Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the discussion. I wanted to ask some questions. I think what I'll do is simply lay them on the table, so you might want to have a pen handy in case I go too fast.
I'm concerned because first of all, I don't see how an on-land facility that pipes in salt water and returns the used salt water back out to the sea would mitigate or change many of the issues that we currently face, unless we talked about massive filtration systems and the application of pharmaceuticals to keep the interaction.... I mean, when you bring in the water, you're bringing everything with it, so I don't know where that's going.
I think we're talking about three different things here.... There are only two different things. There is a completely closed and contained system, and there's a system that interacts with the ocean. If any of you can share any experiences with me on that, I'd like to know if any study has been done or if any information is available on the quality of the product. When you're talking about something that's grown in the ocean, and when you're talking about wild, and when you're talking about farmed in an open-cage pen versus when you're talking about farmed in a closed-containment system, I would guess there would be significant quality issues to deal with there.
Mr. Backman, I think you mentioned in your testimony that Pacific salmon are more resistant to the Pacific sea lice than the Atlantic salmon are. I'm wondering if that applies evenly across the five Pacific salmon species, or if there are variations within the five Pacific salmon species. Perhaps you can elaborate on that. I would like to know about your brood stock program. What do you do to maintain a healthy genetic diversity? You're saying that you're not importing any genetics right now. If you could tell me how you maintain a healthy genetic diversity for your stocks on the west coast, that would be great.
I heard testimony from a witness last week. I asked basically if a young juvenile salmon, a pink, could leave the Fraser River and swim north between the mainland and the islands and not go through an area of effect. He gave me a number; he said that the footprint of a salmon farm is about 30 kilometers in diameter. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but he said that if that were the case, no salmon could swim without going through an area of effect.
Could you tell us what your information is insofar as the area of effect of a salmon farm? Perhaps you could enlighten the committee on what measures you have taken to mitigate any interactions with seals, aquatic mammals, and so on to address some of the concerns that we hear about dolphin and whale interactions, and talk about some of the issues pertaining to that and to the release of the Atlantic salmon into the wild.
Thank you.