Fisheries Committee on Feb. 29th, 2012

[Gerry Furney]

I don't think there would be a problem in finding additional land. All sorts of land is available that has different designations. Some of it is parkland, some is industrial land, and some is zoned for forestry and will probably continue to be forestry associated. There would be no problem whatsoever because we have not had the kind of development on the west coast that we have seen and you have seen in other parts of Canada, where there has been a lot of private ownership.

Relatively speaking, there is very little private ownership on the coast of B.C., mainly because most of the activities in the past have taken place as a result of a forestry operation or a mining operation. Once forestry is finished in an area, it takes a long time for that area to produce wood again. In the meantime, the land is owned essentially by the provincial government. As well, the first nations people will have a considerable amount of that land available to them all over the north island and the adjoining coastline.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Okay, thank you. Yes, I wasn't sure what the provincial permitting requirements or licensing requirements for land access were like, and I wondered if that was going to be an issue.

Mr. Smith, on the supplemental report from 2009, you have $178.3 million in revenues generated from the impacts of aquaculture. Did I hear the population for that region right at around 7,000 people?

[Neil Smith]

That's just the municipal population. The regional district's overall population, including unincorporated and first nations, is 11,500.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

That's still fairly significant for that region: $178 million in revenues for 11,000 people.

[Neil Smith]

Yes, it is significant. The bulk of that value is retained through the processing plant that Marine Harvest Canada holds in Port Hardy. I will pass that report along to your clerk.

The value that's produced from our region is shared with neighbouring areas as well. We don't have a lot of employment in farm site work, for example, by local residents at this time. However, there's a lot of transportation that is of value to the local area.

We're still in the process of—through our labour market partner agreement with the Province of B.C.—trying to maximize employment and economic opportunities in our region through our communities that are producing half of British Columbia's farmed salmon. We're not quite there yet. We have our 400 person-years of local employment, as you can see there, but there are many more person-years, arguably, that we should have in our region from that industry.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Do you see room for growth in that area? If so, what's preventing it right now?

[Neil Smith]

There's a distinct problem in farm site employment. Marine Harvest Canada has made significant efforts in the last couple of years to boost the number of local workers that manage their farm sites in the Broughton Archipelago, the Quatsino site, and elsewhere.

However, we have companies like Mainstream Canada with a number of farm sites that offer little in the way of local employment, mainly due to the fact that commute workers operate the sites and the fish harvested from those sites are delivered to Campbell River instead of our region for processing. The benefits are somewhat muted from their activity in our communities. However, those benefits do accrue to central Vancouver Island instead.

There is a belief by my board that we do need to boost the employment from the existing farm sites and support any new technologies that will increase employment in the first nations and the communities. We're only really scratching the surface at this time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much.

Mr. MacAulay.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, gentlemen.

Your Worship, you indicated that groups like Living Oceans and others, which are sponsored by foreign dollars, have created a negative atmosphere. Is that in the fish farming areas?

[Gerry Furney]

Yes, certainly. They've done it in the major centres as well, with articles in the Vancouver Sun, The Province and the The Globe and Mail. The only really positive newspaper that covers the area in a practical sense is the National Post. I believe they have a good handle on what actually happens in British Columbia and its economy.

I don't feel there's a way of handling anything while the campaigns that are being waged against fish farming, as it stands, continue to succeed. I don't believe there is a possibility of increasing the number of people employed in fish farms until such time as these people face reality.

I'm hoping that the amount of support the Namgis will have on their land base operation will let people know, and let those organizations understand, that it's not practical for them to denigrate the product. That's one of the areas in which the opposition has been fairly difficult to deal with—creating a negative image about the product.

The product is an absolutely beautiful product. In fact, in most of the good restaurants in Vancouver that's the product that is presented as fresh fish. For that reason alone I believe these groups should back away, and let the economy and the nature of the people take effect on it, carry on the way they should be able to carry on, and increase the number of jobs they have in production, transportation, and processing.

I believe there is tons of potential there. Its footprint on Vancouver Island and the coast north of here is minute. There's no reason in the world why it shouldn't be allowed to expand at the level the economy would justify.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you.

Just so I fully understand, you mentioned in your presentation that you would like the government to approve more sites. Just to get a better understanding, are there farming groups that want to expand and are not given the go-ahead to expand, or has the climate been poisoned by outside interests that want to tell people that this fish farming is so bad for the sea, killing the land underneath the farms, and all this stuff? You've heard it all; we've heard it all. Is that what you see?

Are there people looking to expand and the government is not approving it, or are people not looking because of the negative advertisement on farms?

[Gerry Furney]

That's a question that needs to be answered.

My take on it is that the potential is there as long as the regulations were widened enough to allow new fish farms. But as Neil has pointed out, there has been very little activity in the creation of new fish farms over the last few years. That's a reality we're facing. If I went and applied for a licence right now to take on an area and create a fish farm in the ocean, I'd probably be told, “We'll get back to you in a year or two, once the dust has settled on this situation.” That's the way it has been for the last couple of years.

That's unfair, especially for the people who have the greatest potential to benefit from it, and that's the first nations people and others who live in the isolated areas in which there is very little alternative employment. So there's a situation here.

I'm not too sure whether your committee has actually toured any of the west coast areas, but I believe you have a pretty fair understanding. Our MP, John Duncan, has been an extremely strong proponent of the industry in any way he can safely do it, as a politician trying to represent all the people on the north island. He does a great job, and I would hope he will manage to get some information across to you along these lines as well. I haven't copied him with my presentation yet, but I intend to.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you very much.

Also, you indicated when you were responding to one of the questions that you would accept closed containment if it would create the jobs. When you gave your presentation you indicated quite clearly, as I could see would happen, that the closed containment sites will end up very close to the market. Do you not feel that? Then the jobs would not be there at all. I just wonder where you're going with that. You're not very strong on closed containment, I would say.

[Gerry Furney]

Like anything else, any other business decision we make in life, any political decision we make in life, you have to show me that it's working, and if they can show me that it's working, I'm not going to resist it. I don't take a Luddite approach to anything. If there's a way of improving it, and we can improve employment and we can improve the product or produce more product, there's no way we should tell people they can't build it near a processing plant or near one of the major centres farther south.

I don't believe the economy would allow all of it to function, say, on the borders of Vancouver. The climate, the availability of water, and the availability of areas in which to disperse the water from the fish farms would be limited.

Our area has very little other activity in it that would inhibit having a neighbourhood turn into a fish farming area, and if it's on land, great; it will employ people as well in the processing, transportation, and other activities. But until such time as we can understand what the economics are—the real economics, not the economics of the force-fed, foreign money coming in and interfering with the normal transition of an industry on land or off land.... I believe until we see that proven in hard numbers, it's very hard to make that kind of a decision. I don't believe we should be putting fish farms or any other activity so far away that they can't be done economically. Whatever we do in the long run has to be economical, and has to be justified to the investors and to the people in terms of their interest in the continuity of the industry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you.

Mr. Kamp.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mayor Furney. It's good to see you again.

Mr. Smith, I'm glad to have you here. I think you bring an interesting and much-needed perspective to our study, so we thank you for that.

Is it fair to say—both of you, I suppose, but particularly you, Gerry—that you're neither for nor against closed containment?

[Gerry Furney]

That's correct. I'm a businessman. I was a logger. I was a miner. I did a lot of work. I've never worked as a fisherman—that's about the only thing I could've worked in that I didn't.

As a businessman, I understand that you have to be able to pay for your costs, and that the costs have to be held as low as possible, in the interest of providing an economical end product. I do not stand in the way of any practical, viable method of growing food. I believe in certain instances we have to do that, with chicken, pigs, and other farm animals.

In the case of fish, the natural environment here should make it possible for us to produce fish at less cost than they'd be produced in a land-based containment system, and honest numbers will soon prove that. In the meantime, I don't think we should be shutting off the expansion of the water-based fish farming. I believe we should be encouraging it.

Your committee, with its influence, will be able to encourage the fisheries to be more optimistic and more helpful in developing new sites. In fact, the ultimate test of your whole work, and my little bit of a contribution, will be if we see any new sites at all. I'm not optimistic about it, but I'm an optimist generally about the north island, the coast, and the people who live here.

I'd love to see it happen. I'd love to see lots of employment, with advertisements for transportation jobs, processing jobs, and jobs in the management of the fish farms in the ocean. I'd love to see that, but I'm also practical. If someone can prove to me that there's a cheaper way of doing it without free dollars being introduced, then great. I'd support it either on land or off land.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

That's a good point. It seems to me that the separation between the status quo open-net farm technology, and the RAS, or the closed containment system, is a false dichotomy.

Mr. Smith, in a section of the report you state that really what we want is the ability to provide fish protein in a way that's environmentally sustainable and responsible, and that there are other technologies available to us as well. There's open ocean farming, which I think the report refers to, and multi-trophic aquaculture.

Are there any comments on that?

[Neil Smith]

The only comment I'd make is to echo what you've just said. We're not dealing with an either-or situation. The north island is very well positioned to maintain open-pen operations. We also need to look at closed containment technologies and their potential for niche sectors in domestic and international markets. There have been a number of successful RAS projects done with coho, and a Washington State company has secured a contract in the last year or so with the Overwaitea supermarket chain.

I think a number of different applications are possible, and anything that assists the region in diversifying its aquaculture is to the region's strength. A diverse rural economy is a strong rural economy, even within one sub-sector like aquaculture. From a regional perspective, it's a good-news story to be exploring all these options without throwing anything out.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Some people on the industry side say they're so tied up with fighting the anti-aquaculture campaign and the whole social licence issue, that they just wish they could take their resources and put them into things like the new research in Europe and elsewhere that your report refers to. But because it's become a polarized issue, this has been a challenge for them.

If you have a final comment, I'd be glad to hear it.

[Neil Smith]

I think it's important when talking about the private sector—I assume that you've had or will have presentations from the private sector—to bear in mind, as I indicated in my report for Mayor Furney, that there are other research and development activities going on in the global industry, focusing largely on much larger open-pen activities further out to sea. Marine Harvest Scotland, for example, is in the process of doing something just like that.

The rural job dimension can actually be lost a little bit with those models. It's important to bear in mind what the private sector is doing in research and development elsewhere, because Canada could get lost in the crowd if it's focusing on only one area of R and D.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you.

Mr. Donnelly.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mayor Furney, you mentioned the Living Oceans Society in previous comments. I'm wondering if you're aware that they are working with an organization called CAAR, the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform. Within that alliance, they've been working with Marine Harvest Canada, including working together with them on a pilot project that Marine Harvest is looking at in terms of closed containment. I'm wondering if you're aware of that and if you have any comments about it.

[Gerry Furney]

I'm aware of this, and I'm also aware that Marine Harvest could spend its time and efforts much more profitably if it were handling new sites and also the expansion of the population in the existing sites, which is an important request of theirs. They'd like to increase the population of their sites by about 20% in each of their farms because they've proven that this can be done economically and practically, but they haven't had that permission yet.

It's still set at the lower number. I believe that it's 400,000 units per fish farm as a maximum at the present time. They feel that they could go to 500,000 quite easily, without any negative effects. Anything whatsoever that we can do to make their time more productive when they're on the water, or available to go on the water and actually manage their business the way they should be able to without having to participate in strange practices with other organizations that are avowedly against them....

I find it very hard to believe.

I saw it happen in the forest industry. Some of our major companies just folded up and went away. We have one major forest company now on Vancouver Island, Western Forest Products, and at one time we probably had half a dozen that were melded into that one company on a much smaller level, strictly because of the pressure that was brought to bear by these people from the outside influencing our ability to farm normally and log our area in the way that we should be entitled to.