With me are Mr. James Smith, director of certification and sustainability policy in my group, the aquaculture management directorate. Mr. Alistair Struthers is acting director for aquaculture policy, also in my group. Alistair is replacing Monsieur Eric Gilbert, who unfortunately could not appear today.
We have provided you with a presentation. My intention was to go over the presentation, not necessarily page by page, but to provide you with an overview to leave more time for your questions afterwards. So I'll tell you which pages I'm referring to as I go along.
The first two slides provide an introduction. We're here at your request to provide a briefing on salmon aquaculture and how it is regulated in Canada as well as in a number of international jurisdictions with respect to regulatory requirements and the state of research and implementation of closed containment.
The committee is also seeking to understand better the activities of the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, known as NASCO, in relation to salmon aquaculture. Specifically, the members would like to know how Canada and other member countries of NASCO are meeting their goals of minimizing the potential adverse impacts of aquaculture on wild Atlantic salmon stocks. It would also like an overview of the ad hoc review group on aquaculture introductions and transfers and transgenics, including the work of the ad hoc group, its conclusions and findings with respect to Canada's management of aquaculture as well as an understanding of how this is consistent with NASCO agreements.
We will pleased to provide the committee with this information.
On slide 3 we provide you with an outline of the presentation. The presentation provides you with regulatory measures in each of Canada, Norway, Scotland, Chile, and the United States. There's a table to compare these regulatory measures as well as regulatory-related research programs in each of the countries. There is also a recent review of the international regulatory and management environment for salmon aquaculture conducted under NASCO.
Of course, closed containment is an element addressed within each of the areas I've mentioned.
Slide 4 provides you with a bit of a general view of aquaculture in the world. Canada, Norway, Scotland, and Chile together account for about 98% of the world aquaculture salmon production, so almost all of it. Each country has established regulatory and research programs that align with their jurisdiction and legislative requirements and programming environments as well as any aquaculture and specific fisheries legislation.
Overall, however, each country is managing for a similar range of environmental matters, including protection of native salmon through protection from escapes and containment of genetic material, and also interactions with other wild stocks, disease, pests, pathogens and pest treatments, and of course habitat. Canada also manages for predator control and marine mammal interactions, and in British Columbia for noise and light interactions with the aquatic ecosystems.
On page 5 of the presentation is a table that tries to provide you with a summary of the main regulatory and management measures. These are the highlights, of course, and we have focused on the key themes of interest in aquaculture, which you will see in the left column, including sea lice, disease and parasite transmission, escapes, and so on. These are the elements for which we are comparing the regulatory and management measures in each of the countries.
Now, unless the committee wishes so, I don't intend to go through each of the columns, because there's quite a lot of information. Generally I would say that what comes out from the table is that all of the countries follow international codes, guidelines, and protocols that are common to us—for example, ISO 234 or FAO protocols. We all generally have the same overall goals in managing aquaculture. The differences would relate to particular environments in a particular country.
On slide 7, we wanted to provide these jurisdictional comparisons by major themes to give the committee some context that I hope will be helpful in understanding activities in Canada. I would note that in general, with respect to the major categories that are in the left column, with the exception of closed containment aquaculture, all of the jurisdictions have pretty well the same kinds of requirements in place from, as I said, the policy or regulatory point of view.
More specifically, for the environmental stressors like sea lice through introductions and transfers, each jurisdiction has established control measures of one type or another. With respect to habitat, each has some sort of survey, monitoring, assessment, and permitting scheme in place to allow the protection of habitat. For classification and zoning of areas, each jurisdiction has its own planning, siting, and management requirements. In Canada, of course, we work with provincial governments on this. Similarly, each area is engaged in various modes of research to help understand effects and exposure to environment...and also environment medication.
In fact, everything that NASCO is asking the countries we look at is in this particular table. As you can see in the table, there are no requirements for closed containment, but operational constraints are leading the industry to go in that direction. There are, as you know, a number of projects that we can come back to that are looking at closed containments. Of course, as the committee probably knows as well, in Canada, the United States, and Chile we use land-based aquaculture in our hatcheries.
Again looking at slide 7, while there is no requirement to use closed containment, each jurisdiction makes use of recirculating aquaculture systems for the purpose of hatcheries, as I just said. However, for larger grow-out operations, the picture is more varied and raises questions internationally about the economics of closed-containment systems. We'll come back to that later.
Certainly the challenges relate to, in our view, the economic viability of closed containment. It seems to be clear and compelling that in the two major international salmon aquaculture production jurisdictions, that's certainly the case.
In slide 8 we switch to a review of NASCO measures related to aquaculture. I should mention to the committee that although I was the head of the Canadian delegation at NASCO for the years 2002 to 2010, I am not the head of delegation any more. However, a lot of the issues are relevant to when I was the head of delegation.
NASCO was established to conserve, restore, enhance, and manage wild Atlantic salmon through international cooperation. The members are, in addition to Canada, Denmark, on behalf of Greenland and the Faeroe Islands; the European Union; Norway; the Russian Federation; and the United States. Iceland was for a long time part of NASCO, but three years ago they got out of NASCO for financial reasons, saying that they intended to come back at some point.
Of course aquaculture organizations have not been accredited to NASCO, but a salmon aquaculture industry liaison committee was established to provide an international forum for discussion of issues of mutual interest but also to make recommendations on aquaculture issues.
Also related to aquaculture and NASCO is the Williamsburg resolution, which is a resolution to help minimize the impacts of aquaculture introductions, transfers, and transgenics on wild salmon, using a precautionary approach.
Slide 9 talks about NASCO's focus area reports. The slide gives a little bit of history about what happens there. As you probably know, there is no commercial fishery for wild Atlantic salmon. NASCO focuses on coordinating research among the countries as well as providing guidelines on how to manage the stock, the habitat, or the potential impacts from aquaculture.
About three years ago members of NASCO decided to do these focus area reports. The idea was actually to try to bring together best practices or guidelines on how to manage wild salmon, how to manage habitat, and how to deal with the potential impacts of aquaculture. The council has yet to discuss what to do with all the focus area reports from the various countries. As I said, for habitat and for management, NASCO has produced guidelines. For the focus area reports on aquaculture, next steps have yet to be determined.
In our focus area reports—this is the purpose of slide 10—we have shown how aquaculture is managed in Canada, including the legislative, regulatory, and management aspects of how we work with the provinces. We have also shown how we are meeting our NASCO goals and commitments. Within the NASCO process, there were comments on this particular report from an ad hoc committee that included NGOs. Thirty-five ENGOs accredited in NASCO as well as members of the different countries are trying to bring together the common elements of these reports to understand how countries as a whole manage the potential impacts of aquaculture on wild salmon. This is the stage we are at right now. The next NASCO meeting I think is in the first week of June. I'm sure countries will continue to consider what the next steps are with regard to that particular report.
This concludes my presentation, Mr. Chairman. I would be glad to answer your questions.
