Sustainable Aquaculture — Issue No. 8 — Monday, June 5, 2006 (HTML)

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

Robin Austin, MLA
Chair

Craig James
Clerk Assistant and
Clerk of Committees

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		111
	L. Erickson
	R. Saunders
	L. MacBride
	D. Groves
	W. Gorrie
	J. Brackett
	G. Putz
	D. McCallum
	C. Schmitt
	K. Kornbacher

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:	Dr. Jim Brackett Lloyd Erickson Wayne Gorrie (PR Aqua Ltd.) Dr. David Groves (Seaspring Salmon Farm Ltd.) Kim Kornbacher Laurie MacBride (Executive Director, Georgia Strait Alliance) David McCallum Gordon Putz (Penta Transport Ltd.) Robert Saunders (President, Island Scallops Ltd.) Carol Schmitt (Omega Pacific Seafarms Inc.; Omega Pacific Hatchery Inc.)

R. Austin (Chair): Good afternoon. My name is Robin Austin, and I am Chair of the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Aquaculture Committee's public hearing in Nanaimo. It's a real pleasure for us to be in your community and to hear directly from you about this important topic.

For your information, today's meeting is a public meeting which will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of this transcript, along with the minutes of this meeting, will be printed and will be made available on the committees website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/aquaculture.

In addition to the meeting transcript, a live audio webcast of this meeting is produced and available on the committees website to enable interested listeners to hear the proceedings as they occur. An archived copy of the audio broadcast will also be retained on the committees website.

Let me also, for the benefit of the presenters, read out the mandate this committee has. The Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture was reissued the following terms of reference by the Legislative Assembly on February 20, 2006. The committee will be empowered to examine, inquire into and make recommendations with respect to sustainable aquaculture in British Columbia and in particular, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, to consider the economic and environmental impacts of the aquaculture industry in B.C.; the economic impact of aquaculture on B.C.'s coastal and isolated communities; sustainable options for aquaculture in British Columbia that balance economic goals with environmental imperatives, focusing on the interaction between aquaculture, wild fish and the marine environment; as well as B.C.'s regulatory regime as it compares to other jurisdictions. The committee is to report to the House no later than May 31, 2007.

Today we have a number of people working with us. Adam Wang and Alison Braid-Skolski are here from Hansard Services. They record what is said during the hearing, and then Hansard produces a transcript of what people say, which is posted on the Internet. We also have staff from the Office of the Clerk of Committees. On my left, Craig James is our Clerk of Committees. Our researcher, Brant Felker, is at the information table.

I would now like to invite members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting on my right.

R. Austin (Chair): We have a very tight schedule with a number of people who want to make submissions. Each presenter is allotted a 20-minute time slot. I hope that people will be able to make their presentation within the ten-minute mark to enable members of the committee to ask questions.

If we do get ahead of ourselves in timekeeping, then I would invite people who are listening to the public hearings, if they want to come up and make some comments, to please do so. Otherwise, we will have to try to keep to this schedule.

I would now like to encourage presenters to throw as much light as they can on the mandate of this committee to help us in our work. I would like to invite Lloyd Erickson up to the witness table to begin the first presentation.

L. Erickson: Good afternoon, hon. members and committee members. My name is Lloyd Erickson. I'm the former and retired head of the environmental quality section of the environmental protection division of the Ministry of Environment in Vancouver Island region. This division was once called the pollution control branch. I have a bachelor of science degree from UVic, with specialty in marine biology, freshwater ecology and fisheries.

The role of the environmental section has been to assess the environmental impacts of major discharges such as pulp mills, municipal discharges and fish farms. I've been a local monitoring committee member, examining Vancouver Island pulp mill environmental impact assessment programs in cooperation with Environment Canada. I was a member of the capital regional district Marine Monitoring Advisory Group, reviewing the monitoring programs for Macaulay Point and Clover Point in Victoria.

I was also on the fish farm review committee, which involved a panel including members from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the Lands branch. The latter two groups are now the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. I am one of a very limited number of people who can provide you with firsthand knowledge about pollution from fish farms and other industries.

I was the principle author of a ministry report titled: A Preliminary Review of Chemical and Physical Data for Year 2000 Interim Monitoring Program. This is the first document describing environmental effects from the fish-farming industry over the whole B.C. coast and is the first government document to report widespread anoxic sediments under net pens. Data gathered for this report was used in developing the recent environmental protection division finfish aquaculture waste control regulation. That data, plus some limited biological data, received a later review by the scientific advisory group who provided scientific advice to our ministry during development of the regulation.

The scientific advisory group reports are available on the Ministry of Environment website and can help you understand the issues pertinent to the environmental standards in the regulation.

My purpose in talking to you today is to bring some concerns I have about the use of open-net pens to raise fish in marine aquaculture facilities. Perhaps the most obvious and studied impact of salmon aquaculture facilities is from the fish wastes and lost feed falling to the bottom of the net pens. These net pens are merely corrals around a feed lot, and fish poo sinks, smothering the bottom under the net pens in black, stinking mud. If you can obtain a sample of this mud, you will notice it's rotten-egg smell. That odour is hydrogen sulphide, a gas highly toxic to living organisms. This gas is a certain sign that the wastes have overwhelmed the assimilative capacity of the ocean and that all the oxygen in the sediments has been consumed.

We use the term "anoxic." No doubt someone will reassure you that these sediments will recover. That would be true if the aquaculture facility went away. But in at least one case where the net pens were removed, at a place called Carrie Bay, the pollution footprint was identifiable three years later.

The recovery required in the regulation is measured only in the top ten centimetres of sediment, a layer collected in a sediment sampler. This layer is closest to the surface and recovers first. The scientific advisory group reports clearly show that the bottom sediments will be anoxic again within a few weeks of fish being fed again at that site.

When you visit a fish farm, you may be impressed by how clean everything looks. Likely, even the nets look clean. For those of you who own a boat, you might wonder why the nets don't get fouled by marine organisms. The fish farm operators deal with potential fouling the same way you would: by painting with antifoulant paint. The volume of antifoulant paint used on one farm is staggering. Just one 50-by-50-foot net, which I'll call one net unit, requires approximately 60 gallons of paint. Multiply that by the number of net units to determine how many gallons the whole facility required.

The active ingredient is copper in a cuprous oxide latex formula. Copper is super toxic to marine plankton in concentrations in the order of 30 parts per billion. In spite of the high toxicity of this paint and the enormous volumes that the aquaculture industry is putting directly into the water, there have been no environmental impact studies. I understand that there are some ongoing now through UVic.

However, within about six months the nets will eventually get fouled, as happens with boats. Once fouled by a few organisms, the nets quickly become covered by a diverse community dominated usually by mussels. This community consists principally of filter-feeders. They feed by filtering phytoplankton and other microscopic organisms out of the water. One might surmise that the environmental impact from the net associated filter-feeding communities would be pretty minor, but let's look more closely.

The net pens hang down from the surface to a depth of 15 metres, collecting from the critical photic zone of the ocean. This is a zone where the phytoplankton, the primary producers, collect all their energy. The juvenile stages of every invertebrate species also spend part of their life stage in plankton, and much of that time is in the photic zone.

Let's calculate how much water gets filtered out per day. Average currents might be three kilometres per hour on a well-flushed fish farm site. Over the space of 24 hours, 72 kilometres of water would flow through the nets, for 365 days per year for an 18-month grow-out cycle.

We don't need to guess how much biomass is filtered out. When the nets are removed from the water, they weigh one to four tonnes more than when put in the water. Using a conservative one-step multiplier in the food chain, that would mean at least ten tonnes of phytoplankton filtered out of the water for only one 50-by-50 foot net. Multiply that by the number of net units in one facility and then by the number of operating fish farms on the coast — 94 or so.

So what do the fish farmers do with that biomass? They waste it. They either wash it off in the ocean to add to the other waste deposited under the nets, or they send the nets to an upland site to be cleaned.

Fish farming not only releases waste, but it also causes large amounts of natural production to be wasted as well. The fact that nets are open to the flow of water means not only do materials put into the nets flow out, but also natural hazards outside the nets can flow in and harm the fish. These hazards can include harmful algae blooms, seasonal low-oxygen conditions, fish diseases, fish parasites such as sea lice.

Occasionally, when hazards are serious enough to cause mortalities, a serious fish kill can result. What do you do with thousands and thousands of rotting, smelling fish? In the first week after the fish kill most of the fish are already so rotten that they can fall apart and slip through the nets.

How long do you suppose it takes to clean up a fish farm where there are 250,000 fish? How long do you think it would take to clean up 600,000 fish, such as has been approved for a new site at Bennett Point? That proposed production for Bennett Point is 4,400 metric tonnes. Where could such a volume of dead fish be disposed of? How would fish farms in the remote central B.C. coast handle these problems?

Interestingly, there is a solution to these problems I've mentioned — to avoid dumping poisons into the water and to protect fish from natural hazards. The solution is very simple. Fish need to be grown in closed containment facilities. These could be floating or on land. The material replacing the nets could be solid, like concrete, or soft, such as fabric used by Future SEA.

Putting the fish into closed containment structures, where the quality of the discharge could be controlled, would eliminate 99 percent of the environmental impact that fish farms presently have. Potentially, putting such containment facilities on land would reduce the number of approvals needed and allow a faster setting up of a facility.

There are a lot of benefits to using closed containment facilities. A number of natural hazards, such as toxic algae blooms and seasonal low-oxygen levels, can be avoided by using closed containment. Farmwide fish kills, which are a factor preventing industry from being even more profitable, could be avoided.

One argument against closed containment is the high cost of pumping water. This is certainly true when using traditional energy sources such as fossil fuels. But the fish farms are sitting in the largest and most reliable source of energy in the world: the tidal waters. Theoretically, they could use the most efficient conversion possible, converting mechanical energy to pump energy.

Alternatively, they could use tidal energy to generate electricity to pump water. I found on the Internet a few tidewater electricity generating plants already designed. This is just one example how research and development could help protect the environment.

History has shown that to the B.C. aquaculture industry, competitiveness means being able to pollute as freely as your competition. Also in the name of competitiveness, this industry wants to be allowed to have bigger and bigger operations at each site and more and more sites in pristine wilderness areas. But who pays the costs of growing environmental impacts? Doesn't sustainable mean existing without making the environment pay?

Recommendations. There should be a moratorium on open netcage facilities. Only closed containment facilities should be given new aquaculture permits. The toxic impacts of the application of antifoulant paints on net should be investigated. All net pens should be weighed before being put into the water and again when being removed in order to provide scientific information on the biomass of fouling organisms being removed.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you, Lloyd. I'd like to invite members to ask some questions. Please bear in mind, as we saw in last Thursday's meeting, it will be impossible for all members to get an opportunity to ask every single witness a question here. So I would ask that you please keep your preamble to a minimum and get to the point directly so that we can have as many questions as possible.

J. Yap: Thank you, Lloyd, for your presentation. I'm wondering. You referred to the main disadvantage of a closed containment system being the cost and power being a big component. You mentioned going to the Internet for information. From your knowledge, what potential is there from a business standpoint in terms of the full costing and economic feasibility of a closed containment? As you sort of hint at, that's one of the challenges with closed containment. What are your thoughts on that?

L. Erickson: I'm not an expert on that, but I did take a look at a number of the programs where there were some trials done. There's one down at Cedar, and there's one with a Future SEA farm type of facility. I think the biggest cost is the initial capital cost of setting up such a structure — the net pens or the nets or the bags. If they went on land, they would have to have proper containment. The type of structure they'd need, the amount of weight and whatnot, all has to be engineered, so there'd also be a high engineering cost in setting something like that up.

Probably some research would have to be done in order to make sure they could optimize all the different variables that they deal with in setting up those structures.

C. Trevena: I've got a couple of questions from your work as an environmental officer. Did you study at all the effects of the fish waste going from the pens beyond just beneath the pens — how far the waste spread at all?

L. Erickson: Yes, we did, and a number of scientists also working for the industry looked at the effects beyond the net pens as well.

L. Erickson: The effects fall off fairly quickly as you get further away from the net pens. Most of the effects occur within a hundred metres and most seriously, say, out to about a hundred feet where the regulation directs us to do some sampling. There definitely is a fall-off effect. The farther you get away from the net pens, the less the impact.

C. Trevena: The second question I have is…. You're talking about closed containment, but there's still the issue, obviously, of waste there. You know, salmon create waste. I wondered if you had thought of any ways that that could be mitigated, even with closed containment.

L. Erickson: The Future SEA pens have a particular type of waste capture system. Also, one of the reasons why fish feces go to the bottom is that quite a lot of them actually maintain a…. Feces. There's actually a solid pellet that goes and falls straight to the bottom. Even doing things like having that masticated and

made into very fine particles would spread it farther and have less of an impact and less of a buildup. There are a lot of different things. Some of the waste from the fish is in soluble form, and it does disappear in the water naturally. You don't even see it.

G. Coons: Thank you, Mr. Erickson, for your presentation. I was just wondering. With your background with the Ministry of Environment, what's your opinion of our regulatory regime and its enforcement?

L. Erickson: I think that the regulation we've developed was a good attempt to bring science into a regulatory format, but even in the development of that, we realized the limitations of the regulation as we have it today. We realized that we need to have another look at it and that perhaps the standards aren't as tough as they should be to provide adequate protection to the environment. By putting specific performance-based standards in the regulation, it provides a better handle on something that we can actually enforce, which we didn't have as good a handle on before.

As far as the best regulation we could have, I think people would agree that we could go a long way yet to have a better regulation, as we look at the data that's coming in.

You talked a lot in the presentation about the environmental impact of the waste. Based on your experience and your background, what might we expect the impact to be of this kind of waste on the wild fishery or on the marine habitat? What's the impact of that environmental waste?

L. Erickson: When you take a look at the initial studies, when we take a look at the bottom, we have a lot of marine organisms that everybody's familiar with — like sea cucumbers, sea anemones, sea urchins and some really large invertebrate species there — and basically, those are gone. Underneath the fish farms, the impact…. Even with recovery you don't see very many of them coming back in any number.

Most of the invertebrates we see that are in the samples when there has been waste have been species that have been resistant to the types of material that are there. So we see an absolute change in the community structure, in the benthic environment underneath the net pens and a little bit beyond. In some cases we can see enrichment, where the actual amount of biomass is much greater within an enrichment zone. In other cases we've also seen where there's been a serious decline in the biomass, the biota, that's underneath the fish farms.

S. Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Erickson, for your presentation. You refer at quite a length to antifoulant paints and the problems that can be associated with that. You mentioned that there was some work…. I guess it's been started recently since….

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Erickson, for your presentation.

R. Saunders: Thank you for taking the time. My name is Rob Saunders. My passion is growing things, particularly plants and animals in the ocean. I've been doing it since 1975. More recently, since about 1989, I've been growing scallops up in Qualicum Beach.

Scallop farming in B.C. is a fairly unique and new industry to B.C. It's a green industry in that we don't feed the animal. It feeds on phytoplankton. It is a Pacific scallop. It was introduced in the early '80s by the Pacific Biological Station where Dr. Neil Bourne did about ten years of excellent research on culture techniques. He probably led the world.

The unique side of scallop farming is that we have hybridized the local weathervane scallop which occurs down by Cherry Point in a small population up off the north end of the Charlottes. As I said, the Japanese scallop was introduced in the 1980s.

A scallop farm is a unique type of shellfish farming. It's submerged. It's approximately 30 feet below the surface. The farm is supported by subsurface longlines. There are no structural components on the surface of the water. If you go by the rest stop at Fanny Bay, by Baynes Sound, you can look out, and you won't see our scallop farm.

It's also low density per unit area. This is a cross-section of what a scallop farm looks like. There are three marker floats on the surface. All these pressure floats are 30 feet below the surface, and the scallops are grown through a series of density reductions over a period of 24 months.

This is the rest-stop farm I alluded to earlier. The boat in the foreground here is…. There are two boats at this farm: one here and one in the foreground. This is that boat. There are four people working on it. This is the submerged longline coming up on power lines and the nets in which the scallops are grown into.

This is what the nets look like close up. We've used some of these nets for over ten years.

Scallops are also grown on a technique called ear-hanging where a pin is placed through the ear of the scallop. All scallops in B.C. originate at our hatchery in Qualicum Beach. It's been there, as I said, for about 17 years. Scallops produce a free-swimming stage — like oysters, mussels, clams — for about 21 days, and then it metamorphoses into an animal that you see on the Shell Oil sign.

Our farms are located primarily in Baynes Sound off Bowser, and we have a number of other farms that we supply seed to.

Worldwide there are about 1.2 million tonnes of scallops produced annually. In Japan scallop farms support whole communities, and it produces approximately $500 million a year. I'm talking shellfish, obviously.

Shellfish in B.C. There are 302 companies, 164 sites, 2,800 hectares and approximately 800 direct jobs producing approximately 8,600 tonnes for a farm gate of about $16 million. Currently the provincial government has released 17 licences for scallop farming, and they occur everywhere from south of Vancouver Island to the Queen Charlottes.

We've been working with 12 first nations on the central coast where they've been looking at oysters, clams, mussels and scallops, and they've come to the conclusion that scallop farming has the most economic potential for them. The best example I can give you for that is: if you have a pickup truck full of oysters, 200 dozen at $3 a dozen, that's $600. If you have 2,400 scallops at a buck a scallop, it's $2,400. It's a big difference. It's the pickup truck economics.

Our farms in Baynes Sound and off Bowser have an economic potential for $100 million annually. It's not a small industry that we're talking about. It will provide over 130 full-time jobs and 200 part-time jobs, and it will significantly affect a number of support industries. We've talked to the Qualicum Indian band, which has a 12,000-square-foot processing plant that's used about three times a year, and we've agreed to upgrade their facility to handle shellfish.

Potential environmental impacts: navigation; fisheries; habitat and carrying capacity, which you've heard; visual noise pollution and other pollution; and socioeconomic impact.

First, navigational issues. The farm is subsurface, 30 feet below the surface, a few scattered marker buoys. Boundaries are well marked and are required by Navigation Canada, and again, all structures are subsurface. This is, again, the farm off Denman Point on Denman Island. You can see the navigational aids and marker floats for the lines, so the visual impact is low.

Fisheries. The main concern is herring spawning. All of our farms are a minimum of 300 metres offshore in 100 to 150 feet of water. Herring spawn in inshore and shallow waters. In the 17 years, I've yet to see a herring spawn on any of our equipment.

Fish habitat isn't destroyed or harmed by our farms. If anything, it's a natural reef that we put out midwater. For example, on our nets that you saw earlier, there can be approximately a thousand small shrimp called caprellids per net. We have 300,000 nets out there. Each produce approximately 3,000 to 5,000 larvae in a 21-day larval life. What we see colonizing our farm are sailfin sculpins, gobies, small rockfish, crab and a variety of other invertebrates. We aren't anywhere near kelp beds, eelgrass or other sensitive habitats, and if anything, the farm structure has a positive impact by providing refuges for juvenile fish as well as positive habitat.

This is what a string looks like. Some of the work by the Centre for Shellfish Research has shown that one oyster longline produces approximately 1,600 different individuals, so increasing productivity. Shellfish are filter feeders. They're feeding on naturally occurring plankton. We don't fertilize the ocean. We have good years and bad years, depending on the type of blooms we achieve.

All the scallop farming is fairly unique, and the equipment is valuable and reusable. We don't have disposable materials, and we don't add chemicals. The boats are small. These are 40-foot boats. There are no evening activities, there are no large floating structures, and the farms are offshore.

Direct jobs. There's obviously a large spinoff for maintaining these vessels, the processing sector and so on.

There are no wild fisheries of scallops of this size. They are a small pink scallop — different species, different habitat. Scallop farming is sustainable because all the seed is produced by our hatchery.

There's a large demand and high value for this species. The U.S. consumes about a billion scallops a year, worth about $300 million. The scallop is fast-growing. You have a product out in two years, and the farming methods are environmentally sound.

Regulatory issues. I'm sure you probably won't hear very much about shellfish in these committee meetings. Clearly, the priority is finfish and not shellfish. Year-round shellfish farming is not treated equitably with other industries. You have short-term fisheries that last maybe three or four days, and there is no mandate to work with the other groups.

There is a duplication of referrals. For example, environmental impacts now are sent off by both lands branch and Transport Canada, increasing a significant amount of time for applications. The problem with scallop farming and everything new is that the regulations were based on farming techniques that were 25 years old — for example, mussel farms in P.E.I. A small farm there would be 115 or 120 hectares.

Aquaculture has not got the right to farm yet, even though we are a subsurface operation and there is very little impact, both by boat traffic — tugboat operations — and recreational use. In Japan it's been a very big success story. When the worldwide limit came in, in 1967, the Hokkaido fisheries crashed, and they started aquaculture of scallops, and it's a big success story there.

We have worked with Morocco and are still trying to set up a hatchery there, both for their oyster and their scallop.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you, Robert. If you'd like to just go back to the witness table now and answer some questions.

G. Coons: Thank you, Robert. Very informative. I'll keep that on my back burner.

When somebody like you applies for a site, what type of environmental assessment would you go through? Would there be habitat banking that would be expected of…?

R. Saunders: At this stage there isn't habitat banking like they're doing for salmon farming. We do have SEA, which is administrated by Transport Canada. It requires underwater video surveys on 20-metre transects to depth. We've had a farm in operation now for 17 years, so it's not a "what if." This is what it is. I think the estimate is that the amount of debris from an oyster farm on Baynes Sound is less than an eraser head per square metre per year. The impact is much, much lower.

This is a fairly big application, the 375 hectares. I'm used to dealing with oyster farms that are ten hectares and that sort of thing. The scale of this particular expansion has certainly raised some public concerns, as you're aware. Certainly, I have been the recipient of some of those too, and I'm mindful of those. A lot of people live in the area. It's not that remote. It's a busy area.

A couple of questions around…. Have there been any…? The navigational issues. A lot of boating happens there. Has that been dealt with by NavCan yet?

R. Saunders: Yeah. I had a meeting with them last week. We've reduced the area now from 375 to 125. There will be no surface markers at all. They'll all be subsurface. We'll use site scans, sonar and pingers to identify the farms. There will be no visual pollution. The Coast Guard is still deciding how many marker buoys.

We reduced the area by two-thirds — no visual pollution, 30 feet below the surface. The reason for this is that the farms themselves…. The lines are 100 feet apart, because when you bring that line to the surface and then let it go in the current, you can tangle it on its nearest neighbour. This is a large footprint because of that, because it's subsurface.

As far as the transport of the area, there was a herring fishery there this spring, a fairly large spawn there. Our farm is almost a kilometre offshore, so none of the fishing occurred there. Even the packers were inshore of the lease area. By regulation, all salmon farming has to be two kilometres offshore, and we're inside of that.

As far as navigable waters transport, moving through, we have a farm at Denman Point that sees annually a large seine and gill-net fishery. They transit the areas without a problem. Sailboats and motorboats do not cause us any concern.

S. Fraser: If I may, just a couple of quick ones. Carrying capacity. Again, we've got filter-feeders, bivalves. Has there been any carrying-capacity work?

R. Saunders: Yes, there are a number of studies done by Simon Fraser, and the estimation is that in Baynes Sound they're using less than 10 percent of the biomass in Baynes Sound alone, for all bivalve culture.

S. Fraser: I'm glad to hear that they're dealing with the size of this. I know that could be a problem for you too. But are there issues when you've got a fairly large farm? With oysters you can get things like Denman disease and that, and if you're on a tenure, the infection can spread throughout that tenure. Is there a risk by having a concentration in an area like this?

R. Saunders: Absolutely. It's farming. I'm sure chicken farmers in Abbotsford would tell you that if you put lots of chickens together, there's always this association. We grow things on an economic scale, so you need to put animals in an area that you can get to.

It's still an isolated area as far as …. I grew up there. I spent all my life there. Sports fishing occurred around Chrome Island and Norris Rocks, not around that particular area. I've gone off the topic there.

When you grow things, disease happens. When we first put this animal in the water, we lost 99 percent of our crop in 2002. It's taken us eight years to breed a disease-resistant strain. We're just starting to farm the oceans, and I don't know all the problems that will occur.

R. Saunders: Cadmium doesn't concentrate in the meat. Cadmium concentrates in the gut, and the little white meat is what you eat.

S. Fraser: So it's not an issue, especially as it is in Europe, with that market?

R. Saunders: If you sell the product live, it's an issue into Europe, but we don't ship live to Europe.

R. Saunders: Yes, at 1 ppm, I believe. I think there's more cadmium in rice than there is in the scallops.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you very much, Robert. I'd like to invite Laurie MacBride from the Georgia Strait Alliance to come up and make a presentation.

L. MacBride: I haven't met most of you before, so I will just briefly introduce myself and why I'm involved in this issue. I've been a very close observer of the aquaculture industry since about 1992, when I began to be involved on both an informal and a formal basis in consultation with the province through various formats, including the MAIAC — the Minister's Aquaculture Industry Advisory Council, which I was appointed to in 1993 — and the salmon aquaculture review, to which I was a representative for the environmental sector from 1996 to 1997.

Prior to that, I was working with MAFF and MELP, who were trying to develop an action plan on salmon aquaculture. I also served two years on SAIAC, the Salmon Aquaculture Implementation Advisory Committee, which was struck following the salmon aquaculture review, and I've been involved in a number of other ways over the years. I made submissions the two times the federal standing committee toured our region, and so on.

In addition to the report card which has just been passed around to you, rather than bring you heaps of files, I've done the environmentally sensible thing today and brought you a CD with about 25 or 30 files on it — various correspondence, reports and submissions from about 1994 to the present. That will be part of your public record as well.

For the report card, which has just been passed to you and which we issued two years ago, we looked at the 49 recommendations that the environmental assessment office gave following the salmon aquaculture review. We used that as a benchmark. The government had been saying repeatedly that they had fully implemented 39 out of the 49. We looked at it, and our analysis differs very much from that. We found only ten of the recommendations that had been fully implemented, and either gaps or complete holes in all of the rest. The grade levels that we gave for the various issues, as far as we're concerned, still stand.

We know that the government did do a response to our report, which we only found out about through a court case that the Homalco First Nation took against the government. The government's response to our report card was one of the documents that they filed in their defence. I only saw their response for the first time this morning. I've pored through about half of it now, and I can say that nothing has changed. The answer…. If you want at some future date to sit down and do a detailed look through our report card, the government's response to our report card and why we don't see the response as answering our concerns, we'd be happy to do that. Both are thick documents.

I would just add to the report card that's been passed around that it is essentially the executive-summary version. The full version is on line, including about 70 additional pages of all of the detailed assessments, references and so on.

Since then, as I say, we don't see that anything has changed. The waste regulation was flawed when it was introduced four years ago. It's still flawed. The allowable limits that were set in that recommendation are too high. Even DFO scientists said at the time in a peer-reviewed study that they felt it would not be effective, that it wasn't the right approach, that it was likely to result in a significant loss of benthic biodiversity and that they could find no scientific information that validated the approach that was taken.

The situation is still problematic in terms of predator control. Just last month 12 sea lions were drowned in predator nets in Clayoquot Sound.

Fish health — still the same problems. Back in the salmon aquaculture review, the government couldn't get the data from the industry on a farm-by-farm basis about when disease outbreaks occurred, when drugs were used and so on, and that's still the case.

Nowadays we have a database that is maintained by the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association. The public has no access to the data. Even the government has no access to the data, only to the compiled report, and the compiled quarterly report is a very generalized document. I've looked at them. There's not much there that addresses the kind of questions that came up in the salmon aquaculture review, the kind of things that people wanted to hear in terms of when farms are applying medication, what farms have disease outbreaks and so on. None of that is public yet, so things haven't changed.

There are other examples I could draw on in terms of first nations consultation, the escapes regulation, transparency, public accountability and so on. I would say we're in essentially the same situation we were in when we did the report card.

The B.C. government has claimed over and over that B.C. is the most highly regulated jurisdiction in the world in terms of salmon aquaculture. I would beg to differ. Just look at Norway, for instance. Now, I'm not saying that Norway's regulation is great. There are lots of things to criticize about the regulation of the Norwegian industry, but it's stronger than B.C.'s.

To give just two examples. In dealing with sea lice outbreaks, for one thing, when the number of lice on the fish in a farm hits a specified trigger level, the industry in Norway is required to act immediately to begin treatment. In B.C., by contrast, the company is supposed to notify the provincial veterinarian. They discuss the situation, and then the company is supposed to come up with a plan, which usually is either to treat with SLICE — ivermectin benzoate — or to harvest out the fish.

It could take several weeks to do that. It could take as long as perhaps three to six weeks to harvest out the fish. In the meanwhile, you've got a deadly reservoir of sea lice there, which allows the sea lice to multiply and, potentially, to infect passing fish. That's one example of where B.C.'s regulation is not as tough as Norway's.

The other that I'll cite is in the siting of salmon farms. In Norway important fjords have been identified, and no salmon farms are allowed in these fjords or near the mouth of them. We have no such restriction in B.C., and that is a cause for concern for sure.

If you want to look at the most highly regulated jurisdiction in the world in terms of salmon aquaculture, look to the north. It's Alaska. That's where they're banned entirely. The reason for that is because Alaska has taken very seriously what it sees as the risk to its wild salmon fishery. It very much values that wild salmon fishery and the coastal communities dependent upon it.

I would just add that B.C. and Alaska are probably the last remaining places with healthy and productive runs of wild salmon that do support a wild salmon fishery, and we should think about that.

I want to talk a little bit about the public consultation record in the B.C. aquaculture debate, starting with the MAIAC — the Minister's Aquaculture Industry Advisory Council — way back in the early '90s. I was appointed to represent the environmental sector late in 1993, more than a year after I had been nominated to replace a resigning rep. Other new appointments were made at the same time, but strangely enough, the MAIAC was never again called to meet, despite several requests by a number of us for a meeting.

At the same time or even earlier, MAFF staff began implementing a set of recommendations that had been delivered to the minister in January of '93. At least two of the reps on the MAIAC at that time have told us that there was never any vote or formal consensus on the draft report or recommendations and that they had indeed voiced disagreement with a number of them, yet these were styled as if they were coming from the MAIAC. Some of my correspondence regarding the MAIAC is on the CD that I'm leaving with you.

On the salmon aquaculture review. It is often styled as being an exhaustive and comprehensive review. It was not. At best, it was a literature review. There were no new studies or research undertaken, and much of the important evidence in this whole debate came to light only after the environmental assessment office had filed its report, and so it was never considered in the salmon aquaculture process.

For example, the outbreak and spread of infectious salmon anemia in New Brunswick, the fact that Atlantics have been found to have spawned in at least three rivers on Vancouver Island and the number of rivers on Vancouver Island that had been found to have adult Atlantics in them…. These were things that came to light after the salmon aquaculture review. At best, the report from that review needs to be considered incomplete, because events overtook it in so many cases.

The Salmon Aquaculture Implementation Advisory Committee was struck to advise on implementation of policy following the review, and it was a failure right from the start. It did not represent all the key interests. There were some very important interests missing.

The members of the committee were not treated equally. For example, siting criteria were determined prior to the SAIAC meeting in closed-door discussions with industry. It wasn't until many months later, when we pressed for answers to why and when the criteria were altered, that we learned this.

Crucial information was requested time and again at meetings and not delivered. There was no evidence that the considerable input we provided during that process ever made it to the relevant ministers. Most importantly, SAIAC members seemed to be treated as a rubber stamp.

All the significant decisions were made by the province prior to any consultation with SAIAC, such as the escape regulations brought in before we could comment. The amendments to that act were being tabled at the SAIAC meeting as…. It was comical. I think we were upstairs in a meeting room while downstairs the government was holding a press conference to announce them.

The final straw, and the reason that the environmental sector — all three of us — resigned from that committee was when we learned that the government had decided to lift the moratorium on new sites the day before our January 2002 SAIAC meeting but did not tell SAIAC about this the next day in our meeting and, in fact, held on to that information till several weeks later. We, the SAIAC members who were supposed to advise government on policy, did not even hear about it until the media reports a couple of weeks later.

The public consultation has also failed around siting. There have been unclear criteria about what requires a public consultation. It seems inconsistently applied. The public often feels ignored when it provides input. There are many examples of that.

We hope this process is different. I do wish you luck in your deliberations over the coming months, but I'm not encouraged by the lack of publicly accessible data — such as the site-specific, farm-by-farm-basis info on disease, sea lice and so on — or the short deadline for written public comments in this process.

I really encourage you to change that, to extend that deadline to the end of the year. I think that people need a chance to hear and consider the info presented through these hearings before some of them will be able to write their submissions. To get those reasoned submissions, I really encourage you to extend that.

B.C. has some of the richest and most beautiful natural coastal habitat in the world, which is why our coast figures so prominently in the promotional efforts of our tourism industry. Fishermen — as well as marine tourism operators and recreational users, first nations and other coastal communities — depend on this richness.

Even the forest industry depends on it, since the science now shows that it is the carcasses of the returning spawned wild salmon that are spread about by bears and eagles in the interior forests that nourish the roots of those trees and keep those forests healthy. We're all dependent on the wild salmon and marine environment of this coast.

For some very good reasons British Columbians are skeptical of claims that salmon farming as currently practised is environmentally benign. Our marine environment is already impacted by so many negative, detrimental impacts that it is questionable whether it can handle the further impacts of an expanding aquaculture industry unless that industry undergoes some significant changes in the way it operates.

We believe that it is possible for the salmon aquaculture industry to be ecologically sustainable, but only if policy decisions dictate that radical changes are made in salmon-farming practices. At the very centre of this change, there must be a conversion to safe closed containment systems. I'm not going to go into detail on those today because you'll be hearing a lot more on that in your later deliberations this week, I know.

Just finally, to close, I want to urge you that if your committee is to maintain its credibility with the public, you must urge the province to ensure that there be no further expansion of the industry until you have finished your work and your recommendations have been implemented. To do anything less would totally undermine your committee.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you, Laurie. I'd like to now entertain questions from members.

G. Coons: Thank you very much, Laurie. Thank you for the report card. That's one issue that as a committee…. I've been asking about the salmon aquaculture review and the recommendations and the follow-up on that, and how that has related to our current regulatory regime, and trying to get answers on that. You got the pros and the cons to both sides, and thank you for that.

One issue you brought up was the fjords in northern Norway. Recently a constituent of mine, Eugene Bryant from the Allied Tsimshian Tribes association, went to Norway and presented to the Prime Minister of Norway and to the King and also to Pan Fish, and issued a statement that: "We the first nations of the Skeena River and its approaches proclaim the waters of our traditional territories a fish-farm-free, wild-salmon-only zone."

I just want your interpretation of that. Do you believe that we should be looking, the same as northern Norway, at having areas that are only marine environment — protected?

L. MacBride: As an interim strategy, yes. Ultimately, I think the whole industry needs to be in closed containment, and that would solve the problem. Definitely, in the meantime we should be giving protection to the significant areas. Certainly, where it's a significant area ecologically, such as the fjords and estuary areas…. Where you have added to that first nations opposition like this, that calls very strongly for no farms in those areas.

G. Coons: One last question: your opinion on the Auditor General's report — I think it was 2004 — the tripartite report with the federal government, New Brunswick and British Columbia reporting on the provincial role in sustaining our wild stocks. That's a major concern I have, and I think this committee has, on the coexisting of the aquaculture industry and our wild stocks. Do you think there has been a move, both federally and provincially, to protect our wild stocks?

L. MacBride: I'm not seeing it. We hear rumours of the Fisheries Act being weakened. We hear a new approach at the federal level to replace the current assessment process on certain projects, which doesn't bode well in my view. I didn't get into federal issues today. On the CD I'm leaving you, there are a couple of submissions we've done to the Fisheries and Oceans standing committees when they toured here in 2000 and 2002. I have not seen a significant change since then, except worries that things might be getting worse instead of better.

S. Simpson: Thank you very much for the presentation. You spoke about availability of information. We've had that discussion both with federal officials and provincial officials in Agriculture and Lands about the availability of information and how it's collected and made available.

It appears that what happens in this industry, as with many industries, is that there is an industry stewardship model that has been adopted by the government, which essentially says that industry looks after its own interests. There is some audit and oversight function to be provided by government, which to varying degrees is successful or not.

I'd be interested to know, as somebody who has followed the industry and clearly has a view of these things, what kinds of information you think need to be made available and are not available today in order for the public to understand the industry and have confidence in it.

L. MacBride: I think back to a moment in the salmon aquaculture review, when a member of the review committee said: "My grandchildren like to swim on a beach near…." I won't name the farm. He said: "I want to know when that farm is treating its fish with drugs, because I don't want my grandchildren swimming when there's antibiotic use going on. How can I find out?"

There was no way to find out, because the info is propriety and held by the industry. Even the government doesn't have that answer. I remember what appeared like evident frustration from the government members chairing that process about that issue.

That hasn't changed. The only thing that's changed now is they get a quarterly report that reports on some very general trends like the number of mortalities in the total area — the total area being as big as the whole Clayoquot Sound or the whole Sunshine Coast or the whole of lower Johnstone Strait, Bute Inlet, etc.

That's not very useful information to the public. It doesn't give the public confidence that they can make decisions about their own activities, whether they want to take clams. For first nations, this has been a huge issue, because a lot of them do a lot of clam harvesting, and they're still very dependent on that. When is it safe for them to take clams from a beach?

Information was provided in the salmon aquaculture review showing studies finding antibiotic residues significantly higher in clams up to a fairly wide margin out from the farms. I can't remember whether it was 300 metres, 600 metres, something like that, around the farms. First nations want assurance that they're safe eating the clams. I think you'll probably be hearing from some of them during this tour, because that's one of the concerns they've had — impacts on their clam beds.

Fish health is just one area. There are so many other areas where the public needs information, but I think fish health and how it's dealt with, not on an industrywide level but on a farm-specific level, is really needed.

G. Robertson: Thanks for the presentation, Laurie. A question on your recommendations around closed containment and what you foresee as a reasonable transition for industry. My sense is that you're not seeing this as, "Here's the deal, and you guys figure out how to survive," but you have thought through how a transition might be practical and not create problems for a lot of the communities that rely on the jobs.

L. MacBride: Yeah. Now, I didn't bring the list with me, but the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, of which our organization is a member, has a list of what would be needed in a move to closed containment transition. It includes things like some demonstration models.

One of the things we're asking for is to get a couple of commercial scale demonstration models — not the little pilot projects like before but commercial scale demonstration projects — up and running as quickly as possible to work out the kinks and to show how this can be economically viable. That's been the industry's main concern, the economic viability. It's not been so much that the system can't work; it's been: will it make money?

At the end of the day, I think you have to also take a look at the externalities that are now factored out when you look at the profitability of the industry. One of the previous speakers spoke about the tremendous free energy that's there in the tidal waters. There are a whole lot of other externalities that are factored out around the cost of waste. We have an office in downtown Nanaimo, and the taxes we pay and our rent have to cover the garbage pickup.

Take a look at all those different externalities that are factored out right now and add them into the equation. A proper economic analysis needs to be done, and I think a clear time line needs to be set, such as the government did back in the 1990s around the reduction of AOX in pulp effluent. They need to set a timetable and a firm policy to get there. I'm not expecting it to happen overnight, but let's get started. If we don't get started it's never going to happen.

I'd like to next invite Dr. David Groves from Seaspring Salmon Farm to come and make a presentation.

D. Groves: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Deputy Chairman and members of the committee.

Just a little bit about my background. I have a doctor's degree in biochemistry. My real background is in animal production. I have a master's and a bachelor's degree in that. I've applied everything I know, since about 1973, to actually farming, which includes fish farming. Initially, with the fish farming end of it, it was far more important to learn how to drive a bulldozer and fit pipe together, but certainly in the last ten or 15 years it's been necessary to use everything I've ever learned.

Ten years ago it would have been impossible for anybody to convince me that I would ever get interested in sea lice. Nevertheless, in the spring of 2001, when the issue began to be discussed rather urgently in relation to the pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago, it looked like something that we really needed to understand. Because I wasn't well versed…. I'm not a parasitologist; I'm a bioenergeticist — quantitative nutritionist and that sort of thing. Initially it looked like this was something really different.

I looked at the pictures of the little pink salmon covered with sea lice that were circulated. To me, there was something that kind of nagged. One of them was: they all looked like starving fish. At that point, because of the lack of general background information on the little pink salmon…. There was quite a lot of data, actually, on the growth of normal pink salmon, but certainly, under those circumstances, the quick argument would be: "Well, you'd look pretty thin, too, if you had all those sea lice all over you."

Then I began to see pictures, occasionally, from people like Alexandra Morton. Apart from showing the pictures of pasty little pink salmon covered with sea lice, she occasionally showed some pictures of some pretty good pink salmon that were taken out of Thompson Sound. They had a few lice on them, but they were in good shape.

One of the things about fish culture and making a living out of fish culture, raising fallow deer and various other growing animals is that a livestock production manager learns to continuously monitor the condition of his livestock. That's what his livelihood is based on. So one gets very good at a sort of hand-eye coordination between the feed…. In most agricultural circumstances, you know how much feed is involved. If you're feeding fish in a fish farm, you'd know how much feed is involved because you weigh it. It's dry feed. It's easily weighed. Coordination between the amount of feed and the result of that feeding — the growth rate of the fish, their condition, their health…. It kind of all works together.

In situations like the production of wild salmon…. Incidentally, I've spent a lot of time doing salmon enhancement, particularly with fry. They're no different. They just eat something different. They have a little different behaviour, but they still expend energy to grow. They still expend energy to move around and to maintain their body weight. It's hard, though, to measure what their feed supply is, because you can't just go and find out very readily how much grass a sheep is eating or you can't find out how many diatoms a little pink salmon is eating.

However, the central point of bioenergetic examination of a situation is that you look at the energetics of it. Those were developed a long time ago. The document which I've circulated has been more or less of a

working document for myself, and you'll see that it goes back quite a way in history. Most of the principles of bioenergetics with animals were developed…. They started being in the late 1700s, and they were well known by about 1930.

When you metabolize a gram-mole of glucose, for instance…. If you could burn it in a flame, you get 674,000 little calories of energy per gram-mole of glucose. If you let a mouse or pink salmon eat it and they metabolize it, it's still the same amount of energy. Although these principles have been around for a long time, the amount of energy transformed hasn't changed. What modern science has done is begun to understand in much greater detail the actual mechanism of how a pink salmon, for instance, can metabolize glucose, fat, protein or whatever it is, without burning itself up, producing a biological result.

As the data proceeded, it began to look like…. First of all, there were only the observations in 2001-2002, and they looked pretty grim. If you looked at the cycles of even-year pink salmon production in the Broughton Archipelago, the six cycles before, say, 2000, there was a pretty steady-state situation. There were about 1.5 million spawners, plus or minus. Making average assumptions, these produced about 80 million to 100 million fry that came out of the Broughton rivers into that system, which is kind of an enclosed system. It's not sort of an infinitely open system. It's kind of like a closed pasture.

There was a lot of mortality. That resulted in about a 1.5-percent to 1.8-percent survival of those fry coming out of the rivers, spawning fish that came back into the system. If you did some approximate calculations on the amount of feed that they ate, you'd pretty soon come to the conclusion that even under moderate production of smolts out of those systems, there wasn't anywhere enough feed in the system to allow them all to become smolts. In fact, there's about an 80-plus-percent mortality, normally. Some of it's due to predators, but some of it is just due to very vigorously competitive feeding.

Now under those conditions, you end up with some fish that are stronger than others. Some came out of the rivers a little ahead of the others. Some of them happened just by happenstance to have a bit better feed show than the others. They got an edge over the other ones. So there's a proportion of fish which are going to survive and ultimately leave the Broughton Archipelago, when we're talking specifically about the Broughton. There's a proportion of fish which simply edge closer and closer to starvation, and once they begin to starve, that's probably a non-reversible situation. Even in a normal year there are fish that are very close to starvation or are growing so slowly that they have virtually no chance of survival, sea lice or not.

In 2000 there was an enormous spawning run: 3.6 million fish. There was no significant fishing in that year, so they all came in and spawned. Those fish would have produced, using the same assumptions, about 250 million fry. Now, there might not have been that number, because when you have a big lot of salmon spawning in streams, then you begin to get overspawning and in-stream annihilation, etc. There are some well-documented situations of this, both in Alaska and also in the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Russian data.

It didn't appear that that was what happened in 2001, because the people that observed this phenomenon, including Alexandra Morton and a number of other people that I've talked to who are fishermen who happened to be there, had never seen anything like it. There were fry everywhere, which at least would indicate there was an awful lot of pink salmon there.

If you do the approximate feed calculations for a normal year — and the feed supply will go up and down, perhaps 15 percent or so — it can't accommodate doubling the amount of fish in the system. So what appeared to happen in 2001 was that there were a very few fish that got out there first and got some feed, but the majority of them, really almost all of them, were starving or nearly starving.

In fact, it wasn't the loss of 3.5 million pink salmon…. People couldn't understand how we could lose that many fish. We didn't lose 3.5 million pink salmon. They were there, and they went and spawned. We lost 99.9 percent of perhaps as many as 250 million fry. It was almost a complete wipe-out. The fry-to-adult survival was about 0.08 percent, which is just about zero, but significantly isn't zero.

That huge spawning population resulted in only about 120,000 returning pink salmon, and people began to talk about extinction. They said: "You've got to shut this down because the sea lice are going to kill them. They've killed all these fish. They're going to kill the rest of them off this year."

The progeny of that 2000 return, which were fewer than 200,000 fish, produced not 250 million but somewhere between three million to eight million fry coming into the system. Now, there may have been fluctuation in the feed supply, but basically, those little fish had an unlimited feed supply. They had, depending on how you calculate it, between a 20-percent and a 30-percent survival from fry to returning adult, which is absolutely incredible. You're right back up to almost a million fish again from practically nothing.

There's been a lot of study on sea lice. We've learned a lot of really fascinating things about sea lice. Most of the research has been louse-centred, not fish-centred. We've learned recently, for instance, that one of the misconceptions about transferring European data to British Columbia is…. It's been done with Atlantic salmon and with sea trout. It's been very competently carried out, but you're looking at an animal that, when it goes to sea, is quite a big fish, and it can only grow about 1 percent per day.

The Norwegians made ballpark assumptions on what was happening in British Columbia which looked fair enough to start with but which really aren't valid. One of the assumptions was that pink salmon, being so small when they go to sea, are terribly delicate, so

they'd be even more susceptible to sea lice. Well, that doesn't work, because the pink salmon, when it goes to sea — or a chum salmon — can grow 5 percent per day in the first three months or so of life. It means that they can double their weight every two weeks. Atlantic salmon can't come anywhere close to that.

Then some of the more recent data, in the last year or so, which is just absolutely fascinating and totally unexpected, is the stuff on pink salmon fry coming from the biological station. When you challenge them with an awful lot of lice, sure, the lice copepodans stick all over them. A couple of weeks later 90 percent of them have gone, or a very high percentage of them have gone.

The pink salmon can not only grow faster…. Therefore, it doesn't quite outgrow the lice, but it certainly gets to dilute them faster than an Atlantic salmon can. Not only that, but now they have a mechanism. It hasn't been absolutely characterized whether it's a specific immune reaction, a general immune reaction or just an inflammation reaction, but they can reject most of these copepodans that have been stuck on them.

Now you have a rather superior fish, in fact. That demonstrates that there is a good possibility that the combination of the growth rate of the little fish and the depletion rate of the sea lice as they attach kind of levels out, but the pink salmon can get ahead of them just by eating enough. Pink salmon are eating machines. They've got to feed continuously. If they don't grow, then they can't compensate for the lice. The data that have been shown are that if they do feed and if they do have a good enough feed supply, they can compensate for an awful lot of lice.

There's another factor. The research on the east coast and in the Atlantic basin — Norway, Scotland, Ireland, etc. — has been with Lepeophtheirus salmonis. The sea louse that we have here is also Lepeophtheirus salmonis. There are other sea lice, as you're well aware, but there may be something different about that Lepeophtheirus salmonis on the two coasts.

In the Atlantic basin, for instance, the Atlantic salmon farmers have to treat sea lice whether or not they're worried about the wild salmon. If they want to get a crop, they've got to treat sea lice, maybe twice in the production cycle. In British Columbia we don't need to do that. We are treating Atlantic salmon and, occasionally, chinook with SLICE, mostly to prevent them from having sea lice which might transfer to wild fish. It has nothing to do with the crop, with production of the fish.

There's something, then, possibly different about the strain of sea lice that we have, compared with the Atlantic basin. There's a precedent if you look at viral infections. VHS, viral hemorrhagic septicemia, has been devastating in trout in Denmark, for instance, and to some extent in Norway.

We have VHS here. When it first showed up in a couple of spring salmon in the American San Juan Islands, the DFO was really worried. They came and tested just about every farm salmon they could get their hands on, and they didn't find any. Then they began testing herring, and they found some VHS on herring. Then it appears that VHS on herring is the virus that kills off most of the pilchards periodically. It doesn't seem to affect salmon on this, but it's still VHS, so it's a different strain. There may be some strain differences.

I've lost track of time, and I'm probably getting very close to being over time. There are just a number of things.

To summarize: pink salmon are not delicate little creatures. I mean, you can squish them like that, and they are easier to crush up than a bigger Atlantic salmon, but as a population, they're a very strong fish.

There are some really interesting things. Although pink salmon have this mechanism of casting off the sea lice, or most of them, chum salmon don't seem to have that capability. They can do that to some extent, and they can probably do it to a greater extent than Atlantic salmon. Atlantic salmon don't have much capability of throwing the sea lice off. Chum salmon look like they're the more susceptible species, yet you don't see this up-and-down with chum salmon. Partly, of course, they have a four-year cycle.

It begins to be very, very difficult to consider sea lice as being a primary determinant of pink or chum salmon survival. A lot of the studies that have been done have been counting sea lice on little fish with the assumption that these are highly lethal, that if a little pink or chum salmon contracts even one sea louse, it's being killed by it. No such thing. It's a function of how well those fish are fed and what the nature of their environment is. Whether or not you have a fish kill or whether you have a high survival is a function.

The only factor that you can really see that makes the data consistent from year to year to year is that there is a difference in the feed supply relative to the number of pink salmon that are eating it. The greater the feed supply per pink or chum salmon, the better they do, the higher the survival.

If you plot…. If you look at the document that I've circulated, figure two looks like a scatter diagram, and it is, because there are a lot of factors involved in survival. But you do find that when you have, in the Broughton, more than 108 fry entering the Broughton system, in most cases the feed is simply hoovered up by this number of pink salmon. That's where you find population crashes: right out on the far end, so you've got to have more than 108 — maybe two or three times 108 — fish in that system, and then you're pretty likely to have a crash.

If you go all the way over to the other side, where you have less than 107, which is less than 10 million, fry coming into the system, and that corresponds to the one after you've had a crash, then you tend to find high survivals. If you look at the dynamics — and this has probably been going on for millions of years, because this is characteristic of pink salmon; they're up and down all over the place — you'll probably find that in the data that's been available since 1952, there are only a couple of aberrant points where you have a high survival and still maybe seven or eight times….

I know; I'm off. Anyway, this is beginning not to look like some special thing that you need to have a parasitologist telling you and looking very closely at sea lice. This gets down to sheep husbandry. You wouldn't think of putting 200 sheep on a field that you knew would only carry 50. That's basically what's happening, and I'm absolutely certain that if in fact somebody went out and caught half of those pink salmon in 2000, we wouldn't be here talking about this problem.

Initially, yes, there is a problem. It looks like the most productive thing is to manage the pink salmon. I can't tell you, at this point, where the farmed salmon fit. It isn't just a simple matter of lice hopping off farmed salmon and getting on little pink salmon. There are all kinds of other hosts, lots of other sources of lice. It would be very stupid to try and say that no, the farmed salmon can't contribute any lice. They're part of the environment now. But the most important thing to pink salmon — and this seems to me the point of the exercise, of whether they survive or not, or whether the other Pacific salmon survive or not — is a function of the pink salmon at this point, probably not the farmed salmon.

I'm going to ask if any members have questions. What we'll do is have them put into writing and give them to the Clerk. Then, when Dr. Groves replies to those questions that members may have, they'll become part of the public record through the Clerk's office.

I'd like to invite Wayne Gorrie of PR Aqua to come up and make a presentation, please.

W. Gorrie: I want to thank you, Robin and Ron, Chair and co-Chair, for inviting me to speak here. I want to thank you for visiting my facility this morning with your whole crowd, and I want to thank you for choosing Nanaimo as the first place to stick your toe in the water in this whole deal. Hopefully, it will set the stage for the towns to come.

Now, those of you who have been exposed to me before know that I'm going to have a difficult time keeping us down to ten minutes, but I'll do my best. I'm supposed to be speaking on land-based fish farming, and that's what I'll attempt to do for most of my ten minutes, but I've saved a few comments for last.

Unlike others here, I am an expert in land-based fish farming. My business is land-based fish farming. We do it well, and we do it worldwide. My customers are commercial aquaculture, dreaded salmon farmers. They are commercial aquaculture, other species. They are state and federal U.S. sport fishing and salmon enhancement as well as catchables. They are provincial and federal Canadian government institutes. They are Alaskan ranchers who are, in fact, one type of salmon farmer. They are Alaska government–sport fishing catchables who are, in fact, fish farmers releasing adults for catching, same-day service.

We work North and South America. Up until recently I had a clone of my business here in Canada in Chile. I've been in Chile since early on in that industry in 1990. We have exported our systems to Europe. We have several systems in Israel.

I think it's safe to say that I know pretty well what's going on in the world of land-based fish farming. I know very well what's going on in the world of land-based salmon farming — in a word, zero.

There have been attempts to establish land-based salmon farming going back over 20 years. Not coincidentally, the longest-running, although not continuous, land-based salmon farming was carried out in Iceland. The reason for that is that Iceland has geothermal heat and geothermal electric power — two things that land-based salmon farms need. I was at that farm three weeks ago, coincidentally as it was being closed for the final time. That farm now has not closed but switched species to Arctic char, which is much more suited to land-based fish farming for various reasons — too many to go into here.

I have offered my services to this committee as well as to CAAR and others who are promoting land-based salmon farming. That offer stands. I have a feeling that I may be hearing from some of you again.

Whether they know it or not, it is the opinion of people in my business — specifically, in my office — that people who say they want to see B.C. salmon aquaculture industry moved ashore…. Now I say whether they know it or not, what they're really saying is that they want the industry gone from B.C. There's absolutely no way, today, that the industry, being a bit player in the competitive world market that we're in….

Both Chile and Norway have the capacity to overfeed for weeks and grow more salmon by overfeeding than Canada produces. We could disappear from the market, and nobody would care. We don't have the option of sitting back and saying, "We're going to do this; we're going to add cost to the way we do business," and stay in business. The business will disappear.

That's it in a nutshell from where we sit. Now, when I say that I'm an expert on land-based fish farming, I didn't really go to school. I don't have a degree, but I have two of my engineers — the brightest lights in the world in recirculation and land-based fish farming — with me. If anybody wants to ask questions of me from this committee that may be of a technical nature, I would ask that you would allow me to get some help from people who are a lot smarter than I am.

The salmon farming debate rages here in B.C. We all love our salmon. We identify with it. We love to call ourselves — whether we're in Campbell River or Port Alberni — the salmon capital of the world. Obviously, it's a topic that's very near and dear to our hearts. But the debate takes on almost a religious quality, from what I see, without a lot of logic involved.

I want to talk a little bit about logic. I'm assuming that everybody on this committee has read the Auditor General's report — is that true? I have, at length. It bored the hell out of me, but I read it. There are a few things in here that really jumped out at me.

On page 20, there's the summary: "How wild Pacific salmon are being impacted." It says: "Wild salmon face many types of risks. Overfishing, degradation or loss of habitat, water withdrawals, land- and marine-based development activities and natural events all threaten stocks. Most impacts are associated with economic development activities that directly affect a wide range of land-use processes and functions integral to maintaining salmon habitat, and many of these effects can be permanent."

I didn't see salmon farming mentioned there. Salmon farming is mentioned, though, throughout this report, but in the summary — "successfully sustaining wild salmon requires the province's active participation" — it talks about: "Environmental impacts affecting wild salmon and their habitat, by type of activity." I made copies of this table for anyone who's interested.

We have 16 areas of impact, and of these 16 areas of impact, we have five industries that affect the wild salmon. Number one — agriculture. Of the 16 impacts on the environment for wild salmon, agriculture racks up 13.

Next worst: urbanization, where we all love to live — 12 impacts. Water impoundments: 12. Forestry: 11. Finfish aquaculture: 5. They have a saying in Chile: it's not the best or the worst; it's the least worst. I would say that on this list, finfish aquaculture looks the least worst.

A logical mind would ask: what are we doing here? Why aren't we having this meeting with agriculturalists, foresters, urbanization developers or people who are designing and controlling water impoundments?

Next is a thing I wanted to talk about. I would have talked about it, Laurie, even if you weren't here. I was at a trade show, a little floating-boat show, yesterday. I walked by the Georgia Strait Alliance's booth. They do a lot of good work, and I applaud them for it. They do a lot of work with better ways of antifouling your boat — just a lot of good stuff. They're even into boating safety, which I'm into too. I'm also an environmentalist. They were passing out bumper stickers in their booth. I love bumper stickers.

The bumper sticker they were passing out there was…. You've all seen it. I'm sure there are lots of people here that have them on their bumpers: "Wild salmon don't do drugs." I'm going to call bullshit on that, because I had the hatchery manager from the Nitinat hatchery in my office this morning, coincidentally. I asked him: "Rob, do your salmon do drugs?" "Definitely." Their salmon are vaccinated at their early stage of development, just like they are in salmon aquaculture. They also eat pellets. Bumper stickers that say, "Wild salmon don't eat pellets" — well, that's not true either.

It depends on what you call a wild salmon, and I'm going to bet that most people in this room will call a wild salmon anything that a commercial fisherman or a sports fisherman catches. A large percentage of those fish are raised in DFO hatcheries as salmon enhancement. Like it or not, for the first six months of those fishes' lives, they are raised using almost the identical technology that we do in salmon aquaculture. So there are a lot of similarities between the two already, wild salmon and farmed salmon, and I think the two are going to get closer and closer as time goes on.

There is more, but I'm going to quit while I'm ahead, if I am, and ask if there are any questions.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Wayne, you mentioned, talking about containment…. Why isn't it economical? Why doesn't it work? Can you specifically say that?

W. Gorrie: Nobody's saying that it doesn't work. Land-based fish farming does work. Land-based salmon farming hasn't worked, and that's not to say that someday it won't. The problem is right now. The problem will always be about competition.

Salmon has become — farmed salmon, especially, not wild salmon…. Wild salmon isn't really a…. It's considered a high-value niche product, much like ice wine. Farmed salmon has become a commodity, and we are competing with Norway, Chile and Scotland for the world market. You can, and will, buy Chilean farmed salmon in Nanaimo at Costco. Make no mistake about it: this is a world competition.

The cost of raising salmon to market in a land-based facility is an order of magnitude higher than it is growing them in open net pens, as we do. There are lots of improvements. Nobody's saying that there isn't room for improvements in open netcage salmon aquaculture. There is. The problem is that we need to remain competitive.

I have other environmental concerns about moving the industry ashore. I don't hear a lot of talk about it. Moving the industry ashore would probably quadruple the footprint, simply because of the sheer size of the pens that are used in the ocean. To try to replicate that on land…. We can't go anywhere near as deep with tanks on land as the nets are in the ocean. Therefore, the industry would actually grow in size by moving it ashore. Somebody would have to show me where we're going to put that.

Then there's the problem of power. The farm that I was at in Iceland had a thousand horsepower. Compared to a commercial aquaculture facility we have in the ocean here, it was small. However, it was the biggest in the world. They had a thousand horsepower pumping water from the shore to the land. We just don't have the…. Even if you could put it on the grid here on Vancouver Island, we don't have the power to operate it. It's just not doable.

C. Trevena: Just to take Ron's question a bit further and your answer a bit further. You say that one of the things is the competitive nature of the business that makes it very difficult economically to encourage companies to move towards closed containment. But that,

essentially, is a simple economic argument because many of the companies are…. They are the same companies who are working in Norway as are working in British Columbia as are working in Chile. So the competition is an internal competition we're talking about, effectively.

The problem with moving to closed containment, having some transition to closed containment, is an economic one for those companies here in B.C. So if there were economic incentives, other forms of encouragement, this is a possibility. You say it's not here yet, but it could be. The matter of encouraging the companies to move that way through various means would make it — bearing in mind what you're talking about, the footprint — a possibility to have closed containment here.

W. Gorrie: So what you're saying is that because they're competing with themselves, then it's not really competition?

C. Trevena: What I'm saying is the issue of economic argument is a little different.

W. Gorrie: What I'm saying is that because they're already in business in other countries, if there's a barrier to their doing business in British Columbia, believe me, they're quite happy to expand a farm in Chile or Scotland or Norway or wherever else they are. Their investment money will leave here. That's a no-brainer.

C. Trevena: A supplementary question on this. You mentioned that it could be here. You've seen in Iceland the problems of cost of power and the cost of doing it. There is the possibility of doing it, and you can see that it could happen in the future — economics, possibly, aside. What sort of future are we looking at? How long to develop it, that it could happen?

W. Gorrie: Well, if cost were no object — where I come from, it is — you could base a land-based salmon farm here and have it operating in a year or two years. The technology exists, if cost were no object.

What I think I'm hearing, and I've heard it before from members in this committee, is that perhaps what's needed are incentives. Well, incentives…. I think that might mean government grants or government money to help these people along. I have a hard time believing that the people who are against salmon farming for whatever reason in B.C. right now would embrace that. Maybe I'm wrong.

G. Coons: Thank you, Wayne. I'm glad you brought up the Auditor General's report again because that's something that's dear to my heart. Federally, they've mentioned quite a few reports — I'm guessing 1996, 1997, 2000 — and nothing has really been followed up federally with our wild stocks as far as the federal Auditor General.

As far as your comments about the other issues out there concerning our wild stocks, I go back to the main news release that was put out by the B.C. Auditor General. He talks about how the findings concern him; that "British Columbia's ability to ensure sustainability of wild salmon is handicapped by a lack of clear vision to guide priority setting;" that both levels of government need to have a shared responsibility; that "provincial efforts to manage wild salmon in freshwater environments have diminished over recent years and what activities remain are now spread over a number of agencies" — we've been finding that in our deliberations — and that "existing provincial legislation regulations do not provide adequate protection for salmon habitat."

The key paragraph in this one-page release was where Strelioff said: "While the government has taken important steps to deal with the possible risk posed to wild salmon by aquaculture operations, further studies are also needed to better understand the interaction between salmon stock and aquaculture operations." Out of all of that dealing with water acts and forest codes and other infringements, a key concept dealing with the times, I think, was dealing with the active concern with the interaction between our wild stocks and aquaculture. I think that's why we are here. So, just a comment on that.

W. Gorrie: No, I accept that. I read that too. I just left that part out, Gary.

Gary has touched on it, but you referred to a number of issues that may have a lot more significance on impacting wild salmon, which of course, is near and dear to all of us. Then you referred to Chile, for instance — how they've looked at…. I forget what the analogy was: best of the worst?

S. Fraser: Least worst. But I've got to remind everybody that we're dealing with…. In B.C. we have some 50 million wild Pacific salmon returning to 2,000 streams along the coast. In Chile I don't think there are any salmon that come back there. We have an issue….

W. Gorrie: Well, no. There are no wild salmon or salmonids south of the equator. None of them are indigenous.

S. Fraser: The analogy, though. I mean, the comparison between there and here is…. I didn't quite catch it. We have a role to play here as far as….

There are a lot of jobs. There are a lot of environmental issues. Certainly, there's a lot of controversy about this industry and about how it might affect the

Even comparing it to other jurisdictions that have aquaculture, like Norway…. I don't know. They have half a million, maybe? It's fairly small. There are not many wild salmon compared to what we're dealing with here.

I don't think you'll find a single person in the salmon farming industry that doesn't believe that the salmon farming industry in B.C. can actually help the wild stock by taking the pressure off it. I find another little gap in logic when I see people promoting eating wild salmon and not eating farmed salmon. I'll make an analogy there: I think we should cut down first-growth forest and not cut down farmed trees.

W. Gorrie: I mean, that's what you're saying. You're saying: "Eat wild salmon. Don't eat farmed salmon." That does not make logical sense to me. I'm sorry.

R. Austin (Chair): Anyway, that's okay. Thank you, Wayne, for your presentation.

I just want to make one comment, and it goes about subsidies. I've only been doing this for a year, but I've noticed that the difference between a subsidy and an investment is indeed a very fine line.

I'll give you an example. Where I live in northern British Columbia right now the government's looking at bringing electricity up Highway 37 in order to enable several mining projects up in what I would call Tahltan country. If that goes ahead, that'll cost the B.C. taxpayers roughly $320 million to build that 270-megawatt line. That is an investment. Some would call it a subsidy for the mining industry. I'm just giving it as an example.

J. Brackett: I want to sit beside Wayne's sign here. I know after that introduction to his engineers, they're going to be asking for more pay.

Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for inviting me to speak and giving me the opportunity. I'm a veterinarian. I've lived on Vancouver Island since 1980. My wife and I have four kids, and we live and work in French Creek, just up the road. I've worked with wild and farmed fish and shellfish since 1987 in a number of capacities, ranging from enhancement volunteer on French Creek through to CEO of an NGO research centre in Campbell River and president of a fish health company. So I've got a variety of inputs there.

Over the years I've worked for DFO on a project to draft new fish health regulations for the country. I've served as an advisor and provided reports to provincial and federal agencies, including DFO, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Health Canada and the B.C. Ministry of Ag and Lands.

I have experience with other animal production industries as a vet, and I've done business in Chile, Norway, Scotland, Taiwan, U.S. and elsewhere. I've also worked on eight Canadian International Development projects in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, China and Ecuador, all with introducing fish farming — carp and other warm-water species.

I'm a board member and a past chair of the Mid-Island Science, Technology and Innovation Council and president of the Canadian Association of Aquatic Veterinarians. I'm a member of the scientific advisory council of the B.C. Pacific Salmon Forum.

That's boring, but I've included that long bio to give you an impression of both my commitment to where I live and the work I do. Some of you, I know, live in coastal communities, and the rest of you are travelling the coast for these meetings. I know that during your travels you're going to see why those of us who live and work on the coast are so passionate about sustaining our environment, our communities and first nations and the industries that support this great part of the world.

Another reason for giving that bio was to provide a context for B.C. aquaculture as a sustainable industry, and that's economically, socially and environmentally. Finfish and shellfish aquaculture have proven to be a critical component of coastal economies around the world — we've all seen the stats for why that has to happen — and that includes B.C. Your committee is tackling a broad mandate to inquire and make recommendations respecting the aquaculture industry. And I've got ten minutes to provide my input.

You can see from my background that ten minutes doesn't really do that, so I was going to reproduce my hard drive. That didn't work either, because I've been working on a lot of this stuff since '87, and it's not on my hard drive. So I'm giving an oral presentation.

I'd urge you to seek other opportunities to meet with the large number of people like me who spend their lives in areas related to aquaculture. I'll warn you, though, that we're difficult people to find and that we're very difficult to talk to. You don't see a lot of my colleagues here, and you won't see them in front of your meetings. We don't generally go to public meetings. You won't find us interviewed and quoted in the media.

When you do start to talk to us — and I know we've tried to do that over a beer after a reception or something like that — you'll find the scientific jargon, the complex situations and the guarded interpretations

of what our work and what our science shows are hard to get through. Most of us like to do our job, and we like to keep our passions for fish out of the limelight.

I've offered verbally and in a letter to your committee to provide resources from the B.C. Centre for Aquatic Health Sciences to assist you in information-gathering. I'd like to repeat that offer and also urge you to consult with me, other veterinarians and other professionals who can provide you with essential but complicated, and at times boring, background on the issues that you want to examine.

Your special committee is the most recent of a very long list in examinations of various aspects of the aquaculture industry in B.C. Previous investigations, inquiries and reports made conclusions, recommendations and, in some cases, predictions. Your committee has already heard that finfish and shellfish aquaculture industries and the regulations that govern them have been exemplary in the way that they've adapted and adopted what seemed to be important to B.C.

You've also heard that we have a regulatory system and community involvement and industries in B.C. that are world-leading in their approach to embracing sustainability and that respond positively to the needs of the larger community expressed through processes like these. So I'd urge your committee to make recommendations that assist in a constructive approach to industry, an approach that supports the development of the industry and the communities that your committee will be visiting.

I have no doubt, and I've already heard some of it today, that you'll find repeated and ever-evolving assertions that the sky is falling because of aquaculture. I'm sure you'll find that those are not supported, and after a couple of decades of sustainable aquaculture here in B.C., it's not happening.

I'd like to make a brief mention of the current situation with veterinarians' health and treatment information in aquaculture. I'd like to put that in comparison with other sectors. I know that you have questions about transparency of public information, and you probably don't know how things are done in other industries. There's vastly more information made public regarding aquaculture in these areas than anywhere else. A good deal of the information is available on the fish health database, on the website, from B.C. MAL and from the companies. It's information that just is not public from any other industry, any other farming sector.

Fish farming companies are the ones who decided to provide that information. As a vet I can't provide that information because by our association, by our professional standards, I can't tell you that information. It's between the client and the vet and the patient.

Another interesting situation is the treatment of farmed salmon with SLICE. You've already heard that sea lice in B.C. have not caused the same clinical problems that they cause elsewhere in the world where Atlantic salmon are farmed. The current treatments with SLICE in B.C. for sea lice are done to manage under the sea lice management plan. They're not done for the health of the fish that are being treated.

That's an interesting situation for vets who are prescribing those drugs. We've had a lot of discussion over that. The feeling is that we can justify those prescriptions and those treatments based on the potential impacts on the wild fish. It would be interesting to see how this develops. You know, we continue to see a lack of evidence of impacts on wild fish populations, so it will be interesting how that scenario evolves.

I mentioned earlier that I'm involved with the B.C. Pacific Salmon Forum in a scientific capacity, and the research focus and funding from the forum is looking at interactions between wild and farmed fish. I'm personally quite excited and optimistic that we will have opportunities to apply what we've learned about farmed fish health to look at wild fish populations. I think this transfer of knowledge will lead to huge gains in our understanding of health in wild populations.

Even the preliminary work in B.C. to date has revealed interesting information about diseases that we're seeing in wild fish and how they might affect population numbers in returns. I know David Groves talked about nutrition. Follow the food, and you'll find the source. In my part of the world we'd also like to throw some other aspects of fish health in there.

Even though sea lice aren't showing up as a huge factor in wild fish populations or even wild fish diseases, the one good thing about this interest in sea lice is that it's putting a lot more effort into wild fish health. Another major move that's coming out of this, particularly in the Salmon Forum's work, is multidisciplinary teams gathering together to work on these projects. We've now got veterinarians, epidemiologists — I know you spoke to Tony Farrell, a physiologist — fisheries biologists and oceanographers. We're all working together now on looking at the big-picture examination of what's affecting wild fish health. That's something that wasn't being done before, and although it's got nothing to do with sea lice, it's going to be a huge benefit to our understanding of wild fish.

A brief mention about closed containment. There's been a lot of talk about that today. As a veterinarian who works with production animals, I would strongly advise against intensive on-land culture of salmon. That's based on my experience from disease management and also from a welfare aspect. It's just very hard for me to look at an animal production system that's currently being done in a spectacularly good environment for the animal and contemplate moving that into a land-based system that's totally dependent on intensity of culture and technology.

One brief aside. Chilean rivers are full of salmon. I caught five chinook salmon in a river down there just weeks ago. They're full of wild chinook, coho, brook trout, brown trout and steelhead, and they're all thriving spectacularly successfully.

All those fish were introduced to Chilean rivers by people like Roderick Haig-Brown and other sport fishermen over the last hundreds of years, and they've

done very well. That was at a time when they also introduced those species to Australia and Europe and everywhere else around the world where there was a river that wild salmonids could spawn in. It's true that there were no wild salmonids south of the equator until sport fishermen took them there.

In closing, I'd like to highlight a few areas that I and my colleagues would be particularly capable and interested in discussing with your committee in greater detail as you move through. Those would include health of farmed and wild fish and shellfish; diseases and disease transfer between wild and farmed fish and shellfish; prevention and treatment of fish diseases; the national aquatic animal health program — I don't know if you've heard about that; the role of veterinarians in fish and shellfish health; regulatory management of health in aquaculture in B.C.; levels of contaminants, including malachite green, that we find in wild and farmed fish; scenario modelling for planning, assessment and monitoring environmental impact — and I think this is just a huge field we're getting into that's going to be fantastic for our planning and assessment purposes; the welfare of farmed and wild fish during production and harvest.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you. I hope that we can provide more information in the future.

Earlier today we were talking to the people at DFO at the Pacific Biological Station, and we talked to them about some of these matters. We talked to them about information and about the lack of site-specific information that's made available. There's aggregate information.

They also told us that as they do their research — and they're a couple of years into some pretty detailed analysis now — they felt that site-specific information would be critically important to them. They were hoping that they in fact were going to be able to access that and find some arrangements to be able to access the information that they currently can't get.

J. Brackett: That's some researchers. I know that there are researchers at the biological station who are working with the farm data.

J. Brackett: Part of my misunderstanding is what is expected from the specific farm data. All of that data goes into the reports. It's on the public websites. All of that fish health information is audited by the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, and that's also public information.

S. Simpson: All I know is that it's not available, and I know it's not available at the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands either. They don't have that information directly either. They have aggregate information, as the deputy has told us. That's one of the concerns and one of the discussions around that.

The other thing they told us that I'd be interested in your comment on is: there was an acknowledgment there that much of the analysis about…. Well, they're starting to understand the impacts of sea lice better on salmon — on the pinks and chums and the differences in that.

They told us that the broader impacts on those fish continue. At this point it's still inconclusive for them. They have more work to do. I'm wondering: what work do you think needs to still be done from a research and analysis point of view as a professional? What do we need to better understand about the impacts of lice or viruses in terms of the relationship between cultured fish and wild fish? What don't we know that we need to invest in knowing?

J. Brackett: There's a huge black hole. It's on the wild fish side, and it's about health and disease in wild fish. We're talking here today because there's a concern that there's an impact on wild fish health from something to do with fish farms. We know almost squat about disease and health of wild fish, and we know even less about that effect on wild fish populations.

What we've done with the studies that I've been involved with, with colleagues and the work that the B.C. Pacific Salmon Forum is trying to fund and trying to direct now, is dealing with knowing more about wild fish. Even fish health management on fish farms has reached the point where we need to know more about what the wild fish around the farms have and don't have in the possibility of transmission — all these things. Even the first few quick surveys that we've done on wild pink salmon at Broughton have shown us…. Parasites have shown us physiological readiness issues and all sorts of health factors that are associated with the survival of those fish.

There's a fish pathologist working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands at Abbotsford who, when he was in Alaska, worked on herring and diseases of herring and worked out a mechanism where they could study VHS virus in herring populations, predict the impact of that on that cohort of herring and use that to help decide how many could be caught in the commercial fishery.

That's where the research needs to be done. It needs to be done on what makes wild fish populations tick. It's a totally different ball game when we're talking about wild fish. In any other farmed animals, almost all of them live. What we're interested in is why those very few of them die. In the wild fish leaving the river, just about every one of them is going to die very quickly in the next few days or weeks.

When we as a veterinarian or an epidemiologist go and look at those wild fish populations and try and figure out what diseases are in them or how well they're eating or how well they're growing, most of them are going to die. It's a totally different ball game

we're dealing with. You have to struggle with that physiologically, scientifically, statistically. It's a challenging game.

That's why it hasn't been done before. That's why we haven't got all those answers on wild fish. That's why I say that the bright spot out of having these discussions is that maybe we'll put some more money and effort in that direction.

S. Simpson: A second question. You mentioned land-based systems. Increasingly, we're hearing about water-based closed containment systems — floating the bags, the concrete. I guess there are numerous approaches, and I'm sure we'll learn lots more about them over the coming months. Do you differentiate at all between the two — land-based and water-based?

J. Brackett: Technologically, I guess there'd be difference. My point is that we've got a fantastic environment that supports the health and welfare of fish, and anything that impacts on that environment I'd have to look at seriously as a veterinarian.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): I think you made a comment earlier about treating fish for lice in pens. If I heard you correctly, it's not because of risks to fish health. Did I hear that right? If so, could you elaborate for me on that?

J. Brackett: Our experience in B.C. is that our farmed fish have not suffered greatly from lice. The levels of lice that we're currently treating…. I wouldn't expect any of them to be getting sick from them.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): A follow-up then. A previous speaker, Ms. MacBride, referred to the lice in the fish farm as a deadly reservoir. I presume this means that this must kill either the ones in the tank or the ones outside. Your comments don't seem to jibe with that. How deadly are the lice?

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Well, sort of a deadly group I think is the metaphor.

J. Brackett: What I can say from experience is that the lice levels that we see on farmed fish in B.C. now…. I wouldn't expect them to be deadly or cause much harm to the fish that are in the pens. So we're treating them at levels that are well below what I think would be justified if we were only concerned about the health of the fish in the pens. We are treating them to try to reduce the potential for them to be a reservoir for infectious stages to fish outside the pens.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Do we spray chemicals in the water, or how do we do it?

J. Brackett: Yup. Actually, we did a review of SLICE treatments. I noticed in reading Hansard that there were lots of comments about SLICE. We did a review of that for the B.C. Pacific Salmon Forum, and I believe it's on the website of the Salmon Forum.

R. Austin (Chair): Good evening. I would like to bring the meeting to order. In light of the fact that the next witness has got a couple of technical challenges to overcome, I'm going to ask that Gordon Putz from Penta Transport please come up and make his presentation now.

G. Putz: My name is Gordon Putz, Penta Transport. I don't have a lot to say. We haul super Bs all over Vancouver Island, B.C., Washington, Oregon and Saskatchewan. We've been doing business with Mainstream Canada since 2003. We've hauled their live fish from their farms to boats. They get put in boats, then taken out to the farms from there. They're not one of our bigger customers; however, they are part of our diversification. We do about $100,000 worth of work a year with them. I'm just here to support. I've distributed a letter for each one of you to read a little bit about us and them, and about our relationship. I'm here to answer any questions you might have.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): So primarily, Gordon, it's hauling the small fish to the farms.

G. Putz: No, we pick up at hatcheries, haul the smolts to a boat, and then they distribute them to the farms in a marine vessel.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Then you're not on the return part of the chain of hauling the…?

G. Putz: No, they're just big, huge tanks on flatbeds that have their own self-sustained oxygen tanks and the whole bit. They send along a technician with the truck that follows them around. They have to stop

three, four or five times during the trip to check on the fish, depending on how long the trip is. Usually out of Duncan to Duke Point they stop once. We haul out of Little Bear Bay, which is north of Campbell River. They go from there to Tofino, and they'll stop five or six times on that trip, due to its duration.

G. Putz: Being flatbed, it's a lot of lumber and steel. Off the Island, it's building supplies and that kind of thing, but we're fairly diversified. Like I say, this is one of the areas we sort of branched out into to stay away from having all our eggs in one basket and that type of thing.

S. Simpson: Thanks for your comments. How many trips to do that? How many trips will you do in a week or a month?

G. Putz: It varies. Of course, they have to grow the smolts to a certain size before we truck them, and then we'll do maybe four back-to-back trips four days in a row. Then we won't do anything for a couple months, while they grow some more.

S. Simpson: So it's cyclical, depending on the cycle of the farm and the work of the farm…

S. Simpson: So you'll get pretty busy for a short period of time till the farm is stocked up….

G. Putz: Then the trailers and that part of our operation shut down for a month or two.

S. Simpson: Are there particular requirements around your vehicle, in terms of how you have to treat and clean the vehicles — things like that?

G. Putz: Yeah. We own the trailers. They lease them from us with their equipment on them. They store them down at the plant, and they disinfect them when they come back, I believe, and before they go again when they water them up and put the smolts in.

G. Putz: Yeah. We have to run a special electrical cord that runs the generator that powers everything. Other than that, we just hook up to them, and they're in charge of everything. They've got the know-how and the technicians that make sure everything goes well.

S. Fraser: Thanks, Gordon. I'm just curious. How do you do the transfer? It's got to, obviously, go out to the farms. So they've got to be transferred to the….

G. Putz: Yeah, they generally go to a fish dock or a government wharf, and the boat, obviously, will be down in the water below. They've got big four- or five-inch gasoline pipes that fit onto the bottom of the tank, and it's just a gravity flow into the vessel.

G. Putz: No. The fish with the water. Then the water just comes down, and the fish go through the hose and right into the hold of the boat.

S. Fraser: I'm curious. In Tofino, do you use the fourth or the first free dock?

G. Putz: No. In Tofino, actually, they back the trailers onto a barge, and then the barge goes out to wherever the farm is. At Duke Point they go from the dock into a boat. It varies how they get them to the farm.

Sometimes it's by barge, and then they'll dump them off the barge from our trailers straight into the farm and sometimes, like I say, by boat. It just depends how far they're going and which area. It's expensive for the boat, so they try and keep the boat to the shorter distances.

I'd like to invite David McCallum to come up. We've had a slight problem here with our computer not quite configuring with your drive there, so my understanding is that you're going to make your presentation verbally. Then you'll e-mail the presentation to the Clerk of Committees, and he'll distribute it to all members, probably tomorrow.

D. McCallum: Sure. Thanks for hearing me. It is unfortunate, because I do have some graphics that I would have liked to show on a screen, but that's okay. I'll do my best to explain them.

The reason I'm here to present today is because I've recently completed a master's degree in geography at UVic. The concept for my research was inspired by Parks Canada's proposal for a large-scale marine protected area in the Gulf Islands.

This is Parks Canada's proposed southern Strait of Georgia national marine conservation area. This is a large-scale marine protected area that is proposed to be multiple use–zoned to accommodate different types of sustainable industry, as deemed sustainable by Parks Canada. That is one component that inspired this research.

The second is that we focused on shellfish aquaculture, given that the Gulf Islands is an area that has a lot of potential for growth of the shellfish aquaculture industry. Also, shellfish are a key indicator of good water quality, so we saw this proposed marine protected area as potentially compatible with shellfish aquaculture, given that they both have goals for relatively healthy and clean water quality.

Before I get started, I just want to say that this is a social study. My study was a study of perceptions and attitudes towards acceptable uses, perceived acceptable uses, in the Gulf Islands. I say that because a lot of the issues that we're here dealing with have to do with perceptions of aquaculture, which don't always necessarily match truth — right?

I also want to say that, of course, as an academic when I started this research, we approached it without bias. Good research is done without bias. Through my education in the past two and a half years at graduate school and through my personal experiences, I've come to be a proponent of aquaculture. I'll just state that blatantly.

I've discussed the background of my study. I've also touched on the potential compatibility of shellfish aquaculture. I'll just add a few things.

Compatibility of shellfish aquaculture within the Gulf Islands. There's close access to markets and labour supply, so it's seen as a potential area for the industry to expand to, a relatively clean and productive environment, and a well-established infrastructure and transportation network.

I do have some graphs here. Perhaps it's a good thing that we're not looking at them up on the screen, because they can be kind of tedious to look at.

I asked my respondents — which, by the way, were a sample of 302 residents of Thetis, Saltspring and Saturna islands — about their perceptions of the benefits of shellfish aquaculture. Between 70 and 78 percent of my respondents either strongly or somewhat agreed with the economic benefits of shellfish aquaculture.

The other two questions had to do with the statement that shellfish aquaculture is an indicator of a healthy marine environment and that shellfish aquaculture demonstrates clean resource harvesting techniques. The responses to this were mixed, variable responses, including a bit of uncertainty — high unsure responses to those two statements.

Then I asked them four questions about four potential concerns associated with shellfish aquaculture. Again, a lot of variability here. There was agreeability that shellfish aquaculture may conflict with certain boating anchorages or conflict with navigation of recreational boats. There was uncertainty regarding whether shellfish aquaculture impacts seabird feeding opportunities — variability in responses, and 42 percent unsure about that. That's all that's really important there.

However, this is a key finding that I have. I asked their overall perception of shellfish aquaculture. Do the benefits outweigh the concerns, or do the concerns outweigh the benefits? And 23.8 percent of my respondents responded, "Benefits outweigh the concerns," and 30.5 percent responded: "Concerns outweigh the benefits." So more people responded that concerns outweigh the benefits than responded that benefits outweigh the concerns.

The biggest bar on this graph is that 42.7 percent responded "not sure." "We're not sure. We can't form an opinion about whether the benefits outweigh the concerns or not." This is to do with shellfish aquaculture — remember? Basically, I can present this to the shellfish aquaculture industry and say that this is an opportunity to educate the public on the truth about shellfish aquaculture and help them form an opinion about the industry — okay?

One of the conclusions that I have made in my study is that perceptions of shellfish aquaculture are influenced by people's opinions of finfish aquaculture, based of course on what they read in the media. I've got some quotes from my survey to back up this conclusion. I asked a question on the survey that said: "Are there any other benefits or concerns you'd like to mention about shellfish aquaculture?" I have six statements here that I'll just read out to you. Remember that these are perceptions and attitudes towards the industry.

(1) "The Gulf Islands are already at risk in terms of their marine environment. I would totally ban all forms of aquaculture."

(2) "Based upon the disastrous impact of fish farms on the B.C. coast, I am concerned about where shellfish aquaculture will end up." So: "Off the record, based on what I know about finfish aquaculture, I'm also concerned about shellfish aquaculture." That's what that statement says.

(3) "Shellfish or finfish farms should not be permitted within the Gulf Islands marine environment. Shellfish and finfish farms should be in closed systems on land." You've heard about that already today.

(5) "Holding any kind of fish in a confined space whilst living, and therefore needing to use manufactured food and medication, is wrong."

(6) "Farmed salmon aquaculture is still highly controversial, and I cannot support shellfish aquaculture without 110-percent proven data that it has zero impact on the marine environment."

Those are six quotes out of 132. I want you to know that. There are a ton of other comments both positive and neutral, but out of 136 comments to that question there were six that told me that people's opinions of shellfish aquaculture are formed by their opinions of finfish aquaculture.

I will just sum up now. My point in telling you that is that in planning to attend this meeting, I was uncer-

tain — as I've just discussed with Scott — about whether this committee was addressing both finfish and shellfish aquaculture. I've recently learned…. My point to you is that some of the public — not many, but there are some people out there — are uncertain about the difference between shellfish and finfish aquaculture. That's just something for you to be aware of.

One thing, of course, that we also need to understand here is that these are two very different industries, both with different economic, social and environmental effects.

The challenges, obviously, for the shellfish industry you've laid out quite clearly. Our role here…. We've discussed this. The formation of this committee, as it were, from a Premier's committee…. He put it forward as a unique entity for us, the opposition having the majority on it and also chairing it. It was largely around controversies around salmon farming and the industry, perceived or real.

But as you are aware, the regulatory regime is in a lot of cases the same, as far as tenuring processes and stuff like that. It's pretty hard to deal with one in isolation from the other, because one has an effect on the other potentially. We're trying to be mindful of that also.

I know in the challenges that the shellfish industry has…. A lot of it is public ignorance of what it is and what it isn't. I think your analysis of the water quality issue is one. If you were promoting that industry, the shellfish industry is a canary. Truly, it indicates marine health. They are filter feeders. If there's a problem in marine health, it shows up in the shellfish aquaculture sector immediately. So it's a good indicator in a lot of ways.

D. McCallum: I'm glad you've opened the discussion about the extreme regulatory burden of both, not just shellfish aquaculture but, of course, finfish as well. This is a challenge, because very few industries are so highly regulated. This is also something that the public doesn't know. Perhaps there's some public out there who think that both shellfish and finfish aquaculture are just conducting their business willy-nilly. Obviously, we all hear and know that that's very untrue.

S. Fraser: Well, I know a lot of ma-and-pa oyster farm operations where they have trouble because of a lot of hoops to jump through. At least that's the perception they have, and I understand that.

G. Hogg: David, you started your comments by saying there's a social study, firstly, and then you talked a little bit about the difference between public opinion and informed opinion. I think one of our responsibilities is to be a catalyst for public discourse and to, hopefully, eventually produce the common ground which obviously makes action possible at some point.

Did any of your research or studies give any indications or suggestions with respect to directions that we might take in terms of that next step?

G. Hogg: You suggested there was a disparity between public opinion and informed opinion. Did your research suggest that there are ways to look at ameliorating that gap as it exists? Or are you suggesting that people are entrenched in their perceptions and that the ability to effect change with that is, like with all of us, more challenging and difficult?

D. McCallum: It's a good question. I must admit my research didn't go there. I was just sampling people's perceptions. I didn't ask them to explain how I might go about changing their perception, of course. But that's a challenge for the aquaculture industry indeed. I've thought long and hard about it. Somebody suggested I do a PhD on that, and I said no way.

Yeah, it's a challenge, and I think this is one way. We've got a long way to go to change public perceptions. Obviously, it has a lot to do with the media. The media, in my opinion, is a huge factor in influencing public perceptions — in this case, negative.

The problem is that positive, good-news stories about the industry don't sell newspapers as much as the negative stories.

G. Hogg: I was just reading one researcher who suggested that when most of us say we're thinking or looking at issues, really we're just reorganizing our prejudices. That fits into that organizational structure or applies to me. I think it is certainly an interesting….

I guess that's the crux: how do we find common ground in a free and democratic society to be able to make the decisions which allow us to then take action or at least enjoin the majority of support across the province? If it doesn't, it won't last or persist, I don't think.

D. McCallum: Hopefully, one of the results of this standing committee will be a positive result. The public can hear and gain an understanding of it.

G. Hogg: I just have one more question. You said that through the course of this process, you came into it somewhat neutral. Maybe we'll use you as the example in terms of the question I was asking. You came into it neutral, and you came out of it saying that you supported it. Can you talk about what thought processes went into your coming to that conclusion?

D. McCallum: Sure. I'll speak to shellfish aquaculture to begin with, because that's obviously where my academic background is. I'm not a biological scientist. I want you to know that. I'm a social scientist. I did, of

course, have to read some academic papers and peer-reviewed articles that stated, for instance, that shellfish aquaculture provides excellent habitat for various critters — right? It actually increases biodiversity.

As Scott commented, shellfish are the canary in the coalmine. They're the first to die off when we see signs of pollution and poor water quality. If the shellfish are healthy, this generally means we have pretty good, healthy water quality. I'm an environmentalist. I'm a conservationist. Obviously, I want clean, healthy water. So by that, if shellfish aquaculture can actually benefit that, we've got a win-win situation with economic benefits as well.

Speaking of finfish aquaculture, this isn't where my academic training is, but in my personal experiences, of course, I've come to realize that our wild fisheries aren't in good shape. I agree with what Wayne Gorrie stated in that I don't understand how the public thinks we're going to feed the hungry world on wild fish that aren't very healthy, at least the wild stocks that aren't very healthy. That's why I've become a proponent, also, of finfish aquaculture.

I'd like to now invite Carol Schmitt from the Omega Pacific Seafarms Inc. to come up and make her presentation.

C. Schmitt: I had what I was going to say written down, and then in the final minute I decided I was going to change what I wanted to say. I sort of put it together on the fly coming down the lake in a boat.

I've put together a booklet here for everyone. It's got a bunch of sections where I've collected a bunch of information over the last long while: general information, letters of support, wild versus farmed, Atlantic colonization, sea lice information, feed ingredients on colorants, and the usage of fish meal, PCB, fire retardant, malachite, heavy metals, organic composting of their by-products, closed containments and then just miscellaneous. So it's a pretty good evening read. The fellow was saying that they could put together this one booklet for everyone afterwards, so I'll leave that with you.

Anyways, my name is Carol Schmitt. I'm president of Omega Pacific Hatchery and Omega Pacific Seafarms. Last fall was 26 years in a row that I've spawned King salmon. I've one of the original leases. We've had this site since 1986, and it's 35 miles by boat out of Port Alberni. We also have a fish hatchery that's seven miles by boat up Great Central Lake. At times we've had up to 20 or more employees. Right now we're at an all-time low.

I'm one of the board of directors of the Pacific Organic Seafood Association, a member of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, recently appointed as an alternate director on the aquatic management board, which is for all stakeholders of the whole west coast of Vancouver Island. I'm a member of the Alberni Valley Honey Producers Association. I've spent a number of years working for the provincial fisheries on reconnaissance. I worked for federal fisheries, and then since 1986, basically, we've run our own fish hatchery and farmsite.

When we started farming, there were about 100 to 130 companies in B.C. It was a really energetic, positive time. Everybody was interested in the farming aspect of it, and it was really great.

Our first salmon we ever sold, we sold for $5.80 a pound. That was farmed King salmon. Since then we've never seen that good a price. As more and more farm product became available, all of a sudden there was a lot of mounting pressure against the farming industry because Alaska, of course, which produces about 1.6 billion fish in enhancement facilities, perceived us as a threat for cutting into, I guess, their market share.

To date, farming now has become a global business. It's basically a global commodity. So when we have fish farming in B.C., which is very small on the global scale, and when we have, say, our wild commercial fishery, there is no "them against us" or anything like that. It's just simple diversity for our coastal communities. We rely on everything.

Instead of talking about a whole bunch of other things, what's the big picture? That's what I was wanting to talk about, to ensure that our country — say, the province of B.C. — has coastal communities and towns that are healthy and prosperous, not just surviving. They need to be prosperous.

The main, number-one thing is diversity. Diversity is the key to economic stability. Get all the facts, make decisions encompassing everyone — that's what I would assume the responsibility is of the board here today — and put together a plan whereby everyone benefits, everyone is included and everyone is allowed to prosper and grow.

We've had a lot of things thrown at our industry — sea lice, PCBs and Atlantic escapements. Most of that stuff has been pretty much dragged through the coals and through the media. You say: "What's going to be the next one? What is there left to do?" I see that the few remaining topics that organizations are going to want to use to exclude farming as a viable business in British Columbia is to err on the side of caution….

Well, I hate to tell them, but we've already been farming here for the last 20 to 25 years. From what I see, our safeguards, the framework for farming, have been evolving, and they have been a working unit in progress. To err on the side of caution will be: "We don't know everything and how it will or won't be affected, so let's not do anything."

We will never have all the answers. As answers to old questions bring up new questions and on and on, there's always going to be something new, something that we don't know. Yes, I think the precautionary principle is good. But let's continue, let's expand, with the rules that we've evolved to date, which for the most part, I think, have gotten pretty good results.

One final thing I wanted to say — and I haven't had time to go on the Net to read what all your history is, your background — is that there is no such thing as government money. In Canada we're only 25 to 30 million people. We make things, we harvest things, and we sell them to other big countries like the U.S.A. It has 300 million. I don't know what Japan has. China is in the billions.

First-dollar businesses send their product out. The money comes into British Columbia. When the first-dollar businesses are doing well, it creates employment and jobs and wages. Secondary businesses thrive as a result of that, right down to restaurants, processing plants, equipment suppliers and malls — everybody. Secondary businesses do well when business survives, and they are basically supported by the first-dollar business. As a result, the big companies, the small secondary businesses pay taxes, the wages and such pay taxes, which the government collects as a big pot of money.

From that money the government is able to manage and keep our first-world level of living that we're accustomed to — schools, medical, roads, services, etc. I couldn't sit here and list all the government organizations. It would probably take all day. Anyway, those guys are a result of first-dollar business. So I think it's very, very important to ensure that those first-dollar businesses, and a lot of them are in coastal communities, are kept in an environment that is healthy. They can thrive and coastal communities can thrive, and we maintain our standard of living.

I just heard the last little bit about the federal fisheries — the plight of the wild fishery. I just wanted to say that the single biggest thing that has happened in the last couple of years was in 2004 when federal fisheries cut the number of chinook that were being released from SEP facilities by 25 percent. So that's 12 million fewer chinook that are being released, which will result in 220,000 fewer adult fish that will be out there for people to catch. They cut the coho program by 40 percent. I'm trying to see the numbers here. It's almost eight million. There were 15 million, so you cut 40 percent. That's a huge amount of fish.

The chinook is one of our most valuable commercial fish. Between 1 and 2½ percent survive to be an adult to be caught. So they went from about 48 million to about 35 million juveniles being released. So that's, like I say, 12 million fewer. Of that 220,000 chinook, about 50 percent are caught in the Alaska fishery. Anyway, it's a lot of fish.

Small coastal community fishermen, first nations — everybody is depending on these fish. Then I said: "Well, did they put the numbers back up?" That was in the fall of 2004. They said it was only for budgetary reasons that they cut those numbers. The 2005 numbers, I believe, have remained virtually the same. So you're going to see a lot fewer fish. I just started to get some numbers from Washington State, and it doesn't appear that they cut their numbers at all.

Anyway, that's just one thing I wanted to pass on to you, because you guys are, you know, doing this forum.

That's about all I wanted to say — that the key to prosperity is diversity. I am optimistic that this group of people will spend the time to go through all the information. If you don't know the answer to something — I don't think we expect all you guys to be experts — just keep on asking. There's more information and more information, and as you turn over more stones, eventually you will get a good idea as to what's going on. After 25 years in the farming industry, I think it's a very good industry. It's been pretty hard, from a small operator's point of view, especially when you're afraid to say anything because of the environmental terrorist groups that have been active in our area.

I'm hoping that we're going to go forward after this standing committee gets all the information, and that's going to be positive.

G. Coons: Thank you, Carol. I just had a couple of questions. You've been, as you said, in the business for 25 years. How many farmsites do you have currently?

C. Schmitt: At one time we had about three farmsites and a couple more leases that were approved. But during the hard times we couldn't afford the leases on all of them, so we let them all go, and we've only maintained one.

G. Coons: So you just have one now. Okay. For that site, when were you mandated to do a fish health management plan? Do you remember? Is that in the last…?

C. Schmitt: How that works is that every person has…. We have our waste management regulations, and we have our fisheries regulations, and according to all those…. They say in there what you're supposed to have. Every company has written up…. Then we submitted, you know, how we do our mortality, collection and disposal, net maintenance, net checks — all that stuff. It's all written up.

It was submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, and they went through it. Then they would come back to us and say: "Okay, this isn't as clear as we would like. Can you explain it a little more?" It went back and forth until both parties were happy that it was thorough enough.

Then when you have it at the farmsite, all the employees have to read it and initial it so that they understand. At our farmsite I have 32 ring binders. It was so confusing and there was so much stuff that I finally listed every item we needed to have, and I had a reference page and then a ring binder for that so that all the information was there and we weren't missing anything.

G. Coons: If you ended up getting another site next week or next month, would you have to do another fish health management plan for that site? Or would you use the same one for both? What factors are dependent on that?

C. Schmitt: What I would do, in my personal opinion, is simply say: "Okay. Where's the site located?" It might be a little bit different. So yeah, I think I would readdress everything. As a work in progress, it is re-read, basically, every year. If there are some changes or updates to be made, it's given to MAFF.

We had one instance at the farm where, when we got down to not a lot of nets in the water, instead of having divers come in to inspect the nets — because it's $700 for one trip because we're so far down there — we were authorized to visually pull it up and check for holes and then drop it down the…. Then after we get up to a certain amount, we'll have divers back.

G. Coons: My one last question. When we were meeting with the ministries last week, they were unsure whether or not the fish health management plans were accessible to the public, for people to see.

C. Schmitt: I don't see any reason why not, unless there's maybe…. For example — it's on a different topic — the Pacific Organic Seafood Association. There may be proprietary information in there that companies have, so they don't want to release that information.

C. Schmitt: There are a number of reasons. One, of course, is that the industry's been fairly stifled. We started. We had a farmsite, and we realized that in order to have quality fish at that time…. We wanted to do our own hatchery, so we did a hatchery. We started to grow smolts for other farmsites, and so our hatchery expanded and expanded. We never grew any great amount of fish at our farmsite.

The hatchery capacity in the industry has equalled or exceeded the volume that was necessary to maintain their own farmsites. So our hatchery, basically…. We've spent about $3.5 million. It's a big facility. We have a number of chinook, but of course most of the industry now is doing Atlantic. I bet there's probably not even a million chinook being put in the water. They cost too much to raise, because they eat a lot more food than an Atlantic, and at the end of the day, the people who are buying the fish don't want to pay you that extra money.

On the hatchery end. Basically, the big companies internalize, especially when they have had hard times. They didn't want to spend any extra money. They said: "Okay, let's just grow what we need in our hatchery and not spend the million dollars and have somebody else do it."

Our farm site. We mostly just ran along for a number of years for our own chinook brood stock. We've just put sablefish in the water in the last year. Because with scale of economy we're way far out there, we need to grow something that we're not just going to make ten cents a pound on. So right now we're in the throes of starting to grow black cod, and we're not going to grow any chinook unless the prices really come up.

C. Trevena: Which I think maybe answers my next question. You're a small operator; you're a small business. The finfish aquaculture industry…. There are lots of big players. I just wondered how you are competing. Where you compete is by changing…?

C. Schmitt: It's been a tough go. We went from 12 to 20 employees for many, many years — probably a good 20 people year after year after year — and then, boom, there are three of us now. For example, at our hatchery I'm saying: okay, if we were going to go Atlantics, we need about a $200,000 improvement. We don't want to spend that, so we're saying: let's grow an end product at our hatchery that we can sell. Then we don't have to depend on the big companies.

Well, the government right now won't give me a licence to grow any native fish. I mean, I've had an application in for cutthroat and for Dolly Varden char for a year and a half to grow specialty fish for a market. They just said they don't have a policy, and they won't give me the licence.

C. Trevena: My final question, if I might. Having the black cod and the chinook…. Are you going to be having both at the same time, or are you basically going to stop having the chinook and move over to black cod?

C. Schmitt: No, we've still got some chinook brood fish at the farm site. We're an atypical farm in that instead of all the pens being beside each other, we have one pen and then we have 60 feet, and then we have another pen and 60 feet. So we have — I don't know how many acres it is — our pens spread out over a large area. If you have black cod and chinook, they're very compatible to be on the same site — not a problem.

Through the years I guess you've seen a lot of changes, both from how you operate and operational changes, technology changes and regulation changes. I'd just like your overview of some of the biggest impacts those changes have had on your business.

C. Schmitt: Just in talking about the way our farm site was originally conceived and was set up, it doesn't pay to be ahead of your time. We've always wanted

full water movement around all our pens. Now there's a bit more of that going on over in Europe and that.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Just the changes that have been a big impact on your business — either from technology or regulation or anything else.

C. Schmitt: It was a lot easier to get a lease many years ago. It still took one year to get the lease. Because it was so new, there were a lot of problems within the government — not really knowing the chain of command and who could approve it.

Nowadays there's a set of guidelines if you wanted to get a lease, but I believe there has only been one new lease in quite a few years. I think the problem is — and I may be wrong — with federal fisheries. Even though we have the same rules here as we do on the east coast of Canada, it takes six months to a year to get a lease on the east coast, yet they can't seem to get past the fact of allowing a lease to happen here.

I mean, that is one of the things. But a lot of things, like…. We have a standard operational procedure for fish health. In 1986, when we took possession of our first eggs — those eggs from the chinook and coho — everything was disease-screened. That was never anything new. We always disease-screened the adult brood stock. New things in the last number of years would be biosecurity. You know: foot baths, handwashing stations — just a general, really stringent protocol of keeping everything spotless. You keep your gear at the farm site; you keep your gear at the hatchery. You don't mix and match.

I would have to say that it's fine-tuned, but there is, of course, almost an over amount of regulatory stuff that I feel…. Like someone said, the farm sites, fish farms, get checked every year, and other agriculture that's been in business for many years has never been checked, but we're under the same ministry. That's because the government wants to ensure…. We're under such tight scrutiny. They want to make sure that no stones are left unturned and that absolutely everything is up to par.

We agree with that, because it shows that you're very diligent. Aquaculture right now is on an annual increase of at least 15 percent globally. It's only B.C. — this little epicentre of, "They don't want it," whoever "they" are — with this unrelenting pressure on us to not allow for any expansion. But it's a great industry.

I always compare this…. Look what happens when you build a bloody mall. You come in, you level it, you take all the topsoil, and you pave it. I don't know how big the average mall is, but I mean, it's solid concrete. They build a big parking lot and building and stick in a couple of trees.

Here most fish farms are basically…. What I've seen after 25 years: we're simply floating reefs. We have great biodiversity, and now with the good predator netting and everything, there are never any predators that need to be killed. They're healthy environments. We're part of…. We don't just come in as our own entity; we're actually part of that system.

R. Austin (Chair): Thanks, Carol. Thanks for coming and making your presentation.

K. Kornbacher: Thank you for this opportunity to speak before the committee. My name is Kim Kornbacher. I'm an educator, an archaeologist, and I'm a resident of Saltspring Island. I'm speaking to you today as a concerned citizen and a community member.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument in favour of fish farming is that since the wild fisheries are collapsing, the development of fish farming is necessary to feed our ever-increasing population. The problem I see with this argument, in terms of B.C. salmon farms and new black cod farms, is that black cod and salmon are carnivorous fish. In open-net cages they consume large amounts of fishmeal.

Here in British Columbia open-net salmon farms use between 2.7 and 3.5 tonnes of wild fish, according to figures from the Suzuki Foundation and the Alaska Marine Conservation Council. It takes that much wild fish to make enough dry feed to raise one tonne of salmon. The data indicates that farming carnivorous fish actually increases pressure on wild stocks of anchovy, mackerel and sardines, all of which are crucial food in much of South America and other areas of the world. The belief that black cod and salmon farms will play an important role in feeding our increasing global population is unsubstantiated. In fact, the reverse appears to be true.

Another touted benefit about fish farming in B.C. is that the industry provides major economic gain for our province. If one looks at this issue in terms of the established netcage salmon farming, there is little evidence of widespread economic gain for the people of British Columbia. In terms of sablefish or black cod, a recent report from the UBC Fisheries Centre Aquatic Research Ecosystems Laboratory predicts that, "A decrease in the price of sablefish will ultimately follow an increase in sablefish supply to the market from aquaculture. This decrease will be at the expense of both sablefish farmers and fishers in Canada but beneficial to sablefish consumers," since virtually all sablefish is consumed outside of Canada. "Benefits are exported while costs are absorbed within Canada."

There are many examples around the world that show that fish farming results in a shift from community-based fishing to industrial farming and that there is a reduction in jobs as technology increases develop. So while the economic gain may be considerable for a few large corporations and individuals, the people of our province as a whole are not experiencing and are not likely to experience an economic boost from the fish-farming industry.

Other problems. The impact of the introduction of a variety of chemicals, fish food, excrement; the impact

of disease transfer and escaped farm fish on wild stocks are additional major problems that have already been reviewed here today and are well documented. Some immediate impacts of all these variables on the marine environment are well documented, but the long-term, ultimate effects, sure to be much greater, are as yet unknown.

Our community's own local experience of the way the provincial government has pushed through its pro-aquaculture agenda is epitomized by the place on Saltspring Island called Walker Hook, known as Syuhe'mun to the local first nations. An industrial fish hatchery has been located on this archaeological site, a place of environmental, cultural, historic and recreational significance.

Despite the local community government and first nations objections and protests, development was allowed at Walker Hook. Development was allowed, and a 20-year lease was granted to Sablefin Hatcheries Ltd. in 2004, even though this is a recorded archaeological site and despite the fact that three different classes of sensitive ecosystem exist here, including a sparsely vegetated spit or tombolo. No baseline environmental impact studies or archaeological impact assessments were required or have yet been completed.

Sablefin Hatcheries Ltd. is a venture capital corporation, and its industrial operation on the tombolo at Walker Hook on Saltspring Island directly contravenes the intent of our official community plan, which calls for protection of our tidal and aquatic shorelines. Our Islands Trust policy statement contains specific statements regarding aquaculture that are contravened by this hatchery. Although the hatchery is land-based, the black cod/sablefish fingerlings raised at the hatchery are being transferred to open netcages in other locations on the B.C. coast.

Once there, they're part of the same fish-farming industry that is fraught with the problems of unsustainability, pollution and disease transfer that were mentioned at the beginning of this comment and throughout this hearing.

Despite numerous international, peer-reviewed and other scientific studies demonstrating that problems associated with farmed fish are causing major environmental degradation, and amid large-scale community objection, our government has allowed Sablefin Hatcheries to move forward with their industrial operation, thus transforming Walker Hook, or Syuhe'mun, into an industrial waste disposal site. How could this occur in a rural residential area on a previously recorded archaeological site and a sensitive ecosystem? It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the government pro-aquaculture agenda is responsible for this situation.

The site known as DfRu002 at Walker Hook is estimated to be the fifth-largest recorded archaeological shell midden in the Gulf Islands. That is a big site. In the early 1970s Walker Hook was surveyed by archaeologists and its size estimated based on surface exposures of archaeological material, but no subsurface testing or other detailed investigations were done.

Although the length of occupation is not known because it hasn't been tested, or hadn't been, to local Coast Salish people this is the ancestral village site of Syuhe'mun and has been used by them since time immemorial. Archaeological investigations at other sites in the area indicate that these cultural deposits could be as old as 4,500 years.

If an archaeological site has never been scientifically investigated and is threatened by development, the Heritage Conservation Act of 1996 requires that an archaeological impact assessment, or AIA, be carried out in order to assess significance and design developments to avoid or mitigate impacts. As such, the archaeology branch of the then Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management should have required an AIA prior to issuing a permit to Sablefin Hatcheries to construct their disposal system. Yet a site alteration permit for the initial construction was issued without an AIA in the spring of 2003.

Penelakut elders, many of whom now live just north of Walker Hook on Kuper Island, remember Syuhe'mun, or Walker Hook, as an ancient village site and sacred place of their ancestors as well as a place to fish, hunt and gather. Elders now recall gathering clams and hunting deer and waterfowl at Walker Hook, and they remember certain ways that they showed their respect for this sacred resting place of their ancestors — things like not carrying game across the tombolo or only being allowed to play on the beach when they were little and always keeping fires below the tide line.

In 2003 hatchery, well and pipeline construction by Sablefin Hatcheries disturbed the midden. Eleven burials were found in the initial construction. Based on this density, it's estimated that as many as 740 people could be buried at Walker Hook.

The customary law of the Coast Salish holds that the dead are respected, just like in the dominant white culture. But their customary law holds that the dead are respected and that their burial grounds are not physically disturbed. In December of 2004 the waste management branch of the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection apparently ignored the customary law of the Coast Salish regarding the cultural and religious significance of Syuhe'mun. They did not take into consideration that the Sablefin Hatcheries operation is an infringement on the constitutional rights of the Coast Salish people.

Neither did the ministry follow its own provincial guidelines, as outlined in the sensitive-ecosystem conservation manual. They chose to proceed, despite concerns raised by the first nations about their ancestral burial ground and about possible contamination of the marine resources at Walker Hook, to which Coast Salish people have acknowledged harvesting rights.

The new permit allows a fourfold increase in the levels of hatchery effluent discharge now pumping through the known heritage site and Coast Salish burial ground to the underlying marine aquifer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Using Syuhe'mun as a waste

disposal site communicates an unconscionable lack of regard for first nations rights and beliefs and sacred places.

The events that have transpired at Walker Hook, the fact that the government did not require an environmental impact study, contrary to their own guidelines, or an archaeological impact assessment prior to approving the construction of a sablefin hatchery in this sensitive ecosystem and wholly inappropriate site indicates to me that the pro-aquaculture agenda is taking precedence over other citizen and community concerns.

I'm concerned with the lack of rigour and regulation that allowed this, and I'm concerned with the diversification of open-net-pen fish farming to include sablefish. I object to the use of an environmentally sensitive, culturally, historically and recreational significant site such as Walker Hook to expand the fish-farming industry, an industry that's already fraught with problems.

Five years ago the Senate Committee on Fisheries recommended that DFO define and apply a precautionary approach to aquaculture. In the same year the Leggatt Inquiry resulted in a series of recommendations including removal of all net-cage salmon farms from the marine environment by January 1, 2005, and application of the precautionary principle to regulation of the salmon farming industry. Between then and now our provincial government has apparently ignored these recommendations and maintained its policy of sympathetic administration towards the fish-farming industry.

As a concerned citizen, I would like to see the provincial government begin to adopt a precautionary principle, a precautionary approach to the fish-farming industry as recommended five years ago. Diversifying the industry to include other species, such as is occurring right now with 47 new licences for black cod, is a direct contradiction to the recommendations, based on expert testimony and public input, that were given five years ago. Since we haven't solved the problems of disease transfer, escape or pollution with salmon, it seems reckless rather than precautionary for the government to issue licences for black cod farming.

As noted by Stuart Leggatt in 2001: "It's time to get on with the job of cleaning up the environmental degradation left behind by the salmon farming industry and preventing further damage in the future."

In my opinion this should be our first priority. Thank you for considering my comments.

S. Fraser: The issues that you brought up regarding the Coast Salish and burial sites and middens. I would suggest that you pass on that they should bring that back up with the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation. We are post–New Relationship, so that should be taken into account.

K. Kornbacher: Yeah. Right now, the archaeology branch has been moved to the Ministry of….

S. Fraser: Tourism, Sport…. I know. Then, cc it there, too. If they want, I'll try to help them do that.

R. Austin (Chair): Okay. We've come to the end of our submissions for today. There are a number of people who would've liked to have come and made submissions today and, due to the lack of time, were unable to. In fairness, we have three here. So what we will do….

I know that Campbell River, where we are going to be on Wednesday, was oversubscribed very, very early on in the process — within a few days of the date being announced. I would suggest that the committee will certainly be coming back to this area again. At that time…. We will keep these three people on the list, and when we return to the area, they will have a priority for making a submission to the committee before any other new applications for submissions are made.

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1)	Lloyd Erickson
2)	Island Scallops	Robert Saunders
3)	Georgia Strait Alliance	Laurie MacBride
4)	Seaspring Salmon Farm Ltd.	Dr. David Groves
5)	PR Aqua Ltd.	Wayne Gorrie
6)	Dr. Jim Brackett
7)	David McCallum
8)	Penta Transport	Gordon Putz
9)	Omega Pacific Seafarms Inc./Omega Pacific Hatchery Inc.	Carol Schmitt
10)	Kim Kornbacher

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