Fisheries committee  I'm not an expert on what the cultural desires or leanings of all the people would be. I can only judge it as a person who functions in the area, as first nations people and non-first nations people have done for the last 50-something years. Because of that, my understanding of it is that I would like to see us maintain, as much as we can, a natural environment for people to work in, similar to the one they have already grown up in—in other words, as deckhands on fish boats and as owners of smaller fish boats.

Fisheries committee  I would say that the biggest problem we have is that the number of campaigns and the money spent on those campaigns have been very effective in denigrating the potential that aquaculture has as an employer in our area. Some fishermen are actively against aquaculture, and I can understand why.

Fisheries committee  As far as I'm aware there have been no new fish farms in the last couple of years. I should emphasize that I'm not involved in the aquaculture industry whatsoever. I have absolutely no investment in it. I've carefully separated myself from any activity that could be seen as being supportive or benefiting in some way from the aquaculture industry.

Fisheries committee  The sad thing is that there is very little that can make up the kind of employment that is available, or that would be available, if we continue with the regular forms of salmon farming. The ideal situation.... As I mentioned in my presentation, the Kitasoo area of the mainland coast—a couple of hundred kilometres beyond the end of Vancouver Island—has no other opportunities to employ people.

Fisheries committee  I can, and I took off my pink sweater so that I could actually present in a more respectful set of circumstances to you. I'm very conscious of bullying and I have watched it exerted by these organizations that have been funded by money from outside the country, in most cases. I've seen it happen in the forest communities of British Columbia, and particularly on Vancouver Island in areas such as Ucluelet and Tofino on the west coast, and areas around Campbell River north.

Fisheries committee  Thank you.

Fisheries committee  The logical position to take on this is that the closer to the marketplace that fish farms can be created, the less the cost of transportation of the product to the customer. Sadly, if the system of closed containment was the only system acceptable to us all, provincially and federally, then there would be very little, or fewer and fewer, opportunities to employ the people in the areas that are far away from the transportation routes and from the areas in which the product is being consumed.

Fisheries committee  Very good. Thank you very much. Greetings from the Town of Port McNeill in the Regional District of Mount Waddington, British Columbia. I thank you for your invitation to make this presentation. My associate for this presentation is Neil Smith, who is the manager for economic development for the Regional District of Mount Waddington.

Fisheries committee  Absolutely. We have some users who don't want to pay anything; they'd like to have it for free. There are other users for whom the money doesn't make a lot of difference. So some place in between we've had to come up with a reasonable way of handling it, differentiating between the commercial fishermen, giving them the big breaks, and then having the other people pay the bulk of the shot.

Fisheries committee  We operate similarly to Port Hardy. There are some parking revenues and some charges for pump-out. We don't charge for fresh water. Wireless Internet would be one of the smaller items. We try to keep it as economical as possible, but as Lorraine mentioned, we do discuss it among ourselves and we fix the prices.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question. It's a subject that's near and dear to my heart. Having helped administer a municipality for the last 40 years, I know a little bit whereof I speak. It is very important to work well with other levels of government, which we do as a municipality. We work as active representatives or participants with our regional district, which is like a county council.

Fisheries committee  I would say that we'll do our best. That's all we've ever been able to do. We started about 1959 or 1960 from nothing in our harbour. Before that we didn't have a breakwater. We didn't have the ability to get boats in and out, other than one small float that speedboats served from Alert Bay, which was the main centre at that time.

Fisheries committee  Again speaking only for Port McNeill, we have been able to maintain such a good relationship with small craft harbours directorate that they have been ready and planning ahead of time, working with us to make sure we have available space. Our current situation is that we have been fortunate enough to get an infusion of funding from the provincial government through an economic development trust that is headquartered in Courtenay on Vancouver Island and services all of Vancouver Island north of the Malahat and close to the Sunshine Coast area.

Fisheries committee  I respect this committee, because it's obviously loaded with commonsense people; I talked to most of you this morning. I think it's a great message to take to any senior level of government, and for that matter any junior level of government, because the same situations can happen at the lower level of government.

Fisheries committee  I'll stand by that statement absolutely. I think that common sense must be utilized at every level of government, and there must be as much communication as possible with the people who are right at the coalface. We're at the coalface: we're doing our things—logging, mining, fishing, aquaculturing; hopefully we'll be oil-and-gassing pretty soon, with any luck.