FISH Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES PÊCHES ET DES OCÉANS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, December 9, 1997

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. George Baker (Gander—Grand Falls, Lib.)): I'll call the meeting to order, please.

I would like to pass a couple of motions, with the approval of the committee, regarding our trip to the west coast.

We need someone to move that the committee approve the proposed operational budget of $60,000 for the period from November 22, 1997, to February 28, 1998, and a travel budget to the west coast of $147,383 for the period from January 18, 1998, to January 27, 1998.

Do I have a mover?

On a point of clarification, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, Ref.): Is the majority of the $60,000 already incurred?

The Chairman: The clerk informs me that about $20,000 of that is spent. This is funding for videoconferencing and witnesses to come to the committee.

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Mr. John Duncan: I will propose the motion.

The Chairman: It's moved by Mr. Duncan, seconded by Bill Matthews.

Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.): Mr. Chair, January 18 to 27.... What is our timeframe? That's a little longer than our timeframe. Is that just for contingencies?

The Chairman: Yes, Mr. Easter, you're right. It's put that way in case we miss a day or two for weather. You're absolutely right.

Mr. Wayne Easter: It might snow in B.C.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chairman: We have a second motion and we need a mover for it: that the committee approve the expenses incurred for the working lunches and dinners during the committee travel throughout Atlantic Canada, from where we have already come back.

Mr. Bill Matthews (Burin—St. George's, PC): I so move.

Mr. Wayne Easter: Seconded.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chairman: The third motion is that the committee authorize the chair, in consultation with the clerk, to make the necessary arrangements to provide for working lunches and dinners from time to time, and that the cost of these be charged to the appropriate budget while we're on the west coast or we're meeting here or there, according to the clerk.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.): I so move.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chairman: Now we go to our committee meeting for today, and our order of reference is pursuant to Standing Order 108.(2), a review of the role of sciences in fisheries management. Today we have video-teleconferencing from Halifax, Nova Scotia. We have several witnesses before the committee. Dr. Ransom Myers, who is chair of Ocean Studies, Dalhousie University, will be first. Then we have four other witnesses after Dr. Myers. We have Dr. Steve Campana, research scientist, Bedford Institute of Oceanography; Paul Fanning, biologist, Bedford Institute of Oceanography; Ghislain Chouinard, head of Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence Section, Marine Fish Division, Gulf Fisheries Centre; and Dr. Don Bowen, research scientist at the Bedford Institute. First we'll go to Dr. Ransom Myers.

Dr. Myers, can you hear us? If you can, sir, you can go right ahead.

Dr. Ransom Myers (Chair of Ocean Studies, Dalhousie University): Yes, I can hear you.

Manipulation of science and the collapse of Atlantic cod stocks in Canada: the central question I had is why did a very extensive system of science and management fail so badly in Atlantic Canada?

The point here is the assessments were wrong year after year, leading to the collapse of the cod stocks, but in equivalent situations, using very similar scientists of equivalent backgrounds, in Iceland and Norway, the cod stocks did not collapse. I think the main reason here is the control of science by upper-level bureaucrats, and that is the point I will address today.

The first point is that bureaucratic and authoritarian control over scientific results results in pseudoscience, not science. Such a system will inevitably fail and lead to scientific blunders.

There was suppression of research within DFO. Data were secret and not allowed to be analysed—

The Chairman: Just one second, Dr. Myers. We're losing you here. I wonder if our technical people...we just lost that last sentence, Dr. Myers. We're going to get another microphone in front of you.

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• 0943

The Chairman: Dr. Myers, please pick up from where you were when I interrupted you.

Dr. Ransom Myers: Okay. This was a system failure. We had a failure of science, of politicians, of bureaucrats, and of fishermen. I'll be addressing the failure of science here. The main point to remember is that the assessments were wrong in the same way: abundance was always overestimated year after year until the cod stocks collapsed.

I am a former employee of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I am guilty and I believe all members of the department are guilty who didn't fight for changes in the assessments, and even if they did, they were guilty.

The point I'm going to bring up is the intimidation and control of science. This happened when scientists refused to go along with the stated Ottawa bureaucratic policy on the state of the fish stocks. If one was not conducting relevant research or was conducting other research there was no such intimation and control. This intimidation only happened when there were important issues at stake.

First there was suppression of research within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Data were secret and were not allowed to be analysed even by members of the department. Tagging data that would have shown there was very high fishing mortality were kept secret by the department. Research surveys that could have been looked at in more detail were kept secret. Some of these problems have abated now, but they still exist.

Second was the intimidation of researchers. Researchers who came up with results that were not bureaucratically acceptable were intimidated by a variety of means. In such a condition, when one is being intimidated by their bureaucracy, it is impossible to carry out open-minded research.

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Next is failure to collect relevant data. We know more about inshore catch rates of cod in Newfoundland in the 1700s than in the 1980s. I can tell you the catch rates of inshore cod in Bonavista or Conception Bay or Trinity Bay for any year of the 1700s. There are very good records. Those data were not collected in the 1980s. In fact, it was actually possibly discouraged to examine these issues. At the same time in the same department we had excellent data on herring catch rates. This was not an issue of great importance to Ottawa; therefore they felt no great need to control it.

The next issue is direct suppression of research. These are all documented cases. In 1986, an analysis was carried out by George Winters showing that fishing mortality was much higher on northern cod than estimated. This paper was directly suppressed by the director of the lab at the time because the information was unwanted.

I was a co-author of a paper examining mortality of cod relating to seals. I conducted this research to counter arguments by animal rights people that one could never detect such an event. We found out we could not detect the effect of seals with the data we had. Because we did not show what was desired by Ottawa bureaucrats, that research was suppressed.

As recently as two years ago, when I was an employee, there were attempts to directly suppress my research that was showing that natural mortality did not suddenly increase in the cod stocks. My adviser was directly harassed by Bill Doubleday because I was carrying out this research. The director of my laboratory was harassed by the ADM of science, Scott Parsons, because I was carrying out research and finding results that were undesirable.

The next issue is control of information to members of Parliament. Members of the Reform Party were not allowed to speak to scientists in Newfoundland a few years ago. An article that I co-authored was requested by a member of Parliament and a bureaucrat wrote a letter signed by the then fisheries minister saying that we had not submitted this paper. The reason the paper was not submitted is that it was censored. Therefore the letter written by upper-level bureaucrats with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was technically true but in fact a lie. They censored the paper and then denied the paper existed.

Next is control of information to AGAC. The critical issue here is northern cod collapse. There was delay before a moratorium was declared on the rest of the cod stocks in eastern Canada. Why was this? There was direct suppression of information from scientists to AGAC that led to a one-year delay in examining the state of other cod stocks. This is in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, eastern Scotian shelf. There was direct intimidation of research scientist Alan Sinclair in Moncton.

This is a crime beyond imagination. During this year delay, 70% of the remaining cod were removed and this caused a much greater collapse in the rest of eastern Canada than was needed. We could have stopped fishing then. It was a direct decision, a bureaucratic decision, to suppress the information.

There is also control of information to the FRCC. Information going to the FRCC in the form of stock status reports has to be approved by the ADM. On several occasions he has suppressed information he did not like, even though he was not directly involved in the assessments and did not have any direct access to the data.

There is control of information to the Canadian public. Any attempt in the last four years by scientists working for DFO to make their research known to the public in terms of interviews was suppressed if it disagreed with the Ottawa position that the cause of the collapse was environment or cold water. I was threatened to be fired because I gave an interview with the Globe and Mail simply stating my research. This is research published in ten papers, the best journals in the world. This was suppressed.

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This is not the only case. My friend Gordon Mertz, who recently died, gave an interview in 1992. He said that of course the cod fishery would collapse because of overfishing and not cold water; everyone knows this. He was required to write a letter admitting that he was wrong, so they could keep it on file in case they needed it. This is Stalinist behaviour. Attempts to interfere with research at universities do not belong in a democracy.

I copied for you a letter written a decade ago by Scott Parsons, then and now ADM of science, where he appears to be directly threatening a professor at Dalhousie, the president and the chair of the oceanography department, because he disagrees with certain DFO policies. This is not behaviour that a bureaucrat should partake in. Individual citizens of Canada should be allowed to criticize policies they do not like without being threatened by bureaucrats.

This has continued. The most recent case I know of was in Newfoundland. Two years ago, there was a direct threat to withhold funding from a research scientist at Memorial University of Newfoundland because he had signed a letter supporting the decision of the NRC to publish the Hutchings et al paper that you heard about last week.

On control of data, university researchers have been dismissed because they don't know the data. The data were withheld from them. Let me give you an example from the west coast. Professor Ray Hilborn did an analysis on the salmonid enhancement program, which cost Canada $600 million, and he showed how improvements could be made. He wrote a scientific article on this. There was an attempt by DFO to interfere with the publication of this paper, and his access to these data was cut off by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans because he published his research. This research was excellent. It was needed for public policy. My guess is that the Canadian public would like to know whether or not $600 million was well spent. In fact, there was an attempt by DFO bureaucrats to suppress any such research.

There have been threats of legal action. The only two people in public to name names were Carl Walters and myself. Carl Walters was threatened with a lawsuit because he named the names of upper level bureaucrats. Bill Doubleday has a suit threatening me at the moment, and I believe it is simply a suit to get me to shut up. The suit is over a newspaper article in which I described the suppression that I'm describing now. It's suppression that's documented, if anyone cares to investigate it in this document and research.

The initial parts of the suit were paid by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The press releases were paid for by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and they're still on the website. This is not a private suit. This is a suit by bureaucrats who are doing it on government time and who are using government resources to harass citizens whose opinions they don't like.

In summary, before I go to my recommendations, the message should be clear to anyone attempting independent research: denial of access to data and research grants, and harassment and legal actions are in store for anyone who disagrees with DFO bureaucrats.

I have five suggestions. The first is independent review. Rigorous analyses and review of policy and assessment need to be carried out, independent of DFO. I suggest that the simplest way to do this is to have a group independent of DFO reporting to the Auditor General, directly to Parliament, to review important decisions. It would be a group in which one cannot suppress the data.

Second, independent research. Although much of the research carried out by DFO is excellent, we need researchers outside the DFO to carry out research. The best way to find that is through NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, but right now there are threats to reduce money going to the NSERC committee that would fund this kind of new research. This is the only source of independent money available for researchers in Canada wishing to investigate these issues. This is the source of my funding at the moment.

Third, a reduction of Ottawa bureaucracy. Canada simply does not need 800 Ottawa bureaucrats. What is the cost of an Ottawa bureaucrat? It's between at least $100,000 and probably $120,000 a year, once you consider care, feeding, and so on. This is $100 million that doesn't need to be spent. We could probably get along with five.

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Four, secrecy and intimidation in DFO should be ended. Bureaucrats should simply not be in the business of intimidating researchers within and without DFO whose research they don't like. Data collected by DFO should, in a reasonable time, be open to the public and for re-analysis.

Five, we should adopt inherently safe fishing policies. One has to remember that in Newfoundland we fished in a sustainable manner for almost 500 years before DFO. We did not need DFO. We did not need the policies. There was a simple method of fishing from the 1500s until the 1940s. Fish were caught largely of the size that would allow them to spawn. Catch rates were probably close to optimal then.

A simple change in fishing regulations in which one would not have to control every movement of every fisherman would result in a much safer and sustainable method of fishing. So my suggestion here is to examine policies on fishing that do not require very accurate assessments. Such fishing strategies are possible in many cases.

Take lobsters, for example. We do not count the number of lobsters out in the ocean. We simply allow them to spawn before catching them. So there are methods whereby we can manage much better in a safe and close-to-optimal way without very much information. It requires the rethinking of the way we manage our cod stocks.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Ransom Myers, chair of ocean studies at Dalhousie University.

Committee members, I have the names of several people who want to question Dr. Myers. We have Mr. Provenzano first.

However, we have four other people from whom we should hear before we ask our questions of Dr. Myers. Perhaps many members would want to hear these other witnesses first.

We have Dr. Steve Campana, who is a research scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography; Dr. Don Bowen, who is a research scientist at BIO; Paul Fanning, who is a biologist at BIO; and Ghislain Chouinard, the head of the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence section of the marine fish division of the Gulf Fisheries Centre.

Perhaps we could start with the research scientists at the Bedford Institute: Dr. Campana or Dr. Bowen. Could you identify yourselves when you start?

Dr. Steve Campana (Research Scientist, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm Steven Campana. With me is Mr. Chouinard and Mr. Fanning. The three of us together would like to talk to this brief.

I should also mention that Dr. Bowen is not here for this presentation, so it will just be the three of us speaking to this presentation. As I say, all three will speak to it. Mr. Chouinard will speak in French for his section.

Mr. Chairman, over the past few months, both your committee and the media have heard from a number of scientists and senior DFO managers concerning the problems at DFO science. Indeed, we heard some more here. While the opinions that have been tabled should be respected, we're concerned that nothing has been heard from the group that is most affected by and targeted by these discussions, which is DFO scientists themselves.

In making this presentation, we wish to offer a different perspective on the future of DFO science. This is a perspective that is independent from that offered by university researchers, union representatives, and senior science managers. Their views do not necessarily reflect ours.

While the five of us named on this brief—three of us are present for this presentation—do not pretend to represent DFO scientists in general, we should note that we've all been actively involved in scientific research and fish stock assessments for many years.

My colleagues here are going to talk about some of the options for improving the delivery of scientific advice, but before they do, I'd like to point out three things, if I may.

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First, it doesn't seem to be that the quality of the scientific research being carried out by DFO is in question. That is, I think it's fair to say that our university colleagues and our colleagues in other countries seem to view DFO science as being of generally high quality, and certainly not substandard compared with that of any other country.

The second point is that the science of fish stock assessment is constantly evolving. I think the members of the committee are well aware that this science is not as precise as that of some other sciences.

DFO scientists do the best they can with the information they have, but we've found in the past that with new information and new insights, some of our stock size estimates that we delivered in the past have proven to be imprecise. I suspect—I'm quite certain—this will happen again in the future. With current technology, it's almost unavoidable. New and more accurate approaches are constantly being developed.

My final point is that we wish to acknowledge that there's certainly room for improvement in the way in which we carry out, manage, and deliver our scientific advice. We can undoubtedly do better. However, we do not accept the viewpoint that science in DFO is structurally flawed, that the system is somehow inherently broken and requires radical realignment. Rather, we feel that improvements and refinements to the current system and increased transparency are the most effective way of improving our delivery of scientific advice.

Ghislain.

[Translation]

Mr. Ghislain Chouinard (Head, Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence Section, Marine Fish Division, Gulf Fisheries Centre, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): Mr. Chairman.

My name is Ghislain Chouinard. I'm a biologist with Fisheries and Oceans, more specifically with the Gulf Fisheries Centre in Moncton, New Brunswick. I handle the section that does scientific work on marine fish populations in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

What I'd like to discuss is some of the options put forward to your committee to improve delivery of scientific information to both the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the public at large.

First, it has already been suggested that a Science Czar be appointed to interpret scientific information and communicate it to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. We don't think that's necessary since, on the one hand, such a person would add another layer of bureaucracy without guaranteeing the transparency of the system and, on the other, scientific information about groundfish is currently interpreted by the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council and communicated to the Minister by the FRCC, an independent council made up of academics and industry representatives. We don't think another adviser is needed. Finally, stock assessment meetings are open at present to industry representatives, academics and even the general public. The information is also available in public documents. So, in our opinion, nothing prevents the expression of different points of view to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

The second question raised repeatedly is this one: Should scientific activities be removed from DFO and placed in an independent agency? We also think there are no advantages to such a system, and indeed that a system of this type would have some clear disadvantages.

First, an independent agency would likely receive overall funding. Money would have to be provided without strings, so as to ensure the agency's independence. We think such a system could lead to the dominance of curiosity-driven research, with no particular relevance to fishery issues.

Second, at present, the basic scientists working in oceanography and the applied scientists like those assessing fish stocks enjoy the benefits of interaction within the Department, among themselves and with other Department employees, including managers. In an independent agency, these links could be deeply affected, especially if one type of research were supported over another. Furthermore, interaction with other DFO parties would probably become more difficult.

Third, whenever the Canadian economy was going through difficult times, it would be easier to cut the funding allocated to an independent agency. We think that scientific research in fisheries would suffer.

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More significantly, it seems unlikely to us that an independent agency could quickly provide the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans with information so that he could act on urgent issues. We need only think of the discovery of domoic acid in mussels, which created a major public health problem ten or so years ago. The Minister must be able to direct research efforts or problems of this nature in order to perform his duties effectively.

Finally, we think that if this agency, as proposed, were responsible for all scientific activities conducted within the federal government, fisheries research would not likely receive the attention it so much requires, as you so well know.

So I will yield the floor to my colleague, Paul Fanning, of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography.

[English]

Mr. Paul Fanning (Biologist, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): I'd like to address a further question that we would present for your consideration; that is, what is the best way to combine the DFO mandates with all the scientific research into fish and ecosystems with the requirement for routine provision of science-based advice on fisheries management and related matters, such as fish stock assessments?

We feel the important thing is to maintain a balanced side in the workplace, which includes researchers charged primarily with the discovery of new knowledge working in collaboration with a separate level of science workers charged with the application and development of scientific methods to address specific requirements, both immediate and long term.

Non-publishable science, such as that associated with fish stock assessments and ocean monitoring activities, is usually not encouraged at universities and non-governmental research organizations. However, it is an important function of DFO science. Beyond its value as an up-to-date source of fish stock status, an important feature of routine monitoring assessment is the long-time series of information it generates, which in turn can be analysed in novel ways by DFO and other researchers to detect long-term trends in the ecosystem and the environment.

DFO science currently maintains a working relationship with the non-scientific arms of the department, such as fisheries managers, enforcement groups, and the international observers. That working relationship serves to keep the science relevant, due to the constant exposure to the issues important to the industry and the public. However, the isolation of science in a separate agency would only act to reduce, not increase, the degree of cooperation among the different groups.

Recently, DFO science has developed cooperative science programs with fishers—examples being the Fishermen and Scientists Research Society, Sentinel, and other industry surveys—in order to assist in the scientific understanding of fish stocks. These programs are similar to other scientific monitoring programs in that there's a large overhead and time commitments that only occasionally produce a scientific pay-off, such as a primary publication. Accordingly, routine monitoring and cooperative science programs are unlikely to be maintained by independent agencies or universities.

Steve.

Dr. Steve Campana: Mr. Chairman, if I can briefly summarize, the objective of DFO scientists is to deliver the highest quality scientific information and advice to both the minister and to the public. We feel there is no reason to expect the quality of that advice to improve if carried out by an independent agency or interpreted by a science arm.

Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement in the way in which DFO science is carried out. So from the scientific perspective, and I should mention this is without consultation with DFO management, we suggest the following.

First of all, I think we need to hire some new young blood with new ideas. The current scientific population in DFO is aging and there has been very little hiring of new scientists for almost 15 years. The recruitment of enthusiastic young scientists would help ensure that DFO science is maintained at the cutting edge.

Secondly, we suggest that maybe there are changes that could be made to the funding structure within the department so that there is some guarantee of multi-year funding for the very best research. At present, every research project is forced to compete for funding every year, even when the project is well under way, is highly relevant, and is meeting all its goals. We view this as being counter-productive, inefficient, and risks termination of important long-term research.

The third point is we feel that we have to improve the visibility of DFO science. As scientists, we accept and agree with the fact that the minister must reconcile science-based stock conservation issues with social and economic realities. However, the basis for the departmental decisions is not always made clear to either the scientists or the public. Better communication of this information might reduce perceptions of scientific distortions where none actually exist.

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Our final recommendation is that we need to improve our explanations to the public, that stock assessments are estimates that have a margin of error or uncertainty, just like opinion polls, weather forecasts, or financial forecasts. We feel that recognition of this level of uncertainty in the estimate is just as important as the estimate itself.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I wish to thank you and the committee for the opportunity to express our views.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Steve Campana, research scientist, Bedford Institute of Oceanography.

We'll now go to questions from the committee. On my list I have, first of all, Mr. Duncan, and then we go to Mr. Provenzano, Mr. Stoffer, Mr. Easter, and Mr. Matthews.

We'll start with the Reform Party of Canada. Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for the presentations. I sometimes think the most important thing we can do is to identify the problem rather than the solution, assuming we know what the problem is. There has been a lot of discussion about various ways of creating independence for scientists within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

From reading through testimony and after hearing testimony today, I'm reminded that it isn't just in science where we've seen major personality-driven problems within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We've had interference from the deputy minister level in terms of enforcement. We had a major poaching circumstance on the west coast where months of work by enforcement people was upset at the last moment by interference from the deputy minister, which was at first denied and then was determined that this had indeed occurred. This was consistent with the perceptions of people in the know about fisheries on the west coast. This kind of thing was obviously occurring, but it was difficult to document.

We've heard a lot about the names; the names of Parsons and Doubleday keep coming up in terms of research. We have personalities driving some of the agenda in terms of coast guard initiatives, a single-minded agenda of bureaucrats that continues from minister to minister on light station de-staffing, despite anything the public wants or demonstrates as to how they want taxpayers' money spent. The bureaucratic initiatives rumble and carry on.

I'm wondering if we don't need to be able to deal with accountability of the bureaucracy, to somehow be able to effect change that will allow people to get out from under what is described as intimidation and secrecy. I find this whole thing about legal suits and so on just absolutely unacceptable coming from senior bureaucracy.

I'd like to ask Mr. Myers in particular about that. He seems to indicate that this all started to occur in 1986, seven years after the fisheries research board, that independent board, was disbanded. Maybe it took seven years for this personality culture to take over.

The other question I'd like to ask Mr. Myers is about my observation that these bureaucracy-driven problems, whether it's censorship or intimidation or political manipulation of initiatives within DFO, seem to get much worse in the year prior to an election. In 1987, a year before the 1988 election.... Things were happening last spring on the east coast, where some of the fisheries announcements made by Mifflin were to me just totally politically driven. I'm wondering if you have the same observation.

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Dr. Ransom Myers: Certainly there are personality problems in terms of individuals; Parsons and Doubleday come up most often as driving these.

I think it's more of a structural problem. If you got rid of those two people—who can do good things in the right circumstances; they aren't necessarily evil people—there are bureaucrats in Ottawa who will take their place and repeat everything they do. Right now, they're waiting to take their place. I think it's much more than personalities. These two personalities may have made it much worse, but there are people who will replace them who may actually be worse.

Is it driven by an election year? Is that your second question? There may be a small component of that in terms of intimidation, but my guess is that's not the main thing in terms of any political-scientific level.

Mr. John Duncan: I appreciate especially your first answer, because that also is my opinion. We change deputy ministers and yet we still have the same initiatives. It's almost as though the face changes, but it's still the same kind of personality running things.

I'm starting to challenge my own assumption that we basically have to have a separate organization in order to bring independence. Is there a way to bring accountability within the organization? For example, what do current scientific job descriptions say about relations with the media? Does it require approval before a scientist can go to the media, or is a scientist allowed to talk to the media about anything that falls within the parameters of their job description? The latter is what I hope it says—that's what enlightened organizations tend to do—but I suspect it's not that way at all.

Dr. Ransom Myers: In terms of speaking to the media, if it's non-controversial it's perfectly fine to speak to the media. There may be scientific spokesmen from Ottawa who in some cases often know nothing about the issue, or what they know is wrong, who advertently or inadvertently mislead the public.

In general, one cannot speak to the media in a responsible manner. The fear is that the public will get mixed messages. I think the Canadian public realizes that there are differences of opinion and you wouldn't expect all scientists to agree on something. But that should certainly change. It took five years after the collapse of the cod before the truth about the cod got out—five years. That's not acceptable.

The Chairman: For the final minute of Mr. Duncan's time, Mr. Hilstrom wants that one question.

Mr. Howard Hilstrom (Selkirk—Interlake, Ref.): I direct this to Paul Fanning. It has to do with the scientists who are currently on staff. I believe they're probably full-time employees of DFO. I'd be interested in knowing how many there are.

You suggest hiring new blood as one of the solutions. What's the reason for hiring new blood? Are the current staff not doing a good job, or have they become incompetent? What's your opinion?

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Mr. Paul Fanning: You've addressed me, although that was in the component read by Dr. Campana.

The aspect of new blood is simply that any organization requires continual renewal of its membership. The people who are with us now are certainly competent. We're not suggesting there's a loss of competence. We need more people. The numbers of people are reduced. It's time to start rebuilding a scientific basis.

As well, retirements are facing many of the people who are here now. So the people who are here now are not going to be here forever.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Fanning.

We now go to Ontario, to MP Carmen Provenzano.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Mr. Chairman, my questions are for Dr. Myers at the outset.

Dr. Myers, I was interested to read your paragraph on adoption of inherently safe fishing policies. You indicate that:

The Grand Banks of Newfoundland were fished in a safe, sustainable manner for 500 years without the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We can adopt a similar, but more modern fishing strategy, that does not require accurate estimates of abundance.

Dr. Myers, you started out by making, I think, a helpful categorization for our committee. We are interested in sorting out the facts here. That's the only basis on which we can make our recommendations. You indicated that statements about the fishery fall into three categories—namely, bureaucratic, political, and those of scientific fact.

In which category would you place the statement, “We can adopt a similar, but more modern fishing strategy, that does not require accurate estimates of abundance”, Dr. Myers?

Dr. Ransom Myers: For some fisheries I would place it close to scientific fact. I mean, that's how we managed our lobster fisheries. We do not know how many lobsters there are in the ocean, and our management system does not require us to know how many lobsters there are. One simply uses traps. If they're too small, one releases them. One catches only the larger ones. One wants to do that so that they'll be allowed to spawn. If you do that, you don't have to know how many lobsters there are. You don't have to have boats counting the lobsters. One has a very simple technology—traps to manage.

A similar thing can be done for many fish stocks. That's where, I think, the research needs to be going, to have as simple management as possible that doesn't require a huge bureaucracy and many regulations.

I can go into more detail if you want.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Dr. Myers, am I correct in understanding, then, that this statement would infer that we don't need to have the kind of involvement we presently have from DFO, that there's a greater opportunity for self-regulation?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Not self-regulation. I'm suggesting that, for example, if we fish cod using hooks, as traditionally was being done, which is possible in some but not all circumstances, and one uses a hook that catches only cod that have been allowed to spawn, one doesn't need to count the fish. One needs simply to regulate the hook size. One doesn't need to regulate how many fishermen there are or how many cod one catches.

So there are circumstances where you can get away without having the bureaucracy. That's not always true, but it's sometimes true. When we can do it, we should move to it. We should try to minimize the amount of bureaucracy and regulations as opposed to maximizing it.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Dr. Myers, there's a statement that's being attributed to you in a flyer being sent around by Canadians Against the Commercial Seal Hunt. That statement, which is apparently your statement, reads:

What happened to the east cost fish stocks had nothing to do with the environment, nothing to do with the seals, it was simply overfishing.

Dr. Myers, again, into which of your categories—political, bureaucratic, scientific—would you place that statement?

Dr. Ransom Myers: The actual quote was that the “class” of the cod stocks had nothing to do with fishing.

We don't talk generally about facts in science. We'd put that in terms of scientific evidence. The research surveys for eastern Canada showed that there were plenty of young fish that should have come into the fishery in the years of the collapse. They did not because they were caught, and many of those were discarded.

• 1025

That statement is consistent with all of the available scientific information that I know of. That doesn't mean that cold water doesn't have an influence on the number of cod or the size, or that seals don't have an influence. It's simply that they were not the cause of the collapse.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Dr. Myers, I understand you were a DFO scientist at one point in your career. Is that correct?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Yes.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: When was that?

Dr. Ransom Myers: I left the department in April of this year.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: As to the conditions you describe in the DFO, were they present when you were working with the department?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Most of that is taken from my personal experience.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Who did you tell about this, Dr. Myers? Who did you relate this to when you were a DFO scientist? Who did you tell about these conditions?

Dr. Ransom Myers: My strategy was not to complain, but to do things in spite of it. I carried out research in spite of the fact that my direct supervisor was harassed by Ottawa bureaucrats. I tried to do my best at my job in spite of them. I saw no way to change them from within the system.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Dr. Myers, I have a final question. You say you left the department in April of this year?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Yes.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Did you foresee the collapse of the cod fishery when you were working with the DFO?

Dr. Ransom Myers: In the year when it collapsed, I did not, nor did any of the other scientists I know of, foresee that the collapse would be as bad as it was. The scientific recommendation, over and over, was to lower the quotas. That was in all the scientific documents. But no one foresaw the magnitude of the problem. No scientist I know of saw the magnitude of the problem.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: You say that was in April of this year, Dr. Myers?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Yes.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Dr. Myers, are you suggesting that something has transpired since April of this year that would have given the DFO the kind of information it needed to make some other kind of prediction or to react in any other way than it has?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Do you mean what happened in the 1980s? What happened in the 1980s could have been avoided if the scientific data were analysed. There was suppression of scientific data. I was not allowed to analyse data, for example, on tagging. To work in a situation where intimidation was common was extremely difficult.

The system cannot produce good answers. It cannot. No scientist who fought in that system was very happy about it. It was extremely stressful.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: It's very important, Dr. Myers, for this committee to know and to differentiate between what is fact and what is fiction. Are you, sir, aware of any scientific fact that is being presented as fiction, or conversely, any fiction that's being presented as scientific fact? If you're aware of it, we'd like to know what it is, sir.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I'm a little confused with the question. Nothing that I presented is scientific fiction. I don't understand your question.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Well, I gather that you infer at least that the DFO has presented either fiction as fact or fact as scientific fiction to make whatever case.

Dr. Ransom Myers: Oh, yes. Upper-level bureaucrats basically lie to you, lie to members of Parliament, lie to the public. Certainly if you look at the statements coming out of Ottawa concerning the reopening of the fishery and why the cod stocks collapsed, I would classify those, in my opinion, as science fiction. They are usually not based on any scientific analysis whatsoever.

If you're within the department, it takes years of research to counter these. It's not a system that can lead to management in the shorter term or that can lead to quick resolutions, if you're threatened to be fired if your results don't agree with policies of Ottawa bureaucrats. The role of seals in the collapse of the cod stocks was DFO policy, based on nothing at the time it was announced. The projections of the cod stocks were based on methods that were known at the time to be flawed.

• 1030

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: The paper that was presented by Dr. Steven Campana and others makes the statement that:

...the science of fish stock assessment is constantly evolving and is not as precise as some other sciences. DFO scientists do the best they can with the information that they have.

Do you agree with that statement?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Individual scientists usually do the best they can with the information they have, but they are not allowed to analyse some information and some scientists are simply intimidated by it or are not allowed to present the results to AGAC, for example.

As a former DFO scientist I should have fought harder, and many other DFO scientists could have fought harder to prevent the collapse of the cod stocks. I am guilty and I think many others are guilty as well.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Myers and Mr. Provenzano.

We'll now go to the New Democratic Party, MP Peter Stoffer, Nova Scotia.

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Eastern Shore, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first question right off the top is, Mr. Campana, Mr. Fanning and Mr. Chouinard, how many years have you worked with DFO?

Dr. Steve Campana: I've worked there for 15 years.

Mr. Paul Fanning: I've worked there for 14 years.

Mr. Ghislain Chouinard: I've been working with DFO for 18 years.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you. The two gentlemen, Mr. Campana and Mr. Fanning, who work with the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, how would you say the morale is in that building today?

Dr. Steve Campana: It's certainly not as strong as it should be.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you. I must say your statements remind me of scientists, who by the way are employed by the oil patch in Alberta, who claim that global warming is not a concern to the population of this planet.

I differ in just about everything you've said. Mr. Fanning stated it is time to hire young blood and new scientists. I can assure you that if I were a scientist coming out of university, the last place I would send my resume would be the DFO.

I've read countless numbers of letters, and Mr. Myers gave us a copy of one that was directed to a Dr. Eric Mills, professor, department of oceanography, written by Scott Parsons. If that's not intimidation, I don't know what is.

The last time I checked we live in a democracy, and the Canadian taxpayer has a right, a duty, and an obligation to information that's presented by scientists, and not what information they receive from DFO bureaucrats.

Mr. Chouinard, you indicated that information is available to the general public, but I can assure you the information they would get from the scientists would be different from the information they would get from the DFO bureaucrats.

We have tonnes of information that shows that what Mr. Myers said was correct. Information from scientists was given to Ottawa and somehow filtered or altered or sent around in different ways to different people, so the information to the minister would be different from what was originally brought forward.

I can assure you gentlemen that when information is not available, it's the same as altering the facts. We've heard this from six different scientists so far, and we have a lot more scientists who will attest to what Mr. Myers said and what Dr. Jeff Hutchings said the last week we were there.

My question is for Mr. Provenzano, who asked how we know whether the information Mr. Myers presented was factual. I would just suggest you read all the letters we've received about the intimidation factor that is going on within DFO right now.

You said to hire new people. I would start from the very top of DFO and work all the way down and start to clean house. I've just about had enough of hearing Scott Parsons' and Mr. Doubleday's names brought up time and time again. I think we should start with those two and move on down the list. I'm in total agreement that science should be independent from DFO.

• 1035

My question for Mr. Fanning is this. You know as well as I do, sir, that science takes an awfully long time to come to a conclusive fact. In fact, you may never even get down to the crux of the matter, because you have to go through research and it takes an awfully long time.

Why do you feel, sir, that hiring new people off the street, more or less, or out of university, is going to help the fisherpeople of Newfoundland, and especially in Labrador, Nova Scotia, Quebec, and P.E.I.? It takes an awful long time for their studies and their research papers to come forward. I think we have a lot of people out there right now, Mr. Myers, Jeff Hutchings, Dr. Paul Brody, Trevor Kenchington, and many others who could do the job right now with the information they already have. Why do you feel brand-new people would be able to save our stocks and give the information that is required?

Mr. Paul Fanning: I think you have partly answered your own question. One of the reasons why it's important to get new people into the science structures and process right now is that in a few years, when their work starts to bear fruit, is when we're going to need it. We have to be a little proactive and start building for the future science that's going to guide our fisheries.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: But sir, wouldn't you agree that we should use the experience and knowledge of the scientists who are already there?

Mr. Paul Fanning: Absolutely.

The Chairman: Parliamentary secretary, MP Wayne Easter, Prince Edward Island.

Mr. Wayne Easter: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Usually hindsight is 20-20, but in this situation, with what we're looking at as a fisheries committee, obviously the hindsight isn't even 20-20.

One point I want to make before I start, though, I guess to Mr. Stoffer, is I would like, Mr. Chair, for Mr. Stoffer, if he has it, to table with the committee the tonnes of information he said he has on this issue. I would like to look at some of that stuff.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Sure, I'll bring it to you.

Mr. Wayne Easter: One of the problems I think we're in here is to a great extent that one person is raising legitimate questions about the accuracy of one scientific point of view versus another. It may in fact be looked at by the individual asking the questions as a legitimate question, whereas the person who is being questioned sees it as intimidation. I think that's one of the things we're up against here.

But I don't want to deal with the past. What I want to get to is how you see, in the future, managing DFO in such a way that the science we're looking at is independent and accurate, at least to the best of scientists' ability. I think Carmen asked the question earlier that fishery science at the moment is not a perfect science, and I think we recognize that. How do you move forward, manage the system, so you're developing the best policies from a government perspective, based on the science that is available, and you can be assured it is as honest and open a science as possible? That's to whomever can answer.

When you're thinking about that, I guess I did have a question for Dr. Myers.

You said you weren't allowed to analyse information on tagging. In my opinion, if you're a scientist you should be able to analyse any scientific information that's available. I would like to know what your interpretation is of why you weren't allowed to analyse that information.

Dr. Ransom Myers: To answer the question on why the information was kept secret—again, I'm speculating on the motives of individuals—was simply that he wanted eventually to do it himself, but in fact he never did it. This was in 1987-88. This was the time for action to be taken. It was simply that he wanted to keep it for himself. He wanted to keep the data for himself, even though he didn't collect any of the data.

• 1040

You have a policy that allows this to go on. One simply has to challenge policies of openness when data, particularly historical data that weren't collected by an individual...it should be open for anyone to analyse and check. The nature of science is its openness. It's not the nature of DFO.

Mr. Wayne Easter: Mr. Chair, back to my original question. How do we manage this system? How do we structure it in such a way that we can make proper decisions based on what we feel is accurate information and legitimate science? I want that question answered by as many witnesses as possible.

I know we're having a debate. Some have talked about the “science tsar”. The fact of the matter is that bureaucracies take on a life of their own over time. It may not even have anything to do with politics. I have a great concern about the bureaucracy in Ottawa. I always have and I still do. Sometimes I feel we live in a bureaucratic dictatorship, but it doesn't matter what the bureaucracy is. If you set up a science tsar, that would develop a bureaucracy too. We've seen it with farm marketing boards. We've seen it with everything.

But here's what I want to come back to. In the political arena we find ourselves in, how do we run that department in such a way that we can make the proper decisions based on what we do feel is good science?

The Chairman: Any of the witnesses who wish to answer that question or address any remarks concerning that question by Mr. Easter can go ahead.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I'll have a crack at answering it. I agree. It's a general question of how you control bureaucracies that have a life of their own. In this case, I think the best system is to have an independent review body, perhaps reporting to the Auditor General, that could not only just cursorily look at the analysis—because that's not good enough—but could carry out independent analysis and be independent in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I think something like that, reporting directly to the Auditor General, who will report to Parliament, something that will be outside the control of DFO, is one potential solution.

The other is simply to have strong policies. Make them show that it's open, and say, “You shall not intimidate researchers”. Let me tell you, I know when I'm being intimidated. When your research is censored, when you're threatened with being fired, and when your supervisors are screamed at by irate bureaucrats, that constitutes intimidation. I think I'd realize that.

One solution is an independent review body that can actually carry out independent analysis and doesn't report to DFO. Perhaps it reports to the Auditor General. And it establishes strong policies in terms of independence and non-intimidation.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Myers.

Do any of the other witnesses wish to add any comments with respect to Mr. Easter's question?

Dr. Steve Campana: Mr. Chairman, maybe I can speak to that briefly.

Dr. Myers' perceptions and experiences are considerably different from my own, and I think they are different from many other people in the maritime regions, which our group here represents. We haven't experienced that type of intimidation or censoring of scientific data or information. Indeed, in our stock assessment process now, we explicitly invite representatives of the various fishing industries to sit in on our ground-level discussions of the scientific information, at which all of the information is presented, warts and all. These fishermen's representatives, and indeed university researchers, get to see some of the information that is later discarded. They get to see all of the information, and then they participate in the discarding of that which they feel is irrelevant.

While I can't comment on Dr. Myers' experiences in the past, they do not seem to reflect what happens in the maritime regions.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Campana.

We have to do this fairly quickly in order to get in all of the questioners but in the order that they came up. Mr. Rocheleau, the way we do it in the committee is whichever one comes up first.... So what we'll have to do, according to my list, is go to Mr. Matthews, then to Mr. Rocheleau, then to Mr. O'Brien, then to Mrs. Leung.

• 1045

Mr. Bill Matthews: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question and comments would be first to Dr. Myers.

Dr. Myers, you say on page 4 of your presentation, in point 2.7, that there are documented examples of scientific conclusions being changed by Ottawa bureaucrats. How pronounced, in your view, was this documentation change by Ottawa bureaucrats, and do you have access to these documented examples?

Dr. Ransom Myers: Yes. One of the changes I know of occurred in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, where there was a demand to change a statement that the collapse in the cod was due to overfishing and not seals. There were also demands to change the Newfoundland herring assessments to fit in with what the ADM believed to be the proper way to do it. I can give you the names. Particularly the first one is very well documented and is reported in one of Jeff Hutchings' papers.

It doesn't happen all the time. It only happens when the results are not consistent with what Ottawa bureaucrats want to believe. It doesn't have to happen very often. The result is that the document that goes to the FRCC and Parliament is not what the scientists themselves necessarily conclude.

Mr. Bill Matthews: Thank you. Dr. Myers, could you pass out another opinion for us, or a comment? Just yesterday DFO released a report saying there are no inshore fish in Newfoundland and Labrador; there are no fish in the bay stocks. We learned in our business down there that the scientific community is using acoustic surveys. The fishermen we listened to in Newfoundland and Labrador told us that in the inshore fishing areas, their traditional fishing areas, there's an abundance of fish. So we're all having a problem getting our minds around whether there is or isn't fish.

Why would DFO scientists not do surveys on the traditional fishing grounds as opposed to using a straight-line acoustic survey, from the shoreline and out so many miles offshore? If there are no fish on that straight line, it's not going to show, but half a mile away in either direction, there could be tonnes of fish. What's your opinion on that?

Dr. Ransom Myers: I would have to side with DFO Newfoundland on this one. What they said was that the concentrations of fish were spotty. They did not say there were no fish, but that they were spotty. You can't do surveys only where there are fish. I think the design of the survey was to get an absolute estimate, but you just cannot concentrate on where you know there are probably fish. That's the rationale. Besides the random stratified design, you might want to go back to certain locations.

Unfortunately, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Newfoundland are in the position of having to make really hard decisions and not having very reliable data. This is a result of many years of scientific interference.

Mr. Bill Matthews: Thank you, Dr. Myers. I don't know if I'm missing something, but it would seem to me that if you're doing surveys where you know there are no fish, then there certainly are not going to be any fish showing. This is the problem I am having with the DFO scientific community. It seems you're doing surveys where there are no fish, and you're not doing surveys where fishermen traditionally have fished for 500 years and know where to find fish. There's something screwed up here.

But I don't want to belabour that point. I want to go on to the other witnesses this morning: Dr. Campana, Mr. Chouinard, and Mr. Fanning.

Gentlemen, from listening to your presentation and reading it while you gave it, I can't help but say this. I'm wondering why whoever at DFO wrote the notes for you didn't sign them, because to me, they're their notes.

• 1050

Maybe it was Wayne Easter; he's over there mumbling something, Mr. Chairman.

I want to say to Mr. Chouinard that you talk about there being no advantage to having an arm's length scientific branch and you talk about the disadvantages it would have. Then you go on to say that in times of a faltering economy the easiest target for cost-saving measures would be an arm's length government agency.

What would be different in that from what we've seen in the last four or five years from the federal government and DFO? They've cut your budget to the bone. There's nothing left of your budget. You can't do adequate research and science because you don't have the money.

What a weak argument, I have to say, for trying to defend keeping things as they are, saying that science shouldn't be taken arm's length from the department by saying that in times of a faltering economy an arm's length agency would be the target of cuts.

How do you respond to that?

Mr. Ghislain Chouinard: I think, sir, we were expressing fear that this would be the case. That's my response. Maybe some of the others may have something to add.

Mr. Bill Matthews: There's a big problem now, as I see it. The biggest problem we have right throughout this country, particularly in the fishing communities and the fishing regions, is that there's total mistrust. Whether it's the fishing community or the general public, no one trusts.... They don't trust DFO and they certainly don't trust the DFO scientific arm. We have to come to grips with this and put some trust back into the system.

My view is that unless we take this branch and make it independent and remove it from DFO, there's never going to be any trust with not only the fishing community but with the general public. I don't know why there's such a resistance, because in my view, it's obvious; it has been demonstrated that there has been intimidation and there's interference. Advice is given to the FRCC that consequently is given to the minister and that is not the same as is given to the top people in the scientific branch.

In your opinion, how do we deal with it? If we keep things as they are, things are not going to improve and the mistrust is only going to grow. Something has to be done to deal with this. I think you're defending the indefensible, to be very honest with you. That's my opinion.

The Chairman: Do the witnesses wish to pass a comment on Mr. Matthews' statement?

Mr. Ghislain Chouinard: In all honesty, sir, the information we are providing to, as you say, senior bureaucrats is information that we do get from our surveys.

For example, a few weeks ago the report on the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence survey was released. It was more than a few weeks ago, actually, but it came to the media a few weeks ago because we were having meetings with fishermen around the area. I can tell you that we actually have fishermen on our surveys, to see, to actually observe, to try to get some of that trust in the system that we need, as you very well point out. I think it's the kind of thing we can do within DFO. Openness, as Dr. Myers mentioned earlier on, involving fishermen, involving people from wherever they may be, to participate in our work is how we can improve.

Mr. Bill Matthews: Thank you very much.

I'll pose a final quick question to Dr. Myers, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Myers, you say that in 1995 you were reprimanded and threatened with being fired when you reported results to the Globe and Mail. Who reprimanded you and who threatened to fire you?

Dr. Ransom Myers: The reprimand came from my director of science, but it was a demand from Scott Parsons and Bill Doubleday. Scott Parsons wanted to fire me, and my science director bargained him down to a reprimand.

I must say I gave the interview knowing full well the consequences. I was under no illusion. I could do it because I backed it up with details, with many scientific papers, and I could easily get a job outside the government.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Myers.

Mr. Rocheleau.

• 1055

[Translation]

Mr. Yves Rocheleau (Trois-Rivières, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Myers, in paragraph 2.3 of the French version of your brief, you say that, for Newfoundland, the Department has much better data for the 1700s and 1800s than for the 1980s. How do you explain this situation?

[English]

Dr. Ransom Myers: There was a failure.... What I'm referring to here is the inshore catch rights. This is a crucial piece of information that was not collected. There was bureaucratic infighting that prevented it from being collected between the science branch and the statistics branch. In the end we have no information on the inshore catch rights for cod in the bays, and that's the crucial information we need. That's why we can't interpret the catch rates we're getting from the inshore Sentinel fishery now. It's trivial to collect. It was not done. The bureaucrats who made that decision got promoted and are now receiving big pensions.

[Translation]

Mr. Yves Rocheleau: Mr. Myers, in the French version of the text that I have, and in the English text, which I also understand, you use some very serious words of very great impact. You talk about camouflaging information, intimidation, blackmail, legal action, threats and so on. To what do you attribute these actions?

Does it come from the public employees themselves, from their own manager? From public employees who feel threatened by researchers? From technocratic pressure on them? Are they being used by others? Does it come from political pressure from the Department? Should we also consider the theory of outside interference, that is, from those who benefit from overfishing or who have benefited from it in the past? Are we actually to think that the businesses that have been overfishing may have an undue influence on the way the Department of Fisheries and Oceans operates?

[English]

Dr. Ransom Myers: I can speak about what I know, and what I know is that most of the pressure came from Ottawa bureaucrats, and sometimes at a lower level. I don't know what pressure was put on them by business companies. A lot of it I believe had to do with covering up their own mistakes in the past. If you look at the timing, when did FPI go public? Was it very important for them to have very high estimates of cod abundance? That may have been a factor. That's speculation. But I do know there was enormous pressure, particularly for northern cod, from the period 1986 on.

[Translation]

Mr. Yves Rocheleau: One final question, Mr. Chairman.

Scientifically, do you think that the cod stocks are going to reproduce and begin to develop again, or are you rather pessimistic?

[English]

Dr. Ransom Myers: This is a question I've analysed in quite a bit of detail. All the available evidence says yes, they will recover. Unfortunately, the rate of growth for the northern cod and northern Gulf of St. Lawrence is quite slow. You're talking about a potential growth rate of around 20% a year. That's what you would expect at these low abundances. Unfortunately, that's an average number, and it'll take a long time for severely depressed stocks to recover fully. I think we should be looking at a very much longer moratorium than was initially thought. That's my scientific opinion.

The Chairman: Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien (Labrador, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Baker. I have so many questions I really don't know where to start.

Dr. Myers, just reiterate for me, in a very short answer, how long you were with the department and exactly why you left. I know I've heard some of the things that led to it, but give me a response to that question in as few words as possible.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I was in the department from 1984 until last year. I left Newfoundland unwillingly, even though it led to a wonderful job, because I felt it was simply impossible to do good science within the structure as it was.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Thank you.

• 1100

The other point you made was that you don't think the seals caused the collapse of the northern cod fishery. What would you say about the seals as related to the recovery of the northern cod, particularly in the points you just mentioned, the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence and the coast of Labrador? This is 2J, 2G, 2H, and so on. I tell you, the 2G-2H is a very slow process. I have my opinions, and I'm sure the committee knows what they are, but I'd sure like to hear yours on that.

Dr. Ransom Myers: The seals may very well be inhibiting the population growth rate of cod at the moment. The definitive evidence isn't in. If you want a guess, I can give you a guess.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: How would you as a scientist account for this kind of situation?

When I grew up in L'Anse-au-Loup on the coast of Labrador, my dad bought seals for 25 or 26 years. We used to get the seals coming from north to south going into the Magdalen Islands and the Gulf of St. Lawrence around December and January. The seals would return in May and go on north. Right now we have the seals coming into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Strait of Belle Isle in late September to early October and not leaving the Strait of Belle Isle until mid-July.

The other thing we found very clearly, whether science agrees or not, is that when there are seals there is no fish. The fish don't come until the seals leave, and as soon as the seals come the fish leave. How do you relate to that particular point of view?

Dr. Ransom Myers: The harp seal population has certainly grown, and they may have changed distribution in terms of the timing relationship in growth. I haven't seen the data. I also haven't seen the analysis that shows the distribution of cod in relationship to the seals. As far as I know, there's no scientific data. I think it's a good question and it should be studied.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Are you seriously telling me that DFO, Mr. Parsons and Mr. Doubleday...? I'm sure your frustration led to what you've expressed. I'm frustrated too. Are you seriously telling me that all these years of all these scientists from private institutions, DFO and so on, haven't put this particular thing in perspective? That's what you just said. I can't believe they haven't studied these kinds of things.

For God's sake, scientists, I would say to you clearly go out and make.... There are all kinds of scientists along the coast of Labrador and in Mr. Baker's riding and all over Atlantic Canada and the west coast. They're called fishermen. For God's sake, when does science start including fishermen or fisherpersons in the process of putting forth a judgment or recommendation? Give me your point of view, Dr. Myers, on what you think the fisherman's role is in scientific data collection and presentation of evidence.

Dr. Ransom Myers: I think in terms of estimating abundance, the inshore fishermen in Newfoundland were absolutely right in terms of their assessment of the situation in the 1980s. My analysis of 1987 agreed with them. They were absolutely right. If you have a fisherman who says he saw fish here all his life and now there's no fish here, I believe him more than I believe a DFO survey.

It think it's a much different question from asking what the impact is of seals on fish. That's a much more difficult question. From fishermen we could say the seals are staying longer in the Labrador area now and they may have a much larger effect on the cod stocks than we suspect. That's a question that should be studied. I have seen no evidence of that effect.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: So really and truly, what I'm hearing here—and I'm sure you're telling the honest-to-God truth because you have no reason not to—is that based on your point of view, having been with DFO and coming through with that perspective...you're a disgruntled DFO scientist. I can't imagine what DFO scientists are thinking. Here I am trying to champion the cause of the seal fishery and make it happen again and put it into sustainable fishery and the scientists are doing diddly. How do you account for this particular point of view?

I could go on forever and ever, Mr. Chairman.

How do you go on from this point of view? You have a fish this size, say three feet long. A seal comes up under it, makes an incision in the bottom, takes the liver, and the fish is dead of course and falls back down to the bottom. Have you ever seen anything like that? The fishermen I know are good friends of mine. In fact, last night I was with probably one of the best in Newfoundland. He sees this in his nets all the time. How do you account for that? I hear people saying that seals eat capelin. They eat this and they eat that. They eat cod, too, but they eat portions of cod. They're just like us with a prime steak. They go for the prime bit, and that's the liver part.

• 1105

Dr. Ransom Myers: They certainly eat portions of cod in nets. How common that is in the wild, I don't know. As far as I know, it has not been studied.

In terms of seals, I drew up the methods that are used to assess most of the seal stocks in eastern Canada. I worked hard on that. In my own point of view, if you see numbers for seals in eastern Canada, I had something to do with it.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Thank you, Dr. Myers. Do you think in your judgment that DFO scientists are doing enough to analyse the issue of the seals relative to sustainable seal fisheries or whatever? What's your particular point of view on that?

Dr. Ransom Myers: There's no difficulty in having a sustainable seal fishery. There's no scientist within DFO or any reputable scientist outside DFO who disagrees with having a sustainable seal fishery. The question is, are you going to say that science says we should kill off the seals to enhance the recovery? That may or may not occur, but there's no question about having a sustainable seal fishery.

Why can't you buy seal meat in Sobey's in St. John's? If you were in St. John's and you wanted to buy seal meat, you would have to go out there and virtually kill the thing and drain the blood. Why aren't the seal fishermen producing products that you can get in supermarkets?

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Myers. Do we have another question from committee members before we go to two points of clarification? Mrs. Leung of British Columbia.

Ms. Sophia Leung (Vancouver Kingsway, Lib.): Dr. Myers, what is your source of research funding now? Do you still do research or just teach?

Dr. Ransom Myers: No, I do tremendous amounts of research. I publish ten scientific papers a year.

It comes completely from grants from NSERC, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. That's where I get my money now. The committee that funds the kind of research I'm doing independent of DFO is being threatened with having their funding cut back.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Dr. Campana, you did comment about the funding structure. You feel that DFO should not have a competition basis. Do you think that without the competition you will be fair and objective in selecting the best to conduct any research?

Dr. Steve Campana: DFO has had major cutbacks over the last two years in science as well as in other arms, and that has affected us. But certainly in no way did I intend to suggest that funding should not be provided to non-DFO scientists to study fish. I view that as being a very good thing.

I would like to see the funding increase for university researchers and private consulting firms, as well as for DFO science. I think everybody in Canada would benefit from that, but of course there are financial realities and they have to be considered.

No, I'm certainly not suggesting that all science be done within DFO. That would be bad, because a university has a very different perspective from that of the department.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Thank you.

The Chairman: I wonder now if we could go to the two points of clarification. Mr. Duncan and Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. John Duncan: I really don't want to try the patience of our chair here, so I'll just offer something up.

We had the parliamentary secretary earlier on say that bureaucracies sometimes take on a life of their own. Within DFO, we have three major groups.

The coast guard is, properly, a command-and-control organization in many respects. It may belong with the military. At least that's my view. It's a Reform position.

We have an enforcement section, which is very often viewed as a policing operation.

These don't fit well with a science factor. It creates a schizophrenia within the department.

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I see this as actually a natural conflict of interest, and the department can't work properly because of these polarized or diametrically different operations within it. There's going to be a winner and a loser, and the command and control operation is going to win. I'll just plant that this conflict of interest means we have to create a separation or it will actually never work. It will eventually blow apart before it ever gets any closer.

Thanks for that opportunity.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I'd just like to make a motion on the floor that the chair be authorized to write the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans requesting that the federal government stop the additional financial cuts to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for 1997-98 and 1998-99. When Mr. Anderson was here a few weeks back, he indicated that he would love to have his funding back for DFO. I would like the opportunity to pass a motion indicating that if he can't do it, then maybe we could write a letter to the appropriate people to indicate the fact that these cuts should stop.

The Chairman: A motion has been moved by Mr. Stoffer. I'll read the motion:

That the chair be authorized to write the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans requesting that the federal government stop the additional financial cuts to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for 1997-98 and 1998-99.

As far as the admissibility of this motion is concerned, Mr. Stoffer, normally a committee—or even members in the House—cannot recommend a motion that would mean an expenditure of money for the Government of Canada. However, the chair in the House of Commons in the past two years has been allowing motions that involve expenditures of money. I don't know how that precedent came about, but that's what has been done. The motion is therefore in order if you wish to maintain the wording of the motion as it is. Did you wish to maintain the exact wording in the way you have it here?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I got that example from another standing committee that did the same thing.

The Chairman: Yes, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: We had the minister here on the basis of the estimates. As I understand it, the term of reference was that if we didn't report back to the House by November 25, we were deemed to have accepted the estimates. Now we are here only two or three weeks later and we're talking about something that directly impacts the estimates. I would suggest that we table that as being inappropriate at this point in time.

The Chairman: Mr. Easter.

Mr. Wayne Easter: It's partially the same point. The timeframe for changing the estimates has already passed. In the discussion we just had with witnesses here, one of them said we need to reduce the 800 people in Ottawa. If we pass a broad motion like this, where are we suggesting the money be spent? Is it for hiring more people in Ottawa or what? There are no specifics to it, so I would have to oppose the motion on that basis.

I think we'd be far better off, Mr. Chair, to do what our intention was: to make some recommendations in terms of where we go from here in science, and make some recommendations as a committee in terms of our tour of Atlantic Canada and what we have to do relative to fisheries management to do a better job in the future. If that requires money, we'll have a look at it at that time.

The Chairman: Mr. Stoffer, do you wish to keep your motion on the floor, or would you like to rework it and bring it up at the next committee meeting?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: No, I'd like to keep it just the way it is, and I would disagree with Wayne. The fact is that all those witnesses today were singing from the same hymn book. They said the cuts to DFO are altering or affecting the way scientists do their job. Newfoundland is a prime example. Mr. O'Brien mentioned the seals. I don't think they can do the research with seals, because they don't have the money to do the job. If people in DFO are going to be cut, you're going to have buy-out packages and everything else for them. They're just not leaving empty-handed. Money is going to be allocated for them.

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I would like to do this right now. If it fails, it fails. It's the way it goes. At least I could say I tried. If Mr. Anderson can't keep his funding, at least we could give him a shot in the arm and maybe keep good people who are there working.

The Chairman: Members have heard the motion. Is there any further debate?

Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce, Lib.): I will simply reiterate that basically what we heard this morning and what we've been hearing in a number of meetings is that even though we may need the money, even if the science is correct and it's not being deciphered, passed through, and action taken on those recommendations, there's no point in spending more money on doing exactly what we've done in the past, which hasn't been fruitful. On that basis, I would vote against the motion.

Mr. Wayne Easter: Just one last point, Mr. Chairman, and I put this on the record. This kind of motion is difficult to deal with. In effect, I think you'll see on our side of the House that we want spending increased where it's appropriate, decreased where it is not, so the spending is targeted so it benefits the fisheries in total and fisherpeople in fishing communities. With this kind of motion, the way it is worded, we have no choice but to oppose it. It will be great for headlines, but it really won't accomplish much in the long term.

Mr. Charles Hubbard (Miramichi, Lib.): On the same point, I think the last time, if Mr. Stoffer would investigate, the area in which the spending cuts were done was the major factor that we were considering in terms of what the outcome has been. I've met with officials in the department and I've said the one desk in Ottawa would support a venture back in my area that would have been very important, the Atlantic salmon. But they prefer to keep that one desk and that one bureaucrat sitting over on Kent Street and do away with three people working in the field in science back in Miramichi.

For that reason, I will vote against it. Until we can really define where the spending cuts have been made and where the additional money is needed, I don't think we can vote for your motion.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I respect the opinion of my honourable colleagues on the government side, but the fact is that I'm not asking for increased funding. I'm just asking that the funding that is there stop being cut. We've heard Mr. Anderson, we've heard the witnesses, we've heard of all the great things that DFO are going to do in the future. My fear, and especially the fear of 40,000 fishers and their families, is that DFO and science are not going to be able to do the job without the funding they currently have. With this further cut, it is going to be further eroded. That's my point of view. I'm not asking for more money; I'm just asking that the money that was originally budgeted to DFO stay right where it is.

Mr. Wayne Easter: I move that we table it. It is redundant. We've already dealt with the estimates.

The Chairman: Members have heard the motion as put by Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Wayne Easter: A tabling motion takes precedence, does it not? I would move that we table because it's redundant as the deadline for estimates is passed.

The Chairman: The problem is that we have to dispose of the motion that's before the committee first.

Mr. Wayne Easter: Not if it's tabled. Tabling in fact disposes of it.

The Chairman: This is an amendment to the hon. member's motion.

Mr. Wayne Easter: No, a tabling motion based on its being redundant.

The Chairman: So this is a six-month hoist. Is that it?

Mr. Wayne Easter: Exactly true.

The Chairman: It has been moved by Mr. Easter that this receive a six-month hoist or be tabled.

Mr. Wayne Easter: Be tabled.

The Chairman: Those in favour of Mr. Easter's motion, please signify by raising your hand.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chairman: We want to thank our witnesses today, appearing by video-teleconferencing from Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dr. Myers, Dr. Campana, Mr. Fanning, and Mr. Chouinard. Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing before this committee.

The meeting is adjourned to the next call of the chair.