Category: Complementary Recommendations to Deliver on Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy

Building a modern fisheries catch monitoring and observer system

Fisheries catch monitoring is essential for science, enforcement and compliance, improving business performance of fleets, and verifying of standards. Canada’s assessments and management of fish populations, including species at risk, relies heavily on at-sea observer coverage and dockside monitoring. There is a global call for a significant increase in monitoring, reporting, and transparency to ensure sustainable fishing.

Canada is supporting improved compliance and monitoring schemes of countries around the world, leading efforts to adopt high seas inspection schemes, funding global tracking systems, and participating in negotiations on electronic monitoring standards. However, at home, Canada’s fisheries monitoring is failing to achieve target coverage levels across a wide array of fisheries despite those levels being set at embarrassingly low targets for a leading fishing nation. The Auditor General of Canada has also identified severe shortcomings in Canada’s fisheries monitoring programs.

Canada’s most high-risk fisheries consistently fail to meet their observer coverage targets, due to a shortage of at-sea observers. Electronic monitoring (EM) has been at the forefront of discussions on how to address shortcomings of the system and increase reliable catch data in Canada. DFO has also identified bycatch monitoring and implementation of the Catch Monitoring Policy to ensure proper management and harvest under Target 10 of the 2030 Nature Strategy.

There is industry and stakeholder interest in increasing the capacity of Canada’s at-sea observer programs and developing EM standards and pilots, but resources are needed to prevent this work from stalling.

Therefore, the Green Budget Coalition recommends that the government invests directly in key areas of the system to kick start an immediate overhaul:

Recommended Investment:

$60 million over three years [DFO]

  • Support up-front costs for electronic monitoring pilot projects and increased coverage for high risk fisheries. ($30 million)
  • Establish electronic monitoring standards, data management policies, working groups, and modern data processing tools. ($20 million)
  • Support recruitment and training for well-paying observer jobs, especially in community and Indigenous based businesses. ($10 million)
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Implementing an ecosystem approach to fisheries management

In 2011, Canada committed to implementing an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM) under the Aichi targets. While EAFM has long been a departmental direction for DFO, implementation has been opportunistic and inconsistent rather than comprehensive, which is why Canada ultimately failed to meet its target by the 2020 deadline. In 2022, the adoption of the KMGBF renewed Canada’s commitment to a number of targets which explicitly include the adoption of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management.

Last year, DFO began developing a national implementation plan for EAFM. This national implementation plan will guide DFO’s future decision making on fisheries management, the ocean ecosystem, and the livelihoods that depend on it. If applied consistently and effectively, this approach will incorporate critical ecosystem variables, such as climate and predator-prey dynamics, into Canada’s fisheries science and stock assessments, leading to well informed decisions and adaptive management.

It is critical that the necessary resources be put in place to ensure DFO can effectively implement EAFM across fisheries and regions. Specifically, the Green Budget Coalition is recommending funding to support three key areas of work: 1) develop full ecosystem assessments for each region – a key EAFM necessity as identified by the DFO EAFM expert working group, 2) develop regional data and code repositories to support consistent and efficient EAFM implementation at the regional scale (e.g., Duplisea et al.), and 3) ensure sufficient capacity to incorporate ecosystem variables into single-stock science and management processes.

Recommended Investment:

$40 million over five years [DFO]

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Data collection to support regulatory evaluation of pesticides (Target 7)

The PMRA often lacks data on environmental concentrations and use patterns (e.g., information on the timing, location, and quantity of pesticide applications) for the pesticides it is responsible for evaluating and regulating. This is an unacceptable gap. Water and use monitoring should be expanded and extended beyond the limited initiatives first announced as pilots in 2021 and funded for two more years in Budget 2024. The collection of these data over a longer term is also required to measure Canada’s progress towards meeting Target 7 of the Global Biodiversity Framework (reducing pesticide risks by 50% by 2030).

In June 2024, the government published draft regulatory changes to strengthen the consideration of species at risk in pesticide risk assessments. The Green Budget Coalition recommends that the Canadian Wildlife Service be funded to lead this work, and to assess and track the overall risks of pesticides to biodiversity.

Recommended Investment:

$100 million over five years

  • $5 million top-up in 2025, then $40 million over five years beginning in 2026 (and renewed in 2031) to expand and extend the new pesticide water monitoring program. [PMRA, in collaboration with ECCC]
  • $25 million over five years to launch a system for collecting and publishing pesticide sales and use data at the local/regional scale, plus $5 million in 2025 to design and develop a publicly- accessible portal for communicating real-time pesticide use data. [PMRA, in collaboration with AAFC]
  • $25 million over five years to support the consideration of species at risk in pesticide assessments and to assess and monitor the overall risks to biodiversity from pesticide use in Canada. [ECCC]

Cost recovery. The Green Budget Coalition also supports the PMRA’s proposed increase in fees for pest control products and recommends: increasing the proportion of costs to be recovered; and expanding cost recovery to include a wider range of programs such as water monitoring activities and use data collection.

See also Sustainable Agriculture Strategy: Cultivating success, with related recommendations for reducing risks from pesticides, earlier in this document.

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Underwater noise pollution (Target 7)

Sound is the most effective means for marine life to sense their surroundings and communicate across the ocean’s vast expanse. Impulsive noise, including seismic activity, sonar and pile driving, can result in temporary or permanent damage to aquatic species at risk. Continuous radiated noise, primarily generated by shipping traffic and tourism, leads to acoustic masking and reduces aquatic species’ ability to communicate, sense danger, forage, and mate. Underwater noise also compromises the ability of cetaceans, especially those already at-risk, to perceive their environment and is considered a principal threat to the recovery of two priority species (Southern Resident Killer Whales and St. Lawrence Estuary Belugas) in Canada’s Whales Initiative, and a significant stressor for the third (Narwhal).

Recommended Investment:

  • $200 million over five years to fund a comprehensive Ocean Noise Strategy to identify and implement regional, science-based underwater noise targets for key Canadian ecosystems, including the Salish Sea, Saguenay-St. Lawrence, and the Eastern Arctic;
  • Develop and establish regional noise management frameworks to achieve those targets; and
  • Begin implementation of the management frameworks, including integration into other government programs. [DFO, TC]

To ensure meaningful reductions in noise pollution, this investment should prioritize:

  • Support for Transport Canada initiatives to reduce underwater vessel noise and disturbance impacts, such as the Quiet Vessel Initiative; completing work on the national Underwater Vessel Noise Reduction advisory group and operationalizing Underwater Noise Management Planning and target requirements for vessel owners and operators; and complementary work at the International Maritime Organization [TC];
  • Support for DFO to develop and integrate noise monitoring into ongoing and developing implementation of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) and MPA networks, Other Effective Conservation Measures (OECM), Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCA), and Critical Habitat for at-risk marine mammals. Data should be made publicly available [DFO]; and
  • Mandating DFO and TC to collaborate to enforce, adaptively implement, and expand as appropriate TC initiatives for the management of vessel noise and disturbance for at-risk whales. [DFO, TC]

See also Marine shipping, earlier in this document.

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Combatting plastic pollution in Canada and the world (Target 7)

The Green Budget Coalition maintains that the impacts of plastic production and pollution on the triple crises of climate change, nature loss and pollution are a catastrophe in the making.

With the final Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee session (INC-5) for a new Global Treaty on Plastic Pollution occurring in late 2024, it is expected that the new Treaty will be presented in 2025. Canada must be ready to act to support its implementation globally and at home.

Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy paves the way to support the new Treaty by positioning pollution as “one of the five largest direct drivers of global biodiversity loss.”

There are known to be over 13,000 chemicals used in plastics and plastic production. Many of these chemicals have not been assessed for their safety. Domestic action should build on the long- standing expertise of the Chemicals Management Plan team, led by ECCC and HC, in order to ensure a comprehensive and consistent path in addressing the chemicals used in the production of plastics contributing to the impacts from plastic pollution. This would also ensure that no new plastic substances or their alternatives are introduced into the Canadian marketplace without undergoing ecological and health risk assessments, and the implementation of management measures are in place to avoid the impacts associated with plastic pollution. Addressing the unnecessary proliferation of plastics in our environment will also help Canada achieve its climate goals.

The federal government should continue its global leadership in negotiating the new Global Treaty on Plastic Pollution and be prepared in 2025 to contribute financially to its implementation globally while accelerating plastic pollution work domestically.

Recommended Investment:

$1 billion over three years to support global implementation and domestic action on the Global Treaty on Plastic Pollution that would include:

  • Contributing to the implementation of the Global Plastic Treaty [ECCC, GAC];
  • Establishing specific funding for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the global south to access technical expertise, develop innovative solutions and engage the public [ECCC, GAC];
  • Establishing specific funding for Indigenous Rights Holders to access technical expertise on implementation of the new treaty [ECCC];
  • Accelerating domestic work to address the lifecycle of plastics from production to waste management, with a specific focus on chemicals used in plastic production (including toxic additives), reduce plastic pollution, prevent problematic plastic products and, proactively eliminate harmful chemicals for use in manufacturing [ECCC, HC];
  • Reducing plastic pollution with specific targets in shipping, ghost fishing gear, and aquaculture [ECCC, DFO, TC]; and
  • Increasing funds to enforce regulations on export of hazardous waste. [ECCC, CBSA]
  • Budget breakdown will be available at a later date.
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