From the Globe and Mail – May 30, 2011

by Mark Hume

The lack of hard data on the ocean environment has become on
important issue to a federal commission investigating the collapse of
sockeye salmon stocks in the Fraser River.

Repeatedly, scientists
testifying at the Cohen Commission have said they don’t really know what
happens to salmon once they have left fresh water and headed out into
the “black box” of the Pacific Ocean. They have complained about a
shortage of data, or no data at all, and have said there are limited
funds available for research.

One of the papers filed with the commission identifies a “hotspot” in
Queen Charlotte Sound, for example, where more than 10,000 sharks
gather on a main salmon migration route – but nobody knows why the
sharks are there, how long they are there, or what they are feeding on.

The
knowledge gap caused Tim Leadem, a lawyer representing a coalition of
conservation groups, to wonder out loud Thursday if the Cohen Commission
will ever get a definitive answer on what caused the Fraser River
sockeye population to collapse. The commission was appointed in 2009
after only one million salmon returned to spawn instead of the 10
million expected.

“What was the cause of the 2009 decline?” Mr.
Leadem asked a panel of scientists testifying about the impact of
predators on salmon. “I expect at the end of the day … [it will be an
inconclusive] death by 1,000 cuts.”

Mr. Leadem noted most of the
science teams that have presented papers to the Cohen Commission have
concluded by saying more research is needed.

“This is perplexing,”
he said. “If we are depending on science [for guidance], where are we
going to find the funding? And who’s going to be pulling the strings and
saying what science goes forward?”

Mr. Leadem said it appears
scientists “are in a world where you are scrambling for dollars” while
facing a growing list of questions.

“Yeah, we are scrambling for
research funding and it is going to be the nature of science that there
are always more questions that need answering,” said Andrew Trites, a
professor and director at the University of British Columbia Fisheries
Centre.

Mr. Justice Bruce Cohen, the B.C. Supreme Court judge who
is heading the hearings, asked if there is an overall strategy for
addressing the many unanswered questions about the ocean environment.
“Within DFO and within the larger community of science … is there an
overarching body that does a macro analysis of all the science that’s
taking place? Who’s going to draw the agenda? Is this a scrambled
situation … or is there actually a game plane here?” he asked.

“My
perception as an academic . . . in terms of fisheries management … I
don’t feel there is a game plan,” replied Dr. Trites, who appeared on a
panel with John Ford, head of cetacean research in the Pacific for
Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and Peter Olesiuk, DFO’s head of
pinniped research.

Lara Tessaro, junior commission counsel, later
asked the witnesses to name the DFO managers who are directing
scientific research in the Pacific, a line of questioning that suggested
the issue may be revisited as the hearings continue.

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From the Globe and Mail – May 18, 2011

by Mark Hume

When federal investigators in British Columbia found 345,000 sockeye
stored in 110 industrial freezers, they thought they were onto a major
black market operation for salmon caught in aboriginal food fisheries.

But
Project Ice Storm, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans intelligence
operation that found the salmon in 2005, ran out of funding and wasn’t
able to track the fish from the cold storage plants to their final
destination, the Cohen Commission heard on Tuesday.

It has long been suspected in B.C. that the aboriginal fishery is a
cover for operations, with possible organized crime links, that trade in
salmon the way others trade in drugs. Native leaders have rejected such
allegations, saying their communities need all the fish they catch
because salmon are a cultural staple in everything from births to
funeral feasts.

DFO documents filed with the commission, which is
investigating the collapse of sockeye salmon populations in the Fraser
River, show enforcement officials felt the fish, caught under “food,
social and ceremonial” licences, were destined to go into the commercial
market.

“The FSC First Nations fishery on the Lower Fraser River
is largely out of control and should be considered in all contexts, a
commercial fishery,” states a DFO intelligence assessment of Project Ice
Storm.

“The Department of Fisheries and Oceans are unable to
effectively control the illegal sales of FSC salmon,” it states. “A
major change is needed in fisheries laws to effectively deal with the
commercial processing and storage of FSC fish.”

Another document,
recording a meeting of DFO enforcement officers in April, 2010, states
that “97 per cent of FSC harvest in LFR [Lower Fraser River] is thought
to be sold.”

Scott Coultish, regional chief of DFO’s Intelligence
and Investigation Services, said in testimony the estimate was based on
the personal comments of field officers, not from any research. But he
felt it was accurate.

Each year, bands are allocated a catch of
salmon to cover their food, social and ceremonial needs. Some years,
when there is a surplus of fish, they are also allowed “economic
opportunity” catches, which can be sold. In 2005, only 5,500 sockeye
were caught in the native EO fishery on the Fraser.

Mr. Coultish
said the 345,000 sockeye in cold storage plants in the Lower Mainland
and on Vancouver Island were registered to individuals and companies.
The fish, which were legally stored, were flash frozen, or smoked and in
vacuum packaging.

“Most or all of this was consistent with what
you would see for commercial fish,” he said. “This product was simply
not for food, societal and ceremonial use.”

Randy Nelson, DFO’s
director of conservation and protection on the Pacific coast, told the
commission his department didn’t have the resources to follow up on the
find, and he doubted they would in the future because he has been told
significant cutbacks are coming.

In an interview outside the
hearings, Ernie Crey, a fisheries adviser for the Sto:lo Nation, which
fishes on the Lower Fraser, rejected the implications of the testimony
of the two DFO officials.

He said 950,000 FSC sockeye were caught
by native communities in the Fraser in 2005, and because the season was
short and intense, a large number of fish arrived quickly and went into
commercial freezers.

“About one third of our fish were in cold storage. This would not be unusual,” he said.

Mr. Crey said salmon are served at almost every ceremony.

“If
a member of my community passes away, you’d get 250 to 1,000 people
attending the funeral. Fish would be served. It’s the same at weddings,
birthdays. … And that’s a lot of fish,” he said.

About 40,000
aboriginal people live in Metro Vancouver and about 15,000 are in the
Fraser Valley. It’s not clear how many of them get FSC salmon.

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From the Globe & Mail – May 3, 2011

by Mark Hume

A federal public inquiry into the decline of sockeye salmon in the
Fraser River has been accused of suppressing information that an
infectious virus has been detected in British Columbia waters.

The
concern is raised in letters to the Cohen Commission of Inquiry by
Gregory McDade, a lawyer representing salmon researcher and anti-fish
farm activist Alexandra Morton.

Officially the commission is not engaged with the issue, but the
letters, obtained by The Globe and Mail, show that Ms. Morton’s
knowledge of the disease and a debate over the public’s right to know
about it has developed into a contentious issue behind the scenes.

The
commission suspended its hearings for the day on Tuesday for what
spokesperson Carla Shore described as a routine all-counsel meeting to
discuss legal housekeeping matters.

But sources say the issue up
for discussion is the one raised by Mr. McDade’s letters, in which he
argues Ms. Morton should be released from the commission’s undertaking
of confidentiality.

The undertaking prevents participants in the
hearings from making public any information they have obtained through
disclosure. And with 390,000 documents and more than 188,000 e-mails
disclosed so far, that means there is a mountain of material to keep
secret.

Mr. McDade wrote that in combing through that vast volume
of material, Ms. Morton came across “indications” a disease known as
infectious salmon anemia virus, or ISA, may have been detected in fish
samples tested by provincial government labs.

The suggestion is
the symptoms of the disease were detected, but not the disease itself,
which has never been reported on the West Coast. ISA can be lethal to
Atlantic salmon, but Pacific salmon have proved immune to it in tests.
The concern is that if the disease were present, it could change and
begin to kill Pacific stocks.

“Canada and Canadians are obliged to
report diseases of aquatic animals as a member of the World
Organization for Animal Health,” Mr. McDade wrote.

“There are
approximately 35 indications of the existence of ISA identified in these
records to date,” he wrote. “Of great biological concern is that some
of these diagnoses are in Pacific salmon, suggesting potential spread of
a novel and virulent virus into native populations may be underway into
the North Pacific.”

He asked that Ms. Morton be released from her
undertaking so she can report her ISA concerns to the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency.

“There is a very substantial public interest in
ensuring full reporting of ISA indications. An ISA epidemic could prove
devastating to wild salmon stocks. In our submission the public
interest in proper reporting must outweigh the interest in
confidentiality,” Mr. McDade wrote.

The request was refused by commission lawyers – but neither the ruling nor Mr. McDade’s application were released.

In
a second letter Mr. McDade objected to the secrecy around the
application and the ruling, saying it “is reminiscent of the criticisms
of the Star Chamber. It is not appropriate to a public inquiry.”

Mr.
McDade wrote that British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen,
who is heading the inquiry, should hear submissions on the matter “in an
open public setting.”

He concludes by stating that the second
letter, which was distributed to the more than 20 lawyers representing
participants at the hearings, should not be covered by the undertaking
because it does not contain any confidential documents.

Mr. McDade did not return calls on Tuesday. Ms. Morton said because of the undertaking she cannot discuss her concerns.

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From The Globe & Mail – April 5, 2011

by Mark Hume

An unguarded note a Department of Fisheries and Oceans manager wrote
to himself has given a judicial inquiry a glimpse into the frustrations
and fears felt by frontline staff fighting to save salmon habitat in
British Columbia.

The brief, one-page document written by Jason
Hwang, a manager for DFO’s Habitat and Enhancement Branch in the
Kamloops area, was entered as evidence at the Cohen commission on
Tuesday by Judah Harrison, a lawyer representing a coalition of
conservation groups.

Mr. Harrison, who obtained the document through disclosure, described
it as “a sort of unguarded critique” of DFO’s struggles to protect
habitat.

“Well, I definitely agree it’s unguarded,” said Mr.
Hwang, who was one of three DFO witnesses testifying on habitat issues.
“I believe I wrote that for myself for some upcoming planning meeting. .
. .trying to reflect on some key things we were grappling with.”

Mr. Hwang said the note is a few years old, but in response to questions from Mr. Harrison, he agreed things haven’t changed.

“Huge
amount of development in Thompson, Okanagan, Nicola, Shuswap. We can’t
keep up. Referral backlog is up to 4 months,” wrote Mr. Hwang, whose
department is responsible for ensuring salmon habitat is not degraded by
logging, mining, agriculture, urban growth and other activities. “We
are not able to pursue smaller occurrences that in the past we have
pursued and prosecuted.”

Earlier in the week, the commission heard
that DFO is not meeting its key policy goal of ensuring that
developments do not cause a net loss of fish habitat. The commission,
which is examining the decline of sockeye salmon in the Fraser River,
also heard DFO’s effectiveness was hampered by a new habitat management
policy (known as the Environmental Process Modernization Plan, or EPMP),
which staff in B.C. resisted because it was “lowering the bar” on
environmental protection.

“EPMP and staff reductions have reduced
our ability to engage with proponents. . .we don’t have a handle on what
is actually going on,” Mr. Hwang stated in his note.

“We have no viable referral system. This is killing us,” he stated.

“We
are without question not attaining no net loss. . .Our staff are very
dis-illusioned [sic] that the department is not doing more to address
this.

“The relationship between province and DFO is in a state of
disfunction [sic]. We don’t coordinate on referrals in any consistent
way, and there is no guidance or leadership from Vancouver-Victoria on
this.”

Mr. Hwang also wrote DFO was not keeping up with the
increased logging authorized by the province in response to the mountain
pine-beetle epidemic, which has swept through much of the B.C.
Interior, killing huge stands of timber.

“We are totally
disengaged from operational forestry. Rates of cut have increased
massively in response to MPB. We don’t have a handle on what is going
on, and are not providing any meaningful guidance on what we would like
to see for fish,” wrote Mr. Hwang.

The frank assessment of DFO’s
failings contrasted with the more cautious evaluations given in direct
testimony by Mr. Hwang, and his co-witnesses, Patrice LeBlanc, director
of habitat policies for DFO in Ottawa, and Rebecca Reid, a regional
director in the Pacific.

They portrayed DFO as doing a good job despite the challenges of budget restrictions and staffing cuts.

Dr.
Craig Orr, who was observing proceedings as executive director of the
Watershed Watch Salmon Society, said he was dismayed by the testimony.

“The
evidence supports the widely held belief that government is more
concerned with streamlining harmful industrial development and
bolstering flagging public confidence than in protecting critical salmon
habitat,” he said.

Read original article

From the Globe & Mail – March 27, 2011

by Mark Hume

When a federal commission investigating the collapse of Fraser River
sockeye stocks heard recently that a Fisheries and Oceans scientist who
has done groundbreaking research was being silenced, it gave Jeffrey
Hutchings a bad case of déjà vu.

“Your recent articles on DFO’s
muzzling of Dr. Kristi Miller remind me of similar attempts by DFO to
stifle the imparting of science from government scientists to other
scientists and to the Canadian public,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Prof. Hutchings, a widely respected fisheries scientist, holds the
Canada Research Chair in Marine Conservation & Biodiversity at
Dalhousie University, in Halifax. In 1997, he, Carl Walters from the
Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia and Richard
Haedrich, Department of Biology at Memorial University of Newfoundland,
set off a media firestorm with a paper that ripped DFO for suppressing
controversial science.

Writing in the Canadian Journal of
Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, they outlined two cases – the collapse
of Atlantic cod stocks and the diversion of the Nechako River, in B.C. –
in which they maintained research was stifled because it didn’t conform
to political agendas.

They argued that, on the East Coast, DFO
silenced scientists who warned Atlantic cod stocks had been devastated
not by seal predation, but from overfishing. And, in the West, they
stated that DFO rejected research that showed an Alcan plan to divert
the Nechako River would damage Chinook stocks.

In both cases, they
wrote, hard-working scientists had their findings suppressed by DFO
managers who didn’t want to see research that clashed with political
goals.

“We contend that political and bureaucratic interference in
government fisheries science compromises the DFO’s efforts to sustain
fish stocks,” Mr. Hutchings and his colleagues wrote.

When the
article came out, it created headlines, sparking a national debate on
the role of science within government. DFO officials denied stifling any
researchers. But the article, quoting internal DFO memos, showed
scientists had been “explicitly ordered … not to discuss ‘politically
sensitive’ matters … with the public, irrespective of the scientific
basis.”

Earlier this month, the Cohen Commission of Inquiry Into
the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River, saw an e-mail by Dr.
Miller in which she complained about being kept away from a workshop
because her DFO masters “fear that we will not be able to control the
way the disease issue could be construed in the press.”

Dr.
Miller, who suspects a virus is killing millions of sockeye salmon in
the river, had a paper published in the prestigious journal Science
earlier this year. But she has not been allowed to talk to the press
about it.

“By preventing Dr. Miller from speaking to the media and
from participating in non-DFO controlled meetings/workshops, DFO is
inhibiting science,” Mr. Hutchings said in his e-mail. “This action, so
evidently lacking in openness and transparency, is regrettably
consistent with the objective of controlling the information that public
servants are permitted to disseminate to the public.”

Dr.
Miller’s situation also inspired Alan Sinclair, a retired DFO scientist,
to write: “Your recent article reporting that DFO put a gag order on
Dr. Kristi Miller’s research on disease in sockeye salmon is very
disturbing. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is all too common in DFO
and other Federal Ministries with large science components. I encourage
you to follow up on this and make Canadians more aware of what’s going
on.”

But following up while Dr. Miller is locked away from the
press won’t be easy. She isn’t due to testify before the Cohen
Commission for several months. Until then, Canadians can only wonder
what she discovered – and why she was silenced.

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