Fisheries committee  Thank you. How do you top that? I started my career as a fisheries biologist, and I worked for the Ontario government in the north channel of Lake Huron beginning with lake trout enhancement. I put in some of the first freshwater cages in the early 1980s as a cheaper alternative

Fisheries committee  The current system is based on some chemical testing, trying to find one that will say you have an impact if you exceed this level, or you don't have an impact if you're below this level. It's a bit crude and rudimentary, but that's the system that exists today. As I said, it's t

Fisheries committee  We like his concept, yes.

Fisheries committee  That wouldn't be my point of view, no.

Fisheries committee  I think what Mr. Storey was alluding to, and what we particularly like at the Huntsman Centre about his story, is this idea of saying that each particular environment you're going to operate in has the capacity to assimilate a certain amount of organic matter. We would size the f

Fisheries committee  Whether the lack of permits is a barrier to—

Fisheries committee  Well, you're absolutely right, and I certainly appreciate your values in terms of trying to preserve that way of life. I think what we're trying to suggest to you is that there is no one answer to the story. It's not simply a case of saying let's take all the nets out of the ocea

Fisheries committee  No, it's not.

Fisheries committee  The aquaculture sector produces products for an open marketplace. They have to compete in that marketplace. At the moment, they compete very well. If we arbitrarily impose other conditions through a policy that says you can no longer farm fish this way and you have to use these o

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  We have some very preliminary costing. Mr. Storey referred earlier to one of the models done by one of the DFO studies. When you look at the costing of that model, there's a fair amount of money involved in the various items, which we already have and could deploy as in-kind cost

Fisheries committee  I think the key difference has to do with the uniqueness of the Huntsman Centre. First of all, we are a marine biology field station. We happen to have education as part of our mandate, but we also have a public aquarium. Our view is that if we were to do one of these, it would m

Fisheries committee  You were doing so well.

Fisheries committee  As I said in my remarks, the current open net-pen systems occur in a variety of geographic areas. Mr. Storey has been talking about looking at the carrying capacity of the specific environment in which you're operating. These open net-pen systems have organic loading associated w

Fisheries committee  Thank you. Members of the standing committee, thank you again for the invitation. My name is Bill Robertson. I am the current executive director of the Huntsman Marine Science Centre. You've just heard a little bit about our history. Specifically related to this topic, I'd like