Fisheries Committee on Nov. 15th, 2010

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Ron.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to our guests this evening. This is very informative. As my colleague Mr. Weston said, the challenge is in trying to separate the wheat from the chaff—as they say on the prairies.

I'm new to the committee, coming from the Okanagan Valley. We enjoy consuming the fish from the ocean—we fish more the Kokanee—and a lot of sport fishermen from my riding like going to the coast. But I have also had concerns expressed to me by constituents about the fish farms.

I want to go back a little to the whole issue of closed containment. As I read about it, it's basically a system of fish production that creates a controlled interface between the cultured fish and the natural environment.

My question would be to maybe Ms. Dane or Mrs. Cannon—no relation; we just met this evening. We may have to do our family tree, with the vowel change somewhere along the immigration process from Scotland. I appreciate your answers this evening, and maybe you could elaborate a little bit more from the industry perspective.

I had a chance today with the committee to go first-hand to West Coast Fish Culture and meet with Ward Griffioen, who seems to be a real leader and visionary in the industry. The number he gave for the footprint in going to closed containment could be up to 800 times more costly in its impact on our ecology and in energy consumption.

I'm wondering whether your industry has done any sort of analysis of the impact of closed containment. That seems to be the answer from the public's perspective, even from the sports fishermen's, but is it a realistic option?

[Colleen Dane]

There's a lot more work that needs to be done before even that decision can be made. The technology has to be there, first of all, and then the other questions—about environmental impacts, and as you mentioned, the energy one—obviously also need to be addressed, and the economic impact of it is also an important piece.

The association itself hasn't done any direct cost analysis, but there have been some draw-outs that, based on some of the numbers we've seen for smaller projects, have indicated that right now it wouldn't be economically feasible. But as I said, we're interested in continuing to look at the technology as it develops. Our companies are there and are part of that innovation, and we'll have to see as we work together into the future what the options are and what options become available.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Thank you, Mr. Cannan.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for having taken this time to explain to us what you have been doing.

I am now going to adjourn the meeting for our light lunch, which will allow us to keep our waistlines, and we will resume the meeting at 7:10 p.m. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

We will now resume our meeting. I would like to thank the people who will be speaking in a few moments for their patience. I am asking you to be disciplined, just as I did the previous witnesses, who proved to be very disciplined and cooperative. This allowed for a better exchange between them and the members of the committee. And so I am going to ask each group to make a five-minute presentation. Today we have five groups with us.

The idea is that the members who will ask you questions following your presentations will be able to raise topics you have just discussed quite easily. This will give us an opportunity for a more in-depth discussion. If other comments or information come to mind that you would like the members of the committee to be made aware of, do not hesitate to let us know. Everything is not over when your testimony is over. We could say, in fact, that everything begins with your testimony. Also, you may send us additional comments in written form later if you wish to do that. I thank you for your anticipated cooperation.

Without further ado I am going the give the floor to Ms. Catherine Stewart.

[Catherine Stewart, Manager, Salmon Farming Campaign, Living Oceans Society]

Thank you very much.

I'm the campaign manager for the Living Oceans Society. Our group is a member of the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform. I would like to thank the committee for coming to B.C. and thank the first nations for this meeting on their traditional territories.

As the name of our coalition suggests, we are not opposed to aquaculture. We are working for aquaculture reform. We believe that aquaculture has an important role to play in meeting market demand for seafood, which is increasingly scarce at a global level. We also believe that jobs in coastal communities are very important.

I would like to raise a question about the job numbers, however. The special legislative committee on aquaculture provincially commissioned an independent report that concluded that the industry in B.C. generates a total of 2,900 jobs, direct, indirect, and induced. The British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association repeatedly cites a PricewaterhouseCoopers report concluding that there are 6,000 jobs. We would invite them to share that report with interested parties. To date there has been no transparency, and it's difficult to know how those numbers arose. Nonetheless, however many jobs there are, we recognize their importance.

But while we believe that aquaculture has a place in B.C., there is abundant evidence that the current practices are not sustainable and that the industry needs to change. CAAR has been trying for ten years to bring about that change, and for the last five years we've been working quite diligently with the largest salmon-farming producer in the world, Marine Harvest, and their Canadian division in a collaborative and constructive relationship to try to find mutually beneficial solutions.

I would like to point out that this work has already led to some modification of practices that relate directly to the issues surrounding Dr. Krkosek's predictions of extinction within a generation. Changes were made in the Broughton Archipelago as a direct result of CAAR's collaboration with Marine Harvest. Farms were fallowed or emptied into alternating channels during the juvenile wild salmon out-migration, and Marine Harvest began proactive treatment of lice during the out-migration period whenever counts were trending upwards to the trigger level. The industry likes to critique Dr. Krkosek's work, but we have to recognize that the status quo did change.

As the committee listens to the scientific debate around the evidence concerning sea lice, for instance, I think it's also important to recognize DFO's position not only at a domestic level but internationally. For instance, in a report produced in January 2010 for the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, or NASCO, the department stated: “Aquaculture information is mainly provided as it relates to marine-based activity, as it is widely accepted that this component of salmon farming comprises the primary risks to wild salmon.” So while at a domestic level DFO may challenge and counter the evidence, at an international level they're clearly accepting it.

We've been encouraging a transition to closed containment for ten years. Living Oceans and the member groups of CAAR have strongly encouraged this committee to recommend a significant federal investment in closed containment pilot projects to test the technology, to analyze the cost implications, but also to begin addressing the market shifts that are taking place.

Our primary market for farmed salmon in B.C. is in the U.S.; 85% or more of the salmon we produce goes to U.S. markets. Those markets are changing. Target Stores nationally in the United States have dropped farmed salmon, and within hours of making that announcement their share value went up by 4%. Safeway has written to the federal government of Canada encouraging investment in closed containment. We've provided copies to Travis of the letter from Safeway. I hope that's been made available to you. If it hasn't been translated yet, I'm sure you'll receive it shortly.

Overwaitea Food Group, I know you have heard, are selling closed containment salmon in their western Canada stores already. Federated Co-Ops, Compass Canada—a major supplier—the City of Ottawa, the University of Ottawa, institutions, hospitals are no longer carrying open-net-cage, farm-reared salmon because of the concerns around sustainability.

The impact is not just on wild fish, but on ocean ecosystems. We believe there are many concerns out there that are not necessarily valid. We've been working with Marine Harvest on their proposed closed containment pilot project. While there are rumours that the industry would move off the north island and away from B.C., Marine Harvest is actively seeking a site for their project on Vancouver Island, particularly on the north island.

Closed containment requires reasonably priced land and abundant fresh cold water, which are not readily available in Los Angeles.

Stores are seeking additional supply. I think it's important to note that Overwaitea is not charging a premium for the closed containment salmon they are selling. They have told us there's sufficient profit margin for both the producer and the retailer without a price premium.

We think that B.C. has tremendous advantages—its experience in fish husbandry, and its established markets, land, fresh water, and non-fossil-fuel sources of energy—and we strongly encourage a full investigation of closed containment.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Young now has the floor.

[Michelle Young, Salmon Aquaculture Campaigner, Georgia Strait Alliance]

Thank you for this opportunity.

My name is Michelle Young and I work with the Georgia Strait Alliance as a salmon aquaculture campaigner. GSA works on a wide range of issues affecting the marine environment in this region, but I'll be talking about fish farms.

A good part of my job is spent researching what is actually happening on the salmon farms, watching for issues of concern, such as the levels of lice on farms when stock are treated and fish are harvested, stocking levels, escapes of fish, disease outbreaks, and so on. Through my experience, I've seen a lack of transparency in this industry.

In recent years the two major fish farm companies in B.C. began publishing their sea lice data on their websites. Marine Harvest has been doing so the longest and has the most comprehensive data. Mainstream Canada began publishing their data this year. However, these data are so minimal that they provide little useful information and can sometimes be misleading. They only report adult and pre-adult stages of lice, and only for one of the two species of lice commonly found on salmon farms. To my knowledge, no one has researched the impact of that second species of lice, a general species known as caligus, and what effect it has on herring and other fish in relation to the presence of those fish farms.

Under the precautionary principle, should we allow those farms to continue to be there if we haven't even asked those questions yet?

Just last week I was researching lice levels in farms in the Discovery Islands area, and the Mainstream Brent Island farm actually showed zero lice in October in their data. But it's more likely that they didn't do a count, because they are harvesting and they don't have to count when they go below three pens of fish. I went out there, and they still have three pens of untreated fish, and we don't know how many lice are on that farm, which is very concerning.

The Mainstream farm just across Okisollo Channel at Venture Point treated those fish in September, but their chart doesn't show how high the lice levels peaked, and what dates they counted and treated those fish, or what levels the lice are at now and how long they took to come down after they had treated the fish. Grieg Seafood also has a farm in Okisollo Channel, but they don't report any sea lice data to the public.

The reason I'm concerned about these particular farms is that they are very close to the Marine Harvest farm in Okisollo Channel, which has just reported 22 motile Lepeophtheirus per fish in September. These high levels are occurring in the Wild Salmon Narrows, where we are asking to have five farms removed as an emergency measure. This is a critical migration route for wild juvenile salmon, including Fraser River sockeye, and yet it's virtually impossible for us to know what's going on at these farms.

There are at least four other farms in the Discovery Islands area right now that have exceeded three motile lice, with two others trending up and not showing any count for October.

While we hear a lot about the industry's ability to control sea lice during the juvenile salmon out-migration, sea lice levels still spike, and there are still juvenile salmon in the area right now. There is currently no evidence that anyone has sampled juvenile salmon in the Discovery Islands for sea lice at this time of year.

These elevated levels are occurring just as a new study was published last week on lice levels in this very same area, showing there are higher levels of sea lice in areas with net-cage salmon farms in B.C. They were highest in the Discovery Islands, where salmon farming is most intense.

Last year a think tank of scientists convened at SFU regarding the declining Fraser River sockeye and released a report on what they concluded should be done for these fish. Among the recommendations was the precautionary removal of salmon farms along sockeye migration routes, which is consistent with our request to move these five farms in the Wild Salmon Narrows.

Summarized regional disease data in B.C.'s annual fish health reports are also touted as a fish farm version of transparency. We need to see all of the data to be able to assess the potential impacts. We must know as a minimum which diseases occurred on which farms, how long the diseased fish are in the water, and what is done in the way of prevention treatments and quarantine of these diseases. While new federal regulations are being developed, the veil of secrecy over these fish farm diseases needs to be lifted. We need detailed and timely farm-by-farm disease and sea lice data, but also bycatch stocking and escape data, as well as advance notice of drug and chemical use for people harvesting seafood in those areas at the same time.

To achieve greater transparency, DFO must impose greater scrutiny over this industry and end its promotion of current practices, such as the information that is on their web page, “Myths and Realities about Salmon Farming”, which I encourage you take a look at if you haven't done so.

DFO should not promote an agenda of expanding fish farms with so many unanswered questions, especially while the Cohen inquiry is going on and while federal regulations are being drafted. DFO needs to protect our marine resources with emergency removal of net cages from wild salmon migration routes, including the Wild Salmon Narrows, and immediately begin the transition of this industry into closed containment while providing both regulatory and financial support.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Sewid, it is your turn.

[Tom Sewid, Executive Director, British Columbia Branch, Aboriginal Adventures Canada]

[Witness speaks in Kwakiutl language]

I'd like to thank the hereditary chiefs and their people of the N'Quatqua First Nations, as well as the Homalco First Nation.

My name is Tom Sewid. I am past chair of Aboriginal Tourism British Columbia, and I am the past executive director of Aboriginal Tourism Team Canada. Back in 1991, when I was the vice-president of the Kwakiutl Territorial Fisheries Commission, not one kilometre down the road I spoke at a hotel in a chamber like this to someone who came from Ottawa with some people on a panel. I believe it was either Mifflin or Fraser, I can't remember at this time. But it was concerning the salmon in the Fraser River system. And when I spoke there I stated that we have to really look at AFS, the aboriginal fisheries strategy.

Right now it's an understatement to say, as the head of Aboriginal Adventures Canada, that if we don't have a salmon resource, we don't have a tourism industry, because it directly impacts the regional draws of grizzly bears, orcas, dolphins, eagles, and everything else. And the scientists will say it makes the forests grow. I believe them.

So in order to keep this resource sustainable and keep them coming to our river systems, we have to look at all the factors that are making them disappear from time to time. I had faith in 1991 when I was relieved of my duty as a captain for Canadian Fishing Company, Jimmy Pattison, on a seine boat. I said that a day would come when those sockeye will return, gangbusters. In 2010 it happened. Thankfully I was on the deck of a seine boat and I reaped the rewards of that salmon season.

Last year I never had one jar canned of salmon in my cupboards, as well as the year before. What happened? Well, I let everyone talk about their reasons. It's all there. But maybe we should look at other things as well, such as why are there drift net floats washing up on the shores of Haida Gwaii right now, as my friends tell me? When I lived there two years ago I saw it. Why is it that the bargain stores now have canned salmon sold cheaply, canned in places like Thailand and from across the Pacific Ocean, where they don't have salmon in their rivers?

Why is it that we're starting to see salmon on the decks of these fish boats this year that have scars in them that are not derived from daggertooth, which was a deepwater fish that was really hammering our salmon populations back in the 1990s? Now they have marks on them that are seal, sea lion, and that's normal. But they also have three slashes: Humboldt squid. I have pictures of Humboldt squid washing up on the shores of Haida Gwaii. It's now a sports fishery on the west coast of Vancouver Island and off the coast of Washington State. So we need to look at all the compounding factors of why the sockeye and other salmon don't show up from time to time.

But when listening to everyone you guys are going to hear, one of the things you need to understand is that as first nations, having a status card makes us more Canadian than Canadians. And with the Supreme Court of Canada and its decisions, we get the rights even more than average Canadians. We now have the right to go in and work with companies to put run-of-the-river projects in our river systems in our traditional territories.

We're able to work with the wind farm operations. We hear from everyone that it's not viable, feasible to go on land with closed containment for fish farming. Well, if aboriginal people have cheap electricity that is produced in their traditional territories, then it makes it feasible to put containment on land.

But it's up to you, as the leaders at the federal government level, to change policies so that we, as aboriginals, have more revenue and equity-sharing with the fish-farming industry. And that is crucial, because once we do, then we can look at working with the federal government to change an obsolete fisheries policy of not allowing ocean ranching that's making those rivers very productive.

Aboriginals were doing that since the dawn of creation. Go to the museum and you'll see a box that was designed to move fertilized eggs from one river system to one that wasn't productive. Yet with DFO policy we can't do that. We have spawning channels, serpentine channels in Phillips Arm in their river system and up in my river, Kakweiken River in the Broughton Archipelago, in the middle of it. Yet due to DFO policy and cutbacks in funding, there is no money to go in there and take the sediment out and the logjams. Well, if we all work together, we're going to put the hand of man on the catch in rivers, however we do it. And you'd better have the budgets to keep those rivers going.

One of the biggest holdbacks right now is this obsolete policy of this genetic uniqueness of salmon in a certain river system. Come on now, the Everglades have 20-plus percent introduced species growing in that rainforest and those swamps because of ships coming from Europe and other places. Everything in life is a constant change. We have to work with it. And one of the best ways we can see salmon being strong on this coast is to work with the first nations, and that's to give us more rights to our traditional territories.

Halla Kas La.

Go in peace.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sewid.

Mr. Kingwell, you have the floor.

[Hugh Kingwell, President, Powell River Salmon Society]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You probably don't have to set the timer for me. I don't intend to speak at great length.

At this particular meeting, I represent the Powell River Salmon Society, out of Powell River of course. We're a small CEDP hatchery, a community economic development program hatchery, funded under the overall salmon enhancement program. Our function in the community is a little bit different from that of the larger production facilities. Our focus is not just on fish production, although we do produce a fair number of fish. We also work around community education, habitat restoration, and conservation practices and education throughout our community and throughout the streams we work in and with.

We do have paid people. We have three paid staff who work with our salmon program, but the rest of the ten directors and I are volunteers who maintain the society. We provide part-time employment on a seasonal basis as well, so we think we have a fairly good economic penetration in a relatively small community.

On the question of aquaculture, which I believe is what we were asked to come here to discuss today, we don't participate directly in the ongoing debate on aquaculture with regard to the pros and cons. That is not in fact the business we work in. But we are subjected to all of the discussions that have been ongoing for a number of years, and they do raise a lot of questions for us. In general we support the aquaculture industry in our area. We have people, neighbours, who work in the industry. It provides economic drivers, both direct and indirect, in our communities.

We have various kinds of fish farms. We have shellfish farms. We have salmon farms. We have net-pen farms in freshwater lakes as well as in salt water. We don't in fact have any that are in our direct waterfront, but we do have them within our regional area.

Notwithstanding our support in general for aquaculture as an industry and for the jobs and economic drivers it provides, we do have questions, and we do have concerns around aquaculture in a general sense. One of the biggest concerns we have--and it's expressed to me locally--is the ongoing lack of ownership of the industry as it is transitioned from the province to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans federally. It seems, in our opinion at least, that a vacuum of ownership has been created as this transition has gone forward.

We have concerns around the province being in a position to administer licences to farms even after the transition is done, whereas the Department of Fisheries and Oceans will be the group responsible for regulating the farms. We're concerned that we'll get into a situation much like the one we have with fresh-water streams for which permits are issued that far exceed the ability and capacity of the area they're issued for. We see that in water licences all the time.

We have concerns when we as sort of the public sitting on the sidelines listen to the debate around conflicting science reports. As the general public, we sit here and we hear everything from people saying our oceans will be dead in three to four years, and there will be no salmon, to people saying there's no impact at all. So we have these two points of view that we're trying to make sense of. We don't believe either of them to be true, quite frankly. We on the sidelines are not as stupid as we're sometimes made out to be, but we are concerned that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has not stepped into the debate. They have not stood up and dealt with the questions at hand and provided us some balancing views on the science that's there. We don't really want to be listening to hired guns on either side of the coin.

As a non-profit society that produces fish, we are, of course, concerned that we're putting fish in the same environments where these fish farms exist. If in fact they are having a negative effect, we'd like to know what that is, and we'd like that to be managed, because it's counterproductive to our interests. We're producing fish, and we really want them to survive, at least to return.

I already mentioned the issue of licences. We are concerned about the fact that now we have a split jurisdiction in which licences are issued provincially and regulation and control are federal responsibilities under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

That's what I came to say.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Thank you very much.

I now give the floor to Mr. Connors.

[Brendan Connors, PhD Candidate, Department of Biology, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Chair. Good evening.

Thanks very much for the invitation to speak to you this evening, albeit briefly.

My name is Brendan Connors. I'm a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University in the department of biological sciences. I've been there for the past almost five years and I've conducted a bunch of research on various aspects of interactions between farmed salmon and wild salmon. My work combines intensive field observations and controlled experiments with the synthesis of existing data sets on salmon and sea lice populations. I work with scientists from other academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to ask questions about interactions between farmed and wild fish. I've published seven peer-reviewed publications to date with these other scientists.

I've also been involved in work in the Broughton Archipelago since the spring of 2003. I believe you've heard a considerable amount of previous testimony with regard to pink salmon and sea lice in the Broughton Archipelago, and you're also probably all very acutely aware of concerns with regard to Fraser River sockeye and farmed salmon interactions, particularly here in the Discovery Islands.

I think the work I've done most directly speaks to some of the things you're interested in hearing about this evening. It involves research that looks at some of the broader ecosystem consequences of sea lice transmission from farmed fish to wild fish. Specifically, what I've worked on for the past number of years is understanding how sea lice influence early marine interactions between pink salmon and the salmonic predators that track them during early marine life, particularly coho salmon smolts.

Unlike pink salmon, coho salmon spend, on average, about one year in fresh water before they enter the marine environment. When they do enter the ocean, particularly in areas like the Broughton Archipelago, where there are odd- and even-year cycles of pink salmon, they feed aggressively on pink salmon for the first couple of months of marine life. This predation can be really intensive; it can account for up to about 70% of early marine mortality in pink salmon. This is during the period of time when, in areas where there isn't intensive salmon aquaculture, there aren't usually very many sea lice. What I've been interested in is what the addition of sea lice means for this natural predator-prey dynamic.

Very briefly, in a nutshell, what we've shown is that infected pink salmon are selectively predated upon by coho. That's not surprising, since an infected pink is easier to capture than an uninfected one, but what is surprising is that this comes at a cost to the coho that are feeding on them. Sea lice are incredibly adept at escaping the demise of the pink salmon that they're on and transferring to the coho as the coho feed on those pink salmon. This actually results in the accumulation and intensification of lice on those coho salmon when they're feeding on infected pink salmon. We've estimated that this increases infection twofold to threefold on those coho salmon in areas where they are reared and then interact with infected pink salmon prey.

Most salmon die one way or another during early marine life. Often that's the real bottleneck. A critical question that arose from this research is what consequences, if any, this accumulation of sea lice on coho has on their population level. On the one hand, you can imagine that increased ability to capture and feed on pink salmon may be a net positive for coho salmon population, because there's an increased access to early marine resources. On the other hand, one might hypothesize that as a result of the accumulation of lice impacts on early marine growth, there may be negative consequences.

In an effort to tease apart these different possibilities and ask that question, we've compiled about 35 years of data from Fisheries and Oceans Canada on the number of adult coho salmon that return to both the Broughton Archipelago and to the populations to the west and to the north. They share a very common coastal marine environment, except for some populations that rear and interact around salmon farms and infected pink salmon prey.

What we're able to do is tease apart or control for the confounding influence of climate and fishing pressure and ask if there are any obvious differences between these groups of coho salmon before and during these recurrent infestations that you've heard about in the mid-2000s in the Broughton Archipelago.

The results of the analysis support the hypothesis that sea lice from infected pink salmon from salmon farms are negatively impacting coho salmon populations. In fact, those populations that we looked at were depressed about sevenfold, concurrent with sea lice infestations adjacent to salmon aquaculture.

It's important to note that during that time this was preceding the coordinated changes that have gone on in the Broughton, so analysis of an updated data set is ongoing.

Two really quick key points I want to make before I wrap up is that this research highlights that it may not just be pink salmon that are impacted by sea lice from aquaculture. That's an important point to keep in mind here. There's a potential for disease to propagate through lice. It also highlights that monitoring and rigorous assessment of the health of wild salmon, both at the individual and population level, is imperative to making informed decisions about the viability and long-term sustainability of aquaculture in areas adjacent to wild fish.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Raynald Blais]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your discipline and your excellent cooperation.

We will now begin the members' question period. The formula we use is the following. There is a predetermined time allotted to each of the political parties. We have with us the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois which I represent, and members of the NDP and of the Conservative Party. According to our procedure, the parties each have a block of time.

We will begin with Ms. Joyce Murray of the Liberal Party.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for taking the time to come and give your view and help us understand the complexities of this important public policy issue. I appreciate hearing how the different groups are working together--and, Ms. Stewart, how your organization is working with one of the major fish farms to find solutions.

I have a question around the Pacific Salmon Forum's report. I notice that the first 11 out of 16 recommendations are really centred around ecosystem-based management. I'm familiar with the long and complex process of determining ecosystem-based management for the central coast land use plan. So what exactly is it? And how exactly does it impact decisions being made by industry? What are the criteria and the parameters, and who decides? How can it be applied so it is putting the ecosystem first?

Clearly, the wild salmon have to come first. These recommendations apply an ecosystem-based approach to managing the resources and the watershed, a governance system to ensure wild and farm salmon are managed according to ecosystem-based principles, and then an ecosystem-based approach to addressing impacts and potential impacts from salmon aquaculture. In your view, is this happening? And if not, what's in the way of it happening? Talk to me about what you see DFO's role is and whether it's possible to apply this similarly to how we applied it in the central coast in British Columbia with our harvest industry.

[Catherine Stewart]

Is that question to me or all of us?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

To anybody who has some thoughts on that...and yes, please start.

[Catherine Stewart]

Thanks. I appreciate the question, a huge question, for sure.

I would have to start by saying that, personally, I worked as a lead negotiator for the conservation community on the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, pushing for the implementation of ecosystem-based management in terrestrial management, and I think we're a long way from that on the ocean side. What can DFO and the federal government do?

My organization, Living Oceans, and many others have been working for a long time to try to move the PNCIMA process forward, the integrated management plan, and I think part of that multi-stakeholder process, which would be very similar to the LRMP processes on the terrestrial side, would be to discuss how ecosystem-based management can be applied to the marine ecosystems under federal and sometimes provincial responsibility.

Fundamentally, I think that we need to start looking at how to define the marine ecosystems, how to define functioning ecosystems and place boundaries in order to enable area management, how to gather baseline data that tells you what the healthy ecosystem looks like and how it has been degraded by current activities. It is critical to look at cumulative impacts, and I think that's another area where the federal government could make changes in the CEAA process, because CEAA tends to look at things in isolation rather than looking at the carrying capacity of an ecosystem, the baseline health of that ecosystem, and what the cumulative impacts already are. When we talk about a salmon farm going into a new area, we shouldn't only be looking at whether there are other salmon farms, but whether there's a pulp mill, or log dumps, what other human activities are affecting the health of that ecosystem and how would a potential farm interact with those as well as what the ecosystem can sustain and still provide us with healthy and abundant wild salmon populations and other marine resources.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Are there other comments on whether that model of the central coast LRMP and EBM is perhaps a model to apply?

[Tom Sewid]

My band, Mamalilikulla-Qwe'Qwa'Sot'Em, holds the western gateway to the Broughton Archipelago and the mouth of Knight Inlet.

I think you'll have to be really careful with that, because now that the central coast has been in effect for quite some time and we first nations are hearing through our cousins and relatives, “Wow, we sure got pooched with that one”, we can't do anything now because of this management plan that we helped participate in. I was a part of that back in 1991. And, God rest his soul, Chief Pat Alfred, my great uncle, who is no longer with us, brought us young men into the back room and said, “Be careful what's going on in there. This is going to affect your grandchildren.” We're now starting to see it. On the central coast, we know the Heiltsuk are dead against fish farming. The Kitasoo are booming with that industry and the spin-offs on that. They have a very strong tourism industry based on their regional draw, the spirit bear, and their river systems are in good shape.

When you come down and all of a sudden you come to the Mamalilikulla-Qwe'Qwa'Sot'Em people, sure, half my people might be against fish farming, but those are the ones who don't work. They're not assimilated into modern society, as the government has been trying since the first iron anchor hit an unnamed mud bay back in the east, in Canada. I'm speaking for the guys on the gale warning right now out on the central coast, on those fish farm boats delivering smolts and picking up farmed fish. They don't have time to go to the parliamentary lawns, to Norway in their regalia with their drums and pound them and say “Down with the industry”. They're too busy working, being assimilated as Canadian citizens living off-reserve and paying taxes, the majority of them, and that's what we have to look at with this land thing up on the central coast.

When it comes down to the government coming to a lot of the first nations down here, speaking for the Kwakwaka'wakw, some of the ones who are participating in this industry, they say “We want you guys to work with us to stop this industry's expansion”. Well, I think you're going to get a lot of our people and our leaders saying no, they're going to be working with the industry to see expansion of the fish farm industry, because when you had strong commercial fishing, you had a strong Kwakwaka'wakw culture. Our potlatches were booming. Our social problems within the confines of our communities and families weren't that bad. All of a sudden, since 1994, the salmon dropped. An 11-year cycle, maybe. Maybe it's caused by fish farming. Who knows? We're going to figure that out, though. But I know one thing: the negative issues to our families increased drastically, because we were flat broke. But now that we're working with the fish farm industry that supports us and keeps our seine boats tied to our communities' docks, so that when those salmon do return we can cut the lines and go fish, this is a happy community, Campbell River. Go to Walmart. Watch how many flat screens are being bought.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Do you have any other comments about ecosystem-based management as an approach?

[Brendan Connors]

I'm not super familiar with the process on the mid-coast, but you did bring up the recommendations made as part of the EBM from the Pacific Salmon Forum. I think they really hit the nail on the head, that if we're talking specifically about farmed fish and wild fish interactions, we need to have rigorous, comprehensive monitoring on the ground wherever there is aquaculture. That's a prerequisite to making informed decisions about the potential consequences--if there are any--of interactions in the first place.

In the Broughton there have been intense conversations, discussions, and research that have ultimately resulted in a coordinated type of approach, but this has been many years in the process. While a spotlight is shown there, other parts of the province have had aquaculture expand outside of the spotlight without a lot of that baseline information. That leads to the uncertainty we are presented with today.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

A key to the EBM negotiations is to have a science secretariat, a timeframe for this land use plan agreement, and everybody at the table. As imperfect as Mr. Sewid would say the outcome was, things can be learned from those processes as we move forward to the next one if there is a science secretariat, and the baseline science is critical to that.

Are there comments on that?

[Michelle Young]

I'm concerned about the length of time that's going to take.

There's apparently a debate going on, although I don't think there's a debate over pink and chum salmon. We don't know if sockeye are affected. There's not a lot of research happening there.

We can't continue to expand this industry when we don't know what it's doing to our salmon. While we're thinking about maybe implementing EBM in seven to nine years, what's going to happen in the meantime while we carry on with business as usual? That's my concern.