Fisheries Committee on Nov. 15th, 2011

[Alan Craig]

When you compare Arctic char to Atlantic salmon, we're talking about a size difference. Arctic char is sold in the size range of two to three pounds. Our average size is 10 to 12 pounds. So the cubic feet of area required to keep those fish is different. I think that's an important point.

I think we should put the escape in perspective over the last 10 years. The 200,000 fish that escaped last year were smolt, which are very unlikely to survive to spawn. If you go back over the history, you'll find that escapes are very minimal, other than that one situation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you.

Mr. Eyking

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Chair. Welcome, guests.

I love fishing Atlantic salmon, and my wife and my family love eating salmon. But there's a problem. If I only catch one a year, we have a situation, so we buy a lot of your salmon. I told her to try to switch it up, so now she's buying trout. It's cheap, good food. It's healthy food, and we need to have it. And it's good for the industry. At the end of the day, though, we have to try to make both industries cohabit in some way.

You mentioned, Mr. Craig, that if we're going to compete with the Norways and the Chiles of the world, some of the technologies that have been put forward here are not going to work. You've got to remember that when something becomes an endangered species, other things come into play. We've seen over the years for many industries--like forestry, farming, mining--that the warning signals were there, and they said, “Well, it's only an owl”, or something like that. Next thing you know from Environment Canada, their industry is shut down because it's an endangered species.

What I'm concerned about is whether down the road there's a ruling and your industry is not ready for it. Whether it's right or wrong or in between, these things happen. You see it happening in the United States with their Endangered Species Act.

How do we deal with that? It was mentioned by the previous guest that Scotland is being proactive. What they're trying to do is keep them at a distance. I know in Atlantic Canada there are a lot of coves and bays out there, and many of them do not have salmon rivers. I know as a farmer myself, you can't move operations willy-nilly, but to me, a solution would be for your industry, working with their industry, to look at a 10-year or 15-year plan.

Instead of working in tandem, you work on a deal. Some will say if there are new aquaculture operations, maybe they should not be in a wild salmon sensitive area. Maybe there should be some encouragement from governments to help move some of these sites into other areas. To me, this afternoon, I see that's one of the biggest solutions that could be used by the wild salmon people.

Some of the recommendations here that you feel you can't deal with...what about having a 10-year or 15-year plan to say how your industry is going to go? Let's go to Scotland and these places, to see how they've done it ,and start moving some of the operations or even do a trial run; do a trial run and get it out of that wild salmon sensitive area and see if it's working. If not, you could all of a sudden be faced with the Endangered Species Act, and you don't want that happening. They simply shut you down; that's the way it is.

[Nell Halse]

It already has. We purchased companies in Maine, where the industry was in a huge downturn because of things like the Atlantic salmon being in danger. There were legal challenges for all kinds of issues. Our company actually bought out the two international companies that decided to heck with it; they got out of there. We had faith in rebuilding the sector, and we did. The year we purchased companies there, there were 300,000 fish in the water, and now we've got close to 3 million. We've opened a processing plant.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Is that 3 million in Maine?

[Nell Halse]

In Maine, and we opened a processing plant, the first processing plant to open in Maine for 10 years. So it can be done. We sat down with the regulators and the NGOs. The containment program there was developed collaboratively. This is not new to us. We've done this before--

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

If I may, though, are your operations in Maine at a distance from the wild salmon sensitive areas?

[Nell Halse]

No. In fact, you would probably not have an industry in Atlantic Canada if you had to stay away from all the salmon rivers.

What's happening in Scotland is a bit of a misrepresentation. I'm very familiar with the Scottish industry. We're very collegial around the world. We meet regularly. The environments are different in each country. They have a very big industry in Scotland, much bigger than we do. The regulations that we follow in Maine and the codes of practice that we follow there are very much the same as what we have here.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

In Scotland?

[Nell Halse]

Here, and in Scotland, too. In fact, there are things that we do here that they don't do in Scotland yet. We do them much better--area management fallowing. Our whole industry is divided that way here, and it isn't in Scotland. I think we have a lot to be proud of in terms of how our industry is run here, but also how it's regulated.

I think moving away from the salmon rivers may sound like a great idea, but you have to first decide why you are doing it. Is it necessary? You talked about the canary in the coal mine. Let's look at what the reality is. What's happening that's different?

The decline of Atlantic salmon in the area where we farm started long before we were there. It's that topic we had earlier. Simply because two things happen near each other doesn't mean one is the cause of the other. Before the federal government asks the industry to do something, it should do the analysis. Is this really required? Is it going to make a difference?

If you moved all the salmon farms off the east coast of Canada, would the wild salmon come back?

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I don't know if that's a fair...they might, but I don't think we would want--

[Nell Halse]

I think scientists would probably say no.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I don't think we would want the industry to go away. I would hope that both industries would work together on a solution. If not, somebody else is going to make the decision for both of you. That's my sense of it.

[Nell Halse]

I agree with you completely. Here's one example. We're working with the Atlantic Salmon Federation on a joint conservation project, which we've done for many years. In the Magaguadavic River the returns are very low. We have a hatchery on that river. We have dedicated a space with a separate facility where together with the Magaguadavic River Salmon Recovery Group, which ASF is a member of, as is DFO and a number of local conservationists, we grow the wild salmon so that they can be released at different stages by the recovery group into the river as part of the restocking. And there's another project in the inner Bay of Fundy that another company has worked on.

So we are trying to find the solutions, not just how to make our industry healthy but also how to restore wild salmon. We have the expertise in-house to do that. We have a lot of people who know more about fish biology and how to raise fish and how to keep them healthy than anybody else.

[J. Terry Drost]

I would also like to say that we need to look for what the source of the decline is. I think that on the Saint John River the decline in Atlantic salmon started long before the salmon industry began down in the Charlotte Island region, which by the way is a fair distance away from the mouth of the Saint John River.

I can remember 20 or 25 years ago, maybe even a little longer, acid rain from the United States was one of the primary causes, or blamed to be a cause, of the salmon decline in a lot of the rivers in the southwestern region of Nova Scotia as well as in some of the rivers up in Cape Breton.

Water quality is huge. There are many things that affect water quality. I think the Atlantic Salmon Federation has worked with a number of different stakeholders along these river systems. It's not just about competition with other fish or even seals; it's also about the habitat and what's happened along these rivers over the years.

We're getting a lot better at it. When we build a road now, we do a lot more to maintain the habitat for the wild fish. Anybody in the construction business will tell you that the way they operate today compared with the way they operated 30 years ago is completely different.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

This is not the first time we've talked about the problems with salmon—wild salmon and farm-raised salmon. The west coast has major problems with them, and I think there was some talk of having rules and regulations on where the fish farms were going to be. There seems to be a problem on the west coast too.

Going forward, I think your association is going to have to look at different technologies to deal with the lice and many of the problems that are happening everywhere you look.

I think Norway is having the same problem with their wild species of salmon too, aren't they? They're not getting acid rain in Chile, but they say the wild salmon in Chile is having a problem. It's been attributed down there to the farm-raised salmon.

[J. Terry Drost]

There have been escapes in Chile over the years and there are starting to be some wild runs of Pacific salmon into some of the rivers and streams in the Chilean region. I haven't heard of this happening anywhere else in South America.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not picking on you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Mr. Eyking, I have to interrupt you here.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I was just getting rolling.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Yes, I can see that.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for coming today, answering our questions, and providing us with some information. We really appreciate it. I'm certain that the committee members do as well.

Thank you for taking the time today out of your busy schedules.

That concludes our meeting. The meeting is adjourned.