CP32-93-2012-3-eng.pdf

Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River • Volume 3
assessment under Strategy 1. No discernible management
action was taken on this status assessment
(including no recovery plan).
Almost nothing has been done to assess or monitor
Fraser River sockeye Conservation Unit habitat
status under Strategy 2. In Volume 1, Chapter 11,
Cultus Lake, I observed that the Cultus Lake sockeye
Conservation Unit likely would have benefited
from DFO’s completion of a habitat status report
under Strategy 2. The lack of implementation of
Strategy 2 parallels DFO’s failure to fully implement
the 1986 Habitat Policy, which, similarly, although
20 years earlier and for more than just Pacific
salmon, envisioned habitat monitoring, including
studies to determine baseline habitat conditions.
Finally, despite Canada’s expressed commitment to
ecosystem-based management, there has been no
demonstrable progress on implementing Strategy 3
as it applies to Fraser River sockeye.
Strategy 4 also requires transparent and
informed decision making, using the best available
information. It requires a transparent process to
ensure that DFO, the minister, and all interested
parties understand the competing interests and
how those interests are balanced. While in some
cases DFO may continue to have an obligation to
consult directly with First Nations, the collaborative
and integrated strategic planning process under
Action Step 4.2 should be the central process
through which DFO receives external policy advice.
Although DFO may need to negotiate arrangements
with First Nations, the Province of British Columbia,
and/or municipalities to achieve some of its longrange
planning objectives, DFO can and must make
many decisions in the first instance in relation to
habitat and harvest.
Seven years after adoption of the Wild Salmon
Policy, DFO has done little of the basic groundwork
necessary to begin integrated strategic planning
for Conservation Units. Apart from the WSP’s own
Appendix 2 (A structured five-step planning procedure),
DFO has not adopted an integrated strategic
planning procedure to consult with other levels of
government, First Nations, and stakeholders.
The failure to implement Strategy 4 (integrated
strategic planning) raises the concern, expressed
by fishers, that the only lever DFO is using to
address weak stocks is curtailing harvest through
the use of harvest-planning tools. 35 As a result, the
harvesters are left to bear the cost of preserving
Conservation Units through forgone harvest. The
companion measures contemplated by Strategy 4,
including restoration measures and habitat
improvements, local development planning, and
other measures involving all levels of government,
have not occurred.
The new integrated strategic planning process
contemplated under Action Step 4.2 needs
to integrate fisheries management processes,
including local fisheries management or advisory
processes established under future treaties, such
as Joint Fisheries Committees. Similarly, if DFO
continues to develop any policy that may change
inter-sectoral allocation of the Fraser River sockeye
salmon fishery, such as the Aboriginal Fisheries
Framework, it should do so through Action Step 4.2
in a transparent and inclusive manner and in
consultation with all fishing sectors and the
public. (The Aboriginal Fisheries Framework is
described in Volume 1, Chapter 5, Sockeye fishery
management, in the Aboriginal fishing policies and
practices section.)
In my view, specific activities under strategies 2
to 4 need priority attention. In the recommendations
that follow, I have identified those activities
and have attached dates by which they should be
completed. The activities and associated dates are
based on the evidence I heard. If the implementation
plan prepared by the new associate regional
director general varies substantially from what I
propose below, it would, in my view, be appropriate
to explain the rationale for that course of action in
the annual public implementation progress reports
proposed in Recommendation 7.
Wild Salmon Policy: strategies 2 and 3
8 By January 31, 2013, the new associate regional
director general should decide whether
the Habitat Management Program (Ecosystem
Management Branch)* or the Science Branch
should take the lead role in implementing
strategies 2 and 3 and what support should
be provided by the other branch. The new
* The Ecosystem Management Branch was formerly the Oceans, Habitat and Enhancement Branch, and this latter term has been used
throughout this Report.
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