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EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, October 24, 1995

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[English]

The Chairman: Order.

I'm sorry for the delay. We are bound by our rules, which are such that we're supposed to have an opposition member and, in the absence of that, we must have six members. The sixth member just walked in.

Mr. Verran, you've saved the day and saved the taxpayers an enormous amount of money. You should put that in a householder for your constituents.

I'm very sorry for keeping everybody waiting, but as I said, there's a movie out called Strange Days, a very odd movie. This is an apt title for the last number of days, and probably the next few days, in Ottawa, with the events that are going on just to the east of us. It's making it difficult, because people are transfixed by those events and some members are participating in the lobbying effort on both sides of that event and therefore are not doing their regular duties as parliamentarians.

I want to get right to the witnesses. These are our first witnesses, outside of the department, on the study of the oceans of Canada.

We have witnesses from the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee and the Canadian Nature Federation, Wildlife Habitat. I take it this is a joint presentation today. We have Nigel Bankes, the chairman of the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee; Dr. Peter Sly, a private consultant; and Leslie Beckmann, a marine conservation adviser for the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee and the Canadian Nature Federation.

You people have done a tremendous amount of work in this area, Leslie, and you've provided a lot of material to me and to other members of the committee. I know that you were trying to get around to see some members of the committee prior to the hearings. I hope that everybody has had a chance to peruse some of the material, because it is, from my perspective anyway, excellent. This is a lot of good work, and it has helped me as a committee chair to understand where we should be taking this bill.

If we can get the presentation finished by the hour - it's on the half-hour now - then that will give us some time for questions. The way we usually operate as a committee is that we like a lot of interchange with the witnesses. Formal presentations are wonderful for the record, but sometimes they just don't give the whoomph and the emphasis on the various nuances of the issue.

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That being said and done, who's going to start? Leslie?

Ms Leslie Beckmann (Marine Conservation Adviser, Canadian Arctic Resources Committee and the Canadian Nature Federation): Yes. I have notes. I will be referring to them, but I'll try not to make it formal and stuffy.

Good morning, finally. I know about the business that has been holding us up and I understand completely.

I'd like to say that on behalf of CARC, the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, and the Canadian Nature Federation, or CNF, we'd like to thank you very much for calling us to appear before you.

CARC is a public interest group, representing 4,000 members, that is interested in sustainable development in the Canadian Arctic and the circumpolar world. The Canadian Nature Federation has 30,000 supporters and 150 affiliated nature groups and is interested in protecting nature and biodiversity.

You've now been introduced to the group before you. I think what I'd like to do is let you know the way in which we'll be doing this presentation, and we'd like to end on the hour as well. I'll be starting with a short overview of the thrust of our brief. Nigel will then take over to take you through some of the finer points of the brief, and then all of us will be available for questions.

Dr. Sly will be particularly helpful to those of you who are interested in asking questions about science and its role in policy-making and the concepts behind sustainable development in the ecosystem approach. Nigel Bankes will be helpful in answering legal questions and I'll be tackling the policy questions.

As many of you know from the material we've presented you with, CARC and CNF are delighted that the committee is reviewing Bill C-98. As you're all aware, the bill has been a very long time in coming, and we think it's a crucial piece of legislation that will set the stage for a new kind of ocean management in Canada. As such, we feel it gives you a unique opportunity to profoundly affect the future of maritime communities and coastal ecosystems for decades to come.

I think it also gives you a unique opportunity to advocate changes to the government's system that will foster cross-functional management, which is fundamental to revitalizing government. As a result, we are looking forward to your making the most of the opportunity before you by strengthening the bill in a couple of key places.

The brief you have all received is quite substantial. As you know, it comes with a one-page summary. I think the clerk has copies of both if you need them.

The bill was also improved as a result of a two-day workshop that was held by the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, the Canadian Nature Federation, and the World Wildlife Fund, who brought together a bunch of scientists, lawyers and policy advisers to review the draft bill.

I'd like to begin my comments regarding the substance of the brief and the bill by saying that CARC and CNF support the bill. We feel it is long overdue. We do feel, however, that it must be strengthened in two key areas in order to adequately reflect Minister Tobin's A Vision for Ocean Management, which was released last November, a vision we largely share.

In that document, which I'd like to read an excerpt from, the minister declared that Canada:

In our view, the two areas that need to be strengthened to ensure that this vision becomes a reality are the conservation provisions necessary to guarantee sustainable development and the consolidation of marine responsibilities held by a number of federal departments. This is necessary to ensure both efficiency and that the federal government is reasonably well structured to manage entire ecosystems. I'll say a little bit about both points before turning it over to Nigel.

With respect to conservation provisions, we feel that the intent of the minister's vision document was to shift his department from resource management to ecosystem management, a type of management that attempts to manage multiple uses in entire functional units of the natural environment, and is usually informed by the intent to maintain and, where necessary, rehabilitate marine ecosystems.

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That kind of shift is premised on the understanding that a healthy marine economy is absolutely dependent on a healthy marine environment and vice versa. It also recognizes that natural systems don't respect man-made boundaries and divisions. The example of the northern cod, of course, shows us this is amply and manifestly the case. It shows us that the continued health of coastal and maritime communities is dependent entirely on the health of the ecosystems.

Our brief suggests ways to improve the conservation provisions in the bill to ensure the health of communities. These include: the very important addition of a purposes clause, which would unify and clarify the bill; doing more basic science on how natural systems work; refining the ocean management strategy arrangements in the bill; and providing greater detail in the marine protected areas section.

With respect to consolidation, we're urging you to strengthen the bill in a way that would guarantee cooperation and coordination not only among the federal departments responsible for marine activities but also between federal governments and the provincial, territorial and aboriginal governments.

Most of you are from coastal ridings and are very aware of the size and scope of the marine environment. You're also very aware that it is affected by a myriad of decisions at different levels, ranging from the municipal through to the international. As a result of that, integrated management is of paramount importance.

In our brief we suggest a variety of means to effect this kind of consolidation. These include: mandating reporting requirements; mandating other departments to work with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on the ocean management strategy and the development of the ocean management plans; and mandating the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to work with a variety of jurisdictions, groups and individuals who have a role to play in marine management.

With respect to consolidation as well, I'd like to pick up on something that was mentioned at committee last Wednesday. We feel the responsibility for a number of federal activities that were not encompassed in the bill rightfully belong in the department responsible for the health of Canada's oceans. We understand that some of what was originally intended to go into the bill was lost in the interdepartmental toing and froing that led to the creation of the bill, and we would urge you to call upon the relevant ministers to find out the reasons for that.

There are two points I'd like to raise with respect to consolidation. We don't believe it would be rational, cost-effective or appropriate to roll into the Department of Fisheries and Oceans two particular marine responsibilities. First is the establishment of marine parks - parks that have to be managed as a unit with adjoining terrestrial parks and as part of a national system of protected areas. That responsibility is currently held by Parks Canada. The other responsibility is for the protection of sea birds. Sea birds depend on the sea area and coastal zone for their food. They make their homes on land. That responsibility is currently held by the Canadian Wildlife Service.

Parks Canada, which was established in the 1880s, and the Canadian Wildlife Service, which was established in the 1950s, both have immense history and experience in their respective fields. Even in the face of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' transition to sustainable management of ecosystems, Parks Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Service have functional responsibilities that are qualitatively different from those of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

In the spirit of management for ecosystems, which we believe is the major thrust of all sound management, these responsibilities shouldn't be split at the shoreline. Instead, we make recommendations in our brief for fostering coordination among DFO, Parks Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Service.

That essentially represents the thrust of our presentation. I'll be turning it over to Nigel now so he can lead you through certain aspects of the brief.

Before I do, I'd like to do two things. I'd like to request that our entire brief be appended to the record and I'd like to acknowledge the financial support of Wildlife Habitat Canada, the Richard and Jean Ivey Fund, and Mountain Equipment Co-op, among others, who made this program possible. A full list of donors is found on the front page of the brief.

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Mr. Nigel Bankes (Chairman, Canadian Arctic Resources Committee): Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I'd like to focus on five elements of our brief and take you through some of those elements in a little more detail. We obviously don't have time to do this for the entire brief.

The items I'm going to speak to are: first, the purposes clause we propose for the brief; second, the goal of the planning exercise, which is currently found in part II of the bill, clauses 29 and 30; third, the changes that we propose to the marine protected areas portion of the bill, which is clause 35; fourth, improving the planning process in clauses 31 and 32; and finally, I'll speak briefly about the science aspects of the bill if I have time.

In the main I'm going to be speaking to pages 3 through 8 of the brief, where you will find a summary of the recommendations that we propose, with some specific draft text for amendments we would like you to consider.

Let me begin by talking about the purposes of the bill and the purposes clause we propose should be added to the bill.

If one goes back to Minister Tobin's vision statement on ocean management, I think it's very clear that what was being proposed was a fundamental change in the way in which we think about and are oriented to the oceans, moving from a commercial fish-centred approach to an approach that focuses on marine ecosystem health. I think it's perfectly clear to all of us what the consequences are of having taken for so many years an approach that focuses on commercial fish stocks and not on ecosystem health as a whole.

We support that vision. We are proposing that the bill more truly reflect the vision that Minister Tobin presented to Canadians. We think the best way to do that and the first way to do that is by adding a purposes clause to the bill that lays out the purposes of this bill, as noted on page 3, recommendation 1: ``the purpose of this Act is to maintain, and where necessary, restore healthy ecosystems for Canada's oceans.''

There is at present no purposes clause in this bill. There is a statement in the preamble, but we think the bill would be dramatically improved by the inclusion of a purposes clause that focuses on this issue of ecosystem health. You'll see that we add to that basic purpose a number of subsidiary objectives that will help us attain that purpose.

We've also provided here a definition of ecosystem health, which we would commend to you. Perhaps Dr. Sly might speak to that during questions.

The second item I wish to speak to is a sharpening of the goals of the ocean management strategy and the integrated planning exercise which is provided for in part II of the bill. Those are clauses 29 and 30 of the bill.

If one looks at those clauses, we think that the bill emphasizes integrated management. We understand integrated management as being technically better management, more efficient management, management that takes into account all sorts of important considerations.

But we take the view that it lacks a statement of the purpose for which we are planning. We think the purpose for which we are planning needs to be included in the bill. Therefore, we propose the addition - and this is recommendation 3 - that the national strategy has ``as its objective the maintenance, and where necessary, the restoration of the health of marine ecosystems....'' In other words, we say that the purpose of the bill is marine ecosystem health and that the planning process should be directed towards that as precisely as possible.

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The third recommendation to which I would like to speak is a strengthening of the clause of the bill dealing with marine protected areas. This clause is currently clause 35 of the bill. I'm really going to be speaking at this point to recommendation 13 of our brief.

We take the view that marine protected areas are critical to an overall strategy designed to protect ecosystem health. Consequently we think clause 35 needs to be strengthened. At the moment that clause does not state the purposes of marine protected areas. It doesn't tell us what a marine protected area is. Indeed, the entire clause is very sketchy. What we therefore propose is a new clause 35. You'll see the draft text contained within recommendation 13.

One of the features of that clause is that it speaks to the reasons for which one might wish to establish marine protected areas, in our proposed subclause 35(1). But in subclause 35(2) there are two items that might be of interest to members.

First of all, we say marine protected areas should be one of the outcomes of the planning process. One of the features we notice about the bill is that it's a number of different solitudes. We think there should be better integration between the planning process and the creation of marine protected areas, and one would anticipate one of the outcomes of the planning process would be the creation of marine protected areas.

The other feature I think is notable about the clause we have proposed there is that this clause might be used by departments other than the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We know other departments and other services within the Government of Canada, such as the Canadian Wildlife Service, Parks Canada, are interested in marine protected areas. We are therefore proposing that this clause would not be the property of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans but could be used for the legitimate purposes of other departments. One particular point we would make there is it might provide a means of protecting national marine conservation areas before they attain official status under the National Parks Act.

I am moving on to the fourth item I said I would speak on. That is improving the planning process.

I've spoken already on the purposes of the planning process. We think the planning process should be more clearly geared to the purposes of this bill, which we take to be the protection of marine ecosystem health, but we also think a number of detailed changes might be made to the planning process laid out in clauses 31 and 32 of the current bill. We would like to make recommendations that go to both substance and procedure.

If one looks at the current clauses 31 and 32, we would say at the moment they are long on procedure and short on substance. That is, they do not give much guidance to the planners on what is to be the content to the plan. That seems to be something that's to be left to unfold. We think it would useful for the bill to provide some guidance on the contents of the plans. You'll see our recommendations on that point in recommendation 4 of our brief, which is on page 4.

For example, just to pick some of the paragraphs listed there from (a) through to (j), we think the plans should contain statements about marine protected areas. We think it should contain statements about where ocean dumping might be permitted, where it might be prohibited.

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On item (d) - and this was a point that came through very strongly in one of the background papers that the marine conservation strategy commissioned - we think the plan should lay out a priority for the items that should be dealt with first. Otherwise, the plan might just be a list of things that need to be done, without indicating which are most important, which are going to give us our largest ecological bang for the buck.

We'd like to draw your attention specifically to items (h) and (j) on that list, which are found at the top of page 5. We think it's important that the plan should set itself some measurable goals against which progress can be measured. If progress can't be measured, then that planning exercise may become a paper one rather than a meaningful one for Canadians.

In devising those goals, as part of the planning strategy it would be useful to have a combination of technical goals and goals that might be thought to be colloquial in nature; that is, goals for which Canadians could actually measure progress in ecosystem health.

If you will look at page 20 of our brief, you'll find some of the sorts of things we had mind. I don't think we're saying that these are the goals that ought to be enshrined in plans, but they will give you a flavour of the types of goals we think might be useful, such as the goal that shellfish throughout the planning region will be fit for human consumption - things that Canadians can relate to and say, ``Yes, that's what's going on in the planning process. That's a real achievement that we've attained over the last number of years''.

Those are recommendations about the substance of the planning process in clauses 31 and 32.

What about recommendations on procedure? You'll find those a bit scattered through the brief, in recommendations 7, 10, and 11, but let me just summarize what I think those recommendations speak to.

First, they speak to the involvement of a variety of players. One of the things that has already been noted about the bill in the House debates at which I've had the opportunity to look is that there's virtually no mention of provinces in this section of the bill. They are treated like other interested persons. We are proposing that if one's going to plan for ecosystem health, then one needs to involve the provinces in that exercise because of the important impact of land-based activities on marine ecosystem health. We think particularly of the problem of land-based pollution.

I think it's fair to say, therefore, that we are very concerned about the existing clause 28 of the bill, which says that this part does not apply in respect of rivers and lakes. We think that if we're engaged in a planning exercise, then the last thing we want to be doing is looking at marine areas in isolation.

We also think that first nations and aboriginal peoples should be involved in this planning process. Indeed, we would say that in the context of some of the northern claims, like the Nunavut claim, there's actually a constitutional requirement that aboriginal peoples will be involved in this sort of planning process.

In addition to involving players outside of government, it's important that other federal government departments should be involved in the planning process - and not just at their discretion, because as NGOs we've had some unfortunate experiences with discretionary involvement. We would like to see it made a requirement of this bill that other government departments will participate in the planning process.

Also, in terms of procedure, it's important that the bill should incorporate elements of accountability and transparency. We would see accountability being achieved by a regular reporting back to the House, through the minister, on progress achieved under the planning process. We think it would be a good idea if the minister's report were referred to this committee for consideration and examination so there could be an examination of the progress that had been made under the planning exercise.

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Transparency we think can be achieved by having as open a process as possible, and through the involvement of non-governmental organizations.

In moving on from planning - we have recommendations that go to both substance and procedure in the planning exercise - I'd like to speak to one final element, and that is the importance of science. If we are moving from a commercial fish-centred approach to managing human activity in relation to oceans towards an ecological approach and an approach that focuses on ecosystem health, we ought to have a much clearer understanding of the role science can play. In our brief we note that our understanding of marine ecosystems is sorely lacking, particularly in the Arctic.

We include in the brief a note from one of the background papers we have prepared. I circulated this to members of the committee who were here earlier. We had a background paper prepared for us on marine conservation in the Canadian Arctic. It looks at ecosystem health in the Arctic Ocean. That was prepared by Dr. Buster Welch. He made the comment:

We think that state of affairs cannot continue. We need to have a more fundamental understanding of the way the ecological processes work, not just in the Arctic Ocean, but on both the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts and in the oceans.

You'll see in our brief recommendation 9 speaks to this point. It also speaks to the point about involving resource users, particularly aboriginal users, and their scientific knowledge, their traditional ecological knowledge, in managing for long-term ecological sustainability.

That concludes my remarks, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Dr. Peter Sly, do you have anything to add?

Dr. Peter Sly (Consultant, Canadian Arctic Resources Committee and Canadian Nature Federation - Wildlife Habitat): Mr. Chairman, my role here is simply to assist and answer questions, if I can.

The Chairman: Leslie, maybe you can tell us...because nobody really touched on it. I know it's in the brief. It's a common theme. You talk about consolidation. You'd like to see further consolidation in the proposed Oceans Act. You and I have talked about some of the concerns I have about legislation that is still the responsibility of other departments but that might more properly have been placed over with the Oceans Act to add some strength to it and to ensure it's not just a lot of motherhood, saying the ministers should talk to each other. We need something far more compelling than that.

You alluded to the fact that your understanding is that some further consolidations got lost in the toing and froing. That's even more reason why we have to have stronger language to compel those types of consultations and specifically require a minister to be the lead minister for those negotiations.

Can you talk a little about three acts, two of them under the Department of the Environment? The department provided us with documents that talk about other pieces of legislation; some of them may have been incorporated under the Canada Oceans Act and subsequently the responsibilities transferred to the Minister of Fisheries, but for others the line responsibilities stayed with the other minister.

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There's a couple in particular. One deals with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act with respect to ocean dumping. There's a note in the brief from the department that it is not in the COA, and the Minister of the Environment is still the responsible minister.

There is the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, specifically the sections dealing with control of land-based sources of pollution and offshore oil and gas toxic substance control. As well, there is a piece of legislation with the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act. It's not an act I've looked at. I said at the last meeting I had to look at it, but I haven't had a look at it yet.

Can you indicate to me whether it is the view of your organizations that a further consolidation of these acts would be desirable? You told us about two programs you didn't think should be consolidated, so maybe you can tell us specifically what should be consolidated and why.

Ms Beckmann: Thank you very much.

Can I just ask, what is that bell and do we have to worry about it?

The Chairman: Don't worry about it. That's Parliament going in.

Mr. Baker (Gander - Grand Falls): It's just the fire alarm.

Ms Beckmann: Okay. I won't say anything about fiddling while Rome burns.

I'd like to ask Peter Sly to answer a portion of that question, but in general, the first thing I would say is we're guided in what we think should be consolidated or not consolidated by the general principle that anything that facilitates management of complete ecosystems is a good thing. The more you can put together that brings all the functional pieces of an ecosystem together the better.

With respect to ocean dumping, which is currently under CEPA, we agree it should be part of this act.

With respect to the pollution and waste provisions in the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, we also agree they should be included within this present act.

Two items were mentioned in committee last week that you didn't mention. Responsibility for shellfish monitoring should be part of this act. As well, ships and ship safety - the environmental provisions that remain with Transport and weren't transferred with the coast guard - should also be moved.

With respect to land-based sources of marine pollution, however, the situation is slightly more complicated, and I turn to Dr. Sly to respond to that, reminding you that our point at the end of the day is to allow for complete ecosystem management.

Dr. Sly: Thank you, Leslie.

The problem here is we're mixing chalk and cheese and trying to come up with oranges at the end of it, in the sense that the supervision of onshore sites of potential contaminants can mean not only the sites that are immediate to the shoreline but also those that are substantially inland. We raise the issue of rivers, streams, lakes and estuaries entering into the oceans. We cannot manage these oceans in isolation from what is going on in the estuaries. How far back up the system does the sea become something else?

From the point of view of managing the actual facilities, the discharges and those sorts of things, there's nothing wrong with Environment Canada managing those activities as presently carried out. I would like to draw an analogy with the Great Lakes, where in fact much of the management of this kind of facility is carried out by the Province of Ontario. Nevertheless the lakes themselves come under international jurisdiction, and we have not only Environment Canada but Fisheries and Oceans as well as the province and a number of states directly involved with the management of pollution control.

The difference between the Great Lakes and the marine systems is there are now relatively well-defined objectives. We talk about swimmable, fishable, drinkable water in the lakes. We don't have to worry so much about drinkable sea water - certainly it must be drinkable for the fish and the wildlife - but we do have to worry about edible produce from the marine areas.

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We also have to worry very much about the fact that we want to have our harbours, estuaries, and similar areas in the coastal zone clean, not only from the esthetic point of view, but also from the point of view of all forms of refuse and discharge.

So from the point of view of the orange that we want at the end of this, we have to state clearly what the objectives of the management program are, and I think this was what we alluded to earlier on. We have to have a very clear statement of what we're trying to do with this act, the stated purpose.

It wasn't until the International Joint Commission made it very clear that what they wanted in the Great Lakes was swimmable, drinkable, fishable water that the agencies, both in Canada and in the U.S., were able to focus on the objectives and say exactly what had to be done to do this. If we achieve the same sort of thing in the marine environment and we say what we want to achieve in that marine environment - and this is the role of the politicians and the public - then the agencies can come onside. I think the mechanisms are available to ensure that they're held accountable to do these activities.

I'm not worried about taking the land-based pollution and trying to put it into the Canada Oceans Act. I think it's better left where it is because the expertise and the bulk of the problems are land-based. What we do need is a clear objective of what these pollution controls are to be expected to do, and then we need to ensure and enforce that the agencies, particularly Environment Canada and Fisheries and Oceans, in fact work to achieve that. I'm not saying we should tell them how to do it, but we can say that's what you have to do, now get on with it. That's their role.

The Chairman: I understand that, but I would ask either you or Leslie to go through this once again. Perhaps I'm a little slow this morning, but I missed some of your comments. Could you specifically name the acts or the programs that should be consolidated? Could you just do that again for me?

Ms Beckmann: Sure. They would be: the responsibilities for ocean dumping under CEPA; the responsibilities for shellfish monitoring, which currently reside with the Department of Environment, and I'm sorry I can't give you an act or a policy; ship and ship safety, which is currently with Transport Canada; and the pollution and waste provisions in the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, which are currently with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. I think in terms of mechanisms for land-based sources, a number exist and the issue is as Dr. Sly alluded to.

Does that help?

The Chairman: Yes, that helps a great deal.

Mr. Scott.

Mr. Scott (Skeena): I have three questions to begin with, Mr. Chairman.

When Nigel was making his presentation he talked about rivers and lakes being part of the plan. Am I given to understand that what you're suggesting is that this act move to take responsibility and jurisdiction over rivers and lakes away from provinces?

Mr. Bankes: That's clearly not our intention. We're not about the business of rewriting the Constitution of Canada here. We are of the view that the Government of Canada does have both constitutional responsibilities and powers that are relevant.

Although no doubt lakes and rivers are within the province, where there are spillover effects - in other words, where there are effects that originate in a province but have a consequence outside the province, such as with the case of marine-based pollution - the federal government does have a role to play in regulating that pollution and indeed does so under the current provisions of the Fisheries Act, dealing with the deposition of deleterious substances into waters frequented by fish.

We say there already is a federal role in rivers and lakes, and that ought to be reflected in the planning process that is incorporated in part II of the bill.

Mr. Scott: I have a great deal of difficulty with that. You know the Fisheries Act has already caused a great deal of conflict between provincial and federal jurisdiction. I would suggest that the Fisheries Act empowers the minister to ensure that the conservation of the resource is cared for. I would have a great deal of difficulty with moving beyond that.

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The second question I have is with respect to - maybe I misunderstood you in your presentation - a requirement to involve provincial ministries. I really wasn't quite clear. I think you said something about your recommending that there be a requirement to involve provincial ministries or the provinces in this bill.

Mr. Bankes: We're of the view that what is proposed in part II of the bill is a planning process that is directed at marine ecosystem health, and as Dr. Sly mentioned, one can't manage marine areas in isolation from land areas. A lot of what goes on in land areas is clearly going to have an effect on marine quality, on shellfish, on anadromous stocks of fish.

Therefore, we say that to plan involving only federal departments is simply avoiding the issue. It's clear to us that provincial governments have to be involved in that planning process. We probably can't compel them to be involved, but there should be an invitation in this bill that's directed at the provinces to involve them in these planning processes, as there is, for example, in the current Canada Water Act.

Mr. Scott: I guess that's the source of my question - are you suggesting that we compel or attempt to compel the provinces to be involved in this planning process, or are you suggesting this invitation? You've answered my question.

The third question I have relates to this. You talked about science and you talked about the fact that decisions should be based on good science, which I agree with. But then you went on to talk about other groups, and the one that particularly caught my attention was aboriginal involvement and aboriginal traditional involvement in habitat management and so on.

Certainly in my neck of the woods, aboriginal people I have talked to who are concerned about the environment - I'm not talking about politicians but people who have a concern about the fish resource and so on, because a great number of aboriginal people are involved - want the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to do it. They don't want to do it. They don't have the resources, they don't have the capacity, and their traditional involvement in the fishery has changed substantially in the last 150 years. What they're asking for, clearly, is that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans continue to manage with the best biological and scientific assistance they can get.

Quite frankly, I find it somewhat offensive to suggest that aboriginal people have a different way of looking at the environment, because I don't think they do. I find it offensive when somebody suggests that the aboriginal people of British Columbia, for example, can manage things better than non-aboriginals. I think human beings are human beings and we all have concerns for the environment; we all have concerns for the resources, particularly the fish resource on that coast.

I would ask you to expand your remarks on that a little bit, because I'm concerned when I see this kind of suggestion and that we should actually incorporate that into legislation.

Ms Beckmann: I think we probably all want to answer that one. Peter, do you want to start, or Nigel?

Mr. Bankes: Maybe I'll start, since the question was directed at something I had remarked on. Then we can pass the question along.

Clearly I didn't mean to offend, and I'm somewhat surprised that you found the comments offensive.

Mr. Dhaliwal (Vancouver South): He's only speaking for himself.

Mr. Bankes: We take the view that there are different ways of knowing, that there are different forms of knowledge out there in the world. Some of them are what we would think of as western scientific forms of knowledge, and there are some forms of knowledge that are held by aboriginal peoples as traditional users of the land. That knowledge ought to be helpful to us in managing resources.

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We are not suggesting here that management of resources or all the scientific work done in this area should be turned over to aboriginal people. We are saying that this bill ought to recognize that users of the resource - and we would include aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in that - have a lot to contribute to building our knowledge of how ecosystems operate.

Let me give you one concrete example of that. For the last number of years, CARC has been engaged in a major research project involving the community of Sanikiluaq in Hudson Bay and the Rawson Academy of Aquatic Sciences. That research project has attempted to build our knowledge of the way in which the Hudson Bay ecosystem operates, the way in which the Hudson Bay-James Bay bioregion works. We carried out that research by bringing together scientific knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge.

We found a significant interplay between the scientists and the resource users. They were able to pose questions to each other and get answers. They were able to find out things such as the fact that there actually is a resident stock of beluga whales in Hudson Bay throughout the winter. Scientists didn't know that. That was knowledge that came from resource users, based on the Belcher Islands down in the southeast of Hudson Bay.

So we take the view that there are significant advantages to be gained from incorporating that sort of knowledge in our understanding of ecosystems.

Scientists will generally tell you that what we have is base line data for maybe the last couple of years, for maybe the last couple of decades. When you bring in ecological users, where traditions and knowledge have been passed down through the generations, you get a time scale that you simply don't get with western science. So we think there are advantages in incorporating that knowledge in the way in which we plan and manage.

Ms Beckmann: Do you want to jump in? Then I will follow up.

Dr. Sly: I will add a bit to what has just been said.

It isn't simply the traditional knowledge from Inuit and Cree or from other first nations that we are talking about here. We are talking about traditional knowledge from all users.

I was involved with the Hudson Bay program. I was responsible for the science side and I worked directly with the traditional environmental knowledge as well. But the same kind of information package is available from the people who have lived on the Newfoundland coast and from many of the maritime people from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It is also true in British Columbia. It is even true for parts of the Great Lakes where I have been working.

There is a tremendous resource of information from people who live and work 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, in an area that scientists only visit occasionally when they can afford to go. We need to blend the two sets of information, and it is extraordinarily valuable to do.

Thank you.

Ms Beckmann: Because we held these regional workshops, I would like to give you another concrete example.

This one is based on comments made at our workshop in Halifax. One of the fishermen there said he pulled up things like that - and he gave the traditional name, and unfortunately, I can't remember it - but in his back and forth with the scientists at the workshop, they said, oh, that is a coral sea fan, and that might mean that there is a pocket of much of an ecosystem that usually occurs much farther south in this particular area off the coast of Canada; that would make it a special area and something we might want to investigate further. That is one example that demonstrates how this could work.

I think the issue really is that the more information of all types we can gather, the better management will be. Period. Full stop.

We are not saying that one way of managing or another is better or that one group has an inherently better way of managing. We are talking about as much knowledge as possible.

.1020

I'd also like to make one comment on your first question on rivers and lakes. I think what we're thinking about is the general peace, order, and good government kinds of provisions, in the sense that if a significant portion of a marine area that is under federal responsibility is being severely polluted by some upstream effect, then the federal government should not be hindered in going to talk to the provinces and saying, look, we think this is a problem.

That's how I would respond to that.

The Chairman: Mr. Baker, on a point of procedure, are you taking the Bloc's ten-minute time allocation, or the first one for the government side?

Mr. Baker: Whichever is longer.

First of all, I want to congratulate the witnesses for a very excellent presentation and a very excellent brief. I certainly support the thrust of a lot of these amendments that are being suggested.

But I'm wondering, in a general sense, when you look at all the things you talk about in your brief, and your very serious concerns, aren't they all addressed now in the Fisheries Act, the Environmental Contaminants Act, the freshwater act - all the acts, some of them at cross-purposes? When you're trying to figure out how to prosecute somebody for dumping or for misusing water with contaminants in some way, you probably have two or three acts you could prosecute them under, plus provincial legislation.

All the things you talk about in the area of conservation, for example, really are already contained, as far as I understand it, in present legislation we already have in Canada - everything. I can't think of one thing. I was going through all your amendments on management of the fishing resource, on gear management, and so on. It's all contained within present legislation.

We have people in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. These are experts. These are PhDs in fish biology. These are the people in charge of resource management. We have all these experts. These are scientific experts, and their credibility as scientists is beyond question.

Why, then, are you suggesting, even beyond our present domestic legislation, even in declaring the 200-mile EEZ this bill does.... That then requires Canada to do a lot of proper management by international law of the United Nations. The very fact that you declare the zone will mandate the Government of Canada to carry out the very things you're suggesting here.

So could you tell me why you think it is necessary to incorporate a lot of these things in this legislation? What would you say is new about your amendments? I mean, can you point towards something we're not now doing in Canada but is here in the recommendations you're making for amendments?

The Chairman: Who wants to tackle that one?

By the way, Mr. Baker, we'll make sure a transcript of these hearings goes over to the scientific research staff at DFO, particularly Dr. Doubleday -

Mr. Baker: Well, now, that's another question.

The Chairman: - that you consider them to be the best in the world.

Mr. Baker: They are. There's no doubt about it. These people we deal with every day. They're experts in the field, and they take into account a lot of the things you've been talking about in your literature, and so on.

Mr. Bankes: I'll make a start at answering that question. I take it really to be what does this bill add to the existing structure of legislation in Canada and what do our amendments to this bill add to what is being proposed. Let me deal with that under three heads: first, philosophy; second, coordination; and third, some issues of substance.

.1025

First, philosophy: One of the things this bill recognizes is a change in the philosophy of managing human activities in relation to the oceans. We've got the Fisheries Act, we've got the Department of Fisheries Act, but they are resource management statutes designed to maximize human utilization of the resource. They're not statutes that are focused on ecological health out of which will flow sustainable human utilization.

So there's a difference in philosophy that we think is being captured by this bill. We're suggesting a change in the philosophy to capture even better this concept of ecosystem health. So that's the first response.

Second, coordination: There is nothing in current legislation that we are aware of that requires coordination, that says let's bring together all the departments that have responsibilities for oceans and different aspects of oceans and let's plan for the future rather than making a series of ad hoc decisions such as the individual permit issued under the ocean dumping provisions of CEPA. We think some forward planning has to be going on here so these decisions will be made in a broader context. So we think that's a change that is being proposed here and we're suggesting ways of strengthening that.

In terms of substance, what's not being done now that we think this bill will do, I've already spoken to planning. The second example I would give is the marine protected areas that we are proposing here. We are proposing a broader conceptualization of marine protected areas.

There are currently provisions in the Canada Wildlife Act that allow for the creation of marine protected areas. We understand that at the moment they are being used for the protection of sea bird populations.

We think that the scope of the MPAs needs to be broadened, and that's what we capture in our amendment. We understand that it's also possible, under the Fisheries Act, to close a fishery in a particular area, with sorts of withdrawal orders that can be made. But they're not permanent orders. They're temporary; they have to be renewed. So we think that this bill, even as it stands, expands the possibilities for creating marine protected areas.

We are suggesting that that movement should be pushed even further and that marine protected areas should be set aside - ``created'' would be a better term - for the variety of purposes we mention in our brief.

Ms Beckmann: I'd like to add just a couple of points.

The first is with respect to marine protected areas. One thing we have to remember when we're talking about marine protected areas is that they don't mean no take zones. They don't mean you can't fish here. They don't mean you can't do a number of things here. As they're increasingly conceived of around the world, they are managed multiple-use zones, which gives a great deal of flexibility but increased integration of decision-making.

The best example is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which is managed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. They set aside certain areas that are completely off limits because they're particularly fragile. They also allow sport fishing. There are also zones for commercial fishing. There are also zones for motorized tourism, etc. This gives one a much more integrated way of managing.

The second thing I'd like to talk about is with respect to this vision and why it's important. I'm known around the office for my cock-eyed analogies, but I'll give you one.

Take, for example, a terrestrial analogy of an apple orchard. Someone says, ``Here's your apple orchard. Manage it and make the most from it. You can cut down the trees, if you wish, and you'll earn a rapid profit.'' Unless you're guided by a vision that says ``I want to keep this apple orchard for the next 150 years'', you're not going to necessarily take the fruit, plant more trees, etc. It's very simplistic, but that's basically why the vision is so important as far as I'm concerned.

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Mr. Baker: In the case of the apple orchard -

The Chairman: Be careful, Mr. Baker. This is the fisheries committee, not the agriculture committee.

Mr. Baker: In the case of the apple orchard example, we have a division of Fisheries and Oceans, resource management, which does exactly what you have pointed out.

As far as the dumping coordination is concerned, to get a permit for dumping, you must get clearance from Environment. You have to get clearance from six or seven federal and provincial departments, agencies and so on.

As far as ecosystem health versus resource management is concerned, the resource management has an incredible procedure to make sure the ecosystem is healthy or there will be no fishery. However, the whole system seems to have broken down in the case of the northern cod and so on.

The reason I was asking you the question is I was just searching for something new. There's a lot of things that we, the members of this committee, think should be new in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. There's no doubt about that.

I'm interested in the MPA. You have one listed that's close to my riding, called the Bonavista-Funk. It sounds like a new dance craze.

The Chairman: Like the Baker Boogie.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Baker: I presume that's Bonavista and the Funk Island banks.

Ms Beckmann: Yes.

Mr. Baker: Maybe you could make some reference to that.

Before you do, I'd like to say I appreciate what you say here concerning ecosystem health in that you are pointing out things that are presently not done by Fisheries and Oceans. You suggest that key species be preserved as key species, which Fisheries and Oceans has no concept of right now. There's no following along from the shrimp on up the food chain and what happens, unfortunately. There should be some coordination. I'm agreeing with you that there is no coordination. There is on paper, in writing, but there presently is not any.

What would you do in the MPA of Bonavista-Funk? I notice you said you won't restrict fishing totally. Certain types of gear would be restricted in an area like that. Could you elaborate on that?

Ms Beckmann: I would start by saying what's going on in Bonavista Bay and the Funk Islands is a really interesting cooperation among Parks Canada and a number of different resource users in the area. It wouldn't have happened without that kind of cooperation.

At first blush I wouldn't walk in and say this and this have to be done. I would do what Parks Canada has done; I would go in and talk with people, saying, ``This is a particularly important area. We'd like to work with you to make it work best for all of us and to ensure it continues to be healthy so that we can continue to reap resources from it and so that it can continue to exist as it currently is. We'd like to work together to manage it as a unit.'' As Dr. Sly alluded to, you can't put a wall at the shoreline and say what's on land is different from what's in the sea.

I wouldn't a priori say this or this should be done, but I would say that as a general rule those individuals would come together to agree on a rough kind of zoning about what can happen where, who does what and those sorts of things so there's greater coordination.

Also, I would encourage you to ask the same question of the World Wildlife Fund, which will be here presenting before you next week, because they are particularly informed about what's going on at Bonavista Bay-Funk Islands and could provide you with more information.

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Does that answer that component of the question?

Dr. Sly: Can I pick up a little on what Leslie's been saying? I'd like to take you away from Bonavista, or from Newfoundland or the whole area, and take away the detail.

You have asked what's new about the approach we're taking. I worked for 25 years as a federal civil servant before I left the government 5 or 6 ago. I was responsible for much of the work that was done in the Great Lakes, and in fact much of the inland research in lakes and rivers in this country. We learned a number of lessons over that period, and I was very privileged to have the opportunity to experience this. We tended to grow up, and tended to grow with our understanding of not only the environment but the way in which it has to be managed, or at least our use of the environment has to be managed.

So when you ask what's new about the approach, what I see in the approach we are proposing is that there is a more mature approach to a very complex problem. We recognize none of us have sole jurisdiction of anything. We recognize we're all players with different levels of authority and responsibility. We recognize we have to make very clear goals and objectives ahead that people can understand and see.

As a politician, you would not normally be very interested in the details of science. I didn't throw science at you in any detail, because you'd say what the heck is he talking to me about; there's no point in it.

Here, this set of briefs, the set of suggestions we're trying to put forward to you, try to provide a more comprehensive approach to managing a very complex issue. The present approach you alluded to is a scattergun of rules, regulations, responsibilities, all over the place. I know perfectly well it's a hell of a job for any manager to try to pull that together. Somebody has to have a better grasp of the responsibilities. But by the same token they must also be held accountable.

I think what we've tried to do is to say perhaps we're a step further towards it in this approach. We recognize there are other players: the first peoples, the provinces. We didn't talk about the international side very much, but they're also very large players in this game. Everybody has to work together, and we have to have certain very clear objectives. That was why we entered in with a purpose.

You ask what's new about this. Well, there ain't no purpose in the existing acts; and I'm saying that's a very important step forward. So I think we have something here which is quite different.

Nigel said the philosophy is different. It is; and there's an awful lot that goes with that philosophy.

I apologize for taking over and pushing this, but I think it is important, and I think there's a lot of new stuff.

The Chairman: Mrs. Payne.

Mrs. Payne (St. John's West): I was a little nervous following my colleague Mr. Baker, because I thought he was going to get into the very thing I wanted to bring up.

This is probably a very touchy subject. It has to do in fact with the whole chain, the whole ecosystem and the food chain and all the rest of it. I want to get some comment from you on what's happening with our seal fishery and the things that go on from there. Could you just elaborate on that without my putting any words in your mouth? Nobody out there wants to touch it.

Ms Beckmann: You're right. The seal issue is a touchy one, and my preference is to say as little as possible.

My belief is that it is a very complex system out there, which we know very little about. My belief is that the more humans interfere in a system, the more likely it is going to continue to be destabilized.

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The disappearance of the cod is not primarily because of an overpopulation of seals. I think it is not primarily due to a change in water temperatures. I think it is not primarily due to any number of other unknown factors. All of those have exacerbated the situation. However, I think harvesting techniques and quotas are the primary cause for the collapse of the stocks.

In terms of whether or not a seal harvest is a priori good or bad, as long as a harvest is well within conservation limits I don't see it as any different from fishing. It is the taking of a resource for human use. Particularly in the north, we have people who still rely on country foods for survival and subsistence.

I think I'd like to leave it there. Does that answer some of your questions?

Mrs. Payne: Not really.

Ms Beckmann: Okay, what would you like to know?

Mrs. Payne: I'll just put some words in your mouth then.

Ms Beckmann: Sure.

Mrs. Payne: We do have an unprecedented number of seals. That's a well-known fact. We do know, and scientists are now beginning to acknowledge, that in fact seals do consume a huge amount of cod. We do know that they are consuming a huge amount of capelin. We do know that they are now infesting our cod with worms. What is your reaction to all those things?

Dr. Sly: Here's a bit of half-science. We don't know the answers to most of the points you're raising, at least not the way we should. Unfortunately, part of that is because of the approach we've taken, which has not been an ecosystem approach, trying to understand complete food chains and the interrelations between various components.

If we take first of all the human need for the meat and for the fur, that still exists in some parts of the maritime areas. If humans did not act as a predator upon seals, there would have been other predators there in the past, such as polar bears in the northern part of the range. Certainly some of the larger marine mammals would also be able to deal with them.

A lot of that is gone because we've often wiped them out ourselves; we've taken the other species. Yes, we have left a gap in the normal food chain, which has allowed the seal population to expand very rapidly. I can't see any reason to deny the taking of some seals as long as, as Leslie says, it remains within reasonable conservation limits.

If the seals are the host of a particular parasite, they're not the only host; there are lots of other parasites. It so happens that this particular parasite is being introduced into the cod stocks at this point in time, when they're highly stressed anyway.

We have a system out there that is in very considerable disequilibrium. It's very, very stressed and there are lots of things going on which perhaps would not normally have occurred. We have major changes, not only in the predator-prey relationship, but also in the food chain at a lower level, and we also have temperature changes, which are having large effects on the system.

I'm not prepared to say at this point in time whether it is a good thing or bad thing to take seals. My view is that if you need them to live because they are a food or because they are a source of fur which you can sell because that's the way you make your living, so long as it occurs within a reasonable balance of the population's capability to sustain itself and remain healthy, I have no problem with it.

I don't know if that helps, but I'm not against sealing. I certainly am against cruelty. I would like to see the seals dispatched in a very clean and effective manner so that the animals are not put through pain unnecessarily. We certainly drag fish along the bottom for a long period of time and drown them, which must be one hell of a position for a fish to be in. In many cases some of the fish that we bring up die on board, which is an equally unpleasant suffocation.

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So we're not exactly the most humane of catchers or predators. But we do these things because we have to, as well.

Mrs. Payne: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: We're going to close up, but I can't let that one go. This is a major issue that affects the livelihood of tens of thousands of individuals - the survivability, the recovery of the stock - and it appears to me that each time we get into a conflict between seals and fish, the prettier of the two always seems to generate the greatest amount of public sympathy.

The difficulty I have regarding the statements that have been made or have been made by other scientists is that I have no idea why scientists over the years have had such difficulty in directing their brilliant science, as Mr. Baker has indicated, toward this problem. It wasn't a problem just yesterday.

There is a predator-prey relationship. Man or other factors have gone in and have upset that ecosystem. The question was, now that we've upset it, do we just allow it to continue to get out of whack, or should we try somehow to correct it?

Secondly, whether the science is in or out as to the degree of causation of the seal predator in the cod collapse, there seems to me to be a growing body of scientific knowledge regarding the seals, that maybe they weren't a factor in the collapse, but the preponderance of seals and the very small numbers of cod that currently exist the seal population as it currently stands is a factor in the slow or non-recovery of the stock.

In short, when you had millions of tonnes of cod and the seals, yes, they were a predator along with others. Now that we have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands - I don't know where we are on the seals - and very few fish...what is it, George?

Mr. Baker: Seven million.

The Chairman: They are now a factor in the lack of recovery.

Would anybody at that end of the table agree? We've had other scientists here who have said that they don't know that seals are the major factor in the collapse, but they now agree that their numbers are a factor in the lack or the slow recovery of the stock. And then we're not going to talk about seals.

Dr. Sly: You may well be right. I honestly don't know. I would like, however, to draw an analogy.

If you look at the caribou, you will see the populations of caribou go through cycles of boom and bust. Whether they did in the past before we had records of what was going on to the same extent that they seem to be going through at the present time, I have no idea.

But every one of these larger members of the food change is usually controlled at some point by a predator, and the predators are in small numbers. When the predator population does not manage to keep control of these large expansions of things like the seals, or the caribou, they can go wild and you end up with a boom and bust cycle.

Unfortunately the same sort of thing we're seeing here has happened in the Baltic. There is tremendous competition for the herring between the fishermen and the seals, and at the present time the seals are losing out very badly. It will probably happen here too.

I cannot tell you, because I do not know the answer to your question, but I suspect you may be right.

The Chairman: The last question I have deals with an amendment you're proposing, as your recommendation 4. You talk that there should be an explicit link between marine conservation strategy and the plans.

Down in area F, you say something that might be controversial; that is, areas within which ocean dumping, dredging and bottom-dragging harvesting devices should not be permitted. Are you subtly or directly making a comment about the environmental sanity of that particular gear type? Why is that in there specifically?

We've dealt with this at committee, not terribly effectively because on nearly anything dealing with the oceans and the fishery there are two sides or more. Are you making a statement here that bottom-dragging gear types are ecologically damaging, or more damaging than fixed gear?

What are you trying to say there? I understand ocean dumping is bad, but what I'm asking is, are you also making an extension that in a large number of cases this particular gear type is also bad? If so, what science do you have to back that up?

Dr. Sly: I think the comments were made more in general rather than specific, in the sense that we were not trying to suggest that a particular kind of gear should not be permitted in general use.

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There are some environments where, because of natural agitation at the bottom, if you like, by waves and currents, there is a continual renewal which is somewhat akin to the kinds of things that go on as a result of dragging. There are other bottom types where dragging has a very definite and deleterious impact.

It is not simply a matter of looking at the gear and saying it shouldn't be used. It's a matter of the gear and the environment in which it is in use and trying to understand the long-term impact of the kinds of things that are going on.

For example, we know some species of whales quite happily burrow away in the northwest Pacific, and they have been doing this, sifting the sediment and taking huge mouthfuls of material on the bottom. If you look at the bottom, either in photographs or from side-scan sonar records, you can see huge excavation pits which have been made by the animals in trying to take up the bottom fauna, because that's the way they feed. The same sort of thing has happened with the walrus.

So simply disturbing the bottom, on its own, in the right kind of environment may not be a problem. In the wrong kind of environment, where you destroy the structure of the sediment interface and it is not rebuilt, or at least it is not rebuilt over a sufficiently rapid time or in the same structure as it was originally...then we may have a major impact which is deleterious.

It is a much more complicated question than simply, is the gear appropriate or not? It is the gear, its use, the frequency, and the location.

Ms Beckmann: I think what we're aiming for is the most passive, most selective gear available, so we do a minimum of damage.

Mr. Baker: So what you're suggesting is that you're more or less forcing government to take a look at these things.

Ms Beckmann: By gear type?

Mr. Baker: Yes. You're forcing the government to take a look at the food chain. You're forcing the government to take a look at the spawning areas, under this legislation, whereas at present it does not exist in our legislation. It forces the government to tie all these different things together.

Mr. Bankes: Yes.

Ms Beckmann: Yes.

Mr. Dhaliwal: I want to congratulate you on a wonderful presentation.

I have just one or two quick questions for clarification on marine protected areas. In your point 11 you've asked that we define marine protected areas. As you know, marine protected areas are for a variety of reasons. They might be for science, to protect an ecosystem, to protect a nursing area. There are a variety of reasons for having marine protected areas.

I'm wondering if in your recommendation you are saying we should do it in the bill or we should look at doing it in regulation. One of the things you need as a minister is some flexibility to deal with this, whether it is having clear definitions...also in the process by which you determine marine protected areas, because it is not that easy to go to communities that may be utilizing that area, whether they be fishermen or recreational users, saying, well, now we're restricting this area. We also have to develop a process, which should come later on.

But also, we should leave some flexibility, because the reasons for MPAs may change as you go along. You may want to have an MP area that protects nursing areas.

When you say we should define it, is this something you would recommend in regulation or in the bill? I think you would want to leave the minister with some flexibility as changes occur. As you know, to bring an act back before Parliament is a much more difficult task than simply changing regulations, which is a lot easier to deal with and a lot more efficient if we set up a process on how an MPA is created and for defining MPAs.

I just want you to clarify your position on that.

Mr. Bankes: We did propose defining MPAs, and we proposed defining them in the bill. But the way we did that was through recommendation 13. Numbers 11 and 13 need to be read together, and clause 35 provides what you might call a definition. It says that an MPA may be designated under this clause for special protection for one or more of the following reasons.

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That's as far as we were proposing to go in coming up with a definition and, as you see, it provides any one of a number of reasons for creating an MPA. It would be possible to broaden that language so that it could say ``and for any other similar purpose''.

To get to the point about why we propose that it should be done in the act rather than in regulations, it seems to us that this is an important point; that is, we're talking about restricting certain types of activities in certain zones within marine protected areas. We're not saying that these areas are going to be off limits to everyone, that there's going to be no resource harvesting in these areas; but you have to look at the reason for which you're setting aside an MPA and then design a set of zoning regulations that are specific to the needs of that particular MPA or that type of MPA.

At bottom, we think this should be done in the act, not in regulations. One always has to balance the need of the minister and cabinet for flexibility with the need for some clear direction to the department and to civil servants, and clear direction to NGOs, who want to be monitoring government and saying, ``Well, you said you were going to set aside MPAs. Where's the evidence that you've done that, for what purpose are you setting them apart, and are you permitting too many activities within those particular areas?'' If you have a statutory test against which to measure those things, then you have some measure of progress and some system of accountability.

Mr. Dhaliwal: In your point 11 you say for definition ``and the activities that may occur in them''. Part of the process when we get community involvement should be to have the community come and say which activities should continue and which shouldn't. It should be a process whereby we consult with the community and in the end determine, under an MPA, what activities are concerned - as a result of the consultation and the process that has occurred within the community.

If we prejudge that and say that under an MPA only certain activities can happen, then I think you're setting yourself a in solid position from which it might be more difficult to create MPAs, when you have already established what activities as opposed to saying, ``Here's an MPA we want to create, and this is the purpose'', and then going to the community and getting it to participate and say what activities should or shouldn't occur as a result of your fundamental objective of creating that MPA.

Do you think that's a better process?

Mr. Bankes: We accept a lot of what you're saying, certainly on the process side, because one of the points we make here is that there should be a link between the planning process that's going on and the creation of MPAs. So we see consultation as occurring as part of that planning process, one outcome of which might be the creation of MPAs.

Even if MPAs are being created outside of the planning process, we certainly take the point that there should be consultation with resource users and that limitations that might be imposed on use of the area in the future should be worked out with the affected communities.

Mr. Dhaliwal: [Inaudible - Editor] ...what activities are taking place within the MPA?

The Chairman: On behalf of the committee, I think I can indicate to you that we've found your brief to be extremely helpful. You've put a lot of work into this. You've done a tremendous amount of consultation leading up to it. I can assure you that some of the recommendations you've made will be seriously considered as the committee brings this thing to a conclusion over the next few weeks at report stage.

I also hope that somebody from your organization, probably you, will be available throughout these hearings. At the end of them, when we'll be doing the clause-by-clause consideration, we might wish to have Leslie back and just make sure you're here to explain further some of the recommendations you've made. Hopefully, when Bill C-98 gets reported you'll see some of your inputs going into it.

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Now we have Thomas Lee, assistant deputy minister of Parks Canada, and David McBurney, marine area co-ordinator. Thank you for being patient with us today. The last witnesses gave us a brief report that we could almost report to Parliament and the members wanted to explore a couple of aspects of it.

I want to welcome you to the committee, and we're all set. What time do you have to be out of here?

Mr. Thomas Lee (Assistant Deputy Minister, Parks Canada, Department of Canadian Heritage): I'm scheduled elsewhere at 11:45 a.m., but I have made arrangements to be able to delay that a little if need be.

The Chairman: Okay, I think we'll be fine.

Mr. Lee: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you trying to accommodate my schedule as well. In line with your opening remarks, I will try to be brief to give you as much discussion as possible.

You have a deck in front of you that I will speak to, regarding the national marine conservation areas program.

First of all may I say that my minister and Minister Tobin, the sponsoring minister, have already exchanged views and letters on this. They are mutually supportive of the type of law that is being brought forward and of the reinforcement of relationships between the programs we and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have responsibility for.

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I would like to really focus on national marine conservation areas and what they are. On the second part of the deck we note that national marine conservation areas are part of Parks Canada's network of protected areas. These include national parks, national historic sites, national marine conservation areas, historic canals and Canadian rivers.

A couple of points on this may be of interest to the committee. These places go beyond just conservation and enjoyment uses; they are really part of the character of Canada. They help to define Canada as a nation. They have a surprisingly high place in the perceptions of the people of Canada. In an Environics poll in 1994 we found out that national parks and national historic sites rank only behind the Canadian flag and the national anthem as symbols of Canada. So both the national parks or national historic sites and national marine conservation areas are part of that family.

The second major point that would be interesting to the committee is the role these places play within the tours and economy of Canada. If you pulled out the Michelin Guide to Canada, you would find that two-thirds of all the three-star attractions in Canada are either managed or sponsored by the Department of Canadian Heritage. Among those is the system of protected areas.

What are the national marine conservation areas objectives and where do they fit into the proposed Oceans Act? The first objective is to protect and conserve the representative areas of significance of the oceans and the Great Lakes. To that extent, our objectives are broader than the Oceans Act and we have to accommodate that.

The second objective is to encourage public understanding, appreciation and enjoyment. So we have a public use dimension that is unrelated to the commercial extraction objective, but it's part of what I would describe as Canadians getting to know Canada and other Canadians. That is one of the functions these places perform.

Finally, the national marine conservation areas have a distinctive objective in that it is the intention that they be established for all time. They're not temporary reserves to fix something. The long-term objective is to manage them in a manner that leaves them unimpaired for future generations.

You have a document entitled Sea to Sea to Sea and you should read that. It's even good bedtime reading. It tells you a lot about Canada and is written in a style that I think is quite enjoyable. From it you will really get a flavour of what we're trying to do here. It describes how we can look at national marine conservation areas in a systematic sense. There would be a limited number of them and they would represent the special, unique, outstanding places in Canada that typify or exemplify our oceans and our relationship to our oceans.

The national marine conservation area is not only a Canadian program, it's part of a worldwide effort. In 1991 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which is a unique organization that includes some 150 governments from around the world and over 800 NGOs, issued its guidelines for the establishment of marine protected areas and really incorporated the approach. It's based very much on the approach Canada is piloting.

In 1994 it called for coastal nations to proceed with the establishment of such areas. In the Canadian context in its role in the global environment, the creation of these areas is part of our commitment under the convention, or part of a mechanism, to meet our commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

.1110

What is a national marine conservation area? It's typically a large area. The Gwaii Haanas Reserve, which is associated with the Gwaii Haanas Park on the west coast, encompasses over 3,000 square kilometres. Even that is small by international standards. The Great Barrier Reef, which was referred to earlier, is over 350,000 square kilometres. The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in California is some 13,000 square kilometres.

These areas try to include the seabed, the subsoil, and the overlying water column. That is the direction we're heading in and that is what our current legislation would provide for. As a matter of policy and legislation, we would prohibit some activities in those areas: gas extraction, seabed mining, and ocean dumping. There would be some core protected zones. On the other hand, those areas outside of the protected zone are also to be managed as models of sustainable use. Within that context, I think national marine conservation areas can play a particular role.

I have been involved in natural resource management throughout my career, and one of my observations is that to try to achieve sustainable development is a very difficult thing to do. What I hope we've learned is that by concentrating our effort on some pilot or model areas, we can advance our knowledge and practices much faster and then use those pilots to spread it across to other non-designated areas. National marine conservation areas can perform that role in the sense that those could become focuses of models of how best to do it and from that become sources of knowledge that can expand beyond that.

National marine conservation areas are managed under the authority of the National Parks Act. That is an existing situation, and an amendment occurred in 1988 to permit that.

I should say to the committee that the the National Parks Act is an interim piece of legislation. The National Parks Act was obviously intended to manage land, and to say that you could simply take that act and try to manage the surfaces or the underwater or the beds of water is a little bit difficult to do. We are currently working on some legislation that might eventually, we would hope, evolve into a national marine conservation area act, which would obviously be complementary to the Oceans Act but would contain the specific things that are needed to manage the type of place that we would be involved in managing.

The management of these places is different from that of national parks. For national parks, Parks Canada is the owner, manager, judge, and jury, the entire proprietor. In the case of national marine conservation areas, we are only one of a number of groups who would be involved in managing these special areas. The specific other groups are obviously the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Department of Transport, and the Department of Environment.

We are making modest progress in establishing national marine conservation areas. The first designation was Fathom Five in Georgian Bay in 1987. A 1988 agreement incorporated the Gwaii Haanas, and there was a 1990 agreement with Quebec. The management plan for that was just recently announced, within the last two weeks. It's jointly with Quebec on the St. Lawrence-Saguenay.

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We are working in other areas. We have signed an agreement with British Columbia to work toward the establishment of two more areas on the Pacific coast. That agreement was signed and announced in July of this year. As referenced in your previous discussion, we are having consultations with local people on the Bonavista-Funk area. We have been exploring with Ontario at the staff level, the professional level, a proposal for a national marine conservation area in western Lake Superior.

In terms of process, the debate in the previous discussion was interesting. I'll use Bonavista-Funk as an example. It might eventually become a national marine conservation area, but we start with some simple discussions with local people. We start with: What is happening here? What are your needs? Do you think a proposal like this might help? Could we find ways to work together? Would it be important to do them?

If the answer is yes, then the second step is to talk about a marine conservation area and what could be done. That goes through a public process. Our processes are required by policy to be public processes. There is no national park or national marine conservation area established in Canada without public consultation.

If we get past the second stage and people still think it's the right idea, then we move into formal creation of an area.

We believe Bill C-98 does complement what we are trying to do. First of all, the national marine conservation areas in our programs are specifically directed and limited in objectives. It is not the network of protected areas or management systems that is needed for Canada's oceans. It's one piece of the puzzle. The Oceans Act obviously is taking steps to accommodate the large variety of other pieces.

We believe the bill, particularly in the management strategy and the planning that goes with it, provides a forum to assess feasibility. We mentioned such areas. We mentioned that we can proceed both ways. If people want to talk about a marine conservation area, we can talk about a marine conservation area. On the other hand, if marine conservation areas arose out of a more comprehensive planning process, that would be very logical and orderly, and to that extent the proposals in the bill are of very positive assistance to us.

We believe the Oceans Act In its intent does increase the viability of our areas, because we know you can't manage any place as an island. The borders are always touching something, and something is always happening between those borders. In the proposals under the Oceans Act as we envisage them, the planning and management provide for the opportunity to establish that relationship in a positive manner.

There's one item in the legislation that I did note. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how this would be interpreted, but there is a point of clarification that the committee might wish to pursue. I've noted that under clause 35, the paragraph relating to the protection of fish uses the word ``fishery''. I'm unclear on whether the interpretation of that would be that the application of the act would be limited to protection of commercial fisheries versus protection of fish. They're two different but related things.

The committee may wish to consider that. I personally would very much like to receive clarification of the actual intent of that clause.

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The Chairman: I can't give it to you, but we have people here from the department. Before you leave we'll ask them to give us some definition on that.

Mr. Lee: It's not important that I get it today, Chairman. It's just a -

The Chairman: Well, you asked for it.

Mr. Lee: Okay.

The Chairman: We'll see if this interdepartmental cooperation works. Fisheries and Parks are here. We'll see if they can talk by the end of the day.

I'm confused. It's the normal state of my being, but today I'm confused because the Oceans Act...and Mr. Baker has pursued a line of questioning with the last witness that I thought was very important: What is new? Why do we have a proposed Oceans Act? The response from the previous witness was that it focuses the attention; it gives line authority; it reduces interfaces between programs and departments, so if you have a public policy that says that's where we're going, it's not going to be mired down in endless politicking and toing and froing in bureaucracies.

How does this work? A document came out from your minister this summer. Mrs. Payne had it at one of her earliest hearings, I think. It was released in June or July. It's a letter to members of Parliament talking about the national marine conservation areas.

I'm still not exactly sure how the two of them relate. Am I properly understanding what you've just presented to us as saying your department has a process for identifying and declaring national marine conservation areas? I'm not sure if you do, because you mentioned legislation. Could you clarify that for me?

If you do, what is the process? What are the criteria? Is it based on heritage? Is it based on conservation, or conservation of marine heritage? I'm not sure what all that means, because normally when we talk conservation, we're talking about the ecosystem, we're talking about the fish stocks and things like that.

Exactly what is the requirement under your program for consultation with the Minister of Fisheries? Is there a requirement here? I would expect if you go forward and you designate an area as a national marine conservation area, it could have an impact on things such as an active fishery in the area.

I'm wondering exactly how this works. Can you declare an area over the objections of the Minister of Fisheries? It may interfere with an active, viable, sustainable fishery. How do these two things relate? We were hoping this bill was really going to consolidate it, so there were clear lines of authority. I'm not saying this takes away from that. I'm just not sure how it works.

Mr. Lee: How it works.... First of all, you should be aware - you are probably already aware - an interdepartmental group was established at the deputy minister level to ensure coordination occurs in these areas, and particularly at this time, as we were moving ahead both with the Oceans Act and, for example, the sea-to-sea statement. So a process is in place that ensures there are no surprises in that area. It's done in pure cooperation. We understand each other's roles, and that is taken care of.

There is no legislated order in which we do that, not that I'm aware of. I think it's good government. But we'll leave that be.

About the public process, as I indicated, the process we use - and you see the beginning of it in that document; and it's the same as for national parks - is we state where we're going in the long term. So we've stated in that public document that we believe over time we could create a system of national marine conservation areas in Canada, for 29 different parts of Canada. The selection of those - and I think you are coming at this from the right direction, Mr. Chairman - is quite distinct from the management problems and issues we have to face.

Our question is, first, what are the special ocean heritages of Canada? What are those special places in Canada which, just like national parks, are special places that represent the oceans as the national parks represent the land, that represent the wildlife, that represent in some cases the heritage of Canada?

The heritage side, if you take a look at Fathom Five, is based on shipwrecks - thirty underwater shipwrecks. On the other hand, wildlife, a spectacular shoreline or a unique ecology are all part of Canada's heritage.

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When you think of it, that is what we're involved in, conserving the heritage of Canada as represented by its oceans and presenting it to the public. It's quite distinct from resource management plans or issues that have to be dealt with in an area.

The Chairman: But that is my question, because some of us have been around long enough to know that the best-intentioned programs and legislation can get bogged down interdepartmentally. I know there are processes under way to try to facilitate better communication, but the reality is that it happens every day and we all deal with it. It never gets into the fuzzy area of whose responsibility it is. That makes it difficult for programs to be realized in many cases.

I'm trying to figure it out because I like to see clearer lines. That's why I welcomed the Canada Oceans Act because it seemed to clear up some of the foggy relationships between departments.

Are you satisfied that this will not be a problem?

Mr. Lee: I believe the bill is a step forward. Before the bill we were in the position of saying that we wanted to see a system of national marine conservation areas in terms of part of a program of protecting the ocean environment. I suppose other people, including Fisheries, although they didn't to the best of my knowledge say they didn't want any of those darn things around or ask what we were doing....

I think the bill is helpful in that sense because it states broadly there will be a system of protected areas within the oceans of Canada. I suppose it isn't explicit in that sense. I don't know whether we could be. Three were mentioned already. One is national marine conservation areas, one is the protected bird areas, and the other is the protected fish or fisheries areas, depending on interpretation. But that is not necessarily the extent of protected areas.

I don't know if the bill should try to define the extent. Maybe it should stick to the generic and let the programs come out. I don't think the bill has tried to be explicit, Mr. Chairman, in what the total range or number or types of protected areas should be, and I don't know of anybody who could define them at this point in time.

The Chairman: This is my last question, and I'll use this example because I'm still unclear.

There are two processes now. Once this bill is passed, we have two processes for designation of marine protected areas and I understand there could be some overlap as to the qualifications to have an area designated under the Canada Oceans Act by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans or by the Minister of Canadian Heritage. There can be an overlap. There can be similar reasons. So there are two different ways that you can do this in some circumstances.

But what I'm trying to figure out is this. If your department goes in and says it's a great idea to have a marine protected area in here for all the right reasons, and if it interferes with an active fishery in a substantial way, before you designate do you have to seek permission from the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans so that the commercial fishery or the recreational fishery in that area will be suspended? I'm just looking at process here.

Mr. Lee: We would have to achieve a cabinet decision that would obviously include the Minister of Fisheries. We do not have designation powers.

The Chairman: Anything you do is through Governor in Council.

Mr. Lee: That's right, and we go through a cabinet process.

The Chairman: So your minister does not have the authority in and of himself or his office to make the designation.

Mr. Lee: No.

The Chairman: It's a Governor in Council designation and the consultation would be done.

Mr. Lee: The consultation occurs long before that. As I say, I described the Bonavista thing, the public consultation, the ministerial consultation, and if you get through all of those you finally get into cabinet and say would you like to have.... You go in and say that the people, including the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, think we should have a marine conservation area, and you ask if the government wishes to establish a marine conservation area in there.

The Chairman: Okay. Mr. Baker.

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Mr. Baker: I'm interested in that possible conflict that could arise between Parks Canada and Fisheries and Oceans. Let me put it in the form of an example.

Fisheries and Oceans allows fishing on spawning grounds. Fisheries and Oceans allows the use of draggers that drag the ocean floor. Somebody used the example of clear-cutting on land. It's like that on the bottom of the ocean. At the ends of the nets there are two big steel traps that are dragged along the ocean floor. The big iron bars that go across dig up everything, and these things drag for hundreds of kilometres.

Anybody with half an iota of common sense would say that this is ridiculous and that we shouldn't be allowing these draggers to drag the ocean floor and that we have a marine protected area.

Secondly, scientists would say to you, ``Well, we don't know the effect'' - and this is the official philosophy of Fisheries and Oceans - ``we don't know whether or not it harms the fishery to fish in spawning areas''. They say this in all sincerity.

It's not that the scientists don't know; it's that the scientific method used to find out if it actually harms the fishery is this. You would have to have a period of fishing in the spawning area; then you would have to stop fishing for an extended period; and then you would have to bring the fishing back again. You would have to compare those various moments in time to see if in fact it had any effect, whereas you and I would sit down and say, with any fisherman or anybody, ``Look, it certainly has an effect. You shouldn't be fishing during the spawning period''.

So my question is this. You have a marine protected area. Say it's Bonavista-Funk, as you have it identified. You have a marine protected area and everybody agreed, Parks Canada agreed, that we can't have those draggers out there, and they shouldn't be fishing because the Funk Island bank is a spawning area. But Fisheries and Oceans says, ``Aha, we have no evidence that this harms the resource, because if we had the evidence that it harms the resource there'd be no fishing on the Hamilton or Georges Banks. We wouldn't have any fishing on any of these banks where the fishery now is concentrated throughout eastern Canada.''

We haven't learned very much over the years.

Anyway, you've got this big conflict. Who resolves it?

Mr. Lee: That's a very interesting question.

First, before the marine conservation area was established there would be certain agreed-upon stated objectives for that area. So those are stated up front. When it is established, a management plan is put in place. That management plan provides for zoning.

To take the example given by the scientist from the previous panel, areas would be established, and these would be permanent. One can say they're benchmark areas or areas where you can compare what you do here against a benchmark that is untouched. So areas would be established in which none of that would be permitted, and those would be the type of areas for which you could say we can do something over here, but we will always be able to compare it to something that is happening naturally.

The second one, when you get into the commercial or the multiple or the sustainable management areas, is that our act would tend to be enforced on the very conservative side because of the nature of the legislation itself. The direction that the management plan would have, as approved by the minister, would be to have.... ``Conservative'' probably isn't the right word. I believe the best-known practices, the best science, and the best management would be applied to that area. The signature on that management plan would be the signature of the minister responsible for Parks Canada.

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Mr. Baker: I don't know if that answers my question or not. Do you think it does?

Mr. Lee: I think so.

Mr. Baker: Would you anticipate that the Migratory Birds Convention Act would not apply for shooting seasons for migratory birds in such a designated area?

Mr. Lee: No. Again, the marine conservation area could include areas for no shooting in areas where harvesting occurred.

The Chairman: Mrs. Payne.

Mrs. Payne: I just want to follow along on the line that Mr. Baker was just following, except that I want to throw in another element there. Basically the formula I have here is conservation versus preservation versus economic development versus sustainable development. This is all thrown into one pot.

Actually, the Bonavista-Funk area is probably a very good one to use as an analogy. We're looking at an area there, as George just said, where there are breeding grounds and lucrative fishing grounds. At least, there used to be. Also, some 15 or 20 years ago, we started doing offshore oil exploration there. We're now getting into the development stage.

I remember going through the environmental assessment studies that were taking place at the time of the oil exploration there, and fishing in fact seemed to take second place. We're now looking at the destruction, devastation, and depletion of what used to be a very lucrative fishery, which in fact took second place to the oil development. Can you give me some sense of which would be a priority in your mind, assuming that you still look at that area as a conservation area?

Mr. Lee: Personally, I don't know this area very deeply. I should tell you that I did take a busman's holiday, working on my own holidays. I spent a week in the Bonavista area this summer talking to fishermen, talking to my staff, talking to federal managers.

You're looking for a balance, a management system, here. If there was a decision to proceed there, there would be preservation for sure. We believe there would be the need within Bonavista for fully protected areas of some kind. There would be zones of use, or what we call conservation or sustainable management type areas.

There would be economics in terms of use of the resource, the fishery, which there isn't now, but hopefully in the future there would be. There would be increased economic benefit from tourism. These areas would become national and international attractions as places for people to visit, just as the national parks are. So there are economic dimensions there.

Before we establish the area, we have a process again, and this works and it's not established by law. With all national parks or national marine conservation areas, before they are created there's a thorough research done on the geology - mineral, oil or gas - to determine if there are reserves of significance in that area. If it is determined that there are reserves of significance and if the priority is put on carrying out that type of economic activity, there will not be a marine conservation area.

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Mrs. Payne: Economic development would take precedence over conservation?

Mr. Lee: No, only in the sense of whether you would want a national marine conservation area. You may still want conservation. You may want to carry out oil and gas.... If you want to do that, you don't have a national marine conservation area.

Mrs. Payne: Well, that's basically my question. Who determines what takes place?

Mr. Lee: Again, there's a public process. The process is exactly as I have described it. The information we have is put before the public. As part of the research that goes into it, we would use existing...or more typically, for oil and gas we do more extensive geological work, specific geological work, related to that area. That information is published, just as all the biological or natural or other information is published. Those go through a series of public discussions. If in the public discussions - and there's always a balancing act here -

Mrs. Payne: I know the process. I'm familiar with the process. My question is -

Mr. Lee: Cabinet makes the decision.

Mrs. Payne: That's the answer. Thank you.

The Chairman: You have alluded to the possibility of legislation coming forward in future for the establishment of national marine conservation areas. If you can already do it now and it's Governor in Council, why would you require legislation? Once you explain that, could you also indicate to me if you view this pending legislation as being similar to or different from the provisions of the Oceans Act on the designation of marine protected areas?

What I'm saying is marine protected areas now are by Governor in Council under clause 35, so that makes sure all those senior players do talk before it happens, before the signature goes on the paper. First, explain to me why there may be a requirement for legislation. Secondly, would you think there would be anything different with the designation process from what is currently in the OA? That's Governor in Council.

Mr. Lee: The designation process would be as I've described. It's a cabinet Order in Council designation.

The Chairman: And you anticipate in the legislation that would remain.

Mr. Lee: What eventually happens - and it already exists - is ultimately these places are created by an act of Parliament, because they are intended for all time. They're not short term.

The Chairman: So each area would have a specific piece of legislation to declare and designate it.

Mr. Lee: It would be a legislative addition to an act.

The Chairman: But that means it has to go before Parliament.

Mr. Lee: Yes.

The Chairman: When you mentioned legislation would be required, I didn't know if you meant legislation to statutize an NMCAS process -

Mr. Lee: Yes.

The Chairman: But I think you've answered that. You said there would have to be legislation to have any of the areas designated. There would have to be an amendment to -

Mr. Lee: That's even under the current act. But beyond that, we need to improve our legislation. As I say, the national marine conservation areas were added to an act, the National Parks Act, that was intended to manage Banff. Managing Banff is not the same as managing Bonavista. That creates a new set of problems for us.

We also have, because we're running under the National Parks Act...and I'll just give you a specific here. We have an issue in the sense that under the National Parks Act we must own the sub-surface land. So if we stuck with the legislation in its current form, it would limit our actions to the territorial sea. That would probably not be a limitation we would want to live with. So we have to fix that.

As I said, beyond that, a lot of visitor management problems occur on the ocean with boats and so on and we did conceive them as part of the problems with the national parks. There are all kinds of visitor management problems that are totally different from somebody hiking in the back country.

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The Chairman: What's the legislative timeframe on this?

Mr. Lee: We're thinking of next fall.

The Chairman: So the department is currently working on that with a view to next fall?

Mr. Lee: We've started it, yes.

Mr. Verran (South West Nova): For clarification, is it by Order in Council or does it have to go to Parliament? I'm not quite sure. There's quite a difference.

Mr. Lee: The final establishment of these areas at this time, and as I conceive it under any changes, is it's created by an act of Parliament.

The Chairman: So it would still go to Governor in Council for approval, then to cabinet for approval, and out of that and through P and P would come a legislative amendment.

Mr. Lee: Yes.

The Chairman: Just before we let you go, does somebody from Fisheries and Oceans have an answer to that question on paragraph 35(b)?

Mr. Gerry Swanson (Director General, Habitat Management and Environmental Science Directorate, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): We're talking about paragraph 35(b) of the bill, which indicates that the Governor in Council may make regulations:

We have had court cases that related to protection of fish habitat in inland areas in which the court interpreted the term ``fishery'' to mean fisheries or areas where fish occur and where exploitation of that resource occurs, in either a commercial, a recreational or an aboriginal fishery. I could provide a copy of that particular court decision to the clerk, if that is your wish.

Mr. Baker: But the question was relating to the interpretation of ``fishery'' or ``fish''. Wouldn't it be clearer to reword it, or do you think that is the best wording?

Mr. Swanson: I'm guided to some degree by the dialogue that went on between the committee and Dr. Parsons last week. There were discussions on the wording of the bill. That's not to say some of the wording could not be improved.

The Chairman: You didn't answer his question.

Mr. Baker: He answered it perfectly.

Mr. Swanson: I think Dr. Parsons answered the questions last week.

Mr. Baker: In other words, Dr. Parsons is the assistant deputy minister, isn't he?

Mr. Swanson: Yes, he is.

The Chairman: And...? What am I missing here?

Mr. Baker: The assistant deputy minister usually makes the decisions, so....

The Chairman: Well, okay, but it was an easy question. If it only includes active fisheries of some type, there may be an area where there is a resource that is not currently exploited by any of those areas but where the fish species itself may be under some stress. The question was on whether or not that would be included. We'll take that under advisement when we get to that section.

Thanks very much.

Our next witness is Don E. McAllister, president of Ocean Voice International.

Mr. McAllister, take the microphone and we'll get right on with it.

Mr. Don. E. McAllister (President, Ocean Voice International): Thank you for inviting me. I'm honoured to be here. Merci beaucoup pour l'invitation.

Just to finish off the last question on fish and fisheries, I have given the chair a list of 1,110 species of fishes in Canada. Perhaps 100 of those species are important commercial species, so there is a difference between fish and fisheries. This doesn't count the invertebrates, which are shellfish and other fish.

Mr. Baker: So it should say ``fish''?

Mr. McAllister: That depends on what you want it to say. If you want to cover all species of fishes, say ``fish'' or ``fishes''. If you want to just consider the harvesting of the fishes, then say ``fisheries''.

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I work for Ocean Voice International, a Canadian environmental organization, and I've worked for 35 years with the Canadian Museum of Nature, where I still edit their journal Global Biodiversity.

Biodiversity is a word that I do not see in the bill. I see, as in the past focus of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, a view of living things as resources. Just as I said, there is a small percentage of fish life and invertebrate life that is a resource. Then we're forgetting about all the rest of the life in the ocean, except insofar as we talk about ecosystems.

I really think that along with the International Convention on Bio-diversity, with the about-to-be-released Canadian biodiversity strategy, we should talk about conservation of biodiversity and sustainable use of resources.

In the draft act, we talk about a goal of sustainable development. I would rather see that made more specific to ecologically sustainable development or ecologically sustainable use. There is a big difference from a narrow focus on just saying we're looking after the cod, forgetting about the ecosystem and all the other processes that go into creating the cod.

We're also forgetting about all of the things that biodiversity does for us. Right now, each of us is breathing some oxygen from the diatoms in the sea. Other forms of sea life are banking carbon dioxide and helping moderate our climate. These ecological services are not yet on our national accounts, yet they are just as vitally important as those things that directly bring us cash and employment.

Diversity is also very important for the oceans. On the land, there are many more species. In the oceans, there are many more genera, families, viola, the higher groups of organisms, the thicker branches on the tree of life. This has a number of important issues in regard to conserving it and using it. It means that if you're looking for a new pharmaceutical, a new drug, and you'd like biotechnology, a new genetic resource - and these are all things that the bill does not talk about; it talks about resources in the classical sense - then this is the place to go to find new drugs and medicines.

Canada, with its three oceans and with its scientific and entrepreneurial expertise, is in a good position to take on this kind of development. We surely have need of this, because at the present on the Atlantic coast we're running short of the traditional resources where you catch it, you eat it, and that's the end of it, or where you catch it, you convert it into a product, you sell it, and that's the end of that. It's a short one-way street, whereas regarding genes, you can have them manufacturing products in vats after you chemically take them out of the organisms, and you have a non-polluting resource that is based upon the original source.

In this regard, we think very much in the bill about the continental shelf. We do talk a little bit about deeper waters, but the curious thing about the variety of life in the oceans is that the number species actually increases down to 500 metres, to 1,000 metres, and even 3,000 metres for several groups. When we're thinking of the new bio-industries, this means we have a rich resource there that we're ignoring.

Back to management, we have focus on counting the number of fish, how fast they grow, how much recruitment there is, and how many we can catch. This is a narrow kind of management scheme. It has worked to a considerable degree in the past. We have a lot of expertise in it. But if we expand out into ecologically sustainable use, then we include knowledge and application of habitat protection and restoration.

We think about food chains. The capelin is food for the cod. If we catch more capelin, is this going to affect the cod fishery predation? Are we upsetting predator-prey balances, stock genetics and diversity, and life cycle information? Each stage of the fish has to survive or we don't get the cod or the new pharmaceutical at the end.

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Canada has also signed on to the precautionary principle in the biodiversity convention and other international agreements. Surely we should be including that in our concept of fisheries management. This helps protect us against environmental cycles and fluctuations. There is a component of climate change in the depression of the cod catches, as well as human or computer errors.

The bill doesn't speak directly about co-management, but this is certainly being looked at in other parts of the world where fishers, coastal communities, indigenous peoples, NGOs, fishing companies and others participate in the decision-making process. I'm not saying this isn't done in Canada, but it has not been a major focus.

It also means public participation in catch allocation. Who gets the benefits of the resources? Is it the small-scale inshore fisherman or the big transnational fishing corporation? Is our goal employment or profit? Is our goal long-term sustainment of the resource? The more we bring this out into the open and the fewer decisions like that are made behind closed doors, the less abuse there is.

I'm really pleased to see the bringing in of marine-protected areas. Ocean Voice is very much in favour of expanding the number of marine-protected areas, which is relatively low in Canada compared to countries like the Philippines, where they have at least a dozen parks established with provincial or national authority, and 100 parks established by communities.

The narrow, old-fashioned vision of parks is just saving biodiversity. I don't like the word ``just''. That's a tremendously important thing. There are a number of other roles. One is protection of ecological services or functions. They are also useful at management.

Right now, on the Atlantic coast of Canada, we have no trawlable area that is not trawled. So how can we measure what effect trawls are having on habitat, on the life cycle of commercial and non-commercial fishes? How do we know what effects they have on biodiversity?

There are some areas that are not trawled. There are rocky areas that you would wreck your trawl on. There are military arms dumps and, believe me, nobody trawls on those either. We have no means of comparing the long-term effects on longlining and trawling on similar areas, so marine parks can offer benefits there.

In other parts of the world like the Philippines, where Ocean Voice has done some work, they are now steaming ahead and establishing community-based local parks because it's beneficial to the fisheries. Everybody thinks if we take this area away from the fishers, the fisher is going to lose and there's a knee-jerk reaction. But when fish get bigger they have more eggs. A fish twice as big doesn't have twice as many eggs, it has three times as many eggs.

Many eggs and most larvae of fish drift out with ocean currents from where they're spawned. So if you're overfishing and size is dropping in a neighbouring area, you have big fish laying lots of eggs here. Eggs and larvae may drift out here, settle down and grow up. So it's not just taking it out of one box and putting it in another; you can have more by setting some aside.

I'd like to talk about hot spots, seascapes and clusters of ecosystems making up seascapes, but we don't have time. I've given the clerk this document of 44 pages, which will go to Jakarta. I will not read this into the record, to save paper, but if anybody is interested I can give him or her a copy. There is a copy of what I'm reading now, and there is a copy of the marine parks paper that I would like to read into the record.

In Canada and around the world we have focused on marine parks tied to the land. It's almost as if it's taboo to think of a park out on the Grand Banks or in the fantastically deep waters off Queen Charlotte Island that are within our 200-nautical-mile EEZ. But we have to think about all the classes of marine parks and reserves in their own rights that don't have to be directly tied to land.

.1200

But we've got to think about marine parks and reserves and all the classes of them in their own rights that don't have to be directly tied to land. We've got to think about what ecosystems we have and how we preserve the ecosystems or clusters of ecosystems in seascapes out in deep water. It means breaking away from the tradition that almost all around the world parks are tied to land. There are a few exceptions. Flower Bank off the gulf coast of the United States is 120 miles offshore, but it's still on the shelf. There are no parks that I know of that lie on the continental slope that are deeper than 200 metres or on the deep ocean sea floor.

We should think about this, not only for the conservation but for the research, the biotechnology and the enormous other series of benefits one can derive from marine protected areas.

To get back to fisheries management, a very important component that has been touched on is fishing gear and how it is used. In 1985 before the closure of our bottom fishery, heavy trawl doors produced 4.3 million kilometres of tracks on the sea floor of the Atlantic fishing banks. Between the doors an area of 29,000 square kilometres was swept. These trawls have heavy doors and usually have heavy ropes on the bottom. I was going to bring a piece of the Spanish trawl that Tobin held up in New York to show you how strong the twine is, but I forgot in my rush to get here. They are powerful, strong and very effective vehicles in harvesting fishes.

They also remove seaweed. They also remove sessile invertebrates and the sea anemones. Any kind of weak or soft creature that sticks up from the bottom and is above the line - the rollers hold the lines up a bit - is going to get broken off or mashed. It also levels out hummocks. A big trawl, with a 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000 horsepower motor, hitting a sedimented hummock is going to cut off some of that top. It will dump it, which exposes a lot of organisms that live in that sediment and then they get preyed on. It dumps it in there, which will smother scallops, clams or anything that is in there.

The delicate sediment-water interface that our expert here was talking about is a critical place. The meadows of the oceans are tiny plankton, thousands of very small algae cells that live in the water column. When they die or when they go through a fish digestive tract, those organisms, or waste, drop to the sea floor bottom. In the sediment organisms feed on that and regenerate it, bacteria recycle it, and with the climatic seasons of the seas and the nutrients that these plants have eaten, it comes back up into the water column. There are seasons with winter storms. There is more sunshine in spring. There are more nutrients in spring because there's less plant growth in winter. What you're doing is affecting this very sensitive and critical thin film at the bottom.

I think we have to look at our fishing gear and ask if this is the best we can do. Are there better designs for trawls? Should we throw trawls out? We fished for about 300 years with long lines and traps and had a fairly good record. There were certainly dips in catches. Let's seriously look at gear design and selection of gear.

Canada has helped prepare the FAO code for responsible fishing. It talks about a lot of these gear and fishing-method issues. It's a voluntary code. Let's look at writing it into our legislation. Let's look at writing it into our international fishery agreements, where Canada has been so successful in strengthening other agreements. Let's also start putting how we fish into them.

Ecomanagement is also going to have to look at broader perspectives: climate change, increases in ultraviolet radiation, toxic chemicals. We have safety limits for individual chemicals so you can drink a glass of water if it's got five parts per million of this. It says nothing at all about what happens if you have fifty chemicals in there, whether it's a fish that drinks it or we drink it. We already know a bit of the answer from the deaths of belugas in the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. There are also oil slicks and petroleum drilling pollution to look at.

.1205

There's another very critical area in the oceans, the sea surface. Living in it are the neuston. These are small organisms that live permanently or temporarily just below or in the sea surface. A lot of fish eggs and most fish larvae come up very close to the sea surface when they're hatched, even if they're deep-water species. They feed on the plankton.

Most of you who are anglers and who have cleaned a fish will have seen just under the backbone a hollow pink balloon, the gas bladder or swim bladder. Through the water column, that helps buoy the fish up in the water so they can swim without wasting energy. They have to start off that gas bladder with a little gulp of air at the surface. If there's an oil slick on the surface, then they can't get their way through to get that first life-giving breath. If Tobin says ``turbot's fingernails'', then I can say ``life-giving breath''. It's actually not a breath; it's a buoyancy gasp. So when we're talking about developing oil wells on the Grand Banks and other areas and when we're talking about controlling ocean pollution, we have to think about what this does to fishes.

There are also toxic effects from petroleum that have to be considered.

On eutrophication from agrichemicals and domestic sewage, will the new Ocean Act stop capital cities in British Columbia and Nova Scotia from discharging raw sewage into the sea? I would hope so.

There have been some papers, not well publicized, showing that the change of flow in river systems changes the seasonal availability of nutrients in estuaries and adjacent oceans. We now dump more water in the winter from our rivers. As the water flows out on the surface, it drags some salt water underneath. Deeper water comes up, in a process called entrainment, that gets carried out to sea. As it comes up, the deeper water has nutrients and helps the spring plankton bloom that feeds the fish. There's a timing cycle built in there.

If we put out more water in the winter, that means less water in the spring, that means less nutrients, that means fewer plankton, and that means the little fish says ``Hey, where's my dinner?''

Some of these changes are gradual, and we need to look at cumulative effects. We tend to look at things like the Exxon Valdez where there's a huge wreck, oil spillage, and you can see the birds getting oiled, the sea otters getting intoxicated by this. But the gradual, slow changes are also something that should be built into our management scheme. We look at things like toxic chemicals, as well as increasing numbers of hydro dams.

In evaluating what we do in the oceans, it's very useful to have somebody who is a little bit distanced doing the evaluating. I asked because I don't see in the bill whether the ministry will be involving and monitoring its own activities or not or whether this will continue to reside to some degree with Environment Canada.

Most government departments' responsibility centres in industry do not have the accounting section duplicated in every section. There's a separate one. We have the Auditor General. We don't always love him, but at least he's standing back. Environment Canada to some degree acts as a very worthwhile monitor for activities going on in forestry, agriculture, fisheries, and other areas.

Being a frequent user in science and as an NGO and as a concerned citizen, I must admit to being a regular user of the status of the environment reports, which come out with a big volume every five years, just packed full of information that must also be very valuable for governments and MPs who want to know what really is going on. We're going to lose this after the 1996 edition next year.

I would like to see that continue to come out, and I would like to see it dealing even more with marine issues. After all, 6.5 million square kilometres of Canada are within our EEZ or our Arctic sector, compared with 10 million square kilometres of land. So that's a pretty big hunk of territory.

.1210

Research provides the knowledge needed to understand and conserve biodiversity, manage biological resources, and develop new industries. The bill does mention research. I guess, looking at our past history, most people don't remember any more or are too young to remember that we had a fisheries research board that did world-class research. That has disappeared and been amalgamated. Cuts at Fisheries and Oceans mean we're still reducing support for research.

The Canadian Museum of Nature, in the forefront of biodiversity research and exploration, has been cut back from $21 million to $13 million, and from 25 scientists to 16 scientists, in recent years.

To the extent that we don't grow our own research capacity in Canada, we will become colonies of countries that do, as bio-industries become one of the major growth components of the world. To some extent it's not where we put this function, but how well we support it. It's not whether we put marine parks and research in Fisheries and Oceans, Environment Canada or the museum; it's whether we support them. Do we put aside dollars and give some priorities to these issues?

I'm not saying it's wise to regroup a number of our ocean endeavours together in one department, because I think it probably is. We should look at each one critically and try to evaluate its pluses and minuses. I'm a civil servant whose museum was dragged through three or four government departments. We started out in what's now called Energy, Mines and Resources; then we went to Indian and Northern Affairs; then we went to Communications; and we've gone through two different crown corporations. To some extent the moving around of organizations within the government has very negative effects. The public never knows where the hell to write. We used to have an Information Canada where you could find current addresses, but that has disappeared.

The reorganizing and re-matching of sections of bureaucracy are quite wasteful. The reams of paper that are thrown out with all these moves is quite terrible. On the other hand, I think there are some very logical and sensible things that could be regrouped in Fisheries and Oceans and it would be wise to have them there.

Tied to research development, Canada has a tradition of developing things to a certain point and then leaving them stranded high and dry. There was the Avro Arrow and the Pisces submarine, which was a fantastic miniature submarine Canadians developed on the west coast.

We had several models of the Pisces, and then I think the company that devised it went under. The Russians, however, had bought one and they have continued its development. We now have the comedy or tragedy of a Nova Scotia company that has hired a Russian mother ship and two Russian submarines and has options on other ones, so we may have on hand the biggest submersible fleet in the world. The Russians improved our design and now we're using second-hands-on Canadian designs.

Submersibles are vehicles used to explore the deep sea, do research, get biotechnology samples, and explore the 65% of the earth's surface that is under water beyond the continental shelf. It also gives us the capacity to take tourists down into deep water. In many tropical areas there are now submersible buses that will take up to 40 people on trips.

I don't know how many of you are from the west coast, but there is a huge contingent of scuba divers - often tourists from other areas - who explore the beautiful kelp forest of the west coast and the rocky reefs because of the rich and colourful variety of things. Not all of us are in shape or wish to dive like that even with wet suits on, and some have medical problems, but use of the submersible means anybody can go there. You can charge a hefty fee. It's a good potential business on all of our coasts to investigate other uses.

.1215

It was nice to see a vision document preceding this. I think that is something we really need. Where are we going? Why are we doing it? What do we really want?

Our neighbour to the south and some of our provincial governments have focused their vision on reducing national, provincial or state debts. They are cutting back on environmental capacity and many other issues. This is a negative vision. I'm not saying we shouldn't have concern about it - it obviously is costing a lot - but we also have to look at other kinds of debt, and there are social and environmental debts.

Right now we're paying debts for the loss of the cod stock capital on the Atlantic coast. We're soon going to be paying seriously for the overharvesting of our forests. There are other kinds of debt besides financial, and we should have those on our accounting system as well.

Let's develop a vision with input, as you're doing today. Let's create dreams with the participation of citizens, accompanied with solid research and ecologically sustainable use, and let's continue our follow-through. Let's include in our dreams the world ocean, which covers 70% of the planet Earth. Let us conclude a forward-looking Oceans Act.

Thank you.

The Chairman: I note some of your opinions, or maybe all your opinions, are shared by some people on the committee. I'm not sure how some of them would actually impact on the Oceans Act, although some of the things you're dealing with certainly impact on the responsibilities of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and as well, perhaps more appropriately, on the Fisheries Act, which is one that's going to be amended and sent to us pretty soon.

I was extremely interested in your comments on biodiversity and also gear selectivity. That is an issue we have raised at this committee more times than you could ever believe. It is a very difficult one, because some of our members come from areas where the impact on their local economy is quite substantial because of licensed draggers in the area.

Any decision that is made has a major impact. When somebody says draggers aren't a very sustainable technology, somehow some of those individuals, who are simply practising what the law allows them to do because they've been licensed, think they're being pointed at as environmental pirates, out there intentionally and wilfully destroying the environment. They are only fishermen who are taking advantage of licensing to make a living. It's always very difficult to separate those things.

In your view, why is it that we have been unable to get the Department of Fisheries and Oceans or scientists to give us more conclusive evidence with respect to the environmental sustainability of dragging technology? Every time it's raised, we're told they're not quite sure it really is damaging and there is no real evidence that it does this or that.

A lot of us have talked to our inshore fishermen who use hook and line. Science is all about observation. We have tens of thousands of observers out there who will swear on their dying breath that the draggers have destroyed the ecosystem and have helped cause the collapse of certain stocks.

Why is it that science is so soft on this? Is it that difficult to prove whether or not it is a good technology?

Mr. McAllister: There have been papers in Europe on this for a number of years. I did a summary paper about five years ago, and I did another one at Coastal Zone Canada '94, trying to stand back as a scientist and set up hypotheses about what trawls were doing. The kinds of things I was talking about were cutting off the bottom habitat and disturbing sediment.

There are two problems. One is that we can't see it. If there's a clear-cut on Vancouver Island, you see it. You can't see the bottom of the ocean, so there's less public concern.

.1220

Traditionally, fishery science has been narrow and effective. It's been narrow in that when we count the number of fish, we age some, we look at stock recruitment, and we look at catch. As long we didn't have enormously powerful trawlers, trawlers with bigger and bigger engines, with bigger and bigger nets, trawlers equipped with navigation equipment, trawlers equipped so they could operate in nastier weather, those concerns weren't very great. But now there is worldwide a tremendous overcapacity in fishing - a lot of it in larger vessels. There are 23,000 vessels around the world with 100 tonnes or more capacity, and we haven't responded to those things.

The narrowness of fishery's management is, I think, gradually moving toward a more ecosystem-based management. There are more and more papers discussing this, but we're not there.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has designed gradings for its shrimp trawls that greatly reduce bycatch - the bycatch are the fish and invertebrates you throw away overboard. They are are largely dead and dying, but not all; some of the clams survive quite happily after the little trip up to the surface. Perhaps a third of the world's trawling catch is thrown away, so there's a huge amount of food and biodiversity loss being created there.

Again, it's not on land. Nobody sees that being dumped overboard. We don't have any tourists out on the trawlers. So it's partly that it's not seen and partly that we have had this narrow traditional focus of management.

Now we're starting to see, in our waters as well as on coral reefs, what happens when you damage the habitat. As an example, a badly treated reef will generate 5 metric tonnes of fish a year per square kilometre. A really healthy one will be 25 or 30 metric tonnes a year.

We don't have those figures for boreal in Canadian waters. We do have some assessments of what kinds of organisms are affected and what kinds of shifts there are in populations, but we don't have the production figures, partly because we have lacked control areas, marine parks, so we couldn't evaluate the process.

The Chairman: So you're saying that marine park provision could be used to further enhance the science in this area?

Mr. McAllister: Much so. We'll have to let some of them grow back. We have some in the Arctic that are untouched, but we'll have to let the ones on the Grand Banks grow back, re-establish themselves, and in 20 years we can see what it might have been like.

But regarding some of the organisms that are quite old, Dr. Michael Risk at McMaster University has done tree-ring sections of gorgonians. These are coral-like organisms and they are a thousand years old. Lying around shattered there were pieces of older ones, so with tree-ring type analysis, he was able to go back to almost 10,000 years ago.

It was in a deeper area - I think it was Orphan Knoll, an area that hadn't been previously trawled. But sites like that are gone from most of the Grand Banks, so we don't know what was there before. Now that's not absolutely true, but we don't have a good picture of what was there before.

The Chairman: Mrs. Payne.

Mrs. Payne: Mr. McAllister, I think a lot of the things you've said there with regard to fishing technology and what happens when certain technology is used is an echo of what I've been hearing fishermen on the east coast of Newfoundland say for a long time. My husband would agree with you 100%.

Do you have any idea, or can you even make an educated guess at how long it would take an area, a feeding ground or breeding ground, to recover to a sustainable condition after having been destroyed, as I believe it is, with draggers?

Mr. McAllister: It would have to be a guess on my part, an educated one. We do have those figures for coral reefs. It takes 37 years for half the diversity and coverage of corals to come back.

In Canada, we don't know, but I think it would be in terms of decades. Most of our fish stocks, providing conditions are suitable, will recover more rapidly than that. Our salmon are in four-year cycles; our cod, seven, eight, nine, ten, much longer before, with a richly varied age class.

.1225

But some of the bottom things like the seaweeds, assuming there are some parents to sow their young ones, are annual things. So the answer will vary for different components of the ecosystem.

Mrs. Payne: Profound.

Mr. Wells (South Shore): I was just wondering if Mr. McAllister could let us have a copy of a couple of the papers he referred to, the 1994 one especially.

Mr. McAllister: The trawling ones?

Mr. Wells: Yes.

Mr. McAllister: Okay.

Mr. Wells: I think those would be appropriate.

Mr. McAllister: I can send those to the clerk.

The Chairman: Send them to the clerk, Mr. McAllister.

Mr. McAllister: There is another one by Alverson that I cite that is a big American study with a few more resources than Ocean Voice had, and essentially they're saying the same thing.

Mr. Wells: In your outline you talk about NGOs and the important role they play in providing vision, guidance, and monitoring. I think we all agree with that, but when you talk about co-management, you also say that NGOs should be involved in co-management. I'll ask you to expand on what you mean and what role you think they would play in co-management of the fishery.

Mr. McAllister: I feel that fishers, fishing companies, indigenous peoples where appropriate, and various other sectors of society, recreational fishers in some areas, and NGOs, should participate. They have somewhat broader environmental concerns than the fishers and the fishing companies. They are interested in ecosystems and habitat, and I think they bring those interests and concerns.

I'm not saying that the focus on target species is not important. They are very important in our economics and our employment.

They're also not as much bought off by various pressures. I've been involved with the negotiations for the biodiversity convention in Canada and for the Canadian biodiversity strategy, and I have seen that the resource departments, provincially and federally, are often rather close to industry in some of their points of view - not universally, and they certainly do have independent viewpoints and stances. The NGOs can act as a bit of a watchdog, a bit of an auditor on these issues.

NGOs also have their own narrowness, their own biases.

So you want a variety of stakeholders.

In developing this, we've talked about some of the issues and agreed upon them with a variety of stakeholders, and some of these are not represented in here. There were also some things that were taken out of the final version of this, probably due to the influence of industry and perhaps the resource departments. We don't know, but it might bear looking at some of the earlier issues of this.

Mr. Chairman, you also mentioned biodiversity. There is a newly published study of Canada's biodiversity, which covers some of the marine issues in here. It tells us how many marine species we have and summarizes quite a bit of useful information. It's $50 plus GST.

Mr. Verran: I wonder if you'd be kind enough to relay to us the location of the military arms dumps in Atlantic Canada.

Mr. McAllister: I can't give it to you precisely, but it's between Sable Island and the mainland of Nova Scotia. I guess they dump old tanks, old munitions, and who knows what else out there. I haven't visited it. The military would probably be able to give you an answer. I think many countries would have such a dump.

There are also dumps in many states for other kinds of old equipment. You've probably read in the newspapers about what to do with an old oil drill rig in the North Sea and a battle about dumping it at sea or taking it to land.

In the States there were areas for dumping of domestic sewage and garbage wastes, but I believe those have been phased out.

Mr. Verran: I was wondering if those sites were contributed to by the American bases such as Argentia.

Mr. McAllister: I don't know.

.1230

Mr. Verran: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a point before everyone dumps on draggers in a general sense. I'd like to point out to my friend, Derek, to other members of the committee, and to our panellists and guests this morning that I certainly cannot speak with any authority about other species of fish and the effect dragging has on them. But I'd like to point out that in traditional areas of dragging the lobster industry has increased. It is shown that where there are traditional areas of dragging the lobster itself just multiplies. It is in much better shape than in areas adjacent to the area where the dragging takes place. So before we make a blanket statement to say that everything is torn up, I'd just like to point that out.

Mr. McAllister: There may be some rationale for that. If you take away the predators on the smaller stages of lobster, more of them survive and get to a bigger stage. On the other hand, the trawls are harming a bit the nooks and crannies that the lobsters like to hide in, and insofar as those are broken down and taken away, that would be a negative part on the balance.

We know our lobster industry has continued to do relatively well, but I could point out that for the most part we don't chase lobsters with trawls. We use traps, and the traps are passive things on the bottom except when a wretched storm carries away your buoy and trap. They are an environmentally friendly form of gear with one exception. If they are swept away by a storm, by gillnets and some other forms of gear, you get ghost-fishing, where the gear continues to catch fish. This is another issue in sustainable management.

If you weave float line from biodegradable cord into your trap or your gillnet it will rot away and the gillnet will fall flat. You may catch some crabs and things and your lobsters will be able to climb out or won't bother going in since it's wide open. So there are ways of making gear even more friendly when the gear is already friendly.

Mr. Verran: You mentioned the nooks and crannies may be decreasing and therefore the lobster would not have a place to inhabit or to lay low in, but at this stage to the best of my knowledge that has not been proven. In fact, as I mentioned before, the lobster are doing better in those areas than they have ever done.

Mr. McAllister: Please, I didn't mean to -

Mr. Verran: And doing better than in adjacent areas where in fact dragging does not take place.

Mr. McAllister: I didn't mean to disagree with you. I just meant that on the balance sheet by harvesting the predators we may be gaining seven points for the lobsters. By destroying their habitat we may be losing three points. So we're still ahead and we're moving along.

Dr. Caddy, who did work for Fisheries and Oceans and now works for the FAO, did have an excellent paper and has since developed further the theory of the value of nooks and crannies in the environment for the smaller, younger stages of fishes and lobsters to hide in and escape from predators.

I think it's quite likely you're right. It's just that the pluses exceed the minuses.

The Chairman: Okay. I understand our witness has to be in Perth.

Mr. McAllister: Yes.

The Chairman: I have no idea where Perth is.

Mr. McAllister: It's a one-and-a-quarter-hour drive from here.

The Chairman: And what time do you have to be there?

Mr. McAllister: I can stay till 1 p.m., if you so wish.

The Chairman: Okay. We'll let Mr. Baker finish this. We'll try to get you out of here in ten or twelve minutes.

Mr. Baker: First of all, Doctor, are you a fish biologist?

Mr. McAllister: No. For thirty years I was an ichthyologist. That's somebody who studies the classification, the distribution and the evolution of fishes, where they're found, how to tell them apart, and how to describe new species and to write lists like the one you have there. Like my colleagues at the museum, I publish popular guides to what we know that help ecotourism and angling and do some very esoteric scientific stuff you probably wouldn't want to hear about.

The Chairman: Mr. Baker is an expert on the - what do you call that, George? The bone in the codfish's ear that will tell you all the wonderful...what's it called?

Mr. McAllister: Otolith.

The Chairman: That's right.

.1235

Mr. Baker: A better idea on the biodegradable float line would be to have a biodegradable lead line, because then your nets would just float up to the surface. You just pick them up.

Mr. McAllister: Recycle them. Good idea.

Mr. Baker: I'd like to know why you're unhappy with clause 17.

Mr. McAllister: I must say, perhaps it's because I am not a lawyer -

Mr. Baker: Oh, no - these lawyers miss everything, believe me.

Mr. McAllister: Well, paragraph 17(1)(a) talks about:

I'm not clear whether the last part of that phrase under (a) is excluding the deep-water parts. I would like to see Canada stake out to the 200-nautical-mile limit every part of the seabed, whether it's on the shelf, which is out to 200 metres, whether it's on the slope, which goes down to 3,000 metres, and if we have some on the west coast, which is beyond 3,000 metres, I would like to see us staking that out. I think it's a natural prolongation of the land. Now, if I am incorrect, and that does say it, as paragraph (b) seems to clearly say, then I have no objection to it.

Mr. Baker: Well, let me suggest what I think your objection is.

In paragraph 17(1)(a), it says explicitly in the definition of continental shelf:

Now, when you go then to clause 18, as an example of the effect that that definition would have, you can see that ``Canada has sovereign rights over the continental shelf of Canada'', for the purposes that follow.

So you're saying that if Canada only has sovereign rights over the continental shelf of Canada defined as being not the deep-water parts that you're concerned about - you're saying that this is insufficient.

Mr. McAllister: It's insufficient because we don't conserve it and it's insufficient because we don't lay claim to it for biotechnology and other bio-industry development. I think that biotechnology is going to be one of the major growth areas of industry. It's going to make Silicon Valley look a little small, with what we can do with the genes. If an organism has 100,000 genes in it - and there are up to 10 million species in the sea - you can see how many genes we have to play around with, and do things, if we so wish, in an environmentally friendly manner, in tanks or on shore. But we have to say what we have in the oceans; we have to lay claim.

The International Convention on Bio-diversity talks about country of origin. Shouldn't we be staking out that this is within our country, and that we have certain prior rights to its use?

Mr. Baker: Mr. Chairman, I think this is a very important point that should be explored with the lawyers at some future meeting - the point being, as the witness has pointed out, that only on the continental shelf will Canada have control over the resources that are on the seabed or attached to the seabed, or indirectly attached to the seabed of the continental shelf.

So if that is the case, which it is, under clause 18, then the witness has said that when you go back to clause 17 to find out what the continental shelf is, it seems the deep ocean floor is defined as not being a part of the continental shelf.

The Chairman: We'll make a note of that, Mr. Baker.

Mr. Baker: That's very important, and can't be explained away by saying, oh, we're only defining the continental shelf. Yes, but in defining the continental shelf, in further references in the bill, it confines our control to the continental shelf.

Mr. McAllister: While we are on that issue - I was not going to have much time, now I maybe have another minute.

.1240

On all the good maps of Canada I see, I see an international boundary line from the Yukon-Alaska boundary to the north geographic pole and southward to a point between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. The act makes no mention of this. I'm not sure where the Arctic water pollution boundary is, but I think it went out to 200 kilometres. Has that old boundary line, which has been on maps for ages, been thrown out? It's not recognized here in this bill.

Mr. Baker: That's another point we should bring up when the witnesses are here, because the experts are here in the room with us.

The Chairman: Explain that point again. I missed it.

Mr. McAllister: If you look at any good map of Canada, there is a boundary line that goes from the Yukon-Alaska border across the continental slope into great ocean depths, down to I think 7,000 metres in the Canada Basin, if I remember correctly, and then to the North Pole. It has another section that goes down to the border between Canada and Greenland, and there's another one that's more typical, which divides specifically between Davis Strait and Baffin Basin.

I think Canada originally proposed this to lay claim to any islands we hadn't yet discovered that could subsequently pop up. That's just a guess on my part, but we have made some sort of legal statement about that in the past. It's on our official Energy, Mines and Resources maps and charts, but I see no reference to it in the act.

Mr. Baker: We will pursue that at a future meeting with the experts.

The Chairman: We'll pursue both of those.

Mr. Baker: I'd make a couple of points to the witness. In pointing out the air bladder in fish, of course you know there are lots of fish that don't have an air bladder. They just have to keep swimming, because if they don't keep swimming, they'll drop to the bottom and get caught by Harry's lobster. The mackerel don't have a bladder.

Do you know, doctor, that the technology on these draggers you keep referring to, especially the Omul-class draggers, which are built in the Russian states, and the Spanish have bought some....

They do not use, as we use, the detectors to find out where the bladder is, because that's our sonar equipment. It's the air bubble. They have their technology, which no longer deals with that at all. They are more accurate. Whereas we can't see a school of mackerel on the sonar, they can.

It's very interesting. It's very selective and advanced equipment. It's incredible. They can catch the last fish in the ocean.

Mr. McAllister: We also have some very good side scan sonar. We have produced some excellent maps of bottom topography, and we can detect effects of trawls with these more sensitive ones, but I didn't know about this technology you're speaking of.

Mr. Baker: I must point out something to you, though. I'm very impressed with your presentation, but I must tell you something about the term ``trawler'', which you use. In these gentlemen's ridings across the way, a trawler is a boat with a long line and trawl hooks behind it. If you were to go down and talk about those nasty trawlers, as I did on one occasion, you would notice, as I did, a hush over the entire hall - ``What's he talking about?''

They define that as a dragger. Side trawlers and stern trawlers, as they're called, are really not trawlers. You have to remember that when you give presentations. It's actually draggers we're talking about.

Mr. McAllister: It depends on where you go.

The Chairman: It could impact on your health.

Mr. Baker: Yes, it could, in southwestern Nova Scotia.

I have one final question. You want a change in the use of the term ``sustainable development''. You want to see ``ecologically sustainable use''. Is that a suggestion for a change of wording in the bill?

Mr. McAllister: I think we should change the wording to help switch the philosophy, to get away from our narrow target-species focus. There is momentum in fisheries science and management towards that, and I think it would change the atmosphere as well as specify more clearly.

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Sustainable development was really publicized by the Brundtland commission quite a few years ago. It is a debatable term, and although it is defined here, it is still focusing on sustainable development of resources and the planet. Most biodiversity does not involve resources. We have to look beyond that for both direct and indirect reasons: for ecological services, beauty, conservation, and any number of reasons. We have to look at the other 90% of life on earth.

The Chairman: Okay. We're going to get you to Perth almost on time. I want to thank you for your presentation. Mr. McAllister, if you could provide those documents Mr. Wells referred to at your earliest opportunity, I think it would be quite helpful to us.

Mr. McAllister: Do you have a card with an address?

The Chairman: Yes, the clerk will look after that. Again, thank you very much for coming here. We may call upon you by the time we're through here for some clarification. Safe driving.

That concludes our hearings for today. The hearings that were scheduled for both tomorrow and Thursday are cancelled. We will take them up starting again next Tuesday, when we have a couple of witnesses scheduled.

I think we should continue to follow up with our teleconferencing. Then we'll pick the witnesses and get the witnesses we're not going to hear on Thursday and hear them toward the end.

It's just too darn hard. Other events are overtaking our agenda and it's going to be too difficult by the end of the week to get a quorum. This is an important piece of legislation and I don't want only three or four people here to deliberate on it.

I'm going to adjourn the committee and we will reconvene next Tuesday.

I would also like to indicate to members of the steering committee that we should try to have a quick meeting in the House today to deal with the staff situation.

We are adjourned.

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