Thank you very much to the committee for the opportunity to report to you on this very important issue.
Watershed Watch Salmon Society is a B.C.-based charity. We were founded 20 years ago. We advocate for the conservation of wild Pacific salmon and their habitats. From our inception, we have been actively engaged in many aspects of the management of the Pacific salmon fisheries, ranging from marine stewardship council certifications to multi-stakeholder management committees.
I'm the executive director. I hold a master's degree in ecology. I worked for several years as an observer on commercial and recreational salmon fisheries, and I've sat at numerous federally mandated fishery management advisory tables.
My colleague, Greg Taylor, is our senior fisheries adviser. He holds a master's degree in resource management. He was the vice-president of fisheries management for oceans fisheries and has led several commercial fishing organizations. He represents the Pacific Marine Conservation Caucus at DFO's integrated harvest-planning committees for salmon. He is the chair of the multi-stakeholder Pacific Fisheries Monitoring Compliance Panel. He is also the CEO of Talok Fisheries, a first nations-owned commercial fishing enterprise here in B.C.
He is our expert on this file, so he is going to conduct the rest of the presentation.