Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to make a presentation here.
My name is Richard Harry. I'm from Campbell River, B.C. I'm the chief of the Homalco First Nation. As well, I'm a commercial fisher involved in harvesting salmon and herring, and I have been involved with aquaculture for a number of years. Today I'm here as president of the Aboriginal Aquaculture Association.
We created the Aboriginal Aquaculture Association in 2003 to ensure that first nations were able to participate in the development of a sustainable aquaculture industry on the west coast of Canada. As you can appreciate, there are a lot of challenges mainly with finfish aquaculture. We have a number of first nations that have protocol agreements or joint venture agreements with industry, and I can share with you the information I get from those first nations.
A lot of the day-to-day assessments and evaluations are done on site. Klemtu is a good example. They do benthic sampling there, which involves looking at the ocean floor for impacts from feed, for instance. They do monitoring of sea lice within maybe a 50-mile radius. The comment from this first nation is that they have not seen any adverse effects over the 10 or 15 years they've been operating fish farm sites in their traditional territory. At some point it would be good to provide their findings to this committee. They have done thousands of dives on their sites for sampling, and there is no increase of sea lice within that radius of 50 miles that they use in their communities.
From a socio-economic point of view, it's the best thing that's happened to this community. It provides jobs and incomes as well as revenues for their community. This is a community that for many years depended on the wild fishery, and long before fish farms, 50 or 60 years ago, the salmon were on the decline. This community looked at aquaculture as a means of re-establishing itself, and it has done that for them. Their unemployment has dropped from 80% or 90% to probably 30% or 40%. The significance of aquaculture speaks for itself here. That's just a first nations community and a rural coastal community at that.
There are other first nations that have arrangements and agreements with industry and investors. The Ahousaht on the west coast of Vancouver Island out of Tofino, B.C., are another example. They have chosen to go with aquaculture to offset their high unemployment as well as to offset their social issues.
I can't say enough about what it's done for this community of 1,000 people. The biggest revenue source for that community is aquaculture. It has provided about 70 jobs on a full-time basis. You can't argue with that. They do all the monitoring with industry. Within their agreement they hold their industry partners to the highest standards of monitoring for sea lice or with regard to any of the accusations made about diseases or what not. They are partners to that. They are as well securing employment and revenues for their community.
The Aboriginal Aquaculture Association is certainly proactive in pursuing the development of an aquaculture industry on the west coast, be it finfish or be it shellfish. We only need to look at recent years, when there has been little or no salmon harvest, to understand that our coastal communities are looking for other ways and means to secure jobs and opportunities for their communities.
The forest industry has been declining for a number of years on the west coast. Then there's the wild fishery, which for most of our communities was always the biggest employer. This explains why we are looking to aquaculture.
You know, we want to do it in a way that minimizes the impacts on the environment. We are participating in the changeover of managing the industry--from the provincial to the federal--and we have made submissions to that. We're anxious to participate in the five-year aquaculture planning that DFO is heading up and to develop processes that would be inclusive of coastal communities.
What we've seen up to now is that they were almost a forgotten people on the coast when it comes to managing, whether it's the wild salmon or even aquaculture. First nations, then, need to have a larger role, a greater role of shared decision-making, and we're certainly pursuing that in the implementation of these regulations as well as the aquaculture planning.
We're certainly looking at not just aquaculture but also how first nations people can partake with government to enhance the wild fishery, be it sockeye, the chums, or pinks. And we'd like to find a way to develop a process to be able to develop ocean ranching, as an example. Ocean ranching is what takes place in Alaska, and Alaska has been able to support a commercial industry for many years.
If you look at the Pacific Rim countries--Russia and Japan and Alaska--those countries are heavily into huge hatcheries to support their industries. In B.C. we've gone the other way. We're minimizing or shutting down our salmon hatcheries to our detriment. We're left with a sunset industry in the wild fishery, which I've been a part of most of my life, and it's not a nice place to be.
Our American neighbours to the south do a better job than we do because they're stronger with hatcheries. If you look at Japan and Russia and Alaska, those countries have record harvest levels of salmon while we sit idle.
So we need to find some solutions for ourselves in the wild fishery. We need to take seriously that our coastal communities are there. First nations people are not going to leave; we're going to be there into the future. We're looking to find the ways and means to develop a process, to develop an aquaculture industry that is sustainable, both environmentally as well as culturally. We're looking to the federal government to find the ways and means to create investments and opportunities in salmon enhancement as well as ocean ranching.
We are partaking in the Cohen inquiry for the same reasons that I'm sharing with you now. This past year it's been a godsend to see more than 35 million sockeye show up on our shores. Don't tell me how that came to be. I have my own ideas on why it is, and why in recent years there's been little or no harvest opportunities for commercial fishers on the west coast. A lot of it has to do with how current policies have been implemented and managed in our resource. When you have 30% harvest rates, it almost eliminates any opportunities from past historical numbers, as high as 80%, of the Fraser sockeye.
So, you know, those things need to be reviewed, and some solutions found.
Maybe I'll leave my opening comments to that.