Thank you, Jackey.
Good afternoon, gentlemen.
B.C. has 27,000 kilometres of coastline. As the little handout demonstrates, we have a total of 157 scheduled sites, of which 78 of those are harbours, core harbours. We have 54 harbour authorities who manage those 78 core sites. Jackey alluded to our volunteer workforce of between 550 and 600 people, which includes our harbour directors and those volunteers from the community who assist in harbour operations. All but two of our harbours have paid staff to support their initiatives.
The fishing industry in British Columbia has approximately 3,000 commercial fishing vessels, and in 2005, the landed value of B.C. commercial fishing was in the neighbourhood of $365 million. The aquaculture industry generates another $340 million, so the commercial fishing industry and aquaculture are over $700 million annually.
We have a solid partnership with harbour authorities. Our major concerns are enhancing their viability skills so they can raise enough revenues to keep themselves going, to keep themselves independent.
A second issue is that we find a growing pressure on our waterfront. A lot of people want to move to British Columbia. The communities that support the harbours want to look at waterfront land as a better tax base, so they're looking at different kinds of opportunities on the waterfront. And one of the big pushes, from our perspective, is to get our harbour authorities more involved in community integrated planning to generate better strategic planning over time, so they don't get overrun by interests selling land and building condos right next door to a bustling harbour.
We also have first nations issues unique to British Columbia. We're involved with the B.C. treaty process in Indian Affairs to have them consider the 15 harbours that front first nations communities. These communities are not just commercial fishing harbours, they are often the ingress and egress of the community. There are no roads, so the only way in and out is by the harbour. So they particularly want treaties to understand that we don't want to be the last federal department standing by first nations when Indian Affairs settles a treaty with them. We think the harbour is an economic opportunity for first nations, so it should be part of the treaty process.
Jackey alluded to many problems. We'd like to have our people get more involved in how the community is changing around them, so we need design capability, engineering support, that kind of thing.
Climate change is having an impact on our harbours, so we need funding to take a look at how to better design or facilitate the changes of our commercial fishing fleet as they move from fishing for salmon to other species such as tuna, mackerel, sardines, and those types of fisheries that require larger boats.
It's a changing dynamic in British Columbia. We have solid partnerships with our HAs and see our business making them more viable and integrating them better with community aspirations.
Thank you.