Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you very much. I think you are addressing a very important topic for west coast Canada and across Canada. I said in the text that I provided to you that I think you're talking about something that we consider “fabric of life” on the west coast, and I really mean that. We have a very substantial following, and I think you'll see right away that it's economic, social, and cultural. It's also fair to say that this is a very complicated fishery to manage; that it gives us opportunities and challenges as well.
My experience is very much limited to B.C. and to mostly tidal waters. Mr. Martin is much more capable of talking about the freshwater recreational fishery. I drew your attention to the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC and provided a web link to it. I provided in the material submitted an excellent summary report of the economic value of the recreational fishery. That was provided in 2013.
I also highlighted in my text a number of statements, which the Pacific Salmon Foundation strongly endorses, provided to you by Mr. Greg Farrant with the Ontario hunting and angling federation. In that text, he makes a number of excellent points that we would certainly want you to keep in mind. I won't read them but have just noted them in my text.
I want to emphasize one point he made, on the promotion of recreational fishing as an investment in our future. I think this is a very important point—difficult to quantify, but I think one of the most important things we can do for our communities.
He also identified that, like any industry, recreational fishing requires ongoing investment, support, and promotion for achieving its potential. This is the main point that was addressed by Dr. Gerry Kristianson and Mr. Owen Bird on March 31 as well. They have provided the minister with a document called the “Recreational Fisheries Vision Implementation Initiative”. That is fundamentally what it's about: how we better regulate and manage the true benefits from the recreational fishery in western Canada.
I won't read my background. I provided it to you only so that you know where my perspective is coming from. I want to emphasize that, when we talk about the recreational fishery in B.C., we're talking about many fisheries—probably hundreds—because of the diversity of different species and the habitats that they use.
Probably the best documented evidence I can give you about the economic value of the fisheries is provided by the provincial government. They have a series of reports called “British Columbia's Fisheries and Aquaculture Sector”. It's a financial assessment. They identify four sectors: the commercial fishery, the aquaculture sector, processing of fish, and then the recreational fishery.
The numbers provided in the document for recreational fishing include those for freshwater and tidal fisheries. It's an excellent document. It gives you a lot of detail on how they define the various sectors and gives you three metrics of value to compare the sectors and two time periods. They give you the GDP, or really a measure of the net economic value to the economy; they give you employment; and then the give you direct values on expenditures.
I'm not going to go through the details; you can see them in the document. I think it's a very clear indication of the economic value and significance of the fishery in British Columbia. It really does stand out currently as the leading economic driver.
I place two other issues as equally important, though. One is the contribution that the anglers and angling communities provide to conservation in Canada and also to the social and educational value of the fishery. In B.C., the most direct indication of contribution to conservation is the salmon stamp. In tidal waters, anyone wishing to retain a Pacific salmon must also buy a stamp with their licence. It's not the licence; it's “in addition to”. At this time, it costs only six dollars, but we have between 225,000 and 250,000 people who buy it annually. You can simply do the math to indicate that it generates a significant amount of money. All of that money, because of a decision by the current government in March 2013, is returned to B.C. through the Pacific Salmon Foundation so that we can invest it in work through communities to restore salmon habitat, manage small hatcheries, and do community planning and education.
At the bottom of page 5 in my text, I give you the recent five-year table of the actual money from the stamp and the money that goes out in grants, which is the stamp plus my foundation's donations that we contribute to the communities. The total value is the value of the entire project conducted, including community values, which have to at least match. I'll read you the values from the top of page 6, because they are the strongest indication of the contribution I can give you. Since 1989, when the stamps started, through 2014, the Salmon Foundation has managed $9.2 million in stamp revenues, which has been translated into a total project value of $90.2 million invested in salmon habitat and restoration.
A 10:1 ratio on investments is not a bad deal. It really does show the the power of community and large numbers. We use that money in habitat, small hatcheries, and then in education, outreach, and community planning. Those are the six categories where we invest money.
The other thing I want to emphasize is that it's not just money that the anglers contribute. Many of them participate in these programs and do hands-on conservation.
The other point I'd like to make is that we definitely support the current recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program. We see it as complementary to the foundation because you have a large upper value of $250,000 per project. Very few of our projects ever get to that size because communities must match the money. Now, with a larger source of funds like that, we can take on bigger programs using networks or partnerships programs. A particularly good example is the restoration of estuaries in the Strait of Georgia that are very commonly neglected.
Let me move on to the social value. I want to emphasize the educational element. As we look at licensing and stamp sales over a long period of time, there's no question that there is a slow, steady decline. We interpret this to be a lack of recruitment of younger fishers or new fishers into the program. I think that an educational program is an important complement to the recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program now, which focuses on habitat. We have to invest in the youth and new fishers to support our future. We emphasize that in the foundation. I've given you a couple of examples where we have things like family days where you don't need a licence to go fishing. The organizations will provide rods and reels, and teach people how to fish. A family can get together and do that for a weekend. There are 50 communities in B.C. that do this now.
Let me go on to the issues and opportunities, because the difficulty with the recreational fishery is its scale. It's made of hundreds of thousands of people, with millions of boat days of effort, and it's a huge challenge to regulate a fishery such as this. I think this is the emphasis that you saw from Mr. Kristianson and Mr. Bird. I want to emphasize that the Salmon Foundation fully endorses their implementation initiative. It does have strong merit, and particularly money into catch reporting and stock assessment. They have initiated important programs as well. There are two examples I gave you: certified tidal anglers, which is about public safety when you employ a charter fisher, and the other is a fisher app. This is using smart phone technology to improve our ability to get messages out to anglers and for anglers' safety in terms of where they are and weather communications, and eventually into catch reporting.
The other thing is opportunity. I want to point out that the recreational conservation stamp has been $6 since 1996. With the current numbers of people, if we simply adjusted that for the cost of living, which we have in all of our annual statistics, it would be $9.80 or essentially $10 per stamp in current value. That extra $4 would be another million dollars to invest into the habitat community, which we could match with the recreational fisheries conservation partnerships programs. It's small steps like that because of the huge numbers that really provide the power of that recreational opportunity.
I wanted to endorse that one of the things the Salmon Foundation would certainly recommend is a continuation of the national recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program. We do see it as complementary. I think there are five submissions that we made this year for it and they all involved restoration of the Strait of Georgia estuaries.
I want to finish by making a point that I started with and say that the recreational fishery is a part of the fabric of life on the west coast. We believe that so strongly in the Pacific Salmon Foundation that we have our largest project ever directed at restoring the recreational fishery in the Strait of Georgia. This is the Salish Sea marine survival program.
I can't go into the details of it. I gave you the website. All the information is there before you. The objective is to understand what happened to salmon production and how to restore it, because the Strait of Georgia alone used to support the most valuable recreational fishery in Canada, but that all stopped in two years in the mid-1990s, and we don't know why yet.
We are taking it on because we think that's the most important project we could undertake in B.C.
I simply want to say thank you again for taking this on. The Pacific Salmon Foundation and the recreational sector have worked closely together since the foundation began in 1989, and we think that you have taken on a really important component of resource management and use in Canada and for all Canadians. Thank you very much.