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37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Wednesday, May 8, 2002

0820

The Chair (Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.))

0825

The Chair

Mr. Brian Wootton (Assistant Officer in Charge, Sea Island, Canadian Coast Guard)

0830

The Chair

Mr. Mike Henderson

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins (Delta--South Richmond, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Jeff Nemrava (Rescue Coordinator Centre Officer, Canadian Coast Guard)

Mr. John Cummins

0835

Mr. Jeff Nemrava

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Jeff Nemrava

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Jeff Nemrava

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Mike Henderson

0840

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. Brian Wootton

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Brian Wootton

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Brian Wootton

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Brian Wootton

Mr. Cummins

0845

Mr. Brian Wootton

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Brian Wootton

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. Brian Wootton

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. Rodger Cuzner (Bras d'Or--Cape Breton, Lib.)

Mr. Brian Wootton

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

0850

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. Brian Wootton

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

The Chair

Mr. Mike Henderson

0855

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy (Matapédia—Matane, BQ)

Mr. Brian Wootton

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

Mr. Brian Wootton

0900

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

Mr. Brian Wootton

The Chair

Mr. James Lunney (Nanaimo--Alberni, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Mike Henderson

The Chair

Mr. Mike Henderson

The Chair

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Mike Henderson

The Chair

0905

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Cummins

0910

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. Mike Henderson

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

0915

Mr. Mike Henderson

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. Mike Henderson

The Chair

Mr. Brian Wootton

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Jeff Nemrava

The Chair

0920

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. Mike Henderson

The Chair

Ms. Joy McPhail (Individual Presentation)

0925

0930

0935

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Ms. Joy McPhail

Mr. John Cummins

Ms. Joy McPhail

Mr. John Cummins

Ms. Joy McPhail

Mr. Cummins

0940

Ms. Joy McPhail

Mr. John Cummins

Ms. Joy McPhail

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Ms. Joy McPhail

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Ms. Joy McPhail

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

0945

Ms. Joy McPhail

The Chair

Mr. James Lunney

Ms. Joy McPhail

Mr. James Lunney

Ms. Joy McPhail

0950

The Chair

Ms. Joy McPhail

Mr. John Cummins

Ms. Joy McPhail

The Chair

Ms. Joy McPhail

The Chair

0955

1000

1005

1010

The Chair

Mr. Dave Gaudet

The Chair

Mr. Cummins

Mr. Dave Gaudet

Mr. Cummins

1015

Mr. Dave Gaudet

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Dave Gaudet

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Dave Gaudet

The Chair

Mr. Dave Gaudet

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Dave Gaudet

Mr. Cummins

Mr. Dave Gaudet

Mr. John Cummins

1020

Mr. Dave Gaudet

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Dave Gaudet

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Dave Gaudet

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Dave Gaudet

1025

The Chair

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Mr. Dave Gaudet

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

The Chair

Mr. James Lunney

1030

Mr. Dave Gaudet

The Chair

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Dave Gaudet

1035

The Chair

Mr. Dave Gaudet

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. Cummins

Mr. Dave Gaudet

The Chair

Mr. Craig Orr (Executive Director, Watershed Watch Salmon Society)

The Chair

Mr. Craig Orr

1050

1055

Mr. Craig Orr

1100

The Chair

Mr. Craig Orr

1105

The Chair

Ms. Angela McCue (Representative, Sierra Legal Defence Fund)

The Chair

Ms. Angela McCue

1110

1115

1120

The Chair

Ms. Angela McCue

The Chair

Ms. Angela McCue

1125

The Chair

Mr. John Werring (Representative, Sierra Legal Defence Fund)

1130

1135

The Chair

Mr. John Werring

1140

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Craig Orr

Mr. John Cummins

Ms. Angela McCue

Mr. John Cummins

Ms. Angela McCue

Mr. John Cummins

Ms. Angela McCue

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Cummins

1145

Mr. John Werring

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Werring

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Werring

The Chair

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Ms. Angela McCue

1150

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Mr. John Werring

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

Ms. Angela McCue

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

The Chair

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Craig Orr

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Craig Orr

1155

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. John Werring

The Chair

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. John Werring

1200

Mr. James Lunney

The Chair

Ms. Angela McCue

The Chair

Ms. Angela McCue

The Chair

Ms. Angela McCue

The Chair

Ms. Angela McCue

The Chair

Mr. Craig Orr

The Chair

Ms. Angela McCue

The Chair

Mr. Craig Orr

1205

Ms. Angela McCue

Mr. John Cummins

Ms. Angela McCue

Mr. Craig Orr

Mr. John Werring

The Chair

1215

Mr. Michael Easton (Individual Presentation)

1220

1225

1230

1235

The Chair

Mr. Michael Easton

1240

The Chair

Mr. Terry Glavin (Spokesperson, Sierra Club of British Columbia)

The Chair

Mr. John Volpe (Individual Presentation)

1245

1250

1255

1300

The Chair

1305

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Volpe

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Volpe

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Cummins

1310

Mr. John Volpe

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Volpe

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Volpe

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Volpe

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Michael Easton

Mr. Cummins

1315

Mr. Michael Easton

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Volpe

The Chair

Mr. John Volpe

The Chair

Mr. John Volpe

The Chair

Mr. John Volpe

1320

The Chair

Mr. John Volpe

The Chair

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Mr. Michael Easton

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

The Chair

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Volpe

Mr. John Cummins

Mr. John Volpe

The Chair

1325

Mr. John Volpe

The Chair

Mr. John Volpe

The Chair

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

Mr. Michael Easton

1330

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner (Bras d'Or—Cape Breton, Lib.))

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

Mr. Michael Easton

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Michael Easton

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. John Volpe

1335

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. John Volpe

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. John Volpe

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Michael Easton

1340

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Michael Easton

Mr. James Lunney

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

Mr. Michael Easton

1345

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

1350

1355

1400

1405

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw (Sierra Club of British Columbia)

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

Mr. Terry Glavin

1410

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. Rodger Cuzner

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

The Clerk of the Committee

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

1415

Mr. Terry Glavin

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

1420

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

1425

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw

Mr. James Lunney

1430

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

1435

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

1440

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Terry Glavin

Mr. James Lunney

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw

Mr. James Lunney

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

Mr. Terry Glavin

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner)

CANADA

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

NUMBER 051

1st SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Wednesday, May 8, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¾ (0820)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.)): Can we come to order, please.

Welcome, gentlemen, Mike, Jeff, and Brian.

We will stay open to the public. I don't think many of the issues we're going to talk about are not already readily available.

For the purposes of the record, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans will hold a meeting on the Canadian Coast Guard hovercraft support to the Sea Island airport.

With us this morning is Mike Henderson, regional director, Jeff Nemrava, rescue coordinator centre officer, and Brian Wootton, assistant officer in charge, Sea Island.

Welcome, gentlemen. I might first thank you for the tour the other night. I come from a farm background myself, and seeing is believing. There's nothing like seeing and being in operations to really begin to understand them.

Welcome. We'll open the floor to you. I know there are some concerns about replacement craft, etc., so maybe we'll let you open it up, and then we'll go to questions.

Mr. Mike Henderson (Regional Director, Canadian Coast Guard):

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you again those who joined us a couple of nights ago. It was a very pleasant evening to be out on the hovercraft.

I was just going to say a few introductory remarks about the general operation of the base. Then I'll make a couple of comments about the process that's underway to replace the service that's provided by the older hovercraft you saw when you were there the other evening. At that point I would just invite you to ask us any and all questions you have about the base or the hovercraft.

As Brian mentioned to you the other day, the area of coverage for the Sea Island search and rescue station is about 500 square kilometres and covers the southern Strait of Georgia and parts of the lower Fraser River. The station, located very close to us here, has been in operation since 1968. It's a 24/7 station: it operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Currently the station has two hovercraft, and it has about 300 what we call “taskings” a year, on average. That's about 300 times it's called out on search and rescue issues.

The craft you went out on the other day, the Siyay, was commissioned in 1998. It's a new, state-of-the-art hovercraft. In our jargon it's “multi-tasked”, which means it does search and rescue, but we can also use it for changing navigation aids. And it's going out today, I believe, to do some science work. So it's a multifunctional ship.

The older craft, which we refer to as the 045—I know that a few people who saw it the other day were glad that they were going out on the Siyay and not the 045—was built in 1968. It's currently used as a backup machine, and it's the one that will be replaced. What we mean by backup machine is that it is used only for SAR and only when the Siyay is down. The Siyay is the primary craft at the station.

In terms of personnel at the station, there are 20-plus people who operate the two craft, as I say, on a 24/7 basis.

One thing we didn't talk about the other day is the a very large hangar you did not go into. That's where the engineers operate out of. There's a dedicated group of engineers who service and maintain these hovercraft year-round.

As Brian showed you, Sea Island is also the only site in Canada where the coast guard maintains a diving program, and Brian showed you some of the gear.

You may also be interested to know—and I think some but maybe not all of you know this—that coast guard search and rescue or lifeboat stations generally operate through the day but are not staffed at night. People are on call day and night, but the stations are not staffed.

There are only two 24/7 search and rescue stations in all of Canada in the Canadian Coast Guard. You were at one of them, which was Sea Island, and the other one is Kitsilano Base, which is near downtown Vancouver, just a couple of kilometres away. The lower mainland area relative to the rest of the country is very well managed and equipped with SAR capabilities.

I was just going to say a few words, then, associated with the acquisition of a new hovercraft, because I suspect this is what is on your mind.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a rather complicated process to acquire large capital assets, a large capital asset meaning something worth more than $1 million. I'm going to summarize the main points in the process, and I think that will convey the information you probably need.

The first step is the preparation of what's called a “capital project summary note”. It's a long phrase, but it just means you prepare a short report that describes, in this case, what the craft has to do, what environment it works in, what responsibilities it will have, and so on. This goes through a whole series of reviews within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and culminates when it's signed off by the deputy minister. That means the project now has approval in principle.

The project to replace the 045 was signed off by the deputy minister in December 2001. Once you have approval in principle, the project has a life of its own. In other words, it's going to go ahead. The question really is now, how does it go ahead? In this case, what craft do we get, and when does it arrive? There's that kind of thing. But there's no longer any debate now about whether you do or do not need that project--it's been approved.

The next step is the production of a project approval document. Again, this is a bureaucratic phrase. What it means is you look at, from a business case perspective, all the different options.

What are the options we could think of for Sea Island? They basically fall into three categories: you could refurbish the 045--you could fix it up, which is probably very expensive and probably not a good idea; you could purchase a used hovercraft; or you could buy a new hovercraft. Those are the three general options. Within the last two, buying used and buying new, there are a whole series of individual options.

We are currently producing this project approval document, or it is being produced in Ottawa. The most recent information I have indicates that within a month we will know what option we're pursuing. In other words, are we buying a used craft and doing the modifications, and if so, which one will it be, or are we buying a new craft, and if so, which one will it be?

With regard to the timelines in terms of when it actually gets here, we are optimistic that if we don't have something here by the end of this year we'll certainly be well on our way. But the timelines obviously depend on whether the craft is new and what the options are for getting it here.

I think the last point I want to make, and again, maybe this is a bit of anticipation, but one of the greatest challenges the coast guard fleet faces--and you may have heard this before--is recapitalizing itself. The replacement value for the coast guard fleet nationally, across this country, is about $3.5 billion.

Currently we're working with an annual capital allocation to replace the fleet, or parts of the fleet, of approximately $50 million. This is just to indicate it's very difficult to maintain a fleet of the size we have in this country with the annual capital allocation that we have to do it. So it's a challenge.

The reason I mention this is if you ask me why has it taken so long to get the backup hovercraft for Sea Island underway, it's not that we haven't been aware of the upcoming problem, but it just takes a while to get in the queue. There are a lot of other high-priority issues across this country for the coast guard fleet.

Mr. Chairman, that was pretty much all I had intended to say. We are certainly open to take any questions you have.

I'll point out once again that Brian Wootton is the officer in charge at Sea Island. He has had extensive experience with operating the SAR station there, and the hovercraft. Jeff Nemrava has worked on hovercraft for a couple of years at Sea Island but also in his role at the rescue coordination centre in Esquimalt. He has a very broad background and experience in the general application of SAR, or search and rescue, along our coast.

¾ (0825)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Henderson.

I have just one other question before I turn to Mr. Cummins.

We certainly saw the Siyay craft the other night, but what does the 045 do in terms of backup? What are its capabilities compared to the bigger hovercraft?

Mr. Brian Wootton (Assistant Officer in Charge, Sea Island, Canadian Coast Guard): The 045 is required for approximately 60 days a year of backfill for Siyay. Some of that is planned refit time, and some of it is unscheduled maintenance for the big craft. In terms of her operational capacity, her sea-keeping and weather capabilities are a tiny bit less than what Siyay's is.

In SAR, the height of eye you saw running around on Siyay is approximately three times as high up off the water as the 045. That contributes to some reduced effort, where actually mid-strait in a big search Siyay can walk through a search area a little quicker than the 045, all things being equal for weather, because we're higher up off the water. But in general they're both very capable for the weather we face in Georgia Strait.

¾ (0830)

The Chair: So what replacement craft is anticipated? Do you know? Does it have the same capabilities as the 045, or less, or more, or what?

Mr. Mike Henderson: A statement of requirements has been developed, on which the selection process is based. Without going through all the details of what these requirements are, the replacement for the 045 will have the same capabilities that the 045 and the Siyay have.

This is one of the discussions right now. A few hovercraft are available on relatively short notice. The issue is, are these hovercraft capable of operating in the environment they would have to operate in? We would not be purchasing or recommending the purchase of hovercraft that did not have the capability to replace the 045 or the Siyay.

The Chair: Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins (Delta--South Richmond, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The coast guard has a responsibility to provide 24/7 coverage to the airport, does it not?

Mr. Mike Henderson: The airport is one of our important users, or clients, if you want to use that phrase. They are located within the 500 square kilometre zone where we provide SAR, as Brian talked about the other day. We are not stationed there exclusively to provide SAR support for the airport, but we have a very close working relationship with them. We have joint exercises with them. We certainly have a capability they rely on.

Mr. John Cummins: But in its emergency plan the airport must have signed agreements with the providers of the off-airport services that are a necessary part of their rescue or emergency response plan. Their emergency response plan has in it functions for the coast guard if a plane goes down in the tidal flat. Is there then some sort of a contractual arrangement with the airport?

Mr. Jeff Nemrava (Rescue Coordinator Centre Officer, Canadian Coast Guard): We don't actually have a signed agreement with the airport. The fact is, though, the coast guard is responsible for maritime SAR. As Brian pointed out the other night, anything beyond 1,000 metres past the end of the runway is actually within the coast guard's jurisdiction. We are responsible for these tidal flats and any water beyond them. We're identified in the plan primarily because we know that if there is an aircraft accident off the end of the runway near the airport, the airport will be closely involved with us. So we always have arrangements for working closely on incidents with other agencies—emergency health services, the airport, and fire departments.

Mr. John Cummins: You not only have an arrangement with the airport—because you're included in the airport's disaster emergency plan—but you also have a protocol of action for the Canadian Coast Guard hovercraft. I can remind you of it, if you like. It says:

3.4.01 IF HOVERCRAFT AT BASE—When notified of a Crash On Tidal Area, the hovercraft crew will immediately start loading YVR Reversible Floatation Platforms on board hovercraft.

3.4.02 Dispatch hovercraft and the Richmond Fire Rescue personnel to the scene of the crash.

3.4.03 On arrival, deploy floatation platforms as required.

And it goes on.

So it's part of the airport emergency plan that the hovercraft will be available to provide service in the event of a disaster. International agreements also compel Canada to provide rescue services on the water in the event of a disaster. Is that not the case?

¾ (0835)

Mr. Jeff Nemrava: I agree with you, actually. That's in fact what I said, that we are responsible for those waters and the mud flats, and in fact we are identified in their emergency plan. It's also identified in the plan that for anything involving a crash on the mud flats the Rescue Coordination Centre would actually be taking the lead role in dealing with that crash, working closely with the airport and their emergency plan.

Mr. John Cummins: That's right. And the fact of the matter is that the only vessel, if we use that term to describe a hovercraft, that's capable of conducting such an operation on the tidal flats is the hovercraft, is that not correct?

Mr. Jeff Nemrava: In all states of the tide, yes, that's correct, a hovercraft or an amphibious vehicle would be the only craft capable of actually responding.

Mr. John Cummins: And let me go to this next point. The coast guard on December 3, 2002—Captain John Palliser, superintendent, marine search and rescue—advised the Surrey Fire Department that the backup resource, the hovercraft 045, at Sea Island is coming to the end of its useful life and can no longer be kept in good repair. I'll just read the letter. It says:

This creates the possibility that a resource from Sea Island may be unavailable for certain periods if the primary resource (SIYAY) is being serviced.

It goes on to say:

A suitable second craft is being considered to ensure 24/7 service is maintained, but due to delay in its acquisition, full coverage may not be restored for some time.

The lack of a resource at Sea Island may also affect the rapid deployment and/or provision of the rescue diving capability presently provided.

Until the situation is rectified, it is suggested that any contingency plans that include the use of the hovercraft be modified in the interim.

So I'd like you to tell me now what sort of contingency plan could you possibly have that would replace a hovercraft in the event of an aircraft going down on the tidal flats?

Mr. Jeff Nemrava: In terms of a contingency if the hovercraft isn't there, first off there's never any guarantee that we'll have one there all the time. There's always a possibility that we could have both crafts broken down.

We deal with contingencies all the time. It's not just with the hovercraft station; we have to deal with them at all of our lifeboat stations. There are times of unserviceability. There are many things we can do in the event that this occurs. If 045 were unavailable, we would leave it to Brian to determine how we'd do this, but we would have to try to maintain Siyay so that it's able to respond. In other words, we would defer other program work on it to reduce the risk of there being damage and unserviceability on Siyay until we could get a replacement craft in place.

Another thing we could do is we could attempt to schedule the general maintenance on Siyay that so that it was only done during periods of high tides, when conventional vessels could get into the area. Another thing we could do is defer maintenance periods to low-risk times between midnight and 6 a.m., when traffic volume in and out of the airport is reduced, mainly because of noise abatement requirements.

Mr. John Cummins: What is also rather amusing is that you, or somebody from the coast guard, suggested to the airport authority that they might consider all-terrain vehicles as an alternative. Is that right?

Mr. Mike Henderson: Can I respond to that? Actually that was not our suggestion. That suggestion came, I believe, from Richmond Fire and Rescue. We do have a very close working relationship with the airport, with Richmond Fire and Rescue, which, as you know, provides the emergency services for the airport. And as Brian showed you the other day, they have some of their equipment and their kits stashed at our place and we take it out if it's required.

It is important to emphasize the point Jeff made that even though we have two hovercraft based at Sea Island, they may not always be available. They may be out on another SAR incident, for example. So we will always do our best to respond.

We also have use of what we call rigid-hull inflatables, which are zodiac-type boats that allow you to get quite close to shore. But again, as Jeff points out, they don't travel in mud. So that is something we do require the amphibious people for.

¾ (0840)

Mr. John Cummins: You could have two, which may not always be available. One may be on a task someplace else, and another may be down.

The possibility of the hovercraft being available is greatly improved if you have two. The fact is, if you're reduced to one, your options are extremely limited. There's just no question about that, is there?

Mr. Mike Henderson: Can you comment, Brian, on the crewing? I think the fact that you have two available functional hovercraft at Sea Island is only part of the story.

Mr. Brian Wootton: Right.

I'd like to just come back to the point that Jeff made. Our responsibility at Sea Island is to cover lower Georgia Strait and the Fraser River. Whether it's the 300 or 350 distress cases we go to in the year, or the multi-tasking work we do, we could be anywhere within that zone. So if a problem crops up at the airport or over at Active Pass, the mission is to be able to get anywhere within our zone within an hour. So there is no guarantee to any one user group in our zone that we're going to be there with a three-minute launch, right alongside an aircraft after an incident.

The contingency plan at the station over the last couple of years has been to do everything we can--particularly with the help of engineering--to extend the life of the 045. They've done a super job of that. It's going to keep us in a two-craft posture through to the fall 2002.

The Chair: Sorry, John. Go ahead.

Mr. John Cummins: I was just going to say, if the 045 had been a privately owned vessel, wouldn't you guys probably have condemned it years ago?

I've been told that if the fan shut down and that sucker was out the middle of the saltchuck, it should be underwater in an hour. True or not?

Mr. Brian Wootton: The craft is safe to operate, or we wouldn't keep it operating. She doesn't have the same water-tight integrity characteristics the Siyay does. She's safe for the crews to operate, or we wouldn't send her out.

Mr. John Cummins: Well, you're close to the ground anyway, or the water, whatever the case may be.

Mr. Brian Wootton: Not that far to crash.

Mr. John Cummins: There's no danger of falling too far.

Mr. Brian Wootton: That's true.

Mr. John Cummins: You do have life rafts available if it does sink.

Mr. Brian Wootton: There you go...that's true.

Mr. John Cummins: But the fact of the matter is, you are tasked essentially with providing 24/7 coverage of the airport. Not only is that one hovercraft tasked, but the Vancouver airport emergency plan also calls for the deployment of the second hovercraft in the case of a large rescue. So if one of these large passenger jets goes down with 300 people aboard, the Vancouver airport emergency plan says the coast guard will make arrangements to have off-duty personnel brought in to crew the second hovercraft, while the first would continue to ply transportation for the casualties.

If a large aircraft went down, regardless of the tasking of the operation or the hovercraft that was on duty, it's obviously going to be pulled and deployed to that scene. It would be a requirement. It may not be there in the seven minutes or whatever it takes you to get from base to Sand Heads, but it's certainly going to be there within your guidelines of an hour, is it? You'll have the hovercraft there, and you will be smoke notching your head in there. That's just the way it's going to be.

If necessary, the plan called for a second one. So in most other areas of the Straits of Georgia, you could use one of the inflatables or a keeled vessel. But there is no replacement that can adequately do the job of hovercraft in the event of a catastrophe in the mud flats off Vancouver airport, is there, nothing that can really do the job of a hovercraft?

Mr. Brian Wootton: It's quite true.

Mr. John Cummins: In fact, is that not the reason why they were brought here in the first place?

Mr. Brian Wootton: Correct.

Mr. John Cummins: The issue of replacement is not a new one. It's not something that has all of a sudden come to a head. When the 045 was built, what was its lifespan, 15 years or something like that?

¾ (0845)

Mr. Brian Wootton: Yes. It was 10 to 15 years or 10,000 airframe hours.

Mr. John Cummins: Yes, and it's now over 30 years old, isn't it?

Mr. Brian Wootton: Yes, it's 34 years old.

Mr. John Cummins: So it's well beyond its expected life, and in fact this document is dated June 22, 1995. There was a memo here to John McGrath from FMO; the subject was the acquisition of two air-cushioned vehicles, and it's signed by Gary K. Running, director, operational programs. The discussion in that particular note is about finding a replacement for this hovercraft. So the discussion has been going on for a long time, hasn't it?

Mr. Brian Wootton: That's correct.

The Chair: John, if you can, please conclude your line of questioning. I know this is your issue, so I'm giving you more time, but we can come back to you.

Mr. John Cummins: I guess my point is that it's been a long time. We have one new hovercraft at a base that operates 365 days of the year, 24 hours a day.

Are there other hovercraft in the service of the Canadian Coast Guard, and if so, where are they?

The Chair: Mike, Dick, or Brian.

Mr. Brian Wootton: There are two other machines similar to the one we all rode on the other night, and they operate in Trois-Rivières. One is a sister to Siyay, the craft we went for the ride on, and one is a smaller sister to that craft. They're both of the family known as the AP1-88, and they principally provide marine navigation service support and ice-breaking support to Laurentian region's operations.

The Chair: John.

Mr. John Cummins: Does that base operate 24/7?

Mr. Brian Wootton: No, sir.

Mr. John Cummins: Does it operate five days a week?

Mr. Brian Wootton: Yes, it's essentially a Monday to Friday operation, eight until four, but they flex the crew requirements depending on what Quebec City requires. Days can be stretched into 12- and 14-hour operating days.

Mr. John Cummins: How many months a year?

Mr. Brian Wootton: I believe she's ten months in service and two months out of service.

Mr. John Cummins: So it operates on business hours, ten months of the year.

You said to us yesterday that the hovercraft attended over 300 SAR missions last year. How many SAR missions would these hovercraft in the Quebec region have attended?

Mr. Brian Wootton: I'd just be guessing. I honestly don't know. I know it's part of their secondary--

Mr. John Cummins: Eight?

Mr. Brian Wootton: That could well be.

Mr. John Cummins: Eight is what I've been told, eight SAR missions last year.

The Chair: We can certainly ask that question of the head of the coast guard if we want to.

Mr. Cuzner.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner (Bras d'Or--Cape Breton, Lib.): Thanks very much for your time the night before last. It was very informative, and it's great to have an opportunity to see the operation up front.

With the Siyay and its operation, I guess sometimes after procurement you guys have an opportunity to work with the asset in the field. What's your sense? Is it the right craft, the one that's required for the job? With 300 actual operations, do you sometimes find it's almost too much machine for what you're expected to do, or is it adequate? Does it have shortcomings? Just give us your general feelings about the asset.

Mr. Brian Wootton: I would never say that she's been totally suitable for 100% of the calls, but I can tell you where my concern as the officer in charge is. To use an old cliché, when it's a dark and stormy night, the craft I would prefer to see go and do the deed, whether someone's sinking, someone's on fire, or an aircraft is down somewhere, is the Siyay. She's a better search tool for open water applications because of her build characteristics. She has more power to weight, and she's a very capable craft for SAR.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: What's a ballpark figure for the replacement cost if you wanted to...?

¾ (0850)

Mr. Mike Henderson: The replacement cost for a new craft would be in the order of $10 million, plus or minus a couple of million, depending on the type.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: Would there be lesser vehicles? For example, if Siyay is going to be your horse and carry the load, are there lesser craft available that would be cheaper but could still fill the void, providing good backup or whatever?

Mr. Mike Henderson: I'll defer to Brian and Jeff in a minute, but I just have a couple of comments.

We would not pretend to acquire a vessel that did not have the characteristics to provide safe coverage, as Brian suggested earlier. The answer to your question is definitely yes, there are craft out there that are cheaper but that do not meet the requirements for operating in that environment. We would not consider purchasing those.

Brian, do you want to add something?

Mr. Brian Wootton: No, I think you've hit the nail on the head.

There are a number of light passenger-carrying variants for recreational use we could go and pick up on very short notice, but they're totally unsuitable for operating beyond the bottom of the ramp we left at the station the other day.

There are some bigger variations on the theme you went for a ride on that are available in Europe, but they're not engined or powered the same as Siyay. I know that some of those craft are on the short list of options that are being considered. The coast guard is examining the power-to-weight ratio and trying to determine whether they're suitable for the weather we have to deal with here.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: Obviously you've just gone through this procedure with the procurement of the Siyay, so you've identified your needs. Obviously this craft has met your needs, so it makes sense in a lot of ways to almost mirror that acquisition.

The Chair: I don't know who can answer this question; maybe it has to be John.

What's the bottom line here? What's the vessel you anticipate will be procured? Is it the size of the 045? Is it the size of the Siyay? What's the bottom line here? We'll probably meet with the head of the coast guard if we deem that necessary, but what's the bottom line from your perspective?

I know you're in a difficult position. The people in Ottawa want to restrain the amount of funding, no doubt. They'll want to buy a hovercraft that may not be required all the time, but the fact of the matter is, from your perspective, you need SAR capabilities in the worst kind of weather. We as a committee need to be able to make a recommendation that is really based on your needs. That's what we want to do, but we have to have the facts on which to do that.

It does seem strange to me, if John's right in his figures, that if you have 300 taskings per year and they have eight in Quebec.... Now, I know there's a different situation there in terms of ice-breaking, and that's another matter, but if they have two machines that are available and you only have one plus a smaller one out here, something's wrong.

Mr. Mike Henderson: I should emphasize that we will be acquiring a craft. We have approval in principle now to acquire a new craft, and it will be a craft that can meet the requirements of operating in the SAR zone Brian described earlier. It will have to have capabilities similar if not identical to what we already have with Siyay and 045.

In terms of the ship itself, one of the issues is should the backup craft be tasked primarily or exclusively for SAR. As you know, the Siyay is equipped to do a whole lot of things. It can do SAR and it can do lots of other things. That's how the coast guard fleet is managed now. One of the issues facing us in the selection of a new craft is that maybe we just need it for SAR. Certainly if that's the case it does reduce the cost somewhat, because you don't have a lot of the other gear to add on.

I'm very confident, in fact, that our colleagues in Ottawa will not recommend the purchase of a craft that does not meet the requirements for operating in this area. It would make no sense.

¾ (0855)

The Chair: I guess why I raised the question the way I did is because I have a concern that sometimes our foundation industry.... For example, if we were talking about a Canadian Millennium Scholarship or Canadian Institute of Health research, we'd hardly blink an eye at $8 million. But if we're talking about a vessel that's needed for fisheries or for the coast guard, we nickle and dime it to death.

I think a mentality has set in--whether it's Agriculture Canada, whether it's Fisheries and Oceans, whether it's related to mining and forestry, or natural resource industries and everything that goes with it--that makes us afraid to request what we really need. But by God, because it's not as sexy as the new technologies kind of thing, that really bothers me, I will admit.

Mr. Roy, do you have any questions?

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy (Matapédia—Matane, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You mentioned 300 search missions and also said you would like to have a new hovercraft? comparable to the 045. I have a question for you about that. I would like to know the nature of those 300 missions; surely they did not all call for equipment like the “Siyay”. Is there other suitable equipment that would meet the needs of those missions? Actually, 300 missions per year amounts to nearly one outing per day for the hovercraft; so it is important to know the nature of the average mission, and what kinds are the most frequent.

[English]

Mr. Brian Wootton: Last year the station responded to about 25 or 30 medical evacuations from beaches and shorelines inaccessible by conventional means. Approximately 50 or 60 of those calls would have involved vessels aground, or coming to some sort of grief, very much in the area that we rode on in the craft the other day, the rock wall where the sea lions were located. That's a very common area for boaters to come to grief.

There were 25 or 30 incidents of standby or searches for ELTs. That's work around the Vancouver airport. The balance would be sinkings, lost boaters, beyond the mud flat area out in Georgia Strait.

As far as capacity goes, my chief concern is the weather capacity of the vessel, not whether it's 200 feet long or 100 feet long, or can do 100 miles an hour. It's strictly that the vessel, whatever is chosen, is able to go beyond the area we went into the other day on the craft, where the shallow water drops off into deep water and there's a surf line to contend with, and to be able to handle the summer westerlies and the winter southeasterlies.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: If I understand correctly, most of your missions are largely due to the negligence and carelessness of people who use the ocean, so to speak. Does the Coast Guard make available a prevention program in order to reduce the number of such incidents?

[English]

Mr. Brian Wootton: That's a very good point, and it's why the coast guard has the office of boating safety. In fact, at our own station the number of distress cases has dropped dramatically from the early 1980s, when Seattle was doing 700 or 800 distress cases a year, to what is averaging out through the late 1990s to the 300 mark.

In effect, most of the incidents I find, even in the time that I've been at the station, is poor planning and negligence; it's probably 25% to 30% of the caseload. The balance is weather, being overcome for weather. As I suggested, with the medical evacuations, those are people who have had bad luck, with falls on cliffs, and falling and hurting themselves on their vessels.

¿ (0900)

The Chair: Mr. Roy. Make it short.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: I have one last question. You say there has been a decrease of about 50% in recent years. Do you think the number of calls to the Coast Guard could be further reduced from the current level of 300 or 350? Do you hope your prevention program will further reduce the need for this type of mission?

[English]

Mr. Brian Wootton: I would say that this is absolutely the goal. The best SAR incident is the one that never happens.

Mr. Jeff Nemrava: I should also point out that even though the incident numbers have been dropping in the area in which the hovercraft operates, for the number of distress cases, in terms of the lives we've actually saved, the numbers have increased from ten years ago. Also, the lives lost have increased. Even though the overall number of incidents has come down, their severity is still there. The severe ones, the ones the coast guard responds to, are still there.

The Chair: Thank you, Jeff.

Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney (Nanaimo--Alberni, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Did I hear there was an agreement in principle to acquire a new craft by the fall of 2002? Was it 2003, or what did I hear there?

Mr. Mike Henderson: Yes. The actual craft that we will be acquiring should be known in about a month. The timeline out from that depends entirely on how quickly it can be built, or acquired, what modifications have to be made, and so on. We're hopeful that if we don't have something by the end of 2002, we're pretty close.

Mr. James Lunney: So you may get agreement and then have to wait. It seems we're waiting a long time for helicopters to be replaced here.

Mr. Mike Henderson: I don't think you'll see delays of that order of magnitude in this case. There is an understanding of the urgency among our colleagues in Ottawa about getting a replacement out here.

Mr. James Lunney: You've talked about acquiring a new craft, and whether it is of the Siyay type or the 045 type, there is a lot of multi-tasking involved here, with repair and so on. Are you talking exclusively about new craft, or are you talking about used craft as well?

Mr. Mike Henderson: Both. There's a business case study being done right now, as we speak, looking at a couple of used craft and a couple of varieties of new craft. A decision will be made in terms of what's best in terms of cost, in terms of risk, and in terms of timelines, how quickly they can be acquired, and so on.

The Chair: Who will do the contract?

Mr. Mike Henderson: I would rather not comment on the specific people they are talking to--

The Chair: I'm just thinking of submarines.

Mr. James Lunney: You're stealing my thunder.

I heard a comment that Mr. Henderson was sure that his colleagues in Ottawa would not recommend replacing them with anything less than ideal equipment. But we have certainly seen some real problems in procurement for the military in terms of helicopters, and we also had some very questionable submarines purchased.

Thank you for pointing that out, Mr. Chairman.

We're looking at, I think you said, about a $10 million investment to replace a Siyay-type vehicle.

Mr. Mike Henderson: Plus or minus a couple of million. It depends on the actual craft.

Mr. James Lunney: I understood you say that there's about $50 million a year for capital assets to be added to the entire coast guard. Is that correct?

Mr. Mike Henderson: That is correct.

Mr. James Lunney: This discussion has been going on a long time. Looking back at the documents Mr. Cummins has noted going back to 1995, and presumably even earlier, discussions have been going on about replacing these craft. I think it certainly reflects a failure in planning to fail to capitalize on replacing equipment on such expensive equipment. This reflects a real failure in departmental planning.

Mr. Mike Henderson: I understand your point.

If I could add, Mr. Chairman, I assume that your committee is aware of the fleet management renewal initiative, which is coast guard's response to the Auditor General's report on fleet. As you will recall, the Auditor General had a whole host of comments about coast guard fleet, yours being one. That report, I believe, is to come out or be tabled this fall. This will be coast guard's proposal of how to deal with all the concerns raised by the Auditor General. I think this will help a lot.

The Chair: Yes, we are aware of that report, James. It isn't even the department's fault, necessarily. We were fighting a deficit for a number of years, and there had to be cutbacks there.

One of the problems for the coast guard and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is capital infrastructure. I think you said replacing the coast guard would cost $3.5 billion.

There's no question in my mind that, over time.... I just look at my farm operation. I have to set aside a fair bit for depreciation of equipment every year. That has not been done within government. So now we're into catch-up time. But that shouldn't deny the coast guard from having the kind of full-sized vessel they might need.

John, the last question is to you, and then we have to close.

¿ (0905)

Mr. John Cummins: The interesting thing, Mr. Chairman, is that I have a coast guard document here, and it tells me the federal Treasury Board instituted a rust-out program in 2000. In fact the money was set aside for replacement of hovercraft then. So I think money wasn't the issue. Money was set aside. What happened to it is the question.

I have to follow up on another comment, Mr. Henderson, you made about the so-called backup. In fact, as I understand it, backup is probably the wrong term, because the second hovercraft has to be capable of performing the same duties to the same level as the primary rescue vehicle. In fact, another coast guard document I have says two similar vessels will be required to provide continuous coverage. This document predates the acquisition of the upgraded vessel we rode on yesterday.

In fact the local marine advisory council for the coast guard here also recommended that a second new hovercraft of the same specifications and capabilities be provided to the Sea Island coast guard base. So these are people within the coast guard and its advisory board who believe the replacement should be of the same standard as the vessel we rode on yesterday. Is that fair?

Mr. Mike Henderson: Yes.

I can speak in terms of the local marine advisory council. I think their particular interest was certainly seen in other craft, just like the Siyay.

In terms of your particular comment, though, all I can say is the craft that is ultimately recommended and purchased will be one fully meeting the requirements to provide SAR in this area.

Mr. John Cummins: Let's hope that's the case. But we'll get there in a minute.

First, let's just get to the other issue you mentioned, this capital project summary note. There was a capital project priority ranking score completed by coast guard personnel on the west coast. When this document got to Ottawa, somehow different ratings were applied. I guess that is their prerogative, but it wouldn't be their prerogative to make mathematical errors on the scale that would in fact downgrade the need in British Columbia. This is essentially what happened here.

For example, the contribution to service strategies and objectives is one criterion on the priority ranking scale. I won't get into the rationale for the rating, but I'll point out that the proposed rating is zero to five, along with a weighting of 30. When it was done in British Columbia, it was given a rating of five. With a weight of 30, the project score was therefore 150. When it went to Ottawa, they gave it a rating of three, multiplied three by 30, and they got 60.

On the next classification, the contribution to external client needs, again, in B.C. they gave it a rating of five, and the weight was 20, for a total of 100 points. When it went to Ottawa, they gave it a rating of three, a weight of 20, and they got three times 20 to equal 40.

As you go down to the bottom, what I find really shocking is the priority ranking criterion for timing. The rationale there is that an alternative hovercraft is urgently required, that timing is critical due to the impending loss of hovercraft CHCGD045. On the timing issue, personnel on the west coast gave it a rating of five, and it has a weight of 10, for a score of 50 points. The timing issue in Ottawa is not perceived to be a priority. They gave that a rating of three. They multiplied correctly there, and they got 30.

¿ (0910)

The Chair: We have a timing issue too.

Mr. John Cummins: On government priority of saving of lives, on the west coast it was a rating of five, yet when it went to Ottawa they didn't think saving of lives was a priority. They gave it a rating of three, for a total of 30.

The end result of all of this was that with the lower concern for saving lives on the west coast and the mathematical errors, British Columbia's score on this particular capital project ranking score proved lower than elsewhere in Canada, so the hovercraft went elsewhere.

Would you care to respond?

The Chair: Mr. Henderson, can you answer that? We are under pressure of time.

Mr. Mike Henderson: Okay, I'll be very short.

As Mr. Cummins points out, there were some mathematical errors made. They were corrected before decisions were made. There's also a process around capital projects where they're reviewed by a group in Ottawa called the Investment Management Board. I didn't want to go into all that, and I actually won't go into all the details. It's to ensure national consistencies.

So when you're trying to weigh the importance of a hovercraft for providing navigational aids in the St. Lawrence and a hovercraft for providing search and rescue, how do you do that? That's their role.

The last comment I'll make is when you speak to the Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard, you will recognize that you are dealing with somebody who puts first and foremost a priority on life and saving lives. We had this discussion with him as recently as yesterday.

So again, I'm confident we'll be able to get something out here. We'll have something soon, and I think it will meet your interests and your needs.

The Chair: This is the last question.

Mr. John Cummins: If this has been corrected, I'd like you to provide the documentation, because the only documentation.... This issue is not new. I made this matter public some time ago. I have never seen any correction, only a denial.

But on the issue of saving of lives, that was the rating, and it was reduced. Search and rescue, which is the priority function of the hovercraft here, is not seen as a priority in Ottawa, and that's the issue here. Whether it's the old boys' network that's in place, as has been suggested, I don't know, but it certainly smells that way.

On the issue of replacement, again, Ottawa has been fudging on this issue. One suggested replacement that came to my attention some time ago was a hovercraft that was taken out of service by the current owners because it was unable to cope with the weather in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was actually a pre-prototype vessel, yet the coast guard were willing to shove this vessel out to B.C. They thought, well, it's good enough for British Columbia. It was only after...it was made abundantly clear by certain coast guard personnel here that the weather conditions and tidal flats they may have to cope with would make that vessel inappropriate for use here.

So what guarantees do we have that we are going to get an appropriate vessel on time?

The Chair Last point, Mr. Henderson.

¿ (0915)

Mr. Mike Henderson: As I stated earlier, the statement of requirements will be fully met. I don't honestly know what hovercraft we're going to get right now. I know we are going to get one, and we will get it soon, and it will meet the requirements for operating in this area. That's the information I can provide.

Mr. John Cummins: This is important. For the current hovercraft the licence expires, I believe, in October, the rating expires in October. By your own rules it comes out of service in October. I've been advised that to try to make it seaworthy, to meet your own requirements, the cost would be prohibitive, if it could even be done.

I also am told that it would take at least 18 months to two years to build one from scratch, to order it from the manufacturer and say, let's have it boys. So how are you going to have one available for service in October if you haven't even ordered it now in May? Where are you going to get it?

The Chair: It's supposed to be ordered in 30 days. Did you not say that earlier?

Mr. Mike Henderson: We will know in a month what option we're proceeding with. That's right.

Some of them are available, sir, on very short notice. Obviously, if you build one from scratch, it does take longer. I agree.

The Chair: John, I take your point on the urgency of the time and the urgency that this get done rapidly.

I do have one question that I want to ask of Brian, or whoever can answer it. If you had two vessels of the Siyay type, as I understand it right now, the Siyay is doing a lot of multi-tasking that the 045 cannot do. Therefore, your Siyay is under a lot more operational maintenance pressure. If you had two vehicles of the same type, over the long term you'd ease the strain on both, have a lot less operational maintenance down time and a lot less pressure on both vehicles as a result of having two vessels of the same type. Is that true? If you have a smaller one that can't do a lot of stuff, your other one is going to have to be working at capacity 90% of the time.

Mr. Brian Wootton: That's correct. And there are operational benefits. Getting the two machines as close as we can to one another makes the job of training the pilots a lot easier. You extend the life of the primary machine by sharing the workload and you reduce the down time that we experience training pilots by not having to train on two different variants.

The Chair: Thank you.

Thirty seconds, Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: I'm concerned when you suggest that we're going to bring other vessels in, because the reports I'm getting, and they're well-documented reports, are that given the vessel complement that you currently have, when there's a breakdown inappropriate vessels are being tasked to replace them. At times it's rigid hull replacing the conventional craft because you haven't got a replacement.

The coast guard patrol boat Osprey broke down. This was last September 24.

The Chair: What does this have to do with the hovercraft?

Mr. John Cummins:The coast guard doesn't have a stable fleet of vessels that are serviceable in any kind of way now. They don't have replacements for the jobs they're doing, so if a vessel has broken down, as the Osprey was, which is a search and rescue vessel, the only replacement they had was a rubber boat and an oil spill boat to fill in.

So if there is a problem, you can't really depend on the vessels you have now. They're old, they're in dire need of replacement, and when one of them does break down, you don't have an appropriate replacement for that vessel now, do you? You guys are in a tight spot, and it's not your fault, but let's get it on the record.

Mr. Jeff Nemrava: The situation is such that we do the best we can. In terms of the Osprey and that, there is a lifeboat replacement plan, which is going to go a long way to help ease those problems.

Mr. John Cummins: You haven't got them now.

Mr. Jeff Nemrava: It's still down the road, that's true, but, as I say, we're doing the best we can right now. And it's true, we are under pressures to keep the level of service we've provided in the past. There's no question of that.

The Chair: We will be dealing with the estimates with the minister on May 23, I believe, so I'm certain the issue will come up at that time as well.

¿ (0920)

Mr. John Cummins: I want to express my appreciation, and I'm sure the committee does, to the men and women in the coast guard who do go out and do their job in very trying circumstances. As a committee, I'm sure we will try to do our best to see you get the equipment to do the job.

Do you and I agree, Mr. Chairman?

The Chair: I very much agree on that point, Mr. Cummins. I'm sure all committee members do as well.

Thank you, gentlemen. I'm sorry we're under the pressure of time, but thank you. Also, thank you for the other evening as well. I think it puts things into better perspective in our own minds.

Mr. Mike Henderson: Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks for the opportunity to appear.

The Chair: Ms. McPhail.

Welcome, Joy. I know you have your hands full of issues these days. Certainly being small in numbers in opposition is not an easy job, but it's an important role in our democracy. Thank you for taking the time to come before us. The floor is yours.

Ms. Joy McPhail (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm honoured to appear before this very important committee. I think it's very good news that the committee is travelling to the west coast to discuss issues around our fisheries and oceans that may be as yet thoroughly explored at the federal level.

If you don't already have a copy, I will leave a copy of my remarks behind and make sure there are enough. The staff has been good enough to say they would make sure there are enough copies for everybody.

I want to talk about finfish aquaculture today, as it is in British Columbia. The committee may be aware that in January of this year, the provincial government announced it would be pursuing an expansion of the aquaculture industry here in B.C., lifting a moratorium that has been in place since 1995.

The government cited that there were new comprehensive environmental standards and recent “best science” to support the claim that the risks are low and therefore that it's time to lift the moratorium. However, as you may have already heard, many stakeholders and scientists have come forward to say that waste, sea lice, escapes, and colonization are significant problems that are currently happening and are getting worse.

The moratorium was scheduled to be lifted by the end of April, just a few days ago. However, the government announced that it's still working on regulations. In my view, it's understandable that they're having difficulty coming up with proper regulations because there's still a great deal of uncertainty and a large and vocal opposition against the expansion.

Looking back in recent history, the previous government of which I was part undertook a salmon aquaculture review. In my notes I refer to that as SAR. As most are aware, the review was the end result of the provincial Environmental Assessment Office's multi-year, multi-million-dollar study of salmon aquaculture here in British Columbia. The report was released in 1997 and the previous government, my former government, used the results to maintain the moratorium.

One of the conclusions of the report was that “Farming in British Columbia, as presently practised and at current production levels, presents a low overall risk to the environment”. That finding does not stand alone as supporting evidence to expand. Furthermore, since 1997 the science around finfish aquaculture has expanded, elaborating on the risks and uncertainty.

I have pursued this issue vigorously in debates in the legislature, along with my colleague from Vancouver—Mount Pleasant. Consistently, the government of the day has relied on that 1997 salmon aquaculture review, and another study from Washington State, to justify its position to lift the moratorium because, they say, the risks are low. However, there are some key issues around the fact that they use only these sources.

First, the salmon aquaculture review was very comprehensive at the time, but it's now five years old and is based on even older data. Furthermore, some scientists and researchers in the field have expressed concerns that it does not stand up to scientific scrutiny, as it was never peer-reviewed.

I'm speaking to you today because, like many others who I think have already presented to you, I am concerned that Canada not make the same mistake by relying solely on that outdated, now suspect information.

Turning to the Washington study, it concluded that fish farms were not a significant threat in Washington. But that particular study was done in the waters of Washington, where there are eight fish farms—eight fish farms in the whole state of Washington.

B.C. has over 90 active at any given time. More than half of those 90 are located in the Broughton Archipelago alone. Therefore it's clear that B.C. has extremely unique circumstances that should, without a doubt, constitute a new local study. After all, if the study was not done in the most densely populated area, it's very easy, in my view, to question the bearing it has for B.C. and the Broughton Archipelago.

Aside from the two sources that the B.C. government is relying on, there have been several recent developments that show there's a substantial risk and lack of full scientific certainty. I'll quickly run through some of those developments now.

Mr. Chair, have you already heard from the David Suzuki Foundation?

The Chair: Yes, we have.

Ms. Joy McPhail: Okay, so I'm sure you're familiar.... I'll skip the Leggatt inquiry, because I'm sure you've been informed of that as well. I'm conscious of time, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: We went through it as well.

Ms. Joy McPhail: There were over 413,000 Atlantic salmon escapes reported between 1991 and 2001 by the Atlantic Salmon Watch program. However, keeping scientific figures is difficult, and estimates ranged to two million fish escapes.

Adult Atlantic salmon have been found and caught in British Columbia in the ocean and freshwater systems, both in the adult and juvenile stages. Atlantic salmon have been found in 77 B.C. rivers. I'm sure more of this will be reported to you by Dr. John Volpe, who I see is appearing before the committee.

Disease-like infectious hematopoietic necrosis is clearly a major threat. Combined with the risk of escapes in farms near wild migration routes, the pest problem is especially alarming. There were 1.6 million Atlantic salmon that died in February at one site alone, and another 5,000 in March of this year in Clayoquot Sound.

The transfer of sea lice from farms to wild salmon is also a major concern. Alexander Morton, a biologist working in the Broughton Archipelago, looked at 924 wild salmon over 10 weeks around fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago and found 45% of the sample was doomed because of sea lice.

Wild salmon transmits the parasite to farm salmon, where the population intensifies. As the committee knows, every 21 days in a fish farm, there's an exponential jump in the population of sea lice. Therefore, in spring, when young fish go past the farms again—young wild stock—they're swimming through a cloud of sea lice.

Regarding waste and pollution from fish farms, the salmon farming monitoring report released in August of last year by the B.C. Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection revealed that pollution occurs beneath every one of the 94 salmon farms tested for physical and chemical data. Some experts have even gone so far as to estimate that four fish farms release into the environment an amount of untreated effluent equivalent to the city of Seattle.

The cumulative impact of disease, parasites, waste, escape, and colonization remains unknown, and there is absolutely no scientific certainty that the risk is low. The threat to the wild stocks in British Columbia and the warnings from various stakeholders, scientists, and researchers cannot be overlooked.

¿ (0925)

Why am I here? It is because I think there are politics involved in this decision that reach beyond the science that I and many others with greater expertise have laid out for your consideration and your clear statutory principles.

I know some of you may want to succumb to the lure of jobs and increased wealth for the coastal communities that host salmon farms. There is no doubt that our coastal communities are suffering. Yet I want to make it clear that the west coast is very different from the east coast on this matter. On the east coast, it's my understanding, many fish farms are locally owned by small businesses. Here on the west coast, fish farms are, in the majority, held by large multinationals and the profits from the farms do not stay in the community.

There is also some question as to the overall benefit to the community of the jobs created. In Alert Bay, for example, I'm advised there are more than 30 fish farms. There are 3,000 first nations people who live in the area, but only a handful of first nations people have jobs on the farms.

I would submit, Mr. Chair, that the majority of British Columbians are not prepared to sell out or put at risk the future of an already successful and lucrative tourism industry--the jobs the resorts and fish guide operations provide, and the jobs sailing, cruising, and kayaking businesses provide, to say nothing of the wild salmon resources and the commercial fishing industry--for the sake of the limited benefits to the local community an expanded fish farming agenda would bring.

As a politician, I want to advise you that the moratorium on fish farming is popular, whether it's in the northern coastal communities or not.

My colleague, the member for Vancouver--Mount Pleasant, was recently in the north. One group presented my colleague with a wild-stock salmon that they wanted her to thump on the desk of the provincial minister. I don't know whether any of you were actually in Parliament when the event occurred twenty years ago. The then member of Parliament for Skeena slapped a fish on the desk of a federal fisheries minister.

People from the north through to the people from Vancouver are insisting more and more that restaurants feature wild salmon rather than farmed salmon. Many people I speak to on this issue are not saying there should never be another aquaculture licence granted on the west coast. They are saying, however, that there are technologies locally available, including those of a manufacturer in the riding of the member for Nanaimo--Alberni, that have already been put to use. It mitigates many of the threats that open-pen farming brings to the ocean waters you're responsible for.

I'm coming to a conclusion here, Mr. Chair.

Finfish aquaculture does pose a risk. Action should be taken to prevent the degradation of the wild stocks so as to avoid contributing to population decline, or even a disaster similar to the cod fishery on the east coast. The federal government and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans need to press for a comprehensive scientific study of the risks in B.C. waters before expansion of open-net-cage aquaculture occurs.

I think the federal government must play a key role in the decisions around the aquaculture industry because of some very key legal issues. First of all, pollution of the environment caused by net-cage salmon farming may well violate the federal Fisheries Act, particularly sections 34 and 35, which deal with fish habitat protection and pollution prevention.

Under subsection 35(1), the act states that “no person shall carry on any work or undertaking that results in the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat”. Fish habitat is defined in the same act, in paragraph 34(1)(e), as “spawning grounds and nursery, rearing, food supply and migration areas on which fish depend directly or indirectly in order to carry out their life processes”.

In my view, Mr. Chair, it's clear that this legislation applies to the aquaculture debate on the west coast, especially when it comes to migration areas of our wild stocks in B.C. in relation to aquaculture. Closed containment facilities would allow the industry to operate within the context of this law, not with an expansion of the system as it exists now with open-net cages.

Furthermore, principle 15 of the Rio Declaration, the precautionary principle, is defined as “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation”. That principle clearly applies in this case.

¿ (0930)

In my view, Mr. Chair, Canada has a clear legal obligation to act on this issue of finfish aquaculture and to prevent the degradation of the environment and the wild salmon stocks.

I have read soothing words on this matter from this committee in its recent reports on the Oceans Act, including a clear statement of support for the fact that oceans management strategy is based upon three key principles: sustainable development, integrated management of activities, and adherence to the precautionary approach.

I recognize the limits of your time, and I really am very honoured to be able to have the opportunity to appear before you. I would welcome whatever questions I may be able to answer. Thank you.

¿ (0935)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. McPhail. Your submission really provides a very good summary of a lot of what we've heard.

Before I turn to John, you make the point that many fish farms on the east coast are locally owned by small businesses. That is true, but increasingly becoming less true, because many of those fish farms are being driven into financial difficulty. Some are being forced to be sold out as a result of the dumping of Chilean salmon into the United States markets, which has driven prices down. Those Chilean salmon companies are really owned by companies in Norway, which are some of the same companies that are involved here. So it's an interesting merry-go-round.

Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: Two-thirds of the companies here are actually owned--

The Chair: Which are forcing the companies out of business on the east coast.

Mr. John Cummins: Anyway, welcome to Ms. McPhail. We're delighted to have you here this morning.

I have to ask you this question, and it may make you squirm somewhat, but I'm going to have to ask it anyway. It has to do with the farm practices protection, or the Right to Farm Act, which was, I believe, passed by your government. Under that act, which protects the right to farm, it says that a farmer cannot be sued for a nuisance for any colour, odour, noise, or other disturbance resulting from the farm operation, and the farmer cannot, by injunction or other court order, be prevented from carrying on that farm operation.

Now, under the act it says that farm operations include aquaculture, as defined in the provincial fisheries act, when carried on by a party licensed under the act. It goes on to say that the board will determine whether or not the practice complained about is a normal farm practice. If the board finds that it is a farm practice, it must dismiss the complaint.

What I was quoting from was actually in the Salmon Aquaculture Review, volume 3.

It seems to me that what happened under this Right to Farm Act was that salmon aquaculture was protected. Am I reading that correctly?

Ms. Joy McPhail: No, Mr. Cummins, although you make a good point by reading the act itself, but there are regulations attached that were passed.

With the two of us it's hard to keep current on what the actual government of the day is repealing, but there were regulations attached that actually were extremely environmentally oriented to protect against pollution, both on land and in water.

Mr. John Cummins: If it's in the act federally, it would give the Governor-in-Council the ability to make regulations or to alter regulations fairly much at will, without having to come back to Parliament, or in your case the legislature. I presume you operate in the same manner.

Ms. Joy McPhail: I have no idea what the intent of this current government is in terms of exercising its right or lack thereof under that particular act, Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: I'm not meaning to interrupt, but I can't understand the intent of including salmon aquaculture in a farm protection act.

Ms. Joy McPhail: In certain areas of the provinces, as I'm sure you are well aware, the water tenures abutt land tenures that are used for farming as well. So it was to make sure that this protection, and also the right to proceed to farm, whether in water or on land, were not unaffected, basically, by urban encroachment. That was the discussion that occurred at that time.

Mr. John Cummins: In your document you talk about the authority of the federal government. It's certainly my understanding that the federal minister has that constitutional obligation to protect wild fish in their habitat. But I'm concerned that with the way things are going provincially, somehow that authority is being undermined, either by an arrangement with the federal government or simply on the initiative of the provincial government. As you know, the federal fisheries minister has huge powers to protect fish in their habitat, and yet it seems there's an erosion of that power. Is that your sense as well?

¿ (0940)

Ms. Joy McPhail: Yes. In fact, that's exactly why I'm here today. I'm urging the federal government through this committee to really take very seriously its important power in protecting the fish habitats and the wild stock on the west coast. There is still an opportunity for the federal government to exercise its authority in that area. I hope there hasn't yet been a meeting of minds between the federal government and the provincial government on this matter, because there has been no public discussion until this committee arrived here. So there is a huge opportunity, and I would say a responsibility, for the federal government to exercise its authority under the federal Fisheries Act in this matter.

The Chair: This will be your last question, John.

Mr. John Cummins: As you know, Senator Murkowski sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell advising him that it may be in the best interest of Alaska to reopen the Canada-U.S. salmon agreement to include provisions to protect—I think that would be a term Senator Murkowski might like—Alaskan habitat from the escapees from these farms in British Columbia. In my view, it is not simply a national issue. It has become an international one. What's your feeling on that particular issue?

Ms. Joy McPhail: You're exactly right, it has become an international issue, and it's certainly a curious aspect of our provincial government to provoke an international issue such as this when we're at such risk in other areas in terms of international trade arrangements, particularly in the area of softwood lumber, and to actually poke a stick in the eye of the Alaskan industry. As I'm sure the members of the committee are aware, the Alaskan government does not permit finfish aquaculture. The Alaskan commercial fishing industry has written to me in support of a private member's bill I introduced to limit future expansion of aquaculture to closed containment. They're very concerned about the effects on the wild stock in Alaska.

The Chair: Mr. Cuzner.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: Ms. McPhail, with regard to your private member's bill, which addresses closed containment, what types of studies did you undertake to address the economic viability of these closed containment units through the process of presenting your private member's bill?

Ms. Joy McPhail: Part of the initiative of the previous government in terms of keeping the moratorium in place was to allow for pilot projects that used better containment strategies, including closed containment. Those pilot projects are ongoing. Also, since the salmon aquaculture review, two companies, one in Nanaimo and one just outside of Seattle, have tested closed containment technology and have provided accompanying data to show its cost-effectiveness.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: Could we get access to that?

Ms. Joy McPhail: If the committee would wish, I could provide you with that information.

The Chair: Yes, we'd appreciate that.

Mr. Roy.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: My question is along the same lines, because the industry told us yesterday that closed containment technology would be five or six times more expensive and would not be cost effective.

You mentioned pilot projects. Are those pilot projects managed by the industry or by the government?

¿ (0945)

[English]

Ms. Joy McPhail: They're managed by the industry, in an arrangement, an agreement, a contract between the industry and the previous government.

I have to confess, sir, that with just two of us it's really hard for me to keep track of what the current government's doing on so many fronts. But it's my understanding that those contracts, on the basis of a pilot project, are still in place and are being monitored by the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries provincially, as well as the Minister of Water, Land and Air Protection provincially.

I do know there have been huge gains made, even beyond those pilot projects, by the local, made-in-B.C. technology, as well as the Washington State technology.

The Chair: Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney: Thank you.

Regarding the land-based facilities in Cedar, just south of Nanaimo, again we have a problem with land-based. As far as I know, there's nobody who's been able to show it's economically sustainable. One of the big problems, of course, is that the pumping of water involves diesel generators that operate the pumping: if the pumps fail, fish die. And operating diesel generators isn't very environmentally sound, either. Of course it creates a lot of noise pollution. So I think we'd all be glad to see an alternative developed, but so far we haven't found a way. I appreciate those people who are looking.

Future SEA, which is also in Nanaimo, and it's the one in Nanaimo-Alberni, with its bag systems has run into the same types of problems with a contained system: their pumps' noise, diesel fuel cost. There's not usually a readily available supply of electricity, so they're again on diesel generators.

We appreciate looking for those alternatives, but in the meantime I'm quite interested in the Seattle-based operation. I'm sure all of us would be. It's a new one to me, so we'd be interested.

Ms. Joy McPhail: Okay, I'll provide you with that information.

Mr. James Lunney: We'd certainly be interested in hearing it.

With regard to the effect on tourism--and being from Nanaimo-Alberni, we're very aware of the economic duress the whole province is under, and certainly Vancouver Island is hit extremely hard--aquaculture is playing a very important role economically. In spite of resistance, and optics that aren't good in some cases, and kayakers who don't like to see farms, in a downturned economy the evidence is that in our area--in the Tofino and Clayoquot Sound area--it's actually the largest revenue generator right now. For a stalled economy, that is certainly important to the townspeople, even if not all the residents appreciate it. I just wanted to make that point.

Also, Joy, with regard to the comment about the Alert Bay area, where there are a number of farms and very few aboriginals employed, we had the aboriginal community here yesterday at committee, and the chief of one of the Alert Bay tribes said his son had been offered a job. But of course he said, in his own words, that if he took the job his dad would kill him, because it's become a them-and-us situation where the industry is regarded as the enemy.

We know, for example, that in Nanaimo-Alberni the local Ahousaht Band has between 50 and 60 local band members involved in the Pacific National Aquaculture sites. So in a developing industry there's certainly another side to the story here.

We as a committee are trying to find a balance here and find what is the right way. Most of the witnesses who have appeared here on the so-called environmental side, and even the people representing the industry, consider themselves environmentalists. Most of them have said they're not totally opposed to aquaculture, they just want good science. I think we'd all like to see good science there.

There really isn't a question in that, but rather just a comment. If you could provide us with more evidence concerning a sustainable land base, I'm sure we'd all be very pleased to receive it.

Ms. Joy McPhail: Yes, and I think those are very important comments you make, Mr. Lunney.

I agree that if the industry can expand with a scientific certainty that there will not be an adverse effect on wild stocks, that is wonderful news. As my private member's bill made clear, I wasn't even wanting to go back to reverse the open-net-cage aquaculture of those who already have contracts in place. It was a looking-forward private member's bill that said that when there is expansion, do it with the best scientifically safe technology available.

I certainly appreciate your comments. Of course the industry that exists now in your riding is key, and it exists in the context of the moratorium in place, as well.

I'm always curious when I discuss with the aquaculture industry their evidence that the job creation that arises out of aquaculture is actually a net gain to the effect of job loss as a result of aquaculture. I have no idea what that kind of study may or may not show. Is it a net increase because of aquaculture when you take into account the effect it may have on tourism or on commercial fishing as well? That would be important evidence for the aquaculture industry to provide.

In terms of the first nations community, I'll just make this note. It sure would be nice if we could have a cooperative approach where first nations feel that they're actually full participants in the future of our economy rather than just having to be constantly in a confrontational situation.

¿ (0950)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Lunney.

Ms. McPhail, on those points, I gather from your comments that you do not believe the federal government is living up to its responsibilities under the Fisheries Act in terms of sections 34 and 35.

Ms. Joy McPhail: I have no idea where the federal government is on this issue. As far as I know, they're dead silent. I hope the fact that this committee is travelling to the coast is an indication that they're going to speak up on this issue.

I take it as a very positive sign that the parliamentary committee is here. There's lots of opportunity for the federal government to quickly get up to speed in assuming their responsibility under sections 34 and 35.

Mr. John Cummins: May I ask a supplementary question?

The Chair: Go ahead.

Mr. John Cummins: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

John Fraser, in his presentation to the Leggatt inquiry, suggested that the federal government in Canada may be adopting a position or a function similar to that of the U.S. government, where it steps away from its responsibilities to the salmon and it's only going to act if there's a question of endangerment of a species. That seems to be essentially the role the federal government of the United States has. It is my understanding that the responsibility for management falls largely to the states, and the federal government gets involved if there's an emergency under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

The federal government here in this country, in this particular issue, seems to be adopting that model. I'm not sure where they're going to come in, but is that your sense of it, that they seem to want to be devolving themselves of responsibility here?

Ms. Joy McPhail: My point is that I have no idea what role the federal government wishes to play, whether it be a passive role such as you're outlining, Mr. Cummins, which I disagree with if that is the case. I think the federal government has an aggressive responsibility here to protect the wild stock and the habitat.

I'm just waiting for a signal, and if the signal from the federal government is that it's a passive role they wish to play, almost a complaints-driven role, then I would be protesting.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Cummins.

Thank you very much, Ms. McPhail, for taking the time to come before us and laying out very clearly where you stand. So thank you once again.

Ms. Joy McPhail: I'm very grateful to the committee to be here. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Now I would call on Mr. Dave Gaudet, who is the special assistant to Alaska's commissioner on the Pacific Salmon Commission.

Welcome, Mr. Gaudet. It's a pleasure to have you here.

We'll take a short break.

¿ (0950)

¿ (0952)

The Chair: Could we reconvene?

Welcome again, Mr. Gaudet. You have a presentation, I believe. Then we'll go to questions. The floor is yours.

¿ (0955)

Mr. Dave Gaudet (Fishery biologist, Department of Fish and Game, Special Assistant to the Commissioner for Alaska, Pacific Salmon Commission, Government of the State of Alaska): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

For the record, my name is Dave Gaudet. I'm a fishery biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Currently I'm the special assistant to the commissioner for the Pacific Salmon Commission.

I understand that you have a lengthy schedule today, and I will try to make this short. You should have received my comments. I will go through those and basically highlight some.

We thank you very much for the opportunity to come down. As you know, this is an issue that has been of great concern to us. We've been following this issue ever since Atlantic salmon started to show up in our commercial fishery catches in approximately 1990. We've done a number of things, and of course our governor, Tony Knowles, last week held a press conference where he announced he had sent a letter to Premier Gordon Campbell that urged him to keep the moratorium on. I have a copy of that letter with me. It should have been passed out to you, or if not now, very soon.

As you know, Alaska is a very firm believer in state rights, and we respect the rights of the Province of British Columbia. We're known for wanting to carry out our own affairs without undue interference from others, and we presume that's what British Columbia would like also.

We share the bounty of several things. We share a coastline, some transboundary rivers, and similar economies that are based on natural resources, including commercial fishing, sport fishing, and tourism. But sometimes through this closeness, there are some issues that compel us to intervene, and the Atlantic salmon issue is just one of those.

Our foremost concern is the number of escapes that are occurring in the fish that are coming into our waters, and of course the fact that they have found them reproducing. We are very concerned about the potential negative impact on Alaska's healthy wild Pacific salmon and its fishing economy and culture that's based on those fish.

One other natural resource that we share is the sea lion population. To date the eastern population that we share is a healthy one, but we are concerned about the number of sea lions that are killed by the farming practices.

There are other issues that many people have addressed—the land use, environmental pollution, lack of people not caring to see these—but we believe that those are the issues that are best left for the people of British Columbia to deal with.

What I would like to do is to describe what Alaska has done to protect our wild Pacific salmon and the healthy fishing economy and culture that they support. I also want to outline specifically what our concerns are.

We've been active in this issue ever since the Atlantic salmon began appearing in the Alaskan harvest in 1990. We've produced a white paper, which we are submitting also as part of our written testimony. In addition, we have instituted programs to educate people in Alaska on Atlantic salmon. We collect the carcasses of the Atlantics from the fishermen. We tally the numbers and the location of the captures. We have also attended workshops on Atlantic salmon farming in British Columbia.

In December 2000 the Commissioner of ADF&G, Frank Rue, along with three other ADF&G employees, including myself, met with Mr. Bud Graham, the assistant deputy minister in the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, and members of the industries to see the farms for ourselves firsthand.

As I mentioned, the Governor of Alaska, Tony Knowles, has also been very active. He has now been in office for eight years, and he has discussed this issue with several premiers who have been in office at the same time. Finally, we participated in the Leggatt inquiry so that our views could be clearly known.

Alaska has a history of codifying its fish and game management. Our state constitutes a mandate so that we have sustained yield management of our resources. Another statute that people have referred to that is on the books for Alaska is the prohibition of fish farming. In the 1980s, along with British Columbia and other northwestern states in the United States, Alaska began to consider legalizing fish farming in order to provide some economic opportunities for our people.

Following a decade of debate and the completion of a comprehensive report by the Alaska finfish farming task force, Alaska adopted a statutory prohibition on finfish farming. The prohibition says: “A person may not grow or cultivate finfish in captivity or under positive control for commercial purposes.”

The legislative findings that accompany this statute concluded that the people, economy, and the environment of the state are greatly dependent upon the continued health of the state's wild finfish resources.

Also, there are serious risks from commercial finfish farming, including the spread of disease among wild fish by farm fish; genetic intermingling of wild stocks with genetically manipulated farm fish; degradation of water quality near fish farms; and land use conflicts over siting of commercial finfish farms. Therefore, to avoid harm to the state's wild finfish, land and water resources, they must take precedence over the development of a new, speculative, potentially harmful commercial finfish farming industry.

To provide further protection to the vital salmon resource, ADF&G, the board of fisheries, and the stakeholders adopted Alaska's sustainable salmon policy in the spring of 2000. This policy provided a framework to protect and promote the sustainability of wild abundant and healthy stocks in Alaska. The policy's goal is to ensure the conservation of salmon and salmon habitat, protect customary and traditional subsistence uses, and sustain the economic health of Alaska's fishing community.

As you can see, and hopefully appreciate, Alaska has gone to great lengths to provide a framework of laws, policies, and management practices to ensure the sustainability of wild salmon stocks. In addition, we've worked hard to avoid the habitat problems that have plagued the Pacific Northwest and led to the listing of Pacific salmon under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

This successful management program recently allowed Alaska to receive a certification as a sustainable fishery. The certification, issued by an international environmental marketing organization, the Marine Stewardship Council, required rigorous evaluation and scientific peer review from highly credible sources. The MSC certification declares Alaska as having well-managed, sustainable salmon. We have no reason to adopt practices that jeopardize our wild salmon resource. We have every reason to be very alarmed with practices outside of our jurisdiction that have the potential to undermine or extinguish our thriving ecosystems, economies, and communities.

Sustainable fisheries management is what sustains Alaska's economy, including the subsistence economy. The seafood industry is the largest job provider in the private sector--47%. Aside from commercial contributions, sport fishing by resident and non-resident anglers, targeting mainly salmon, also make significant contributions.

It is the economy that we want to preserve, and that's why we're so concerned about the farming of Altantic salmon. They are alien to the west coast. The fish farmers of British Columbia have introduced these animals for the purpose of profit. They've tried Pacific salmon; it did not work out.

Many introduced species have been classified as invasive due to habitat destruction, diseases, hybridization, proliferation from competition. The effects can be catastrophic. There are many examples: the rabbit in Australia, mongoose in Hawaii, zebra mussel in the Great Lakes, just to name a few. I've listed an example in my notes of one in Lake Victoria, which I will just pass by and let you read yourselves.

The Lake Victoria one was particularly horrible, but granted not all introduced species become invasive with such horrific histories. However, it is important to note that invasive species are implicated in the decline of 42% of the species listed in the United States Endangered Species Act. The cost of these invasive species is staggering. Control of the non-indigenous animals, plants, and microbes costs the United States $123 billion a year, according to a January 1999 Cornell University report.

À (1000)

The ecological menace and the resulting economic disasters of invasion as they try to eradicate or recover from the invasion of introduced species has prompted many countries and individual U.S. states to enact regulations banning the entry of non-native species.

Alaska was very concerned when Atlantic salmon were introduced into British Columbia. British Columbia's response to our early concerns was to dismiss them as unwarranted. They claimed the things we worried about would never happen. However, many of them have happened.

First, we were told there would no escapes and there wouldn't be a problem, that they would be enclosed in net pens. The fact is, these escapes happen continually, either through the deliberate release of non-performers--that is, fish that are not large enough to be retained when the pen mesh size is increased--or from accidents. Since Atlantic salmon farming began, we know there have been a minimum of 330,000 in British Columbia, and there have been a large number in Washington, but these aren't documented. It may be closer to two million when you calculate in all the non-performers.

Furthermore, one thing that concerns us is that the chief method of monitoring the escapes in B.C. has been from the commercial catches by the British Columbia commercial fleet. Now that the British Columbia commercial fishery is operating at a fraction of what it was ten years ago, this despite some excellent returns at the north end of British Columbia, the monitoring method is clearly insufficient and unreliable.

With regard to escapes, we were told that Atlantic salmon wouldn't be able to survive in the wild. Again, evidence shows the concerns were warranted. They do survive, and they have been caught in the act of attempting to feed. They've been caught on troll gear and sport gear.

With regard to our concerns about escaped Atlantic salmon spawning in the native streams, we were told not to worry; they tried to introduce Atlantic salmon on the west coast at the turn of the century, and it didn't work. What was true one hundred years ago is not sound evidence or conclusive proof for today. We're finding Atlantic salmon in Alaska and British Columbia rivers. Ecological conditions are very different now. Pacific salmon were abundant then, and their habitats were intact. Today, in areas where Atlantic salmon are being farmed, many populations of Pacific salmon are considered by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans to be in trouble.

Whether it's fishing practices, habitat destruction, or both, there is now an ecological niche open, which is often the catalyst for an introduced species to become an invasive and destructive one.

Finally, what is of most concern to us is the proof of Atlantic salmon progeny in British Columbia streams. In 1998 juvenile Atlantic salmon were found in British Columbia's Tsitika River. Analysis proved that these juveniles were successfully spawned in the wild. And recently Atlantic Salmon Watch has reported many other streams with them.

To this point we've only been concerned with the establishment of feral populations. In a published paper entitled “Impacts of Introduced Species in the United States”, Dr. Daniel Simberloff of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville pointed out that “on a general level, introduced species often interact with the destruction and fragmentation of habitat, the other major cause of our national conservation crisis”.

In addition, he noted that of the 632 species listed as endangered under the United States ESA, invasive species are feeding on approximately one hundred of those listed, and for 424 of the listed species, habitat destruction is the main threat. He also noted that disease and competition from introduced species are also threats.

With respect to the lifting of the moratorium, we understand that the primary goal is to establish Prince Rupert as a hub for new farming locations in northern British Columbia. This worries us. We've been told that many of the escapes of the past were the result of inexperience with both siting and materials. With all the industry's experience, escapes still happen in great numbers, as proven last year.

If new aquatic farming territory is added, here comes a new learning curve. If farms are brought to northern British Columbia, they will undoubtedly be plagued with a new set of problems in an area that is unfamiliar to them and is known for high southerly winds and violent storms. If Alaska is now getting all these fish from escapes from the Johnstone Strait and the Broughton Archipelago, how many will we get when they escape from net cages located just across the Dixon Entrance from Alaska?

We appreciate the new regulations adopted for the salmon farming industry last October. However, these new regulations, with their lack of enforcement, fall far short of providing protection, particularly the addressing of escapes as a managed risk. So far the indications are very clear that the farming of Atlantic salmon in non-native marine waters is posing a tremendous threat. There is no proof otherwise at this point. Again, I would like to quote from Dr. Simberloff:

“The complexity of ecological interactions, the history of past introductions, and the potential ecological and economic costs on new ones strongly support the recommendations that every proposed introduction be viewed as potentially problematic until substantial research suggests otherwise.”

À (1005)

I hope I've been able to demonstrate why we are concerned. We've worked hard. We believe that as a result of our hard work, including sustainable salmon management programs and sound habitat management, we will continue to have healthy fisheries and a healthy marine mammal population. We find the possibility that we won't, of having this ruined through poor Atlantic salmon farming practices, is unacceptable.

We note that the burdens of industry and government are essentially very different. While industry is primarily interested in responsible, profitable operations, governments are responsible for protecting the environment and the economies they support. In our view, preventing all escapes of an introduced species in the interest of environmental protection must be a primary and critical responsibility of the industry.

At this time, I would like to reiterate quickly Governor Knowles' recommendations that he announced last week.

First, leave the moratorium on new Atlantic salmon net pens in place, and ensure that British Columbia makes the salmon farms biologically safe and environmentally sustainable.

Secondly, move the existing farms to fully contained onshore sites by a certain date.

Thirdly, record and make available for review the levels of mortality, disease, and parasites.

Fourthly, test and report results of tests on market-bound salmon for pathogens, drugs, and chemical contaminants.

Fifthly, expand the number of annual surveys to discover Atlantic salmon in freshwater systems.

There are additional recommendations in the white paper that you should have received.

Finally, we encourage you to support the talented DFO scientists and managers who advocate re-establishing healthy fisheries from wild stocks that were once the pride of British Columbia.

Thank you.

À (1010)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Gaudet, for a very good paper. I also appreciate receiving the white paper. I've just kind of leafed through it, and there's a lot of information. Committee members do have that. We'll go through that documentation, as well as the rest of the documentation you've provided.

Just before I turn to John, I'm not sure who had mentioned it yesterday, but the Alaska salmon fishery declined in value from about $350 million to I believe they said the figure was $50 million, while at the same time production has increased. Do you have any statistics on that? If you don't, that's--

Mr. Dave Gaudet: I don't have any with me right now, but that is of course the case, that the price per pound of salmon that are sold has been declining, while production in Alaska has remained at very high levels.

I'm not certain who mentioned it before, but we're also feeling the price of the Chilean market.

The Chair: Yes, there's no question that everybody is feeling the pressure. It's not just in salmon; it's in other species as well. The Chilean dumping into the United States is causing everybody financial problems, it's true, including the wild fishery.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: Thank you very much, Mr. Gaudet. I certainly appreciate you taking the time to come down here and make a presentation to this committee.

As you indicated in your remarks, we do share a long coastline, and certainly the fish that swim in British Columbia undoubtedly swim in Alaskan waters as well. I think we have to work together even more than we have in the past to manage the resource.

One of the shortcomings, if you will, of the Pacific Salmon Treaty is that there's not enough emphasis placed on co-management efforts. We have to get together with our neighbours in Alaska and in Washington and Oregon if we're going to really effectively manage wild stocks, so I think your being here this morning is a testament to that.

I appreciate Governor Knowles' comments, and as well Senator Murkowski's request to Secretary of State Colin Powell that it's perhaps time to reopen the Pacific Salmon Treaty to address this issue.

I would say that Governor Knowles' statements and Senator Murkowski's efforts are indicative of the emphasis and the concern in Alaska over the lifting of the moratorium in British Columbia. Is that a fair assessment?

Mr. Dave Gaudet: That's correct. There is a lot of concern, not only over the lifting of the moratorium, but also the escapes and the fact that we are finding them in both our marine and our fresh waters.

We've actually had them now in rivers up as far as Prince William Sound, a tributary of the Copper River. There was an Atlantic salmon that was captured this last year. Of course the only way we get the recaptures back is through the sport fisheries. We have many very remote rivers, as you do, and we're not in a lot of those on a daily or monthly basis.

Mr. John Cummins: We had officials in here from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans yesterday, and they have a very small program, although they inflate it and would have us believe it is more effective than it is. In that presentation yesterday, they certainly downplayed the number of escapees that were making it, if you will, to Alaskan waters. Could you give the committee a rough idea of numbers of escaped Atlantics that are arriving in Alaskan waters?

À (1015)

Mr. Dave Gaudet: Yes. As I said, we have a program where we have notified commercial fishermen and we've tried to educate the public as to what an Atlantic salmon looks like. Quite often they're just brought in because they're strange-looking fish. The numbers we've reported from that program have been in the order of several hundred per year that are voluntarily turned in, and our efforts have really just gotten underway.

The number we are finding in streams is a little bit smaller than that, but what's alarming to us is that these are Atlantic salmon and they're showing up in the Pacific streams. With British Columbia you can certainly appreciate the inaccessibility of many of the streams. We have the same problem. The ones that were seen in fresh waters are very opportunistic recoveries.

Mr. John Cummins: In your list of concerns you talk about escapees from damaged cages and net pens and so on, and that issue has been addressed here. We dealt somewhat with the numbers. But you also bring into play the release of non-performers. I think it's worthwhile to the committee perhaps for you to discuss that, because it's not something that has been addressed at the committee level and some members may not be familiar with it. I don't know whether you want to describe for the committee how that occurs or if you want me to do it, or whatever you like. Perhaps you could do it.

Mr. Dave Gaudet: I'd be happy to. As I said, several of our biologists attended a workshop on Atlantic salmon farming practices, and what we learned at that workshop was that they changed--

Mr. John Cummins: That was in British Columbia, sir?

Mr. Dave Gaudet: Yes, it was. I believe it was at Simon Fraser University. It was held in 2000.

What we learned was that as the fish grow, you change the net pen, the mesh, in order to provide for more circulation of water through it. Obviously you have to have smaller mesh for the smaller fish. Not all these fish grow at the same rate, so as you change the mesh, you do have a number of fish that obviously can swim through the next mesh size and are free to swim away. We haven't seen it ourselves, but that's how it was all explained to us. We did visit the net site.

The Chair: Can I interrupt for a second? This was explained at the meeting you attended at Simon Fraser?

Mr. Dave Gaudet: That's correct.

The Chair: That's the first I've heard of it.

Anyway, will that raise some questions?

Mr. John Cummins: Yes. I forget now myself, but perhaps you remember the estimate of the percentage of fish that actually escape in that manner. I know there's a variety of estimates.

Mr. Dave Gaudet: I believe the number they use is between 1% and 5%, and they use the median of 3%. Of course, that's primarily what's assumed.

Mr. John Cummins: That's a huge number of fish. It dwarfs the number of fish that actually escape from damaged pens and so on, I would suspect.

Mr. Dave Gaudet: That would be my suspicion also, although I'm not certain we know how many are actually escaping from the net pens as adults. When your primary tool is to use a commercial fishery to recapture them, timing is of the essence.

Mr. John Cummins: Currently the bulk of salmon farms operating in British Columbia are in waters adjacent to Vancouver Island. With the lifting of the moratorium the possibility, of course, exists for salmon farms to be established in the area of Prince Rupert, which is essentially on the British Columbia and Alaska border.

As you note in your paper, weather conditions there are different, everything is different. The possibility, then, of release of escapees from these pens, by whatever means, increases exponentially the number of Atlantics that will arrive in Alaska. And it's a certainty that they will arrive.

There has been a discussion and some indication that Alaska may seek compensation if this occurs. Is that the case, as you understand it?

À (1020)

Mr. Dave Gaudet: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Cummins, it has perhaps been talked about. It hasn't been talked about as a policy of the Department of Fish and Game, nor am I aware that the governor's office has done this.

In his press conference last week the governor made it very clear that he wanted to continue his dialogue with the Government of British Columbia to try to solve this problem, but that was not one that I've heard mentioned as being the prime thing they were looking for.

Mr. John Cummins: Dialogue would be the preference, but the hammer is always there that there are legal avenues.

Mr. Dave Gaudet: The one thing that perhaps comes closest to that is simply in the fifth recommendation that I had read from the governor, to expand the number of annual surveys to discover Atlantic salmon in fresh water. Perhaps some people might interpret that as somebody is going to have to spend some money to do those surveys. What do you do when you find juveniles? Frankly, it has not been addressed.

Mr. John Cummins: Is the main concern of Alaska that these exotics will establish colonies in Alaskan waters, or is there an equal concern that the Atlantics may be carrying some disease to which fish in Alaska are not resistant?

Mr. Dave Gaudet: I think we have concerns on both of those. Our primary concern, as I've stated in here, is the Atlantic salmon as an invasive species, as an alien to the west coast. Of course we're very concerned, because we've seen them establish themselves in some of the Vancouver Island systems. We're hoping that doesn't happen, but obviously it's something that's happened.

We're concerned about the disease. Quite honestly, it's going to be very hard to ever prove at this point that there is a disease that came along the backs of Atlantic salmon and transferred to an Alaskan salmon at this time. The possibility exists.

As I went through the litany of what we were told would never happen, of course that's one of them: it will never happen that you will have an Atlantic salmon come up and pass on a disease to Pacific salmon. So far we listed at least four never-could-happens that have happened. So I would never say no at this point.

The Chair: This is your last question, John.

Mr. John Cummins: I make note of the letter that Senator Murkowski sent to your Secretary of State, Mr. Powell. He expresses a concern. He says:

“There are a number of valid reasons to be concerned, including pollution of coastal waters from unused food and fish wastes, the possibility of transmitting diseases to native species, and the possibility that antibiotic use in farmed fish will lead to more forms of various disease-causing organisms.”

That fairly much covers the waterfront. And I guess Governor Knowles and your department would concur with Senator Murkowski's concerns, including the concern about the use of antibiotics in farmed fish.

Mr. Dave Gaudet: All of those are certainly a concern to us, but we've chosen to focus primarily on the invasive species role. I don't mean to downplay that the others are of concern to us, and especially as they move farther north and come right along the border.

As you probably are aware, the currents in that area are predominantly north, so anything that flows out of the Queen Charlotte Islands flows right into the inside waters of Alaska. So it's a major concern.

À (1025)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Gaudet.

Mr. Cuzner.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: Mr. Gaudet, I think a question begs to be asked here. In a press conference in April, the Governor of Alaska called for a full, collaborative, scientific review of the effects of salmon farming on wild fisheries, and he has forwarded to the B.C. government three recommendations with regard to monitoring disease, mortality rates, and what have you. Has the Government of B.C. been able to see the merit in this program?

Right now the Government of B.C. has a great contention over the punitive measures taken by the U.S., which have sent 10,000 workers home from the softwood lumber industry. It has caused a great deal of hurt to this province. I think they recognize and appreciate that there is such an interdependence with their American neighbours. How has this call from the Governor of Alaska been received by the Government of B.C.?

Mr. Dave Gaudet: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Cuzner, Governor Knowles has had many discussions. I've not been privileged to sit in on those discussions. I don't believe he has received a response to the letter I passed around here. So I am at a bit of a loss to try to characterize what those government relations have been.

Just for the record, I'm with the Department of Fish and Game. We don't handle any of the timber issues. That's handled by another department. So I'm not familiar with the discussions.

I'm sorry, I really can't help you too much on that one.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: It will be interesting to see how they do respond.

Thanks.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Cuzner.

It goes without saying that we're really concerned about the softwood lumber issue.

Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your presentation. There are a lot of mutual concerns with the common shoreline and species that don't respect our international boundaries. There's quite a history of cooperation on Pacific salmon and lack thereof, and we understand the concerns being expressed over the farming issue.

One of the primary concerns you've addressed is the ability of the Atlantics to colonize in B.C. waters, and therefore there are concerns that they will be found in your waters. We did hear extensive testimony on this over the last two days. There is some science on the colonization aspect. But it's not as if this is a new issue. Atlantics have been farmed in B.C. for over 30 years. These concerns have been raised and raised and raised, and we've had lots and lots of opportunity to observe them in British Columbia. In spite of our thin population, there is a much better representation than probably in some of your systems in Alaska.

But the evidence is that Atlantics have failed to colonize anywhere. We know that they go to the bottom--these are some of the reasons we heard yesterday--and that they're vulnerable to predation by Pacific salmon when they're there, because the Pacifics are more aggressive and grow quicker. They're also vulnerable to the high bacterial and viral loads that are here on the west coast, because of the high mortality of Pacific salmon after they spawn. It has been suggested that they're very vulnerable to predation by sculpins, because the juveniles, if they are able, and indeed there have been some feral juveniles found in British Columbia waters....

Even in the streams where we had seen juveniles or ferals, and even with subsequent studies and increasing supervision—even though it's small—and with the employment of aboriginal swimmers checking streams now, they have not been found in subsequent years, or there has been a failure to find them being able to establish themselves.

I think it's important that we recognize that as far as a colony that has been able to establish itself, that still has not been identified anywhere in British Columbia, although those are legitimate concerns.

And believe me, talking about foreign species coming in, aggressive new species coming in, both in plants and animals, is certainly a big concern. On Vancouver Island somebody introduced rabbits. As an owner of a small acreage on Vancouver Island, I can tell you that 10 to 11 years ago there weren't rabbits in the area, but there sure are now, lots of them, because there are no natural predators.

But as far as the Atlantics being aggressive, that has clearly not been shown to be the case in terms of colonizing anywhere in the world. I think we did hear one example yesterday about a freshwater system in New Zealand that the Atlantics had somehow colonized there, and they are reproducing. That seems to be the only place in the world other than their traditional territory.

We know that there are Atlantics being found in your streams, but is there any evidence that any have successfully reproduced in Alaskan waters?

À (1030)

Mr. Dave Gaudet: The direct answer is, no, we haven't. We don't have the ability to do the float surveys and the dives, as you've mentioned, where they're floating down. We run smolt surveys in about 15 different rivers where we capture every smolt and put in coded wire tags as part of our evaluation programs. But like British Columbia, we have thousands of streams, and it would be awhile.... It would be very opportunistic for us to go in and find.

It's good news that so far we haven't seen any populations established. My point was simply to acknowledge a couple of things. One, the environment has changed quite a bit thanks to the introduction of humans along the coast. We have modified it. It's very different than it was during the times when they aggressively tried to introduce Atlantic salmon.

As well, as we became more involved in this issue, I went to the literature and started to read some things. This person whom I quoted a couple of times, Dr. Daniel Simberloff, his whole career is simply to catalogue invasive species, catalogue what's happened, take a look at the situation, ask how did this happen, how many. And it was extremely interesting, very interesting. And I did like the one quote that I read. It essentially said that until you have done extensive studies to determine that it is not going to be possible, you'd better be careful. That was a paraphrase, I'm sorry, but the exact quote is in my remarks.

The Chair: In your paper, there's an indication here that in 1998 juvenile Atlantic salmon were found on British Columbia's Tsitika River. Analysis proved that these juveniles were successfully spawned in the wild.

So there's a river there, James; I'm not sure what documentation we have on that.

One last question.

Mr. James Lunney: The other question was on disease. There are constant concerns being raised about the diseases being spread from Atlantics to the Pacific salmon. And after all these years, as I understand it from the testimony we've heard, there really aren't any new diseases that Atlantics are subject to that have been discovered so far. There are nearly the same diseases that all salmon are subject to, whether it's IHN or the ISA or some of the bacterial kidney diseases and things. They're common diseases amongst salmon. The concern of course has been expressed as to whether the wild stocks in fact pass diseases to the penned fish and back and forth. Of course, that is a legitimate concern.

Are you aware of any new disease that's ever come from Atlantic salmon that isn't found also in Pacific salmon?

Mr. Dave Gaudet: The disease that comes to mind is the ISA on the east coast, and of course I don't believe it has been found on the west coast yet, at this time. It's the disease that has decimated a lot of the farms on the east coast.

One of the things we've addressed or recommended in our white paper is that there be no more importations, which might be the way you see a disease come across. Right now, we haven't seen it.

Our view of the world is that just about anything is possible. This is what has us concerned, especially when we've seen come true some things that were not supposed to be possible.

À (1035)

The Chair: Thank you, James.

With regard to the letter of Senator Murkowski to the U.S. Secretary of State, do you know if he's asking for a new annex to be attached to the Pacific Salmon Treaty? Has there been any response to this, as yet, from Secretary Powell?

Mr. Dave Gaudet: I'm not aware of any. Since the request was made, over the last couple of months I believe our Secretary of State has had his hands full. We haven't heard anything yet.

The Chair: A point of clarification.

Mr. John Cummins: On this business of establishing colonies, in your opening remarks you commented on salmon spawning. I think you pointed out, quite correctly, what might not have worked 100 years ago...conditions are different. One hundred years ago, Pacific salmon was abundant and their habitats intact. Today there are areas where salmon are farmed. Many populations of Pacific salmon are considered to be in trouble. So there is a space now for the establishment of these colonies, which may not have been available in the past.

I think what's most interesting in the paper you provided us are your comments on predation . You note quite correctly, “Therefore, the greatest threat may occur in fresh water, where the age 1+ fingerlings produced from successful spawnings”--and that would be spawnings of Atlantic--“would prey upon native species, and that may include pink and chum salmon fry.”

The Chair: That's a long point of clarification.

Mr. John Cummins: The point is that the Atlantic salmon stay in the streams longer, grow bigger, and can feed upon the native fry. Is that not correct?

Mr. Dave Gaudet: Mr. Chairman, our fear is that this is exactly what would happen.

I would just like to add one additional quick comment. Like British Columbia, we are in a very beautiful part of the world. We have one unusual thing that I don't think British Columbians have seen. We have Glacier Bay, where the glaciers have receded since Europeans came to Alaska. Obviously, when these areas were under ice, there were no salmon populations there. We see them now. Something has to go in and establish them. This is an example of a great change in the environment. Fortunately, Pacific salmon colonized the area.

My point is that things do change; we are concerned.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Gaudet. We thank you for taking the time to come down and provide us with a lot of useful information. Have a safe trip back.

We'll suspend for five minutes. Then we'll start with Mr. Craig Orr of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, and Angela McCue and John Werring of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund.

À (1034)

À (1045)

The Chair: We will come to order. We have the projector set up.

I'm sorry to have to push people so tightly for time, but Mr. Cummins and I have to catch a plane if we don't want to miss another meeting we're supposed to be at in Ottawa.

Welcome. Mr. Orr, with the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, will be first. What we'll do is go through both presentations as quickly as we can and then we'll go to joint questioning, if that's okay.

Mr. Orr, welcome.

Mr. Craig Orr (Executive Director, Watershed Watch Salmon Society): Thank you very much. Just for the record, my name is Craig Orr. I'm the executive director of Watershed Watch Salmon Society and I'm a professional ecologist by training.

I am only going to talk on one subject today. I'm not going to do the shotgun approach, I'm going to be focusing on just one of the potential economic and environmental costs of salmon farming, and that is sea lice.

For my talk today, I've tried to bring a few visuals here. I imagine that you're getting a bit “zoned out” here with all the paper flying in front of you, so if you can see this, that is fine, but it's also on the handouts.

The Chair: You have provided this as well, right?

Mr. Craig Orr: That's right.

Today I'm talking about three things. I will give some examples of the environmental and economic costs of sea lice. I will try to combine both of those, and I am going to be presenting--and I want this on the record--in the spirit of exploring and serving the public interest. I'm not a salmon farmer. If I were a salmon farmer I could go to Ottawa and talk to all you people and try to get you to change your laws and everything and I could write off the cost, but since I'm a charitable organization we all come under some risk of being seen as advocates--and Revenue Canada does frown on that--and individuals can also challenge our legal status if we even testify at committees like this. So I hope you take those words back that you hear in these two or three days and consider those kinds of risks that we also face here.

Today it is life cycle--and I will have more questions and answers at the end of this.

Next slide, please.

You will all get a bit of a brief natural history of sea lice. Lice are marine crustaceans. There are only two main species that we're worried about in the world, and the major one is Lepeophtheirussalmonis, and since that is such a mouthful we abbreviate it to L. salmonis. It is a marine crustacean that has 10 stages in its life history from egg, and the only infective stage is the copepodid stage. It is a free-swimming stage. That's the only infective stage, but there are several other adult stages. They look like little horseshoe crabs because they are crustaceans.

This next slide is just to point out that the only infective stage is the copepodid stage. It is free-swimming. It's a non-feeding stage. It's very important to understand that there are 10 life history stages of these lice, and that has a lot to do with how they infect wild salmon.

Next slide, please.

It is also important to note that sea lice outbreaks have been reported in wild salmon since the inception of aquaculture in Norway, Scotland, Ireland, New Brunswick, Chile, and now British Columbia.

The next slide shows a little bit about the physiological impacts and physical scarring that lice wreak on salmon. There's a fairly graphic picture of L. salmonis eating away at the skin and mucus of a salmonid.

The next slide shows there are several physiological impacts attributable to sea lice. One is if they're infected at the free-swimming copepodid stage. Lice cause increased stress in the host they happen to be on, and this can be measured in the laboratory by plasma cortisol levels. They reduce the immune function of the host—that is, the ability to fight off secondary diseases. That's been proven in the laboratory. They reduce the growth of infected fish. In fact, we estimate it's about 100 grams per year for an Atlantic salmon on a farm. They also increase the fish's susceptibility to disease, as we just mentioned, and in the latter stages, when you get heavy infestations of lice, you get two things occurring. You get osmoregulatory failure in these fish, and eventual host death is quite common. There's a picture of a small chinook salmon here that was taken from the Broughton Archipelago. That was a wild fish that was infested last year.

The next slide shows a little bit about physiological impacts, again from laboratory studies. We know that Finstad,a louse researcher in Europe, took juvenile Atlantic salmon in a lab and found that if you put ten or eleven lice on that fish, it will die. It will succumb to that lice load, as those fish...cause all those hosts of physiological impacts. Some other studies have shown that a substantially smaller number of lice, as few as five, will cause significant impacts—physiological, pathological impacts on fish—and it can cause host death. So we' re talking about as few as five lice being a problem on a juvenile salmonid.

Regarding the next slide, I'd like to also mention that the impacts of lice vary by fish species and size. Such fish as brown and cutthroat trout are at extremely high risk from being infested by lice. Juvenile small salmon are at high risk. You hear people saying lice are common in the oceans and in salmon, and that's true. But they don't necessarily come in very high infestation rates on the adults, and they don't seem to have the physiological impacts on them.

This is an impact of small and juvenile salmonids. Small fish that migrate near farms are at high risk, and other organisms that are around the farms are at risk from lice control biocides, because there's a suite of generally organic phosphate biocides—neurotoxins that are used to control lice on farms—and these get into the marine environment. I'm not going to go through the entire list; those are published elsewhere.

For the next slide, I'd like to talk just a little bit about known impacts of sea lice. We have to go to Europe to get most of the information, because we have not done the studies here in British Columbia. This graph shows a very interesting correlation between the increase in salmon farms in Ireland, mainly on the west coast of Ireland from around the mid-1980s, and the decrease in the actual angling catch of sea-run brown trout. They call them sea trout in Ireland, a very common salmonid there, a fairly small salmonid that goes into the ocean and comes back to spawn in fresh water. We have heard from Dr. Paddy Gargan—he was just in British Columbia speaking on this recently—that heavy infestations of more than 30 lice per fish have been found on juvenile trout, but only near farms. Wild trout and areas free of farms are not heavily infested, and collapsed populations—and this was a very interesting point he raised—can be rebuilt if you fallow the farms; that is, if you take the farms out of production for a certain amount of time.

I will not be taking too much time talking about the data from British Columbia on the next slide. We only have one year of data from these infestations, but this is a schematic of the Broughton Archipelago, the most heavily farmed area in the world, off the northeast side of Vancouver Island. As you can see, it's a formidable gauntlet for juvenile salmonids to run when they come out of the rivers lice-free and have to go by these farms.

The next slide shows one graph from Alexandra Morton, who has studied lice in the Broughton Archipelago, and there is an infestation happening already this year, as we know; there are people up there looking at it. These numbers are a little hard to read, but what they show are the average infestations rates on juvenile pink salmon through the Broughton Archipelago. There's a very strong correlation between the infestation rates and proximity to farms where these fish were collected.

À (1050)

As you recall, we saw significant pathological damage to fish with as few as five lice per fish, and many of these lice loads are 13, 10 lice per fish, 23 lice per fish, on average. These are certainly lethal to these small salmonids.

The evidence is very strong that while sea lice are natural parasites, the densely packed farms may serve as reservoirs for lice and disease. We heard these points before. It's not that these aren't natural—disease is natural and lice are natural—but these act as reservoirs for the 10 life history stages of lice, and when the juvenile fish go by, they get infested. There is almost no doubt in the world about that, as you look at the European experiences.

With the next slide I'd like to make a brief segue into the cost of lice to salmon farmers. This is not just a problem of environmental costs and damages. We heard Mr. Lunney ask before about the economic viability of farms. I can tell you that the cost of lice to salmon farmers is never factored into these discussions on the economic viability of farms in Clayoquot Sound or anywhere on this coast.

Some veterinary scientists published a paper just last year where they looked at these issues of cost. They made the assumptions that: these farms in Atlantic Canada have about 200,000 fish; there's a two-year seawater culture period for Atlantic salmon; normal Atlantic salmon when marketed is about 3 kilograms, and salmon fetch about $4.50 a kilogram, which might change; feed costs are about $1.25 a kilogram; and you do have a damage penalty for skin damage from lice on the open market of about $1 per kilo.

So if we do those assumptions, we can figure out some basic costs of sea lice to the farmers. Again, this is not an environmental cost. I will let you run through the math at your leisure. The first cost to be looked at is a reduced growth rate. We know that there's about 100 grams per year per fish loss from louse infestations, and if you multiply that by two years, times $4.50 a kilogram for the cost of the market value of the fish, times 200,000 fish, each farm is losing, on average, about $180,000 per farm from louse infestation.

The second cost is that you have about a 5% reduction of feed conversion ratio. If it's 30,000 kilograms extra per farm to feed those fish, based on that conversion ratio you have a loss of about $37,000 per farm because of lost feed conversion ratio.

The third cost is that you have the lice ulceration and the fish downgrading, as we've mentioned, so there's about a $1 penalty per fish, times 200,000 fish, times 3 kilograms per fish, which gives you a $6,000 loss. That's a fairly minor cost compared to the other one.

With the next slide, the fourth cost we'd like to look at is in terms of secondary infections. You do have a mortality to other diseases, such as vibrio and aeromonas. You have about a 1% mortality from secondary infections. With about 200,000 fish on your farm, that's about a $27,000 cost.

Cost five is that there's about a 3% direct morbidity from the lice and the treatment, which is the organophosphates used to control these lice. If you multiply that again by the 200,000 fish, the 3% loss works out to about $81,000 per farm again. Then there's the treatment of the organophosphates itself, the cost of that, which is about $12,000 per bath.

To go to the next slide, you can sum all those up. The math may change depending on the figures at the time, but this is the average cost that these veterinary scientists published just recently. Per farm it was about $340,000 from all of those costs added up. They admit that this is a conservative estimate. They also say that it's a missing estimate, missed in full cost accounting. We can talk about the jobs and all that, but you have to do the full cost accounting before you really know the true value of these farms to British Columbians, or anyone in Canada. It's an economic estimate again, it's not environmental.

So the recommendations from the veterinarians are: to develop alternate control methods, such as vaccines for the fish; to develop better husbandry techniques—i.e., fewer fish per cage, fallowing farms; to develop louse-resistant salmon; and to seriously consider land-based salmon farming.

There's a picture of Cedar Farm, for your viewing enjoyment.

The Chair: What farm is that?

À (1055)

Mr. Craig Orr: It's Cedar Farm, south of Nanaimo.

I'll finish off with some of the questions that are arising from this one subject on salmon farming. I think these are very important questions. I hope you take those away and ponder them. I don't have the answers to them; I'm only posing them at this time.

You must ask, does B.C. have adequate regulations to deal with the lice threat? Really, the only regulation they have is on the kind of chemicals that can be used, but we're still allowed to use organophosphates. There are no regulations for dealing with the sea louse problem at this time.

A question that also arises is, can B.C. learn from the experiences of other countries? This is a very important question, because it seems that at this point we're very resistant to learning what other countries have already learned, although you can look at what Jens Christian Holst, our original lice expert, said barely a month ago in a British Columbia workshop here. He found that Norwegian salmon farmers have reduced their average loads of lice from seven louse per farm fish on average down to half a female louse per adult fish in a farm. He gives them a lot of credit for reducing these loads down this far, but he also still points out that even at half a louse per fish, that's still too high to allow the recovery of wild salmonids in Norway; it is still too high.

Some questions arise. Does Fisheries and Oceans admit that there's even a potential problem? Well, I'm not certain about that. Certainly, statements they make in the press that sea lice are natural and the public is getting quite a biased view, don't really help clarify that question at all. Hopefully, someone else will ask them that question.

Does B.C. admit that lice are even a potential problem? At this point, the answer is no. The Honourable John van Dongen, at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Fisheries, was saying that he has complete confidence in DFO's ability to deal with this situation, and he believes the investigation done last year on the outbreak in Broughton Archipelago, which is published and is on DFO's website, is a credible investigation.

But if we go to the next slide, we might ask, do others believe we should rethink our handling of the lice threat? I'm sorry if I'm embarrassing someone in this room, but this was a report in the Vancouver Sun just before Christmas, that the DFO report is unscientific and does not meet the DFO cheerleading slogan of scientific excellence. That's from an ex-DFO employee, who you will hear from in a few minutes.

Finally, do others believe we should rethink our handling of the lice threat? There's a lot of names on this graph, but these are all the people, many of them academics and NGOs, who got together on March 26 to discuss the issue of sea lice and where we go from here. You would think that such an august group could answer this very simple question: Does the potential exist for infestation--potential, we're not even talking about threat--of sea lice on wild Pacific salmon stocks from salmon farms? I can tell you that the academics agreed that this was true, and that the NGO scientists there agreed that this was true, but the federal Fisheries and Oceans scientists would not agree that the potential even exists.

Á (1100)

The Chair: On that slide, the previous one, on the March 26 meeting, I've been led to believe there was nobody from industry at that meeting. Is that true? If they weren't there, why not?

Mr. Craig Orr: That's a good question. They were invited, and we couldn't decide which of their scientists would be the best ones. That's why they didn't appear.

The Chair: Were they invited or were they not?

Mr. Craig Orr: They were. Trying to determine which one was the appropriate one was the problem in getting them there.

The Chair: So it was industry's decision not to send somebody, then.

Mr. Craig Orr: No, it was the decision of the organizers that we couldn't find the right scientist at that time, but that we would have further meetings that would certainly involve industry, and we're moving toward that direction.

Mr. John Cummins: Can I ask where that meeting was held?

Mr. Craig Orr: It was held at Simon Fraser University, downtown campus.

The Chair: Thanks; sorry to interrupt.

Mr. Craig Orr: I'm almost finished, because I recognize that there are other presentations here.

I'd like to ask another question. How much have things really changed since Dr. Jeff Hutchings, Carl Walters, and Richard Haedrich asked, “Is scientific inquiry incompatible with government information control?” What they were talking about at the time were the canal completion project issues and the cod collapse on the east coast. Obviously, they hadn't got to the issue of salmon farming and the kind of research that's needed around these issues. It is just one issue I'm talking about today, not all the multitude that you've heard about. If you haven't read this paper, it's a fantastic read and the references are there; you might want to look at it.

I'll finish off with one final question, and it's a fairly important one that you heard Joy McPhail talk about this morning: What is Canada's commitment to international treaties? Principle 15 of the Rio declaration is a precautionary principle, which we believe Canadian fisheries and provincial fisheries should be following. The onus of proof on these kinds of threats is not on the public. The lack of scientific evidence to fully identify this question of lice should not be used against people who have concerns about the expansion of the salmon farming industry.

There are enough questions there, so I'll leave it at that at this time.

Á (1105)

The Chair: Thank you very much for a well-put-together slide presentation, Mr. Orr.

Ms. McCue, the floor is yours. Go ahead.

Ms. Angela McCue (Representative, Sierra Legal Defence Fund): Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I appear on behalf of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund. There are essentially two unique perspectives that we can bring to this hearing.

The Chair: We have a document from you as well, correct?

Ms. Angela McCue: You do. You have a 29-page document from me and a four-page study from my colleague, Mr. Werring.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Angela McCue: I will spare the committee my reading the letter.

Essentially, there are two matters that the Sierra Legal Defence Fund is uniquely positioned to discuss and bring to this committee. The first set of issues relates to our involvement, as public interest counsel, in relation to dealing with government with respect to the recent IHN outbreaks in British Columbia. You will find, at the top of page 3 of my letter, the three issues the Sierra Legal Defence Fund has been involved in. As Dr. Orr has already discussed the third, the sea lice situation, I will confine my remarks to what I have referred to as the “fish-dumping case”, a case involving IHN-diseased Atlantic salmon and a plan to dispose of them by dumping the offal into the mouth of the Fraser River, where they would pose a threat to wild salmon.

The second situation I will address is what I've referred to as the “IHN virus case”, which essentially relates to Sierra Legal's involvement in attempting to get information from government regarding the recent IHN outbreaks.

First I'll turn to the fish-dumping case. The Sierra Legal Defence Fund was involved as counsel in a case that came to our attention on the morning of February 8, 2002. We learned that 1.6 million diseased salmon, infected with the IHN virus, were en route to Vancouver to be disposed of at a processing facility in the Fraser River. This is in fresh or brackish water, where science clearly shows that IHN is a much greater hazard.

This was occurring shortly before approximately one billion young salmon were due to arrive in the mouth of the Fraser. It was also occurring at a location adjacent to aboriginal fishing grounds--the fishing grounds of the Musqueam band. Indeed, those fishing rights are not only constitutionally protected but have been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada in a case called Regina v. Sparrow. I would pause to note that there was no consultation with the first nation before attempting to implement this plan and no advice to the first nation until the afternoon of February 8, when they received the information from Sierra Legal Defence Fund and David Suzuki Foundation.

The letter outlines the various steps we took that day upon learning that we had until midnight to avert what appeared to be a looming ecological crisis. We spoke with various representatives of DFO and the province. Simply put, no one was interested in doing anything. They were surprised that such a plan was taking place. They were surprised that the facility to which the fish were going could not properly process the fish without dumping the offal, blood, etc. into the Fraser River, but they took no steps. I've named the DFO officials we spoke with, including Mr. Davis and Mr. McGillivray, who clearly indicated they would not take steps.

Essentially, what we were forced to do, after advising that we would do it and getting absolutely no answer, was to convene an emergency session of the British Columbia Supreme Court, commence proceedings on behalf of the Musqueam Indian band, and obtain an emergency injunction, which we obtained at approximately 10:30 that night. We then proceeded to the processing plant to serve the plant and the boat at midnight, when the boat arrived.

Simply put, this is regulatory failure. There is no appropriate system in place to ensure that this type of hazard to wild stocks does not occur.

Turning to the second situation, we were aware, by virtue of our involvement in the fish-dumping case, of the official position of the provincial veterinarian. In the fish-dumping case, the 1.6 million salmon were too small to be marketable. The provincial veterinarian swore an affidavit in that proceeding, saying the appropriate steps had been taken to remove the fish from the water. I take no issue with the fact that these fish were removed from the water. It is interesting to note that the provincial veterinarian swore an affidavit saying this was the right thing to do.

That leads us to the current situation. Based on information we have received from the province, pursuant to an emergency request under the freedom of information act, we understand that there have been 16 IHN-infected sites in British Columbia. We've been advised that two have been depopulated.

What that means, gentlemen, is that, as far as we can determine, there are 14 sites remaining with infected fish in the water.

This situation first came to our attention in mid-April. We wrote to the provincial veterinarian, and, as had occurred in the fish-dumping case, she was away. There was no one to deal with the situation. No one knew who to refer it to. The province couldn't do anything. Too bad.

We eventually obtained her superior's contact information, and did get some response from him. So the province has told us the number of sites. They have refused to tell us where the sites are. They have refused to respond to first nations enquiries asking for confirmation of where the sites are, and who the owners are. Essentially, they've ensured that the information that relates to potential damage to the public fishery is kept secret. It's claimed that this is proprietary information.

Similar requests were made of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Dorothee Kieser. Our initial inquiry was greeted with what I would describe as “taking the fifth”.

After writing to Ms. Kieser, we contacted her by phone seeking information on confirmation of the disease outbreaks and what steps were being taken by DFO. Ms. Kieser would not even confirm for us what federal policies existed, much less provide any confirmation of any of the disease information. We eventually received a letter from her also taking the position under the Access to Information Act that this was proprietary information, potentially dangerous to the economic interests of the fish farm operators.

DFO also has taken the position that the information is not public and can't be made available to members of the public. We find this to be a scandalous situation.

Also of concern was the fact that we asked Ms. Kieser directly whether any enforcement action was being taken. During a telephone conversation with Ms. Kieser, and Mr. Werring and myself, she indicated that she had referred the matter to the enforcement branch. She would not tell us who. She seemed extremely nervous. In our subsequent correspondence from her, it was clearly implied that no action was being taken, that as far as DFO was concerned, there wasn't a problem.

At this point, the situation we are in is that DFO has taken no steps that we're aware of, nor has the province insofar as we're aware. The diseased fish, the reservoirs of IHN virus, are sitting in the marine environment in an area in which first nations are now in a position to confirm that wild salmon have been migrating for approximately the past two weeks.

The juvenile salmon are migrating through pens in which first nations have received confirmation from the fish company, Heritage Aquaculture, that there are diseased fish, and have observed the juvenile salmon in the pens.

I cannot comment further at this time as to what further action will be taken by the Sierra Legal Defence Fund. I do want the committee to appreciate just how significant this situation is.

Á (1110)

You will note in my letter that I've referred, at page 6, to the New Brunswick situation, and I've quoted from the Alaska white paper, giving a description of it.

The point that I seek to make there is that the British Columbia situation at present, based upon our experience, is more significant than the end product of the New Brunswick situation. Simply put, if one refers to the description of what happened in New Brunswick, one finds that approximately 1.5 million diseased small salmon, not marketable, had to be destroyed. That is exactly equivalent, in fact, slightly less in number than the number of salmon destroyed in the fish-dumping case we were referring to that occurred some two months ago.

We also have anecdotal evidence from first nations that at least one of the currently infected sites involves fish transferred from pens adjacent to the 1.6 million fish that have been destroyed. And this appears to be the site of a current outbreak.

Again, looking to the New Brunswick situation, initially it was only the salmon in the diseased pens that were destroyed. Then, with further spread of the disease, it was determined that everything in an area that was potentially affected had to be destroyed.

So what we have in British Columbia now is the same number of sites that were involved in New Brunswick and obviously far more fish, because 1.6 million have already been destroyed and there are 14 more sites out there.

In summary, gentlemen, this is a very serious situation. I will leave my colleague, Mr. Werring, to speak to the scientific aspects of this situation.

You have attached to the paper a four-page discussion by Mr. Werring, who is a registered professional biologist with 16 years' experience in the field. He discusses the mechanism for transfer of IHN virus and other viruses from farmed Atlantic salmon to wild stocks.

The second perspective that the Sierra Legal Defence Fund can provide is a legal one. That begins on page 10 of the materials I've provided. I'm not going to take the committee through an extensive discussion of case law. I will take the committee through an overview of our position.

Simply put, our position is that salmon farming, as currently carried on and regulated in the province of British Columbia, is illegal. It is illegal from a constitutional perspective, it is illegal from a domestic law perspective, and it is illegal from an international law perspective.

Beginning at page 10, I outline three bases on which the regulation of aquaculture, as currently practised in British Columbia, is unconstitutional and ultra vires the Province of British Columbia. One is the broad scope of the federal fisheries power. You will find, as you review this opinion, that my main basis for that is a Supreme Court of Canada decision from February of this year, a decision that was not in the hands, obviously, of the province when it decided to lift the moratorium, a case called Ward.

The second matter is that jurisdiction over marine pollution is exclusively federal. That is based upon Supreme Court of Canada authority, a case called Crown Zellerbach, which is cited in the materials.

It is our position that it is not only the marine pollution that comes from fish farms, from feces, and from other acknowledged forms of pollution that is clearly a matter within federal jurisdiction and therefore ultra vires the province. If one reviews international law, including UNCLOS, to which Canada is a signatory, it is also clear that introduced species are considered to be a form of marine pollution that Canada has international obligations to prevent the introduction of.

As well, I've referred to the American case law in the state of Maine, where the ISA virus from New Brunswick is alleged to have migrated. There are indeed three cases under the Clean Water Act dealing with language that is very similar to our Fisheries Act. They essentially adopt the proposition that Atlantic salmon in areas they don't naturally occur and their feces, their diseases, and their parasites—sea lice, IHN, for example—are marine pollution.

Á (1115)

On that basis, given that the Supreme Court of Canada has said only the federal government can legislate with respect to marine pollution, the disease, parasite, and introduction of exotic species are all matters that must be dealt with federally, not provincially.

The final constitutional basis I've outlined is based upon exclusive federal jurisdiction over matters of national concern. Essentially what I've done is outline the criteria from the Supreme Court of Canada for deciding that a matter is a matter of national concern.

Some of the testimony you've heard here this morning is very relevant to that analysis. If I may summarize, where a matter has developed over time into a more significant situation than it initially appeared to be, and where it has begun to have transboundary impacts, the courts will then decide that the matter has become a matter of national concern and one over which the federal government has exclusive legislative jurisdiction.

I have also, under the third part of my discussion of the constitutional aspects and the national concern doctrine, spoken to development of the aquaculture industry with reference to the Auditor General's report. I heard some remarks earlier, when a previous speaker was talking, about the fact that some of these problems have been around for many years. I would invite you to review the Auditor General's report, and in particular the portions I've cited in this letter.

Á (1120)

The Chair: What page is that in your document?

Ms. Angela McCue: My discussion of the national concern doctrine generally starts at page 21, and then my discussion of the Auditor General's report is, I believe, at page 23.

The Chair: Okay, thanks.

Ms. Angela McCue: Simply put, the situation is this. Yes, there has been salmon farming in British Columbia since the 1970s; however, it was very minor until the early 1990s. If you review the graph in the Auditor General's report of December 2001, at page 30-9, you will find two things. First of all, you will find that until 1993, Pacific salmon were the major farm species. Only in 1993, two years before the alleged moratorium, did Atlantic salmon begin to be the major species.

You will also find that during the time of the alleged moratorium--and I refer to it as “alleged” because I do not believe there's been one--there's been a 300% increase in British Columbia production. There's been no moratorium; there's been a vast increase in the production of Atlantic salmon since 1995. So the situation in British Columbia is an emerging situation. It is much different from the situation a few years ago, and even at the time of the salmon aquaculture review. The number of Atlantic salmon being farmed and their density is obviously much higher than it was even in the early 1990s.

Essentially, these changes--the outbreaks of disease, both in New Brunswick and in British Columbia; the transboundary impacts, New Brunswick to Maine; the transboundary impacts, British Columbia to escaping salmon found in Alaska waters--suggest that this is a matter of national concern to be addressed by the federal government, and in my respectful submission, to be addressed promptly, given the risk to the wild stocks.

I have, at page 24, included a final constitutional consideration, which is first nations. I was not sure whether the first nations who had appeared would have been able to refer the committee to recent case law from the British Columbia Court of Appeal regarding first nations. Essentially, my point is this: first nations have not been properly consulted. They have constitutional rights. Their constitutionally recognized rights to fish, including those of some first nations who have had confirmation from the courts of those rights, have not been consulted. Indeed, at least one first nation has been asked not to patrol its traditional territory because of disease outbreaks, but they have not been told where those disease outbreaks are. So they're being asked not to look for the breaches of their constitutional rights. That's how serious the disease situation is in British Columbia.

I've referred at page 25 to the recent B.C. Court of Appeal cases. I would invite you to consider, in the context of aboriginal issues, the comments of the British Columbia Court of Appeal in the Haida case. Incidentally, both of these cases have been decided, one the day before the moratorium was lifted and one approximately four weeks later. This is all around the time the province was deciding to lift the moratorium.

With reference to the Haida case, the Court of Appeal says:

Where there are fiduciary duties of the Crown to Indian peoples it is my opinion that the obligation to consult is a free standing enforceable legal and equitable duty. It is not enough to say that the contemplated infringement is justified by economic forces and will be certain to be justified even if there is no consultation. The duty to consult and seek an accommodation does not arise simply from a Sparrow analysis of s. 35. It stands on the broader fiduciary footing of the crown's relationship with the Indian people who are under its protection.

In essence, I'm suggesting that's what's happening here. For economic reasons, the interests of first nations, the constitutional rights of first nations, are being ignored. In British Columbia, consultation and accommodation is now recognized to be a legal right. Previously it was only considered a moral obligation.

Just very quickly, beginning at page 25, there is an overview of domestic legislation that is not being enforced. Essentially, the fish farm industry seems to have had a vacation. Regarding navigable waters, Sierra Legal has performed some on-the-water, in-the-field audits, and has determined that many fish farms are nowhere near where they're supposed to be sited. They do not appear in the right place on navigational charts. They are not where the province and the coast guard say they're supposed to be. This is a hazard to navigation and suggests that these farms are operating in locations they're not supposed to be in and without appropriate environmental assessment.

Under CEAA, our enquiries suggest that there are all of three fish farms that have had appropriate CEAA assessments. Well, they're potentially appropriate CEAA assessments; I haven't actually seen them. CEAA has been ignored. This is amazing, given the fact that both the Navigable Waters Protection Act and the Fisheries Act contain CEAA triggers. Fish farms necessarily destroy habitat underneath, and yet there are no CEAA assessments, although we're advised that a flood of applications was expected by the end of April. So there's no proper assessment. There are 120 sites.

Finally, I refer to the conflict between provincial law and the federal Fisheries Act. I again refer to the Auditor General's report and a problem he highlighted. Simply speaking, as long as the province is permitted to have regulations on the book and to issue permits, and DFO does not exercise its jurisdiction, the courts will essentially suggest that, gosh, the poor fish farmers have been lulled into believing they had appropriate authorization. The result is that at least one private prosecution has been stayed, and the same problem will remain once the new regulations are in place.

If the province is permitted to essentially put in waste management regulations that permit marine pollution, prosecution under the Fisheries Act for deposition of deleterious substances and damage to fish habitat will be very difficult practically, because the courts will be loath to permit enforcement of the Fisheries Act in light of the confusion to the fish farmers arising from the existence of these other regulations.

I also have in the paper extensive discussion of international law and the relevant principles. In essence I'm suggesting that the precautionary principle must apply. I'm suggesting that the Supreme Court of Canada earlier this year has recognized that the precautionary principle is a matter of law in Canada. I'm also suggesting that the international law principles relating to Canada's obligation to prevent transboundary harm apply. You'll find the citation set out in the materials.

Simply put, the precautionary principle must apply. We do not have to wait until there's absolute proof of damage to the wild stocks before taking action. It's time for the federal government to take some very strong action in dealing with the disease issues for certain, with the parasite issues for certain, and with the other emerging issues.

Á (1125)

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. McCue.

Mr. Werring, go ahead, but be as brief as you can. We have very limited time for questions.

Mr. John Werring (Representative, Sierra Legal Defence Fund): I will try.

Mr. Chairman and committee, thank you. My name is John Werring, and I am a registered professional biologist with the Association of Professional Biologists of British Columbia. I have a master's of science degree from the University of British Columbia, and I have been practising as a biologist for 16 years.

Given that we were made aware, through various sources, of disease outbreaks at various fish farms in British Columbia, I took it upon myself to do a review of the scientific literature in this regard. One of the things that became quite apparent is that the disease that is currently causing outbreaks at fish farms in B.C. is a highly contagious, lethal disease that affects all species of Pacific salmon. This is clear in the literature.

The government's position, when we raised this issue with them, was that it believes the wild stocks of B.C. are immune to this disease. That is simply and factually incorrect. That would be equivalent to saying that humans are immune to the flu because we've all been exposed to it. But I would defy anybody to ask a person to go into a room that contains 200,000 other people infected with the flu and to come out the other end free of disease. It's simply not likely to happen.

Quite simply, there is this disease. It is lethal. It is especially lethal to juvenile fish. It may not cause direct mortality in adult fish. It may not even manifest itself in an outbreak in adult fish. But one thing that's clear from the literature is that the only way to get this disease is to be exposed to it. If you were in IHN virus-free water, you would not get the disease.

If adult fish pick up this disease by swimming past fish farms where the disease is currently causing an outbreak, they can then take that disease and transfer it into watersheds in B.C. where IHN has not been detected in the past. We're talking about all species of Pacific salmon here, not just sockeye. One of the things that the government would have us believe is that it is a sockeye disease only. It is not.

There have been studies done on the east coast by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans looking at the dispersion of dye and chemicals from sea farms. I would liken those particles of dyes or chemicals to virus particles, because they're very microscopic and minute. Dye packets were put into an open sea pen. This is the way they treat for sea lice. For example, they would put a vinyl curtain around the pen, throw in a chemical packet, let the fish bathe in it and then lift the curtain and allow the chemical to disperse. The dye showed that, clearly, these chemicals could disperse anywhere from several hundred to several thousand metres—so we're talking kilometres—in the space of two to four hours.

What we're dealing with here, with IHN, the disease that's currently causing an outbreak on the west coast, is a disease virus that can actually live in salt water for up to three weeks. You can imagine, over a three-week period, that the disease particles are being carried over a huge area. In one of the areas, we've been told, 16 farms have outbreaks. Two of them have been depopulated. Of 14 farms, at least 11 are situated in one geographical area that we believe to be in the Campbell River area. We can't say this for certain, because information is being withheld. The Campbell River area is the bottleneck of Johnstone Strait, where all the Pacific salmon tend to migrate down to the Fraser River and where the juvenile salmon migrate to head up north to Alaskan waters and over to Japan.

These fish will be passing by these farms, and the science is absolutely and categorically clear that disease transmission can occur from fish to fish, without direct fish-to-fish contact, through the water.

Sick fish will expel particles through their feces, their slime, and dead fish into the water. Essentially, what we're causing is a marine reservoir of virus that has never existed. There has never been documented a marine virus reservoir of IHN virus, or any other virus of this nature, other than fish themselves. What we have now are marine reservoirs created by the salmon farming industry, open-net farms.

DFO relies on a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington state to say that disease transferred from farm fish to wild fish is minimal, that the risk is minimal. I read that report and I have to say that the report basically does not deal with fish farms. What it does is deal with is fish hatcheries and the incidence of disease in hatcheries. They conclude that because we've had hatcheries that have had outbreaks of disease not manifested in wild stocks, it's therefore not likely to happen in the ocean.

One can simply not make that conclusion. They do make that conclusion, but the fact is, there is absolutely no science behind it. If you look at the report and you look at any scientific authority that says this will not cause an impact, there are none. The reason for that is they haven't done the studies.

On top of that, what we have been able to determine is that the State of Alaska and the State of Washington both have policies in place for outbreaks of IHN and disease. These policies dictate that when an IHN outbreak occurs, it be reported as soon as possible, within two days.

Á (1130)

Once it's reported, immediate steps are taken to sanitize those facilities. The key words in these policies are specifically “to avoid the spread of this disease to wild stocks”. We do not want that, so they take immediate steps and immediate measures to eradicate the disease in the hatchery, which includes destroying the trays the eggs were raised in. It can include destroying and disinfecting raceways. All infected fish are immediately destroyed and disposed of, and there's a prohibition against transfer of those diseased fish to any other jurisdictions.

These policies are clearly in place. We have no such policies in British Columbia. In fact, I don't even think there's a policy in British Columbia—if there is, I have yet to find it—that dictates that if a disease outbreak occurs it be reported. In fact the Salmon Aquaculture Review is quite clear that there is no policy for reporting but that there should be.

I want to make reference at this point to the fact that, contrary to what the NOAA report states—that the disease transfer is a low risk—there are two separate documents, one produced here in British Columbia, that indicate it is in fact a risk. One is the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, which states, “Aquaculture of salmon in open marine net pens raises similar concerns as well as additional concerns from escapement...and increased risk of disease transmittal.” This is a position of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission: “net pen aquaculture for Atlantic salmon has potential affects due to disease spreading” and “there is still potential for spread of disease from Atlantic salmon to native salmon”. They specifically refer to open net pens.

The Salmon Aquaculture Review actually has a section that says, “Given the paramount importance of protecting wild salmon, minimizing the risk of disease transfer from farm to wild salmon should continue to be a major priority. Current disease control and reporting systems are not adequate or well established.” This was over five years ago.

The key tool they recommended be formed to deal with issues of disease in the province is a fish health working committee, composed of provincial and federal representatives with demonstrated expertise. With input from the government agencies, first nations, industry and community groups, the committee would develop and coordinate disease and drug-use surveillance, field investigations, facility inspections, fish health assessment, and reporting to the public.

Well, I can tell you that the committee has been formed. There are no community groups; there are no sport fishing advisory groups; there are no commercial groups; there are no first nations interests; there is no public interest group representation. It is a committee formed with members from DFO, from the province, and the aquaculture industry only. There is no reporting to the public. They will not tell anybody when and where these disease outbreaks occur.

Finally—

Á (1135)

The Chair: Mr. Werring, is what you're quoting from there in this documentation?

Mr. John Werring: No, it hasn't been provided. Something is coming....

The Chair: But it will be provided?

Mr. John Werring: It will be provided, absolutely.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. John Werring: I would like to make reference to Concepts of the Alaskan Sockeye Culture Policy, in relation to infectious hematopoietic necrosis, which is the disease currently of concern here in B.C. It says here:

In most cases where IHNV has been a problem, lack of adequate containment has been a major factor in the outcome of these events. These inadequacies have included; insufficient physical separation of freshwater raceways, lack of predator bird control, failure to contain IHNV in hatchery effluent passing over saltwater net pens of fish, inability to contain the virus in saltwater net pens (whether this is possible remains to be seen), and procrastination in killing fish infected with IHNV.

Containment procedures for IHN are just as important in sockeye culture policy today as they were at the inception of the program. Hence, complacency on this or the other two cornerstones of sockeye culture can and will result in significant fish losses; maybe not this year or next, but at some point it will happen.

So I implore you, one of the things we've been asking of the DFO at this point in time is to have these contaminated fish that are currently sitting in B.C. waters removed from the waters immediately for the protection of our wild fish and our wild fish stocks, which the science clearly shows are susceptible, can pick up the disease, and can suffer major mortalities.

We have stocks of sockeye salmon in Rivers Inlet that are not fished commercially and for the past four to five years have been declining in number with no explicable reason, but I think this may be one of them.

I think I'll stop there.

Á (1140)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Werring.

We have time for only about one question each.

Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: I have about a half dozen.

The Chair: I know you do, but I can't.... It's you who has to be back for scrutiny of regulations, so if you take too long, we'll both miss it.

Mr. John Cummins: All right. We'll go fast.

I'll start with you, Craig. On Professor Gargan's research in Ireland, when that research started and when they were having the trouble with the brown trout, my recollection is that sea lice weren't immediately identified as a problem; they looked at a whole host of issues. Is that correct?

Mr. Craig Orr: Your recollection is good. What Dr. Gargan said--and he's said it on radio and he's said it privately at several workshops--was that when they first noticed the demise of these sea-run brown trout, they spent five years denying there was a problem and then they spent five years looking for every reason for that decline, except for the real one. In fact, they even investigated whether Chernobyl was the cause.

So they spent 10 years until they finally identified that this was related to the sea louse infestations coming from the farms.

Mr. John Cummins: Yes, I think that's important to note, that this was an outstanding scientific effort at trying to determine a cause. The conclusion they reached was based on a great deal of effort, and I think that's important.

I have to be quick. I want to move to you, Ms. McCue, if I may.

There is a provincial document here, and you're aware, I'm sure, of this Right to Farm Act. As you know, the act includes in its terms salmon aquaculture operations. I would assume from your comments that you would believe that any federal statute would simply not allow this act, that this act in fact doesn't really have the authority that one might think.

Ms. Angela McCue: I have reviewed that act, and I take issue with the constitutionality of it. Essentially what it is doing is characterizing aquaculture as agriculture and it's completely ignoring the fact it occurs in the marine environment, taking away rights such as rights to nuisance actions and rights to injunctions in the marine environment, where the provincial government has no jurisdiction. In my view, it's outrageous.

Mr. John Cummins: Good. And on the same note, there is a Canada-British Columbia memorandum of understanding on aquaculture development that was made back in 1988. What's your view of the legalities of that document?

Ms. Angela McCue: We've had some difficulty getting an actual copy of it. I'm certainly aware of the general content of it. Essentially, what I've said in my presentation is that any memorandum of understanding that is not founded on an appropriate understanding of the constitutional division of powers is not an enforceable document.

Mr. John Cummins: Oh, I'd be happy to provide you with a copy. You just went to the wrong sources.

Ms. Angela McCue: We seem to do that frequently.

Mr. John Cummins: We'll get you a copy of that.

Ms. Angela McCue: And it was also well before the current line of case law that has greatly expanded the federal jurisdiction with respect to both pollution and fisheries.

Mr. John Cummins: I have two quick questions, if I can, for Mr. Werring. On the issue of disease, I agree with many folks that many of these diseases are found naturally in fish. I don't think that's an issue. It may be in specific instances, but in large part, many of the diseases that have been problematic in fish farms are found in the wild.

The issue or the reason for concern is that, when you confine large numbers of fish in the restricted area of a net pen, they simply become breeding grounds for disease. In fact, we see the same type of behaviour with disease in wild salmon.

For example, I think it was in 1995, in Babine Lake, in front of the Pinkut and the other facility there, the fish congregating in warm water had an outbreak of Ichthyophthiriasis.

So whenever you concentrate fish in a confined area, it's a breeding ground for these diseases. This really is the issue. They occur in the wild, we agree on that; it's when you concentrate them that you have this blooming, if you will, of diseases.

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Mr. John Werring: Yes, Mr. Cummins, that is an accurate portrayal. But the other thing you have to consider is a basic understanding of diseases, which are virus particles. These particular things are viruses that replicate and mutate. So one year a fish could be immune to a disease and the second year it could not be. It's the same with the flu. One year you might get influenza A or influenza B, and the next year you might not, because these things constantly mutate.

They will affect fish populations. Whether they're wild or not, it doesn't really matter. The flu has been around for years, but it has caused some of the greatest pandemics of death and mortality in human populations simply by virtue of the fact that it mutates. It can happen with fish viruses, too. It does happen with fish viruses. Any virologist will tell you that.

The Chair: Last question, John.

Mr. John Cummins: The problem is that these farms, especially in the Broughton Archipelago, are often located in areas where salmon migrate. So whenever you do have a problem in a pen, the disease is then easily transmitted to wild stock.

Mr. John Werring: It is clearly transmitted to wild stock. The science shows it, and it's outlined in my report. Studies done by Dr. Traxler of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans has found that fish living adjacent to these pens have high viral titers. There's no question it's transmitted. They are situated on migration routes.

Basically what it comes down to, or the simple fact is, if you aren't exposed to the disease, you're not likely to get it. So when you create a reservoir of a disease particle that can live for three weeks in a marine environment, and carry it on the tides, there's a huge curtain of virus that otherwise would not be there in nature. Fish are being exposed to an unnatural situation.

Mr. John Cummins: A supplementary question, Mr. Chairman.

The cure, at times, can be as bad as the bite. I'm thinking about the delousing, if you will, of sea lice. My understanding is that sea lice are a shellfish, but the cure can also affect native shellfish in an area. The cure is not restricted to the lice on the fish, but it also affects shellfish living on the adjacent ocean bottom. Is that correct?

Mr. John Werring: That's absolutely correct. We've been dealing primarily with salmon. But another issue the Department of Fisheries and Oceans must deal with are shellfish beds and shellfish populations. We have no idea what the impact of these various diseases and delousing agents are on shellfish beds.

From talking with first nations in the areas where these farms are located, we know anecdotally that huge areas they have normally and historically fished for shellfish are suddenly being closed by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They're no longer able to go there and fish. No reason is being given for this.

I think this is a very serious concern. Huge areas that were once producing food for first nations and for recreational harvesters are now being closed around these fish farms.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Werring.

If Mr. Cummins doesn't have a point of clarification, we'll go next to Mr. Cuzner.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: Just two quick ones.

First, I have to tell Ms. McCue, when I get back to Ottawa I'll be telling my buddy, Elizabeth May, you didn't use two-sided copies, so you'll anticipate a phone call and a scolding. Okay?

Is this the first time you've presented your position that the aquaculture industry is in fact illegal, or have you shared this before with the Department of Justice or DFO? I say this because it is a revelation.

Ms. Angela McCue: In this forum, it's the first time this has been shared.

This particular analysis, together with an additional analysis of potential liability and negligence, is going to be forwarded within the next week to all of the relevant federal and provincial ministers, seeking input and immediate action from the Attorney General and Department of Justice. It may also be appropriate for constitutional reference.

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Mr. Rodger Cuzner: Mr. Werring, can you be specific about what DFO is doing? Their website alludes to infected sites, but they dismiss the fact that 16 infected sites have been identified, constituting approximately 20% of fish farm operations. They say there is no evidence indicating any disease outbreaks or that salmon farms have resulted in increased disease in wild stock. Are they active on the file with any research or science at all in trying to determine...or is this their position? You said they had referenced some U.S. study. Are they active in any study themselves now?

Mr. John Werring: As far as I know, they are not. There's no indication that they are. This is one of the critical things; they are simply not looking for the evidence. I would suggest if they did start looking for it, they would probably find it.

The federal government has put $25 million towards research on aquaculture, and impacts of aquaculture on the environment, through the cooperative aquaculture development fund. It is an industry-driven fund. The moneys are only accessible to people entering into partnership agreements with industry, and this includes DFO.

But the problem is, all their studies are geared towards increased production, and that's it. They have recently published their lineup of research for the last year of projects recently granted funding. I've also seen these for the previous year. Not one of these studies deals with the impact of fish farming on the environment, or the environment on fish farming. It's actually quite disappointing, because when I read the research development program's stated objectives and goals, one of them was to find out what the impacts are on the environment.

They simply are not doing these studies.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Werring.

Monsieur Roy.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My question is for Ms. McCue. I would like some clarification in connection with the question Mr. Cuzner just asked. Basically, you are not saying that aquaculture is illegal. You are saying that aquaculture, as currently practiced in British Columbia, may be illegal because it does not comply with the legislation. Among other things, it disregards the species protection and water pollution responsibilities of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. But you are not saying that aquaculture is illegal, essentially. It is illegal as currently practiced in British Columbia; that is what you are saying.

[English]

Ms. Angela McCue: That's exactly what I'm saying, and that is what I've said in my letter.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: That's fine. Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

That was a very lengthy presentation. There are so many areas of interest, I'm sure we could pursue this for some time. It's a pity we're so constrained.

I'm particularly interested in the discussion about the lice-control biocides, or organophosphates. I would be interested in knowing more about them; however, I'm just going to jump over that for a minute. I'm also interested in the life history of the lice. You mentioned there were ten stages. I don't think any of them are actually within the salmon themselves. I think they're all external.

Are you a scientist, Mr. Orr? I'm sorry, I missed....

Mr. Craig Orr: I have a doctorate in ecology.

Mr. James Lunney: Okay. Thank you.

So that's a very important question, because one of the alternatives that I think was recommended was development of a vaccine. Yet if this copepods infection is an external parasite, I don't see how a vaccine would be effective.

Mr. Craig Orr: A vaccine is something that does have some potential, as it can make it difficult for external parasites to become established. That is certainly something worth pursuing.

There are some studies in Europe, again. We seem to miss what's happening there, shutting it out entirely, but the Europeans are light-years ahead of us in looking at this issue. They are looking at some enzyme control methods as well.

I think there are some alternatives, and the industry should be looking at these instead of denying that there's a problem.

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Mr. James Lunney: I think we're all in agreement that we need more science. It is a serious issue we'd like to see controlled.

I just want to make a point here. Mr. Werring, I think you made the comment about the IHN virus that if there is no exposure, it is unlikely to be contracted. There's an underlying assumption here, though, that it's always the quality of the immune system that determines whether someone will get sick. You made reference to the idea that a number of people in a room may be infected with the flu but not everybody gets it.

I have 25 years practising as a health care practitioner, and I never had to ask people who were sick not to come in. It was my responsibility to maintain the integrity of my own immune system. I missed one day in 25 years.

It is a responsibility. This is also reflected in every other species. Every species has a viral load. As you mentioned, there's the question here of the etiology. No naturally occurring marine reservoirs for the disease have been found. The epizootiology of IHNV is not completely understood. The source of the virus infecting salmon in the wild is unknown.

Every species has their own endemic viruses. Monkeys are susceptible to 2,000 viruses that have been identified so far, and pigs have thousands of porcine-endogenous retroviruses, which are a real problem when you're talking about organ transplants. In fact, the genetics people who worked on the Human Genome Project say a high percentage of what they find in the genome could be of viral origin. So for many of these diseases, we may in fact be picking up an immunity through genetic transmission.

I think the point has clearly been made here that IHN is a disease of all salmon. That has been established. I think it's overly simplistic to say that just avoiding exposing healthy fish to it means they aren't going to get it. The question here is about immunity.

What can be done to make sure that the immunity of salmon is enhanced? I think this needs to be recognized. The whole point of vaccinating is to improve the immune response of the organism, right?

Mr. John Werring: I would agree. I'm not a medical doctor and I'm not a virologist, but I can speak from my own human experience.

I typically don't get the flu unless it's flu season and there's a virus around and people are infected. Yes, I might not get it because my immune system is strong; but at other times I might be overly stressed, for some reason, perhaps because of a dietary thing or a physiological thing, or perhaps it has something to do with the climate being too hot or too warm. There are a lot of things we can't control, but I typically don't get sick when the flu is not there.

What I'm saying is, when you do get an epidemic or an outbreak of flu, more people are likely to get sick because they are being exposed to the virus. I'm not saying you won't get sick if you aren't exposed to it, but I find it hard to believe that you will get sick if you haven't been exposed to it. If it's not in your system, how are you going to get sick?

I mean, I try to avoid exposure. I try to avoid sick people. I wash my hands when I touch doorknobs. I avoid people who sneeze when they are obviously ill, so I don't pick up the virus from them. I would find that hard to do if I was in an environment where everybody was sick and I was part of that environment or had to pass by it. It would be almost impossible.

I think this analogy applies here. These fish are migrating past and through areas where the virus is unnaturally being replicated at high viral loads. It's there and it's in the environment. They are being exposed to it in a way they would otherwise not be exposed to it.

When we found out there was an outbreak of IHN in a fish farm, if we simply removed those fish from the water immediately and eliminated the reservoir of the disease, then the likelihood of fish swimming through that area picking up the disease would be greatly reduced.

The Chair: Please move on to your last question, Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney: The point, again, is that exposure to something often gives lasting immunity, and that's the whole purpose of early vaccination programs. Take the example of rubella in women, which is a real problem during pregnancy; a lot of people prefer to expose their female children to rubella early to make sure they get lasting immunity.

Mr. John Werring: But we don't get immunity to all diseases. We don't get immunity to the flu. If you get a flu shot this year, it doesn't guarantee you'll be immune from the flu next year.

Viruses replicate, mutate, and change. There are certainly some diseases we've been able to control by vaccination. But IHN is one that is not being controlled by vaccination, as currently practised in aquaculture, even though they're trying.

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Mr. James Lunney: The point is, the immune system functioned for many millennia before vaccines came along, and has apparently adapted much quicker than vaccines.

I rest my case. I wish I had more time to pursue the discussion.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lunney.

I have just a couple of questions.

How is the Sierra Legal Defence Fund funded? What is the Sierra Legal Defence Fund?

Ms. Angela McCue: Let me answer that.

The Sierra Legal Defence Fund is a non-profit society. It is funded by foundations and individuals. In the order of 20,000 to 30,000 individual Canadians provide us with donations.

The Chair: This Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans certainly looks at DFO. The bottom line, in terms of your presentation or your view here, is do you believe the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or the Government of Canada, is living up to its responsibilities under the Fisheries Act, specifically?

Ms. Angela McCue: It is not, under the Fisheries Act or the Oceans Act.

The Chair: Have you examined the Oceans Act as well, then?

Ms. Angela McCue: I have reviewed the Oceans Act; I haven't discussed it in detail. The issue there is that the Oceans Act sets up an appropriate framework to decide where aquaculture should be, together with all other uses of the oceans. With the provincial government proceeding as it is, it's effectively ensuring the Oceans Act can never be properly implemented.

The Chair: Aquaculture farming is taking place in a number of countries around the world. You've basically suggested it's illegal constitutionally, provincially, and federally--

Ms. Angela McCue: As currently practised.

The Chair: Have you looked at the legality of aquaculture in other areas of the world?

Ms. Angela McCue: We haven't, other than references to international law and American jurisprudence.

The Chair: Mr. Orr—and this question is to you too, Ms. McCue—in the last slide you presented, you said principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, to which Canada is a signatory, explains the precautionary principle as:

Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

Are you suggesting we're in violation of that declaration?

Mr. Craig Orr: Currently, yes.

The Chair: Would you agree, Ms. McCue?

Ms. Angela McCue: I would agree. I would also reiterate that the precautionary principle has, in the Spraytech case, been determined to be part of the law of Canada.

The Chair: Are you opposed to aquaculture farming in its entirety? What has to be done to allow aquaculture to take place in a way that meets the concerns you have raised?

Mr. Craig Orr: I'd like to answer that one.

I get a little annoyed when I see papers by people like Dr. Brad Hicks, with his very ad hominem argument that everyone on his list is opposed to aquaculture. In fact, many of us have gone on record many times saying we're not opposed to aquaculture; we're opposed to bad aquaculture. We're not opposed to logging; we're opposed to bad logging. We're opposed to things that damage the environment.

In fact, some of us are working very hard with industry, as you questioned earlier. I met with the Honourable John van Dongen recently to get industry involved in a workshop with the B.C. Aboriginal Fisheries Commission this fall, to look at all the issues associated with salmon farming, and how we might move ahead in a sustainable manner.

That's what it's all about; it's how we define “sustainable”, and how we in industry provide those economic benefits with the least amount of damage to the natural marine environment and the least amount of damage to the public interest.

The Chair: Thanks, Craig.

Ms. McCue, do you have anything you want to add?

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Ms. Angela McCue: Essentially, I agree. The Sierra Legal Defence Fund is not opposed to aquaculture, it's opposed to unsustainable aquaculture. In terms of how to do it properly, a full CEAA assessment with appropriate mitigation measures is the correct way to go.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: I have a very quick one, if you don't mind.

The Chair: I've heard your quickies before, and they're not fast. But go ahead.

Mr. John Cummins: Ms. McCue, in your presentation you talk about the fish-dumping case. My understanding is that part of the problem is there are no regulations for industry on how to deal with these outbreaks, and that may very well have been the problem the DFO person had, in that she was unable to reference it.

In the salmon fishery, the fishery is governed, in fact, by the Pacific fisheries regulations. For the life of me, I have been unable to discover a bundle of regulations that apply to simply salmon farming. Are you able to locate such a bundle or is that really the problem, that there just doesn't exist a bundle of comprehensive regulations to provide guidance to the industry?

Ms. Angela McCue: They are simply not there.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Cummins.

Thank you, Ms. McCue, Mr. Orr, Mr. Werring. Are there any last comments you want to make before we go on?

Mr. Craig Orr: Yes. This is a plea for science. We have some outstanding scientists in the federal fisheries department, but they're not being allowed to do their work. We do hope that you recognize this, and that you take this back and say let's do it with good science. Let's do an expansion of aquaculture on this coast, but let's make sure it's science-based and not out of some false profit motive.

The Chair: Mr. Werring.

Mr. John Werring: It's absolutely necessary that the science that's in existence in other jurisdictions in the world be taken into consideration and that our federal government start to undertake the science to understand the potential dangers here. It's going to be too late if 10 years from now we have to come back to another committee and say, we told you so; we told you 10 years ago. We'd love to be able to do the science ourselves. Unfortunately, because we are non-profit and privately funded, we simply do not have the funds to do the kind of science that is necessary.

The Chair: Where would you say they are doing aquaculture best? I've looked at aquaculture in Scotland, Norway, and a few other places. Where do you think they are doing the best job?

Mr. John Werring: My personal view is that aquaculture is still in a gold-rush mentality; it's still in its infancy. Even in the United States today, when it comes to regulating aquaculture, when I enquire about regulations for aquaculture, they simply don't have them. They're in development. They've been developing over time--over five years, over ten years.

But quite simply, the science is there, the dangers are there, the flags are there, and it's time to start regulating the industry. Somebody needs to take the step to introduce those regulations. They're trying in Norway. They're trying in Scotland.

But really, what the problem comes down to is that we have these open-net pens in the ocean, and it's really hard to stop anything from going in and out of those pens--diseases, parasites, chemicals. Without containment, it's going to be an ongoing problem.

The Chair: Thank you very much for your forthrightness.

We will take a three- to five-minute break. We'll start with our last witnesses doubled up: the Sierra Club of British Columbia, Mr. Terry Glavin; and as individuals, John Volpe and Michael Easton.

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The Chair: Welcome, folks.

We'll start with Dr. Easton.

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Mr. Michael Easton (Individual Presentation): I'm president of a small environmental company. Our interests are not necessarily in aquaculture but in the environment. We're interested in contaminants and pollutants, and my company has been a world leader in assessing genetic damage in animal populations in the environment as a consequence of exposure to contaminants.

Today I will share with you a brief outline of my talk. I will then introduce the concept that the oceans are highly contaminated, and we have to be vigilant about what is going on with respect to moving nutrients in the form of fish into the human food chain. I'll also be talking about the risk assessment issues with respect to both humans and fish.

I have some overheads that may be helpful. You have copies of them all in the document entitled Presentation by Michael Easton.

The contaminants I'll be discussing today are PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, organic chlorine pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polybrominated diphenylethers, and methyl mercury. These enter the marine food chain and end up in the manufactured feed used in the production of farmed salmon. Through the enhancement of the feed with additional oil, these contaminants tend to be dissolved in the oil. In fact, that's where they concentrate.

The high levels of ubiquitous contaminants in our environment get into the feed, and represent a potential harmful diet to the salmon, which we'll look at later. When eaten by us on a regular basis, the farm salmon are a conduit into the body for these marine contaminants, where they accumulate and may have health effects, which we will also discuss.

We're also going to consider Health Canada regulations governing the level of contaminants in food. We're going to focus specifically on PCBs. I am making the assertion that the regulations for PCBs, although under review, are drastically out of date and in serious need of immediate revision.

This is quite a large scope for 10 minutes but in any event, we'll start.

The oceans and oceanic food chains have been contaminated with unique, man-made chemicals that are foreign to natural systems of this planet. These chemicals include, as I mentioned earlier, PCBs, organochlorine pesticides, and so on. These are known as persistent organic pollutants, or POPs. They persist because they are not readily broken down in living systems. During the evolution of these animals and life on earth, all these man-made chemicals weren't present until just recently.

As an industrialized society, we have managed to dump over 183,000 tonnes of PCBs into the north temperate oceans since 1945, and have dumped millions of tonnes of organochlorine pesticides, such as DDT and toxaphene, into the oceans. In addition, the brominated diphenyl ethers--which are flame retardants, and a new and persistent organic pollutant since the 1960s--has been increasing exponentially in human breast milk over the last 20 years, according to a Swedish breast milk study.

All of the stuff I'm going to talk about is published information with references in science journals. Everything has been peer-reviewed.

About 40,000 tonnes of these brominated diphenyl ethers are produced annually. This material has recently been banned in Europe, but not in North America. It's estimated that, within 20 years, this contaminant--these brominated diphenyl ethers, which actually consist of 209 different individual chemicals--will become the predominant contaminant in our environment, and especially in the marine environment. This family of chemicals is continuously released as a gas from all thermoplastics, including television sets, computer monitors, telephones, etc.

One of the unique features of these contaminants is they are more readily dissolved in fat or lipids than in water. Once these chemicals reach the ultimate repository of all contaminants--the ocean--some become hooked into the marine food chain, starting with the single-celled marine algae.

So you have a pyramid. At the base are marine algae, supporting all other ecosystems. As a consequence, when they hook into stuff, they gets concentrated at each of the subsequent levels. These contaminants have the capacity to then become more concentrated with each succeeding link in the food chain, because they are not readily metabolized or excreted. These contaminants can then become many thousands of times more concentrated than if you were taking a sample of sea water, and analysing it, or the marine algae from which they originated into the marine food chain.

The higher portions of the oceanic food chain, including carnivorous marine fish, such as salmon, tuna, and swordfish, can show elevated levels of these persistent organic pollutants. Marine mammals such as whales, sea lions, seals, and polar bears have even higher levels of these pollutants. This phenomenon of contaminant bioaccumulation occurs in all parts of the ocean, from the Arctic to the Antarctic--just in case you thought your area was immune; it isn't.

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Because many persistent contaminants represent the volatile organic portion of a pesticide or a PCB, they can be transported on the upper air currents far from their point of origin. These chemicals then drop out of the air over the colder regions of the earth, such as mountain-top snowpack, the Arctic and Antarctic, and glaciers. You know the pure glacier water you get? Forget it.

They then enter the food chain through plants. Thus--and here we get to the aquaculture part--when someone utilizes the ocean for the production of a product such as salmon feed, one has to be extremely sensitive to the potential for the introduction of ubiquitous chemical contaminants into the human food chain. The accumulation of these chemicals in the human body bring significant, recently discovered consequences, particularly to developing fetuses within pregnant women.

I can discuss the consequences later, but owing to the fact that we're a little short of time, I will go on. I just want to mention briefly that a Swedish study shows they affect head size and newborn weight. The American studies showed neurological effects on cognitive behaviour in children. There were numerous studies there. The Japanese studies showed immune-function effects in the fetuses themselves. The PCBs, when hooked up with the Epstein-Barr virus, increase the potential for getting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma by a factor of 20 times.

In the early days of 1987--15 years ago--DFO scientists realized these contaminants were at high levels underneath salmon pens, and that they were getting into the local biota. Hal Rogers looked at the animals, and found a cline of contaminants that stemmed from these salmon farms. He analysed all of these animals and the debris under the pen. He wondered where they were coming from. He analysed the feed, and there they were--in the feed. This has been known by DFO for a long time. And what have they done about it?

Later on another DFO chemist came along, Walt Cretny, who analysed the stomach contents of juvenile salmon in 1994. He did the same thing in 1998. I came along and was involved in a study where we were finding some rather unusual effects in the DFO-enhancement hatchery fish. I said, “What's going on here?” He said it was probably the contaminants in the feed. That's what started this whole project I'm about to share with you.

You'll see from Table 1 that I took samples of feed from four different manufacturers, and one sample of feed from a duplicate sample. It was not a duplicate as such, but another sample from the same manufacturer that came from the hatchery I was just talking to you about. That sample encompassed all the different feed types those juveniles had been fed, from the earliest stages to just before they were released. So it was a whole profile.

In any event, we also looked at eight salmon. Four of them were farmed salmon and four were wild salmon. Doing analytical chemistry is a very expensive operation when you're doing it at the ultra-trace level at which we were working. In order to really isolate the individual chemicals we were after, we had to use one of the best labs in the world, which we did.

Looking at these farmed and wild fish, we found what seemed to be quite remarkable differences. We didn't do any statistical analysis on the data because we were dealing with different species, as you will notice, and small numbers. If we just looked at it in a very simple way--because it was a preliminary study--just to see if there was anything worth pursuing for a much bigger study, we did find something that we felt was fairly compelling.

Figure 1 indicates the mean concentrations of organochlorine pesticides in the wild salmon, farmed salmon, and the salmon feed. As you'll note, the level of contaminants appears to be much larger in the farmed salmon and more or less similar to what is in the salmon feed.

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Now, this is where we took the flesh of the salmon and analysed it. We didn't analyse the interior organs, where other lipid areas are located and where contaminants would also be concentrated, and therefore the levels of the farm salmon don't necessarily equal those of the salmon feed. But for the whole fish, if one were looking at the whole fish, one might come up with a different picture.

With regard to the organochlorine pesticides, we're focusing here specifically on DDTs and dieldrin, which were the two most frequent by concentration in the samples. We also looked at polychlorinated biphenols, which are again a similar story. The wild salmon appear to have a relatively small level and the farm salmon a much higher level. We also did the same for polybrominated diphenylethers.

If you look in the actual research paper published in the international environmental journal Chemosphere, you'll find a complete listing of all the contaminants and their concentrations characterized in this paper. I think you each have a copy of it. For the sake of brevity, I have to focus here.

We'll look at PCBs on table 2. Back in 1994 they figured out a way to consider the individual chemicals. There are 209 different PCBs or congeners, as they're called, and each of them has its own unique characteristics from a toxicological perspective. Not all of them have been characterized, but some have. The more common ones work through the same pathway as dioxin, that is, the aryl hydrocarbon receptor, dioxin being the most toxic and the others measured in relation to how they stimulate this particular pathway, which is the beginning aspect for dioxin when it enters the body.

From that perspective, these contaminants are given a value or TEF. Notice there's one for mammals and one for fish, so we can work out the relative toxicity for fish too with respect to these coplanar PCBs. This is just a small class of PCBs, just a dozen of the 209 that are used in the characterization. The ortho-planar ones that caused the neurotoxic damage, which I alluded to earlier in the cognitive behaviour studies done in the U.S., are not included in this, but should be, as the author had suggested.

When you have these toxic equivalency factors, you then multiply those factors by the concentration of the individual congener. In other words, you have to do ultra-trace-level analytical chemistry to get those concentrations, and then it gives you a toxic equivalency.

Now, the assumption is that all the toxic equivalencies can then be added up, and there are not going to be any synergies between any of these chemicals, which is not really necessarily the case. It is just an assumption on how these are made. This is a very basic approach and is not particularly robust, but it's a start in understanding the toxicology of these contaminants.

Some of the PCBs, as I mentioned, are much more toxic than others. The World Health Organization utilizes these values. These toxic equivalencies affect these factors. The Health Canada tolerable daily intake levels do not. They do not consider the toxicology of individual congeners at all, period.

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They look at the total concentration of PCBs and assume there is no difference between any of the chemicals forming that particular set of concentrations. They do not, in fact, use an ultra-trace-level analysis to arrive at those concentrations. They use a much more crude analysis.

Turning to PCB toxic equivalencies with respect to farmed and wild salmon--this is the mammalian stuff for human risk assessment--we see the farmed salmon has a considerably larger mean toxic equivalency factor than the wild salmon appear to have. This is strictly for the dozen so-called toxic congeners that behave in a similar fashion to dioxin.

So the WHO regulations, brought in in 1998--it's written there for you, but I'll just say it--are one picogram, which is a very small number, per toxic equivalency, which I just showed you, per kilogram body weight of the consumer, per day. This value from the World Health Organization includes not only PCBs, but dioxins and dibenzofurans as well. So that includes all those other things, which are much more toxic. They could really shoot the levels up much higher.

We didn't include those in our study because we didn't have the money to go after dioxins and dibenzofurans, too. It was just beyond our reach with the amount of money we were able to get.

Â (1235)

The Chair: Mike, we'll have to speed it up a little bit.

Mr. Michael Easton: Yes, we are. We're just at the—

The Chair: I know this is right up Mr. Lunney's alley.

Mr. Michael Easton: Yes.

I just want to show you this in very graphic terms.

Table 3 indicates the allowable number of portions per week stipulated by the World Health Organization and by Health Canada. There's a tremendous difference. For the first one, the Atlantic salmon, you would allow two portions of 200 grams for a 50-kilogram person a week. Health Canada would say, “You can go ahead and have 29, according to our current standards”.

Now, let's whip down to a 20-kilogram child. The WHO regulations suggest that child shouldn't be eating any farmed salmon to the rate of 200 grams a week, period. It's beyond their safety levels. Health Canada says “No problem. Go ahead and have 12, 30, or whatever.”

WIth respect to the wild salmon, you'll note the WHO regulation doesn't seem to find too much of a problem with the wild salmon we analysed.

Table 4, just to finish off the human risk assessment issues, brings in methyl mercury, because you cannot look at contaminants in isolation, as we have just done. You need to look at them in context of all the other contaminants that are there. When you bring in the methyl mercury regulations from Health Canada, and you look at the WHO's PCB regulations, you realize the consumption of wild salmon needs to be moderated by the Health Canada methyl mercury levels.

We can look at the same sort of thing with respect to the salmon. Looking at polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a known xenotoxin, one of the samples, BO-2 from Bio-Oregon, a U.S. manufacturer, seemed to have a very high spike.

Turning to figure 5, when we did our DNA damage analysis, the hatchery stocks were showing huge amounts of DNA damage. The negative value means the greater the amount of DNA damage compared to the control values. The spike in PAHs, which we had demonstrated on the previous figure, could easily account for that difference in DNA damage.

In this context, there is some work by Arkoosh et al. on the wild salmon in the Duwamish hatchery, a heavily contaminated hatchery something like our Fraser River estuary. You'll note that the PAH levels are substantial there, and given that we appear to get a tremendous amount of DNA damage at a much lower level, it's likely that the wild salmon that achieve those levels are really getting hammered.

The work I've just discussed is based on this research paper I've told you about. I made three recommendations at the end: that Health Canada should bring its PCB regulations into line with at least the WHO 1998 standard; that salmon feed and farm salmon testing should be more frequent and more stringent to ensure that fish having a PCB plus dioxin plus dibenzofuran toxic equivalency per gram greater than five aren't allowed on the market; and all fish packaging should include concentrations of contaminants such as PCBs, methyl mercury, and DDT in meaningful units with an explanation of the safety levels for the regular consumer of fish.

Thank you.

Â (1240)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Easton.

We'll turn to Mr. Glavin.

Mr. Terry Glavin (Spokesperson, Sierra Club of British Columbia): I wonder if I might suggest that John go before us. We're not here to address salmon aquaculture at all. I'm not quite sure why we were slotted into this part of the agenda. It might make sense to have them together.

The Chair: All right.

John, go ahead. Mr. Volpe.

Mr. John Volpe (Individual Presentation): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to be working from this document. I'll walk you through it.

My name is John Volpe. I'm assistant professor of fisheries ecology at the University of Alberta. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

I'd like to say that I represent no interests in the aquaculture salmon debate, pro or con. If I had to describe myself, I'd probably say I'm pro-aquaculture. But I'd also like to make the point, leading off from previous speakers, that salmon aquaculture is indeed in its infancy—three decades or so. Aquaculture has existed for over three millennia. We need to make the distinction between salmon aquaculture and aquaculture in general when we start talking about effects to the environment and economics and so on.

On page 1 of these slides you have in front of you, I'd like to start off talking about escapes. This is a subject I've spent the last seven years working on. In 1999 the Atlantic Salmon Watch program—and I understand that Andy Thompson, who runs the program for the DFO, has appeared before you already—logged 35,000 reported Atlantic salmon escapes.

What this number does not encompass, though, is the leakage associated with the farms—and leakage, as I define it, is chronic low-level unobserved escapes. This number is suggested to be somewhere between 55,000 and 110,000 individual fish in 1999, based on those production numbers.

You may be aware that the Alaskan government has recently released a white paper. Based on its investigation, it suggested to the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association that the number is closer to 443,000 Atlantic undetected escaped salmon during that year. Some other numbers are listed there for chinook and coho.

The leakage numbers are on the left and the Alaska estimates are on the right in brackets. And these are all in addition to the official 35,000 reported by DFO.

What does all this mean? We have no idea how many Atlantic salmon are escaping. I think even Andy would agree that the official numbers that are reported are significant underestimates. The reporting is voluntary, so we have no way of validating these numbers in a controlled sense.

Some colleagues and I tried to get a handle on just how far off these numbers are in terms of the reports of Atlantic salmon. Turning to page 2, this charts the escapes in the summer of 2000. We had two major escapes in the Broughton Archipelago that year. DFO's Atlantic Salmon Watch program in 2000 logged 7,833 Atlantic salmon captured—captured in the marine fishery—in all B.C. marine waters for the entire year.

During a 15-day survey, where we went out and actually surveyed the boats that were on the fishing grounds during the month of August, we documented 10,826 Atlantic salmon caught in 15 days in one fishing area, area 12 on the northeast coast of the island. That represents a 41% increase over the entire Atlantic Salmon Watch program reported number, with a very small survey conducted by two people over 15 days.

My point here is that the reports of escapees and captures must be taken with a very large grain of salt. We have no idea how these numbers relate to the real situation.

Of course, in terms of captures, which is used as the benchmark or the barometer of how many Atlantic salmon are actually out there, the vast majority of these come from the commercial fishery. The commercial fishermen are on the water about twenty days a year, so does this really constitute an effective survey method? Of course it doesn't. How many captures would we have seen if the commercial fishery didn't happen to open, coincidentally, with these escapes? They would have gone unnoticed.

Of course, the same goes for fresh water. Recoveries of juveniles and adults in the fresh water easily go uncounted.

So we turn to page 3. I've spent a number of years investigating the competitive ability of Atlantic salmon post-escape. Do these fish represent an ecological threat to our native populations? I've forwarded peer review journal articles that have appeared in some of the leading scientific journals to the committee. I hope you've received them over the last couple of months. The upshot of all that work is condensed on this one page.

As you know, Atlantic salmon were introduced to British Columbia at the beginning of the last century. A considerable effort was made to try to get the species established for the purpose of sport fishery. This failed. This has been held up as evidence that Atlantic salmon are incapable of colonizing this coast.

Through a series of experiments, I've demonstrated that not only are Atlantic salmon capable of colonizing this coast, but they do represent a competitive threat to our native species.

The reason they failed in previous introductions at the beginning of the last century is because they are very susceptible to competition from native species. When a habitat is saturated with competitors—particularly steelhead—Atlantic salmon are very poor competitors. When there are low numbers of steelhead—and right now steelhead populations across Vancouver Island are sitting between 10% and 20% of their long-term averages, so 80% to 90% of the habitat is underutilized—this is the window that Atlantic salmon need to colonize. This is the window they are using to colonize.

So I conclude that the potential for colonization today is far greater than it ever has been in the past, and the experience from 1905 to 1934, when the introduction of Atlantic salmon to this province was first tried, can in no way be representative of the situation today.

Turning to the next page, I'd like to speak a bit about effluent. This has come up a number of times, I'm sure. An interesting pilot study has recently been completed by Dr. Arthur Whitely, a University of Washington professor emeritus in the zoology department there.

Â (1245)

The analysis of four farms off of Bremerton, Washington, showed that they produce approximately 33% more waste than the entire city of Seattle. We're talking about total suspended solids, also known as crap and by other interesting terms. These four farms produce 5.2 million pounds of feces in one year. Only 4 million pounds is produced by the greater Seattle area, which is representative of 830,000 people.

The number seems to jump around, but let's say we have 100 active sites in British Columbia. We are pumping a lot of waste into our coastal environment, and we have no idea what the effects are. However, I'd be very surprised if they were in any way positive.

This brings up an interesting sideline. The ability of the farms to release these effluents free of charge into the environment represents a natural subsidy to the industry, without which it would not be profitable. Filtration sterilization of the effluents for the taxpayers of Seattle is pegged at $536 million in infrastructure costs to build the treatment facility and then another $80 million a year to maintain it. This is the cost to the Seattle taxpayers to minimize their impact on the environment.

We'll now move to the next page, where we show the inputs that go into the farms. Salmon, unlike all other species that are in culture, save shrimp, are carnivorous. Therefore, they require animal products as part of their feed. Typically, feed is made up of 45% fish meal and 25% fish oil. It requires between 2.8 and 4 kilograms of wild fish to produce one kilogram of farm fish, plus an equivalent amount of bycatch, which is killed during the capture of the forage base.

The marine area required to sustain a fish farm is 40,000 to 50,000 times the area of the fish farm itself. So if you have a one-hectare fish farm, an ocean surface area of 50,000 hectares is required to maintain that area. Using current production numbers, the B.C. industry consumes the biological productivity of approximately 7.8 million hectares of ocean. That's equivalent to about 278 times the area of all terrestrial horticulture in B.C. So this idea that the farming industry has a small environmental footprint is false, to say the least.

The requirement of industrial inputs in the form of fish meal far exceeds any domestic harvest quotas. There's no way this industry could sustain itself based on harvesting the raw materials from B.C. coastal waters. It would be horrendous. So what do we do? We go to political jurisdictions that don't have such a big problem with collapsing their coastal fisheries, such as South America, where we are now hastening the collapse of their coastal fisheries and ensuring that the spiral of poverty continues in these coastal regions. So under the auspices of supporting our own coastal communities, we are in fact destroying coastal communities of other political jurisdictions.

Keeping on the inputs theme, we move to the next page. I borrowed this from Dr. Peter Tyedmers, who recently finished his PhD at UBC and is now at Dalhousie University. Peter did some outstanding work, which you may be familiar with, where he assessed the energy inputs required for the production of farm salmon product versus wild catch and compared the energy efficiencies of these two food production systems. Down the left side are listed cultured Atlantic salmon and chinook and then the array of wild captured fisheries. If we compare the most efficient cultured method, which is Atlantic salmon, with the most inefficient commercial catch species, which is coho, largely because they're trawl species, the cultured Atlantic salmon industry is 50% less efficient than the most inefficient commercial catch fishery.

Â (1250)

If we convert those numbers to greenhouse gas emissions, then we begin to see real demonstrable effects on the environment.

Why is the commercial catch fishery so much less energy costly than the cultured production system? We have to go down to South America and send the boats out to capture the forage base--anchovetas, anchovies, mackerel, and so forth. They have to be brought ashore and rendered. Once they are rendered, they have to be pressed into pellets, and then those pellets have to be transported to North America, where they're brought out to the farms as feed.

We have to process colourants to feed the fish, antibiotics, pesticides, and anti-foulants for the nets. Then the fish have to be graded, which of course is energy costly. The product has to be processed and finally transported to the distributor, which transports it to the market. This is a horrendously expensive operation from an energy point of view, and is unsustainable.

The next page just puts the aquaculture industry in the context of some of the more common North American diet items or food production systems. This is from Peter's work, and shows the food production system and edible protein return on investment. So how much food is actually returned for your energy investment? You'll see that the second most efficient culture method is actually aquaculture, except it's not the way we do it here. It's carp and it's in Indonesia.

We return 3.3% of our energy investment for the culture of Atlantic salmon, and 2.6% for intensively cultured chinook salmon. This industry cannot sustain itself in any environmentally friendly way.

On the next page, turn your attention to sea lice. I know this has been brought up a number of times before, so I won't rehash much of it. These pictures are from sea-lice-infected pink salmon smolts.

As has already been mentioned, when we have millions of fish in a very small enclosed area, the opportunity to bio-magnify or bio-amplify disease pathogens and parasites is a reality. When the life history stages of those vectors then leave the farms, they create clouds of vectors that are free to infect passing fish.

Pink salmon are particularly prone to sea lice infection, due to their life history and small size. Last year, when these pictures were taken, we chronicled the first sea lice epidemic on this coast. My colleague, Alexandra Morton, is in the water collecting more samples this year, in a more experimentally rigorous fashion.

Last year we were just kind of caught off guard by this. All of a sudden we had huge numbers of sea lice infecting huge numbers of pink salmon, killing the majority of these fish. We tried to collect data to alert DFO to this problem. DFO promptly ignored that data, came out, did a study that was charitably obstructionist, and failed to recognize this problem. We are now back in the water, having had a year to put together a much more rigorous examination, and the numbers are even more frightening this year.

Sea lice have decimated salmon populations in Europe. Dr. Paddy Gargan's work has been already mentioned. One of his site studies, which formed the basis of pointing the finger at sea lice, found that 95% of the sea lice infestations of wild salmon came from area farms. I'm afraid our work is pointing in the same direction.

Â (1255)

In summary, let's bring it all together.

Escapee numbers are grossly underestimated and pose a real threat to native species. This is peer-reviewed science. It's accepted in the scientific community. Anybody who says otherwise is not reading the papers or is just wilfully ignorant.

Effects of huge volumes of organic effluents are undetermined. They're not good. When I say undetermined, I mean the effect has not been reviewed in the scientific literature. There is of course lots of rhetoric on both sides, but until it is peer-reviewed, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't exist.

The production process is biologically unsustainable on so many levels. I've only touched on a couple here. There's strip mining by foreign coastal fisheries, ensuring that those coastal communities that rely on those fisheries remain in a spiral of poverty.

The bioamplification of parasites such as sea lice and of diseases such as IHN represent clear, irreversible, catastrophic effects to our coastal ecosystems. I can't overstress that.

Then there's the reliance on antibiotics by this industry: 6.8 tonnes of antibiotics were used in 1998, producing antibiotic resistant, superbug bacteria in the wild environment. This is an emerging issue. Peer-reviewed science is coming out as we speak to demonstrate that this is not only occurring in Europe but also in British Columbia.

As Dr. Easton has pointed out, the nutritional quality of this product is potentially inferior to that of wild counterparts, particularly in light of toxic residues.

Finally, a point I neglected to put on this page is that for employment opportunities this industry is held up as the saving grace for coastal communities that have weathered fishing, forestry, and mining storms before; this may represent an economic out for them. Yet the wild catch fishery is far more labour-intensive. If you want to employ people on a per-biomass basis, you're far better off doing it in the commercial fishery.

The commercial fishery and the aquaculture industry share a common salmon market worldwide. Because of the glut of farm-produced salmon on the world market, prices have fallen. The commercial fishery is now no longer viable in many locations. Instead, we have a low potential labour market for the salmon aquaculture industry, which has now taken the place.

So what do we do? On the second-last page I've listed legislative remedies. I'm sure I don't need to go over these for you. As has already been brought up before you already today, this industry is illegal, and it's illegal in a number of ways.

The Fisheries Act, subsection 35(1), refers to habitat “alteration, disruption or destruction”. We have demonstrated this in a number of ways, and this industry contravenes the act. The Fisheries Act, subsection 36(3), talks about the addition of a “deleterious substance”, which could be exotic species, effluents, toxic pesticides, net anti-foulants, antibiotics, and so on. This contravenes this act, clearly.

The NAFTA environmental side agreement says that no nation shall ignore its own environmental laws in favour of trade. Now, 77% of the B.C. product is exported. We are clearly ignoring our own environmental laws in favour of trade. There is no case to be made otherwise.

The problem with going last in a series of speakers is that sometimes your good material gets presented before you get a chance to bring it up. You've already seen principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration, so I won't bother rereading it here.

Finally, here's the last page. I am on record now and I'll go on record again here as saying that within one decade the salmon farming industry as it now exists will not be present in British Columbia. This is because one of two events will occur. Either you will act to restructure this industry, which you are legislatively and morally obligated to do, or catastrophic events will force this industry from B.C. Of course, the question is, at what cost? What is it going to take with it? We can't answer that, and we won't be able to answer that until it happens.

The scientific community speaks with a single voice on this issue. The status quo will lead to the deterioration of our Pacific coastal heritage. This can be avoided, but action must be taken now.

I'll paraphrase a lawyer friend of mine, who says that if you have a good case, you pound the case; if you have a bad case, you pound the table. I haven't pounded the table once. I suspect you've seen a lot of table pounding in the last couple of days. I rest my arguments on the evidence available.

Thank you.

· (1300)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Volpe.

I believe Mr. Glavin's brief relates more to the rockfish issue. Mr. Cummins, perhaps we'll leave that for the rest of the committee to deal with and we'll question Mr. Volpe and Mr. Easton. Then you and I will have to depart.

· (1305)

Mr. John Cummins: That's a good idea. We'll have the record of Mr. Glavin's testimony.

The Chair: Everything is recorded, and if people didn't hear some of the other witnesses who were before the committee, that information will be available through the House of Commons standing committee's evidence, in any event.

All right. Let's turn to questioning for a moment.

Thank you both for your presentations. That's a lot of research and a lot of thinking.

Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: I think it should be noted that Dr. Volpe recently graduated with his PhD from the University of Victoria, but unfortunately he was unable to find a job in British Columbia. He was condemned to go to Alberta to deal with the issues with which he is so well versed. It's humorous, but it is a shame, I think, because there is a knowledge here and an expertise.

Over the last couple of days--and I think, Mr. Chairman, you'd agree with me--the one issue that keeps coming back is that we need science and we need good science, and here's an opportunity and it's at least temporarily lost.

I'm going to take up on the last point in your last page about catastrophic events that will force the industry from British Columbia. In talking of that, you may in fact somewhat be referring to the problems you referred to earlier in your paper about the pressure the salmon farming industry puts on feeder stocks.

Yesterday I quoted from some U.S. Department of Agriculture documents that made it very clear that recently there has been a downturn in the biomass of anchovies, for example, off Peru. To me, the uncontrolled exploitation of the seas off the coast of South America to provide fish meal is probably the biggest threat the industry has. Am I off base on that?

Mr. John Volpe: I think you're definitely on base. I grazed over some of the reasons why I suspect that in ten years this industry won't exist. One of the reasons that is well documented is that this industry will just simply eat itself out of house and home. There will not be the forage base available to produce these fish, particularly, of course, if the industry grows. We'll hasten that decline to the end point.

Mr. John Cummins: As an aside, when those feeder stocks are gone, there are other critters in the food chain that rely on them. So what are we talking about, affecting wild stocks of tuna and so on?

Mr. John Volpe: Absolutely. The ripple effect will certainly not stop at the boundary of that trophic level or of that level where those stocks feed. The effect will be felt above and below. Of course predicting that is a highly complex affair, and I don't think it can be done absolutely.

Mr. John Cummins: In your presentation you referenced a study that was done on four fish farms in the Bremerton area of Washington. You talked about the 5.2 million pounds of feces that were deposited annually for those four fish farms compared to 4 million pounds deposited by 830,000 people in Seattle.

The Pew commission in the United States, in its report, tells us that a salmon farm of 200,000 fish releases an amount of nitrogen equivalent to a city of 20,000 people; of phosphorous, the equivalent of a city of 65,000 people; and fecal matter, of a city of 65,000 people, respectively. So their numbers are a little bit different. The information in the Pew commission may be a little older than the information from Bremerton, is it?

· (1310)

Mr. John Volpe: The Pew commission report is also based on a much larger sample size, so you have an averaging effect that would go into that.

Mr. John Cummins: If you take a look then or consider the Broughton Archipelago and the number of fish farms in that area, there are probably over 40, I guess. Are there not?

Mr. John Volpe: I don't think there are quite 40, but it's close to that number, yes.

Mr. John Cummins: It's in the neighbourhood of 40.

I just shudder to think of the fecal matter that's dropped into that enclosed waterway, actually, because it is enclosed. It's also on the salmon migration route. It's disturbing just to think of the effect that alone can have, is it not?

Mr. John Volpe: I don't think you're alone in being disturbed. Of course, this is not high-level science here. We can model quite accurately the general effects. The problem is that nobody seems to recognize that this is a problem or a potential problem.

Mr. John Cummins: It's amazing, but that is the case. One issue that you don't hear discussed is the depositing of waste on the bottom under these farms. It just doesn't seem to have captured the imagination of the media, for whatever reason. I find that a little bit curious, to say the least. Is it simply because there's not been a whole lot of work done in that area?

Mr. John Volpe: Yes, but the same could be said for just about every issue that concerns the environment as it relates to fish farming. I think the lack of media attention is.... I'd be interested in trying to talk a reporter into doing a story about fish poo, frankly.

Mr. John Cummins: I have one quick question for Dr. Easton.

The issue you raised of contamination of fish on these farms is an interesting one. Again, it's one we've heard a little bit about, but it's one that hasn't had a whole lot of play. Are there now any ongoing efforts by the Department of Health to monitor these contaminants in either wild fish or farm fish?

Mr. Michael Easton: The Department of Health Canada, I think, works through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency takes its lead of what levels are important or significant from Health Canada regulations, of course.

As I've just pointed out, the Health Canada regulations, for PCBs at least, are extremely inadequate. They came in in 1978 and they have not kept pace with toxicological evidence--substantial amounts of it, actually--that we need to have those values reconsidered urgently. In addition, they need to upgrade their methodologies for doing the analytical chemistry at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency so they can work at individual congener levels for PCBs, which they haven't been doing because the Health Canada regulation doesn't require it.

Mr. John Cummins: You say in your document that frequent fish-eaters have a risk of adverse health effects by consuming more than one to three portions of fish a week. Are there other food sources of these PCBs that would also put people at risk?

· (1315)

Mr. Michael Easton: There are, indeed. But according to the study done in the U.K., which I cite in my paper, 97% of the PCBs tend to come in through fish. A certain smaller amount comes in through beef and dairy products.

I might point out they are starting to increase the amount of fish meal in pig and chicken feed. So it's possible in the future we will be getting increased levels coming in through these routes as well.

The Chair: A question, John?

Mr. John Cummins: Dr. Volpe, on the fish meal issue we were talking about a minute ago, John Fraser suggested in his presentation to the Leggatt Inquiry that the demand for fish oil, and whatnot, from the salmon farming industry would utilize all of the available resource within 10 years—including the resource that, I guess, goes to the meal consumed by chickens and pigs. Is that your understanding, as well?

Mr. John Volpe: Yes, absolutely. That's the premise.

I purposely didn't get into numbers and graphs. But the take-home message is this industry can't support itself on a raw input level, or energy level, or a market level--period.

The Chair: Thank you, John.

I just have one question before I go to Rodger.

I think all of us—except Mr. Cummins—were at the Boston seafood show. Looking at some of the products there, and talking to some of the people, one of the things I found rather scary was the impact on the fish food chain. They even had a lot of under-utilized species there, which are really part of the fish food chain. I think that's what you're arguing, that it will have a global impact if we continue to catch anchovies, etc., off Chile—or wherever.

Mr. John Volpe: Absolutely. It's a food web.

The Chair: Yes, it'll spread throughout the system.

Having said that, I've raised the question with some in the industry. Basically their argument back is if they aren't using fish meal, it will be the pork or other industries, or aquaculture elsewhere in the world using it, and we won't be in the game. How do you deal with this question?

Mr. John Volpe: I would love it if we weren't in the game.

The Chair: You might love it if we weren't in the game. But how do you deal with the impact on the fish food chain globally, if we're not even in the game?

Mr. John Volpe: Well, let me back up. Let's look at it. Why do we have to be in the game? What are we getting out of this? Employment? This employs a tiny fraction of people, and it's growing smaller every day as technical advances increase, displacing more and more people.

What are we getting out of it? With the exception of Weston, 80% of the companies are Norwegian, or at least foreign-based multinationals whose products have shifted offshore.

Educate me. I can see the costs. The costs are huge, unpredictable, and unquantifiable. We know they're going to be large. We don't know how large. What are we getting for that?

The Chair: So then what are you basically recommending to deal with the problem? I have your recommendations here. But if we are out of the game, there's still a problem globally—

Mr. John Volpe: Absolutely.

The Chair: —with the fish, in terms of the fish food chain. At what level do we start to deal with this?

Mr. John Volpe: I don't think we're going to solve the world's problems here. I think we have to take care of our own problems first. Once we can look at ourselves cleanly in the mirror then we can turn our attention to other people.

Obviously the B.C. industry is already starting to make overtures to China because I think they see the writing on the wall that this product is not going to enjoy the consumer support that it would like to see in this province or in this country. Therefore, they have to find markets where it will be supported, and obviously China represents a huge market and frankly they're not really too concerned where their salmon comes from so long as they can enjoy salmon when they want it. So that's a major problem, and I readily admit it's the case. But that doesn't remove us from our own responsibility of doing what we can to make sure we're not part of the problem.

· (1320)

The Chair: We've heard at the committee varying scientific opinion. From our perspective it comes down to who you believe.

Mr. John Volpe: I think you have to go with the weight of the evidence. You have a few individuals who obviously come into this argument with a bias, or you can look at the weight of the scientific community, which has no bias, and see where the arguments lay.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Volpe.

Mr. Cuzner.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: I'd like to make a comment. I'd like to thank both presenters here today. I think you've really added some science and measurement to arguments that we've heard earlier in the three days of testimony and certainly brought attention to the great consequence of messing with mother nature. Although I must admit, Dr. Easton, my eyes glazed over when you got into the middle of your presentation. I was a picogram from trancing out.

Mr. Michael Easton: Sorry about that.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: That's okay. I'll remind the committee I had 65% in grade 11 biology.

We're going to lose two members—

Mr. John Cummins: That was after trying three times, too.

Some hon. members: Oh, Oh!

Mr. Rodger Cuzner: We're going to lose our chairman; he and the critic for Her Majesty's loyal opposition are going to take off. I have to commend both you guys and your staff for the work they've done with the research. I think the three days of testimony have been excellent, and I think the contribution that both you guys made has allowed the discussion to evolve. I know you guys have to take off, so thanks.

The Chair: Rodger, can you chair? And we'll go to Mr. Roy.

Mr. John Cummins: Could I have a question before we go?

The Chair: Go ahead.

Mr. John Cummins: I want to bring this issue, Dr. Volpe, up about escapees and the potential for these Atlantics establishing colonies here. You're probably the guy in B.C. who's done more work on that issue than anyone. Would you give some comment to the committee on the likelihood of Altantics establishing a colony here in British Columbia?

Mr. John Volpe: One hundred percent.

Mr. John Cummins: Why is it more likely now than it might have been say a hundred years ago, when the effort was made?

Mr. John Volpe: Because the research that I've done both in the lab and the field has shown that when Atlantics are introduced into an environment that is saturated with competitors, particularly steelhead, they are competitively inferior, and vastly so. When they're introduced into an environment that has underutilized habitat and can establish a residency for three days, that's all it takes. If you allow an Atlantic salmon a residency period for three days that salmon that would have otherwise been competitively inferior now becomes superior, because it is able to evaluate the worth of its habitat and will defend it more vigorously. The recent work coming out of Europe has knocked that down to one day. So during the introductions last century we were stocking frys and eggs, which naturally have the highest mortality rate, on top of populations that were saturated. Today we are stocking, in effect, large, healthy, immunized adults that were reared in British Columbia by the hundreds of thousands into these rivers that are depopulated, to say the least, of competitors.

I am the one who found all of the feral populations to date, and the amount of area that I've sampled is not significantly different from zero compared to the amount of available habitat out there. I have surveyed a triflingly insignificant amount of habitat and have found three feral populations.

The Chair: I took it from your presentation, and I think John's on the same wavelength here, that with declining species--and we have declining Atlantic cod, extinct in some cases or in big trouble, in Atlantic Canada--when escaped Atlantic salmon get into a tributary now, there really isn't another species to compete with them.

· (1325)

Mr. John Volpe: There's no biological resistance.

The Chair: Therefore, there's a much changed environmental situation and predator situation compared to say ten years ago.

Mr. John Volpe: Much changed, but they operate in a much different way from the Pacific salmon, ecologically speaking. Therefore, there will be effects that come from this difference. A healthy Atlantic salmon population exists at a density of one one-hundredth, or even less, that of a wild Pacific salmon fishery. So all of the predators and the web in which the Atlantic salmon finds itself, all the animals and so on that rely on those carcasses, or the nutrients from those carcasses, now have to deal with one one-hundredth of their former supply.

If we consider that the coastal forest ecosystem derives 30% of its nutrients from dead salmon carcasses--dead salmon feed the coastal forests--now people say that if we can't have Pacific salmon, we'll have Atlantic salmon. Yes, you're going to have them, but you're going to have them at one one-hundredth the density.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. Roy, go ahead.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My question is probably for Mr. Easton. Mr. Easter mentioned this earlier: we have problems with some species in the East, particularly with ground fish; they are species at risk. In recent months, it has been discovered, but not yet fully proven, that foreign ships from certain countries have been fishing beyond the 200 mile limit, that despite the NAFO restrictions, they have been fishing for endangered species, and that in order to avoid being caught red-handed, they have been processing those species into fish meal.

Is it possible that this fish meal could wind up here to support our aquaculture? You mentioned anchovies, but we don't use just anchovies. I would say that anchovies are probably more productive for salmon farming, but can other species be used? Are other species used? Is it possible that our fish are being taken in the East and processed for aquaculture in the West?

[English]

Mr. Michael Easton: That is entirely possible. I actually looked into that possibility when I used to work for DFO for eight years as a research scientist in Newfoundland. After I left that position, I did some research on the potential for fish meal production in the east. Indeed, there is potential there, but as I pointed out in my discussion on contaminants, the east coast is not necessarily immune from that problem, as well. In fact, a colleague of mine from Quebec who researches on the diet of peoples along the coast of Quebec has shown that fish-eating populations have large levels of contaminants coming into their bodies as a consequence of eating local fish and because they are frequent eaters of fish. They do bring in these contaminants.

I might also point out that in Chile and Peru, where we have been discussing the origin of fish meal, their environmental record has not been stellar. They have not been properly disposing of their PCBs and have actually been dumping them. They don't have the technology to properly destroy them. As a consequence, PCBs and of course pesticides too—with the rise of grape-growing and other agricultural production, where they use large amounts of pesticides—are getting into the marine food chain off Chile and Peru.

I suspect the levels of contaminants, if we persist in using that oceanic food chain off South America, are only going to increase. To what levels, or whether they're comparable to the potential for fish meal production off Canada's east coast, I don't know.

In any event, the argument from Dr. Volpe is that it's not really a sustainable proposition to continue to produce carnivorous farmed fish. One should rather consider looking at fish that are perhaps algo-eaters, such as carp and so on—more after the Chinese model—and where contaminants are extremely low.

· (1330)

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner (Bras d'Or—Cape Breton, Lib.)): Monsieur Roy.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: You answered part of my question. You say you worked in Newfoundland, but the main part of my question was the following: are our resources in the East being stolen?

Currently, foreign ships are illegally catching endangered species in our waters and near our waters and processing them into fish meal to avoid detection. Is it possible that this fish meal is winding up here in British Columbia?

[English]

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Mr. Easton.

Mr. Michael Easton: I understand your question. I don't know the buying practices of the fish feed companies. That would be an extremely good question for them. Where they buy meal on the international market and often are price-oriented, perhaps that might be a possibility. I don't know, but it would be extremely interesting to ask fish feed representatives that question.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Thank you.

[English]

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Merci, Mr. Roy.

Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney: Did Mr. Roy mention feed there at all? Okay, I was on another trail.

When we were on the east coast, one of the suggestions that came forward from someone, a rather innovative thought, was that perhaps the seal herd, which has proliferated to about seven million, where they feel the sustainable herd is around two million to two and a half million--

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Seven million.

[English]

Mr. James Lunney: Two to two and a half million would be a sustainable herd. But now there are about seven million, with a surplus of maybe four million. They eat about a tonne of fish per year. It's a significant problem in allowing fish stocks to regenerate, so someone came up with the brilliant idea of using seal for aquaculture pellets. But I'm thinking ahead, Dr. Easton, and your response would be that the higher in the food chain you go, the concentration of the persistent organic pollutants you're referring to are more likely to be concentrated in the seals, and that would perhaps even further complicate the problem you brought up. Is that correct?

Mr. Michael Easton: Yes, that is entirely likely. I don't know of any research--there could well be some--about contaminant levels in the seals, but there is for some out here, and the levels are quite a bit higher in the seals, sea lions, and so on. It's actually a cause of great concern, because the levels are reaching potentially toxic levels of the DDTs and so on that can be modulators of endocrine reception and also potential immunal modulators affecting the immune system of these animals.

Mr. James Lunney: I want to come back to that in just a second, but perhaps I can direct a question to Dr. Volpe. You suggested there's no biological resistance today. I think, in view of other testimony we've heard, that in fact Atlantics are having extreme difficulty, in spite of your observations, actually effectively colonizing and establishing long-term colonies. There are other predators, such as the sculpins, and any Pacific salmon or steelhead are still likely to present a very large concern to Atlantics trying to establish themselves. Would you not accept that?

Mr. John Volpe: I'd accept it a little bit.

You've raised a number of points. I never said there was no biological resistance. I said the resistance is below the threshold required to stop colonization, or words to that effect, which I have demonstrated both in the lab and in the field. This is empirical research. It's been demonstrated.

The largest feral population that is currently known is in Amor de Cosmos Creek, which is just north of Campbell River. Amor de Cosmos Creek has the largest sculpin population I've ever seen, and they are the largest sculpin I've ever seen. I know that sculpin were pointed to as another potential source of biological resistance. However, the fact that we have our largest feral population in this creek with this incredibly large population of sculpin stands in the way of that argument.

It needs to be tested. Actually, we have submitted for funding to NSERC to test that, along with a number of other hypotheses. However, this is our second swing at this. We, myself and other academics, have been shut down left and right trying to get funding to test some of these fundamental hypotheses.

· (1335)

Mr. James Lunney: We do appreciate the concerns you have brought forward. They are concerns we have heard in other voices. We think you certainly highlighted them very well. I think it is a little presumptuous, though, to suggest that the scientific community speaks with a single voice on this issue. We have heard testimony on different sides of the various issues here.

Mr. John Volpe: I would like to look at the paycheques of the people who are presenting the alternative arguments. I should have put in there that the academic community speaks with a single voice, meaning those who do not come into the issue with a stated agenda and who simply make the decisions based on the evidence available.

Mr. James Lunney: Just by way of argument here, when you say the scientists who aren't related to industry have no bias, it's unrealistic to expect that anyone comes without a bias. We all have a bias, a perspective based on our world view. The same issue applies to historians: they want to say, well, he's always biased. Anyone who observes events has a bias, depending on where they've come from.

Mr. John Volpe: I'd accept that, but I have also had almost a decade now of dealing with scientists who present information in a way that does not present the entire argument and only presents it in a way that forwards their bias.

Mr. James Lunney: Thank you. I'll accept that.

I take this back to Dr. Easton, because I think he's raised an extremely important point here, one that is a major concern to everyone and probably far beyond the aquaculture issue; that is, the accumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the ocean and indeed in the high snowpacks in the Arctic and our mountains here.

In fact, this really shook me just a few years ago, moving to coastal B.C. from Ontario and seeing our lovely mountains, where I like to hike. We could understand that the oceans were becoming polluted, but the notion that these persistent organic pollutants were actually arriving in significant levels in the high mountain snowpacks was very distressing, with our so-called pristine waters and all these wonderful waters of our glaciers. It makes you wonder how pure some of these waters are. It's a very serious concern.

In fact, I wonder if you noticed just this morning, since you've talked about the accumulation of these in the food chain, that an orca washed up on the shores of Puget Sound just south of us here. They analysed the tissues and found extremely high levels of PCBs. It was on the front page of today's National Post. It said, I think, that it was a thousand times higher than they'd seen.

This is a major concern you have identified here, one that is going to have to be looked at very seriously.

Mr. Michael Easton: Just on that point, from the perspective of human health issues, some of the studies I was quoting were not particularly representing groups of people who eat a lot of fish...to some degree. The Japanese study and one of the American studies I referred to just looked at the general population. They did an analysis of blood for PCB levels, looked at some of these issues, and saw these relationships in just the normal population.

The concern is for women, especially women of child-bearing age, because the tolerable daily intake levels are designed supposedly to demonstrate that these would be allowable amounts that over the lifetime of the individual would have no ill effects.

The problem is we need to deal with the unborn child, so it is particularly important for women in their twenties, thirties, etc. The levels that are mobilized in the woman then go to the developing fetus, and subsequent to birth, through the milk, can be quite substantial. So anything that will reduce the contaminant burden of women in particular....

Men are kind of stuck with it. We really don't have much choice; there's no other way we can get rid of our contaminants. But women can reduce their contaminant burden by about 40% to 50% with each child. The first-born child gets the most contaminants; subsequent children get less. If she happens to eat salmon that does have a fairly high level of PCBs and so on, she ends up sending a spike of PCBs 500 times above her background level to her offspring, and this could have a significant impact during that time.

· (1340)

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Mr. Lunney, a final question.

Mr. James Lunney: You cited that research in your document here, on passing the toxic load on to the newborn.

Mr. Michael Easton: Yes, it's in this one.

Mr. James Lunney: We'll want to follow up on that. We have two bills currently before the House. Right now there's Bill C-53, the pesticide act, and we're expecting tomorrow to have a reproductive technology bill tabled. These are issues about declining human fertility. But on the pesticide issue, there have been tremendous studies recently about the effect on amphibians, that pesticides accumulating in the environment are possibly related to the decline of amphibians worldwide.

As you say, we're back to our aboriginal friends again with hishtukish ts awalk--everything is one. And in fact in the biological food chain we certainly are showing traces of what we eat, and some of these accumulating chemicals are having a devastating effect, or there's evidence that they are.

Thank you for bringing the issue forward. We'll have to be very cognizant. I'd like to see some follow-up information as you progress with your work.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Thank you, Mr. Lunney.

Are there any final brief comments from Dr. Easton or Dr. Volpe?

Mr. Michael Easton: I would like to raise a few, just briefly.

I designed this project quite some time ago and was looking around for funding for it. I initially went to the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association to ask them for funding, and after my initial presentation my phone calls were never returned over a six-month period. I subsequently went to the David Suzuki Foundation, and they found some funding for my research and were able to publish it.

After it was published, a chap from one of the U.S. universities, Dr. Charles Santerre, wrote a critical article, which never reached the pages of the journal I had published in, so it isn't a published letter, but it was brought to my attention by the person who publishes a trade journal on food and contaminants out of Washington, D.C. He sent me Santerre's letter, which I had never seen, but it apparently had been posted on a number of websites. I wrote a reply and answered each one of the points he raised in some detail. You have a copy of it. I would urge you, if you do come up with some negative comments on my paper from Chemosphere, you will undoubtedly find them answered in this reply to Santerre.

It just goes to show that when I was questioning Health Canada regulations, by default I was also questioning the American regulations. That was a concerted effort from the U.S. to defend--I didn't think very well--their regulatory environment.

· (1345)

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Thank you, Dr. Volpe.

Are there any comments? No.

On behalf of the entire committee, I'd like to thank both of you for your testimony here today. This information is shared with the entire committee as we develop our report. So thanks again.

Mr. Michael Easton: Thank you.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): We'll continue the proceedings with Terry Glavin and Mr. de Leeuw on the rockfish fishery

Mr. Terry Glavin: I'm Terry Glavin, and I'm going to be presenting on behalf of the Sierra Club of British Columbia today.

Valentyn de Leeuw is an inshore rockfish fisherman, a commercial fisherman. Because my presentation will be touching on issues on groundfish and rockfish, we thought it would be helpful to committee members to have a fisherman here who might more reasonably inform any questions that might arise.

The Sierra Club of B.C. is a membership-based, largely volunteer organization that was established 33 years ago primarily for the purpose of conserving old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. The Sierra Club went on to become one of British Columbia's most effective and credible conservation organizations and has recently found itself paying much closer attention to the conservation of B.C.'s coastal marine ecosystems.

The Sierra Club of B.C. is dedicated to fostering conservation-based policies and practices that allow for sustainable fisheries in the context of healthy ecological functioning, biological diversity, and species abundance. We acknowledge the special role played by Pacific salmon, not only as a keystone species in B.C.'s marine environment, but also as a key indicator species in B.C.'s terrestrial ecosystems.

Briefly, the marine conservation goals of the Sierra Club of B.C. are to ensure that the public interest in the conservation of all marine resources is afforded the highest policy priority, that human activities are managed in ways consistent with that priority, and that the priority of conservation in public policy is informed by the most rigorous conservation principles.

Our key concerns at the moment are to marshal public support for major conservation measures aimed at reversing alarming declines in the abundance and distribution of marine species in the Strait of Georgia and for reforms in the management of inshore fisheries of Canada's west coast to ensure that the serial depletion and disruption of marine ecosystems and the depletion of marine species in the strait is not replicated coast-wide.

The Sierra Club's approach to this challenge is to make its best effort to work collaboratively with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, with decision-makers and scientists, with first nations, with community and stakeholder and other conservation interests to ensure that human activities are managed according to the precautionary principle and are subject to risk-averse management practices. Our objective is to ensure that the public interest in the conservation of marine resources, including salmon, is afforded the highest policy priority, and that fisheries management, indeed all marine-related decision-making, is informed by the best available scientific principles.

Over the past year we've been involved in quite a number of issues related to fisheries management, from the B.C. salmon industry's efforts to obtain certification by the Marine Stewardship Council to the public debate over marine protected areas. However, our main efforts have focused on the management of groundfish fisheries, which account for more than half of the fish caught on Canada's west coast, and specifically the matter of the conservation of the remnant populations of Strait of Georgia ling cod and inshore rockfish species coast-wide.

In summary, the Sierra Club of B.C. wants to see people fishing and wants to see fisheries managed in sustainable ways.

As a preamble to the main points of this submission, I'd like to make a tiny bit of a departure from the kind of thing that you normally hear, perhaps, from conservation organizations. We would like to recognize those individuals within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, scientists, managers, and key leaders of industry for the contributions they've made in recent years to what I think are legitimately success stories in the revival of marine species abundance and for progress we have seen in moving fisheries to a more sustainable footing on this coast.

I'd like to start with Strait of Georgia herring, since that fishery has just wound down for the season. There are troubling aspects to that fishery that are commonly raised in the fleet about the extent to which the resource rent accrues to licence-holders. Working fishermen are obliged to pay quite often tidy sums for the privilege of fishing.

Solely from a conservationist perspective, we have to say that it's quite clear that the Strait of Georgia herring fishery and perhaps to a lesser extent the roe herring fisheries throughout the coast appear to have matured to the point that they meet the optimum conditions conservationists require of fisheries. We acknowledge that questions about local stock depletions remain unresolved. It gives us great satisfaction, nonetheless, to observe this past spring that the biomass of the strait's migratory herring stock was estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 100,000 metric tonnes. It's about the same as it was last year, despite a very intensive industrial fishery prosecuted on that spawning stock. Just for fun, it's roughly equal to the weight of the human population of Alberta. I have always liked this statistic; all these numbers just bore me to death.

The return of herring to the strait is particularly heartening. It's as high as if not higher than anything we've seen in the last 50 years. We saw 60 linear miles of spawn this past season in the Strait of Georgia. We're starting to see spawn again below Dodd's Narrows. It all holds out the hope that in my lifetime we actually might see herring spawning again in the islands where I live--which we really haven't seen in any significance since about the 1930s.

We'd all like to say it was because we made the right decisions, and we're all very responsible and reasonable people. The truth is, it's because of favourable ocean conditions and greatly improved marine survival rates. At the same time, it has to be said that I don't think we'd be seeing these kinds of revivals were it not for some really responsible fisheries management and some concerted efforts on the part of the fishing industry and DFO scientists to ensure projected total allowable catches are maintained within sustainable quotas, and so on.

There are other fisheries that have to be acknowledged. The halibut fishery is one that has made great strides towards addressing the daunting challenge of ensuring that harvests are sustainable. The catch statistics are reliable, and the harmful bycatch impacts are being addressed. I should say that the halibut fleet should be recognized, particularly for its recent adoption of bird-avoidance gear. Even the big-boat trawlers--which everybody, including myself, likes to beat up so much--should be recognized for the progress we have seen made in that industry and fleet over the years. It has embraced some major changes in an attempt to come to grips with the unavoidable threats it poses, under the conditions in which it's currently obliged to operate on this coast.

There are other fisheries I could mention. The issue of coho has come up at this committee. If anything, this might show us that the very difficult decisions made by fisheries ministers from time to time were wise. They may have been contentious and unpopular among sectoral interests at the time, such as the decisions by former fisheries minister David Anderson with respect to coho conservation, but we think the recent decision by the committee on the status of endangered wildlife in Canada, declaring or identifying upper Fraser coho as a threatened or endangered species, confirms the wisdom of those difficult decisions made in the late 1990s.

Similarly, in the management of Fraser River sockeye this past year, we realized that tremendous hardship was faced by commercial fishermen in the lower Fraser River, as a consequence of what we believe were necessary decisions to ensure the passage of these troubled late-run sockeye stocks. But at the end of the day, and at the end of the season, I think we had 4.7 million spawners from the summer-run stocks in the Fraser system, which is one of the highest returns we've seen in that cycle year in 60 years. I don't think that's necessarily anything to be ashamed of from a public interest point of view.

· (1350)

Similarly, with Fraser River pink salmon, we saw 22 million pink salmon spawning in the Fraser River this past year. I don't think most British Columbians or most Canadians would look at that--and if they understood that this was one of the highest returns of pink salmon on record, certainly one of the highest, if not the highest, since 1913--and say that it was anything less than a great success.

But now that I've said all these nice things about all the wonderful things that are happening out there, regrettably, I have to turn to the many structural and chronic failures on the part of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to live up to its mandate to protect the public interest in the conservation of marine resources.

About a year ago the Sierra Club of B.C. concluded a study that was intended as a sort of an overview of the many impediments we find with respect to sustainability in fisheries management under Department of Fisheries and Oceans authority on this coast. I think this report has been made available to the committee members, but I'll summarize the findings.

DFO's entire $300 million Pacific budget, which includes the coast guard, amounts to less than half the money U.S. government agencies spend every year just on salmon conservation initiatives and just in the Columbia River. The lion's share of the DFO's west coast fisheries management and science budget is spent on salmon, herring, and a few other species. A mere $5 million is spent on science with respect to most of the species that comprise the west coast catch, and for an alarming number of those species there's no science done at all.

Deep-dwelling fish, about which science knows next to nothing, are making up an increasing proportion of the catch, and the amount of fish taken from B.C.'s waters every year routinely exceeds 225,000 tonnes. That amounts to fully 10% of the primary production that occurs in Canada's Pacific waters. It's an amount of fish roughly equal to the weight of the human population of British Columbia, and there's no ongoing effort by DFO to assist the ecosystem impacts of biomass removals of that scale.

In that study we focused our inquiries on groundfish, mainly because that management classification accounts for most of the west coast catch by volume and by species. We took a particularly close look at rockfish, and particularly inshore rockfish, because all sectors and all gear types catch rockfish in both targeted fisheries and as bycatch.

It would be an understatement in the extreme to say that what we found was disturbing. Very generally, what we saw was that the major fisheries of this coast are being conducted on a variety of fish species for which there is no stock assessment science and consequently no catch limits at all.

Where there is some stock assessment science, it is often very preliminary and ranked by Department of Fisheries and Oceans science branch employees as being highly uncertain. In many cases there is little, if any, evidence that the advice of scientists is being taken into account in fisheries management decisions.

Conservation is just one of several competing management objectives. Fisheries prosecuted upon most of the fish that make up the B.C. catch by volume and by species are proceeding in direct contradiction to several of the principles set out in the most universally accepted charter of sustainable fisheries, the UN Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. I've appended the relevant principles of that code at the back of my submission.

It was the scale of those fisheries that was so surprising. As an example, over a six-month period last year, our fishing fleets caught 413,000 pounds of longjaw rockfish, 426,000 pounds of redbanded rockfish, and 544,000 pounds of sharpchin rockfish. These are offshore rockfish stocks, which are protected by no catch limits whatsoever.

The situation actually appears to be worse for inshore rockfish--and the caveat here, I have to say, is that at least there is some stock assessment science for the six species of inshore rockfish. While it is disputed by some fishermen, the scientific consensus is that there is evidence of declines throughout the coast. For the Strait of Georgia, the evidence suggests drastic declines and serial depletion of rockfish reefs. And, particularly disturbing to us, fisheries were being authorized despite all of this.

Commercial total allowable catches were being cut back, rockfish protection areas were being established, and Fisheries and Oceans officials were handing out these nice little pamphlets asking anglers to try to avoid catching these lovely little inshore rockfish. But Fisheries and Oceans science branch was saying that the declines were continuing despite these measures.

· (1355)

A lot has happened since the Sierra Club released its study last year. Last November there was a conference in Nanaimo that was fairly well attended by first nations, commercial industry representatives, community groups, anglers, and conservationists from throughout the coast. At that meeting, a fairly widely supported consensus was hammered together by participants on what should be done about inshore rockfish conservation. There were some rockfish fishermen who didn't support the consensus, and the Sport Fishery Advisory Board representatives didn't support it. But it was nonetheless backed by several industry leaders and several environmental organizations.

I know some people have taken the habit lately of saying none of this really happened and it was all sort of invented by the Vancouver Sun or something, but I assure you it did. It was encouraging that conservationists and industry could come up with at least a rough game plan, of sorts. That consensus statement is also appended at the back of this submission.

As committee members know, the former fisheries minister announced last December that a series of fairly sweeping measures would be required to conserve inshore rockfish, and he gave regional officials and industry until April to meet his requirements or, in his words, “I will act unilaterally”.

It's a week into May, and we haven't heard any pronouncement out of Ottawa about where we are. Certain fisheries are proceeding on an interim basis, and we understand other fisheries—most notably the ling cod jig fishery and the dogfish longline fishery—may be opened soon, subject to some interim measures. We wish them well.

We're not at all confident that the public interest in the conservation of these species is going to end up, at the end of the day, the priority of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Since last October we've been looking at a science branch recommendation for a zero harvest rate target for the Strait of Georgia ling cod, for instance. The recreational ling cod season begins next month, and there's still no word out of DFO about whether the managers will listen to their own scientists, or just do what the sport fish lobby wants.

I'd like to briefly summarize what the conservation sector says about these things. We simply say that fisheries managers, on the matter of inshore rockfish conservation, should simply do what they're supposed to do. They should do what the public is assured they will do, according to the very objectives their fisheries management plan set out, which is manage fisheries in a precautionary, risk-averse manner, according to the best available science.

What follows briefly is from a lengthy submission the Sierra Club of B.C. presented to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in its rockfish conservation strategy consultation process. The submission was also endorsed by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the David Suzuki Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, and Watershed Watch.

We say the conditions that would allow the continuation of directed rockfish fisheries do not exist, at present, for any of the fisheries management areas of the coast. The harvest rate objective for inshore rockfish must reflect the findings articulated by federal fisheries scientists. We identify the documents that have assessed this and produced the recommendations,

Specifically, what is being recommended by science is that given natural mortality rates in the range of 2%, harvest rates of less than 1% may be sustainable. Importantly, the authors of that document noted that since we have no method to estimate biomass over the entire coast of B.C., we cannot recommend sustainable TACs, meaning total allowable catches.

Conservation measures must also, as the minister promised, provide the needed protection for Strait of Georgia ling cod stocks, which generally share the same habitat and are vulnerable to the same gear as inshore rockfish. The most recent formal advice of the Pacific Scientific Advice Review Committee groundfish subcommittee has identified the needed protection of Georgia Strait ling cod as a harvest rate target as close to zero as possible, beginning in 2002.

As advised by PSARC scientists, and as set out in their research documents, the targets for the large-scale closed areas the minister stated were necessary must include a network of harvest refugia in fisheries management area 4B—which takes in Johnstone Strait, the Strait of Georgia, bits of Juan de Fuca Strait, and adjacent areas up the Queen Charlotte Sound—to encompass roughly 50% of the known rockfish habitat types in the area. There must also be a similarly designed network of harvest refugia to encompass a minimum of 20% of the known rockfish habitat types elsewhere on the coast.

We're saying the consultation process should turn its attention as soon as possible to the objective of re-establishing fisheries within a sustainable and publicly defensible management regime. We've urged fisheries managers to consider small-scale, closely scrutinized experimental fisheries for most areas of the coast.

¸ (1400)

We make a rather exhaustive series of recommendations in that submission, and I'll see to it that it's available to this committee.

I realize that what we propose will cause tremendous hardship to many fishermen on the coast. I see the fishermen's union has made a submission about how to deal with that kind of hardship, and I would recommend it to the committee members. I'm not a big fan of buyback programs and stuff. I really hate it when we lose fishermen to the industry. Years and years of accumulated wisdom tends to go out the door with them.

I'd like to conclude on a matter of science, which is certainly a recurring theme. A subtle pattern has certainly begun to emerge, today at any rate, in the submissions you've been hearing, and the phrase “the best available science”. It's our view that the state of science and the degree to which fisheries decisions are made wholly in the absence of science on this coast are nothing short of scandalous. We do not propose that simply by throwing money at DFO's science branch everything will be all right.

I have to say I respect and appreciate the difficulties people in places like Lethbridge or Moncton might have in continuing to subsidize the madness that appears to be a chronic problem in fisheries management on Canada's west coast. At the same time, the reality is we live in the 21st century, and this is Canada, and there's potential for tremendously productive and profitable fisheries on this coast. But many of those fisheries cannot be prosecuted in any publicly defensible way simply because we don't have the basic scientific tools necessary to allow the fisheries to proceed according to the public's reasonable expectations about these things. And because we don't have the science, and because what science we do have is often disregarded, conservationists find themselves in the position of having to argue for the closure of fisheries. Fishermen end up at one another's throats. And that's what goes on out here.

What the Sierra Club of B.C. has stated time and again is something that bears repeating here: closing a fishery is never a conservation victory; it is an admission of defeat. And there's one thing around which all the various and fractious interests in this coast's ongoing rockfish controversy agree—first nations, anglers, commercial fishermen, and conservationists. That is that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has sorely neglected its solemn duty to provide fisheries' managers and fisheries communities with the best scientific resources available to allow the prosecution of sustainable fisheries, particularly sustainable groundfish fisheries.

B.C.'s groundfish landings and the associated processing jobs contribute about $250 million every year to B.C.'s economy, but we spend about $5 million on groundfish science and management every year. Only yesterday, I was trying to cobble together an application on behalf of the Sierra Club of B.C. for funds from an American charitable foundation to pay for a Strait of Georgia ling cod stock assessment survey, designed by DFO's science branch, that DFO in Ottawa recently says it can't afford to fund. That's what we've come to: critical, basic science, without which no fisheries for Strait of Georgia ling cod can be publicly justified, and a B.C. environmental group is obliged to go begging for the money from American charities. I think we all deserve better than this. I also believe the Pacific region's science capability is a matter this committee might usefully turn its attention to.

I don't know if Valentyn has anything to add right away.

¸ (1405)

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw (Sierra Club of British Columbia): Not really; you've said it all, except that on the inside the rockfish fishery is much smaller. Terry mentioned a lot of numbers for the outside—so many tonnes. On the inside the actual quota for the commercial fleet is only 100 tonnes. That only translates into a five- to ten-day fishery per boat. There are only 69 boats that actually did partake. We've now been told we are out of work. Just as on the east coast, that fishery is finished.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): And you indicated, Mr. Glavin, you would make your November study available to the clerk or the researcher.

Let me begin here, and then I'll turn to my colleagues. You initiated your presentation with some success stories on the rebound of the herring stocks. Could you give us a snapshot of that? When was it first flagged? How was it flagged? What measures were taken, and how--

Mr. Terry Glavin: On the herring?

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): On the herring, yes.

Mr. Terry Glavin: Well, the major thing, of course, is mother nature. She was awfully generous and kind to us and allowed that.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Fairly forgiving, eh?

Mr. Terry Glavin: Yes.

If you look at the herring fishery, it seems to me there was one year when we took I think it was 150,000 tonnes of herring out of the waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): That would have been circa...?

Mr. Terry Glavin: Through the 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s, there was a major reduction fishery for herring. Then the roe herring fishery, which is basically a fishery that targets the delicacy market in Japan for herring roe, took off in the late sixties and early seventies, and it was mayhem. It took years before that fishery was brought under control.

You might remember it; I think most people would. There used to be camera crews from around the world who would fly to British Columbia in the herring season and would do this spectacular story with aerial photography--the rodeo and the millionaires made in a day and boats ramming one another and so on.

Now it's preposterous. It's a real gentlemen's game. People are out there saying “Oh, you didn't meet your quota? Have some of mine.” It's because we've ended the race for fish. We've gone to a system of pulled quotas, which tends to be quite contentious. As a means of ending the race for fish I think they've served a very useful purpose. Our science is much better. By ending the race for fish we've been able to make sure that the chronic problem of inadvertently overfishing has basically been resolved. Every year now total allowable catches are kept within 1% or 2% of what the anticipated quota goal is.

¸ (1410)

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): The science specific to the herring is much better.

Mr. Terry Glavin: The science is much better. It's a much more high-profile fishery, and I think that's one of the reasons why. There are lots of scientific uncertainties in herring, but those uncertainties have been taken into account more and more. I think we should recognize those kinds of successes.

I guess the point I wanted to make is that you can turn these things around. Even though we recognize that in the short term, in fact, particularly for these long-lived species like rockfish...the time it takes to turn these things around it's a long time. It's worth the investment, and sometimes you have to make these tough decisions. When you make these tough decisions, you see a return on that investment.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Yes, I guess you're sharing that with a guy who comes from the east coast, where the tough decisions were made with Atlantic cod, and we still haven't seen the turnaround because of various factors.

Monsieur Roy.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think it is all right for you to point out that you are a guy from the east coast because I am too. We have experienced what you are experiencing, and I find you quite optimistic about restoring stocks. That is more or less what I wanted to say. Basically, if you look at what is going on in the East with ground fish, particularly cod, despite a moratorium of I don't know how many years now...

Mr. Cuzner, how long has the ground fish moratorium been in effect now? Fifteen years?

[English]

The Clerk of the Committee: It's ten years.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Yves Roy: Yet, we now know that the stocks, particularly cod stocks, are not bouncing back. On the contrary, they continue to drop. You seem quite optimistic to me. That is not a question; it is just a comment. Despite a full moratorium, despite the fact that fishing has been halted, the stocks continue to decrease. Currently, a lot of questions are being asked.

Might it be due, among other things, to the increase in the seal herd that was discussed earlier? That is entirely possible. Are there other factors?

For now, scientists are virtually unable to answer that question. Perhaps there has been a slight variation in ocean water temperature such that stocks are not bouncing back and the mortality rate is very high among remaining fish, but I say it is practically irreversible. Once stocks are too low, it is very, very hard to restore them.

That was not a question; it was just a comment.

[English]

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner) Mr. Glavin, would you have a comment on that?

¸ (1415)

Mr. Terry Glavin: Actually, I do.

I'm reluctant to draw comparisons between east coast cod and the situation here in British Columbia, although I must say that what happened with respect to east coast cod has actually happened in British Columbia several times over.

We used to have an abundance of halibut in the Strait of Georgia. We don't have an abundance of halibut in the Strait of Georgia any more. What we consider today to be from time to time quite localized abundances of yelloweye, when you look through the catch statistics those statistics suggest that we may be looking at 5% of the yelloweye or red snapper populations of the Strait of Georgia. We have 5% of the ling cod populations of the Strait of Georgia that we saw in the 1950s. I don't mean to be a Pollyanna about this, but at the same time.... Another thing is, with inshore rockfish, a lot of these species don't become sexually reproductive until they reach the age of 18. So before you actually see the effect of conservation measures a quarter of a century might have to pass.

I recognize that these are very daunting challenges, but at the same time, I think we have to be very careful not to simply write off our grandchildren's generation for the immediate short-term interests of the commercial value that might accrue to us today. I also want to be careful not to dismiss the very real hardship that these decisions pose for working fishermen.

On the issue of inshore rockfish conservation on this coast, we'll probably lose the participation of about 70 boats in the south coast area indefinitely. We'll lose the active participation of 40 vessels north of Cape Caution indefinitely, and again these are inshore rockfish fishermen.

There are about 150 active dogfish longline boats on this coast. Because of the neglect this department has shown with respect to its duty to conserve inshore rockfish, by ensuring that other fleets avoid encounters with inshore rockfish, I'm not quite sure whether the dogfish boats are going to be able to muster the resources to comply with the necessary measures that will reduce their encounters of inshore rockfish. We don't know how many of those boats will be going fishing again. We lost 11 halibut boats out of area 4B as a consequence of this. I don't know when they'll ever go fishing again.

Then there are the ling cod jig fishermen throughout the coast... And that's just inshore rockfish; there are six species of them. There are another 28 species of rockfish on this coast, and they're coming out of the slope on the shelf areas. The fisheries that we now have to look at are fisheries that produce most of the fish by volume and by species on Canada's west coast. So the consequence of not doing something is pretty significant.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney: Thank you.

There are a lot of questions that come out of this, particularly about the science. You're saying that there's a lack of science by DFO. For example, on page 7 you talked about the deep-dwelling fish, and you noted that the amount of fish taken from B.C. waters routinely exceeds 225,000 tonnes. Was that one the biomass of Alberta?

Mr. Terry Glavin: No, that's actually the biomass of B.C.--

Mr. James Lunney: It was B.C. I'm one province behind on that one. I appreciate your analogies.

Then on the next page, we're talking about 413,000 pounds of longjaw rockfish, 426,000 of red-banded rockfish,and over 500,000 pounds of sharp-chin rockfish. These are offshore.

Mr. Terry Glavin: Yes.

Mr. James Lunney: That's the catch. It seems like we're talking about a total of fish taken from B.C. waters exceeding 225,000 pounds. But now here, we're way over.

Mr. Terry Glavin: We're talking millions of pounds and tonnes.

Mr. James Lunney: It's pounds. Excuse me. So that's the connection, one is pounds and one is tonnes.

Mr. Terry Glavin: I know we're supposed to use kilos, but I still haven't got out of the habit--and neither has the fishing industry, by the way.

¸ (1420)

Mr. James Lunney: That clarifies that one, thank you.

We're going on here. On page 8 you're talking about the inshore rockfish caveat. There is at least some stock assessment for the six species and, while it is disputed by the fishermen, the scientific consensus is that there is evidence of decline. What science? Are these the studies you are referring to here? On page 10 you mentioned a couple: the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat--

Mr. Terry Glavin: Yes, those are the most recent overview assessments of inshore rockfish stock status on B.C.'s coast. But we actually have several years of these kinds of observations that the science branch has been making, and I have to say that I can't find very much evidence of effective response on the part of fisheries managers to that science.

Mr. James Lunney: Can you give us some indication of the extent of these scientific studies and how much money went into it over what period of time?

Mr. Terry Glavin: A small portion--a very small portion--of the $5 million was spent on groundfish, which is one-sixth of the total science budget on Canada's west coast. About $31 million is the DFO Pacific region's science budget.

By the way, I should say that the $5 million includes management measures. It's not just science. As you can see, it's a very small amount of money and the kind of science that is done is a really good question. It's really very hard to describe because it's not like conventional...the stock status tools available to fisheries managers in salmon or herring or other kinds of species are simply not available to scientists who look at these long-lived species--117-year-old yelloweye. Some of these fish live for a very long time and they also tend to respond to gear in ways that make the conventional catch-per-unit-of-effort analysis very difficult to use as a stock assessment tool.

I don't want to give out too much about science myself, because I'm not a scientist, but I would refer you actually to those science papers, because they are written in the language of common speech, for the most part, and they reach some fairly clear and unequivocal conclusions.

I'd like to point out one thing, though. You might think of what the science is saying, or the problems we're facing, in this way: in area 4B, which is basically the inside waters of the south coast of British Columbia, there is evidence of serial depletion of rockfish reefs that is fairly uncontroversial in certain areas of management area 4B. South of Campbell River, most of the rockfish catch is actually the recreational fishery. In fact, I think the recreational fishery is equal to or exceeds the commercial catch of rockfish throughout all of area 4B. It is a significant fishery.

Most of the commercial fishermen in area 4B fish north of Campbell River, between Campbell River and Cape Caution, with some people in the southwest around Sooke.

The problem in the southern waters of British Columbia is that there actually is, for the most part, a preponderance of science, a preponderance of evidence of depletion. However, in areas 12 and 13, say between Campbell River and Cape Caution, it's not that clear. There is an abundance of rockfish up there that you don't see elsewhere in the Strait of Georgia, and throughout the rest of the coast the main problem is that we simply don't know, we don't have the science. There is some evidence of depletion, but the problem is we don't have the science, we don't have any credible analyses that would allow PSARC, the science branch of DFO, to recommend sustainable harvests to fisheries managers.

That's actually a problem that can be solved, a problem that can be remedied. It's a problem that can be turned around in fairly short order. We might be able to answer certain relevant and useful questions. On an area-by-area basis, what is the stock? What does it look like?

Mr. James Lunney: Thank you.

Can I just ask Mr. de Leeuw a question?

Are you an inshore fisherman, or offshore?

¸ (1425)

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw: I'm in area 4B, mostly in the south.

Mr. James Lunney: In 4B. Do you agree with the comments that have been made here about the declining stocks? Are you having trouble catching your quota, when you have quota available?

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw: Up to a point, because we've been doing it for so long. Yes, close to home there were a lot more fish then, 20 or 30 years ago, than there are now. We're not having any problem catching our quotas because they are so small.

I might just go on to say that for the last years DFO has been giving us declining quotas. It's only ever been focused on the commercial sector; in other words, no other user group has had the need to cut back on anything. I still think there is a fair stock in the George Strait--that's in the southern half--but they are more difficult to find, and they are not as easily accessible to people.

Mr. James Lunney: How many days would you typically be allowed to fish? There are very short openings, I understand.

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw: Yes. We get between five and six months in a year. Each of those months we're allowed 1,100 pounds. These fish are all delivered alive, and they all pretty well go to Chinatown in Vancouver. It's a delicacy market; therefore, it's a high-priced fish. So each fish has to be treated with great care. These fish all have an enclosed swim bladder, so virtually all of them will suffer damage because of the expansion of gases in the swim bladder. They will be damaged inside. So you have to really look after them. Sometimes you have to use a needle to take the air out. You have to make sure they aren't exposed to temperature changes. It's a very delicate fishery.

Having said all of that, yes, there is a depletion. It may not be as great, but by the same token, these fish are getting to be close to 100 years old, so it's almost like mining. You don't just go out, catch some, and then hope that five years later you're going to see a resurgence of that species.

Mr. James Lunney: It's very curious. I've had some fishermen talk to me recently about this. They say that in spite of the fact that they are forced to fish in a relatively small area--because of weather conditions, or whatever--they are not having trouble catching their quota in the allotted time. They feel that if the stocks were really depleted, they should be having trouble catching their fish.

I'm just wondering, though, about the science here. You're saying there isn't adequate science. Is there adequate science to close the fishery? There are so many boats that are depending on a very small amount of fish, relatively, for a livelihood.

Mr. Terry Glavin: Do you want to go ahead? I'd like to address that.

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw: Sometimes you just have to approach a situation with caution. As I mentioned before, these fish are very old; they are very sedentary. For us, the commercial guys, when we are fishing there is almost a regulatory system that takes place. If we're in an area where the surface water is above a certain temperature, we can no longer fish that area, because it would just kill the fish. They are a wasted fish, you might say; their value would just go down. So we would have to move, whereas to the sports sector it doesn't make any difference. They can continue to get those fish, because they are going to take them home and eat them anyway, or, in ignorance, sports fish for them and let them go, and they'll all die.

We've done experiments with science. Most of the science that has been done in the southern gulf has been done by ourselves on our boat--not the science, but we catch the fish for the science; we work with the science. Yes, I think we should approach the whole closure, or these fish, with extreme caution. Then, maybe, if they find there are enough fish to allow a small fishery, the next thing that scares us is the allocation by DFO. The fish have been given to the sports group, as opposed to, let's say, the commercial group. It's not conservation; it always becomes an allocation issue.

In other words, if we're allowed x number of fish, and if every sportsman who has a licence catches one rockfish a year, that is almost double what the whole commercial quota is on the inside.

Mr. Terry Glavin: It's about four times.

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw: It's a staggering difference in the quantify of fish that this small commercial group takes as opposed to what the sports sector takes. It has always been, through the years, that the cutbacks have always come out of the commercial group, rightfully or wrongfully. Still, it should have been taken as well out of the other user sectors.

Mr. James Lunney: I understand that you referred earlier, Mr. Glavin, to bycatch in other fisheries, where rockfish are picked up in most other fisheries, and that this is probably a significant threat to stocks.

¸ (1430)

Mr. Terry Glavin: Yes, it is. Part of the reason is that it's unknown. For instance, the most recent estimate of the recreational harvest of rockfish in the Strait of Georgia came from 1998. We know that over the last four years we've seen an explosive growth in the charter fleet operations for rockfish.

I just wanted to make a comment on your previous question. You said that if the science isn't adequate, if it isn't good enough, should we really be shutting down a fishery that supports 75 boats in area 4B? The way most people would expect fishery managers to make those difficult decisions in this day and age is actually the other way around. What has been the consensus of conservative fishery management for at least a generation now is that the absence of science should not be used as an excuse for not conserving aquatic resources.

In fact, what I think the public reasonably expects is that before fisheries are prosecuted, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should actually be capable of demonstrating some certainty about the biological implications of that fishery.

Mr. James Lunney: With all due respect, how realistic is that? It would be nice to have science on every issue, but there is so much we don't know. We've been talking at length about the Atlantic salmon in our streams and so on. It's impossible for science to be on top of every issue.

We do depend on fishermen, their catches, and observation. And after all, observation is the basis of science. It begins with observation. Our fishermen on the ground are actually the first step in science. They're the people who are closest to the resource, and that is science in its rudimentary form.

Mr. Terry Glavin: Quite so, and that's precisely why we have encouraged experimental fisheries, particularly in areas 12 and 13, where there appears to be some abundance of rockfish and where fishermen are fishing almost all the rockfish anyway. We have argued for a two-year program of experimental fisheries and a much closer relationship between science and the fishermen.

I agree with you. I just think that we have to remember that we do live in the 21st century. We had an experience ten years ago of using the absence of science, using scientific uncertainty, as an excuse not to close a fishery when there was a preponderance of evidence on the decline and perturbation in the populations of North Atlantic cod. I don't think the public will tolerate that any more. Certainly as a signatory to the United Nations Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, Canada has committed itself to doing exactly the opposite of that.

Mr. James Lunney: May I ask a question? You said that at this conference in Nanaimo attended by first nations industry stakeholders and conservation organizations there was a consensus hammered out. You said that there certainly were some fishermen who didn't support the consensus, besides the Sport Fish Advisory Board. Who did support the consensus?

Mr. Terry Glavin: Who supported it? Off the top of my head, the option A trawl fleet representatives formally endorsed the consensus statement. The sablefish fishery association formally and fully endorsed the consensus statement. The Halibut Fishermen's Association either supported it in principle or fully supported it--I can't remember. The option B trawl fishermen leadership--in fact, he was the first person to stand up at the mike and speak in favour of it. That was ironic, because the consensus called for a moratorium on the prosecution of his fishery, and that's a trawl fishery that occurs within the Strait of Georgia.

Mr. James Lunney: Is that a targeted fishery for rockfish?

Mr. Terry Glavin: No, that's a targeted fishery for anything they happen to catch. There is no stock assessment science for any of the fish they are allowed to catch. There are not identifiable harvestable surpluses of any of the species they do target. There is not a comprehensive observer program that would allow us to understand exactly what those trawlers are taking up out of the Strait of Georgia.

The impact of that trawl fishery on rockfish, ling cod, wolf eels, cabazons, greenlings, red Irish lords, and everything else that's down there is utterly unknown.

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Mr. James Lunney: So what exactly did they agree to? Are these option B fishermen not going to fish at all, or are they just not going to fish rockfish?

Mr. Terry Glavin: This is what we said about the option B fleet. If our position is going to be that we should not be prosecuting fisheries that nobody in DFO has one idea about what is actually being produced by those fisheries, about what the catch of that fishery might be, about what the effect of that fishery might be on the targeted stocks, if we're all going to join together and put our shoulder to that wheel to turn that around, then we better do that. I think the option B trawl fishery realizes that it's extremely vulnerable. The public simply won't tolerate this kind of conduct any more. Also, the option B trawl fishermen want to prosecute a sustainable fishery. They would like DFO to dedicate some resources to stock status science for the species they're targeting.

Mr. James Lunney: I think what I hear you saying is that the people who have agreed to stop this prosecuting of the fishery are people who have a bycatch fishery or those who have no direct interest in the fishery at all. So they're all agreeing the other guy should stop the directed fishery.

Mr. Terry Glavin: Oh no.

Mr. James Lunney: Well, I didn't hear that the rockfish people--with the exception of Mr. de Leeuw--have agreed to lose their livelihood; it's other people on the periphery that seem to be agreeing. I'm hearing some very strong objections, and I wonder if they're not well founded. When you're talking about taking away a person's livelihood, you also need some science to justify that.

Mr. Terry Glavin: No, you don't, and here's why. I'm a citizen of this country, and I own the fish that Valentyn catches. We are all citizens, and ultimately we are owners of this resource. And on this coast particularly, when you look at the people who live around the Strait of Georgia there is no longer any tolerance for the prosecution of fisheries according to 19th century standards of fishery management. It's simply not tolerable. What we want to see is people fishing. We want to see people fishing in ways that are demonstrably, scientifically defensible. I don't think that's personally asking all that much. When we do have a preponderance of scientific evidence that fisheries managers simply can't be provided with the information they need in order to authorize fisheries, I don't know what more evidence you would like.

Mr. James Lunney: Mr. Glavin, by your own admission, you have no method to estimate the biomass over the entire coast of B.C. We cannot recommend sustainable total allowable catches. So you're saying that in the absence of science, you don't have the information there, and yet you're still recommending a total closure.

Mr. Terry Glavin: A moratorium. We are also proposing a rededication of DFO's scientific resources to be able to provide science with the information they need to recommend sustainable fisheries. We also have proposed the participation, particularly of inshore rockfish fishermen and experimental fisheries in an attempt to ensure that science actually does get that information.

Mr. James Lunney: We're all in favour of better science, but this saw works both ways. I think you also need some evidence. I would be interested in looking at the evidence, but it certainly hasn't satisfied everyone that it's conclusive. I think it's very questionable at this stage, at least from the evidence that's been presented. By your own admission, we don't have solid science to justify this.

Anyway, we're all in favour of science, and we need to have a look at it, but I think to say that only your science or your standard of science is going to be acceptable is a little questionable as well, Mr. Glavin.

Mr. Terry Glavin: That's not what I'm saying at all, and it's not my standard of science.

If you were a commercial fisherman, would you be satisfied that you had no idea how many fish you were catching, that you didn't know if you were catching the very last fish out of a particular species or a stock--you had absolutely no idea what kind of impact your fishery was having on the ecosystem you make your living from? Would you find this acceptable?

Mr. James Lunney: I think by your own admission--

¸ (1440)

Mr. Terry Glavin: I don't think most fishermen would.

Mr. James Lunney: —the number of vessels involved is rather small. The livelihoods involved are not huge compared to the other commercial fisheries. These are rather small operations—small boats, small owners. In a declining economy on the coast, I think we have to look seriously at the science before we take away a person's livelihood. There are not a lot of options for the fishermen to go to, and I think you're being a little presumptuous to take it away without some science to justify it--or at least quality science.

Mr. Terry Glavin: What makes you think there's no science to justify it?

All the science suggests two things, as I've tried to make clear. In the south coast of British Columbia, the overwhelming preponderance of scientific evidence is for serial depletion of rockfish fisheries to the extent that we may be looking at 5% of the pre-industrial biomass of rockfish in the Strait of Georgia; that's the scientific evidence. We may be looking at 5% of the pre-1950s biomass of ling cod in the Strait of Georgia; that's the scientific evidence.

Every single year, science makes these analyses, and they make their recommendations. Nothing is done. The situation gets worse. The recreational fishery becomes even more uncontrolled. At what point do you say, “I think we've had enough science”?

Mr. James Lunney: Well, your confidence in your science has just gone up a significant level here. We're hearing now that every single year there are studies that show this and support this. In fact, that's not the evidence that I've heard so far at committee, and I wonder if others have.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Maybe we could bring this to a close. Obviously there are some philosophical differences, but I appreciate my colleague's perspective, because we continue to move from the science being there and the science not being there. I think what we've found as a committee over the last three days is that either the science is not there or it's not being applied. I guess that's the question that begs to be asked.

A quick comment....

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw: I have just one comment to Mr. Lunney.

You said in your statement that other than Mr. de Leeuw, who was willing to give up fishing in agreement with a meeting in October.... The last thing we want to do is to quit fishing. It's our only livelihood. We have no place to go. We're looking to the future at a black hole. We have over $300,000 invested in this fishery. We started this fishery, basically, on this coast ourselves. The last thing we want to do is to say to people, okay, we want to quit fishing. We don't. We have nothing else to turn to. So that is not a fair statement.

That is why I am here with Terry. I don't agree with everything that's going on within the science. I believe there can be a sustainable fishery. Having said that, I also think we should really have a good look at what's down there, and I believe it can be done fairly soon.

I also think that if there are enough fish there to catch, we want to go out there and catch them and not have it be given to other user groups, or at least shared equally, because right now it's just us who are getting kicked in the butt, nobody else.

We are looking at a black hole in the future. There is nothing there for us. It's pretty bleak. So to say that we volunteer to quit fishing.... It's not as simple as that. I don't want to quit fishing.

Mr. James Lunney: I'm sure there are others who feel that way.

Mr. Valentyn de Leeuw: Oh, I'm sure they all do.

Mr. James Lunney: I think there's certainly room for reason to prevail here, but when you're talking about a complete moratorium, you need something to justify that. I certainly will be interested in looking at the evidence and the science.

Mr. Glavin, you say you're going to present the reports. We'll be happy to look at them.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Mr. Glavin, do you have any closing comments?

Mr. Terry Glavin: Well, it's just this. I'm a big fan of fishermen. I like fishermen. I like fish. I actually am a sportsman, and I used to really like catching rockfish. You know, it's gotten to the point where my nine-year-old son can remember the good old days in area 18. There are some significant problems here.

The landed value of inshore rockfish in the south coast of British Columbia has declined to $1.5 million a year. My concern is that the public, as I say, simply will not tolerate this kind of conduct any more. They simply won't, Mr. Lunney.

What we've proposed is experimental fisheries. We've proposed a rededication of science. And for all the disagreements that people have, I'd just like to say that at the end of the day, the one thing we all agree on is that there has to be a rededication of science resources to these issues on this coast. That's one thing everyone agrees on.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Rodger Cuzner): Mr. Glavin, we're just completing three days of testimony. If there's a common thread that runs through the testimony, it would echo your concern.

We've had three excellent days. In closing here, I'd like to thank our staff, our techs, our interpreters, clerical staff, and researchers, who put in long, arduous.... And I'm really looking forward to Alan's report. He's been inundated with information.

Anyway, for the people who came out and took part in the hearings, we're very grateful. Hopefully we can make a contribution, or at least an impact.

I'm going to ask the committee to stay, but this concludes our hearings.