Fisheries committee  Thank you very much.

Fisheries committee  I have a couple points of clarification. The Swift Aquaculture site isn't a recirculating aquaculture system, to start with. It's a flow-through system, like any other trout farm in the province. Basically, licensing of that facility didn't really change much. We issued an aquacu

Fisheries committee  No, I don't.

Fisheries committee  When this issue came up many years ago, they did an assessment of the existing sites and they moved some sites around to try to address the issue. I think what you're talking about is a somewhat different issue, and that is siting the farms on migration routes. It would be diff

Fisheries committee  I can't really answer that because it really depends on what the site costs. It could be several years, but that's true of any business. So there is no simple answer to that question.

Fisheries committee  Yes, there has been interest for closed containment salmon aquaculture in B.C., but it's not really taken off because of the cost. We did have some very significant interest from one of our very large salmon farming companies in the province, but because of the current economic c

Fisheries committee  I just don't think it would be realistic.

Fisheries committee  Actually, my job didn't change that much. We did have a group at the ministry that was managing aquaculture policy and managing the aquaculture regulations. After the Hinkson decision was made, that group was largely reallocated. Some people went to work for the Department of Fis

Fisheries committee  Me?

Fisheries committee  Basically, my role as the industry specialist.... We didn't have an industry specialist for aquaculture for quite a long time. I was actually a policy analyst in the ministry. Largely, the reason for that was that we had a mandate to regulate the industry. Now that we don't have

Fisheries committee  It's possible. I don't know what businesses would do if they were faced with having to invest tens of millions of dollars. As you say, they could put them in a place where the land and the services are cheap, but they would have to increase their transportation costs. Reducing tr

Fisheries committee  The number is the cost of the capital. To operate the system and to produce the fish, you would have to add about another $7 to $10 per kilogram. So you have the cost of building the site, then you have the cost of operating it for the year it takes to grow those smolts. When you

Fisheries committee  I think the number would go down with economies of scale. There's no doubt about it. But the numbers we have right now are hypothetical. They're not based on actual systems. So where they're budgeting a couple of hundred tonnes of production, to get a realistic number you would h

Fisheries committee  I don't believe that aquaculture is having a demonstrable impact on salmon stocks. The reason I say that is because when you look at salmon stock numbers they seem to fluctuate up and down as a coast-wide phenomenon. They're not directly linked to salmon farms being present or no

Fisheries committee  Well, that again is a very site-specific question. It depends on the hydrography of the site and how the site was used—whether it was a large site or a small site. It could be a couple of months; it could be many months. What is done in B.C. is that if they fallow a site they hav