FOPO Committee Report

Supplementary Report from Conservative Party of Canada Members

“Allocation of Resources to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission”

November 2023

The Great Lakes fishery is a binational resource affording Canadians and Americans dependent on the resource over $7 billion in economic benefits on an annual basis. These benefits are derived from public, commercial, and Indigenous fisheries harvests and other sectors including tourism, fishing charters, vessel construction and services, and fish processing, to name a few.

The Great Lakes fishery is an economic driver for the harvesters and Great Lakes communities that derive economic activities, food security, and jobs from the fishery. For millennia, Indigenous communities have depended on resources of the fishery for food security and continuation of their cultures and traditions.

By area, the Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes on the planet and the fishery both depends on and supports healthy ecosystems in their waters. Sustaining the Great Lakes fishery and benefits it affords requires conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity through a myriad of actions including the management of aquatic invasive species (AIS), such as sea lamprey.

In 1954, Canada and the United States finalized the Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries (the Convention) to formally establish cross-border cooperation and coordination of conservation efforts to strengthen and sustain the fishery through the creation of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (the Commission). Article VIII of the Convention delineates how parties to the Convention are to determine and pay expenses of the Commission and make contributions to pay for Commission expenses.

Conservatives were motivated to initiate the Committee’s study of the resources and governance of the Commission in response to complaints of Canada’s underfunding of the Commission and the machinery of government structure that perpetuates the underfunding. In his appearance as a witness, Commission Executive Secretary Robert Lambe stated that Canada underfunded the Commission from 2000 to 2022.[1] Lambe also stated that Canada’s underfunding of the Commission was enabled by a conflict of interest that exists within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) as the department holds responsibility to both deliver funding to the Commission on behalf of Canada and deliver sea lamprey control activities for the Commission.[2]

In her appearance as a witness on June 8, 2023, Ms. Debbie Dingell, United States Congresswoman for Michigan, described how the structural issues of Canada’s machinery of government for the Commission resulted in decades of underfunding that culminated in the Commission not meeting in more than a year and not having a regular program since 2021.[3] Dingell noted that Canada’s considerable funding gap was addressed in Canada’s Budget 2022, however the government did not remedy the machinery of government mechanism that allows DFO to hold back funds allocated for the Commission in the federal budget.[4]

Commission representatives and Members of Parliament who participated in the Committee’s study recognized DFO’s structural conflict of interest vis-à-vis its responsibilities to the Commission. This conflict of interest was confirmed by a June 2022 legal opinion obtained by the Commission from Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP.[5]

DFO and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD) officials stated that no such conflict of interest exists and that their positions were confirmed by a legal opinion obtained from government lawyers. When officials were pressed to provide the Committee the legal opinion supporting their position that no conflict of interest exists, Niall Cronin of DFATD stated the “opinion provided by our lawyers is different, and that's why I committed to going back to the department to see what could be shared in writing with this committee.”[6]

However, the Committee never received the legal opinion cited by DFO and DFATD officials but rather a written response from DFO distributed to Committee Members on June 21, 2023, merely stating the “Department of Justice’s (DOJ) legal opinion in response to the Fasken opinion cannot be provided as it is subject to solicitor-client privilege.”[7]

Conservatives are very concerned that government officials failed to provide the Committee the legal basis for policies and decisions precipitating DFO’s apparent conflict of interest that allowed the department to underfund the Commission for over two decades. Canada’s prolonged underfunding of the Commission has undermined the confidence of our American partners in Canada’s commitment to the Commission, limited the Commission’s work to protect the waters of the Great Lakes and has also caused unnecessary tension and dysfunction within the Commission.

The Government of Canada’s inexplicable refusals to change machinery of government functions to eliminate DFO’s conflict of interest in this matter are very concerning. Mr. Cronin stated “our understanding is that any decisions relating to machinery of government changes rest with the [Prime Minister’s Office]. I think what our colleagues from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans said last week was that analysis has been undertaken across government and that the decision now rests at the centre, which we would call the Privy Council Office or the Prime Minister's Office.”[8]

When Niall O’Dea of DFO was pressed for the date when the matter of the Commission’s machinery of government change was raised with the Prime Minister’s Office, he stated that step would not have come from DFO, that he did not have that information, and that he would take the request for information back to DFO. However, when the Committee received DFO’s written response to this question, the Committee was once again stonewalled as we were informed that “DFO does not provide advice on Machinery of Government changes and therefore is not in possession of this information.”[9]

Where DFO officials failed to provide pertinent information for the Committee’s work, the federal Open Government online database confirmed that a brief seeking decision regarding the Commission’s machinery of government change was sent to the Prime Minister for a decision on April 12, 2022.[10] Record of the requested decision being made could not be found on the database and Conservative Members have no reason to believe that the Prime Minister has made a decision on the Commission’s machinery of government change since it was submitted for his decision over a year-and-a-half ago.

Despite repeated calls for the machinery of government change to be made, including a March 2023 letter from 43 Liberal Party of Canada MPs to the Prime Minister pressing him to finally make the change, the Prime Minister has not initiated steps necessary to establish a permanent solution for Canada’s underfunding of the Commission.

The Great Lakes are invaluable economic and ecological resources for Canada and the United States, and it is imperative that the Government of Canada fulfill its commitments under the Convention and delivers stable, fair and equitable funding in support of the Commission’s work to restore and conserve the Great Lakes for future generations.

Decades of underfunding by Canada poses an unnecessary and inappropriate threat to the function and operations of the Commission and conservation of Great Lakes resources. Canada’s underfunding has also eroded the confidence of Canada’s American partners in Canada’s partnership and commitment to the terms and fundamental conservation purposes of the Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries.

The issue and affects of DFO’s machinery of government function for the Commission are not new and there is strong multipartisan support for these to be resolved once and for all, and yet the request for the Prime Minister to provide a permanent remedy for this problem continues to languish in the Prime Minister’s Office without explanation.

Canadians and our American partners deserve to know why the Prime Minister continues to refuse to make a decision on this matter to start restoring certainty and stability to the Commission’s essential work in restoring and conserving the irreplaceable and essential resources of the Great Lakes.

Recommendation

1) That the Prime Minister immediately and publicly issue a decision regarding which Government of Canada department is mandated to fulfill machinery of government function for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and provide the reasons for his decision.