I want to support that idea. Unfortunately the debate gets to be very heated about being either for or against aquaculture. The debate should really be on what kind of aquaculture will give the benefits we need. The one thing I do know is that the wild stocks are declining, the world demand for high-quality protein is growing, and when it's done right it can address all those needs and create economic activity.
One of the problems, Mr. Blais, is that as the aquaculture industry developed, there was no real environmental impact study done; it was developed on the assumption that it would have no impact. By the time the rules were put in place, companies—mostly foreign companies—had put hundreds of millions of dollars into developing these operations. Now they have an economic argument saying the economics don't work on closed containment. Well, if you had an operation in which your costs were fixed at 40% of income and somebody said that you now had to do something different and that it was going up to 50%, you would fight that tooth and nail because it's money out of your pocket.
The question should be whether there is a way to do this. My answer would be yes, and it's closed containment. Make sure, as Mr. Dill has said, that there is no interaction between the wild stocks and the farm stocks. It is being done economically in some places. Mr. Dill might know more about this, but I know I've received some emails in the last few weeks about it.
When you go over to my fish, sablefish, we're not $1.50-a-pound fish; we're an $8-a-pound fish. If you can't do closed containment on sablefish, you can't do it on any fish. We're one of the priciest fish in the world.
So closed containment is the option. To the provincial government we've even offered to put money into a closed-containment study for our stocks. Quite frankly, we don't want the disaster and the controversy of salmon to be visited on a healthy stock that we get more per pound for every year and that we fish sustainably.