave: Yes, small runs.
You will be hearing about the concept of the conservation hatchery, which is also called hatchery reform. I suspect that bureaucratic inertia is resulting in a tendency to close the smaller hatcheries — particularly the community stewardship hatcheries, some of which are very conservation-based — while the big dinosaur hatcheries, the federal hatcheries, seem to be immune to any consideration of closure.
That is where the hard choices will be made. We have put this to some people in DFO. It is at the top of their minds. They know that some of the big hatcheries offer the opportunity to recover significant costs. It would be a terribly cruel choice to have to make, though, because the public will howl if they are used to tonnes of salmon being put in.
Senator Cochrane: Will these big hatcheries be closed as well?
Dr. Marliave: I am suggesting that some of them should be closed, but there is much more resistance to closing the big ones. The big hatchery that is close to us right near downtown Vancouver — the Capilano hatchery — is sort of a special case because the migration route is such that you can have a sport fishery that has absolutely no mixed stock implications because they turn away from the Fraser River route and head up toward Vancouver Harbour. It is very easy for DFO to manage the sport fishery for that, whereas some of the other hatcheries on the main Fraser River cannot possibly get away from mixed stock management problems.
Senator Cochrane: What will happen? You are saying that you will test to see if these salmon stocks are lice infected. What will happen if this larger hatchery is not closed? Will that spoil the outcome?
Dr. Marliave: The lice issue and the hatcheries issue are quite separate spatially. The council has not formally addressed hatcheries. It is a big issue. We have had some interesting conversations about it, but it is a scary topic, like salmon farms.
Mr. LeBlond: On the subject of hatcheries, the original intent was to increase the number of fish that would be available. However, people discovered that making more baby fish did not necessarily produce a much greater number of adult fish because in the ocean there is a finite carrying capacity. There is only so much food. Oceanographers still do not know exactly how many tonnes of fish the Pacific Ocean can produce, but it is clearly a finite number. With the hatcheries, the experience has been that after some initial increase in returns, it completely flattened out again. A limit was reached where there was only so much food for fish and no more. Pumping more little fish into the ocean did not matter.
Senator Cochrane: A witness from Newfoundland, talked to us about the straddling stocks. He mentioned some of the things to which you have referred. He said that DFO is significantly understaffed. He said that when you have such severe budget cuts you lose top-notch scientists — not only the working scientists but also people with the knowledge and the vision to establish broad scientific objectives in a fishery that is complex and very difficult to manage.
He went on to say that there must be a complete change in attitude toward the management of fisheries, including the work of scientists, scientific programs and all that goes with them.
I should like to have your comments on those words, if you would, please.
Mr. LeBlond: I would agree that there is a need for more and better science and that, indeed, in cases where the morale falls in a scientific research establishment such as DFO, top scientists do leave. This has happened on the West Coast as well. People have gone to prestigious positions in American universities, for example.
How the science should be conducted in government laboratories has been the subject of a number of studies. The committee of scientific and technical advisers to the government has put out some reports on how to attain excellence in government science. In most cases, it is not sufficient to have excellent scientists; they also have to be working on the problems that are of interest to the mandate of the government. Sometimes this is a problem. Scientists are not like dog teams. You cannot just harness them and say, ``Pull in that direction,'' because they are curious and will easily go off the trail.
How to keep gifted scientists on the track of problems of national importance and of importance to the mandate of a particular department is always a problem. It requires skill in management. It requires that the scientists themselves participate in the formulation of the science programs.
I sympathize with the comments made by your previous witness that there is a scientific crisis within the Department of Fisheries. The managers of the department are aware of this and they have been struggling with this problem for some time.
Senator Cochrane: Do you want to comment, Mr. Fraser?
Mr. Fraser: We have made it clear that if there is not adequate scientific work being done on a constant basis, we will not be able to meet the challenges of habitat degradation, low water flows, increasing temperatures, and climate change. We will move from crisis to crisis unless some decisions are made now to ensure that the work is being done to adequately meet these challenges. We will be faced with what we are looking at in the aquaculture issue: Areas in which work that should have been done just was not done because someone did not think it was necessary or someone did not have the budget to do it.
The biggest difficulty in running fisheries is that you cannot make decisions based only on departmental cutbacks across the board. These people know how to issue orders to cut the spending, but most of them know nothing about fish. You have financial managers who are not there because they know anything about fish; they are there because they are operating on orders that come down from above. If they want promotions, they make sure that the department out in the province of British Columbia does not spend any more than department X, and sunset the programs that someone else set up because, after all, they have to save money. We are talking about millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars.
Every department must have bean counters. You have to have someone who tells you how much money you have, and how much money is coming in and going out. However, when bean counters are setting policy on complicated things that involve science, history, culture, wild things and the great outdoors, it is a prescription for folly. I think we could make some terrible mistakes unless someone does not get on top of this.
Senator Cochrane: It involves people's livelihoods, Mr. Fraser.
Mr. Fraser: People's livelihoods are all bound up in it. Livelihood is earning money because you have to pay your bills.
There are cultural aspects of a fishery. You spoke movingly about what cod has meant to the Maritimes and to Newfoundland and Labrador. Salmon means a great deal to British Columbians. As my colleague Dr. Marliave said, it is not just salmon. That is not the only thing. Our mandate is to look at salmon and steelhead. However, salmon and steelhead swim in a huge ocean, in a huge ecosystem, which will only function if everything else in it functions.
Senator Mahovlich: The Norwegians were the founders of aquaculture. Are they aware that our coastline on the Pacific is a little more sensitive than their coastline? Do they have sockeye, chinook and coho?
Last year I sailed around Norway quite a bit, right up into the Arctic Circle. Their islands were more Queen Mother hat-type islands, not as rugged as our coastline. I did not see any rivers. There are mostly inlets and fiords.
They come over here and start the fish farming. I do not think they are aware how sensitive our coastline is. Am I correct in that?
Dr. Marliave: It was covered in that disclosure episode that you were looking at. The farms in British Columbia are controlled by Norwegian multinationals. At the meeting I mentioned earlier, the head of veterinary medicine for Norway said, ``You must understand that in Norway the government did not need any proof to believe that there are sea lice in salmon farms and that the lice are bad for wild salmon. The farms never needed any proof. We got on with an action plan to try to mitigate the problem.''
The truth is that right now in Norway, you have to treat at 0.1 motile lice per fish. These same multinationals in British Columbia — in tandem with our provincial government — now have a plan that says if you count three motile lice per adult fish — that is 30 times more — then you will look more closely and then you will leave it up to your company veterinarian as to whether or not you will treat. I suspect because of the cost of treatment that they knew perfectly well that they were getting away with cheap operations in Canada that would not be allowed in Norway.
Senator Mahovlich: In our agriculture and veterinary colleges in Canada, the government allows about $123 million to study plants and animals. I would think that the University of British Columbia would have a study going on. What would they be allowed? I do not know.
Dr. Marliave: The brand new UBC Centre for Aquaculture and the Environment has a total of $3.75 million to look at this issue. That is spread across the entire province.
Mr. Fraser: It is not just salmon.
Dr. Marliave: They are spending on the salmon.
Senator Mahovlich: That is the amount. Are there universities on the East Coast that do these studies?
Dr. Marliave: We are all envious of the veterinary college in P.E.I. It gets a lot more money.
Senator Mahovlich: That is interesting.
I have another question for Mr. Fraser from a colleague: Do you think that aquaculture would be better dealt with under the Fisheries Act, or would you recommend the development of an aquaculture act?
Mr. Fraser: I practiced law for a long time. I learned that it is dangerous to try to answer a question unless you really know what you are talking about, so I will be very cautious.
I do not know whether an aquaculture act would be the appropriate approach. Much of that would depend on the mandate of the activity. It will not make me particularly popular with some people, but I can say that there is active concern among people who are paying attention to this issue in British Columbia, that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has itself in the unenviable position of pushing aquaculture. The impression is that those who are concerned about the interrelationship between aquaculture and its possible negative effects on wild salmon are being pushed out of the picture. The drive to develop aquaculture with some of the best intentions in the world — that is, jobs and its activity — has resulted in a situation where when people turn to DFO for action to protect the salmon, they do not know whether they are dealing with a department that is more interested in an aquaculture development than it is in protecting the wild salmon.
If you pose the same question in British Columbia, you will get the same answer from a great many people. I think this needs attention because it is a question of confidence in a great federal institution.
There is also an historical aspect to this. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has always tried to find ways to promote the exploitation — and I use that in the proper sense of that word — of fisheries products, the very best way of catching, caring for and processing the fish, and finding the markets for the fish. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has always been involved in this commercial capture of fisheries products and using means at its disposal to encourage the people involved in the industry to support them where it was helpful, to work to expand their markets, and to help finance great fish shows.
I was in Boston several times as minister. It is not altogether outside of tradition to have a minister of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans supporting the commercial use of fisheries products to the benefit of not only the consumer but also the fishers, processors and so forth.
Having said that, when the appearance among citizens is that the balance has slipped and that more attention is being paid to promoting aquaculture and not enough attention is being paid to ensure that it is being done in such a way that the wild salmon are the first priority, then you have a problem in confidence. When we have a lack of confidence in any great federal or provincial institution, it does a lot of damage to democracy. It does a lot of damage to our political system. It does something else: It does a lot of damage to the fish.
Senator Hubley: You are so right. Thank you for your presentation this evening. There was a lot of information.
You commented that climate change is a chief threat to the salmon population in British Columbia. I think there is the scientific evidence now that verifies that we are experiencing climate change and, in the longer trends, warming. I notice that you mentioned the El Niño effect in the 1990s. From a scientific standpoint, are you doing studies on how the climate change will affect the species and how it will affect both the farmed and the wild variety? Which is better? Which will better be able to adapt to those changes?
Mr. Fraser: Several years ago, we held a symposium on climate change and invited some first-rate scientists there. We have included that report in the information that we have provided to this committee.
Our view is that there is no doubt that we are going through a period of climate change. This is also the view of many good scientists — particularly those who are studying fish on the West Coast. They have predicted that if climate change continues to result in lower water flows and higher temperatures, it can clearly affect the runs and the range of Pacific salmon.
A whole second question comes up: What about adaptability? I cannot answer the question of whether the farm salmon will continue in a completely artificial state and not be affected by climate change. I do not know. I cannot answer that.
However, most scientists will agree that creatures do have — and experience shows this — the capacity to adapt to things or else they cease to exist. Depending on just how far the genetic base of any particular species spreads in terms of its ability to adapt to different locales, that probably increases the probability of adaptability of some of those fish. However, we do not know much about that. It may be that some of the salmon can adapt to warmer water but we do not know.
Quite frankly, not much is going on in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to find out about it. The council wrote a letter and sent copies to a number of senior ministers a couple of months ago, prior to the budget. We were encouraged to do this by some members of Parliament. Ms. Karen Kraft Sloan, a Liberal MP, contacted us and spoke of the concerns about the lack of resources for studies in the Arctic, especially on climate change. She asked if there was anything that we could do. We decided that, although we do not run the fisheries, that is absolutely within our mandate because we have to know what the consequences of climate change will be on a number of species.
Right now, the most acute and noticeable changes are taking place in the Arctic. If we do not do the scientific work there, we will not have the science to be able to do it on the south coast of British Columbia.
Senator Hubley: Would one of the other witnesses care to comment on that?
Mr. LeBlond: Yes, I would comment on climate change. It may well be that fish will adapt to climate changes better than the fisherman will. If the distribution of salmon moves north to the Alaskan waters because of warming there may be as many fish but not as many for Canadians. That is a possibility. Mr. Fraser referred to adaptability. Salmon has already adapted to climate change. Glaciers used to reach south as far as Vancouver, and the rivers where the salmon spawn now were under a mile of ice ten thousand years ago. They are clearly able to adapt.
From the point of view of the fishery, there are some practical consequences to shifts in fish population because of climate changes.
Dr. Marliave: I would like to add to that in regard to the standpoint of wild salmon versus farmed salmon. In the 1990s, in British Columbia, we had a taste of the effects of global warming when productivity dropped way down to the extent that wild salmon numbers dropped way down as well. In Puget Sound, B.C., Atlantic salmon are farmed at significantly warmer temperatures than the temperatures of B.C.'s Broughton Archipelago. The salmon farmer has the advantage such that when the waters warm and the fish's metabolism speeds up, he can just order more bags of feed from the pellet mill. The fish thus operate at warmer temperatures and you have good conversions. The farmers like to sit back and say that they will do fine with global warming but there are issues of disease resistance and such that will probably throw curves at them.
Senator Watt: You raised the matter of numbers and many questions could be asked. I will try to limit myself to discussion of Atlantic salmon, an area in which I have some knowledge.
We have only Atlantic salmon in Nunavik. We have three major rivers that are good for Atlantic salmon and they have been under pressure for a number of years. The Atlantic salmon were almost non-existent five years ago. There were some but not in big numbers. The change was noticeable this year. I was an Atlantic commercial fisherman in the past. I have not practised that for quite a number of years now because there have been no salmon to fish.
This year, I noticed that salmon are slowly beginning to come back in bigger numbers than in previous years. I am not sure whether that has anything to do with the fact that your area is beginning to have some problems, even for quite a number of years, in respect of the Atlantic salmon. I do not know whether the two events are connected but Atlantic salmon are beginning to return in small numbers. There is hope but who knows what will happen.
You raised the issue of lice, with which I am familiar. Atlantic salmon usually comes in from the ocean carrying lice. When the salmon enter freshwater, the lice die. You talked about fry already carrying lice when they go into the ocean. They must be getting it from the ocean and not from the freshwater. That is an interesting disease that affects not only the farm fish but also the wild fish. Some time ago, in this committee, we raised the issue of lice when the farming concept was first initiated. At the time, we wondered what would happen to the wild stock versus the farmed stock in captivity. It now seems that there is an effect on the wild fish.
We do not have a good handle on that issue, if I understood correctly from your presentation. You think that governments are not providing adequate funding for necessary scientific research.
You raised the issue of conflicts within DFO. I understand that there are definitely conflicts of interest. There is a definite conflict of interest when a department is managing wild stocks while promoting farmed fish. There is no doubt in my mind about that. One of the two species will have to suffer and the wild stock is the one that is suffering. We anticipated that that would happen.
Have you had any long-term knowledge of what is happening in the Yukon and Alaska areas? You are dealing with the same stocks, I believe.
You mentioned that there is a need for more money for scientific research in the Arctic. I believe you said that you have written letters to the Prime Minister to that effect. Have you received a response?
Are you, in some way, linking your problem in British Columbia to a need for further scientific research in the Arctic? Is there a link?
Mr. Fraser: I will try to do justice to your observations and your questions, senator. Concerning the Yukon and Alaska, I will read from our annual report of 2001-02:
This annual report presents a comprehensive factual account of the Pacific salmon stocks in southern B.C. and the Okanagan River, and the trends in their abundance and diversity. Subsequent Council reports will address Pacific salmon in central and northern B.C. and the transboundary rivers including the Yukon River, as well as steelhead stocks and salmon habitats.
This is a heavy volume and it is fascinating reading, but it takes some work. That is the southern part of the province. We do not think that any other publication has brought as much pertinent information on the state of the stocks in southern B.C. together in one place. If all goes well, we will produce a similar volume with respect to the Yukon. I would not get into Alaska necessarily, but we are certainly going up to the Yukon. The short answer is yes; we are turning our attention there.
You said that you saw the Atlantic salmon coming back in greater numbers. This is likely a direct consequence of better ocean survival. I think that is showing up in the southern rivers in the Maritimes as well. That was certainly the case last summer.
Senator Watt: That is true.
Mr. Fraser: Over the last several years, we have had remarkable recovery in terms of ocean survival, not just in British Columbia, but also from California right up through British Columbia, and maybe to a lesser degree as you get into the northern reaches.
There has been a sense that all the gloom and doom of the last decade is over; they got it all wrong, and everything is fine again. The difficulty with that is this is an El Niño year, and we do not know what effect that will have on ocean productivity. Nor do we know whether, in the shifting ocean regimes, we could be heading back into another period of warmer water. That will, of course, reduce nutrients, which reduces productivity, which brings the predator fish farther north, et cetera, et cetera.
You also mentioned that there is not enough money being spent on the relationship between aquaculture and wild salmon. I want to be very fair here. The federal government has found $700,000 or $800,000 that they are spending now — they were not spending it before. The provincial government is spending several million dollars now. You heard Dr. Marliave refer to the University of British Columbia's several-million-dollar fund, which is concentrating mostly on aquaculture and wild salmon. Therefore, more money is being spent on this.
Overall, however, when you see the cutbacks in the services that DFO can give, plus the fact that so much money has been taken out of circulation by the province in an attempt to balance the budget, it means that we do not have the resources to meet the challenges.
You also talked about conflict of interest. I think most people would say there is a conflict of interest. The department has always tried to conduct itself in such a way that it gave support to those who make a living out of the fishery, processing and sales. Therefore, it is not altogether surprising that the Fisheries Department would be concerned with promoting aquaculture.
Aquaculture is not just salmon aquaculture; there are many forms of aquaculture. We have never taken the position that there should be no aquaculture. The council has not said that. What we have said is that it has to be conducted in such a way that on the West Coast — and our mandate is the wild salmon and the steelhead — it is done in such a way that we are not diminishing the wild salmon.
Senator Watt: Coming back to the question of the way the salmon are being raised now in the ocean, I believe there is technology existing now that you could do it in the mainland, instead of the ocean? Has that been looked at seriously?
Dr. Marliave: Before addressing that question, I want to get back to what you were saying about observing Atlantic salmon coming back to rivers with lice on them, which then dropped off. The important thing to remember, because it relates to the defence the industry tries to give itself in terms of sea lice in the north Pacific, is that it is quite normal for pink salmon to return to rivers with adult sea lice on them. In the same way, the lice die when they enter fresh water. The life cycle of the sea louse is in an ecosystem out on the high seas. That is where reproduction takes place, and that is where infection takes place. With the salmon farms being situated in the protected waters such as the Broughton Archipelago, you have millions of adult salmon supporting the life history of sea lice right near the river estuaries where the salmon smolts come out.
Unlike coho, steelhead, chinook or Atlantic salmon, the smolts of sockeye, chum and pink are exceptionally small. The pink salmon are the smallest. In technical terms, they are an atypical host. In parasitology, a good parasite does not kill its host; but the pink salmon smolt coming out of the river is not the correct host. That is what results in fatality. They are just too small to be able to handle this kind of an infection. It is not normal for it to occur.
One obvious solution is to go to closed-containment or land-based aquaculture. However, it is a very new industry; and they are generally proving that you cannot competitively sell tank-raised salmon compared with farm-raised. The reason restaurateurs or food outlets such as a grocery chain on Vancouver Island are buying it is because they know their customers are willing to pay a premium for salmon that are not raised in the open ocean.
It is strictly a ``green'' attitude on the part of the public, comparable to demanding wild salmon in a restaurant. The truth of the matter is that none of the closed-containment rearing involved effluent treatment. The salmon cannot escape, it is easy to control them for lice and such, but true closed containment is very expensive. It would probably only be economical with species other than salmon, like Alaska black cod, which is a much higher value animal.
Senator Watt: I believe our chairman also referred to this idea of more money needed to do research in the Arctic. Mr. Fraser wrote a letter to the department some time ago. Has the Prime Minister responded?
Mr. Fraser: At Karen Kraft Sloan's request, we directed our letter to a number of ministers, and to the clerk of the Privy Council. I cannot remember if we sent one to the Prime Minister, but we sent one to a great number of ministers. If my memory is correct, we have had replies. However, what was encouraging is that the replies indicated that whoever was writing the letter to us had actually read our letter. Having spent many years in public life, I can tell you that does not always happen.
Yes, we are getting a response. We had an extract of a statement by Dr. Richard Beamish who is ex officio from DFO on our council. He also is one of the leading fisheries scientists in British Columbia. He also is one of those who, in the early days, was one of the first Canadian researchers to start to zero in on the real cause of acid rain.
He has been a great support to our council. We got an extract from his considerations on the essential need to be doing the research work in the Arctic now, where the manifestations of climate change are most obvious, so that we can learn enough to deal with it, if and when it starts to occur along the West Coast of British Columbia and, by the way, in a lot of other places.
That is not the only Arctic research that we were supporting. I do not have to tell you about the consequences of climate change in the North — you could probably tell me a lot about it; however, they are significant.
As a matter of interest, I ran a string of pack horses with a great friend of mine, in the Yukon in the summer of 1954. While we were not as far north as you can go, we were in an area where nobody but our First Nations had ever been and we were living in what could be called a pristine wilderness area. There were places where it was difficult to make sure that your tent pegs would stick, because as soon as you pounded them in, you were hitting frost underneath the grasses and the soil. All of that area is in balance, as long as the temperatures do not go too high and stay too high. Otherwise, you will have remarkable changes in the topography of the ground. That is even more pronounced the farther north you go.
We do not know what effect this will have on the eco-system and the animals in it, but we should certainly be finding out, because the consequences of these changes could be quite remarkable. The other thing is that, as my colleague Mr. LeBlond said, the salmon on the West Coast have adapted. Between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, things were very different on the West Coast. Just across the river from where we are right now, up in the Gatineau, there was about half a kilometre or more of ice and snow 15,000 or 20,000 years ago. Some people say the time frame is even less than that.
However, the salmon had some time to adapt. The worry of anyone who thinks about it, apart from possibly Terence Corcoran and his like, who do not believe that there is any climate change and we have nothing to do with it, one of the things that is most disturbing for most us is that this is happening very quickly. The question of adaptability becomes a crucial one indeed.
Senator Watt: In your presentation, you also raised that there is another method that is being used to enhance the stock, by using the natural rivers. I am not too sure exactly how, but just let me try to describe how we do it in Nunavik, because this is a new method of technology. We are trying it out to see if we are enhancing the stock of Arctic char, but not Atlantic salmon.
Are there advantages or disadvantages to using the wild stock from natural rivers, squeezing out the eggs, turning those eggs into fry, and putting them in an incubator? Do you have any knowledge on that?
When you mentioned the genetics of the fish, I wondered what effect it could have on the wild fish. We do not have even $1 to monitor what is happening to those small ones, the little fries that are being released into the natural river. Will they mix with the wild stock? Do you have any knowledge of that?
Mr. Fraser: I have some knowledge, but I will ask Dr. Marliave to deal with this. However, before I do, let me point out that the stripping of fish and raising the eggs is not new. That is done in many places. It is also done to preserve the eggs and the sperm from vastly diminished stocks so you can rebuild the stocks from that genetic base. These days there is also far more thought directed at finding ways to put them in an environment that more closely reflects nature rather than mixing the eggs with the milt and then protecting the fry in artificially encased reservoirs.
All of that is part and parcel of the so-called hatchery issue, but Dr. Marliave is an expert on this. They have a hatchery display. I would not say anything more about it, but they spent a good deal of money and they have a lot of people watching it at the aquarium. I think it is a buckshee operation, because the fish do not actually spawn.
Dr. Marliave: I would not discuss that display because it is intended to show inner city people see what looks like a wild salmon river spawning.
The process we are talking about is what I had mentioned earlier, which is the conservation hatchery practice, or ``hatchery reform,'' as it is called in Washington State. DFO is actively pursuing this. Recently, Rivers Inlet, one of the sockeye runs, crashed critically. The runs that were most critically depressed were being enhanced at a remote hatchery, but strictly at a level that could not swamp the natural output of the few spawners that came back. They were strictly limiting the amount of time the eggs or fry were in human care rather than out in natural selective conditions. The intent is that you do this for as few years as possible. You minimally enhance so that you do not have the genetic impact on the wild stock.
The issue I would like to raise, though, is that they are all getting in on the game. All the big hatcheries, to which I have referred as dinosaurs, are clapping their hands to their hearts and saying, ``we are taking conservation hatchery practice to heart and it is an important part of our new program, so you cannot cut our budget.'' I would caution you that cruel choices have to be made, and that kind of conservation hatchery and short-term approach, can be consolidated in one or another of the best performing hatcheries and you can still make cruel choices about large hatcheries with huge budgets.
Senator Watt: Can you be more specific? Are you talking about the river?
Dr. Marliave: They go to the river. In the case of sockeye, you cannot even see if the fish are spawning, because the water is so silty. They get a few fish and strip them. In some cases, they dig up eggs. They take them to the hatchery and eliminate any mortality for a certain period of time. A lot of the issues with the sockeye have to do with the fact that they get diseases in hatcheries, so they do not want to keep them too long. It is not like a hatchery, where you keep them forever more. You are just giving a little booster shot to the wild stock. This is being done quite a bit in British Columbia.
Senator Watt: It was nice to talk to you and your colleagues again, Mr. Fraser.
The Chairman: Mr. Fraser, you referred to the Adams River sockeye fishery some time ago in your presentation. It has been presented to some of us that last year, four million sockeye returned in a river that can accommodate about two million.
The question has been posed to us that the precautionary principle, which I think everyone supports, actually became risk-adverse. The integrated fisheries management team was just too sluggish to respond to the requirements of this huge return. There was a miscalculation of the timing and a weak stock assessment team; this caused too much stock to return to the river. One solution might be that the stock management team should be given a different approach on how to do stock management. Is this oversimplifying what has been presented to me, or is this a real concern?
Mr. Fraser: Let me go back to what I said a while ago. For a number of years, we watched the sockeye runs going into the Fraser. Instead of waiting at the mouth of the Fraser as was ``customary,'' they had been coming in early — these are the late-run sockeye — running up the river and getting on the beds. At that point, the parasite, which starts to activate itself when they get into freshwater, had taken over and was killing the fish before they were mature enough to spawn. The mortality prior to spawning ran, depending on the place, anywhere from 80 per cent to 90 per cent. That was the aura of concern and fear that the Pacific Salmon Commission and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was dealing with when they were trying to decide on this recent late summer run and autumn run to the Adams River.
They also had estimates of the number of sockeye coming back. The estimates were to begin at four or five million fish. As it turned out, the run was probably double that, but they did not know that for a while. The concern regarding the high mortality of these sockeye fish in the previous runs — and there were not nearly as many, but the mortality rate was high among them — resulted in the decision to limit the commercial catch to 15 per cent of the estimated run. Of course, at that time they thought it was a run of about four or five million fish. Why 15 per cent? It was 15 per cent because, with the enormous percentage of mortality in the previous runs over the last few years, they wanted to give every possible chance for enough fish to get on the spawning grounds so that we would not lose the Adams River run.
What happened? Well, a lot more fish came back than was expected. I will not try to appoint blame in any way, but suffice it to say that as the evidence that the run was much bigger became more obvious, DFO felt a lot of pressure to increase that percentage of the salmon that were coming into the river and going up to spawn. It was understandable, because the fishermen wanted to get a reasonable share of that run. I have seen estimates of what it meant in terms of value to the fishing community and to the economy of British Columbia as high as $100 million to $200 million dollars. Some have claimed that was lost because the fisheries managers failed to adjust their plans to a much bigger run in sufficient time. They did make an adjustment and they did extend the opening, but the criticism remains that they did not do it fast enough.
Could it have been done differently? A study is being done right now to find out whether or not that could have been done better. Minister Thibault has commissioned a thorough review of the way it was handled, and we will have to wait and see what happens. If it can be handled better, let us all wish it had been.
The fact is that the run was far greater than anyone anticipated. The question is immediately asked, ``Do we not have a better way of finding out earlier what the size of the run is?'' Some of us have asked that question for a long time.
Furthermore, we do not know why these fish got up there and did not seem to have any marked pre-spawning mortality. What was the difference between this year and last year? That is something we should be trying to find out. What happens next year if we do not have sufficient funds to do it?
When the minister's report is complete, we may all be wiser. We do not manage the fishery, but others may be able to manage the fishery better.
The Chairman: You talked about the problem of hatcheries. If the hatchery fish mixes in with the genetically purer salmon, it might cause some problems. Why does Alaska not have this kind of concern? What do they do to handle it differently that would not cause this to be of concern to the people in Alaska?
Dr. Marliave: They do not do anything differently. They focus on pink and chum hatcheries. Our hatcheries are largely coho and chinook. They are basically incubating and releasing the fish to swim right out into the ocean. They are under natural selection for virtually all of their life history, out of the egg stage, whereas when you rear salmon for an extensive period like coho, which has been upwards of 18 months in the hatchery, you are putting a lot of influence on their development and you are selecting them. You are domesticating them. Hatchery coho in particular tend to show signs of domestication. The Alaskans simply do not deal with coho salmon in hatcheries.
The Chairman: Might that be an approach that we might look at in order to try to avoid any kind of domestication?
Dr. Marliave: Are you aware of the price right now for pink and chum salmon? Alaska is not proving to be terribly successful right now because of the marketplace.
The Chairman: That would certainly make a difference.
Mr. Fraser: I want to comment a bit on the hatchery. Let us take coho. Everyone has been concerned about a number of coho stocks. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has gone to great lengths to try to protect those. My colleague said ``weaker'' runs. We should say ``lesser'' runs in terms of numbers. The fish are all right. They are not weaker, but there are not as many of them.
The question is how to deal with this. If you take the coho eggs and the milt and hatch the eggs and keep them in an artificial basin, they are in their freshwater state for a year until they go out. If you wait until they are smolt size — about four or five inches long — and then put them out, those fish have had their entire life in an artificial situation. We think we know that if you do enough of that, and they mix with the wild fish, you end up with a diminishing of the wild stock. Also, you are probably ending up with not as many of those fish coming back after the initial increase, which seems to have been almost historical.
On the other hand, if you let the eggs hatch and move the early fry to a natural stream whether they can have a year to learn to live and to mature as wild fish, there might be a very different situation. We have been trying to bring back salmon runs in urban streams. The salmon stocks that were there 70, 80 or 100 years ago are extinct. The only way you can do it is to bring them back this way.
In most cases, they are trying to get from the egg stage to just big enough for survival and then put them in the streams and let them mature. I am talking now about coho, which are in the freshwater stream for about a year. Chum and pinks go out very rapidly.
Dr. Marliave: Mr. Fraser provokes me about our hatchery display in Stanley Park. The other approach being pioneered — mainly in Washington State — is that you can put living fish predators into a hatchery trough when the fish swim up. You see remarkable changes in the behaviour expressed and you come out with a completely different animal. This is one of the things we are doing. It is a different way of producing the same effect that Mr. Fraser is talking about. We have to send out street-smart salmon rather than functionally retarded salmon.
The Chairman: That is an interesting way of putting it.
Senator Cochrane: In 1998, a report by the Geological Survey of Canada estimated that 9.8 billion barrels of oil and 25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be present in the Queen Charlotte Basin. The smaller basins of Winona and Georgia are said to contain an additional 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. In your opinion, can the fishery and the oil and gas sector co-exist?
Mr. Fraser: I do not know the answer to that question because we do not know what the drilling plan might be. We certainly do not know what the extraction plan might be.
We look to the East coast where we think, generally speaking, there has been oil and gas extraction without diminishing effects on the fishery. In the public domain now, however, there are complaints being made about the effects of seismic testing in the waters on both animals and fish.
With respect to the so-called offshore oil and gas potential of the West coast of British Columbia, there has been a moratorium for many years. The provincial government is anxious to have that moratorium lifted. Depending on who is making the statement on any given day, the federal government has been looking upon the lifting of the moratorium with some favour. If one listens to other federal cabinet ministers, there is a serious caution that it must be done in such a way that is environmentally sound.
That leads to a debate as to whether or not the companies that wish to explore there and exploit those resources ought to have to pay for the environmental studies that would be taken.
There is also a series of articles that appear in the public domain on the business pages, which range from a hallelujah chorus of immediate riches that will balance budgets and make British Columbia a rich province to others, especially from analysts of the oil and gas industry, who say, ``Wait a minute. There is a lot of gas to be discovered in British Columbia, especially in the northeast.'' Unless and until a lot more is known about the certitude of the probability of finding extraction processes that can get at the wealth under the sea, industry is not lining up to spend a great deal of money on this at this time.
When we talk about the challenges to the wild salmon fishery in British Columbia, the possibility of lifting the moratorium and having active exploration and extraction on our West coast must be taken into account. That means that we must learn a lot about what we have to know to be sure that that will not diminish the wild salmon stocks. Again, it is one of a long list of things from climate change to habitat, to warm water, to overfishing, to pollution, and so on.
However, that is another reason we have to have sufficient funds being spent on sound science and research. We need to look ahead and anticipate things that we will have to know if we are to exploit those resources.
The Chairman: On behalf of the committee members, I should like to thank our witnesses this evening for their informative and open briefing to us. You have been most helpful.
The committee adjourned.