B.C. Wildlife Federation Executive Director Jesse Zeman testified before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans Canada on December 9, 2024.
Here are excerpts from his comments to Members of the Committee. Questions and responses may be edited for clarity.
Zeman: This year, the B.C. Wildlife Federation and its partners restored over 350 hectares of wetlands and streams, conducted a number of salmon habitat restoration projects and installed 71 beaver dam analogues. Over the past two years, we’ve helped remove nearly 45,000 kilograms of garbage from the Fraser River tidal marsh. Our partners include First Nations, ENGOs, local communities, private landholders, the Government of Canada and the Province of B.C.
The 2019 modernization of the Fisheries Act provided a number of positive amendments, particularly around rebuilding plans, alteration and destruction of habitat, environmental flow needs and the return of the HADD provision. However, the application of the Fisheries Act is perhaps more important than the Fisheries Act itself.
In the world of conservation, the future of salmon is dependent upon outcomes, not process. This year, for Fraser River sockeye, we had the second-lowest return on record, with a final end-season estimate of 456,000 fish. That’s 100,000 fewer than what was originally predicted.
With the second-lowest return on record, one would expect additional enforcement efforts to protect this dismal return. However, Pacific Salmon Commission data indicates that legal fisheries, such as test fisheries and food, social and ceremonial fisheries, caught just over 6,100 fish. The United States, our treaty partner, reported zero fish caught. In addition to that, Canada reported 15,000-plus sockeye in what DFO calls “other” fisheries. DFO defines other fisheries as fisheries that may include “unauthorized directed retention or unauthorized bycatch retention in fisheries directed at other species.”
The 15,000 fish is an underestimate, as those numbers are primarily from fisheries managers, not fisheries officers. We know this because fisheries officers were virtually non-existent on the mid-Fraser. DFO enforcement spent 1,000 hours patrolling the mid-Fraser in 2022. In the past, it was 1,000 more than that. This year, it was around 100 hours. To my knowledge, there were no night operations or helicopter operations on the mid-Fraser, but there were a number of reports of poaching.
In November, 2023, we spoke to the committee about illegal, unregulated and unreported catch and similar issues within DFO. A number of fisheries officers who were passionate about fish conservation have now left compliance and conservation and protection entirely or have left DFO, and some have recently left the Canadian government to work for the province. Additionally, a number of managers in the conservation and protection part of DFO came from the Canada Border Services Agency. This has eliminated advancement opportunities for DFO staff, but more importantly, it has put those who know very little about fisheries conservation and protection in charge of enforcement.
As we said in November 2023, I believe the committee has a number of questions to ask DFO conservation and protection about historical data related to officers on leave, turnover and the number of night patrols and helicopter and boat patrols on the lower and mid-Fraser River over the past five years. This would give the committee a better temperature check on the changing effectiveness and culture within conservation and protection. The number of fisheries officers in Lillooet, Williams Lake, Quesnel and Prince George is now fewer than half of what it was in 2011. Without enforcement, the Fisheries Act is merely a paper tiger.
Question from MP Mel Arnold: Mr. Zeman, you mentioned changes in the Act. Some were good, but the results were more important than the process. Could you elaborate a little further on that?
Zeman: This ties into the lack of enforcement. On the mid-Fraser, we reached out to DFO. We got a message response back on why there was no enforcement. There are parallels around the world of whirling disease and invasive mussels. We have laws that say you can’t transport whirling disease or aquatic invasives, but we know there’s no protection around our borders to keep them out.
A number of committee members probably don’t know what whirling disease is. To make a very long story short, it’s a parasite that affects salmonids. It can get into their spinal column. They essentially get a kink in their tail or in their body and they swim around in circles until they die. B.C. just reported three positives on Friday in Kootenay Lake.
The point is that we can have all the laws we think will change the outcome and take care of fish, but if we have no enforcement of those laws, the laws don’t mean anything. B.C. is one of the few places left in Canada that currently does not have quagga and zebra mussels. Until last year, we didn’t have whirling disease. Quite frankly, DFO, on both fronts, has been nowhere to be found.
Arnold: Are you saying that in enforcement, the inspection of watercraft or water-borne vessels, tools or implements is lacking and putting B.C. waters are risk?
Zeman: Yes. From our perspective, no watercraft should enter B.C. without being inspected and decontaminated and possibly quarantined. DFO did provide $400,000 a year to the invasive mussel defence program until 2023. This year there was no money provided federally. The BCWF partnered with the Pacific Salmon Foundation and the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation to try to provide some bare minimum funding. I believe DFO did buy a couple of trailers.
From our perspective, again, we have federal regulations that prohibit the transportation of invasives, but if there’s no money and there’s no enforcement of laws, B.C. will end up with mussels. We now have whirling disease in two places.
Question from MP Patrick Weiler: I think we’re seeing an overall centralization of DFO services. I think you quite accurately pointed out the concern that some of that has led to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Do you see any mechanisms or opportunities to better utilize technology and data in some of the detection and enforcement efforts?
Zeman: Yes, we are seeing a lack of officers. We’re seeing a brain drain happen, with people heading to other parts of the Canadian government and people leaving. As I said, there are people leaving who are coming to work for the province and the Conservation Officer Service. There’s a challenge with people who love fish and wildlife. They don’t do it because they make more, get a better paycheque or it’s a better job. They sacrifice those things because they’re so passionate about the resource. Sometimes you see—we’re seeing it provincially too—some pretty serious issues around morale because there’s a lack of funding.
How do we change that? I know that B.C., definitely, has more fisheries. We have a bigger recreational fishery, more Indigenous communities and more species at risk, probably, than every other place to the east of us, but per capita we definitely have far fewer fisheries officers. So, we need some kind of commitment to ask, “What do we need? How many people do we need?” This is as opposed to a makeshift approach where, when we have budget cuts, it’s a matter of priorities. Our priority is fish and fish conservation.
On technology, the BCWF actually built a tool called the Conservation App. We need to update it, but it gives citizen scientists the ability to report infractions on their phones. For a bit of backstory, when we started putting it to use about six or seven years ago, DFO was opposed to it because they were worried they would be overwhelmed by the number of reports and they wouldn’t be able to respond to them because there weren’t enough people. Is the technology there? Yes, absolutely.
As it relates to enforcement, the big picture is funding, capacity, and then outcomes. It’s hard on all of us when fisheries officers, biologists and managers, who care so passionately about the resource, say they can’t even do their jobs, they’re not allowed to leave the office and they can’t travel—all those sorts of things. There’s a big picture, and maybe DFO can spend some time looking at what’s an appropriate level, but there have been multiple commissions, and every single commission that comes up always says there aren’t enough enforcement officers.