Sustainable Aquaculture — Issue No. 10 — Wednesday, June 7, 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

Opening Statements		175
	R. Kwakseestahla

Presentations		177
	P. Marshall
	V. Egan
	J. Ritchlin
	P. Gibson
	B. Milligan
	J. Gordon
	B. Walker
	L. Brunt
	E. Blueschke
	F. Blaney
	R. Stevenson
	R. Burns
	S. Krompocker
	I. Roberts
	A. Sutherland
	M. Storry
	R. Grant
	C. Backman
	J. Holder
	G. Thulin
	R. Grigg
	N. Lax

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:

Clare Backman (Marine Harvest Canada Inc.)
Fay Blaney (Georgia Strait Alliance; Homalco First Nation)
Eric Blueschke (Georgia Strait Alliance; Homalco First Nation)
Leanne Brunt (First Dollar Alliance)
Rod Burns (Bold Point Centre for Tourism Training)
Van Egan
Peter Gibson (Grieg Seafood B.C. Ltd.)
James Gordon
Roy Grant (Councillor, City of Campbell River)
Ray Grigg (Sierra Club of Canada — Quadra Island Group)
John Holder (JLH Consulting Inc.)
Scott Krompocker (Positive Aquaculture Awareness Society)
Chief Russell Kwakseestahla
Noel Lax (Sierra Club of Canada — Quadra Island Group)
Patrick Marshall (Campbell River Economic Development Corp.)
Barry Milligan (Grieg Seafood B.C. Ltd.)
Jay Ritchlin (Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform)
Ian Roberts (President, Positive Aquaculture Awareness Society)
Roberta Stevenson (Executive Director, British Columbia Shellfish Growers Association)
Mary Storry (Councillor, City of Campbell River)
Alan Sutherland (Pan Fish Canada Ltd.)
Gary Thulin (President, Campbell River and District Chamber of Commerce)
Barb Walker (First Dollar Alliance)

R. Austin (Chair): Good afternoon. I would like to open these hearings. My name is Robin Austin, and I am Chair of the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture. Before we begin, I would like to invite the hereditary chief of the Laich-Kwil-Tach Nation to come up and say a couple of words.

R. Kwakseestahla: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Bear with me. I just went through heart surgery a while ago, so I'll do the best I can. We have overlapping meetings today.

Yo, gilakas'la. Welcome into our Laich-Kwil-Tach K'ómoks homelands of our ancestors, who are a non-treaty nation with the colonial government — your predecessor — or the British Crown. We enjoy full jurisdiction to our homelands today, even though the rule of law does not acknowledge that.

My people's beginnings started at a place between Ehlqwa and Xama, Willows Creek and Oyster River. One of the seven children of the sun came down into this homeland. This is the legend of my ancestors, and that is when our people began. You are in a [Kwak'wala spoken] of the Awahoo tribe, the Thunderbird tribe of the Laich-Kwil-Tach Nation and the K'ómoks people.

The story is shared jointly, and an anthropology expert who reported my family's history concluded in 1996 that the Kwakseestahla/Quocksister family are the lineal descendents of the heads of both those nations. We knew that, but the courts required expert opinion, so we went ahead and hired an anthropologist and got the expert report done.

Part of the systems we have inherent to indigenous people in this part of the world, the Pacific north coast, is that we don't look at the saltwater seas flowing through our homelands as a capitalistic venture. I'll share with you the words of my great-grandmother, Queen Mary, to my dad Qwinxwilas, Captain George Quocksister.

The sea is a cepa ac'i, a great feast dish that the Creator provided for us. We are entrusted to care for it and protect it as hereditary leaders of our nation and tribes. It says nothing about ownership. It talks about a trust between a group of people and their creator.

My other great-grandfather in 1914 at [Kwak'wala spoken], Salmon River — and I always use his words of expression, because he should have known back then where we come from — said the Creator put us down here. That's why I make those statements today. They are not statement created by the speaker. They are statements created by my ancestors.

My other great-grandfather made the same statement to the royal commission in Cape Mudge — that where his people come from, the Creator put them there.

Attached to our presentation are maps that were sent to the B.C. Treaty Commission in 1992, to give you a good description of our homelands. One of the things I put in here is that we are protected by King George III's royal proclamation of 1763, whereby those tribes that don't have treaty with the Crown — meaning the British Crown at that time — should go unmolested. We maintain that legal position even though it isn't our law. We should be unmolested until there's a just settlement made with our people, nation to nation, as other people were treated by Governor Douglas. The present mechanism in place does not have that formula.

The other thing that I've got in a written presentation to you talks about marine genocide. Attached to this presentation are three expert reports of…. The speaker was a delegate-elected member of the Canadian Environmental Network for 15 years. I resigned. I also was a member of the B.C. Environmental Network for ten years. I resigned both those posts to work with my people as an environmental representative on our tribal council. They are attached to here.

I'm going to submit this to the committee secretariat so that you can facilitate yourselves with a copy, but I expect mine mailed back to me because of these reports. These are the only copies of the report that we have.

Our position on the fish farm has been zero tolerance. We really took a firm position about eight years ago. I was in a commercial herring bait fishing job, and I was anchored with my captain on the vessel I worked on in Kanish. It's a little saltwater lagoon on the north side of Granite Bay on Quadra Island, where some fish farms are located.

I used to go there as a child with my father and my uncles to pick up oysters and clams while the fishing tides weren't viable for fishing. There used to be tons of oysters and tons of clams, but in the two or three days I spent going around Granite Bay as we were waiting for the herring — the herring that we were going to be bait-fishing had not arrived; they arrived late — I went into that lagoon, and I was totally flabbergasted.

I've invited a lot of people on my TV program and people I see on the street: "Go look at Granite Bay, and look what happened to the oysters and the clams in the lagoon that we call Kanish." Kanish, for those that don't know, means "the passage where you can go through that island," as does Okasala, which means "a full passage" in our Likwala language.

The expert reports that are attached are by M.D.L. Easton, R.K. Misra and G.M. Kruzyinski. There may have been consent by agents of the Crown, self-serving the Crown. We tell you today, as the captain and chiefs of the Xwémalhkwo Nation and all of our people, that environmental genocide, marine genocide….

There is also a report in here on the pulp mills by the same group. It's the last report. It talks about the poisoning that's going on with the marine life. This was way before the fish farm became a hot issue.

We make these statements to you and to study the expert reports…. I see you went out on a jaunt today. I wish I could take you out for two or three days and show you my homeland and some key places that have been devastated from the residue of those fish farms. It's the same colouring as the colouring that comes off the bottom of the nets, and the tide does not circulate in a lagoon like in the rest of the bay, so it just all stayed in there and killed everything in there. That is marine genocide.

In my presentation today I say, on behalf of our entire nation — chiefs, peoples, children and future children: what would the eagle and whale and sea otter and seals and rockfish say to your committee today if they were privy to the King's English and could come to this committee? What litany of injustice would they say because of the mercury tailings that are in the north gulf of Georgia, which was studied 25 years ago?

I say that in a good way. I have no disrespect for any of the presenters, and I'm honoured to make this presentation on behalf of my people today to the B.C. government committee.

There's a lot of whoop-de-do about jobs, and in the documents it says we don't care about jobs. My feeling, being politically involved with the native people for 32 years in this part of the world and in numerous elected positions right to Ottawa as assistant to some of the national leaders…. Our people have been driven into perpetual poverty. If our people did go into fish farming, which I doubt they would, the places where fish farming is viable are all taken up. Just about a month or two ago the north Island newspapers were full of fish farm applications again. So I say that on that part.

In closing, I want to go back the animal kingdom and the marine life. There have been contractors contracted by fish and wildlife to destroy animal kingdom things for going into the pens — such as sea lions, seals and sea otters. Nowhere in our history of thousands of years in this homeland were we ever taught to destroy something for a created entity.

I say this on behalf of my people. In our language we have a word: [Kwak'wala spoken.] It means being as one with every thing else in that territory — the trees, the fish, the birds, everything. We're all one. [Kwak'wala spoken.]

I would to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Aquaculture Committee's public hearings here in Campbell River. 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 that this committee has. The Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture was reissued the following terms of reference by the Legislative Assembly on February 20, 2006: that the committee 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 following: 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 B.C. 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. We have Adam Wang and Alison Braid-Skolski here from Hansard Services. They record what is said during the hearing, and then Hansard produces a transcript of what people say, which as I've already noted is posted on the Internet. We also have staff from the Office of the Clerk of Committees. To my left is Craig James, our Clerk of Committees, and 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): Before inviting the first witness up, I would just like to acknowledge…. I see the former Attorney General, Colin Gabelmann, here with us today.

I would like to say one thing about how this has been proceeding in the last couple of days. We're trying to hear around three witnesses an hour, if possible. If witnesses do use up their entire time with their presen-

tation, it becomes very difficult for the members to have an opportunity to ask questions. If it's possible, it would be great if you could limit your presentations so that we do have an opportunity to ask those questions.

In order to facilitate that, I will just give a signal when there are about five or six minutes left so that each witness can maybe decide whether they would like to wrap up or whether they would like to use all of that time to make their presentation, in which case members do have the opportunity to put questions in writing. Those will be sent to them through the Clerk of Committees, and then those replies will come back again through the Clerk of Committees. All of those written questions and answers will become part of the public record.

The first witness today is Patrick Marshall. If he would like to come up, please.

P. Marshall: Gilakas'la, gilakas'la, gilakas'la. I'd like to recognize the Laich-Kwil-Tach-speaking community, in which we are meeting today, formed by the communities of the We Wai Kai and We Wai Kum as well as the K'ómoks community.

I'd also like the committee to know that you're at a crossroads of first nations. We also have the Nuu-chah-nulth communities of the Mowachaht from Gold River. We also have the Klahoose and Homalco from the Naut'sa Mawt community. So we have quite a group of first nations communities here in Campbell River.

Today I'd like to introduce myself. I live at 1762 Aspen Way in Campbell River. I'm the EDO and general manager for the Campbell River Economic Development Corp. — Rivercorp, for short. I've served as the general manager since the creation of this locally owned operation in 2001.

The economic development function for Campbell River was taken out of city hall because the community wanted it outside, visible and accountable. The community process by which we came to this conclusion can be seen at www.credo.incampbellriver.com, a website that I maintain so that the community can revisit it. There are elements associated with aquaculture that you should take a look at on this site, as it was a consensus-driven targeting process managed in 1998.

I currently serve as the chair of the Elk Falls Community Advisory Group, another consensus-driven approach to sustainable community development, and as a director of Small Business B.C. in Vancouver. I've also listed my other qualifications, not the least of which is the fact that I own a bachelor of environmental studies from the school of urban and regional planning, a professional honour degree program, from the University of Waterloo.

I can speak to items one, two and three of the committee mandate. I arrived from Toronto, having left on a Friday before July 1, and started working for Campbell River on July 4, 1989. I mention this because I was born and bred in the city, and it took me a long time to understand that salmon don't come from the St. Lawrence Market. They actually come from communities like Campbell River.

I have several exhibits to deliver to you today. I have left copies with your research assistant. I'd like to speak today with respect to four basic reports. I'm sure you'll hear from a lot of people who don't live in this community, but I felt that these pieces of work — some that were completed by the province of British Columbia — were really relevant to the first three points in your mandate.

The first one is British Columbia's Heartland at the Dawn of the 21st Century: 2001 Economic Dependencies and Impact Ratios for 63 Local Areas. This work by your own Garry Horne is a bible for sustainable development, because it provides you with an accountable measure of impacts from your actions as B.C. politicians as well as the impacts from the policies you set.

I make reference to table 2.1, which illustrates that Campbell River has a 29-percent income dependency on the forest industry, followed closely by a 20-percent dependency on public sector or government jobs like teachers and health care workers.

Recent restructuring in this industry has refined these numbers somewhat, but we're still dependent on the wood trade. This community and coastal communities it supports — like Gold River, Tahsis, Quadra Island, Sayward and the tri-port cities of the north Island as well as first nations cities on the coast — need the certainty associated with clear and accountable practices by the provincial government to diversify our local economies.

As a suggestion to the committee, you should request the special report from Garry Horne. He works for B.C. Stats. At least I think he still does; I'm not sure. This report is dated January 2004. I'm suggesting that you request this report to quantify the changes in our economic picture from the aquaculture industry over the past decade. I think the aquaculture industry was lumped into fishing and agriculture and food categories, as we know that during the same time there were significant changes to the wild fishery. Any other consultant does not really have the ability to provide the correct interpretation, which is an unbiased factual approach. Garry Horne, as I said, was or is an employee of B.C. Stats, and I'd suggest that they probably have the best information from which this committee can judge economic impact.

Table 3.1 on page 27 shows that logging represents a ratio of 1.21 and pulp and paper represents 1.64. I'd suggest that the same exists for fish farming at 1.21 and processing at 1.64. What this means is that for every hundred jobs in fish farming, 21 jobs are supported in service and government sectors like teachers, health workers and retailers. Also, for every hundred jobs in fish processing, more than 64 jobs are supported in non-basic employment.

This is really important for the committee to understand. Tourism outside Vancouver operates from April to September and only has an impact on seven jobs per hundred. So please stop referring to tourism as a sav-

iour of our rural resource economy. B.C. has relied on its pretty face for far too long, and we need to invest in technologies around our resources.

The second item is the regional district Comox-Strathcona statistical profile. Here are some socioeconomic dependency numbers for this region. They show that the economic region is dependent on social programs of the B.C. government and low on opportunities. We're ranked 14 of 27 in regional districts in terms of high elderly dependency rate. We're ranked 11 of 27 in terms of lone-parent families as a percentage of families with children at home. We're ranked 21 of 27 of income share of poorest households. We're also ranked very high, seven of 27, in terms of population aged 19 to 24 receiving employment insurance.

I point these out to you as it's been proven that the most efficient social program is a job. If you remove the uncertainty and politics from the issue, it becomes an opportunity, and we can employ more youth and young adults at home in the region of their origin. Right now our single biggest export is not wood but rather human resources to the cities of the lower mainland.

The third item I'd like to share with the committee is entitled…. I'm sorry; I didn't make up these titles. It's one of those problems with the particular profession in which I serve. It's called Proprietary Economic Modelling and Impact Analysis for the Comox Strathcona Regional District. It was a study commissioned jointly by Comox Valley Economic Development and Campbell River Economic Development.

Basically, on page 32 of this report it illustrates that the Comox Valley injected $560 million into government and used less than $330 million. Campbell River city and area injected another $374 million into government, with less than half of the population, and used only $219 million. When I say "injected," that means in terms of the payment of taxes. What that tells us is that in 2001, our area generated enough surpluses to senior governments to supply $388 million for hip replacement surgeries in Vancouver. Our working resource communities drive the service-dependent economies of the lower mainland. This is factual information developed by third-party sources.

The fourth element I'd like to share with the committee is a document called GoodCompany. It's a group of guidelines for corporate social performance developed by Canadian Business for Social Responsibility in 2002. Most legislation policies proposed by land use–based single interest groups around sustainability are, in my opinion, dysfunctional, accountable and basically incorrect. Please investigate the use of good company guidelines. These guidelines enable companies to assess, improve and report on their social, environmental and financial performance. Knowing the individual companies and the people who operate them from across our coast, I'm confident they can exceed all of these guidelines — and currently do so in each of our communities.

It didn't take long for me to transform from an urbanite who thought that the salmon came from the St. Lawrence Market into a rural resource citizen on the coast. When you make a bad policy decision, it translates into no Christmas lights in my neighbourhood when there should be or, worse yet, for-sale signs when there need not be. I know that you will come to some hard conclusions through this process, but for those of you from the city, I will be looking for real accountability on your final decisions. Some of you will be unable to detach yourselves from political party rhetoric. For those of you who can, it's on your backs that the province will move forward.

In closing, I would support both the provincial and national chambers of commerce resolutions on this topically. Basically, they recommend that governments (1) fairly interpret and apply existing regulations as they pertain to salmon farming projects, (2) ensure that the relevant regulations and programs be implemented to support the development and expansion of aquaculture and new programs be developed that recognize unique features of this segment of Canada's food production system and (3) base regulation and expansion of the industry on legitimate and responsible research into the environmental impacts of water farming.

I hope you've had time to visit the B.C. Centre for Aquatic Health Sciences located in this building, downstairs. If you can move forward in a positive fashion with this opportunity, we've been advised there could be many more ventures of this kind that have international significance. I'm held accountable for my work every six months. I'm scored against what the board of directors has established and confirmed as my priorities for the year. I would expect the same of the industry and government in British Columbia.

Thank you for bringing this committee into the rest of B.C. Former political parties referred to us as beyond Hope, which was very negative. Others referred to us as the heartland and then stopped. I'm content just with being another working rural resource British Columbian, and the more you can dissolve this from being an us-and-them issue, the faster we can move forward together.

R. Austin (Chair): I would now like to ask members if they have any questions.

C. Trevena: Patrick, thank you very much for opening this session for us. I think that one of the issues we do face as a committee is to try and find that balance, try and find ways that we can work together to make sure that we continue to have very productive communities along the coast. I'm very well aware that Campbell River is highly dependent on aquaculture.

What I wondered, in your looking forward and looking at the area, is what sort of new projects you see coming on that can work with aquaculture. What new things are coming on line within Campbell River that can take the industry to a different level?

P. Marshall: I think that's a great question. While nobody was looking, there are companies in this community that have supplied and been part of a supply chain in logging for 50 years at a minimum. We inter-

viewed one company that is responsible for heavy trucks, only to find out that 20 percent of their business is in service and supply to the aquaculture industry. Now, it's hard to think that a company would go from serving truck loggers to fish farmers, but that's part of the transition that's taken place out here over the last few years.

What we're finding is that in terms of technology, finding solutions around water-based farming is driving a whole part of the economy that we hadn't been really paying much attention to. That's in research and technology. I know there are issues where certain people see an opportunity around land-based aquaculture, but to be quite frank, if there was a business case for that, they'd be doing it. That's something that really, from our perspective, isn't relevant.

What is relevant is that the international focus in Campbell River is something that's come about through aquaculture in the last ten years. It's been quite surprising, the number of languages that you'll hear in many of these businesses. I think that as the economy has shifted from being totally dependent on a wood-based economy into a more diversified economy, our small businesses — which make up 98 percent of the employers — have shifted, as well, into training for aquaculture, into building equipment and servicing aquaculture.

S. Simpson: Thank you very much for the presentation. I appreciate your comments.

As we learn more and more about this issue and begin to understand it from all the different perspectives, I think we're learning a couple of things. We're certainly learning about the passion that people on all sides of this issue feel for their view.

The other thing is around the science. We're starting to determine — as the Auditor General determined a couple of years ago, as we've learned from Fisheries and Oceans in meeting with their scientists and with provincial scientists — that there are big gaps. It's not conclusive. The science isn't conclusive.

How important do you think it is that we start to do some of the things like we were talking about today with the folks at Agrimarine — about their work, about those kinds of demonstration projects being done in controlled ways to see whether that actually is a viable option to look at for down the road? I'm wondering what your thinking is about investment in trying to look at those options. Do they actually work, or can they work?

P. Marshall: That's a great question. First, we shouldn't throw out the research — all of it — that's been done. But you should check on the credentials of the people that are submitting it. I've seen so many things come across and appear as witnesses at other committee meetings, which are coming from spurious sources. That's one part. But don't throw it all out.

The second part is that investment in new technologies, whether it's land-based or otherwise, is kind of market-driven. Wouldn't it have happened already if there was a demonstrated business case for it? Nothing against what Agrimarine is attempting to do, but possibly part of the problem or the challenge they have as an independent business is because there's been so much in terms of confusion around this issue in British Columbia for so long. Who's going to invest in something like that until there's certainty determined by government?

The third part of this is that I wouldn't want to see government relying totally on its position and putting public money — all of it, 100 percent of it — in this type of research. Certainly, there has to be some consideration for minimizing risk, which might promote some more testing or development. But again, how long are we going to wait? How long are communities like Gold River or Klemtu going to be able to wait for this to be tested out?

I think there's certainly a body of government information on regulations and managing outcomes through provincial processes. There's lots of that. We're almost to the point now where the process that we have for marine-based industry is about equal to what we've developed over the past decade for forests. At some point we've got to draw a line and get on with things.

I would encourage that type of investment, and we do, when prospective investors come along. But they're very few and far between.

Could I ask everybody to please switch off their cell phones? It'll make things a lot easier for all of us here.

V. Egan: My name is Van Egan. I'm from Campbell River. I've lived here for 50 years. I've seen the gradual decline of the salmon resource during that time. I feel that fish farms are one more obstacle to their survival. Thank you for this opportunity to express my views on the fish-farming industry being allowed to use our pristine waters on this coast.

In April I wrote a letter to the Minister of Agriculture and Lands, Mr. Pat Bell, expressing my concern about the government's present policy of allowing further growth of this industry. My letter was copied to Claire Trevena, who has advised me that she has passed it on to this committee. I thank her for that. I shall try not to go deeply into that letter's contents today, but I have attached a copy of it to my written submission.

Just to refresh your minds about the scientific studies that have been carried on regarding the problem of sea lice proliferating around open-net-cage fish farms and the danger of sea lice and their larvae wreaking

havoc on out-migrating salmon smolts. In this matter, I would like to think that the findings of these studies by reputable people of the scientific community will bear more weight with you than some of those mind-numbing pronouncements of the industry's professional public relations people.

We should all be aware that science does not have all the final answers to problems, which we might like, especially those problems where multiple variables exist, but good scientific research provides us with the best answers we have at this time. These interpretations of collected data should be the basis for decision-making. In the matter of open-net-cage fish farms the evidence is clear that they are deathtraps to out-migrating salmon smolts. It seems to me that we should be questioning whether fish farming is sustainable at all. I would say it isn't, even if placed in closed containment systems on land.

To provide the feed for farm fish requires four pounds of oceanic food obtained from the aquatic life of lesser immediate value to us to raise one pound of farm salmon. To make the food pellets for farm salmon requires fishing down the ocean's food chains. Multiple tonnes of the ocean's food web must be extracted to grow one quarter the amount of farm salmon. Is this a smart move? Is this good management of the world's resources? I think not.

It's true that much of this fishing down on the food chain takes place elsewhere on the globe, but are you aware that 500 tonnes of krill have been netted each year out of the Strait of Georgia during the past decade?

Krill are high up in the food chain of growing salmon. Eighty percent of the krill harvest is used to make food pellets for farm salmon. The other 20 percent goes into making goldfish food. The fish-farming industry is asking DFO to increase the harvest.

The Strait of Georgia is not showing signs of being the great, healthy fishing pond it once was. It may not be the only factor in diminishing those not-so-long-ago days when coho and spring salmon were abundant, but it seems conceivable that to continue these krill harvests will jeopardize any efforts to bring back the wild salmon of the Strait of Georgia — nor will the continued existence of open-net-cage fish farms.

Recent trends in human demographics here on the west coast point to our intent to continue living and growing here for the long term. What will we leave those who follow — diminishing natural resources, somewhat like those we inherited? Human spirits do not soar with nothing more than fenced-in livestock for human consumption only. Coastal B.C. is not paradise because the word "wild" is missing in our lexicon — quite the opposite. Just ask yourself: "What will make me" — meaning you — "happier: seas of floating netcages or legions of salmon returning to our rivers to spawn?" It won't be both.

In closing, I'd like to call your attention, again, to the letter which is attached to the scientific studies and to the last paragraph. Thank you for your time. Thank you for listening.

S. Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Egan. You've touched on a number of points. Just so that you know, we all care about the wild salmon. I think I speak for all of us up here too. It is part of the mix that we're looking at — wild salmon, the environment, the economic activity created by aquaculture — and trying to come up with recommendations. That's a part of it.

You've touched on another issue that Shane has mentioned. There are gaps in science. The Auditor General stated that in a report in 2004-2005, so we know there are gaps in science and information and that we need to really find out what effects we have between the wild and aquaculture. We are up here looking at that. That's why we're travelling here, so we appreciate — I know I appreciate — your comments. I've read your letter already.

A couple of the comments that you've made…. You mentioned four pounds are required of biomass, basically, to grow one pound of farm salmon or cultured salmon. Do you have a source for that?

S. Fraser: Well, this committee has heard, in the last few days, quite a number of different numbers there.

I would now like to call up the next witness. Mr. Jay Ritchlin, if you would like to come forward, please.

J. Ritchlin: Now that everyone is well-acquainted with my computer speed, I would like to thank the committee for having this session and for inviting me to speak today. My name is Jay Ritchlin, and I'm presenting today on behalf of the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform. I'm also an employee of the David Suzuki Foundation, a founding member of the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform.

I will speak today primarily on the sustainability of aquaculture in relation to closed-tank systems. I know there's a wide variety of issues to be dealt with in the aquaculture field, but I will focus primarily on finfish and closed-tank systems.

The David Suzuki Foundation, as many of you know, has been working on the aquaculture issue for many years. Our goal is to try and find solutions that will allow a healthy environment as well as a sustainable human environment. Towards that end, we've been investigating both the science of aquaculture and its impacts as well as the potential solutions that we can hope to find in the public and private sectors.

I won't spend too much time on this, but I will talk briefly about the need for sustainable aquaculture. I

will discuss what we mean by closed-tank aquaculture, their sustainability from an environmental point of view, and feasibility from a technological and ecological point of view — some of the efforts currently ongoing to move us in this direction. We'll close with some suggested recommendations that we would hope to see from this committee to the provincial government.

Obviously, we need food. The demand in the future, according to the food and agriculture organization, is probably going to be too high for it to be sustainably provided by wild fisheries. The current aquaculture practices, on the other hand, are not sustainable in our view and will not help us in the long-term supply of seafood protein.

One of the solutions that we believe is a very strong option is closed-tank aquaculture. What do we mean by that? There are very many different types of closed tanks that have been in experimental or in commercial use in North America as well as in Europe and parts of the developing world. These are some examples of the systems. They go from completely closed and land-based to partially closed and floating. Some, as you can see, are still design drawings, and some are actual projects that have been in the water.

The sustainability of closed tanks. When we talk about closed tanks, we want to separate the farmed environment from the wild environment. People talk about farming, and they conjure up images of the farms that we see on land. The aquatic environment is very different. Everything is shared back and forth. You have no control of your boundaries with an open-net-cage system. Therefore, you need to have very strong control over what's going on in order to not have a negative impact on the outside environment.

By closing the system and separating the farm and wild, you stop the transfer of disease and escapes of fish. These are two things that I think have been fairly well-studied. While there may be some gaps in the science, there is very strong evidence….

In a system like ours in Canada and British Columbia, where we do have precaution written into our laws, that doesn't mean stick your head in the sand and don't do anything. It means that where you have reasonable evidence to expect harm, not having conclusive proof is no excuse for not taking preventative action, and that's what we're recommending.

Waste in the local ecosystem, especially solid waste where the particles of fish feed, feces, the particles that disease is attached to…. Those need to be collected and removed and not taken into the local ecosystem.

Antibiotics and other chemicals used to treat fish. They are significantly reduced in closed systems, because the exposure to the outside pathogens is removed. Yes, wild fish can give farmed fish diseases. Yes, those farmed fish then incubate those diseases at their high densities and send them back out to the wild fish. If you don't have the wild fish bringing diseases in, you do not need to use the same amount of chemical treatments and antibiotics to control those diseases. So you have a reduction of that. In some cases closed systems have been entirely eliminating those chemicals, and we believe that's a positive step for both the environment and the consumer.

Safe, sustainable feed remains an important and high concern with any kind of carnivorous finfish. The quote that was graciously attributed to the David Suzuki Foundation is a few years old. I recently participated in a global research project led by a well-respected researcher who was chosen by industry and environment to do a review of global feed issues. Clearly, salmon still take more protein than they produce in the end. Clearly, the conversion is still somewhere between two to four pounds of wet wild fish — not the processed feed, but wet wild fish from the ocean — to one pound of produced product.

The thing about the closed systems is that by controlling all of the environmental factors of the growing conditions, you reduce — in some cases significantly, 10 percent to 20 percent — the amount of feed required to run your operation. This is also an economic benefit, since feed is usually one of the largest cost inputs for fish-farming operations — feed and labour in North America and clearly feed in South America.

First nations and coastal communities have long had varying opinions on whether or not they want aquaculture in their communities. We would hope that any move towards closed containment systems would respectfully honour their requests and not be put in over the objections of local communities.

Wildlife — whether it be aquatic, marine or bird wildlife — is easily excluded from closed-tank systems, whether on land or in water. At this point, genetically modified organisms, which are one of the other concerns from the groups that I represent…. It's no different between open nets and closed tanks, but none of the closed-tank producers that I've spoken with are interested — as I've heard at open-net industry conferences — in introducing these fish at this time.

We believe, and I think some very good research in the published literature shows, that there are also benefits to industry — the reduction of pollution. I understand there was an algal bloom today at a site that you were planning to visit. Those don't happen in a closed system, because the external environment does not enter.

The chart on the right demonstrates some of the losses to the existing fish farm industry due to interactions with the outside environment. They include sea lice. They do not include things like algal blooms, but clearly it's a major problem for the industry when an entire pen or system of pens on their tenure is affected by an algal bloom.

Disease — the same way. If it doesn't get in, it's not as big a problem. We have seen entire crops, if you will, of farmed fish wiped out by disease all over the world. Controlling the inputs to your farm with closed systems will clearly prevent that.

Climate change. It's largely accepted as something that is happening. The ocean temperatures are warming, and salmon are very picky about what temperatures they like. Closed systems allow complete control over the oxygen, temperature and salinity levels — all

of these will change with climate change — and the husbandry benefits of being able to control those over the long term are going to be a benefit to the industry.

Markets. Clearly, my organization and the Coastal Alliance have been very active in trying to educate consumers. We are also very willing to be active in educating them in sustainable products when those become available.

The feasibility of closed tanks has been demonstrated both theoretically and practically. There has been detailed financial modelling, both by non-profit groups and people in industry or in the private sector who wish to try and start these. The question that's come up several times of why they can't find investment…. Well, most of the people interested in investing in this kind of thing are already invested in the open-net-cage system. They are not particularly interested in investing in themselves, and yes, there is some climate of uncertainty as to whether anybody will be able to sell farmed fish in the long run. That is also something we're trying to help work on.

Eco-farm is a company in Europe that won a $500,000 U.S. prize from the French government to build land-based, fully closed systems on the coast of Normandy in a highly sensitive zone of cultural and natural heritage to the French government. They're also building systems in the Faroe Islands. These will be for salmon as well as other species.

AquaOptima is a joint government-industry private research effort in Norway. They're growing a number of coldwater salt species in closed tanks, as well as freshwater species.

Many, many non-carnivorous species are grown in closed tanks in North America and other parts of the world — tilapia, catfish. All over the U.S. these species are selling. They're making money. They have good markets.

In Washington, in Seattle, at the beginning of this year I co-presented with Richard Buchanan from Campbell River and Josh Goldman from Australis on the east coast of the U.S., and they have a thriving business growing and selling barramundi in closed farms.

Of course, we have British Columbia's own Agrimarine, which has run a land-based test facility in Cedar and is proposing to run a floating system, staging up through some test phases into full commercial production in Campbell River and Middle Bay.

I want to stress that closed containment systems aren't systems off by themselves in the ideal world. They would be integrated with harvest and processing and located in close proximity to transportation. Campbell River, Port Hardy, Port McNeill — these are all the places you would want to locate the closed systems, not out in the pristine environment. The wild salmon and the cultured salmon both require the same natural elements to thrive.

Instead of competing for somewhat limited coastal space, you can put these systems right where you have your workforce, your markets, your transportation, your processing. That's how you make them economically feasible. And as gas prices go up and the cost of hauling things on ship up and down the coast gets more and more…. It's only going to become more advantageous to have them located closer to centres.

We are very excited by the moves toward success that we have here in British Columbia and in Canada. We have also, in the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, engaged in collaborative research with government, and we are now working with industry. As many people will know, CAAR and Marine Harvest have agreed to try and work on collaborative research. That includes sea lice research and a commitment to looking at closed containment research. That has not begun yet on the closed containment side, although the sea lice research is in a data-gathering stage.

We are supporting new projects, and this is a big step for environmental non-profits to actually support a commercial effort such as the Agrimarine project that may or may not actually meet our ultimate goals in the long run. But we think it represents a major step forward and deserves our support.

Again, the comments from the first speaker about certainty — I couldn't agree more. We need certainty in regulation and in labelling. It needs to be clear that we are not going to grow fish at the expense of our wild fish. The less people think that they might be able to do that, the more emphasis will be placed in the hands of the ingenious engineers that we have to come up with more solutions. We continue our market work with retailers, restaurants and wholesalers to try and help them understand the concept of sustainability and how the closed-tank systems would fit into that.

Yes, we believe aquaculture is a reality. We also believe that real problems exist. We believe that the closed-tank systems offer a solution and a way forward. We think that economic viability is achievable. The research that has been done today on the economics has been flawed in several ways. The David Suzuki Foundation participated in an economic assessment with a University of California in Los Angeles economics professor to understand why the existing economic analyses are flawed. I can provide that to the committee at your request.

We have dedicated people in government, in industry and in the environmental movement dedicated to working for change but keeping a viable industry. I want it to be very clear. We are not looking to shut down the aquaculture industry. We want it to coexist without harming the wild populations, but we believe that's possible.

Finally, with respect, I would offer these suggested recommendations: that the government of British Columbia establish a fund for innovation and implementation of new closed-tank systems; that we open no new areas to open netcages and, in fact, require new finfish licences to use closed-tank technologies; that we aim for aquaculture that is a net protein provider.

I haven't really touched on much about shellfish aquaculture or freshwater non-carnivorous fish aquaculture, but you can provide viable protein at a marketable price that does not require the vast amounts of protein from the sea that we've heard about. Even as

the industry strives to reduce that amount of fishmeal and fish oil, they're switching to canola and soy and other things that come from somewhere. Some of it comes from the Amazon; some of it comes from Canada; some of it comes from the U.S. A lot of those crops are genetically modified. Some people are concerned about that; some aren't. But it is a fact that that is where the emphasis on feed composition is going.

We would also like to request that the government of British Columbia formally support federal funding for the Agrimarine Middle Bay project. It is now in front of Western Economic Diversification, and if it is a successful one-tank trial and moves to the full implementation stage, it will probably go to Industry Canada for some of the startup funds there. I would greatly encourage the government of British Columbia to formally support those efforts, as well as the efforts of any other entrepreneur who wants to bring a system as good or better into British Columbia.

G. Coons: Thank you, Jay. I agree with the concept of CAAR, your association, working with Marine Harvest in collaborative research and fallowing and coming up with initiatives that will perhaps lead to more a sustainable industry.

You did mention Agrimarine and how you're familiar with that. I'm just wondering if you could take a minute or so just to fill us in on your concept of the workings of Agrimarine right now and your opinion of closed containment on land or closed containment in the ocean.

J. Ritchlin: Sure. I think that the project that was run at Cedar on land showed very clearly that from a husbandry side, it's very doable. You can create healthy, marketable fish in a closed-tank system. The design of that facility and the distance, particularly, they had to pump water and the fact that they had to use liquid oxygen because of the scale of the enterprise made it economically very difficult. However, I believe that at a proper scale, you will see oxygen generation on site, which is pennies on the dollar compared to bringing in liquid oxygen, and you will see the economies of scale that you get from large tenures of open net pens. No one would run a single net pen and try and say it was a viable business.

So I think that the economics and the technical feasibility together…. Sure, they need to be proven, but I believe that that's what this project that Agrimarine is presenting set out to do.

I had an interesting conversation with an aquaculture, private sector industry man from Texas, and he got interested in this issue because someone of his acquaintance told him: "Oh yeah, you grow lots of tilapia, but you just can't do it with salmon. It just doesn't work." He got so angry. He just called it — well, he's a Texan, so I won't say exactly what he called it — lazy thinking. He's proceeded to send me more Excel spreadsheets on the cost benefits and the financial business plans for what would constitute a financially viable closed containment system than I can actually make it through. But again, there are a lot of people out there with a lot of good ideas about how this could work.

G. Coons: One last question. You mentioned in your brief that there needed to be a certainty in regulations. Perhaps if you could just comment on one or two regulations that you think are not certain.

J. Ritchlin: Well, I believe that new finfish tenures should be required to be in closed systems. I believe that any area with shown juvenile wild salmon migration and rearing should be off limits. I think that communities should be able to have the power to say no and not be overridden. So those are three examples.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Just to clarify a few points. You mentioned the benefits that accrue to a closed system are control of your inputs and outputs. Is that correct?

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): I think you've said that you need separation…. If I wrote this down right, the external environment does not enter. Is that a critical component?

J. Ritchlin: I think that you need to have as much separation as possible between the farmed environment and the wild environment — yes.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): You're aware then, and I'm not trying to…. I think Agrimarine is quite an advancement forward in some areas, but of course, you're aware that they pump fresh water in and don't filter the input and don't filter the water out either. So how does affect the environment?

J. Ritchlin: There's a combination of issues that they're dealing with at Agrimarine. I'm the first to say that this system needs to be fully tested, but my understanding is that they draw water from depth. Of course, they need water. They can't get away without the water. The testing and the years of running in the Cedar plant have shown that they brought in no external pathogens with that water drawn from depth. That needs to be confirmed, I agree.

The other thing is that when you have a closed system, at the first sign of disease you can shut the system down. I believe that should probably be a recommendation too. So Agrimarine's current system, where there is some outflow of water over the top, could be shut down. It might be a financial loss, but I believe that it should be a requirement. Well, it will be a financial loss, but so is an algae bloom or a Kudoa outbreak

or bacterial kidney disease. All these are financial losses when an entire net pen goes down, but they also have the threat of taking out wild fish with them. In a closed system the risk rests where it properly belongs, in my opinion, which is with the private operator.

Again, I would encourage British Columbia to try and bring as many entrepreneurs into this game as possible. I have worked with Richard, and I have to compliment him on how open he's been and how forthcoming. If somebody has a better mousetrap that's more feasible and offers superior protection to the environment, I wouldn't want to see them closed out of British Columbia by any means.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Just to follow up. They do pump the water out unfiltered.

J. Ritchlin: No. They have overflow water, yes. They filter with screens on the way in, but they have a hydraulic system that pulls solids to the bottom…

J. Ritchlin: …and the majority of the problem that we know of, at this point, is resting in the solids. Again, I'm committed to being part of a research team that tests the viability of that overflow and whether or not we can live with it.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that. Then you're suggesting that if there's a disease problem, you'd shut it down. What would happen if you shut the water input down at that point to the fish in the tank?

J. Ritchlin: I think you would have a loss. I think you would have a loss of the crop, but you would protect the wild environment.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): The other point you make, and I think it's a very good one, is the cost of energy these days and the cost of shipping. You mentioned gas prices. So it's advantageous to locate plants closer to transportation. Is that right?

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): I guess the next step to me is it would be logical that if you're going to have closed containments where you control your water input and output, why the heck wouldn't you locate to at your metropolitan centres and your metropolitan markets? Wouldn't that make sense?

J. Ritchlin: If you could get the quality of water that you need to grow healthy salmon, it would make a lot of sense.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Up and down the coast — L.A., San Francisco — wouldn't it make sense to put them closer to your major markets and transportation?

J. Ritchlin: Of course, you have competing land use and foreshore use issues there. There are market realities that…. You can talk to the condo developers about whether or not they can outbid fish farmers for coastal land space.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): We have that here too, but it's a big coastline. You agree with the point that the closer to the market you can get, the better.

J. Ritchlin: I think if you can get it closer to the market and grow healthy, safe fish without contaminated water, that yes, that's viable.

C. Trevena: Thank you, Jay, for your presentation. I think we're all pleased on this committee to see the environmental NGOs working with industry to try and find some solutions. We are all looking for solutions, in different ways, so I think that's very healthy.

I have a couple of questions that are really more general. One is: who actually makes up CAAR? What organizations make up CAAR?

J. Ritchlin: There are currently nine of us, I believe. I don't have the list on the computer in front of me, but the David Suzuki Foundation, Georgia Strait Alliance, Musgamagw Tsawataineuk Tribal Council, Living Oceans Society, Raincoast Research, Raincoast Conservation Society, T. Buck Suzuki Foundation and Watershed Watch Salmon Society.

I may have missed someone. Eric Blueschke from Georgia Strait Alliance is here. Did I miss anyone there? The Friends of Clayoquot Sound — my apologies.

C. Trevena: I'm also interested in the fact that Suzuki has put money into Agrimarine. It seems quite unusual that an ENGO did put money into the closed containment project that you were talking about. Is that correct?

J. Ritchlin: We haven't put any money into the project, but we have been lobbying support with the federal and provincial governments. We have been talking to the markets. We've been talking to retailers and wholesalers, and we've been working with people on the international level to try and help solve some of the roadblocks that have come up so far.

We're a charitable organization. I'm not even sure we'd be allowed to invest in a private company that way, but we are committed to providing our own expertise and science expertise if the Agrimarine project goes forward to help be a part of a committee to oversee the research element about its potential.

C. Trevena: My final question, and I hope it doesn't open up too much discussion because I know the Chair

is watching the time. You mentioned a couple of farms in France — the eco-farm in France, and the work they're doing in the Faroe Islands. You say that's salmon, and it's closed containment. What sort of system is it compared to what we have seen at Agrimarine?

J. Ritchlin: At this point they are in the building phase. They have the grant for the money. I do have a picture of their system here, but my computer seemed to shut down. It's a completely closed and land-based system, with each individual tank being built in a module level and containing its own recirculation and recycling technology. They have done one year of full operation in Norway, where they've built and tested it. This would be their first full-scale commercial application.

J. Yap: Thanks for your presentation. I would like to get back to the part in your presentation where you talked about protein and fish being a source of protein, and the ratio of anywhere from 2 to 1 to 4 to 1 of protein inputs to farmed salmon. It's a range of two to four. How does that compare to a wild salmon? Wild salmon, through their growing cycle in the wild, would also be consuming protein. Do you have that figure?

J. Ritchlin: It depends on the species. Some eat higher on the food chain than others, and some eat lower. The point is that the entire ecosystem has evolved with those salmon consuming that amount of fish. What we're doing now here is bringing in 500,000 tonnes a year in Norway, 500,000 tonnes a year in Chile, and then you have the U.K. and British Columbia lagging somewhat behind that, but quite a bit more consumption. In terms of how it compares to other cultured species, it's poor compared to non-carnivorous fish or to shellfish, which actually produce more protein as an edible product than they do for what goes in.

J. Yap: Right. If you were to make a comparison from a global ecosystem — because the protein has to come from somewhere in the wild or, specifically, fish somewhere to feed the fry to grow — would it be comparable, or would it be quite a difference between wild salmon and farmed salmon?

J. Ritchlin: I'm not sure exactly how to answer that question. I think, as I said, the range varies for wild salmon from pinks to chinook. Some of them are more efficient than farmed and some of them are a bit less efficient. Again, I honestly don't believe it's a useful comparison because those fish have been eating that food for thousands and thousands of years, and we're actually drawing on new and different sources to create the food for the farmed fish. So, in fact, the wild salmon are still eating what they ate, and now we're taking more out from different places to create the farmed fish feed.

I don't mean to disrespect your question at all, but I'm not quite sure how it helps us get to the bottom of that issue.

J. Yap: Okay. In terms of efficiency, if that's a way to frame the discussion, would it be comparable — wild versus farmed?

J. Ritchlin: It's probably comparable. Again, even in current fish-farming practices they may be able to do a bit better with some species because they do have some control. But wild salmon have to be incredibly efficient because they face a pretty hostile environment.

J. Yap: Compared to other sources of protein like beef and pork, do you have those ratios?

J. Ritchlin: There's no question that beef and pork are poor users of wild fishmeal and fish oil. I wouldn't debate that for a minute, no.

J. Yap: So it's more efficient from a production-of-protein standpoint to…. Aquaculture is more efficient, then.

J. Ritchlin: The research that we participated in at the international Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue has those figures in it. I don't have it at the tip of my fingers. I can get that for the committee. There's a chart that compares the efficiencies of both the various types of aquaculture and the land-based production methods.

A question, following up on John's, related to feed and conversion. You mentioned the actual wet fish weight versus the dry pellet weight. We've heard conversions of just over 1 to 1 with dry pellets. You're mentioning you've got to multiply that up because you're starting with wet fish, presumably off South America, where most of the fishmeal and fish oil comes from. Is that correct?

J. Ritchlin: I learned a ton at this international research effort about the fishmeal and fish oil industry. There's a wide range of where fishmeal and fish oil come from and how they're utilized in the four or five main producing jurisdictions. From the information that we got there, Canada is actually one of the more efficient users of fishmeal and fish oil, but still, we are using quite a bit.

Some of the fishmeal and fish oil produced in Canada comes from those sources that you've mentioned in the southern hemisphere but, as was mentioned earlier, we also use krill. We don't have the same restrictions as they do in Europe about using land-based animal protein. So feather meal, blood meal — some of those things can go into our feeds. We also, obviously, have access to canola and soy, so our feeds are substituting those where they can for fishmeal and fish oil.

I would say it's almost a certainty that the production sources on the west coast of Canada are different from the production sources on the east coast. It's been one of our challenges, as a non-profit, to actually trace the chain of custody of fish feed. Any help that the provincial committee can give in illuminating that entire supply chain would be, I think, of benefit to the entire debate.

I would just say on that note that in terms of the economics of closed containment, one of the difficulties has been getting specific enough numbers to really make the kinds of comparisons that are valid. Information is a challenge for us.

G. Robertson: Okay. It has emerged, most recently this week, as another area where we don't have a lot of information. For me as a former land-based farmer, conversion was a big issue, particularly between poultry and livestock.

The one aspect of conversion that hasn't come up yet…. I'm curious if this came up at the conference that you were at. The fish that's used in fishmeal is a protein to start with. There's already a conversion built in there as they convert in the wild from vegetable to meat protein.

G. Robertson: You mentioned having some documents from that conference. Is there an easy answer to this that the committee might have access to, once you multiply it all out, starting from whatever the original source is to the protein that we produce in the end?

J. Ritchlin: The exact method of conversion was detailed in the report, the way that the author, Albert Tacon…. He's a PhD, most recently at the University of Hawaii. I believe he's just moved jobs, but he's worked with and for the Food and Agriculture Organization for many years. He's consulted to industry as well as to academia and non-profits. That information, the entire feed report, is on the website of the World Wildlife Fund U.S. — the WWF U.S. website. I can forward the exact link to the Committee Clerk, if that would be helpful.

I don't know if the conversion rate of the wild fish…. That doesn't sound familiar to me in the way we've gone over the numbers, so that may not be actually factored in.

G. Robertson: If there are other places in the world where they're ahead of the curve in terms of feed efficiency, it would be helpful to the committee to know what those models or those sources are so that we can factor that in.

J. Ritchlin: Of the main growing regions, Canada is one of the most efficient in terms of substitution of non-fishmeal and non–fish oil sources — better with fishmeal. It's easier to replace the meal than the oil. They're actually very important to separate in this debate — the fishmeal and the fish oil. The fish oil is the real limiting factor in growing salmon, and the aquaculture industry uses up to 80 percent of the fish oil produced in the world right now. They only use a little less than half of the fishmeal, with poultry and cows using the bulk of the rest.

Can I please call Peter Gibson to make a presentation on behalf of Grieg Seafood.

P. Gibson: Thank you for the opportunity of presenting Grieg Seafood here today. Unfortunately, Tim Davies was supposed to be doing this but can't. At the last minute I was landed with the job. I've also included our colleague here, Barry Milligan, our full-time vet who works with us, in case there are questions or issues that he may be better able to answer than I.

I'm the managing director for Grieg Seafood B.C. Ltd. We're part of a family-owned limited company based in Bergen, Norway. We have farms operating in Norway and on the west coast of Canada. We started here on the west coast in 2000. We bought three licences from a company called Scandic Seafood in Esperanza Inlet, and we took over a partially built hatchery in Gold River at the old pulp mill site where the pulp and paper mill used to be.

We've been actively expanding since then in an effort to increase our production. We've obtained a further three sites in Nootka Sound, and we're now expanding onto the east coast of the Island. We have an operating site in Okisollo Channel north of Campbell River. We were the company that got Bennett Point in Clio Channel just recently.

We're quite a small company in the sense that we don't have the finances or the funds to buy out other companies and expand in that fashion, so we rely very much on going through the normal application process which has been established in the province to get new licences. We're finding that operating on the west coast is high risk, with algal blooms, high-water temperatures, fluctuating DOs. It's good for us to be able to spread our risks between operating areas on the inside of the Island and on the west coast. Our hatchery in Gold River is now up and running, with the potential of producing over three million smolts a year.

Our employment side. We have 47 full-time employees, including our hatchery, our marine sites and our office staff. We produce exclusively at Walcan, which has 170 employees. Bill Pirie is of the firm opinion that the wild fishery on its own would not sustain Walcan and that dependency on the farm fish in conjunction with wild fish processing is absolutely paramount in maintaining full-time, sustainable jobs for his employees.

We value the close working relationship we have with Walcan and with other smaller, family-owned companies such as Aztec Freight. Allpen Diving provides at least eight or nine divers for us. That's integral in our future success as a company and their future

In Gold River, which has been a depressed town for many years since the pulp mill closed down in the '90s, we provide about ten full-time jobs in our hatchery. Since 2002 we've contributed over $11 million into the Gold River community through payroll, construction, services and lease payments.

We also have a strong presence on the Nootka Sound Watershed Society, which involves all user groups in the stewardship of Nootka Sound. Also integral in our management of the Nootka Sound area is an agreement with DFO to monitor lice on wild fish in Nootka Sound. This is our third year of sampling. We sample eight sites from March 1 through June 30.

I've been in the business for 23 years in three different countries. I started in Scotland. I worked in Greece, and now I'm working in Canada. This is my 11th year here. What I've noticed most that's changed in this industry over the 23 years is regulation and control and our increased efficiency. Our ability to feed fish at a very efficient rate through the use of feed cameras, the need to do prestocking baseline sampling before we can even put fish back in there again, our strict control over net strengths, the number of years we can use nets and our increased efficiency in how we run our sites all contribute to helping with the management of the environment.

I feel we're an industry, and we should be proud of it. We continually evolve and strive to improve standards in our operation. It's very important for us to be economically viable, and it's of no interest to us to make mistakes and to destroy the environment that we're working in. Fish always have been and always will be a primary indicator of the health of the environment, and farm fish are no exception to that.

It's extremely important to us to keep the fish healthy, keep them clean of lice so they feed well, and we don't waste resources.

J. Yap: Thanks for your presentation, Peter. I have a couple of questions. First, could you expand on what your involvement is with the Nootka Sound Watershed Society? You made a passing reference to it, and I'm just interested in what you do.

P. Gibson: Yeah. I'm sorry. Tim Davies has been doing most of this work rather than me, and he knows more about that than I do. But it's to do with the general management, I think, of the health of fish streams. It's to do with how we manage our sites. We explain how we manage our sea lice, how we fallow our sites. We interact with other user groups — for example, in the forest industry, the streamkeepers association — and we share information and ideas on how to move forward.

J. Yap: The other question I have is on regulation here in B.C. With your international experience, from your perspective, being in the industry for many years…. You've seen a change over the 23 years, I think you said. Where we are today — how does regulation, in your mind, compare here in B.C. versus overseas?

P. Gibson: Well, certainly in Greece the regulation was nowhere near what we have here. Let's see. It's 14 years since I've been in Scotland. Reading on the Internet and reading the information, everything has changed hugely. I think the regulations are certainly much tighter than they've ever been.

S. Simpson: Thank you for the presentation. A couple of questions. First, maybe you can just confirm. I believe that Grieg currently has two applications in front of the statutory decision-maker.

P. Gibson: We've got two in front of the statutory decision-maker for Nootka Sound. One is Concepcion, and the other is Gore.

S. Simpson: Right. I'm still figuring out how that process works. What's the reasonable expectation for you to get a decision out of that in terms of timing?

P. Gibson: There's been extensive consultation with first nations going on now for well over a year. We've been told that we would expect to get the decision in July.

S. Simpson: I'm curious about your view of some of the discussion around the floating closed containment models. We've talked about it here. You know the work that Agrimarine has done. I'm sure you're aware of that. What's your view?

People are coming and speaking to us. They're telling us that the land-based models aren't viable, and there's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that might be true. But we're not hearing a lot of people in the industry talk to us about these hybrids, the floating models — whether it's the Agrimarine model or the others — so I'd be interested to get comments from you

about either the viability of that or the merit of looking more closely at those models, since they're in pretty formative stages.

P. Gibson: I would support us looking at alternative ways to farm. The issue in the end is not the system itself but whether or not competitively, financially and practicably it can be used. There is considerable doubt at the moment within our minds that this is a viable system. In our opinion, as a company we're not saying no to looking at it. We're very happy to look at this situation, but we've got to decide who's going to pay for this, how much it's going to cost, how much investment we'd have to put into it.

But we're not closed-minded. We're not saying that we wouldn't consider looking at it. In fact, I think it would be foolish not to. But we've got to be competitive as an industry. Does that answer your question?

S. Simpson: It does, in the sense that I think that, clearly, it is about looking at modelling and trying to determine…. If we're going to have that discussion, it has to be around, "Is this commercially viable?" and all of the things that means. The question is: is it something that warrants serious exploration?

P. Gibson: Yes, I think it does. I think it should be looked at. I think we should see if it's viable or not. But the whole thing has to be looked at — the whole picture — to see how it's going to operate, to see whether it's economically viable. That's very important.

G. Coons: Thank you, Peter and Barry, for coming today. When we were at Tofino, we visited some sites. Recently they had some predator-control problems with some sea lions, and we had the opportunity to talk about that. And I realized — I think it was May 2004 — there was an escape of 30,000 fish from one of the sites in the inlet. I'm just wondering where that is in the process and what type of regulations there are for recapture.

P. Gibson: The Muchalat South escape, for our situation, is before the court at the moment, so we've been advised that we can't go into any detail about this at this time. What I have to say about the Muchalat South escape is that we know exactly what happened, we know why it happened, and we know how to correct it. I think that's very important — that the industry and we ourselves accept the fact that if something happened, we find out what it is, we fix it, and we make sure it doesn't happen again. And we've done that.

G. Coons: I was just wondering what type of recapture incentives, initiatives or regulations there are in a situation like that.

P. Gibson: The regulation, if I remember correctly, is that we have to have a standby vessel with the ability to set a seine to capture any fish that may have escaped.

G. Coons: One last comment. In your presentation you mentioned the changes to regulations and control and looking at how we can improve standards. In a situation like the escape, which was close to two years ago, and when we start looking at public support and public interest as far as the whole industry, I think it's imperative that we have a timely process, not only for the company but for the public, to make sure that the regulations are….

P. Gibson: Yeah, absolutely. It was reported in a timely fashion. There was no delay on our part to report it. It's then up to the government to follow through and find out what's going on.

G. Coons: Just in response to that, I'm looking at the current regulations and the delay. Yes, I realize that you were required to report within 24 hours. But the delay is so intensive — you know, close to two years — and that's something that is a concern to me personally — and to the company, I'm sure.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Questions, firstly on escapement. What's the escapement been like in the last few years?

P. Gibson: We had a reported escape at Muchalat South, which is the one he mentioned. We had a suspicion of an escape at Sonora, which is a site in Okisollo Channel. But as far as we can see, no fish escaped.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): So are you saying zero escapement since that previous incident?

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Now, one of the major concerns is…. Well, let me go back on siting. We heard from other speakers that some of the sites, which perhaps were in place earlier, were not appropriate, and you're now looking at current conditions and extensive regulations. If you were to start it again, how many of your sites — and some of them may not be operating now — would you move if you had the chance to move them?

P. Gibson: In Esperanza Inlet the two sites that I'm thinking about are very prone to algal blooms and fluctuating dissolved oxygen levels. The algal blooms, particularly, are the worst.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): But you have to go through an entire process. If you were to move that, it's like a new application. Is that how it works?

P. Gibson: Exactly. There are no reallocations anymore. Well, there are, but we have to go through a whole process as if it's a new licence.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): One of the big controversies is lice. We've heard a lot about it, and we're going to continue to hear about sea lice. I'd like you to comment on the incidence of sea lice and what methods you've had to employ — if you've had to employ any methods — to control sea lice in your fish. We certainly expected some today, and if you could give us an idea of an order of magnitude.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Well, how often do you see them? Just give us a sense of what it's like.

B. Milligan: Currently we monitor sea lice monthly. That's part of the regulations. It's audited quarterly by the ministry. We have set thresholds for action. During times of smolt out-migration, which are typically March, April, May and June, you have a set action level of three. So at three motile lice per fish, you have to then treat, harvest or have some other management decision in place.

The rest of the year, when you don't have out-migrating smolts, it's six. At six motile lice per fish, you then have to impose some action. Currently, during this smolt out-migration period we've been far less than three motile lice per fish, so there hasn't been any action in place at all in this period.

Typically, what we would do if they're not close to harvest size is treat them. As a veterinarian, you only have one choice for treatment, and that's with SLICE, which is emamectin benzoate. This is avermectin, sort of like a commonly used drug for parasites in people, dogs, cats, sheep, pigs — a very commonly used class of drugs. It's currently the only one we have available to us. We really only have two options: (1) to treat or (2) to harvest.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Just to get a sense, a feel for it…. You're not exceeding the three. Typically, when you count fish, how many do you count? How many lice have you found lately?

B. Milligan: Well, for the fish you were looking at today, it was about 0.15 lice per fish.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): So that's averaging 0.15. The chemical you add then goes into the feed, I understand.

B. Milligan: That would be in feed. It would be produced by a feed company, and you'd have in-feed treatment for seven days.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): One of the concerns expressed by some people here was: is it safe to walk on the beaches? Once it's in the animals, does it spread — these chemicals? What happens once the fish ingest it?

B. Milligan: No, it would be metabolized just like any other therapeutant used in poultry or swine. It's actually very similar to a commonly used therapeutant in all common agricultural animals.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): All right. Just one further question, then, on disease. You'd be the veterinarian responsible for disease. What sort of actions do you take, and what sort of concerns have you had lately, if any?

B. Milligan: Usually it's prevention. For most of the common pathogens — furunculosis, fibrosis — we have very efficacious vaccines. They would actually be vaccinated in the hatchery, so they're still in fresh water. Then they'd be released to sea with basically full immunity to those pathogens. That's the common method of controlling disease.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): So they're all vaccinated before they get to you?

B. Milligan: Yeah. There is IHN — I'm sure you've come across that as a disease of concern — and there is currently a vaccine available. Right now it's cost-prohibitive, in the sense that it costs a lot — about 30 to 50 cents per smolt. But there are two other vaccines in research right now for IHN, which should be more cost-effective.

Did you mention, Peter, that you've currently got two applications forward in Nootka Sound?

P. Gibson: Yeah, we've got two at that stage at the moment. We've also applied for two sites in Sunderland Channel, which are going through the process now as well.

S. Fraser: And you said, at least with the Nootka Sound sites, the consultation with first nations is occurring?

S. Fraser: Okay. With Bennett Point, was there a similar consultation process?

S. Fraser: Were first nations…? Was there opposition, or were they supportive?

G. Robertson: Thanks for your presentation. We've had some concerns before the committee around the public reporting on enforcement and regulations. There's no doubt that there is a formidable set of regulations in place, but at this point it appears there has been no public reporting on the enforcement side for two years, which we understand is imminent. We should hear, hopefully, in the weeks ahead what has happened over the past two years.

Beyond the case you mentioned earlier that's before the courts right now, have you had other issues around enforcement fines, practices that you've been…?

G. Robertson: Okay. We've had questions and concerns in some of the hearings around the public availability of both these enforcement fine records and fish health plans — which we understand are amalgamated by industry group and then submitted to government versus being available from different farmsites — which help both the academic side in terms of research and public concerns about where there are fish health issues regionally.

Does your company have any concerns about making your fish health plans or your enforcement history public or readily available to the public?

P. Gibson: We'd have no problem with that at all. I think you're referring to the fish health database — are you? — where we report in.

P. Gibson: We'd have no problem reporting as an individual company or having it sent out as an individual company. It would be fine. We've got nothing to hide.

C. Trevena: Thank you, Peter. I just have a couple of quick questions. One is the applications for Nootka Sound. You mentioned that you'd been negotiating with the Mowachaht-Muchalaht for some time. Are they in favour of the farms? I know there has been some concern there.

C. Trevena: So you're continuing the consultation until they are in favour? At what stage would you say you weren't going to…?

P. Gibson: We're not cutting out the consultation. The government is cutting out the consultation. It's the government that's consulting with the first nation. It's the government's concern and aim to answer and to be satisfied that they've adequately answered all the concerns that the Mowachaht-Muchalaht have for those sites.

C. Trevena: If the government, and the regulatory process it goes through, doesn't feel that they have been satisfied, this would not be in a process to be in a position to be agreed on in July. Is that right?

P. Gibson: I think their approach is that if they…. What they'll do is send a table showing what the concerns were and what the answers to those concerns were from the government. That will go to the Mowachaht-Muchalaht. They'll have, I think, 30 days to look at it, and then it will be up to the Mowachaht-Muchalaht to reply to that. Then we're going to have to see what happens after that. But provided there are no further objections or any indications that there are any further strong objections other than what has been listed and discussed in that list, then I would imagine that it would go ahead.

C. Trevena: On the Bennett Point one, you mentioned that there was no objection from the Tlowitsis First Nation. But did you talk to the MTTC treaty group?

C. Trevena: Again, what was the sense there? Bennett Point is not in their traditional territory, but it's in the territory that they use.

P. Gibson: The MTTC claimed in that case, for Bennett Point, that it could have some effect on their migrating fish.

C. Trevena: Right. Is there any stage where you as a company do liaison with the first nations on these issues?

C. Trevena: As a company, do you do liaison with first nations, with the MTTC or with the present Mowachaht-Muchalaht, or do you leave that to government?

P. Gibson: We've had a lot of personal active negotiation with the Mowachaht-Muchalaht. We have been very close to getting an agreement with them, but at the last minute there always seems to be a problem. We have been very close to getting a written agreement with the Mowachaht-Muchalaht First Nation.

J. Gordon: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank you for all your time spent, allowing this event to hap-

pen. My presentation is going to be rather short and definitely not as technical as what you've heard thus far from the speakers.

My name is Jim Gordon. I've been on the north Island for 45 years, 35 of them in Campbell River. I'm retired now but spent all of my working life with the telephone company.

I will be the first to admit that I know very little about fish farming — whether dry-land fish farming is an option or, for that matter, if the way it is being done now is not the best way. I do know that we have very different views coming from many different, highly qualified scientific groups as to the damage caused by fish farming.

I also know that scientists have been studying this for many years in Europe, and they also have not been able to make a collective decision. To this day they are still having the same arguments as we are having here and now. One needs to wonder why.

I can see where shutting down the existing fish farms would have a devastating financial impact on the communities and the businesses relying on them, especially those little communities that once relied on commercial fishing and logging as their base. I can see where a moratorium on fish farms would have a small effect on these same communities.

To predict the long-term economic impact of fish farms as they are now run is impossible, as the long-term impact on the environment in other resource industries, especially those that are ocean-based, is unknown. As has been proven time and time again, it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to undo damage to our oceans and ocean floor. I refer to the overfishing and oil spills that have happened in the past.

The scientific community has collectively proven that we should treat human sewage before dumping it into our ocean, and even this treated sewage is pumped out into fast currents, away from the delicate shoreline. But nothing is being done to treat fish-farm waste, which has, I assume, more drug residue and growth enhancers than human waste, not to mention the pesticides used to kill sea lice.

That waste is not moved away from the shoreline but is left, and the fish farm moves — again, I assume — to prevent the spread of disease to the fish farm. What happens to the wild salmon, cod and shellfish that are left or that go through the area?

Mr. Otto Langer, a 30-year biologist with the DFO, stated: "A small fish farm may pour as much liquid waste into the sea as a small city." Now, if this is a fact, and you multiply that by the number of farms situated in an inlet and then consider the additional ingredients that are added that are not in the small city's waste, such as the antibiotics and pesticides, the concentration of this waste must have a devastating effect on the surrounding area and its wildlife.

Keep in mind that these farms are usually placed in sheltered areas that have some current flow, but nothing like what is insisted on for human waste disposal. Again, I would add that it is untreated. Then again, if they are placed in an area of high current flow, would that not spread highly concentrated contamination over a larger area? It would seem we are damned no matter what we do.

Speaking of food enhancers and drugs, we all know what can happen when humans ingest some food enhancers and wonder drugs. High blood pressure and deformed babies were some of the results. What are the long-term effects of these fish-farm additives and drugs to humans and the wild fish stocks?

During the last provincial election campaign, when the idea of a moratorium on fish-farm expansion was mentioned, it was stated publicly that a moratorium was out of the question. "We have got to keep expanding, or we will die." These statements were made repeatedly by a manager of a fish farm that has offices in Campbell River.

Now, I can see where a moratorium would hurt the stock investors and put a damper on the fish farms, but I have a problem understanding how, if they do not keep expanding, they'll die. I'm more worried about the need to keep expanding and then eventually dying, thus causing very deep cuts in our communities in the end.

I would hope the people of British Columbia's coastline insist that a moratorium on future fish farms be implemented immediately. A close watch on where they move the existing farms must be kept so as not to jeopardize our existing environment.

Also, the government along with the fish farms jointly fund a mixed group of top scientists to study this — using other companies' past studies, if useful — until all our fears are put to rest. I also hope the scientists that are picked have no preconceived biases, as this seems to be the complaint about past studies. True or not, the impression is there and taints the work done.

If financing is a problem, could I suggest zeroing in on the waste and its side effects? This is in a concentrated area and is — from the little reading I've done — a major concern. It would give us the fastest, cheapest results. Naturally, I assume the sea lice issue will be dealt with along with the above.

One last thought. Scientists state that we live on a fault line that is sure to cause a major earthquake and to be prepared for a large tsunami as bad or worse than the one caused by the earthquake in Alaska, which devastated the Alberni canal and surrounding inlets in March 1964. Are the fish farms capable of handling a disaster such as this?

Again, I ask the question: if all these highly educated scientists in B.C. and worldwide have done all these studies — and the fish-farm industry likes to say it has been studied to death — why is it there are so many equally highly educated scientists so strongly disagreeing with the findings? It should be remembered it's better to walk slowly now and do it right, as it's next to impossible to step back, if we need to, in the future.

B. Walker: Good afternoon. My name is Barbara Walker, and I'm a founding director of the First Dollar Alliance Society. I'm here today with my colleague Leanne Brunt, also a founding director of the alliance, to speak to you about the importance of salmon farming to the people of B.C.'s coastal communities. We appreciate this opportunity to address the committee.

The First Dollar Alliance is a grass-roots positive advocacy group supporting working resource communities and their families. Our organization is composed of women and men in B.C.'s resource sector who are very proud of the work they do and of the efforts they're making every day to keep the B.C. economy rolling.

My own personal reasons for becoming involved in the organization are pretty simple. My husband Dennis and I operate a small welding business in Campbell River, and that's just one of the hundreds of businesses in the service industry here in Campbell River that count on the aquaculture industry to help keep our people employed.

My older son and his wife are directly employed in the aquaculture industry. They have recently bought a home and are looking forward to a bright future raising their family in this community that they grew up in and love. I am very grateful to have most of my family here, especially considering that my youngest son had to go to Alberta a few years ago to seek employment.

Leanne knows all too well how that feels, as her son is working in Alberta as well. That had a lot to do with prompting us to action and having us stand up and take part in this process.

As an organization we survive on very little money, although I'm very pleased to say we did receive some project funding for our Women of B.C. Resource Communities conference that was held in 100 Mile House a few weeks ago. Women from all across the province met through the weekend to discuss their role in the sustainability conversation.

I have to say that in a world in which such groups like Save Our Wild Salmon — with their enormous income from the American Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation — tend to dominate the debate over rural communities, First Dollar is a small but very passionate player in that.

We are very committed to a future in our rural communities that includes environmental excellence, economic stability and community strength. That's why I'm very pleased to note that Claire Trevena was one of the many women in attendance at that conference.

By the same token, that's why I was so pleased to see our MLA making positive statements to the media about the fact that the special committee remains open-minded on the topic of the future of the aquaculture industry.

In mid-May Grant Warkentin in our local newspaper, the Campbell River Mirror, reported Claire Trevena as saying that it's time to set aside election campaign comments when it comes to the aquaculture industry. "I think we're all beyond that. We're all looking at the future of our communities," she said. "It's an industry that creates a lot of jobs in my constituency."

Claire was very right. Aquaculture is B.C.'s largest agricultural export item. It contributes over $6 million to the provincial economy and employs some 4,000 people in communities all along B.C.'s coast. Those are significant numbers and noteworthy numbers.

It is a fact that our province's coastal resource communities depend on salmon farming. In fact, it's one of the few bright spots for employment that supports workers and their families in our region. The mayors of many of our communities are great supporters of aquaculture, because they know how important it is to local economic development.

At a time when other sectors in B.C. are struggling, aquaculture offers the hope and promise of a better future for thousands of British Columbia workers and their families. I would also point out that women are widely employed in the salmon aquaculture sector in this region at every level — including farming operations, processing and management — and have found the industry to be a vitally important employment option.

We seek inspiration at First Dollar from a whole range of sources, one of whom is David Baxter of Urban Futures. We've brought a copy of that full report for you today, which we've left with that gentleman.

He told a group of business people in downtown Vancouver recently that "what we have in British Columbia is a schizophrenic disconnect. We think the money for education and health care in the province comes from somewhere, but we certainly don't have the understanding that it comes from our resource industries."

He added that British Columbians are fooling themselves if they believe the hype that cities are the economic engines of the province. Not only are they fooling themselves, but they may well have things entirely backwards.

Your committee must understand in the clearest possible terms that we who stand before you today are mothers, wives, employees, environmental stewards and people who care very deeply about our coastal communities, but we have a very important role to play outside of our communities as well. That is to educate people, especially in the large urban centres, that their analysis of our coastal environment may be misinformed.

Wild salmon returns to aquaculture areas are strong, and the doom that was predicted has simply not materialized. Do we remain vigilant? Yes. Should we continue to focus on fish health, including both wild and farmed? Yes. Are we in crisis? Of course we are not.

I hope this committee will take all the views into consideration when it reflects on a sector that forms an important part of a sustainable future for us all.

We brought for you today a well-researched and very balanced book written by Peter A. Robson titled Salmon Farming: The Whole Story. We've left them for you as well.

This is a direct quote from the preface. "We can best participate by looking past the spin, hype and controversy, and informing ourselves as best we can. This book is a step in that direction." We hope you will find this book helpful to you in your deliberations when you go back to Victoria.

I'm hopeful that the final report of your committee will carefully acknowledge the voices of hundreds of thousands of British Columbians that work in the resource sector. I hope the committee will ensure that its recommendations allow the industry to be successful by reducing red tape and by acknowledging sound and continually improving farming practices.

Finally, I want to close today by restating our message to the committee in the clearest possible terms and by summarizing a very few important results of that message.

The First Dollar's message to the committee is as follows. Urban British Columbians, particularly those in the lower mainland but also in Victoria, are often unaware of the important role that communities like Campbell River and its resource workers and suppliers play in the B.C. economy.

The province needs a kind of bridge to assist that information flow. B.C. needs to understand salmon farming as it is really practised on the coast, not as a replacement for the wild fishery but as another means of supplying healthy food year-round to a growing and hungry market. There's an information gap between here and Vancouver that needs to be bridged, and today you all are that bridge.

I've heard some of the members of this committee ask, and rightly so: where's the common ground on this issue? Of course, that's the key question, and my answer is this. The common ground lies in the idea that coastal B.C., urban Vancouver, markets from here to southern California, and even fish stocks, are all part of a delicate balance of ecological, environmental and social interests.

Wild fishers, fish farm employees, environmentalists and downtown Vancouver lawyers, accountants, cab drivers and Starbucks workers are united in their quest for balance, not for imposing impractical and unfeasible technologies on an industry that is seen as a bright spot on a sometimes difficult horizon in this community. I'm talking about genuine balance.

In this region we have been seen by many urbanites as having been interested for a long time in economic and social or community values. In part, your job is to listen very closely to what goes on in this area, now, in connection with ecological values.

Put aside what you've read on U.S.-funded websites, which are furthering their own agenda. You're here in salmon-farming country, and you have the great advantage of being able to ask all the questions you can of workers, management, scientists, etc.

We say this not only to your committee. We say this every day. The solution to the polarization on this topic will be found only through education, awareness, engagement and active participation. We're in this for the long haul. You can expect us to speak out for a higher, more constructive level of debate through personal involvement and through balance.

I encourage your committee to separate fact from fiction as you continue to listen and to learn. We need you to disregard biased conclusions and base your final recommendations on clear, accurate scientific information, or as Claire put it so well in the Campbell River Mirror, I hope you will get past any partisan view of this issue and, especially, that we can manage to listen carefully to the experiences of people who have worked on the farms themselves.

In that way, you will create an environment in which this progressive, viable, valuable industry and the resource sector as a whole can flourish.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you, Barb. I just wanted to correct something here for the purposes of the Hansard public record. You said it contributes $6 million. I think you meant to say $600 million, and I just wanted to put that on the record.

G. Robertson: I'll start. I had a question about that, too — the $6 million, $600 million. The last figures we have from our research are that the farmed salmon industry is about $200 million. The last farm-gate revenues for 2004 was $212 million. Are your figures…?

B. Walker: I'm not going to argue your numbers, but I will say this. I'll bet I'm not included in that number.

L. Brunt: Are you talking export numbers, or are you talking about the contribution of the whole…?

G. Robertson: It's the farm-gate value of farmed fish from B.C. Is there somewhere else we should…?

L. Brunt: We can confirm it with B.C. Salmon Farmers Association. It has all the stats.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): I do happen to sit on another committee, the agriculture committee, and that certainly is the largest agricultural export of British Columbia. The agriculture department uses the figure of $600 million, so it may be a difference of farm-gate versus retail prices. I was quite interested that in the brochure, they didn't list it as an agricultural export in the program.

I'd just like to comment that I really appreciate your presentation. I think it is a good lesson to learn — that we can't reinvent things. We need to build on our strengths, and our strengths are our resources. Certainly, urbanites depend on the production from natural resource areas.

S. Simpson: Thank you very much for your presentation. I'm interested in knowing a little bit more about First Dollar and who you are and what you do. I've heard about the organization a little bit, but I quite

honestly don't know much about it at all. I'm interested in who First Dollar is. Do you have organizational members? Is it individuals?

B. Walker: First Dollar Alliance is composed of the people we support and who support us. Who here supports First Dollar Alliance? Here we are. What we are is the working men and women in the resource communities.

We're speaking up on behalf of ourselves to tell our story to Victoria and Vancouver — that we are an integral part of the economy of B.C. We could debate numbers on that, too, but we make the first dollar, and where would this province be without us?

I think Patrick Marshall made an excellent reference this morning when he talked about the number of hip replacements that happen because of those of us who make the first dollar. We are a first-dollar industry here in all the resources.

L. Brunt: I just wanted to add, because I think you're trying to look at the organization level, that basically, First Dollar is true grassroots. It's Barb and myself. We sat down at a kitchen table one time and said: "You know what? We feel like we really need to speak out." I can tell you, both of us have been….

We're not public speakers. We forced ourselves to come out because we passionately believe in our resource industries and our resource communities and all the people who work in the different industries on the north Island or the north coast or wherever else in B.C.

It has been a fabulous experience. Most of our initiative is to network. We truly believe in education and informing people, in encouraging people to get involved and making sure they're aware of all the issues. We connect very well right throughout this province — with the ranchers up in the interior, the coalminers out at Quinsam…. We've been at TLA. Barb and I have gone out there and tried to do the best we can to encourage people to get involved.

B. Walker: To facilitate information. And I'd like to point out that we do this totally, completely, as volunteers. One of the most important things to me about this committee today…. You're going to go back to Victoria, and I can't even begin to imagine the amount of paper you're going to be looking at to reach your recommendations.

But do you know what you won't see in that paper and what I hope you'll bear in mind? You won't see these faces. You won't see the real people who stand to be very highly affected by the decisions and recommendations you make.

So that's who we are. We're just mothers waiting to be grandmothers. We've got better things to do, but we felt this was so important and so….

S. Simpson: Getting back to the question, I guess the reason that I asked…. I look at an organization like CAAR, and I can say: "Okay, I know who CAAR is. CAAR is a first nations group, seven or eight environmental organizations. That's who makes up that organization."

I can sort of say: "Okay. I can figure out who they are, and I can pretty closely figure out what they represent by looking at who their members are." I appreciate your comments that a vast number of your membership are people who live in these communities.

S. Simpson: I guess the point I'm trying to make, if you'll just give me a second, is…. I'm trying to determine…. It's made up of a large number of individuals — obviously, lots of people here and many others, I'm sure, who weren't able to be here today — but is it made up of organizations as well? Of businesses? I'm just trying to determine who makes it up.

B. Walker: No. I can tell you how you can easily…. Please visit our website at www.firstdollar.ca. On that website is a declaration simply saying: "We, the undersigned, support working resource communities and their families." There're about a thousand names on that. That's who we are.

S. Simpson: That's great. Thank you very much. That's what I wanted to know.

J. Yap: Thank you for your presentation. For a couple of people who don't do a lot of public speaking, you did very well — with passion.

I want to get back to a couple of phrases in your presentation: your rhetorical question, "Where is the common ground?" and then the concept of bridging. We've heard a lot already in various presentations on this tour that there are gaps. There is, obviously, the gap between what is perceived to be a fact versus fiction. There's the gap within science, which we think we want to get to but is going to be challenging, from what we've heard so far, because the science is not definitive.

What it comes down to, then, is perception out in the communities that are affected by aquaculture and just generally throughout the province. What steps have you taken — I know you have a website — to address what I think is a perceptual challenge, to talk about what aquaculture is today versus five or even ten years ago?

L. Brunt: I think it's about education and networking. That's why we were very excited to find the new

release of this book, Salmon Farming: The Whole Story. It's written by a fellow who has no interest. He was just curious, which we find very interesting. He's written a very balanced book on both sides of the issue, trying to address a lot of the controversy. I really recommend it as a good read.

I think your question is: what else are we doing to try to get that information out? We try to work very much with other organizations. I'm also a member of Positive Aquaculture Awareness. We work with our associations for all the different industries. We try to put ourselves out as much as we can to chambers of commerce and Rotary clubs. If someone is having an AGM or something like that, actually, we have gone in and spoken.

The thing that I do is a media watch. I've developed quite an extensive distribution list that covers the province. I look for issues that maybe we can all respond to. I also try to put out a current issue and then put links to sources where you can go in and make up your mind about what the real answers are. That's been quite effective. There is a huge networking system that happens there.

J. Yap: Let's talk about one issue that is probably the one that comes to mind for people generally about aquaculture, and that's sea lice and the perception among folks that it's a problem. I know that you've done some work in disseminating information. What else are you doing to kind of address that perception issue?

B. Walker: Can I just interject? I'm going back a little bit to Leanne's answer, because I think that's wrapped up in it. What Leanne might not have been clear on, and what I'd like you to understand, is that the media watch she puts out…. I don't want you to think we're typing things up and sending them out. We are capturing the real stories with the real information in the papers. Lots of times we will pick up things that even the papers won't pick up. We watch for news releases. We watch for the good information. We send people the links. We don't tell them what to think. We tell them where they can find this information.

As far as absolutely answering sea lice questions, I can't speak for Leanne, but for myself, I know that the experts are here in the room preparing their presentations, and I would really like to leave that for them.

What we came to tell you today is that the grass-roots people are standing up and speaking out. We need these jobs in our communities. We need to keep our kids at home in our communities. We hope that this committee does a good job with their recommendations.

C. Trevena: Just to follow up on John's question — and thank you very much for the presentation, both of you — on how you get your message out. I notice that a lot of people here today are wearing stickers, and I've seen the billboards on the way down to Nanaimo. Is that advertising campaign First Dollar Alliance, or is it Positive Aquaculture Awareness?

L. Brunt: I believe the stickers are British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association. The billboard, I'm very proud to say, is Positive Aquaculture Awareness. We had a fundraiser. We have an annual gala, and we have a billboard campaign. It's a grass-roots contribution. Those billboards are very important to the people of Positive Aquaculture Awareness, because it speaks to the pride that we feel of working in this industry.

G. Robertson: Just a question on families that are supported by wild salmon. We've heard from lots of people in communities where they're dependent on wild salmon. I'm not clear on whether wild-salmon-fishery-dependent families are part of your membership.

L. Brunt: Absolutely. We support a sustainable fishery. I can tell you that I come from a family of commercial fishermen. I also come from a family with a brother who works in salmon enhancement. I'm very much aware of that.

You just have to look out the window here and see the boats out there. How could you not support that industry? It's a fabulous industry.

B. Walker: I think I'd like to say to that, as well…. Of course, I've been following the hearings. I think that one of the problems stems from…. Somehow we've gotten to a point where people think either you can support the wild fishery or you can support salmon farmers but that you can't do both. We say: "Wrong." Not only can we do both, we absolutely must do both.

I believe we have another PowerPoint presentation, so maybe the members would like to take a five-minute break.

R. Austin (Chair): I'd like to bring the meeting back to order, please. If you'd like to take your seats, we have to plug away here, as we're already behind schedule.

Our next witness is Eric Blueschke, so I would like to invite Eric to start his presentation.

E. Blueschke: My name is Eric Blueschke. I am the community planning coordinator for the Homalco First Nation. Up until recently I worked with the Georgia Strait Alliance for four years on the salmon aquaculture campaign, and I've been a sport fishing guide in the Bute Inlet area for the past 18 years. I'm also here with Fay Blaney, who's the Homalco councillor and treaty coordinator.

What we're going to go over briefly today is our experience with first nations consultation and escape regulations as the result of a B.C. Supreme Court judi-

cial review and court-appointed consultation process that's still being engaged.

Starting with the escape regulations, we're going to be fairly specific here and raise two questions specifically about these regulations. The two questions that we have been trying to answer are: how effective are provincial regulations in tracking the actual number of farmed salmon escapes, and how effective are provincial regulations in determining the origin of escaped salmon?

This is a map, and you've got Bute Inlet here. This is the Church House site, where the committee flew over today. Campbell River is down here. You can see the other farms in the area. These were proposed sites at one point for Bute Inlet. These numbers that you see identify sample numbers of what we now know are escaped farmed chinook, where they were caught by sport fishing guides in the spring-summer of 2004.

On June 4, 2004, the Homalco First Nation, the Georgia Strait Alliance and the Stuart Island Community Association informed MAFF — Agriculture, Food and Fisheries — and DFO that sport fishing guides were catching what appeared to be escaped farm salmon in the Bute Inlet area. Throughout the spring and summer of 2004 we collected ten samples, although there were at least another 20 fish of similar characteristics caught but not tested, which again raises the question that if sport fishing guides are sampling ten and catching 30, how many were actually swimming around out there? That's still what we're trying to figure out.

In mid-June 2004 we submitted DNA samples from eight of the fish to DFO through Fisheries guardian Chris Bunn. Between June 2004 and September 2004 GSA, on behalf of Homalco and the Stuart Island Community Association, made inquiries of representatives from Marine Harvest; Agriculture, Food and Fisheries; and DFO as to whether baseline data from farms in the area raising chinook salmon were available for baseline comparison so that we could determine where these fish came from. We weren't successful in that. It was indicated to us it was not a viable alternative.

This is one of the fish that we caught. The sample was a fairly community-driven process. It included the community association, the Georgia Strait Alliance and the Homalco band. We had guides fill out the forms. You can see here where the DNA samples were taken by DFO. This is after they were submitted.

Since it appeared we were having problems getting any data to really correlate where these came from because there was no report of escapes in there, we were able to get three farmed chinook salmon out of one of the net pens in the area. In late November 2004 we did get confirmation from DFO and Agriculture, Food and Fisheries that these were in fact farmed chinook salmon and that it was impossible to determine the origin of these fish.

This rolled into December 24. B.C. Supreme Court granted Homalco First Nation an injunction regarding the Church House site and the stocking as a result of the consultation process to amend the licence to Atlantic salmon. The initial application was for chinook, and it was switched to chinook after the first production cycle.

During the course of the ensuing judicial review, which took ten days, we took these samples that we had of what we knew were escaped fish but not from where, the ones that we knew were from the farm, and some wild samples. We sent them to Victoria to have a stable isotope analysis done to the meat signatures — the feed signatures in the meat.

The data said with a high degree of certainty that these fish had eaten the same feed as the fish from the pens. It also determined that they had consumed significantly wild feed when they were out in the wild. They were certainly striking the troll gear very well. That resulted in this graph, which shows you our three control samples, our ten suspects and where the wild fish showed up on the feed signature.

The question is: how effective are these regulations? This is really not about whether or not we conclusively determined if these fish are from that pen; that's really not our job to do. But I would suggest that if there was the political will to do so, a question like this could be answered, certainly.

Here we have escaped farmed salmon in the water that are out there, and there's no accountability as to where they come from. It's been two years now, and we don't know where they're from. We know we've caught ten, and we don't know how many got out, so this is really the question. What we're here to do today is to share our experience with the escape regulations, and then Fay will be talking about her experience with the consultation process, which has now been going on a year since it was ordered by the court to try and resolve these issues.

From the website, these are the number of reported escapes from the now Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. You can see that in 2003, approximately the time when these new regulations came in, there was a dramatic drop in the number of reported escapes.

What did we learn from this, as best we could discern from a year of consultation process, about how these regulations work? As best we can tell, the scope of an escape investigation is really severely limited unless a salmon farm company submits an escape incident report form to the province. Without that it really didn't seem to go anywhere. I know the inspectors went out there, and it really has gone nowhere.

We understand that if a company submits an escape incident report form and if they note that they suspect an escape may have occurred but did not witness the potential escape or have any idea of how many got out, the investigation will only address the potential cause and will not look at how many fish have escaped. Any fish that may have gotten out in this case do not go into the statistics of reported escapes. The only way to really get a more full-blown investigation is if the company submits one of these forms.

Understanding this process raises the question of how accurate these statistics are, and in terms of es-

capes, this is our top-line message today, from what we've learned from the consultation process.

E. Blueschke: Yes, we'll take some questions on that in a few minutes, but I'm going to turn it over now to Fay Blaney, who is going to talk about some of Homalco's recommendations and their experience with the consultation process and their view on this situation.

I'm here to speak about the duty to consult and to accommodate. I truly believe that Xwémalhkwu has a great deal of expertise in this area due to the past year, plus we've been engaged in the court-mandated consultation.

I'll back up just a bit and say that any discussion on the use of natural resources, including fish farms, must include first nations and consultation with us because of our right and title. We're sitting currently at the treaty table trying to negotiate these rights with the federal and provincial governments. The issue for us is that we're sitting there negotiating and we're very worried about the threat of an empty ocean at the end of the negotiations process.

Currently we're negotiating an incremental treaty agreement which focuses on the marine resources. We've delivered a document titled Urgent Issues and the Decimation of Rockfish in Our Territory. There is rockfish habitat. I understand you went to Church House today. There is rockfish habitat underneath that pen.

The sea lice on migratory stocks is another concern. There was a really serious decline in chum stocks, which is a staple for Xwémalhkwu people.

The issue for us here is that our aboriginal right and our culture rely on the marine resources. Our chief has consistently been stating that with empty oceans we have no aboriginal right and we have no culture. If our wild stocks are to be displaced by Atlantic stocks, we have no aboriginal right to Atlantic stocks. That's been proven in the international courts with the Maoris when they attempted to claim chinook as an aboriginal right.

Just a really quick rundown. I know I don't have much time here — a couple of minutes left, I think. We're engaged in a court-mandated consultation, and what brought us there was the application by Marine Harvest to place Atlantic salmon into the farm at Church House. Their application went in, in April of 2004, and the provincial government did not notify us of that application until July of 2004.

In that notification, it said to us that the decision for authorization would be handed down on December 8 of 2004. They didn't tell us, but we found out through court afterwards that the authorization actually happened on December 7, and they promptly began to put Atlantic stocks into that farm.

We were notified on Friday, December 17, at 4:50 — the last day before the Christmas holiday — and our offices close at 4:30. Luckily for workaholics like me, I was still at work, and I saw this fax coming through the machine. We promptly contacted our legal counsel, who were on their way home for the Christmas holiday as well.

We filed an injunction, and on December 24 we were successful. We had a judicial review. The outcome of the review was that Justice Powers ordered for a proper consultation. That's where we are now, starting in March of last year. We're still there.

In your package that Eric has handed out, there are some terms of reference. It was quite a challenge and a struggle for us to get those terms of reference on the table so that we weren't meandering all over the universe in our dialogue and discussion. We wanted to have some level of certainty in terms of the direction that our consultation was going.

I really want to acknowledge the elders that are in the room today. They are part of those terms of reference. They participated in an exercise that we call the 13 moons, and it discusses what we did each month of the year traditionally with the marine resources. The elders that I think are here are Bill Blaney, Maggie Paul, Moses Hackett, Alfred Hackett, Daisy Hill, Clarence Paul and Larry Blaney.

What they contributed to the process was a tremendous amount of traditional ecological knowledge that the Crown had no idea…. When we took them on a tour up to the inlet, their records indicate that there were no clams in our traditional homelands. Our Chief went up onto the beach to the spot where they said there were no clams. He dug them up and said: "Here they are." That's just a snapshot of what I'm getting at here.

These elders also tell us that there is rockfish habitat there underneath the pens. It's an area where we harvest ling cod eggs, which are very scarce these days. This past February, I believe it was, we went up there. We had been laying off ling cod eggs because of our conservation concerns. We went up there and found one chunk. That's all we could find, considering the ample amounts that we were able to gather as children.

We later learned about the holes in the pens of Marine Harvest's numerous sites. In their documentation it indicates that they were applying SLICE at the time we were up there harvesting those ling cod eggs. So it's not in the delusional minds of our elders or ourselves that we're not eating those resources. We refrain from exercising our aboriginal rights and title because of the contamination.

In our consultation with the company, which was very short-lived…. They're not very forthcoming in wanting to engage with us. I lost my train of thought there. I'm sorry.

The elders presented over several days on the 13 moons, and that's something that I would be happy to share with you if you're prepared to meet with Xwémalhkwu on our own without this public forum. I would really encourage that.

There are many, many things I can talk about, because we've been in this process for over a year now. One thing I wanted to highlight was the self-policing and the downloading of monitoring and compliance. That's something that really irks us to no end, because

it impedes our ability to be properly consulted with. When we ask the province for information, they send us to the company. Industry holds a lot of the information. We can't adequately consult if we can't access the information. It's around and around, chasing our tail trying to get responses.

I just want to end by saying that we've recently signed an agreement, and we call ourselves the first nations strategic alliance on aquaculture. We've partnered up with the Musqamaqw Tsawataineuk Tribal Council, which consists of three bands that I'm sure you've met with. We're moving quite rapidly with that. We've been meeting for awhile, but now we're taking the next steps to take action on our common interests in that duty to consult.

Our goal is to be recognized by the leadership council for the New Relationship, and we've brought resolutions forward to the aboriginal organizations, to the First Nations Summit, to the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. It's being discussed and debated now as we speak, I believe. We're bringing it to the Assembly of First Nations as well.

Our intent there is exactly where I started, which is to be more instructive on how the Crown needs to be consulting with first nations in that duty that came out of the Haida and Taku River court cases.

I would just reiterate that I have talked to my MLA Claire, here, about wanting to have our own meeting. I would really urge you to do that, as we consider ourselves one of the leading authorities on this issue. The MTTC, of course, have been struggling on this front for decades, and for us it's been a concentrated effort over the past four or five years or so.

I would urge you to meet with us on our own and talk about the things that I've mentioned here: the elders and their presentations, the scientific evidence, some of the pitfalls and shortcomings of regulations. The recommendations that we're advancing are in the "bar none" strategy. We've been doing a massive mailout of that document and bringing it to a number of different arenas and in front of different government officials, so we're on the move with that document.

Around the escapes, on the chart that you provided to us, the number is quite astounding — what happens in 2003 versus all of the previous years. When you ask government about that, and I'm assuming that possibly you've done that, what explanation do you get for that?

E. Blueschke: That's a very good question which I haven't actually raised or got a response from them on that, although I do know there has been some statistical analysis done on the probability of how realistic those numbers are. For 40 fish for the coast for a year, you're talking less than half a fish per farm. But I think your point is a very good question that perhaps this committee could be asking.

With the questions around the regulations, do you have a sense that…? Has there been a change in the regulatory regime as you know it from 2002 to 2003?

E. Blueschke: It was around the same time that the moratorium was lifted. I know that the waste management regulations came out, and there were a number of changes. I would say in this forum that I'm fairly certain there were changes in the escape regulations. Again, that's a question that I think bears more investigation by the committee as to why these numbers were so dramatically different over a very short period of time.

S. Simpson: Last question. These are the numbers from government, as reported by government?

E. Blueschke: This is from the Agriculture, Food and Fisheries website. I think there used to be 2004 numbers on there, but I don't see them now.

Thank you very much, Fay, for describing what's happened over the last few years in your traditional territory. I have passed on the request you made to me to the Chair, so that's obviously being considered.

I wanted to know a little bit more about consultation and both the Homalco First Nation and the MTTC. When looking at consultation, are you looking at solely government-to-government consultation, or are you also looking at first-nations-government-with-company consultation?

F. Blaney: We attempted to do that in the court-mandated consultation. In the absence of a requirement on the company, as you heard from previous presenters, it's very difficult. We have a really long letter with incredible numbers of questions that we put to the company that they hadn't responded to. They wrote us a letter and said that they were finished consulting with us. Then we sent those questions. So we don't have a whole lot of leverage in terms of trying to talk with industry.

With government, we have the court-mandated consultation with MAL currently, so they're forthcoming in engaging with us. But it's a whole other story with DFO, and it's been like pulling teeth trying to get DFO to the table. It's been incredibly difficult.

They engaged with us in trying to piggyback on the MAL consultation, but they refused to entertain the idea of terms of reference or even of resourcing or capacity-building with us. We've been spending our own resources on the court case and then on the con-

sultation. We were not adequately resourced by the provincial government, but at least there were some funds there. DFO refuses to engage, so there's an obvious jurisdictional issue going on here.

I know it's not within your mandate, but this is one of the issues we faced — the HADD. Hazardous alteration disruption and destruction is what I think HADD stands for. That's permission to wreck the place, with DFO's permission, and then some mitigating measures. There's none in place for Church House, and there was a recommendation that there be one.

When we were engaged in the consultation, they came, after the fact, asking us to negotiate a HADD with them. That's just one of the glaring problems in our relationship with DFO in the consultation process. If the province were to work on that…. I know from the statutory decision-maker that we're meeting with, her interest is to engage more effectively with DFO, but it's just very difficult.

C. Trevena: Have you ever had the questions answered that you put to Marine Harvest — your list of questions?

E. Blueschke: Not in the last letter, no. There are a lot of outstanding questions, certainly, on many different issues — specifically, I suppose, what would be termed as more detailed information, which is what you're really looking for if you're looking to resolve some problems like these escapes, for instance. That is where it really becomes a problem, trying to get that type of information. I'll leave it at that.

F. Blaney: Yeah, I think the escapes are the place where the discussions really broke down, because they had a number of holes in their nets. What we were trying to get at was the change in regulation that arose from the merger between them and…. I've lost track. Was it Stolt — the second one? The first one? Then they merged with Pan Fish after.

There are huge implications in terms of the regulations that they adhere to, so we were trying to determine which regulations they were going by when these holes in the nets occurred. We just had a heck of a time trying to get at what happened there. There was some really suspicious activity, in our minds and in our eyes, going on, and we couldn't engage with them. It was at that point that our meetings ended with them. I think we only had two meetings with them anyway.

G. Coons: Thank you for the presentation. Fay, what companies are currently in your traditional territory?

F. Blaney: There are 21 farms out there. As I understand it, isn't Pan Fish taking them all over? I think Pan Fish has taken them all over. There are more, according to Chief Bill Cranmer. He says we've got more farms in our territory than he has in his. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but he was really astounded at the number.

G. Coons: Thank you. In the document you gave us, First Nations Strategic Protocol on Aquaculture, dated May 8, 2006…. I haven't had time to go through it. Is this a framework that you see would work, as far as communicating with both federal and provincial agencies?

F. Blaney: Currently, the New Relationship is only with the province. So this document, although we include DFO in our resolutions…. I think most first nations are not really optimistic that's going to happen in the near future. We don't know when that's going to happen, but we are pressing for DFO involvement because of their role — you know, their jurisdiction.

G. Coons: Yes, and in our deliberations with both federal and provincial agencies and officials, they stressed the Supreme Court decision in honouring the Crown as far as consultation and accommodation. I think that's something we all have to look at.

I've asked questions about what type of protocol agreement they are using, and I personally haven't got that answer.

G. Robertson: Thank you, Fay, for your words, and Eric, as well, for the presentation.

Pulling away from the hard science, I'm curious about the impact to your wild salmon resources that your people have felt. I'm sure there's a significant integration of the wild salmon going back in time. Have you seen big changes with all these farms being located in your traditional territories? How is that affecting your wild salmon and the role that they play with your people?

F. Blaney: I would be happy to share a copy of a report that we've produced through the treaty table on the salmon stock analysis for our traditional territory. They're all very much in decline, and as I mentioned earlier, the chum stocks have reached a crisis point now from last year.

We're really worried about what DFO is going to do in terms of piloting the McRae-Pearse recommendations of individual transferable quotas and the overfishing of our stocks. DFO doesn't do an effective job as it is of monitoring the smaller rivers and streams on the coast. They focus attention, resources and data on the larger rivers. The elders behind me will tell you that one river will sustain two or three families. In DFO's eyes, that's meaningless. It doesn't matter.

It has had a huge impact from the 13 moons presentation. The elders talked about being able to set up to 14 nets in front of Church House and being able to catch a whole array of different fish — salmon, cod and all those types of seafood resources. Currently, those stocks are seriously depleted, and our aboriginal right is walking up to the truck to get our food fish today, which is a real sad statement for us.

E. Blueschke: Could I just make a follow-up on that in terms of impact on stocks in this area?

I think it's fair to say that we all know there are serious problems with the Georgia Basin salmon stocks. There's certainly a lot of science going on up in the Broughton Archipelago in terms of sea lice and impacts, but in our area here — in the straits area — there is not a lot of science. But that doesn't mean there are not necessarily issues either.

I think another thing we'd like to see is more study, casting that net broader from just the Broughton. This is a serious migratory route for Fraser sockeye, for instance. They come through this whole area. I guess the upshot is that in terms of focused science in this area on impact from farms, there's not nearly what has been going on up in the Broughton. That sounds clear.

G. Robertson: Broadening that to other species, have you noticed an impact on the shellfish in terms of what you're able to harvest and the health of your clam beds and prawns?

F. Blaney: The elders are refusing to eat the marine resources in that area. There was a day when we could dig clams on Bartlett Island just outside of Church House. If you look at the Indian Reserve Commission from 1888, it provides testimony of our ancestors saying that that site was selected specifically for clams.

Back then it was MAFF. The MAFF process didn't even know where all the clam beds were. There are some clam beds right next to that fish farm. That resource is lost to us because we won't go there, and that holds true for the rest of the farms in the territory. We just don't feel safe eating those.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you very much, Fay and Eric. I'd just like to make one comment with regards to your letter and invitation to us. We will, as a committee, sit down and discuss that and get back to you. I did want to make one thing clear. We certainly go out and do site visits with individuals, both on farms and today we were at a fish processing plant, but we don't hold any private meetings. All meetings are held on the public record. Certainly, we'll look at it in terms of a site visit, and we will get back to you on that.

R. Stevenson: We made up a bit of a PowerPoint to try and entertain you and break up your afternoon. We'll see if it works. If it doesn't? Oh well.

I'll keep it really short. Thank you for letting us talk. I represent the shellfish growers of the province. You might wonder why we're here. I often wonder too, as I sit in the audience and think: this is all about finfish. But you know what? Your whole website is all about finfish. It just doesn't say finfish.

With all due respect, it's critical that we come out and represent shellfish so that you can hear the other side of the aquaculture equation here. I really feel it's critical that you differentiate in these talks what you're talking about, with no disrespect intended towards finfish farming.

However, shellfish farming suffers the brunt of lack of information with the public. Our industry has been operating here in B.C. for a hundred years. We're falling by the wayside in many ways, so I wanted to show you a presentation on that — if it works. We're used to technology failing us. In case it doesn't work, luckily I brought some notes.

I know a couple of you understand well about the shellfish industry, Scott especially, so I don't need to go into it much. Should the presentation appear on the screen, of course, it'll show a little bit about the industry association and what it is. I won't go into it that much with you, because it's not necessary. Hopefully, in the background it will be there.

Our association represents 140 members. It's a strong association. But when you talk about acronyms today at this table, I notice the one that hasn't come forward is the CAVE group, which is "Citizens against virtually everything." I'm sure they will appear later.

Basically, I do want you to know that with the public misinformation out there, the shellfish industry, especially in this area where we sit today, has been unable to expand. Our industry lives primarily in Baynes Sound. Baynes Sound grows 51 percent of all the oysters in the province; 35 percent of all the clams, whether they be wild or farmed, come from Baynes Sound.

We've tried to see the industry expand into other regions — certainly on the north coast, west coast. I myself put in 35 farms for the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council. But with the cost of doing business in remote locations, which I'm sure you guys would like to see some economic benefit to, shellfish cannot do it. Why can't we do it? There are lots of reasons, but a big one is that the cost of doing business in this province is huge.

The Shellfish Growers Association put together a presentation to government showing that the cost of doing business in British Columbia is the highest of anywhere in the world. With margins like what we suffer with selling shellfish, we cannot compete globally with other countries.

Why are we being hit so hard with regulations when it is only shellfish, you say? Go figure. But I can tell you that I give talks all over the province about shellfish farming. I always like to refer to this one talk in front of the legislative buildings with all that grandiose and all the people with the cameras — CBC and whoever. Someone behind a very large camera said: "How do you guys handle escapements, anyway?" You know, I tried to keep a straight face, but shit, it was hard.

The lack of information in the world about the differentiation between finfish and shellfish is so big that I just came here today to ask the committee to make it clear. You know, we all share the ocean, but there are lots of users. Our industry is suffering from this lack of understanding by the public. I'm sure you've heard that a few times in your travels.

There are no new sites available in the region. The sites that are available have to be purchased from existing farmers who are going out of business or retiring. The tenured area that we have in the province is the size of the new runway at the Vancouver airport. It's very small, yet we produce about $20 million worth of shellfish. As I said, for the first time this year we produce more farmed clams than the DFO-run fishery. We're very proud of that. We knew the day was coming because, of course, everyone here likes to agree that DFO mismanages.

Everybody, we like to think, knows the benefits of shellfish farming and that we produce such high-quality protein in a small amount of area. In fact, all the tenures in the province only take up the size of the Vancouver airport runway — a very small area. We have 47,000 kilometres of coastline here, and yet we've chosen to allow very few new sites and to paint shellfish as a negative industry.

I can tell you that we are the canary in the coalmine. If our industry doesn't thrive, it's because the water is in bad shape. Everybody knows that shellfish are positive uptakers and, in fact, are used to clean bays in other parts of the world.

The big things stopping our industry from moving ahead are aesthetic considerations and potential changes in waterfront property values. You can skirt this all you want, but that's reality.

The riparian rights issue with the upland owners on waterfront in this province will not change that. Where I chose to work over the last four years, prior to being with the association, was the west coast of Vancouver Island, specifically so that I wouldn't have to deal with those people. I enjoy working in communities where shellfish are welcomed, but the reality is that you cannot make a dollar in a place where it takes four hours by boat to get there.

The perceived environmental effects of intensive shellfish aquaculture are often very incorrect. I have owned and operated a family shellfish farm for many years — in fact, 20 — and I can tell you that, yeah, most commodities are moving towards a little technology. Everybody loves the idea of mom and pa out there farming away, but I gotta tell ya: they don't make any money, and they cannot compete in today's market.

The lack of knowledge by the public of the husbandry methods has caused us a lot of grief. This confusion between shellfish and finfish industries has got to stop. We each have our own issues to contend with. One isn't right and the other wrong at all, but we do want you to know that we pay extremely high rents on the water that we use. Our rents have been escalating. It's really hitting those moms and pas that everybody likes to think exist. Those moms and pas are having to leave the province and give up shellfish farming.

Yes, you will see bigger companies taking over these small farms. Why? Because they're the only ones that have the capacity to make a dollar. These high rents are inexcusable. They've been unable to get changes through the system to lower those rents. Why they decided to pick on us, we're not too sure.

Between the lack of legislation underpinnings, the riparian rights issue, the low access to sites — in fact, zero access to sites — the environmental and public perceptions around shellfish, the lack of new species development in the province — for example, with abalone…. That's just horrendous. I mean, it's such a benefit for people who live far and away to farm abalone and yet…. Anyway, that's a whole other story.

There are issues with profitability and efficiency, but we basically have a lack of government support and vision for the industry. We have a lack of local government support. Regional district zoning has made it nearly impossible, and investment and financing is not attracted to an industry that has this kind of perception problem with the public.

If nothing else, I'd like to see you guys really make an effort to try and fix up your website and call it what it is. Otherwise, let's talk this through and get it straight, because we're a little tired of being dragged down this path. We are an alternative species in the regard that we feel sustainable. Maybe we're not. You can discuss that all you want. We do a lot of job creation. We have a thousand jobs. We have a $20 million industry, and we're ready, set to go, but we have no new area.

Areas that I chose to work in over the last four years on the west coast have a 90-percent unemployment rate. If my presentation works, you can see pictures of the farms that we did out there. I can tell you, having travelled all over the world, that a 90-percent unemployment rate creates severe havoc in a community. You need to go to those communities, you need to check it out, and then you need to embrace shellfish farming and try to make it happen in this province, because those communities are anxious to get into shellfish farming. They cannot compete economically.

In order to advance this industry, I'd like to appeal to this committee to broaden your horizons. Get it straight. If you're going around talking about finfish farming, great. Call it that. Thank you.

S. Fraser: Thanks, Roberta. Just so you know, we did have a presentation from David McCallum two days ago in Nanaimo, I think. He did point out some of the issues around the public lack of understanding about the industry. You're now formally on record — it's in Hansard — that the oysters don't actually break out and escape, which is good too. That hopefully will be a start.

We also had a presentation from Island Scallops. There is a role here for shellfish in this committee. As you know, a lot of the regulatory stuff around tenuring and all that is the same. It's handled through the same ministry and through the same sort of regulatory regime. For anything we deliberate here, we have to be mindful of the other uses. In a sense, that's why — I don't want to speak for the committee here — we wanted to keep it inclusive. But a good point in making sure that we point that out more.

A question. You said you presented some of the challenges to the government already. Did you get a response yet?

R. Stevenson: I'm getting old, Scott. I'm pretty tired of going to Victoria. You know; you've been there. Ward Trotter is in charge of raising our rents like he has. He gets a call from me every single day. I'm paid to do that. What can I say?

Minister Bell. I've met with him in person and said: "Hey, if you want to see these little farms carry on, you've got to lower these rents." There are bigger fish to fry out there. There's BSE, avian flu. You know, there's always something big.

We do our best to be rebellious. Shellfish farmers are a pretty rebellious group at best. We're used to taking a beating. I just don't see why this sort of venue couldn't also limit itself. I know you just explained it, but it just doesn't make sense to me, Scott. I think it would be better if you had separate venues and people could keep things separate.

Someone from the site is going to home to say: "Jeez, you know they're feeding those shellfish." It doesn't get out into the media correctly. I get calls every day about how we're damaging the planet. This is painful.

R. Austin (Chair): I think that's it. Thank you very much for your presentation.

R. Austin (Chair): I would like to call Rod Burns up to make a presentation.

R. Burns: Chairman, committee members and people in the audience, I wish to address my points. I believe you're just getting my report presented to you. I'll be addressing my points on the socioeconomic perspective, as was suggested in the call for presentations. It will be addressing anything from the salmon farms, be they hake, new species…. Some people are doing their research in many areas.

I come from this presentation myself as a business owner — Bold Point Centre for Tourism Training. I would say, in the larger sense, that I am a certified professional heritage interpreter. As a professional heritage interpreter, natural and cultural history, it behooves me to focus my thoughts in three realms: to understand where audience and issues are coming from; to help, in the public sense, relate issues back and forth — not taking one side or the other; and at the end of the day to provoke all participants to look at the issues a little bit differently from where they first started the confrontations or their opinions. It's on those three points that I will try and do a flow-through.

With that, as well, I come to the presentation as a quiet economic geographer. It's my training. I'm an educator as well. In the position as an economic geographer, I have significantly tried to look at the reliance of B.C. and indeed Canada on resource extraction — the pushes and pulls, historically, of where we've come from to where we're going.

I've lived across Canada, worked across Canada, from Salmonier Nature Park in Newfoundland as chief park naturalist to Ontario to Alberta and now B.C. It's interesting. I got my feet very well put into the position of looking at issues in Newfoundland as the local people in the mid-1980s were faced with the seal hunt and Brigitte Bardot and other actors and actresses protesting that point, versus what the local people did for hundreds of years as far as the base of economy and paying for the shoes out of the company store by seal hunting.

It then led me to having to come up to speed very quickly with the demise of the cod fishery in Atlantic Canada. One of the issues I had to address at one point was a government hot potato where the minister had an issue of his favourite meal being poached salmon. Read between the lines on that one. It is a court case.

When I moved from Newfoundland to British Columbia, I opened up a couple of businesses. I've now been in this area of the coast, on Quadra Island, for ten years. I do have a small farm, raising chickens and sheep. In the evenings or when I have spare time, I go canoeing out on Hoskyn Channel. In that area I have visually and soundscaped a number of mussel and oyster leases. So, Roberta, we're recognizing that the shellfish industry is there and has been there for many, many years up and down the coast.

I also have a history in that area of travelling and paddling and talking to the workers on three or four of the fish farms. In some cases, the people started the fish farms in the early 1980s on the promise of getting rich and wealthy and being able to retire by the year 2006. Those people got gobbled up by the majors.

It's interesting. When I was in Newfoundland, one day I got really thrown into the socio-political economics of resource extraction. It was over the effects of the bluefin tuna, which weighs 800 pounds.

Federal law said that the sport fishing industry could go out and earn a few hundred dollars catching the tuna, but it could not be brought to shore to be distributed as food into the communities to the local people. It was prohibited. The question is: why?

According to Canada's food regulations, bluefin tuna in Canadian waters had too much mercury, so to protect the public health, we were going to put a ban on it. Followed that story through and found out that the Japanese automobile industry and economic development community said: "Tell you what. If you allow us to harvest in excess of a million pounds of bluefin tuna on our terms and conditions, we'll arrange for some place called Delta, British Columbia, to have an automobile port and assembly plant. And maybe if you really treat us well, we'll get some automobile plants and other goods from Japan brought into Ontario."

Of course, the bankers, the financiers, the industrial might of the heart of Canada, the golden horseshoe of Toronto, said: "You've got a deal." It was interesting that at the same time they struck that deal, the Nova Scotia fishermen, again for hundreds of years, were prohibited from going out and catching fish other than

herring. In catching the herring, the deal was that you did your off-loads into a netted cove where the herring were fed to the live-caught tuna.

In the fall of the year, through Halifax International Airport, came the Japanese fisheries technicians who duly hauled out now these feedlot tuna, hauled them up into the fish processing plants, did what was needed in the Japanese method, got their tuna — big dollars — and flew back to Japan. But there was herring fishing taking place in Nova Scotia.

It's interesting that 20 years later, New Brunswick was notified in the Globe and Mail — I believe it was in April, just two months ago — that they have a new, wonderful life in existence for the fishery. I was amazed when I read the article. There's no real fishing now taking place in New Brunswick. Yes, there are salmon farms, but to go out with the nets, with the specialized boats of the Atlantic, really doesn't take place anymore.

But fish plants operate, because the international harvesters of the sea go out and are scooping up species that were trash fish until a couple of years ago. Apparently, they are primary processed — gutted and headed — somewhere in China. Then, interestingly enough, they are somehow shipped to these ultra–technologically advanced processing plants in Saint John, New Brunswick, where they are specially filleted by the gram, by the millimetre, by the roll, by the sushi bit, to feed the ultra-high-end restaurant market.

The processing of British Columbia fish, I think, now needs to be brought into question. Here on the coast…. I'm shifting gears a little bit, just trying to give you some historical perspectives. Part of it was addressed a little bit a minute ago by the events of going up to Bute Inlet. About five years ago Heritage Aquaculture, a George Weston company, put in a request for three fish farms up at Bute Inlet. Boy, did it raise a furore!

In the presentation the three fish farms that were applied for were going to bring in wonderful economic benefits to the region. It was going to be somewhere around 12 employees on two fish farms, because the third one, the fish hatchery, was going to be significantly fully automated.

When the fellow gave his presentation, a guffaw of laughter went around the audience, because right where the presentation was given, the fellow didn't hear that right over there was the roar of the sound of the floatplane's motors. It was a $25 million high-end tourism industry, but he was going to bring employment into Bute Inlet — 12 people.

What was interesting in the presentation was that a gentleman by the name of Mr. Ritchie stood up. Mr. Ritchie was or is still involved in Ritchie auctions from New Brunswick, the largest international heavy equipment auction company in the world. He has a little bit of property where you were flying over today.

Mr. Ritchie asked a question of the audience and the panellists of the regional government. He said: "Just a simple question. How much in provincial or regional tax dollars is Heritage Aquaculture currently paying federally, provincially or regionally, and if the fish farm is put into place, how much could they be paying?"

We're not talking about income tax from the workers. We're talking corporate tax. And that's a question I present to you.

The application, ultimately, was denied. Reading through the scenario a little bit — which I do; I look at things pre- and post- and put together some other snippets of information — you find out that Mr. Ritchie was from New Brunswick. George Weston Ltd. was from New Brunswick.

The argument, the conspiracy theory, that could be laid out went something to the effect of: "If those fish farms get placed where the map says they're going to get placed, my real estate values are going to plummet. I won't be able to sell them, or my inheritors won't be able to sell them for very much."

Not only that, then the regional government said: "Hmm. If his property values plummet, we're not going to be able to charge as much waterfront tax." And back to that question. Where are we going to have best economic benefit? Real estate taxes or salmon farm taxes, aquaculture taxes? The question is out there.

With the figures that have been presented today — that the gross revenue of the finfish aquaculture industry is about $600 million — how much of that $600 million is really being given as true economic benefit to this province?

I've had it from the fish farm managers, a couple of years ago, that indeed, when the majority of the companies are now owned offshore, they have a vertical integration process where the nets, the walkways, the technology and the computer programs are in fact brought in from the parent company, from Norway and Europe, and that very minimal real economic benefit, economic gain, is created in this province.

How much, then, of the annual profits or annual expenses really show up as true economic leakage to this province, not economic benefit? In the big picture, how disposable are the 4,000 or 1,000 workers out in these communities?

It's very interesting that a couple of years ago, at a public hearing similar to this, MacMillan Bloedel was being offered to make a sale agreement with Weyerhaeuser. It was presented through a public comment that Weyerhaeuser would buy MacMillan Bloedel and very quickly calve off the B.C. fibre holdings.

In fact, a couple of years later they did. Weyerhaeuser has since calved off those holdings to Norske Skog, and Norske Skog, in this area, has calved off their holdings and ownerships to Catalyst pulp and paper.

It's interesting when people say: "We're so important that nobody can ever throw us away." But if you do an economic analysis, the balance sheet for MacMillan Bloedel ended up being 20 percent…. The British Columbia holdings were 20 percent of the total balance sheet. It was calved off. It was thrown away. The most economic benefit was south, down in Georgia.

When the salmon aquaculture industry of B.C., which is owned offshore, is only 5 percent of the global

component, what is it going to take, other than a blink and a drink, to say: "We're out of here. We're gone"? It doesn't make economic sense in a global market, and these comments were presented earlier. Five percent of an economic industry in British Columbia can be sneezed and blown away in a minute.

I'll just close my comments now, very quickly, with a story that I got from an elder at the public application for Church House. It was an elder, a senior lady — Klahoose, I believe. She got up, and for this lady to get up in the audience was phenomenally difficult. She said to the participants and to the audience: "I've been reminded of a story that my grandma told me. The story was that at some point, the white man will arrive, and the white man will look at our fish and our clams. At one point the white man will take away our fish, our clams, our deer, and control our berries and our trees and our plants. And at one point, in the big cities of the white man, there'll be a collapse, and the white man is going to come back to us and say: 'Please, native people, aboriginal people, you know these things. Teach us how to fish. Teach us how to hunt. Teach us how to collect the berries.'"

The lady looked around, and she said: "Well, if you come to me now, I'm going to tell you all to go to hell."

So, after this panel, following the first nations component, please consider seven generations behind us and the words and wisdom of the elders, and seven generations into the future so that your great-great-great-grandchildren, and mine as well, can look at us with pride, not with shame.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you, Rod. Do the members have any questions for that presentation? Seeing not, I will thank you very much for your presentation.

We are running quite a bit behind here. We started late, but I am going to ask that we call this a half-hour recess. We will come back with Scott Krompocker and Ian Roberts in, hopefully, half an hour.

R. Austin (Chair): I'd like to call this meeting back to order, and I'd like to invite Ian and Scott, from Positive Aquaculture Awareness, to come up to the witness table, please. Other members will be joining us.

S. Krompocker: Good afternoon, Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Scott Krompocker, and I'm joined today by my colleague Ian Roberts. We are here to represent the many hard-working employees of the salmon farming industry through the grass-roots organization Positive Aquaculture Awareness. I have been involved with the industry for 13 years and believe in both its ability to show continual improvement and its strong future as a world-class producer of salmon.

I grew up in the small, close-knit, hard-working coastal community of Powell River, B.C., where my entire family has lived for many years. Like most of my friends, I believed I would be there forever as well. I'd work in the mill, get married, have kids, etc. Graduation marked the end of that dream and replaced it with cold, hard reality.

The mill was downsizing rapidly, forestry was seasonal at best, and the economy was struggling. I found myself leaving my hometown with the majority of my graduating class. I was lucky, or I feel I was lucky. I didn't have to go to Alberta or the city centres to find work, like a lot of the others. Instead, I began my career as a summer temp on a grading crew for a salmon farming company with operations on Vancouver Island.

Since then I've worked in the industry as a fish farmer, lead hand, commercial diver, crew boat operator, environmental compliance manager, occupational health and safety officer, and most recently, as a human resources manager.

During these positions I've been responsible for raising healthy nutritious salmon; routine monitoring of farm stocks and environmental parameters; development and maintenance of the industrywide code of practice; ensuring regulatory compliance for my operating organization; development of best practices for fuel handling, storage return and emergency planning; providing a safe working environment for all our employees; and ensuring that the next generation of fish farmers carry on our hard work ethic.

As a fish farmer and member of our local community, I have given my time as a Little League coach, participated in community and charity events, been involved in organizing annual beach cleanups, donated money to a variety of local charities and organizations, developed training and mentoring opportunities for local high school kids in the field of aquaculture, helped develop post-secondary educational opportunities through our local college and, of course, paid my taxes.

When I return often to visit my family in Powell River, I'm still saddened to see how it has lost what it once was. Lack of jobs has continued to send the youth away, and drugs become a bigger and bigger issue. The community is now becoming controlled by rich, retired urbanites, who see it as their private park and playground.

It is an all too familiar pattern we are seeing in our coastal communities, one that would be greatly accelerated by a restricted or collapsed salmon farming industry. While you conduct your research, please remember that B.C. salmon farming supports my family and hundreds of other families from coastal and first nation communities across this province. We are working environmentalists and have the biggest interest in a sustainable and successful salmon farming industry. It is indeed our future.

My name is Ian Roberts. I work for Marine Harvest, and I also volunteer for Positive Aquaculture Awareness. I grew up in the '80s. I have been and always will be an environmentalist. I watched as report after report

surfaced about how our stocks of wild seafood cannot support our growing population, and in the late '80s I researched opportunities to do something about this unbalance. I entered college in 1990 and graduated with aquaculture in 1992.

Aquaculture, the art of water farming, is to me just one of the things we can do to take pressure off wild fish stocks around the world. Aquaculture to me includes farming, ranching, enhancing. There are many ways to define aquaculture.

I am a salmon farmer. Since 1992 I have fed salmon, counted them, graded them, harvested them. I've dove scuba, anchored in farms and built cages from scratch. In 1998 Marine Harvest, the company I work for, was approached by the Kitasoo/Xaixais First Nation in Klemtu, B.C. This is a remote village of 400 people on Swindle Island. It's about 500 kilometres north of Port Hardy.

I'm not here to speak for the Kitasoo/Xaixais people. I'm here to speak about my experience with the Kitasoo over the past eight years. The people of Klemtu started farming in 1986 and were successful, but they didn't have large enough scale to make it financially viable.

Their last fish was harvested in 1991. The Kitasoo started farming for two reasons: as an economic driver to replace the commercial fishing industry that's now nonexistent and also to take pressure off these wild stocks so that their food fishery may continue for the next generation.

The Kitasoo people contacted Marine Harvest in 1997 to begin discussions on a partnership in their traditional territory. In 1998 a five-year agreement was signed, and we started building cages in January of 1999 on Roderick Island. Production has grown over this time. Today the Kitasoo have 15 full-time jobs on the farms, seven full-time positions on their harvest vessel and 30 jobs in their processing plant located right in the village. That is over 50 jobs in a village of 400. The unemployment rate has dropped from 90 percent to 40 percent.

Just two days ago we finished six straight months of processing over six million pounds. We celebrated by having a community feast on Monday night. Over 300 people came to eat and speak about their experiences. We heard people speak about how being physically active has improved their sugar levels, how they are proud to wake up in the morning to go to work, how they can afford to travel now, and how proud they are to support their families and not rely on the government for handouts.

Percy Starr, the band manager, spoke last. He referred to a five-year study done independently. This is what we refer to now as the environmental report of salmon farming in Klemtu. It looked, and is looking, at any change in biodiversity, bottom impact and contaminants. Suffice to say, this report is very good news, showing impact with what the Kitasoo summarize as acceptable and expected. In Percy's own words: "I have no concerns." These studies will continue.

We're starting to harvest and process in August again. This will last for seven months and bring over ten million pounds through the Klemtu processing plant. I cannot put into words how wonderful an experience it's been to work and live amongst these people in Klemtu. I've been given permission to welcome any of you to visit our farms and experience this first hand. Please consider this your invitation.

You have something in front of you. I'd like to travel north of Klemtu into the state of Alaska. I understand that a speaker in Tofino told you that Alaska does not farm salmon. I wanted to take this opportunity to correct this false statement. You see in front of you four pictures, and I apologize for those behind me. I don't have it on a PowerPoint presentation. Luckily, I didn't rely on it.

I trust that looking at the pictures you can all recognize what a farm looks like. If you look at picture one, this is Hidden Falls Hatchery in Alaska. You can see that's for the sole purpose of producing salmon. Beneath is the Hidden Falls Hatchery again, and you can see the net pens in behind. I think you can count ten or 12 50-by net pens where these fish get entered into to continue their growth. The purpose of this hatchery is to improve saltwater survival and to imprint the smolts to their surrounding environment.

If you turn the page, you can see the same hatchery and the commercial fleet coming in a couple of years later to catch these…. I call them farmed salmon. Some people call them wild salmon. The last page you can see is a net pen in Prince William Sound. I count 16 50-by cages. This is for the purpose of growing up juvenile salmon. I'll read you a blurb from this Prince William Sound website, and this is in their own words. If you look at that picture of the farm…. "After the fry emerge from the incubators, they are either directly released into local waters or held in captivity and fed a commercially manufactured fish food. Often fry are moved to saltwater rearing pens and fed."

I would just like to point out a study that was done about salmon ranching. This is what it's commonly referred to in Alaska — salmon ranching. Trout Unlimited was funded to provide a study to the American Fisheries Society, and I quote this paper: "Further, the risk that hatchery fish pose to wild fish is a more significant and ubiquitous one than that posed by farmed salmon because hatchery fish have more opportunity to stray into wild stock streams and interbreed, reducing genetic fitness, and because there is more opportunity that hatchery fish can displace wild fish in the ocean environment."

Interestingly enough, this report was funded by the Packard Foundation. That's a well-known funder of anti-salmon environmental groups. I spoke with the author of this study, who informed me that shortly after this draft was published, the funding was promptly removed.

Alaska produces 1.5 billion salmon in hatcheries and net pens annually. That is approximately 60 to 75 times larger than the B.C. salmon farming industry. We produce about 20 to 25 million a year.

In regards to their ban, I'll read their ban. This is their statute. The state of Alaska, by Statute AS

16.40.210., prohibits the growing or cultivation in captivity for commercial purposes. All you have to do is look at those pictures in front of you. Pictures say a thousand words.

I'd like to finish here, and if I can — it might be question period — pose a question to one of the committee members. A few months ago I heard through the grapevine — of course, I work in Klemtu — that Gary Coons might be visiting Klemtu. I e-mailed him to ensure that it was clear that he had an invitation to the farms and the processing plant. A few months later I heard through the grapevine again — and it is the grapevine, so I want to clarify this — that Mr. Coons had indeed visited Klemtu.

He did not request a tour of either the processing plant or farms with any of us — or myself. I e-mailed again to ask Mr. Coons if he did receive a tour of either facility. I only received a generic e-mail that contained no response. I sincerely hope that I'm wrong, because I would find it unbelievable that a member of this committee could visit the only village in his riding that has an active salmon farm and farmed salmon processing plant that was operating during his visit….

R. Austin (Chair): Thanks for your presentation. I'll ask if members have questions for either presenter.

G. Coons: Thank you, Scott and Ian. Yes, I did go to Klemtu for a day on that trip, and I did e-mail you back. I don't think it was generic. I think that I replied. I don't send generic ones.

I. Roberts: You replied by saying that you'll be touring the Island. That was the reply — that you will be visiting Campbell River.

G. Coons: I think I replied; we'll have to check that. It's neither here nor there. I thought I replied that our committee would be touring and were specifically going to go to Klemtu.

Yes, and when I made arrangements there, I thought I had made arrangements through the band to tour the hatchery and everything. We went to the plant, and it was not operating at the time. So we will be there. You are correct that at that point in time…. I thought we had made arrangements, but we didn't. I did attend the Marine Harvest workshop there.

I. Roberts: That's how I heard that you were there. We had a fish health workshop.

G. Coons: Yes. I did attend the two- or three-hour workshop and got a lot of information out of that. I do thank the personnel there for doing that. Thank you for bringing that up.

I just want to comment on the farming/ranching. This is something that has just been tweaked, in my mind. It's just come across my table in the last couple of months — about ocean ranching. Is that the same? Ocean ranching or farming/ranching? It's something that I definitely would like more information on, because what I'm hearing is that there is a…. I don't want to say a moratorium…. But the Alaskans do not want fish farms.

G. Coons: It is significant that you brought this forward, and thank you very much for that.

J. Yap: Thanks for your presentation, Scott and Ian. You mentioned and talked about the story of the Kitasoo First Nation. I understand that aquaculture is an issue that has a diversity of views, certainly among the first nations who have the opportunity to participate. We have heard impassioned pleas from one side and the other — one side saying that we need to do more and the other saying that we need to shut it down.

From your perspective as someone who is really tuned into aquaculture, what has to happen to try and bridge these views? What ideas would you have to try and create a dialogue where there can be some common ground so that we don't have such a wide span between "go for it" and "stop"?

I. Roberts: Right. That's a good question. That's a big question. If I had the answer for that, I'm sure I could solve a lot of problems. Even close to Klemtu, there is another band, the Heiltsuk Nation, which has in the past said zero tolerance for salmon farming, depending on what time of the year you talk to whoever you might talk to. There is difference of opinion, of course, within the band as well.

I honestly don't know. I mean, everybody is entitled to their own opinion. All we can do is provide those answers to those people. If they truly want to know the answers, those answers are out there.

You know, that's how we approached the Kitasoo. They had concerns, and they had questions. They still do today. I mean, these studies are continuing. In the agreement it is agreed that if they feel uncomfortable upon the impact, they can pull the plug on the agreement. That was written in there.

All you can do is provide them with the answers if they want to listen. I think a few groups, and not just first nations, along this coast don't seem to want to know the answers. Even a few people today who made

presentations are long gone. They say their piece, they leave, and that's it. All we can do is be there to provide the answer, and that's why we're part of Positive Aquaculture Awareness. It's truly volunteer. All we do is go to school groups or go to ocean days and explain to people what aquaculture is and what we do for a living.

J. Yap: That's made me think of asking you: who are the members of Positive Aquaculture Awareness? Who's in your group?

I. Roberts: I have the title of president, and Scott…. There are five directors who get together about once a month and decide what functions we're going to do. We fundraise by golf tournaments and baseball tournaments. We raised enough money to do our billboard down in Nanaimo.

It is truly comprised of salmon farmers and suppliers. That is it. Ocean days was comprised of probably six or seven people who are suppliers and salmon farmers on the coast. It's truly what I consider grass roots, and I'm proud of that. I'm very proud of the billboard for that reason. By the way, the billboard in Nanaimo, when you drive by it on your way home, is Archie Robinson Jr. — a fellow I work with. He's the poster boy.

S. Simpson: Thank you very much, and thank you for the presentation. I just want to follow up on John's question a little bit. Based on your answer about Positive Aquaculture Awareness, you said it's salmon farmers and suppliers. Is it industry groups? Is it businesses — Pan Fish, Marine Harvest, the suppliers as well as individuals, of course? Do they make up the membership of Positive Aquaculture Awareness?

I. Roberts: No. I think what you're getting confused is B.C. Salmon Farmers Association with Positive Aquaculture Awareness. We're truly individuals, not the member companies.

S. Simpson: Not the member companies. Were they contributors to the campaign?

I. Roberts: I'm glad you asked that, actually, because I specifically received money from seven suppliers to build it and fund it for six months along the highway. It was originally in Pat Bay and came up. It was seven suppliers that built it and paid for it for six months.

I. Roberts: If you can offer any money, I'm looking for a couple more months.

R. Austin (Chair): Good try. We're just here to seek information from you. Thank you very much for your presentation.

A. Sutherland: Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you very much for this opportunity. I'll ask my colleague here to assist me with operating the PowerPoint presentation.

I'm production director with Pan Fish Canada. I graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1982. I've spent the last 24 years working in the aquaculture industry, salmon and trout. I've been with Pan Fish for nine years. I joined Pan Fish Scotland in '97 and transferred to Pan Fish Canada in September 2003. I look after all aspects of production here in B.C.

I wanted to use this opportunity to talk about some of the favourite topics for discussion or promotion by anti–salmon farming activists. My basic concern is that if misinformation is repeated often enough, it has a tendency to become accepted as fact. What I perceive as inaccurate statements regarding the following six topics can be found in most of the anti–salmon farming websites. Unfortunately, these tend to be picked up by the media and the press and become recirculated and almost self-perpetuating.

Given the scope of the time available today, I narrowed it down to six hot topics: PCBs, malachite green, antibiotics, pigmentation, the amount of wild fish that it is alleged to take to grow a tonne of salmon, and the use of hormones or genetically modified material.

We start with PCBs. How often have we heard alleged that farmed salmon have up to ten times more PCBs than wild salmon? Well, PCBs are synthetic organic chemicals — actually 209 separate congeners that were widely used by industry for 50 years until they were banned in 1979 in the States. But in the meantime, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of this material were dumped into the various waterways and made its way into the marine environment. PCBs are absorbed by and accumulate in the fatty tissue of animals, including fish.

CFIA and USFDA have safety guidelines for PCBs of 2,000 parts per billion. A paper was published in Science, volume 303, which compared levels of PCBs between wild and farmed salmon from various parts of the world. The levels found in farmed fish range from 18 parts per billion in Chile up to 50 parts per billion in Scotland. British Columbian samples averaged 32. At the same time, levels in wild salmon from B.C. and Alaska range from just under two up to 10.25.

The authors of the paper recommended limiting consumption of farmed salmon based on their findings, based on what is known as the EPA standard. What we found very puzzling was that this in fact should have been a good-news story, because the worst farmed fish they could find were only 2½ percent of the FDA limit. In fact, the western Canadian fish, or the B.C. fish, were only 1.6 percent of the limit. This chart illustrates

where we're at with the levels of what the various authorities, including the World Health Organization, consider to be an issue.

There is in fact no scientific evidence at all, regardless of what the safe levels are, to show that PCBs have ever actually caused cancer in humans, and that includes studies done on people who used to work in the plants that actually manufactured the PCBs. The EPA standard, which was adopted by Hites and his colleagues, is based on the premise that one eight-ounce portion per month with a PCB level between 24 and 48 parts per billion will increase the risk of cancer one in 100,000 over 70 years. Basically, it's based on a zero-risk basis.

However, we would argue that any small additional risk is far outweighed by the health benefits of eating salmon, and that's backed up by the National Academy of Sciences, the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization.

It's important to remember that PCBs are ubiquitous — that everywhere we all have PCBs in us. They're found in a wide range of human food products, including beef, pork, chicken and dairy products. As an illustration, if the same standards that were proposed for farmed salmon were applied to other foods, it would mean, for example, that you would be limited to a single six-ounce glass of milk every other day, using exactly the same criteria.

This is an illustration of the relative health benefits against the perceived cancer risk, as such, of one in 100,000. Heart disease, of course, is the biggest single killer in the States, and for the same 100,000 people, we believe we could prevent 400 of them from suffering a fatal heart attack. There are also benefits to be had in the prevention of Alzheimer's and stroke, for example.

Farmed salmon accounts for approximately 6 percent of the per-capita intake of PCBs. The levels in other foods may be smaller, but because we tend to eat more of them, then the net amounts to the same — the higher percentage of PCBs in the total diet.

Pan Fish actually recently tested some of our market-size fish. It's important to remember that Hites's work was done on samples which were taken in the year 2000. A lot has changed since then.

The total PCB counts that we found in our own fish range between 6.75 and 7.5 parts per billion, which compares almost identically to the latest findings from Alaska — and wild sockeye and chinook, which were found to be ten and 8.25 parts per billion, respectively. Salmon of the Americas recently tested farmed salmon in Washington State and found them to be 11.5.

It's important to realize the PCB levels can be extremely high in wild fish as well. In fact, evidence from the Copper River sockeye gives levels up to 791 parts per billion. Bearing in mind that the FDA/CFIA tolerance level is 2,000 parts per billion, these are still well within safe limits.

One of the reasons why we see lower levels today in farmed fish compared to the Hites report is that there is more substitution of fishmeal and fish oil in diets. Also, the fish feed manufacturers have become more aware and more focused on where the source of fishmeal is. There's less meal, for example, taken from menhaden meal. The bottom line is that, based on Health Canada's risk assessment, consuming farmed salmon does not pose a health threat to consumers from PCBs.

Second topic here. Recently in the local paper a statement appeared to say that when trace amounts of malachite green threatened to shut down B.C.'s salmon farming industry, the zero-tolerance limit was reviewed and relaxed.

To give a bit of background, malachite is an organic dye that is widely used in Canada and around the world in many different industries. Its uses include pulp and paper, textile colouring and mosquito coils. It previously was used to treat fungus in salmonid hatcheries, both in government and privately owned hatcheries, but in 1992 it was banned for use in fish intended for human consumption. The zero-tolerance level was established.

Malachite is readily absorbed by fish, concentrates in the tissues and metabolizes into a different substance called leucomalachite green. It's extremely persistent and could probably be found for the entire life of the fish, which basically leads to intentional illegal use — an exceptionally foolish course of action because if it was, it would be detected. It can now be detected with existing technology down to 0.1 part per billion. To give some sort of perspective on that, that equates to one second in 320 years.

CFIA added testing for malachite and leucomalachite to their aquaculture program in 2003-2004. In the summer of 2005 positive results for malachite were found in two chinook farms. The levels were only 0.1 to 0.3. The vast majority of farm fish tested were all negative. At the same time, leucomalachite green also turned up in sports-caught chinook and coho in a Campbell River area at about the same level — 0.1 to 0.3. Malachite has also been found in chinook enhancement hatcheries and also in rockfish in the Campbell River area.

The conclusion that we arrived at was that this trace level of malachite is unlikely to be the result of intentional use. However, if CFIA were to maintain their zero-tolerance policy, then this would impact commercial and sport fishery as well as aquaculture, because it's impossible to test every wild-caught fish.

Malachite is likely to be an unavoidable contaminant. It's out there. Trace levels are present in the natural environment. The levels of malachite and leucomalachite that have been found in very small numbers of farmed fish are consistent with the levels found in very small numbers of wild fish.

Malachite is still available for other non-aquaculture users. Health Canada, in acknowledgment of the concerns it would cause for the seafood industry as a whole, announced on April 3 that they would instigate a limit for malachite at one part per billion, which matches up with the U.S. FDA limits.

It's important to recognize that in Europe the limit is two parts per billion, and in Japan, five. A statement from Health Canada has determined that the potential

risk to human health from eating fish with the levels of malachite and leucomalachite at one part per billion or lower is remote, even if fish with these levels are consumed every day over a lifetime.

Point number three: an allegation that salmon farmers are increasingly relying on antibiotics. Antibiotics in aquaculture are only used and only administered to salmon to treat disease, and not to promote growth. It's common to use antibiotics as growth promoters in the poultry, pork and beef industry. They can only be used in salmon when they're prescribed by a vet following the diagnosis of a bacterial infection.

Following the antibiotic use, a strictly regulated withdrawal period and testing program is mandated to ensure the residue level is met or exceeded. Withdrawal times will vary depending on the therapeutant and ambient water temperature. It's not possible to harvest fish for food before the withdrawal period is completed. The use of antibiotics and the residues in food fish are monitored by CFIA and FDA.

There are currently four antibiotics licensed for use in aquaculture. It's important to also recognize that the majority of antibiotic use is in fish less than one kilo, which is a long way away from harvest size. The typical withdrawal period is around 100 days. That combined with the withdrawal period ensures that the antibiotics never reach the human food chain.

Antibiotics are used far less intensively in aquaculture than in land-based meat producing industries. All antibiotics used in salmon farming, except for brood stock which aren't grown for human consumption anyway, are administered through feed. Currently, less than 2 percent of all feed used in producing Atlantic salmon in B.C. contains medication, compared to more than 50 percent in poultry, pork and beef.

This trend towards the reduction in the use of antibiotics in salmon farming is attributable to better husbandry, the use of more effective targeted antibiotics, and of course we now have access to more effective vaccines. The use of medicine in animal husbandry is a standard part of modern veterinary practice, and to suggest there's something wrong with treating livestock with medication is as ludicrous as suggesting that humans should give up modern medicine.

Topic four. Again, quoting from Pure Salmon here, one of the most commonly used dyes, canthaxanthin, has been linked to human eye defects and retinal damage. Well, the pink colour of salmon, wild or farmed, is created by the presence of carotenoid pigments. In nature the fish get the colour from consuming crustacea containing the carotenoids. Carotenoids are also powerful antioxidants and have other biological functions essential for fish growth, health and reproduction.

Because commercial salmon feed doesn't contain a crustacea or any other natural sources of carotenoids and because salmon can't synthesize carotenoid pigments, they must be added to their diets. The objective is to achieve a total inclusion level between seven and nine parts per million, which equates to the same that you'd find in wild Atlantic salmon.

Our grower diets typically contain between 15 and 30 parts per million canthaxanthin and 15 and 30 parts per million astaxanthin. It would average over a production cycle approximately 23 parts per million and 23 asta. It's an extremely expensive component of the diet. It's about 13 percent of the total cost of our feed. In other words, we don't put it in for our own amusement. We put it in there because the customers require it and also because the fish require it. It's about 8 percent to 9 percent of our total production cost.

Customer preference is for pink colour. It's perceived as an important quality parameter. The inclusion of canthaxanthin up to 30 parts per million in the diet and asta up to 60 is, of course, approved by CFIA.

The eye problem that's referred to and is left as a suggestion that it may be linked somehow to farmed salmon is called canthaxanthin retinopathy. That has been discovered in people who have overdosed on tanning pills basically. It's got nothing to do with the consumption of wild or farmed salmon containing canthaxanthin and astaxanthin, which has never at normal levels been shown to have any adverse effect on human health whatsoever.

Canthaxanthin retinopathy has come about due to the use of mega-quantities of up to 250 milligrams per day in tanning pills. This basically constitutes a substance abuse, and it's got nothing to do with the consumption of farmed salmon. To ingest the same amount as a daily dose of tanning pills would require eating 62.5 kilos of salmon every day, and that practice would have to continue for several weeks.

The allowable daily intake for humans for canthaxanthin is 0.3 milligrams per kilo per day, and a 400-gram portion of salmon contains 1.6 milligrams. So for your average 70-kilo person, that equates to inside the ADI. Basically, an average person can consume 400 grams a day for 70 years without having a problem.

Topic five. We hear frequent reference to the amount of wild fish it takes to produce a tonne of salmon — over three tonnes or up to five tonnes. It's important to realize that the species most commonly used for fishmeal and fish oil production are pelagic bony fish, such as anchovy, which are unsuitable for human consumption.

Fishmeal and fish oil are also produced from by-products or trimmings from processing food fish, and that accounts for about 15 percent of the total production. While a wide production of fishmeal and fish oil has been stable since 1985 at around about 6.5 million tonnes of meal and 1.1 million tonnes of oil per annum, the majority of B.C. meal and oil now comes from Peru and Chile.

Salmon feed manufacturers in B.C. only purchase meal and oil from sustainable and actively managed fish stocks. The availability and cost of meal and fish oil have been incentives to salmon farmers to supplement their inclusion with alternative raw materials.

Supplementing fishmeal and fish oil in salmon allows the possibility to achieve a wild-fish-to-salmon ratio close to 1 to 1. Fishmeal and fish oil are finite resources, as we see that production has been stable since

'85. However, as a result of changing diet formulation, modern aquaculture can continue to grow without depleting world fish stocks. Feed is also the single greatest expense of salmon farmers.

Rising costs of meal and oil are also motivations for substitution, and researchers and the feed manufacturers are working with a variety of fishmeal substitutes, including wheat gluten, corn gluten, canola meal, soybean meal, poultry meal and feather meal. Fish oil substitutes include soy, canola and poultry.

I've actually produced a calculation based on the diets that we are currently using. This calculation follows a formula proposed by a national environmental trust that is actually the sponsor of Pure Salmon. A typical grower diet now contains 22-percent fishmeal and 13-percent fish oil. As I already said, 15 percent of that came from trimmings of processing of food fish, but for the purposes of this calculation, we'll allow it to be 10 percent.

The grower diet will therefore contain 198 kilos of meal and 117 kilos of oil from wild-caught fish. If we assume a feed conversion ratio of 1.15 to 1, that will require 228 kilos of meal and 135 kilos of oil. The yield of fishmeal from wild-caught fish is 5 to 1. Therefore, we'd need 1.14 kilos of wild-caught fish. The yield of fish oil from wild-caught fish is 8 to 1, which is a lower number, but it obviously comes from the same tonne of wild fish. Basically, we're looking at 1.14 tonnes, and that's largely due to the level of substitution by alternative sources.

The final slide. Hormones in genetically modified material are alluded to from time to time by our critics. There's absolutely no hormone use at all in B.C. in any farmed salmon destined for human consumption. The use of growth promoters is absolutely not the case. Also, there are no genetically modified fish currently allowed for commercial use or release in Canada. Nor has any federal department received an application to import or grow genetically engineered fish.

C. Trevena: Thank you very much for that, Alan. We've been talking, as we've been travelling around, about fish health management plans. Obviously, you're trying to address a lot of our concerns about fish health management. I wondered whether your fish health management plan for each of your sites — rather than cross-company, but just each of your sites — is a public document. If not, why not?

A. Sutherland: I know that the various regulating authorities require a cite of them before the sites are licensed. Whether or not they're available for public scrutiny…. I don't actually know the answer to that. I don't believe they are. I don't think so.

A. Sutherland: No, I don't see why it should be. I mean, it's basically, as you say, a plan — a set of objectives and contingency plans and ways to deal with things when they go wrong. Basically, prevention is what we're aiming for. We don't want a problem.

Our fish health is dealt with by fish health professionals. We have our own vet in-house, and they are tasked with looking after that aspect of our business.

S. Simpson: Thank you very much for the presentation. As you're aware, Marine Harvest has a memorandum of understanding with CAAR, the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, looking at a whole range of issues and discussing a whole range of things related to the industry.

I'm wondering: now that Pan Fish has taken ownership of Marine Harvest, is it the intention of Pan Fish to continue with that memorandum of understanding and the activities that are going on, or are there plans to make changes to that?

A. Sutherland: Obviously, the integration or the merger between Pan Fish and Marine Harvest is still at a very early stage. The competition authorities have not had their final say on the transaction. Preliminary discussions have taken place between our senior management and Marine Harvest senior management. One of the topics which was put at the top of the list was almost an insistence that these agreements were maintained and in fact continue to be developed.

G. Coons: Thank you, Alan, for the presentation. Very informative. I just have a couple of questions. How many sites do you have?

G. Coons: Okay. On the north coast there are two sites. Is it Anger Island and Petrel Point? Did their applications or licences run out?

A. Sutherland: The status of that. I believe the licences run for 12 months and may be renewed. There's a third site we're after up there, of course, which I know you're very well aware of. At this point in time we have quite a lot of business in front of us that needs to be taken care of, and these things will work away in the background.

G. Coons: Recently, as you know, the Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en and the nine Tsimshian allied tribes went to Norway and presented a declaration that the Skeena River and its approaches remain fish-farm-free, wild-salmon-only territory. What's your comment on that?

A. Sutherland: You have to understand that my knowledge of first nations issues and politics is fairly sparse, but I understand that the arrangements we

have up there are with the Kitkatla Nation. I obviously know about the delegation that made their way to Norway and appeared at our AGM. Our CEO has indicated that he would prefer that we had agreement with first nations who have right and title to the areas that we wish to be active in, and that's something we will pursue in due course.

Sort of along with what Gary was referring to, the Freedom of Expression Foundation is…. I know you're aware they announced they're going to be pulling support or shares or whatever, and they cited specific issues that they had — concerns with Pan Fish's operations here and in Chile, I believe. I haven't got any of the details on that, but you must.

A. Sutherland: Well, firstly, it's a fairly good time to sell shares. The prices have gone up. So I can be a bit cynical about that tactic as well.

I thought it was a bit unkind that we were included — or the operations in Chile, where I believe their concern was welfare of workforce. We were tarred with that one as well. We've not actually made any approach to the Chilean operations at all yet. I think the only issue left is whether or not they regard us as being insensitive in the way that we regard the development up north. If that's their view, then they're entitled to it.

But as far as I'm aware, we have an arrangement with Kitkatla. We've actually sponsored 20 Kitkatla graduates to go through North Island College and be qualified as aquaculturists. We employ eight of the Kitkatla people on our farms right now in anticipation of being able to commence operations up there and offer them full-time employment.

You had a top six list, which didn't include two issues that we have heard a lot about, and I wonder if you could comment on your experience as a major operator. The two that you didn't have up there: the issue of sea lice and that there's a perception out there — rightly or wrongly — that aquaculture concentrates sea lice, which then has an impact on wild salmon. The other that we hear about, which is the perception out there as well, is with regard to the issue of escapes. I wonder if you can comment on both of these.

I know you wanted to limit your list, but if you were going for a top eight, would it include those two?

A. Sutherland: I had to rush through things to try to get through in the allotted time. I left lice off my list, because I felt that maybe others around here have more extensive experience with that particular subject here in B.C.

My comment on lice is that if we look at the Broughton, for example, I don't think that returning pink statistics back up all the sky-is-falling warnings we've had. If you've seen the charts for returning pink numbers, I think there have been much worse years before salmon farming appeared. Since farming appeared we've had some of the record returns, both in odd and even years. Frankly, I think the lice issue has been exaggerated and blown out of proportion.

As far as escapes go, for our own company, I don't believe that in the time I've been here it's been an issue. I don't think we've even had a reported incident.

A. Sutherland: With the equipment that's available nowadays, it's become less of a problem. We've got stronger pen systems, stronger moorings, better nets and better knowledge, experience and understanding of how to put them together.

G. Robertson: Thank you for your presentation, Alan. First a question in terms of species. Is Pan Fish only Atlantic, or are you farming chinook?

G. Robertson: One hundred percent Atlantic. Maybe this should have a question for the previous presenters — Positive Aquaculture Awareness. Maybe you know this. The Alaska salmon ocean ranching…. Those are native species. Or are there any Atlantics?

Question on Pan Fish in terms of the ownership of the farms on the B.C. coast — maybe Pan Fish and Marine Harvest. In terms of the percentage of the industry here, what does that add up to individually and then if the merger is approved?

G. Robertson: If the merger is approved by Securities…. And Pan Fish is a publicly owned, publicly traded company?

A. Sutherland: Yes. Our majority shareholder is in our region — John Fredriksen.

G. Robertson: The company's most recently published profitability — what sort of numbers are we looking at?

A. Sutherland: I think the first quarter of this year was…. I couldn't actually quote the figures. You'd be better to talk to some of our financial people. In fact, all this information should be available on the Pan Fish website.

A. Sutherland: It depends if we're looking pre- or post-Marine Harvest. Pre-Marine Harvest we're probably looking at between 10 percent and 20 percent.

G. Robertson: Pre-Marine Harvest it would be in B.C. In terms of the company's profitability, is B.C. a major contributor to that? Do you break that out in your public reporting?

A. Sutherland: The situation in B.C. is that there have been a few difficult years up until last year. The company has made a number of changes. We have access to a new vaccine. Previously the company had suffered from problems with infectious hematopoietic necrosis and kudoa. Those problems have not affected us in the last two or three years.

The company has actually been given the opportunity to demonstrate that it's possible to operate in B.C. profitably, which is basically what we've done. We downsized and refined our operations and took account of best practice, moved forward and developed a model which we're now in position to scale up.

G. Robertson: In terms of scaling up, have your operations in other parts of the world continued to grow? B.C. has been stagnant for some years and is prepared to grow. Are the other operations growing in the meantime?

A. Sutherland: Yes, there has been modest growth in Scotland, for example, where a couple of small independent companies were taken over recently. In Norway there has been growth as well — organic growth plus taking over other existing companies.

I'd like to invite Councillors Grant and Storry to come up to the witness table, please.

M. Storry: Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee this evening.

My name is Mary Storry, and I'm a councillor for the city of Campbell River. Presenting with me is my fellow councillor Roy Grant. I'd also like to introduce the mayor of Campbell River, Roger McDonell, and my other fellow councillor Andy Adams. Councillor Ziggy Stewart was here, but he had to leave for a recital. Councillor Morgan Ostler was also here, but she had a seven o'clock meeting at city hall.

As the councillor responsible for economic development for the city of Campbell River, I'd like to discuss primarily the economic value of the aquaculture industry to our community.

Aquaculture is not part of a new economy for Campbell River. In fact, Councillor Ostler owned one of the first fish farms on our coast back in 1985. The industry provides Campbell River with well-paying, full-time employment for all demographics, including women and youth, and it allows us to find work in career jobs close to home.

For example, Walcan Seafood, the largest employer on Quadra Island, employs 165 persons with approximately 55 percent of them living in Campbell River. Marine Harvest employs 260 people, primarily also living in the Campbell River area. Pan Fish employs 240 persons, with at least 50 percent living in the Campbell River area. These numbers do not include the other large manufacturers and the packing plants or the suppliers.

Jobs in administration can pay up to $50,000 a year. A site manager earns $5,700 per month, and a site tech can earn $40,000 to $50,000 per year. These are salaries that can support the young families that turn the wheel of our local economy.

Some processing companies offer profit-sharing and production bonuses on top of their $13-to-$15-per-hour wages. These wages are not seen in tourism service industry jobs that are commonly presumed to be our community saviours, although I must mention that there is a great opportunity for the tourism sector to incorporate this industry into their plans. I understand that tours to salmon farms will be offered this summer, and I think they're going to be a big hit with our adventure-seeking tourist.

As B.C.'s most significant agricultural export, the industry does return over $600 million to the provincial economy each year. This also means significant tax dollars to our municipality, and fortunately businesses are very confident in our city's future.

Brown's Bay Packing Co. is currently undergoing a $2 million refit to allow the company to be more competitive and further their ability to manage the growth that they see our industry is capable of achieving. The world's largest aquaculture company, Pan Fish Canada, has its head office in Campbell River, as does Grieg Seafood Ltd. and Mainstream Canada.

How important is this industry to us? Here's a surprise. Here's a list of 440 businesses. All these businesses are located in Campbell River, and they supply our aquaculture industry. You have a smaller copy in your attachment numbered one. I also have a list of 120 major services and suppliers that service more than three aquaculture companies each.

It's not just the jobs and the economic value that we cherish in this industry. It's also the participation in our community. A list of teams and non-profit organizations supported by the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association includes the Campbell River Elks, Lions, Shriners, Kinsmen, Rotary, softball, slo-pitch, hockey and soccer. I've enclosed that attachment for you as well.

Recently, Grieg Seafood B.C. Ltd. presented our mayor with $22,000 for a joint project with the Nature Conservancy to develop two new back channels on an island in our estuary. I know there are many more examples.

I'm sure you all understand, given the current discussion around our forest industries and our mills, that it is critically important for us to continue to diversify our tax base.

In appreciation of the value of the aquaculture industry to our community, the mayor has proclaimed September 11 to 17 to be aquaculture week and has made the following proclamation:

As a council, we need to continue to learn as much as we can, and we look forward to sharing the information from this special committee. If the 500 pieces of farmed salmon that were quickly gobbled up at Ocean Day last Saturday is any indicator — and I think it's a very good one — then there is certainly community and visitor appreciation of this product.

As your attachment five I have included a photo from a recent tour. Thank you for your time. I'll relinquish my spot to Councillor Grant and remain available for questions.

R. Grant: I promise I don't have a scroll to throw out on the floor for you.

Chair Austin, Deputy Chair Cantelon, MLA Trevena and members of the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture, I'm Roy Grant, and I'm a city councillor with the city of Campbell River. I was going to go into the introduction, but Councillor Storry has spoken before me, so she's beat me to that. We'll go past that point in my introduction.

This is the third stop for you in what looks to be a very long and tiresome public consultation process that will run into the fall. I have to congratulate all of you for your level of participation with open minds in this effort to examine, inquire into and make recommendations to the Legislature with respect to sustainable aquaculture in British Columbia. I also congratulate the Premier's bold and innovative move to assemble this special committee comprising Members of the Legislative Assembly from both sides of the Legislature.

I chose to apply to speak to your committee as a grass-roots citizen of this part of the province when I learned that you wanted to hear directly from the people in the communities where these issues are most important. When I met with Geoff Regan in September 2004 when he was minister of FOC, he suggested to me that he felt there was a lack of meaningful dialogue to resolve the conflict and public confusion concerning the salmon aquaculture industry. My feeling is that your committee is answering the call.

Without a doubt, this industry affects the community that I live in. I felt I should attempt to convey my thoughts regarding the aquaculture industry as an open-minded citizen. My comments aren't necessarily as a councillor of the city of Campbell River, but as a citizen of the community.

Councillor Mary Storry has outlined the economic benefits that our coastal community derives from this important industry, including thousands of jobs, many of which are right here in Campbell River.

The word "aquaculture" covers a wide variety of farmed ocean species, all of which are extremely important to our community and our province. But since the unnecessary and sometimes unfair controversy has focused on B.C. salmon farming and since salmon farming accounts for about 81 percent of the value of the industry, I will base my presentation on that part of the industry.

Some of the things that we know. We know that B.C.'s salmon farming industry is by far the most stringently regulated industry in the world, but many who do not understand the industry want more regulation. We also know that the federal government, the provincial government and the salmon farming industry have all mandated that aquaculture must be managed in a manner that protects the environment. But those who need a target in order to fulfil their lives choose to attack the aquaculture industry.

We know that both farmed and wild salmon provide the world with a healthy, safe food choice. It is an important source of nutrients, particularly omega-3 fats. But paid opponents are tainting the minds of millions of Canadians by using scare tactics through the story-starved media.

We know there is no known credible science to prove that sea lice from fish farms are having any negative impact on wild salmon stocks on the west coast. In fact, the recent credible FOC scientific reports indicate that prior to fish farms locating to the Broughton Archipelago, over the last 50 years there were two major disease events among juvenile salmon in the wild. Yet none of the opponents of farmed salmon have been able to explain why pink returns were higher than normal immediately following the much-publicized catastrophic year.

We know that escaped Atlantic salmon do not survive in the wild, and we know that they do not colonize our rivers and streams. A recent in-stream survey found only two Atlantic salmon among 389,000 salmonids counted in 55 different river systems covering 280 kilometres. Yet opponents continue to undermine this research data.

We know that closed containment fish farming increases pollution from fossil fuel consumption. We know it's not economically feasible and would displace

many hectares — this is the kicker — of forested land for each farm's operation. Yet critics will not listen to these facts.

We all know that PCB levels in farm salmon are 1/80 of the safe levels established by FDA. Yet the Hites report touted by the David Suzuki Foundation suggests that this poisonous food is laced with PCBs.

We know that salmon farming is environmentally sustainable and that a healthy marine environment is important to the industry. We know that environmentally sustainable salmon farming can actually help protect wild salmon stocks by helping the consumer demand for fresh fish on a year-round basis.

I implore you to ignore the ignorance and hysterical allegations of certain well-funded NGOs and ignore the scaremongering sound bites of certain radio talk show hosts. Don't confuse journalism with science. I encourage you to listen to the experts and study the independent data provided by the agrologists, the veterinarians, the marine biologists, the geoscientists and the policy analysts. I ask for your continued support of the new B.C. Centre for Aquatic Health Sciences, an independent finfish research laboratory which coincidentally is located downstairs in this building.

I ask that you work toward the elimination of rhetoric and move towards resolving fact from fiction. I ask that you work towards educating the general public in regards to all the good that the aquaculture industry does for our province.

I ask that you work toward implementation of constructive solutions to identify problems. Most importantly, I encourage you to continue to maintain the protection of our wild salmon stocks as a top priority while promoting the growth of the farm salmon industry. There is room for both to thrive in a healthy ocean environment.

R. Austin (Chair): Thanks, both of you. I'll start with questions from Claire.

C. Trevena: Thank you both very much for your presentation. I'm not sure if you were here earlier on, but I think we're all agreed around this table and listening to the presenters that what we want to do is try and find a way that we can find balance and that we can have the industry and working with our wild stocks as well. I think we're all agreed on that.

Mary, in your attachment that you've given with the list of 411 names…. Are these suppliers to the industry?

M. Storry: Yes. They have each supplied one manufacturer or one industry or one salmon farm. The shorter list of 120 has supplied three or more.

C. Trevena: I'm just intrigued, because on the top of one of the pages it's got "Conservative Party of Canada."

M. Storry: Isn't that the donation page? Is that appendix three you've got there?

C. Trevena: I'm going through the list. It's the first list, alphabetically — attachment one.

M. Storry: Well, then I am sorry. That definitely shouldn't have been in there.

J. Yap: Thanks for your presentations, Mary and Roy. First of all, you used the word "tiresome," Roy. Speaking for myself and probably for most of my colleagues, this is not tiresome. We're pleased to be here to engage in the important work of this committee. Just to assure you, it's not tiresome.

R. Grant: MLA Yap, I think that probably in the fall you'll change your mind about that.

J. Yap: I suspect not. Anyhow, you've got a proclamation of Aquaculture Week. You've compiled an impressive list. What I'd like to know is: what other steps has the city taken, or will take or is thinking about taking, with respect to getting the message that we all want to address, which is that aquaculture is here to stay — if that's how I might word it — but needs to be in balance with the wild fishery?

This is in respect to perception. The perception that's out there about some of the past practices of the industry, which today may not be the case or are not the case…. You've already outlined some, but what other steps is the city taking to message?

R. Grant: I'll start. Thank you, MLA. First of all, I guess we're so busy with sewer lines and roadbuilding and building our new cruise ship facility that the aquaculture industry, as far as our taking steps is concerned, has not been at the very forefront.

I suppose what our city council would be doing is looking forward to the recommendations that your committee will be making to the province. Hopefully, we will be able to implement some of those recommendations in our own community and be able to assist the province and the aquaculture industry and our own community in making sure that everyone can work together properly, that the industry is going to remain as an environmentally sustainable industry and, mostly, that the province and the country are educated to what aquaculture is really all about.

J. Yap: What ideas have you got in terms of doing that? I assume you have an economic development officer for the city of Campbell River. Is that part of his or her mandate?

M. Storry: Absolutely. Our Rivercorp general manager, Patrick Marshall, is very active with the groups and participates in a lot of meetings. We trust him to be able to offer the economic development support that…. As Councillor Grant says, we can't focus on just one thing. We have to focus on all the different aspects of our jobs.

We are trying to learn as much as we possibly can. We've been attending some events. We were at Ocean Day, and we went out to see a salmon farm. We continue to gather information as well. As Councillor Grant was saying, we are eager to hear what recommendations you bring forward. We continue to maintain a good relationship with all of the industries so that we can hear about any new initiatives they're taking, and we'll carry on doing so.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation. As a former city councillor for a city south of here somewhere, I appreciate that it's not always easy to take political stands, as you've done, on an issue that's quite controversial. Are you really confident you have the community behind you on this one?

M. Storry: Absolutely, 100 percent. We know that this industry is a good fit for Campbell River. We know there's work to be done within it. We know there are still some questions out there, but we know it's giving us the diversity that we absolutely need. It's providing the jobs that we absolutely need. It's keeping the young people in our community so we can have the families that will fill the schools that will take care of us as we get old — not the schools, but the hospitals and the nurses that will take care of us as our population gets older. As we encourage more retirees, this is great, but we still need the younger people and the professionals to take care of these.

Absolutely, there is no downside for the city of Campbell River with this industry.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): The hospitality we've received has been tremendous. It's not very tiring. It's enjoyable, and we'll probably be back. So thank you.

G. Robertson: Thank you for your presentation, and very impressive to see such a long scroll. My background is in small business, and farming before that.

This isn't really expressly in our terms, but looking at the future of this industry and trying to map it next to the future of many of the industries that have boomed here before, certainly in the province before…. I'm thinking in particular of the tendency in many of these industries — though they're supported, and they in turn support many small businesses, which are the majority and the driver and what most of us here rely upon — for ownership of resources to concentrate in companies that are not based here in B.C. and that then go away.

I think Weyerhaeuser, fairly close to here, is the latest chapter in this. There's some chaos created by the comings and goings of major global investors, coming and perhaps creating lots of opportunity here for our small businesses and for us to grow industries. But when they come and go too quickly or their long-term interests aren't here in B.C., they create lots of instability for all of us who live here and plan on being here for our future generations.

I'm curious if there are concerns with you as councillors and if there are concerns among the small business network here and the community about the trend that we're seeing now, with the salmon farm industry obviously going from being very many small businesses to the potential of having one foreign-owned company having more than 50 percent of the industry here.

M. Storry: Actually, I don't have a lot of concern. I can't speak on behalf of all the small businesses. But in the resource-based community that we are, we've seen many companies change names, change ownerships.

My family has a logging background, and my kids were raised on logging dollars. The company that my husband worked for changed hands I don't know how many times. At one point it was out of New Zealand, and at another point…. His job and his company name have changed on many occasions, but it still supported us, and the money that we've earned has stayed within our community.

If the industry is strong, it doesn't matter that the home bases aren't here. The local economy is still making the dollars and still providing the jobs. I'll let you jump in.

R. Grant: I understand your concern, MLA. I do frequent with a very wide variety of business people in the community, and the thought has never been discussed at all that because there's some amalgamation or some larger companies getting together into one even larger company, it would have any negative effect on the local small businesses. We just have not witnessed that. It hasn't been discussed — not to say that it hasn't been thought of.

G. Robertson: I think the challenge, being that by their nature, those companies have to provide a return to their shareholders wherever their shareholders are based…. We as locals, as British Columbians, give up a chunk of our potential profitability for big companies to come and operate here. It isn't something we're specifically tasked with, but it's a concern when there are potentially environmental or social compromises made to accommodate the growth of an industry.

We should be benefiting to the best of our ability by this. It's work that the committee is doing, looking at the future and at what is sustainable. It's not an easy question to answer, of course, but I thank you for your response.

R. Grant: The way it is now, MLA, is that there is a very long list of local businesses that do supply the industry. I'm sure that buying power does come into play, but I'm sure that the majority of those businesses are going to stay very healthy with the industry staying healthy.

R. Grant: Mr. Chair, I just wanted to mention that I want to thank you and the audience behind for missing an important hockey game for an even more important session tonight. As you know, the captain of the Carolina Hurricanes is from Campbell River — Rod Brind'Amour. Just so that you know, the Times Colonist has a good story about Campbell River's mayor and Rod Brind'Amour on the front page.

C. Backman: Co-Chairs Austin and Cantelon, Member Trevena and the rest of the panel, I thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak to you today again, having met with you earlier in the day on the tours.

The presentation I'm going to give is not terribly long, and it's not terribly involved with statistics and numbers, so that would be a bit of a relief for some of you having to sit through today. I think it will give a bit of an overview of the vision of Marine Harvest and the direction of Marine Harvest as a company here on the coast growing salmon in British Columbia. I think it speaks, to some degree, for the vision that's shared by all the companies that are participating in salmon aquaculture in British Columbia. They're all committed to what they do, they're all trying to improve what they do, and we're all trying to produce a high-quality product for sale around the world that will be as good as or better than any other farm product produced around the world.

First of all, a little bit about Marine Harvest. The company, of course, is based in Norway. It has always had a strong component of its production in Atlantic salmon. Atlantic salmon are grown in Norway, Scotland, Chile, Ireland. However, there are other species grown as well. The company grows yellowtail in Japan. It also grows barramundi in Australia. It's a company that's been committed to differentiation and development of species. It's a company that's been involved in research into the aspects of nutrition and also very committed to the highest product quality in all the species that it grows.

In Chile, of course, the primary product there is also Atlantic salmon, but coho salmon is another strong product grown by the company in Chile. It's also grown here in B.C. — again, Atlantic salmon being the primary product, but Chinook salmon also being a product that we're growing here in British Columbia.

Our primary markets for the product out of British Columbia include North American markets in the United States and Canada as well as in the Asian countries of Japan and Taiwan.

Now, a little bit more about Marine Harvest here in Campbell River. We have about 260 full-time employees who work in the company's freshwater-rearing and marine-rearing hatchery operations. There's also a similar number of people employed in the processing plants that receive our fish.

The average production of salmon by Marine Harvest is about 30,000 tonnes — that's about 66 million pounds — on an annual basis. That's the product that goes out to our markets. It doesn't include the additional work that we do with our brood stock, where we develop high-quality reproductive stock for our Atlantics and our chinook. It doesn't include the hatcheries. As well, it doesn't include the freshwater-rearing facilities and all of our sales and marketing staff that are involved in the sales of the products out of Campbell River.

One of the things that Marine Harvest focuses on is maintaining a strong regulatory compliance. We're aware of the nature of the regulatory environment that we operate within, and we take it very seriously. We want to ensure that our operations are not only meeting the regulatory compliance measures that are in front of us but exceeding them wherever we can achieve that.

We shoot for a high-quality product. When I say high quality, I mean in terms of market acceptance, in terms of its nutritional value and in terms of its market demand as well.

We strive for excellence in environmental and social performance. We want to be a good neighbour to the places and to the people where we're operating our farms, and we want to be a good employer to the people that work for us on our farms and our hatcheries.

I've just returned from a brief trip to Klemtu, a small village up the coast where Marine Harvest has been invited by the Klemtu first nation to grow our products. Klemtu is a very interesting and very successful place for us to have been operating. It's very pleasing to be involved there, with the acceptance that we've received.

A location like that, which doesn't have a lot of opportunities for other kinds of activity, has welcomed Marine Harvest. Their unemployment rate has dropped from 70 percent to about 30 percent, and about half the economic benefit of Klemtu right now is derived

from Marine Harvest operations there. That's just an example of the kind of value that this industry can and does bring to the coastal communities of British Columbia.

In terms of key initiatives that we have as a company, as mentioned already tonight, we're undergoing a merger very shortly. We're merging with Pan Fish. That's a global merger that is going to take some time to work through. It's been approved in Norway and the U.S.A., but the closing date for some of the other countries, in terms of the overall merger, is still a few weeks away.

Another key initiative that you're aware of and that has been referred to already tonight is the framework for dialogue that Marine Harvest has negotiated with the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform. I can say a little bit about that.

It's something that took about a year and a half of very hard negotiating to come to an agreement. It was based on an understanding that there had to be alternative ways to get our message out about the products we grow and the way we do our business. One of the best ways to deal with a situation of conflict is to find ways to engage and to communicate. The framework is about searching for mutual interests, identifying areas that require additional research and moving forward on those.

It's not an easy thing to be involved with people that have a lot of potentially nasty things on their website to say about the product that you grow. However, we feel there's a lot of benefit in pursuing the relationship. We're six months into the agreement at this point.

We are continuing to pursue improved relationships with the first nation groups where we operate, and there are a number of them as you can imagine. There are a lot of coastal first nations, and a company like Marine Harvest that has operations in the northern part of Vancouver Island and up as far as Klemtu in the mid-coast…. We have about 14 different first nations bands that we interact with.

In terms of certification systems, the two companies that formed the new Marine Harvest Canada were ISO 14001–certified, and we're maintaining that certification at this point in time. What that means, of course, is that we have a set of standards, a set of operational procedures that are uniform across the company and that form the basis of training our people and for the standards that we take into the practices we carry out.

Looking forward, initiatives that are of interest would take the form of certification standards around standards of operation for the marketplace. Obviously, the marketplace is looking for greater certainty around the product that's produced from salmon farmers, and we're looking in that direction as well.

We have taken the step of developing our website. The website contains a lot of information about where our farms are located and what we're doing on our farmsites. We intend to maintain the operation of our website. It's a good way to share the kind of information about our various farmsites, and it seems to be well received.

Looking ahead, we are of course looking at completing the merger. That's going to take up the balance of 2006, and we hope we're still involved with the rest of company as we go forward.

We're looking at improving our relationships with first nations. Obviously, that's a challenging point for all the companies involved in British Columbia. Right now we enjoy very good relationships with some first nations and very challenging situations with other first nations. One of the key commitments we have is to find ways of adding value to the first nations communities in which we operate and to bring a greater appreciation for what we do, the products we bring and the opportunities they can gain out of having us in their territories.

We also want to build greater public confidence in salmon aquaculture. I think that's one of the desires we have coming out of this process of this committee — that it will, at the end of the day, provide greater public confidence in salmon aquaculture here in British Columbia, which right now is really an industry that has not yet even begun to approach its potential.

We are looking, as a company, towards focused, collaborative research on sustainability issues. We know there is a lot of controversy. We wouldn't be in the room if there wasn't ongoing controversy. We realize that industry has to play a part in being involved in the right kinds of research to bring closure to some of the questions that are out there.

Finally, in an era of somewhat conflicted opinions about salmon aquaculture, I think Marine Harvest is trying its hardest to find ways to resolve that conflict. We've been committed to a number of programs over the years, whether it's first nations or research-based, in order to pry the information that the public needs in order to form a conclusion to an issue and move on. We feel this overall component of conflict resolution is one of the key components that this committee can bring forward as a piece of its final business.

In closing, I just want to thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to the outcomes that will, as I say, provide greater opportunity for this industry in British Columbia.

S. Fraser: Thank you very much, and thanks, Clare, for your hospitality today too. You touched on an issue…. We had a representation here earlier today from first nations elders regarding the Church House site and the injunction that followed in that. You've already touched on some of the challenges you're dealing with, but there was cited some specific concerns regarding sort of a downloading of responsibility from government to what was perceived as downloading to business.

The information that was deemed necessary for the first nations was not easily accessible. Have you made any progress with that? Have there been any further discussions? This was specifically around escapes or potential escapes.

C. Backman: The process of working through the consultation matter with the Homalco band has been,

as you know, a lengthy one. The situation there is that this is a matter between government and government — the first nation to the province, primarily — in terms of consultation. It's the fiduciary responsibility of the province to carry that out.

We have been willing and active participants in that process in supplying information. There are numerous multipage letters that have gone to the band in order to bring the information forward that they have been looking for. We feel that we have more than adequately covered off the information they require. If they have additional information that they would like to get from us, we welcome that submission and will consider it.

S. Fraser: Can you tell me what the status of that injunction is? I don't think the representation took us that far. That was in 2004, was it not?

C. Backman: Yeah. It's not an injunction. It is in fact a requirement by the province to complete additional consultation, which has been going on for a number of months. The status of that consultation at this point is that the province is evaluating whether or not adequate consultation has occurred. They haven't made a decision on that at this point.

S. Fraser: Finally on this, one of the concerns also raised was that the level of consultation was happening after the fact and that there are other court decisions, not with aquaculture — Haida–Taku River particularly — that said that was not appropriate. Have there been any discussions around that level of consultation — that it should happen earlier rather than later?

C. Backman: Only to say that one of things that I think we've all learned from this process is that when we are triggering a process which we know will involve consultation from government to first nations, it's in our best interest to contact the first nation at the same time and engender that information process up front rather than wait for it to happen after the fact.

G. Coons: Thank you, Clare, for the tour today. In your role as manager of environment and compliance, I'm just interested about federal requirements as far as habitat compensation. There are some regulatory numbers, ratios. I'm just sort of wondering how that affects you and what you've been required to do as far as habitat compensation.

C. Backman: That's a very interesting one, because the concept that we have here is how we're going to compensate for the deposition — or the simulated deposition, in the case of a computer model — of salmon poop on the bottom of the ocean, to put it rather bluntly. We know from the studies that have been done that this is a material which has a very short lifespan. Residency time is measured in months. It will be taken up by the environment, absorbed by the environment, within a matter of months and in fact is a kind of phantom problem.

However, the DFO rightly notes that when it exists, it constitutes a change. Therefore, we have to look at identifying ways of compensating for that change under their harmful alteration, destruction, disturbance aspect of the Fisheries Act.

To answer your question, what we're doing is identifying the extent of that change that occurs at the peak of production. Then we are, in fact, as a company — I'm not alone; other companies are as well — constructing valuable marine habitat in other locations in order to compensate for that.

G. Coons: Is that available somewhere for…? When we look at the reason we're here and looking at issues, that might be an issue to some people.

C. Backman: You're asking if it's available. Absolutely. Those facilities are constructed, and they are available to be viewed. But they're all 30 metres or so below the surface of the water.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Clare, you've been in the industry how long now?

C. Backman: I've been with this particular organization since about 2000, but I originally got involved with the industry back in 1987.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): My question is: if you compare both the competence of the industry, say, ten years ago and the industry regulations ten years ago to the regulations today and the general competency of the industry today, how would you compare them? If you gave the old industry, which I think certainly didn't have a good name, a scale of one to ten compared to what it is now on one to ten and any comments you'd like to make on that….

C. Backman: The old industry could be described as being energetic and folksy, and the new industry today can be described as being very astute and responsible. I think people have learned from their mistakes as they've moved along, and things that were hopefully good enough to be safe in terms of keeping fish in, for example, are no longer good enough. We ascribe to various precise standards now for safety of equipment and for operations in order to ensure that our fish are kept safe, kept healthy and kept in the pens, for example.

The numbers of regulations, as you mentioned, Ron, have been steadily increasing over the ten years that you mentioned. We had a small number of…. The aquaculture regulation and the Fisheries Act were non-specific to aquaculture in the early days. They're now very specific to aquaculture and very voluminous in terms of the way they address this industry.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): One of the issues that we keep coming up with is sea lice. There's a lot being written about it, and the Salmon Forum is spending about half a million dollars studying it. How do you see it on your farms? What is typical of the number of lice you get in your regular checks?

C. Backman: You only have to go to our website for our company to track the numbers of sea lice and see that they're very, very small in numbers. I was just up in Klemtu, and they were doing a government audit. There were 60 fish in the audit, and I think they found three sea lice. Sometimes there are more, and sometimes you have to take action when they reach the three-motile level. But then the motiles are not the infective stage of the sea louse, so we actually treat it before it becomes an infective stage.

Another example I can give is a young university student who wanted to get 300 sea lice for a project that he was undertaking. He was up at our processing plant last week, and he had to sit through a day and a half and about 30,000 fish in order to get 300 lice. So they're just not there in the numbers that some people think they might be.

My last question is on escapement. We saw earlier that the figures for escapement seem to be almost, well, incredibly low. Why is that, and how do you count the actual fish that escape?

C. Backman: Well, we're getting pretty good at counting them. Our systems now, as you know, include underwater cameras. They don't monitor the nets, but they do monitor the fish, and so we get a pretty good idea from day to day, get a feel for the number of fish in a net. You can also get a feel from the actual way the fish are responding.

The strength of the nets that enclose the fish now are the strongest of anywhere in the world. We're looking at a program now of…. When our nets no longer meet minimum strength requirements in British Columbia, we're looking at a way we might be able to sell them to other jurisdictions where they would be stronger than the nets that are available there, even when they're below our minimum strength levels.

You ask how we know that fish are staying in. The nets are stronger. The frequency of checking the nets is greater. The records that are kept are very meticulously maintained now. Before coming today, I worked with a colleague of mine who checked over our records for the number of fish that escaped last year from Marine Harvest, and we were able to discover that it was one fish. We know that because it leaped out of the net at one point when they were doing a top net change. Other than that, we had no reported escapes last year. I think the industry and our company are doing an amazing job.

C. Trevena: One of the criticisms of the industry and the regulations at the moment, I think, is that the industry is almost becoming self-policing, at least at the provincial level — that it's up to the industry to report that, getting information.

You're obviously willing to have a certain amount of transparency by posting issues such as sea lice on your website, which is something that…. In our conversations with the provincial government we've found that they don't all get all the information. I wondered, on two levels, how transparent you're willing to become on issues of fish health and so on. Would you be willing to make public your fish health management plan and any other issues coming to your sites and post them as quickly as you would notify the government — post them publicly on your website?

C. Backman: I think the choice in becoming transparent about information is up to each individual company. I think that it is based on the level of trust that is developed between the two groups.

In terms of posting information on the website, it was a tough decision that we took, but we think it was the right one to do. It certainly has taken a lot of the mysterious nature out of some of the information in transfer.

In terms of the fish health management plans, the template for the management plan is available on the MAFF website. In terms of what's in there, it's very clear. I think each company has to look at what's contained in their fish health management plan, and where the fish health management plan contains proprietary procedures, it very well may be that the company wouldn't want to put that in the public domain. It would be an individual company decision.

C. Trevena: Just one subsequent question to define that. Again, with the sense of transparency, would you be willing to put on the website the amount of food that you're feeding in each site or issues like this? Or again, is this a proprietary issue that Marine Harvest doesn't feel comfortable sharing?

C. Backman: The amount of food fed on each site is a highly variable piece of data, and I'm not sure how it would factor into gaining better understanding of what we're doing. We are monitoring the ocean floor for the waste, for example. That information is audited by the provincial Ministry of Environment. I think before a decision around that level of information-sharing could be taken, you'd have to have a discussion about what that would be used for and how it would benefit both parties.

J. Holder: Good evening, Mr. Chair and the committee, thank you for you having me here tonight.

It just says John Holder on the sheet of speakers, so I think I'll give you a little background on who I am. I'm a registered professional biologist in the province of British Columbia. I graduated from the University of Guelph in 1973, and I started my aquaculture career in that same year. So, as of July 9 of this year, I have been in the business for 33 years.

I have had extensive experience with freshwater systems, dealing with salmonids and cichlids, and numerous saltwater species, including shrimp, and some people consider me an expert in this field. I have worked and consulted for aquaculture companies on six continents.

I sent the committee a letter on May 24. I didn't know if I'd get a chance to speak to you tonight so I've added to that letter. Everybody should have a copy. I have one left over — no, I did. If you don't mind, I'll just start reading most of this letter.

As I stated, I work in the field of recirculation technology. Closed containment is another way of expressing it. I should say: true closed containment. I was responsible in part for the first large-scale recirculation system in British Columbia, which was situated just outside of Port Alice. It ran for many years and produced an excellent smolt — and that was fresh water, not salt water — much larger than previously reared at that facility. Due to the mergers of various companies, it is no longer required and has been dismantled.

If there is going to be a sustainable industry in B.C., we need smolts to feed the farms which are situated in the sea. I design those facilities. Without farms, I would not have a company. I am a small company and employ only one other person but also contract out, which can employ up to three other individuals on a part-time basis. I'd also like to add that I have a minor holding in a company in China. I have a minor holding in a company in Chile, and I have an equal partnership in a company in the United States.

In addition, new facilities require new equipment, which again employs people here in B.C. — not only equipment manufacturers but also skilled trades people. The list goes on.

I believe that the salmon industry as it's practised in B.C. today is environmentally sound and sustainable. This industry takes off the pressure that we're putting on the traditional wild capture fishery, which is in decline — not due to salmon farming but global warming, overfishing, habitat destruction, etc. As a whole, it's taking a toll on this valuable resource.

If we continue to exploit the wild fishery to the extent we do today, it will not survive. Salmon farming will allow it to regroup, and if government implements the proper safeguards it will flourish alongside the farming industry. I have had the privilege to travel all over the world and share my expertise with other farmers, and I can state with professional surety that the salmon farming industry as practised in B.C. is the most stringently regulated aquaculture industry than any other farming district in the world.

I would also like to comment on the notion that has been widely spread — that it would be more economically sound to move industry out of the sea and put it on land. I have to disagree with this notion. True closed containment facilities or recirculation facilities do work and do work well, but they are not for Atlantic salmon. Farmed Atlantic salmon are a commodity and must be raised as economically as possible. This is being done by the B.C. salmon farmers using cage culture. If it was moved to land, the energy requirements to pump water on the scale that is required is just not economically feasible but environmentally flawed as well.

Most of these farms would have to be located in remote areas due to the high cost of waterfront properties, so diesel generators would be required in most instances to provide that power. This one fact alone casts doubt on this notion.

My last sentence, I wasn't able to get here. Turn the page, and on page 2 I have a discussion dated today. Recirculation technology has advanced tremendously in the last few years, and it does have a place in aquaculture. But one of those places is not in the salmon farming industry, nor could it be bannered as a technology to move existing salmon farms from the sea to land-based operations from anywhere net pen operations are being used today.

The so-called closed containment systems that most environmentalists, some government officials and the public in general are calling for are not closed containment. They are flow-through systems that use energy to flow vast amounts of water through a vessel of some sort to keep the fish alive. Net pens use tidal power to do this now. A true closed containment system is on land and uses recirculation technology to limit the amount of new water used. Even with the most advanced system, some water does return to the environment.

The B.C. salmon farming industry currently produces about 75,000 metric tons, plus or minus, on a whole product basis. This is a 2003 figure. I heard today that it's more likely around 80,000. I'm going to illustrate a land-based system that produces 1,000 metric tons, a small fraction of the industry. The capital cost of that unit was estimated to be $4 million in 2004. This estimate did not include land cost, site works and the makeup water supply. Backup generation or primary generation would add over $500,000 to the above cost. According to Target Marine, which is based out of Sechelt, a 1,000-metric-ton net pen operation would cost approximately $1.7 million to install — today's dollars. This is replacement cost and does not include the environmental assessment, etc.

I must concede that this is only one design I'm going to show you today, but it is typical of most recirc systems. I have included a process diagram for you to look at to see how recirc systems in general do work and what is involved in the nitrification process.

If you can follow with me on page 3, that's a process diagram of how a true closed containment or re-

circ system works. You start with your culture tank. The water goes through the bottom drain and then goes to the swirl separator to remove 50 to 75 percent of the waste. The waste goes along to the drum filter, where the rest of the waste is extracted, and that goes to the effluent. It goes into a pump sump. These systems require power. Part of that water, 80 percent, bypasses the solids removal system because it's through a side box. Then it comes up; 80 percent goes to the biofilter. This is the thing that does all the work, which I'll explain later.

It goes through a CO₂ stripper, and then the biofilter, which consists of a media that has two nitrifying bacteria in it that take out the ammonia and put it into harmless nitrate, which I'll show you shortly, and 20 percent of that water goes through an oxygenation system into the tank. Depending on the system, anywhere up to 2 percent of new water is added. So that water goes back to the environment — 2 percent.

It's a nitrification system. That's what a biofilter is. Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for all organisms. In fish culture systems, nitrogen exists in many forms, the most important of which are un-ionized ammonia, ammonium, nitrite and nitrate. Nitrogenous waste enters the system through excretion from the fish and through the mineralization of solids. Fish expel both ammonia and ammonium through gill diffusion, accounting for 60 to 90 percent of the total nitrogen excreted from the fish. Urea, originating largely from the gills, accounts for an additional 9 to 27 percent of soluble nitrogen production. Urine contributes very little to the total nitrogen production. It's mostly feces.

With fish, up to a quarter of the high protein food consumed is excreted as feces. In addition, up to five percent of all food fed is uneaten and wasted. When feces and waste feed collect in the system, a process of mineralization occurs through which protein in the solids are broken down into inorganic nitrogen — ammonia — by heterotrophic bacteria.

There are two steps. I don't want to hold you up too long because it's getting late. If you look at the second paragraph, it's a two-step process where autotrophic bacteria are used to oxidize the un-iodized ammonia to nitrite the nitrate, thereby reducing the toxicity to the fish. You can see there equation one: ammonia plus oxygen gives you nitrite; nitrite plus oxygen gives you nitrate, which is benign and no problem to the fish.

It should also be noted here that the above process is not as efficient in salt water as it is in fresh water. These systems are used all over the world in fresh water — great place for them. In some instances the process is only 50 percent as efficient in salt water, thus larger biofilters and more water movement are required, which would be the case in the salmon industry.

We have to move water. This is straight engineering physics. To determine the amount of horsepower required to move water around, the following formula is used: HP, or horsepower, equals flow rate times the head — how high you have to lift the water — divided by 3,960 — which is an engineer's term, and I hardly get it but they've worked all that out — times the pump efficiency. I'm not an engineer, by the way. I don't wear the pinky ring.

In most instances a water pump has an efficiency of 65 percent. Now, there are cases where there's 75-percent efficiency, but most pumps are 65 percent. To rear Atlantic salmon at a density of 50 kilos per cubic metre, which is relatively high, and to maintain a pristine environment for them requires a lot of water to be recirculated. Using approved engineering and biological principles, it was calculated that the total amount of water that needed to be moved for 1,000 metric tons — that's all — was over 100,000 gallons per minute. In addition, pure oxygen would be required to maintain the level of seven parts per million to help eliminate stress or keep the stress level down.

From these figures — and using a standard system, which you'll see on the next page — it would take approximately 900 horsepower using conventional pumps with an efficiency of 65 percent just to pump the internal water around those tanks. In addition, the oxygen delivery systems, the oxygen generators and small accessories would require an additional 227 horsepower. Another 100 horsepower would be required to provide the makeup water. So you have a total of 1,227 horsepower.

Now, there are air lifts — another option. You use approximately 66 percent of the horsepower that a conventional system would use, so you'd use 600 horsepower instead of 900. Then again, the whole design would have to be changed — added cost.

A little bit of math here. There are 0.740 kilowatt hours per horsepower — all right? Here in B.C. where we have one of the lowest energy rates in the world, a kilowatt costs 0.068 for the first third per kilowatt hour and then 0.0327 for the second two-thirds. This is from the grid. This is B.C. Hydro commercial rate 1200, so that's right out of their books. The 1,227 horsepower or 900 kilowatts would cost $40 per hour, $967 a day or $350,000 per year.

This is roughly 17 cents a pound added to the production, which may be manageable if the power was available from the grid and the company wanted to invest in the capital structure, which could be two to three times more than a conventional net pen. Now I'll leave that question to the accountants.

If you look at the next page, this is sort of a top view of a possible land-based farm. The tank area alone, just the tanks — you see the five tanks on the upper left-hand side, and you see the five larger tanks on the lower part of the diagram there — is 3,700 square metres. At a site like this, with waste disposal — which goes into Geotube bags, which I didn't get into — you'd need approximately two to three hectares just for the tank system and probably another two hectares to have all the other support — feed storage, parking and, like I said, effluent disposal. So you're looking at about five hectares.

The five small tanks. These aren't small tanks. They're 15 metres by three metres deep. The large tanks are 30 metres by six metres deep. That has a total

production of approximately 2,400 cubic metres. A 100-by, which is 100 by 100 by 80 feet deep, is approximately the same volume. That's one net pen in a fish farm — all right? It's $4 million — in 2004 dollars — without the land.

It can provide a stable environment all year — in other words, complete control over varied conditions. That is a fish farmer's dream.

No disease — smolts are disease-free when stocked — therefore, lower mortality. The closed containment systems that I've seen — the bag, Cedar, this new thing by Agrimarine — there's no way they cannot get disease, because as I said, they're flow-through. They're taking the water in the environment and just passing it through. In this system, the incoming water would be treated with ozone and UV.

In a land-based system you've got better control of your feeding, but mind you, in the industry today, they have feedback cameras, so they're doing a great job.

Harvesting could be easier because it's a stable environment. You're not going up and down with the waves.

Secure conditions for staff. You don't have to worry about going in a boat, flying or whatever.

There would be no sea lice, so they'd save money on SLICE, due to the screening and disinfection of the makeup water.

You have complete effluent control. Two percent of the water flow is required before it goes back to the environment. It also would be drum-filtered or microscreen-filtered, UV'd and ozonated, so anything going back would be prescreened, and there'd be no escapes — unless you had an earthquake of seven or eight on the Richter scale, and who cares after that? That would be the last worry I would have.

Higher energy used than conventional net pens. You'd need approximately 28,800 kilowatts per day for each 1,000 metric tons produced. A typical house would use about 50 kilowatts per day on an average over the year.

Land availability and road access. It's just not there to take the industry off the water. It's just not.

The big one: you depend on mechanical means to keep the fish alive. For example, oxygen generation and water pumps. Now I know for a fact that the "closed, contained system" in Cedar has gone bankrupt three times. Two times, they lost their fish because the water quit moving — a major drawback.

Also, most hatcheries today, because they're on land, have two backup generators. The reason they have two is in case the first one doesn't start. The company in — they're not anywhere anymore; they were taken over — Port Alberni learned that lesson. Their main generator didn't come on, and they lost a lot of fish.

Also, you've got to remember that salmon is a commodity. It competes in the world economy and needs to be reared for the least number of dollars possible. That 17 cents a pound doesn't seem like much, but a year or a year and a half ago farmers would have died for that 17 cents. Today they're doing very well, but a couple of years ago, like I said, they would have died for that 17 cents.

These farms need to be situated near salt water, because they're saltwater animals. Due to the high cost of beachfront property near existing infrastructure, it would be very expensive. You try to buy a five-hectare waterfront in Campbell River, Nanaimo, Vancouver or Victoria — try it — that would have all that power beside it.

Fossil fuels to generate power in remote areas — I'll demonstrate that in a minute.

Waste disposal. About 25 percent of the feed develops into feces, is captured and has to be disposed of, and another 5 percent may be wasted; I doubt it. But just say there's 250 metric tons out of this 1,000–metric ton facility that has to be gathered and disposed of. It has to be trucked out — more diesel for those tractor-trailers.

Unfortunately, all the pros above cannot outweigh the huge demand a land-based industry would have on the electrical power grid system we have today. A typical small farm does about 2,000 metric tons, which is 400,000 smolts at five kilos. This is only modelled for 1,000. Industry would need 75 or 80 of these units just to maintain it, and the power is just not there in rural B.C.

As I mentioned, a typical house like mine uses 50 kilowatts per day of electricity averaged over the year. The industry — 75,000 metric tons — would require the power to run 32,700 homes, or a small city with a population of over 100,000 people. It's just not in rural B.C.

If a diesel generator is required, a 1,250 kilowatt Cummins on a continuous load produces 900 kilowatts of usable power. We need 908. This diesel unit, when you look it up on the Internet, burns 216 litres per hour of fuel, or 5,184 litres per day — a dollar a litre, being conservative. That's $5,000 a day to run this 1,000–metric ton unit in the wilderness, plus all the fossil fuels it's burning up. This does not make economic or environmental sense.

You say: "Use hydro." How many rivers or dams are out there? Are there 80 of them? I don't think so. Also, that's a fairly large hydro plan for this operation.

In closing, recirc has a place in aquaculture, but I believe it's in smaller units with specialized or exotic species where demand is good and the fish in question are not a commodity but command a premium price. Recirc may also be ideal for a salmon brood stock holding facility. I think that's one place where it would work. It would take all the worries out if they had two generators. They wouldn't lose their stock to IHN, algae blooms and so on. Also, growing smolts, which they already do in this province — there are numerous recirc facilities in fresh water growing smolts, and they're doing it very well.

Now I think somebody mentioned that there's one of these units in the Faroe Islands. To my knowledge, there is no saltwater recirc system being used for sal-

monid today. It's a hatchery in the Faroes, and a very good one by the way. It runs on recirc.

My answer is: the replacement of net pens as is practised today should continue, and forget about true recirc technology to replace the industry. Thank you very much.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): I dare to ask one question of all this math. How high a tank did you assume — the head?

J. Holder: No. The pumping head was based on 18 feet. It's just not the lift, but also the restriction of the pipe, the elbows and so on.

S. Fraser: I just have one for clarity. Are you suggesting that this model is not practical? I don't want an answer. It was a rhetorical question, John. Thank you.

J. Holder: If the farmer were willing to spend twice as much for a site, and he was beside a power grid that had the power to supply it, it may work for a thousand metric tons — that's up to the accountants — but not for the whole industry. You've got to shake your head when somebody says: "closed containment." What the public and a lot of people are saying is not closed containment. It's a vessel in the salt water that you pump water through.

Now if you take the solids off, you've got to pump it up to the shore, extract those solids and put the water back. Okay. You got rid of the solids out of the water, but where are you going to put those solids? You've got either silage, or you've got to bag them up or make compost. But they have to be dealt with, and because of salt water, it may not be good for agricultural use.

S. Fraser: That's fair enough, John. I know people use terms that are inaccurate. People call a tidal wave a tidal wave; it's a tsunami. But thank you.

G. Thulin: I'd like to thank you for allowing me to speak before you. My name is Gary Thulin. I'm the president of the Campbell River and District Chamber of Commerce. I currently live in Campbell River and have all my life. I've been very lucky that I was born and raised a Riverite. My family — my two brothers and myself — owns a local business, Pioneer Home Hardware Building Centre. The company's been in existence since 1937, when our grandparents started the business. We've had a long time within this community.

I will speak on two main issues on this. I guarantee, listening to the last ones, that I definitely won't be as long, so I'll help you speed up a little bit. These are the economic impacts of the aquaculture industry for our business community and Chamber members, and our support of the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce position on aquaculture, or finfish farming, in British Columbia.

Firstly, the economic impact on Campbell River and area. Our Chamber membership currently stands at 459 members. Approximately 12 percent of our membership derives a substantial benefit from the aquaculture industry. As well, approximately 25 percent of our membership derives a substantial or a lesser benefit from the aquaculture industry.

With Campbell River and the surrounding area being home to the head offices of Pan Fish, Marine Harvest as they go through, Grieg Seafood, Mainstream Canada, as well as Walcan Seafood and Brown's Bay Packing Company, the overall impact of the revenue generated from the aquaculture industry by the way of wages spent within the community by employees here and in the north Island, for which Campbell River is a service area, greatly impacts all the businesses in our city in one way or another. They definitely, from the Chamber's perspective, have a big impact on our business community and, in a spinoff, employ a lot of extra people within the businesses from the support of the aquaculture industry.

Secondly, I would like to state that the Campbell River District Chamber of Commerce supports and was proud to be part of the position of the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce on aquaculture, or finfish farming, in British Columbia that was developed in 2005. I have attached the federal and provincial policies to my report for you. I'm not going to read through them, as you've probably already seen them more than less, but I will verbally state the recommendations.

The Chamber recommends that the provincial government (1) fairly interpret and apply existing regulations as they pertain to salmon farming projects; (2) ensure that relevant regulations and programs be implemented to support the development and expansion of the aquaculture sector and that new programs be developed that recognize the unique features of this segment of Canada's food production system; and (3) base regulation and expansion of the industry on legitimate and responsible research into the environmental impacts of water farming. This was also moved forward as a recommendation to the federal government on all three aspects.

The aquaculture industry — I'm adding on a few things as I go through — also supports many different community sporting groups as well as non-profit organizations that we see when they come through our Chamber, which has greatly improved the health and vibrancy of our community.

In closing, our Chamber feels that the aquaculture industry is a valuable component of the economy for all businesses in Campbell River and the north Island, and we fully support it.

Once again, thanks for allowing the Chamber the time to appear. We look forward to your positive outcome from your committee.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you, Gary. Your presentation spoke for itself. There are no questions.

Now I'd like to call the final witnesses for this evening. I'm sorry to everybody. We are running late.

R. Grigg: My name is Ray Grigg. I'm just going to answer questions. If any questions arise, I'll help Noel with questions.

N. Lax: Mr. Chairman, members of the panel, I'm here to represent the Sierra Club of Canada, Quadra Island Group. We are an association of ordinary people with no pecuniary interest in the fish-farm industry but who do believe in the environmental legacy which benefits us all.

For the record, I would like to quote the Sierra Club of Canada's mission statement: "to explore and protect the wild places of the earth, to practise and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources, to educate and enlist humanity, to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives."

Before commencing the body of this presentation, there is an issue of some importance we would like to raise. A reliable source informs us that the provincial government is considering imminent approval of a number of new fish farms. To approve these while this special committee is working would be inappropriate and would seriously undermine the credibility of the committee. Consequently, we believe and we request that the government is so advised.

I started…. My notes here say "Ladies and gentlemen," and you've really fouled me up on that one. I can hardly say, "Lady and gentlemen," but that is what I'm going to say.

You as members of the British Columbia government have the responsibility of ensuring that aquaculture in general and fish farms in particular are environmentally safe and that they remain so. By assuming this responsibility, you make a commitment to future generations to protect and preserve the beauty and the ecological integrity of the land, the sea and the rivers, which may be damaged by enterprises such as aquaculture.

I said "may be" damaged, not "would be." We have to use the precautionary principle in our thinking too. The well-being of our beloved coast is in the hands of this special committee and the government, to which you will be reporting.

Fish farms, as you must be aware, have a footprint far larger than the immediate area they occupy. Evidence of this fact is apparent in much that we already know. Spikes of sea lice or other infestations have a demonstrable effect on wild stocks in the vicinity of net pens. Disease transfers to wild salmon, and hormones, antibiotics and trace concentrations of other chemicals enter the natural environment and food chain. Mercury accumulates in nearby bottom fish. The benthic ecology beneath the net pens, without adequate flushing, resembles a sewage lagoon.

The tranquility for sailors and kayaks is impacted by the sound of diesel generators, which may be heard a whole day's paddling distance away. I have experienced it in the Broughton Archipelago. This occurs whether they are tourists from Germany or Japan who pay top dollar to come here or, just as importantly, British Columbians and other Canadians who stay at home to enjoy their own country.

Finally, ugly industrial intrusion and pollution haunt world-class bays and coves, many of which could qualify to be sites for national parks. You will need truth, not myth, to guide you. As deciders, to use a Bushism, you will be making critical decisions in your report to government. You will need to discern the empirical evidence and the self-serving tobacco science of the fish farm industry. At some point, the precautionary principle has to be applied to fish farm aquaculture issues.

We also need to acknowledge and incorporate the poignant lessons learned from fish-farming activities in Europe and be certain that the disasters which occurred there are not repeated here. It has been suggested that without the injection of fish farm paycheques, some smaller communities will fail economically. Please remember: fish farms are fairly new to this coast, and the smaller communities existed before they came.

While these marine feedlots may be of some economic benefit in such communities, ethics demand that the entire available coastline is not littered with industrial sites. Call this moderation in all things, if you like, although the market economy abhors the concept. We're reminded of the observation by local entrepreneur Ralph Keller: "Excessive use is the mistake which catches up to us every time." Excessive use is the nemesis of our time. We cannot expand the fish farm industry indefinitely, and we need to decide when enough is enough.

B.C. first nations representatives recently travelled to Norway to attend the annual meeting of a company that controls well over half of the salmon farming licences in Canada. One of the native leaders said that the practices of aquaculture in their territories threaten the traditional way of life of B.C.'s aboriginal people. Their purpose was to introduce a shareholders resolution "to adopt salmon production techniques so that disease transfer, waste pollution and escapes are eliminated and to make sure that fish feed is sourced solely from sustainable fisheries." We concur with this resolution.

For clarity, we support onshore closed containment facilities, preferably with the convenience of economy provided by road access and electricity, which should address most of the present problems created by fish farms. Furthermore, DFO should eliminate its contradictory mandate of sustaining wild salmon stocks while supporting the aquaculture industry.

We already know that the ecology of the planet is beginning to collapse around us and that unless we act wisely in particular instances, the general result will be

a legacy none of us wants to contemplate. We can no longer avoid the environmental precariousness in which we now find ourselves. Although referring to another issue entirely, these words written by Winston Churchill in 1936 seem fitting to ponder: "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedience, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences."

C. Trevena: Thank you very much, Noel. I hope that we as a committee can find that balance.

I want to ask you something we've been asking the industry. We've been asking the industry, as we've had representatives up, what improvements they've made over the last 20 years of changing the regulations. What has got better? I wanted to ask either you or Ray, as long-term residents of the area, what you've seen that gives you confidence in improvements in the industry.

R. Grigg: I'll answer that question. There have been improvements in the industry. When it first arrived, there was very much a gold-rush mentality. Fish farms were sited in inadequate places. Many of those fish farms, by the way, have subsequently closed down. There were many, many escapes. That has been reduced.

The fish farm industry is civilizing; there's no doubt about that. I would like to think that people who have assumed a critical role in the fish farm industry have had something to do with improving the situation in fish farms.

I think the prospect of fish farms expanding indefinitely is unrealistic. So at some point they have to be contained, and we have to set parameters. I think, generally speaking, what we want to do as a society is to say: "These are the benefits that we will accrue from fish farms. These are the costs they ask of us, and we need to be firm about those costs so we don't spend more than they are worth to us."

It just reminds me that fish farms are a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment and that they are only here because of its blessing.

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1)	Campbell River Economic Development Corporation	Patrick Marshall
2)	Van Egan
3)	Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform	Jay Ritchlin
4)	Grieg Seafood B.C. Limited	Peter Gibson Barry Milligan
5)	James Gordon
6)	First Dollar Alliance	Leanne Brunt Barb Walker
7)	Georgia Strait Alliance/Homalco First Nation	Eric Blueschke Fay Blaney
8)	British Columbia Shellfish Growers Association	Roberta Stevenson
9)	Bold Point Centre for Tourism Training	Rod Burns
10)	Positive Aquaculture Awareness Society	Scott Krompocker Ian Roberts
11)	Pan Fish Canada	Alan Sutherland
12)	City of Campbell River	Councillor Roy Grant Councillor Mary Storry
13)	Marine Harvest Canada	Clare Backman
14)	John Holder
15)	Campbell River and District Chamber of Commerce	Gary Thulin
16)	Sierra Club of Canada – Quadra Island Group	Noel Lax Ray Grigg

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