Mr. Speaker, I am more than happy to address Motion No. 119 of the hon. member for Davenport which pertains to a study of fish farming and ecosystem health. I think that issue has been discussed in parliament. Certainly it has been discussed at the fisheries committee for some time. There are several areas that need to be looked at.
I should like to make a couple of points before I get into the gist of my speech today. I should like to comment on the documentary on the David Suzuki Foundation that was aired earlier about ecosystem health. It was very anti-fish farming.
All of us have a responsibility in this place to understand the facts as best we can and to present them in a manner that shows both sides of the story, not just one side of the story. A number of issues deal with fish farming in Canada. A number of issues will continue and will be ongoing.
I will quote from Suzuki's report. I have a serious problem with some of the science in that report. I also have a serious problem with members of parliament who simply want to quote something verbatim without taking a long, hard, serious look at it.
In the Suzuki report there was mention of the salmon that were tested. This is a major report which causes some doubt about a major food source on the planet. Millions of tonnes of salmon are grown every year by Canada, Norway, Scotland, Ireland and Chile. We also have some very serious salmon farming operations in New Brunswick, some in Nova Scotia, and a lot of salmon grown in B.C.
The Suzuki Foundation tested just eight salmon, four wild salmon and four farm salmon, and put out a report. That is far too few to reach any scientifically defensible conclusions about contaminant levels.
That does not say that we should not be worried about contaminant levels, that we should not be vigilant about contaminant levels, but it certainly says that it is based on bad science. The Suzuki study has been neither independently reviewed nor published and the organization has not released any of its findings to date.
The Scottish study to which he referred found no discernible difference in the PCBs and dioxins found in wild and farm salmon. The author of the Scottish study, Dr. Miriam Jacobs, has called the BBC 3 show claim absolute nonsense. The levels of the PCBs and dioxins that the Suzuki Foundation reportedly measured in farm salmon were well below the safety standards set by Health Canada and enforced by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
We have to question both on a scientific basis and, more important, on a public basis the use of limited, unpublished and unsubstantiated data purporting to claim health concerns respecting farm salmon. If there are health concerns, we should be the first people to be concerned about them. If there are not, we should not be supporting a bogus claim of such.
After that little statement on Suzuki's evidence, I make clear that I grew up on a small salmon river in Nova Scotia called the Gold River. As a young boy I was able to catch salmon in that river. We actually still have a few wild Atlantic salmon that return to that river every year. That should indicate that I am very friendly to the Atlantic Salmon Federation and to anyone who supports wild salmon.
I learned a long time ago to be very cautious in the aquaculture industry not to point the finger of blame at some place that it may not quite belong. Do we have some problems in the aquaculture industry? Absolutely we do. Have those problems been attended to, reported and looked at in a very serious manner over the last 10 years? A lot of them have. Do we still have problems with escapees, with algae bloom and with feces on the bottom? Yes, we do. Have most of those problems been attended to? Yes, they have.
I should like to break that down into a bit of detail. Last year the fisheries committee proposed a study on aquaculture. We finished the majority of that study, although we did not finish it all. We visited the west coast of B.C. and Washington State. The report will tell hon. members that we also visited the east coast. We were there for two days. All members were not able to attend. We were in Maine, New Brunswick, and had one quick stop in Nova Scotia. It is a long way from being an indepth study on aquaculture on the east and west coasts.
We also spent six days in Scotland. While we were there we were able to meet with the minister responsible for aquaculture in Scotland, the minister responsible for aquaculture in Ireland, and a number of officials in Norway as well dealing with fin fish aquaculture. That is another difference that needs to be explained. We are dealing with two totally different types of aquaculture. It should be made very clear to the listening public that we do not want to get the two mixed up. Fin fish aquaculture and shellfish aquaculture are two entirely different things.
I can remember when shellfish aquaculture, which has been around for the last 20 years, was first becoming an important industry on the east coast. If anybody in the House is not aware of it, 95% of the blue mussels in the world are raised on P.E.I. A lot of oysters have been raised traditionally for the last thousand years.
I can remember in Mahone Bay in Indian Point when the Indian Point Mussel Farm first opened. There was a lot of fear between the traditional lobster industry and the farmer who was trying to introduce the blue mussels. What happened was that the mussel socks were put over muddy bottom, which is not lobster bottom. It attracted a lot of predators, including crabs and lobsters for the dead mussels that were falling out of the socks, and actually improved the habitat.
We have the same type of potential not necessarily to improve the habitat for other species by having salmon farms, but we certainly have the potential if we look at it in a smart, reasonable and responsible way to have fin fish aquaculture side by side with the traditional fishery. Will that be an easy process? Absolutely not. Is there a lot of fear out there from the traditional fishery about fin fish aquaculture? Yes, we do. Have there been some mistakes in the past? Yes, there have been.
Let us look at a couple of those mistakes. It is a fact that in the past way too many antibiotics were used on fish farms. That antibiotic rate has been cut down in the last three or four years in particular, first, with the use of more vaccines and less antibiotics. Second, it has been cut down so that probably today we can fairly accurately state that aquaculture uses less antibiotics than any other veterinary science. That is a big statement. If members visit some beef lots and some feed lots for the beef industry, and I am very familiar with those as well, they will see lots of antibiotics.
Another issue, which is a very real and significant one, is that of escapees. We have a problem with escapees. There is absolutely no question about it. If members have studied the aquaculture sites where they have significant problems with escapees in the past, they will see that problem has basically been managed. The escapee level has dropped dramatically in the last five or six years. The previous speaker said there were no incidents of escapees actually surviving. Unfortunately that is not true. There are incidents of escapees on the west coast. Incidents have also been recorded in New Brunswick and more incidents in Norway.
Do we need to protect the biodiversity and the salmon stocks that are there? Absolutely. Can we do that? Yes, a methodology can be applied that will do that and still allow for fin fish aquaculture.
The real culprit for the decline in the wild stocks is that we overfished them. We overfished them on the west coast. The government helped to do that. We overfished them on the east coast in a very serious way. When wild stocks were found off Norway, Canada, Norway and the United States fished them to extinction.