THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, October 3, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met with videoconference this day at 9:05 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and its work.
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, everybody. My name is Fabian Manning, senator for Newfoundland and Labrador, and I have the pleasure to chair this meeting this morning.
Before we begin, I would like to ask all senators and other in‑person participants to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. Please make sure to keep your earpiece away from all microphones at all times. When you are not using your earpiece, place it face down on the sticker placed on the table for this purpose. Thank you all for your cooperation.
Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to the clerk or to myself, and we will work to resolve your issue.
Before we begin, I will allow the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator McPhedran: Marilou McPhedran, Manitoba.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy, Nova Scotia. Welcome to our committee this morning.
Senator Ravalia: Mohamed Ravalia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Petten: Iris Petten, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator C. Deacon: Colin Deacon, Nova Scotia.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: Réjean Aucoin, Nova Scotia.
[English]
Senator Cuzner: Rodger Cuzner, Nova Scotia.
Senator Busson: Bev Busson, British Columbia. Covering the other coast.
The Chair: Thank you, senators.
On September 24, 2024, the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans was authorized to examine and report on the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
Today, under this mandate, the committee will be hearing, on our first panel, from Dr. Nicole Nietlisbach, Fish Health Committee Chair, Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
I hope I did justice to your last name, doctor.
Nicole Nietlisbach, Chair, Fish Health Committee Great Lakes Fishery Commission: No worries.
The Chair: On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for being here today. I understand that Dr. Nietlisbach will be delivering some opening remarks.
Following your presentation, members of the senators will have questions for you. The floor is yours.
Dr. Nietlisbach: Thank you, Mr. Chair and the rest of the committee, for the opportunity to speak with you today.
My name is Dr. Nicole Nietlisbach I am a veterinarian employed by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Management program. I work closely with our state fish hatcheries and with fisheries biologists on fish health issues. I am also the current chair of the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee.
Fisheries management agencies in the Great Lakes have agreed to work together to manage fish stocks of common concern through a voluntary and non-binding agreement called A Joint Strategic Plan for Management of Great Lakes Fisheries. Agencies with primary fishery-management responsibility are subnational units of government on both sides of the border and tribes in U.S. waters of the upper Great Lakes.
Signatory federal agencies from both Canada and the U.S. play important supporting roles. Signatory agencies operate by consensus, agree to freely share information and are openly accountable to each other through this successful process. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission, or GLFC, facilitates the joint strategic plan process for the benefit of shared fish stocks throughout the Great Lakes. One of the reasons that the joint strategic plan is held up as a worldwide model of international cooperation is that the GLFC is a truly interested but neutral party in its facilitation role because it does not have any direct fishery-management responsibility.
Two important but often overlooked groups that help to make Great Lakes fishery management more effective are the Great Lakes Law Enforcement Committee and the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee. You will hear from Great Lakes Law Enforcement Committee representatives later today. The Fish Health Committee provides science and consensus-based advice to fishery managers about reducing the risk of communicable disease-causing agents or pathogens of concern for both wild fish populations and fish produced in hatcheries. Often, when people hear the term “fish health,” they think of human health issues such as fish consumption advisories related to chemicals of concern such as mercury, PCBs and PFAS, which are typically monitored and regulated by the departments of health, rather than departments of natural resources.
Though most fish diseases are not communicable to humans, they deserve attention due to the risks they pose to the health of fisheries and the viability of fisheries restoration efforts in the Great Lakes basin. The Fish Health Committee is concerned with disease-causing agents, such as viruses, bacteria, parasites and fungi that can have detrimental effects on fish in the Great Lakes basin.
One of the main ways the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee approaches management of fish health in the Great Lakes basin is by providing guidance to agencies through publication and maintenance of a document called the Model Program for Fish Health Management in the Great Lakes and an accompanying risk assessment framework designed to help inform decision makers about the risk of bringing fish into a hatchery, transferring fish among hatcheries, and/or releasing fish into the wild. The committee’s model program is an excellent example of binational cooperation to develop joint recommendations that all agencies signatory to the Joint Strategic Plan take quite seriously.
Through model program guidance and regular communication, the Fish Health Committee helps to coordinate regular pathogen testing across jurisdictions and share findings from those tests at semi-annual meetings.
The committee’s efforts and collective knowledge especially help hatcheries provide sport fishing opportunities for several salmon and trout species introduced into the Great Lakes. The Fish Health Committee’s efforts have also been instrumental in ongoing efforts to restore the native top predators, like muskellunge and lake trout, to restore populations of lake sturgeon, and to restore native prey fish populations to the Great Lakes. Overall, the sport and commercial fisheries of the Great Lakes generate an annual economic return to the region of more than C$8 billion annually and support upwards of 75,000 jobs. It is our pleasure within the Fish Health Committee to help ensure that these important fisheries are strong and able to withstand the challenges fish diseases may pose.
The binational nature of the committee, facilitated by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, allows all of the Great Lakes fishery management agencies with fish health interests to come together to develop shared priorities for research, a common understanding of disease-causing agents and the best ways to prevent their spread, best practices for rearing healthy hatchery fish, and to come to agreement on recommendations to fishery managers about how to manage the risk associated with the movement of fish potentially exposed to or infected with particular disease-causing agents. Additionally, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission facilitates communication across its committees, allowing for important informational exchanges between experts in different fields, such as a recent exchange in which the Law Enforcement Committee requested a letter from the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee for use in future court cases explaining the importance of enforcing certain fish health testing requirements. Without the efforts of the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee, supported and facilitated by the GLFC, it is highly likely that Great Lakes fisheries and hatcheries vital for fisheries management would be at a great threat from disease outbreaks. Agencies would also be less prepared to handle such outbreaks. The continued work of the GLFHC and other aspects of the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission are essential for protecting the future of sport and commercial fishing opportunities, the overall health of the Great Lakes ecosystem, the sustainability of its vibrant fisheries, and the economic benefits fishing activities bring to the Great Lakes region.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, doctor. Our first question goes to the deputy chair, Senator Busson.
Senator Busson: Thank you so much for being here. My question is related to the latest transfer of governance responsibility from the department of fisheries in Canada to the department of foreign affairs. It is forthcoming and we are hoping for it to happen as soon as possible. Has your committee talked about how this change might affect your day-to-day priorities and activities? Are you part of any consultation process dealing with this transition period?
Dr. Nietlisbach: We have not discussed this transition, and we’ve not been consulted on this transition, either — not at all. This is the first time I am hearing of it, actually.
Senator Busson: Okay. Interesting. I will ask another question then. You mentioned jurisdictions. Your committee deals with a number of state governments, I suspect, and certainly the Ontario government.
Dr. Nietlisbach: Yes.
Senator Busson: Is there a linchpin for these kinds of discussions between jurisdictions? You mentioned there was consensus-based advice given to different areas regarding chemicals and diseases. Can you tell how that works?
Dr. Nietlisbach: We meet biannually. We try to meet in person biannually. There are one or two representatives from each of the jurisdictions. Not everyone can make to both of those meetings. We also have meetings as needed virtually in between those in-person meetings. At our biannual in-person meetings, each jurisdiction is expected to and usually does provide an annual report on any issues. We also discuss them in person. Does that answer your question?
Senator Busson: About the meetings, yes. That answers my question. Thank you.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you, doctor, for being here today. Given your work on fish health in the Great Lakes, what are the most pressing concerns regarding fish diseases threatening the ecosystem and how are you currently addressing those?
Dr. Nietlisbach: The Great Lakes Fishery Health Committee maintains a few different lists of pathogens and one that we term “emergency pathogens.” These are generally pathogens that we know cause “epizootics,” or outbreaks of disease and large-scale mortality in other parts of the country or the world, but that have not yet been identified in the Great Lakes.
We also maintain a list of priority pathogens, on which there is not much research yet, but we know has maybe caused a serious outbreak either within the Great Lakes or somewhere else. Some of those pathogens include different parasites, one being [Technical difficulties]. There are many viruses that we are concerned about. We have a strain of viral hemorrhagic septicemia in the Great Lakes, and there are many around the world and we are worried about other strains being introduced.
We are constantly re-evaluating this list. Outside the list, we are also worried about antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. There are other bacterial pathogens, particularly lactic acid bacteria, that have caused significant issues in parts of the United States for natural resource agencies, and we are constantly monitoring and looking out for those.
At our biannual meetings, we discuss these different emerging threats. We often invite speakers from outside our committee to inform us about different fish health threats.
Pathogens are not the only determinant of health in the Great Lakes. We are constantly trying to stay abreast of different nutritional and environmental issues that may affect the overall health and strength of the different fisheries in the Great Lakes and may or may not make them nor susceptible to different diseases.
Senator Ravalia: Do you have any Indigenous or tribal representation on the fish health committee?
Dr. Nietlisbach: We do. There are two different American tribal entities that have seats on the committee. They have not attended in-person meetings recently, but they do sometimes respond to our virtual discussions, and we always include them in our virtual communications.
Senator Ravalia: Would Tribal knowledge be incorporated in some of your strategies?
Dr. Nietlisbach: Yes, if they are offered.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you for being with us today.
I want to ask about the effects of climate change and how you are looking to manage that. In Nova Scotia, we are downwind of a lot of the most populated parts of the United States. We are still dealing with the effects of acid rain, and the Nova Scotia Salmon Association has been liming rivers to increase alkalinity to great success of improving the health and magnitude of the salmon population over the last 20 years. It has had a tremendous effect.
Could you speak a little bit about the effects that you may be seeing in the Great Lakes along these lines — there are increased water temperatures, obviously — but, specifically, around the fish health related to acidification of waters due to industrial and motor vehicle activity and what you are seeing?
Dr. Nietlisbach: I can’t speak directly to the effects of acidification, but I can speak to some of the climate change issues that we are concerned about.
Certainly, acidification and any change in water chemistry is something we are concerned about. We are very concerned about the effect of changing temperatures on water bodies. As temperatures and different water-quality parameters change, they may make the Great Lakes basin more hospitable to pathogens that were not able to establish here previously or weren’t able to cause disease here previously.
Any changes in acidity or water temperature would not be ideal to the fish who live here. It would make them more susceptible to pathogens or other diseases. And as the environment changes, you may see a disruption of normal life-stage timing and the availability of prey, and these are all changes that compromise the well-being and health of the fish and the fisheries, making them potentially more susceptible to pathogens.
We are constantly keeping an eye on what is happening in other parts of the continent because we know that as climate change takes place, we might see migrations of pathogens or diseases that were not previously causing issues or concerns in the Great Lakes. For example, we are starting to learn that there are some parasites in the Great Lakes that have been associated with other parts of the continent, but they haven’t caused any issues here yet. We are worried that as the waters warm, maybe we will see that change.
Senator C. Deacon: In the Atlantic provinces, we are seeing a migration of certain species moving north. Are you seeing migration of species between lakes? Are you seeing a different balance of populations among different groups of fish?
Dr. Nietlisbach: I can’t speak to that. I might be able to speak to other members of the committee who could speak to it better.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: Thank you to the expert who is here, Ms. Nietlisbach.
When it comes to establishing your research priorities in relation to the pathogens that are rampant in the Great Lakes, are you able to react quickly enough to deal with a crisis?
I have a second question on this.
[English]
Dr. Nietlisbach: Thank you for the question. Yes, I would say because of the existence of this committee and the facilitation by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, we are able to have quick and efficient communication about emerging issues.
I mentioned in my opening remarks that we maintain a document called Model Program for Fish Health Management in the Great Lakes. That document is aimed at having guidance and recommendations in place for dealing with emergency outbreaks of pathogens, and even pathogens already present in the Great Lakes, with the aim of having agencies ready before these issues take place with some sort of a plan.
Yes, I do feel like the committee is instrumental in having agencies be more prepared to respond to new fish health pathogens or fish health issues.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: Can you give us an example of a crisis that occurred and that the committee was able to contain? How did you manage to avoid the disaster of contamination or the death of several species of fish?
[English]
Dr. Nietlisbach: Yes. One of the bigger emergencies faced by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission in the recent past is the emergence of viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS, in the Great Lakes which is a virus. It showed up in the early 2000s. I wasn’t on the committee at the time, but I know that there were emergency communications within the committee. A lot of the testing and fish-health movement practises that were already in place at the time helped the agencies to respond, stop movements and to reassess the situation quickly. A lot of the different fish health experts and laboratories in the region were able to deal with testing, surveillance, and trying to figure out where the pathogen was in the Great Lakes and especially limit its spread to other water bodes in our jurisdiction.
We are still dealing with the effects of VHS today, but we continue to communicate and to modify our testing regimens as necessary.
The communication on the committee was certainly not the only part of, but a contributing factor, in being able to have similar and uniform restrictions and practices across the basin. I think that helps with the response.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: Thank you very much.
[English]
Senator Petten: Good morning, doctor. I was wondering if you have any comparison analyses with other regions or jurisdictions to determine how well you are doing.
Dr. Nietlisbach: We do not have any statistical comparisons. We do have exchanges with similar entities in other parts of the country. For example, there is the Northeast Fish Health Committee — I’m not sure if that’s the exact name — that operates in the northeastern states. I’m not 100% sure if they include some of the Canadian provinces nearby. I know, last summer, we had an exchange at a conference where we compared our different strategies and different lists of concerns, so there is communication between the different committees. I wouldn’t say there has been any formal analysis of success or anything like that.
Senator Petten: I noted earlier that you indicated your work is on a voluntary basis. I was wondering if any of the recommendations suggested by your committee have been implemented.
Dr. Nietlisbach: Yes. The model program that we maintain is taken seriously by many of the jurisdictions. I know that they heavily influence the rules and regulations, especially in some of the states that are members of the committee. I think especially Minnesota and Michigan consider the model program quite heavily and our different lists of pathogens of concerns when making the regulations.
Senator Petten: Thank you.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you for being with us this morning. I wanted to pick up on an aspect of what was raised by Senator Deacon, the general question around climate change but a more specific aspect of that if you’re seeing it. Are you seeing any change in the pathogens that I understand you to monitor? Certainly, we hear and read quite a bit of this from West Coast coverage, and I wonder if this is also the case in Great Lakes surveillance?
Dr. Nietlisbach: I can’t say that we’ve had huge changes yet in the pathogens that we’re seeing, but I think our concerns are changing as we are seeing global warming potentially affect other parts of the country. I talked earlier about lactic acid bacteria. It’s a group of bacteria, many of which can cause issues especially in fish hatcheries — fish hatcheries are important for the restoration — and potentially cause issues in the wild. A theory behind some of the emergence of issues with those bacteria is warming waters and more stress on fish making them more susceptible to these bacteria that are difficult to treat and get rid of.
We’re seeing maybe some changes in the way that some viruses behave that might be due to changing environment due to climate change. For example, there is a virus called the largemouth bass virus. Recently, our different jurisdictions have reported that this virus is affecting, or is associated with, issues in smallmouth bass virus, which is different from, as the name suggests, the largemouth bass that it is known to infect traditionally.
These are just some of the examples I can think of.
Senator McPhedran: This is switching gears a little bit, but I’d like to understand a bit more about your jurisdiction and monitoring conditions in hatcheries. In particular, do you have a protocol? Have you had any concerns about abuse of fish in hatcheries?
Dr. Nietlisbach: Abuse of fish welfare?
Senator McPhedran: Yes.
Dr. Nietlisbach: To answer that part of the question, I can speak mostly to Wisconsin, but I’m one of two veterinarians that work with the Wisconsin Department of National Resources, and welfare is a high concern for us. We are constantly evaluating our processes in hatcheries and in spawning weirs to ensure that the fish welfare is a top priority. We work very closely with biologists and hatchery personnel to provide access to different sedation methods, making sure we’re practising good euthanasia techniques, if necessary. Across any fish culture, especially in the hatcheries, you’re not going to have good fish and successful raising of fish without taking care of their welfare. Poor welfare leads to stress, which makes them susceptible to various kinds of diseases.
I would say that fish welfare is a top priority for all, and I’m sure I can speak for all of the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee members.
We don’t limit our meetings to talking about diseases and pathogens. We bring in experts and presentations on things like welfare or preparing hatchery fish for release and success in the wild, the stocking and transportation practice and all sorts of things like that.
Could I ask you to repeat the first part of your question?
Senator McPhedran: Yes. Let’s treat it as a hypothetical question. Let’s say that it comes to your attention that there are allegations of abuse of fish. Do you have the adequate jurisdictional authority, hypothetically, to deal with a situation like that?
Dr. Nietlisbach: Again, I can’t speak for all of the different committee members. In Wisconsin, my purview is just the state fish hatcheries, and if there were allegations — or any of the Wisconsin Department of National Resources actions in fisheries — and I don’t know if I would call it jurisdiction, but I do feel I have authority within the department to address those situations. I know that my superiors within the department of natural resources are also very conscious of fish welfare, and they certainly have the ability to address that — and we have had to address questions from the public in the past — and take it very seriously.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you.
Senator Cordy: My question is also about the hatcheries. We know that the Great Lakes depend on the hatcheries in the region to bolster the stocks and for the restoration. In your comments this morning, you said your commission provides guidance to agencies to reduce disease when transferring fish in the hatchery.
What role does the Fish Health Committee play in hatcheries, and why is it essential that we have a coordinated approach when we’re dealing with transferring within the hatcheries of stocks?
Dr. Nietlisbach: The model program document and the risk assessment documents are aimed at providing guidance for fisheries managers and especially hatchery managers in the event that any of these pathogens are detected or if they’re trying to import fish from a different area of the continent that is endemic to a different pathogen. The Great Lakes Fish Health Committee, by maintaining this document, helps provide a framework that I think helps hatcheries be much more prepared for disease issues and plan in advance.
The risk assessment is helpful for making and backing up decisions about movement of fish within hatcheries. Parts of the document addresses best practices, such as disinfection and other things.
The committee itself provides for a lot efficient communication between jurisdictions, and we certainly exchange knowledge about fish culture techniques and best practices that help elevate all of the fish hatcheries in the region.
Senator Cordy: When you spoke about transferring fish from another continent, is a risk assessment done before the fish are transferred into the hatchery?
Dr. Nietlisbach: I apologize. I meant to say within the continent. Within the continent is much more common. I’m not sure, recently at least, that we’ve transferred from outside of the continent. That certainly happened in the early 1900s.
Senator Cordy: Is there a risk assessment done? How does it work before you would transfer fish?
Dr. Nietlisbach: Yes. If a jurisdiction were looking to do that, we would look especially at the emergency pathogens list. Our list is meant to be complementary to any national health plans in Canada or the United States. We’re also always looking at the World Organisation for Animal Health’s list of diseases. If a jurisdiction were looking to import fish, they would look at all those lists of pathogens, consider the species they’re trying to import and whether they are susceptible to those pathogens, and whether the area that they’re trying to import from is declared free from that pathogen or known to have that pathogen. We would work through the risk assessment, and we would come up with different recommendations depending on the level of risk. So the outcome could be “It’s not recommended to bring these fish in” or, “Yes, you could bring in those fish,” but we might recommend different quarantine procedures, isolation procedures, how much testing to do, how long testing should occur, various recommendations like that.
We generally have conversations among the committee after doing those risk assessments for anyone to provide input or voice concerns.
Senator Cordy: That’s what I was looking at too. First of all, could you tell us what are some of the damaging fish diseases that you see and some of the parasites that might be infecting the Great Lakes today? You just touched on the coordinated response that you would have when you’re managing or dealing with issues related to that within the Great Lakes.
Dr. Nietlisbach: Yes, so I did mention earlier that viral hemorrhagic septicemia is a virus. It’s one of the most detrimental viruses to fish known around the world. It has a really wide host susceptibility range. There are different strains of VHS and different genotypes that are prevalent in other parts of the world, and it has caused losses in private aquaculture. It has caused large-scale die-offs in the wild and is of concern to many countries and is of trade concern.
Other pathogens have caused issues in the Great Lakes. One is a bacteria called Renibacterium salmoninarum which causes a disease called bacterial kidney disease. We have not seen it causing many issues in wild fish populations recently, but in the 1980s and 1990s it caused some very serious disease outbreaks, especially in Chinook salmon and declines in that fishery. That was precipitated by some other issues as well, some forage issues and overpopulation, potentially, of Chinook. But we’ve also seen that pathogen cause production issues in the hatcheries themselves, and the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee was instrumental at that time. The members exchanged a lot of information and data from across the jurisdictions to try to identify what the cause of the Chinook disease and loss was. The committee also continued to share information about the VHS outbreaks in their hatcheries and practices that help to limit or eliminate disease.
We continue to share advice about prevention programs. A lot of us do quite extensive testing of broodstock fish, the fish that we collect gametes from to produce fish for the hatcheries. And we exchange information on how best to test for the pathogen and biosecurity methods for keeping those pathogens and disease issues out of our hatcheries.
Those are some examples of fish issues that we’ve dealt with in the past.
Senator Petten: A quick question for you. I’m just listening to what you’re saying, and I’m just wondering if you have to adhere to the same standards, for example, as the aquaculture industry.
Dr. Nietlisbach: Good question. I would say this probably varies depending on the jurisdiction. For example, in some states, the Department of Natural Resources, which is mostly who is on the Fish Health Committee, might be in charge of the regulations of both private aquaculture and the movement of fish for natural resources. In other states, however, it is the opposite. In Wisconsin, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection is the ultimate authority on fish movement and regulation.
In Wisconsin our hatcheries and our fish movements are subject to the same regulations as any movements for private hatcheries.
The area that we have authority in, which the Department of Agriculture does not, is fish stocking into public water bodies. We issue permits for stocking.
I would say it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but for the most part, I would say natural resource agencies and hatcheries are subject to very similar testing requirements as the private sector, and we often self-impose higher standards of testing and test for more pathogens than the private sector would.
Senator Petten: Thank you.
Senator McPhedran: I have a question about interjurisdictional cooperation. I hope I’m correct in understanding. You’re based in Wisconsin?
Dr. Nietlisbach: Yes.
Senator McPhedran: How does it work for the Canadian aspects of the coverage of the lakes, and if an issue arises, how is the interjurisdictional cooperation?
Dr. Nietlisbach: That’s a great question. The Great Lakes Fish Health Committee and the Joint Strategic Plan is non‑binding, so the different entities aren’t legally required to have the same regulations, and certainly there are also different players on both sides of the border as far as food health regulations. There is the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, on our side and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, on the Canadian side.
The recommendations of the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee aren’t the be-all end-all of what happens in each jurisdiction, but the communication that happens within the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee between the different jurisdictions informs the members of DFO, or members from Ontario at our meetings, who can then go back to their respective government bodies and jurisdiction with this information. This might affect how they handle the outbreak or an issue.
I don’t have any examples in my tenure on the committee to draw from.
Senator McPhedran: A quick yes-or-no question, what I’m taking away from your answer is this is an ad hoc situation, case by case?
Dr. Nietlisbach: Yes. I think, yes.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, senators, and thank you, Dr. Nietlisbach, for a very informative conversation. Certainly thank you on behalf of committee members for taking the time to join us here this morning and assist us with our ongoing study.
For our next panel, we will be hearing from the following witnesses from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission: Ron Beirnes, Vice-Chair, Law Enforcement Committee; and Robert Stroess, past chair, Law Enforcement Committee. On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you both for being here today. I understand Mr. Beirnes will be giving some opening remarks, and senators will have questions after.
Ron Beirnes, Vice-Chair, Law Enforcement Committee, Great Lakes Fishery Commission: Good morning, chair and committee members. It is an honour to be here before you today to be able to pass along any information we can with respect to the Law Enforcement Committee activities in the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
I am a Senior Compliance Officer with the Conservation and Protection Branch of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I have been with the department a little over 20 years and worked all of my career, essentially, in the central and Arctic region. I’ve been in the Great Lakes watershed for that time frame.
I am obviously here this morning to testify in regard to my role as chair, which started last week. Prior to that, I was the vice chair of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s Law Enforcement Committee.
Our focus will be on the activities and issues that we deal with at that level. I’m going to ask my colleague to introduce himself, and then I’ll give a bit of an opening statement.
Lieutenant Robert Stroess, Past Chair, Law Enforcement Committee, Great Lakes Fishery Commission: Thank you, Mr. Beirnes, and thank you, senators. I have been a conservation officer in the State of Wisconsin for 25 years. I am the administrator of our Aquatic Species in Trade Enforcement Program, which deals with commercial fishing industries, live fish haulers and invasive species in trade. About a quarter of my job is investigations and the rest is managing our program.
I’m here as the past chair of the Law Enforcement Committee.
Mr. Beirnes: I will start with an overview.
The Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s Law Enforcement Committee is made up of conservation law enforcement officers from agencies around the Great Lakes. Our committee meets twice a year, generally once in Canada and once in the U.S. Meetings are generally coordinated with other Great Lakes Fishery Commission committee meetings, such as with Dr. Nietlisbach from the previous panel. The focus of the meetings are on operational updates that include trends in violations, interstate and provincial movement of illegally harvested or possessed species, training components, case studies, investigative strategies, discrepancies in laws between jurisdictions and committee projects we might have ongoing.
The mission of the Law Enforcement Committee is to protect, enhance, and promote the safe and wise use of the natural resources in the Great Lakes for present and future generations. Those activities include promoting the concept that the Great Lakes fisheries resource is a shared renewable resource whose protection and enhancement require close cooperation among all jurisdictions charged with the responsibility of resource protection and promoting recognition and acceptance that law enforcement is an integral part of effective Great Lakes fisheries management.
We promote cooperation among all Great Lakes law enforcement jurisdictions by identifying and promoting Great Lakes law enforcement priorities and tactics, sharing of law enforcement information, supporting investigations that span jurisdictional lines, supporting development and dissemination of information and training related to emerging enforcement technologies and techniques, and developing and recommending consistent objectives for policies and regulations among the different jurisdictions.
To provide some context on what the committee has recently been working on recently, I have a few examples.
The governors and the premiers from the states and provinces in the Great Lakes region formed an alliance to collectively address issues of common concern. One of their projects was creating a list of aquatic invasive species which they agreed to be the most concerning because they are some of the most threatening to the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. They also passed a series of resolutions instructing their respective conservation agencies to address the issues of aquatic invasive species in the region.
The Law Enforcement Committee use their resolutions and least wanted list as guidelines for directing much of our efforts. A current focus of the Law Enforcement Committee is to reduce the risk of aquatic invasive species entering the Great Lakes through a combination of law enforcement outreach to dealers involved in the trade of aquatic organisms identified as threats to the Great Lakes, along with follow-up investigations to check for compliance. There are inspections, as well.
We recognized that several industries were shipping invasive crayfish species throughout the Great Lakes basin. Since the shipments were crossing jurisdictional lines, the committee did outreach to the live food, pet and biological supply trade to educate them on the laws involved. Certain cases lead to enforcement action when the companies continued to ship the invasive crayfish. Most notably, distributors of the self-cloning marbled crayfish were identified in several U.S. states. Several distributors were convicted of charges, and over 1,000 marbled crayfish were seized. This is the same species that has now been identified in the wild in Ontario, being the first discovery in the wild in North America.
We also work closely with fish managers on other committees at the commission to develop and enforce commercial fishing regulations across the basin.
In addition to enforcement work, cross-jurisdictional training is a key part of our committee. When we meet, we utilize experts to conduct training such as identifying aquatic invasive species and teaching methodologies for finding illegal commercially harvested fish through records analysis and technologies such as side-scan sonar and remotely operated underwater vessels and drones.
That is a quick overview of the committee and things we are working on. I will end my opening statement there, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Beirnes. We’ll go to our first question, which is from the deputy chair.
Senator Busson: You used the word “jurisdiction” a number of times. I’m fascinated by the complexity that you must meet with every time you deal with an issue around enforcement. Just the boundaries by themselves would be, I suspect, a really difficult thing to deal with.
I’m trying to imagine how you might deal with that, and I’d like you to tell us, but do you have agreements on international boundaries — for instance, somebody fishing in one jurisdiction and landing the fish in another? Does that become a big problem, or is that part of the consensus building or the agreements that go along with the enforcement in this kind of international, interstate and interprovincial jurisdictional environment?
Mr. Beirnes: That’s a great question, senator. Lt. Stroess, I will defer to you for some of this as well.
In the Great Lakes on the Canadian side, the Ministry of Natural Resources has the mandate of enforcing sport and commercial fishing. My organization is not much involved in that aspect of it. If you are going to be sport fishing tomorrow somewhere on the Great Lakes and you get checked by a conservation officer, it won’t be a Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, or DFO, officer. It will be a provincial officer.
I know there are rules and regulations in regard to fishing across boundaries, vis-à-vis having to have licences in both jurisdictions and that sort of thing, but I don’t have a lot of experience, so I defer to Lt. Stroess on that.
Lt. Stroess: Yes, senator, when we talk about the international movement of fishers or products, that’s generally off-limits. If someone crosses the line, we won’t have that authority even if we’re working with another agency, but the agreements in place for that international stuff is through the cooperation from agencies like the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, having that constant contact and knowing we are able to pick up the phone and call a person in another jurisdiction.
For example, a couple of years ago, Ontario had an issue with a large-scale harvest of bait fish — good timing with the Fish Health Committee testimony from before — from an infected lake. Tens or hundreds of thousands of minnows were being harvested from an infected lake with an ultimate destination in my state and travelling through Michigan.
Without the cooperation that we have on this committee, we would have no idea where to start. There is no way Ontario would have any idea who to contact in Wisconsin or Michigan. It’s because we have this constant interaction among the members of the committee that we were able to be on the phone for four hours figuring how the laws interact and how we could deal with the situation among the three state and provincial organizations and two federal agencies. It was like an instant cooperation that way.
When it comes to border issues between states, many have memoranda of understanding set up so we can enter an adjoining state for a limited distance to deal with something close to the border. At the federal level, it is through cooperation only.
Senator Busson: I imagine, in certain instances, if there is organized crime involved, you might stand up a joint task force or something like that?
Lt. Stroess: Ideally, yes. However, in the world of conservation law enforcement, the amount of staffing that we have across the board for conservation law enforcement agencies is so minimal compared to traditional law enforcement. That’s a constant struggle. There is limited enforcement capacity within all our agencies to deal with that. We deal with it from time to time, but, in all honesty, there is not enough capacity to actively deal with the vast amount of interstate, interprovincial and international trade of illegal species, whether it is commercially harvested fish or invasive species in trade.
Senator Busson: Is that an ask? Is that something you are constantly dealing with as far as capacity is concerned, or do you learn to work around it?
Lt. Stroess: We learn to work around it because we don’t generally lobby for positions or funding and things like that. It can’t come from the agencies, really.
Senator Busson: Thank you very much.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you, both of you, for being with us today. It’s great to have a former commissioner of the RCMP asking relevant questions.
I want to dig into the specific reason why this change in governance is occurring considering the Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s concern over governance at DFO and seeing this distance and the appropriateness of having Global Affairs Canada as a home.
Do you see any challenges being created by the shift in governance? Is it creating any opportunities in how you do your important role? Operationally, we have heard that DFO plays an important part in the delivery of services as part of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. I have not heard — or maybe I missed it — any concern in that regard. We want to preserve what is working and maybe enhance it while we fix this governance problem. My question is: Do you see any challenges that this creates or opportunities it might unlock in terms of operational activities?
Mr. Beirnes: It is a great question. To be honest, senator, I don’t have the context. When I look at it from the perspective of the Great Lakes Law Enforcement Committee, we have our mandate and our roles and responsibilities. I don’t see it changing much in our program at all because we’re operationally focused. The staff we deal with and the relationships we build with at the operational level are operational. Frankly, discussion around this topic doesn’t come up at our level. This isn’t involved in the day-to-day work that we do. We are always optimistic that it will help, but, at this point, I really don’t have a comment or a position on that.
Senator C. Deacon: Lt. Stroess, do you see any issues at your end?
Lt. Stroess: No, I echo what Mr. Beirnes says. We are operational. We are not high-level management. We don’t see it or deal with it whatsoever.
Senator C. Deacon: Our concern is that this change doesn’t cause problems, that in the process of trying to solve one problem, it may cause another. It sounds like you have confidence you will be able to keep doing your operational work as effectively as you are.
Mr. Beirnes: Yes.
Senator Petten: I wonder if you can outline any differences, if there are any, with respect to the fisheries regulations in different jurisdictions of the shared waters. I know you have said that you worked with DFO and you understand they are all about the fisheries regulations. I also understand you said earlier it was to deal with a provincial issue. I am wondering if there are any differences. Are there any of them that you have confidence that it is working with respect to the regulations?
Mr. Beirnes: If I understand your question, you are asking for the differences in the variety of jurisdictions that we deal with here?
Senator Petten: Yes.
Mr. Beirnes: Certainly, it makes it a little more difficult to skate our way through the issues because an issue in Michigan would still be an issue in Ontario, but the legislation will be different, or Wisconsin and Ontario. One of the things, especially around aquatic invasive species, that our committee has been recommending is that every signee of the joint strategic plan, every member of the committee and all member agencies identify a person who is an aquatic invasive species specialist.
For the past couple of years — and I will get Lt. Stroess to talk about it as well — the lion’s share of our issues have been around aquatic invasive species and them showing up in the Great Lakes watershed and potentially having an impact. There is a laundry list of species that we know have had an impact. We’ve pushed the commission and our members to strive to have at least one point person within their programs to be the go-to person, so when each agency has a bunch of field officers out on the land and they run across something related to aquatic invasive species and it is not something they deal with daily, they have an expert in-house.
Some jurisdictions have that now. Lt. Stroess is a good example of that. We have dedicated staff in Ontario, in DFO and in the Ministry of Natural Resources, but not all the members do. This is an important part for us moving forward, to create that subject matter expert position, which also creates the tie between jurisdictions. Does that answer your question?
Senator Petten: Yes. Do you think you can react quickly enough if you need to deal with something on an emergency basis?
Mr. Beirnes: It would be difficult. It will always be difficult. You will never get a resource-based organization that will say, “Yes, we have all the resources we need.” I don’t think that is something you will hear very often. Essentially, we can react. Sometimes, we run into issues within legislation.
I will defer to Lt. Stroess again. I keep saying that, but then I don’t let him talk.
At the end of the day, we see different pieces of legislation and try to make sure we have the know-how and understanding so we can all work together on it and find out the best legislation to use and in whose jurisdiction to deal with the problem.
Lt. Stroess: It’s all right, Mr. Beirnes; I’m just your sidekick.
Mr. Beirnes: Not at all.
Lt. Stroess: Regarding the core of your question about differences in fisheries regulations, we’ve seen historically that there are differences in harvest issues, bag limits and things. I would say those issues are minor and play a tiny role in conservation among the jurisdictions.
At the committee level, we are more aware of large-scale issues and investigations. Our Law Enforcement Committee is a platform to deal with international trade, interstate and provincial trade and movement of large-scale products, as opposed to something that the day-to-day field conservation officer would deal with such as a violation in front of them. It’s similar to a traffic enforcement officer dealing with an issue right in front of them or responding to a call. We are looking at it from a larger-scale perspective.
We do see differences in the laws, especially when it comes to the movement of illegal products, especially invasive species, that can affect the Great Lakes. In one state or province, one species is allowed, and in 10 others it is not allowed.
What we found over the last five years of intensely looking at this kind of trade is that any products that originate here are going out on a spiderweb to many jurisdictions, whether the U.S. side or Canadian side or coming across overseas. It is a giant web of products, just like other illegal trade. Wildlife trade is, I think, the fourth largest illegal trade in the world behind guns, drugs and human trafficking. It is the same situation for illegal movement, so there are discrepancies in that.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. To follow up on Senator Petten’s questions, illegal fishing obviously remains a significant issue in the Great Lakes. How is your committee working with Canadian and U.S. law enforcement to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing? Is this something that’s increasing as time is moving on?
Mr. Beirnes: The committee is set up to do just that, to help coordinate discussion and the sharing of information around some of that illegal harvest. Again, a lot of that aspect of the job is done within our jurisdictions and done well, and the cooperation piece is there.
On the issues around aquatic invasive species that could come in and have a bigger impact, you are seeing, as Lt. Stroess described, that movement of illegal trade.
Our committee is set up, as I mentioned in my opening address, to provide training to staff. We appoint people from all the agencies sitting at the table with us to go back and run some of that training, or we promote a certain type of training that we suggest they can take back to their own jurisdictions and give it there as well.
Every time we meet as a group, depending on the location, we will get local officers, from the jurisdiction we happen to be in, attending as well, so we offer training along those lines.
We bring in trade associations that represent industry that we are dealing with so we can better understand their business as well. That gives our members a contact person or a place to start, when an issue arises, to be able to go to those trade agencies and span out the information.
There is training. There is some of that communication piece. Our theme this morning will be communication and relationship building because that’s the key to what we are doing at the committee level and making sure we have the contact we need to resolve an issue, get the job done or the additional information we need.
I don’t know if that answers your question, but the committee’s role is to create that connection for all the jurisdictions involved.
Lt. Stroess: A lot of what we are talking about so far is aquatic invasive species, but, obviously, it is the Great Lakes and there is a large commercial fishing harvest along with sport fishing. Our focus thematically is large-scale issues and not one little individual catching an illegal fish; that’s not our role as a committee. But for the large-scale harvest and trade of those species, an example of training we have done — and this is not something most people would think conservation officers are doing — is forensic accounting and analysis of large-scale records data. That’s where we catch large-scale harvest. Once in a while, certainly, a uniformed field conservation officer is making a great case by contacting a fisherman right in front of them and maybe catching somebody with an illegal 5,000 pounds of whitefish or lake trout or what have you. With some of the records analysis, you could catch them with 100,000 or 300,000 pounds of illegal fish, and it is much less labour intensive for the amount of effort compared to what we catch them with. While most businesses are good businesses, obviously, there are poor business people out there, too, who are illegally harvesting things.
By cooperatively doing training like that, we can draw upon the resources from each of our jurisdictions and get the training from other experts within our agencies.
Senator Ravalia: To what extent are you collaborating or involved with Indigenous and tribal communities and leaders with respect to your overall mandate?
Lt. Stroess: Within our Law Enforcement Committee, we are in a unique situation of having members who are official signatories to the joint strategic plan, and we have other guest members. In the joint strategic plan, we have four U.S. tribal organizations or tribes who are signatories to it. We have a Wisconsin-based tribe, the Red Cliff Band. They are the most recent signatory and are participatory within our Law Enforcement Committee. Then we have three joint groups in which several tribes join a larger governance. The Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority, or CORA, is one of the groups that represents many tribes, and the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission represents many tribes with inland ownership, not necessarily Great Lakes work. Then there is the 1854 Treaty Authority. So we have three different groups of tribal organizations and one individual tribe who are part of our committee.
Senator Cordy: Thank you. It is very interesting. When I look at the Great Lakes — and I have done a lot of work on it — I tend not to look at the law enforcement aspect, which is huge — enormous. Thank you both for all that you and your colleagues do.
Lieutenant Stroess, you said that in one jurisdiction an invasive species is not allowed while it may be allowed in another jurisdiction. That, to me, would be a huge challenge. We have eight states and one province — a big province. Would it not make more sense for everybody to get together and make a list that would be the same for all jurisdictions? It is named different lakes, but it is one big huge lake.
Lt. Stroess: That would be like the quick answer that I would jump to without being engrossed in these industries. The nature of invasive species is that they are invasive in one part but not invasive in another part. In reality, some of them are not invasive where they are from.
If we go to the extremes, southern Indiana, for example, the red swamp crayfish is somewhat native; it is the southern end of their range. But it is highly invasive when it gets a couple of hundred miles north of there. We don’t want it around. As an example, from our state of the value of stopping these, we had red swamp crayfish that invaded two ponds in a neighbourhood, and they were there for a couple of years before they were reported and took over. It took three quarters of a million dollars in U.S. funds and four years to eradicate them from two ponds. If you expand that, how can any jurisdiction ever afford a mass invasion of something invasive like that?
It is akin to the sea lamprey in the Great Lakes. It’s a huge disaster if red swamp crayfish got beyond two ponds or got to 100 ponds; there is nothing we can do. The value is stopping them up front; however, it is hard when they are native to one jurisdiction and not native to other jurisdictions as you go further north or south. That’s just an example.
I would love to say you can’t have anything on this giant list, but it wouldn’t be functional because they are native to some parts of it.
Mr. Beirnes: To add to what Lieutenant Stroess has mentioned, I think because you are dealing with a large geographical area, it is obviously very difficult to say something that you can outlaw in all jurisdictions. There are all kinds of other political, social, economic reasons why some things might be allowed in certain areas as well.
We continue to push this issue within the committee, and we certainly make recommendations associated with trying to harmonize legislation as much as possible so that we’re not seeing right in the middle of a group, “This one is allowed in,” but if it gets in here, then it will get to everybody else anyway. It is certainly a large question, but to answer your question, yes, it would be great if everything were the same across the board, right?
Senator Cordy: Maybe we could bring in Houdini or something.
Mr. Beirnes: Exactly.
Senator Cordy: I would like to talk about information sharing between the jurisdictions. Is there any effort to coordinate law enforcement across the borders? I say that because I’m sure there is a lot of information that you hear and things that you see that are extremely sensitive. Are there limits, or is it a very open dialogue between the various jurisdictions and the information that you share?
Mr. Beirnes: From our perspective, it is as open as we can make it, based on each jurisdiction’s legal requirements when it comes to sharing of information. Having said that, regulations and legislation in different jurisdictions will have different caveats about the level of privacy that someone deserves with respect to the work or activity they are doing.
To give you some examples, there is information that gets shared quite quickly through the connections we have in the committee. As an example, the moss ball issue. Moss balls are small aquatic organisms brought over from Ukraine that is like a natural filter for aquariums. They were sold in the pet trade, but it just so happens that almost all were laced with zebra mussels, which is a problem. They are here in the Great Lakes but they travel outside of the Great Lakes and other parts of the jurisdiction that we have responsibility over. We tackled a bunch of that and dealt with a bunch through some of our communication links with industry back at the beginning of the pandemic. We got control of it with respect to the Canadian side of the border and stopped the import of some of that stuff. But as recently as the last few months, there was some discussion on the American side of an importer in Florida who was bringing in more product. We could contact somebody through the committee and we could have a list in half of a day of the potential retail distributors in the northern half of some of the states where some of this product could have gotten to. That’s just one of several examples of quick data sharing.
I don’t want to get into too much detail. Many of you are from Nova Scotia, so you will be familiar with our elver eel issues. Elvers come through Toronto, obviously, but elvers also come in via the United States, and elvers come in through the Caribbean as well, up through the states and into Toronto as well, along with our mixed elvers. Although that’s not a Great Lakes issue, the connections and the relationships we have on this committee certainly help with some information sharing as to when products may be showing up and that sort of thing.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Stroess, do you have anything to add on information sharing?
Lt. Stroess: Yes, I would agree that there is very little that can’t be shared. It’s really pigeonholed, the type of information that can’t be shared outside of an agency, really private information. But in general, when there are operational issues or movement of products or who is doing it, that information is generally freely shared among whatever jurisdictions are involved on either side of the border.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you, gentlemen. I have a three‑part question, or three questions, depending on how you look at it, but the theme is law enforcement officers and jurisdiction for them.
The first part of my question is about arms. Our DFO officers can carry arms and do have arrest authority. Is it consistent with your enforcement officers as well? I will run through my questions because they are interrelated. My second question is related to the actual officers. You referenced Indigenous representation on your committee. Are there any Indigenous officers? My third question is about your legislative agreement, conveyed jurisdiction and whether there are any asks that are either in development or that you have already made for changes that you feel would be needed to increase your efficiency and impact. I am happy to repeat them if that was too much at once.
Mr. Beirnes: I will just touch on the Canadian side. As far as the capacity of what a fishery or provincial conservation officer does, we have the same powers under the Fisheries Act, and so the provincial conservation officers essentially have the same powers as fisheries officers do. Based on my experience, the majority of the states do as well.
The tribal members, I’m not sure if they are armed.
Lt. Stroess: Yes, our U.S. tribal side members have arrest powers and are authorized law enforcement officers in their areas.
Mr. Beirnes: Your third question was if there are any asks around that. As a committee, I don’t think we have anything right now as far as a formalized ask of anyone to bring forward. Certainly, we make recommendations throughout the commission around some of those issues as they come up, and we continue to do that. I don’t know of anything that we have on the books now as far as an ask associated with that.
Lt. Stroess: We have no legislative asks as a committee. We make recommendations and certainly have ideas on recommendations, but we don’t lobby for change or lobby for individual state or provincial or federal laws, but we certainly provide information when asked.
Senator McPhedran: On the Canadian side, are there any Indigenous officers?
Mr. Beirnes: Indigenous officers within the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and within our program, right across the country and through the province, there are some. There isn’t the same tribal set up as the upper peninsula and in Wisconsin, as Lieutenant Stroess has talked about, where they have jurisdictions, regulations and officers. We don’t have the same arrangement on the Canadian side, for I’m sure a number of reasons which I am certainly not an expert on. Any Indigenous officers that we have will be embedded within our programs.
Senator McPhedran: You do have some?
Mr. Beirnes: In Ontario right now, out of the nine Conservation officers, none are First Nation that I am aware of. On the provincial side, I know there are, but I can’t quote as to how many. We certainly do. I am part of a bigger regional perspective, and so we have staff in the eastern and western Arctic and in the Prairies and on the coast, and some of those officers are Indigenous.
To follow up on that, we have our Guardian programs as well working with the Indigenous communities. Again, that’s outside the scope of the commission and the watershed we are talking about.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you.
Senator Cuzner: You had made reference to records analysis. I probably should know this, but I don’t. Is there dockside monitoring? Is that typical? Is that the way you go? Are there private entities that you contract with to do dockside monitoring?
Lt. Stroess: I’m not aware of any sort of private contracting for dockside monitoring. It might exist in some coastal areas or something, but within the Great Lakes, no, that does not happen. But there are docksides by our conservation officers, absolutely. That’s kind of a key component to monitoring the commercial fishing industry.
Yes, definitely dockside contact with commercial fishers.
Most agencies have some sort of legislation regarding records or law that requires commercial fishers or even the next level up, the wholesale buyers, to produce and keep records of their transactions so there is a paper trail back. That’s where the records truly come into play.
Senator Cuzner: Is this consistent through all the jurisdictions?
Lt. Stroess: No, that is not consistent through all the jurisdictions — not at all.
What is interesting is that a couple of states have rather robust laws regarding the wholesale buyers. For instance, wholesale buyers throughout much of Ontario are licensed in my state because they do business in my state. Therefore, they have to be licensed as a wholesale fish dealer in my state, which gives us the ability to get their records.
So it’s a way to that, and that helps collect all of our agencies together if we need to deal with something that is in one state or one province — and maybe the laws are not the greatest in one state or one province, and we can utilize each other’s cooperation to figure things out.
Senator Cuzner: I think we’ve had fairly good success in some of the coastal fisheries with really putting the onus on the brokers. Part of the success they had with the elver fishery was putting the onus on the brokers — as the ceremonial lobster fishery. And the fines imposed were considerable.
Is there any kind of consistency with penalties and fines through the jurisdictions — or that’s pretty broad and deep?
Mr. Beirnes: I would say, first, that I really don’t know.
Just to back up to your previous question, though, the Minister of Natural Resources does have their management of the commercial fishery here in Ontario, so they do have a number of strategies to follow up. I don’t pretend to be an expert or speak on their behalf, but whether it’s dockside offloads or monitoring requirements, daily call-ins and, in a lot of cases, commercial fishers have GPS-marked vessels and net systems.
So it’s hard to hide things from that perspective. The province, in my humble opinion, has done a pretty good job of that on the Canadian side.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: Thank you very much for your time. My question may be complex. Perhaps I’m not familiar enough with what’s happening with First Nations in Ontario and the United States.
Senator Ravalia asked a question about First Nations. My question can be very complex, because in the Atlantic, First Nations have communal fishing rights that allow them to fish without a licence, and there are certain conflicts with white commercial fishermen, if you can put it that way. You said you have a very good relationship with four or five First Nations groups—you called them tribes—in the United States, but I didn’t understand what your relationship is with First Nations in Canada.
Do First Nations or tribes in the United States have different rights to those of commercial fishermen, and does that pose particular challenges for you in terms of conservation? Are member groups involved in conservation? How does that work? Can you tell us about it?
[English]
Mr. Beirnes: On the Canadian side — getting back to your question, as I mentioned before, the four or five tribal organizations on the U.S. side — and, again, it is a broader discussion that I am certainly not an expert on, but they are signatories — agencies to the joint strategic plan. As I mentioned before, they do have their own regulations and their own enforcement staff. I’m looking to Lt. Stroess to ensure I’m not saying anything out of line here.
On the Canadian side, it’s not necessarily structured like that. I’m not sure. I’m not going to speak for the commission in general. I think you’re going to see some more senior staff in the commission next week, and they can speak more broadly as to the relationship with the First Nations communities on our side.
I know there is still Indigenous fishing on the Canadian side. I’m just not well versed enough, senator. We can probably go back and get some additional information from our provincial partners to help explain it a little bit more about some of the sensitivities and some of the issues or conflicts with commercial fishers. But the commercial fishing scale is not on the size and scope as it is in the Maritimes in the context of the size, scope and volume of products and resources. I say that out of personal knowledge, not because I’m an expert on it.
But we can certainly get some additional information for you with respect to how that relationship works between the province and their commercial fishery management and the Indigenous fishers in Ontario.
Lt. Stroess, do you want to elaborate more on the American side?
Lt. Stroess: Sure.
Basically, the tribal entities are almost entirely within Wisconsin and Michigan. There is another entity in Minnesota that doesn’t operate in the same way, but they’re part of our committee. So the vast majority of the tribal relationship is in Wisconsin and Michigan. Wisconsin has two tribes that commercially fish on Lake Superior, and Michigan has — I don’t know the exact number, but it’s somewhere from six to nine tribes — that commercially fish on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.
The ones in Michigan are part of a group called the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority that governs all of them together, collectively. The ones in Wisconsin operate independently, but one of them is actually a member of the committee — the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The other is the Bad River Band.
In Wisconsin, they commercially fish in the same area as our state-licensed commercial fishers, but we have an agreement with them through court decisions to grant them rights. So our tribes have rights on land and water to do subsistence and commercial fishing. Then the state and the two tribes, collectively, come to an agreement to say how they’re going to jointly manage that fishery.
Similar to the GLFC, all of our states and federal agencies jointly manage the Great Lakes. The state and the two tribes in Wisconsin have a similar agreement just among the three parties, and they renew that agreement approximately every 10 years; they agree on what methods are allowed, what the bag and size limits are, and how much is allowed for subsistence fishing versus commercial fishing.
I think the second part is whether they’re included in conservation efforts. Yes, absolutely. That would be part of the agreement that I just mentioned — the every-10-year-agreement called the Lake Superior Fishing Agreement. They are very much included in conservation.
In Michigan, I do not know how that organization actually runs the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority. Although they are officially a member on our Law Enforcement Committee, they are not active on our committee, so we don’t have a relationship with that particular group.
Senator Busson: I believe that Senator Cordy touched on my question. I just wanted to pursue it just a little further.
Again, with the amount of interjurisdictional work that you have to do, do you have access to each other’s databases? Is there an interoperability of databases to share intelligence?
Mr. Beirnes: As far as I’m aware, with our database, there isn’t open access across the board. I suspect that is shared upon request, but Lt. Stroess will know more details with respect to that.
Lt. Stroess: I echo what Mr. Beirnes says. We don’t have any access to any other jurisdiction’s databases whatsoever. It’s all just from cooperation and communication with that agency.
Senator Busson: Then, if I might, I have a follow-up question around consultation.
Clearly, your committee works well on consensus and gets done what needs to be done. Because regulations in other jurisdictions would be so different vis-à-vis “everything from sports fisher quotas to other regulations,” do you ever get consulted by regulators on how you might coordinate better on quotas and regulations to aid your enforcement responsibilities?
Mr. Beirnes: Again, I have limited experience in the Great Lakes when it comes to sport or commercial fishing in the context of regulations. I would be deferring to the province.
It’s my understanding that the enforcement branch within Ontario’s Ministry of National Resources would be sitting down with their science folks and working through some of those things in the group that are within their jurisdiction. Interjurisdictionally, I don’t know. Does it happen, Lt. Stroess?
Lt. Stroess: From a law enforcement side, no, that doesn’t really happen interjurisdictionally. I can’t speak on behalf of every conservation agency, but in general, this is a constant issue. I’ve been around a long time. I know what happens. There are a lot of silos. The information is very much siloed, extremely siloed.
We have been able to get away from that in a couple of agencies, but even with the successes we’ve had, we’re still government bureaucracies, and the silos happen. It’s a constant struggle to get everybody at the table to have those conversations.
It’s certainly getting better. There is more awareness of it. More people are talking about silos. In my state, it’s night and day different than it was even six years ago. But I know a lot of states and other agencies experience the same thing. That’s just the world. That’s our bureaucracies in government.
Senator Busson: Would your committee have any voice in getting closer to the kind of world or environment that you’re talking about?
Lt. Stroess: We have made progress, absolutely, on the committee side. I would say what we do at the committee drives how our states, provinces and federal agencies work with their fishery partners because we have access to those high-level managers within fisheries programs.
We were invited to present at their last meeting. Our chair or vice-chair presents to them every year, but they actually wanted us to come in and present to the whole group of all the lake committees and all the managers about what we’re doing in law enforcement, so we just did that nine months ago.
Mr. Beirnes: Following up to that, I was just looking over my notes here. With respect to those regulatory changes across jurisdictions, I know of a few examples. Marbled crayfish were listed in other jurisdictions after outreach by our enforcement group and Asian swamp eels were listed, though they hadn’t been previously, after some investigations with interstate trade. Then, Lt. Stroess worked with the National Sea Grant Law Center to identify gaps in the law related to the movement of grass carp. We do try to engage at that level. We try to make a difference with respect to trying to marry the legislation as much as we can and utilize that.
We know that the RCMP fully understand that from a legal perspective. There is an exchange of information that has to be done properly, or it won’t be admissible in a court situation. We work hard to bring our legal counsel into it. In a previous meeting in Duluth, we had an attorney general from Minnesota or Wisconsin come to present on the process of governance in that state.
Now that I’m chair, I’m hoping to do the same when we have a meeting in Ontario. I hope to bring in our public prosecution service and the Department of Justice Canada legal counsel from our program to do an overview — not so much that it changes the landscape at all but so that it makes everybody aware of what each jurisdiction has to go through. Then, when they’re asking if we have to do a production order to legally get that information, at least they understand the context we’re all working under and that it’s different in jurisdictions. It will help us understand what we’re doing as a group.
Senator Busson: Thank you very much.
Senator Cordy: Thank you so much again. You’ve done a great job.
I understand that the Law Enforcement Committee organizes joint training and operations. Could you give us an example of some joint operations or joint training that you’ve done?
Mr. Beirnes: In the last training session, science folks from out of the state of Michigan brought in a list of aquatic invasive plants and identification clues. They physically bring them into the meeting so we’ll have products there to show. We show it to the officers that are there from the different jurisdictions but then also recommend and promote that they take it back to their own jurisdictions.
We’ve brought in examples of various species of fish, mussels and that sort of thing with experts to give us some background on those species to get people up to speed on identification, especially when we’ve seen we’re going to have a meeting with a larger group because there are more field officers there. That’s very opportunistic, but obviously, we promote that back in our agencies as we go back.
I touched on training. I don’t know if you want to speak to any of that, Lt. Stroess.
Lt. Stroess: We’ve also done tabletop exercises and scenarios for interstate and interprovincial movement of illegal products, whether it’s a commercial fish species or an invasive species being traded in the live food agency or the pet industry or if there’s a giant tanker truck full of 20,000 pounds of live fish.
What happens when it is stopped at the border or by a conservation officer in one state or province? Because it came from two jurisdictions away, how do your agencies react? What laws do you have in place? What laws can we utilize to deal with this situation even if there is nothing wrong in the province or the state it was stopped in but it’s an illegal product in the state or province it originated in? So we do tabletop exercises like that.
Senator Cordy: Are penalties sufficient to deter these kinds of activities? Would that be, no?
Lt. Stroess: This gets back to something I said right at the beginning. Penalties probably would be sufficient if there were enough of enforcement to deal with it in the first place.
We can only get to 1% of what’s happening because there are very few dedicated positions among all the agencies to deal with this. On average among all the jurisdictions, there’s probably one full-time equivalent position to deal with this stuff in trade. That in and of itself is unrealistic and problematic because one full‑time equivalent position spread between five people means you now have five people doing two months of work on the topic throughout the year. There is not enough knowledge within our law enforcement agencies and staffing to deal with vast, interconnected industries moving all this product.
So, yes, the penalties would probably be sufficient enough if there were enough cases getting through the system.
Senator McPhedran: I want to build upon the discussion you just had with Senator Cordy to ask about technology and surveillance. Are you sufficiently supplied so that this can supplement and reinforce the capacity of your enforcement people? If not, what is the thinking on that?
Mr. Beirnes: From my perspective, getting our hands on the equipment is not the issue as much as there is a person putting their hands on the equipment. It’s the person hours, more than access to equipment.
We do have some state-of-the-art equipment. We talked most recently — a week and a half ago at our last meeting — that some drone training, potentially, is going to be on the docket for our next meeting.
We’re constantly working toward that. We’re providing a bit of that input.
Not to be throwing up roadblocks everywhere — it sounds that way, and I can appreciate that — but it’s difficult. As a committee, we would bring in the technology and have people do presentations on it, discuss issues and offer training if there is a need and if it fits in our agenda. But then you have individual regulations within different jurisdictions that might govern whether some of this technology can be used and how it can be used. So we have those elements to consider as well. There is no sense talking about state-of-the-art drone training if some jurisdictions don’t allow drones as far as evidence collection.
We have to be aware of that kind of thing. There are always a few different axes to the equation that you’re looking at.
Senator McPhedran: Is it the case that some jurisdictions don’t allow drones?
Mr. Beirnes: I can’t speak for all of the American jurisdictions. Recently, in my program, drones are coming into fashion, but there was a time when we were late getting engaged in drones, and other jurisdictions did have access to it; we didn’t. That’s not a criticism of the department. Sometimes you need the driver to illustrate the value of a particular piece of equipment.
Senator McPhedran: I think that’s just a little bit to the side of the question I asked. The question I asked is this: Are there jurisdictions that do not allow drones currently? You mentioned it, but do you have some specific examples?
Mr. Beirnes: I not have specific examples.
Senator McPhedran: Could you research that and supply us with that information, please?
Mr. Beirnes: Sure.
Senator McPhedran: Then I had one last quick question, which is about diversity on your committee. We’ve already asked you about Indigenous representation, but could you share with us whether any women are involved? What other aspects of diversity and inclusion are you applying to the work of the committee?
Lt. Stroess: Everyone on our committee is appointed by their agency, so we don’t get to select anyone. It’s whomever the agency identifies as their official representative.
Currently on our committee, the vast majority are males. We have one female on the committee, from Ontario, and we have at least two Indigenous representatives. I think that would be the extent.
Mr. Beirnes: Lt. Stroess has pretty much touched on it. At our most recent meeting, because a wider swathe of people were there, there were an additional three women, but as far as the core committee, there is one.
Senator McPhedran: Other than your Indigenous members, racial diversity is not very present?
Lt. Stroess: I think the rest of the committee members are white males.
The Chair: Thank you, senators and witnesses, for an informative discussion and for the opportunity to help us with our study. As I say to most of our witnesses, if you think of anything after you leave here today that will be beneficial to us in our work, please reach out to the clerk and pass the information on to her.
Thank you for your time this morning.
(The committee adjourned.)