That's a fairly big question. I'll try to keep my comments kind of short.
On the waste discharge side, right now the current requirements are part of a performance-based monitoring scheme. I don't know how familiar you are with that. I think that on the west coast we've been really quite proactive in developing that system, although that system is also used in other regions around the world. Wherever you have an activity such as aquaculture or any other man-made activity, if you have some performance measurements you can use, you can certainly manage the situation. So I think that's being done relatively well. I don't have a concern about it.
The one thing we don't know as much about is cumulative impacts. While you may be able to characterize one site, what's the impact of multiple sites?
I think the waste impacts are being managed.
On the disease side, I've worked in a lot of countries around the world, and I spent a lot of time studying sea lice before I arrived in the provincial government. Sea lice on the west coast have a very high profile, but personally I don't believe that sea lice are causing any impact.
I think we've started to hear testimony in the Cohen commission to the effect that people are starting to feel the same thing. You have lice numbers that are very low. The use of things like Slice to treat for lice is the lowest for all the salmon-farming countries in the world.
Here in B.C. the lice numbers are very low. I think if I had to characterize sea lice as a problem, I would say that if a region wanted to do the best thing possible or if you were to set a standard, you would do what they do in B.C. I've seen other regions where the lice problems have gotten out of control, and I even worked in one for many years.
On other disease fronts, it really depends on the disease in question, but I think that when the province was managing the situation there was quite an active surveillance program. I thought the farmers were really quite proactive about it. Disease incidence is very low, and any disease we've had has been from endemic pathogens already present on the west coast. So if you farm some fish in a region, they might catch something that is local, but then it's being managed.
Disease is definitely a threat, and I certainly wouldn't want to be complacent about it, but I also think that it's being risk-managed at this time.