Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members.
I want to thank you all for the opportunity to present here today.
My name is Bill Taylor. I am president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Salmon Federation. With me is my colleague Jonathan Carr. He's director of research and environment for the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
I`ll give you a bit of background. The Atlantic Salmon Federation is an international salmon conservation organization. We're international in scope in that we work throughout the whole North Atlantic wherever you find wild Atlantic salmon, and our mission is to save, conserve, and restore our wild Atlantic salmon runs throughout the North Atlantic in the ecosystems, rivers, and the ocean marine habitats on which the Atlantic wild salmon depend for survival.
The Atlantic Salmon Federation's international headquarters are in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick. We also have field offices, one in Quebec, one in each of the four Atlantic provinces, and the U.S. headquarters in Brunswick, Maine. We are a not-for-profit, a charity. We have to raise all of our money to support our conservation, education, and research programs on our own. We have no government funding.
The way we are structured, we are truly a federation, an umbrella organization with the Atlantic Salmon Federation at the top. Underneath that umbrella you have our five provincial councils, Quebec and the four Atlantic provinces, and also two in the United States. Underneath those provincial and state councils, there are 120 local river associations, such as the Miramichi Salmon Association, the Margaree Salmon Association, and so on, and throughout that membership there are about 25,000 to 30,000 active volunteers working to further our conservation mission.
What is the state of wild Atlantic salmon runs throughout the North Atlantic? They are in decline and have been for the past three decades or so. Speaking specifically about North America, Canada, since the mid-seventies, wild Atlantic salmon runs have declined from about 1.8 million large salmon and one sea winter salmon or grilse coming back to our rivers, and in Canada there are about 1,100 wild Atlantic salmon rivers, again in Quebec and the four Atlantic provinces. We've seen a decline from the 1.8 million in the mid-seventies to just north of 400,000 in 2001. Since then there has been a modest increase in each of the last few years, and this past year actually things were the best they've been in a while. When I say “best”, what you need to do is take the Miramichi north--so the Miramichi, Cape Breton Island, north of that, and you look at northern New Brunswick, Gaspé, the north shore of Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador--and those areas are all relatively healthy. Everything south of that is in decline and continues to be in decline.
One of the principal threats to wild salmon is aquaculture. That has been well documented. If you also look at where wild salmon runs are in decline, again, it's in the southern Maritimes and in southern Newfoundland. Aquaculture has been pointed out as a principal cause of those salmon declines. And that's not just from the research that we've done. It's well documented by research institutions, universities, and even by our own federal government.
The latest report from the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, COSEWIC, which is a non-partisan, unbiased forum of university professors, researchers, and federal and provincial governments, has pointed to three areas where aquaculture is in high concentration in the Maritimes. In the inner and outer Bay of Fundy, aquaculture is pointed out as a primary threat to wild salmon runs, and also in southern Newfoundland. Again, when I said that this year was actually a pretty good year for our wild salmon runs, it's certainly no coincidence that in those areas it was not a very good year, and there continue to be problems.
The Atlantic Salmon Federation also conducts its own research on the Magaguadavic River, for example, which is close to the centre of the aquaculture industry in the Bay of Fundy, just up the road from Saint Andrews. The Atlantic Salmon Federation has been conducting research on the impacts of aquaculture on wild salmon in that river for the last 15 or so years. In fact, DFO has made the Magaguadavic River the index river for the study of the impacts of aquaculture on wild stocks across the country.
What we've found in the Magaguadavic River since we began that research, which Jonathan has actually been leading for the last 15 years, is that wild salmon returns to the Magaguadavic in the mid-1980s hovered around 800 to 1,000 fish, year after year after year. Since then it has been in serious decline, to the point where we're now counting them on our fingers and toes--the wild salmon coming back to the rivers.
We also monitor the aquaculture escapees coming into the Magaguadavic River. In every year but one in the last decade, the number of aquaculture escapees has actually outnumbered the wild salmon coming back to the Magaguadavic River.
I want to put all those concerns out there. These concerns are well documented: pollution, sea lice, disease transfer, escapes, interbreeding with wild salmon. There are all kinds of studies on the offspring of a mating between an aquaculture escapee and a wild salmon. The offspring are not as fit for survival. If it's an aquaculture female, she does not lay as many eggs. The eggs are not as viable, so you don't have as many fry. You don't have as many fish going out to sea, and those fish are not as fit for survival.
As to the concentration of aquaculture sites, whether it's Norway, southern Scotland, or our Bay of Fundy, there is a great number of escapees year after year. There are tens of thousands and, in some years, hundreds of thousands of salmon escaping in the Bay of Fundy alone. You get those interbreeding. As serious as the pollution and sea lice problems are, the genetic issues are much more severe and have more dire consequences.
ASF has made it clear time and time again that we're not against aquaculture. The whole concept of raising fish for food makes good sense and takes pressures off wild stocks. In fact, if you look back at our own history, 25 years ago the Atlantic Salmon Federation was waving the flag for aquaculture. We saw it as an opportunity to take pressure off wild stocks and provide a good food product, which was needed. But we did not foresee—and neither did the scientists—the unintended consequences of aquaculture.
Just to be clear, we're not opposed to the concept of aquaculture. We're in favour of sustainable aquaculture. We see land-based aquaculture as providing an opportunity to move in a positive direction.
We are an advocacy group. We are not a group to constantly complain. We are aware of the jobs related to aquaculture and the important jobs for coastal communities. But when we consider that, we should also consider the valuable wild Atlantic salmon and the recreational fishing industry.
Gardner Pinfold Consulting, a reputable national firm here in Canada, has just released a report on the value of wild Atlantic salmon in eastern Canada. The recreational Atlantic salmon fishery alone was worth $130 million last year and supported the equivalent of 3,300 full-time jobs.
If you think about where those jobs are, it's rural northern New Brunswick, Cape Breton Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Gaspé, and the north shore of Quebec. In those river communities, if people aren't working along the salmon rivers—whether as guides or in the tackle industry or building canoes or in the outfitting and lodging industries—they're probably not working at all. There aren't that many alternatives. That's just the value of wild salmon with the recreational fishery.
There's also the value to first nations, which is substantial. There is value to all Canadians in knowing that our rivers are healthy enough to support wild salmon and wild Atlantic salmon. This is an indicator of the health of our own rivers and marine environments, and the health of our own world.
When Gardner Pinfold Consulting looked at the total value of wild Atlantic salmon--we're just talking about Quebec and the four Atlantic provinces--it was $255 million annually and it supports the equivalent of 3,800 full-time-equivalent jobs.
Mr. Chairman, this is a recent report, and I'd be happy to make it available to the clerk and to you and the committee if you want to receive it after this meeting.
The Atlantic Salmon Federation is also putting its money where its mouth is. It's easy to say that we're for sustainable aquaculture. What are we going to do about it? We have partnered with the Conservation Fund Freshwater Institute, which is a world-renowned environmental conservation organization in the U.S. The Freshwater Institute in West Virginia has a long history of research and technology development in land-based aquaculture. We are raising, with the Conservation Fund, Atlantic salmon in land-based fully enclosed containment systems, and the salmon will be ready for market in just a few months.
We envision this as a long-term project over the next several years. We invited the industry to be a partner with us. Certainly we'd love to have their financial support, but it was made clear that was not necessary. We don't want to be in the aquaculture business. It's to demonstrate that the technology works and can be cost competitive, and to hopefully transfer the technology to the industry so that as the industry continues to grow, hopefully it embraces this land-based closed containment technology so that you eliminate all possibility of escapes of farm salmon into the wild and you eliminate the negative impacts of chemicals, vaccines, pollution, and sea lice, and on and on.
Often we're talking about the increased costs. I'm certainly aware of the DFO report on the increased costs of land-based versus the current open net pen aquaculture, but none of those studies factor in the environmental costs, which are significant from the current practices, or the costs of the chemicals and vaccines and so on, or the cost to the industry of all the escapes, which are significant year after year. We are confident that when the dollars and cents get crunched and the business model is presented, it'll be cost competitive to raise salmon commercially on land--cost competitive with current practices of the open net pen.
Watching my time here, Mr. Chairman, I'll just summarize by saying that the open net pen industry is implicated globally in the widespread negative environmental impacts. The aquaculture industry says it would be too costly to move the industry to land. Whenever there is a large amount of money to be made, there will always be convenient excuses to stick with the status quo and not to move forward with better and new technologies.
At present, and I'm sure you've heard this from others, there's a bureaucratic maze of ineffective regulation by agencies that both promote and regulate the aquaculture industry. It's time for Fisheries and Oceans Canada and our provincial governments that are home to salmon aquaculture and wild Atlantic salmon runs to implement and enforce a strong regulatory regime to control the negative impacts on the environment. We see land-based aquaculture as the way forward, separating the farm fish from the wild fish, protecting our environment, and protecting the lucrative recreational salmon fishing industry, the first nations fisheries, and traditional commercial fisheries like lobster.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd be happy to do my best to respond to questions.
