Fisheries Committee on Feb. 29th, 2012

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

So you are aware that this environmental organization is working with the aquaculture industry.

I'm just wondering why you think—I think you alluded to it before—the open-net aquaculture industry hasn't expanded.

[Gerry Furney]

I'm aware that the only way that aquaculture can expand is by developing new sites and/or getting permission to increase the volume, or the population, in their existing sites. If they're spending most of their time negotiating with other organizations that are against their existence, that's their choice. They probably have a gun to their heads, and they have to do what they're doing with Living Oceans and any other environmental organization that is committed to the destruction of the aquaculture industry.

I can see where they're almost prisoners of the situation. I think it's very unfortunate that any environmental organization, especially when they're funded from outside our country, should interfere in the normal development of an industry that is perfectly legitimate and perfectly capable of functioning safely and employing a lot of people.

That's the basis for my whole involvement in this thing. I want to see our communities develop. I want to see first nations people and young people developing in their capabilities and working in the areas they were brought up in, so that they can benefit from the beauty of the area and its ability to provide solid, steady jobs on an economical basis year-round.

That, to me, is worthwhile. This is why I'm involved to this extent with you folks today. I really appreciate your committee doing what it's doing. I appreciate the quality of the questions that we've had. I wish we had another couple of hours. I'd much prefer to do this over a coffee or a beer in Port McNeill, or Port Hardy, but maybe another time we'll be able to do that.

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

Thank you for the invitation. I would certainly love to do that, Mr. Mayor.

The Royal Society of Canada recently released a report. I'm not sure if you're aware of this or have heard of it. It was called “Sustaining Canada’s Marine Biodiversity: Responding to the Challenges Posed by Climate Change, Fisheries, and Aquaculture”. Certainly, the panel of scientists note the inherent uncertainty of scientific data. In the report, they basically conclude that it's accepted that the open-net fish farms can cause infections of salmon louse, can contribute to infections in native salmonids, and that these infections can increase juvenile salmonid mortality rates. That's essentially a quote out of this report. The report authors expressed concern over the potential spread of other salmon disease. I know there was concern from the ISAB—and it has been contentious—about parasites and sea lice in the ocean coming from aquaculture and affecting wild salmon. That has been the source of a fair amount of controversy.

I'm wondering about the findings of this new, national report. It has international implications, in fact—the Royal Society of Canada's report. I'm wondering how that plays with you, and how that might affect, for instance, areas like the Broughton Archipelago, the wild salmon fishery, or other areas—the things that you described that are quite amazing and beautiful in your part of the world.

[Gerry Furney]

It's a very tough question to answer from a practical standpoint. I'm aware there were various studies done. There was one study a couple of years ago that came out of the University of Alberta. It was proven by people who looked at the results of that particular study that it was erroneous. It was wrong. It should have never been publicized and given any credit. Unfortunately, it was. I wrote to the University of Alberta at the time objecting to the method in which it was done. It involved some extremists who were involved on a pseudo-technical basis, utilizing a lot of exaggeration and misinformation to try to denigrate the industry.

That kind of thing is continuing to happen. This Royal Society of Canada report I am not aware of. I'm sorry, I can't elaborate on that. Again, if there are any negative activities against aquaculture, I'm very suspicious of who the proponents are, where they are getting their funding from, and why they are doing what they are doing. It's not a practical, honest, and decent way of running a country, province, or an industry in that province. We should have the freedom to do these kinds of things in the proven areas that we have.

We have already proven that this industry works well. It works well in Scotland. I know it works well in Ireland. It works very well in Norway. I've made two different trips to Norway at my own expense to see exactly what was happening in aquaculture there. I went there about 30 years ago. I went again about three years ago. I was very impressed by the industry there. They have had their problems. We've had our problems. There will be problems no matter where we go with any method of fish farming or any other kind of farming. It's up to whatever is the best way possible to fund the kind of proper research that will make sure we don't screw up in the future and harm that industry in any way, whatsoever.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you.

Mr. Sopuck.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Good afternoon.

Robert Sopuck is my name, Mayor Furney.

On a personal note, I think our paths crossed many years ago when Prime Minister Mulroney appointed you to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. I was staffed to the Honourable Glen Cummings, who you may remember was a Manitoba member of the round table—

[Gerry Furney]

I certainly do.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

—and I was the young staffer at the time with him.

It's wonderful to see you again, and I'm so impressed that you've continued, for these decades, your advocacy for rural B.C., and indeed for all of rural Canada. It's a testament to your tenacity and dedication that you are here in front of us today. Hopefully, I will be in Port McNeill one of these days to have that beer with you, because I will take you up on that. I'm buying, by the way.

We just had some questions here. We had a presenter from Overwaitea Foods, and he talked about their decision, which I think is dubious science, at best, to decline to buy farmed salmon in favour of wild fish. There was very little evidence presented, but it's obvious his corporation caved in to the pressure that was placed upon it before they really thought it through.

Can you comment on the behaviour of corporations like this that cave in to pressure without really thinking things through?

[Gerry Furney]

I can. I think it's very irresponsible of any organization or any individual to jump into something like this and make flat statements that can harm an industry or harm the people who work for that industry, and harm the whole province that we have here, depending on the resource industries. I don't believe there is any organization that should have the right to come in and raise spurious facts or questions about a situation that is proven and well proven, in the majority of cases, in other countries, which we've already discussed.

I believe that as much as possible we should take people like that with a grain of salt. It's very sad, but they're motivated by other forces, far beyond my understanding, and unable to appreciate what the hell they're doing to us.

As far as the arrangement with Overwaitea goes, I have a certain friendship with the main man in Overwaitea, and I'm going to have a chat with him and tell him to get these people off our backs. There's no way they should continue to be doing that kind of thing just in the interest of making an extra buck out of salmon that is no different from the salmon produced by all the other activities.

Incidentally, if you're going to come to Port McNeill, you might arrange to do it at election time, and then I will have you work on my election, which will be in three years.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

You can count on that, Mr. Mayor. You can count on that.

Mr. Smith, you talk about 400 person-years of employment in the local area now. If net pen aquaculture were fully developed, what would be the potential job impact in your region?

[Neil Smith]

If you sell more net pen development, firstly, you would be looking at maybe some more employment opportunities in the processing area based in Port Hardy. You wouldn't necessarily be looking at any great increases in farm-site worker employment, given the current industrial model of eight days on and six off.

That's a bit of an inhibitor to local recruitment. We really do need to have that discussion with industry to allow the open-pen industry to fulfill its true potential up here, because as I said earlier, we're not at the level of employment we should be, even at its current size.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Given the length of time, Mayor Furney, that you've been in your community, you've probably been following the state of the wild salmon stocks. What is your view in terms of the effect that net pen aquaculture may have on wild salmon stocks and wild salmon fisheries?

[Gerry Furney]

I don't believe there is any negative effect. The flow of fish up and down will continue to be up and down over the years. Last year we saw one of the biggest runs of fish ever in the Fraser River, fish that were not expected there, and I'm sure there were lots of so-called environmentalists worried about the fact that we had a huge return on the Fraser River.

Other areas of the coast are managing to hold their own fairly steadily. The increasing capability of the fishing industry has been very surprising to me. The mechanization that has been developed in seine boats means that seine boats are down to sometimes just a couple of hours of fishing in an opening. They're no longer as labour-intensive as they used to be now that so much mechanical improvement is available to them in handling their fishing challenge.

There's another aspect too, one that I'm only peripherally aware of, and that is the effect of the Alaskan salmon on our fish and the amount of fish that are actually swimming back and forth through the same area. There are Japanese fish. There are Chinese fish. There are Russian fish. There are American fish. There are the semi-wild fish that are produced by the Alaskans, where they have their own particular form of fish ranching and are fairly capable of maintaining a big industry in Alaska. But all those fish are eating in the same area. They're on the same timetable, if you like. Obviously there will be fluctuations in the way the fish survive, whether they're in a food area or not in a food area. There are also factory ships working on the ocean that have an effect on runs. I believe some of them are probably taking a lot of our salmon on their way home.

It's a very complicated business. I'm not a technician. I'm not a scientist. I'm just a practical person who tries his very best to understand the ebb and flow of the whole argument. Unfortunately, I see people motivated for the wrong reasons—whatever those reasons may be—interfering with the normal process of a good industry that has tons of potential for the people of coastal British Columbia.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

My time is up, but it's been great to cross paths with you again. Thank you very much.

[Gerry Furney]

Thank you very much for taking our presentation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Mr. MacAulay.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank both of you gentlemen for appearing before the committee today.

Mr. Mayor, just from listening to the conversation, I'm not sure we're on the same political team, but if I were to look for somebody to organize or to speak for me, I would certainly like to have you. You gave a very capable presentation here today, and made it very interesting. And you might say you're not this and you're not that, but you're a lot of things. You certainly made it interesting.

I have a couple of questions. First, do you have much tourism in your area? And has this foreign negative advertising that has taken place affected your tourism?

I'm not sure if this has been asked—with all the questions, it probably has been—but is there a great ill feeling between the commercial fishery and the fish farmers?

[Gerry Furney]

I'll ask my technical expert to answer that. I'll supplement, hopefully, anything he misses.

[Neil Smith]

Yes, the regional district has a significant tourism sector. We have quite a number of hotels in our communities, and the municipalities largely serve the resource sector most of the year. However, a significant number of lodges in the Broughton Archipelago and elsewhere rely on recreational sport-fishing clientele and ecotourists for their income.

It would be very hard to judge whether or not over the last three or four years the debate over finfish farming has had any impact on the tourism industry, given the overwhelming impact of the recession and the changing exchange rates with the U.S. dollar and elsewhere. That would be an interesting study.

I don't think I could comment further.

[Gerry Furney]

I'd prefer if he didn't comment any further. I don't want to try to participate in an economic discussion at that level. However, I believe that tourism is a wonderful industry for all of us in British Columbia, and not just on northern Vancouver Island. Overall, it's a wonderful industry.

I have, however, one little comment about it, and that is that it's seasonal. It's very seasonal in our area. We don't see many people from the outside on the northern half of Vancouver Island during the winter. During the late fall, it tapers off, and in the early spring it begins. There's a peak in July and August.

Neil touched on one particular group which is very active in the Broughton, and that's the people who run the very high-level lodges there at $1,000 a day for people to stay there, and that kind of thing. They have taken a very anti-aquaculture position, and I think it's very unfair of them. The people on the practical side of life have not criticized their ability to go out and catch fish, and I'm delighted that they're there doing their thing. They employ a very small number of young people from our communities—Port Hardy, Port McNeill, Alert Bay, and Campbell River, as examples—but not very many. They don't have a big effect. Once the end of August rolls around, they're gone, and we don't see them again until the beginning of June the following year.

So tourism is wonderful, it's great, and I love to see many tourists, but I'm also very much aware that we couldn't live on tourism alone. I did a little study years ago because I had my questions about tourism, and some information that was being bandied about regarding what a wonderful organization and industry it was. I think it's great, but it is not 12 months a year, and it has a very limited effect in the high season, and that's about the extent of it.

It's very unfortunate that the people who participate in it at the high-level lodges, the $1,000 a day lodges, have taken the position of questioning the continuation of fish farming and the way that it is. They even question the amount of fish that sports fishermen from Port McNeill or Port Hardy want to fish. They question that kind of activity. They have big money behind them, there's no question about that, but they're not a great help to the area.

As far as the rest of the community goes, I had our office call each of the businesses in Port McNeill a few years ago to ask how many employees they had at the height of the tourist season, and how many employees they had at the depth of the winter season when there were no tourists. The numbers came out that there were about 15% to 20% extra employees in the high-season months of June, July, August, and September. Beyond that, those people were gone, but the basic population of managers, mechanics, accountants, and other people working in the normal industries twelve months a year were still there in the middle of winter. But the drop in the overall population was around 15% to 20% of the people employed.

We can't kid ourselves into thinking that tourism is the be-all and end-all. It's great. It's a good industry, but it has its limitations. People shouldn't base all their decisions on the viability of tourism because of the potential that it has for having a negative effect on the industries that are year-round industries.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Being from Prince Edward Island, sir, I fully understand what you're saying. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and Mr. Smith. I'd like to take this opportunity on behalf of the committee to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to appear before our committee today to answer our many questions, and to make your presentations. It has been greatly appreciated by all committee members. Thank you once again.

Mr. Donnelly, do you have a question?

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

Not to do with this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

We'll excuse our witnesses.

Mr. Donnelly, go ahead and make your point.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I just wanted to serve notice of motion. Do you want me to just read this into the record?

That, because fleet separation and owner operator policy is critical to coastal communities and protecting independent fishers in the inshore fishery, the Committee reaffirms its support for fleet separation and owner operator vessels in the inshore fishery and oppose any move to eliminate this policy

I service notice.