I am here as a representative of the members of Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans, and the Canadian Forest Service. It's a volunteer position that I am in.
When I was looking at the criteria for this brief, there were four parameters: economic, environmental, cultural, and sustainability. I don't know of anything that addresses those criteria as well as B.C. wild salmon.
Wild salmon are a cornerstone of the economy of British Columbia, in terms of sports fishing, commercial fishing, and the tourism industry. B.C. wild salmon are the cornerstone of the coastal and river systems in British Columbia. Salmon are the economic stimulus package of the ecosystem.
Wild salmon are the cornerstone of first nations culture and the heritage of the people of British Columbia who came after the first nations people. B.C. wild salmon are synonymous in British Columbia with sustainability and prosperity, and the sustainability of B.C.'s aquatic ecozones. The five different wild salmon species of British Columbia used to be the icons that B.C. was known for across the world.
Given the importance of wild salmon to our economy, environment, heritage, and culture, how is it that we have come to where we are today? How is it that we have taken the most productive sockeye salmon river in the world--the Fraser River--and ruined it and exploited it so that now we don't have a commercial fishery for sockeye on the Fraser River? We don't have sports fishing on the Fraser River. We don't even have enough sockeye salmon going up the Fraser River to feed the animals that live off the spawning salmon. And how is it that we have a Department of Fisheries and Oceans that can be so completely wrong in estimating over 10 million sockeye salmon returning this year and one million show up?
I say it's because, for some strange reason, we haven't been able to get our message to Ottawa. The 600,000 sports anglers in British Columbia, 35,000 commercial fishermen, and tens of thousands of people who work in tourism somehow haven't been able to get the message to Ottawa that salmon are important, that salmon have to be protected, their habitat has to be protected, and their whole environment has to be protected.
I say that because how else can you explain that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a no net loss of salmon habitat policy? They've had that policy since 1986, and today they can't even tell us how much salmon habitat there is. Not only can they not tell us whether there has been a loss or a gain or anything, they can't even tell us how much there is. Why is that? Because it's not funded. It hasn't been funded properly. In 26 years there hasn't been the proper funding to do this.
You don't have to take my word for it. You can just look at the 2009 spring report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, which was issued through the Office of the Auditor General. Not only does the Auditor General talk about habitat, she mentions that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans lacks information regarding numbers of fish stocks, contaminants in the actual fish, and the overall water quality. How can we manage this resource without the proper science?
The lack of funding has been widely known for years. The Senate Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, the David Suzuki Foundation, the Sierra Club, the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union, the Honourable John Fraser, and the Honourable Bryan Williams are all saying the same thing, that lack of funding prohibits the federal government from doing an effective job in areas of enforcement, habitat protection and restoration, salmon enhancement, research, and stock assessment. They're all saying that.
Increased funding to the departments should not be considered an expenditure; it should be considered an investment, an investment in the future of British Columbia and an investment that will return to the citizens of Canada a thousandfold--economically, environmentally, and culturally.
Thank you.