Sustainable Aquaculture — Issue No. 7 — Thursday, June 1, 2006 (HTML)

2006 Legislative Session: Second Session, 38th Parliament
SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE
MINUTES AND HANSARD

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE

Chair:	* Robin Austin (Skeena NDP)
Deputy Chair:	* Ron Cantelon (Nanaimo-Parksville L)
Members:	* Gordon Hogg (Surrey–White Rock L) Daniel Jarvis (North Vancouver–Seymour L) * John Yap (Richmond-Steveston L) * Gary Coons (North Coast NDP) * Scott Fraser (Alberni-Qualicum NDP) * Gregor Robertson (Vancouver-Fairview NDP) * Shane Simpson (Vancouver-Hastings NDP) * Claire Trevena (North Island NDP) * denotes member present

Witnesses:

Randy Alexander (Ministry of Environment)
Yves Antaya (Ministry of Agriculture and Lands)
Al Castledine (Ministry of Agriculture and Lands)
Dr. Anthony Farrell (University of British Columbia)
Bud Graham (Ministry of Environment)
Jaclynn Hunter (Ministry of Agriculture and Lands)
Ron Lewis (Ministry of Agriculture and Lands)
Larry Pedersen (Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Lands)
Andrew Thomson (Fisheries and Oceans Canada)
Chris Trumpy (Deputy Minister of Environment)

R. Austin (Chair): I'd like to bring this meeting of the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture to order here. We are here today to have a variety of presentations, both from the federal level of government as well as the provincial level of government, specifically looking at B.C.'s regulatory regime as it compares to other jurisdictions.

I would like to begin by welcoming our first witness, who is Andrew Thomson from Fisheries and Oceans Canada. He's the assistant director of aquaculture management.

A. Thomson: Good morning. Thank you for inviting me here today to explain some of the highlights of the federal regulatory regime for finfish aquaculture. A little correction: I'm the acting director of aquaculture management. Unfortunately, there is no assistant director.

I'm just going to read through the deck that we've provided to you, which will explain some highlights of the federal role in regulating aquaculture in British Columbia. The purpose here today is to show how we apply our federal legislation in the Pacific region, which is slightly different than in the Atlantic region — which I'll highlight later on as a comparison.

I should note that the regulatory regime in British Columbia is complex. Several agencies, both federal and provincial, are involved in managing the industry. I've chosen, in my presentation today, to highlight a few areas of the DFO's regulatory regime. It certainly is not a comprehensive viewpoint; to do so would take many more hours than this.

One of the key features of our regulatory responsibilities is an adaptive management system. We change and evolve our regulatory system as we go ahead, as we develop new information and tools. To illustrate that, and at the request of your committee, I've prepared a brief history of how the department has regulated aquaculture initially as well.

To give you an overview of where our regulatory powers come from, it's naturally from our mandate and our legislation. The legislation is really the backbone of our actions and of DFO's management of aquaculture.

The legislation pieces that we primarily use are the federal Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, though certainly the Species at Risk Act and the Oceans Act do come into play in certain situations. I foresee a greater involvement of the Oceans Act in ocean planning as we move forward in adopting that.

We have key policies such as the habitat policy, commonly referred to as the no-net-loss policy — we're trying to reduce any impact to fish and fish habitat; the aquaculture policy framework, which sets guidelines for how aquaculture should be developed within Canada; and our strategic plan, Our Waters, Our Future.

I should note that most of our regulatory action occurs prior to the installation of an aquaculture site. Our regulatory actions are about planning and ensuring that the site installation is in the best possible site and that it has the least impact on the environment. Our sea and habitat reviews occur prior to the farm being installed.

Next slide. This is an overview of where the federal role is in the regulatory regime. You can see we're involved…. It is a joint regulatory regime, as you'll hear from the provincial government on their role, after I speak. Certainly, they have a very important role in regulating the industry as well. Our role deals with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act; first nations consultations, which obviously the B.C. government has a role in, as well, and habitat assessment under the Fisheries Act, which includes a new tool that we use called DEPOMOD. I'll describe that in more detail later.

Once a site moves into operation, we have rules, as well, in terms of fish-stocking licensing — we license the movement of fish into farmsites; certification of those fish to be free of disease agents; and in monitoring the habitat as well — how the farm is performing. Is it performing as we predicted when we went through the site evaluation?

I want to give you a brief historical look at how we've evolved the regulatory regime over time. I've split it into three slides here: essentially, prior to the moratorium being put in place, just after the moratorium was lifted in 2002 and what we currently have today. The bulk of my presentation, obviously, will be what we currently do today, but here is a brief historical view.

The first slide here is a viewpoint of how we conducted our regulatory reviews in the 1980s and 1990s. Applications were subject only to review under the federal Fisheries Act and were mainly exempted under the navigable waters permitting act, which means they didn't require a navigable waters permit. That was a decision made by the Canadian Coast Guard at the time.

First nations were advised of the site, but the standard of consultation in the 1980s wasn't the same as it is today due to case law. There was no environmental assessment. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act was not promulgated until 1997, so there was no comprehensive environmental assessment. That was just not the standard of the day.

There were no specific monitoring programs for aquaculture habitat. There was poor harmonization with provincial regulations, and this occurred up to and including the moratorium. Of course, during the moratorium when we weren't reviewing new site applications, it wasn't seen as a large priority.

Just after the moratorium was lifted — I'll be completely honest with you — the federal Fisheries and Oceans was faced with a new set of tools, the Canadian

Environmental Assessment Act, and a new group of applications coming in, and we were not fully prepared for it. We did not have the proper guidelines and tools as to how to apply the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. We, the B.C. government and industry were unfamiliar with CEAA and finfish aquaculture and how they worked together — CEAA is the acronym I'll use many times for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act — so there were steep learning curves for all parties.

We didn't have a great deal of guidance for how to apply CEAA. The time frame for conducting these reviews could stretch two, three and even more years as we requested further information from the companies, tried to determine if that was enough information and tried to move forward with a decision.

Our habitat requirements for habitat assessments were much the same. They were evolving information requirements. Although we were working better with British Columbia — we had a one-window approach; applications came in through one window — they were still not as harmonized as they could be. We were doing the best job we could with the tools available, but we did need to develop new tools.

That brings us forward to the current day and what will be the bulk of my presentation today. Over a two-year period DFO staff, under the former director of aquaculture, Allison Webb, worked diligently to develop new tools and new guidelines for how we apply CEAA and our habitat assessments.

They've included the standardized scoring matrix for CEAA screenings, which I'll explain later — this is a complex area, but I'll try to explain some of these pieces later on; guides for conducting cumulative effects assessment; the use of DEPOMOD, which is a computer model for waste deposition; setting an authorization threshold, so setting a limit that we knew was going to be a potential impact to habitat — rather than being subjective but setting a number, which I'll explain later; and improved harmonization with British Columbia — working to harmonize our regulations so that the sampling required by the provincial government would aid us in doing our regulatory reviews.

Additionally, the DFO and the provincial agencies worked on a national code for introductions and transfers of aquatic organisms, which was brought in, in 2003 and which, again, improved our ability to regulate fish coming into the country and transfers of fish within the country.

We're on the slide that says: "DFO review role — CEAA." Though often confused as one review, the federal site review was actually comprised of two very distinct parts. There's the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which is the environmental assessment of the site, and there is a habitat review, which is conducted under the federal Fisheries Act, section 35(2), which looks at impacts to fish and fish habitat. We have very distinct review processes, quite commonly now actually conducted by a single individual, but because there are two pieces of legislation, they have to be conducted separately.

I will go through the CEAA process and then go through the habitat process. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act must be triggered by another federal action. You cannot arbitrarily apply CEAA. There has to be a trigger for it. Those triggers can be federal lands — anything built on federal lands, built with federal funding. You know, if you build a bridge that has federal funding, that will trigger a CEAA, or if it's on federal lands. There are numerous legislative triggers — if you issue a permit or such.

For aquaculture the two main permits that we're concerned with are the navigable waters permit…. Essentially, any item placed in any navigable water, which can be a creek down to where a kayak can go down, requires a navigable waters permit. The issuance of that permit triggers an environmental assessment. That doesn't say the environmental assessment just looks at navigation. It now triggers a whole new process.

Similarly, section 35(2), "Habitat authorizations," triggers a Canadian environmental assessment. An authorization is where the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans has decided that a certain level of impact to habitat is acceptable and will be authorized. That authorization, as I'll explain later, comes with compensation. Under our no-net-loss policy, we want to see habitat restored or created to compensate for that being taken out of the environment. This is a very similar process that we would see to, say, the building of the Canada Place extension here. Obviously, there's an area being impacted, so you want to compensate for that area of impact.

Now this gets a little bit more confusing, but I'll try to remove some of that, in that the navigable waters permit part, which was previously with DFO up until 2005, has now been transferred to Transport Canada. So there's yet another federal agency involved in aquaculture reviews. This was a decision of cabinet to transfer those responsibilities. Whereas previously it was with the Canadian Coast Guard so that all triggers were within Fisheries and Oceans, now there are some triggers that are outside Fisheries and Oceans' control — for finfish aquaculture.

The CEAA is our primary siting management tool. It is an extremely powerful tool and looks at a broad range of environmental effects of a project. It looks at virtually every environmental effect possible — impacts to wildlife, impacts to birds, what benthic habitat impacts there are going to be, what the impact is of net-cleaning, what the impact is of transporting the fish to the site — virtually every impact that you scope into the project. There is an opportunity for the public to comment on these through advertising conducted under Navigable Waters.

The ultimate goal of CEAA is to determine whether or not a project is likely to cause a significant environment effect. If the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act screening comes out saying that it isn't likely to cause a significant environment effect, then whatever permit that originally triggered the act can go ahead, or the funding can go ahead, and the project can

go ahead. However, if it is determined that it is likely to cause a significant environmental effect, then the project is returned to the proponent to be redesigned, resubmitted or withdrawn.

The CEAA is a very complex process, and it can take two, three, four years. What I've chosen here today is to highlight the two main aspects that I think will be of interest, which is a table, known as a valued ecosystem components table, where it really summarizes the meat of the CEAA assessment, and the cumulative effects assessment. This is another very important part of CEAA — that we look at the other projects going around the farming application. So we don't just look at the one site in isolation; we have to look at what other sites are going around.

The valued ecosystem component tables. This is a summarized report on potential effects such as water quality and fish habitat impacts, impacts on fisheries resources, on biodiversity, human health and recreational fisheries. The table also identifies what mitigation measures the proponent is planning to use to minimize those effects and then makes an assessment of what the ultimate effect on the environment will be. So the determinations are based on the overall potential for environmental change after the mitigation measures are applied.

On the next slide there's an example I've taken out of a standard CEAA template showing how a VEC table works, if you will. In this case we've chosen net-cleaning — the use of antifoulants, which is a process that goes on at farmsites. That's the component or activity. What are the potential environmental interactions of known mitigation measures where applied? Well, you could have a release of toxic or biological waste in the environment. You could have cleaning agents. This type of thing changes the water quality.

Therefore, what are the valued ecosystem components that could be impacted? Obviously, water quality of the marine environment, fish habitat, if there's waste material depositing from no net-cleaning, and impact to fish resources — that kind of thing. In this case, what is the mitigation measure the company is planning to use to mitigate those impacts? In this case, the company plans to transport all nets to a land-based net-cleaning facility. This is quite common in the industry.

Then we assess what the actual impact is going to be to the environment. In this case, it's a low impact. Yes, they'll be moving nets to and from to clean them, but they won't be cleaning the nets at the site. Therefore, the significance of the effect is low.

What we've done through our review of this CEAA process is come up with a scoring matrix to allow for this type of assessment to go on in a very transparent, defensible and repeatable approach, so each of these effects has to be derived from the same five attributes. We score them on: what is the intensity of the effect? What is the geographical extent of the effect? What is the duration — you know, are you going to clean nets for hours on end or would you just be doing it for a short period of time? What is the frequency — how often are you going to clean the nets? What's the reversibility — or what would happen if you just stopped doing that process there?

Each of the activities is judged on these things. Then the attributes scores, the significance-of-residual-effect scores at the end there — whether they be low, medium or high — are looked at, at the end of the review. If there are activities that are in the medium and high, that may be an indication of a significant environmental effect or likely to be a significant environmental effect, in which case the CEAA would not come out positively for that particular project, and the project would have to go back.

Another important aspect of this Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is the cumulative effects assessment. Quite often a criticism of the way we view projects is we don't look out at what else is going on in the system. Well, under CEAA it's a requirement. You have to look at the cumulative effects assessment. Again, when originally we had it, we weren't given a lot of guidance. So we developed a guidance document for our biologists who conduct these things, to say: "This is how you're going to go about doing a cumulative effects assessment." We have the same sort of scoring matrix that we go into, as we do in the valued ecosystem component tables. We use a similar type of approach for doing cumulative effects assessment.

The CEAA includes consideration of any cumulative environmental effects that are likely to result from a project in combination with other projects. It could be not just the other fish farms in the area but, say, a log-handling facility, a pulp mill or any other major project within an area that has to be considered, and the activities we carried out — and not just the ones that are currently in place, but also the ones that are reasonably foreseeable. If we know there are applications coming, we have to consider those as well.

These included effects are then additive, interactive and synergistic, so we have to, through this matrix, score them together, essentially — the combining factors of these different projects within an area. The way we do that is we include all the VECs and the valued social components, which is another scoring table within the CEAA, for which the significance of a residual adverse effect has been determined to be more than negligible. So anything higher…. I should have explained this earlier. Our final scoring within a VEC table is negligible, low, medium or high. So anything higher than "negligible" from a single project has to be included in this overall assessment of other projects within the area.

As an example for the committee of the type of groupings we would look at — I realize it's fairly faint on your paper copies here — this is the number of fish farmsites, aquaculture sites within the area of the west coast, and you can see large circles drawn around groupings of sites. That would be the indication of sort of the areas you'd be looking at for doing a cumulative effects assessment. You'd look at those groupings of sites.

What this means is that when looking at sites coming into an area, the first site may be acceptable, and the second site may be acceptable. The third site, even

though it may be operated in exactly the same manner, may not be acceptable. The combination of effects could be simply overwhelming the cumulative effects assessment, which would mean, unfortunately, that project wouldn't be acceptable for that area, so it would go back into the planning stage.

Of course, incumbent on any government review or decision-making is first nations consultations. The Crown has a responsibility to consult on any decision that it makes. In the case of finfish, aquaculture consultations have always taken place at some level, but of course, we have an evolving consultational requirement.

We recently have worked together with the federal and provincial governments to work at making our consultational efforts more harmonized, to avoid going out to the same first nations community on several occasions, requiring the resources on several occasions. That's not upholding the honour of the Crown. It's better to go out as one Crown and to consult as one. This effort to harmonize is further being strengthened through working on an MOU on first nations consultations with the provincial government for whenever a CEAA is triggered.

We will conduct proactive consultations to determine the effects of the project on current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes as well as broader issues for potential infringement. In CEAA itself the requirements for consultation are quite narrow. They only look at current use of resources. However, as we may also be making decisions under other legislation, like the federal Fisheries Act, we consult on a broader level.

Now I move into the second part of our assessment procedures. That was CEAA assessment; this is our habitat assessment conducted under the federal Fisheries Act.

The habitat provisions of the federal Fisheries Act are some of the strongest in the world. They require that the fish and fish habitat must be protected against impact. The habitat site reviews are carried out to assess any impacts to fish habitat. Projects are assessed for their likelihood to cause an HADD — this is yet another acronym that government is always fond of using. In this case it means harmful alteration, disturbance or destruction of fish habitat. Sorry, I ran through that quickly, but I used to do some habitat assessment.

We have a group of very dedicated and trained habitat biologists. This is their bread and butter. They will go out looking for HADD — not just from fish farms but from any project. Has there been a disturbance or destruction or alteration to habitat, whether it's someone building a culvert in a farm area or B.C. conference centre expansion?

Our reviews are guided by our policy of no net loss. As I mentioned earlier, we don't want to see any reduction in the available fish habitat out there. We require a compensation for it, which I'll describe in greater detail later.

Again, we've made changes to how we do habitat assessment. I'm going to describe how our new set of tools works for habitat assessment.

The first steps are that we have to predict the severity of impact. We use that through a new tool called DEPOMOD. DEPOMOD was developed in Scotland. It's a computer-based model that predicts the deposition of waste on the ocean floor. We've chosen to adopt it in a more stringent fashion than it is in Scotland and probably anywhere in the world actually. We use it as our predictive management tool for siting the farm.

As I mentioned earlier, our legislation allows us to be proactive, to put farms where they're going to do the least amount of impact. We use this tool to ensure that's the case, and I'll describe the tool in greater detail in a moment.

We also require bathymetry information from the farmers. How deep is the site? What are the general physical characteristics around the site? We also require, through our habitat information requirements, an evaluation of the sensitivity habitat.

We value habitat in different levels within Fisheries and Oceans. We have levels that I'll describe in the next line of sensitive and critical habitat that are more important and of more value for us to protect than other areas of lower habitat. Through our habitat information requirements, we want to identify those critical and sensitive habitats and predict the severity of the impact.

It's a tiered approach based on both the depth and the sensitivity of the habitat and the predicted severity. If you're talking about a shallow site that has a lot of production, maybe in the sense of habitat we're going to require you to do a lot more habitat assessment up front to give us a lot more information on that site than if you were in a deeper site farther offshore in an area of less sensitive habitat that would require less information requirements. So our information requirements are tiered to the physical characteristics of the site and predicted impact.

Beyond DEPOMOD information, the additional requirements we may want are things like intertidal and subtidal scuba surveys with divers using an ROV survey for areas that are too deep or other quantitative surveys where you actually go and do quantitative surveys of the number of animals within an area. How important is this geoduck bed? How packed is that clam bed? That type of thing.

This has a link back to CEAA. I talk about two different processes, but through doing this assessment under habitat, it may require an authorization, which is a CEAA trigger. As I've already mentioned, we're already doing a CEAA regardless because of the navigable waters permit.

Defining our most important habitat. This is certainly a decision of the government to make in that all habitat is important, certainly. All marine habitat is important, but we do have a classification scheme. Our critical habitat is things such as anadromous spawning areas; kelp beds; eelgrass beds, which are so important for juvenile salmon rearing; ling cod spawning habitats; and herring spawning areas. Those are critical habitats, so they must be protected.

Sensitive habitat, which of course requires a high level of protection as well, is rearing areas for anadro-

mous fish, rockfish rearing areas, shellfish beds and unique features like sponge complexes. Within the critical habitat, which is our highest level of protection, would also be important SARA — species-at-risk — habitat as well.

That's the background of our habitat assessment, and then we'll get into how we actually use our new tools to do it. This next slide about DEPOMOD gives you an idea of the inputs and what we require from the company. The company ends up assuming the cost of running this model. The results are passed to federal fisheries and ocean scientists who are experts in the model for quality-control, quality-assurance checks.

Under DEPOMOD we look at things like cage positions and the exact position of the cage, how much feed they're planning to feed and how many fish they plan to have. We have information about the settling rates of the waste material, what the currents are doing — we require them to put down there a Doppler current meter, which is the best current meter going, to see what the current is — whether or not there's turbulence and things of this nature.

We require them to run this model at the authorized peak production. Obviously, the farm isn't in peak production at all times. As the fish grow larger, they require more and more feed, and it's at that peak production that we're looking. Certainly, over the life span or growth cycle of the fish of 18 months, we're looking at the highest level of impact, whereas most of the time they are not at the highest level. This is done to overestimate the impact.

In the next slide you'll see an output from a model. You'll see on this slide the yellow squares that represent the cages of fish for one particular farmsite. Beneath that you'll see some contours. The two contours of note that are important to us are the ones labelled "One" and "Five". The one-gram contour is used for our siting decisions, and I'll explain how we use that on the next slide, and the five-gram contour is used to assess the area required for authorization.

We use the one-gram as a siting buffer to move it away from critical assessment habitat. The five-gram is used for assessing an area for which we know, or we expect the likelihood is, that there will be a HADD. We authorize it, and we require compensation based on that area. That's what the five-gram contour is.

On the next slide you'll see our decision rules. Our red — or stop, if you will — is if that one-gram contour, that lightest circle, overlaps critical habitats. We will not allow impact to critical habitats. The applicant must redesign, relocate or mitigate in some manner, whether it's reducing production or finding a new site, and rerun the DEPOMOD to assure us that that one circle isn't overlapping critical habitat, like abalone beds.

If the one-gram contour is overlapping sensitive habitats, we may require additional monitoring for a site. So they'll have to go and…. You may be able to put the site in, but we're going to require you do additional monitoring of that particular sensitive habitat, like a clam bed, to make sure there's no impact going on. We'll come back and review the monitoring as it goes forward. A lot of times what happens is if that one-gram contour is overlapping sensitive habitat, it's better off for the farmer to relocate.

You have, in the odd instance, and it's only happened in one location I know of in British Columbia…. There is no five-gram footprint or one-gram overlap on a depth contour or sensitive critical habitat, in which case there would be no authorization because there is no area of impact, necessarily. We would issue a letter of advice that so long as you carry forward with this operation in this manner, we do not expect deposition because you've now moved your site into deeper, faster-flowing water. Though we've done our habitat review, we don't require an authorization.

Compensation. I've already spoken about compensation a little bit. For me personally, it was an idea I had to get my head around — that we would require compensation for habitat impacted. But having spent some time with our habitat biologists and working as one, it is a way forward to allow development within the province and also to allow protection of habitat.

We authorize a certain area, and it has to be…. We then require compensation — compensation the proponent has to come up with. It's intended to replace the productive capacity of the habitat. The compensation that's done must be monitored to ensure that it's doing the job that the proponent promised it would. We prefer that if you're going to be impacting a sandy-bottom habitat, you replace it with a similar type of habitat, but we're open to other ideas if there is something better to be done. This is an abstract concept, so I'm going to give you some examples of what we're talking about.

For the airport expansion at the Vancouver Airport, there was some impact to fish habitat. What was done to compensate for that was planting eelgrass beds along the Fraser River — taking an area that was previously impacted from industrial operations prior to close scrutiny under the Fisheries Act and replanting it with eelgrass, bringing the area back to life.

Another example is rebuilding a rocky reef somewhere, increasing the value of what would be a low-value habitat like a mud bottom by putting a properly designed concrete rocky reef complex to increase the value of that habitat. Another area is cleaning up previously impacted sites, like an old cannery from the turn of the century or some notion of that, as a way to build back better capacity.

This compensation authorization procedure that we've introduced for fish farms is the same as is done for big projects like runway expansions or for the conference centre expansion as well. This is bringing fish farm management into line with other projects that are done in the marine environment.

Now we move into our operational role. I've talked up to now about what's essentially a preplanning review role, but obviously, once a farm is installed we still have a role to play, being the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and I'll talk about that in the next few slides.

We have our habitat monitoring regime. We have worked with the provincial government to harmonize our sampling sites and get some information from the provincial waste control regulations, which the Ministry of Environment manages. We also can have, in addition to that, as I mentioned on two slides previous, sensitive habitat monitoring. If there was a clam bed that we expected might be impacted, or potentially could, we have additional monitoring requirements that go on.

We have additional monitoring and information that comes in on these sites to ensure that they are in compliance with what we predicted. If, for instance, the site, the computer model — because that's all it is, a computer model — has predicted an area of impact that's only, say, two hectares, and it turns out that the area of impact is larger than that, we will go back to the companies and say: "The prediction was wrong. You are impacting a larger area. Therefore, we are going to require you to authorize a larger area and compensate for a larger area." We have corrections in our predictions.

Another operational role that we have is in stocking the farms, licensing transfers. All movements of fish within the province must receive a section 56 licence from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The licences are in two categories for salmon farming: routine and individual. For a farmsite that's been in standard operation and has a hatchery that's in standard operation, it may get a yearly licence to move fish into that site. There are times when movements are non-standard, in which case we will issue individual licences.

Those individual and routine licences are reviewed by a Federal-Provincial Introductions and Transfers Committee, fish-health professionals that conduct a review of whether or not to transfer those fish (a) if the fish are healthy, to ensure that only healthy fish are being moved, and (b) to ensure that all our standards are being met for the movement of those fish.

This is all guided by the new 2003 national code on introductions and transfers and conducted under federal fish-health protection regulations. So we have requirements for how it moves.

The next slide. I understood that the committee wanted a comparison to other jurisdictions, so I brought a comparison to how we do things in the Pacific region versus the Atlantic regions. Certainly, we are a little different out here in the application of exactly the same legislation. We both have the same legislation. We just apply it differently out on the west coast.

Under CEAA, in the Atlantic region they're still very much doing subjective assessments — the same things we were doing just after the moratorium. Every biologist goes off and does their own assessment but doesn't have the guidelines and scoring matrix to work with. You have different viewpoints from different biologists, whereas in the Pacific region we have a standardized scoring matrix and a standardized cumulative effects assessment.

Under the habitat, they don't have a standard HADD determination. Actually, they've never determined that a HADD is being created by a fish farm on the Atlantic coast, whereas on the west coast we've made our determination that if there is going to be five grams of carbon deposited per metre squared per day — for that five-gram contour — that's a HADD or is likely to be a HADD. Therefore, we're going to authorize it. That's a rule change we have on the west coast versus the east coast.

They don't use DEPOMOD, though they are very interested in it, and we've sent our scientists back there to talk about it. We use it as a management tool already.

We do the authorization and compensation because we've made a HADD determination. On the east coast they have not gone to that step.

In terms of introductions and transfers, we have a specific policy in British Columbia called the salmonid importation policy, which has restricted imports of salmon into British Columbia to only eggs. Outside of British Columbia the only fish that have ever been brought in are eggs.

Those eggs must go from a quarantine facility to another quarantine facility. Those quarantine facilities are inspected by federal Fisheries staff. It doesn't matter if they're coming from Iceland or the United States. They have to be inspected by federal Fisheries staff. On their transfer to British Columbia they are disinfected through a surface disinfectant and then put into another quarantine facility and tested before they can be released out.

Through this system we have never seen the importation of an exotic disease pathogen through our salmon importation guidelines. They are very strict, and frankly, we're very proud of them because they've kept exotic diseases — diseases from the east coast — out of British Columbia waters.

To sum up, we have a very complex and robust regulatory role for managing aquaculture in British Columbia. I've given you some high points. Certainly, it takes a long time to learn all the intricacies. The CEAA and the habitat assessment are our primary tools, and we do them prior to the site going in.

Then, of course, provincial regulations — a lot of them are based on the operations. They have annual licensing. We work prior to it going in.

Our regime is based on the best available science. We have scientists at the Pacific Biological Station, which I know you are planning to tour on Monday. They're looking forward to explaining some of our review processes. We have some of the best scientists in the world, frankly. They input into our management regime. So when new scientific knowledge comes up, it gets put into our management regime.

We're not afraid to change our management regime, as I've shown you here today. We will continuously improve our regime as we move forward. We think it's a very good and very stringent regime now, but as new information comes up, we will improve it.

I wish your committee well as you start your tour of the province. I'm sure that the department will be

happy to answer any additional questions that come up while you're doing your tour, if other issues come up. I'm certainly happy to answer your questions at the moment.

I have a question regarding DEPOMOD output, specifically the standards — you know, five gram, one gram per cubic metre. How were those standards established? And how do they compare to other jurisdictions?

A. Thomson: No other jurisdiction uses DEPOMOD as a management tool in the same way, because no other jurisdiction has the Canadian federal Fisheries Act.

We developed the standard of five-gram contour as likely to cause a HADD based on a review of scientific literature that saw that the number of organisms would decline significantly at a micromole level of concentration of sulphide, which is another standard. Actually, when you talk to the provincial government, that's how they measure bottom impact — by sulphide concentrations.

We judged that sulphide concentration when we saw a reduction in the number of species or biodiversity of the sediments. We saw the major reduction at the five-gram contour. That's why we said: "Okay. We're seeing a reduction in the biodiversity at five grams. That indicates to us that there is the likelihood of a HADD. Therefore, that's the circle or that's the contour we will hit to do HADD determinations."

We want to be more protectionist in doing our siting around sensitive and critical habitat, so we picked the one-gram contour, greater than the five-gram, to ensure that we were siting away from the sensitive and critical habitats.

J. Yap: So you have science that is fairly rigorous to support these standards.

A. Thomson: I could have brought you…. Like I say, you can go over this stuff for days. But I could have brought a slide, and I can certainly supply it later on, that shows a review of the literature of where we see a drop-off in biodiversity. It relates to the five-gram contour line, and that's why we've chosen it.

J. Yap: My final question on this: is there fairly extensive peer support for the science that supports these guidelines?

A. Thomson: I'm not entirely sure the peer science out there is aware of all the changes we've made. These are relatively recent changes. So whether or not someone has gone out…. We are having scientists conduct reviews to ensure…. For instance, with DEPOMOD we have our science staff, Dr. John Tamon and Dr. Dario Stucchi, out there ground-truthing our DEPOMOD predictions. So they're out there at farmsites looking to see: "Okay. You predicted it's going to be a five-gram contour at this site. Let's see if it actually is." That type of peer review, that research in motion, will come forward as they're doing their research now.

G. Coons: Thank you, Andrew. I'll say I've got three questions, just to keep us on track here. The first one is: you're talking about compensation habitat banking, I assume, and looking at keeping it in line with other projects like the Fraser port authority or the port of Stewart. I'm under the assumption that those are on a 1-to-1 ratio for compensation. What are the ratios for farming sites for compensation?

A. Thomson: It is less than 1 to 1. It is slightly variable. I don't have the figure right in front of me. I can tell you that it is less than 1 to 1. The reason for that determination being less than 1 to 1 is because of the transient nature of a fish farm application. If you removed a fish farm tomorrow the site would remediate itself back because there would be no impact of continual feces being put down, whereas if you built a runway, there is no way to remove it, or not easily. So that's one of the reasons. It's based on the fact that all farmsites do lie fallow for a certain period of time.

I don't have the compensation ratio in front of me; I'm sorry, but I can certainly provide that to you.

G. Coons: With a no net loss and habitat gain, is there also a habitat gain in that?

A. Thomson: Certainly, there can be a habitat gain in it because in terms of compensation it's based on the value of the habitat. So even though you may not be putting down five hectares of compensation, you may be increasing the value in a lesser area of habitat. Rather than replacing five hectares of muddy bottom with another five hectares of muddy bottom, you might be better off replacing it with one hectare of rocky reef, as an example.

G. Coons: One other question about first nations consultations. I'm just sort of wondering. In your brief it says federal and provincial governments have been making efforts to consult in a harmonized manner. Is there a protocol agreement that you are using since the Supreme Court decision?

A. Thomson: We're working on an MOU specific to it, but we go out now as a joint group, irrespective of the fact that we're working on an MOU to make sure we always do. We do go out now as a single group.

A. Thomson: I should back up for a second there. Certainly, it starts with letters to set up the meetings and such, and then if there's a face-to-face meeting requested, it goes on, and we do face-to-face meetings.

G. Coons: As far as consultation and accommodation, have there been any accommodations to first nations as far as you are aware?

A. Thomson: Not from the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, no. There have not been any accommodations for first nations in particular.

G. Coons: The last question, to move on. It seems there's a lot of monitoring going on by DFO staff throughout the Pacific region. I'm just wondering how many staff you have and how many in specific regions.

A. Thomson: Well, total DFO staff in Pacific region is somewhere around 2,700 employees, but in terms of aquaculture habitat monitoring, the habitat branch of habitat management is somewhere around 112 individuals across the province. Within aquaculture itself, for aquaculture assessments there are three people plus one manager devoted full time to doing habitat assessments of aquaculture projects.

A. Thomson: There is no staff who live in the north coast, but there is a staff who works out of Campbell River who is tasked with doing north coast assessments. We previously did have staff that lived in the north coast that worked in the Prince Rupert office. Because of personal changes, they moved on to a different job. We haven't yet filled that position again, but we have staff tasked to do those assignments.

A. Thomson: Depending on the operational priorities within the department. If there isn't movement up into north coast areas, there may not be.

C. Trevena: Gary just asked one of my questions, and I want to follow up on that. The three plus one: are these the only people who are actually out on sites doing the reviews and the assessments?

A. Thomson: They are the ones primarily tasked. We certainly do draw on other people within the department. Say, when you're doing a Canadian Environmental Assessment Act screening, one of the conditions you look at is impacts to current fishing practices. Well, the habitat assessors who are doing this go and speak to our fisheries managers within the area who have knowledge of what fishing activities are going on and draw on their experience. Conversely, if you have a particular question about abalone impacts, our habitat assessors will go and speak to the scientists who are experts in abalone.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada is the lead agency for aquaculture. It's part of our mandate to conduct these reviews, so we will make use of whatever staff are required to do it. But yeah, full-time, working on aquaculture reviews, it's the three plus a manager. But that does include staff like myself — I'm in management, director of aquaculture — or aquaculture scientists or other people that are tasked to work on aquaculture.

C. Trevena: You're doing a lot of monitoring and reviewing. Is there any enforcement done by DFO?

A. Thomson: We can enforce under the federal Fisheries Act. We have fisheries officers who can enforce the federal Fisheries Act. We've done investigations under section 35 for habitat impacts of fish farms in the past. We haven't been successful in those litigations. Part of the problem has been that they're very long investigations, very costly investigations.

One of the reasons why we want to move to this is to get them in line so that we would have a set standard and say: "This is the area that you're supposed to be in, so if you're outside of it, then you have to…." Obviously, rather than going through a long, complex court battle, the better way to do it is to go to the farmsite and go: "You have to get back in compliance." And we can certainly do that through our enforcement staff, saying: "You're out of compliance; you have to get back in compliance."

C. Trevena: So you'd use a fisheries officer to ensure that a fish farm gets back in compliance?

A. Thomson: Certainly. Or we have habitat officers that also are tasked. We have sort of two branches of our enforcement. It doesn't have to be a fisheries officer. It can also be a habitat officer as well.

C. Trevena: Yes, I know how stretched the fisheries officers are. On that, is it possible to say where these cases were where you had the investigations — locations, period, companies?

A. Thomson: I can see how much of that information is released. Because it may still be an ongoing investigation, I would be hesitant to release it at this time without first asking the investigating officer. But if it's releasable, I will make sure the committee's aware of it.

Just one other question, because I know other people have lots of questions. When you're looking at siting and discussing all the areas for siting, are you also looking at migratory routes and using the same criteria on that as you are when you're looking at the actual physical site of one of the farms?

A. Thomson: Migratory routes of salmon are certainly considered under the Environmental Assessment Act, but they're not a necessary reason to not site the site within a migratory route. One of the difficulties…. They're considered under the Environmental Assessment Act. They're looked at and deemed by the individual assessor as to what the impact would be from a particular site. But given that a large proportion of the coast is, essentially, migratory routes for salmon, there are certainly sites, you know, in the migratory routes of salmon, but it is considered.

I guess the message is that if it were a particularly sensitive migratory route, that may be an indication that the site couldn't go there. It is considered and looked at and then judged by that particular assessor.

C. Trevena: Who judges "sensitive"? How is "sensitive" judged? It's used a few times.

A. Thomson: There is a scoring matrix, which we could go through a little more, about what the potential impact is. But at the end of the day it is up to the assessor who's doing the assessment to make that judgment, based on their professional knowledge and expertise and the guidelines given to them by Fisheries and Oceans.

S. Fraser: Thank you, Andrew. I'll try to be brief here. Gary touched on the first nations consultation. Does that consultation include…? What's the basis for consultation? Is it geographical proximity? In my conversations with first nations — say, in the interior, along rivers obviously intrinsically linked to the salmon — they do not feel they're being….

A. Thomson: I will say this. It's based on our ability to contact the first nations within the area that the site is going on. Certainly that's our initial contact for a first nations consult. However, I personally have been involved in consultations with other first nations who have requested a consultation and who may be farther away from the site than that.

A. Thomson: If there's a request, certainly, I would never turn down that request.

A. Thomson: We do not send letters out to every first nation in the province for every site, no — if that's the question.

S. Fraser: Even if they are involved in fisheries along the river — up the Thompson, in the interior?

A. Thomson: We do not currently send out letters to each of them, but they do have the opportunity to consult with us.

S. Fraser: Okay. Then another question on predators. There have been some issues around predator mortality. Who takes responsibility when there is an issue there?

A. Thomson: That is actually a responsibility of my office. It was one of the slides I cut for brevity, frankly, but we issue what's called, at this point, a nuisance-seal licence. Farms can apply for a nuisance-seal licence to dispatch marine mammals. At this point the two marine mammals that are eligible are California sea lions and harbour seals. Steller's sea lions, being a species of special concern under SARA, are no longer eligible for a nuisance-seal licence.

I've worked with the farmers, and the farmers have worked on it themselves to reduce the level of mortality through this licence, through better practices. I would be more than happy to provide some numbers to the committee, because I think it's a good story to tell — that through better practices, you've seen the level of culls actually go down.

They are required under licence to report the culls quarterly to my office, and we compile the statistics. We require each farm to give us a predator control plan: what measures are they putting in place to avoid culling? Obviously, no one wants to be culling these marine mammals.

A. Thomson: It's a requirement of their nuisance-seal licence. It's much like a commercial fishing licence, if you will. We put licence conditions in there of what type of calibre of weapon you can use, what you have to do with the carcass, things of this nature — a number of licence conditions.

Part of that condition is that they have to report. If they don't report their culls to us, I won't reissue a licence. They have to be in compliance of the licence for me to reissue them, obviously. If there's a complaint — much like a fisherman, if they were going outside the bounds or conditions of their licence — that complaint would be referred to our conservation protection staff and would be investigated.

S. Fraser: Lastly — I mean, I've got a whole bunch, but I know we have limited time here — Claire touched on the migration route issue and the requirements for siting and a lot of the controversy we're hearing about from communities along the coast. Where there is controversy is around the sea lice issue. I know that in the Auditor General report in 2003 or whenever that was — was it that long ago? — they specifically said there are a lot of inconclusive myths around the sea lice issue. But there is certainly an issue potentially around migration routes and the potential impact on wild salmon. Rightly or wrongly, there seems to be a lack of science there. Since that report, has DFO done anything to improve that?

A. Thomson: Certainly. I mean, one of the mechanisms…. We obviously recognize the sea lice issue as

well. You'll see more of this on Monday on your tour. You'll see some of the science behind our management actions. In terms of our management actions, we require from the farmers — as part of the CEAA, if you will, in our review of CEAA — that they have a proper and acceptable fish health management plan, which is regulated through the provincial government.

Incumbent in that fish health management plan is sea lice testing and sampling to ensure that the sea lice levels on farms are kept below a certain level. Frankly, our viewpoint through the fish health management plan, whether it's for sea lice or other pathogens, is that if you keep the fish in the farm healthy and free of pathogens, there's no opportunity for them to pass it on to the wild stock.

We have a concern, obviously, about the wild stock. That is our primary mandate within Fisheries and Oceans: to protect wild salmon. We have no interest in seeing that…. That's why, where we put that in our management actions on the other side of things, as you'll see Monday, we invest a lot of time and energy into our science aspects.

It's so as to get to the heart of the issue and to ensure that if there are future management actions that need to be taken — future conditions, future licensing conditions — they're based on the best science available. They're based on knowledge gained through our investigations.

A. Thomson: Is there a risk to wild salmon from sea lice? If there are sea lice emanating from the farm. The key is to make sure there aren't sea lice emanating from the farm. Some of these management actions are covered under the provincial regulations. The risk to the wild salmon is actually a better question for the scientist.

S. Fraser: I agree. I know the province plays a role here, and this is a bit of a grey area, but DFO brings up…. I think it was page 7, section 35. It specifically says you have to protect migration routes. The priority in section 35 is to do that.

The Auditor General's report stated that it was inconclusive whether or not there was risk, for instance, from sea lice emanating from farms to wild salmon. Where does that leave the DFO? If you're inconclusive, and I haven't heard anything that's changed that…. If there's a potential risk to the salmon, how do you reconcile that? You've got section 35 that says the priority is protecting the wild salmon, and then you've got an unknown, according to an independent report….

A. Thomson: Certainly, we believe that the inclusion of fish health management plans with sea lice control levels reduces the level, as we stated in our CEAAs, to an acceptably low level of impact to the migrating salmon.

S. Simpson: Thank you for the presentation. I want to follow up a little bit with a couple of questions. They relate a little bit to some of the work the Auditor General did in '04-05 in his report around aquaculture.

He suggested at the time in his report that there were significant gaps in the science around aquaculture and the impact on wild stock. What's the view of the DFO? Do you concur with the position that there are significant gaps in the science and that there isn't the knowledge there?

A. Thomson: One of the initiatives the National Science Programs has embarked on — and you'll have to excuse me, because I'm not an expert on all of our national science programs — is called state-of-the-knowledge reports, in which we are conducting a total of seven reports. We're doing a compendium of exactly that: looking at all the knowledge or trying to do a review of all the available knowledge on certain issues.

Fish disease is one. Fish escapes is another. It's a state-of-knowledge report on aquaculture and potential impacts on the environment. From those reports, we'll have a better viewpoint of where there are gaps. There are always gaps in our knowledge of any subject matter. It doesn't matter if it's fisheries. It doesn't matter it it's health. It doesn't matter if it's anything else.

The key is to focus in on those priorities and devote scientific efforts to where there's the greatest risk, to reduce our knowledge gaps and to improve our management regime based on that knowledge. Are there gaps? I'll certainly admit that there are always knowledge gaps within our knowledge assessment, but we are doing this review, nationally, to assess those gaps. Then we're going to be putting our resources where the best places are for them.

S. Simpson: To follow up on that, I agree there are always gaps. You really do want to focus on the priority areas. That follows back on a question Scott raised. Was it in 2003 that there was a joint federal-provincial review of sea lice and the impact of sea lice? I believe there was some work done on that in 2003.

A. Thomson: We've had what was initially called the pink salmon action plan since 2003, studying the impacts of sea lice. You'll see some of that on Monday. This is a very large and comprehensive study we've been conducting every year since 2003, and we're continuing to do it.

S. Simpson: Are there conclusions that are definitive? Part of the problem I'm having, I guess, is that,

looking at the information we have…. It's the B.C. Auditor General who suggests it's not conclusive information. The concern I have is: how do we know what those impacts are? They seem like such a critical issue, particularly….

We know sea lice is one of the driving questions in this whole debate around aquaculture. I'm struggling with where the best information is about those impacts of lice and whether, in fact, that work has been done. Do you have information? I think you made the comment to Scott that you were comfortable with the levels of sea lice currently.

A. Thomson: I said that the way we score the risk of emanation of sea lice from the farmsites is that it scores in the sea as low, because of the actions of the fish health management plan that keep the levels of sea lice at a low level.

A. Thomson: No, we rely on the provincial government to manage the fish health management plan. That includes reports of sea lice, which I'm sure we'll describe.

S. Simpson: We'll talk about the fish health management plan with the provincial government.

You don't get any individual reports from individual farms. There's cumulative information or whatever the province provides you, and you base your assessments on that information, not on information you collect directly.

G. Hogg: You mentioned two departments, four sets of legislation, two policies and one strategy. Are there other federal departments that are engaged in this beyond transportation, and…?

A. Thomson: Certainly. There are Transport Canada and Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency would take care of the health of the product as it leaves the farmsite.

There's Health Canada, which sets the standards that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency enforces. There's Environment Canada that looks at section 36 of the federal Fisheries Act, which deals with contaminants in the water column. It's actually part of Environment Canada's purview. Environment Canada and Canadian Wildlife Service are also consulted on all CEAA reviews for impacts to birds and wildlife.

There are other federal government departments involved in different levels too. Agriculture Canada is involved in some seafood marketing for agriculture. There are other levels of government involved, but those would be the main ones.

G. Hogg: Six or seven ministries and departments. How many provincial ministries or departments do they relate to or are involved in it?

G. Hogg: Maybe you need a degree in understanding the organization just to figure out what the other things are that you do.

Has there been discussion, or are there other jurisdictions that have a more singular or direct management style or system in place than one that engages ten or 11 different departments?

A. Thomson: I'm sure there are other jurisdictions that do it in a more cohesive manner. There are others that do it worse. I know Washington State has something in the neighbourhood of, I believe, 17 or 27 agencies involved in aquaculture at any one time.

As Fisheries and Oceans Canadsa, we are the lead role. The issues of aquaculture come through my office, essentially. We try to work very closely with Transport Canada. I talk with them, certainly, every other week and Environment Canada and such.

It's challenging at times to work and be more coordinated. We've identified that with our provincial agencies. I know for a fact that we deal in a more cohesive and harmonized manner now with the provincial agencies than we did five years ago. There's room for improvement, and we are trying to make those improvements. Is it a perfect system? No, it's not a perfect system.

G. Hogg: Are there jurisdictions or are there roles within Canada where a provincial responsibility may be taken over by a federal government by way of contract or agreement or memorandum of understanding, or vice versa?

A. Thomson: There is, in one particular case I know of in Prince Edward Island. In British Columbia the land tenure itself is issued by the B.C. government. In Prince Edward Island that function is left with the federal government.

A. Thomson: It's delegated back to the federal government, yes. That's by…. I guess historic precedent would be the best way of putting it. The tenures for the shellfish operations are given out by the federal government.

A. Thomson: That's by historical precedent. I guess that would be the best way of putting it. The tenures for the shellfish operations are given out by the federal government.

G. Hogg: Organizationally, with all the challenges there, sometimes with so many organizations involved, there's a dynamic tension and accountabilities and competition and things that work well. Sometimes, organizationally, that seems to create a mess.

A. Thomson: One of our efforts over the last few years has been to try and untangle that mess and try to straighten these things out so that we give the best guidance we can. We take our lead role as managing the aquaculture industry and as being the coordinating force within British Columbia for the federal agencies.

G. Hogg: I don't want you to make value judgments, so I'm trying to carefully phrase the things I'm doing. In terms of being able to provide the people of British Columbia with the best possible service and quality of aquaculture, are there other organizational models that you may be conversant with that may look at or do that in other ways, ones that don't seem to have as many organizations or as many people involved?

Certainly, I'm more familiar with the number of other provincial and federal government services. Every time you get 12 or 18 agencies, organizations, ministries or departments involved, they start pointing fingers at each other. The quality of decision-making is questionable and, in most cases, is delayed for agonizingly extended periods of time.

A. Thomson: We recently had the opportunity to have a colleague brought in on an interchange assignment from Chile, which is obviously the largest — or second largest, depending on how you measure it — salmon producer in the world for salmon farming. She described very similar sets of interconnected bureaucracies. The department of the navy actually looks after land tenuring down there, so they have to deal with the military presence.

I think the reality within large democracies, whether it be Chile or Norway, is that there are going to be overlapping jurisdictions. Certainly, Scotland has overlapping jurisdictions between area boards and the national government. I think that's just a reality. The idea is to do the best job you can with the agencies you're working with.

G. Hogg: I think one of the things we have to look at, though, is the organizational management system, as well, and whether or not we should be looking at or recommending other models. I'm just wondering if there are places we can go to, to look at that. There will always be some overlap, but there may be ways to make it more effective in terms of the stewardship of our system for the people of the province as well.

G. Robertson: I'm concerned here specifically around habitat, the definition of habitat and migration areas. I have clear guidance that in section 34, fish habitat is defined as spawning grounds and nursery rearing and food supply migration areas on which fish depend directly or indirectly in order to carry out their life processes.

The impact on migration areas: you describe an acceptable level of risk for that impact. What we've seen here today is directly from farm-siting. To what degree do you factor in far-field effects, effects through a whole channel, say, in terms of a migration route that is, by definition, habitat?

A. Thomson: Far-field effects, obviously, is a more challenging area to address than near-field or…. We've had two conferences that I'm aware of in the last two years within our science branches to do this, to develop research programs that will look at the far-field effects both of finfish and shellfish culture, to see whether or not there's nutrient enrichment several hundred kilometres away, or some sort of impact.

Those types of research studies will go into informing our regulatory regime as it comes forward. In the meantime, what we do is look at the cumulative impacts under CEAA, as I mentioned. We do look at the cumulative impacts of a number of sites within an area.

You're looking at whether or not a number of sites within that one area and the far-field effects, because they're situated sometimes quite a few kilometres apart, are having an additive affect in the area. So that's the interim. As we get more information on far-field effects, we will improve our management.

G. Robertson: At this point the far-field effects are probably an even bigger knowledge gap than what you described within near-field. Near-field, there are a lot of questions still about what the impacts are, based on the science done to date. Far-field sounds like it's just beginning to be….

A. Thomson: There is less known, but there is also less likelihood for severity of impact, given that you are farther apart, farther away.

G. Robertson: In terms of the acceptable levels of risk and those impacts, you're charged with minimizing or eliminating the risks to the wild salmon above all else. In terms of these impacts, when you say it's an acceptable level of risk, how many fish is that? Are you quantifying a percentage? If there are 50 million wild salmon returning to this coast….

A. Thomson: No, it's not quantified in that manner. It's quantified through the matrix of how big the geographic disturbance is, based on knowledge gained, given to us from science, what the frequency of disturbance may be, what the duration of the disturbance is and whether or not it's reversible. It's scored through this matrix.

I could have brought more slides to show how we actually come that low, and I certainly can provide that

to the committee in a paper form that might be easy to digest. It's based on this matrix, so it's not a quantified number of fish. It's quantified through the scoring matrix, broken down to subjective decision-making.

Is the impact going to be reversible? Certainly, if we moved the farmsite, it would be reversible. Is the impact going to be of long duration? If it's an impact that's occurring over the entire length of the farm grow-out cycle, then it may be of medium duration. It's done through that mechanism, not based on the number of fish.

G. Robertson: In terms of actual impact, rather than relying upon an abstract end-point of risk…. I'm confused that all your models lead to an abstract definition of impact versus: "This is an acceptable level of risk, if we lose 5 percent or lose 10 percent, in terms of ecosystem, in terms of…." At some point, you have to set targets. You have to set acceptable outcomes.

G. Robertson: I'm concerned about quantifying impact, not only for habitat, not only for wild salmon. On the industry side of this you've described several — three plus one — DFO staff that are specifically working on aquaculture here. You then mentioned a whole series of fisheries officers, habitat officers, who have time dedicated to dealing with the impacts related to the aquaculture industry.

Is that all added up? Is there a cumulative cost that you can give us for DFO specifically, related to the impacts of this industry on the wild fishery, on the marine environment?

A. Thomson: It's difficult to tease out every percentage of everyone's job who deals with aquaculture. Certainly, some fisheries officers in Nelson won't deal with aquaculture, because they're not near a coastal area. To quantify each individual job, outside those that are dedicated 100 percent, gets less and less accurate.

I wouldn't be able to give you an accurate statement of how many person-years work on aquaculture in any way that accurately functions, other than those that are, like myself, full-time on aquaculture issues.

G. Robertson: What would be very useful, given that there is a cost to taxpayers to manage these impacts…. The impacts are created by a technology that has gaps, much as you say the science does. There are releases into the environment created by the technology or because of the technology.

With the closed-containment alternatives we're hearing something about, those gaps close or all but close the impacts or reduce the necessity for taxpayers to do all the funding related to managing the impacts or trying to eliminate the impacts…. It's different, obviously. Much less.

I'm curious to know if there's a big cost within DFO to manage the impacts created by a technology, if it's in Environment Canada, as well, and several other departments federally and provincially that are all related to the impacts created by the technology. At this point, you're saying, those costs to taxpayers are not added up. We don't know exactly what the total cost is within, say, DFO.

A. Thomson: I can certainly provide a figure of the staff directly involved in doing the assessment of the impacts. That's easy enough to add up and provide to the committee, based on those three staff.

I would like to go back to your point about closed containment not having a need for assessment. Certainly, closed containment sites that are placed within British Columbia would still trigger an environmental assessment. They would still require a navigable waters permit, so you would still have to do an environmental assessment.

Because they're in the marine environment, you would still have to do a habitat assessment, as we've done for closed containment sites. There still is an assessment process that goes on that looks at any of these projects, because that's our responsibility under the federal Fisheries Act and under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

G. Robertson: Is it your sense, though, that with closed containment technology, there will be reduced impacts and reduced costs related to monitoring those impacts?

A. Thomson: There can be, though I would like to caution the committee on what is truly closed containment. I've been in the position of managing aquaculture for a number of years, and most of the facilities I've heard being called closed containment are not truly closed containment. There is either a water discharge, or you still have to find someplace to put the waste.

The fact of the matter is that waste is created one way or the other. Even if it's land-based, or if it's in the ocean, there still are wastes being created that a place must be found for, or there is still a water exchange that must be filtered in some way to truly be called closed containment.

I guess that for me personally, it's a term that's used a lot, but it doesn't describe the accuracy of it. There is no such thing as closed containment. For me that would be maybe no water exchange, no waste coming out of it, but that's just not a reality.

G. Robertson: But if there would be, the technology will dictate to some degree what the impact and the cost…

A. Thomson: I'll give you an example. We did a study, a Canadian Environmental Assessment Act screening, of a closed containment facility. In that facility what you're actually looking at is not so much the impact of waste getting out, maybe, but looking at the impact of what would happen if the bottom of the facility hit the ocean bottom.

That, in the particular site they were looking at, potentially could occur. There are different ways of looking at it. You just have to look at all the potential impacts.

G. Robertson: At this point, what financial commitments has DFO made, on the research side, to closed containment? Is there a significant…?

A. Thomson: It's certainly significant. You'll see it on Monday when you go to the Pacific Biological Station. There's a research farm at the Pacific Biological Station, and it's actually the first aquaculture finfish farm set up in British Columbia. I believe it was set up in 1974, so we've had a farm at Pacific Biological Station to study aquaculture impacts.

For a number of years, though it has just been removed, there was a private company that, through an agreement, used a portion of our lease there to study the impacts of closed containment. What we had at that time was a closed containment site right next to our research farm, and we could do comparative studies on performance of fish, of impacts, of that type of thing.

There have been a number of studies produced by Fisheries and Oceans Canada — Henrik Kreiberg, who you will likely meet on Monday — that look at these types of comparisons of studies.

We've certainly been involved and will continue to be involved in looking at better technologies for the industry. That is certainly in our interest. We want to develop better technologies, better management, for the industry.

G. Robertson: Could you provide the committee with the financial commitments on the research side of these various technologies?

A. Thomson: I could certainly ask our science branch, which was involved in it, to provide that information. They may not have it for you for Monday but, certainly, over time.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you. I have just one more person with a question — a quick one from Shane.

Thank you very much on behalf of the committee for coming here and presenting today and for answering all these questions. As you mentioned earlier, I'm sure that we will have…. Once we find out more things as we go on the road, maybe you'll be able to answer further questions, either in writing or maybe by coming to speak to us again. Thank you very much for coming today.

R. Austin (Chair): At this time I'd like to recess for a ten-minute refreshment break and allow a change of setup as we move over to the provincial officials. We'll recess for ten minutes.

R. Austin (Chair): I would like to bring the meeting back to order. Noting that we have just under two hours for this portion of the meeting, I would like to invite Larry Pedersen to introduce all of the witnesses here today.

Also, I'd like to remind members here that unlike when meetings take place at the Leg., all of these microphones are on permanently, so please make sure that any comments you make…. It does affect the webcast, so please remember that all the mikes are on all the time.

My understanding is that we're going to have a presentation for about 40 minutes and then have time for questions after that.

L. Pedersen: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to introduce my colleague Chris Trumpy, who is the Deputy Minister of Environment. I am Larry Pedersen, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Lands.

We have three presenters with us today: Al Castledine, who is the director, aquaculture branch with the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands; Randy Alexander, who is the regional environment protection manager with the Ministry of Environment; and Yves Antaya, who is the section head of the compliance and monitoring unit, aquaculture licensing and compliance branch, with the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

Also in attendance with us today are Bud Graham, assistant deputy minister, oceans and marine fisheries, Ministry of Environment; Daphne Stancil, assistant deputy minister, strategic policy and legislation division, Ministry of Agriculture and Lands; Jaclynn Hunter, director, fisheries and aquaculture licensing and compliance branch, Ministry of Agriculture and Lands; Dr. Ron Lewis, director, animal health branch, Ministry of Agriculture and Lands; and Kathy Evans, section head, licensing unit, fisheries and aquaculture,

As requested, the presenters intend to cover the subject of regulation of finfish aquaculture in British Columbia, starting from the period of about 1995 to the present day, so as requested, going back to the period of the salmon aquaculture review and then coming forward through time as the attendant legislative and regulatory changes were undertaken.

We will speak to our understanding of the topic areas that you are interested in: escape prevention, fish health, siting, licence and compliance, waste control and cross-jurisdictional analysis and comparison.

Just prior to bringing the presenters to the table, I would like to take the opportunity, further to our discussion yesterday, to read a very brief letter to the committee for the committee's understanding, and then I will table the letter with the Clerk. The letter is addressed to Robin Austin, Chair of Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you. I appreciate, certainly with regards to Mr. Graham, that there was a miscommunication that occurred. I will do my best to ensure that, in communications between myself and the Clerk of Committees and then in communication that goes on down the line, we don't have any mistakes like this in the future.

I'm glad that you are all here and that you all have smiling faces and are ready to make a good presentation and answer all of the questions, so I thank you for coming here today. Let's get over all of this and get to the business at hand.

L. Pedersen: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I will propose that Deputy Minister Trumpy and I step back and bring our presenters forward at this time.

R. Austin (Chair): I would just like to remind the witnesses here that the mikes are set up for only three presenters at the witness table, so when anybody comes forward to answer a question or to make any presentation later on, please identify yourself by name so that Hansard can record that for the purposes of people who are either listening or want to read this later on.

A. Castledine: I'm pleased to have the opportunity to return to the committee and provide more in-depth information about the regulation of aquaculture in British Columbia.

What we've done in this presentation is try to strike a balance in terms of presenting enough detail to inform questions and answers but not take up too much time for presentations. Thus, we're going to try and do this in about 40 minutes.

What we want to do, we hope, is to demonstrate that changes have taken place over the last ten years since the salmon aquaculture review was implemented, and we'd certainly be pleased to follow up with any further information if the committee desires.

You've got hard copies of this in black and white. It's probably more convenient than working through the screen, but I can click away if we want. I'll do both. Okay.

Deputy Pedersen has introduced the staff who are here today, so we can skip this one. An overview of the presentation is that we will talk a bit about the salmon aquaculture review, the work that was undertaken, some of the conclusions and the implementation of its recommendations.

The SAR covered escape prevention; fish health; siting; licensing and compliance, which would cover both inspection and investigation; waste control regulation; and a comparison with other jurisdictions.

To my left is Yves Antaya, who will be talking about the licence and compliance functions, and to my right is Randy Alexander, who will be speaking to the waste control regulation. I'll wrap up with a discussion of the comparison.

The environmental assessment office was charged in 1995 with conducting a review of the environmental risks of salmon farming, recommending methods to mitigate risks, to determine if salmon farms were reviewable projects under the B.C. Environmental Assessment Act and to conduct a socioeconomic assessment of industry.

In terms of the Environmental Assessment Act and reviewable projects, at the time, there was some discussion as to whether each of these should be considered a major project and be reviewed under the Environmental Assessment Act.

At the same time this work was initiated, there was a decision that a hiatus should take place in acceptance of new applications for salmon farms while the salmon aquaculture review was underway. The issues to be examined by the SAR were escapes of farmed fish, fish health, waste discharges, interaction with marine mammals and other species, and fish farm siting.

Just a brief description of the structure of the SAR. There were two key components of the review process. There were ten members of a technical advisory team who had expertise in these areas: fisheries management, coastal planning, environmental assessment, marine mammals, environmental law, fish biology, fish culture, salmon ecology, economics and fish health. These were well-recognized experts in these fields. In addition, there was a 45-member review committee, which included first nations, local government, environmental non-government organizations, industry, fishers, processors, etc.

All of these working sessions were open to the public, and all the reports, submissions, etc., were available through the Internet, and repositories were made at various locations on the Island and at the Vancouver Public Library. It was a very open process. People were welcome to attend. It took over a year for the public part of it, and then it took about a year for the environmental assessment office to report out.

In 1997 the salmon aquaculture review was completed with a report. They issued a number of documents, several volumes — executive director's recommendations, first nations perspectives, the technical advisory team discussion papers, also a volume on socioeconomic assessment, the management and regulatory framework, regulatory comparison with other jurisdictions at that time, and an overview of existing and developing technologies. This overview included a review of the state of the art at the time of what we currently call closed containment, which means an alternative, I suppose, to net pen technology. Then there was a very large bibliography. This was a very, very large review, and I don't think it's been repeated anywhere else in the world since.

In broad terms the SAR recommended that government implement a preventative approach to regulatory approval processes in mitigation, utilize adaptive management approaches, develop performance-based standards and conduct additional monitoring and research. The legislative and regulatory base could use some improvement, and farm proposals should not be considered reviewable projects under the Environmental Assessment Act.

Post-1997 the hiatus on receipt of applications continued until a new regulatory framework was developed, and work started immediately on developing that framework. The province did focus on those areas that were discussed in the Salmon Aquaculture Review: escape prevention, waste management, fish health, compliance and enforcement, siting and research and development.

SAR had four recommendations on the subject of escapes. As a result of those recommendations, a new regulation for escape prevention came out in October 2000. This regulation covered matters such as the design, installation, maintenance and anchoring of cage structures. For example, anchoring now requires a marine engineer's certificate to make sure that it's up to certain standards. There were considerations of the strength of the containment netting. It had to withstand a certain stretch test.

There were requirements for net inspections, recordkeeping and boat operations. Boats were not allowed to be run near nets. There had to be specific locations for boats to tie up, etc., so we could avoid propellers hitting the nets.

There were best management practices plans developed. Predator avoidance was a key, because predators do tear nets, and fish can escape through those holes. Companies had to develop an escape response. If they found evidence that escape may have occurred, then they had to have a response plan.

In 2002 there were additional amendments to ensure that this escape prevention focused on high-risk activities. Powers were created for inspectors to remove suspect net cages from the water. They could go onto a farm and if, according to the records or their own observations, they thought these nets were not up to scratch, they could order them removed. There were streamlined recordkeeping requirements, increased flexibility for dive requirements that focused on high-risk activities.

As I mentioned, best management practices plans were put into place. This particular comment about net

strength standards being consistent with other jurisdictions is an interesting one. Apparently there was a problem with translating Norwegian net strength standards to Canadian. Someone got the math wrong, and ours ended up being about four times as high as theirs. There was an amendment made to make those net strength standards a bit more realistic, given the materials that are being used.

Mandatory net strength testing procedures were implemented — specific instrumentation, specific part of the net, etc. — and then there was an emphasis on staff training. Those were the ways that government responded to the Salmon Aquaculture Review's recommendations on escapes.

We move on now to fish health. SAR provided nine recommendations on fish health. It identified a need for enforceable standards for managing farmed salmon health that should apply to all intensive fish culture operations.

Before I move to this slide, I'll just elaborate a bit on all intensive fish culture operations. Fish health standards needed to be applied not only to the private aquaculture operators but to those facilities that were being operated by the federal and provincial governments through SEP or stocking programs. There are, obviously, disease issues with all hatchery-type facilities, so the public sector facilities are developing fish health management plans, as well as the private sector.

In response to some of the SAR recommendations, a fish health advisory committee was struck. This committee developed documents to inform the development of fish health management plans, as I said, for both private and public fish culture facilities. These documents are probably available. They're fairly large documents.

The Fish Health Advisory Committee provides information about the health management standards that are expected from the aquaculture industry. It's an organization that's based in science, keeps up to speed with the latest developments in fish health information and sees how they might be applied to improved fish health management on farms.

Some information about fish health management plans. All fish health management plans are evaluated by the fish health veterinarian to ensure that they address all the required elements and that they satisfy the Manual of Fish Health Practices. These are not insignificant documents. They run to well over a hundred pages. They are reviewed by the fish health veterinarian.

Parts of the elements of a fish health plan are not prescriptive. They describe a required outcome, and the companies have the ability to address the required outcome in the best way they can. This recognizes that fish health management or fish health practices improve with time, or change.

If we were to prescribe ten parts per million iodine for a footbath, someday someone will come up with a better chemical and it's to be done at 20 parts per million. The plans are designed to address that need for continual improvement.

I'll talk a little bit about surveillance and auditing of fish health. Some of this information was presented to you earlier. It may sound a little bit familiar, but it's worth going over again because it is being presented to you today as part of the comprehensive response to the Salmon Aquaculture Review.

There are two separate programs. There is fish health monitoring and disease surveillance, and there's the sea lice audit. Part of what we've done is that we've made information on fish health in the salmon farming industry more transparent. For fish health and diseases, industry must report quarterly things like the average mortality rate, the proportional mortality rate — that is, what are the dead fish as a proportion of the fish population? — and fish health events, which is anything that is noted that may have an infectious cause.

For sea lice, monthly levels are reported. This information is posted on our ministry website. If companies are not in compliance with reporting, then action can be taken. That's part of Yves Antaya's role for the ministry.

What are the objectives of this surveillance and auditing? Our staff go out there and monitor a certain number of the farms to ensure that their results are comparable to the results that are being reported by industry. We actually go out and have firsthand knowledge through on-site sampling. This approach is consistent with the government's approach to other activities. We don't go out and audit 100 percent of anything. There's a certain subset that would be seen to be statistically sufficient to get you the information you require.

Some of the numbers: 30 farms per quarter. This is not a simple undertaking. It involves watercraft — two to three people on a vessel visiting the farms in sometimes inclement conditions. This is quite a good survey number. Some 120 farms are visited per year. Some of them are obviously visited more than once, according to these numbers.

For sea lice, it was in February 2003 that in the Broughton area a sea lice monitoring program was established. This involved our staff going out to farms and a requirement that the companies report sea lice levels. In 2004 this program was extended to all B.C. farms. Lice monitoring is a required component of all fish health management plans and is enforceable as a condition of licence. In January 2005 there was an instruction to farms that they must take early action to manage sea lice during wild smolt out-migrations, and audits increased at that time.

I know there's some debate about the stringency of action levels — numbers of lice on fish — but we certainly believe ours are among the most stringent of all salmon farming companies. Farms monitor monthly and then boost that to twice a month when three mobile stages are found. The mobile stages are just the stages that ultimately develop into the adults that can lay eggs. They're not particularly problematic at that size. The audits increase during smolt out-migrations, and the results are posted on the website.

Lice management strategies include early harvesting, veterinary treatment and other best management

approaches. What I'm referring to there is that in the previous slide we talked about increased need for action during wild smolt out-migrations.

For siting, the Salmon Aquaculture Review provided ten recommendations. In March of 2000 new siting criteria were adopted for new commercial aquaculture tenures. We weren't in a position to receive applications for new tenures until 2002.

These are all described in a guide that was prepared a few years ago. This helps applicants figure out what we need in terms of information to make decisions. These items are all considered by the statutory decision-maker when licence applications are being adjudicated.

I suppose I could run through these. I'll just bounce on a few. There's a minimum distance from salmonid-bearing streams, shellfish beds and an appropriate distance from sensitive fish habitat. We would rely on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to provide us information on the sensitivity of the habitat.

No pre-emption of aboriginal, commercial or recreational fisheries — that is, the setting of a farm cannot affect those. There have to be continued opportunities. Not in areas of cultural or heritage significance — this is of particular importance to first nations.

Consistency with local government bylaws and a requirement that farms be a minimum of three kilometres from each other, with the exception that a company may apply for a site that's closer than three kilometres because those farms would be under the management of one company. And consistency with local area plans and coastal zone management.

In addition to developing information on those criteria, there's a large requirement for industry, when it comes forward, to address the information needs of government. They have to provide detailed descriptions of site characteristics, which are quite costly — benthic surveys, current surveys, proximity to other valued foreshore, etc.

This information all goes into the siting. What we did was took from SAR some messages that perhaps the siting criteria were not as good as they could be and could consider other factors.

I'll touch briefly on the role of one of our groups. It operates out of the Courtenay office. We're split into two groups. There's the licensing and compliance group, and there's the aquaculture group that I manage.

There's a group of staff in Courtenay that actually receives the applications from the applicant. Their job is to review and assess applications for new freshwater or marine finfish farms and any amendments to farms to ensure that they're biophysically suitable, sustainable and technically feasible — does the company have the right number of net pens to hold the number of fish that they propose having? — and that they conform with siting guidelines.

They also conduct field surveys to inform their professional analysis. They don't just take what comes in and accept it at face value. They'll go out and do some of their own field survey work.

What they do, then, is take their analysis and provide recommendations and advice to the delegated decision-maker, and they are on the licensing side of this particular fence. When they make a recommendation, they may make suggestions that special provisos be attached to the licence if there are unique aspects to a proposal and if they might improve the proposed operation by mitigating effects of the facility on the surrounding environment.

What I'm explaining is that there's this dual role. There are the people who look at the feasibility of what the proponent is trying to do. Then that information is provided to the delegated decision-maker, who will consider that amongst myriad other factors in reaching a decision.

I'm just going to say a few words about the fisheries and aquaculture licensing and compliance program before I hand it over to Yves to talk about compliance and enforcement.

In terms of licensing, SAR recommended a change to the regulatory policy framework for approval processes. Now, a detailed review is completed to determine if an aquaculture application meets identified criteria. It is a far more rigorous approach than prevailed ten or so years ago.

All licensing decisions are based on principles of administrative law, and general principles guiding deliberations on salmon farm applications include fairness, transparency, efficiency and accountability. Key values applied and considered by officials include protection of the environment, sustainable economic development and ensuring that public health and safety values are maintained.

At this point I would like to turn it over to Yves, who will provide some information on the compliance and enforcement side.

Y. Antaya: Thank you, and good morning. I've been asked to come over here today to give you a brief overview of the compliance and enforcement program of our ministry. The compliance and enforcement program is a key component of the provincial approach to industry management.

In addition to inspections that the inspectors conduct at fish farms, we've added four items that are listed here: underwater dives as part of the investigation process; the spot audit program to farms, as well as dive audits; the drafting of an inspections policy manual; and improving investigations. Also, we have a joint agency service agreement with the Ministry of Environment.

The inspectors inspect all active salmon farms at least once a year. Often there will be a need to reattend if there is an incident at one of the farms, but every farm will be inspected at least once a year. When the inspectors do their inspections, they provide immediate results to the farmsite manager, and it's followed with correspondence or a visit to the head office by the inspectors to discuss any non-compliance issues. Every year there is an annual inspection report published.

Most annual inspections are completed between May and October, although now, with the acquisition of a new vessel last year, we can travel year-round. We have now started inspections as early as January.

Our objective when we attend fish farms is to assist compliance with regulations, licence terms and conditions. When the inspectors attend at a farm they interview the farmsite manager. It could be a company official, or it could be one of the managers from the main office. They review their policies, their BMP — best management plan — the maintenance records, and they have to ensure that they comply with all the requirements. As well, the inspectors walk around the system and inspect every cage and pen, including the anchors, the walkways and any buildings attached to the farmsite.

What the inspectors do when they travel to a farmsite…. Prior to their departing our office…. We have a checklist that has ten pages of questions they will be asking at the farmsite. They will review the current management plan held at our office. They will record some information so they know what to expect when they travel to the farmsite. At the farmsite they know what the biomass will be and what the structure should be and the species, and they confirm that the licence is current.

Then they attend at the farm, sit down with the farmsite manager and complete these two forms. The white one is from our ministry, and the blue one is for the Ministry of Environment. We record information and provide this to the Ministry of Environment.

Once this is done, if there are any non-compliance issues, they need to be dealt with right away. There is a compliance report that is given to the farmsite manager so that he can take immediate action, and it is followed with phone calls and a visit to the company's main office.

I'm not going to go through the entire list, but as you can see, it's broken down in different sections. The first one is operation description. This is what the inspector should see when he gets there: the species, the amount of fish, the structures, as well as the location within the tenure.

One of the things we do now is…. For the last two years we've recorded all the GPS coordinates at the farmsites to make sure that they are within the approved tenure. What happened in the past, before GPS, is that we were told by the company: "Oops, we moved our site 90 degrees because we felt it was better." We had no way of knowing it unless the company told us. Now we know by doing just this.

Then they go through every section. The first one is the licence. Is the licence current? It has to be current. Escape reports, to see if they had any escapes in the previous year. The inspectors will have checked prior to attending there if they had any reports within the last year. Then they go through all the inspection records — all the records — at the farmsite, and then there'll be a visual inspection for the net cage.

Then they switch over to the inspection with the Ministry of Environment. Again, it's asking questions of farmsite employees and a visual inspection as well.

On the escape reporting and investigations, SAR made four recommendations on escapes. What we do now is conduct in-depth investigations of every report we receive from the industry.

First of all, there's a 24-hour phone number now that they can phone. They have 24 hours to report an escape or a suspected escape. I mean by that any hole big enough for a fish to escape. We have companies that will report holes that are too small for a fish of eight kilos to go through. When it's three strands by four strands, you cannot have a fish going through. They'd only be caught, so they just report every hole.

Those ones may not require a formal investigation, but the companies will report every incident. Even if they don't suspect an escape, if the hole is big enough, they will phone the reporting number and make a report within 24 hours, which will be followed by a written report within seven days.

As soon as we get a report, a file is opened. It's an investigative file. An inspector is assigned. Depending on the seriousness, the inspectors will attend within 72 hours. The inspectors have six months to complete their investigation. We're limited to the limitation period in the Fisheries Act.

The investigations can have the following outcomes. Nothing happened. It was a small hole, and the fish were too big to swim through. A written warning, which could be a letter, or it could be a written warning ticket. It could be a violation ticket, it could be a report to Crown with recommended charges, or it could be a recommendation for aquaculture licence suspension or revocation.

I'd like to quickly turn it over to Randy Alexander, who will talk about the finfish aquaculture waste control regulation.

R. Alexander: I'm going to start out by giving you a bit of a summary of our activities and what our role is as the Ministry of Environment in this activity. Some of this information you saw in February when we presented to you, but it's important context.

The Ministry of Environment's activities are primarily around administration of the regulation, the finfish aquaculture waste control regulation, which controls the waste that's discharged from sites. Those types of activities include processing registration applications, assessing the operational monitoring and compliance reports that are sent to us by the fish farms, the review of annual reporting information, generation of discharge fees and processing of operational amendments to registrations.

There is also a major component of our activities which is field auditing of the industry monitoring programs. Those are the production standards, the sediment standards, that are set in the regulation. We audit to compare with the information we get from the industry when they monitor and also to help us with improving the regulation and assessing its effective-

There's another major component of our activities, which we call promotion of regulatory compliance. We generate annual compliance summaries. We're now generating compliance summaries for individual companies, and we go out and meet with those companies on an annual basis and review that. It gives us an opportunity to discuss with the management of the company how they're doing and also to find out more about what direction they're going in and what issues are coming up for them. It helps us focus our compliance efforts, and it's been very effective.

As Yves said, we also have joint annual compliance inspections and reporting with his team, which leads the inspections. There's coordinated MOE-MAL enforcement through our conservation officer service, and they lead the investigations on any type of activities that are identified.

We also focus closely on working with stakeholders, including DFO and the industry, to solve technical issues. For example, we work with DFO on trying to harmonize our standards, our information requirements. The gentleman from DFO was talking about his standards. We're out there in the boat with them. Whenever possible, they come with us. We're trying, at the working level, to make our regulations work and, as much as possible, to make things consistent and work together. We're quite effective on that. We're developing very good working relationships, and I'm quite happy with how we've progressed over the last few years in that area.

I'm going to talk a bit about the regulation now. It's really the centrepiece of the ten SAR recommendations regarding waste. Those ten recommendations were implemented primarily through this regulation.

The components of the regulation are as follows. There's a registration component to it, where they have to provide quite a bit of detailed information about the site and the conditions to provide us with a baseline to evaluate environmental impacts over the history of the activity. We try and coordinate with DFO as much as possible on this information, because there is some overlap with their requirements — so things like mapping, baseline inventories, video surveys, sediment sampling, all of those sorts of things.

There are also best-management-practice-plan requirements in the regulation. There are annual fees and reporting.

What I'm going to talk about in a little more detail are the operational reporting requirements of the regulation. Fish farms are required to monitor at peak production for compliance with the production standards — and I'll talk about those in a minute — and the pre-stocking requirements. They'll do their monitoring, and pre-stocking monitoring is required where sites have triggered a certain level of sulphides. They're also not allowed to restock if their sediments are in excess of a certain level of sulphides, as well, and I'll talk more about that.

There are two types of bottoms underneath a fish farm: a soft bottom and a hard bottom. The sulphide standards apply to the soft bottom, because you can sample the sediments, and you can test the chemistry. On hard bottom you can't do that, so we have video requirements in lieu of actual sediment sampling there. We're still developing the actual standards involved in how you determine environmental impact in a hard bottom. That's one of the activities that's a major focus of our activities right now towards the next amendment of the regulation.

This is just to briefly describe what the production standards are for soft-bottom sites and how this works. I want to mention that the regulation is performance-based, so the fish farm has to meet certain standards or they can't put new fish in the water. That's the basis of it.

We use a chemical surrogate, which is a free sulphide in the soft-bottom sediment, and there's a very direct relationship with the concentration of sulphides and the impact of organisms in the sediments. That was evaluated in quite a bit of detail in the development of the regulation. Over a hundred sites were sampled and analyzed to develop this regulation and these standards.

There are some triggers. At peak production the fish farm has to sample the sediments in the bottom below their farm. They sample at 30 metres from the net pen. If the sulphides are above 6,000 micromolar, it triggers incremental monitoring and sampling. They can't restock until they're down again below the standard. If the sulphides are above 1,300 micromolar — that's not quite as high — they still can't restock. It doesn't trigger additional monitoring, but they're not allowed to restock until they're down below that level.

That's the level that's been determined. There's not, we believe, a significant impact on the sea floor at that level. The 6,000 is the level that's been determined. There's a real issue of concern if you get up above that level.

This is a comparison of how the industry is doing relative to the production standard compliance component of our regulation. What you'll see on the left is the peak production standards and triggers. This is what percentage of farms go out and sample, are below 1,300 micromolar and don't have to worry about additional activities. You can see that it's 65 percent in 2003 and 2004. It's 71 percent in 2005. They've triggered additional monitoring and so on.

The next component on the right is how many farms have actually complied with the requirement that you don't put fish back in the water until you're below the standard. In 2003 and 2004 we had 100-percent compliance. In 2005 we had one incident of non-compliance. That's just under review right now, so I don't have any results to tell you about for that particular incident.

A. Castledine: We're now into the section on comparison with the jurisdictions. Everywhere in the world regulation of industry is constantly evolving. Standards are set in British Columbia. They're picked up in

Chile or Norway or vice versa. When brought into force, our standards of practice for escape prevention set the world standard. Other countries are now improving their requirements based, somewhat, on our standards. There's learning going on about how to approach some of the management issues.

In fact, the World Wildlife Fund used B.C.'s regulatory scheme for escape prevention as the standard by which Atlantic Canada's regulatory systems and industries are judged. The author of that report is a fellow called Gareth Porter. He's currently undertaking an audit of the management of salmon aquaculture for the Pacific Salmon Forum. The results of that are forthcoming. At this time I'd like to predict that it'll be a mixed report, as its assessment is based on prescriptive rather than performance-based criteria.

We in this province, certainly, are focusing on the performance-based and not on making prescriptive-based approaches in regulation. I mentioned the simple thing about the disinfectant in the footbath. It's the results that are particularly important. However, some people are looking for a line in a regulation that says "ten parts per million," or they're not satisfied.

Some of the other jurisdictions that we could compare ourselves to are Norway, Chile, Scotland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Maine and Washington. They're useful for comparison because they regulate this common activity of Atlantic salmon in open systems. We're going to compare them on four. This is going to be a very simple comparison. There's not enough time to go into detail, but we're willing at any time to provide that detail.

We're going to talk about farm escapes, farm siting, fish health and waste management. This table has been produced to describe escape prevention requirements, so those jurisdictions that have a tick in the box have a requirement related to that particular activity. The grey ones are somewhere in between not having that requirement at all and having that requirement. They may have minimal standards.

With respect to these criteria, on the left-hand side you can see that B.C. has ticks in all of the boxes except for "Tagging." Only one jurisdiction does that. That's Maine. They have a population of wild Atlantic salmon that is at severe risk. They want to tag each fish so that they'll know where it came from if it ever ends up in a river.

I'm quite willing to entertain questions on any of this as soon as the presentation is over, but I'd like to just flip on to the next, which is siting requirements, based on three criteria: whether there's a salmon stream buffer, a site buffer or a requirement for baseline data collection prior to putting in a farm. Again, the ticks indicate that there is a requirement.

The site buffers are described in that second line there. Some are as far as three kilometres, eight kilometres. Some are as little as 300 metres. In New Brunswick you can have farms 300 metres away from each other.

In the bottom this reflects the amount of material that would be required when you're collecting baseline. So the more ticks in the boxes, the more information you have to provide. You can see that British Columbia is one of those that require considerable information on the siting requirements.

For fish health we've used these criteria: management plans, monitoring, recordkeeping, drug records, surveillance, quarantine, eradication and isolation. British Columbia does have isolation procedures for IHN, for example, so it gets a tick in this box. Of the jurisdictions and the fish health side, British Columbia fares quite well in this comparison.

In terms of waste management, for the criteria identified — environmental monitoring reporting, benthic baseline, more monitoring standards and waste management plans — you can see that B.C. and Washington State have similar requirements, but some of the other countries are lacking these.

I must also go back and repeat what I said earlier. There's learning going on. Just as industry has developed common structures to grow fish in — as you go to one fish farm in Norway or Chile or British Columbia, you see essentially the same structures — countries are converging in terms of their standards. So the comparisons change through time.

I'm going to wrap up with two slides. What I would like to show you is that in the year 2006 things are different than they were in the year 1995. We have an enhanced application process, revised siting guidelines. The guide I mentioned was a very comprehensive application review.

We have licensing policy. We have a better process for public input, enhanced first nations consultation. We have a document that describes how the delegated decision-maker comes to a decision, which is on our website. We have sophisticated modelling of benthic impact, so we can predict that. We have performance-based waste management regulation, including registration, an audit program and best management practices.

We have a very comprehensive fish health monitoring program, which includes the advisory committee, fish health management plans, surveillance and audit, and public reporting. We have an enhanced compliance and enforcement program, highly trained inspectors, a policy and procedures manual, annual inspections, annual compliance reporting. We have enhanced the aquaculture regulation, the standards of practice for escape prevention.

We have CEAA screenings, and my colleague from Fisheries and Oceans gave a very good account this morning of how they address some of the matters around salmon farming, CEAA, Fisheries Act reviews and the national code on introductions and transfers.

All of these, I believe, represent changes and improvements in the way the industry is approached and managed in British Columbia.

Now I'd like to invite members to pose any questions they have. I'd also like to remind anyone else who steps forward to answer a question to please state your name just prior to giving the answer.

G. Robertson: I'll jump in. Thank you for the comprehensive presentation. No doubt there is an exhaustive amount of work that's gone into developing all the regulation and the infrastructure in place right now around this industry, but regulation without enforcement is meaningless.

I'm curious. Given that there has been a controversial history in terms of enforcement, fines levied and fines returned to industry, could you give some perspective on enforcement and fines for farms, industry players or companies that are out of order — what is currently happening with that — and a historical context in terms of actual fines that have been levied and enforcement that has taken place to date?

Y. Antaya: First of all, you've got two sets of rules. You've got the violation tickets, where you have a set amount of fine — be it $173, $195 or up to $500. The other fines are set by the courts. Under the Fisheries Act, section 25, depending on the offence it could be up to $2,000 per day per count, up to $10,000 per day per count. The courts will determine what the fine should be.

A. Castledine: The director of licensing and compliance, Jackie Hunter, would like to elaborate a bit on Yves's answer, if that's appropriate.

J. Hunter: Good afternoon. Thank you again for having me. I just wanted to respond to Mr. Robertson and to further expand on Yves's comment around enforcement.

You mentioned that regulation without enforcement is meaningless. I think what you were talking about in terms of the fines issue — and, unfortunately, I don't have anyone here from Lands…. Bud, you might want to speak to that piece. Those were talking about Land Act tenures.

Our C and E report should be coming out in the next eight weeks or so. It will provide a detailed chronology of enforcement.

A. Castledine: Would you like to talk further about the fines? You mentioned that some fines were returned to some companies. It was Lands that returned that money. We don't have anybody from Lands here. I know a little bit of the history but not enough really to cover it well enough for this discussion.

J. Hunter: And I think what we wanted is the return of any sort of fees was not related in any way to enforcement — is what I was trying to say…. We have over the last six years in particular developed a very comprehensive C and E program. We have 18 convictions through the courts, and that, as I said earlier, is in our C and E report.

G. Robertson: There is a whole series of questions around this. I think there is a lack of clarity around enforcement and what has actually happened. I know statistics that I have on non-compliance on site configuration…. In 2002 and 2003 compliance was 24 percent on site configuration and 75 percent on biomass compliance.

No doubt there are impacts created by those being out of compliance on both levels. What steps were taken there in terms of fines or penalties? What ensued when industry in these situations was that far out of compliance?

J. Hunter: Right. Well, we tend to employ a compliance continuum. As Yves mentioned in his presentation, it starts with anything from a written warning to a violation ticket to charges to Crown to, ultimately, recommendations to the SDM for licence suspension or revocation.

In terms of compliance rates from 2001 to date…. Did you bring the graph, Yves, that showed the comparison of compliance rates between years?

J. Hunter: Okay. We can certainly provide you with more data in that regard, but we do take very seriously the responsibility to ensure that non-compliance issues are rectified.

Compliance rates for 2004 and 2005, which will be coming out in the next month, will highlight where we've come in that regard. For example, on biomass, I think for '05 the compliance rate is in the mid-90s. We do definitely take action with companies to ensure that those issues are resolved. Again, it could be a whole range starting from a written warning to a violation ticket to charges.

G. Robertson: Do you have statistics on what fines have been levied and paid, and appeals and all that?

J. Hunter: Absolutely. We do, and that information is included in the C and E reports by company as an appendice.

I just have a couple of comments about one of the SAR recommendations about reducing the risk of ecological effects from escaped farmed salmon. I'm just wondering: as far as a licence, in the escape recovery plan, is there a duty to recover escaped fish?

J. Hunter: There is a requirement, through our legislation, to try to recapture those fish. The authority is provided by DFO by virtue of what is called a ZZ E licence to recover those fish — so yes, definitely.

The other thing is that companies are required through their best management practices plans, which are a series of standard operating procedures, to try to

J. Hunter: There is a duty to try to recapture fish through our legislation, yes.

G. Coons: Okay. Recommendation 14 looked at the likelihood of escapes of at least a minimal number as will remain. Is there a threshold number attached to sites or licences?

J. Hunter: No, there's not. I'm aware that was one of the four recommendations in SAR on the issue of escapes, and there is no so-called threshold. To MAL in particular, we don't want any escapes. Our priority is zero escapes, so there is no such threshold number that we apply.

G. Coons: Okay, thank you. The other issue I wanted to bring up is about…. In the Hansard from February 1, '06, when we had a meeting and we had Randy and Al here, I had a major concern about the Auditor General's report for British Columbia about the effects of a wild salmon strategy. I was wondering who the lead agency was in the province, as a recommendation from the Auditor General was that there needed to be an agency to take a lead role in that. Al indicated that Environment was the lead agency, and then it came to Randy, who said: "Our group…isn't the lead on this issue. It's the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands."

I'm just wondering: was there any follow-up to the Auditor General's report of 2004 on the province dictating a lead agency to protect our wild stocks?

B. Graham: As was outlined in the presentation that I made about the role of my division, we are the lead ministry within the provincial government that deals with interactions with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We are reviewing with them the wild salmon policy as it develops and starts to progress, because the next major stage in their wild salmon policy is to define the conservation units that will apply on the coast and how they do that.

Our ministry has developed a wild steelhead policy, which is very comparable to that, and yes, we are working with the Department of Fisheries to address that question of coming up with a common vision for where we're going with our wild salmon populations in British Columbia.

G. Coons: Thank you. Again, the major concern that I have coming from the north coast — and, I think, the major concern and why we're all here — is the interaction between our wild stocks and the aquaculture industry and trying to create some harmony there — you know, maintaining jobs. But if the follow-up from the Auditor General's report, from the tripartite report, is not done quickly, there's a real concern about our wild stocks. That's the pressure I'm receiving from a lot of constituents along the coast.

I just want to make sure that the 2004-2005 Auditor General's report recognizes…. It recognized that gaps and uncertainty in knowledge exist when it comes to interaction of fish farms and wild salmon. The report indicates gaps around disease transfer and the cumulative impacts on wild stocks. I was just wondering: has there been any progress made, since the report was released, about identifying gaps around disease transfer and interbreeding with natural stocks?

B. Graham: The B.C. Aquaculture Research and Development Committee has funded a significant amount of work associated with this. Most of that has been focused around sea lice and issues associated with sea lice in the province.

There's also work going on through AquaNet, which is a national science function looking at that. The Ministry of Agriculture has a detailed review of all of the research that's currently underway on that.

I think, as Mr. Thomson said in his presentation earlier, there will always be some gaps, but we believe we are focusing our attention on any issues that are of significant concern. We all share the concern, and as the Department of Fisheries pointed out, we believe that the regulatory framework is effective in protecting our wild stocks.

G. Coons: I'm just going to go back to the Salmon Aquaculture Review as far as setting policies for managing fish health. In SAR it talked about a fish health database and restrictions on eggs and reporting diseases. On the webpage I noticed that the latest report is 2003. I'm just wondering: is that data available to the public, when will it be available for 2004-2005, and when is 2006 going to be on there?

A. Castledine: I'll try and answer that. There's a capacity issue in terms of getting that data onto the website in a timely fashion. You have pointed out one of the deficiencies in terms of timeliness of posting that information. It certainly involves a lot of work to actually put that data in a form to get it onto the website.

B. Graham: May I just add to that? I think it's important to recognize, though, that in the most recent budget there were new positions provided for the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. Another veterinarian and two more fish health technicians were added to the team, so we're clearly trying to address our ability to get those reports up in a timely manner for public review.

On the subject of sea lice sampling, I understand that the sampling is done as part of the fish health review. Every farm gets reviewed or visited once a year — sometimes more than once. Do you have a model you use to decide which ones to go to next? Is it risk-based? How do you decide where to go first?

R. Lewis: I'll try to address your question, if I can. I think Al has pointed out our fish health auditing and surveillance program, by which our auditors go to sites. These sites are picked randomly. It's kind of a random number-generating system, if you like. I think the example was made that if there are 30 percent of the fish farms in a particular area, then 30 percent of fish farms in that area will be monitored on an annual basis.

J. Yap: Following up on the question regarding enforcement, did I hear that the statistics will be available, for the first time, with that report you referred to, Jaclynn?

J. Hunter: Our first annual report that was publicly and annually released was in 2001. The last report that was published and is on our website is up to 2003. Our 2004 and our 2005 results will be released, as I said, in a month or so.

In 2003 it was the first time where we individually named companies in terms of non-compliance issues. I guess last year was the first year, and of course, we'll continue it on for subsequent annual reports.

J. Hunter: Absolutely, and we will make sure that everyone on the committee is provided with a copy as soon as it is released. It will also be on our website.

S. Simpson: I have a couple of questions. I'd like to start with a couple of questions that relate to sea lice. I believe that the current standard is…. Three lice per fish is the allowable standard?

A. Castledine: When the mobile lice level reaches three, there has to be increased monitoring and action taken, yes.

S. Simpson: I guess the question is: how did you arrive at the standard of three? What science was used to get to that number?

R. Lewis: I believe that Dr. Constantine spoke with you about sea lice in February. She's our fish health veterinarian, of course, so I'm kind of substituting for her. I apologize for my lack of jumping readily to this.

I believe that this number was taken as a result of looking at impacts in other jurisdictions and trying to come up with…. There was intent to come up with a particular number — some number that would generate some kind of action because of concerns for wild stocks, of course.

Before I even say anything further, my understanding is that the impact of sea lice on individual fish seems to be quite different in British Columbia than it is in other jurisdictions, and I don't think we quite understand why. My understanding is that the sea lice impact in the east coast, for instance, appears to be more detrimental than it is in the west coast. Nonetheless, it was considered that there had to be some kind of number we could go to that would trigger some kind of action to provide confidence that if there were sea lice levels on fish farms, these fish would be appropriately treated and those numbers would be reduced.

The specific method of how they arrived at that number three, I really can't answer. I'm sorry.

S. Simpson: To follow up on that, that number does concern me as to how it was arrived at. Of course, when you talk about other jurisdictions, one of the things we know is that in British Columbia we have 50-odd million salmon that return. In Norway and Chile and Scotland they don't have a wild fishery that is at all comparable to what we have here in British Columbia. I would think that has to be part of the consideration — and what the impact is on these particular species of fish. That concerns me.

I guess one of the concerns I have, as well, is that to the best of my knowledge — and I certainly would be happy to be corrected — the only peer-reviewed analysis that's been done on this is a most recent study by Morton and Routledge, which suggests that there's a problem with that number of three.

I'm wondering whether there is other science that you draw on to deal with that when you start seeing the peer-reviewed science out there saying: "We have issues around this. We're not sure that this number makes sense in British Columbia." What do you do when you see that kind of analysis? Do you go back? Do you review? Do you contract other science that would also be peer-reviewed to look at that?

R. Lewis: I can only answer, Mr. Simpson, that there's been an awful lot of work done in that area. I recognize the concerns that you're addressing. To be quite honest, I don't feel that I'm the appropriate authority to be answering that.

I can tell you that there is a lot of work being done on that. There's a lot of controversy about numbers. I recognize that. There's a lot of controversy about the impact, of course, of sea lice on wild fish and on farm fish, and whether there's a potential transfer between one or the other that's significant or not.

As I said, I can certainly get that information for you. I will get that information for you.

S. Simpson: Thank you very much. I appreciate that if you don't have it, I can't ask you to produce information you don't have. I would appreciate….

R. Lewis: Excuse me. I'm just saying I don't personally know that information.

S. Simpson: I understand you're talking personally. I understand that you have that within the ministry. It's just that you don't have it.

To follow up on that, it's a question in relation to how we get that information. Now, it's my understanding that counts on sea lice aren't done for the government farm by farm. In fact, they're collected by the association. I know there are inspections done at the individual farms — 30-odd inspections every quarter or whatever — but it's my understanding that the actual data is collected by the association, and then an aggregate number is provided to the ministry. Is that correct?

R. Lewis: Every time one of our auditors visits a site to do routine auditing and surveillance, they check numbers of sea lice as well. I believe that what they take is 20 salmon, for instance. Ten will be checked by the fish farm, ten will be checked by the inspectors at the farm, and they'll get those numbers. So at every site our inspectors, or auditors if you like, check those particular numbers.

The aggregate numbers are, in fact, quite right. They go in on a monthly basis to the B.C. salmon farm database, and the B.C. ministry is provided with the result of those aggregate numbers. We have resolved to what the numbers are in the industry, but we don't have the numbers for an individual farm.

S. Simpson: Why not? Why have you chosen not to have those numbers supplied directly to the ministry and to your own staff?

R. Lewis: I'm feeling very awkward in this position, trying to answer those specific questions. I guess all I can say is that we are using our surveillance system as an audit, if you like, rather than an actual thing by which we can compare numbers.

In other words, the numbers that we come up with are used to audit what the industry is saying. If our numbers fall within what the particular industry is telling us, then we feel fairly confident that those numbers are correct. If there's a disparity, that would require further investigation.

S. Simpson: I appreciate that. I guess the reason I ask that question is because I assume that should a farm exceed the allowable number of lice — should that occur in a farm — then they would be open to a prosecution if they didn't correct that measure in the appropriate time. The question I have is: how do you get the evidence to be able to proceed with that kind of action if you're not collecting the data on the individual farms?

R. Lewis: As part of our fish health management plan, one of the requirements is that if they exceed this particular number, then obviously treatment must take place. That treatment has to be recorded, and those numbers have to be recorded by that farm. When our auditors go out to that farm, they review the records that are taken by that farm under the fish health management plan to assess what's been done.

S. Simpson: Just to follow up…. I appreciate that. Fish health management plans — I understand those are private documents. They're not public documents.

R. Lewis: The fish health management plan is something that…. As a condition of licence, every fish farm has to have a fish health management plan. It has to be overseen by a professional veterinarian who reviews that particular plan on site.

S. Simpson: Are those public documents that can be reviewed by the public — the individual plans for farms?

R. Lewis: In terms of the actual documents themselves, I think those are available when the auditors go on site to check those documents. In terms of their availability…. If you're asking for a specific farm, whether they're available…. Is that what your question is?

S. Simpson: We know that fish farming is under a lot of scrutiny. Fish health management plans are a critical document. That is the plan that people should be able to measure whether in fact an individual or specific farm is meeting the expectations and the agreement that it has with government. The question is: how do individuals who have a concern about that, who are not government officials…? Do they have the right to review those plans? Are they a public document?

I ask that question because in your report here, I believe you talked about transparency. A key fish piece of transparency is the ability to access those plans. The second point that I guess I would relate to that is: have there ever been prosecutions related to contraventions to the management plans?

R. Lewis: Maybe you can answer that directly, Jackie. I'm not quite sure what you've got here.

J. Hunter: Recognizing I'm not in fish health.... In terms of the disclosure issue, we'd have to go back and talk to Joanne specifically, who is responsible for administering the fish health management program. My sense is, however, that elements of that fish health management plan would be subject to FOI disclosure. There may be proprietary elements that a company includes in its fish health management plan, which may not be released.

S. Simpson: I'll let that go. I would be very interested in getting a response about whether the plans are available. My understanding is that there are portions of the plans that are not FOI-able, so they're not available at all even through an FOI request. I'd be interested in an explanation about why these plans aren't, in fact, a public document or why a significant portion of

them aren't public. I realize there may be financial information about the company related to that, which is kept private for competitive reasons, but I doubt that should reflect on the whole of the plan.

B. Graham: Mr. Chair, I just wanted to provide some clarification on the development of the fish health database. You asked questions about why we are doing it with industry as opposed to doing it by government alone.

At the time we were trying to respond to the question of the need to have a fish health database and to be able to publicly report that. That's a very significant undertaking. The route that we chose to go was to do it collaboratively with the industry since they are being required to do the fish health sampling on their farms and submit that. We do the audit program to ensure that the data they're putting in the databases is, in fact, accurate and reflects what takes place on the farm.

It was a conscious decision to work collaboratively with the industry in the development of a fish health database, because that was the most cost-effective way of coming up with that information and meeting what we thought was the important issue, which was a public reporting of that kind of information.

S. Simpson: I appreciate wanting to have the big picture of being able to get that data together. Is there any impediment to the government actually being able to directly collect information about individual farm performance — presuming they're going to supply the same information to the regulator, to government, as they supply to the association — so that the information, farm by farm, is available? As we know, as in all industries, some people do it better than others.

B. Graham: I think the response to that is each of the salmon farming companies has its own professional fish health people on site. They do their own fish health sampling as part of their business plan of how they're operating their farms. We're simply taking advantage of the access to the fish health professionals that are already working in the industry in putting this together. To the best of my knowledge, we've not had an issue to date with the quality or the information that's being provided to the database.

S. Simpson: I appreciate that. I guess the comment I'd make about that is I certainly know there are people who've contacted me and said that may or may not be true. The challenge they have is that they don't have the data to know. It's the lack of information. So they're saying: "If we don't have the information, we don't know if they're doing a good job or not." That becomes the challenge.

Just to make a comment, as we do our work, it seems to me that one of the things that's going to be absolutely critical in the future of this industry is the transparency of the industry so that the confidence is there that it is the very best practices that we proceed with — whatever those end up being. Availability of reliable information at the site level seems like a pretty critical issue.

A couple of quick questions, and then I'll let this go. It's my understanding around siting that there is a discrepancy between distances. You can site a farm one kilometre away from a site of another farm owned by the same company, but it's three kilometres away from different companies. What's the rationale for that?

A. Castledine: The rationale is that if you have two companies in close proximity to each other, they may have different operating practices. A company that would have two farms a kilometre apart would not be exposing themselves to the practices of another company.

J. Hunter: The other issue of interest on the fish health side, with respect to the siting criteria, is biosecurity protocols. Companies will employ the same practices within close proximity to each other. There are all kinds of fish health provisions, as we know.

For example, when our inspectors go out to the site, they cannot go to two companies in one day, because we have to work on our boats — disinfect them — to make sure that we're not transmitting any potential fish health issues.

S. Simpson: Just a last couple of questions here around escapes. What's the reporting requirement around escapes?

J. Hunter: Companies must report any suspected or known incident, as Yves mentioned, within 24 hours. If they find a hole in a net, they are required by legislation to report it to the manager of aquaculture. A couple of years ago we implemented a 24-7 toll-free escape reporting line to make sure that companies could not say they'd tried to contact us, for example, over the weekend. That is the requirement. They are required to verbally report within 24 hours and to follow up with a report in writing to the manager of aquaculture within seven days.

S. Simpson: What do you do with companies where there are chronic escapes, even if they're small ones like leakage and stuff? How do you deal with that?

J. Hunter: There are a variety of mechanisms in terms of dealing with them. If there's a consistent pattern of leakage that is strictly attributable to human handling error, then we're probably going to start with a violation ticket to recommending charges to, if the issue continues to escalate, looking at potential licence

revocation or suspension. Our inspectors will work very closely with sites to make sure that is, in fact, not happening.

We do look at patterns. Yves was working on an investigation last month where he noted a pattern with respect to nets. So what we've done, as part of our education process in working with industry, is that we are going to work with the net lofts and say, for example: "These are some of the issues that you need to look at when you're getting nets from farms." Does that answer your question?

J. Hunter: We have not revoked a licence for escapes. We did consider a potential licence revocation proceeding. Section 18 of our act provides that. The minister or his delegate, which in this case would be Larry as deputy minister, has to preside like a judge in terms of a hearing. It's a very formal process under the principles of administrative law.

We had one particular company where we discovered the use of malachite green. We were very concerned that they were deliberately applying it. There was a very intensive investigation that was taken in liaison with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and our staff. That was certainly contemplated at one time, until we found out later that there was a broader, systemic issue that did not support licence revocation proceedings.

C. Trevena: Just to follow up from Shane. There has never been any farm that has lost its licence as the ultimate penalty?

J. Hunter: No, there hasn't. On our continuum that is the most grievous thing that you could do to a company. We haven't, in fact, suspended, but what we have applied in some cases, based on a company's compliance history, are some fairly rigorous licence conditions.

C. Trevena: I know that you're going to be issuing your report, which has been long awaited, in a month or so, but I wondered if you could maybe give us a bit of information that's going to be in the report. I'm very interested in the enforcement side and in the issue of fines. One of the questions…. Just to clarify, Yves was mentioning that up to $10,000 per day is what it could be in fines. Is that right?

Y. Antaya: The Fisheries Act states $10,000 per day per count. That's the ultimate.

J. Hunter: What we do is make recommendations to Crown counsel through the development of a report to Crown.

I can only think of one instance where we recommended a very hefty fine, pursuant to section 25(2) of the act, because the company started operating without having an actual aquaculture licence. Crown, of course, looks at the history and the case law, and the company in this instance pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

We've certainly made that recommendation. In terms of whether or not a company has had X number of days at $10,000 per day — no, that has not yet happened.

B. Graham: Just a point. As an agency…. It's the judicial system that decides what the fine is. We have no control on what goes forward at the end of the day, and if we were to say anything about that, we would be soundly criticized by the judicial system.

C. Trevena: If there is action against a farm, where can the industry appeal to? Is it to the minister? What's the way that the system works?

C. Trevena: If there is a complaint against a farm by the ministry, and the fish-farming company doesn't like the complaint, at what level can they appeal? If they get fined, can they appeal, or are they just stuck with the fine? What is in response? We're talking about the legal system here.

Y. Antaya: If it's a violation ticket, they have a choice of disputing the ticket, which has happened in the past, and then it goes to court, and a judge will decide if there's enough for conviction. If there's enough, the judge may, more often than not, change the amount, which has happened as well. They could have had a $173 fine and end up with $1,000 in lieu of $173.

If it's a conviction and it's a fine given by a judge, the company has the right to appeal. They have 30 days to appeal the decision. More often than not, they won't. I haven't heard of any appeal.

C. Trevena: There's never been an appeal against a fine or against a prosecution?

Y. Antaya: I shouldn't say "never." As far as I know, there has not been any appeal, other than just disputing the ticket. They get their violation ticket, and that's their appeal: "I don't like it. I don't agree with you. I'll take it to court." That has happened.

C. Trevena: Again, it's possibly pre-empting the report, but going back to what Shane was talking about, about escapes, there was a very large escape a couple of years ago in Nootka Sound. This is something that — we knew there was an escape — we have

heard nothing about. Do we have to wait for the report, or can we have an explanation here about what happened and what happened with the company?

J. Hunter: I recall, I think, that Mr. Yap asked me that question when I made my presentation in February about that single escape incident. You're right; it has taken quite a while.

What we can tell you is that we did refer that file to the Ministry of Environment for a formal investigation. Our understanding is that they have recommended charges, and right now it resides in Crown counsel's hands.

I recognize your frustration about the time lines. MOE in this particular case, I believe, is pursuing under federal provisions, so their statute of limitation provides up to a two-year time line.

C. Trevena: Going back to the issue of working with industry…. Obviously, there is a lot of work with the industry, and the Salmon Farmers Association is very active. I know that there was a stage in about 2002 when Alaska was very concerned about what was happening in salmon farming, and a Senator from Alaska came down to B.C. and looked at salmon farms.

As I understand it, this was a cost-sharing trip between the ministry and the Salmon Farmers Association. I just wondered if you could explain a little bit about this.

B. Graham: We had a request from some officials from Alaska who wanted to come down and go on a tour and see fish farms, so I approached the…. Because we don't own the farms, we have to seek permission to go on the farms, unless it's part of an inspection program. If we want to bring visitors, like a delegation of food writers or whatever, we approach the Salmon Farmers Association and seek permission to put a tour on. In this particular case we picked up the airfare, and they provided the rest of the meals and various things like that. That was the nature of it.

What we were trying to do was respond to another government's request for some information and how could we best facilitate that.

C. Trevena: So this would happen on other occasions if the ministry wanted to take the people out to any of the fish farms around?

We were trying to demonstrate to the state of Alaska that we have a very effective regulatory regime. We wanted them to see a farm, because they don't have salmon farms. We wanted them to actually get out on a farm. We thought it was in our interest to promote that, and so that was the case in that particular case.

We look at each one of those on an individual basis and see what the benefit is for us.

C. Trevena: What about the…? I know that the Salmon Farmers Association is very proactive in getting people out to see farms and also to see the regulations outside, including other countries. I wondered if the government — either ministry — was at all involved in those trips.

B. Graham: We provided some support to the Aboriginal Aquaculture Association last year for a delegation of first nations people to go to Norway. That included the industry in Norway putting on an extensive farm tour for them over there.

We provided some funding by way of a grant. I can't remember the number off the top of my head. I'd have to go back and check that. But we did provide for that particular initiative, because there were lots of questions coming from the first nations community, and we thought it was a way to help facilitate them getting a better understanding and grasp of what aquaculture was all about and how it could benefit people in coastal communities.

C. Trevena: I know there's an upcoming visit as well that the Salmon Farmers Association has organized for a number of local officials, again, to Norway this summer. Are you involved in that?

C. Trevena: No, not you. I mean the ministries. I apologize when I say "you." The ministries.

A. Castledine: Yes, we have provided some funding to Rivercorp in Campbell River to, hopefully, take a delegation of coastal mayors to AquaVision, which is a large symposium in Norway. My understanding is that a number of south coast mayors are interested, and there may be some interest among north coast mayors as well. There are some mayors from Newfoundland who may be interested in going as well. It would be a broad-based trip in that they would be looking at things other than aquaculture at the same time.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): This touches a bit on Shane's comments too. Obviously, one of the reasons we're all here is that there has been a history of aquaculture, and it hasn't always been a good one in the eyes of the public. I think that's one of the reasons this committee was struck.

I'm coming to my question. We've gone to management plans and various aspects — health management plans, escapement plans, best practice plans and so forth — which don't necessarily have the reassurance of specific data, either public or empirical, to cross-reference against other industries. I'd like to question its outcome base — why we went that way, how it compares to other plans — and the efficacy of doing this approach rather than other approaches.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): We have several. Why don't we go that way instead of three-lice-per-fish kind of data?

A. Castledine: Okay. I would like Randy to talk about waste and then Jaclynn to talk about her role.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): I would ask you to phrase your comments on: how can we, again on Shane's point, make this more available for the public? I think that's one of the reasons we have convened — to try to get the word out.

R. Alexander: The basis of best management plans or practices for waste is to identify a number of areas where you put the onus on the industry to develop the best practices they can to protect the environment in a number of areas where it's probably not as practical to have specific regulations or standards. Each farm is a little different, so you provide an opportunity for each farm to provide the best standard they can.

The challenge we have with best management plans is getting out and making sure that they are all comprehensive and that they all deal with issues appropriately. That's one of the challenges we're going through now in terms of identifying what best management plans they have out there and providing better standards for what the plan should contain, because those things weren't specified in the regulation as it was developed.

That, hopefully, is something that we're working towards. In the next version of the regulation we can have a little bit better standards or requirements around what specifically needs to be in a best-management plan.

B. Graham: If I could just add to that. I was around when those regulations were being developed. The issue is that in the past we tried to be very prescriptive about how we regulated an industry. That meant it was a one-size-fits-all kind of scenario. The waste management regulation now, basically, looks at the assimilative capacity of the marine environment, and it says that what we're concerned about is: can the marine environment handle a salmon farm, whether it's producing one fish or a million fish on the site? The company now has the obligation not to exceed government standards of the degree of impact that we would allow to happen associated with that.

A. Castledine: The other thing that a performance-based approach does is allow for continuous improvement. I go back 20 years when someone wanted the Canadian General Standards Board or whatever to develop standards for net pens. At that time they were 20-foot-by-20-foot wooden structures. The difficulty is, of course, that if you've got a prescriptive way of doing things, you can't adapt or adopt new approaches that will give you a better outcome. So as long as the standards are set by government….

For example, our hope for a standard is zero escapes. Then the challenge to industry is to develop mechanisms to do that, whether it's specific anchoring or laying their site out in an appropriate way. So it provides that kind of flexibility so that you can improve over time.

J. Hunter: I'm speaking specifically to the escapes piece. What I can say is that the regulatory amendment in 2002 to the aquaculture regulation, aside from the BMP component, which is very performance-based…. I would say that that, particularly appendix two of that regulation, is very prescriptive around escape elements and practices at the farm to prevent those activities.

In terms of the BMPs themselves, inspectors go out on a site. They make sure that they have the standard operating procedures employed. There's an endorsement statement that staff have been trained at the site. As Al mentioned, we want to put the onus on the company to continuously improve. So if there's an escape incident, an inspector will go out on site. He will look at the BMP and will determine whether or not the company was complying with their own BMP, and we can pursue enforcement sanctions.

In essence, we are trying to put the onus on industry to demonstrate that they're employing practices to eliminate the possibility of escapes.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Certainly, there are scientists providing more and more information and leading the way in developing new standards. To me, it makes logical sense to have management plans. But it would seem that they essentially write their own test on these things and then mark their own papers. I hope, with Shane, that it would be the case that access would be available to these, but are we publicly reporting out how they're doing on their management plans? How is their performance doing against the plans that they set out, and how are we telling the public about that?

J. Hunter: What I can say is that we are publicly reporting in terms of any compliance issues associated with the BMPs. In terms of the fish health management plans, I do know that, of course, there is an intent to get that information and that report prepared. Ron can speak to timing and has kind of spoken to it briefly already.

A. Castledine: No, I just wanted to talk about the fish health management plan. I think that we could spend…. We don't need to spend the time now, but there are prescribed elements of a fish health management plan that a company has to address when they develop their fish health management plan. How they address those elements is subject to evaluation by the veterinarian. So the plan provides some latitude for the company to take a different tack to achieving the same objective, which is improved fish health on the farms.

It's obvious that there is either some misunderstanding or not enough communication about fish health management plans and how they work. Perhaps

what we need is to do a better job of explaining how they achieve the objectives we set, which is improving fish health on the farms, to eliminate that as an issue for wild fish.

I guess one thing I just wanted to add for the committee's benefit is that we talk about fish health management plans, and I think we're pleased with how they're generally working. I think it's a good plan, and I think we have real confidence in it. But one of the things I'd just like to mention, too, is to highlight our fish health auditing and surveillance program, which is an incredibly intensive program.

Not only are we accepting samples that are passively submitted to us in case of fish disease…. If there's a fish disease event on a farm, we have a fish pathologist, a highly accredited diagnostic laboratory in Abbotsford to examine all those samples and come up with a diagnosis to treat those fish or do whatever has to be done with them as quickly as possible.

In addition to that passive surveillance system, we also have our active auditing and surveillance system. We're going out there on a regular basis, as you've seen, according to a random generation of farms, and we're actively checking for specific diseases that could be of interest not only to the farmed fish but also to the wild fish population.

In order to do that, we do maintain, as I've mentioned, a highly accredited diagnostic laboratory that does an awful lot of very highly sophisticated testing that will specifically detect any of these diseases that are in that environment. I think that we mustn't lose sight of the fact that…. In my view, this is probably the single best system anywhere for the detection of disease and giving ourselves some reassurance that we are minimizing or preventing any potential disease problem that may occur in farmed fish from escaping into wild fish.

A. Castledine: Can I just make one supplementary comment? Dr. Constantine is actually having an audit done on her fish health management program. That will inform us how it stacks up.

R. Alexander: With respect to best management practices or plans for waste, best management plans are applied in circumstances where we want to encourage continual improvement. Everybody has to obey the law and has to comply with the law, but we want to encourage and get the farms moving towards continual improvement.

They have to have a plan for reducing waste, management of harmful materials. How are they going to continually improve those sorts of activities? That's when we use best management practices or plans for waste issues.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Since the SAR in the '90s an entire body of regulations and enforcement has been put in place, and I hear it's strict. The comparison certainly would indicate that we have some of the tightest regulatory regimes in the world. I guess one of the reasons here is that the public doesn't generally understand that or get that impression.

One question I would have: since this has come in, and it is evolving, as you point out, with best management programs…? A general comment, and I know results are coming out. How would you characterize the compliance of the industry? Are we seeing now that these regimes are coming in, primarily since 2002 and so forth? Do we see the industry changing attitudes? Do we see trends? We talk about fines, but how is the industry responding to all this?

J. Hunter: My personal opinion — I mean, I came to this agency in late 2000, I guess — is that there has been a significant increase in compliance rates. I think industry is very responsive in trying to resolve some of these issues, to have a very good compliance record.

They know now that their non-compliance issues are publicly released. Certainly, there are always areas for improvement. That's where we focus our efforts, but I would have to say that industry has certainly improved in recent years.

We can also provide you…. We've got a series of action items from today's meeting. The other thing we brought for committee members is an inspection checklist, so you can actually see the level of detail that we assess on site. We can certainly provide you with follow-up information from today's session.

R. Alexander: From the waste perspective, I would echo that comment that now that there are standards in place, we see the industry willing and interested in improving their compliance. We see an improvement in compliance because we're out there, because we have standards. It's moving in a positive direction.

S. Fraser: My stomach's growling, and I know everyone else's is, so I'll try to be brief.

Al, you mentioned that the escape prevention is the world leader or is setting the world standard, and you referred on page 40 to one of the charts that says the escape prevention requirements…. When was that chart compiled?

A. Castledine: It's a mixture of information. We actually worked on this over the last week or so. We've done similar types of comparisons in the past, but as I mentioned, things continue to change. Sometimes we don't have the most up-to-date information. Some of these other jurisdictions may have sharpened up on some of these areas that we're not aware of.

S. Fraser: How were the criteria set? Or who set the criteria for the escape prevention requirements?

A. Castledine: We would look at our requirements and compare them to those of other jurisdictions and see how they stacked up against ours.

There's just time for the first one. It says, "Escapes prohibited," and then it's got a checkmark for B.C. So that's a yes. Now, "prohibited" means forbidden.

J. Hunter: That, of course, relates to the threshold question that was asked. Basically, our ministry policy is zero escapes. We recognize that on occasion fish, in fact, do escape — right? That's when we trigger our investigation.

S. Fraser: Fair enough. I look at that, and okay, we won on that one. I don't know if Claire was referring to the Nuchatlaht incident. That was in 2004. You're indicating that that's the one where there might be charges pending or recommended. There were 30,000 escaped. That was right in May. That was in a critical time for the wild fishery.

In 2003 there was the Stolt incident, and there were no charges laid there. There were none recommended, I believe. There were no penalties from that one, I believe — Stolt.

B. Graham: Maybe I'll just jump in. Again, I was around at that time period. I think the key question that became apparent in 2000 and at various times was that in the past our regulations had no benchmark under which to judge whether a company had practised due diligence or not in trying to prevent escapes from happening.

We have been very clear in British Columbia that our goal is to have zero escapes, but that doesn't mean that accidents don't take place. You need to have benchmarks under which to judge whether the company had exercised its best due diligence.

It's like automobile accidents. Our goal is zero automobile accidents, but we know that automobile accidents continue to occur. You try to put measures in place to prevent that.

When designing those regulations we went and looked at what the largest source of escape incidents occurring was. At the time it turned out that entire farms broke up on the coast in a storm event because they weren't anchored properly. They didn't have the right kind of structures to support them.

That's all changed in the industry. They now require professional engineers to set their anchoring requirements. Again, those are standards and benchmarks. You don't get your licence approved unless a professional engineer has authorized and certified your anchoring requirements in a particular area.

All of those are designed to try to prevent them from happening, to meet our goal of zero escapes. It doesn't mean that we will never have an escape in British Columbia, but if you can get the risk of escapes down to a very low level, then you're covering off any potential risk associated with that escape event.

S. Fraser: I appreciate that clarification, but the category is "escapes prohibited," and it's ticked off. They haven't been prohibited. They are occurring. In 2003 they occurred, and there wasn't a penalty. If something's prohibited, that's a word. If there's no penalty derived, I'm not sure how that was decided.

Is there a benchmark? Who makes the decision? Who overrides a decision? How does the industry know what they're allowed based on "prohibited"? If one group is prohibited and fined, which may be happening with the 2004 incident, but another group was prohibited and wasn't fined…?

First of all, the escapes weren't prohibited. I mean, they were prohibited, but…. It's confusing for me. It's confusing for the public. I assume it's confusing for the companies involved. How is a decision made in some objective way?

J. Hunter: What I can tell you is that ultimately, our interest is in looking at what led up to the actual event. I have to say, as Randy and Yves mentioned earlier, that we do have an interagency service agreement with the Ministry of Environment. I don't want to speak on their behalf in terms of elements that they look at, but ultimately, what we're looking at are the practices that led up to the escape incident. If it's contrary to a licence condition or legislation, then we would, in fact, probably contemplate charges, whether that's through a violation ticket or a report to Crown counsel. I know that doesn't specifically answer your question around zero escapes.

The other thing I'd like to say to the committee is that I know you're going to be out touring over the next little while, but if you would be interested in coming to witness a finfish inspection, we can certainly make arrangements. We would be happy to do that, and you can systematically see what inspectors ask on site to give you a better background and information.

I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot here. We are going in the field. We are going to weather questions like this. It's nice to be forearmed with answers for that, so I appreciate the responses you're trying….

A. Castledine: One comment. It's against the law to release fish deliberately. If you extend that, we do not permit people to let fish out of their pens. It happens occasionally — boat propellers — and small numbers get out.

I think we're dealing with a bit of a semantic issue here in terms of the word "prohibited." I understand exactly what you're talking about. It's a confusing word.

S. Fraser: I agree. The goal is not to try to penalize somebody because they've done something wrong. There is a reason for the prohibition, and that's to protect the environment, wild stocks and the interaction, especially migration. These are key issues.

In 2004, the Grieg incident, 30,000 escaped. Protecting the wild is important. All I could find on that was that it was reported out six months later. When were the local communities informed of that escape and the extent of that escape?

J. Hunter: What I can tell you — because this file is still under investigation, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further than what I'm going to say — is that the company did report the incident. It was subsequently determined that the number of fish lost was, in fact, much greater. That's when we sent that file, as I said, to MOE. They have reviewed it.

My understanding is that they have recommended charges to the Crown. Unfortunately, until the Crown concludes that process, it would be inappropriate for me to comment any further.

In the interests of protecting the wild stock, what mechanism is in place? It was mentioned that there is an obligation to try to capture those 30,000 that escaped — a large number, regardless of whether it was thought to be less at the beginning. I don't know what capacity individual farms have to catch these. Presumably, you would need the community's help to get out there with these boats that have been sitting in dock for a long time because they have a problem with their own wild fisheries issues.

B. Graham: They are required to have a contingency plan for escapes in place. Many of these companies contract vessels in the area. In many cases they are former seine boats that were operating in that area. They have on retainer a relationship with people who are in the wild-fishing business.

If an escape occurs, what they have to do is apply to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for a permit. The province does not have the authority to issue a fish collection permit in the marine waters of British Columbia. It's required by DFO.

They view those on a site-specific basis. They will not give a blanket authorization, because it could be in the middle of a commercial fishery that's taking place in that area. It could be other factors that are going to be dealt with. The fisheries managers have to make the decision about whether they're going to allow that recovery effort to take place. It would be dictated by the size of the release, the time of the year and what other events are going on at the same time.

S. Fraser: Thank you. Any idea how many were captured in that particular incident?

A. Castledine: I think in that particular incident the fish were small — less than a kilo. There's been absolutely no sign of those in any of the stream surveys that have been done in the local systems — the Gold River, for example. DFO does monitor the west coast streams by swim surveys, and as I've said, there's been no sign of those fish.

There was certainly some concern expressed by the local first nations about them swimming up the Gold River, but none have been recovered. Essentially, they vanished, which happens to a lot of the fish. We don't see them again.

G. Robertson: Questions. I just want to return again to the issue of enforcement and fines that I left off on earlier. The decision that was made by, I believe, Land and Water B.C. several years ago to embark on the repayment and forgiving of a $1½ million set of fines…. Who asked for that repayment, and who made the decision to repay that fine?

B. Graham: It was Land and Water B.C. at the time. It had to do with the land tenuring decisions of the time, but I can't remember the details associated with that. We can go back and check the records and provide that to you.

J. Hunter: We can certainly do that, Mr. Robertson. We can try to provide you some background on that particular issue, but just to be clear with what I was saying earlier, in MAL's history — in the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands — we have never had any sort of forgiveness of enforcement fines or anything like that. It's my understanding that that was a land rent issue, and at that time it was a separate agency.

Again, we can commit to getting some background information, but it was not in any way related to enforcement for any issues that fall under MAL's authority.

G. Robertson: Thank you. I think the committee will need to see documentation of what occurred there and, in particular, what political elements were at play there — if the decisions were all truly made within that agency or at what point there was ministerial, cabinet or Treasury Board involvement — where the decisions were made for amounts as significant as that to be returned to industry, in particular because of the mixed message it sends to industry and to the public about what's happening with enforcement.

A second question, and this is specifically to Mr. Graham around the briefing note. I have a quote here from when you were ADM in the fisheries and aquaculture division. "Examining the potential for expansion of the aquaculture industry is considered a key ministerial priority, and sending conflicting messages to industry and, further, potentially affecting public perceptions relative to authorities and efficiencies will only have negative impacts."

Mr. Graham, in that briefing note you expressed concern about the conflicting messages to industry affecting public perceptions. What are those concerns grounded in?

B. Graham: The issue was over enforcement action associated with an escape event. It was two ministries

within the province each looking at an escape incident. The upshot of that is that we now have a formal memorandum of understanding on enforcement issues between what was then the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food — now MAL — and MOE to address that we don't have duplication or conflict over how we're proceeding with enforcement action.

G. Robertson: I'm more concerned about the conflict between this sense of enforcement regime and the priority around enforcement regime and compliance with that as the primary priority for whomever is responsible, however the ministries work that out — the conflict of that being set aside when public perception is an issue or when industry concerns are put ahead of it.

B. Graham: They're not put ahead of it. What that memo was addressing was an issue that was taking place between two ministries within the province, and we have subsequently dealt with that through the memorandum of understanding.

It doesn't do public confidence in any kind of regulatory regime any good if you have two agencies fighting with one another about the course of action to take in a particular case. What I was trying to do with that note was point out that that is an issue, and we have subsequently dealt with it internally by signing a memorandum of understanding between the two ministries.

G. Robertson: The memorandum of understanding addresses an issue around the ministerial level. However, the issue here seems more specifically that the minister has a conflicting view with the ministries, in that there's a political priority around public perception and message to industry, but you're not addressing that specifically here.

B. Graham: It has been clear that one of the initiatives that started since the 2001 election was that the government wanted to further develop aquaculture in British Columbia. We were tasked with the job of putting a regulatory and enforcement regime in place that would allow that to take place while at the same time protecting the wild fish stocks and the sustainable environments in British Columbia.

There was a bump in the road. The bump in the road has been resolved. It should be clear that we aren't in conflict with one another in government, that we have a coordinated plan of action of how we will respond. Having coordinated inspections — since we're going to the farms, doing the checklist and referring that back to other agencies — is just a cost-effective mechanism to do that. If we have to escalate the enforcement action, then we have a mechanism to do that as well.

G. Robertson: Is the priority of ministries to have an effective regulatory regime? Is that the priority here versus messages to industry or public perception?

B. Graham: It has always been the objective to develop a proper regulatory regime, and what the presentations today and last time were attempting to do was to demonstrate to the committee that we have a very comprehensive regulatory regime in place, that we address a wide range of issues and public concerns, that the issues that are of public concern are being addressed in the regulatory regime and that there is a high degree of compliance with the industry.

You made the comment that it's nice to have regulations but that if you don't have enforcement…. I think we've demonstrated that 100-percent site visits of all active farms is hardly saying we're not actively participatinsg.

G. Robertson: A question specifically on SLICE. We talked about sea lice, but we haven't addressed specifically the release of that pesticide into the environment. From my understanding, SLICE is prohibited to be released in other aquatic environments. At this point it is mandatory that it is used to treat sea lice and that therefore there's a mandatory release into the marine environment. Can you give me a yes or no in terms of that one?

R. Lewis: Previous to SLICE being approved, we were using a product called Ivermectin, which was far more of a problem in the environment. That was recognized, and when SLICE became available, it was also recognized that was a far more effective drug to use.

I guess I would quarrel with calling it a pesticide. It's basically a drug, and it's given in feed only. The feed the fish takes with the drug in it is metabolized, so I think that in terms of environmental impact, it's very small. It's an extremely effective drug, and we're kind of caught in the middle of something here.

We're thinking the concern is that we must treat sea lice if they're above a certain number. Yet if we do treat them with the most effective product available, we face concern because, perhaps, that product isn't safe to the environment. I think we've managed that very well by using a drug that is extremely effective against sea lice. Also, it's metabolized by the fish and is not released to the environment. It's in the feed only, so I think that it's really effective.

G. Robertson: So the Ministry of the Environment's stance is that this substance is actually not released into the environment?

R. Lewis: I think that the only release would be the metabolites after it was metabolized by the fish itself, so it's not an active drug that's being released into the environment.

G. Robertson: So the ministry has no concerns that SLICE is being released into the environment?

R. Lewis: I think there are a couple of things to say, just to kind of predicate any comment on that. One

would be that the actual number of times that SLICE is being applied in the fish environment is probably somewhat less than it was previously. It's going down a little bit from what it was before, but the reason why it's being used at all is primarily to meet regulatory requirements to treat fish by the rules that have been established.

Consequently, I think that there's been very little, to my knowledge, of any case in which SLICE is being used because there's a significant impact on that particular fish stock. I guess occasionally that has happened, but it's more to meet the regulatory requirement to reduce the burden of the product. I think that the amount of SLICE that's being used is pretty darned small. We certainly have the numbers available. We can give you those exact quantities on an annual basis.

G. Robertson: We would, I think, benefit from seeing the actual numbers — exactly how much SLICE treatment has been happening, what specific farms.

G. Robertson: That information is not currently available to the public. Is that correct?

R. Lewis: Yeah, that's right. The drug itself…. I guess that's the other thing Jackie is reminding me of. Thank you for that, Jackie.

This drug is given under an emergency drug release. In other words, it must be used by a veterinarian. A prescription must be given by a veterinarian. It must be given under specific circumstances. It's very tightly regulated in terms of how that particular product is being used, so it's not being used as a routine. I guess I wouldn't want the committee to feel that this is being used as kind of a routine product. It's only used under specific and very tight conditions. Because of that, we can give you those exact numbers and quantities that are being used, and we'd be happy to provide that to you.

G. Robertson: That would be helpful, I think, for us to understand, in addition to what is being released, the rationale and risk associated with direct release. Coming from a farming background, with the use of any drug or agent like this, there can be, and often is, some release that happens. In conjunction with it, there are cumulative effects related to that, particularly with a substance like SLICE that has devastating impact on marine organisms if there is direct contact.

R. Lewis: I would echo your comments and concerns. I think your concerns and comments are well justified. It's very true.

In any product we use, whatever the product might be, it comes at a cost. I think it's questionable whether the cost is small or the cost is large. The view of the scientific community, from information that I've had access to, is that this is an extremely safe product and has very minimal impact on the environment. I certainly will be very happy to provide that information and the appropriate references to you.

G. Robertson: Thank you. One last quick question is triggered by the news yesterday and today of the Skeena First Nation making a very clear statement around their opposition to the expansion of fish farms to the north coast. In light of the New Relationship, in light of all the references to increased consultation with first nations, what is the position here, among those present, in terms of how this will be addressed?

A. Castledine: I can answer that. You're referring to a decision on the north coast. That application is still in process. There are still discussions ongoing with some of the bands on the Skeena River, so we are not aware that a decision on that is imminent. There is more process to be followed.

A. Castledine: We've been in discussions with the Gitxsan Watershed for a year and a half. Also, I think there are more upriver first nations who want to get into that dialogue as well.

G. Robertson: But in this situation, I would say, there is a definitive statement made by a number of first nations specifically whose traditional territory is affected by the potential licences or applications.

A. Castledine: Not to be argumentative, but Kitkatla band, in whose traditional territory the farms will reside, is very supportive of these farms. It's a particularly difficult situation where both groups have very strong interests. We're trying to work through those interests.

J. Hunter: Just to add further to what Al was saying, we are very much engaged in a dialogue with the Gitxsan Watershed Authority. Their issues certainly are of concern to us, and staff have met with them many, many times over the months.

To respond to it, as the ministry and the honour of the Crown, we are taking those issues very, very seriously. We understand the concerns in terms of potential impacts to the GWA — for example, their sockeye run issues. We're certainly very much engaged in discussion with them.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you very much. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank all of the officials for coming here today, both for the presentations and for the answers you have given.

I see that there are lots of documents that have been requested to be forwarded to us. If I could please ask that you direct those through to the Clerk of Committees, and then he will distribute them.

Also, before you leave, please avail yourself of lunch. There's plenty of lunch here, so please have something to eat before you leave. We will recess for as long as it takes for the members to grab some lunch themselves. Then we will sit down and listen to the next witness, Professor Farrell from UBC, but I believe Larry would like to say a couple of words before we close.

L. Pedersen: Certainly, we commit to the follow-ups. I have noted the areas of MLA Robertson's interests in the LWBC actions of the past, so we'll report back to you on that. As to the compliance and enforcement reports, we're actually trying to expedite the completion of those. We'll get them into your hands, hopefully, within about four weeks.

I would like to offer, however, a further presentation by technical staff in an area where I think there is room for further dialogue. You have asked some questions to which, potentially, there are others who can give broader and better responses, particularly in the area of the data that underlies the policy framework on sea lice. I personally asked for and received a presentation on that some while back. I think the committee would benefit from hearing, in fact, just exactly what that data source was and what the history was that led to the current treatment regime in terms of numbers of sea lice present on farms.

You have also asked, I think, for a better understanding of the policy rationale on disclosure around fish health plans. When are veterinarians who become aware of some information able to put that information into the public domain, and under what instances and circumstances do they feel that they're not able to do that? I think it would, again, be beneficial to have the individuals involved in those undertakings come and speak directly.

I would really like the opportunity to have a further technical presentation that I'm confident can address some of the questions that we've touched on but, I think, have not yet taken to the heart of your concerns sufficiently. I'd like to make that offer. If that's difficult or awkward for the committee, then I would like, at minimum, to make a further written submission to you, at your pleasure.

R. Austin (Chair): I think that's an excellent idea. I'll arrange with the Clerk for a time that's mutually convenient for all of us to meet again. Thank you very much.

R. Austin (Chair): I'd like to bring the committee back to order and welcome Anthony Farrell. Anthony Farrell is the professor of the chair in sustainable aquaculture at UBC's Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research.

A. Farrell: I'm not sure exactly what you want from me, but I was asked to speak on the roles of the chair and also the Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research. I've prepared a 15-minute presentation, and I'll take questions after that. Is that okay?

A. Farrell: The Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research used to be a cannery. That's where they brought in the wild fish, and that's the picture up on the left-hand side. In the '60s it was sold to the DFO for a research lab, and in 2005 a memorandum of understanding was signed between UBC and Fisheries and Oceans Canada to form a partnership. That partnership is to do aquaculture and environmental research. I'll be speaking about this first to give you some idea of the group of scientists and the research activities that go on there. Then I'll speak specifically about what I do within my chair, so it's sort of top down to bottom.

We've adopted the name Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research, and the acronym is CAER. The facilities are just phenomenal there. They're phenomenal because we have laboratories, offices for fish-holding, and it primarily focuses on fish research, as you'll see. We have three sources of fresh water, we have salt water, and all these with remarkable proximity to a major city in Canada, industry to do with both environment and aquaculture and two university campuses. Malaspina is only a ferry ride away, so we could say three campuses. We have a deepwater dock. We have indoor-outdoor aquaria. It's highly suited for research on fish, and you can see some of the tank facilities there.

The CAER staff. DFO has 15 FTEs there. There are two UBC research chairs. That's an incredible intensity for a small thing, so it's a research-intense environment. In addition, we have other UBC and SFU faculty that do research there, so it's a collaborative environment. Graduate students train there, post-doctorate fellows, research associates. We bring in international and national collaborators to work there. The idea is that it's open, we collaborate, and we bring skills to the centre.

Annual operation of the facility is currently about $600K, two-thirds of that provided by DFO and one-third by UBC.

We have advisory and steering committees that oversee the science direction, but by and large, people like me have a certain level of autonomy to do the research, which I'll outline in a little while.

We have a common vision, which is shared by the DFO and UBC at the larger scale. This vision is to focus on aquaculture and environmental research — not one or the other but both — and provide a highly valued educational and science extension activity. Beyond basic research, we are moving on to applications.

We hope that this will enhance the Canadian aquaculture industry, that it will create wealth for Canadians by that enhancement and that we will be a global leader in the production of aquatic protein. We view aquaculture of fish as a source of protein, and I think that's the primary drive for aquaculture — or the way I view it, anyway.

Alongside that development is an absolute commitment by all people at the CAER facility to minimize environmental degradation of these activities, to be excellent stewards of the environment and also to think about the coastal environment in an integrated manner. I think this will be reflected in some of the specific research areas.

The science activities centre around both culture facilities and also wet-lab experimental facilities. Wet is important to rearing fish. They like to live in water. They don't like to be out of water unless they're in a frying pan and we're about to cook them, of course.

We have three main emphases. One is to do with sustainable aquaculture research, and there are a variety of topics there. They're loosely grouped together, but they involve different people, and I'll be coming back to each one of those as I move through the individuals that are there.

Then there are issues related to sustainable natural fisheries, or wild fisheries, if you will. People represent a variety of topics there. Invasive species. This may be wastewater in tanks of bulk freighters that have gone through B.C. waters. Then there are interactions of these two on the natural resources, and there's no question that there's a focus on this interplay between cultured and wild fish. They are not static.

There has been a proposal for $12 million to the federal government through the Canada Foundation for Innovation to expand some of these facilities, to increase the capacity of research and to do a better job. The horizon is to grow, not to shrink, and I think that with that horizon, there will be improvement.

Dr. Steve MacDonald is the DSO — designated scientific officer — for the DFO. He's basically the chief DFO person there. His research focuses on freshwater salmon habitats. He's been involved in fish-forestry interactions. He's been involved in spawning escapement targets to make sure that they are met. We've collaborated over the years on wild salmon migration. He's also been given proposals now about cold water releases on the Nechako to assist spawning up there. Steve works on the freshwater side.

Colin Levings, who recently won the Murray A. Newman Award for conservation research by the Vancouver Public Aquarium, is our marine ecologist. He's very interested in how trawling gear, which is wild fishery, impacts the benthic environment. He's been involved in the Britannia mine acid mine drainage. He's involved in making sure that juvenile salmon have the appropriate riparian environments, is involved in invasive species, and also, lately he's been looking at the interactions between the environment and aquaculture.

Bob Devlin is our molecular geneticist. He's been developing transgenic fishes and assessing what the capabilities are and aren't. He has been very central in understanding fishery production of monosex species, which are very important in minimizing the effects of escapees. He has also been working on the effects of pollutants at the molecular level.

Terri Sutherland is our benthic ecologist. She's done a lot of work with very novel and innovative ways of looking at what sits on the benthic environment remotely, and this includes looking under sea pens. You can see her taking a grab there from a bottom somewhere. She starts at it from the level of: what should it be? Has it changed? Is it changing? How much can that system take in terms of load? She works on that.

Dave Higgs, another DFO scientist, has been working in fish nutrition. I would say he is the most qualified fish nutritionist in the whole of Canada, and we're fortunate to have him in B.C. He's been a pioneer in the development of plant-based dietary lipid protein, and these will help in terms of reducing the amount of wild fish feed that's used, better ways to provide fish to increase utilization of the food and new diets for new species.

Scott McKinley is UBC CRC tier one research chair. His interests are in limiting sea lice impacts on native stocks and, also, biotelemetry of fish. He has many collaborations around the world, and this brings a wealth of resources to B.C. to help with issues here.

To give you a little bit of history about the research chair, which is my position right now. It's an endowment, and I know nothing about how this money was obtained. I just became the recipient of the interest.

A. Farrell: Maybe it's better that way. What I did find out for you is that a deed was signed by a deputy minister, and I think it was MAFF back then in August 2002. President Piper of UBC signed it in 2003.

They searched around, and they recruited me from SFU. I've actually been at SFU for the better part of 20 years, working on fish and environmental toxicology, so I know B.C. and some of its problems quite well. I was appointed in September 2005, so I've been around in this chair for about 18 months.

This endowment funds two-thirds of my position, which comes through the faculty of land and food systems, which was formerly the faculty of agriculture at UBC. It has changed its name. One-third of my position comes directly from the university, from the department of zoology. So I wear several hats, or several people pay my salary.

What do I do? Well, I have some fundamental goals. It is a research chair, but I think I try to go beyond just basic research. I perform both basic research and applied research. I don't think you can do applied research until you understand the basic mechanisms, so that's where I start. I take basic mechanisms; then I apply them out.

I really want to promote the sustainable use of B.C.'s wild and cultured fish resources. I've been involved for a number of years in wild salmon migrations, and that's very dear to my heart.

People who know me know that I'm enthusiastic. People know that I convince other people to do things that they didn't think they wanted to do. I view myself as a catalyst for research activity. What I know for sure is that I can't do it all, but I can bring a team of players to address things that are important to British Columbia, and that's what I intend to do.

I intend to bring collaborators and funding to look at wild and cultured fish and their interactions. My hope is that I can restore public confidence in the sustainability of both wild and cultured fish. There are concerns expressed by the public. I go to parties just like you, and I listen to these things. My wife tells me very clearly: "Why are you talking about fish again?" I'm very passionate about both, and I think that's at the higher level.

What exactly do I do? I work on fish nutrition. I'm interested in developing vegetarian diets. I want to move the diets for salmon closer to the sun. I mean, if you're an ecologist, basically, that's what we do. We're cutting out one step in the food chain. I want to optimize food assimilation. When we optimize food assimilation, we don't have so many wastes. It doesn't cost so much to feed these fish.

I'm interested in the way fish are cared for. Fish welfare is very important. The quality of my research depends upon the quality of my animals. By the same token, the quality of the product that we eat from the aquaculture industry will depend upon their welfare. If they have poor welfare, they're not going to have good profit margins, and they're not going to have a good product. I've been working with the industry on their live-haul operations. How are smolt moved out? How are live fish, the adults, moved back to the processing plants?

My main interest is cardiorespiratory physiology and understanding basic mechanisms. I love to find out the way hearts tick, so I do that as well.

The effects of high temperature, global warming scenarios. I testified to the Williams commission and convinced those people, I think, that warm temperature was our problem for missing salmon on the Fraser River. And it really is an issue. Low oxygen will come along with that. Biotelemetry is part of our fish migration project.

What have I accomplished in 18 months? I do a lot of stuff besides what I'm talking about here, so don't think this is all I do. The Williams inquiry was quite a challenge for me, and I enjoyed having that sort of output, but I had a bit of a baptism by fire.

I've never worked on sea lice. I've probably seen sea lice accidentally. But I was asked to run a workshop on sea lice research, and I ran that. The goal of the workshop was to identify research gaps. What actually came out of the workshop was this acrimonious division, and this was amongst the scientists. We haven't even got to the public level.

As I was sitting there, not being partisan to anything, what I learned was that it was to do with data interpretation. Different people were interpreting exactly the same data different ways. Now, that's a scientific method, and that's okay, but you should have to have some commonality.

I suggested that what we develop were some protocols and guidelines for sea lice research. I recruited a number of authors, and then we sent them out for review around the world, got the international experts. I think we probably tapped into almost every person who's ever worked with a sea louse in their life and got their input on this. Now these protocols and guidelines are posted on the B.C. Pacific Salmon Forum website, and they're forming some of the basis for the research that is now ongoing. We tried to get a common playing field for everybody that wants to engage in this.

We also generated a bibliography of sea lice research, and this was to generate the knowledge base. Again, this is posted. Rather than everybody going back to the literature to try to re-find it, it's there for everybody. It can be updated. It's currently being used by Craig Orr, I believe, to develop a synthesis of what is known and what is not known.

I'm also an active member of the science advisory committee for the B.C. Pacific Salmon Forum, and I give advice on what sort of research should be funded.

I've performed research on fish welfare during commercial live…. I managed to get 200,000 from AquaNet network of centres for excellence. That work's ongoing, creating some new information and also employment opportunities and some training opportunities.

We have already developed, in collaboration with Norwegian colleagues, some new ways of assessing guide formulations by actually doing surgery on fish and sampling blood. I'm co-investigator for research on adult salmon migration from the Salmon Endowment Fund. We're bringing up money from the U.S. — almost to the tune of $1.4 million for this summer. I put together the $12 million proposal for the Canadian sustainable salmon centre, which is the acronym for the project.

I've also proposed a new outlet for aquaculture research, and it will be based in B.C. It's a science journal called Advances in Aquaculture.

R. Austin (Chair): I'd like to invite members of the committee to ask any questions. We'll start with Scott.

S. Fraser: Thank you, Dr. Farrell. This is great. I've got a bunch of questions that come to mind.

Your work on vegetarian feedstock. One of the criticisms that we've certainly all heard around the long-term sustainability of the industry is whether or not the amount of biomass required to produce a pound of farmed salmon is sustainable. I've heard arguments to….

S. Fraser: The question, as I have had it put to me, is: has there been any example of successful farming of carnivores, if that's the right term, and is that sustainable? I mean, I've even heard the same argument with cows, which aren't carnivores. The amount of feedstock required to produce a pound of beef…. There's a lot of grain required to do that. Is that an efficient production of protein? You opened up by saying….

A. Farrell: I think I know where you're going to, but correct me if I'm wrong. The term is "conversion efficiency," and I think you're asking about conversion efficiency. I think it's generally accepted that fish are as good, if not better, converters of food than cows. I would have to feed less to a fish than to a cow to get a pound of meat.

S. Fraser: Fair enough, and that's fine. But one of the criticisms that I've heard levelled — I'm not saying it's right; I'm a layperson; I don't know — is that the amount of biomass from the sea that has to be harvested to create a very specific product in farmed salmon is not a sustainable model based on finite levels of production in the sea.

A. Farrell: I think I would agree. I'm not an economist, so I haven't done that analysis. But it makes sense to me, if I look at simple trophic levels, that if you move from a top predator down to a carnivore down to a herbivore down to a primary producer, there's about a tenfold loss of efficiency of energy as you move through those. If you jump one of those, you get closer to the free stuff, which is the sun. The sun is ultimately driving most of the planet in terms of the free energy we get.

What I'm suggesting is not that we take food from the sea to feed the fish but that we take canola, which grows on the land. We're actually growing lots of canola in Canada already. We process it for oil for our consumption, so there's a supply of lipid. What you're doing is diverting that supply through — the sun, land plants, fish.

A. Farrell: I don't know. I think there are two things we have to do. One is that we have to assure ourselves that the fish are quite happy eating these kinds of diets. I think that's my part of the puzzle.

I'm saying: "Do you prefer to eat tuna, salmon or steak tonight for supper?" The first thing is that I'd say: "Eat it. Let's have a little experiment. Eat all three." Then I'd see if you're happy afterwards. We've got ways of measuring whether fish are happy.

S. Fraser: Finally to that, I know it's still early days, but if you do feed salmon canola and if that becomes the base of the feedstock, will the salmon still taste good to you and me?

A. Farrell: Yes. The same equation is that there will likely be finishing diets. If you look at a fish that's in grow-out, it's probably an 18-month cycle. Can we grow them for 15 months on this alternate protein and lipid source and then finish them so that you can't tell the difference at the end with this much, much smaller amount of wild-based, or whatever we need to base it?

We're looking at poultry. We're looking at pig-based, canola-based. All these different flows of protein and lipid into the diet are being compared.

I'll add two things. One is that there are diets out there where we can't detect the difference in terms of the "happiness" of the fish, and I'll use that in a loose way. They perform well. They can run marathons just as well as the ones that take wild fish.

The second is that nature, of course, has fed millions and millions of salmon for years and years using that model. In other words, salmon prey off there. If you do an estimate of what the food conversion efficiency of a wild salmon is versus a cultured salmon, then of course the cultured salmon is a lot better off. You don't have to chase your prey, basically.

One question about global warming. With potential increases, I see, rapidly of ocean temperatures, is this argument moot — the whole argument here about aquaculture? Is there a specific temperature range that salmon can survive in? What happens? If you look at the progression, by a lot of models, we're in trouble anyway. Whether farmed or wild, we've got a big problem.

A. Farrell: I think that from the wild point of view, we've got a bigger problem. I know that I can go down to Idaho, and I can find a redband trout. It can tolerate 27 degrees. We are probably not going to get 27 degrees. The question is: do we want an environment with only redband trout in it? The answer is: probably not. But we may end up with that. That's one scenario that we go off to. The other one is that we could culture redband trout, because it's the only thing we can culture if we ever got that.

I think the wild fish are probably more threatened by the global warming scenario, because we are sitting right at the southern end of the geographic range for what I would call glacial retreat, and salmonids follow glaciers retreating. They're just retreating a little faster than we had anticipated.

A couple of questions. One relates to sea lice. You spoke about the session that you moderated and the experience you had there, which was very strong, conflicting views among scientists and among academics.

As we try to move past that, is there much in the way of peer-reviewed research around sea lice, particu-

larly that applies to the Pacific coast — to pinks, to our salmon? I'm sure the species we have here deal differently with lice than fish in other places in the world. Each unto their own, I suspect. Based on the work that you've done and the work that came out of that, is there much in the way of peer-reviewed research that we can look at to try to get something that's definitive?

A. Farrell: I will answer that question — okay? But I just want to step back. If we were to do medical research on something, there are probably ten papers looking at the same question. Typically in the fish world, we'd do one, if we're lucky. So when we sorted through the bibliography, and this is going all the way from fish migration — what the pink salmon do, what we know about pink salmon migration — all the way down to the taxonomy of sea lice and their interactions, we accumulated something like 250 refereed publications. Where were most of those done? Obviously, the pink salmon migration were done here and Alaska.

The work on sea lice would drop down to the order of 50. Of those that were, you could say, done specifically on the British Columbia coast, or the west coast, which is probably a reasonably good ecosystem, we're in the tens. I would not call that, if I was a scientist having to stake my career on making a strong statement, "we have a lot of information."

S. Simpson: I'd be interested…. Thank you for that. Would it be possible, maybe through the Clerk, to be able to identify those papers that are peer-reviewed or refereed papers that deal with that, just so we know what they are?

S. Simpson: Maybe we can get Brant or somebody to sort them out. That's great.

The next question. One of the issues relates to sea lice. There's always a debate around the use of SLICE and the impacts of that, and of course, it's the environmental impacts. We know that it's used as a measure to deal with emergency situations around sea lice when it gets out of control.

What's your take around the environmental impacts of the use of that, and when should we be concerned about that?

A. Farrell: If I were advising you on what to be concerned about, I would tell you to be more concerned about the use of the birth control pill by females to regulate population growth and its release into the sewage system than I would about SLICE. If I put it into "we decide to do this" versus "we decide to do that," I think you have to make that choice. That's the first thing.

The second thing is that SLICE has been researched more outside of this country than within this country. It's accepted for use outside of this country because of its concentration levels and also its degradation properties. The issues of concern to me are (1) what are the residual levels in the fish that we eat, and (2) what are the residual levels in the water and in the sediment in and around the farms?

Of the literature that I've read — and I've said that I'm not an expert in sea lice — there are SLICE levels which are below acceptable levels, the tolerance levels, so they fall below. I would view that as: I don't have to be concerned, if I trust all the data.

As a scientist, if I was researching that, I'd go back and ask questions about those levels. Are those levels really safe levels? If they're not, then we need to lower them. For example, the level of lice that triggers a SLICE application is lower in British Columbia than it is in Norway. Is that a good thing? Yes, because that means that we tend to catch any epizootic you would have, in terms of the lice taking off, earlier and have fewer environmental problems. Second, it means that the application rates of the SLICE would be lower, because you're trying to kill fewer lice than if you were to try to kill a lot of lice, instead of having something like a pandemic.

Personally, at this stage I have not seen any real alarm bells. I've seen samples underneath cages. Sampling the underwater environment is very, very difficult. It's a real challenge. When you talk to people like Terri Sutherland, you'll appreciate just how difficult it is.

Most of the areas under the cages it's non-detectable. You may find a little bit of accumulation off in one pocket, so the question is: has it all migrated to that one area? And then the question that you ask is: what are the impacts out there? I can't speak to those. I'm not an expert on those.

S. Simpson: To follow up. You made the comment about the analyses in other places — in Norway, Chile, Scotland, wherever. Has there been, to your knowledge, an assessment done of the different circumstances — our British Columbia coast with 50 million salmon coming back, or whatever that number is, versus the returns of wild fish in Norway? It's a very different circumstance, I believe, in terms of the relationship of the wild fishery to cultured fish.

Every place deals differently, and as we talked about, species are impacted in different ways. Smolts are impacted in different ways by lice. Some may be more vigorous than others. Has there been much analysis done that says, "Here are the different circumstances between British Columbia, Norway, Chile and Scotland," so that we can know when we're talking about apples and apples and when we're talking about apples and oranges?

A. Farrell: I don't think I can speak to that. I don't know enough about that literature. But what I can do is

give you a bit of a guideline, which is a general guideline. That may help you if some expert comes along who can tell you about that.

SLICE likes not to be in water. If you get a salad dressing and you put herbs in a salad dressing that's got oil and vinegar, some of the herbs will go into the vinegar, which is a water section, and some will go into the oil. SLICE would tend to go into the oil section. It doesn't like to be in the water. So when it gets into the environment, if it's getting into the environment, it would tend to distribute on the sediments themselves. If there were feces it was getting out on, they would tend to go down, and they would settle to the bottom. The primary place to look for SLICE would not be in the water. It would actually be in the sediment itself — okay?

Then I would play general biologist. What do salmon do when they're coming back or when they're going out? Where do they live? Well, we know that pink salmon tend to be in the upper part of the water column. Other species tend to be a little bit further down, but do they grub around at 100 feet and feed off the bottom? No. We know that salmon are pelagic and are not bottom-feeders.

In terms of the contact now, you've got a degree of separation. I think that may help you. Of course, the migratory species coming back have actually stopped feeding. To follow adult salmon, we actually put telemetry probes down their esophagus and follow them all the way up the Fraser River, and we know that pretty well by Johnstone Strait they've stopped feeding. They're not actually eating things.

The fact that we catch them on rods is probably a bit bothered by the flasher. I don't know. But the digestion is reduced. So if the digestion is reduced, the amount that's coming into them is small.

S. Simpson: I appreciate the comment around SLICE. The point of that question was a little bit broader. I'm particularly thinking about it in terms of largely migratory practices of the fish going out, which are the younger fish. That's when we seem to have this challenge around whether they're impacted.

A. Farrell: Okay. All right. I think you may have misunderstood what I told you. That's my problem for not communicating it correctly.

Alex Morton can catch pink salmon going out with a dip net. That means that those fish are on the surface. My understanding is that many of the net pens are about a hundred feet deep, which means that the feces are falling down and are being released a hundred feet. If I've got fish on the surface and I've got feces, which is the likely high concentration of the…. I don't have contact.

S. Simpson: So you don't think there's a correlation between sea lice coming out of those fish farms and those pens and the wild fish, because they're a hundred feet apart?

S. Simpson: No, I've moved past SLICE. I'm talking generally about impacts on migratory practices.

S. Simpson: Yeah, I know, and that's why I'm trying to move to this next point.

I just wanted to pick up a little bit…. I know it's unfair to ask you this, but it relates to another of my questions. If the SLICE goes down into the sediment, according to your understanding, salmon are not going to be eating it, so it's not an issue for salmon, but what about other species?

A. Farrell: Absolutely. I don't know enough of the research to know what species have been tested relative to those levels. That may well be a data gap, or it may be just my lack of knowledge.

If I were guiding research, I'd say that we need to know what our benthic ecology is. Then we need to know what concentrations we're seeing around the farms. And then we go in a lab and shove some of these two together and say: "Do they keel over and die, or do they just keep growing normally?" I'm not sure whether those experiments have been done.

What people have done is…. I know there has been some work on lobster larvae. Unfortunately, we don't have lobster on this coast. If you go through the toxicology literature, lobster larvae tend to be extremely sensitive to a whole range of toxicants.

I was involved in setting the regulatory levels for chloramine, which is a disinfectant for tap water. If you go to Ottawa, they disinfect the drinking water with chloramine. We use chlorine, and the lower mainland will be using ozonation too. The lobster larvae are probably the most sensitive species — and the life stage is the larval form — to chloramine.

It was setting the regulatory guidelines across the whole of Canada. The question is: should it be applied to British Columbia? That's the long answer.

C. Trevena: The short answer is that you're not sure if any experiment has been done.

C. Trevena: Again, on the issue of droppings to the ocean floor and waste. You're researching different forms of feed. Are you also looking at the impact that the waste, the salmon poop, will have? If they're eating canola, what's that going to mean? How is that going to affect the ocean floor if they're eating pork products or chicken products? How is that going to impact?

A. Farrell: The beauty of fish is that they're incredible absorbers. I mean, you can overfeed a fish, and then it'll produce a lot of poop. But that doesn't work as a producer. You're going to cut into your profit margins, so you don't want to go to that stage. You design the feeding so that you get an optimal feeding, and then you cull out the fish so you've got similar sizes, so you're not throwing a lot into a big weight range.

You try to optimize it. We know, for example, that lipids are 95 percent taken up when it passes through the digestive system of a fish. We know that. So what goes in really is not coming out, and most of what comes out is roughage. The model that the industry is using is to maximize absorption of the proteins and the carbohydrates, and then what's left is just roughage.

C. Trevena: If the industry wanted to fatten up the fish quickly, they would throw more in, and more would come out.

A. Farrell: They may want to fatten them up more quickly, but their profit margin would…. It's a silly practice, and I think they've learned. I think that may have been a practice years and years ago of the more you throw in….

I was looking at sea bass culture in France a couple of years back. Their model system is to just keep feeding them. That's because the consumer market likes fatty fish. You open up the belly of one of these sea bass, and it's gross. There is a lot of excess fat in there. I said: "Why do you do that? That's a waste of money." "No, it's not a waste of money, because we sell the product whole." We sell a dressed product.

What we sell is a beautiful fillet, whether it's a wild fish or a cultured fish. That's what we're marketing: the protein. I think the industry just can't sustain haphazard feeding. That's my gut feeling.

C. Trevena: My possibly last question is: are you as an institute or as a scientist feeding this back into the environment, into the industry, or is the industry coming to you? What's the relationship between your institute and the aquaculture industry?

A. Farrell: It's two-way. It's a horrendous position to be in, really, because you are wearing two hats. It's a balancing act. I'm passionate about the environment. I've got kids who I want to inherit this environment. I'm doing my utmost to prevent the degradation.

When I give you my gut feeling, it truly is my gut feeling. If I don't think it's getting there, I'll talk to DFO, I'll talk to provincial Environment, and I'll also talk to industry. But fundamentally, I'm recognized as an objective scientist, and I hope to be able to stay that course.

Just a couple of questions, starting with…. Well, maybe to set some context, there are certainly many risks that we know about now to wild stocks, to our wild salmon populations, many of which we have very little, if any, control over when we talk about ocean temperatures or river temperatures.

There are other issues — and we are confronting these here in this committee — that we have total control over in terms of whether or not there will be impacts to the wild stocks. In terms of impacts and risk to our wild stocks, we acknowledge that there are risks that are attributable to aquaculture, and we're tasked with finding a sustainable path forward to minimize those risks.

We talked just briefly about the differences between B.C. and Norway and the various jurisdictions that have fish farms and the fact that B.C. has a very robust wild salmon population in comparison to the others. What hasn't been pointed out yet, I think, is that Norway actually has part of their coastline prohibited from aquaculture to protect the wild fish that remain there. Much of their coast no longer has significant populations of wild fish, but they have actually prohibited farms in part of it.

As a scientist, do you support the approach — I guess a precautionary approach, in this case — of keeping parts of habitat, parts of coastlines, completely risk-free from aquaculture?

A. Farrell: I think your prelude had some flaws in it, so I'll start there and then answer your question.

The biggest threats to the wild fishery are us and our fishing practices. We typically harvest to 80 percent of a stock, if we're choosing to target that. So we're taking out 80 percent of what nature has returned back to us.

The fact that we're in Vancouver now…. We may well be sitting on a former spawning habitat. We have chosen, first, to harvest at incredibly high levels. We're backing off on those, so that's been good. Second is that we've removed habitat in just about every city that we've built here. I think it's absolutely amazing that B.C. has decided to develop parks and protect the wildlife, and that goes beyond fish, because that maintains habitat.

Then, the second level — and that's where I come from — is: what impacts is aquaculture having? I've looked at the migratory data for pink salmon coming through the Broughtons, which is our most intensive. I cannot as a scientist see a general trend that is large and hugely impactful. I can look at the fishing practices, see the returns and see a trend. When we fish heavily, we just annihilate fish.

When we decided to put the railway through the Fraser Canyon on one side of it and it collapsed, we

nearly lost every salmon on the Fraser River in 1913. Through careful management, stewardship and commitment, we've built those stocks back on the Fraser River.

I think that committees like this that take it seriously will come up with the right opinions. Should we stop aquaculture? If people don't want aquaculture in a certain area of British Columbia, I think it's their right to say, through the public process: "We don't want it there." That will be a regional management decision. As somebody who lives in a city, I don't think I should be dictating to somebody up on the north end of the Island. If they want a job and they feel that aquaculture is the way they want to go — and that's the group decision — then perhaps that's the way to go.

G. Robertson: As a scientist, do you support the concept of marine protected areas? You alluded to this at the beginning — areas that are no-touch?

A. Farrell: I certainly do. I think that if you go back to the minutes that were involved in the development of Whytecliff Park, you'll find that I was one of the strong proponents of marine protected areas. I think they're incredible.

If you have never been to Leigh Marine Lab in New Zealand, you should go there. Do any of you scuba dive? Have you ever picked up a crayfish that's this big, because it doesn't run away from you? They've created a marine protected area. You can go in, and the animals are fearless, absolutely fearless. You can go in, and it's phenomenal.

The question is: how big should they be? How frequent should they be? I'm definitely supportive of that as an approach. Where they should be? I think that's for other people. I can provide advice, but….

G. Robertson: My second questions are related to genetically modified salmon. Can you give some context around what activity there is — the presence of those fish here on the west coast — and the research that's taking place?

A. Farrell: As far as I know, they're safely contained within the West Vancouver facility.

A. Farrell: I would have to defer to Bob Devlin, who would know precisely. I know that I've tried to do research on growth-enhanced fish, and DFO would not allow me the transplant permit to move them outside of West Vancouver. So it would surprise me if there are any outside. That's the growth-enhanced ones. I'm not sure whether there are other ones out there.

G. Robertson: Is there somewhere that the committee should be looking for specific information around what is here and what activities are taking place?

A. Farrell: My guess is that Bob Devlin from DFO would be able to just really…. You wouldn't have to listen to me waffling.

G. Robertson: Do you know what species are currently in B.C.? Are there Pacific salmon species that have been genetically modified?

A. Farrell: I think it's coho and rainbow trout that are the two he's done, but I may be incorrect.

G. Robertson: In your opinion as a scientist, do you feel that the presence and the work with genetically modified salmon here in B.C. is an unacceptable risk to our wild populations?

A. Farrell: I don't think it's an unacceptable risk the way it's being conducted right now. They're being confined to a research facility, and the growth-enhanced ones, which are the primary focus right now, are at best couch potatoes in my assessment of them. If they were to get out and try to compete with a wild fish, they'd lose, hands down. They wouldn't get away from the start line, if you want to use that analogy.

That's one I think I mentioned in connection with global warming. We may have to make decisions about which stocks of wild fish we can keep going in British Columbia. If you go from stock to stock to stock, they've got different temperature tolerances. Do we go one step further and say that we can have salmon if we make this manipulation, which is a gene that gives them higher temperature tolerance?

That's a decision the public has to take. I would suspect that most people in British Columbia don't want genetically modified fish. That's what I would suspect in public opinion.

J. Yap: Thank you, Dr. Farrell, for your presentation and for coming before us.

I want to get back to an answer you gave some moments ago on the issue of sea lice, which I think, when all is said and done, is the reason we're here as a committee to do this work. There is an image out in the general population that has fostered opinions among people regarding some kind of linkage between sea lice from salmon farms and them somehow affecting wild salmon stocks. That's out there in the general population among people, who may not have particularly strong political views one way or another. That is an image out there.

I thought I heard you say in your answer moments ago that in your opinion as a scientist, from your studies….

J. Yap: Not your studies. Okay. From your review of studies by other scientists.

A. Farrell: By my limited review of the literature. I stated clearly and explicitly at the outset that I've never

worked on sea lice. I've collected the literature, and I've tried to bring people together to find out what the story was.

J. Yap: It's fair to say that you've done quite a bit of reading in this area.

I heard you say that in your opinion, you don't see the linkage. Is that correct?

A. Farrell: I said I can't see the weight of the evidence. I look at the evidence, and I say: "Is something jumping out and hitting me that I can't provide another alternate explanation for?" As a scientist, the way I go about it is that I observe something. I may have a preconceived idea before I do the experiment, and then I'll say: "Do those data fit with what I thought?" Then I'll say: "Is there another explanation?" That's what a good scientist does.

What I've seen in the arena is that people tend to force the data into what they thought was going to be the result of their experiment, and that is the core problem that's causing the division. It's that alternate explanations are not being considered appropriately.

When I look at all the data that I have seen, which is perhaps more than you but less than a real expert, I'm not swayed. There's just too much uncertainty for me to go in and say: "Stop this, do that, or change that." I'm not swayed. There are too many unanswered questions, in my opinion.

J. Yap: In your opinion, what is the answer to this? More research to dispassionately look for the linkage?

A. Farrell: I actually think, when I answer the question, that there are not many peer-reviewed publications, specifically in B.C., to deal with this on a relative scale. There is a lot of research underway currently, and I think what we have to do is…. It takes time, just like the political process, for that to come out, and we have to see what that tells us. Each year we have an opportunity to do a set of experiments. The Salmon Forum gave out some money to do more research on lice, so it's an ongoing process.

I think we need to understand pink salmon migrations. We don't understand them. When fishermen get something like 15 cents a pound for adult pink salmon, people don't look at the biology of pink salmon. When someone gets $6 a pound for sockeye salmon, we'll understand the biology a lot more. I think one of the reasons we don't understand a lot about pink salmon is the economics of it. Now we're starting to say: "Well, here's a potential interaction between pinks and sea lice." Unfortunately, we didn't have the basic information at the outset, and that's what we're trying to gather right now.

I'd like to move on to the subject of escapes from fish farms. What is the scientific evidence you're aware of that points to escapes as being a serious problem in terms of the environment, ecologically?

A. Farrell: The piece of evidence that worries me is that large numbers of fish can escape and have escaped. That worries me because it's a numbers game. If I ask the question, "What is the impact of those escapes?" then I'm far less worried.

I had the privilege to meet probably the pre-eminent and pioneer researcher on the west coast having to do with salmon biology. His name was Donaldson, and I met him when he was 90 years old at the University of Washington. I went down to his fisheries research lab there. He had a stream which came into his office. Each year he'd put eggs into that stream, and they would escape. The fish would come back, or a proportion of them. He'd been releasing Atlantic salmon in large numbers into Puget Sound for the better part of his research career.

Given what we know about the migratory ability of fishes, there is not a large number of Atlantic salmon. It seems that in nature Pacific salmon evolved to be better suited to the Pacific coast than Atlantic salmon did. When the competition or the gauntlet is down, the Pacific salmon seem to win out.

There are places where we do find Atlantics, and I'm not sure that we actually have convincing evidence that they're a breeding population. Are they escapees that just use the habitat and grow? In that case, the impact is that they're using resources that another salmon could use. They're not in the millions. One of the gentlemen here suggested that we're dealing with 30 million salmon yearly. I mean, there's a ratio, so it's not a large impact. I think that's probably all I could say. I don't think it's a serious issue.

J. Yap: That, to me, is the other reason, probably the second-biggest reason, why our committee is here doing this work: sea lice and escapes. There's that image of escapes being a serious problem. Thank you.

A. Farrell: If I can just have one second, I just thought of something, for genetically modified fish, which has just reminded me…. The reason why we're

thinking about unisex fish for aquaculture is to prevent the breeding problem — all right? So that's a manipulation unto itself, but I'm not sure you'd call it genetically modified.

There is another modification that is a genetic modification, which the province does. I don't think many people know about it. But again, it's to create sterility, and that is that we stock B.C. lakes with triploid fish.

We have two sets of chromosomes. If you take a fish egg and you heat-shock it or pressure-shock it during early development, the division changes slightly. You end up with an extra set of chromosomes, so you end up with three sets instead of two sets. That creates sterility. We stock lakes with those fish, and people catch them, but they don't breed with the wild population. The benefit of that is you don't dilute the wild gene pool, but you can provide recreational fishing opportunities, which is a huge moneymaker in this province.

Just a couple of comments. I'll try to keep it brief, knowing the time. Recently, in the last six months or so, an SFU salmon study revealed a flaw in how DFO was using the measurement of sea lice impact on juvenile salmon, and they're using the Fulton's condition factor. I'm wondering if you have any comments on that.

A. Farrell: Yup. Would I advise anybody to use Fulton's condition factor to describe happiness? By and large, no. So I agree with the general statement. Having said that, if you go into Marty Krkosek's papers and ask what value he uses, Marty suggests — and we've talked about it — that you use some algorithm of length and body mass.

Fulton's conversion factor is based on an algorithm of length and body mass. In other words, he took the same input values and twiddled them about a bit more, because he's a first-rate mathematician — a brilliant mind. But it's the same thing. He has a refereed publication which says that we should be using this derivation of length and mass. So we've got a bit of a general problem out there.

I'd be happy to know whether fish could swim and avoid predators. I'd wish to know whether they had behavioral responses. I said there were collaborators from SFU. Right now Larry Dill's student, Paul Mages, is looking at behavioral responses of sea lice–loaded fish and asking the question: do they behave normally? That work is now being done, and it's being funded by guess who. B.C. salmon forum. It's being done in the same building as Kevin Butterworth, who is looking properly now at what the correct lice loads are.

If you say: is it one or two or three where the threshold effect is? It's based on that. I would never have gone to a condition factor.

G. Coons: I guess that's the problem we're encountering here. Our agency that's looking after our wild stocks and the effects of sea lice are using tools that scientists don't think are appropriate.

A. Farrell: But the important point there is that you have to remember that we are now looking at the right things. You can dwell on the past, or you can improve. I think we're improving, and we're improving immensely. I think the trajectory is a great trajectory. Talk about the condition factor for all you want. I mean, they shouldn't be using it. That's all, and I don't think they will be using it anymore.

G. Coons: We were talking about lobster earlier, and somewhere along the line…. I'm just wondering about some research that I came across. In looking at the use of SLICE and the possible effects on prawns, they talked about research indicating that the spot prawn and the Dungeness crab dislike food pellets even more when they contain SLICE.

Another comment was that in studies examining the toxicity of this product in lobster, the LC50 was calculated at 60 times higher than normal inclusion rates that would be found in pelleted feed under a farmsite. Being a layperson at this, I'm just wondering if this is typical research that somebody might include in a decision-making process.

A. Farrell: I don't know. I've not been involved with that aspect. I'm not sure what knowledge has been put into the decision-making process. What I have heard is that the way in which SLICE was administered to those animals was such that at high levels these animals didn't want to eat it.

One of the challenges when they do regulatory work for us and use rats is: how do you get the rats to eat the thing at such high levels that you can measure an effect? Typically, what we do in the world of toxicology, which I've spent most of my life doing, is work at concentrations well beyond what you'd expect out in the environment, and then you extrapolate back. It's not a trivial study.

The point is that that is one study and not many studies, which comes back to an earlier comment I made. Should you make decisions on one study or many studies? I think there are criticisms about the quality of that study, but I don't know what goes into the regulatory levels.

G. Coons: One other comment. In some jurisdictions, in Norway and Ireland or some other jurisdictions, they stipulate preventative measures such as whole-bay management or single-age stocking, fallowing, mandatory lice trigger levels for treatment. Do you think that we should be incorporating that in our regulations?

A. Farrell: I think we do. My understanding is that we have triggers for lice management, which I already alluded to and which are much more precautionary

than those in Norway. The second one is that I believe there has been fallowing on the basis of accumulation of sediments under pens, but I'm not sure that was triggered by SLICE accumulations or just sediment itself.

G. Coons: Just a comment on the lice triggering levels. The information I've got as far as Norway and Ireland. In February 2002 new limits were set in Norway to a mean of 0.5 adult females and going to 0.3-to-0.5 female lice per fish. In Ireland they went to, apparently, 0.3-to-0.5 female lice per fish during certain times — during the March-to-May inclusive, or during the outgoing-smolt period. That compares to three-mobile-lice sampling during smolt out-migration and six for the remainder of the year in B.C. jurisdictions. That's information I've got as far as lice….

A. Farrell: I'm not aware of that information. I can't comment, but I will comment that I've never seen 0.3 of a louse. I've only ever seen one louse, but I've never seen part of a louse on a fish. I mean, I'm struggling with that.

A. Farrell: Zero point three. So that means you would have one louse on three fish.

G. Coons: These are the new limits that apparently were set in Norway in February 2000.

My last comment, so that we can move on, is that I'm glad you talked about marine protected areas, because a major concern that we have…. I understand that in Norway they do have some fish farm–free fjords. They've been created, obviously, for certain reasons — concerns about the environment, concerns about wild stocks. Do you think that in British Columbia we should have jurisdictions where we have, say, fish farm–free areas?

A. Farrell: My answer to that is, again, that the regional representatives should make all sorts of decisions. I personally don't want to do it. I live in Whytecliff Park, and I'm passionate about doing that. I've watched my neighbours protest over Eagleridge Bluffs. What can I say? One of the members of cabinet has decided that it's going to go through — that road.

We elect you people to office to make wise decisions for us. All I will implore is: make a wise decision about how we use our coastal resources, and you'll have my support.

R. Austin (Chair): At that point I would like to thank Dr. Farrell for coming here and making his presentation.

Unfortunately, as it is very late in the day and this room is actually going to be in use by another group very shortly and we have run late, I have asked whether the last witnesses could maybe…. We'll try and rearrange to meet them another day, because this room is gong to be needed. It's very difficult to listen to somebody in only ten minutes, so I think, at this point, that we will bring this committee to an end for the day, and we'll make some arrangements to meet with the other presenters some other time.

I do apologize for that. What happened is that there was such a large presentation this morning and so many questions that we got behind. So we're at this point now. If the room wasn't going to be used by somebody else, we'd just happily carry on, but unfortunately, it has been sold to another group, which makes it very difficult for us to use any flexibility here.

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	1)	Andrew Thomson, A/Director, Aquaculture Division, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada
	2)	Ministry of Agriculture and Lands • Larry Pedersen, Deputy Minister • Al Castledine, Director, Aquaculture Development • Yves Antaya, Section Head, Compliance and Monitoring Unit, Aquaculture Licensing and Compliance Branch • Dr. Ron Lewis, Director, Animal Health Branch • Jaclynn Hunter, Director, Fisheries and Aquaculture Licensing and Compliance Branch Ministry of Environment • Randy Alexander, Regional Environmental Protection Manager, Vancouver Island Regional Office • Chris Trumpy, Deputy Minister • Bud Graham, Assistant Deputy Minister, Oceans & Marine Fisheries Division
	3)	Anthony P. Farrell, Professor, Chair in Sustainable Aquaculture, at the DFO UBC Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		65

Committee Staff:	Brant Felker (Committee Research Analyst)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE