Sustainable Aquaculture — Issue No. 12 — Monday, June 19, 2006 p.m. (HTML)

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

Robin Austin, MLA
Chair

Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Clerk Assistant and
Committee Clerk

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		253
	R. Campbell
	M. Ayranto
	A. Okabe
	C. Justice
	D. Nobels
	A. Nagy
	D. Konsmo
	J. Thorkelson

Appendix		A-1
	Additional Presentations
	S. Dennis
	M. Wesley
	E. Bryant
	L. Helin
	T. Green
	W. Ryan
	R. Henry
	G. Wesley
	M. Reece
	C. Lewis
	J. Vickers
	B. White
	G. Amos
	M. Haines
	R. Wilson
	R. Michell
	B. Robinson

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:	Mark Ayranto (Pan Fish Canada Ltd.) Ross Campbell Charles Justice David Konsmo (Green Party of British Columbia) Arnie Nagy (T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation) Des Nobels (T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation) Alan Okabe (Ganhada Management Group) Joy Thorkelson (United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union)

R. Austin (Chair): Good evening. My name is Robin Austin. I'm the Chair of the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture. I would like to call this meeting to order.

We are going to have presentations. We understand that there are six people who have preregistered to make submissions to this committee. I am going to start with Alan Okabe.

R. Austin (Chair): Okay, I'll start with somebody else. I'd like to call Ross Campbell to the witness table to make his presentation.

R. Campbell: Thank you, members of the committee. First of all, I'd like to start off by saying that I lived in Prince Rupert for 18 years, a number of years back, and was involved in the processing industry here — in wild fish, during most of those years. From 1972 — when I started working at Atlin Fisheries, slinging fish around during the summers and going to high school — and through the years I've worked at several of the companies that were doing business up here.

As I come back to Prince Rupert, I notice that only one of the plants I worked in is currently, in any sense, operating in the way it was when I left. I'd just like to say that it grieves me. I am currently working in the salmon farming industry and have been for the past 18 years.

Salmon farming had a brief history on the north coast here in the early days — the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was during a very troubled time in the industry, when it was just getting going. There was a lot of investment that was done in the industry at that time, and it wasn't done very wisely or very well. When I started in the processing industry, processing farmed salmon, I saw some of the results of that.

I am a friend of wild salmon, if you take the capitals off each word. I consider myself an environmentalist. I'm a very inquisitive person, and in the early days when I was involved with salmon farming, I asked a lot of questions, and I had a lot of concerns about what was actually going on. Most of those concerns I was able to get satisfactory answers to. Many of those concerns went away with the bankruptcies of the underfunded, unmanaged, very frontier-mentality kind of industry that it did start out with.

I think what we're really suffering from now is kind of a hangover in the media and with the environmentalists who are still trotting out many issues that we have dealt with, that have been significantly discounted and that were related to a very young industry with poor financing and poor equipment.

For the most part, those issues have been addressed. Basically, I've heard a lot of what has been said today, and it grieves me. I want to respect what's already been said today, but it really grieves me that there's so much misinformation that is just passed on as fact.

Atlantic salmon. In the years up to 2002 there were almost half a million Atlantic salmon that escaped either from salmon farms or transport boats. There are no Atlantic salmon colonies or populations currently in any river or stream in B.C. that are spawning, propagating and competing with the wild fish. That is a fact. It just drives me nuts when I hear people say: "Well, they're going to take over."

Also, the sea lice issue has been…. I'll have to say that in my processing days I think I've seen way more sea lice on wild salmon that I've harvested than I have ever seen on any farmed salmon that I've harvested. That is actually getting better now that there is a treatment for sea lice for salmon farms. I've seen a lot of farmed salmon. I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to how many I've seen in my time in processing.

Today I'm trying to speak about my experience. I know, from enough experience with media and from things that I've been told, that I can really only believe the things I've seen and the things I can confirm in my own mind — that this is how it is.

During the early days when we were harvesting some fish, I was working at Brown's Bay Packing Co., which is near Campbell River. We were harvesting some fish from the bankrupt Royal Pacific Sea Farms. These fish had not been fed for over 30 days. They were coming into our plant for harvesting.

What we found in the guts of these fish was basically anything that they could find in the water that looked like a pellet. There were bark chips and wood chips and just about anything. But one thing that we did not find was any wild feed, and those fish were basically starving. They did not have the wherewithal or the brains to go and eat anything else that may have been in the pen with them.

I've heard the theory that pit-lamping…. The companies use lights to pit-lamp herring into the pens so that they can be eaten by the farm salmon, and, thus, we have to feed them fewer pellets. I've heard that theory, but what I've seen is live-haul boats coming in with farmed salmon, and there are herring swimming in the live-haul boat with them.

Now, the only way those fish would have been with them is that they were in the pen when they were harvested. There was no interaction between these fish. It was like they were little brothers or something. There was no predation on those stocks at all.

The whole issue of environmental contaminants in salmon. I think you've probably heard enough evidence and seen enough of the facts on that. The environmental pollutants are pretty much the same in either wild or farm salmon. There might be a slight dif-

ference, but it's not…. To me, that's a bigger issue than salmon farming. It's something we cannot control. It's an environmental contaminant.

What I have seen in the past number of years, probably more since the salmon aquaculture review happened, is that there are far more regulations on the way that salmon farming is being conducted. There's far more research monitoring. One of the things that's happened in the salmon farming industry is that we do not have any more small, poorly funded, poorly managed operations. We have an infrastructure that has grown with the industry. We now have fewer escapes. We have fewer problems with predators because the equipment is that much better.

I came back to Prince Rupert to make this presentation, because…. Well, I'm kind of wondering why now. No, I'm not really wondering why. In the past couple of days I've been speaking with many old acquaintances who I've met up with, and I've been discussing with them some of the things. Some people have their minds closed to what's really going on. I'm here to try and open some of those minds and show them that real people do benefit from salmon farming. I've made my livelihood from it for the past 16 years, and I intend to continue to do that for the next 16 years.

I certainly want to see the industry being regulated. There are always going to be issues. There will always be issues with any industry we have, but there are no issues that cannot be addressed to the satisfaction of certainly maintaining wild fish populations. If you're a vegetarian environmentalist, I guess you would have the view that we shouldn't be farming salmon. You'd also have the view that we shouldn't be fishing salmon.

I believe that the commercial fishery and the farmed salmon have a lot of synergies to get together to market the product that we have and the incredible marine resource that we have here in B.C. We need to be able to utilize that resource in a cooperative manner to make seafood from B.C. the choice of people around the globe, instead of having them go to the seafood counter and say: "I heard that farmed salmon had this problem with it, and I also heard that wild salmon is on the way out, so I think I'll buy beef." I want to see us work together. I want to see the Department of Fisheries manage the wild fishery in a sustainable way. It's a tough job. They've got a real tough job.

Really, my message is that there's nothing in salmon farming that should preclude it from continuing to grow in B.C. I would be the first one to jump off the bandwagon if I thought there was something that was going to harm the wild salmon or was otherwise environmentally unsustainable. I would be the first one to get off.

I really respect the wisdom that was given earlier today. I had the opportunity to work in Klemtu for about a six-month period with the people in that community in their salmon aquaculture in the processing plant. To see what it did for that community was quite amazing. When we started up the processing, there were a lot of people who were really happy to get back to work. They also have a big tourism business in Klemtu, and they absolutely have no problem with salmon aquaculture conflicting with the other uses for their marine resources. I think other native communities could certainly learn from that experience.

In closing, I'd just like to thank the committee for listening, and if you have any questions….

S. Simpson: Thank you for the presentation. The question I have for you, and it's not a scientific one at all…. We heard earlier today when we were at Kitkatla a very strong argument, and one that I appreciate very much, which is that the Kitkatla people were making decisions and that they should be respected for the decisions they are making on their traditional lands. Those choices are their choices to make about their traditional lands, and I appreciate that. We then heard later today here from many more first nations who made a very similar argument that was also compelling, who said: "We have our traditional lands, and we all say no." There was nothing ambiguous about their position at all.

R. Campbell: I think the Supreme Court tried to handle this one, and it may not have….

S. Simpson: I ask for it as a committee that has had a strong case made by the leadership of Kitkatla, and understandably so, that we need to respect them as a nation with traditional lands. We then heard that from at least nine other first nations groups between three or four and 6:30 — very strongly put.

I'm looking for some advice. How do we respond to that if we are going to show true respect for first nations traditional lands and their rights?

R. Campbell: I believe that we do need to show a measure of respect for their feelings and what goes on in their territory. Yes, I do. We as an industry, I believe, have a much larger job than convincing you, the committee. We have to go and convince them. We have to go and convince each band, one at a time: "Hey, you've been given these as facts."

I understand where they're coming from when they say they've been kicked around. I have to agree with that. Talk about a precautionary principle. They have to be looking at what has happened in the past. I would be kind of gun-shy if I were them as well, when someone else is coming into their territory and saying: "Here's another thing we're going to do to try to help you."

Yes, we have to be respectful of them, but it's up to us as an industry to show them what has gone on in other places. They seem to be getting a lot of their information from people who have another agenda.

C. Trevena: Just a couple of questions, Ross. You're still working in fish processing. Who are you working for now?

C. Trevena: One of the arguments we've heard where we've been going…. So far, I've been to a number of processing plants. I'm the MLA for North Island, so we have a number of processing plants. The argument we get is that salmon farming creates year-round employment, but fish processing — wild fish — was never year-round employment. Why should people be expecting, through the industry, that there is year-round employment from fisheries now?

R. Campbell: Expecting that there is year-round employment from wild fisheries?

R. Campbell: I'll temper that a little bit. Our processing plant is currently shut down because we're rebuilding the stocks from some problems we've had in past years.

I guess you wouldn't call that year-round employment. But I worked at Brown's Bay for 13 years, and when I started, they told me, "Oh, you'll get the summers off," because they don't process farmed salmon in the summer. Once we got going, we were going 52 weeks a year. We were lucky to get a day off to do maintenance. Those jobs are year-round jobs.

At Englewood Packing it's the same thing. They process for Marine Harvest. They're year-round jobs, 52 weeks a year, five days a week.

C. Trevena: How often is the Alpha plant, the Pan Fish plant, closed down in Port Hardy?

R. Campbell: I've been with them for about two years. We've had a two-week shutdown, a six-week shutdown, and we're currently in the middle of about a three-month shutdown. We are told that with the stocks that Pan Fish has in the water now, this will be our last shutdown, barring unforeseen circumstances.

C. Trevena: One final question. Is that because of the amalgamation between Pan and the other companies?

R. Campbell: That would be just with the stocks that the Pan Fish portion has in the water right now.

G. Hogg: You said, Ross, that the concerns largely disappeared with the bankruptcy of poorly financed, poorly equipped fish farms. Can you tell me about how things are different today from the way they were five years ago, other than just the issue of bankruptcy? What, in fact, does a better-financed operation look like, and how has it taken away the issues and concerns that are there?

R. Campbell: Good question. I was on quite a few fish farms in the early days, and they basically ranged from a few logs that had been hammered together, and they hung a net from them, to some better ones that actually had plank walkways. Usually half the planks were missing. You had to look at it and go: "Oh, would I want to work here?"

Now the pen systems are much better designed. They're much better sited. There's much more knowledge and expertise in the industry about how to site a farm properly to avoid problems with too much current or with sedimentation underneath the pens — and much better anchored. All of those systems have grown through the years of experience. Those are the main things. Plus, there's more regulation. The amount of red tape that is needed to get a new site approved…. They have to do a lot of current-monitoring to find out where the waste will go. The benthic impact is being monitored, and where appropriate, farms are being fallowed in order to shut that down.

It's a combination. The better financing allows you to put more money into your equipment. It really was like the wild-west days in the early…. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was starting a salmon farm in this little inlet here and that one there. They'd hire 16-year-old kids who threw the feed bags in the water.

It's totally different now, the training of the salmon farming staff. Pan Fish is currently entering into an agreement with North Island College where we are not going to hire anybody unless they've had at least the basic training in salmon farming. We're constantly looking to up the level of expertise that we employ on the salmon farms, and that's happened over the past years.

Some people have made a lifetime career. They've been in this business since it began 20-some-odd years ago, and they've got the expertise. They know how to manage farms. They know what they need to do to make it work better.

G. Hogg: I think you're the fourth or fifth person that's appeared before us that has suggested there's a difference between public opinion and informed opinion around these issues, that it's been a transition over four or five years.

Has anybody laid that out in any rational way that says, "Here's what existed, here's how the regulations have changed, and here's what's here now" around each of those issues? Has that type of work been done, to your knowledge?

R. Campbell: I know that outfits like Positive Aquaculture Awareness have been doing a lot of that. B.C. Salmon Farmers has been doing a lot of that. But as far as any systematic comparison between now and then, I don't know that anybody has really sat down and figured that out.

You started by saying that you felt there was a lot of misinformation in existence, based on your experience and not on your reading or anything else. You said you felt that you and others had some responsibility for ensuring that there was a higher level of awareness or understanding. How do you expect to exercise that responsibility you've referred to?

R. Campbell: Well, I'm doing that right now. That's one thing. I think we need to do far more public education. I have been on the board of Positive Aquaculture Awareness. That was a grass-roots organization that basically started because we were tired of getting kicked in the teeth.

As the people that worked in the industry, we didn't think that maybe the people that we worked for or the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association were doing a very good job on the PR front and the media front. We went for years taking the attitude that maybe if we just ignore them, they'll go away. That hasn't worked for us. Now I think that we're very much more aware that we have to get out and show the world what we're doing and not allow the media or an environmental organization to tell the world what they think we're doing.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you. We're at 25 minutes with Ross, so I just ask that all members make their questions as concise as possible, and Ross will do his best to answer as concisely as possible.

G. Coons: Thanks, Ross. With your experience in both wild and farmed salmon, I'm just wondering why you mentioned that you found more on wild than on farmed. Why would that be, do you think?

G. Coons: You said that in your experience with farmed salmon, you found more sea lice on wild than on farmed.

R. Campbell: Well, I think that traditionally, in my view of what I remember of wild salmon, pink salmon generally have more sea lice than any other species of salmon — at least when they come into the processing plant. I know that's the case.

G. Coons: I also imagine that the farm salmon would be nearly clear of lice. If there was an infection or a sea lice problem, they would be cleared of it through whatever form of antibiotics they'd be getting — or not by antibiotics but SLICE or whatever. That might be another reason. Could that be?

R. Campbell: It could be, but even in my early days in the farmed salmon industry, there weren't that many sea lice on the salmon that we were processing.

G. Coons: I guess that the key concern here isn't on adult salmon. It's on juveniles passing by farms. In a book that we got from First Dollar, Salmon Farming: The Whole Story, it talks about a 2003 study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London that found that juvenile salmon carried almost no sea lice before encountering farms, but once they passed nearby, they immediately became infected at levels about 70 times greater than the ambient levels. They also indicated that they thought, in this study, that aquaculture likely has negative impacts on wild salmon. There were some critics of the study, but the key point in here says: "Clearly, a great deal more research is needed to identify sources of infection and the impact on wild fish."

Do you think we need more research on the effects of aquaculture, say, on our wild stocks?

R. Campbell: I don't think we should ever stop looking. I don't think we should ever stop looking at anything we're doing that affects the environment. We should never stop looking.

The one thing I will say, if I may: the deal with sea lice in the Broughton…. I've heard this word "decimated" used so often. The fact is that the Broughton Archipelago is absolutely notorious for being an up-and-down place, even before salmon farming started. The runs were there one year, and the next brood year they were gone. Then they'd build back, and then they'd collapse. With all the publicity around this, you would think that the salmon farms had actually created sea lice in the Broughton Archipelago.

On average, there have been better runs of pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago since salmon farming started — on average. There have been good years. There's been the biggest year in history in 2000, and there was one of the worst years in history in 2002. To me, that says that more study is needed. But it also says that, on average, you can't really draw the line between salmon farming and any kind of collapse of that stock, especially not decimation.

D. Jarvis: Mr. Campbell, I'm sorry. I was late coming in. Are you a biologist?

R. Campbell: I've got about 18 years' experience in salmon farming processing and about 16 in wild fish processing.

D. Jarvis: I've got a couple of quick questions here. They'll only take a couple of hours for you to answer.

On the sea lice thing. The theory I was given is that it's the wild stocks swimming by that were getting the high participation of sea lice on them, that it's ostensibly from the farm salmon. You're supporting that — are you? — in saying that the wild salmon seem to have more sea lice on them than the farm salmon.

R. Campbell: What I was saying was that the wild salmon I have processed — now this is adult wild salmon — generally have had more sea lice on them than the adult farm salmon that I have processed.

D. Jarvis: I don't know if you were in the industry before, but how prior to salmon farming is that? Was that the same premise?

R. Campbell: Basically, all of my wild fish processing was prior to salmon farming. I started in the wild fish business in '72, left it in '88 and went into the farmed salmon processing.

You mentioned that you do not see where there's any difference in farmed salmon and wild salmon, and you referred to, for example, taste. I've heard this afternoon, for example, that a frozen salmon will turn to mush as soon as it's thawed out.

R. Campbell: I've eaten lots of wild salmon; I've eaten lots of farmed salmon — frozen farmed salmon, frozen wild salmon. There are differences in each individual fish — the way they've been handled. The important thing about having good quality salmon is that it's fresh. Whether it's wild or farmed, I would eat any of it and enjoy it.

D. Jarvis: Chief White this morning mentioned in one of his talks that they're contemplating…. As well as salmon farming, they're going to do ocean ranching. We'll have ocean ranching, farm salmon ranching — in that sense — and natural stocks in the wild. I know you're not a biologist, but so what? Is there any science to indicate that ocean ranching and/or farmed salmon is going to be detrimental to the wild stock?

R. Campbell: They do a lot of ocean ranching in Alaska. They have been doing it for a number of years. I don't know how many years. You've got to be careful with ocean ranching, because what you're doing is introducing an unnatural number of fish into the wild to go out and forage for food. I'm not a biologist. I really don't have an opinion on it, except that we've got to be careful with that.

There's a lot of talk about how much wild fish it takes to produce a pound of farm salmon, but it takes way more wild fish to produce a pound of wild salmon. If you're sending that fish out there to forage and compete directly against the wild stocks…. I think you've really got to balance that. There could be problems.

D. Jarvis: Just to continue. I had down here about farm salmon. How is that going to affect the wild?

R. Campbell: In my estimation, I think there is very little impact from salmon farming as it is currently practised on wild salmon stocks. Again, I'm not a biologist. I'm looking at the things that I've seen and heard.

S. Fraser: Thanks, Ross. I'll be quick. Pan Fish — Omega before — negotiated with the Kitkatla leadership, which is wise, because the traditional territory that the farms are proposed in is there. Now, there are first nations upriver systems that still have a history and a culture and a past and a life and an economy based on, at least in part, fisheries along the river. They are inextricably connected. How have there been negotiations with any other nations that might be affected, if they don't have a comfort level?

R. Campbell: I certainly can't speak to that, because I wouldn't be involved. My capacity with Pan Fish would not involve those types of negotiations, and I would not necessarily be privy to them.

S. Fraser: Lastly, you mentioned that the industry should be allowed to grow in B.C. We're seeing a greater concentration of industry, Pan Fish certainly being part of that. You've said that's a good thing in a lot of ways, because it takes away the…. There's more economics towards it. There are fewer problems, because more resources can go toward them.

At the same time the concentration makes it a corporate business model that needs growth. How much growth do you figure? You're saying it should be allowed to grow in B.C. What are you talking about here?

R. Campbell: I've been to Chile, and I would rather not see what's going on in Chile go on here. I think their salmon farms are located quite close to each other. In the most concentrated area you couldn't look at the coast anywhere and not see a salmon farm.

You've probably flown over a lot of the coast here, and they're pretty far between. We do have a huge coastline. I've spent six months, every couple of weeks, flying up and down from Klemtu to Port Hardy, and there are more bays and inlets and suitable waters, I think. But we have to be careful about growth, yes. We need to make sure that all the things are….

To answer your question, I don't know how much we need to grow. Could the salmon farming industry stay the size it is and remain viable? I think probably

S. Fraser: To finish, in this day and age with globalization, businesses need to grow, and the status quo is death. Stagnancy is death. I mean, it is a concern that has been raised: will growth just be a never-ending thing? I'm not looking for an answer.

M. Ayranto: Great, and hello again after not so long. For those who weren't here this morning, I'm Mark Ayranto. I am the licensing and development manager for Pan Fish Canada, and I am also the project manager for the north coast and have dealt most closely on the ground with the Gitxaala First Nation.

I won't bother, for the sake of the committee and the hours you guys are putting in, to be going over some of the stuff we went over today. I'll try to keep this fairly short, but I would like to raise a couple of points. Today I heard a lot of emotional discussion, and I heard a lot about depressed fish stocks, depressed abalone stocks and others. To make it really clear to everybody, there is no salmon farming on the north coast. I know there was some a number of years ago for a short period of time, but Pan Fish is not operating in the north coast.

More importantly — to elaborate on the discussion and the environmental sustainability and environmental stewardship of the project we've been working on, and to touch base very briefly on what I discussed earlier — we approached the Gitxaala First Nation in the territory in which the farms are located. We did that, and we agreed not to stake any farms unless we could get an agreement. We did so.

In all cases we had Gitxaala members — you know, ex-fisherman, divers, captains and other members — coming in and helping us with the traditional knowledge, as well as the leadership chief and council and the hereditary system providing Pan Fish advice in where we should or should not be going. Pan Fish doesn't claim that we know the area, nor would we be that presumptuous.

When we first started a number of years ago — it's going back five or six years ago now — we were working with the nation, with members, with the leadership. We looked at a couple of areas that are fantastic for salmon farms, and at that point, based on a couple of considerations — social and cultural considerations — wanted Pan Fish to look at other areas.

At that point we had a real crossroads with our model and whether or not this was a real, true partnership. We were one year behind and several hundred thousand dollars, or at least a couple of hundred thousand dollars, doing this stuff. We made the decision — and the right decision — to shelve that data and start looking at other areas. It was part of the growing pains of getting the communication down better.

We have worked very, very closely with the nation. I will make a written submission on band council resolutions that support that the applications, which we have applied for, are solely within Gitxaala traditional territory. We believe that Gitxaala has unresolved land claims, and those should be respected. It's why we have an accommodation agreement.

I certainly appreciated what I heard today, and if there are other groups that feel there is some aboriginal right in those areas, I would encourage them to speak to Gitxaala First Nation. Pan Fish believes it's Gitxaala that has the aboriginal right, and that has been supported through several band council resolutions and stuff.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Mark. You were here this afternoon, and I'm sure you heard as clearly as we all did here the very strong statements from the representatives of the first nations: no fish farms here. They expressed their concerns about the environment and a wide range of things, about how the salmon farms may affect and impact the wild salmon.

Particularly and specifically, escapement was one. Lice was another, and the material that settles to the bottom and how it affects shellfish. You heard those comments, and we heard those comments. What would you say? What do you say? There are many of them who are still here.

M. Ayranto: I absolutely heard the comments. In fact, you heard them this morning when we were in Gitxaala. You heard them, and it is why these types of agreements and these types of arrangements are important.

You go way beyond the little piece of paper that you sign. It goes about building a relationship. This morning you also heard talk that there is a proposal for a Gitxaala environmental monitoring program to address these things. You heard that there are environmental clauses within our contract that enable the nation to be looking at and monitoring at our operations, and should there be any negative adverse environmental impacts, there is an exit clause, effectively.

I think an important point that wasn't brought up earlier today is that essentially all, I believe, of the employment on our farms up here will be Gitxaala First Nation, and you cannot hide anything from your employees. They know the numbers of fish. They know what you're feeding, how you're feeding. They know mortality rates. They know the size of your fish, and they know when they're being harvested.

They really are the eyes and the ears. We are really looking to address those things. To your first point, I guess, we haven't staked any farms in Lax Kw'alaams territory.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): A very quick follow-up. We have agreements in place so that if it does affect the environment, there are clauses that would create withdrawal, but the real concerns are: what problems does it cause? I'd like you to comment on that. Are there problems that are caused by fish farms that affect the wild fish or the environment? What do you say to these first nations people who have these concerns?

M. Ayranto: I've been involved in several upland and aquatic food production…. Fish in this industry, I believe, is the most sustainable I have ever seen. Is there an effect on the environment from activities we do, from humans? Of course there is. There is, as well, when you go out and harvest wild fish. I mean, it's an undeniable fact.

Can we do it better? Absolutely. Have we improved in the last ten years? Yes. Will we look back in ten years and see improvements? A hundred percent. I believe this is a very sustainable industry. I believe that a number of the issues raised are ones we need to make sure we do address, and you've heard about communication and doing that stuff better.

You have to consider the Gitxaala First Nation…. That's their traditional territory. You heard about having a 10,000-year-plus history. They are the last people who would want to be seeing any negative consequence to their traditional territory. Because of their strong concern for that, they have empowered themselves to be ensuring that, in fact, measures are in place. I mean, I don't know how much more assurance you can get than that.

There's a Nuu-chah-nulth term. It's hishuk ish tsawalk. It means all things are connected.

Going back to the question I asked Ross, I'll try it with you. You've mentioned the accommodation agreement — a contract or whatever — with the Gitxaala. We've got first nations upriver that are still traditional territories. Certainly, the first nations in some cases do not feel confident that they feel comfortable the wild salmon won't be adversely affected. Have you made any similar accommodation agreements with other nations?

M. Ayranto: No, we haven't, not with first nations upriver. I'm not an aboriginal rights expert by any means. My own layman's understanding of it is that there are traditional territories that are essentially sovereign areas, that there is legitimate first nations governance and that they have unresolved claims.

We are within Gitxaala traditional territory. We have an agreement with Gitxaala First Nation. We are operating within the law. We're partnering with them, but we're doing the full applications. I told you this morning they're 550 pages long, as if we even…. There have been no shortsightings in those things. We believe the aboriginal rights are with Gitxaala First Nation. If others disagree, they should really be talking with Gitxaala First Nation, I believe.

S. Fraser: It was mentioned this morning, Mark, about the accommodation agreement. There was a comment made by one of the people who spoke to us about the lack of accessibility to that agreement, and it was suggested it was available. Would the committee be able to get a copy of the accommodation agreement? It could be useful for us.

M. Ayranto: As Chief Clifford White had said this morning, we'll have that discussion. It's essentially a business contract between two parties, but we'll have that discussion. I think things are usually quite possible to do. I don't have one here.

The membership, in my understanding, has had access to the agreement. There haven't been any big secrets that we've been in there and not been really upfront with. If the committee would like to see one, I'll certainly talk with the chief counsel on that.

S. Fraser: Okay. Because you've cited clauses from it, and it has been mentioned by community members.

S. Simpson: Thanks for the presentation, and yes, I'd very much like to see this agreement and get a copy of it.

A question I have is in regard to issues related to closed containment, particularly on-the-water closed containment — not land-based but on-the-water closed containment. Over our last set of hearings and that, when we've had these discussions and spoken about closed containment with representatives of industry, they've been pretty dismissive, generally, of the closed containment model.

Could you tell me: how much investment has Pan Fish done in research and development and comprehensive analysis of closed containment models?

M. Ayranto: I honestly can't tell you. I'm not sure. I could certainly bring that to you. I could ask the people in our research and development division that look at that stuff. I cannot tell you.

I would suggest a couple of things with closed containment. From my own perspective, it has not actually been achieved yet, and I don't believe they necessarily bring the environmental improvements that some people have alleged they do.

The third thing with it is that closed containment, when you need power…. Regardless of whether it's floating or on land, you still need to pump water — although less height, obviously, when you're floating on the water. You need lots of power for these things,

It might be in a place like Vancouver, where you have close access to markets and power. But being up in coastal communities, where you have very limited access to those things, it's an unlikely model, even if you got over the environmental improvements.

S. Simpson: I've certainly heard all of those comments in the last few months. But the thing I'd find most interesting and I would be interested in is what the industry has invested.

Part of the reason that closed containment hasn't gone anywhere, as best I can tell, is that I don't see any examples or any evidence of any significant industry investment, sincere investment, in looking at the modelling of closed containment. I certainly haven't seen it to this point.

Pan Fish being a very significant company in this industry, I'd be very interested in knowing what work Pan Fish has done to look in a sincere way at how closed containment could or might work and what was done there around trying to see if you can make it work, versus finding arguments for why it's not a good idea.

Shane, what I can tell you is that I would disagree with you. Pan Fish has two sites, so roughly 10 percent of our sites, using closed containment technology — Future SEA bags and ones of our own that we made, and that is pre–Marine Harvest. I'm not fully aware of what Marine Harvest's full extent has been, but they've carried out a very significant commercial attempt out of Saltspring Island. So I would disagree.

C. Trevena: Thank you, Mark. A couple of quick questions involving licensing.

Assuming that the merger — or the takeover or whatever — goes ahead with Pan Fish and the other companies, will it just be one licensing department to deal with the whole structure through B.C.?

C. Trevena: Okay. The other question is…. When we were in Campbell River, a representative from Grieg came to address us, and he was telling us that he's expecting…. They've got outstanding applications in the works, and they're expecting a rapid resolution to those agreements on the west coast. I know that you have an outstanding application, and I wondered if you'd had any indication from anyone in the Ministry of Agriculture about what stage those applications are and how quickly they're going to be processed now.

M. Ayranto: We only have, really, one outstanding licence. My understanding is that it's been through all of the review process. The one outstanding issue is first nations consultation, and I don't believe there's an immediate resolution to it, although I'm not really aware.

A. Okabe: Thank you, hon. members of the special legislative committee. My name is Alan Okabe. I'm a member of the Kitsumkalum First Nation. We're also one of the seven Tsimshian tribes. I'm also of the Ganhada house.

My role with Kitkatla for the last three years has been manager of economic development. My role with economic development has been three years, but I was involved with Kitkatla in the original discussions with Pan Fish back in 2002. For the first nation itself, it's been a very protracted, a very frustrating process, as you can well imagine.

In starting this short presentation to you…. There's a saying that has never been more appropriate than in relation to your committee. It's a quite common saying. It's: be careful what you ask for because you just might get it.

We've done extensive due diligence. We've been watching all of your committee undertakings throughout the province. You've just touched the tip of the iceberg. You haven't even come close to going where you really are going to go.

In presentations like this I would normally fuss for weeks and weeks and do presentations and amend them and fix them and alter them. In this case I just couldn't put anything on paper, because the experience that Kitkatla has been going through, the frustrations that I've been going through…. It's beyond reason.

Looking at it from 50,000 feet, we have a multinational company coming to a very small first nation, a very small community that's invested into a protracted land claim with the provincial and federal governments, a land claim to deal with traditional territories and traditional lands and to negotiate rights and title. What are my rights and title and interest within the traditional lands that we've been in, as they say, for tens of thousands of years?

With this unresolved treaty, in the meantime industry comes. We need economic development. We need employment. We need to create an economy because, as you've heard today, the unemployment rate at Kitkatla is unacceptably high. It is just so far off the mark with every other mainstream community in the province that it's not acceptable.

Industry comes and says: "We would like to invest, over a period of time, potentially, $75 million into your community to fulfil this multi-year salmon farm agreement with you that's going to employ approximately 100 of your people. We'll start training them today. We're going to put them into FTE college courses to get them job-ready so that as we ramp up and as these sites become available, your staff is avail-

able." So we all start investing money, we all start investing time, and we're going forward.

The most important thing is that all of us believe that the salmon farm industry is a viable, dynamic, profitable business because we keep seeing that in the rest of the province there are 4,000 people employed full-time in salmon farming, feeding all of their families and paying all their mortgages and running processing facilities and growing fish and creating, essentially, the largest agricultural export in the province — export.

Somebody else's money is coming into British Columbia — phenomenal good news. It's great for the province. It's great for taxation. It's great for our people. It's great for the local communities that are involved in it.

Kitkatla says that this is a good thing, and we get pushed back because salmon farming is controversial. From our side, we're saying that either it is a business that's acceptable and is allowed to operate in the province, or it isn't.

There shouldn't be a double standard. We shouldn't be sitting there on a treadmill since 2002 waiting for permits to have our people go to work when it continues to operate, employing 4,000 people, in the rest of the province. If they're able to work, carry that economy and that flag and generate that capital, so should we. If we can't, then they shouldn't. To me, it's a double standard if it isn't — right?

Interestingly, if we went after a different industry…. Just for example, if it was an international industry that came to us and said: "Kitkatla, you've got some good trees. We'll build an OSB plant, because your territory is perfectly suitable for OSB." You know what? We wouldn't talk to anybody. We wouldn't tell anybody. We'd go quietly on our way. We'd get our licences. We'd get our permits. We'd build a $78 million OSB plant, and we'd have all our people at work. Then when we're successful, we'd go out and do a press release and tell everybody: "Hey, guess what we're doing."

We couldn't do it in this case, and the funny thing is that after all these years of frustration, all these years of the Chief and council being whipped for a long, long time, here we are in a public forum talking to you and having this push-back.

You know, the Chief and council mentioned to you today…. The Chief talked passionately to you today about the protocols of just even coming to talk. I'm not sure if all of you are aware, but in the province of British Columbia there are 197 first nations — completely distinct first nations. In British Columbia there are over 37 completely separate dialects — separate languages. They can't understand each other from one region to another. They don't speak the same language, so therefore, their protocols are completely different.

There are no similarities between the various nations when you go from one territory to another. So it's not adopting or understanding one protocol and saying that all nations have the same protocol, because they're completely different. When you go up 100 or 300 or 500 kilometres and you turn south and go 200 kilometres, it's a whole different world.

What may be happening here and what may be a result of this process…. Again, I'm up there at 50,000 feet looking down on this. Your legislative committee may be remembered for blowing up the treaty process, because if our nation and our people have talked and said as a nation, "We've invested millions of dollars going through a treaty to determine what our rights and title are within our traditional territory," and then we're up in front of this public forum, and we're realizing we don't have rights and we don't have title. We don't have anything.

What is the process? Why are we wanting to crystallize this treaty when we can't even operate a legitimate, legal business within our territory to employ our people in an environment which is so desperately needed? We don't have a lot of alternate choices in Kitkatla. We don't have the luxury of Vancouver or New Westminster. We don't have that luxury. We're very, very restricted in what comes and what can bring an economy to us.

This is the thing that kept sticking to me. This kept sticking over and over again — right? It's funny, because we're here. If it was any other business, we would never have talked to you. We wouldn't have to talk to anybody. Because it is this particular business, we're on display to the whole province.

In the meantime, we've got this legitimate company. We'd had them for two years. They're prepared to invest money. They only want a couple of things. They want business certainty because…. A ten salmon-farm agreement. I mean, it's aggressive, but you know what? If you're going to start expansion into the north, you can't do two farms and stop. You can't do that because it's economies of scale. You need to have a certain biomass to make it economically viable. That's all they wanted, and that's all they've been pushing for. That's why we've been hiccupping and bumping into the wall on that third site. At this point in time we're back to square one.

This might be a little bit off topic, and it certainly wasn't where I started. I was writing down all kinds of notes, but you know what? When I was reading what other people were saying over and over again, and the one thing that Mr. Coons has said about four times, twice this morning and twice this afternoon…. He pulled out this little book called Salmon Farming: The Whole Story. I'll tell you guys something. If you haven't read it, go home tonight and read it. I don't have any shares in this book, but I'll tell you something: it is one piece of writing that if you haven't read it in your positions in the jobs that you're doing right now, you are absolutely obligated to read it. Read it with an open mind.

J. Yap: Thank you, Alan, for your presentation. In your capacity as economic development manager for Kitkatla, you mentioned that — I think you said — there are no other options. With the history of your first nation in fishing, how far did you go to look at the

We've heard a lot about how the wild fishery is such a strong part of the tradition for many, many thousands of years — that emotional attachment. I'm interested in your comments. That being the case, how far did you go to try and make a future in the wild fishery?

A. Okabe: We worked for several other coastal nations as well, and we worked a lot in the fishing industry. We've been at this now for 14 years. We've been doing this exact work for 14 years.

I digress a bit. I was raised on the Skeena River, North Pacific Cannery at the mouth of the Skeena River. We were relocated there in 1958. All the canneries were running — Sunnyside, Cassiar, Inverness. All the Skeena River canneries were running. It was the most fantastic environment with the Skeena running, because the canneries all operated with first nation workers.

The Tsimshian had a village, the Nisga'a had a village and the Gitxsan had a village, and they all came in the summertime. The men went out on the fishing boats, and they caught the fish. The women and the children worked in the canneries to process the fish. It was the most dynamic…. Somebody said it today: we didn't have unemployment in those days. Everybody worked. Little kids were working. It was part of our culture.

Over that period of time, through the '70s and '80s, when those canneries started to decline and in the '90s when they started to consolidate and restructure and become a real corporate entity, we found that when licences started having value…. Back in the '60s they didn't have a value. You paid $10, and you got a gill-net licence, and you fished for the year. Then, all of a sudden, it was 1985, and the gill-net licence was now worth $100,000.

It's an interesting dynamic because when you have a transition like that, the poorer members of that environment, of that community are the first to get culled out. That was what was happening with our members. They got culled from the industry. It was in the herring. Then it was in the salmon.

You ask the question out at Kitkatla today: how many people fish in the industry? Well, it's simple. It's less than the fingers on my hand. At one time there were over 60 gill-net and seine boats working out of Kitkatla. When you have seine boats, one seine boat might have a crew of five members working as crew plus the captain. So they had seine boats and gill-netters. There were over 60 vessels fishing out of Kitkatla.

The whole industry, from the wild salmon side, essentially is nonexistent. The fishermen that are there now, the fishermen that traditionally fished the Skeena River, area four…. You could make a whole living of fishing area four. It started in June and ended at the end of August, but you were able to make a livable wage.

The fishermen with area four licences or northern licences haven't put their net in the water in area four for two years — right? The gill-net fishermen up at Kitkatla are saying: "We haven't been able to get our net in the water for two years because fisheries have said that the returns of salmon are not there, they're not sustainable, and we can't have openings for sockeye." Then the mixtures come in. They want to do pink opening, but the steelhead are coming. So they can't open the pink because you're going to get an interception of the steelhead.

There are all kinds of reasons for doing it, but the reality is: this whole industry, which was once vibrant and had a huge tonnage and a sustainable capacity, is no longer there. It just simply isn't there anymore.

J. Yap: On that point, in your opinion based on your experience and knowledge, what would be the three or four reasons for the loss of the wild fishery?

A. Okabe: First and foremost is overfishing. I think that it's not simply British Columbia. It's not simply British Columbia west coast. It happened on the east coast. It happened in Scotland. It happened all over the rest of the world. Primarily it was overfishing.

Then you sit back, and if you get up there 50,000 feet, you look at…. There was an offshore intersection fishery. There are the logging practices upriver. There's global warming.

I think the statistic was that farming was the number two or three main cause of the demise of the wild salmon. As they're cultivating all of that land as you go upriver and towards the top end of the estuary, the fertilizers that go into the land go into the rivers and cause problems.

J. Yap: You did mention aquaculture as one of the main reasons for the impact on the wild fishery.

A. Okabe: Again, especially in the north, John. There are no salmon farms in the north. The statistics and the demise…. The condition of the wild stock fishery in the Skeena River and the Nass River is the same as it is in the Fraser River. There are no salmon farms north of Kitasoo. There are none.

J. Yap: So based on that, one cannot say that fish farms here in the north have caused the demise of the wild fishery.

A. Okabe: They can't, because there aren't any here. There are no salmon farms north of Kitasoo.

Again, in southeast Alaska, the Alaska panhandle, there are no salmon farms anywhere there either.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Alan. There were times perhaps earlier this evening where 50,000 feet looked like an attractive place to be. But we're here, and I think it's very good. We need to face these things, these issues, and discuss them. In fact, earlier today we were often told, "No fish farms," and now you're telling us we're going to be blowing up the treaty process. It just gets better for this committee every minute.

I have a question. We heard these concerns, and they're concerns from a very deep and rich hereditary tradition. We've seen declines in the fish, and these fears that we have heard from the leaders of the first nations are legitimate fears, real concerns. So what do you say to them?

They're here now. They're still here. Maybe we can start a rapprochement or at least a dialogue on this. What do you say to them to say your fears are unfounded or with caution? What do you say to them?

A lot of the people here tonight weren't out at Kitkatla this morning. You as the committee were able to hear a presentation from Kitkatla involving….

Kitkatla has been working on an environmental monitoring program for a couple of years. They've been working in concert with DFO, the Centre for Aquatic Health Sciences and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fish. We have two first nation biologists that have both…. Kitkatla has its own biologist on staff, but we have a second biologist, a prominent first nation biologist.

The process is to deal with the environmental clause in the agreement with Pan Fish, whereby Kitkatla wants to do an environmental baseline study on all of their territory. They want to do a baseline study on the salmonid. They want to do a baseline study on their kelp, their vegetation and their shellfish prior to siting any salmon farm. When one goes in, they accelerate the monitoring process to ensure there is no negative environmental impact to the land or the water or the subsurface of the water, because that is a clause within the agreement.

Kitkatla has been saying — and they've been saying fairly loudly and succinctly — for a number of years that they've done their due diligence. They've done their homework, and they're setting themselves up in such a way that they're not flailing blindly into an industry that people say is going to demise their stock, demise their resource or kill their last remaining resource. They are doing it in a very, very smart way.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Just one quick follow-up. That would include not only wild stocks, but as I heard earlier, it would also involve assessments of clams, oysters and unrelated…. Is that correct?

A. Okabe: That's correct. The Chief and council are looking at expanding, looking at their aquaculture or their aqua-farms model as one that not only deals with finfish but looks at shellfish and other aquaculture species to grow out. It's less contentious.

C. Justice: Thanks for having me. I'm Charles Justice, and I'm an environmentalist. I want to speak on the two kinds of aquaculture.

Northern B.C. stands at the edge of an aquaculture controversy. To the south, the federal and provincial governments and a few big corporations are promoting a certain kind of salmon aquaculture to be brought to the mouth of the Skeena sometime soon. To the north, in Alaska they have a different kind of salmon aquaculture, and it's everywhere along their coast. But unlike B.C., there is no controversy.

B.C. and Alaska have a lot of things in common — huge areas of pristine wilderness, large first nations populations, healthy wild stocks of salmon and valuable fisheries based on them. Both Alaska and B.C. have salmon aquaculture, but there is a big difference. In B.C. it's called salmon farming, and in Alaska it's called ocean ranching.

In salmon farms, salmon are kept and raised in open-net pens in the ocean for most of their lives. In ocean ranching, the salmon are raised in hatcheries until they are big enough to survive, and then they are released into the wild. Ocean-ranching salmon look and behave exactly like wild salmon. Once they are released, they make their way out to the open ocean. After they mature, they want to come back to the stream where they were released from, in order to spawn.

In Alaska salmon farms are illegal. Why? I'm sure that Alaskans would cite the voluminous evidence of harm that diseases and sea lice from salmon farms have wreaked on the wild salmon stocks, but I think there's another reason why Alaskans refuse to allow salmon farms in their waters. If you look at the population of Alaska, a significant proportion of Alaskans hunt and fish for subsistence. Alaskans put a high value on wild salmon.

Farmed salmon are privately owned, so no one else has access to them except through the market. In contrast, ocean-ranching salmon are accessible to everyone, including wildlife. From the point of view of a subsistence fisher, farmed salmon have inferior taste and texture, and they're more difficult to preserve

than wild salmon or ocean-ranching salmon. Isn't it interesting that in Alaska, with its deeply conservative Republican-voting population, they have a constitution that ensures that salmon are kept as a common-property resource?

In contrast, in Canada the DFO has been steadily eroding public access to wild salmon for the last 20 years by pushing privatization of salmon through quota systems and through the promotion of salmon farms.

Property rights are the real key to the difference between the ways Alaska and B.C. treat salmon. In Alaska the salmon are legally a resource that is accessible to all, but in B.C. that could change if salmon farms come to dominate the coastline.

The ocean-ranching hatcheries in Alaska are private, non-profit corporations. They are each allotted a proportion of the returning salmon. This is what they call cost recovery. When the salmon come back to the streams where they were released, the hatchery can close down the public fishery for a couple of days in their special harvest areas, and they can hire a seine-boat crew that will catch enough fish to cover the hatchery's operating costs as well as provide spawn for next year's salmon production.

As well as season openings for the different species of salmon, Alaskans have many hatchery openings, when the hatchery allows smaller fishing boats to target the hatchery salmon in their special harvest areas. In this way, Alaskans are able to spread out their salmon-fishing season over a longer part of the year. The Alaskan system allows more people to catch more fish and make more money than we can do in B.C. right now.

This is a real difference between ocean ranching and salmon farming. In salmon farming, salmon farming corporations are highly vertically integrated, so the only people who benefit from the salmon are the owners and the employees. In ocean ranching, the salmon are available to commercial fishers, to sports fishers, to subsistence fishers. They also benefit the hatchery workers and the shore workers. The value of ocean-ranching salmon is distributed more widely and deeply in the local economy. When a resource is treated as a common resource, it benefits more people.

In the world of salmon farms there is a focus on huge volumes and mechanization and on vertical integration in order to save on labour and capital costs. It's similar to what hog farms have become. By consolidating and becoming bigger and bigger, hog farms are able to produce pork for a cheaper price, but it has meant fewer farms, fewer farmers and fewer farming communities. Plus, it has meant a blander-tasting pork.

A new sector of the hog market has developed that has smaller herds and allows their hogs to live in their natural surroundings rather than in a barn. These hogs have a better immune system. They don't need to be fed antibiotics. Best of all, they taste better. People are willing to pay a higher price for this kind of pork. It's common knowledge that the fastest-growing sector of the food industry is organic foods. People are willing to pay more for better quality.

The Alaskans have successfully marketed their wild salmon as organic under the organic label. They are able to differentiate their product from farmed salmon in the global market through the help of a state-sponsored marketing and advertising program. Just imagine, if we were able to do that in B.C., what a boon it would be for everyone working in the wild salmon economy.

Why are people so taken by ocean ranching? In the past nine years I've been travelling back and forth to the southeast Alaska panhandle, and I've met lots of people there: hatchery workers, fishermen, conservationists, teachers.

What I see is that Alaskan fishermen are making more money than their B.C. counterparts. I also see that there is nearly universal support for ocean ranching. First nations support it, and they're involved in every aspect of the industry. Commercial fishermen love it. There are even trollers making six-figure incomes.

Yet there's no cry of opposition from local environmentalists in Alaska. Why is that? Why is there no significant opposition to ocean ranching? In B.C. the majority of people are against salmon farming. As you've seen today, the vast majority of first nations people are dead set against salmon farming. Isn't it obvious why? Farmed salmon will never turn up on their tables because they don't consider it food.

In Alaska there is no native opposition to ocean ranching. None. In B.C. almost every major environmental group has a campaign against salmon farming. MLAs in B.C. lost their coastal ridings because of strong opposition to salmon farms.

In ocean ranching we have an example of how treating salmon as a common property resource leads to healthier coastal communities, healthier first nations communities and greater public unity. Everybody supports ocean ranching. Fishermen are willing to pay a 1-percent tax on their catch in order to support the hatcheries. The hatcheries are producing fish that support a wide range of stakeholders.

Ocean ranching has been in place for more than 25 years. It really works. Wild stocks are at an all-time high. There has been no negative impact on the environment. Contrast the relative harmony of ocean ranching across the U.S. border with the division and opposition to salmon farming in B.C. As more of the ill effects from salmon farming are publicized, this industry can look forward to more public outcry, not less.

B.C.'s north coast doesn't need an industry that damages the environment and divides people against each other. We've got a better alternative, and it's not hypothetical. It's been benefiting the folks across the border in Alaska for the last 25 years. Isn't it time that we took a closer look at what our neighbours to the north are doing? Let's stop the environmentally destructive expansion of fish farms and start the expansion of ocean ranching right here in B.C.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you, Charles. Gary would like to ask you a question.

G. Coons: Thank you, Charles. We've heard about ocean ranching a couple of times, and I'm just wondering if there are any initiatives that you know of in British Columbia. Is there any federal or provincial support to ocean ranching?

C. Justice: The Native Brotherhood is involved in some pilot projects. I don't know how much support they're getting from DFO for that.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you, Charles. Those are all the questions we have for you. Thanks very much for your presentation.

I would next like to call Vern Jackson up to the witness table, please. Can you just come up to the microphone so that it becomes part of the public record.

V. Jackson: Mr. Chairman, I feel that what I had to say was said in our community this morning.

Moving right along, could I ask Des Nobels to come up to the witness table, please.

D. Nobels: My name is Des Nobels, and I'm representing the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation here tonight. I'm presenting on their behalf. I would also like to introduce Arnie Nagy, who will be helping me with this presentation.

Thank you to the committee for coming to Prince Rupert. We appreciate this. I'm sure at times you feel that the task you've been given is a rather daunting one. But if you feel with your hearts and listen to your minds and hear the voice of the people here today, I think you will be much easier in your deliberations.

That being said, I'll take one minute to thank the Tsimshian Nation for allowing us to speak in their territory here today. I've worked for the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation for the last three years in this area. I've lived here for almost 35 years, and I've spent 29 of them commercially fishing. Fifteen of those years were spent fishing salmon.

Three years ago I'd been working on this issue as an individual, and I was approached to basically see if I'd be willing to monitor the farm applications that were being received in the north and carry on with the work that I was presently doing as a private individual. I said yes, I would be more than willing to do that.

That being the case, I began to monitor the site applications in this area. At that time there were two: at Petrel Point and one at Azimuth Island, which is known as Anger Anchorage. I put together submissions that were presented to the government with regard to the siting of those two areas. Since then I've also done a third submission on Strouts Point, which at present is in abeyance. But I believe it is virtually on the verge of being granted.

The T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation has a fairly long history with this issue. In the mid-'80s the province began to explore salmon aquaculture. At that time I was commercially fishing and was dealing with a lot of people out of MAFF, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fish. We had some very significant discussions around this whole issue and what the province perceived as their right and what they perceived as the truth with regards to salmon farming.

In 1988 the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation sent a delegation to Norway. You'll see in your package the very first portion that I gave you is a copy called Journey to the Future. This is a report that was printed after the trip to Norway. Mr. Nagy was part of that trip, and that's why I've asked him to join me here this evening. I'll now pass it over to Arnie to give you a brief overview of what that trip entailed and what information they brought back with them.

A. Nagy: First, I'd like to introduce myself so you'll know who I am. My name is Arnie Nagy. I'm a member of the Haida Nations. My mother and family are from Masset. I think it would be the proper protocol if I were to recognize the Chiefs, the matriarchs, the elders and others of the nations that stood up and spoke here today.

One thing I would like to clarify to the Chair, as it was stated just a few minutes ago, and perhaps to Mr. Okabe….

Whether it is being said in the tongues and the dialect of the Tsimshian, the Nisga'a, the Gitxsan, the Wet'suwet'en, the Haidas and the different dialects that are in each of those territories, "No to fish farms and protection of the wild stocks" is clearly understood by all nations, no matter what tongue. We understand that clearly.

It was to that regard, when I was asked to be part of the delegation of T. Buck to go to Norway and explore the fisheries, I eagerly jumped at it — more so for the understanding, as a first nations person, and the importance of the salmon to us, but also as one who had studied four years of fish biology in school. It gave me a lot of interest to see what was actually being done on the other side of the world.

At that time we witnessed major problems that were going on in Norway in regards to the aquaculture industry. This was at the time when Norway was being heralded as the champions of the fish farm industry in the world. What we witnessed was the closure of the commercial fishery, and that was due to the genetic pollution of the farm fish escaping and mixing with the wild salmon and destroying the genetic diversity of those streams to the point where there was actually a sperm/milt-taking program that was being done. The fellow that was doing it was travelling in excess of 20,000 kilometres during the time that the salmon hit the rivers to try and get some males so that they could try to preserve the wild stocks.

As we know now, those wild stocks are basically written off. The commercial fishery is done. It was really disheartening to sit there and talk with Arne Lien, who was the president of the Norges Fiskarlag,

which is the fishermen's union in Norway, as he was explaining to his membership that this was the last year that they'll ever be allowed to commercially fish.

We have seem some of those same types of closures going on here in B.C., and that is through DFO policy. As somebody who works in the industry, you cannot understand the heartache and the loss of dignity that is created to people that have lost their economic resource not because of their choosing but because of government policy. The political expedience that we see going on here now, to make decisions or offering economic opportunities, leaves me looking back — that we haven't learned anything over the past eight years with the experiences that we've seen in Norway.

When we came back from Norway, we wrote this paper: Journey to the Future. We were called alarmists because: "The fish won't escape." Well, after the fish got out of the pens and they were swimming around: "You don't have to worry, because they don't know how to feed. They won't survive." We heard that again tonight.

Then all of a sudden we started seeing posters coming up, here in Prince Rupert, about the Atlantic salmon alert: "If you see them, please phone DFO and keep the species." Well, obviously, in order to swim that far up the coast, they had to eat to get here.

Then we were told: "Okay, they can eat, but you don't have to worry because they're not going to enter our water systems." Well, now they've found them on Vancouver Island in the watersheds. Then we were told they wouldn't spawn. Well, I'd suggest that Alexandra Morton's and John Volpe's scientific studies clearly show that that is going on.

One of the problems we witnessed in Norway was parasitic contamination of the river systems by a parasite known as Gyrodactylus salaris. That parasite is on the west coast. It's naturally occurring there.

The reason why it was able to take over and create so many problems in Norway? Weakened stocks. The genetic diversity had been lowered to that point that they could not deal with it. They could not survive it. The only way to eradicate the parasite was to poison the whole water system. Imagine if the state of our wild salmon here came to that point.

I'll agree that the Atlantic salmon are not going to go into the watersheds and mix with the Pacific salmon and spawn. That's a given. I won't argue that point, but what I will argue is the fact that there are other species of Pacific salmonids that are being farm-raised in British Columbia that do have that very potential.

To jeopardize the runs and the livelihoods of many more communities up and down the coast is not a logical solution.

I would suggest to you on that question — it was said that the wild fishery is on its way out — that that is a defeatist attitude. I wake up every morning; I look at it as a sunrise industry, not a sunset. The sun hasn't set on that industry, and there is much potential to develop it and bring it back to where it was.

I would refer you — and I'll make sure that the committee gets it; I'll give the information to Gary Coons — to a report that was done shortly after this journey to the paper came out. It was a wild salmon conference hosted by the UFAWU and the T. Buck Suzuki held in Vancouver. Many of the people that we met in Norway came over here to talk about wild salmon and what they have seen. I think it's something that this committee should look at.

One thing that I would like to add before I pass it back — a couple of things, actually, very quickly — is that many of us have appeared in front of committees in the past, whether it be in regards to DFO policy on licensing or what have you. I hope there is the political will of this government to follow the recommendations of this committee. Otherwise, it is a sign of clear contempt for the people who are raising this issue. It is a clear contempt of the committee. The elders and others that have stood up and spoken in this room have made it very clear in whatever tongue that they decided to speak in.

The line is drawn in the sand. "No fish farms in the north," is what's being said — period. They will not be tolerated by the first nations in our territories. They will not be allowed to jeopardize the future industries and the rights of future generations. It is an infinite resource. I can be here forever. We will do what we have to do to make sure that it does not become a finite resource. Thank you.

In the package that I have provided for you, you will now find two documents, one that is called the Best Available Science and Reports on Environmental Impacts on Open-Net Pen Salmon Aquaculture on Coastal B.C. This is a list that was compiled of the best science that's available to date on the issues and what exists out there. I've provided this to you so that you have a reference document. I'm not a scientist. I've no scientific background whatsoever, and I'm not about to argue the science, but I felt this would be at least a guide to the committee that they could use at their convenience.

The second document is called the References on Potential Fish Farm Impacts — 702 References. These are 702 references that we put together on negative impacts of salmon farming.

The industry continues to tell us that the science is in and that there is no impact from salmon farming. Well, this was done in about three-quarters of an hour, and it's not a finite list. There is a significant list out there. I've yet to see from industry the science that continues to back their position. It doesn't exist as far as I know. To date the only science that's credible out there is science that shows significant impacts from this industry and as such has to be taken at its face value. I've provided you with those two documents.

There are a number of committees that have been struck over the years by the province to address the science issue. The Pacific Salmon Forum is probably the latest of those to actually undertake a review of the science that exists out there and evaluate some of it.

I believe there was a committee struck in 2001 under Minister van Dongen, a four-person panel. To be

perfectly honest, I've never seen anything come from that committee. I don't know if they ever put any advisory out with regards to the science in 2001 or not, but it's the only other group that I'm aware of that was actually reviewing the science.

Next I've provided you with a map of the proposed sites. This map is actually a Pan Fish map, and these are the proposed sites that they had reviewed and looked at as suitable sites for salmon aquaculture. Encapsulated within this are three sites — two that are granted and one that is in abeyance at the moment.

In turn, also you'll find, accompanying that, two maps that are migratory routes. They're from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The first one is the adult migration route and the second one is the juvenile migration–out migration route. If you look very closely you'll see that I've drawn a circle there around the area of concern, and you will see that the department in turn has also marked this significantly with cross-hatching, which indicates very dense stocking of smolts exiting.

What's rather interesting is that in the last two years Dave Ralston and Bart Proctor have conducted scientific studies, smolt out-migration studies, in this area, and they have found significant amounts of smolts from the Skeena, conceivably in excess of 25 percent of the Skeena's run, which are actually entering the ocean through this lower estuary route. It's a very significant habitat for the rearing of these smolts prior to them entering the ocean environment. I think this is one of the reasons that you see such interest by the first nations in the upper headwaters of the Skeena, because it is their fish that are travelling through this area. It's those fish that are born in the headwaters of the Babine that are travelling through this area on their outward migration, and as such, it poses a significant risk to those fish, we believe.

Lastly, I've provided you with a copy of the National Salmon Rivers and Salmon Fjords strategy. This is Norway's attempt to deal with the mess that they've gotten themselves into. There was a recent comment attributed to the Minister of Fisheries in Norway. As a matter of fact, it was about three weeks ago when there was a delegation from this area in Norway. He basically told them: "This is odd. We no longer debate this in Norway. We know you cannot grow fish and have them in conjunction with wild fish. Therefore, we have adopted this strategy." There are eight fjords which are off-limits to salmon farms, and there are 32, I believe, that are being looked at for the removal of farms to try and maintain what integrity exists in the wild stocks that are there at present.

I would advise the committee that in reviewing the material that's out there, keep in mind that it's not one size that fits all here — all right? There are a number of ways of dealing with this, and Norway, in its wisdom, after much debate and a lot of experimentation, has come to understand that they have to maintain truly wild areas to be able to maintain the integrity of their stocks.

Another thing I think we need to keep in mind, as well, is that if global warming is an issue — and I believe it is — then the stocks that we have in the north here are probably our most precious salmon stocks on the North American continent at present and, as such, need to be looked at with that in mind.

Lastly, I leave you with a newspaper article here that is a petition with 4,000 names that was submitted through Gary to the Legislature from people in the north here. The reality is that through a petition and through a survey that was done in this area, it was found that in excess of 70 percent of the people in this region did not support salmon aquaculture in any form.

They wish to maintain the wild salmon economy and build on that. We have a fairly significant economy here built on that. It has an immense amount of growth potential. Our economy, built around tourism these days, is living on that fish. That fish is what brings people to this community and to this region, and many of them have told us: "Should you do anything to harm that fish, we will no longer come."

I'll hazard a guess right now that if Kitkatla were to enter into the recreational sector and become part of the tourism industry, they would do far better than they would entering into the salmon farming industry that is controlled by outside interests. At least they would be able to control their own tourism packages. I would suggest to them that perhaps they try that.

Rather than take up any more time of the committee today — you've had a long, hard day — I'll leave it at that. If there are any questions, we'll gladly attempt to answer them.

Arnie, you mentioned that you'd have a document that you'll pass through Gary. I ask that you actually send it to the Clerk of Committees, so that way it'll get distributed to all members of this committee. You can get the address from Brant afterwards.

C. Trevena: On the premise that there is no such thing as a dumb question…. We've heard a lot of very emotional and very impassioned statements today about keeping the north coast free of salmon farms. Does the science show, as far as you understand it, that if there is a certain area that would be clear of salmon farms — so there would be salmon farms up to the Broughton and then nothing beyond, assuming you were playing in that sort of scenario — the wild salmon in the north would still be protected, because would it not still be going past salmon farms?

D. Nobels: It would be our hope that should the north be maintained as a fish farm–free area, the farms that are in the south would manage themselves in a much more responsible manner than they have in the past and that the escapes that are presently taking place would be nonexistent, therefore basically negating any impacts that we might see here. As long as escapes continue to take place, we are going to see Atlantic salmon in this area because they swim. It's as simple as that. The tails take them wherever they go.

I would hope that in eliminating the threat in this area and having the south look at, basically, cleaning up their act, those considerations would not have to be taken into account. We would be a safe and secure region.

That's the premise that Norway is labouring under at the present moment as well. We can only wait and watch. All I know is that, at present, people in this part of the world are not supportive of any initiative. They wish to maintain their wild salmon economy and see it as being, basically, their saviour in the end.

C. Trevena: So you see it as the combination of enforcement and drawing a line in the sand at the same point — but greater enforcement.

D. Nobels: Yes. The provincial government continues to belabour the point that we have the most comprehensive regulatory system in the world. That may well be the case; although I doubt it. But regulations are only as good as the monitoring and enforcement that go along with them. If you don't have those in place, the regulations aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Again, if the province did undertake to implement and actually initiate the responsible regulatory process that's out there, then I would hope to see a significant decline in the impacts we're presently looking at in the southern regions.

Just a comment. Des was talking about something about 2012, and there was a scientific advisory group that was given five tasks to complete for the Ministry of Environment to look at advice for implementing a performance-based waste management model. They were going to provide comments. I just find it interesting.

People should know that in our briefings we met with the Minister of Agriculture and Lands, deputy ministers and Environment, and we hadn't really heard anything about this scientific advisory group. They did have concerns about knowledge gaps in some of the regulations, and they had a key concern about gathering and interpretation of regulatory compliance data and that it should be available and transparent to the public.

I was just wondering, Des, in your role, if you saw…. What concerns we hear are that our regulatory regime is number one. I'm just wondering how you think that compares and where there might be some gaps.

D. Nobels: First of all, I believe there are significant gaps. Whether or not filling them would be of any consequence…. I would say, in light of the feelings of people in the north, that no, it wouldn't make any difference with regards to us.

On the regulatory issues, again, the province has belaboured that point that they have this significant regulatory body that exists. But who monitors? Do we see these reports? I mean, a lot of this material seems to have proprietary rights. As such, a lot of this information just isn't getting out.

I think one of the recent agreements with Marine Harvest has sort of opened that up a bit. We're beginning to see some of the inside information of what the industry is actually dealing with. But again, industry, I believe, has to become more clear and transparent, and to date they've been anything but.

To be perfectly honest, wealth concedes nothing without demand. It never has; it never will. The industry, unless it is pressured to, will not undertake what is needed to make it a clean and possibly sustainable industry; although I doubt that that's even possible, in light of the fact that we're raising carnivorous fish. That being said, I guess we owe them the opportunity to perhaps take a look at it.

A. Nagy: Gary, one thing on that that I'd like to point out. If you look at what's going on in the commercial fishery, and it doesn't matter what fishery you look at, the changes that are being demanded to preserve the stocks come out of their pockets — i.e., cameras on boats, blue boxes, or whatever, that the fisherman have to go out and buy before they can actually go out and fish, or whether it's to pay for the actual monitoring and then land-based monitoring and on-sea observers.

In the gill-net fishery some of the costs run up into the thousands of dollars. This is from a fishery where, for the people that are participating in that fishery, gross stock might be $20,000. Now, if you figure that percentage out towards their income, to request self-containment systems from companies — that want to participate in the aquaculture industry and that are there to reap millions and millions and millions of dollars of profit out of it — is a small thing to be asking for to protect the stocks.

It's the responsibility of all. I know people have to dance to their corporate masters and whomever, but I will say one thing, from my boss Jimmy Pattison. He advertises it quite loudly, as one of the wealthiest men in B.C.: go wild. That's the Canadian fish policy. Go wild.

D. Nobels: Just one final comment. Arnie's comments with regards to the management responsibility and regulatory responsibility within the commercial fishery…. I just finished a commercial halibut trip. We're now responsible for 100-percent monitoring of that fishery. We pay for that out of our pockets whether we choose to or not. As Arnie said, we have cameras on the boat, or observers, 24 hours a day.

My paycheque dissolved by one-third this week. One-third of my income went to pay for the monitoring of my resource. I'm not happy about it, but that's fine.

Now, how about the salmon farming? Put one-third of their bloody profit back into it.

A question about escapes. Arnie touched on it. Escapes are a fact of life. They happen. There are disasters. There are accidents. There are storms and everything else. It has already been acknowledged.

Arnie, you touched on the fact that there was some denial about that in the industry initially, that they wouldn't be able to survive. Then you mentioned the notices were up. I've seen those. I'm from a coastal community. I certainly saw notices.

The colloquial knowledge around Tofino from the sports fishing guides is that they were catching them. Is that correct — that they were more than surviving? They were actually putting up a fight?

A. Nagy: If a fish is going to be in the water and it gets hungry, it's going to bite. That's just common reality. As a sports fisherman myself, an avid fly fisherman, I would be horrified if I was to go on the Skeena River and do some fly fishing and hook into one of those. I would be outright angry, and I would be scared.

I will tell you one thing. The importance of the Skeena River salmon to the north…. All the salmon that is canned in British Columbia, through Canadian fish, is listed as northern-southern. Skeena River salmon is the only canned salmon in the world that has its own distinction on the can of salmon that you buy. That is because it is such a unique species of sockeye, because of the colour, the texture and the oil content. It gets its own special code on that can to identify it. It is one of the major sellers, which is why it demands the highest price of any canned salmon in the world.

That would be an absolute shame to even…. But it is. We see them coming up in some of the seine fisheries once in a while, from the central coast. They'll come in, and we'll get some of the fish, which is why we have the sign, "Atlantic salmon alert," up there in the plant. If they find one, they get it to me, because they know I'll deal with it and it's not going to be brushed under the table. It has to be known that this is what is occurring, and it is a threat.

A. Nagy: Yes. They are given to me. I get hold of the fellow at DFO, and they take them. The last one that we did have, we cut the belly open, and there was some herring inside the tummy. But I will say that that was about four years ago, the last time I saw one up here.

I'd like to ask if Melvin Tolmie is present in the room, or Steve Smith. How about Mayor Dave MacDonald?

D. Konsmo: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and the committee. I'd like to welcome all those on the committee to Prince Rupert.

There has been a lot said during these hearings by people who work in the fish-farming industry about concern over the possible loss of their jobs. I think if I was working in that industry, I would be very worried too. To me, this has a very human face. I happen to know people and love certain people who are involved in the fish-farming industry through their families. It really eats at my conscience that some public position that I would take against fish farming could adversely affect their lives. It's not something that I take lightly.

Still, I am also part of the environment. We all are. I've heard a lot of elegant things tonight. Everything that I think has to be said about fish farming has been said. To me, the issue just comes down to: what do I choose to believe. I think that for each one of us it comes down to that.

When I hear some of the horror stories over the years about what's been happening with fish farming, I choose to believe it's a bad thing. I would hope that it would not continue. When I hear of hundreds of ocean mammals being slaughtered by the fish-farming industry, I choose to believe it. It may not be true. When I read in a book called A Stain Upon the Sea about wild bears and so on having a difficult time finding food because the runs of pink salmon have dropped off as a result of sea lice, I'm inclined to believe that.

I see no reason to think that the people who are saying these things are making them up. When I hear of sport fishermen in Ireland saying that they've pretty well lost their sport fishery because of salmon farming, I see no reason to think this just came out of the air. I mean, they enjoy what they do. I can't imagine them saying this if it wasn't true.

To me, that's what it all comes down to. Right here in Prince Rupert, when I hear first nations people from the Broughton Archipelago coming here and telling us about the damage to their beaches…. When I see in the film called Call From a Coast the muck that people have to walk through on the beaches because of fish farming…. I don't know. Maybe some of this is exaggerated, but I'm inclined to believe that it's true.

I could be mistaken, but I'm a reasonably intelligent person. I've weighed the evidence like anybody else. I don't like to have to believe this. I'd like to think the fish farming can coexist with the wild fish industry, but I don't believe it can.

This evidence that I've been hearing, so far as I can tell, has been ignored by our political leaders. The DFO has abandoned its responsibility, from what I can understand, to protect our wild fishes, which is what they're supposed to be doing. They're not doing it.

As politicians, I guess my message to you is: please stop playing Russian roulette with our children's future. It's not just a matter of fish farming. It's all tied in with global warming and the whole issue — air contamination and offshore oil and gas drilling. It's just one part of the whole thing. The oceans can't take the kind of abuse that we're dishing out. The Earth can't take the kind of abuse that we're dishing out.

I think it was Gandhi who said: "The Earth has enough for everybody's need. The Earth does not have enough for everybody's greed."

I don't want to dwell for a long time on all this, except to again ask you politicians…. You are in a position of responsibility. Please get back and make sure your leaders get the message and start listening to the

vast majority of people who, as far as I can tell, are telling you to stop doing this. Either make it safe or stop it.

There's a thing we call a precautionary principle. The onus is on the fish-farming industry to prove that what they're doing is safe. If it isn't, and if there's evidence to the contrary, then why has it been allowed to go this far?

The last time Pat Bell, the Minister of Agriculture, approved a fish farm somewhere in this area…. I don't know where it was. He knows. He knows all the facts. All the politicians who are making these decisions know everything that's been going on. They know everything we've been saying to them. What we've been saying here is nothing new. Maybe it bears repetition. I'm also very happy to see that people have had the opportunity to speak out, but what we know isn't going to change.

The decisions we make are going to continue to have destructive effects on our environment. We all know that. So I hope that you, as politicians, will do something about it. I think maybe you have an opportunity to do something about it. Nothing I can do about it.

I'd like to call Joy Thorkelson to the witness table, please. This is the last witness for this evening, as we are already pretty much going over our scheduled day here.

J. Thorkelson: My name's Joy Thorkelson. I'm with the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union. I'm the northern representative. Our union represents shoreworkers and fishermen on the north coast. We represent the vast majority of shoreworkers, which are people who work inside plants, and we represent a large number of fishermen, although not the vast majority of fishermen any longer. But we represent certainly a great number of fishermen.

I'm glad to be able to speak to you today. Before I begin, I'd like to say that there are probably 250 fishermen on the grounds right now who would have loved to have been here today to make presentations and to hear the committee and to hear other committee members speak. Unfortunately, Monday was the only day that they were guaranteed to fish, and this was the day that the committee had unfortunately scheduled the meeting in Prince Rupert.

I'd like to invite you back — as many of you as can come — either this Saturday or the following Saturday when we will be having large meetings at the Fishermen's Hall of all fishermen, regardless of what organization or gear they're fishing. They will be at Fishermen's Hall this Saturday and the following Saturday for meetings, and I invite members of your committee or your whole committee to come at that time.

The fishing industry on the north coast is the largest private sector employer. We hear lots, especially from the federal government, but also from the provincial government, about being risk-averse. Usually when they talk about risk-averse, they mean risk-averse environmental and fish management practices for the protection of fish. We would also say that we would like to see governments have a policy of risk-averse effects on employment as well.

You know, we have problems with fish stocks all over the coast, but from what I've heard here tonight it sounds like we have some major collapse in fish stocks on the north coast. The fact is that our north coast fish stocks are indeed very healthy.

Only one year, which was last year — not the two years, as a previous witness stated — have we not had a fishery in area four. That was not as a result of mismanagement and certainly not as a result of overfishing. In fact, that was the largest number of fry that was ever put into the system in the Skeena in 2000 for that 2005 return. The 2005, to the best guess of the Fisheries department, did not return because of ocean conditions and had nothing to do with fishing and nothing to do with freshwater conditions — they believe.

My question to you, a somewhat rhetorical one, would be: if our fish stocks weren't healthy, then why on earth would we even be considering having to add something else that would be added to a list of risks and challenges that salmon must overcome in order to go out to sea and return?

Fortunately, our stocks are healthy. But does that mean we want them to have to run a gauntlet of fish farms in order to get into the ocean, if in fact we believe there may be problems with fish farms being located in areas particularly where we have juvenile salmon going to sea?

There's an IBM study that's going to be presented more thoroughly upcountry, I understand. In those figures they have figures about what the value of the commercial salmon industry is to the province of British Columbia. The north coast Skeena River commercial salmon industry is the province of British Columbia.

Those are figures that affect the economy of British Columbia. I'd like to talk about figures that directly affect the economy of Prince Rupert. The Skeena salmon run brings in and is directly responsible for $28 million of shoreworkers' wages coming into our community, being earned in our community. These wages are earned and spent on the north coast.

Not all of those wages are a direct result of Skeena River stocks, because we fish other things up here. The reason that we have fish plants located in Prince Rupert is primarily to take advantage of Skeena River sockeye. If we don't have Skeena River sockeye and Skeena River pinks — if those stocks dwindled — then we will not likely have a processing sector on the north coast.

What will happen is that either our fish on the north coast will be caught and taken north to Alaska, because there are no laws to prohibit that, or else our fish on the north coast will be taken and processed on the south coast in Vancouver. Probably a third of our fish right now, other than pink salmon, are taken out of our community for processing on the south coast. However, it's still the largest major private sector em-

ployer, and it still pumps $28 million in wages into the Prince Rupert economy, the north coast economy, every single year.

For salmon fishermen, the amount of money that comes into their pockets is not as stable. It can go up or down. It can go up as high as $100 million and down probably as low as next to nothing, which was last year because we did not have a fishable return to the Skeena.

I guess the question is: if we have a commercial fishing industry here, can we just add a fish-farm industry which can supplement the commercial industry? When there are downturns in the commercial sector, you just pump out a few farm fish and maintain your employment levels.

Well, it doesn't work that way anywhere. You don't see a mix of farm salmon and fresh salmon being processed together on any kind of regular basis. The only reason that farmed fish have a step up on the rest of the wild salmon industry is because they can produce year-round, which means during June, July, August, September and October when our plants traditionally have fish in them.

When we asked companies like B.C. Packers, who own fish farms, "Why aren't you running those farmed fish through our plants?" their answer was: "We need to have a plant that operates solely on farm fish because we can't stop our farm fish production, go to wild fish and then go back to farm fish production. Otherwise we'll lose our foothold in the marketplace. We can't do that."

If you have fish farm plants, you're going to have them located on the north coast. We question again: for how long? Most of the production has taken place on the south coast, particularly on Vancouver Island. We believe that what we'll see on the north coast is an initial number of fish plants open up here, and then we'll see a consolidation to Vancouver Island with our fish. We don't believe, for example, that Kitkatla fish will actually be processed on the north coast. We think that Kitkatla fish will be taken down and landed in Port Hardy and processed in Port Hardy.

When a Norwegian delegation came to town in 2003, that delegation told the public meeting at the Fishermen's Hall that the Canadian fish-farming industry has too many employees to successfully compete in the long term, that we are completely unproductive, that our fish farms are unproductive and that we have too many employees per fish and have to reduce our employment by at least 75 percent in order to compete in the long term with Norwegian fish farms.

That's what was told to us at the Fishermen's Hall. Now, I can't say whether that's correct or not, but that is what was said publicly at the Fishermen's Hall. It has never been challenged. In fact, if you're going to have to continue to reduce your employment in order to be competitive on a long-term basis, then it really begs the issue of what kind of employment you will be getting out of fish farms.

I have lots to say, but I'm always too long-winded and you guys look dead. Lastly, I do want to say that I don't believe…. I want to reassure you that I think treaty negotiations are far more resilient than putting a no-fish-farm zone north of Cape Caution. I don't believe that negotiations will collapse or that economies will collapse or that anything bad will occur because we have a no-fish-farm zone north of Cape Caution.

We believe that what will happen is that our fishing industry that we already have will be protected. And there are lots of things. People always say: "Jesus, Joy, you're always crying about what's going on in the fishing industry." Well, yeah, there are lots of things. Some of them the provincial government can help with, and others of them the federal government has created.

Mostly what people here are complaining about are the policies of the federal government that have created licensing problems that have taken money out of our pockets. Regardless of that, we still have a wealthy fish stock, and we still have fish plants. Two weeks from now we will have 2,000 shoreworkers working in those fish plants. What we need to do is keep those fish plants here and expand on the amount of work they do in the wintertime, not put the fish that's keeping those fish plants here at risk.

I firmly assent that we have a right to comment on this. We're not talking about fish farming limpets. If people were talking about fish farming limpets, then maybe I don't really have a whole lot to say about fish farming limpets. They don't walk very fast.

When we talk about fishing and we talk about farming a resource that is an extremely mobile resource that has to pass through so many risks on the way to the spawning grounds, and then those little fish…. Like last year, why did all those fry not come back? Nobody knows.

Those fry have to go all the way back down. Why would we put another risk in front of them before they can go into the ocean when we don't even know what happened to the largest number of fry ever released and which should have come back there? They were released in 2003 and should have returned in 2005 or were released in 2003 and should have come back in 2002, depending what species you were looking at. Why would we put something else in their way to be a risk barrier?

I just want to say on that that people here have spoken in a democratic manner about fish farms. I'd like to say that in the last two years we have really had four elections about fish farms. Our first election was a federal government election, in which Nathan Cullen, our MP, ran on an anti–fish farm basis. He swept this riding.

Nobody believed that the NDP was going to come up from behind and take the riding. Anybody who was any kind of political commentator said that Nathan took the riding and that the issue at stake was fish farms. That was the major issue on the north coast in every single riding. It was polled in every single riding as the issue.

The next person that was elected up here was our MLA Gary Coons. Again, fish farms were the major issue in this riding at that time.

Prince Rupert city council said, in last November's elections…. Because the city council had been pro–fish farms, the city council, in the last election…. Those of us who are anti–fish farms wanted to make a major issue, and the city said: "We have heard where you're coming from. It's no longer an issue." When people stood up to speak against fish farms, our city councillor said: "It is no longer an issue. We have clearly heard what the people of Prince Rupert have to say."

Then again last January every single candidate in the federal election was opposed to fish farms — every single candidate, regardless of party. I want to say that I think that is a democratic reading of people who are running for government about the position that people have taken on the north coast. I think that's a clear, democratic response to a clear, democratic expression of how we want our resources to be managed on the north coast.

I want to say thank you very much for hearing me. Like I say, I had a much longer presentation, but I've cut it down. I do want to say that our resources are healthy. We want to keep them that way. We don't want to put additional risks. We want to have an industry that we have now that employs shoreworkers and employs fishermen on the north coast. We want to make the federal government listen to us regarding all kinds of licensing changes, but that doesn't mean we don't have a healthy industry and want to keep it that way.

Two questions. First, commercial fishermen. Setting aside last year, but generally over the last five or six years, what kind of income might they reasonably be expected to make if it was a decent season?

J. Thorkelson: A gill-net fisherman would probably think that he was going to make around $30,000 on average in a decent system. We're not talking about people who have huge expectations of a huge living.

J. Thorkelson: I would say that probably their take-home income would be maybe less than $30,000. If you want to look at the last decade and a half, I think you'd find, I would say, probably $40,000 would have been take-home. Unfortunately, since the advent of the Mifflin plan we've had a few problems with licensing, which have made our fishermen less viable. But yes.

S. Simpson: Second question. We heard tonight about ocean ranching. Has UFAWU looked at that, and what it is? I mean, it's something that we're hearing about, but we honestly don't know a lot about it.

J. Thorkelson: We prefer the term "non-profit regional aquaculture," which is what the Americans use. We've been trying to find something else, because "ocean ranching" has connoted for many years private ownership of the resource. What we prefer to call it…. I think our last kick at the can was "community ocean ranching" or something like that. I can't remember what it is.

There is actually one project going on. If you go over to the Charlottes, you should talk to the Haida about Pallant Creek. It is the first community ocean ranching project in British Columbia. What it has is a board that is made up of local players: commercial fishermen; sports fishermen; the Haida, of course; environmentalists; and community members. They sit on a board, and we all have a veto over one another's positions. That board actually sets management guidelines and sets the business parameters for the hatchery. The Haida themselves manage the hatchery. They make the hatchery decisions.

When that fish comes in, it is caught in an open fishery. Then, after it's caught in the open fishery, we make sure that a third of that fish gets to the hatchery above what the requirements are for brood stock. But a third of that fish goes to the hatchery, and the hatchery takes that and puts the money back into the operation. So a third of the fish that is caught goes to the hatchery in order to continue the hatchery.

J. Thorkelson: That's where their revenue stream comes from. It comes from some other things, because it's experimental. But yes, that's what it's supposed to come from.

G. Coons: Thank you, Joy. I was going to comment on community ocean ranching and public versus private, but I think we covered that quite well. Just for the record, you are a city councillor in Prince Rupert.

J. Thorkelson: Oh yes. I do want to make it clear that I am a city councillor. I think people knew where I stood when I was elected. Also, I'm not so sure, Gary, that everybody else on the city council would agree with me, but I know there are two of us on council. I'm not sure where everybody else stands.

G. Coons: The last question, Joy. As far as local membership for the fishers and shoreworkers that you represent, and provincially, what would those numbers be?

J. Thorkelson: Well, in Prince Rupert we represent probably around 2,000 shoreworkers — more on a

good season. Coastwide we probably represent 5,000 on a good season and, say, 4,000 on a normal year. We probably represent close to a thousand fishermen.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you very much, Joy. I would like to thank everybody for coming here this afternoon and this evening — both those who made presentations, shared their knowledge with us and answered questions from the committee, and those of you who came as spectators to witness this public process. I bid you all a good night and hope that you have a good journey home.

I'd like a motion to adjourn. Thank you very much. These public hearings are now closed.

S. Dennis: …which we hold history to. We have shared territories with Kitkatla. Our fight is not with them. We want our voices heard to this.

So with that, I would like to call upon the Gitwilgyoots. [Sm'algyax spoken.] These are the spokespersons for the territory where these meetings are being held today.

M. Wesley: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My white-man name is Marvin Wesley. I'm a hereditary chief of the Gitwilgyoots tribe, one of four hereditary chiefs of the Gitwilgyoots tribe. We have three other chiefs within the Gitwilgyoots tribe. This territory belongs to the Gitwilgyoots tribe, and we've had it here for thousands of years. I am one of the chiefs here. I have three others that are in Port Simpson.

We have a lot of the history of this territory. You people want it? We could give it to you. We also hold rivers within the Skeena River. You see all our head people here. The nine tribes of Lax Kw'alaams — they're all holders of the rivers within the Skeena River system. Up a little past Terrace is where we resided. There's history. We have the history to this. You'll hear more from our other chiefs as we go along.

My tribe and the other three chiefs are deadly against fish farming until we have more science done to show that it would not harm our wild salmon. A few years back they had farms here within our territory. There was one across the bay, up in Union Inlet. They had a farm in there for a few years.

While this farm was there, stuff in the inlet — crabs, herring, cockles, clams; whatever was there that my people used to eat — gradually disappeared. Now, this is no lie. I want everybody in this room to know that and hear it. It happened; it actually happened.

We used to go into Union Inlet and get spring salmon or crabs and everything in the winter months to eat. After a few years, after that, we had nowhere to go. There was nothing there. The herring disappeared in there. It's starting to come back a little bit now. That farm did it in those days, with what they used…. I don't know the difference between there and today — what chemicals and whatever they use in these fish farms today.

I'm speaking for the other three of my tribes, and we're against — deadly against — fish farming until such a time…. I'm a commercial fisherman, by the way. I own a seine boat. With the rest of my people in the village, I'm deadly against fish farming because we saw what happened within Union Bay and Work Channel. There are two areas where they had this farm. They moved it about.

There's history there. We have it within our council chambers there what happened. You take the herring fishing. They used to be loaded. We used to get our own kelp in there and our fish eggs, herring eggs, for our winter supply. That's not there anymore.

We have a big river. We're in between two big rivers, the Skeena and the Nass. If we ever touch these rivers — and we've got lots of small rivers…. Dundas has sockeye. All these rivers here — that's the reason why the Tsimshian picked this spot 10,000 years ago.

Abalone. We've got no more abalone. We used to enjoy that a few years down the road. That's gone now. I'm eating wieners now. That doesn't taste like abalone. I bet you'd rather have an abalone — eh? — than a wiener.

So you see what happens to the sea if we play with it? We're afraid. We're very afraid of fish farms. I know people down in Alert Bay that…. I run the coast, and I know what's happening within the Alert Bay area — the aquaculture down there.

E. Bryant: My name is [Sm'algyax spoken]. I also belong to the Gitwilgyoots tribe. My crest is the Ganhada, the Raven. In the Tsimshian culture the Raven is a messenger, and this is what I did when I went over to Norway. I delivered a message. For the record, I did not say that I was speaking for all Ravens. I merely stated that in the Tsimshian culture, the Raven is a messenger. That's real common knowledge among my people. You'll hear from the Gitlaan, the Giluts'aaw, the Gitando, the Gits'iis, the Gispaxlo'ots, the Gitandoiks, the Gitzaxlaal and the Ginaxangiik, and we are the Gitwilgyoots. We are the tribes of Lax Kw'alaams.

Seeing that this is on public record, I want to read to you what I delivered on behalf of my people when I was over in Norway. This went to King Harald V and also to the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg. This was delivered May 31, 2006.

This is what I delivered. Chief Bob Chamberlin from Gilford Island had also delivered a message at the same time.

We are very concerned about what this can do to our marine environment. You know, I urge you folks to do the study — some kind of first nations studies on our people here on the coast and how long we've actually been here.

We have village sites and gravesites that are underwater, and we know why. The ocean had two settlements in this earth's lifetime. The first time, our people were still living here when the ocean first started to settle. We figured that that was going to be the beach line, I guess.

This is how far back we go. We go thousands and thousands of years back. Now, if you study our history and know us, you'll also know that our people…. Not only did we live in harmony with the land, we had our wars. We fought with other people, with other nations. You think about it: 4,000 years, 3,000 years ago our people were having wars with other nations. Why? Our people from the nine tribes had the vision to see that if they fought for the resources back then, we could use it today.

Now we stand before you doing the same old fight, using modern tools, but we also have a lot of other people who are standing with us. We, the nine tribes of Lax Kw'alaams, also realize that what we do here on the coast does matter to what happens to the people along the Skeena River, first nations and non–first nations. Fish farming is not going to do it.

You know, I've had all kinds of interviews since the Norway trip. They wanted to know how many people I represent. I said we were 2,700 strong from the nine Allied Tribes, but I was corrected today. We are 2,800-plus strong. But that's just the nine Allied Tribes. We did not include the non–first nations and other first nations, because the numbers are too big. They're huge.

People talk about jobs; this is going to create jobs. I say that's a pile of crap. It's not going to. They're going to only end up putting conveyor belts in and feeding the fish that way, using assembly lines. It's not going to create any jobs. What I do see that's happening that it's creating now is uncertainty among some of the first nations in themselves, and I don't like that. Let's hope that that will get straightened out.

We have many issues, many concerns. You know, we talk about the salmon. Well, in many of my interviews I talked about the ripple effect of that — underwater. You talk about all the creatures that are living on the ground — your crabs, your shrimp, including your halibut and rockfish. You heard of how the herring was disappearing at one time because of this. Well, if that herring goes, so does everything else in this ocean.

I was put in a very unique situation, gentlemen and ladies, when I went over to Norway, because not only was I representing the nine Allied Tribes of Lax Kw'alaams, I was now representing other first nations and non–first nations. That is a very unique situation for a person to be put in: to be speaking for everybody who is against fish farms.

There are others who are actively pursuing this, but they are a minority compared to the people that I've talked to. We're going to make a real strong stand here on the coast, to make sure that fish farms don't come into our area now. That's the way it's going to be.

One of the questions that I was asked over in Norway was…. They got this little fish now that they say can take care of the lice problem. This is what they told us, and they asked: would we consider, if this was the case…? I said: "Absolutely not." My mandate was very clear. No. And if you've come up with anything, use it in your own back yard for 20 years. If there's zero impact to the environment, then maybe we'll consider discussing it.

Another thing that we found out when we met with their ministry of fisheries over in Norway was that they are already protecting eight fjords over there, because they realize the impact the farm fish is having on their wild stocks, so there is no farmed fish around there at all.

So when we delivered our message, Chief Bob Chamberlin from Gilford Island was representing his people down there. It's his area that has been devastated. He's a very interesting person to listen to and very strong for his people. It was a pleasure and an honour for me to work alongside this person. He really cares about his people as much as we do ours. It's too bad that their area is the way it is.

You know, for those people that think that fish farms aren't devastating anything, I'd like them to go visit Gilford Island. I'm sure Bob Chamberlin will whip out one of those black clams and give it to them and see if they'll eat it. Including the creatures that live above the water…. You've got your eagles, your ravens, your ducks, your wolves, your otters, your minks, all the bears.

One of the things that I brought up in Norway was Khutzeymateen. Just because it's to the north of us here, that doesn't mean it's not going to get affected one way or another. You've got to understand our tidal waters here. Whatever comes out of there — any effluent or anything — sooner or later will find its way up there, and it's not worth the risk. That's the last grizzly bear sanctuary in the world within our territories. We're not going to put it at risk.

There are many, many factors and many issues that we look at. I want to quote the late Frank L. Wesley, who used to sit in our council and was a strong representative of the Gitando tribe. He used his ears when he was young, and you could remember what the elders would say: "Beware the almighty dollar, or it will get you." I've made that statement.

We are taking a strong stand, and we're not going to back down. These people you see before you are giving me a stronger backbone now. I thank them all for being here — to show up. There's much I have to say, but there's another tribal representative from the Gits'iis. I'm speaking from my heart now — that we will do anything and everything to preserve our culture, to preserve the marine life that's in it, both under the water and on top of the water.

As well, before I close off, I want you all to think about this. It's not just the first nations that have concerns here. They want to make Prince Rupert a port of call. They just opened up their docks down here. They're expecting 90,000-plus visitors this year. Now, think about it. If the herring go, so do the whales and everything else in it. Tourists aren't going to come here if that's the case. That's a fact. So when you think of the non–first nations, you'd better think of all the businesses that they have started and all the work and time that they have put in to get to where they are at today.

There's a huge contingency of us out there that will be standing strong together. One of the most wonderful things I've got out of this trip in representing other first nations and myself and the non–first nations is coming up with an idea and taking a look at what we can do when we work together. We can tackle any mountain, any obstacle in the way.

With that, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Gitwilgyoots tribe, welcome to our territory.

S. Dennis: If we may, Robin, we do have other of our tribal members that have come forward, and I'd ask that you'd bear with us, because we've come a long way to get our message across to you as a committee. I'd like to indulge the people here with other spokespersons from our tribes.

Ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests, I want to invite you into our territory. We've done this before, going back maybe ten years, I guess, to when you people met with ATT, Allied Tsimshian Tribes. I've invited your ministers to meet with us and talk these things over for the last 15 or 20 years. I say this because my status as a sm'ooygit is comparable to the King and Queen of England in our land.

You wouldn't expect to send a whole bunch of office workers to go over and meet with the King and Queen of England, would you? We demand that we be given the same privilege, not only because we own the land. We've never sold it. We've never had a war. We've never promised it to anybody, and nobody has come and asked us if we could use your land.

Right now everything that's going on, on our land is done without our permission. We don't know how many billions of dollars you've cut down in our trees. We don't know how many billions of dollars you've taken off the land in other resources. We don't know how many billions of dollars have gone out in fish, and most of the fish that you people get have been wasted.

I am what you call a packer. I packed fish for 46 years for a company. I've packed all kinds of fish.

In the wintertime I go out scouting for herring. I used to go to places like Poison Cove, the west coast of Vancouver Island and the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands. There was a lot of herring in those days. There were places where the wash of the boat would kill them. There were so many in a bay. You don't see that anymore. You might get into one small corner and see a few homesteaders in there.

Nothing is there anymore. So it goes for the rest of our land. It's been depleted of everything. As soon as — what would you say now? — the Europeans came amongst us, maybe 200 years ago…. It's been a downhill slide since then. Most of this started for the fisheries when the fishery people were put in charge of our salmon.

We used to have all this fish around us, and we traded it with the people inland, which was what our great Saviour put it there for us to do with. We worked on a barter system. There was never a person who starved. There was never a person who went without fish. We took what we had, and we took it in-country and traded with them. There was still lots of fish left over. You don't see that anymore.

We've asked you to come to Port Simpson, the few of you. Look how many of you…. You can put you all in one plane, instead of bringing a whole nation in here to meet in a small room that is barely big enough to hold them. We'd let you roam through a whole big gymnasium. We'd treat you to seafood. We'd show you who you are. But these things are not there anymore. They've been wiped out.

They've had divers go down and clean out the abalone below the low-water mark. How we got abalone in our time was to wait until low tide and take what we could. If there was nothing there to take, so be it. The rest was left alone to reproduce.

Now we sit in a room like this, face to face, almost enemies. You came to our land 200 years ago, and we welcomed you. We said: "Take this. Help us with it. We want to help you." This went along fine, as the giving was from the nation, but then other people came along and said that they wanted to do this and they wanted to do that.

White man's businesses started. They started to make money, and they said: "Well, we need more land. Move the Indians out." The missionaries were told to get rid of the Indians but to save the man. That means: "Take the Indian out of the man, but save him so he can work for us."

Then we ran into places called residential schools, which is a hot item today. There are not very many

amongst us that haven't been touched by that. It's a national shame, and it was done by the churches.

You come along, and you ask us: "What are we going to do about this?" It's something that you people are to blame for. You're the ones that brought it upon yourselves. You couldn't sit back and say: "We're going to help you. We'll do a two-way thing. You help us; we'll help you." No. Money got in the way.

You said to yourselves that all these Indians running around here didn't need all this land. You started inventing ways to say: "Well, we own the land. You don't own any land. This is Crown land." Now, can any of you tell me how on God's green earth a crown got onto my land?

We've been living on this land — my tribe, my people — since before Christ, before Jesus, before the Flood. We were here. We were never anywhere else. We didn't go across and say: "I've got a flag. I'm going to stick it in the ground here, and I'm going to tell them it's mine." Just because somebody didn't pass them that day on his way to work or something, they said that it's barren land, that there's nobody here. That's not so.

You're God-fearing people. You brought us Christianity, and then you made liars out of yourselves. You didn't actually do what the Good Book told you to do, which is to look after your neighbour.

We've got a book the same as yours. It's the same as the Ten Commandments. It's called ayaawx Tsimshian. It's the things that our elders from 50,000 million years ago have taught us, and they've never changed. Maybe how you interpret them may have changed because of the people in it, but it's never changed. They're all the same things. Honour your fellow man. Help him if he's down. Don't ever see a starvation come amongst you. All of this.

Yet 100 years after you got here, there was starvation starting here. You brought sicknesses that were foreign to us. We had no way to fight them. We'd never seen them before, but you brought them in amongst us. Then somebody got the bright idea: "Let's use the blankets that the people that had smallpox died on. We'll give it to the Indians. They'll contract it, and we'll wipe them out."

They forgot that we're a hardy brand. And besides, we've got our own medicines that we believe in. A medicine is not any good to you unless you put your soul into it, and you can't put your soul into anything unless you believe in it. I believe in my way of life, and my way is to be left alone.

Right now we have the port authority coming to us. They live in Prince Rupert. Prince Rupert is my island and the other nine chiefs'. The island belongs to us. Nothing belongs to Prince Rupert. They didn't buy anything. Some little short guy got off a boat and said: "Hey, there's a nice piece of land here. I guess I'll call it Prince Rupert." That's what he did. He saw the land where the tribes were was all cleared. All he had to do was to put roads on and sell it, and along come people who sell land.

They settled down here. They started using the trees. They wore those out. You fly across any of our land here from border to border, and you will see nothing but scorched land. It was something like in the war; they talked about scorched land. I've seen it on the Queen Charlotte Islands. I spent a long, long time going from nation to nation when I was a fish collector. I've seen whole islands torched just to get rid of the underbrush, to make sure they can plant trees and pick these trees and take them within a few years.

Big, great pieces of land were given to Crown Zellerbach — big logging company. They never asked us: "Can we give your land away?" No. "It's Queen's grant or King's grant — belongs to the Crown." Can we, as the Tsimshian people, go over to Great Britain and say to them: "This is Tsimshian ground"? You know what would happen? They'd run us off the end of the dock. Yet that's exactly what happened when they came here.

They brought in other nations to fish our fish. They brought in other nations to log. It got so that the province was getting crowded, but they were still bringing in more people. Not us. They didn't ask us anything. Some people were lost in a boat out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a whole bunch of refugees from somewhere, and they said: "Come into British Columbia. We'll give you land. It's not ours, but we'll give it to you anyway."

That's where we stand today. You're coming to us with another problem. How are we going to do this? What are we going to do? Who's going to say that the land is theirs or that the land isn't? We're talking about aboriginal people. White guy got up and said: "You're not aboriginal people." I said: "Maybe you should read your own dictionary. Find out what an aboriginal people is."

They did the same in Australia, and they called the people there Aborigines. They told them they didn't belong to the land.

It doesn't matter where you go. If we don't find some way to bridge the gap, we're going to always have this — always. We're getting to the point now where it might become militant. We're not going to wait around for a long time. There's only so much of this you can stand. The more education our children get, the more they'll know that we are not being treated as equals. That is a hard pill to swallow.

I was here with the Duke of Edinburgh. He wanted to go up into the Khutzeymateen Valley and have it changed into a bear sanctuary. I agreed with him, because a year before that we had stumbled on the carcasses of 17 bears that were shot on the beach and gutted — the hands cut off and the heads taken. The rest was left there to rot. The Valhalla Society went in there with me.

These things come up. We do not hear about them until they are done. I talked to my people. I said: "Let's try to be a society that proacts." But we don't know what we're going to proact to when nobody tells us what's going on.

I really would like to invite you over to Port Simpson and have a feast. You talk to the people there. You shouldn't be talking to just a few people. The whole

nation of the Tsimshian, the Nisga'a, the Wet'suwet'en — they should all be there to listen to what you have to say.

Yet you're still doing it piecemeal. You might gain here; you might lose there. You might push this thing back or push that back. We're consistently getting pushed into a corner. We don't need that. Life is hard enough. There's no fish to go fishing for. There's nothing out there.

I'm a diesel mechanic by trade. I've got nothing to mechanic. Even if I did, the guy with the boat doesn't have any money to pay me. It's a vicious circle. It's a catch-22, and I'm urging you from the bottom of my heart…. As a sm'ooygit, I'm asking you for my people: try and see our side of the coin. Try and do this before things get too late and they pile up on you and there's no way around it.

We are going to have a march on this port. We don't want you using our land for nothing. At least you should have shown the decency to come and say: "Can we put a port on your land?" Everything from the mouth to the headwaters of the Skeena belongs to all of us — not just a few Tsimshian, the whole nation.

The Nass River comes our way, and we and the Nass River people join together. I've asked when we had a Tsimshian Tribal Council that amongst all the people in the north, they form a committee or some kind of a service that will put all our people together in one place and go to Victoria with it. It may be a little early for us, because we're still learning the ways of the white man. We've got to learn the devious ways as well as the rest of it that goes with it. If we can get somebody down to Victoria who will keep an eye on things and speak for us, it would be a different thing, but we haven't.

I asked some of the people who come to our meetings in Port Simpson with the Allied Tribes: "How about bringing a line minister in with you so we could talk to them? How about bringing in a minister who's comparable to our chiefs?" Consistently, they've sent people who work in the front office. They might have a day off or something. "They've got nothing to do? Send them over to Port Simpson. They can talk to them."

I'm 75 years old now. I've been talking to white people ever since I got out of high school. They know who I am. In Prince Rupert they know who I am. I'm always going and saying to the mayor of Prince Rupert: "If you don't smarten up, I'm going to take your little village and move it off my land."

He asked Bob Hill, of the TTC. He said, "Can he do that?" and he told him: "Yes. You guys have no titles." You can say: "I bought this house in Rupert, and I paid so-and-so." So-and-so didn't put anything in my pocket, so it's still mine.

There are other people who want to talk. I can go on for hours like this. I must have been a politician sometime in my life. I thank you for listening, and welcome to our land.

T. Green: [Sm'algyax spoken.] My name is [Sm'algyax spoken]. I am one of the house leaders of the Ganhada-Gits'iis tribe, and also one of the speakers. I speak for Niesyaganagt. I just wanted to say something on what I heard from a previous speaker here. You know when you put this fish farm in areas…. What it could do to the wildlife — what you heard Eugene say here — that also bothers me and the people of the Lax Kw'alaams and all the people that are sitting in here today.

You heard Marvin say about that farm they had up — where was that, Marvin? — in Union Bay there. You can just imagine if this comes forward and is done. You're taking all those wild species away from us. You're taking food off our table when you do things like this, and when this happens, whatever happens, you know what is going to happen. You've heard it from Marvin already.

When that does happen, does each and every one of you know how long it's going to take for that wildlife to come back again? What are we going to put on the table for our people? What would we have for our future generation that's coming? This, we've got to think about.

I truly, truly go along with [Sm'algyax spoken], Eugene, the sm'ooygit here. We have to think, and think really hard, of our people, of our new generation that's coming. I really, really am thankful to see each and every one of you here today — everyone, all the different nations that are standing here with us today. We welcome you to the Gits'iis land. It's good to know that you're here to be as one and to work as one. Thank you.

L. Helin: Our answer to the fish farming is: absolutely not. No. Negative. None. Thank you.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Excuse me. I wonder if we could be given names. This is a formal record. It's going into Hansard, and we'd like to get the names of the speakers so we can enter them into the record. Could you do that? Write them down or restate them.

T. Green: I gave my name as [Sm'algyax spoken], but like you said, my white-man name is Terry Green.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): We'll take either, but we do need a name for the record. You spoke well. We wouldn't want to misquote you.

L. Helin: My name is Laurence Helin, and my name is Niesyaganagt. It means "coming down from an incline."

S. Dennis: Again, we're bringing the rest of our spokespersons from the Allied Tribes. I think it's only fitting that the message that we bring today is our opinions and how we feel, as allied tribes, on fish farms.

I'd like to thank the Gitwilgyoots and the Gits'iis, addressing the panel here. Now the rest of the tribal members and tribal leaders from each individual tribe will have a few words to say on their issues in regard to fish farms. I beg your indulgence. The Gispaxlo'ots tribe [Sm'algyax spoken].

W. Ryan: [Sm'algyax spoken.] Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Wayne Ryan. I belong to the Eagle tribe. My name is [Sm'algyax spoken]. The Eagle tribe

Digby here is 5,000 years old. The shell middens are over nine feet deep not only here, but all out Dundas through the Metlakatla pass here. Our people have three villages. They move wherever they gather their food. Up the Nass, where they begin after the cold spell to harvest oolichan, there was a big village there.

We move around wherever and up the Skeena in the fall to harvest our fish there, to dry them and to go hunting. Before they come down, they gather the berries there. Before they come down, they go up in the canoe to the Indian villages, below Terrace there, to trade their seafood. Even today we still trade with the people up the Skeena. I do. This is what I was taught — to trade with our people, to share our Indian food on the coast.

Now all our rivers where there were fish are gone. Why? Because of logging. The government made big money out of our logs, our trees. Why don't they use that money now and clean up our rivers? That's the reason why we're short of salmon today. When the salmon come through this town now, there's no work like it used to be when I was a young man.

There were about 12 canneries through the Skeena here, plugged with fish. They were piled on the dock. The packers were full. I've seen that. The canneries worked day and night, all 12 canneries, for three weeks or one month with the heavy fishing on the Skeena there. Now you don't see that.

Even halibut. All the coastal people here up the Nass, the Skeena…. The boats were just plugged out there. Everybody got their own landmark. They never crossed others' lines. If you don't use your landmark, you don't catch the halibut. That's our way. Now you've got to have a ticket to run a boat. Then you have to ask permission to cut down an alder tree, which is standing on our land. Who put those trees on our land? It wasn't you guys. It was the Creator, for us to use. All the shellfish were planted there by our creator. Now it's almost wiped out again.

I used to listen to our grandfather. We'd all sit around a table. He's telling these stories, all about the coast here. Now it's you guys' turn to take care of our lands that we look after for your kids and your kids to come.

Just a few years ago the white man put wolves on our islands at Dundas. Now it's killing off the little, small animals — beaver, mink. They are even eating our clams out there. The white men say: "We don't know who put them there." There was no wolf around there before, but now it is overrun with wolves.

I'd like to thank our brothers from Bulkley Valley there, come all the way down, who stand with us, and from the Nass. Thank you. We eat the same seafood. We open our land here for other people. We share our land, our seafood. We never charged anybody, because our creator gave it to us.

I see the fish farm in Simpson there, Union Bay, Work Channel. I see the packers bypass us with a load of fish. There was no work for us. They just put them on the truck, I guess, and shipped them to Vancouver. I think the same thing is going to happen.

S. Dennis: Also, I'd like to read a letter from one of the sigidmhanaa or the Gispaxlo'ots [Sm'algyax spoken], Marietta Helin.

To move on with our tribal speakers here, I was asked if you can be specific to the fish farm issues when you're speaking on how we feel. This is the message we want to deliver.

Next we have the Lax Kw'alaams tribe. [Sm'algyax spoken.] Rod Henry will be speaking.

I've been asked to explain how the gentleman who's going to speak on behalf of the house today got there. He was chosen to be the next spokesperson for the Lax Kw'alaams tribe. [Sm'algyax spoken.] He is the [Sm'algyax spoken] in training. He is the next one who will come to hold the name [Sm'algyax spoken].

R. Henry: I'm sitting here listening to our previous tribal speakers. You're here, and you're talking about fisheries. You're talking about forestry. You're talking about the creatures of the land, and you're asking us to talk about fish farms. We are. All of those things are tied together. We can't talk about one without talking about the other, because it is affected by what happens to one.

I wonder how you feel about the Fisheries questions that are being asked of you, because I know you do not have a department of fisheries in this province. I wonder how you feel about the concerns being brought to Fisheries. They're sitting there thinking: it doesn't concern me. You aren't just elected people of this province. You are citizens of Canada. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a fiduciary obligation to protect wild species. I ask you: what are you doing even entertaining farm aquaculture? It is a Fisheries issue. I wonder how you can sit there and think you can manage this, when it is a Fisheries issue. I'm wondering if you are aware that Norway has banned fish farms in some of their fjords. It's mind-boggling.

If we were in Africa, would you sell lion meat because there's lots of wildebeest to feed the lions? Salmon are a predator. They're one of the most massively abundant predators in the world, and I've seen nothing good come out of penning them up, catching biomass to feed them and grow them to feed people.

Look what's happening in Alaska. They ranch their salmon. They raise them to that big, and then they let them go. That only benefits the ecosystem. Those smolts go out to sea and feed everything that's out

there — everything that the tourists of the world come to B.C. to see. They don't come here to see salmon in pens. They come here to see the killer whales. They come here to see the eagles and the wolves.

Mr. Austin, Mr. Coons, I know you were on the Skeena. How many grizzly bears do you see when you drive the Fraser River? How many do you see between here and Terrace? What will the tourists come to see when those are gone?

There is so much at stake here. It is mind-boggling to think the Ministry of Agriculture is trying to manage a Department of Fisheries issue. The department of fisheries in Norway has stepped up to the plate and acknowledged that farmed salmon and wild salmon cannot coexist. We are here in the last pristine wilderness in the world. Why would you jeopardize that?

Salmon are what make B.C. beautiful. It isn't just the animals. It isn't just the people that make a living off of it. The trees. You can check DNA in trees, and it traces back to salmon. It's the most abundant fertilizer in the world, and you're jeopardizing it.

There's just so much at stake. Your committee is called Sustainable Aquaculture. I wonder who it will sustain. What rights will the people here have to that penned salmon? Will Pan Fish let our people go in there with dip nets and feed themselves at no cost? I think not. The people of the Skeena River who are dealing with tourism right now — what will you do when you lose their tax dollars?

There's just so much at stake, and you ask us only to talk about farmed salmon. I remind you that we are. There is just so much at stake. It is a huge, huge thing that you're trying to decide here.

I will remind you that when you first came into office, you had a referendum on treaty issues. That is not your jurisdiction. Now I'm asking you, on behalf of the people of the Skeena River, for another referendum, which should be tied to the Skeena ridings and the coast, asking: do you want penned salmon farms situated at the mouth of your rivers?

I wonder what kind of binding these hearings will have. Will you go away and just say: "Oh, okay. That's their concern, and that's their concern. I'll put this pile, this pile, this pile…. I like this pile better. Forget that one"? I wonder what you're hearing. Is it going to be binding?

I told you in the radio interview, Mr. Austin, that our community is 100 percent against farmed salmon, and that will be reiterated tonight. But to you all, I do call for a referendum.

What good is a hearing with a small portion of the people in these ridings? One hundred percent of these people are against…. But there are only so many people here out of this community and the communities around us. You need to get full information from the people of these ridings and hear from them all. Whether they're for it or against it, hear from them all. Give everyone the opportunity to have their piece, even if it's only a checkmark on a box that says: "No, I don't want fish farms." That allows them to make a statement.

I thank my leaders here today for allowing me to speak. My thoughts are theirs, and theirs are mine. That is why they have allowed me to do this.

I ask again: how can you sit here and deal with Department of Fisheries and Oceans issues when there is no Department of Fisheries and Oceans in this province? You do not have one in your Legislature. Fish farms are a Department of Fisheries and Oceans issue.

Norway has been fish farming for 60 years, and they acknowledge that it is a fisheries issue. They did not hand it off to the department of agriculture. They dealt with it and acknowledged that there were problems.

Alexandra Morton. Like I've said before, she's gone into the Broughton Archipelago to study the apex predator on our coast. That disappeared in her time studying them, and she started to find out why. That is science. You can't ignore that.

I'll have to cut myself off now because there are so many people here that want to speak. I ask again that you keep in mind a referendum specific to the Skeena ridings and the coast. Ask the people how they feel about Norway having fish-farm-free zones and about Norwegian companies coming here because they can't go there.

Don't let the almighty tax dollar blow you over, you heard one of our speakers say. Don't let the almighty dollar get you. I was in politics, and I understand that a balanced budget is important. But we also understand as a first nation that the ecology around us is equally important, if not more, because without the ecology around us, there is no economy for first nations people. The ecology is our economy. Without it we are lost. Thank you.

We come before you today as a panel to reiterate our concern that we would have wished you guys to come over to Lax Kw'alaams. We had two ferries come over and pick us up today. As was mentioned, our elders have been here for quite some time, so I ask that you show the respect that they are due and allow them to be heard.

Our issue is with the Gitando tribe here. We have grave concerns with fish farms in general. I've mentioned it before, and we've made no secret of it. The fish farm issue needs to be addressed from the south to the north, not vice versa.

The fish farms have been in the south for how many years now? Give us a report on their resources. Where are they with that? Have they restocked all the resources, and are the first nations benefiting from that? Has anybody been benefiting from it? We haven't seen anything documented whatsoever in regards to how the fish stocks are surviving down south, if they are, or how the clam beds are. We have seen documentaries from the Broughton. That is just terrible.

We want to be straightforward as the Gitando tribe, along with all the other tribes of the Allied Tribes. Our message wants to be heard loud and clear. We have our territory up the Skeena River. Our tribe belongs to

an estuary that flows into the Skeena. When you bring in fish farms…. If there's going to be a fish farm anywhere near the Skeena's estuaries, you can bet your bottom dollar that it is going to affect what is running into our rivers, as the Gitando.

One of the other issues we want to bring forward in regards to fish farms is: where do our rights fit within fish farms? We're exercising our rights today.

Sure, there are issues with Kitkatla members, but as you will hear later on, it's not with all Kitkatla. There seem to be a select few that are pushing the fish farm issue. We haven't heard from their total membership, but I can guarantee you, from our total membership, that we are opposed to fish farms and will remain that way — from the Allied Tribes and the Lax Kw'alaams band.

On behalf of us, as the Gitando tribe, take this message and heed our words. The Gitando, as one of the Allied Tsimshian Tribe members, forbid fish farms to be brought into the north here until you show us that the stocks are sustained in the south and that we will be compensated if there's anything that goes wrong. I've never heard of any compensation.

I've heard of your hearings down south and on Vancouver Island. The fish farm industry was well represented. The first nations weren't well represented in those hearings. The commercial sector didn't have any representation. So with that, I say to you, Robin Austin, Gary Coons and to the panel of members here: let the message be clear to you on where we are coming from.

We are not just speaking from the Lax Kw'alaams standpoint. We are speaking in regards to the territory. There's representation here from every other nation, including the non–first nations, which needs to be heard. With that, the Gitando tribe wants to bring the message out that we are against fish farms and do not condone any fish farms being brought in the north. Thank you very much.

On behalf of the Giluts'aaw tribe, [Sm'algyax spoken], speaking on behalf of [Sm'algyax spoken].

A Voice: Committee, I want to address you on behalf of my chief [Sm'algyax spoken]. My Indian name is [Sm'algyax spoken] of the Giluts'aaw tribe. I'm the chosen spokesperson. I talked to my chief before I came in. She reiterated it to me, and I'm quite certain that the rest of our tribe is 100 percent opposed to fish farms in our traditional territory.

I want to know how, if you guys release and give the permission for fish farms to go into our territory, you can take that delicacy away from our elders, from our future children. You're taking that delicacy off their plate. To me, that is not right.

To Mr. Austin: how, when you were given an invite to our community, do you come back and say you can't come to the community until October? What is up with that? You can make the time to go to the village of Kitkatla. Our flight is less — 15 minutes. Make that stopover. Meet our hereditary leaders.

Instead, they had to get on a ferry — early in the morning, mind you — to come to meet your panel. And when we get here, we get into the building and we're told to wait. We've got to wait around for another hour. You know how some of these elders are up in age. They get tired. We respect that. We try to get them out of the building as soon as possible so they can rest.

Yep, I'd really like to know how you guys are to go about making this decision to put fish farms in the traditional territory when I want a guarantee that my children, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren will have the chance to have that taste of the wild salmon. I know you guys won't answer me right now, but I know that not one of you will ever go up to one of my children and say: "I'm sorry we did this." You won't. You'll sit back in your offices and, yeah, let it slide.

I don't like it. I want to make sure that we don't have fish farms. From my tribe again: we are 100 percent opposed. So do what you can, and do the right thing. No to fish farms. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Geddes Wesley. My Indian name is [Sm'algyax spoken]. I'm speaking on behalf of my sm'ooygit here, Niisho'at of the Gitzaklalth tribe. We'd like to have our traditional fishing area, seafood area and shellfish area all protected from fish farms, and we are totally against fish farms — 100 percent. That's all I have to say.

S. Dennis: Thank you. The Gitandoiks tribe, Sm'ooygit [Sm'algyax spoken], also to stand with [Sm'algyax spoken] Murray Reece.

You all see that we're all here, that we would like to get an understanding of what's happening about this fish farm. I quite agree with this, which I heard of the chiefs — what they explained. They said they don't want it, and I don't like to see it either. I've seen it in Work's canal there at Union Bay. A little ways from that canal they had a fish farm there.

One of the hunters ran into it. He said he couldn't stand the smell of that fish food. He had to get away. He told the people in our village, passed the word around. I quite believe what this man said.

There are a lot of our people who have hunted a lot of areas, not only one area. There are a lot of places where they go, away up in the bush, even now. I'm so proud of what they do.

For me, I go trapping. I go up the Skeena River. That's a big river, the Gitnadoix River. I'm chief spokesman of the Gitandoiks tribe, and I see what's happening. We had a shack up in our trapping ground.

What really happened…. These workers that tried to put up a shack, another place, burned ours down. We had no place to stay, nowhere to sleep. We had to pitch a tent to do our trapping.

I used to go out with my stepfather, like in April. We had great times. We trapped for beavers. It's a great honour for me what he does. He showed us all the things he used to do. On the way up, he'd keep telling us: "See this land here. There's a big slide there. There's a tunnel there that goes over." We had to go under there to go by it, and the river was still running. We had to send somebody else on the other side, and he threw a rope back to pull the canoe up so that we could get by there and get up on the lake.

We had a great time at that place there. They call that place [Sm'algyax spoken]. It's a great word. There are lots of words up the Gitnadoix River. There's one mountain there where you could stand below and holler up at that mountain. I can't do it myself. I haven't got the voice to holler up.

I used to hear that man. His name was Mark Grebe. He hollered up in that place. That mountain answered him. What he said comes out up there. He had the voice to do it.

I'm not quite pleased at what I see in that river. The Gitnadoix River — such a big river — that I still honour today. See all the fish in that river? In September they're just boiling underwater — all kinds of fish. In the springtime they go out into the Pacific, and that's when fish spread out everywhere so the fishermen would catch them.

That's why I'd really like to protect that area. I'd like to see that these men that burned our shack down rebuild our shack in the same place. This is what I want, so we can go back trapping there with my boys — my three boys at home. I have two grandsons who are grown up now. They can do it.

I just love rowing in a canoe. The Tsimshian call it [Sm'algyax spoken] duwaay. They row. They get in a canoe, and they row. They never used an outboard. They used a pole. They go upriver.

I'm so pleased at what I see with my stepfather — what he taught us. Even my other chief, [Sm'algyax spoken] — he's a great man. He knows a lot. But he had to go fishing. He can't keep away from fishing to make a living, but there are no fish out there.

Fishermen are crying out there now. I'd like to see the fishermen get back fishing. I'd like to see trolling come back, that our people would go back trolling again. I just love going trolling. I have my boys come out with me and troll. They just enjoyed themselves. How they caught fish, one after another, going back and forth, taking turns. They were so happy.

Now the fishery is closed there. Why? I'd like to know. Is it only one year? Look how long it took now for one year. Year after year nothing happens. When is our trolling going to open up again? This I'd like to see.

It's a great honour. I'd like to get back on that Skeena River to row back up there again in a canoe to do the work.

It's a great honour to see that each and every one of you is here. I'm so thankful that you've come and listened to us. We've given our voice to you to get what we want. What they said is that they disagree with farmed fish. I disagree with that too. I'll go 100 percent with that.

My tribes. I know some of them are busy right now trying to be prepared for food fish, but still, there are no fish to catch and put in jars for our own use for the winter.

I'm so thankful to be here today to honour you people who listen to us — every one of us, all the chiefs. It's about time for us to place our voice to you — to know what we say and try to get what we want. This we've got to do. I'd like to see it in the near future. Thank you very much.

Robin, I just want to point out to you that we don't have too many more to go, so it'll move along. I would ask those that are presenting to be precise and a little bit more to the point.

I'd like to call upon a member from Kitkatla, Conrad Lewis, to do a presentation here.

When we traditionally talk in Kitkatla, it's usually all Kitkatla that come and speak. I've noticed now through the building that we've got Kitkatla people here that speak in favour of fish farms. They had their opportunity out at Kitkatla to speak to you guys. Whenever they control a meeting, they'll pay our way out. Whenever they like what we say, they'll pay our way back in. If they don't like what we say, we pay 650 bucks to come in.

You guys control this meeting. I asked for an hour and a half out there, an hour and a half here, so we do not infringe on our fellow Tsimshian, our fellow Gitxsan, our fellow Haisla, our fellow Haida and our fellow Nisga'a. We did not want to infringe on their time here because this would have been a perfect opportunity for them to talk.

Now we are forced, because that didn't happen, to have to do what we're always forced to do. All of us here, my aunts and uncles all included, have to work here and are forced to have to go to Kitkatla to voice our concerns. When it doesn't work in their favour, if they can't control what we say, then we pay our own way back into town.

Then I go out to a meeting and see all the rest of my aunts out there not saying a word — not one word. I speak to them the way I speak to everybody here. When I was in amongst the All-Native Tournament…. I know all these people all the way up the line — all the way to Alaska, all the way down to the Nuu-chah-nulth people. Every reserve I go to, there's the same problem. But in Kitkatla, my own hometown, I see people scared to speak, because leaders, who call themselves leaders, suppress that. That is not the way to go.

I miss my uncle, the house to which we'd come [Sm'algyax spoken], for he would not allow this. He would be with everybody. Whenever there was a problem in town, he'd come to town. Rain or shine or wind — it didn't matter — he'd come to town for us.

Now we're fighting with our own people, and some are our own families. Now I have the embarrassment of going to my village and seeing my aunts scared to speak, my uncles scared to speak, my cousins scared to speak. That is not leadership. That is not speaking on behalf of Kitkatla. I speak on behalf of all Kitkatla people — behind my aunts, behind my uncles, even if they're in Vancouver. I shake the hands of any of my cousins, regardless what their opinions are on fish farm issues or anything else.

We have a right to speak. Everybody has an inherent right to say whatever they want regardless of what the outcome is, and not to be forced to say…. The rumours that I hear about no social assistance, no funding if you speak against…. These are the trashy things that I hear, and it's going to stop now.

When somebody passes away, we gather, as we are today, and we say [Sm'algyax spoken]. Yet when it's done and over, we go back to fighting over fish farms, over land use plans where we're giving away our land for pennies. People are talking about these people selling their creeks. Take those fish farms and put them on your creeks.

Where are your creeks? Bring them to your creeks and put them there, because the ones that are speaking — the ones that are giving away my family's creeks — don't even have creeks in that village. They have creeks in other places. There are only maybe one or two that have creeks. The rest of them do not. These people do: my aunts, my uncles and my fellow Kitkatla members.

I've gone in the newspapers saying that Kitkatla is 85 to 90 percent opposed to fish farms. I stand on that number. I'll stand on it and stand on it and stand on it. And when true democracy is given where we can all vote on fish farms on behalf of Kitkatla, that number will be pretty damn close to that.

Bring back democracy. Bring back things to our village. Let us really be truly [Sm'algyax spoken]. No to fish farms.

J. Vickers: I'd like to say something, too. My name is John Vickers, and I'm from Kitkatla.

To the committee: you've heard all those opposed to fish farms. I hope you don't take it too lightly, because if you had the proper room, we'd fill even that too. The persons that organized this meeting, I heard, were from Pan Fish. You see how they organized it. It wasn't the proper size. If they did it right, it would still be full. There are a lot of people out there who are opposed to fish farms, and that needs to be put out in the open for everybody.

I'd like to say something to the Ganhada person who went to Norway: I'd like to thank you very much for taking the message to Norway and to the king. Not only did you give him the message — the king — but he gave the message to everybody here who is against fish farms. I'd like to thank you very much from the bottom of my heart.

I'd like to thank all the chiefs and elders who have come here to speak today. I want to just ensure that people recognize that this room being chosen as the location was not the doing of any fish farm company. It was done by the people who work down in the Legislature to organize and coordinate our meetings around the province, and it's done mostly by what room is available at any given location in any given city. I just want to make that clear.

I also want to just make clear to all members here who are witnessing this today that we on this committee are not able to bring in new fish farms. Nor are we able, as part of our terms of reference, to stop the process for fish farms going on. I just want you all to have that understanding.

This committee is here to go around and listen, and that's what we have done. As you have witnessed for the last two hours or so, we have sat here and listened — not spoken, but listened — to all the voices of all of you here who have made your opinions very evident to us.

S. Dennis: I have just a few more speakers on my agenda there, Robin, and then we can move on to yours. If you will allow me to….

R. Austin (Chair): We are going to recess after your speakers. We are going to recess after that to enable Hansard to finish up the technical setup and for there to be a small break.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): I'd like to just echo the comments. I think one of the elders said it well. We are here to listen. We are the messengers. We hope to be, and we are, your voices, but we have no authority. We're not kings here either. We're just elected officials from our area. We're here to listen, and we're here to take your words forward, and that will compose part of our reports, but we have no authority whatever either to endorse or to restrain.

Ours is yet to listen to the problem and take it forward. This is what the Legislature has set up through the Premier's direction at the request of the Legislature. Thank you.

S. Dennis: Thank you for that, Robin and Ron. I appreciate the opportunity then. Still, our voices will be put across here.

We have a spokesperson from the Haida. I'd like to call upon him now. Bill White. [Sm'algyax spoken], Bill.

Panel or committee or whatever it is that you're called, my name is Bill White. I'm Haida. I'm here to….

B. White: Haida-Tsimshian. I'm half Tsimshian. I told them that earlier. I guess they're not going to let me forget it.

This thing about fish farms should have been talked about a long time ago, when the fish farms were being brought in down south. There was quite a bit of talk about it up here with the last government. They were having problems with fish farms down there. They had to relocate 25 of them because the areas that they had chosen for them were not suitable. So they destroyed 25 areas, and now they want to move it out into 25 new areas and destroy those ones.

You talk about the room that you wanted to rent here. I think, Gary, if you had told the panel here that there's lots of room in the mall…. Lots of businesses have closed down there. It's three or four times the size of this. You could have held a good meeting in there.

One of the other speakers talked about compensation. That should have been talked about a long time ago.

I'm a little older now. When I was in school, this time of the year we wanted to get out of school, not to go play in the sun but to go to work. We used to try to get out of school early, make sure our marks were up high enough so that we didn't have to write the final exams. If you didn't write the final exams, it meant you got into the cannery a little bit earlier, and some of the other people didn't have the opportunity to get in there.

We used to work quite a bit in those days. We used to work three or four months on salmon — never mind the halibut and other stuff that we used to work on. But now, through the wisdom of DFO, we only work two or three weeks a year on salmon. Then most of that salmon we work on in Rupert here is not even Canadian salmon. It's brought down from Alaska.

With all the trouble that we're having with fish not returning to our rivers, not being able to employ our people, not being able to feed our people, why are we even talking about introducing fish farms and new species into a system that is not set up for it? You hear other people talk about the Creator. If the Creator wanted Atlantic salmon to be brought over to the Pacific, he would have put it here.

All the trouble we're having with the salmon, the herring, the roe and kelp…. We used to be rich before, but now you see the fishermen and our people, first nations people, running around trying to make sure we have enough for the winter, until the next season starts.

Everything is changing. The only thing that's not changing is that the first nations are still sharing. I don't know how we got to be so good about sharing. When the Europeans came over here, they saw us share. We thought share was give-and-take. Well, we soon found out it is. We give. They take. That's what I mean about things that are going on.

Compensation. Like I said, we used to work three or four months a year in the cannery. Now we work two or three weeks. There's no compensation for those people who are out of work now. There's no compensation for those people who are no longer fishing. There's no compensation for the people who've lost their boats. The majority of those people are first nations people.

We need to sit back and take a look at what is going on. You come here to listen. You say you are listening. That's good, but we want you to hear loud and clear that we do not want fish farms. Why? Because it doesn't cause anything but trouble. We don't want to see fish farms anywhere in our territory. I'm talking about the Haida territory, not the Tsimshian. We don't want to see any fish farms.

I used to sit down and listen to the elders and the leaders speaking when they said: "When the tide is out, the table is set." But that table is getting damn small, because there's nothing on the table anymore. Everything is gone.

You heard them talking about the abalone. They didn't tell you that it's been about 20 years now since we've been able to enjoy abalone. When they put the fishing ban on abalone, they said: "Don't worry. In five years you'll be able to fish it." Twenty years later we're still waiting.

We can't even protect what we have here, and we're talking about introducing something new. What are we learning about the process that we've followed already? You heard the people say that they went to Norway, and they're saying no more fish farms in their fjords. That should be telling us something right there. They don't want to do it in their back yard, like it was said earlier. They want to do it in our back yard. Well, we don't want it.

There are other things that we have to worry about. We have to worry about what we've got. By that, I mean that we have a container port coming in. I was watching one of those bigger ships come in the other day, with two pilot boats guiding it in. One of the things I noticed on that boat was that they were pumping water out. What's in that water? Where did it come from? What's it doing to our water? How many diseases are we bringing over here because they want to dump their bilge water here?

With the increased traffic that we're expecting on the container port, there's going to be more bilge water put out there. More bilge water means more oil out on the water, and that means that if they happen to go past where the Tsimshian pick their seaweed…. Well, there's going to be no more seaweed there next time, because the bilge water is going to wipe it out.

One thing really disturbed me when you came in, and that was what Robin said. You said you can't start the meeting because Hansard isn't ready yet, and it's not official. But I like to think that if I say anything to my MLA, who is Gary Coons, I hope that's official,

whether it's recorded or not, because I want my words…. When I say to an MLA — whether it's my MLA or one of you — that you have to go down there and say it, it has to be official record, whether we have the machinery to do it or not.

I want to thank the Tsimshian for allowing me to speak on their territory. I just want them to know that I as a Haida will be standing beside them. Howa.

S. Dennis: Thank you, Bill. Now we have a representative from Kitamaat Village. I call upon Gerald Amos. [Sm'algyax spoken.]

Before I start, my name is [Haisla spoken] from the Beaver tribe in Kitamaat. I'm not here as an official spokesman. I want Hansard to record that really clearly, or else I'll get in trouble. I am here speaking for my family and for myself, and I've got a pretty big family in Kitamaat.

Without exception, they are — like I am — opposed to fish farms, particularly in the northern regions where they haven't been introduced yet. I'm not going to take a lot of your time, because I'm simply here to reinforce the message you've already heard. I suppose I can sum it up really quickly. For the provincial government and for the industry, my question is simple: what part of "no" is not being understood?

S. Dennis: Thank you, Gerald. Now we have a Nisga'a elder I'd like to call forward. Dorothy Young, Sm'ooygit. Sm'ooygit Max Haines. [Sm'algyax spoken.]

First of all, I would like to thank the Tsimshian Nation for allowing me and the Nisga'a elders to be here at this time. I'm representing the elders. This is one of them, and there is an elder sitting back there. She should have been up here with us and the rest of Nisga'a from Kincolith, Nass River.

I'm Wolf clan, a chieftain of the Nass River. [Nisga'a spoken.] I've been fishing for about 55 years total. I started when I was 14, and I am now going on to 73. I've seen the changes in the fishing industry over the years that I commercially fished. The Department of Fisheries has introduced a lot of new regulations, cutbacks, buybacks. I often wondered why they didn't spend the money on enhancing our rivers and our creeks instead of the buybacks for decreasing the fleet. Once you decrease the fleet, there are more jobs lost.

I was one of the persons who were picked about two years ago for a group at the Crest. I think there were ten or eight of us. There was one young Safeway fellow. He was working there. Another one was a retired school teacher, one school teacher, and I think there were two or three businessmen. I was the only commercial fisherman and first nation in there at that time.

From what they told us at that time, what they wanted to hear…. There was a mike on the table like this, as we were on a circular table. Directly from there it was supposed to be audible, whatever we were talking about. We only used our first names at the time. We were not allowed to make any notes.

From all of that group everyone was against fish farms. We didn't only talk about fish farms. We also talked about the environment and the Department of Fisheries — what they were doing. I have never heard any report out of that. I've attended lots of standing committees like you are now. No report.

I've never heard one report. Most of them I've gone through are against fish farms. Where is it coming from that they're still going to fight to put them there? It seems like our voices are talking to a stone wall. Nobody's listening. Nobody's listening to our concerns.

It just gets me a little bit upset that our future generations, our grandchildren…. It has already been pointed out that there's no more abalone. My grandchildren don't even know where the abalone is. It's sort of…. I don't know how to put it. Like I said, I've been fishing for 55 years, and I could see the different changes.

They're introducing something that doesn't work. They've conned us in to selective fishing. We've tried every regulation they've put on us, and we abide by them. We try to follow the rules to save our wild salmon. We bent over backwards to save our wild salmon, and then you're introducing fish farms, and that's going to take it all away — wipe it out.

In my mind the Atlantic salmon, once they mix up into the rivers, will contaminate the wild salmon. You wouldn't see it right away, but they won't reproduce. The wild salmon would never reproduce, and they'll eventually get wiped out. That's my theory.

Across the border, up in Alaska, they're dead against fish farms. I remember that a few years back, there were 30,000 Atlantic salmon that broke loose out of one of the boats that delivered them to Port Hardy — 30,000, and some of them ended up in Alaska. They were quite upset once they saw those fish farms and those Atlantic salmon — really upset. I have relatives up there.

To cut it short, I'd like to hear what comes out of this panel you have here — in the newspaper or wherever. How can you let us know? I've gone to enough of them, and not one that I've heard….

No to fish farms — 100 percent with my people. No to fish farms, please. As hereditary chief of the Nass River, I'm begging you: no fish farms, because I can see what it's going to do to our environment. A million dollars, as an elder said at one of the meetings they went to in Vancouver, was offered to Kitkatla. One elder said that the million dollars you're talking about is like peanuts, like five cents, for what it's going to do to our environment. And he's right. That's very true.

R. Austin (Chair): Just for everyone's knowledge, there will be an interim report coming out in the fall and a final report in May of 2007. Those reports will be available. Anybody who would like to give their address to Brant would be able to get a copy of that report, and it's also on the website.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): All the proceedings that we record — and that's why we like to have them recorded — will be posted on our website. They're also in audio form, so you can get them recorded and spread them to whoever you wish.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): It takes a few days for Hansard to collate and put them in, but they're available in a few days.

A Voice: The only reason why I'm asking is if you're going to be going up to Terrace and further on, would they be able to get to see what we're doing here?

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Well, we'll be in Terrace tomorrow, so it won't happen that fast. It takes a while to record them.

S. Simpson: Thank you very much for the words of people here. I just wanted to clarify what we are doing, from my view. This committee isn't just listening. It is our job to listen. It is our job to hear what you have to say.

We're also looking at issues around the science, around the economics, around the environmental impacts. We've been put here not by the government but by the Legislature and the 79 members of the Legislature. We represent ten of those 79 members, chosen by the Legislature to be here.

Our job is to report back to the Legislature with recommendations — not just listening, but to make recommendations. When we do that the Legislature will receive that report, and the government will ultimately have to deal with those recommendations.

We are here to do more than just listen. We are here to hear what you say, to deliberate among ourselves and to make recommendations back to the Legislature of British Columbia. You will get to see what our recommendations are in May of next year when this final report comes down.

A Voice: That's the message that has been given here. You listen to my elders. Listen to what you're saying. They're telling you guys: no to the fish farm. We have a voice.

S. Dennis: If we could get back to our speaker to let him finish, George. Appreciate it. Thank you.

I think the message is getting clearer and clearer for our panel members here. From the Wet'suwet'en, Nanika, I call upon Walter Joseph. Is he present?

W. Joseph: I want to thank the Tsimshian for coming to their territory and listening to this very issue that concerns many first nations and non–first nations along the coast and inland through the watersheds that affect the salmon and the water. It is my respect and training to address the host, and I have chosen to speak to you first. That is our law of the [Sm'algyax spoken], our language, our land and our law — the law, the [Sm'algyax spoken].

I will speak very briefly. I found out later on this afternoon that you'd be situated in the Hazelton area, Kitimat. There will be representatives from the Wet'suwet'en speaking to the issue in regards to the biology reports. I'm very grateful to hear many elders speak very eloquently to the issue.

As you just pointed out a few moments ago, your term of reference is limited, but I think our term of reference is section 35, Delgamuukw-Gisday'wa, in our pocket. I think we should stand together and say no to fish farms. I'm speaking on behalf of my house chief, Chief Namox, Bill Holland. I have taken it off because the term of reference is not here. I will not wear it. Thank you.

S. Dennis: I call upon the Gitxsan, the Gitxsan headwaters: Roy Wilson and Ralph Michell.

Just to the panel this afternoon, I'd like to iterate what my fellow chiefs have said. You came here to listen, and I sure hope in hell that you guys are not like McEachern.

Most of you won't understand what McEachern means. One of our elders, when we were going through court, said: "I want to sing our song of [Gitxsan spoken]. I want to sing before I speak to you, Madam Chair." She addressed McEachern as Madam Chair. She said, "I want to sing it," and McEachern said to her: "I've got tin ears. You can sing your song, but I won't hear you." She got up and said: "McEachern, we as Kitsums developed can openers for people like you who have tin ears. We developed that. It didn't come from you guys. It came from us, the first nations people." So she sang her [Gitxsan spoken] to the panel.

The reason I brought this up is because you guys are representatives of the government, legislation. I can go on and on and on. You got your fancy machines. Five, ten years from now…. I can still remember the words that have been put out to you guys and the words that were put out 25 years ago. Our other elders had been fishing for 55 years. I'd like to ask you: how many of you have been in this business? How many of you understand it? How many of you understand the legislation, you name it? How many of you MLAs, as you call yourselves…?

I am from the headwaters of the Skeena River, places where salmon return. They return every year. Every year it is lesser and lesser. Now, as someone said, all the pollution, all the big ports, all the big ships….

I'd like to touch on the Queen of the North. They said that the government makes somewhere around $78 million, and they can't even lift the Queen of the North. That, itself, is an impact to the Port Hardy, Hartley Bay, Kitimat people. I'd like to see you go back and tell them to hoist that boat out, because we didn't sink it. We sure didn't sink that boat. We sure didn't move the island.

You have always heard about the joke, about drunken, stinking Indians. You guys also have that drunken, sinking captain at Valdez, up in Alaska. That man who was involved in that never got punished for it. I'd like you to take it back so he gets punished for it for the rest of his life. I don't want a slap on the hand for him.

This is the message from our people upriver. That thing is going to affect our Skeena River, believe it or not. It's like the others say. I won't say please. I'll just say that you guys have to do it. Take it back and say that we, the first nations people, have spoken. We have spoken. We come to you to tell you. We don't want these farms — 110 percent. If it ever moves in, we as the Gitxsan people are going to come down and destroy it, because we enjoy the tradition and trading with our friends down here.

We get the seaweed. We get the halibut. We get to use the abalone. I've still got one jar in my freezer from 20 years ago. I want to know what abalone looks like. A lot of people have offered me for it. It is a jar of abalone in my possession. It is priceless.

I say again to you, panel, MLAs: the recommendations that you are going to make are to our benefit as first nations people. As someone said, we've got to see in the fisheries…. What are you guys doing here? Where are the DFO people? We went there. They weren't there. We couldn't find them. Mark my word. I did. I went there last Monday. They weren't there. They were on holidays. They were making recommendations in January, and they've gone on holidays. I don't know where. Somewhere. Maybe they went down to….

I would like to thank you again for your time, and also the time of my people of the Skeena, Tsimshian Nation, Haida Gwaii, Haisla — you name it. Thank you very much. [Gitxsan spoken.]

I'm really proud to stand with my brothers from Lax Kw'alaams. I've heard your comments and totally agree with you. I just remember what we did in 1992. All the traditional leaders came to Rupert and signed a northwest tribal treaty. In that treaty we recognized one another as nations. We recognized each other's jurisdictions and own territories. An important part of that northwest tribal treaty was that we would work on common issues, and today there's a huge issue we have in common, and that is salmon. How do we save our salmon?

Many of us go to our [Gitxsan spoken], and we do that because we're on land. We're on resources. Our own land tenure system costs us a lot of money, billions of dollars, and no government on this planet has enough money to pay for our land for the tribe. It's the most valuable commodity for all of us. It creates us, and we must look after it, because if we don't look after it, it will not be able to feed us again.

It's time for all the people in the northwest tribal treaty to get together again on this very issue and show our numbers and speak with one voice against what this government is proposing to do to us. It's what we have to do. We can do it in Prince Rupert. We can do it in Gitanmaax — doesn't matter — because we signed that northwest tribal treaty in this city.

If we have to come back again, to get together, I'm confident that we can do it, and we're prepared to work with you. We're prepared to work with the Haisla, with the Haida, Tsimshian, Nisga'a and the Tahltan. This government does not care what it does to our food basket. It does not care about it. People who don't even live here, near us, are going to make those decisions. It's not right.

I hope that this committee is just not another façade. We are listening to you. We are hearing your concerns. We are a people, all of us here, and when we say no, please listen to it. Remember that we are people.

Every time I listen to the news I hear about public opinion. The opinions that we hear in the news are not ours. We've been characterized as a problem, a huge liability to British Columbia, but we aren't. We're a part of the economy of northwest B.C. — a very important part of it.

I heard on the news that the town of Prince Rupert was going to lose its only bank, and I thought to myself: there aren't any band councils near the town of Stewart, and there's no land claims office in Stewart. If they only had some Indians there, some native people, that bank would still be open. That's how important we are to the economy.

I really hope that this is not another façade. We're hearing you. We're listening to you. I hope that you go back and tell them that you were in Rupert and all the people there that you met with said no.

The last one we have on our agenda for the day is to call upon Brian L. Robinson.

There are two points I'd like to make. First off, I used to be a salmon fisherman and salmon-seine all over the B.C. coast. Our fishing weeks used to consist of three to four days. As the years went by, our weeks were reduced to one to two days. Eventually it was reduced to mere hours, 12 to 24 hours per week, all in the name of conservation of various species.

I understand conservation and believe it is necessary. We must leave some of the Pacific wild salmon for future generations. One has to wonder, though —

when you add up the hundreds of millions of dollars that our Canadian government has invested over the last 40 to 50 years in the Pacific wild salmon all throughout the British Columbia coast — why would the Canadian government and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans allow a foreign, Atlantic farmed salmon species an opportunity to infect and decimate the wild Pacific salmon? You have protected the Pacific salmon since the inception of DFO. The Pacific salmon has created more jobs and capital than Atlantic farmed salmon will ever create.

This is my second part. At the present time I personally have a hereditary right to go out and catch Pacific coast wild salmon for food and ceremonial purposes. It has also been a stable part of my diet all my life and in past generations.

Now, let's use the worst-case scenario. Due to disease and sea lice infection from alien farmed salmon species, the Pacific wild salmon are decimated. Along with the salmon, my hereditary right is also extinguished. I do not have a hereditary right to obtain Atlantic farmed salmon.

Who will compensate all of the first nations people you see in here who depend on Pacific wild salmon during the next 20 to 30 future winter months? These coastal waters are our food banks. Have any one of you ever tried to eat a farmed salmon after thawing it out? It literally turns to mush. It isn't fit to eat. I say this with the utmost respect to those who think differently.

In closing, I would like to pass on a message from the grave of my great-great-grandfather from Hartley Bay: [Sm'algyax spoken].

I'd like to thank the people of Lax Kw'alaams and our surrounding communities and nations for coming out in support.

With that, I thank you for allowing me to speak. I've been dodged by Omega. I've been dodged by DFO. I've even been dodged by our former MLA, Bill Belsey.

Finally, it took my own people — an opportunity to give me a word, a voice. With that, I thank the people of Lax Kw'alaams. Thank you.

S. Dennis: With that, Robin and Ron, that concludes our agenda for the day. We look forward to you, one and all, coming to our community of Lax Kw'alaams — you say in October. That date won't be changed for us. We'll await your arrival. You will be properly introduced to our peoples who own these territories. Bearing in mind that we won't go through this again, we gave you the message of the day, and you will receive the passion of our people when you come to our community, to let you know that we are a part of this society also.

While we talk from our elders, we have a representation of our youth here, from our school, and that has to be mentioned. These children did not bear any information as to how they felt about fish farms, yet they wrote about it. They're passionate about keeping them out of the north here because of the traditions that have been handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years.

How do we address fish farms? We address them by trying to keep them out. We don't want them in the north here. So the agenda will be set in cooperation with you all when you come to our community. It's nothing personal. We are here to send a message in regard to the territories that you are on. Our intent…. As was mentioned earlier, you are the MLAs that are elected; you have to represent everybody who's here in your ridings. You are going through some of the ones who are up from down south. You have to represent them also.

With that, I want to thank you, Robin, for hearing our agenda today. This is what we had from our community. This is the agenda that was set for you guys, and we had to bring it to you, instead of you guys coming to us. There is no intent of hard feelings coming from us, other than that you should have abided by our recommendation to come to our community. That's all we would like to say.

From the Allied Tribes and everybody here who spoke today, I really appreciate that. We have nothing against Kitkatla. It's the fish farm issue in general that we're trying to address. Thank you very much for listening, and for your time. We appreciate it.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you, Stan, and thank you again to all the elders and chiefs who have spoken here this afternoon.

Prior to us recessing for a quick bite to eat, I would like to ask if anybody who had submissions or pre-registered to make a submission to this committee would please come and see the Committee Clerk, so we know who is still here, to plan our evening forward. Thank you very much.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

1)	Ross Campbell
2)	Pan Fish Canada	Mark Ayranto
3)	Ganhada Management Group	Alan Okabe
4)	Charles Justice
5)	T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation	Des Nobels Arnie Nagy
6)	Green Party of British Columbia	David Konsmo
7)	United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union	Joy Thorkelson

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