Hon. Pat Duncan: Thank you, minister, for your visit to the Yukon to learn first-hand about the decline in chinook salmon stocks and the low return of other salmon resources.

Discussions of salmon in the Yukon and in all of Canada’s West Coast are complicated. In the Yukon, it’s multi-layered with international components of the commercial Alaskan and First Nations subsistence fisheries, the Yukon River Salmon Agreement and the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Mandate letters require a whole-of-government approach mindful of Canada’s commitment to First Nations. The management of the salmon in the Yukon is in critical need of a whole-of-governments, whole‑of-ecosystems approach, supported by Indigenous knowledge in the face of climate change and other challenges.

Minister, would you outline your approach to ensuring that there continues to be several species of salmon for future generations of Yukoners and of Canadians?

Hon. Joyce Murray, P.C., M.P., Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard: Thanks for that question. Firstly, my approach included going to the Yukon and spending several days there visiting and listening to the committees of fish harvesters that include Indigenous harvesters that provide advice to my ministry.

I went to remote communities like Little Salmon Carmacks, where community members spoke with me about their grief at not being able to harvest any fish, not being able to conduct their fish camps, not being able to conduct their ceremonies that are so important to their communities and their teachings.

So I have a great deal of concern about the state of the salmon stocks in the Yukon of various species, and that’s why I took the opportunity to contact Dr. Spinrad, who is the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and current NOAA administrator, and expressed my concern about potential overfishing by U.S. fleets at the mouth of the Yukon River and expressed my desire to see the United States adopt a precautionary approach to their management of fisheries as we have done here in Canada. I hope to see benefits from that.

Many of the First Nations in the watershed in the Yukon have been funded to help with the data collection and science and are working very closely with my ministry officials and providing their advice as to what can be done to recover the salmon.