Read the full transcript here.

Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-05-30 23:51

Mr. Chair, just by way of opening, I will say that I am basing a lot of these questions on testimony that we heard at the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. It is an excellent committee with a lot of non-partisan co-operation between members around the table, but I will not cite every witness in every specific question.
I am following up on an earlier question on the climate impacts of extreme weather events and the impacts on fish habitat. We know we have impacts on and threats to Pacific salmon from flooding, wildfires and the destruction of the riparian zones that used to shield the waters to keep them from getting too hot from increased water temperatures. However, I want to focus on what we are going to do to rebuild infrastructure after the November floods in B.C. We could do it wrong and worsen salmon habitat through building dikes and drudging or we could do it right. Some of the expert witnesses suggested that Washington state is where we ought to look for excellence in its flood plains by design program, which works to reduce flood risks while enhancing and restoring salmon habitat.

Can the minister update us on whether DFO is actively pursuing a flood plains by design program?

Hon. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra)
2022-05-30 23:53

Mr. Chair, I absolutely share the concern that it is not just the effects of the flooding, slides and fires, but how we rebuild from them. I mentioned earlier that I am part of the emergency committee of provincial and federal ministers, and each of my and DFO’s interventions has been to make sure the other ministers understand the importance of having fish-friendly rebuilding. We are going to continue to press that point.

Our government provided $5 billion to the province to help rebuild from the flooding in November. That rebuilding has to be done in a way that is fish friendly, so I am going to be asking for a report on what we are doing to ensure that.

I thank the member for her concern.

Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-05-30 23:54

Mr. Chair, I will move to the problem of what people call aquaculture but my constituents insist I call toxic fish factories, and how we are going to get them out of the water, as the minister’s government promised. Some of the witnesses who testified recently on the science issue questioned why the department, not the minister personally, obviously, has in certain sections suppressed science on viruses and sea lice. The conclusion was that it had to do with the fact that the Fisheries Act structurally has a conflict of interest in both promoting the aquaculture industry and regulating it.

Would the minister be open to looking at the new aquaculture act to eliminate that conflict of interest, have a different department promote aquaculture and have DFO protect wild fish stocks?

Hon. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra)
2022-05-30 23:55

Mr. Chair, we do have a process, the CSAS process, which provides the opportunity for peer review of science. I understand what the member is saying when she says that there has been some recent research that has come out since the CSAS report that determined minimal risk. At a certain point, when there is a body of work that has not been reviewed, I will be requesting that another peer review process take place through CSAS so that we can update our analysis of the risk to wild salmon.
Consideration in a Committee of the WholeDepartment of Fisheries and OceansMain estimates 2022-2023

Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2022-05-30 23:56

Mr. Chair, moving on, I was really pleased to hear the minister say that she recognizes that polystyrene is a real problem of plastic pollution in our coastal areas, but I was disappointed to hear that it sounded like DFO is not interested in getting it out of the ocean.
Is DFO working with Environment and Climate Change Canada to improve the regulations currently under review for ocean plastics to put polystyrene’s use in the marine and coastal areas on a list so that we avoid getting it into the ocean in the first place?

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The federal green parliamentary caucus is shocked by the sudden and ill-considered decision to prevent spot prawn fishers from flash freezing their catch in small containers at sea.

The sudden departure from the decades long interpretation of regulation around our local BC spot prawn fishery is not only shocking for its lack of consultation, it is also illogical and unscientific.

It is not difficult to inspect a small box of prawns that is easily thawed.

We completely support the statement from James McIsaac of the BC Commercial Fishing Caucus:

“The commercial sector does want prawn size enforced but it does not want the market killed by the enforcement actions. Banning the sale of prawn in tubs frozen at sea does nothing for the sustainability of the industry, it only forces harvesters to package for export or go to processors to enter local markets.”

We must support our local small fishers and their ability to get their product to local consumers. We want to prevent an illogical regulation with the likely consequence of benefiting larger producers for no ecological benefit.

We have written the Hon Bernadette Jordan and requested she immediately reverse this decision.

Click here to read the letter to Minister Jordan.

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Submission in Response to the Review of Changes to the Fisheries Act 

To: The Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans
From: Elizabeth May, O.C. Member of Parliament Saanich-Gulf Islands
Date: November 30, 2016 

This brief is prepared as a contribution to the Committee’s Review of Changes to the Fisheries Act, which was gutted with the implementation of the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38, in 2012.

Though I am heartened to see that the Liberal government is moving forward to repeal some of these changes, Canadians continue to live under C-38’s broken process when it comes to environmental assessment.

With the passage of time, people tend to forget that the National Energy Board never had a mandate to conduct environmental reviews prior to C-38, neither did the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, nor the Atlantic provinces’ Off-Shore Petroleum Boards. The repeal of the original Canadian Environmental Assessment Act has caused a series of flawed and illegitimate reviews that place the new government in an untenable position. 

It would have been preferable to reinstate environmental laws as they existed in 2006 and conduct a review and consultation based on those acts.  The current drawn-out consultation process creates the risk of more projects entering a hopelessly flawed process. The longer these bad laws remain, the more new projects start at the front end of an unfixable and unfair process.

Canada deserves better.

I call upon the government to repeal changes to the federal Fisheries Act found in spring 2012’s omnibus budget bill C-38. To protect precious fish habitat, we must restore the habitat protection provisions of the Fisheries Act, destroyed in Bill C-38.

Prior to the changes made in 2012, the act prohibited harmful alteration, disruption or destruction (HADD). Amendments to section 35(1) of the Fisheries Act changed the legislation to prohibit the permanent alteration or destruction of fish habitat, and the prohibition was merged with the previous stand-alone prohibition against destruction of fish. This broadened the act, and completely undermined the ability of the Fisheries Act to protect our waterways and their biodiversity. As well, whereas it used to apply to all fish and fish habitat, it now only applies to fish and their habitat that are part of, or support, commercial, recreational, and aboriginal fisheries. Changes to the Fisheries Act in 2012 have also weakened the government’s ability to charge companies for destroying fish habitat. 

In an open letter to then Prime Minister Stephen Harper, scientists from across the country said:

“Habitat destruction is the most common reason for species decline. All ecologists and fisheries scientists around the world agree on these fundamental points, and the Fisheries Act has been essential to protecting fish habitats and the fisheries they support in Canada.”

The damage wrought by these changes is extensive.  The very thorough brief of Dr. Martin Z. Olszynski is entirely persuasive.  I also urge the committee to follow the excellent recommendations of West Coast Environmental Law, as presented by Linda Nowlan, and FLOW, with research from Tony Maas. The Habitat 2.0 recommendations, in particular, deserve support.

The C-38 re-classifications of types of fisheries meriting protection as “commercial, recreational and aboriginal” deserve special mention.  For those members of the Committee who did not serve in the 41^st Parliament, you need to know the source of this new legal regime.  It is not based on evidence or sound public policy analysis.  In fact, it came from industry lobbying – word for word.  To my knowledge in the last forty years of evolving environmental law, this is the first time in Canadian history that laws have been literally dictated to government by industry.

The effect is to deprive any fishery without human utilization from consideration.

The Fisheries Act is one of Canada’s oldest pieces of environmental legislation and it must be strengthened to ensure the success of our coastal communities, our economy, First Nations, Metis and Inuit rights of utilization, and our country’s natural resources.  All opposition parties in 2012 fought hard against the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38, which destroyed habitat protection under the Fisheries Act. Those devastating changes are not yet reversed. It is my sincere hope that this government will no longer delay on this matter.

Recommendations:

• Repeal changes to the federal Fisheries Act found in spring 2012’s omnibus budget bill C-38.
• Remove the exemption of the Fisheries Act in the C-38 changes to the National Energy Board Act when pipelines are involved, as well as removal of the Species at Risk Act and Navigable Waters Act.
• Strengthen the Fisheries Act to:
  • Require evaluation of threats to fish stocks and include provisions to protect fish stocks and the marine environment;
  • Make protection of critical stocks and habitat mandatory;
  • Require that the management and conservation of wild fisheries take precedence over aquaculture, wherever there are conflicts;
  • Increase penalties for contravening the Fisheries Act
  • Improve public participation in decision making, under the principles of the Oceans Act, in particular engaging coastal communities in local fisheries management.
  • Implement the Wild Salmon policy
  • Transfer the promotion of aquaculture to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and restore DFO’s role in protecting coastal eco-systems from the threat posed by open-pen aquaculture
  • Make fish-friendly flood control an aspect of climate adaptation.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide these points.  I am very happy to meet with the committee and staff to provide more detailed background to any of these points.

Elizabeth May, O.C.

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Tragically, as with so many issues relating to our environment, this is a day to remind ourselves of the threats to and recent attacks on this very critical natural resource.

“Canada has no national strategy to address very urgent water issues facing our society,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands. “Our Federal Water Policy is more than 20 years old and has never been implemented. We need to make use of its excellent guidelines immediately in order to deal with the impact of climate change, contamination, shortages, pressures to bulk export, and more.”

In May, 2012, a report by the Forum for Leadership on Water, a group of academic, NGO, and retired public-sector experts on water policy, stated that decades of policy and funding neglect had left Canada “crippled,” as it confronts growing threats to its water.

Since then, the situation has grown worse with the Conservatives’ aggressive promotion of the extraction industries, leading to the end of credible environmental assessments, the gutting of the Fisheries Act, and the virtual elimination of the Navigable Waters Protection Act – which leaves the great majority of our lakes and rivers vulnerable to development.

Even the Great Lakes are at risk. “The Great Lakes, which hold more than 95 percent of North America’s surface freshwater – 20 percent of the world’s – are continuously threatened by climate change pollution, over-extraction, invasive species, and wetland loss,” said Cathy MacLellan, Green Party Energy and Natural Resource Critic. “As the south and mid-western US continues to experience severe water shortages, the shared Great Lakes and Canada’s other fresh water resources are vulnerable to weak legislation concerning bulk water exports.”

Recent reports that Lake Erie is in trouble again, after having nearly died and then being revived in the 1970s, are disturbing. Earlier this year, Lake Winnipeg was given the title of Threatened Lake of 2013 – the most threatened lake in the world – by the Global Nature Fund (GNF). It is being poisoned by blue-green algae feeding off sewage and agricultural chemicals.

At the same time, small freshwater lakes are being used as toxic dumps. The Fisheries Minister has allowed certain lakes to be reclassified as ‘tailings impoundment areas. This absolves mining companies from having to build man-made containment ponds designed to protect natural water systems, and fish.

Our wetlands, too, are in danger. “Canada has about 25 percent of the world’s wetlands – lakes, rivers, swamps, wet grasslands, peatlands,” said Janice Harvey, Green Party Fisheries Critic. “Historically, we have played a key role internationally in protecting them. With the gutting of the Fisheries Act and the aggressive expansion of the Alberta tar sands this is no longer the case.”

“Our freshwater is in a fragile state for a variety of reasons, which might have been adequately dealt with before climate change,” said May. “Now, the fight to stop the rise in temperatures globally is crucial to saving this resource for future generations.”

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There is money for the burial of our veterans and $8 million for the restoration of Massey Hall. “Public outcry over the savaging of fisheries habitat has lead to a small sop this time around — $10 million over 2 years to work with local conservation groups to improve fish habitat –and a salmon conservation stamp,” said May.

Encouragingly, a number of the Green Party’s recommendations made during pre-budget consultations were adopted. These include:

• new funding to Sustainable Development Technology Fund (although at $325 million over 8, less than what had been recommended by Pembina);
• going after off-shore tax-havens;
• reducing money wasted in Government of Canada travel and greater use of telecommunications and video-conferencing;
• money for First Nations education, although much less than recommended;
• funds to municipal infrastructure, and while less than what the crisis demands, it is certainly a step in the right direction;
• a just transition for asbestos workers with $50 million for 7 years toward retraining of workers in that shameful industry.

Same Direction, New Tone

However, the overall direction of this government is unchanged. Whereas last budget’s only use of the word “climate” was restricted to “investment climate”, Budget 2013 actually references climate change and mentions the Copenhagen target, though predictably repeats the falsehood that we are “halfway to meeting (it).” (p.242)  The same page even boasts of the accomplishments of the ecoEnergy retrofit program – a program they killed last year.

“The problem with the budget documents is that they are increasingly vague documents.  We no longer receive the appendices with the total budget numbers for departments.  So, is the total envelope going up or down?  Who knows?” asked May.

“For instance, VIA Rail is mentioned and gets money — $54 million this year and $58 million spread out over the next five years.  But there is no context to know if the 50% cut in VIA support in the Main Estimates would be redressed in the Supplementary Estimates, or whether the cuts are devastating and these amounts are band-aids on a fatal blow,” continued May.

“What we will not know until we see the implementing legislation is how many egregious measures will be rammed through the House in a 2013 Omnibus bill that claims to derive its legitimacy from this budget,” said May.

“The reality is this is a fudge-it, a PR piece, rather than a real plan. The 2012 budget made no mention of the Fisheries Act, but Budget Implementation Act C-38, destroyed fish habitat.  So it will take a few more months to be sure the second of one of Mr. Flaherty’s new shoes is not about to fall,” concluded May.

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In the February 28th meeting it was decided that the committee report titled Closed Containment Salmon Aquaculture would be presented to the House by the committee chair.

The same motion determined that the committee would dedicate the March 5th and March 7th meetings to consideration of the Supplementary Estimates, and that the committee would invite departmental officials and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to the meetings to discuss fisheries management issues and the coast guard.

The motion also set out a schedule for committee business, including plans to continue its study on invasive species in the Great Lakes, meeting with provincial officials and beginning a report on northern and arctic fisheries.

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For example, the ice-breakers were promised in 2005 and again in 2008, and have been delayed once again. China, with no Arctic coastline at all, now has icebreakers in Canada’s waters while our Coast Guard’s Amundsen is in dry dock.

The construction of the deepwater port naval port in Nanisivik promised in 2007 has yet to be begun, despite promises it would begin two years ago. Also two years ago, the Prime Minister announced a major new satellite project, the Radarstat Constellation Mission. It now appears to be mired in budgetary delays.

In one of the more recent bizarre announcements, Stephen Harper promised the creation of a new Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS) to be built in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. It was first pledged in the 2007 Speech from the Throne claiming the government would “build a world-class Arctic research station that will be on the cutting edge of Arctic issues, including environmental science and resource development.”

It is bizarre because at the same time that the Harper Conservatives are pledging millions to build a new research facility from the ground up, they are shutting down the internationally renowned PEARL (Polar Environmental and Atmospheric Research Laboratory). PEARL recently had $10-million invested in state of the art equipment to monitor ozone depletion and the build up of greenhouse gases. Closing it down is a scandal.

Part of Harper’s vision is clearly the exploitation of fossil fuel resources in the Arctic. Last spring, licences were opened up to start the planning for prospecting and exploration to tap into the oil and gas now increasingly accessible as the ice shrinks.

A quite different view of the Arctic comes from the scientific community. The Arctic faces new pressures for resource exploitation, from fisheries to oil and gas. Far from being an economic bonanza, the rapidly disappearing summer ice is a disaster. On Aug. 26, we reached an all-time loss of Arctic Sea ice. The melt represents a loss of more than 40 per cent of summer ice extent in the past decade alone. The melting of Arctic ice had been an anticipated climate change impact for decades, but the pace at which the ice is melting exceeds earlier projections. The explanation lies in the impact of positive feed-back loops. The loss of ice compromises the albedo effect, a cooling effect. The white ice bounces the sun’s heat back to space, whereas the dark ocean water absorbs it, speeding the warming. Less ice equals warmer waters, melting more ice.

The loss of Arctic ice has devastating impacts on the entire planet. Research at Rutgers University identified the mechanism by which the melting Arctic is impacting areas far to the south through increasingly serious extreme weather events. It turns out the difference between Arctic cold and Equatorial heat has kept the jet stream moving fast and relatively horizontally over mid-latitudes.

With the warming Arctic, the difference has gone wobbly and so has the jet stream. Fires, floods, and droughts have increased globally as the jet stream slows down due to a warming Arctic. Moving more slowly it lies in lazy loops, leaving high pressure and low pressure zones in place for unusually long periods of time. It is too early to diagnose the causes of the ferocity of Hurricane Sandy, but clearly the melting of the Arctic is implicated.

Yet, on the Prime Minister’s Arctic visits, climate change is never mentioned. Of course, moving to open up the Arctic to oil and gas is to throw fuel on the fire that is warming the Earth and melting the Arctic. Last spring, the federal government moved to boost offshore petroleum development in Arctic waters. The National Energy Board announced it would weaken its policy requiring proof of an ability to build a relief well in the same season prior to drilling. This creates unacceptable levels of risk for the Arctic. Norway requires proven capability to initiate a relief well within 12 days of any accident. It seems the industry has more concerns for safety than the Conservative government. Total SA, the French oil giant, withdrew from its planned oil exploitation in Greenland, noting that the costs of any accident outweighed any benefit.

Similarly, Royal Dutch Shell abandoned its plans to drill off Alaska after a $4.5-billion investment continued to fail technologically. The reality is that drilling for oil in the Arctic is highly dangerous as, for much of the year, any response to an emergency will be impossible. Industry experts confirm that the private sector would not be interested in the Arctic at all—if not for subsidies.

As Canada takes the chair in the Arctic Council, it is my hope that Aglukkaq will champion a vision for a sustainable Arctic.

We need to work for an oil spill prevention strategy, for affordable food and Inuit rights, and a fisheries management strategy, within a precautionary and stewardship approach. And we have to stop ignoring the threat of a rapidly-warming climate.

Elizabeth May is the Leader of the Green Party of Canada and the Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
Originally printed in the Hill Times.

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On Thursday, October 18, the committee met in camera to discuss “Closed Containment Salmon Aquaculture.” The Minutes can be found here.

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Green Party leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands, Mary Gorman, Save Our Seas and Shores Coalition, Dr. Lindy Weilgart, Research Associate in Biology at Dalhousie University and an expert in seismic impacts on marine life, and Dr. Thomas Duck, Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, also called on Canadians and regional provincial governments to join them in stopping the Harper Conservatives’ aggressive extraction agenda in the Gulf.

“We need as many concerned Canadians as possible and their provincial representatives to join us in our call for an exploration moratorium in the Gulf of St. Lawrence” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands. “Prime Minister Stephen Harper has just spent the past few months pushing through his pro-oil budget and omnibus Bill C-38, and now he thinks nothing can stop him. We have to demonstrate that’s just not the case.”

The elimination of federal regulations for offshore development are likely to have dire consequences for the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a highly sensitive ecosystem with over 2,000 marine species that spawn, nurse, and migrate year around, including lobster, herring, snow crab, mackerel, tuna, endangered blue and right whales, leatherback turtle, and harlequin ducks.

Environmental assessments for exploratory drilling, which can be as dangerous as production drilling, were eliminated in the new Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012 (CEAA 2012) introduced in Bill C-38. It should be recognized that the largest oil spill in American history, the BP Macondo Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, was an exploratory well.

Environmental assessments of seismic blasting were also eliminated. “Marine mammals and fish are highly impacted by seismic surveys. Whales can strand and die, often bleeding from their eyes; dolphins can go rigid, catatonic, and drown, and the hearing cells in fish can be ripped apart. To carry out this destruction in as productive and biologically rich an area as the Gulf is madness,” Dr. Lindy Weilgart warned.

The Harper Conservatives are eliminating environmental regulations and protections to fast-track offshore drilling in spite of the fact that the Gulf provides a renewable global and regional food source, generating a thriving fishery – including Mi’kmaq and Acadian fishers – which, together with the tourism industry, is worth one billion dollars and creates approximately 50,000 related jobs. At the same time, the Harper Conservatives have not amended the current industry liability limit which now stands at 40 million – nothing compared to the billions BP has spent in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf has unique characteristics making exploration and extraction particularly risky. It is a partially landlocked, inland sea with strong, counter-clockwise, tidal currents that only empty into the Atlantic once a year. There is no feasible way to clean up an oil spill because the Gulf is one of the windiest regions in North America. Due to the currents, one oil spill could damage five provincial coastlines (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Newfoundland).

“As coastal landowners, we feel betrayed and abandoned by our governments who are gambling recklessly with everything we have worked for our entire lives – our property values and net worth along with our Gulf’s pristine beauty, recreational pleasures and unique maritime culture,” stated Mary Gorman.

“I would like to formally welcome Prime Minister Harper to the 21st century and advise him that humans are not the only species on the planet. It is long past time to shuck off this anthropogenic attitude of superiority and mastery and learn a small lesson in humility. It is good for the soul. While the rest of the world is embracing change, our government is clinging to 20th century philosophies and business models. This may have been acceptable in the 1950s, but we have moved on. We urge the Canadian government to do the same,” said John Percy, Leader of the Nova Scotia Green Party.

This aggressive extraction agenda is taking place as the government’s ability to monitor negative impacts has been greatly weakened. Professor Thomas Duck highlighted the ongoing reduction of scientific capacity at Environment Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

“Sound policy is informed by science, yet the Harper Conservatives have dismantled much of our capacity to monitor the impact of fossil fuel exploration and development. The elimination of scientific assessments and oversight — indeed, the whole of Harper’s war on evidence — puts the health and safety of Canadians and their environment at considerable risk.”

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