Thank you. You read my mind.
I've been out and about in the Broughton Archipelago, a beautiful, remote area, for 26 years, and I just want to tell you that the oceans are not dying. When I arrived, there were no humpback whales. There are now 27 whales that use the area. The sand lance population, which is a very, very energy-rich fish, is bigger than it's ever been. Nobody has seen it this big. We have pilchard back, which were gone for 90 years. The Pacific white-sided dolphin population is in the thousands.
A lot is going right in our oceans, and the fact that our salmon are declining, when the western Pacific and the Alaskan ones are not, is an indication that we can fix this.
I so hope that you let us do this. If fishery management became more localized, if DFO became an organization that worked with people and you took the scientists out of the political body of DFO and let them be what they were at the fisheries research boards.... They were cutting edge. They were the leading fishery scientists in the world.
If we just took a few simple steps, Canada could be an example around the world of how we could have our fish and our communities thrive.
To your committee, thank you so much for having me here today. I see a lot of movement happening, and I'm hoping that we can all follow through and solve this. It's not about anybody losing; we all win. The Norwegians, if they have to go home, will still fish farm. Those European shareholders will be fine. It's the communities of British Columbia we need to be concerned about.
So thank you so much, all of you.