Salmon Steward

24 2019 psf.ca Jonathan Wilkinson MINISTER OF FISHERIES, OCEANS AND THE CANADIAN COAST GUARD (DFO) Salmon? WHO CARES ABOUT A WORD WITH THE MINISTER Q You have extensive experience working in private sector leadership roles devoted to green technology development. How has your background helped in your role as fisheries minister? I believe previously having been a CEO and having worked in the environmental technolog y field have been helpful in a number of ways. To be a good CEO one must be able to prioritize and use data to eectively analyze issues and come to reasonably rapid conclusions/decisions. These are skills that are obviously quite important in a department such as Fisheries and Oceans where the mandate is broad and the number of decisions required are many. Secondly, working in green technology development and deployment has provided insight into both the challenges and the opportunities that can be enabled by technology. In the oceans space, this relates directly to important issues including aquaculture, illegal unregulated fishing, oceans plastics and monitoring of our ocean environment. Q You previously worked as parliamentary secretary to Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna. What issues have you found the most surprising or challenging in your new position? I was privileged to work with Minister McKenna on a range of critically important files during my first two-and-a-half years in government. These files included climate change, species-at-risk/biodiversity loss and sustainable development. As someone who got into politics largely as a result of my concerns regarding climate change, I felt myself very fortunate to be able to contribute to the work of the government in these areas. Some key files within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard are similar to those I worked on in Environment Canada – such as species- at-risk – while others, including fisheries management, are quite dierent. In the species area, I spent a lot of time while with Environment Canada working on the plight of boreal and South Mountain caribou in Canada. These days, I spend a significant amount of time on important aquatic species files including the Southern Resident Killer Whale, the North Atlantic Right Whale, the St. Lawrence Beluga Whale, Pacific and Atlantic salmon, and steelhead trout. Perhaps the most surprising and challenging things for me in transitioning into this role have been the appreciation I have developed for the scale of the department, the large number of day-to- day decisions that are involved (such as establishing Total Allowable Catches [TAC] and fishing allocations) and the fact that the issues to be addressed are often very dierent from coast to coast to coast. I would also say, that in terms of challenges, there are a few files where a very public and acrimonious debate has developed over previous decades that has resulted in an unfortunate dialogue of the deaf. Issues such as finfish aquaculture on the Pacific coast would fall into this category. In such instances, we need to look for new ways to address questions and concerns – ideally in a manner that can bring reasonable people on both sides of such debates together. Q Pacific salmon face a variety of challenges. What are some essential activities you want to focus on to ensure their future in B.C. and the Yukon? Certainly the state of wild Pacific salmon is a critical issue for many British Columbians. Pacific salmon are inherently linked to our identity here on the coast and are funda- mental to the culture of many Indigenous communities. Over the past several years, we have seen declines in a number of key Pacific salmon stocks. These declines are having important consequences for our environment and our economy. Declines in many Chinook runs, in particular, are highly significant from a biodiversity perspective – including their role as a food source for Southern Resident Killer Whales. As a minister from B.C., I understand the importance and critical nature of challenges we face. Some of these challenges are: • Maintenance of critical habitat – we must look to protect existing significant fish habitat to ensure that through land and water use we are not creating new problems for fish health. • Habitat restoration – we must prioritize areas where habitat restoration will be most impactful. We must then focus energy and resources on such restoration. Recently, I announced a new $100-million British Columbia Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund for exactly this purpose. I also announced a $55-million fund to support species-at-risk, which will be focused on a number of key watersheds in Canada, including the Fraser River. These are in addition to the $75 million set aside a couple of years ago for the Coastal Restoration Fund. • Climate adaptation – we must begin to look seriously at tools that can be utilized Federal Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson answers our questions about salmon and the future Minister Wilkinson holds a tagged Sockeye at the 2018 Adams River return.

• Cover