Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have a couple of questions. Before I get to the questions, this could be a roundabout way of doing it, but there are a couple of things I want to say .
I live in Newfoundland and Labrador, on the south coast. I see fish farms in the area in which I lived for 30 years. Before the beginning of fish farming in Newfoundland and Labrador, we had a major decline in northern cod stocks and Atlantic salmon. We saw the closure of the cod fishery in 1992, and we saw the closure of commercial Atlantic salmon fisheries decades ago as well.
The reason we have salmon farming in Newfoundland and Labrador today is that major decline, which threw 30,000 people out of work. When the people of Newfoundland and Labrador tried to explore ways of staying in their coastal and rural communities, one of the things that came to their attention was the potential of salmon farming, after reviewing jurisdictions such as Norway, Chile and others.
We believe we have an ideal environment on the south coast of the province. It's ice-free, with deep bays and fjords, 400 to 600 feet of water and more, and ocean-going currents and tides, which have a great flushing action. If you're ever going to grow farmed salmon, it seems to be the ideal environment in which to do it.
We as a province—I can say “we as a province” because there's a lot of support for salmon farming in the province, even though we do have some opposition. Obviously, not everybody is on board. I certainly respect the work you've done in this report in identifying some of the shortcomings and some of the potential risk, because it's important to us in the province that these risks be mitigated, reduced, or eliminated, where possible, to grow an industry that can create thousands of jobs and sustain hundreds of small communities. The province has a plan to try to double the industry over the next five to 10 years, and we have major investors coming in from places such as Norway.
When you look at aquaculture operations, is there any such thing as an ideal environment that's least disruptive of natural ecosystems, when they're done in places that have large bays and oceans, and waters that are 300 to 500 feet deep? Do you have an opinion on that?