FOPO Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES PÊCHES ET DES OCÉANS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, February 22, 2000

• 1330

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.)): Our first witness this afternoon is with the T. Buck Suzuki Foundation, Mr. David Lane. David, the floor is yours. We have to keep it down to half an hour to stay on schedule, so could you keep your opening remarks reasonably brief so we can go to questions?

Welcome. Thank you for coming.

Mr. David Lane (Research Director, T. Buck Suzuki Foundation): Thank you very much.

I wanted to begin by stating that we're an organization whose whole focus is protection of wild salmon. Our membership of about 4,000 mostly comes from the commercial fishing industry, and because of that they're extremely concerned about the state of wild salmon stocks. We're often confused with the David Suzuki Foundation. We're different organizations, though we do work together on some issues. Our organization is named after a commercial fisherman whose name was Tatsuro Suzuki. He was one of the first working on salmon habitat protection on the Fraser River many decades ago. We thought it was a fitting name, since our focus is on the membership in the commercial fishing industry. His nickname was Buck, hence T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation.

We come here today with many concerns about the impacts of salmon aquaculture on wild salmon, but our message is not that they are completely incompatible. We believe that salmon aquaculture as it currently is being practised is not regulated enough to ensure the protection of our wild salmon stocks, stocks that are in great trouble at the moment. We do not want to see any further impacts on those threatened stocks.

I went to the Department of Fisheries policy on ocean management when I was thinking about presenting here, and lo and behold I found that three key principles are the foundation of their ocean management policy: sustainable development, integrated management, and the precautionary approach. I believe that on salmon aquaculture the Department of Fisheries is in violation of all three of those principles.

First is sustainable development. They define it themselves as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs, and I believe very strongly on the evidence, particularly in other jurisdictions where wild salmon have had major impacts, that if we're looking in the long term at future generations who will be depending on wild salmon, we do not have the safeguards in place to make sure our wild stocks are not threatened.

• 1335

As far as integrated management is concerned, it's defined by DFO as transparent decision-making developed by stakeholders to integrate planning and implementation of activities. There has been absolutely no consultation with affected stakeholders in the development of salmon aquaculture and no transparency whatsoever.

As far as the precautionary approach is concerned, DFO defines it simply as erring on the side of caution, and we believe that is not being done and should be done.

I want to point out that as far as the economics of salmon aquaculture are concerned there is a considerable amount of economy generated through this new industry, but I also want to counterpose it with the economics of the wild salmon fishery. And let's be clear, it's not just the fishery itself. In terms of wild salmon, it has often been misconstrued as being the value of what fishermen land at the dock. It's not. It's the processed value of wild salmon, which is double that amount, a vibrant sports fishing industry that compounds extraordinarily more than that, and it also includes a first nations commercial fishery and a first nations sustenance fishery, all together well over $1 billion to the B.C. economy.

In terms of key threats, the two I want to focus on, although we're concerned about many other things, are the potential threat of disease transferred to wild salmon and impacts from escaped farmed salmon.

On the first, disease transfer, it has often been stated that there isn't evidence of that happening in British Columbia. First of all, we firmly believe that the research is not being done to give us the answer to that question, again, evoking the precautionary principle. But secondly, in every jurisdiction where there are wild salmon and aquaculture, whether we're talking about Norway, Scotland, or New Brunswick, there have been major problems with diseases and parasites, to the extent that in Norway 40 systems have a parasite whereby they will basically have to poison the river to get rid of it. We believe this is not tolerable and that it is too big of a threat, and the threat still exists as long as farms are open-net cages that can have contact not with just adults but also juveniles that are passing through. There has been no effort by the Department of Fisheries to ensure that farms are not sited on migratory routes of salmon, and they migrate both incoming and outgoing, and we're very concerned about the juveniles that are going out to open ocean.

As far as escaped farmed salmon are concerned, you have probably heard testimony about this problem, probably focused mostly on Atlantics, which now—although we were told they would never be a problem, would never find themselves in the wild—are finding themselves in our wild streams.

But I want to point to a second problem: there are also farmed Pacific chinook salmon. Pacific chinook salmon are also escaping. The Ministry of the Environment originally said this should not be tolerated, having these able to escape in huge numbers, because they absolutely can breed with wild salmon. They are the same species. There is no program the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has to even identify if they are getting into wild salmon streams. There is no parallel program to what they call Atlantic Watch. There is nothing to say they aren't escaping, aren't interbreeding, aren't finding themselves in large numbers in our streams, because nobody is looking. It's a bit trickier to look because they're the same species, but anybody who knows a little bit about salmon can identify what a farmed salmon looks like by a rather ratty tail compared to a wild salmon.

Interbreeding will necessarily mean weakening of the genetic stock. They are not the same. They are not from the same systems. Farmed salmon are bred for domestic purposes, with different criteria for the genetic stock.

What's our answer? We have many recommendations, but the three I want to focus on are, one, we need desperately more research by both the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the provincial government into the impacts on wild salmon. The work has not been done so that we have the information to make informed decisions about how to regulate this industry, what the impacts in their total and long term will be, and until we have that research we are proceeding in a very wrong direction.

• 1340

Secondly, we need to be moving to closed contained technologies that will get away from the problems of net pens. Net pens will always have escapes. Seals can bite their way in. There will be predators that do damage. Storms will do damage. There is no way to guarantee that there won't be escaped farmed salmon. The only way to take care of that problem is to have them in closed containment facilities.

Lastly, we have to have a policy that gets net cages off migration routes of wild salmon. There is neither a provincial or a federal policy as such.

With that, I have many other things I'd like to say, but I'd rather just have some questions and discussions.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Lane, for an informative presentation.

Mr. Stoffer to start.

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Lane.

You gave evidence about chinook escaping. Can you give locations of where those farms might be?

Mr. David Lane: There's a variety. I've visited one, for example. I've been on a farm for some days. It was on the west coast of Vancouver Island. So I've seen the conditions first-hand.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Whereabouts would that be, sir?

Mr. David Lane: That one was in Clayoquot Sound. There are chinook streams in the vicinity. And I might add on this issue that there was a parliamentary committee in Norway two years ago looking into the problem of wild salmon impacts. Their conclusion, in the majority, was there is no compatibility between farmed pens in inlets where there are going to be major salmon runs. Their recommendation was to just ban them in those inlets. Let it happen elsewhere. Ban them in those circumstances. We agree with that. That would be a good policy for British Columbia.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: In point two of your key recommendations you indicated a rapid phase-in of closed containment systems. We've heard that this technology is just starting to happen now in terms of the closed system. How fast would your organization like to see this? In all probability, as the technology is just emerging, as we've heard this morning, how fast would you like to see it?

Mr. David Lane: I would say five years. We're having debates about that, but basically we would like to make it possible and practical for the industry to change. We don't want to put them out of business by having some policy that makes it impossible to change, but change is what we want to see.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: And lastly, is your organization working with, for example, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans or the minister of fisheries and oceans here in the province, in terms of trying to come up with some concrete plans for the future of the farming industry here?

Mr. David Lane: I will say that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans does a lot of consultation on fisheries management and has even broadened that to include some conservation groups. I applaud them for that. But on salmon aquaculture there has been absolutely no consultation with affected groups or concerned groups and no opportunity to have that kind of discussion.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins (Delta—South Richmond, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

David, we've had two biology professors here, one from Victoria and one from Vancouver. Their position was that the basic research hadn't been done and that at this point it's impossible on some of these aspects to make definitive statements about either negative impacts or neutral impacts of fish farming—that fundamentally the research has not been done. Would you concur with that assessment?

Mr. David Lane: Very strongly. This is a new industry. There are good opportunities. But the research is not done on wild salmon impacts in particular. There are impacts on other species, marine mammals in particular, but as far as wild salmon are concerned, we need an immediate and extensive research program by the Department of Fisheries. They have good staff for doing that and yet they have completely shirked their responsibility.

Mr. John Cummins: My understanding is that closed containment pens, or that technology, is used elsewhere, I think in the southern United States, for catfish and that kind of stuff. Are you aware of any of that?

• 1345

Mr. David Lane: I know what you're speaking of as far as the southern U.S. is concerned. It's a technology that we believe can be used here, can be developed and put into place.

I would give you an analogy. Just over ten years ago, a number of concerned environmental groups, including ours, went to the provincial government and said, it is intolerable to have the level of dioxins coming from pulp mills; we need a different technology to do that. Industry screamed. They said we can't possibly do that; it's too expensive; we can't convert. In fact, a ten-year plan was put in place by both the federal and provincial governments to get rid of what is a deadly toxin. In fact, industry has complied, and almost all pulp mills have converted to different technology.

Mr. John Cummins: Do you distinguish between the land-based closed containment system and one that would be floating?

Mr. David Lane: No. Actually, our point simply is to have no impact on wild salmon. If it's enclosed in the ocean context, that will do that; if it's on land.... In both circumstances, you have to deal with waste and other potential influences.

A closed facility on land can cause a problem to a nearby stream, for example, if precautions aren't put in place. They're getting their water supply from somewhere.

Mr. John Cummins: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Sekora.

Mr. Lou Sekora (Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

First, when you mentioned that there were three violations by DFO, are you talking about federal-provincial, or are you talking about one in particular?

Mr. David Lane: I'm saying, for the federal government, the Department of Fisheries, their stated oceans policy of sustainable development, integrated management, and the precautionary principle—they're violating all three of their own policies—

Mr. Lou Sekora: As far as farm fish are concerned?

Mr. David Lane: —as far as farm fish are concerned.

Mr. Lou Sekora: I didn't think we had approved farm fishing yet, as far as the federal government is concerned. It's the provincial government that is doing the licensing right now.

Mr. David Lane: The federal government is heavily involved in regulating salmon aquaculture. It's a joint jurisdiction. The federal government has been putting their stamp of approval on the industry since the beginning.

Mr. Lou Sekora: So we approve the farm fishing. We'd be in violation. Is that what you're saying?

Mr. David Lane: That's right. The Department of Fisheries has to approve the use of salmon in the ocean.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Okay.

On another thing you mentioned, the disease in Norway, the disease in Prince Edward Island and a couple of other places, it's not that rapid here in B.C. Are we ahead of time, behind the times, or do you think a few years from now it's going to catch up with us? What do you foresee?

Mr. David Lane: Absolutely, in a few years it will catch up with us, as it has in each of those jurisdictions, where previously they said this is not a problem, and then lo and behold a major disease hit New Brunswick, with its source being probably Norway, because eggs and smolts are being transported from country to country.

That will happen yet again. There aren't safeguards to make sure that won't happen in British Columbia.

Mr. Lou Sekora: If there were farm fish and wild fish and everything was put to work, how would you do it differently to make sure both of them survive, or do you think it's impossible?

Mr. David Lane: As I was saying, I believe this one very clear measure of making sure they're not in open-net cages would go a long way to ensuring that wild salmon are protected and the two can exist at the same time on the B.C. coast, and actually there could be some cross-benefits.

Mr. Lou Sekora: I have one last question.

Everybody has been bringing up this netting. They say netting, netting. Some of them say, out on the land, because with netting you get escapes.

Let me mention this to you, and I may be totally way out on this one. What about stainless steel wire mesh instead of the ropes and the different things the seals and everything can eat through? What if they're held in a stainless steel wire kind of thing instead of cloth or rope?

Mr. David Lane: I've never heard it proposed.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Do you see any obstacles?

Mr. David Lane: What comes to mind is that—

Mr. Lou Sekora: I guess it would be very expensive. That's one.

• 1350

Mr. David Lane: Yes, and the flexibility of a net allows you to raise it, move it, and clean it.

Mr. Lou Sekora: I'm talking about one that would be stainless steel wire meshing, that would be the type where you could move it around. I guess you'd have to have somebody come up with some way of doing it, but I wonder if that's another possibility. If there was, would there still be the danger to the salmon?

Mr. David Lane: Again, the main point is that as long as there's movement of ocean water in and out of a cage, you have a disease transfer problem, a parasite problem, and you potentially have a problem of juvenile wild salmon simply swimming in and getting gobbled up.

Mr. Lou Sekora: On the disease you're talking about...you're closing dams and you can readily see this disease. But surely to God, there must be some disease in the wild fish that is not detectable because it's so few and far between from one to the other.

Mr. David Lane: There is disease in wild salmon. There are occasionally problems on particular runs that get into disease problems. It happens when they get too stressed out. That is a natural occurrence.

What we're saying is that there should not be anything beyond natural occurrence, and there certainly should be no threat of any new diseases being brought into this jurisdiction.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Sekora.

Are there any other questions?

Mr. Lane, on the research side, you're saying, and a lot of others have said, that research hasn't been done here. But has it been done elsewhere? Is there research from Norway, Chile, Scotland, or Ireland that is accessible?

Mr. David Lane: There is, and one of the problematic things is that during what was an actual provincial environmental review here, that information was not brought forward. As a matter of fact, the people representing the Department of Fisheries in that process did not bring forward available information from other jurisdictions on impacts on wild salmon, nor did they bring any of their staff whose expertise is wild salmon protection. The people they brought to that environmental review were solely people working with aquaculture.

The Chair: Could you, by chance, give us a list of some of those studies? Would it be possible? Not now, not off the top of your head, but could you forward that to us so that we could access them?

Mr. David Lane: I certainly could do that. I will flag to you that one of the other presenters this afternoon, Laurie MacBride from the Georgia Strait Alliance, has that appended to her brief as part of her presentation.

The Chair: Okay. Anything you could give us as follow-up would be helpful, or name some other people who maybe we should be talking to within DFO.

Mr. David Lane: It probably has been pointed out to you that Simon Fraser University and some other co-sponsors are having an event on March 2, 2000, that includes some international experts on these impacts, and some very interesting information will come out of that forum.

The Chair: Is that in Saskatoon?

Mr. David Lane: No, that's a forum that's happening here in Vancouver on March 2, 2000.

The Chair: There's one going on in March, too, in Saskatoon, isn't there?

Are there any further questions?

Thank you, Mr. Lane, for your presentation.

Mr. David Lane: Thank you for the opportunity.

The Chair: We'll turn next to the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association—I believe there are five people—which is headed up by Anne McMullin.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: What about the second one?

The Chair: No, the second one, Tom Bird with the Sport Fishing Institute of B.C., has cancelled.

We have Anne McMullin, Ward Griffioen, Dr. Brad Hicks, Dr. David Groves, and Stephen F. Cross. Welcome, folks.

Anne, I guess you're leading off.

Ms. Anne McMullin (B.C. Salmon Farmers Association): Thank you very much.

Our other colleague, Stephen Cross, is supposed to be here. He is coming over from Vancouver Island by ferry, and the ferry has been delayed. I hope he will be able to join us before the hour is up.

• 1355

The Chair: We found a solution to that, Anne, in Prince Edward Island. We put in a bridge.

Voices: Oh, oh!

The Chair: Go ahead.

Ms. Anne McMullin: Good afternoon. Thank you very much. My name is Anne McMullin. I am the executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association.

I would like to introduce my colleagues. Dr. David Groves of Sea Spring Salmon Farm was one of the pioneers of salmon farming in B.C., Dr. Brad Hicks of Taplow Feeds is one of B.C.'s leading aquaculture veterinarians, and Ward Griffioen of West Coast Fishculture operates a freshwater fish-rearing facility near Powell River.

My industry colleagues will be making their own presentations this afternoon but have agreed to be on hand to answer any specific or technical questions you may have during the hour.

I must say I'm pleased the committee has come all the way to British Columbia to look at this issue. I trust the experience of visiting a west coast salmon farm, of meeting the men and women who work in the salmon aquaculture industry, and of seeing the communities that rely on this industry has provided you with an important perspective.

You're aware by now that salmon aquaculture in B.C. is among the most intensely studied, heavily regulated, and acutely scrutinized industries in Canada. I would like to say we wouldn't have it any other way.

Increasingly the salmon farming sector in B.C. has a positive story to tell. We are currently working in close partnership with the provincial government, coastal communities, first nations, and other marine industries and environmentalists to implement a new regulatory framework for salmon farming in B.C. When those regulations are in place, B.C. will have among the most progressive and inclusive legislations for salmon aquaculture in the world.

At the same time, B.C. salmon farmers continue to invest in new technologies and practices that have drastically improved our production efficiencies and our environmental performance. For instance, improvements over the past decade mean B.C. salmon farms release about one-third of the organic waste to the environment today that we did ten years ago, despite a 300% increase in production. In addition, salmon farmers have spent tens of millions of dollars to upgrade net systems to reduce escapes. We have built new value-added processing plants to increase the socioeconomic benefits associated with salmon farming and to enhance synergies between aquaculture and the traditional capture fisheries.

The industry has also made enormous advancements in the environmentally sound management of disease. The use of vaccines and advanced husbandry practices have drastically reduced the use of antibiotics in salmon farming to a level that is far below any other agricultural industry in the world.

I'm sure other representatives of our industry have told you salmon farmers have an inherent interest in maintaining the health of the environment around their farms. Without clean and healthy growing conditions, we can't produce the high-quality product our international market demands. As a result, investments in new technology and new practices not only serve to improve our production efficiencies, but they also improve our environmental performance. The two really go hand in glove in this business, such that B.C.'s marine environment is sure to benefit from future advancements in aquaculture technology and practices.

The salmon farming industry has also made significant strides to foster partnerships with native and non-native communities in B.C. We have worked hard to educate British Columbians about our industry, our environmental practices, and our prospects for the future. In fact a recent Mark Trend poll found that British Columbians support the expansion of the B.C. salmon farming industry by a margin of five to one. More than 70% of citizens believe salmon farming is an environmentally sound and sustainable industry, and 85% agree it's an important part of the province's economic future.

B.C. salmon farmers are active proponents of salmon conservation in B.C. Individual companies and the industry as a whole regularly contribute money and expertise to support fisheries enhancement and habitat restoration projects. We have also worked hard to build partnerships with other fisheries stakeholders. Our association recently helped found the B.C. Seafood Alliance, a coalition of west coast fisheries and aquaculture organizations that have come together to promote the conservation, sustainable use, and production of seafood resources in B.C.

• 1400

Our industry is creating a world-class food product that is in demand around the world, while generating much-needed jobs, capital investment, and economic diversification in B.C.'s coastal communities. As you know, our industry's full potential in B.C. has yet to be realized. At a modest rate of growth, B.C.'s salmon farmers have the potential to create 20,000 new jobs and $1 billion in sales annually within a decade.

As I said earlier, B.C.'s salmon aquaculture industry does have a very good story to tell. We have an ongoing multi-stakeholder process to implement some of the most progressive regulations for salmon aquaculture in the world. Of course that process has been informed by years of scientific inquiry and practical experience. As an industry, we have invested tens of millions of dollars in new technologies and practices that have drastically improved our environmental performance. As B.C.'s salmon farming sector continues to grow and flourish, these investments and the environmental benefits they create will only continue to grow.

Finally, salmon farmers have won the trust and respect of many British Columbians. As an industry that operates on a public resource, we fully understand and accept our responsibility to the people of B.C., we accept the often intense scrutiny our activities attract as a part of doing business in British Columbia, and we take seriously our responsibility for maintaining and enhancing the long-term health and productivity of B.C.'s marine environment.

I'd like to leave a final thought with you today. A great many accusations have been made over the years about the impact salmon farms may have on wild salmon stocks or the health of the marine environment. You may have heard many of these accusations over the past week, and you'll likely hear more before the hearings are complete. Marine and fisheries sciences are very complex, such that these issues are wide open for interpretation and, I believe, manipulation. But I'd like to leave you today with some key facts and scientific findings that really put this issue into perspective.

I'd like to remind you that salmon aquaculture has been extensively studied in B.C. over the past decade. The most recent and most exhaustive of these studies was the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office's salmon aquaculture review, wrapped up in August 1997. After 18 months of consultation and 1,800 pages of findings, the SAR found salmon farming as practised in B.C. poses a low risk to the province's marine environment and to wild fish stocks. None of the accusations of environmental degradation brought against the salmon farming industry were found to be substantiated in science.

I should add that three previous B.C. government reviews, undertaken between 1987 and 1994, reached the same conclusion. In fact scientific findings since 1997 have overwhelmingly confirmed the findings of the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office.

I would like to bring to the committee's attention at this time a scientific, peer-reviewed paper published in the international science journal Aquaculture just last week. It was authored by three eminent Canadian fisheries scientists: Dr. Donald Noakes, Dr. Richard Beamish, and Dr. Michael Kent. It investigated the causes of the sharp decline of B.C.'s salmon stocks in the 1990s.

The internationally recognized experts concluded that:

The most likely reasons for the decline in Pacific salmon stocks include a combination of climate change, overfishing, and freshwater habitat destruction.

And that climate change is a key, perhaps dominant, factor.

In addition, Drs. Noakes, Beamish, and Kent concluded that salmon farming in B.C. has not had a significant impact and that:

The combined evidence indicates that salmon farming, as currently practised in British Columbia, poses a low risk to wild salmon stocks particularly when compared to other potential factors.

This independent, peer-reviewed study by three of Canada's most respected fisheries scientists confirms the findings of countless studies that went before. At the end of the day, all of the scientific evidence points in one direction. Salmon farms have made no demonstrable contribution to the decline of wild Pacific salmon stocks and pose no significant risk to the future survival of wild stocks.

I should add that Drs. Noakes, Beamish, and Kent studied all of the various ways in which salmon farming might affect wild salmon. That is, they reviewed the genetic, ecological, and disease-related accusations of our critics and found little or no basis for these accusations in science.

• 1405

What the three scientists did flag, however, is the fact that B.C. salmon enhancement programs actually present a greater genetic risk to wild salmon stocks than salmon farming. The research paper concludes that hatchery programs have “resulted in significant ecological and genetic interactions with wild salmon” and “have tended to reduce the genetic diversity and result in the replacement of wild salmon by hatchery fish”.

It's interesting to note that Canadian and U.S. hatcheries release two billion juvenile Pacific salmon into the wild each year. These fish are known to spread disease, as was outlined in the paper, and they are in fact treated with the same suite of antibiotics as farmed salmon, although with far fewer veterinary and regulatory controls, yet nobody is calling for an end to salmon enhancement in B.C.

At this time I'd like to table for the committee's consideration the research paper included in the other body of documents that I have tabled. I think this study represents the most current scientific assessment of the environmental impact of salmon aquaculture in B.C. It clearly supports the position of the Canadian and B.C. governments that salmon farming is an environmentally sustainable industry and a legitimate user of the marine resource.

In fact, this conclusion was also recently recognized by the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization or NASCO, of which Canada is a member. NASCO and the international salmon farming industry signed a historic cooperation agreement this month that acknowledges, and I quote:

Salmon farming has the potential to be complementary and beneficial to wild salmon conservation.

The Canadian aquaculture industry looks forward to working with NASCO to help achieve its wild salmon conservation goals while enhancing sustainable salmon aquaculture in the north Atlantic. Both parties have agreed to investigate ways in which salmon farmers can contribute to the conservation of wild stocks through research partnerships and the application of private sector resources and expertise.

In fact, one of my colleagues, Ward Griffioen, has tabled a presentation this afternoon about how the knowledge, expertise, and technological innovation of B.C.'s salmon farming industry can be applied to improve salmon enhancement programs in B.C. and throughout Canada.

There is a growing scientific and popular consensus out there that salmon farming is not only not part of the problem where wild salmon conservation is concerned, but it is an important part of the solution. By enhancing the production of fresh farmed salmon in B.C., we can alleviate fishing pressures on remaining wild stocks while creating well-paid, full-time jobs for displaced fisheries workers. At the same time, our industry's expertise, knowledge, and resources can be brought to bear to reverse the declines of B.C.'s wild salmon populations.

We are a vibrant, technologically advanced, capital- and knowledge-intensive industry that has tremendous economic potential in the province of B.C. The preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that salmon farming is an environmentally sound and sustainable industry that can contribute in a meaningful way to wild salmon conservation.

Last, I would like to say that I urge the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans to add its voice to the growing number of Canadians who want a flourishing aquaculture industry in Canada.

Before we answer any of the questions you may have, I'd like to refer to a number of the documents that I have tabled with the clerk. These documents include statements and reports that have been explicitly requested by the committee, as well as documentation that refutes some of the accusations made by our critics.

In particular, we have tabled a number of documents that refute claims made by previous witnesses about the transfer of disease from farmed to wild fish, particularly at Scott Cove in 1993 and 1999. We have provided copies of the findings of Washington State's Pollution Control Hearings Board, which found that salmon farming does not pose a risk to the environment or to native salmon stocks. We have also tabled a description of the Atlantic salmon watch program in B.C., through which the impacts of escaped Atlantic farmed salmon are monitored.

We have also tabled a report from the institute of marine research in Norway, which concludes that the spread of a parasite, Gyrodactylus, which eventually led the Norwegian government to poison a number of rivers in that country, was caused by the wild salmon enhancement program. The disease outbreak has never been linked to salmon aquaculture, despite repeated claims to the contrary here in Canada.

• 1410

Finally, we've also tabled two financial reports in response to requests by committee members. They include a review of the world supply and demand for farmed salmon as well as sample payables for a major farm company in B.C.

Thank you once again for your attention. My colleagues and I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. McMullin. The information you've tabled will be made available to committee members as early as possible.

Starting with questioning, then, Mr. Duncan.

Thank you very much for your presentation, by the way.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a few questions here.

The Chair: John, I might say just before you start that we do have a little more time so we'll give you more time.

Mr. John Duncan: Okay.

I'll go first to the document from Norway. It indicates that the total amount of antibiotics used is far below what is used in Norwegian agriculture and is one-fiftieth of the amount used in 1988. This is as of 1996. Do you have any idea of how their current usage would compare to British Columbia's current usage, on an equivalent basis?

Ms. Anne McMullin: I can refer to Dr. Hicks on that, but I will just say that it has gone down dramatically in British Columbia. I think that's due to what has been probably one of the biggest benefits to salmon farming, the development of vaccines, as well as to improvements in animal husbandry and in feed.

I don't know, Brad, if you want to specifically address that question.

Dr. Brad Hicks (Representative, B.C. Salmon Farmers Association): To tell you the truth, I don't know exactly what the present numbers are, but I would concur with Anne that there has been a dramatic decrease and that the decrease is indeed primarily a result of two things.

One is the advent of vaccines, which is, quite frankly, the same as it is for man and other animal species that we rear—although I guess “rearing man” would be a difficult term to accept. In essence, the health management of man and other animals has now been applied to fish, and as a result there has been quite a dramatic decrease.

The other issue has been that this industry, significant salmon farming, is really only about 25 years old, and it has taken the first 10 to 15 years to train staff on how to basically apply husbandry techniques to these animals. As staff learn how to rear these animals, that of course decreases stresses and difficult conditions for the animals, so the incidence of disease is also decreased for that reason. And as disease decreases, so a disease of animal products decreases.

I think there's one other major issue. When salmon farming started, our only source of eggs was from the wild. Wild salmon—as I believe Mr. Lane mentioned—do carry their own set of diseases, their own suite of diseases. Originally, we took salmon eggs from the wild and we screened them, although our techniques were not perfect. In reality, what has happened, as we now take the salmon out of farms, is that the farm fish actually carry much less of a pathogen burden than wild fish. We actually have a paper to that effect. As a result, the actual fish going into farms now are much cleaner, if you will, than they were 15 to 20 years ago.

All of those things have contributed to a decrease in the amount of antibiotic use.

Ms. Anne McMullin: As well, the use of antibiotics and vaccines is heavily regulated by four different agencies of government. The Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and in particular, Dr. Joanne Constantine, does have all the records and numbers on the amount of antibiotic use, and I can certainly endeavour to have her give that information to the committee.

Mr. John Duncan: Speaking of the same doctor, Joanne Constantine, in her correspondence she refers to ISA, I believe, on the east coast, as being something that occurs naturally in a marine environment. What does that statement actually mean?

Ms. Anne McMullin: David, do you want to answer?

The Chair: Mr. Groves.

Dr. David Groves (Representative, B.C. Salmon Farmers Association): I'm sure Brad Hicks could contribute to that as well.

I am not an expert on ISA in Atlantic salmon on the east coast, but it appears that it is something that is intrinsic or that the susceptible species is probably Atlantic salmon, whether wild or domesticated. I don't think all the vectors have been found. So far it doesn't appear that those vectors appear in the Pacific Ocean, so there's no great probability that it will transfer here. We have diseases on the Pacific coast that are not on the east coast, like IHN virus.

• 1415

To me, that statement means—and Brad can elaborate—that it is an intrinsic organism in the environment being carried by something. That “something” is probably Atlantic salmon or perhaps some other species, like Atlantic herring or some other species like that. It's at a very low level, so some incidence appears sooner or later.

The Chair: Dr. Hicks or Dr. Groves, do either of you have communication or ongoing discussions with some of the people at Atlantic Veterinary College who are working on this issue?

Dr. Brad Hicks: Yes, as matter of fact, until a few months ago, I was responsible for managing farms in the state of Maine, which of course is on the east coast and is very near and dear. At one time, I was actually offered a position to teach at the vet college in P.E.I., so I know all those gentlemen quite well.

Anyway, I'd like to just clear up one thing that David Lane mentioned in his talk. He talked about ISA being a threat because of the import of smolts. Well, as it turns out, we have not imported any smolts from Europe—never—as a salmon farming industry.

Canada has had something called the fish health protection regulations, despite the fact we're told there is no regulation. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans won a legal mandate that has specifically to do with salmon farming, and that is the fish health protection regulations. Those regulations have been in place all of my professional career, which is over twenty years. Only eggs are imported, and before they are, they must be disinfected. They must come from what's called a specific pathogen-free source. So there's actually a tremendous amount of control on the movement of fish eggs amongst various geographic jurisdictions.

Mr. John Duncan: Okay, thank you.

Your document, Anne, is about the drastically reduced use of antibiotics in salmon farming to a level that is far below any other agricultural industry in the world. How do you define that? Is that based on biomass produced or the amount used per biomass produced? Is that how you're defining that?

Ms. Anne McMullin: That's right. Brad can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe in other agriculture industries they use about seven to eight times more than they do in aquaculture.

Mr. John Duncan: I'd like to get on to your presentation, Ward, because you talk a lot about work that you've done in Alaska.

The Chair: Before you do, John, are we coming to that later in the day?

Ms. Anne McMullin: No.

The Chair: All right, good.

Go ahead, John.

Mr. John Duncan: It's very interesting. Were you one of the key people involved basically in determining the strategy as to how Alaska went in the direction it did?

Mr. Ward Griffioen (B.C. Salmon Farmers Association): In 1979, I was invited to go up there, and basically I was centred out of southeast Alaska, initially with the fishermen's groups in the ocean ranching program that is in place in southeast Alaska now and is fairly successful.

Mr. John Duncan: You talked a lot about initiatives in Canada, and I noticed you were talking about an aggressive enhancement program in Theodosia Inlet. Will that be based on the Alaskan model?

Mr. Ward Griffioen: Yes, we put this product proposal together, and it now has received the official blessing of our fisheries minister. It is based on a community effort that includes fishermen and first nations people who started a program much like it. It will depend on its success and how we can cooperate with fisheries biologists on this.

Mr. John Duncan: As a committee, we've heard time and time again about the abandonment of the Smith Inlet and Rivers Inlet areas of the province in terms of the fact that major salmon producers are hardly producing at all. I was wondering if you were familiar with those areas and if you had any thoughts as to whether your concepts would be very appropriate concepts there.

• 1420

Mr. Ward Griffioen: Yes, I know the problem in the whole area, and I think we should take a really hard look, first of all, at how to get eggs, and secondly, at how to produce smolts for these areas and then release them aggressively.

I've been most impressed by the returns in Alaska. Regardless, I know we have problems out there in the ocean, but it's beyond me how to figure those problems out. But hatchery production has consistently supplied fish to the fleet there to such an extent.... I did some consulting in Prince William Sound, and I used to run into one of the fishermen. I asked what percentage of his catch was hatchery fish, and he said 100%. If we say that in B.C., they say to shut down the hatcheries.

If you want to provide a fleet with a product, then you have to put some seed in the ocean. My suggestion with the Rivers Inlet fiasco would be to immediately start holding brood stock to develop egg sources, and to then rear the egg sources and stock to do some major enhancement. I think the technology is around, and we know how to do this.

Mr. John Duncan: Thank you. Lastly, I'd like to go to Dr. Hicks' presentation. You talk about the closed system. There has obviously been a lot said on that subject, but maybe you could just expand on that section for us. What you're saying is that a closed system does not exist, number one, and I think we'd like to know more than that.

Dr. Brad Hicks: I'm actually doing a presentation separately.

Mr. John Duncan: Oh, are you?

Dr. Brad Hicks: Yes.

I don't understand how your committee works, but at this point I was asked to support Anne with technical information. If it's okay with you, I would sooner—

The Chair: Dr. Hicks, could we just hold that question until later?

Dr. Brad Hicks: Absolutely.

The Chair: On Mr. Griffioen's brief, we didn't get his read into the record, but it is available for your reading.

Mr. John Duncan: Well, I do have one question for Dr. Hicks in this section. We were talking about vaccinating hatchery fish as well as aquaculture fish. Is that the main exposure? Are they both a single exposure?

Ms. Anne McMullin: Are you asking whether hatchery fish and farmed salmon are both vaccinated?

Mr. John Duncan: Is it done on an equivalent basis?

Ms. Anne McMullin: No, farmed salmon are vaccinated against disease. The hatchery programs don't use vaccinations, but they do use antibiotics.

Dr. Brad Hicks: That's mostly correct.

In agriculture, if you buy day-old chicks that come out of a hatchery, they're pretty clean and they are vaccinated. They then go out to a farm. In the old days, when they went to a farm that was open, they would be exposed to pathogens from pigeons and sparrows and everything else.

With our farm fish, when we put our farm fish in the ocean, they're very clean because they come from a very clean system. Now, that's in contrast to hatcheries that are in the public enhancement systems, which are basically open systems. Almost all of them are supplied with river water, whereas we're all on well water, so we have a very clean system.

We screen all the fish. All the eggs and all the materials going to our hatchery are disease-screened. In the wild, that's not the case. In the wild, the reproductive products from the brood fish go into the hatcheries with only very minor screening. They're then in an open system, so they're constantly exposed to disease.

Disease is quite common amongst young animals no matter what animal you're talking about. It's also quite common in both federal and provincial hatcheries, but it's not an unholy situation. Disease is actually quite common in all wild animals, so it's a balance issue.

• 1425

This inference that somehow farm fish are laden with disease or very strong vectors to disease simply has been proven to be inaccurate time and time again.

I originally came to British Columbia as a provincial fish health veterinarian. We did a study at that time in which we looked at diseases in returning spawning wild salmon and at diseases on fish farms. Well, really we looked at the presence of pathogens or bacteria. We didn't really look at disease, because that's a slightly different issue. Anyway, when we did that study, we did find out that wild fish had more pathogens and had higher burdens, and that is normal because wild fish come from a heterogeneous environment, a very much mixed-bag environment, whereas farm fish come from a very homogeneous environment or almost sterile environment.

When I was a pathologist at the University of Guelph, I used to do a lot of wildlife biology. There, we found exactly the same thing. Farm animals had a list of ten or twelve diseases, and it would be the same every time. Yet wildlife, because it came from a very different and more heterogeneous environment, had a much greater variety of diseases.

So for me, this is not a surprising issue at all. It's not surprising that the farm fish are cleaner. It's not surprising that their diseases are less numerous and better managed, because you can manage them. You can't manage disease in the wild in the same way. So as for this idea that somehow farm fish threaten wild fish, if really the truth were known, it's quite frankly the other way around.

When we put our fish out in the ocean, they are then exposed to all the pathogens that live not only in the salmon in the ocean, but these pathogens also live in herring, eelpout, and all sorts of other species. Many of these pathogens are not species specific. So I think it's important that you somehow twist your head around to appreciate that what we put in the ocean is clean, and that the ocean itself has quite a heterogeneous bag.

Salmon farming is only 25 years old. Diseases developed with animals over time. As the glaciers retreated and the salmon populated the rivers, they brought with them their pathogens. It's not like salmon farmers invent pathogens.

The Chair: Dr. Hicks, I think it's much the same thing as disease in the hog industry. There's a lot of breeding stock now coming out of disease-free barns. If you put them in a barn that isn't also in the disease-free system, you are in big trouble. Relating it to my agriculture experience, it's similar.

Dr. Brad Hicks: Yes, and that's the specific pathogen-free pig-rearing system, and that's absolutely true if you don't maintain it. However, if you were to take those piglets and vaccinate them for those same common diseases, you could rear them in an open system. That's essentially what we do as fish farmers.

The Chair: In fact, that's what we do.

Mr. Stoffer, and then Mr. Sekora.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you very much for your presentation. It was good to hear the other side of this as well.

In your report, you say almost 70% or 80% of British Columbians support this.

Ms. Anne McMullin: That's right.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: What would that breakdown be in aboriginal communities?

Ms. Anne McMullin: When a poll is done by an organization like Mark Trend, it is certainly a representative sample. They didn't specifically target the first nations community, but I would also say many first nations are supportive of aquaculture and are in fact involved in aquaculture. A first nation band up in Klemtu, the Kitasoo, is operating a farm with a company called Nutreco. There's also a first nations group out on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Kyuquot, that are involved in salmon farming. Certainly there are those involved in the Campbell River area in the processing and in the live hauling of fish. There are a number of first nations that are getting more and more interested as a way of ensuring that the consultative process is occurring in B.C. on aquaculture.

The salmon farming industry has started an organization or a group called the First Nations Communications Committee, which we—

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Sorry, but my point was to ask why so many aboriginal groups would appear before this committee or send something in writing, wanting these farms out of their traditional territory.

That leads me to my second question. In Nova Scotia, we have a consultative process. If a community does not want a farm in its area, although the minister of the province can force it in there, because of the consultative process, that farm won't go there. If a community here in British Columbia says, for whatever reason, that it doesn't wish to have a fin-fish farm in their community or in their area, would your organization honour that request, or would you use whatever powers you have with the government to put it there?

• 1430

Ms. Anne McMullin: I suppose that goes back to who has the right to the land. We have started with the provincial government the salmon aquaculture implementation advisory committee, a group composed of multi-stakeholders—environmental groups, first nations, communities, and industry—to look at just those issues and make recommendations.

You know, when it comes to first nations and whether they have aboriginal title, that's out of the power of the salmon farming industry. That's a government issue. I don't think we would ever pretend to get involved in that type of legal debate.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Take the example of Port Hardy, just as a town. If that community says no to fin-fish farming in their area, would you honour their request?

Ms. Anne McMullin: Well, I think.... I guess I'm confused—

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I ask that because we have companies—for example, in Arichat a company called Scotia Rainbow—that receive tremendous access to public dollars. They've received over $20 million. They've been trying to force putting in a fin-fish farm in the area that includes Whitehead, Tor Bay, and Larry's River, to great protest by the community. There are indications that the government may still put it there.

We have another one in St. Margarets Bay. The majority of people there don't want it. The jobs don't matter and these farms being good or bad doesn't matter; they just don't want the farm there. This company is not honouring the requests of the community.

Would your organization honour the requests of a community if it said no to fin-fish farms in its area?

Ms. Anne McMullin: Yes, I think as an industry you do have to be accepted by the community in which you operate.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Exactly.

Ms. Anne McMullin: As part of the B.C. aquaculture implementation policy framework, some of the farms that are being moved are due to user conflicts. I think this industry respects that, yes, but ultimately it's a government decision.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay. Because there are communities that do wish to have farms in their area for the jobs.

Ms. Anne McMullin: That's right.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Would you say that the aquaculture commissioner for Canada, Yves Bastien, should be an objective individual, as best he can, when it comes to this issue, when he's working for DFO?

Ms. Anne McMullin: Yes. I think his title is Commissioner for Aquaculture Development, so his office is about the development of aquaculture. I think he has to be as objective as he can be about the development of aquaculture, yes.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay. Because at the bottom of his website, it says the information has been supplied by the Canadian aquaculture industry. My point is that for people who object to fin-fish farming or raise objections to the practices in it, how unbiased would he be, as the aquaculture commissioner, if the industry is supplying him information?

Ms. Anne McMullin: I think many people supply the Commissioner of Aquaculture Development with information, including industry.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay.

The Chair: Thank you.

Yves Bastien's role is carried out at the deputy minister level. His role is for aquaculture development. DFO, on the other hand, in terms of Wayne Wouters as deputy minister, has its own responsibilities as well. No doubt there's a debate from time to time, but the minister has to make the ultimate decision.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: All right, but you don't see on DFO websites, for example, “This information provided by the David Suzuki Foundation”.

The point I'm trying to get at is that we heard that there's conflict within DFO between that of aquaculture and that of its primary mandate, which is to protect fish and fish habitat, or the wild stocks. A lot of people have the contention that DFO is not doing its mandate, its constitutional mandate. That's why I brought that up.

If there are internal conflicts within that department, you would assume they would be working closely together with all stakeholders, not just one piece of it, in order to come up with comprehensive plans for the future of farming in this manner.

Ms. Anne McMullin: That's right, and that's what I would like to think. To use your words, if there is a conflict, I guess what I would like to see is a move away from conflict. You can use the mandate of conservation and aquaculture development together.

Frankly, a lot of us in Canada are tired of the kinds of conflicts we see and would like to see departments work together so that there is a balance and both issues are well looked after.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: You also indicated the same thing that DFO tells us all the time, that the decline of the stocks is primarily due to ocean conditions and climate change. Yet Alaska had six of the largest runs in this decade, and those fish swim in approximately the same area as B.C. fish. I'm wondering why Alaska can do so well with their stock and British Columbia and Washington cannot.

• 1435

On top of that, why would Alaska be so adamantly opposed to fin-fish farming and the lifting of the moratorium in British Columbia? Do you have any indications as to why?

Ms. Anne McMullin: I think those are two quite distinct questions. To the question on global warming, to be honest, I'm not an expert on global warming. Maybe David Groves or Brad or Ward would like to address this issue. From what I understand, though, it's this very global warming that Alaska benefits from, because they are far north. They are not that close to Vancouver, certainly, or the area around Campbell River. So that's just it; it's moving north, and they are benefiting from global warming. As I said, though, I'm not an expert on that.

In terms of why the Alaska fishermen are opposed, certainly the effects, whether perceived or real, of salmon farming down on the coast of B.C. are not affecting the Alaska fishery, but I think there are many issues about which the Alaska fishery would be opposed.

Frankly, I think it goes down to market issues. You're competing for the same marketplace. You're competing with the same retailer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Finally, we had a presentation from Mr. E.B. Taylor, who said that to move forward in aquaculture in any direction would not really be advisable, because the research and scientific work just have not been done.

In fact, he says this quite clearly. He says what needs to be done is to commit proactive research on invasion biology and potential impacts on native fish—and he's basically saying those studies have not yet been done—to press DFO, an agency whose mandate includes conservation of aquatic resources, to commit to this very thing, and press the aquaculture industry to commit to funding such research.

Ms. Anne McMullin: That's right. As I think Brad and David and others have said, there has been an enormous amount of research. David Groves has been doing research in aquaculture in B.C. since 1972. There's an enormous body of evidence on aquaculture.

As with any industry, I think there will continue to be more evidence, and it would be rather ignorant of all of us if we said the research was done and we have nothing more to learn. No matter what industry it is, we will continue to do research.

As well, this industry has committed to doing research. There's research being done by David Groves. There's research being done at the feed companies. There's research being done down in Nanaimo. There's research being done all over the world on this industry. It's in our best interests to constantly be doing research.

As well, through the salmon aquaculture implementation policy framework that the government has announced, this industry has committed to doing research projects. There are projects actually in the development stage right now that are looking at the issues of waste management, the Atlantics, genetics, and disease control.

With the amount of research that has gone into this industry on the development of a vaccine, to say that this research has not been done is simply not true. We have developed a number of vaccines over the last ten years, and that takes an enormous amount of research.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Lastly—

The Chair: Very quickly, Peter, because we're going to start to run out of time.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: You said we had lots of time.

The Chair: Well, we did until you started using it up.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: We have had lots of groups present to us here, and to me on the east coast in Nova Scotia. We'll also be going to the east coast. As you indicated, a lot more groups will be saying things differently, obviously, from what you're saying.

What do you say to all those groups that have presented to us their concerns and their fears over fin-fish farming? What can you say to ease their fears and worries in terms of their documented evidence—the diseased fish they've caught; the killing of rivers in Norway; the blood let off boats that goes up a creek; and all those other concerns? What can you say to them to lessen their fears, more or less, for the future of fin-fish fishing?

Ms. Anne McMullin: I think the most important thing is that their concerns are our concerns. You know, if it's an issue of waste management, it's our concern. If it's an issue of escape, it's our concern. If it's an issue of disease management, it's our concern. It's in our interests that we're constantly improving our environmental performance, because what's good for the environment is good for the fish.

If you reduce the waste or the impact on the ocean floor you have better growing conditions and you produce a better product. If you manage diseases better, obviously you're protecting your livestock. We have a 95% survival rate of our fish in the pens. When it comes to escapes, it's in our best interests to invest in and spend millions of dollars, as we have been doing, in research to reduce those escapes.

Certainly the announcement by the provincial government that we're moving forward, that all stakeholders are going to work together to address these issues and have ongoing studies, is what we have to be doing. As I said, their concerns are our concerns.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chair: Before I go to Mr. Sekora, Mr. Griffioen, I know we haven't read your information into the record. I've read it and I would like to see it read into the record. Was it your intent to read it into the record?

• 1440

Ms. Anne McMullin: Certainly it was our intent. We were originally told that Ward was speaking here.

The Chair: The points you raise here about wild salmon enhancement and DFO's role in that, or lack of it, are very important. I'd like to go to Mr. Sekora and Mr. Cummins and then come back to you to maybe spend a few minutes on this, if we could.

Mr. Sekora.

Mr. Lou Sekora: In your opening remarks you said you work with the first nations, yet we saw some of them in Campbell River saying they're not being consulted. Another group said they'd been invited to the meeting but they didn't go. What is the problem there?

Ms. Anne McMullin: I don't know if that's a salmon farming issue. I think the issue with first nations is a difficult question. The issue around first nations and land claims is far bigger than our industry. When it comes to consultation and the Delgamuukw decision and things like that, that's difficult.

What I can say is that in the very beginning of this industry, the provincial government said “Don't talk to the first nations; don't talk to the communities. Government is going to make the decision. You guys just go about your business.” We've obviously learned, certainly in the social and political environment of B.C., that you don't do that.

We have certainly made a strong effort over the last couple of years to involve communities and involve first nations. We have set up committee and community meetings with first nations so that we do have an opportunity of forums sort of like this to bring out all the issues.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Maybe I should ask you the same question I asked of the previous witness. You're talking about netting. Everybody's against netting because of escapes. What would be wrong with having either the first net or the bottom net made of a stainless steel kind of mesh so the seals and other things can't get at it?

Ms. Anne McMullin: I'm not an expert on the stainless steel kind of mesh, but certainly there are double nettings. Maybe Brad, as somebody who's practised salmon farming specifically and has done research into the types of nets that are used and has experimented with different types of things, could address that. That obviously is something many companies are doing. They have double predator nets and are looking at different strengths and durability of nets and things like that so that there aren't escapes.

Brad, I'll turn it over to you if that's all right.

Dr. Brad Hicks: Good fences make good neighbours. You're absolutely correct.

I'll just tell you one quick little story. One weekend we lost $50,000 worth of fish to seals, and we found ways to improve our netting. That's not to say we don't ever lose any fish to seals and it's not to say seals never hole a pen, but it is quite rare, relatively speaking.

In addition, in collaboration with the National Research Council again, because no research ever gets done, several years ago we did a very extensive study on currents and forces that affected farms so that they could be properly secured. So there have also been big improvements in engineering.

Netting material has improved dramatically in the last five or six years. If you actually look at the numbers of escaped salmon, you will see quite a decrease. I think 1994 or 1995 was the big year, and it's declined ever since then. Really, it's because we as farmers are in the process of building better fences, but it doesn't happen overnight.

As to your comment about stainless steel, there was actually a fellow in New Brunswick in roughly 1978 or 1979 who put steel nets in. The trouble was they were rigid and of course the tides in the Bay of Fundy decided to move the farm, so that didn't work. But chain mail will work. Is it practical? I guess time will tell.

Mr. Lou Sekora: This is my last question. We're talking about these escapes. Why is everybody so nervous about escapes?

Ms. Anne McMullin: I think we all have to be concerned and watchful of escapes, certainly from a business perspective. It doesn't help our business. I think people generally are concerned about whether or not there's an impact on the wild Pacific stocks, and that's a valid concern.

• 1445

What is probably most important to point out is that we really have to look at the impact of Atlantic salmon. Maybe David Groves will be addressing that in his presentation. I know there has been some talk that there has not been research done. There has been a lot of work done and there will be more work done, but I think people say it's an exotic species and it will threaten our wild stocks.

We also have to remember that in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, I think it was, the B.C. government intentionally tried to stock our rivers with Atlantic salmon for sport fishing. I was actually looking at an old newspaper from Chemainus that told people in the U.K. to come to B.C. and catch the Atlantic. At the same time they tried to introduce brown trout and a couple of other species. I can't remember which ones.

The brown trout and the others successfully established themselves. In fact, the B.C. Minister of Environment actively supported the enhancement of the brown trout, which is an exotic species, and still does, despite deliberate attempts to introduce 8 million fingerlings, eggs, and fry into 37 rivers in B.C., and even despite the escapes we had in the early days of this industry. The evidence has shown that it's not an impact, but if there is an exotic species in B.C., people have to be watchful and concerned. That's just a natural responsibility of our industry and a natural concern.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Thank you.

The Chair: Dr. Hicks.

Dr. Brad Hicks: I would just add one comment. I have a publication from 1951 by the B.C. government on fish species present in British Columbia. At that time, 25% of the species living in fresh water in British Columbia were exotic species. So there are lots and lots of exotic species here; it's not just the Atlantic salmon. In my view, the Atlantic salmon is picked on.

The Chair: Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: It's easy to say there are lots of exotic species, but that's not necessarily a justification for introducing another one. Many of them have caused huge problems, and I think you'd have to admit that. We have the problem currently in the Okanagan Lake with shrimp that were introduced there as food for kokanee. That's an interesting observation but it's certainly not a justification. That's not to pass judgment on salmon farming or anything else.

Thank you very much for your presentation, Anne. In your documentation here you talk about an article that appeared in the scientific journal Aquaculture by three eminent Canadian fishery scientists. You list three of them. Dr. Noakes is the DFO's aquaculture guy.

Ms. Anne McMullin: That's right.

Mr. John Cummins: I don't recognize the other names. I think they're DFO people but I don't recognize them as necessarily being involved in fishery science. Could you tell me something about them?

Ms. Anne McMullin: Yes. Dr. Richard Beamish received the Order of Canada for his work in fisheries science and Dr. Kent is the head of fisheries science at the University of Oregon. David has worked with them or knows them, and he's going to elaborate on that.

Dr. David Groves: May I elaborate just very slightly? Dick Beamish is an ex-director of the Pacific Biological Station and has worked there for years and years. His area is ocean fisheries climatology. Michael Kent has been one of the principal researchers in the fish health area at the Pacific Biological Station. They have not worked directly on aquaculture necessarily, but their work is very interrelated to aquaculture.

Mr. John Cummins: Yes, I thought Noakes was there as the aquaculture expert. Their conclusions are interesting, especially the climate change one, which is a matter that DFO is repeating as an excuse for their poor management practices. It seems to me that these three guys have just picked up on that, so I personally wouldn't want to accept that study at face value without some look at it.

On this issue of disease, I don't deny, and I don't think anybody does, that diseases are common in all wild species, and that if there is a disease, it is likely to be prevalent in the wild as it probably would be anywhere else.

• 1450

But the issue is not whether or not the disease is in wild fish or farm fish. I think the issue is that when you have crowding, you have disease. As an example, in 1995, I believe it was, in Babine Lake, ick was prevalent. There was warm water, and there was a huge crowding of wild sockeye at the entranceways to the spawning gravel, the artificial beds at Pinkut Creek and the other hatchery there, so this disease reared its ugly head. But it was because of the overcrowding. Isn't that really the issue? It's not whether it's wild fish or farm fish. It's the issue of crowding and bringing fish into close proximity to one another. Isn't that—

Ms. Anne McMullin: I will let David go into more detail about that.

As I was saying to Mr. Stoffer, those concerns about disease are our concerns, because we have to ensure survivability. Otherwise, we don't have an industry.

Mr. John Cummins: You're not making a profit either, so it obviously—

Ms. Anne McMullin: Right. So the issue of keeping our fish healthy is paramount. We have a 95% survival rate. I think in the wild it's a 1% or 2% survival rate. That's why there is the use of vaccines and improvements in animal husbandry. There are a number of things veterinarians recommend and farmers do to ensure that the fish aren't under stress so that there isn't the outbreak of disease and you do have that kind of survival rate.

David, perhaps you would like to go into more detail.

Dr. David Groves: First of all, we can control the degree of crowding. That's part of the animal husbandry process. We're aware within quite narrow limits as to what level is 99% safe and where we're pushing the envelope.

This is really where the effectiveness of vaccines is evident, and this is why they're used to the extent they are. If you have a population that is a little more dense than, say, the wild population, that doesn't mean to say those fish are more likely to be diseased, but if one of them is diseased, then there is a greater likelihood of it transmitting. However, when they are vaccinated against those diseases—and I think Brad will back me up on this—they are not as susceptible to the transmission of disease, so they remain healthy.

Now, the wild fish that carry the same diseases are very seldom seen to be diseased, although when we take a sample of them, we can isolate subclinical levels of them. But they are at low densities. They aren't close to each other, nor are they close to farm salmon. Even if one swims past the outside of a farm, there's still a substantial difference in that any kind of dilution factor is very considerable.

But you're right, there's a greater concern about disease in any kind of an intensive culture system. But in order to have a product and have a 90% or 95% survival rate, you have to contain the disease and have it so that it isn't probable. The animal has to be in superb physiological condition. Otherwise, it won't grow and produce. It's as simple as that.

Mr. John Cummins: I appreciate your response.

Like a witness earlier today, I've lost my train of thought. I was going somewhere, and now I'll see if I can find my way back.

Oh, I know what I wanted to ask. In talking about disease and some of these other issues, you mentioned the amount of research that has been done by the salmon farming industry, and I do appreciate that.

But there was a comment this morning from a scientist that I felt was probably on the money. But let me ask for your comments on it. He said that the research that's being done essentially is research that will enhance the aquaculture industry and make it more profitable, which in my lexicon is a good word, that it's directed in that sense but not so much in the sense to determine the impact salmon farming will have on wild stocks and the habitat. That's where the concern is. The concern we're hearing is about what that impact is going to be.

• 1455

Is it going to mess up the genes of wild fish and so on? Peter and others have mentioned to the committee a concern that the current aquaculture general, or whatever they call him in Ottawa, Mr. Bastien, is seen to be an advocate of the industry rather than a dispassionate observer.

The Chair: He's the Commissioner for Aquaculture Development.

Mr. John Cummins: But the concern, then, is that the science that's being done hasn't answered some of the concerns the citizens have mentioned in their presentations to us and so on. Do you agree that those concerns have to be addressed and that the science perhaps isn't being done to do it?

Ms. Anne McMullin: I'll let David talk about it in a minute. He has certainly done a lot of work on this.

Again, I go back to the answer that those concerns are our concerns, and those are concerns we're addressing. No, I don't agree. Certainly, as I said, more work is always being done.

Dr. David Groves: Perhaps I could speak to that just very briefly. There are two kinds of research: there is the practical, operationally oriented research that benefits the industry. For instance, feed companies are doing their internal research, and it's directed toward producing better feed, which makes them more money because they'll sell more feed.

However, the statement that there hasn't been any research done is absolutely ludicrous. One of the biggest advantages that the B.C. and Canadian salmon farming industry has had since its very beginning 30 years ago is that although DFO has varied in its political approach to aquaculture, it has always had world-class fishery science going on. When we started salmon farming, the people I was very fortunate to have contact with, many of whom were at the Pacific biological station, weren't working on aquaculture. Their mandate was to study the swimming sockeye going up the Babine River. But the quality of their basic research has been absolutely fine. There are other institutions such as the National Marine Fisheries Service in Manchester, Washington, and the University of Washington, and various other places, as well as in the United Kingdom and Norway.

The work has not necessarily been done on aquaculture, but the work to understand fish and the interaction of fish with their environment goes way back and is truly fine work. There's still calibration stuff to be done to look at specific instances. We'll never be short of research topics. But the amount of information that has always been available to the salmon farming association....

We've never had an adversarial relationship with DFO. It has always been that if we had a problem, we could walk into somebody's lab and say, what can you do for us? What do you know that we should know? If they don't know, they can tell us where to go to get it. One of the best sources of information at the present time, for instance, is the library at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo. That has all the basic references on which the Norwegian industry was built, for instance.

I think one of the deficiencies we've had hasn't been a deficiency of research but a deficiency of people who were broad enough and scientifically trained enough that they could pick the literature that is not necessarily in areas that relate directly to fish and use that information to solve a problem we have, which we've done year after year, and will continue to do.

The Chair: This is your last question.

Mr. John Cummins: I agree with you that DFO has some world-class fishery scientists, but the information they are acquiring from the studies they're doing doesn't seem to be getting out. You only have to look at the northern cod scenario in the north Atlantic to figure that one out. Somebody blew it badly there, and my suspicion is that it wasn't the scientists as much as it was the managers. I think right now there's that same feeling with Pacific salmon. Many of us don't quite trust what we're hearing from government. Perhaps part of the problem you're facing, too, is that people don't necessarily trust DFO's interpretation of some of these things. We really have to address that issue if we're going to settle the dispute that—

Dr. David Groves: You're right on that. They haven't always been right in the things they're trying to work on. But if you pick over what they've done, so many times they've already done the thing we need.

• 1500

The Chair: On this point, Dr. Groves, one of the problems Dr. Taylor talked about this morning was the lack of a comprehensive research program by DFO to objectively assess the potential ecological and genetic effects of escaped Atlantic salmon and native fish.

I had the opportunity and previous experience of working on the rBST issue, opposed to Monsanto and a number of the other pharmaceutical companies. One of the big things you're dealing with is perception.

In the hearings we've had, the perception is out there that the research hasn't been done, or if the research has been done, it's been done by industry that has an inherent interest in it for profit and other means.

Certainly they want to protect their fish stocks, I understand that, but the confidence is not there that research has been done with the intent on public health and ecological issues, etc. That's the perception, and perception is sometimes reality. I guess from our perspective, if money were flush, an independent agency or DFO would be doing this kind of work, but it's not that flush. So how do we deal with that problem?

Dr. David Groves: You're absolutely right that perception is very frequently 90% of what people believe. I think the only way an organization like the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, which is a production group, can operate is we have to be where we are. We can't just move on if things aren't exactly right for salmon farming.

We have to not just talk about environmental sustainability; we have to know ourselves that we are being environmentally sustainable, or we really don't see a future. I think your comments on perception are absolutely correct. We have to be correct and be seen to be correct, but we mostly have to be correct. Eventually, if we can do that, I think the perception will turn around.

The Chair: Peter, I know you want in, but I'm going to take you in the second round when we deal with Ward on this letter. Okay?

We've had a number of concerns raised about lights on fish farms, and acoustic warning devices. In fact, we've had a lot of concerns raised on those two points. What is the industry's position? Are the concerns valid? On lights, the indication is that there's better feed conversion, but it's because the lights are attracting other sea life into the pens, and so on. The acoustic devices are causing trouble for everything from whales to you name it.

Dr. David Groves: I could make a comment on the lights. I think I'll leave Brad to talk about the seal scares because I've never used one. We primarily run a hatchery. We don't have seals in fresh water.

On the situation with lights, they allow the fish to feed 24 hours a day. The metabolic rate of salmon and the growth and sexual maturation of salmon is a function of photoperiod manipulation, so the lights contribute to them actually operating at a higher level, physiologically.

People who see the lights are concerned and think it's terrible, but pit-lamping is an age-old art of attracting animals close enough to kill them, by shining a light at them. The lights around salmon farms possibly attract other things, but it is very easy to verify whether it is having any effect whatsoever on the feed conversion of the salmon farm.

A salmon farm keeps very detailed and accurate records on how much feed they're using, relative to how much fish they're producing. If there were any significant effect that way, we would get extraordinary feed conversions, and that isn't happening. You can check that by looking at the documentation on any salmon farm.

There are other situations where it's quite common to see herring that have come into a salmon farm when they were very little, weren't eaten, and are now a foot long, swimming around with the salmon. It's very easy to check that by simply looking at the records.

• 1505

The Chair: I don't want to get into a debate on this, because I come from the farm sector, but in my view the only way you could really say positively that the farmed salmon are not eating other sea life that come in is if you compared the feed conversions in a closed unit versus feed conversion units in an open cage.

Dr. Hicks.

Dr. Brad Hicks: There's one simpler way—cut them open and look in their stomachs.

Ms. Anne McMullin: A number of studies have been done on stomach contents, and they are available.

Dr. Brad Hicks: That's been done. One study looked specifically at the stomach contents of farmed salmon. It's true they habituate to pallets, to the fish feed, and herring will grow up in the fish pens. On the east coast, there's haddock and pollock living inside the fish pens. On this coast, you periodically see black cod living along with the salmon. They move into the pen when they're small, by swimming through the mesh, and then they grow up and can't get out. There are often schools of small herring swimming around with the salmon.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Are you indicating that the fish are not eating anything else but the food you said?

Dr. Brad Hicks: They eat primarily the food. I saw one case of farmed salmon picking up worms. I couldn't figure out how the heck they were getting them, but they were actually eating some shrimp. So periodically they eat what comes into their pens, but it certainly doesn't make up any significant part of the diet.

I'll read the study. It's been about eight or nine years since I read the study that was specifically done, but the numbers were very low. The amount of wild forage in the farm fish's stomachs was quite low.

The Chair: On the acoustic devices....

Dr. Brad Hicks: I'm not an acoustics expert. I read the documentation and was at the environmental hearings on the acoustic devices. I can only repeat what other experts have said, basically that the studies that were presented were not accurate or conclusive. I don't think many acoustic deterrent devices, or ADDs, are presently being used, to tell you the truth.

The Chair: They are being used somewhere.

Dr. Brad Hicks: They are being used, but I think the use has diminished because we have built better fences. As I say, all I can recall from the environmental assessment hearings was that Ms. Morton had one conclusion and the scientists who reviewed her paper had a different conclusion. That's all I can tell you. The details of the material were presented at the salmon aquaculture review, and the details are in that document.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Hicks.

We will turn to Mr. Griffioen's presentation and spend a little time on that. We may have to steal a little time from Mr. Cross, Dr. Groves, and Dr. Hicks to make up time here.

Welcome, Mr. Cross. We knew you were coming. You didn't have a bridge to cross.

Mr. Griffioen, do you want to read this? There's a lot of good information in this. I know there are questions on it as well.

Mr. Ward Griffioen: Okay. I can shorten it a little.

I'm a salmon farmer in the Powell River. We run an independent family business and we love doing what we're doing. We hate to be put on the other side of the fence. We love fish, and it doesn't matter if they are farmed or wild.

The declining wild stocks are a major concern. As salmon farmers, we know how to do this, and I feel very strongly that a decline in wild salmon is reversible, through an aggressive salmon enhancement program.

If you look around the salmon farming industry, you realize fairly quickly that the expertise and technology is there. We have no shortages of egg stocks and we have the equipment. All of this is ignored like the plague by our Department of Fisheries, who are threatened by the private salmon farming industry and claim that they alone are God's chosen people to save the salmon stocks.

• 1510

Everywhere in the world, wild salmon stocks are declining, except in Japan and Alaska, where through private fishermen and cooperatives, aggressive enhancements are showing that they can create a harvest for the fleet.

I feel that in Canada we have been sold a bill of goods by the Department of Fisheries. We were promised a doubling of the salmon catch with an incredible salmon enhancement program. This has never materialized, and now, realizing their inability to meet the goal of aggressively seeding the ocean with salmon for harvesting, fisheries hatchery ministers have now convinced us that if you let nature do its thing through conservation, then all will be fine. That's like telling a farmer, don't seed anything, just sit back and forget about harvesting and everything will be okay.

However, our fishermen and general public seem to be swallowing this fairy tale, and they are now convinced that aggressive enhancement or big hatchery programs are a bad thing.

I've been involved since the early seventies, in Clayoquot Sound and elsewhere, trying to do something about aggressive enhancement. I was invited to go to Alaska, where I worked, and my ideas were accepted by the commercial fleet that owned the fish. And we have to understand that the fishermen paid into these programs in order to have control over their future, and as such, they have some control.

I'm presently involved in a pilot program for aggressive salmon enhancement locally, in Powell River and the Theodosia Inlet, and we have just received word that through our fisheries minister, Herb Dhaliwal, this pilot program has been improved.

I feel our salmon enhancement programs have failed miserably due to DFO mistakes, complicated fishery goals, and the lack of private involvement. Private involvement creates biological flexibility, and I think that's very much needed. And where originally all the regulations of fisheries committees seemed biologically sound, we now have a different situation. Our fish stocks are declining, they're disappearing, and we have to do something else. I feel that through our effort in Powell River, through our coastal community partnership involving salmon farmers with knowledge, like myself, commercial fishermen, first nations, and the community, it will be an exciting project we'll be going into.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ward.

Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: Thank you very much.

I found your letter interesting. Let me quote from the document that Ms. McMullin provided here today, by Dr. Noakes, Dr. Beamish, and Dr. Kent. It says:

Another common practice is the release of fed coho fry from hatcheries into rivers and streams outplanting within a particular watershed. The larger hatchery fry have been found to replace smaller wild fry and a number of studies (Nickelson et al, 1986; Solazzi et al, 1990; Reisenbichler, 1996) have shown that this practice can reduce the productivity of these populations. In some cases, the releases have been significant with more than 10,000 fish/km of stream outplanted in years when the streams were likely to be already fully seeded by progeny from wild spawners (Pitre and Cross, 1992).

This is the significant statement here:

It is likely that both short- and long-term ecological and genetic consequences resulted from these activities, although no quantitative studies have been conducted.

You're suggesting the use of hatcheries to enhance salmon. You suggest it's been done in Alaska, but here are some fairly reputable studies that say these larger hatchery fry are going to replace the wild stocks, and the likely consequence could be short- and long-term ecological and genetic changes. Is that a healthy avenue to follow?

• 1515

Mr. Ward Griffioen: It's interesting, because that's where DFO's major mistake has been, in placing these major hatcheries on viable wild runs in B.C. I've never understood why they did that. In Alaska we put them in isolated bays and areas where there were no runs, or the few fish that were left were written off so that we could enhance those areas, away from the major fisheries runs.

Again, if you want to feed a fleet and if you want to harvest fish, you have to put seed out there. If you don't do that.... What you want to do is draw the attention of the fleet away from the wild stocks so that they'll start harvesting 100% hatchery fish and the wild stocks will have a better chance of recovering. You have to do some thinking about that.

Mr. John Cummins: Part of the problem with these hatchery programs.... In Oregon we had them, and there was a collapse not too many years ago due to diseases. Some of the stuff Ms. McMullin has presented us with today records some failures of hatchery programs where wild stocks have been decimated because of problems. Aren't you afraid of that sort of thing happening again?

Mr. Ward Griffioen: I'm not trying to predict that we can do this with the Fraser River, the Columbia River, or whatever. But there are isolated bay areas, such as Theodosia or Sechelt Inlet, where we should try to see how applicable this system is. I'm quite happy to see that finally we got the go-ahead to try this as a pilot project in a specialized area. I'm not predicting we should do this coast-wide, but anything we do there will draw....

The wild stocks are declining. They are disappearing. However, in Alaska, where these hatchery programs are going on, there's a large enough return that it feeds the fleet and lots of fish are coming back to these hatcheries to pay off the hatcheries and to provide eggs for the next generation.

Mr. John Cummins: I know it's successful. In fact some of the fish from those hatcheries are actually processed in Prince Rupert. So it has been very successful.

The danger would be—and I guess this is why you're saying isolated bays—that you don't want to be producing these fish so that they're going to be mixing with the wild stocks and result in some kind of mixed harvest. That would be counter-productive. So you would make sure there's a fairly wide separation.

Mr. Ward Griffioen: Yes, and I think that's why our fisheries have such major opposition. These fish are going to come back, and it takes some special harvest management plans to deal with them, and I think they'd just as soon not deal with it.

Mr. John Cummins: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

[Member speaks in Dutch]

The Chair: We have bilingualism, and now a third language here between Peter and Ward.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: It's good to talk to a fellow Dutchman.

My question is actually aimed at both of you. I didn't get to ask it last time. It's regarding the farmed salmon. Of course we know in Europe people are wanting labelling on genetically modified foods, and now people are indicating to us that they would like the labelling of farmed salmon as well, in stores and restaurants. Would you object to that in any way?

Ms. Anne McMullin: I don't think so. That's up to the retailers, however they feel is best to sell the product. Retailers are in the business of selling their product to customers, and the way to sell their product is by satisfying the customer. Certainly in many of the stores I see it myself. In Vancouver it says “Atlantic salmon”, it says “farm-raised salmon”, it says “farm-raised chinook”. I see many different things on the menu. As I said, that's an issue for the retailer and the customer.

But as well, I want to talk on Ward's point, just to clarify, John. As I said in my remarks and as Ward said, there is an opportunity for the salmon enhancement programs, but what I hoped to put forward in the presentation is that there's an enormous amount of knowledge in the salmon farming industry on genetics and on disease that can help the salmon enhancement program. There's a lot of talk about how the genetic issues have been affected recently, but that's not to say the salmon farming industry and the salmon enhancement program can't actually have a benefit on the genetic diversity of wild stocks.

• 1520

Mr. Ward Griffioen: On the marketing of Atlantic salmon, I think it would be great. You'll find that more people like me will buy the farmed salmon. I eat a lot of salmon. I prefer the farmed anytime over wild, because it's always a good product.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: The lake you have here is Lois Lake. I know where Powell River is; I've been there. But does Lois Lake itself have a natural runoff somewhere?

Mr. Ward Griffioen: Yes. It's a reservoir, so it's been dammed, and it's used for hydro power for the pulp mill. There are two lakes in the area. One is Powell Lake; the other is Lois Lake.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: And you've been involved in the business for how long now, sir?

Mr. Ward Griffioen: Twenty years or so. I started in 1979 in my own business, but I worked before that—

Mr. Peter Stoffer: You indicated that Mr. Dhaliwal had just received word regarding the intervention for implementation of the program.

Mr. Ward Griffioen: Yes.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Is that a significant shift for DFO, do you think?

Mr. Ward Griffioen: Yes.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Why do you think it took him so long?

Mr. Ward Griffioen: Well....

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Ward Griffioen: They don't want to deal with managing these fish coming back if it works. And I'm starting to wonder if DFO really is interested in going back again through a licensing program, if these programs might be successful, with more fishermen getting loans for boats or whatever. I'm really wondering why I've been hitting my head against a wall for so long, but it finally starts to make sense. Maybe there's no interest.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Dankje wel.

The Chair: Thank you, Ward.

Are there any other questions?

Thank you very much then, Ms. McMullin and all the other individuals present.

I wonder if we can go to Dr. George Peterson and then come back to Dr. Groves, Dr. Hicks, and Mr. Cross. That will give us time to have a break.

We'll take a five-minute break, Mr. Peterson, if that's all right. Oh, it's Ray Peterson? I have “R. George” on here. It's Ray. Okay.

• 1522

• 1535

The Chair: Okay. We'll begin.

Dr. Ray Peterson, the floor is yours. There is a paper in your information package as well, folks.

Dr. Peterson, go ahead.

Dr. Ray Peterson (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much.

My name is Ray Peterson. I'm associate professor emeritus, department of animal science, University of British Columbia. Emeritus means that I'm retired. It's sort of like an honourable discharge.

In any case, I spent 30 years at UBC in research and teaching of genetics and selective breeding programs. I spent the first many years primarily working on dairy cattle, but also with pigs and some other species as well. In 1984-85 I started research in salmonids, and we've studied chinook, coho, Atlantic salmon, and rainbow trout.

I am currently a partner with one of my previous graduate students in TRI-GEN Fish Improvement, and our company is engaged in salmonid brood stock development, research, and management.

I would like to discuss the genetic interactions between wild and farm fish of the same species. This is an important issue in Atlantic Canada, but it is also an issue of importance in British Columbia. This is a very complex issue centred on natural selection, or if you like, survival of the fittest.

Very briefly, the fittest fish will have the largest number of offspring in the next generation of spawning fish. Therefore, this fish will have the greatest genetic contribution to the next generation. The genetics of fitness involve the complete genome. It involves all of the genes. It involves all of the active DNA—and I stress “active”. We'll come back to that perhaps in the questions.

Fitness is not a simply inherited characteristic. Can fitness be measured? Yes, at least in theory. Count the offspring of the fish that spawn. When those offspring spawn, count the number of offspring. You have to count their offspring. Fitness of a fish must be measured for the entire life cycle, egg to egg.

The issues of interest include whether farm fish are less fit than wild. My conclusion is yes, they are. Are crosses between farm and wild fish less fit than wild fish? Yes, they are, but in the short term only. Can farm fish contribute genetic diversity to wild stocks? Yes. Can crosses between wild stocks increase the genetic diversity of those wild populations? Most emphatically, yes.

These conclusions are based on genetic theory, not on observations. There are no measurements of fitness of any salmonid species in the scientific literature. None for fitness of farm fish, wild fish, or crosses between them. Why? Because fitness is a very difficult trait or characteristic to measure. Fitness involves a total life cycle, from egg to egg. The life cycle of salmonids is quite long, generally between three to six years. To measure fitness you must identify parents and their offspring from one generation to the next. Consider that as an issue for a spawning population—that's a very daunting task.

• 1540

Many studies have estimated differences in sub-traits of fitness for short periods of the life cycle: survival to smoltification, spawning success, etc. However, these are confined to the freshwater portion of the life cycle, a very small portion of the life cycle. These studies represent only partial results of the first lap of a marathon race. Statements regarding fitness based on these results are subjective, not objective.

What is the expected fitness of crosses between farm and wild fish, based on genetic theory? The fitness of the initial cross will be lower than the fitness of the wild fish. After two or three generations of natural selection, the hybrid will equal the wild population. After three or four generations of natural selection, the hybrid fish may well be better in terms of fitness than the wild fish.

My conclusions: First of all, small escapements of farm fish do not impose a threat to healthy wild stocks. Wild stocks that are at risk because of minimal genetic diversity for fitness will benefit from genetic migration from virtually any source, whether it's wild or farm fish. Management of wild stocks should focus on maintaining and even increasing gene flow between populations to allow natural selection to work.

Currently the strategy proposed for management of wild stocks by DFO and others involved in these matters is to isolate them from genetic migration. This may work in the short term. It may work for the first generation or even two generations. But it is contrary to the natural state. Normally in wild stocks you get small migrations between stocks. This is a vital source of genetic variation. This isolation will lead to a decline in genetic diversity of wild stocks, and eventually this will lead to extinction of wild stocks.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Peterson.

Mr. Stoffer, to start, then Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Dr. Peterson.

I have a basic question for you, sir. Could farm salmon jeopardize the survival of wild salmon?

Dr. Ray Peterson: It depends. What I'm suggesting is that small migrations from farm salmon will not affect healthy wild stocks.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay, because we had a report from DFO's own scientists, and we've heard today some of the best scientists around. They warned that escapees could jeopardize the survival of Canada's wild salmon. Would you agree with that or would you disagree?

Dr. Ray Peterson: If they are very large escapements, then they could flood the population and jeopardize it in terms of.... Yes, it could swamp the population and basically replace it.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay. Sir, as you probably know, a New Scientist article dated February 6, 2000, has quoted you as saying you wrote a paper for the department claiming wild salmon would benefit from some new genes:

“Isolation of salmon stocks should be avoided”, writes Peterson. He says they have lots of genetic diversity.

Dr. Carl Walters and Dr. Taylor, who was here before us, said that is nonsense. How do you reply to what they said about you?

Dr. Ray Peterson: Actually, I came just before lunch and I heard Dr. Taylor's remarks with regard to my paper, which would have generated a really good debate had we—

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Sure, that's why we're here, to listen.

Dr. Ray Peterson: Well, it's too bad he's not here to debate it. But he'll get an e-mail tonight.

In any case, his statement that bothered me the most was that wild stocks have essentially all of the genetic variation they could possibly use. Well, this is obviously not true of very small stocks. So we eliminate that. So we talk about wilder stocks. The problem is that I don't know how he's estimating genetic variation among fish within a stock to estimate this genetic diversity. If in fact he's relying on DNA probes, then, I'm sorry, it's nonsense. DNA probes are useful for identifying fish because the fish.... This probes non-active DNA. This is the material that doesn't bother the fish if it mutates. Therefore it creates a good marker. That's very useful in pedigree identification, for example. It's extremely useful in that regard, but it says nothing about the genetic material that's associated with fitness.

• 1545

When we talk about fitness, basically fitness involves the total genome for the fish: all of the genes, all of the active DNA. Some of those genes are associated with traits such as growth. I've studied probably 15 different stocks of chinook on this coast, wild stocks sampled from the rivers. In all of those cases there was genetic variation for growth. This is useful for me as a selective breeder of salmon. I address this issue in the paper I referenced.

Falconer puts the traits associated with fitness into three groups. One of them is this set of traits that are quite useful and will retain genetic variation even though they are not directly associated with fitness. Weight is one of them.

There is another set of traits that are directly associated with fitness. Natural selection will cause genetic variation to leap those. Selection essentially consumes them over time.

The third set is neutral genes. I suspect many of Dr. Taylor's results were based on neutral genes. These are the protein samples and that sort of thing, where they see differences in protein. These are neutral to fitness.

When I talk about genetic variation being lost, that's genetic variation associated with fitness. If you isolate a population and allow natural selection to go on, I'm sorry, but you're going to lose genetic variation for the trait that's under selection: fitness.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: That will be an interesting e-mail, won't it? Thank you.

The Chair: What was your last point, Peter? We never heard it.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: He said he was going to send an e-mail to Dr. Taylor. I said that would be an interesting e-mail.

Dr. Ray Peterson: I put this paper on the web because I really wanted to get scientific feedback.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Sure.

Dr. Ray Peterson: This is a useful discussion. Unfortunately he didn't read the paper. He suggested he didn't believe....

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I have one final question. I know this isn't your particular area, but some people at DFO are saying that to prevent the escapees they would eventually like to see a closed-net system or a land-based system. You have just said yourself that in large escapes—say the total collapse of a farm where 100,000 fish decide to leave—that could have an effect. We're not quite sure yet, but it could have an effect. Would you agree then that the pens should be closed or land-based, however possible, to prevent escape?

Dr. Ray Peterson: I would support anything to minimize escapes, but I think you really need to take a look at the evaluation of these systems. I wouldn't endorse them out of hand. They have to work in a cultural system and they have to work economically.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Yes, sir.

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

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Would it be fair to say that over time our wild populations have essentially become more isolated simply because there are fewer of them and we've had some local extinctions and so on?

Dr. Ray Peterson: Yes, I think so. I don't know if we have any good information on that. There are some studies in human populations about genetic migration, but I haven't seen it in salmon.

Mr. John Duncan: If the hypothesis is correct, we could have been narrowing our genetic diversity for fitness lately, for example?

Dr. Ray Peterson: Yes, most definitely.

Mr. John Duncan: But is it also not true that we get a fair amount of drift naturally? Don't we get individuals who go somewhere else?

• 1550

Dr. Ray Peterson: Yes. I discussed this sort of issue. You see, one of the problems is that the foundation, the genetic base of the foundation of a stock, is not selected; it's assigned at random. So the founding genes of the stock are basically there because of random events.

Founders, bottleneck theory—there is a whole host of ways, and a lot of population geneticists have dealt with those. This means that in fact it's not likely that any stock started with all of the best genes for its particular ecological niche.

Mr. John Duncan: So, in a sense, you're challenging the essence of DFO's management regime.

Dr. Ray Peterson: I am.

Mr. John Duncan: You were here for Ward Griffioen's presentation.

Dr. Ray Peterson: Yes.

Mr. John Duncan: Do you agree that it's a very valid proposal and one that would not put—

Dr. Ray Peterson: I'm not sure which proposal that is.

Mr. John Duncan: That's the proposal—

The Chair: Stock enhancement.

Mr. John Duncan: The stock enhancement, the Theodosia proposal, the Alaska way of doing things.

Dr. Ray Peterson: I don't know that much about stock enhancement. I've been to a lot of the enhancement facilities basically to sample some of their fish. I think the proposal has some real validity to it. I have some real problems with how you select the parents that you actually use to reproduce your stock for enhancement. It's a conundrum. I don't see how you would actually select the fittest fish as would happen in nature because natural selection works on that. We don't know what traits are involved.

Mr. John Duncan: A conundrum it might be, but you wouldn't be paralysed by it, would you?

Dr. Ray Peterson: No. But I would certainly explore different avenues. The way they're currently using the stock enhancement program—it's my understanding, at leas—is they're taking a sample of all the different sizes of fish. Intuitively, to me, that doesn't seem like a very good approach.

Mr. John Duncan: You would use some other variable, obviously.

Dr. Ray Peterson: I think so. But I think you'd have to really think about it and do a little bit of study.

Mr. John Duncan: That's it for me. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, John.

Mr. Bernier, and then Mr. Cummins.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier (Bonaventure—Gaspé—Iles-de-la- Madeleine—Pabok, BQ): I will try and ask a brief question. I listened to several witnesses give evidence today, although I did have to leave to make a few calls, given the three-hour time difference. I apologize to the other witnesses, but I know that they are scheduled to return later.

You have spent approximately thirty years working as a professor and researcher. In your presentation, you gave us some very specialized information about fish reproduction. We politicians are somewhat removed from highly specialized areas such as this.

My biggest problem is the difficulty separating fact from myth. Some of your colleagues don't quite feel the same way you do and we don't have the same information to be able to sort everything out. Are we going to need a book with a chart to distinguish the opinions of one doctor or veterinarian from another? I find it amusing, and rather sad, that you have tabled a document on the Internet and that this has not generated any kind of response. That's a sad commentary indeed. Given the lack of response, we have to wonder if any of this makes sense.

I'm not in a position to ask you specific questions about DNA management. However, is there some way to shed some light on such important issues as DNA management and all of the other aspects of salmon farming. We have no scientific data and when someone does present some, it is immediately challenged by another party. Who is telling the truth? Maybe I'm being philosophical, but do you.... [Editor's Note: Inaudible]

• 1555

[English]

Dr. Ray Peterson: I'm sure all the scientists who come before you attempt to give you their pure version of the truth, but you have to realize that science very seldom, particularly in biology, comes up with a black and white answer. There are useful comments that come from both issues, and I was really quite upset that the paper did not generate scientific discussion. It generated some news media discussion, which is not necessarily that productive, but I wanted to hear back from scientists and critique it. It's not good enough to say “You're wrong but I haven't read the paper”. You have to say “I don't agree with this point and therefore we might come to a different conclusion”.

The same thing applies to Dr. Taylor's work or anyone else's, and this is why an academic community discusses these sorts of things in seminars and workshops. Unfortunately, I was hoping our good friend the Internet would provide us that, but it didn't.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Peterson, Yvan.

Mr. Cummins.

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

Dr. Peterson, in your document on the first page you say there's one misconception that colours the discussion of genetic interaction and it is that the idea of natural selection has transformed wild salmon stocks into the optimum genetic solution for their ecological niche. That's been the commonly held belief not only in DFO but probably with fisherman as well, that a particular stock was suited to its river, its home, and that if you start mixing or mingling you're asking for some trouble. You say no.

Dr. Ray Peterson: No. The reason is, of course, as I mentioned earlier, that the genes that this stock had to start with were not likely the best genes available in terms of the genetic diversity for natural selection to work on. Therefore, it's going to go up this mountain to a peak, but that peak is limiting. This is the Sewall Wright sort of analogy. If you talk about fitness as being on some sort of a plain and you have these mountains all around, the stock goes up to the closest mountain relative to the genes that are available. That may not be the highest mountain around. But to get to the other peak, it has to go down and back up the other side. This is what I'm saying. In theory, when we cross wild stocks, expect that the fish will not be as fit as the original wild stocks, the first generation, the first crosses, but very quickly they will restore the fitness of the original stock and in all likelihood will go up a higher mountain because it has a different set of genes.

The other issue—and this is perhaps the most critical—is that somehow we seem to think that these ecological niches are constants. They're not. They're changing. The environment is very dynamic, and when you change the environment, what you do with this little field of mountains is basically you change the altitude of all the mountains. You change the definition of fitness and you have to go back and climb another mountain. In theory, you could even end right down in the valley by changing the environment.

• 1600

Mr. John Cummins: I don't know. I know a little bit about blue jeans and Gene Autry, but I don't know a whole lot about this stuff you're talking about. I'm a Fraser River gillnetter, so I'm not too sophisticated, but I do know a little bit about fish—a little bit.

The Noakes study we were talking about earlier today makes reference to healthy spawning fish, and they talk about hatchery fish perhaps spawning earlier than wild salmon. If we take a stock like the early Stewart run that comes into the Fraser River, that's a pretty finely tuned fish. That fish has enough fat to swim about 700 miles up the Fraser River without eating, and it has to have enough to get there and it has to have enough oomph when it gets there to do its thing.

If you monkey with the genes and you alter that fish just a little bit so that it comes in a little bit later, a little bit earlier, or has a little bit less fat or a little bit too much, it probably won't make it.

Dr. Ray Peterson: It'll reduce its fitness, at least initially, but it may add some genes that will enhance its fitness ultimately. This is the point. What happened when we had the rock slide in the Fraser Canyon that cut off all the migration of fish up to Fraser? What happened to the Stewart run?

Mr. John Cummins: It just survived—they all just survived—but the people were packing fish over the rocks, around the rocks, and trying to make sure spawners got into the beds. But they just survived.

Dr. Ray Peterson: Those are the sorts of catastrophic events that actually put a real stress on the genes, essentially, to make a fit fish.

Mr. John Cummins: It seems to me that those fish may not have started out with the best stock, but they sure arrived at a point where they have the right stuff to do what's required to get home.

Dr. Ray Peterson: Yes, but they are not necessarily the best; you might be able to create a better one.

Mr. John Cummins: You might, and then on the other hand, as you suggest here, with large intrusions of farm genes the stock might not survive the flood.

Dr. Ray Peterson: That's true.

Mr. John Cummins: That's always the risk.

Dr. Ray Peterson: But a small infusion of genetic material from farm fish or from other wild stocks provides a genetic variation to test those genes for natural selection—to test them. This is the whole key. I think it's really quite futile for us to sit around in a committee and say this is a good trait or that's not a good trait or whatever. We have to subject it to the acid test; we have to subject it to natural selection.

Mr. John Cummins: The point that concerns me is it seems to me that these fish are in many instances engineered to very fine specifications, and some alteration to that may impact on those runs. Some of those runs aren't very big at the best of times.

Dr. Ray Peterson: The small runs are a real problem.

Mr. John Cummins: Along those same lines—

The Chair: Last question, John.

Mr. John Cummins: I'll make it a little more specific. We have runs in the upper Skeena River, coho runs, that are very weak. We've introduced sockeye in hatcheries in Babine Lake—not hatcheries, but we have two large spawning channels, at Pinkut Creek and the other name escapes me, that produce a lot of sockeye. So there's a lot of potential fishing activity that the coho stocks further up river can't tolerate. The water there is very cold; the spawning is limited. From what you're saying, the gene pool that exists allows those runs simply to cling to life, but you're suggesting perhaps there may be some way that we could make that a more healthy environment, or make an animal that's more suited to its environment than nature has allowed.

Dr. Ray Peterson: I think the problem is that the environment is changing. The fish need to have the ability to change, and this is all you really want to ask. You don't want it to necessarily change, but you'd like it to have the ability to change.

The Chair: With that, we'll have to close. Thank you, Dr. Peterson.

I know you want in, Peter, but you'll have to catch Dr. Peterson on the side somewhere.

• 1605

We'll call forward Dr. Groves. Do you three want to come together or do you want to do your presentations separately?

Dr. Groves, then.

We'll go with 20 minutes for each session, if we could.

Dr. Groves, we have a paper, do we not?

Dr. David Groves: Sorry, I don't have a submission here.

I'll shorten down what I was going to say, because we're running behind time.

The Chair: That's good, because we already need two extra suitcases to get back to where we have to go with the paper.

Dr. David Groves: What I would like to present is a little bit of perspective on escaped Atlantic salmon in British Columbia. I'm not going to talk about Atlantic salmon on the east coast, but the problem we have on the perception is that we have escaped Atlantic salmon and that they may or may not be doing environmental harm in British Columbia waters.

Incidentally, some of the arguments for escaped Pacific salmon interact with the things Ray Peterson has just said, but in the case of Atlantic salmon, basically they do not reproduce with or interbreed with Pacific salmon. So we're dealing simply with the Atlantic salmon itself, swimming free in the environment, and we are concerned about the possibility that they might become established in the environment.

We have all kinds of examples of exotic animals being introduced into other ecological areas, and some of them causing ecological damage. We have English sparrows and starlings and killer bees, and Pacific salmon in the Great Lakes, perhaps. There are all kinds of examples. So, in general, the concern with Atlantic salmon is the fact that they're one of these, that they're an invasive species, or they could be.

On the other hand, time after time, over many years, looking at Atlantic salmon interactions, we find that in fact they aren't invasive. There has been a great deal of difficulty re-establishing Atlantic salmon in areas of their own native range where they've dwindled.

So the Atlantic salmon does not appear to be an invasive species. Why is that? If we go back in history a little bit, we find that the genus Salmo, which is the genus of Atlantic salmon, appeared about 50 million years ago, or somewhere like that. Then at about 15 million years ago, the genus Oncorhynchus, which is the Pacific salmon, differentiated from Atlantic salmon and became evident in geological records.

At about that time, the land masses on the earth were quite different. First of all, the original Salmo was basically circumpolar; it was all over the place in the northern hemisphere. But at about the time that Oncorhynchus began to be seen, the Atlantic Ocean was in fact a rather small enclosure, not much bigger than the Great Lakes, actually, on one side of the world. There were land and/or ice bridges, which would prevent fish from moving back and forth from the Pacific basin into the Atlantic basin. So the Atlantic basin was basically a protected area from the intrusion of Pacific salmon.

I'm not an expert on geology, but one of the things that apparently happened somewhere subsequent to the development of Oncorhynchus was that Salmo became extinct in the Pacific basin—that is, they were here first. So we might ask ourselves, why is this? Not, are these fish going to become established in the Pacific basin, but why aren't they still here?

There are a lot of questions there and a lot of possible hypotheses, but if we look to the differences in the biology and the developmental biology and the culture of Atlantic salmon and Pacific salmon, perhaps we can have a little bit of insight into why this might have been, in terms of the ways in which Pacific salmon differ significantly from Atlantic salmon.

• 1610

The inference is that the Atlantic salmon either weren't able to adapt to a changing environment at some time or other through geological history, or that they were simply competed out by the Pacific salmon, which are more ecologically vigorous. The differences show up immediately when you begin to try to culture these things.

My background started with Pacific salmon, because that's the species that was cultured first on the B.C. coast, and then subsequently Atlantic salmon.

Starting in the hatchery, Atlantic salmon have an extremely slow juvenile growth rate. At 10°C, the chinook or coho salmon will be able to grow at 3.5% per day, after emergence from the gravel. Atlantic salmon will barely grow at 1% per day or less.

There are a lot of reasons why Atlantic salmon are a more successful culture animal, because later on they have characteristics that are a little better for culture, an economic culture. But starting when they come out of the gravel, the Pacific salmon has the capability, not that it always grows that fast, because the rate of growth will be a function of the amount of feed it has available, but if feed is sufficient, the Pacific salmon can have a burst of growth, which is a survival advantage because it can get up out of the gravel, it can swim, and it can get bigger faster so that predators can't catch it. This is very apparent when you look at them.

In the hatchery that I work in, that we manage, we've been doing salmon enhancement programs for quite a number of years. We have chinook salmon, some Atlantic salmon, and some coho salmon in the hatchery, which is an unusual situation in the salmon farming industry, so we see these things side by side.

Atlantic salmon, in order to make them grow at a rate that is commensurate with commercial culture, have to be heated to somewhere around 15°C or 16°C so they will grow at 3.5% per day. Otherwise they'll take forever to grow, and this costs a lot of money. We have a propane heater that costs us about $3,000 a week right now to heat Atlantic salmon.

So that's very obvious, and the result of that is if you visualize a wild-spawned Atlantic salmon, if in fact that exists in British Columbia—there's some question, actually—a coho and an Atlantic salmon coming out of the gravel at the same time, within a couple of months, and particularly in the spring, there is a sufficient feed supply. The feed supply in most native streams becomes limiting somewhere around the end of June and July, when the weather gets hot and the temperature goes up and the streams start drying up, and so on. But by the first of July, the Atlantic salmon, at ambient temperatures, will be something like one gram or so, and the coho can be as big as five or six grams. Pretty soon the difference in size is great enough that I'm sure the coho would be tempted to eat the Atlantic salmon.

So that is one area where it isn't necessarily the reason there are no Atlantic salmon around in the wild, but it's one that hits you right away when you're trying to culture them. You can visualize that a wild-produced Atlantic salmon fry, in a system where there are Pacific salmon, would be at a very great disadvantage. Either it gets eaten or simply the Pacific salmon get big enough to out-compete its feed supply.

In fact, Atlantic salmon tend to have slightly different habitat. They tend to sit on the bottom. The coho and chinook and the rainbow trout and steelhead tend to be up in the water column. But if there's a shortage of feed supply, rest assured that the coho is going to find it wherever it is, and they'll get there first.

We've done a little bit of experimentation on a very ad hoc basis of co-culturing coho and Atlantic salmon at our hatchery, and we'll repeat that this year. The coho and Atlantic salmon started off at the same size. We started them at one gram or 1.5 grams. The Atlantic salmon, in that case, had been jump-started in heated water. This year we'll go back to no heated water at all.

The result was that at the end of the summer the coho weighed 10 grams, and all of them survived. This was in a system where they were rather competitively fed. I didn't feed them every day, and when I did feed them, I'd make sure there was enough food that all of them had access to food, but they weren't just growing at maximum rate. But the coho ended up being about 10 grams, very uniform, and in really good condition.

Of the Atlantic salmon, 30% had disappeared somewhere. I never found the way in which they left the tank. They probably had been eaten by other fish. The average weight of the Atlantic salmon was 3.5 grams.

• 1615

One interesting thing happened. By the end of the summer, in September, two Atlantic salmon began to grow. The rest of them were totally inhibited. So at the end of the cycle, at the beginning of November, they were actually the biggest fish—only two of them—whereas all of the coho had survived. But overall, over the early rearing period, the Atlantic salmon didn't compete very well with the coho. This year we'll repeat that with Atlantic salmon and coho that start without the Atlantics being accelerated. They'll start at 0.2 grams, and I think the Atlantics will be further back, but we may have some data on that at this time next year.

We'll leave that, but that's a very considerable thing to be concerned with.

The other thing the Pacific salmon have done—and there simply isn't time to go into all the ways in which they are different from Atlantic salmon—is they have learned to rush up the streams in large numbers and spawn and die. This fertilizes the stream. It's an economy of energy because they don't need to carry any more energy with them from the sea to enable them to get back to the sea again. They just die. This fertilizes the watershed so that in the following cycle there are more nutrients coming into the water so that there can be more salmon fry growing in the system. This doesn't happen in an Atlantic salmon river because the Atlantic salmon mostly don't die in the river. They make it back to sea. Some of them return to spawn, but most of them just disappear. You don't see them a second time.

One of the consequences of this is that you have huge quantities of dead fish in a Pacific salmon spawning stream. Every year on Vancouver Island we have the example of thousands and thousands, maybe 30,000 to 40,000, of chum salmon coming into Goldstream, right near Victoria, and they die all over the place. We have pictures of David Suzuki standing beside a river that's white with dead fish, saying how wonderful all this is. It truly is wonderful, because that's how the streams become fertilized. But when they die, those fish are not sterile. We have determined that in fact on those dead chum salmon you can find bacterial kidney disease and Aeromonas hydrophila and a whole plethora of organisms that grow like a rug on them. So there are huge concentrations of bacteria associated with those rotting carcasses, and many of them are pathogenic.

So in order for Pacific salmon to take advantage of this fertilizing capability, they have developed a very considerable resistance to disease, the standard normal diseases that are just in the environment. Although they do get Aeromonas hydrophila, they can get Aeromonas salmonicida, furunculosis, etc. They've developed a relatively high resistance, including to diseases like IHN virus, which is carried by sockeye and to some extent by chinook.

Atlantic salmon, as we found to our dismay in the early days of culturing Atlantic salmon, are very susceptible to these diseases, more so than the Pacific salmon. In the culturing system we have fortunately been able to develop and use vaccines that protect them to a very high level against these diseases, but the wild-spawned Atlantic salmon is not going to be vaccinated. If it's going to become established, it has to become established in a stream that has coho, probably sockeye, chinook, chum, and all of these other things spawning.

It's very interesting. Anne made reference to the early part of the last century, prior to World War II. There were something like seven or eight million Atlantic salmon fry established in the rivers, particularly in the Cowichan River on Vancouver Island, in that system. There have been points made that in that time the technology wasn't good enough to allow a viable Atlantic fry, but the technology was plenty good enough to allow a viable brown trout fry, which became established. We don't know why those Atlantic salmon didn't survive or didn't appear again, but one thing that's probably the case is every single one of those places where they were introduced was in a system like Cowichan Lake, whether the kokanee population, which are sockeye, which have been shown to have IHN virus as an endemic background, or a regular sea-run sockeye population. They probably didn't make it to the river mouth. There are many other aspects of this.

• 1620

Just to put a bit of a nutshell on it in terms of the risks of Atlantic salmon to the environment, first of all, they're an embarrassment to the salmon farming community and will continue to be so as long as they get out. The name of the game, the object of salmon farming, is to raise these things and sell them to market, not to stock them into the environment. So as long as they are there, they will be a problem to us.

In terms of the actual risk, as far as I can see, I'm pretty comfortable with this. I would have great difficulty working with an industry or an operation that was in fact deleterious to the wild fish because I do salmon enhancement as my second thing. But those fish are out there and that's their impact; it's the fact that they're there. Even though they've been shown to come into streams and perhaps have spawned, the probability of them developing natural-producing populations in our native streams is very low. I'm pretty confident about that. I don't think we're going to see an establishment of Atlantic salmon. They were extinct once, and I can't visualize that they're going to get established again, here. Other evidence is the fact that they're so difficult to re-establish in their own range, whereas Pacific salmon are rather easy to establish in other ranges.

We're short of time, and—

The Chair: Yes.

Dr. David Groves: —I could go on for a long time about that, but I think this is a perspective.

The Chair: I think you've provided some interesting evidence, Dr. Groves.

We'll turn to questions, but we'll have to do it hastily.

John Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Just very quickly, you say that Atlantics are hard to establish in their own range; you're talking about in the Atlantic system. I wasn't aware of that. Does this have to do with stream productivity or just the nature of the fish?

Dr. David Groves: I didn't quite get that.

Mr. John Duncan: I think you indicated that restocking Atlantics is a real problem, even within their indigenous range.

Dr. David Groves: Yes.

Mr. John Duncan: Is that due to much lower stream fertility or to just the things you described?

Dr. David Groves: I honestly don't know. The stream fertility will be lower in an Atlantic system because there's not the supply of nutrients.

One of the ways in which an Atlantic salmon stream is rehabilitated—and I get this information second-hand from people in Scotland and Norway—is that the first thing you have to do is get rid of the rainbow trout and brown trout that are in the system, but particularly the rainbow trout. Otherwise they simply compete more than the Atlantic salmon.

The Chair: Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Lawrence D. O'Brien (Labrador, Lib.): Dr. Groves, I apologize for being late, but I'm having a little bit of a bug today. I found the portion I managed to hear very interesting. You sound convincing, at least to me.

You may have already mentioned this before I came in, but I'd like to ask you how we can bridge the gap or find a common denominator, some common ground, to bring the issue of the fears of the fishermen and the people in British Columbia and along the Pacific coast, Alaska and Washington, whatever.... How can we bridge that gap so that at the end of the day the fears are...? Well, you'll never put everybody's fears to rest, but how can we bridge the gap so that there's enough faith in what's happening to put society at rest, if you wish, in terms of finding the common policy? That's the great challenge here. That's basically what we're looking at: finding a way.

I heard the gentleman before I left the other day—and you were sitting at the table—saying DFO this, this, and this in a negative context. We hear from many others, on both sides of the coin. We're hearing that DFO is doing it all wrong or that it's not all wrong, depending on who you're talking to. I know that on both sides of the coin we're looking at it from the extreme point of view. Somewhere in the middle of all this is the silent view as well.

• 1625

I would really like to hear from you on that because you sound like you have something to offer, and I'd be interested in hearing what you had to offer.

Dr. David Groves: I think that's an extremely good question. This is the biggest challenge we face.

Over the past several years, the rhetoric between wild salmon and domestic salmon has been going back and forth. Basically it's an irrelevant argument. We have demonstrated to our satisfaction that the interaction between wild salmon and farm salmon is in fact very low, if it's measurable.

But these fears are definitely out there. There are people who have had traditional livelihoods catching the wild salmon, and the whole picture is changing. They're in a kind of mishmash and they certainly have fears.

It's exactly the same thing in dealing with the first nations. The first nations have perfectly good and perfectly valid fears about farm salmon, escaped Atlantic salmon, aquaculture versus wild fish, and all of this sort of thing. In addition, they've been fed an awful lot of very bad information. Now they're getting far more sophisticated in terms of their own understanding.

This, I think, is one of the challenges of the salmon farming association. We've kind of had our heads down dodging stuff for quite a number of years, yet our technology, in terms of our understanding of what we are doing and where we sit relative to true sustainability, has increased very dramatically—and increasingly so.

It's really our obligation, with DFO and with other areas of expertise, to be able to keep working with these other people. That's all we can do. We can't persuade them to go salmon farming. We can't tell the Kwakiutl District Council that this is a wonderful thing. For a while they're still going to say no, no way, because they don't understand it, but we have to keep pushing at it, to provide them with the very best information possible, not a bunch of manufactured stuff. We have to give them the actual real stuff as to how you raise these fish so that they can make up their own minds. This, to me, is the biggest challenge of this whole process.

I think we've achieved the level—except for some of the perceptions—where we're satisfied that we're not wrecking the wild fish; there are other influences. We must have the wild fishery in British Columbia. We have a whole lot of public salmon pasture out there and it's a national disgrace if we can't keep the right kind of fish swimming in it—and those are the wild ones.

But aquaculture fits in relation to things like global warming and influences that are perhaps going to diminish the wild production over the next few years. Hopefully that's a cycle that will come back again. We can control aquaculture well enough such that we can have fisheries production even in the face of adverse conditions for the wild fish. We must have both of those things. It isn't an either/or situation. We have both aquaculture and the wild fishery, and that's part of the B.C. fisheries production industry on this coast.

So you're right, we have to keep reaching out and finding ways to bring these other guys in. As our industry gets bigger, there are commercial fishermen and commercial fishing boats, with their expertise and their equipment, involved in the salmon farming industry. We have a lot of live-haul boats running up and down the coast with smolts. The same boats pump fish out of the fish farms and bring them back to the processing plants. We have a whole lot of processing plants that are running mostly on farm fish now. These guys who used to only work with the wild fish now have farm fish to work with.

We're getting there, but you've put your finger on the biggest challenge we have. The industry has to stick its head up every once in a while to make sure we're part of that education process. It's in our own best interests.

The Chair: Thank you.

Peter.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, sir, for your presentation.

Just along those lines, you said that you have a lot more work to do, but when aboriginal people read headlines like “Farm salmon hurt wild stocks”, from an internal report by DFO scientists, you can understand the fears aboriginal people would have.

Dr. David Groves: Absolutely.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: That's why I pointed it out. Yesterday we had a presentation by the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. This was just yesterday. Obviously you're having those talks with them on an ongoing basis.

• 1630

Again, to repeat my earlier question to Anne, if these individual groups or towns or communities, for whatever reason—we're talking about perception being reality—didn't want the farms regardless.... You know how they talk of their cultural indigenous rights. A lot of aboriginal people we've spoken to say they won't eat an Atlantic salmon, although some probably do. Would you honour that request and say you won't show up when you're not welcome?

Dr. David Groves: Absolutely. I think you have to honour that request. I don't think we necessarily have to accept that they will never.... If they say no, that means no, but that means not right now. I think we are obligated to make sure they have the information so that they will be able to make up their own minds. They might not want salmon farming, but they might want some other aspect of aquaculture, and we have to work with that.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: You mentioned the decaying fish having all these pathogens when they're dying. Do they have those pathogens before they start going up the river, or do they have them when they start decaying?

Dr. David Groves: It's some of both. There's a background microflora of things like Aeromonas that exist in streams. At one point, it was thought that the IHN virus was something that spawning sockeye in the Fraser system, for instance, would pick up on the spawning bed and that it would then be in so many fish that it would become an epidemic and cause large losses. A few years ago, however, it was demonstrated that sea-green marine sockeye could in fact be made to break with the IHN virus. The implication there is that they actually had it at a low level, it went to sea with them, and they came back with it. So it's a mixture of both.

Some of the diseases we have to deal with are marine diseases, like marine vibrio diseases. Those aren't in fresh water, but some diseases are in fresh water and are carried back and forth.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: You mentioned—

The Chair: This is your last question, Peter.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: —that the coho and Atlantic salmon were together and that the Atlantic salmon were then gone. You suspect the coho ate them. Did you by any chance open up a coho to see if indeed they were in the belly?

Dr. David Groves: I opened them up at the end of the experiment, but I didn't take a sample at the time. I particularly opened up the two biggest Atlantic salmon, and none of them had fish remains in them at the time. A fish would disappear probably within 36 hours or so at that temperature.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay, thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Duncan requires a point of clarification.

Mr. John Duncan: I just want to ask the obvious question that's begged by your presentation. If you were to cultivate Pacific salmon in the Atlantic, given all their natural advantages, wouldn't they be supreme colonizers?

Dr. David Groves: There are Pacific salmon in the Great Lakes. I think if Pacific salmon get down the St. Lawrence Seaway, there really will be a problem with Atlantic salmon, i.e., they will have a tough time because Pacific salmon are more active.

Mr. John Duncan: There really hasn't been any attempt that you're aware of to introduce Pacific—

Dr. David Groves: At one point, years ago, there were pink salmon introduced around Labrador, and there are pink salmon in the Great Lakes that started from just a very small introduction in Lake Superior. But Brad Hicks knows the history far better than I do. There's some danger they may get out that way and will be a force to reckon with at that point.

The Chair: Carmen, very briefly.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.): Mr. Chair, if it's a long answer, maybe Dr. Groves can mail it to the committee.

I was interested in your answer to my colleague Lawrence O'Brien's question. When we talk about the fish farms and the wild fishery, and about trying to create vibrant fisheries out of both of those, allowing them or promoting their coexistence, are there any considerations that would require that we harmonize with what's happening around us? Out on the west coast, can we do that in isolation from anything that's happening in, say, Washington or Alaska? Do you know what I mean? It's one thing to harmonize your own industry, but it's another thing when you're on a coast and you have this obvious interaction. That just increases the number of players and the number of interests to be balanced.

• 1635

Can you make a brief comment on that?

Dr. David Groves: Well, that's a little bit difficult, because the fish from Washington, Oregon, California, and British Columbia all go north past Alaska. I think one of the reasons the Alaskans have been relatively intransigent about salmon culture is that they still have a lot of fish up there, including a lot of ours.

I personally think that with some of their species, such as coho and chinook, and particularly chinook, they aren't doing as well as they are with, for instance, sockeye and pinks. I don't think they're too far away with chinook that they would be holding some in net pens and having captive rootstock programs.

Part of the wild fishery problem, as you've pointed out, is that they're in transit. They come from a whole bunch of different sources. It's not that easy to separate Canadian fish from American fish.

So I don't know what the solution is to that, but you can still have aquaculture without impacting those migrations.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: That's basically what I was asking.

The Chair: Thank you, Carmen, and thank you, Dr. Groves, for your information.

Dr. Hicks, welcome back.

Dr. Brad Hicks: Thank you.

The Chair: Perhaps you could highlight some of your paper, Dr. Hicks. We're already very tight for time.

Dr. Brad Hicks: I'll be very brief. You have a paper that has a bunch of stuff in it, but there are really only three points I would like to make.

First, the reality is that salmon farming is a very, very large business around the globe, with a little over 55% to 60% of the production, depending on how well Alaska does in any given year. The last calculation I specifically did was last August. At that time, 83¢ out of every dollar that was being spent on salmon was going to a farmer.

With regard to Canada's participation in that activity, at the height of it, Canada had 12% of the world's salmon value, and world salmon value was a couple of billion dollars. Canada's participation now is about 5.5%. So we've lost a tremendous amount of our participation in the global salmon market. That's one point I would like to make.

The second point I would like to make is that in the last roughly 15 years, Chile, which had virtually no salmon in 1985, now produces in excess of $1.5 billion worth of salmon and employs 35,000 people in an area that was quite depressed. At one time I managed farms in Chile, and I can tell you, the dramatic change in terms of the livelihood of those people in those coastal communities was striking. For the love of me, I can't understand why we in this country don't get to participate in that type of growth in activity and development.

The next point I would like to make, very briefly, is that there are no closed systems, period. All systems for raising fish are open, one way or another. All systems for rearing our agricultural animals are open systems, end of story.

Now, a much more complicated issue, and one that I think is at the root of this whole salmon debate, is the paradigm shift we're experiencing. In the mid-1980s the salmon farming industry in British Columbia was worth in excess of $350 million. I'm talking about the commercial industry. Mr. Lane talked about the whole salmon industry, but I'm talking about the commercial sector here.

So that was worth about $350 million. The biggest number I ever saw in that area was $387 million, but if we use $350 million that's a pretty good number.

• 1640

Last year, and we're talking just 15 years now, that same fishery was worth $20 million. That's a massive shift. That's a lot of anger, a lot of hurt, and a lot of unemployment. I think a tremendous amount of the vitriol you see cast at salmon farming has to do with this shift.

The environment is frequently used as a lever in the debate. I have been to four or five different types of environmental assessments, and time and time again, when the facts get to the table, those in a position to judge say that salmon farming is an environmentally sustainable industry.

So my bid to this committee is that we get on with it. Salmon farming is a sustainable industry, and we should accept that it's a sustainable industry. We should accept that like any production management system, it has to have an environmental management element. The salmon aquaculture review in British Columbia has a prescription for an environmental management element, which is called the measurement of our impact on the environment, and there's a feedback system where our measurement of the impact will limit our productivity.

I think we in this country should move forward. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Hicks, for being direct.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Are you a veterinarian?

Dr. Brad Hicks: That's correct.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: How many drugs are allowed by Canada in the aquaculture industry?

Dr. Brad Hicks: The management of the drug system for use on agricultural animals—and it doesn't matter whether or not it's fish—is set up such that there are three actual types of regulation governing it.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I know what the answer is. I just want to know if you're going to say what it is. What I know is that it's four.

The Chair: Are you sure you know what it is?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I just spoke privately to a couple of gentlemen, and they say there are four drugs that are legally allowed to be used in aquaculture.

Dr. Brad Hicks: That's actually not correct. There are many, many more.

I'm sorry if I was being a little winded.

There is one under something called the Medicating Ingredient Brochures, and that can be used without a prescription. That's called an over-the-counter drug. Anyone who's a farmer has probably used over-the-counter drugs and knows what I'm talking about. It's not unusual. In dairy cattle you have many. In fish farming you have one.

There are three others that have a label saying they can be used in fish, but they all require a prescription. For all the different types of drugs that are available, any drug that has what's called a DIN number, a drug identification number, can be prescribed by a veterinarian for use in food animals.

Then there is another category, which is called the emergency drug release. This is where we get experimental drugs for humans and animals. You can also use that as a route to get drugs that are newer and that perhaps don't have a drug identification number. Drug identification numbers are put on drugs once they've been through a certain hurdle at Health Canada. I'm not in that regulatory business, and I don't know what all the hurdles are.

So in reality there is access to many, but we don't use that many.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay.

Along that line, as you know, Alexa Morton sent an Atlantic salmon she got to Guelph, Ontario, for examination, and there were 18 different drugs in that fish. One of them was erythromycin. DFO says right here that:

Erythromycin is a restricted drug in Canada. It can only be used in fish with special permission from Health and Welfare Canada. Fish treated with erythromycin, including spent adults, may not be used for human consumption, and under no circumstances may the drug be used orally or to control BKD in food fish.

This is an Atlantic salmon. If it escaped from a pen in, I would assume, the Broughton archipelago, because that's where it was, what I'm trying to figure out is how erythromycin got into an Atlantic salmon when Atlantic salmon in farms are used for human consumption.

• 1645

Dr. Brad Hicks: First of all, I think that report has been misinterpreted. I have seen a similar report—I think it's the same one, but without having seen that one, I don't know for sure—and my guess is that is the table they used. When you get into a laboratory an animal that you suspect might have a drug resistance to a bacteria, my guess is that those 18 drugs are the battery with which they test it for antibiotic resistance, and it's not that the fish was analysed for 18 drugs.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I'll give you a copy.

Dr. Brad Hicks: That's just to let you know. It would be most unusual to find 18 drugs in any animal. Do you have an analytical report that specifically says erythromycin was present?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I just have what was handed to us by Dr. McGrogan of the University of Guelph, He's a doctor of pathology.

Dr. Brad Hicks: Anyway, just to let you know, I think there's a little misinterpretation in understanding that report. That is my first cut on it.

My second cut is that under the law, erythromycin could be used in farm fish. I can tell you that much. I don't know what you have there from DFO that says it can't be used orally, but there is a mechanism so that you can use it in fish. Fish are treated like all other animals we rear in farms. Fish are not treated uniquely from that perspective. I do know that you can use erythromycin in other species, and I'm sure you can use it in fish. I know of no specific restrictions.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: This is my last comment.

You have compared our aquaculture concerns with the explosiveness of growth in Chile and the jobs they have. But in all honesty, sir, most groups, as well as myself, would never want Canada to be compared with Chile in any way, shape, or form. They have some of the worst environmental and labour laws in the world. To compare it with Chile in terms of that growth...I'm glad Canada is slow on the approach, so that we can make sure we have all the best scientific evidence in order to ease the fears of environmental groups, aboriginal groups, and other groups. You get comments like “Farm salmon hurt wild stocks”, and when you get those kinds of reports from DFO scientists—these aren't environmental groups saying this—I'm glad Canada is using a precautionary principle in that regard in order to ascertain the best science so that when aquaculture does grow, we will do it with minimal or no mistakes.

The Chair: Thank you, Peter.

Dr. Hicks.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I'll get you a copy of this, by the way.

Dr. Brad Hicks: Do you want me to respond?

The Chair: If you wish to.

Dr. Brad Hicks: My comment is that I do understand that the labour laws are different in Chile. I worked in Chile for a while. I also grew up in the outback in northern Ontario. When I was a child, the labour laws in this country were not a whole lot different from what Chile's labour laws are now. I employed about 50 people in Chile. Just to let you know, I was kicked out of British Columbia, and that didn't make me happy. I went to Chile because I was kicked out of this country, not because I wanted to go to Chile. In Chile there are wage standards and a health program for all the workers. We supply clothing to all the workers in Chile, and there's a workmen's compensation board in Chile. It is not what the press would necessarily have you believe.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Hicks, for that information.

Next is Mr. Cummins, followed by Mr. O'Brien.

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

Thank you, Dr. Hicks.

Just to comment on your paradigm shift, I always shudder when I hear talk of paradigm shifts, and when I read yours, I think I shuddered for good reason.

I don't think it's helpful to look at the aquaculture industry as if fin-fish farming is necessarily replacing the old order of things, which is wild salmon stocks. There's no doubt that the management of wild salmon stocks has not been helpful. That's a problem of government, where government has operated or managed the fisheries more as a social program than as a money-making enterprise. The successful fisheries are operating with the bottom line visible, and I think that's the way it should be.

• 1650

I don't see the management of the fin-fish fishery is necessarily a shift from one to the other. If there's a shift, it's probably from the 10-year-old system that was in operation in the fin-fish fishery to the modern system, the system we've heard about in the last few days, in which fin-fish farming has improved what it does.

On the myth of the closed system, no such system exists. I'm not sure why that is. Is it simply because they're pumping out whatever they catch in the bag directly into the water? What's the story on that?

Dr. Brad Hicks: The water flows into what has now been termed more accurately an “enclosed” system rather than a “closed” system. A closed system has the connotation that somehow you're completely isolated from the environment and from any interaction with the environment. These systems essentially take water out of the ocean, pass them through the fish, and the water goes back to the ocean.

My contention is that in the present system the water comes out of the ocean, passes through the fish and goes back to the ocean. The difference is more with Mr. Sekora's concept that we're really talking about the type of webbing.

The difference is in the so-called enclosed system. The matrix of the weave is indeed quite tight. We can't see through it; that's how tight it is. In reality, from the so-called environmental perspective, there is little or no difference. There are escapes from enclosed systems. Systems can break up in weather in much the same way as a conventional farm can. The majority of the nitrogen excretion from fish actually comes out of their gills anyway in a water soluble form.

I don't think anybody has, quite frankly, thought in specific detail about what an enclosed system is and what it is that people actually think it's going to accomplish. I don't think they've thought through to the end gain.

Mr. John Cummins: Perhaps what they were thinking about was the type of system in New Brunswick that the chairman had mentioned earlier, where these systems operate on the land. We asked the question this morning about whether or not the land-based system was the equal of a water-based system, and we were advised that it was, but you're basically saying it isn't.

Dr. Brad Hicks: Again, I'm not sure what you mean by a land-based system. A federal hatchery in British Columbia is a land-based system, but it's a wide open system. There's a pump-ashore place in Nanaimo, which is considered a land-based system. You have a pump, it moves the water up through the fish, and then you have another piece of piping that goes back to the ocean. My comment in my paper was that really what you have is a system with a lot of plumbing.

If you look at it specifically, at your molecule of water to your molecule of nitrogen, you really haven't changed a whole lot, except for some plumbing. Somehow that has made some people feel good, and I personally don't understand how, except, of course, it's the big expensive way to farm fish.

Mr. John Cummins: My understanding was that a filtration system was an essential part of that.

Dr. Brad Hicks: Again, I don't know anyone, first of all, who has actually taken the time to go through and decide what it is they're filtering out, because primarily it'll be carbon. Carbon is generally not considered a pollutant. Organic carbon is considered a nutrient.

If people really want to get serious about this debate, they should talk about nutrient cycles and carrying capacity.

The Chair: Okay. Are you giving any further information, Dr. Hicks?

• 1655

Dr. Brad Hicks: No, I think that's it.

The Chair: Okay. Mr. Bernier, last question.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I'd like to return to my earlier philosophical musings. I think I amused you a little. First of all, Mr. Hicks, you're a veterinarian. Is that correct?

Dr. Brad Hicks: Yes, that's correct.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I'm trying to make the connection between your title and the title of veterinarian in Quebec. Exactly what kind of doctor are you? Are you a veterinarian, in the sense that you treat all animals, or do you specialize in salmon?

I'd also like to know if you are involved in any way in farming operations? Are you an expert in the salmon farming industry?

[English]

The Chair: Dr. Hicks.

Dr. Brad Hicks: To answer the first question, I have a degree in fisheries biology, I have a degree in veterinary medicine—which has to do with all species, not just fish—and I have a master's degree in fisheries pathology.

In the Great Lakes alone I did something like 250,000 necropsies when I was working on fish in the Great Lakes. I have read very extensively on the Pacific salmon and salmon ecology. I spent many years working on salmon ecology in the Great Lakes. So that answers the question about expertise.

I have been at many of these environmental sessions about the interaction between farmed and wild fish. Quite frankly, earlier, the question was raised that we don't study the interaction between farm fish and wild fish. In reality there is a tremendous amount of information on that subject. Part of the problem is because it's written in Latin and Greek. It's written in scientific literature and a lot of the problem is people can't read it.

DFO finally hired a veterinarian this year. The first time they hired a veterinarian was this year, so that answers that question.

What's happening in Quebec?

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I'm simply trying to find some basis of comparison between your profession and someone holding a similar title in Quebec. Back home, I don't know of many veterinarians who specialize in the care of fish.

My other question concerns the paragraph that deals with the myth of closed systems. Mr. Cummins also talked about this. You explained very clearly what you meant by this, but you also acknowledged in the middle of the paragraph on page 3 that it was possible that the immediate environment of a farm could not assimilate or destroy food or organic matter produced, which could lead to a decline in productivity within this particular environment.

Your response to that was that new salmon aquaculture standards, as set for the province by the SAR, could allow for the development of a new method.

Do you think that's sufficient? Do you not think that this provides some ammunition to opponents of fish farming? I'm thinking here in particular about the First Nations who are opposed to salmon farms in their immediate environment. You've confirmed that salmon farming can be harmful to the environment. Would relocating these farms bring any measure of reassurance to people? As I said, I'm not an expert, but this is the first time I've heard a supporter of open net-cage salmon farming acknowledge that this kind of activity can be harmful to the environment.

• 1700

As part of my philosophical musing about fact and myth, I'm asking you whether you believe these standards will be adequate?

[English]

Dr. Brad Hicks: During the environmental assessment there were many models that were offered to be used to manage the salmon farming industry. We arrived at performance-based standards as the consensus by the environmentalists, the salmon farmers, and the government, because this is a common mechanism to manage environmental issues.

If you think about it, we really can't do anything without having some interaction with the environment, no matter what we do. The dairy farmer has a manure pile. The bureaucrat in Ottawa has an office. There used to be a tree where that office was. So we do have an interaction with the environment. The performance-based standard is a feedback mechanism where if we exceed the carrying capacity where the farm is located, the government has a mechanism to decrease the impact. It's a natural feedback system. That is the primary mechanism presently used in the environmental management of most industries.

My sense of it is it should work well. They have this type of system in place in Washington State already and it is working well. My understanding is that it's working well.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Bernier, do you have a last question?

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I seem to recall that the State of Washington is also experiencing some problems in terms of the health of its rivers. Unless I misunderstood, that's what we were told last week.

My final question relates to what you said, namely that fish farming operations can affect the immediate environment, but that ways can be found to farm that will not have any adverse effects.

My final question doesn't really have anything to do with fish farming, but more with the environment and public safety. How should we feel about the fact that the city of Victoria apparently dumps its sewage into the ocean? I don't know whether you're aware of the problem. We've been told that the amounts involved are rather small, that the dumping takes place some distance offshore and that the marine environment is strong enough to break down the effluent.

If you're aware of the problem, namely the sewage from Victoria, how does it compare with the effluent problem from open net-cage fish farms on rivers?

[English]

Dr. Brad Hicks: I'm not familiar with all the details of the Victoria sewage system. I know that frequently people compare organic material leaving fish farms with sewage, and often it's commonly used. I think it's to bring a motion to the table, because what comes from salmon farms is not sewage per se. Sewage is a very complex organic material that includes an awful lot more than carbon and nitrogen and phosphorus. It includes an awful lot of chemical materials that we add to the water.

At salmon farming, the effluent is primarily digested material, feces. The digested material comes from the feed, and essentially all the ingredients in salmon feed are wholesome ingredients that you could eat. So it's a little different. First of all, it's not just sewage. With the performance-based standards you can overload the system if you put too big a farm in too small an area. That's when you get into trouble. With the performance-based standards you have a way to put the brakes on. That's why in this province, after many discussions, the groups agreed that this would be the way to move forward.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Hicks. We'll have to cut it off there. If members weren't so inquisitive, we'd get through faster, but we need the answers.

Dr. Brad Hicks: Thank you very much.

• 1705

The Chair: Mr. Stephen Cross, welcome.

Mr. Stephen F. Cross (President, Research Director, Aquametrix Research): Mr. Chairman, I will make this extremely brief for the committee's sake, since I have negative five minutes now to do this.

I've thrown away my speaking notes, and I'll just make—

The Chair: We have them on the record, though.

Mr. Stephen Cross: That's great. I'll make three very brief points, then we can just go to questions, if that serves the committee well.

I've been involved with the aquaculture industry for 14 years, in the role of a third-party environmental consultant. When I say to the industry, it's not just to the companies that grow the salmon, but to the government departments that regulate the industry as well, including DFO, our British Columbia Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, and the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Over the past 14 years I've conducted a number of studies on behalf of these government agencies and have done a fair amount of work for industry over the past six years from an environmental management perspective.

The work I have completed on behalf of all of these groups has allowed me to visit and actually acquire environmental information on 104 salmon farm sites on this coast. So my comments and opinions are based on actual hands-on, in-the-mud, underneath-the-farm experience. I just want to make you are aware of that.

Of the three points I want to bring forth out of the document you have in front of you, one is that there is a benthic impact, or an impact to the sea floor, as a result of salmon farming practices. Nobody's going to deny that; there's a lot of hard evidence to suggest there is a real impact. That impact occurs primarily directly beneath the salmon farm itself and, according to our information, extends to about 50 metres around the perimeter of the farm.

Point two, this is the only industry I know of that will be directly affected by its environmental waste. There aren't too many other industries I can think of, in coastal British Columbia or on the coastal Canadian scene, that are influenced by their actual waste discharges, including pulp mills, booming activities, municipal outfalls, and mining waste. These industries and commercial activities discharge materials to get rid of them.

As part of the process, salmon farming loses organic waste from its operation. That includes incidental feed and fish fecal material. That material hits the sea floor and will break down naturally in the environment. If they exceed the assimilative capacity of the environment, the first thing to be affected is the overlying fish. It truly is the canary-in-the-mine-shaft scenario. So this type of industry has to watch and manage the environment, as they are the ones that will be affected first.

As a result, my final point is that there has been and continues to be improvement in industry practices. In my brief I've noted a couple of the major types of activities and processes that have changed over the last ten years, and continue to change now. One is husbandry practices, or the way farmers have actually been trained and have learned how to grow fish on the site. There have been technological improvements in husbandry. The most significant one on this coast is the use of camera systems.

Virtually every pen system on this coast has a camera on the bottom pen that looks straight up. When the operator on the side of the pen throws an armful of feed into the pen, he actually looks through a camera system, and all he sees is the fish going around. As soon as he sees one pellet of feed make it through the group of fish, feeding is discontinued. So that kind of technological improvement, which has only occurred in the last ten years, has dramatically improved the amount of feed that is lost in the environment; it has significantly reduced it.

There have been other significant improvements in feed quality, brood stock management, and farm siting. Recently, we've adopted new oceanographic technologies and applied them to the industry on this coast, to look at optimal siting of net cage structures to ensure that they have optimum water movement through their net cages and sufficient water movement across the sea floor to assimilate waste materials.

• 1710

All this type of technology is being applied and continues to be applied to the industry situation, which allows that waste material issue to be addressed quite efficiently. You'll see numbers in my brief that actually show you how that has improved over the last 10 years.

To fit in with this notion of continual improvement within the industry, we are currently applying the principles and guidelines of the ISO 14001 program to the salmon farming industry on the west coast. Two of the larger companies here have retained us to actually develop formalized environmental management systems for their companies. So they are committed to continual improvement; it's not just hearsay or whatever. They are actually making legitimate strides in this area.

I would be happy to answer any questions.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Cross. We had the opportunity to look at one of those cameras in operation at the fish farm we were on. I'm reasonably familiar with some of those feeding issues because I am a dairy producer, although you guys always seem to use dairy as an example.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: You mentioned 104 sites, and I wonder if that includes some previously abandoned sites in the Sechelt area or whether it's just currently occupied or fallow areas.

Mr. Stephen Cross: That's my list from the last 14 years of doing that, from the mid-1980s until now. So it includes some of the Sechelt sites, some of the southern sites, such as Nanoose, and down at Sooke.

Mr. John Duncan: Is there a mechanism for cleaning up sites of old gear and stuff like that, for example, in the Sechelt area, where that has been identified, but where the company that was there at the time no longer exists or is around? The reason I bring that up is because I am aware of a prawn fisherman who lost some gear in one of those areas and fully attributes it to the fact that there was a fish farm there and they didn't clean up their gear.

Mr. Stephen Cross: That's a little bit off my line of expertise. I'm talking about waste material issues. However, I would suspect that under the conditions of the licence of the operator there, one of those conditions would be to remove any of that material after leaving.

Mr. John Duncan: Okay. I won't belabour that.

Are you familiar with the area that's subject to the legal suit...the Lynn Hunter charges?

Mr. Stephen Cross: That particular site we haven't had any dealings with. I've looked at some of the information from the company itself. Some years back a government study was done on that site. I haven't actually done any measurements on that particular company's site. I'm familiar with the area—the Broughton Archipelago. We had it done on a number of other sites in that area.

Mr. John Duncan: Would you consider that to be a somewhat typical site, or an atypical site?

Mr. Stephen Cross: That would be difficult to say without really looking at some of the information that's available. It's probably middle of the road, I think, from what I recall from the data we have on it. But the amount of data is sparse.

Mr. John Duncan: Okay.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Duncan. I'm just wondering about this, because it is a problem in other areas of the country—material that's left, even by mussel producers in the shellfish aquaculture and so on. Is that not a provincial area?

Mr. John Duncan: No, because it's underwater habitat.

A voice: The sites are provincial leases.

Mr. John Duncan: They're provincial leases, but DFO can insist they be cleaned up.

The Chair: It's something we'll have to look at for sure, in terms of the committee, because we've had some horror stories in many areas. In fact, one person was killed in Newfoundland with a buoy, as a result of it being improperly placed.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Stephen, thank you for your presentation.

In 1997, the Food and Agriculture Organization developed a code of practice for aquaculture development for the world, I would assume. I understand now in British Columbia the industry is developing their own code of practice. How much of the code of practice they are developing—and I don't even know if this is a fair question to ask you—would they take from here? Reading it, it looks pretty good in terms of developing the aquaculture industry and allaying the fears of many people in the industry. Wouldn't it be advisable just to take the code of practice from the FAO with a little jigging here and there to meet B.C. standards?

• 1715

Mr. Stephen Cross: I can't tell you what process they used to develop their particular code of practice. They actually only released it last week. It is finished as far as I know. I have a copy of it. I haven't had a chance to read it—B.C.'s.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Maybe I could pick that up.

Mr. Stephen Cross: As far as I'm aware, we did just receive a copy. I haven't even read it yet. It's our intent to take the existing code the industry has developed and incorporate it into our ISO 14001 EMS for the clients we're dealing with on this coast. That strengthens their EMS even further.

I am aware that the code of practice that has been developed by our industry on this coast is intended as an evolving document. The code of practice is starting off as a first cut at it. Then as we go, we'll just continually improve that document as scenarios develop.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Very good.

You mentioned these cameras. We saw one of those cameras. It was neat watching all those fish swimming around. But would a camera be at the bottom of every pen?

Mr. Stephen Cross: Yes, most of the pens have them.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: When we were there, how many pens would an average site have? Five or six maybe? Seven, eight?

Mr. Stephen Cross: Number of pens?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Yes.

Mr. Stephen Cross: It depends on the size of the pen. There are larger pens, so there'd be fewer numbers or smaller.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: When we were there we noticed an automatic feeder around and around. Yet I didn't notice anyone go to the cameras to see if the pellets.... You said if one pellet drop, the feeding stops, right?

Mr. Stephen Cross: I'll give you an example of a site just north of Campbell River that has a combination of the camera systems and the automated feed deployment. It's actually all done with multiple camera systems that extend through the whole system. So there's one in the bottom of every pen. It's linked back to a computer monitor inside the cabin. One guy sits there in his chair and he can actually watch all the pens. He can actually control pen one and get some feed. Then he can just click with the mouse to pen two and then hit the button and feed it.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Like the security guy at a major hotel.

Mr. Stephen Cross: It's pretty much like that, yes, that's right.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: So that individual can monitor all pens.

Mr. Stephen Cross: Yes. Basically it's an automated system but he's still monitoring feed live.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: That clears that up, thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Cummins, last question.

Mr. John Cummins: I have a comment to take note of the waste material composition section, where you talk about the infamous Victoria primary sewage treatment. I think that's an interesting issue you bring forward there. Members of the committee might want to note that.

As well, on the environmental recovery, where you talk about the residue from log booming and whatnot and the longevity of the mess that remains on the sea floor, I think that also is an interesting comment. I don't know whether you want to say any more about it, but I think it's worth noting for the members of the committee.

Mr. Stephen Cross: Yes, I make those comments because as a marine biologist, oceanographer, and environmental assessment biologist I've worked with all of the other commercial activities and industrial activities on the coast, including log booming. Given that the B.C. salmon farming industry takes up approximately 0.3% of the tenured foreshore base in British Columbia, opposed to 30%-plus for log booming, it's a natural comparison when you look at that large of an area of log booming, and the type of waste is similar, except in the case of log booming you are talking about chasing of logs and a large amount of bark material falling to the sea floor. It's still organic matter and it builds up.

If you take Puppy Chow as an analogy for the fish feed and melt it in a glass of water, that's what you're comparing to a chunk of bark. The time it takes for the assimilation of that piece of fish feed or fecal material from the fish compared to a chunk of bark is quite a bit different. We're talking decades or a hundred years. So to legitimize one type of industry, in my mind, on that type of waste issue, you need to look at both sides of it.

Mr. John Cummins: Those are good points.

The Chair: Thank you. Yes, there are some excellent points in the submission.

We did have a tour last week at one point of Victoria. We went out in a boat.

Thank you very much. Mr. Cross, I don't see any other questions. Thank you for being as brief as you could be.

Mr. Stephen Cross: Thank you.

• 1720

The Chair: We'll go next to Ms. MacBride, with the Georgia Strait Alliance, and then we have one other witness after that.

Welcome, Ms. MacBride. Do you have a submission?

Ms. Laurie MacBride (Executive Director, Georgia Strait Alliance): Yes. Thank you.

The Chair: As you know, we've chatted.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I was just going to say that I know you've had a long day, so don't worry, I'm not going to read the submission.

I'd like to touch on a few points and mainly guide you over what's in it so that you can take it away with you and hopefully read it later. I'm going to touch on a number of different issues. I'm primarily going to touch on issues that fall under federal jurisdiction and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on those under provincial jurisdiction.

I wanted to start with just a few points about the federal fisheries ministry and its attitude toward net-cage aquaculture through the federal aquaculture development strategy. We see that DFO has actively promoted net-cage salmon farming and has sometimes suppressed critical information and failed to act to protect wild fish, which we see as DFO's primary mandate. I give a number of examples in section 1 of the submission that you may want to look at later. Basically my main point in that section is that we believe it is unconscionable and completely inappropriate to have DFO as a regulating agency acting simultaneously as a proponent for the salmon farming industry, which it has done and continues to do in many cases.

The second section deals with diseases in farmed fish. As you know, in New Brunswick the provincial government took the radical measure of ordering a slaughter of millions of farmed fish to prevent infectious salmon anemia or ISA from spreading to wild salmon, and despite that action ISA was found in wild salmon there in October of last year. The disease has been serious enough in Scotland to force a quarantine of up to one-quarter of all the farms there, and it's still spreading.

In November, officials there discovered for the first time that the virus had been detected in several species of wild fish including salmon, trout, and eels. Government scientists in Scotland are now admitting that there is little hope of eradicating the disease. ISA is highly contagious among fish, and it seems to me it is only a matter of time until it is brought to British Columbia, because ISA is now found in every country from which Canada imports Atlantic eggs.

ISA of course is only one disease affecting farmed salmon, and there are many others. I talk about some of the others in this section as well.

I have some pictures I'd like to draw to your attention. Who can I hand these to, to be passed on?

A voice: Right here.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: The first photo marked number 1 is a picture of an Atlantic salmon that was caught in a stream in the Broughton Archipelago area last fall, just after an escape from a fish farm in that area, and it clearly showed signs of disease. At that time the workers thought the disease might have been furunculosis, but it was sent to two independent labs and they showed that both fish were infected with one bacteria and in addition the second fish tested positive for a second bacteria. These bacteria, Aeromonas hydrophila and Serratia liquefaciens, can cause a variety of infections in humans ranging from diarrhea—fairly innocuous—all the way to flesh-eating disease. There is at least one example of a fisherman who lost his lower arm to that disease following exposure to this same bacterium after lacerating his thumb on a fish's fin that was in the Strait of Georgia. It was the same disease.

Dr. Warren Bell of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment reviewed the documentation in detail and said of the lab findings: “I believe a warning to people fishing in the area is definitely in order”. In other words, it was a health risk for people in the area but there were no public warnings issued. There are some other examples in that section of fish diseases and human interaction with them.

• 1725

The third section is on antibiotics. Antibiotics are used, and as you know, they are applied to the feed primarily—for medicated feed. The heavy use of antibiotics at times, including some similar to the ones used to treat human infections, adds a growing concern for human health as well as the marine ecosystem.

Obviously, antibiotics are used in terrestrial livestock as well, but it is a real concern with fish farming because of the nature of the marine environment and the fact that you cannot contain drug applications, as farmers can do on land. Antibiotics are given through the feed, and the feed pellets are tossed out over the net pens. The fish can absorb only 2% to 10% of the antibiotics they're fed, and the rest can sink below the net cages, where they can be consumed by other fish, shellfish, and so on.

A UBC study found that shellfish up to 300 metres away from fish farms had significant levels of antibiotics in their tissue. So it does affect other organisms in the area. The 1994 study quoted in the paper found that from 74% to 100% of wild fish caught near fish farms contained antibiotics in their flesh, some of those above a safe human consumption level. We believe that all farmed fish should be required to be labelled in the marketplace so that consumers can make an informed decision on whether they want to buy farmed fish or not, knowing that there may be antibiotic residues in some of them.

The fourth section is about pesticides. The primary one I'm talking about there is ivermectin, a very toxic pesticide used to kill parasites. Just 2 millilitres of it is enough to kill every parasite in a 1,000-pound animal. When a study was conducted into sea lice treatment a couple of years ago, the industry gave assurances to the provincial government that no chemicals or drugs were being used in B.C. to treat sea lice. However, freedom of information requests found that this was not the case, that in 1997 alone, 107 kilograms of ivermectin were used at farms on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

So there are two serious issues here: (1) the fact that the industry lied to the provincial government; and (2) the use of a substance that even the manufacturer does not recommend for use in the marine environment because of its toxicity to other organisms.

The industry keeps trying to tell us that stories like this are a thing of the past, that practices have changed and are much better now. But just two weeks ago, a farm in the Broughton Archipelago accidentally killed 7,000 salmon at its Wehlis Bay farm with an overdose of ivermectin. I believe you received some testimony about that the other day. It was applied in the fish feed to deal with a sea lice outbreak. One of our concerns is that some of that feed may have drifted through the net cages and drifted off to be eaten by other marine life. Ivermectin would not kill just sea lice, it could also kill prawns, and this farm was adjacent to an area used by sports fishermen to take prawns. So we are concerned about the potential health impacts for people in the area.

The fifth section is about morts and other waste. Morts are the dead fish from fish farms. This is an issue that's raised directly with the Wehlis Bay incident. What do you do with 7,000 dead fish? I'd like to draw your attention to the second and third photos. This is a mort barge that is in the Broughton Archipelago area.

When I saw this barge and took these pictures, the plastic totes were brimming over with dead farmed fish, a brown soupy mass. If you look in the photos—I don't know where they are at the moment—you'll see small white spots throughout, which are maggots. The mort soup was overflowing from the totes, along with what seemed to be leakage from tubs of formic acid sitting on the barge and dripping into the water. That wasn't very long ago, the summer before last. Residents in the area tell us that the same practices are still going on.

I'd also like to draw your attention to photographs 4 through 7. It was very interesting, that discussion with the last speaker on waste left behind when farms go broke or move their operations. Those four photographs are pictures that I took just last summer at an abandoned farm in the Sunshine Coast, the Sechelt area. As you'll see, there's quite a mess remaining, even though the farm stopped producing years ago: netting left in the intertidal zone, styrofoam floats all over the shore, half-sinking floats in the bay, cluttered piles of junk everywhere. Debris from this one farm can be found in five separate islets in that area, in the centre of a popular recreational boating and summer home area. Of course, there's all the waste we can't see, and I'm not going to touch much on that, because seabed waste is primarily provincial jurisdiction.

• 1730

The fifth section is about Atlantic salmon in B.C. waters. A continuing concern for us is that this alien species carries a risk for wild salmon, not only for transmission of exotic diseases, but also for the colonization of wild salmon habitat.

When Atlantic salmon were first introduced into B.C. waters, DFO told us not to worry, Atlantics could never survive if they escaped. So then when fishermen started catching escaped Atlantics that were clearly alive and well, they said don't worry, they won't survive in the rivers. Okay. Then they were found in rivers, as far away as 100 miles up the Skeena River and in streams all over Vancouver Island. So clearly that wasn't true. Next DFO told us don't worry, the Atlantics will never spawn in our rivers, and now we have evidence of them spawning in three rivers on Vancouver Island.

Clearly, DFO has been pushing a “don't worry, be happy” line, while trying to minimize or ignore the very real potential for Atlantic salmon to take over the habitat of wild salmon.

The sixth section is about predator control. DFO's study on acoustic harassment devices showed that these very loud seal scarers, as they're called, clearly contravene the marine mammal regulations in that they disperse marine mammals. It has become an even more important issue in light of the news last spring that killer whales in B.C. are now officially at risk.

The federal committee on the status of endangered wildlife in Canada included acoustic harassment devices in its list of current threats facing these whales. The B.C. government review recommended that AHDs, or acoustic harassment devices, be phased out by 2001, and so far we see no move from DFO toward any phase-out.

The other area of predator control of concern is illegal shootings of wildlife, and I list a number of examples there that have been brought to our attention of excessive wildlife kills, unpermitted kills, at several farms.

The next section is a very short section. I just wanted to flag an issue that has alarmed local residents in the area, which is nightlighting—the use of very bright lights to enhance fish growth. This has raised concern from people in the area about disruption to movements of herring, oolichan, and so on, and disruption to the marine food chain.

The provincial review recommended that the issue be studied prior to any more nightlighting permits being granted, but again, we see no move by DFO to address this issue yet. It is a federal issue.

The next section is about genetically modified organisms. I'll just touch very briefly on this. This is about some of our concerns about the development of transgenic fish, in other words genetically modified organisms, within the Canadian fish farm industry and academic community.

At this point, they're not being grown in Canada, to our knowledge, but that technology is being exported. We're concerned that the human health impacts are unknown, the impacts on the marine environment are unknown, and any studies that have been done to date are too short to provide any real answers. It doesn't make sense to introduce these fish into Canadian fish farms in the absence of any certainty that it's safe to do so. Also, it makes very good sense for government at all levels to support policies of mandatory labelling of any transgenic organisms—GMOs—since the public wants the right to know what they're eating and buying.

The ninth section is about sustainability of wild salmon in the commercial fishery. We see that the net-cage industry has put more pressure on wild stocks, and although the industry says it is helping to feed a hungry world, we see it as actually reducing the capacity to feed the world, because of a couple of things. One is the net protein loss—the feed conversion ratio when you're raising predators. There's an appendix attached that explains this more fully. Second is the fact that most of this feed is being taken from other parts of the world, from the developing world, and creating a luxury food.

• 1735

We also see that the industry has undercut markets and prices for wild salmon, thus increasing hardship for fishermen in coastal communities—and there are some examples given there.

The final section before my policy recommendations is on closed containment versus net cages. The safest way in which salmon farms could operate would be in fully contained land-based systems that don't have any exchange with the marine environment. Saltwater recirculating systems comparable to what would be required for salmon aquaculture have operated successfully in several countries. The great advantage with these is the capacity to control and manage the quality of the rearing environment. In other words, you let the farmer maximize production without risking wild species or habitat.

You can also use closed containment in the marine environment if the farms are properly sited and if they're closed-loop systems. In other words, they include a waste removal and treatment component and a recirculating system that means no discharge of effluent or solids into the marine environment. If the industry was doing this, we believe it would be addressing the majority of the problems that are inherent in salmon aquaculture today.

The industry argues that closed systems are too expensive because of the initial capital and operating costs, but we believe that when you factor in all the true costs, that equation changes. You need to consider, for example, the hidden subsidies to the net-cage industry. Appendix 4 is attached with, I think, four pages of examples of those, and they are just the federal ones. I haven't listed the provincial ones.

Losses by net-cage farms that would be unlikely to occur with closed-loop systems should be factored into the equation too. Net-cage farmers have losses to toxic algae blooms, storms, predators, etc., that wouldn't be a problem if they were using closed systems.

Another thing we need to factor in is the relative cost of each system to the marine environment. The other thing that never seems to be factored into any economic analysis is the impact of net cages on other users, including the sport fishery, the commercial fishery, the shellfish industry, and the marine tourism industry. Just as one example, marine tourism alone brings in one-third of all B.C.'s tourism revenues. That's about $3 billion per year. Open net-cage fish farms are extremely offputting to visitors to B.C. who are looking for a pristine coastal experience. They don't like to see an industrial experience or smell an industrial experience, etc., so these industries are in conflict in a lot of locations. They're also posing risk to wild salmon, which underlie the very foundation of B.C.'s marine tourism industry, so I think it makes no economic sense to risk a $3 billion industry for the sake of one worth around $250 million.

There is some other information given in appendices 5 and 6 about some economic figures that really put to question the idea that net cages are more economic than closed containment, and there are examples of economic figures there from Canada and Scotland.

Compared to marine net-cage operations, closed-loop systems have a number of advantages not just for the marine environment but also for the industry. These should be factored into any economic analysis. There are a number of those advantages listed on pages 10 and 11. I won't read through them. I'll leave them with you.

To our knowledge, no definitive study has ever been done of the true economics of closed containment versus the net-cage industry. We believe that if all of the environmental, ecological, social, and regulatory costs of net-cage production were to be weighed against those of closed containment, then closed containment would look very affordable by comparison.

To end with our policy recommendations, I have ten of them.

The first is to revoke the federal aquaculture development strategy and remove the proponent role from DFO. Ensure that DFO is carrying out its legal responsibility to safeguard wild fish.

Secondly, cease all Atlantic egg imports to Canada, particularly in light of ISA.

Third, require biomarking or some other identification systems to identify ownership of all farmed fish. Also, require immediate reporting of all escapes and active recovery efforts when they do occur, with significant fines for escaped fish.

Fourth, work with provincial governments, the industry, consumer groups, and stakeholders to develop a system of eco-certification for fish grown in closed-loop systems and without the use of antibiotics, pesticides, and other drugs.

Fifth, ban the use of AHDs.

Sixth, ban the use of night lighting except where it can be proven to have no detrimental effect on the marine food chain. For example, it might work just fine in some closed systems.

• 1740

Seventh, vigorously prosecute the unpermitted killings of wildlife by fish farm employees.

Eighth, work with the provinces to adopt a schedule for phase-in to full conversion of the industry to closed-loop containment systems, and then ensure that the industry is moving towards that and is meeting the schedule.

Ninth, require clear labelling of all farmed fish going to market so that consumers can identify it as farmed.

Tenth, refuse any necessary permits that would allow genetically modified fish to be grown in Canadian waters.

Thank you, and I'm happy to take questions.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. MacBride.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Thank you.

On page 5 of your document you make reference to a 1997 total of 107 kilograms of ivermectin being used, and you've garnered that information from an access to information request. We have other testimony that talks about 450 grams being used, I believe in calendar year 1998, although it may have been 1999.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I think it was 1998, because I've seen that too.

Mr. John Duncan: Do you think there has been that dramatic a change? What do you attribute it to?

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I might have thought so until the Wehlis Bay incident two weeks ago, when 7,000 fish were accidentally killed by an overdose of ivermectin.

There are cycles of parasite years. Some years are worse than others, and 1997 was obviously a worse year than 1998. I wouldn't say that all practices aren't improving, because that's much too strong a statement. Certainly some practices are improving, and certainly a lot more has come to public light in the last couple of years, thus forcing the industry to make some improvements. But I don't think we're there yet. I think we have a long way to go.

One of the things I should just add about the ivermectin concern a couple of weeks ago, which I touched on, is the question of where you dump 7,000 fish that have died of a toxic overdose of a pesticide. Local residents are concerned that there is one of two places that they may have been dumped. They've seen birds circling over both those places in large numbers, and they are concerned that birds may be ingesting this toxic pesticide.

Mr. John Duncan: We had evidence presented on that issue by the assistant deputy minister provincially. His office was involved in the process, and I understand they were taken where you are to take.... I don't think it's a normal mort disposal since they have the ivermectin content. I think there's a special process when they experience that circumstance.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I certainly hope so, because it could get into other wildlife through birds and streams and other run-off.

Mr. John Duncan: Exactly.

The Chair: We have been basically assured that they went to the proper site.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Good.

Mr. John Duncan: Some of us are lacking for questions because we've been around the block. This is day seven, so we've certainly heard a lot and have pursued some things also.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I would just add that, in that case, the other concern is for anyone taking prawns in the area around the fish farm. To my knowledge, there was no public health warning issued or caution given for people to stop sport fishing in that area at that time for prawns.

An hon. member: That's a very good point.

The Chair: Mr. Provenzano, and then Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: It's an interesting brief. I don't know why I feel I've read it before. Was it presented to the province?

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Pieces of it are very similar to our brief to the province, but it's actually quite different. When I looked at our provincial brief, there wasn't that much that I felt was applicable to this one. But we've written a lot of stuff over the last few years.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: It's just that it seemed so familiar.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: No doubt.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Some of the comments you're making about antibiotics are interesting to say the least. I'll just refer to a couple of statements.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Which page, please?

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: You state:

The heavy use of antibiotics—including many of the same ones used to treat human infections—adds a growing concern for the long-term impacts of salmon farming on human health as well as the marine ecosystem.

Do you believe that's a well founded concern?

• 1745

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Oh, yes. I've met with microbiologists and human health people on this at UBC, and they have been very concerned about it. It's not just a problem in aquaculture; it's a problem worldwide in terms of the growing increase in antibiotic resistance. Aquaculture industries are adding to it, so it's a concern. In fact, I had testimony from a couple of the professors at UBC that they gave to me to take to the health minister on that issue.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: You say:

Even when the feed does reach the salmon for which it is intended, at least 90 percent is passed back into the environment either as feces or through the fish's gills.

Is that a true statement?

Ms. Laurie MacBride: It's the information that I've certainly read, and it has been corroborated.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Also:

A UBC study showed that shellfish up to 300 metres away from fish farms had significant levels of antibiotics in their tissues.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Yes.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: What I'm trying to do, as one member of this committee, is get a perspective on some of the things that are being said. When I read and hear things such as this, that perspective is affected by what every one of us knows. There are five billion people on this planet urinating and defecating into the water. If what we are saying is true about the antibiotics contained in the feces, what about the waste of human beings that is pouring—

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Oh, absolutely.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: —hear me out—that is pouring into our marine waters by the billions of gallons. There's no mention in here that the antibiotics you're finding in fish could be traced not to the fish farms but to what we're doing to the waters through our municipal sewage outfalls because of the fact that humans are taking so many more antibiotics in such great quantities than any fish in any specific fish farm. Maybe we're providing those antibiotics in the water. Have we discounted that?

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I guess that might be the case if these fish farms were being run close to those urban centres that have municipal outflows, but they're not. They're in remote areas of the Broughton Archipelago, where there's a very small urban population compared to those urban centres with outfalls.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Fish swim.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Well, farm fish don't swim.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: You have migration that covers huge areas. Are we saying that we're going to discount the sewage outfalls from municipal sewage treatment facilities? What about the municipalities where there is no treatment? Are all the antibiotics contained in the feces, the discharges from human beings, that are dumped into the waters not a possible source here? We don't even mention them as a possible source.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I doubt they're a source in the farmed fish going to market. In farmed fish going to market, 3% to 4% of those have been found to have significant antibiotic residues in their flesh. Those fish are not swimming wild, or at least we hope they're not. They are caged and they are removed from the farms and are taken to market. It can't be a factor for those fish.

As far as places like Victoria are concerned, it's a problem, but it's mainly a problem for returning spawning salmon to the Fraser River. It's not so much—

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Where am I going wrong here? You tell us that only 3% to 4% of the fish that are contained in the net cages and that go to market have those traceable antibiotic levels. We're talking about 3% or 4% of huge volumes of fish.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: We're talking about 3% to 4% of the fish that were tested, and only a very small number get tested to begin with. It came out of the provincial review that only a very small number actually get tested, and that's because of underfunding of government testing services, primarily. So, to start with, only a few get tested. Of that, one of the technical experts at the review said that farmed fish that went to market generally had a slightly higher level of antibiotic residue in their flesh, as compared to other terrestrial livestock.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: But your point as well is that marine life—

The Chair: This is your last question.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: —in the vicinity of these fish farms is displaying higher levels of antibiotics.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Yes, that's from a scientific journal. I have the reference cited right there.

• 1750

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Can you get a barrel of water anywhere that doesn't contain some level of antibiotics? Can you go out into the ocean a hundred miles and get a barrel of water that doesn't have some level of contaminant?

Ms. Laurie MacBride: No, of course you can't. The entire planet is bathed in a dilute layer of tetracycline because of our overuse of the stuff, and that is causing increased antibiotic resistance among humans, which is an incredible problem that we are having to deal with, but adding to it through any industry is not the answer.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: It's our task to find out the significance of that concern, whether there is a significant additive here or whether in the scheme of things it's not so.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I think it's also your task to determine what are essential and non-essential uses of those substances. Where they're essential, yes, we should be using them. Our point is that were these fish being grown in closed systems, there wouldn't be the need to be using these antibiotics and we could cut out one more source of unnecessary antibiotics getting out there into the environment and to humans.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Provenzano and Ms. MacBride.

Mr. Stoffer, this is your last question.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On page 7, in the bottom paragraph, you make a statement that I think is very serious, and if I were Anne McMullin, I'd be very concerned over that last paragraph, where in fact you indicate that former and current employees and a manager of a farm said that over a four-year period, they killed all kinds of various animals around the farm. Can you indicate what years those were?

Ms. Laurie MacBride: The one in the last paragraph was several years ago, but the second to last paragraph was very recently, so it's not necessarily a practice that has ended.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Can you indicate where that farm was?

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I don't have it with me, but I can indicate it, if you want, by follow-up. We've already actually lodged a complaint on the one in the second to last paragraph. We know what farm that was. We lodged a complaint. To our knowledge, DFO has not prosecuted or done anything about it.

Regarding the one in the last paragraph, I can't. The man was so terrified to come forward publicly, because he felt he would be prosecuted for his role in this, that we were never able to get that information.

Actually, there are two different examples in that last paragraph. On the second one, yes, I can, although I'd rather do that confidentially, because I don't want the employees at that farm to—

Mr. Peter Stoffer: For the benefit of this committee, this is another aspect of fin-fish farming that never gets mentioned, until today. If you could possibly supply us with the information—

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I'd be happy to.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: —as to who owns the farm, who these employees were, and see if they would come forward, I would certainly like to talk to them and the committee would like to hear evidence, if they could prove to us various statistics that a particular farm or other farms.... You also say other employees at other farms indicate the same practices.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Yes. It will be a couple of weeks before I can supply that, because my staff person who has all the information is in Europe right now.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: We need it to be truthful and factual.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Yes.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: If you could send that to us, we'd greatly appreciate it.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: I will.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: That is indeed quite shocking, let alone everything else.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Yes.

As I said, on the first example in the last paragraph, unfortunately, the man was too terrified to give his name or any information, but on the other two examples given there, I can.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: So you can see then where we couldn't use that particular evidence, but we could use others.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: Yes.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Stoffer, and thank you, Ms. MacBride, for your interesting exchange.

Ms. Laurie MacBride: You're most welcome.

The Chair: Next is Mr. Bruce Turris, with the Canadian Sablefish Association.

Mr. Simmons, we'll be about 20 minutes. Sorry to hold you up.

Bruce, John was saying your background is with DFO. Perhaps you'd want to give us that as well before you start.

Mr. Bruce Turris (Executive Director, Canadian Sablefish Association): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will.

My name is Bruce Turris, and I'm here on behalf of the Canadian Sablefish Association. As John mentioned, I am a former employee of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, where I worked from 1984 through 1987. When I left the department in 1987—

Mr. John Cummins: In 1997.

Mr. Bruce Turris: Sorry. Thanks, John.

• 1755

I left the department in 1997 as the manager of the commercial groundfish fishery division in the Pacific region.

I'm here today, though, to make a presentation on behalf of the Canadian Sablefish Association regarding aquaculture. Our association, and I'm the executive director of that association, does not support open net-cage aquaculture and believes fully contained, land-based operations are necessary to ensure that wild fish resources and habitat are not negatively impacted and threatened.

The Canadian Sablefish Association is a legally constituted organization representing nearly all commercial sablefish licence holders. The CSA was formed in 1987 to protect the interests and investments of sablefish fishermen and to explore and develop programs and policies for the protection and the conservation of sablefish, both independently and in conjunction with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

In 1999, approximately 4,500 tonnes of sablefish were harvested commercially, with a landed value of approximately $25 million.

From the outset, the Canadian Sablefish Association has taken a very active role in the monitoring, research, assessment, and management of the commercial sablefish fishery. We have worked cooperatively with DFO to find progressive, constructive, efficient, and effective solutions to a myriad of difficult problems constantly facing the industry.

Today, the B.C. sablefish fishery is one of the best-managed fisheries in the world, due in large part to the efforts of the Canadian Sablefish Association.

My presentation will provide you with a brief background to the fishery and then focus on the Canadian Sablefish Association's concerns regarding aquaculture.

Sablefish has been harvested off the west coast for about 40 years. Following the departure of the Japanese foreign fleet in the late 1970s, a number of Canadian fishermen attempted to establish a viable fishery by pursuing overseas markets in Japan and experimenting with trap, new trap, and longline gear, which was more effective and productive at harvesting sablefish.

In 1981, DFO limited entry to the fishery. At that time, the fishery was managed by opening on a specific date and then closing when the fishery department estimated the TAC had been taken. As I'm sure all of you know, limited entry didn't solve most of the common property problems associated with commercial fisheries of the day. That's why owners continue to use whatever means available to increase the vessels' harvesting and fishing power.

Concerned about where the fishery was going and about the sablefish resource, the management of the fishery, and the economic viability of the industry, the Canadian Sablefish Association initiated discussions with DFO in 1989 regarding changes to the management structure. Following months of consultation, those changes resulted in the implementation of individual vessel quotas in 1990.

Since 1990, the association has become extremely active in all aspects of the fishery, especially in the scientific research and stock assessment areas. The CSA directly funds and manages research charters and delivers the annual sablefish stock assessment for the department and monitoring, tagging, and biological sampling programs.

The costs associated with the research and assessment of sablefish are paid for by the sablefish licence holders through the Canadian Sablefish Association. This includes all DFO salaries, benefits, and operating and capital expenditures, as well as expenses incurred directly by the CSA for the various charters, contracts, and activities managed by the industry. The annual cost or budget for science is approximately $600,000.

The CSA also funds monitoring, enforcement, and management activities directly or through cost-recovery arrangements with DFO. To fulfil these obligations and others, the CSA employs and contracts with professional managers, technicians, scientists, and others on an annual and multi-year basis. The total cost annually for the operation of the management and research activities of the association are about $1.2 million.

The purpose of this background information is to demonstrate to the standing committee that the Canadian Sablefish Association and its members have a significant investment in the well-being, conservation, and sustainability of the sablefish resource and the environment that the sablefish inhabit and depend upon. Given that background, I'd like to talk about our aquaculture concerns.

The CSA's position on aquaculture has been developed after careful consideration and analysis of information from various sources over the past several years.

• 1800

In addition to the growing literature currently available, the association has independently contracted studies that review the impact of aquaculture from environmental, ecological, and legislative bases. The CSA's opposition to open net-cage aquaculture is not based on a singular concern. Rather, it's a continuing problem, with growing international and domestic evidence and a long list of unanswered questions that give rise to the fears of the CSA and many others that the current and potential damage from open net-cage aquaculture will have serious negative impacts on valuable fish habitat and wild fish resources as well as on the viability and the continuation of many commercial, recreational, and aboriginal fisheries.

The association's concerns include: the risk of disease transfer from net pens to wild stocks; risk of disease introduction from the importation of exotic species' eggs and milt; the increased risk of the transfer of common diseases among domestic species; the loss of access to traditional, commercial, recreational, and aboriginal fishing grounds; pollution of habitat from fish sewage; government funding and subsidies for aquaculture resulting in fewer financial and human resources available for research assessment and the management of wild fish resources; injury, stress, and mortality to marine animals caused by net entanglement and the use of acoustic deterrent devices; the impacts on wild resources from drugs and pesticides used on aquaculture sites; genetic interaction between wild and escaped farm fish; competition for food between wild and escaped farm fish; the losses of wild fish, especially small juveniles consumed by net pen fish; the loss of juvenile habitat; parasite infestation; the presence of farms altering the availability of natural plankton and feeds and creating a hostile environment for wild fish larvae and juvenile fish; increased disease susceptibility due to increased stress levels among pen fish; risk to human health from increased utilization of antibiotics and other drugs used in farm fish; and the risk and impact of farm fish becoming resistant to antibiotics.

Of course, the impacts of many of the above noted concerns have yet to be fully analysed and scientifically quantified. We understand that. Yet what we would expect in the interim is that until such issues are better understood, the responsible management agency, DFO, would try to minimize risk and take a precautionary approach toward aquaculture growth and development.

The department has clearly demonstrated the use of precautionary management in the commercial salmon fishery, having closed nearly all sockeye fisheries to protect against the harvest of small numbers of endangered coho, chinook, and steelheads. Canada is also a signatory to various international agreements that espouse the use of precautionary management of marine and natural resources. Indeed, Canada is a member of the Food and Agriculture Organization, where precautionary approaches to the management of fisheries and aquaculture have been outlined in detail.

According to the FAO, a precautionary approach involves the application of prudent foresight and includes the following principles: to avoid irreversible changes; prior identification of undesirable outcomes; corrective measures without delay; when uncertain, conservation is a priority; appropriate placement of burden of proof; and all fishery activities are managed.

The FAO guidelines for responsible aquaculture development, brought in in 1997, also should give a code of practice for aquaculture development. While encouraging the development of aquaculture as a means of economic and nutritional diversification, the document provides a number of precautionary principles, and I'd like to cite some of them.

The first one is that the states should promote responsible development and management of aquaculture, including advanced evaluation of the effects of aquaculture development on genetic diversity and ecosystem integrity based on the best available scientific information.

States should ensure that the livelihood of local communities and their access to fishing grounds are not adversely affected by aquaculture development.

States should establish effective procedures to undertake appropriate environmental assessment and monitoring, with the aim of minimizing adverse ecological changes and related economic and social consequences of aquaculture activities.

States should conserve genetic diversity and maintain integrity of aquatic communities and ecosystems by appropriate management. In particular, efforts should be undertaken to minimize the harmful effects of introducing non-native species or genetically altered stocks.

• 1805

Finally, states should, whenever possible, promote steps to minimize adverse genetic disease and other effects of escaped farm fish on wild stocks.

While the precautionary approach is a component of Canada's oceans management strategy under the Canadian Oceans Act, it does not appear to have been implemented and operationalized by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. In fact, the department does not even have a recapture plan for fish that have escaped from farms or ways of ensuring that they do not take up residence in local rivers. Such escapes are becoming more common, and we know now that the Atlantic salmon have survived and spawned in local rivers and streams.

In conclusion, the Canadian Sablefish Association doesn't support open net-cage aquaculture. We believe fully contained land-based operations are necessary to ensure that wild fish resources and habitat are not negatively impacted or threatened.

The CSA also contends that the precautionary approach and the code of practice for aquaculture as outlined by the FAO should be implemented by the government, by DFO. Rather than acting as an advocate for the aquaculture industry, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should be acting as a public watchdog to ensure that the aquaculture industry does not cause long-term damage to wild fish and basic resources.

Governments should be undertaking and funding research projects that will address many of the concerns identified above. Until such research is completed and the results known, marine open net-cage aquaculture expansion should be prohibited or minimized so that the risk to the wild resources is also minimized.

The Canadian Sablefish Association would like to thank the standing committee for this opportunity, and we would be pleased to take any questions if you have any.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Bruce. There's a lot of documentation attached, which members can certainly go through at their convenience. Thank you for your effort.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Thanks very much, Bruce.

The moneys your association spends are impressive indeed. There is probably no other fishery that compares. Am I correct?

Mr. Bruce Turris: They would definitely be one of the top one or two fisheries in Canada that spends that kind of money on research. There are a couple of others that may be close.

The Chair: The lobster fishery in Atlantic Canada spends a lot as well.

Mr. John Duncan: My question is a little unrelated to our terms of reference, but I'm interested in your science budget. What kinds of activities would you focus on in the sablefish industry?

Mr. Bruce Turris: Annually we run an extensive survey that tags over 20,000 sablefish. It's a very expensive survey. We also employ two stock assessment scientists from outside of the department to carry out the assessment. They are very well known internationally. We also employ aging staff, people who age the fish. There's another technician as well.

Actually, it's a very formalized process. We have something called the sablefish finance committee that sits down with the department. At the beginning of each season or each year, a work plan that includes a myriad of science projects is developed in conjunction with the department. Those projects are reviewed to ensure that they're going to add to the existing assessment process and then are approved accordingly. Those projects add up to about $600,000 in terms of science.

Mr. John Duncan: So with your total expenditure of $1.8 million, is DFO actually spending any money on top of that?

Mr. Bruce Turris: That's $1.2 million, and the answer would be no. I don't want to suggest that we're capturing any time that people in DFO in Ottawa may spend on sablefish issues that may come up. But, for example, the groundfish manager, the sablefish coordinator with DFO, several DFO scientists who work on sablefish—all their time is cost-recovered from the association through a Treasury Board-approved revenue offset program that was set up in 1993, I believe.

• 1810

Mr. John Duncan: In your document on page 5 you talk about DFO not having a plan to recapture escaped farm fish all your years with DFO. Can you explain why that would be, why they wouldn't have a plan? And how difficult would it be to develop a plan like that?

Mr. Bruce Turris: I can't exactly answer why they don't have a plan. I would suggest it has a lot to do with how their resources are dedicated at DFO.

As for your question about why it would be difficult for a plan to be developed, having worked there for nearly thirteen years.... These are personal opinions of course. I hope you take them that way. They don't necessary reflect the views of the association I'm speaking for here today.

The structure of the department is wrong. The department sets up its structure as an advocacy process. I worked there for a long time as the manager of groundfish fisheries. In many respects I was an advocate for commercial groundfish fisheries. But I was an advocate to a lesser extent than the recreational fisheries coordinator or the aquaculture fisheries coordinator or the aboriginal fisheries coordinator were. They all would be advocates for their respective sectors.

So when you have an issue that crosses over boundaries between commercial and aquaculture, between commercial and recreational, or between aquaculture and recreational, the structure of the department makes it extremely difficult to find agreement. Rather what they do is they build cases to defend their positions, and it goes up to senior management.

It's a matter of how they're going to divvy up resources and who puts up the best fight, rather than the department taking the position of, what is the department's role in all of this, period? Irrespective of whether or not we're managing commercial or aquaculture or recreational or native fisheries, what's the department's role, and what's the best integrated approach to dealing with these issues?

So there are some fundamental structural problems within the department to deal with issues such as this. And of course there are significant resource problems as well, in terms of staff levels and budgets. For example, somebody mentioned earlier that the salmon fishery used to be worth over $300 million. I'm not going to attribute the blame for why it's worth $20 million in 1999. You're trying to figure out some of those answers yourselves.

Let's just say they used to spend $100 million in DFO on resources to manage the fishery—scientists, the bureaucracy, ships, and so forth. Today they still spend almost the same amount of money to manage salmon. That's because the bureaucracy is full of empires, and it protects its empires. So you can bet if you're in there, as I was, trying to get more money to do research for groundfish or to do groundfish management or to do recreational, at the same time a whole lot of other people are trying to protect their salmon empire. And they've been very effective at it. They've used every tool possible, much of that being the international crisis that's besieged salmon over the last several years.

So there are some structural problems that make it difficult for resources to move where they should be moving, for resources to move to do aquaculture research to answer a lot of the concerns you're being addressed with today. Really, the answers just aren't there because the research hasn't been done.

Mr. John Duncan: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Bruce, for being forthright in those points. On that point about the structure of DFO, in fact we've talked to the Auditor General about it, we've reviewed it in several committee reports, and we've said there needs to be some restructuring at 200 Kent Street.

Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Bruce, I take it you're not planning to go back to work for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Mr. Bruce Turris: Oh, no. I made that clear long before this presentation.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Excuse my ignorance. I don't know much about sablefish. It's obviously a very lucrative fishery, $25 million. You're obviously putting your money's worth back in, $1.2 million. You seem to be quite organized in terms of the level of expertise you've brought on board from DFO, for instance.

• 1815

Can you tell me why a lot of those points that you laid out here in terms of your concerns are very similar to...? We've heard a lot of concerns from other sectors, from other interest groups, but you're in the fishery. Can you lay out why you feel threatened in this fishery by the farm fish in British Columbia? Can you show the comparison as to why you would sit here today with this presentation expressing this concern?

Mr. Bruce Turris: Yes. Actually, I apologize for not making that clear in the presentation. So thanks for asking for clarification.

Sablefish is caught in very deep water, generally from 250,000 feet to 500,000 feet. So it's not caught where you'll find salmon farms, but all juvenile sablefish grow up in the inlets. This is where the salmon farming is occurring and we have a considerable fear about the impact that it may have on juvenile fish.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Understood.

The Chair: Mr. O'Brien, we will come back to you.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you, sir, for your very thick presentation. It would be good to read on the plane going back home.

On page 30, you mentioned what the previous presenter said. From 1989 to 1997, over 3,800 seals and sea lions were killed by B.C. salmon farmers. Can you tell me whether or not they have a licence to be able to do that?

Mr. Bruce Turris: No.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I'm trying to get my head around this. We're trying to promote a safe industry of food source for people, but at the same time these farmers are killing other animals that are obviously attracted by these pens. So you're unaware that they would either have a provincial or federal licence in order to do what they're doing?

Mr. Bruce Turris: I don't believe they have a licence to do that at all, sir.

Again, clearly we've identified that there are a whole host of issues around the industry.

The Sablefish Association would like to see the department have a consistent approach to how they're going to deal with the management of resource issues. If it's going to be a precautionary approach, which we support...I've seen that in many commercial fisheries, and I'm sure we'll see it in many more over the next several years as the department wrestles with the growing utilization of fish resources.

We don't see that happening in aquaculture and we'd like to know why. We know some of the reasons ourselves, but we'd like the standing committee to be asking that of the department itself. Why wouldn't you have a precautionary approach for salmon management?

The groundfish trawl fishery here on the west coast of Canada was shut down in 1995 because it was overharvesting the resource. And rightfully so. It was shut down for about 4 1/2 months. When it reopened the government took a very strong position on conservative management: a 100% observer coverage, all at the expense of the industry.

Someone talked here earlier about the excessive cost of converting to closed pen systems. A groundfish trawl vessel that's getting 30¢ or 40¢ a pound for its fish is spending $80,000 a year on an observer that he wasn't spending before. At the same time, his licence fees have gone up from $10 to about $20,000. So the department has added $100,000 to his bill at a time when the market was just in the toilet. First was the resource and ensuring that the management of that resource was not going to threaten it any further. And a 100% observer is a fairly heavy-handed approach, but the government saw that it was necessary.

I just don't see that kind of approach being taken when there are unanswered concerns being levelled in other fisheries, in other uses such as aquaculture.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: My final comment, sir, is that you and your organization should be congratulated for proving that the co-management of a resource can work when everyone works together, even though it is costing you a lot of money.

• 1820

We have crab fishermen just off Cape Breton who do a similar thing on a five-year co-management plan, where they invest a lot of their own money into protection and the science work of the resource, and, again, you should be congratulated for that work as well.

Mr. Bruce Turris: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Bernier, I believe you had a question.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I'm curious. What type of gear do you use to fish sablefish?

[English]

Mr. Bruce Turris: We use primarily trap gear as well as longline gear. About 85% of the annual harvest is taken by trap gear. They are conical traps, a little larger than crab traps that are fished on a longline gear. A ground line is set and traps are hooked on that ground line about 20 feet to 30 feet apart. There are usually about 60 traps on a string and a vessel would often fish about four or five strings on a vessel.

The traps are very selective. They catch very little bycatch and they've been designed so that they are also very selective for the sablefish, so they don't retain juvenile sablefish. Two escape rings in each trap are mandatory to ensure that fish generally under four pounds are not retained. That would exclude all juvenile fish.

Actually, the association is also experimenting at this point in time with excluder rings that go in the tunnel of the trap to keep the largest females out, the largest females being very productive in terms of having not only the most eggs but also the best quality eggs. So we try to ensure that those fish stay in the resource for their reproductive capacity.

So, generally, it's fished on a vessel that ranges from 50 feet to 110 feet in length. It fishes, as I said earlier, in quite deep water with significant gear.

Surrey is a very expensive fishery to invest in in terms of the gear. It is very expensive. You could easily spend in excess of $1 million in gear on a vessel. These are freezer vessels; it's frozen-at-sea products. You're out for anywhere from 20 to 30 days on a trip and you take about seven or eight men on each vessel.

The Chair: Mr. Bernier.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: You say that sablefish are fished in deep water. Are you talking about depths of 80 to 100 fathoms or much deeper than that? What bait is used to attract the sablefish into the trap?

I've strayed somewhat from the subject at hand, but I'm trying to understand this. The sablefish reproduce and grow in shallower waters. What draws them to this environment? They then return to deeper waters. How do you go about catching them?

I'm just curious about this, because this behaviour pattern appears to be totally different from that of the Atlantic cod found on the East Coast.

[English]

Mr. Bruce Turris: Sablefish are generally caught anywhere outside of 250 fathoms, so you're looking at about 1,500 feet, out to about 600 or 700 fathoms, so anywhere up to 4,000 feet.

They reproduce by dispersing their eggs. The eggs are fertilized and then they float in the water column. Eventually they'll come up towards the surface into the inlets, mostly in Hecate Strait, but also with some of the southern inlets in Johnstone Strait on the central coast.

They'll spend up to a couple of years in the inlets as they grow and, then, as they mature, they'll move into deeper water as they recruit into the commercial fishery. Generally, they won't recruit into the fishery until they are about three or four pounds, which takes about three or four years.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: What kind of bait do you put in your traps?

• 1825

Mr. Bruce Turris: It's a combination of Pacific hake, which is a form of cod, and squid. Hake is the predominant bait. They'll put a couple of pounds of hake into the trap, a frozen block, and then in little bags they'll put perhaps half a pound of squid.

The Chair: Mr. Bernier, thank you.

Mr. O'Brien, did you have one follow-up question?

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: No, I'm fine.

The Chair: All right. Thank you very much, Bruce, for your presentation.

That will adjourn our formal hearings.

Committee members, we do have a 20 minute or so in camera session with the consul general for Canada in Seattle to give us some information on Alaska that might be useful when we have a conference call with Alaskan people.

So we could take five minutes and reconvene. Then we're finished our western tour.