STANDING COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES PÊCHES ET DES OCÉANS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, February 22, 2000

• 0902

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.)): Welcome, committee members and ladies and gentlemen.

As I think everyone in the room is aware, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans is travelling in western Canada on a study of aquaculture, the aboriginal fisheries strategy, and the Oceans Act. This morning our first witness is from the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, Karen Wristen.

Welcome, Karen. Do you have other people with you, or are you on your own?

Ms. Karen Wristen (Executive Director, Sierra Legal Defence Fund): Actually I'm here with Lynn Hunter from the David Suzuki Foundation. She's your second presenter. With your permission, we'll join each other at the table here.

The Chair: Okay.

Ms. Karen Wristen: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to address you this morning.

I hope you have by now picked up a copy of two items I brought along with me this morning. One is a letter dated July 29, 1998, about ten pages long, and the other is a copy of this report the Sierra Legal Defence Fund produced in 1997 called Containing Disaster: Global Lessons on Salmon Aquaculture.

An hon. member: [Inaudible—Editor].

Ms. Karen Wristen: I'm sorry. Perhaps I can endeavour to get a copy for you later on. I don't intend to refer extensively to the report in my oral submission.

The Chair: Go ahead, Karen.

Ms. Karen Wristen: Thanks very much.

I had the benefit of being able to take part, over the course of about a year and a half, in the provincial government's salmon aquaculture review process, which looked into a specific study area here in B.C. and tried to determine, based exclusively on the available literature concerning salmon farming, what the risks were to the environment, and in particular to wild salmon stocks, from salmon farming. The conclusion that all of the technical advisory team reached, with which I heartily concur, was that there are huge data gaps in our understanding of what the impacts are, particularly on wild stocks.

• 0905

At the end of the day, the technical advisory team and the Government of British Columbia made a risk assessment that at current levels of production, that is to say with some 120 tenured sites and approximately 80 operating farms at any given time, there was apparently a low risk to wild stocks.

This assessment, I must stress to you, was based on the fact that there are no studies available of the impacts on wild stock. Because there were no impacts that could be traced to the operation of the farms, it is assumed that there is a low risk. That fact being entirely unproven, working in concert with Greenpeace, the Friends of Clayoquot Sound, and the David Suzuki Foundation, we looked to other jurisdictions in the world to see what their experience of salmon had been. The results of that investigation are contained in the report I referred to, Containing Disaster.

We looked at what was going on in Norway, Scotland, Ireland, and Chile, four of the countries that have had salmon farming for the longest time. Norway has had it going for about 30 years, so it's to be expected that they've encountered more of the problems we will ultimately encounter here in Canada. What we found was truly shocking.

I'll just focus, for this morning's presentation, on the case of Norway, because it is the most cautionary tale.

In Norway, salmon farming grew up with very little regulation, and it came to pass that farms were sited very close to each other and were stocked very densely. They were also poorly sited originally, so they were in bays and fjords where there was very little flushing action from the tide. A number of things happened.

Diseases and parasites that had not previously been known in Norway's wild fish population began turning up in frightening numbers in the wild population.

The other thing was that the wild population of Atlantic salmon began to plummet. It had been overfished; everyone knows that. It had been depressed because of fishing pressure, but the stocks coincident with the introduction of salmon farming began to plummet. They are now at the point where they are not expected to survive. I think we're down to a matter of less than a year now before it's expected that the wild salmon stock of Norway will be completely extinct.

In order to try to reverse that situation and deal with the parasites and diseases that were being brought into the rivers.... I should stress here the mechanism. They're being brought into the rivers by both escaped farmed fish and by wild fish passing through the concentrations of net pens and picking up, most especially, sea lice from the farms. The lice act as vectors for transmitting all kinds of diseases to the wild stocks. The infestations of these critters around the farms have become so severe in Norway that the wild stocks literally pick them up passing by the net pens.

Two main things were done in Norway to try to remedy this problem, and they're two things we really need to take a lesson from. First, if you don't fix the problem soon enough, you wind up having to poison your rivers to try to fix it. Norway is still, to this day, dumping rotenone into its major rivers. There are some 74 rivers that have now been completely poisoned three times, three years in a row, in an attempt to destroy everything that lives in them, in the hope that they can one day be restocked with wild fish.

The second thing we can learn from Norway is that there are certain regulations that absolutely must be in place to prevent these disease and parasite problems from happening. The main regulations of importance deal with the siting and density of stocking of these farms.

Norway has now adopted regulations that require fish farms to be located 20 kilometres or more from the mouth of any fish stream. They did that because there was clear evidence that the parasites and diseases being incubated on these farms were being transmitted to both smolts leaving the river mouths and to wild mature salmon returning to spawn. They separated the farms from the river mouths and made sure the farms were more than 20 kilometres apart from each other, to prevent pandemics from breaking out, where the disease spreads from one farm to the next. They required stocking densities to be kept at a lower level than the farms would otherwise have wanted to use for maximum economic benefit.

We have so far ignored all of those cautionary lessons from Norway, which were repeated in Scotland and Ireland. Both of those countries have now imposed moratoria of their own on new salmon farm licences, and are trying to restrict them and impose further regulations. We ignored that caution.

• 0910

In New Brunswick, during the course of the final weeks of the salmon aquaculture review here, a pandemic began to break out with a disease called ISA. When it was first detected on the farms, we should have obeyed the lessons that were learned in Norway and said “Slaughter all the fish; get them out of the water. There's no treatment for it, there's no way to prevent it spreading, and it's extremely virulent.”

That wasn't done. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans elected not to make that order until the disease had spread to several bays. When an order was ultimately made, it was made by the Province of New Brunswick, and the fish farmers resisted it because they were going to have to bear the loss. They weren't fully insured for the market value of diseased fish. They wanted to grow them out to a marketable stage and sell them. The province refused to let them.

Ultimately, the Province of New Brunswick and the Canadian government wound up bailing out the industry to the tune of some $10 million worth of taxpayers' money. I understand some of that is loan and some of it's direct subsidy, but the bottom line is the cost to the taxpayer is simply not justified, based on the message the industry delivers back to the province.

In the letter I provided you dated July 29, 1998, Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Sierra Legal Defence Fund tried to set out for the federal ministers just what areas of federal jurisdiction needed attention in this whole matter. One of the reasons we did that was because it had become apparent that a number of federal sources of funding were being devoted to the promotion of aquaculture and aquaculture research, and this seemed to be creating a steamroller effect that was preventing us from going back and doing the risk analysis and the science that needed to be done to find out what the impacts on wild salmon were. I have noted just a few of those subsidies.

In terms of indirect subsidy, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans itself—these are 1990 figures unfortunately—at that time had more than 200 people devoted to aquaculture, at an annual cost of approximately $16 million. The National Resource Council in the year 1989-90 dedicated $550,000 to aquaculture research, and through its industrial research assistance program another $1.7 million went to support aquaculture research. Between 1982 and 1990 they had spent over $6 million funding aquaculture.

The Pacific Institute for Aquatic Biosciences was also supported with government funding. This was a laboratory in west Vancouver that was taken over by a consortium heavily funded by taxpayers' money, and its lab was devoted to research in aquaculture.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in 1988-89 committed another $1.7 million to aquaculture. Industry, Science and Technology Canada committed $200,000. The Canadian Jobs Strategy, External Affairs and International Trade, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, and Western Economic Diversification all contributed millions over the same period.

We have virtually every funding agency of government devoted to promoting an industry, when we have not assessed what this industry is going to displace or destroy. The clear evidence from every other country that has undertaken this industry is that it destroys the wild fishery, it destroys tourism and angling businesses that depend upon that wild fishery, and it renders the coastline an industrial use area, rather than a recreational use area.

That was in part the motivation for writing the letter I have put before you today. I won't try to detail the recommendations that begin on page 6 and follow through page 10. But just to give you some of the highlights, there are concerns, particularly here in B.C., on the part of first nations, most of whom have come out quite clearly against the idea of putting these farms in their traditional territories. As you know, the extent of the aboriginal rights to the use of the water and the marine resources is a matter that is still open for determination by the courts.

• 0915

Stocking density and impacts on wild stocks were the issues I referred to earlier. Certainly the New Brunswick episode gives us some real cause for concern here in Canada: we're not dealing with density and siting issues properly. I told you about Norway's solution to the problem, which was a twenty-kilometre setback between farms and away from salmon streams. The United States requires, in some parts of its jurisdiction, a five-kilometre setback. These distances are dependent on local conditions. We have not done the kind of study here in B.C. that would enable us to determine what kind of removal is necessary between the farm and the salmon stream.

I can tell you an interesting anecdote that I heard about just yesterday in terms of who's making the risk assessments here and what evidence they are based on. There's a farm about to be relocated because it was badly located in the first place. It's up near Campbell River. The referral on the relocation came before local government. They looked at it and said “The place you're planning to relocate this to is right on a stream. Are there salmon in it?” The agency responsible for the tenure said they didn't know, so local government took it to DFO habitat and asked if there were salmon in this stream, by any chance. They said “Oh yes, it's a coho stream, and there are cutthroat in there as well.” The local government went back to the aquaculture branch of DFO and said “You can't put the farm there, it's right on a salmon stream.” The aquaculture branch said “It's not an important salmon stream.”

Now, over the last couple of years we have had the most draconian measures imposed on our commercial and aboriginal fisheries here in the name of protecting coho salmon. I don't know how you tell a fisherman or an aboriginal person who can't get their own access to fish that any salmon stream that supports coho on this coast is not important. That is certainly not a risk assessment that should be made by the head of the aquaculture division of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, but that is in fact what's happening.

There is no agency that's standing up and saying no, you can't put a fish farm on a salmon stream because we know there are going to be escapes into that river and we know there will be impacts on the wild stocks. It's just not being done. It is the responsibility of the federal government to protect those fish, and the purpose of this letter was certainly to encourage all of the relevant jurisdictions to work together to discharge that responsibility. It is still not happening.

We have had no response to this letter, other than to one specific request, which was to have someone study whether or not there were impacts on the wild salmon populations in New Brunswick following the outbreak of ISA there. Those studies were finally reported on last year. The results showed that there in fact were impacts. The disease has been isolated for the first time in the wild populations on the New Brunswick coast. What that's going to mean for the survival of the wild species is yet unknown. We don't know how far the disease has spread. It was isolated in a number of fish, that's all I know. It's there and it's real. This is not a pie-in-the-sky concern.

We saw as well, at the time we were writing this letter, grave concerns about what was happening when Atlantic salmon escaped from net tanks here in B.C., entered our rivers, and were found in spawning condition. We'd been told repeatedly by the department that these fish were incapable of surviving in the wild, certainly incapable of finding a spawning river, incapable of spawning if they found a river, and their fry wouldn't survive, so there really was no need to worry. This all evolved over a period of about ten years, with denial after denial.

This past year, juvenile Atlantic salmon, having been reared in a river, were finally discovered by a researcher, the one researcher who is actually looking at impacts, Dr. John Volpe. He has discovered two different age classes of fish in three different river systems now, clear proof that everything DFO said about what would happen to escaped Atlantic salmon was wrong. They are breeding in the wild. It doesn't mean they are taking over our rivers yet and it doesn't mean they have colonized yet, it simply means they're capable of doing so—one more threat to wild salmon stocks.

The Chair: May I interrupt for a second? I take it you and Lynn are going to make a joint presentation, or else we're going to be out of time for you.

Ms. Lynn Hunter (Fisheries and Aquaculture Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation): I have a separate presentation.

The Chair: I'm going to stick to half an hour per witness today, because we have a lot of them. We only have ten minutes left now for questions, so if you could quickly close....

Ms. Karen Wristen: Yes, I'll certainly do that. In fact, I can just close right here and take your questions if you'd like, because all of the issues that we saw raised at this are fully set out in this letter.

• 0920

The one point I wanted to finish on, though, was in terms of impacts on wild stock. When I was sitting on the salmon aquaculture review, I asked the Department of Fisheries and Oceans representative, Ron Ginetz, who's the head of the aquaculture branch, to bring to the table—so that we could all consider it—a map indicating the wild salmon migration routes and the important holding and feeding areas in our study area, the Broughton archipelago, because that was surely one of the first things we needed to know before we talked about where to site fish farms.

That study mapping the migration routes was supposed to have been undertaken back in 1992 by the department when it did its first feasibility study for siting fish farms in the Broughton. I don't know whether the study has been done or not. That evidence was never produced by DFO. That is how far we are from having even approached the subject of whether we can have wild fish and fish farming together. The evidence of every other country in the world is that it doesn't work, and there's no reason to expect that it will here.

The Chair: Thank you. I want to be sure about this. Is the letter you're dealing with the letter to David Anderson, Christine Stewart, and Jane Stewart?

Ms. Karen Wristen: That's correct.

The Chair: Did you get a response to that? You mentioned that you got a response to one part. Did you get a full response?

Ms. Karen Wristen: No, we never did. The letter was acknowledged by all three ministers. Minister Christine Stewart did write back, but the response was unresponsive to the issues raised.

The Chair: We'll get copies of that information from the various departments.

John Cummins is first. We're going to go very briefly with the questions.

Mr. John Cummins (Delta—South Richmond, Ref.): Thank you very much for the presentation.

DFO's response to the issues you raise is probably going to be yes, there were problems, but we fixed them. What would you say to that?

Ms. Karen Wristen: If it is, I'd really like to see what they've done to fix it, because we still have—as I said, yesterday—a salmon farm about to be sited on a salmon stream and someone saying that's not important. Well, it certainly is important. There's no question that it's one of the main things we need to address in terms of developing the industry. They've still done no fish health studies on wild populations to see what the impacts are. They're still using fish entrapment devices, despite clear evidence that they don't work and they're impacting on the wrong critters. They've done nothing that I'm aware of to improve the fish issues.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: May I respond to part of that as well?

Mr. John Cummins: Sure.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: As a former member of Parliament, I had the privilege of sitting on the environment committee in 1990 and hearing a visiting delegation of a parliamentary committee from Norway. I remember the testimony. In response to Mr. Fulton's question about the disaster that occurred in Norway, the parliamentarian from Norway, Mr. Blankenborg, said:

What we see is maybe a weakness in the structure of monitoring and governing this field. In a way we see...that the Ministry of Environment functions more or less as a first-aid ministry.

Later on in the testimony, another member of Parliament from Norway said:

We have a concession law. One has to have a concession to be a fish farmer. We are very strict about the quality and the environment questions. Therefore, some of the fish farmers went to Canada.

This is what exactly happened. The fish farmers who screwed up in Norway are now operating in Canada, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is supporting and promoting them.

Mr. John Cummins: Perhaps, Mr. Chairman...[Technical Difficulty—Editor]....

The Chair: It was 1990, you said.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: Yes, I have a copy I could leave with you.

The Chair: [Technical Difficulty—Editor]...John.

Mr. John Cummins: The DFO attempts to recover funding from many of the commercial fisheries that operate through licence fees and...[Technical Difficulty—Editor]...this morning that these aquaculture firms have been receiving grants from a variety of industries. Are they required to pay any sort of royalties or licensing fees for the use of the water and the locations that they have?

Ms. Karen Wristen: Not to the federal government. They pay a licensing fee for the tenure to the provincial government when they...[Technical Difficulty—Editor].

Mr. John Cummins: So they don't have to pay any fees for any science that would be required to ascertain their safety as far as protection of wild stock? There are no fees that are imposed on them for that kind of thing?

• 0925

Ms. Karen Wristen: No, nothing of that sort. In fact, all of the science that is being done is being done on the fish stock of the farm itself. All kinds of money is being poured into developing newer and better stocks of fish to grow in a farm, and none to the wild fishery.

In the years the results were recorded, we did have some economic analysis of the return on investment—the public investment, literally—in salmon farming. The figures disclosed that the industry as a whole was a modest drain on the system. In other words, it had consumed somewhat more in subsidies and direct grants than it had yielded in tax and licensing revenue.

The Chair: Monsieur Bernier.

Mr. Yvan Bernier (Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok, BQ): I'll do my best in English, Mr. Chairman, but after that, if we can set up the sound for travel, I would suggest to you that we take a little break to do that. But I will raise my first question in English.

I didn't have enough time to read all your paper, but I listened to you carefully. I note that you mentioned that there is a serious correlation or link between a concentration of open-net fish farming and a collapse of the wild species.

I also note that you talk about John Volpe in your paper. Everybody tells us, including John Volpe, that he is the only researcher in Canada, in the northwest of America, who is studying Atlantic salmon. But in the other countries are there any scientific papers showing that there is a real link?

We are the people who make the law, and we have to take care of both sides. I understand that in appearance there is a link, but it would help us very much if there was some scientific advice on that as well. So if you have something we can read on that link, we would be glad to see it.

Ms. Karen Wristen: Some of those sources are cited in the report I've provided you with today. In the introductory section you'll see references to the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization. That has convened a number of symposia over the years to deal with precisely this issue, impacts on wild stock.

As well, a number of very good papers have been written on the experience in Norway, Ireland, and Scotland, in particular, where the links between damage to wild stock and the farm were established by doing genetic testing on the sea lice that were being found on the wild populations. They were coming into the rivers incredibly infested with sea lice. They started testing them and they were able to determine through genetic testing that these lice had originated on the farms. That's where the connection there lies.

Now, that's not a mechanism that's happening here in B.C. so far, or as far as we know, or in New Brunswick, as far as we know, but that's certainly the first evidence that there is direct transmission of disease and parasite from farm to wild stock. As I say, the evidence can be found among the working papers of the NASCO organization.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: But is it true that in the other countries the disappearance of their wild stock began at the same time their open-net fish farms opened? Or if I take note of what happened in B.C., fish farming has been running 10 or 15 years, but it's not a long time ago that we took note of the fact that the wild stock was collapsing.

Ms. Karen Wristen: The correlations are quite sound in Norway but stronger still in Ireland, where in a number of places the sea trout stocks collapsed. In Ireland certain sections of the coastline had been permitted for farming and sections had been closed off, and the difference was quite marked. Where there were farms, the populations collapsed.

Moreover, in those areas, when the collapses were noted, farms were closed down and required to fallow. The trout populations came back.

So the connections there are established, perhaps without scientific certainty but certainly with enough coincidence or correlation of events to make it a very persuasive case that there are impacts.

Mr. Yvan Bernier: Thanks.

• 0930

The Chair: Mr. Sekora.

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

I listened to your presentation, and some of the things you bring up I have great difficulties with and want more information on. Something I have difficulty with is when you say “somebody said” with regard to Atlantic salmon, for instance, that they don't know where to spawn or where to go, whatever it is.

Can you get that for me in writing? I have great difficulty with hearsay evidence. I'm here to make some decisions, and I want to make decisions on some written documents, not on the fact that “somebody said”. Who is this “somebody”? Maybe you can get it to me in writing.

Ms. Karen Wristen: No, actually, I probably can't. As I said, these were assurances that were given by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans over a period of approximately ten years, as fish were being seen to escape, were being seen in the rivers. All the reporting on it is anecdotal, and it's been completely overtaken. We now know the facts. The fish can escape and they can colonize our rivers.

So from the point of view of a decision-maker looking to make law, that's the fact you have to deal with today—the research that John Volpe did, establishing that these fish can colonize our rivers.

Mr. Lou Sekora: The second question I'd like to ask you is with regard to the mistakes made in Norway. In British Columbia, certainly, they seem to think they are doing the right things, placing them in the right places.

If they're such disastrous things, why would the Province of British Columbia lift the moratorium on fish farming if they don't have their ducks in order and know what they're doing? I mean, if it was a party other than the NDP in British Columbia—

Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP): Hey, hey, hey.

Mr. Lou Sekora: No, sorry, Peter, you're a great friend of mine.

The fact is, they class themselves as being very environmental and everything else—so why? I want to know a little more about it.

Ms. Karen Wristen: That is a question I have asked myself repeatedly. The only answer I can come up with is this.

First of all, the moratorium hasn't been lifted. We are expanding—

Mr. Lou Sekora: The licences that were there.

Ms. Karen Wristen: The existing licences.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Yes.

Ms. Karen Wristen: The 120 tenures, as it were, will become operational. Only 80 of them have been operational at any one time.

So first, the moratorium hasn't been lifted. Second, we're in the process of determining what the proper siting criteria should be right now. There's an admission on the table that we don't know.

I'm sitting on yet another government process now, the Salmon Aquaculture Implementation Advisory Committee, whose job is specifically to review what's coming forward from the agencies with respect to siting and to see if we do know enough to know how to site these things right now.

So it's far from a done deal here. We are still grappling with these issues in a very active way, but we're doing so without the support and assistance of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the federal Department of the Environment.

The Chair: Thank you, Karen.

Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

Lou, in reference to your statement, it may all change when the new premier decides on his new cabinet. Who knows what decisions will come forward?

I have two quick questions for you. With regard to the stream where that proposed farm is going to go, if we can get exact information on that—who owns the farm and who's making the decisions—we'd greatly appreciate having that information. Maybe we can do something about that.

Yesterday, though, we heard a comment about a move afoot to have labelling on farm fish for restaurants and in the stores, and then the wild fish would be labelled as organic. I'm wondering if you could comment on that, please.

The Chair: It's mentioned in the letter.

Ms. Karen Wristen: Yes, that is a move that has been supported widely by consumer groups, environmental groups, and first nations. If these fish farm products are as safe as they are, the labelling ought not to be of detriment to the industry.

Certainly it's an important issue for consumers who want to know whether or not they're consuming, potentially, antibiotics, drugs, and chemicals that are routinely used to raise these fish. We have a lot of people out here with sensitive allergic conditions who need to know whether or not they're getting these chemicals. At present, it's impossible to tell.

Moreover, it's misleading when stores advertise salmon as “fresh” salmon. You have to ask whether that means it's farmed or wild, or you have to know when the fishing season is and make an informed guess as to whether or not this is going to be a wild salmon. Not all consumers are that well educated to know. So it's essentially being actively passed off as the wild product.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I have one last question, Mr. Chairman.

I notice you concentrated on fin-fish farms. Does your organization have any concerns with regard to the shellfish industry in aquaculture?

• 0935

Ms. Karen Wristen: There are a number of them, and they again relate to siting and the competing uses of public lands. To what extent are public uses going to be impacted by giving these tenures over into private hands?

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Hunter, go ahead.

Ms Lynn Hunter: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also want to thank the committee quite sincerely for coming to the west coast to examine this issue. I'm sure you've heard very conflicting testimony.

What I propose to do in my submission is to give a very brief oral presentation and then suggest some areas of questions you might want to ask.

On the letterhead of the David Suzuki Foundation are the words “finding solutions”. The goal of the foundation goes beyond exposing environmental problems to finding solutions. These are the same values that are incorporated into the foundation's work on salmon net cage aquaculture.

With that in mind, I intend to summarize some of the problems you've already heard and then go on to recommend a solution that will address those problems. That is switching from conventional net cages to safe, closed-loop containment systems now.

You've heard about some of the problems of diseases. I have that in my summary here. You've heard the problems of escapes. You've heard the problems of interaction between farmed and wild fish. You've heard some of the problems about the pollution. All of those problems would be addressed by closed-loop containment systems. They would keep wild disease out and keep farm disease in. I'm sure all the members here are familiar with the concept of a condom. This is the same concept.

They also prevent mortalities due to algae blooms, which is a major problem the industry has to grapple with, costing them a lot of money when algae blooms come in and kill off all their fish. The closed-loop containment system keeps farm fish in and saves wild fish, seals, sea otters, and birds from going into the system and being eaten or shot.

Then there's the interaction. Canada's leading scientists say it is bad. The safe, closed-loop systems are the solution. The Honourable John Fraser, former Minister of Fisheries and now the chair of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, said last year at this time that these systems should be land-based. I think the man has enough experience on the fisheries file that we should be listening to that advice.

In terms of the pollution and the drugs that are in the sediment, safe, closed-loop containment systems would stop the dumping of those dangerous pathogens, drugs, and sewage.

Parliament has a duty to protect wild salmon, and this is not being carried out. There is some will that we should be doing legal work for absconding jurisdiction. That's the term. That means the federal government is not doing its job in protecting wild fish. I urge the standing committee to recommend a halt to open net cage salmon farming and phase in safe, closed-looped containment systems.

Now I want to suggest some questions. I understand that Alexandra Morton gave a presentation to this committee in Campbell River, where she presented some evidence of pathogens that were in a fish she had sent to the department of pathology in the University of Guelph for testing. The report she received from that showed the drugs that were found in the fish. There are only four drugs that are permitted under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or Health Canada for the use of aquaculture. I'd ask the committee, please, what you intend to do with the testimony of Alexandra Morton.

• 0940

Another thing I know you heard in Campbell River is Yves Bastien's comments. When I attended the Canadian Aquaculture Conference last October, I took extensive notes of all the presenters. I have copies of what he said. I'm happy to provide you copies of my written notes and also the copies of correspondence I've had regarding those notes with Mr. Dhaliwal, the minister.

I know you're going to be hearing from a Dr. Peterson this afternoon. This is the PhD in genetics. He worked with cows. Yves Bastien commissioned him to do a report on the interaction between farmed and wild and he said don't worry, be happy. Mr. Peterson's comments and paper have both been widely refuted by Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientists. We obtained that through a media source. It seems that there are good people in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who have just about had it with the department's own support and promotion of this industry and are now trying to do their duty by leaking documents to the media.

I know you've also heard testimony on the use of ivermectin. Ivermectin is prohibited for use in a marine environment. I have some documents on that issue as well.

Finally, I'd like to talk about the closed containment systems and also the sediment report. I have a copy of the sediment report. We obtained this document through freedom of information provincially and it forms the basis of my private prosecution against one of the farms up in the Broughton archipelago.

With that I will allow the committee to pose questions to both Karen and myself.

The Chair: I'll go first to John and then Lawrence and then Sarkis.

Before I do, on the statement by Yves Bastien, this has come up before. From his speaking notes I want to put on the record what was said:

We are starting out, however, with a rather ironic handicap—a strong fishing industry and a still abundant supply of marine resources. The very existence of this industry and the abundance of her marine resources naturally give rise to debate. Should we turn to aquaculture? Will aquaculture development not adversely affect the fishing industry and our marine resources?

He goes on from there. At least from his speaking notes, he didn't make the statement that he was alleged to have made in previous evidence.

Mr. Cummins.

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

Lynn, before I start my questioning I just want to compliment you on the work you've done on this issue over the years. I think you've made a great contribution to the debate and I certainly appreciate that. I know many people do.

You mentioned in your discussion, Lynn, the fact that Parliament, in fact the minister, has a constitutional responsibility to protect wild salmon. Given the fact that the minister operates the commercial salmon fishery with a heavy regard for the precautionary principle, it seems that particular principle is lacking in his management of the aquaculture industry. Would you care to comment on that? Is that an accurate view as far you're concerned?

Ms. Lynn Hunter: I think the structure of the department precludes the minister from getting good advice, and this goes back to my comments about what the Norwegian parliamentarians noted. We have not listened to what has occurred in Norway, Scotland, or Ireland and we're going along the same happy little road to disaster.

I know you'll be hearing from others who have worked formally with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It seems that you have the habitat division at war with the aquaculture division. The habitat division knows the damage the aquaculture industry is doing to the marine environment, but there are more resources for the aquaculture division. Therefore the department becomes a cheerleader for an industry.

• 0945

And as Karen pointed out, at a time when there are no resources for commercial fishermen and for those who have traditionally gained their food fish and their livelihood from the ocean, the department is promoting an industry that is actively destroying the marine environment and the fish that come from it.

Mr. John Cummins: On that same note, Mr. Bastien views himself as an advocate of aquaculture, and it would seem to me that someone in his position should perhaps be a dispassionate watchdog of the industry rather than an advocate. I'm sure you'd concur with that.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: Absolutely, and what I see is that the Canadian taxpayer is funding the public relations arm of the aquaculture industry. When we talk about subsidies to industry, this is scandalous when you consider that—as you pointed out—the constitutional obligation is to protect the wild fish. Instead, the resources of government are being used to promote a polluter.

Mr. John Cummins: Thank you.

The Chair: Thanks, John.

Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Lawrence D. O'Brien (Labrador, Lib.): Sarkis is going to leave. I'll come later.

The Chair: Mr. Assadourian.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian (Brampton Centre, Lib.): I have three short questions.

You make the comparison with Canadian and Norway Atlantic salmon fish farms. Yesterday we had a witness here who was leader of the first nations union. He said that question is a no-brainer. Basically, he said it's no big deal in the east coast salmon farming. Now you tell me salmon farming in Norway is the same Atlantic salmon as the east coast salmon. Am I right?

Ms. Lynn Hunter: Yes.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: So would you comment on that situation? That's my first question.

The second question is, on the first page, on problems, you mention pollution, and that fish farming leaves the same amount of sewage as a city of 500,000 population. Last week we went to the sea. We had a tour on a boat to see where the sewer goes, and we were told it goes 1.2 kilometres into the ocean, and because we have currents there, they take away the sewage, so everything is nice and rosy.

We were told the same thing by the fish farmers up north. They said because they have a current, all the waste is dispersed, and in due time, with the activities in the ocean, it becomes basically harmless. Are you telling me it's the same damage as a city of 500,000? Can you comment on those two points for me, please?

Ms. Lynn Hunter: Yes. Karen would like to answer your second question.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: That's in your documentation, though. Suzuki's—

Ms. Karen Wristen: I acted on behalf of the David Suzuki Foundation throughout the salmon aquaculture review process and in preparing these reports. I have perhaps some knowledge that Lynn doesn't share, particularly with respect to the sewage issue.

The problem with the deposition of sewage on the ocean bottom is several fold, but let me just address buildup first of all, because you're saying the currents take it away. Well, yes, at the farm you saw, no doubt the currents are taking it away.

We have 80-some farms on the coast, approximately 20 of which need to be resited because the currents don't take the feces and chemical matter away. It's been depositing on the ocean floor to the extent that the natural process of breaking down has stopped. We're getting hydrogen sulphide gas forming under the fish farms and bubbling up to the surface. That's lethal to human beings. It's lethal to fish too. That's how badly sited some of these farms are, and how far we are away from understanding what makes a good fish farm site as yet.

There are some good ones. There are some that are sited in places where they're as good as an open-net pen can be, and perhaps that's what you saw. But that's certainly not the case across the board. When the provincial government finally did do some sediment surveys throughout the summer of 1997, and reported in 1998, what they found was that there were some 13 farms that needed urgently to be relocated because the hydrogen sulphide gas problem had risen to such a degree that it was literally a health hazard to both the fish and the farm workers. That's how bad it had gotten.

So you have to be cautious about these things. When you're taken out on the site visits, they don't usually show you the worst.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: Before you go to the second question, I have a very short question.

The Chair: Go ahead.

• 0950

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: We had this wonderful book yesterday. It was very well presented. Do you know the expression that says one picture is worth a thousand words? Maybe if you could give us a picture of the site that's contaminated the way you say—it's bubbling up with gases—we could do as the Government of Canada does for smokers: This is the healthy lung; this is the lung with cancer.

Ms. Karen Wristen: I have some lovely pictures of escaped farmed Atlantic salmon with lovely festering ulcers on them, if you'd like them.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: I want to see the ground, if it's possible.

Ms. Karen Wristen: It's kind of hard to take a picture of the ocean bottom—

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: I'm sure there is a way.

The Chair: If you have anything in that regard, Ms. Wristen, then we'd like to have it.

Lynn.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: Yes, the David Suzuki Foundation actually did a video news release showing what is going on under the farms, and I'm happy to forward a copy of that. It's only about a three-minute segment, but it does show exactly.... It's a moonscape down there.

The Chair: Just what year was that done?

Ms. Karen Wristen: 1997 or 1998.

The Chair: All right. Forward it. We'll welcome it.

Go ahead.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: Acting for the David Suzuki Foundation, we accessed the sediment report. There was a survey of 30 farms in the Broughton archipelago, and it showed that pollution was occurring. I have a copy of the report. The report was done by registered professional biologists from the provincial ministry, who acknowledged that fish farm waste is accumulating at a rate faster than decomposition—that is, they are polluting; that 10% of the farms exhibited anoxic benzic conditions up to 50 metres from the farm; and that 20% of the farms sampled exhibited unsafe sediment concentrations of zinc. One farm exhibited high concentrations of zinc beyond the perimeter of the farm—that is greater than 50 metres.

This isn't our stuff; this is the provincial Ministry of the Environment's in these documents. This is what is forming the basis of my private prosecution.

I also have a copy of the search warrant. A fisheries officer from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans confirmed that pollution is occurring. This is a court document, a public document, so I obtained it. The next court date for that case is March 1, 2000, in Campbell River.

It is not the job of a private individual to sue a fish farm. It's the job of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to do their work, and that is not happening. The members of this committee have a duty to Parliament to get the department to do its job. There are good people who want to do their jobs within the department, and it's not happening. I can speculate as to why that is, but I think it's your job as parliamentarians to make certain that the department does its job in protecting wild fish and the marine environment.

The Chair: Thank you, Lynn.

I want to go to Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thanks once again, Lynn. Again, any further documents you can provide the committee would be greatly appreciated.

I'm trying to connect the dots here. When Mr. Dhaliwal was first appointed minister, one of the first comments out of his mouth was “aquaculture”. And Mr. Streifel is promoting the fact that the moratorium may be lifted under certain conditions for the extension of aquaculture. Yet we know the constitutional aspect of the government is to protect wild fish and their habitat. We also heard that a lot of the fish farms now aren't independent farms, they're corporately controlled. So I was wondering if you could connect the dots for me as to who owns these farms and what influence they may have on the department. I'm trying to ascertain why the department is doing what it's doing.

Do you have any indication or any documents that state a very friendly relationship between the industry and that of DFO or the Ministry of Fisheries?

Ms. Lynn Hunter: The main one that I am suing, Stolt Sea Farm, is from Norway, which goes back to my earlier testimony about the fish farmers coming from Norway. They are mostly multinational corporations. I don't want to speculate on why the federal government is promoting fish farms rather than doing its duty as a public agency to protect the marine environment. I could speculate privately, but I don't want to speculate before a parliamentary committee.

I've lost my train of thought. Karen, can you pick it up?

Ms. Karen Wristen: Yes, I can.

That's teamwork for you. What Lynn was about to tell you—

The Chair: We've tried that a few times with Peter, but it doesn't work.

• 0955

An hon. member: [Inaudible—Editor].

The Chair: Just Reformers.

Go ahead, Karen.

Ms. Karen Wristen: Thanks.

There are two domestic companies that are heavily invested in fish farming on this coast at least, and they are Weston Foods and B.C. Packers. What their connection may be with the federal government or the DFO is not something I care to speculate on, but those are the domestic players.

As Lynn says, the multinationals are primarily based in Norway, with some in the United States. I understand that the major feed company that is financing a lot of what's going on, EWOS, is based in the United States, in Maine, if I'm correct.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: And as my last question for you, we hear testimony about the fact that these lights are at the bottom of the pens in order to give us the impression that the fish will grow faster, with about a 30% reduction in their feed costs. We've also heard evidence from people wondering what the fish are eating then, in place of that feed. I was wondering if you have any evidence on that.

We know that when a fin fish goes for processing, its bellies are empty, as they don't feed them for I think the last four or five or certain number of days beforehand. But there seems to be evidence that the fish are eating something else other than just the food they're being presented with. Do you have any indications in your studies as to what else they may be eating underneath those pens?

Ms. Lynn Hunter: They may be eating other little fish, including the little wild fish that are coming out of the streams. That's why siting is so important. Karen had told you in conversation yesterday that these little wild fish are coming out.

I'd also just like to point out the residues that are so worrisome. I have a New England Journal of Medicine document that talks about streptococcus iniae, which is a pathogen in fish capable of causing invasive disease and outbreaks in aquaculture farms. What this New England Journal of Medicine says is that there were a number of people in Toronto who got this infection transferred by handling fish. I know that when Alexandra Morton gave her testimony, she said she now knows she should have been handling this fish only with gloves on. She's darn right, because there were people who were going to hospital because of these infections.

The Chair: Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Bernier, and then Mr. Duncan to close.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I'd like to thank the presenters, because I certainly got your point of view and you've provided a lot of documentation.

Based on your interest in, your knowledge of, and your compassion for this issue—and I've heard your views on DFO and the various provincial and federal departments and agencies—I'd like to ask you what you would recommend as an overall recommendation to us as a standing committee. What should we report to DFO on the kind of structure we should have to govern the future of fish farming, salmon farming or whatever the case may be, and to take it one step further to do the actual enforcement of it in order to put it into balance?

I've heard you mention some points about things on land and this and that. You made some good points about various places where it's not so bad, and some more places and so on. We have to make a recommendation out of all of this, after all of the compelling evidence of yesterday and down through Washington, the east coast and so on. Both of you are involved in this well enough to give us your thoughts on a structure to create some balance for this.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: As I said in my oral presentation, I want the standing committee to urge a halt to open-net caged salmon farming, and a phase-in of safe, closed-loop containment systems.

As for the structure of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, it should be doing what it is legislatively mandated to do, which is to protect wild stocks and the marine environment. That's what they're not doing.

Karen, you have at that.

Ms. Karen Wristen: In addition to that, in the meantime, while we're moving to closed containment—which is a move that would be supported all over the world—we need to adopt the most precautionary approach to the farms that are legitimately operating under licences now. That is to say that they should be immediately moved to locations at least twenty kilometres away from the mouth of a fish stream. The best evidence we have from Norway is that's the distance needed to protect wild stocks.

• 1000

There's no justification for the one-kilometre rule DFO is using here, with no science base to it at all, or for the zero-kilometre rule they were attempting to apply in Campbell River the other day. We can put the farm right on the stream because the farmer needs some fresh water and those fish aren't important—that has to stop.

If nothing else changes, there must be immediate attention paid to the interface between these farms and wild stocks. It hasn't been done, and it must be done instantly.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: May I add just a comment? I have access to information documentation that actually says DFO has actively sited farms so they would not trigger Canadian environmental assessments. I'd be happy to leave those with you.

The Chair: Please do.

The last question is for you, Lawrence.

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien: I'm starting to think about seals, fish farming, labels—a whole range of things is just starting to penetrate my mind. If we start talking about labelling wild salmon, it is only caught for market on the west coast. Wild salmon is not allowed to be caught for market on the east coast because Atlantic salmon is basically a protected species now; there's no commercial salmon fishery, as you know. The only way to get a feed of Atlantic salmon now, whether it be west coast Atlantic salmon or east coast Atlantic salmon, is through a farm, unless you poach or catch it out of a river. That's basically the truth to this.

I'm a bit concerned here about where this is going. I would rather find the balance of the issue, in terms of putting it forward as policy and implementation, and get down to the nitty-gritty of this package and that package, and then maybe campaign for how much fish...you shouldn't eat fish caught on farms, like the campaigns on seals. I feel compelled to bring that point forward, and wonder what you think about that. There are better solutions.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: Yes, and that's why we're not saying to stop aquaculture. We're saying go to closed-loop containment systems. This is a product people want to eat, but the industry should pay the cost, rather than the environment. That's what's happening. The environment and the wild fish are subsidizing the costs to this industry, the way it's currently operating.

The Chair: Mr. Bernier.

Ms. Karen Wristen: Could I perhaps address some comment to the last question as well, before we move on?

The Chair: In thirty seconds or less.

Ms. Karen Wristen: I'll be quick.

When you're talking about balance, the farmers often say “Don't treat us differently from anybody else; we get to pollute our share of the planet too.” But no other husbandry operation we permit in Canada is allowed to discharge, in an uncontrolled manner, fecal waste, chemical matter, etc. into the marine environment, or into any water environment. That's what we're permitting this industry to do. We don't even know what effects that will have on the ocean.

You want to have a balance. Let's just contain the issue first of all, and then we can balance it.

The Chair: Mr. Bernier.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I am not really at ease in the language of Shakespeare. I have two short questions. I wrote down several, but we do not have much time.

You want to resite open-net fish farms in order to have at least a twenty kilometre setback between them. I understand the B.C. Fisheries Ministry has developed a siting map. Have you seen this map? Does it meet the 20 kilometre criteria you suggest?

[English]

Ms. Lynn Hunter: The ministry has set up a committee, and Karen is one of the members of that committee. They're trying to figure out the way to implement their decision. It's a two-year look at...freezing of the sites.

• 1005

The problem is that the industry is not willing to give government the data it's asking for. So here we have an industry that is working in our common territory of the open ocean, and so far is unwilling to provide any data to government on what the problems are.

Ms. Karen Wristen: With respect specifically to the twenty-kilometre radius, it won't be before this committee. We're left to deal only with the regulations that are in place that were looked at by the provincial aquaculture review. We don't have the ability to say we have to move to twenty kilometres. We're stuck with one kilometre until the Department of Fisheries and Oceans gets in there and says that doesn't protect wild fish.

The Chair: Mr. Bernier.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvan Bernier: I have one last question on my mind. I may not be as well-informed because the David-Suzuki Foundation is less active in Quebec, but I would like to know how large a foundation it is and how it is funded. You say the federal government should do the research, but as you know, having been an MP, you know the bureaucratic machinery is very slow.

The provincial government suggests to move to closed systems on a trial basis, but it seems there are no efficient closed systems on the market. Could the foundation purchase an existing fish farm in order to grow fish and try to develop a closed system? You may have better contacts with scientists and private industry than we do.

You may answer or not, as you wish, but since things are moving very, very slowly, what can we do to increase the speed?

[English]

Ms. Lynn Hunter: The David Suzuki Foundation is a charity in Canada operating to finding solutions, as I said earlier. We have over 30,000 members in our organization, and our funding comes from those people who donate to us, as well as foundation grants from other organizations that wish to support our work.

As far as taking on the task of looking at buying a farm, I would suggest that another charity you might want to ask that question of is Anne McMullin from the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, because they have charitable tax status as well. They're the industry. They should be doing that job, demonstrating to the Canadian public that this is a viable industry, because so far they've failed miserably in doing that.

The Chair: Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, Ref.): I have a comment then and a question.

I just want to clarify one thing. You talked about concerns about handling of the fish, particularly Atlantic. I don't think it's appropriate to use kind of scare tactics.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: Is that your characterization of what I did?

Mr. John Duncan: I'd like to quote from a letter from the fish health veterinarian from the B.C. government Ministry of Agriculture and Food, dated November 15, 1999. Are you aware of that letter to Bud Graham? It says:

Aeromonas hydrofila, and other naturally occurring marine bacteria, can cause disease in humans, particularly those who are immuno-compromised. In my discussions on this subject with Dr. Murray Fyfe, Epidemiologist, Centre for Disease Control, UBC, he agreed that given the commonplace existence of this bacteria in the environment, the risk associated with captured Atlantic salmon is no different than that for wild fish. Anyone who cuts himself or herself when handling raw fish or shellfish products, wild or farmed, should immediately wash their hands. As an added precaution to protect against skin infections gloves should be worn when handling raw fish, particularly individuals with compromised immune systems. Once the facts are presented to the medical health officials, I think they will agree that there is no public health hazard.

That's just part of the letter. I think it's important, on the public record, to ensure that people do not get the impression that there's a bunch of poisoned fish running around.

• 1010

Ms. Lynn Hunter: No. I'm happy to leave this with you, Mr. Duncan. In the New England Journal of Medicine submission I referred to earlier, I quote:

It has been suggested that streptococcal infections in fish have become increasingly important because of overcrowding in farms and transport.

They're wondering if this emerging pathogen, streptococcus, is because of that.

The Chair: John, go ahead. Thanks for putting that on the record.

Mr. John Duncan: Yes. I don't want to get into a to-and-fro on detail. All of us are concerned about the use of antibiotics, not only in the marine environment but in the human environment. Just yesterday it was noted that human consumption of antibiotics has actually decreased since the last time they kept statistics, which is an indication of where the public is coming from on this and the medical fraternity. That's very good news.

The last subject I want to ask you about is this. From the perspective of the aquaculture industry, clearly DFO is their lead agency. But this doesn't necessarily make farmers happy either. I know you're not happy with them. They're not happy either. This is not a happy marriage. Some have suggested that really that activity is more of an agricultural activity. This has been promoted in some circles.

There's a concern about clarifying the role of the fisheries minister and the fisheries department in terms of the wild fishery and in terms of providing a constructive balance between aquaculture and the wild fishery. Do you have an opinion on whether there's any merit to splitting off aquaculture and maybe putting it in a different department—maybe not Agriculture, but...? How else can we accommodate those two competing interests?

Ms. Lynn Hunter: What we have is a struggle within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They are in a conflict. If the federal government wishes to support an industry, the federal government can do that. Industry Canada promotes industry. But it should not be done within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, with their legislative responsibility for looking after the wild fish and the marine environment.

Mr. John Duncan: Can I comment on that?

The Chair: We're over time, John, but make a last comment then.

Mr. John Duncan: Is it not so that the primary responsibility of the department is the protection of fish and fish habitat? The operation of the commercial fishing industry or the sport fishing industry or aboriginal fisheries is sort of at the secondary level, the primary responsibility being the protection of fish and fish habitat.

So would aquaculture not be a natural fit in that department? If they were fulfilling their primary role and obligation and constitutional duty, then you wouldn't have a concern about whether aquaculture was a good fit here. It could be a separate entity within the department. It would probably take direction in a slightly easier fashion if it were part of the department, as opposed to an entity outside it.

The Chair: Do you have comments, Karen or Lynn?

Ms. Karen Wristen: Yes, I'd like to respond to that.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans' habitat branch will always have a critical role to play in regulating the aquaculture industry, so it's not that we're suggesting it be taken out altogether. It's the cheerleading function we could do without, the promotion.

First of all, I question whether we need it or not. The salmon farmers' associations are there for the promotion. Yves Bastien is there for the promotion of the industry. We're already spending money on that. Why do we also have the department spending money on it?

That function goes. I don't have any recommendation as to where it goes. I say forget it. Regulation and enforcement is the proper role of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The Chair: Lou.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: We're already cutting into our lunch hour.

• 1015

Mr. Lou Sekora: I was a municipal politician for 25 years before I went into federal politics. When I sat at city hall and conducted public hearings, you had the one vision: do your job and don't rezone this property. Those are comments to you, that somehow the federal government is not doing their job. It all depends who you listen you. Some people say we are doing our job; some people say we're not. It's the same as a public hearing. Which property do you rezone? Who do you listen to? If you listen to one side, you're doing the right thing. If you listen to the other side, it's “Mayor, do your job. Otherwise we're going to get rid of you. You can't rezone this property.” Those are the comments I'll make.

Secondly, I was also on the board of directors for GVD, which is 21 municipalities. I've seen films. I'm not saying yours is the same or anything else. I've seen films. The fact is when they were broadcast and shown on a screen, they weren't exactly what they were, or they weren't the same films as we were told they were, or what was shown to us was not factual. It wasn't the area at all. I'm not saying yours is any different. We'll look at that film. I want to see it. But also I want to go into everything I'm listening to with an open mind and weigh the pros and cons of both sides.

The Chair: I don't think there's a question there, Lynn or Karen.

Mr. Lou Sekora: No, it's not a question.

The Chair: In your recommendations to the committee, you recommend a halt to open-net cage salmon farming and a phase-in of safe, closed-loop containment systems. What kind of timeframe are we looking at? Do you really believe the closed-loop containment systems are technologically advanced enough yet that that can happen in a short period of time?

You can make that jump. You can in fact order that jump and be into greater difficulty with the closed-loop system than you are with this one. Do you not think major improvements have been made in the last four years? If not, okay. But what timeframe are we looking at? And can it be done safely?

Ms. Lynn Hunter: I have documents here on one particular type of closed containment facility that I'd like to give to the members of the committee, and also some media relating to those in which our own Minister of Fisheries provincially, Dennis Streifel, says it's the ideal way for salmon farming to expand. This was January 26, 1999.

Karen also wants to comment.

Ms. Karen Wristen: These systems are not only technologically feasible. They actually can be operated at lower cost than an open-net cage, because there's no waste. There's stricter control over disease. You can control the environment completely. You can produce a better product at the end of the day by controlling the currents. There are all kinds of advantages to them from the operations point of view.

The farmers say they can't afford to move into them, because they're not economically feasible. Well, it's impossible to say if they're economically feasible. No one has developed the technology. Nobody is mass-producing the technology. So we don't know what the cost of that technology is going to be when it's actually implemented in an industry, and we never will, until a government requires this industry to move into closed containment, because there's no incentive for them to move themselves at present. It's much cheaper to just pollute the marine environment than to control your own system's wastes.

So the answer is yes, it is technologically feasible. If you were in Washington State, you no doubt heard about the system that was operating in Puget Sound up until last year.

Ms. Lynn Hunter: Mariculture.

Ms. Karen Wristen: See? Teamwork again.

Mariculture Systems have a fully contained system that grew out an entire year-class of fish.

You asked about timing of implementation as well. The owner of Mariculture Systems has indicated to the provincial government here that they are prepared to move here and set up shop, producing the systems wherever the demand is, and that they could have the systems in production within the year. In terms of the fish farmers' own cycle, it will take 18 months to 24 months for them to grow out whatever stocks may be in the pens. So that's the kind of timeframe we should be looking at. The equipment can be ready and the farmers can be ready to start a new cycle within that timeframe.

We suggested during the entire provincial process that perhaps a three- to five-year timeframe, to give people time to research other technologies that might be available, was appropriate. The salmon farming industry isn't even discussing this issue.

The Chair: Thank you, Lynn and Karen.

• 1020

I know that on P.E.I. it's closed containment because it's land-based fin fish, but those fishermen will certainly tell me that their costs are a lot higher than those of the other people. That is land-based, it's not in the water at all.

Mr. John Duncan: Fresh water?

The Chair: Fresh water, yes. It's different entirely.

We'll let it go, John.

Thank you, Ms. Hunter and Ms. Wristen.

I'm going to call forward for five minutes Craig Williams, who has a basically closed containment system, and then we'll move to the other witness schedule. Craig, would you come forward for a minute?

I don't want to take questions. I want to take five minutes. Craig, if you could, because we're talking about closed containment systems, just outline where you're coming from on this. As a committee, I think we're going to have to go to full-day hearings in Ottawa on closed containment and get different points of view. But I know you're sitting here. We might as well take five minutes and hear from you, if we can. Go ahead.

Mr. Craig Williams (President and Chief Executive Officer, Future SEA Technologies): Thank you.

I'm president and CEO of Future SEA Technologies. This is the company here in B.C. that has been developing enclosed containment systems. I've heard it referred to over the last couple of weeks as a greenhouse for growing fisheries, and you can control the environment. I've also heard it referred to as a condom, so I'm going to try to set the record straight a little bit on that.

Basically, we think we have a dream. We have a better idea of how to rear fish, but we're not all the way yet. It's important that everybody understand that not all the answers are there. Our esteemed supplier in the United States is not in business because it's not economically viable. So we're making steps in that direction.

Basically, what the SEA system is—the SEA stands for sustained environment aquaculture—is a floating, enclosed, controlled environment rearing technology. It attempts to address some of the economic, technical, and environmental challenges facing the fish farming industry.

Who's our company? First off, it's our customers' profitability that has to count to us. If we can't make these fish farmers more profitable in a sustainable way, they won't be in business and there's nothing for us. Our intention to do that is through being a world leader in the provision of innovative products and services, supplying a sustainable industry. We have a number of stakeholders to take care of, including our shareholders, our employees, the community in general, and the environment.

We were incorporated in 1994. We're 100% Canadian-owned. And when I say ESOP, it's an employee-owned company that's moved from the three founders to now 30 employees in three locations in B.C.

The early years was the market assessment. And as you know, this is a huge and growing industry and the market is quite sizeable. In terms of the proof of concept, we've done work with DFO. Our relationship with DFO has been very positive. We've been working at the Pacific Biological Station to get some prototype test results out, which have shown some very encouraging results. Our challenge is to get that out on a commercial scale so the industry can see that it is truly commercially viable.

We have an outside board of experts who are helping advise us where the industry is going over the next ten years, and we're ISO 9001 certified. So we've been building our business along with this technology.

You can also see on that little graph on the right-hand side that back in 1996 was the first bag that went out. At the end of this year we expect to have approximately a hundred bags designed and delivered. I think we just hit sixty last week.

What is the SEA system? It's basically floating, enclosed, controlled. The floating part is important, because to build these on a land base has not been proven to be economical. Infrastructure costs and construction costs throw out your capital investment and you can never recover it. We have examples of this all over the place in B.C. So we try to take land-based technology and put it out on the ocean in a safe manner.

If you look at that picture, basically what you have is an intake line that's adjustable up and down so you can get below-negative surface effects. We have a patented pumping system. You bring the water in, you swirl it around like a teacup effect. The fish swim against that. It provides them with exercise, so you get better feed conversion rates, less stress, they're less prone to disease, they have firmer flesh texture—all those good things we're trying to prove out on a commercial scale.

The potential benefits.... It's important to understand that it's not all solved yet. We're a step in the right direction. This is the issue we're having with the industries. We need to prove it out commercially. We are selling commercially—unfortunately, not here in British Columbia but in Australia, in the United States, and eastern Canada, which has moved forward to try out some of this technology. We're having some challenges. The Bay of Fundy is a high-energy site, and we're having some problems there, which we're working on, but those are engineering problems.

• 1025

We've seen improvements in feed-conversion rates, which have been published by DFO and are quite significant—again, not on a commercial basis, but enough. That's where the economics is. Sixty percent of the cost of growing fish is in the feed, and we're knocking out an up to thirty percent improved feed conversion. Now we have to prove that on a full scale, not on our little bench scale.

There is lower mortality. The fish are protected. We have a pet seal. If any of you have been to Nanaimo, we have a pet seal that cruises around. The fish don't know she's there, and they don't get upset. The seal doesn't attack them. There's less chance of predation, because seals and sea lions will attack a net and pop holes in it.

On higher densities, we don't think density's the issue. It's stress-free fish that is important. What happens in our bag is because we have a uniform distribution of temperature, salinity, and oxygen through the water column, the fish distribute nice and evenly. They're not running to a band of preferred area.

We're doing enhancement projects, unfortunately not with Canada, where we're trying to, similar to the salmonid enhancement program, grow out a stronger smolt to go to sea so it's integrating with the wild fishery.

We also believe that in all the studies we've done there's less utility downgrade, so it is a higher quality, as was mentioned. Less stress means less disease. Flesh quality we believe is going to be better. A lot of this stuff is not proven. It's conceptual right now, but we're seeing the preliminary results.

It will mitigate environmental impacts. There are a number of things happening out there, such as predators, as I mentioned. Jellyfish is a problem in eastern Canada. We've developed technology to keep jellyfish away, which poison fish in open nets. Plankton blooms are a problem, and we can adjust below that so we take in water where the fish would normally live. In eastern Canada there's super chill: the fish are freezing and the water hasn't frozen. We've managed to get a customer in eastern Canada through that problem in Cape Breton.

Low oxygen sites means we can make sites useable again, even though they may be anoxic.

Lice infestation: we're getting some very important results of significant reductions in lice infestation on fish on both the west coast and the east coast. In terms of what that means to the disease transmission, we haven't connected all that, but they are very good indicators.

With waste management, this really depends on what the market says. Do we need to have waste? We have a waste management system where we're taking solid waste off the bottoms of our bags. This is the difference between closed and enclosed. There's no such thing as closed. Enclosed means we have an envelope to protect the fish. We have now developed technology and have it patented for removing solid waste off the bag. We're operating in central Canada in a system, and we've just—unfortunately not here, we're doing it in Australia in a marine site—now got our waste trap and our concentrators operating on a prototype phase down in Australia. We're looking in Scandinavia to put systems in too. It's still early stages. There are a lot of difficulties in doing that in a marine environment, but we see our technology as a platform for being able to do waste management down the road.

In terms of the industry benefits from the kinds of things we're doing, I put a little summary here. We believe this leads to sustainable aquaculture. I think if we can move ahead in this technology it allows Canada to take leadership in technology. There are export opportunities. Canada's 5% of the world market. Economic development, job creation.... The frustration we have here is that we need a vibrant and growing aquaculture industry interested in developing the technology. It's very costly for us to be flying to Australia, Scandinavia, and across the United States to develop it. You need a growing, thriving industry.

I think the industry needs to have roadblocks removed for responsible sustainable growth. I think we're moving in that direction here, but it has a long way to go. The government has to encourage technical innovation, and we've had some support. It's not big grants. We have royalty-based loans with Industry Canada, which we're very appreciative of, and we have an R and D program going with that. That's very important to us, because it takes a lot of money to develop technology.

There's another thing we've seen in other countries. There's a focus on the industry, and there must be a positive spin. People don't want to work in the industry if it's always negative. I think there are some real opportunities because of the industry's huge growth potential—big market. Coopers & Lybrand did a study finding 20,000-odd jobs here, a billion-dollar potential. We have to start working toward that.

I don't want to have our technology used as a pawn in this debate. There are lots of things we think it can do down the road. It's not there in all regards. Unfortunately, it has been used a little bit that way. We're more than willing to talk to people on this. At this point we're clearly the leader in the world at sixty-odd bags out there. That's more than anybody else has done. We'd like to be open about that down the road.

Thank you very much.

• 1030

The Chair: Thank you very much, Craig.

If we go to questions, we're really going to be in a bind at lunch. If people are willing to—

Mr. John Duncan: I'm thinking about the tour, if we're going to go on tour if there's one of these we could see.

The Chair: Okay, maybe we'll take a few questions. I think we're going to have to go to sandwiches for lunch. I'll take one question from each party.

John.

Mr. John Duncan: Craig, this committee will be travelling to the east coast. Is there some place you would recommend where we could see one of these things operating? Which one would you have us target to look at?

Mr. Craig Williams: That would probably be the one that took the fish through the super-chill and the low oxygen in Bras d'Or Lake and Cape Breton. That's the latest design out there. It's an eight-bag system.

Mr. John Duncan: Can you give us the company and the location?

Mr. Craig Williams: Yes. I can get all the details for you.

Mr. John Cummins: We will be in Cape Breton?

The Chair: Yes, we will be in Cape Breton.

Craig, if you could forward that to us, it would be great.

Mr. John Duncan: That's it.

The Chair: Thank you.

Peter.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you very much for your presentations.

At the bottom of this picture you have the valves going out. Is that indicating that the waste from the fish farm actually goes into the wild, or would that be contained somehow?

Mr. Craig Williams: No, in the picture on that, it's being distributed as.... How would you compare it? Instead of a pile of manure, it would be a fertilizer spreader. That's how some people operate. They put it around, move it in one spot for a couple of months and move it over, and they come back when the spot has cleared up.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: So currently it's still going into the wild.

Mr. Craig Williams: In that picture it is. We have a freshwater site where the solid waste is being recovered, and we've just started up a prototype marine site.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Could the pumps that you have be operated on solar power, or would it be fossil-fuel generation?

Mr. Craig Williams: Actually, we run either off a grid or we have diesel generators.

They're very efficient pumps. There's no other pump in the world that has this volume of flow for this low a horsepower requirement.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Would they be noisy at all, or anything like that?

Mr. Craig Williams: The noise would be from a diesel generator. So you have to muffle that. They put it inside the building.

On our farms, you have muffled hospital-grade backup generators, which we put inside a building. We've been operating across from DFO for three years now, and haven't had a complaint.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Peter.

Carmen or anyone? Yvan? No?

Thank you very much, Craig. I appreciate you coming forward and giving us the information. I'm glad we were able to fit you in, because in terms of the evidence before the committee, I think we need to see what's possible and probable out there. I appreciate you saying that all the answers are not there, that it's developmental.

Mr. Craig Williams: Thank you very much. I'll be here through the day.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Williams.

The next witness is Karen Wilson. I'm sorry for being a little behind time. Welcome, and thank you for your patience. The floor is yours.

Ms. Karen Wilson (Individual Presentation): Good morning. My name is Karen Wilson. I live in Ladner, which is a farming and fishing community south of Vancouver, at the mouth of the Fraser River.

My husband and I are commercial fishers with a gillnet boat that didn't catch one salmon last year. So I have an interest in the future of British Columbia's wild salmon stocks. I would like to see them managed properly, and not endangered by disease.

Starting with Scotland's wild salmon facing the threat of extinction, experts predict that many of Scotland's great fishing rivers will be wiped out of wild salmon and trout within two years because of the spread of disease from commercial fish farms. Recently Scotland put a moratorium on fish farm expansion, but that isn't good enough for sports fishermen, who are taking the U.K. government to court for more drastic action to be taken.

Infectious salmonoid anemia, commonly referred to as ISA, and flesh-eating lice are a serious threat, costing many fishing industry jobs.

• 1035

Here in B.C., fish farm escapes are getting to be a common occurrence. No one knows how many hundreds of thousands have escaped and how many were diseased. Government—DFO—allowing an expansion of fish farm production in open-net cages is an irresponsible thing to do.

In 1998 the New Brunswick cabinet announced a $10 million provincial bailout with a $13 million federal bailout for the salmon farming industry ravaged by ISA. More than 25% of the industry was temporarily shut down in an effort to control the disease, at a loss of $30 million to the industry.

ISA was first detected in Norway, according to the Friends of Clayoquot Sound. When fish become infected with ISA, they are lethargic, sink to the bottom of the pen, get swollen abdomens, and have bulging and blood-spotted eyes. The infected fish have severe anemia, and mortalities are high.

When disease is discovered, farmers quickly harvest, process, and market fish for human consumption. Since sick fish are usually harvested and processed for consumption, Norway has found that ISA is readily transmitted in the effluent of processing plants and therefore requires treatment in these plants.

When sea life concentrations become too high, they are a problem in themselves, because they can carry ISA. Controversial drugs like ivermectin are used by salmon farmers to combat them.

Most importantly, ISA has now been discovered in wild salmon in New Brunswick, in late October 1999. This is the first time I've heard of this in our wild stocks in Canada. I urge you to stop the spread of this disease and save our wild salmon stocks in British Columbia.

There are many other diseases, including bacterial kidney disease and furunculosis, which are very infectious and deadly.

In Norway they have poisoned 24 rivers to get rid of a parasite from fish farms, which didn't stop the parasite. In 1999 Norwegian authorities gave permission to poison or re-poison 17 rivers of all life in hope of killing the parasite.

Biocides have been poured into the Bay of Fundy region of New Brunswick to try to control sea life. The poisoning of rivers is something the people of Canada don't want to continue or expand. I feel the government has a responsibility to its people and its resource.

In Washington State, farms are required to disclose annually to the public the type and quantity of drug used, on a site-specific basis. B.C. salmon farmers try to use veterinarian-client privilege, which has no basis in law, to keep this secret from the public.

Infectious salmonid anemia can infect other types of fish. Tests show that herring can be infected. Are we, as Canadians, prepared to risk our herring fishery also?

B.C. salmon farmers are not presently required to notify any authority of any disease outbreak. Because of secrecy, it is unlikely that the public would ever be told of an outbreak. How can the farm fish industry be allowed to process diseased fish for human consumption without any public disclosure?

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is protesting the expansion of salmon farming in B.C. because of evidence that escaped farm salmon are establishing themselves in the wild. Salmon farming was banned in Alaska in 1990.

Alaska Fish and Game has called for a coast-wide moratorium on new farms. I've attached the Alaska report, Atlantic Salmon: A White Paper, which states Alaska's recommendations from their Department of Fish and Game scientists. It's the last ten pages in this bound set of papers that I gave you. The last page is their recommendation.

The Atlantic salmon that is imported to the farms could introduce exotic diseases and parasites.

Scientists have confirmed at least two age classes of Atlantic salmon successfully spawned in the Tsitika River.

The Governor of Alaska, Tony Knowles, is in the process of getting Alaskan wild salmon classified as organic. What do you think that will do to B.C.'s wild salmon on the world market? B.C. is not moving forward, and it must move to save the wild salmon.

The fish-farming industry says it's feeding the hungry world and taking pressure off wild stocks. Nothing could be further from the truth. It requires three to five pounds of feed to produce one pound of fish. How long would you have money in the bank if you handled your money that way?

• 1040

Antibiotic resistance is a grave threat to human health. Overuse of antibiotics in agriculture has led to serious antibiotic resistance problems in foods. Few people would choose to allow drugs to be robbed of their life-saving effectiveness in exchange for a small benefit to agribusiness, particularly for non-essential use in promoting weight gain in farm animals.

Sweden banned all non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in agriculture in 1986. In 1997 a World Health Organization report recommended ending the use in animal feeds of all antibiotics. British Columbia's Ministry of Agriculture animal health centre newsletter of January 1999 reported dietary deficiencies in farm fish and recommended review of formulation and trace mineral analysis.

Farm salmon are fed animal by-products from organisms they do not eat, such as chickens. Apparently feathers make the pellets float. We should remember mad cow disease.

Farm salmon is grey, and must be chemically coloured to fool us into believing that we are eating wild salmon. I brought this salmon colour chart—perhaps you could look at it, maybe pass it around—put out by La Roche, a large international chemical pharmaceutical company, to show you the different colours you can make the flesh of Atlantic salmon. The darker the colour, the more expensive the feed. This leads me to ask that all farm fish be labelled with the words “farm” or “farmed salmon” on it to help the public make a more informed choice.

B.C. is known around the world for its high-quality wild salmon and being home to the killer whales. I don't think tourists will come to B.C. to tour fish farms when our wild runs and killer whales are wiped out.

First nations' concerns aren't being addressed. Arnie Narcisse, of the B.C. Aboriginal Fisheries Commission, states:

DFO is complicit in the destruction of wild salmon stocks and is therefore infringing on aboriginal rights.

Alexandra Morton, a killer whale researcher, states:

In 1993 salmon farms began broadcasting very loud sounds underwater to repel seals. The orca, who don't consider farm salmon edible, are repelled by a wall of noise.

Acoustic harassment devices are becoming popular with salmon farmers around the world, forcing whales out of large areas of the central coastal habitat. Dispersing whales violates the Canadian Fisheries Act, but DFO doesn't enforce its own act.

Stop and consider 80 salmon farms along the B.C. coast. How many salmon fry coming out of our rivers swim through an open-net cage and never come out the other side? DFO scientists have found that farm fish eat the juvenile herring and salmon fry on their way to open ocean.

Why does it take a private citizen to file charges before anything is done? I don't know if I need to read this, because Lynn was just here before me, but here goes.

Earlier in 1999, in Victoria, Lynn Hunter, a former member of Parliament, brought criminal charges under the Fisheries Act against Stolt Sea Farm Inc. for harming fish habitat and depositing harmful substances in the water frequented by fish near a salmon farm off Vancouver Island. Briefly, count one is harmful alteration of fish habitat; count two is unlawfully deposited fish farm discharge, including feed, fecal, and net-cleaning material.

On November 8, 1999, in Campbell River Provincial Court, John Cliffe, the lawyer for the federal Department of Justice, told Judge Saunderson that he was not yet ready to tell the court if the Department of Justice would be taking over the case from a private prosecution. They had executed a search warrant against Stolt ten days before, and he estimated the court's time to judge the case at two to four weeks. A court date was set for March 1, 2000.

• 1045

My goal in making this presentation is that I would like to see you protect B.C. wild salmon and other wild habitat by stopping open-net pens and putting pens on land if they're considered farms. Treat the pens as if they were greenhouses and make them have tanks for waste and recycled water to stop their polluting our rivers and oceans. Since they are under the farm protection act, possibly they should come under the Department of Agriculture. Most importantly, I would like all open-net farm sites to be shut down and not be in or near any of the wild fry migration routes.

I would like to see package labelling in stores and restaurants with the words “farmed” or “farm fish” on it to stop the public from being misled. The public needs to make informed choices about the food they eat and the drugs and antibiotics these fish have had administered to them.

I would like clarification and a reassurance of safety on the issue of genetically altering salmon and the impact it has on human health. The process of taking two unaltered female salmon, known as diploids, having two chromosomes, and giving them hormones to fertilize salmon eggs without a male salmon and creating a sterile salmon that has an extra chromosome, called a triploid, having three chromosomes, is something the public should know about before they go to the store and buy it for their dinner table. I want to know and have the choice if I'm buying or eating something genetically altered.

I would like to see independent monitors at fish farm sites for reporting disease and to regulate and report on feed and antibiotics given.

I would like full disclosure of taxpayers' money DFO has spent on financing and aiding fish farms and how many hatchery eggs were sold to fish farms instead of restocking our wild runs.

Now, if you would turn a couple of pages you'll see a fax with questions listed on it and then behind that the answers to those questions. I received answers to a list of questions from Ron Ginetz, the regional aquaculture coordinator for Pacific region of DFO. There are two questions I'd like you to read and see the answers. Question one is “How many eggs were sold by DFO (they consider them surplus) of each species, especially coho and chinook, by year starting in 1985?” Ron Ginetz's answer: “Millions”. Question two: “How many eggs were used to restock the wild runs, and where?” Ron Ginetz's answer: “0.0”.

Commercial fishermen could not fish for chinook salmon after the late 1970s or about 1980 in the Fraser River because they were endangered, but DFO continued to sell millions of eggs for years. The DFO mandate is to protect the wild fish. I'm extremely disappointed that the wild runs have not been restocked with the eggs that were sold. What is DFO's responsibility and priority?

I hope you do what's right for all Canadians, because our wild salmon are an irreplaceable resource that should not be jeopardized by some corporations trying to capitalize on an unproven science.

Thank you for listening.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Wilson. You have a lot of information here. We thank you for taking the time to put it together.

We'll turn to questions. John Cummins.

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

Thank you for appearing this morning, Karen. I appreciate the effort you've put into your presentation.

One of the questions I have would relate to DFO's contribution of chinook eggs and what not to the fish farming industry. Were these provided free, gratis, or was there a cost involved to the fish farming industry on those? Do you know?

• 1050

Ms. Karen Wilson: I don't know what they had to pay or if they had to pay. I just think that what is foremost is that those eggs should have been used for restocking runs that weren't being commercially fished, which meant that they were either at a shortage or endangered or something of that nature.

Mr. John Cummins: They never indicated to you where those eggs came from, whether they were Fraser eggs or whether they were from Vancouver Island, the hatcheries there?

Ms. Karen Wilson: No. What I've given you is their response. I find it outrageous that they would do this.

Mr. John Cummins: In the last of the white paper document prepared by the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game, they express some concern about the introduction of wild Atlantic salmon on the west coast. Do you know if they were concerned as well about the introduction of hatchery fish or Pacific farm salmon displacing wild stock on the rivers? Were they concerned about that issue as well?

Ms. Karen Wilson: Yes. I spoke to Glen Oliver, who's a scientist with the DFO who actually wrote this white paper, and he indicated exactly that. That is one of the fears. The timing of it is anyone's guess on how long it would take, but they feel that several things would displace fish that are already in those rivers.

Mr. John Cummins: This has happened, of course, on the east coast, where the Atlantic farmed salmon, as we understand it, have taken over many of the rivers in the state of Maine, and I'm sure in New Brunswick as well, where there are wild salmon and they are displacing the wild stocks. I guess in a sense on the west coast here we don't hear about that problem, but it seems to me it's almost the Trojan Horse, if you will, of fish farming, the fact that these escapees could in fact displace fragile wild stocks on this coast.

Ms. Karen Wilson: Yes.

The Chair: Thank you, John. Is that it?

Mr. John Cummins: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

In your presentation you make some pretty serious concerns about the fact that some fin-fish farmers are selling and processing fish that is diseased. Do you have any documentation indicating that?

Ms. Karen Wilson: I brought this book, and I recommend everyone read it or take a look at it. It's called Sea-silver: Inside British Columbia's salmon-farming industry. It somewhat documents the beginning of fish farming here in B.C. throughout the first ten years—what happened, the disease, everything. I found it extremely good information. I think I also cross-referenced that to some documentation in here.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Okay. And secondly, you mentioned that the feed given to the fish may contain chicken feathers.

Ms. Karen Wilson: Yes.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Do you have a copy of what's in the fish meal? Do you have the ingredient list?

Ms. Karen Wilson: No, but I could probably get it.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: It would be very interesting to get the ingredient list of what's in that fish meal, if that's possible.

Ms. Karen Wilson: Okay. I'll try.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: On the egg situation, about selling those eggs or giving those eggs away or whatever, I find it astonishing that DFO would do that, but I've said DFO is out of control anyway.

Ms. Karen Wilson: I was shocked. I just received this last week, and I could not believe what they put down.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Have they given you any further clarification to these documents as to why they do the things they're doing? Obviously when you got these you must have called them and said—

Ms. Karen Wilson: No, actually I just received this last week, so I really haven't. I'm taking it for just exactly what it says here.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Very good.

The Chair: I can assure you, Ms. Wilson, that we will be asking for further clarification on that from DFO. That will be done.

Mr. Sekora.

• 1055

Mr. Lou Sekora: Thank you very much.

You say you're from the British Columbia Legislative Committee. Who are you employed by?

Ms. Karen Wilson: I work for Novateck Limited. It's a fertilizer and grain company. My husband and I are commercial fishers, so I'm not employed by any group or connected with any group in any way. I'm strictly here because I'm concerned—

Mr. Lou Sekora: When you asked to be—

Mr. John Cummins: That was a misprint. It shouldn't be on our agenda.

Ms. Karen Wilson: I don't know what....

Mr. Lou Sekora: I'd like to make a comment, Mr. Chair. This morning we've heard from one side. It's nothing against you or anybody who made presentations, but I think these presentations should be screened so we don't have the same thing over and over. I think we need to have the presenters send their speeches or what they're going to make a presentation on to the chair and the chair should take a look at them so we don't have four or five of the same type of presenters.

The Chair: Lou, I wouldn't want to make that decision.

Mr. Lou Sekora: I realize that, but it would make it a lot easier for us to be able to see more witnesses.

As far as the food is concerned, I'd rather see this committee ask the people who produce food for the fish what the ingredients are. Rather than putting her through telling us what they tried to get and what they may get and may not get, we can get it readily. I think that's one way we can do it.

The Chair: When we ask for witnesses on the east coast, that might be one of the ones you want to suggest. All members were asked to present witnesses' names and we have what we have and we appreciate them taking the effort to come here.

Do you have a specific question?

Mr. Lou Sekora: No, that's it. Thank you.

The Chair: Any other questions, Mr. Duncan?

Mr. John Duncan: No, that's fine.

I'd just like to say I've been reading your material with great interest.

Ms. Karen Wilson: Thank you. I hope everyone does.

The Chair: On that ISA problem, the New Brunswick salmon issue in the Bay of Fundy and Maine, I know the Atlantic Veterinary College is working fairly extensively on that. I've talked to them a number of times, and when we go to the east coast we'll be trying to meet with them as well.

Mr. Stoffer and back to Mr. Cummins.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Wayne, just for a point of clarification, some folks yesterday were asking what happens now that we've been here. Just to let you know, once the committee's done its findings, we'll do a report. That report will be made to the House of Commons and then will become public.

The Chair: Yes, and the minister will have to respond within 150 days. We hope he responds more positively and a little more quickly than he did on the last one.

Mr. Cummins.

Mr. John Cummins: I'd just like to point out to the committee that Karen has collected a good cross-section of documentation relating to this issue. Certainly it's well worth the time to read that material. I think it will provide you with answers to a lot of the questions and issues that have been raised.

I also wanted to state that Karen is a fine example of the fishing community in British Columbia who take an active interest in issues relating to habitat and protection of habitat and do so on their own time. I certainly appreciate the time and effort she's made to appear here this morning and to collect this material for us. I think that should be in the record.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Wilson. I can't add any more to that. Thank you for your presentation. We will wade through this document. There is good information there.

Ms. Karen Wilson: Great.

Mr. John Cummins: I want to make a point, Mr. Chairman. Val Roddick, who is a member of the provincial legislature from Delta South, is with us and has been for a while this morning.

The Chair: Val, welcome.

Ms. Val Roddick (Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia): Thank you.

The Chair: You know all about committees. We always get good information and hopefully make good decisions.

• 1100

Robert Corlett as an individual is the next witness. Welcome, Mr. Corlett. If you want to give a little bit of your background, the floor is yours. I think we have a document from you before us.

Mr. Robert Corlett (Individual Presentation): Thank you. I've had very short notice of this committee meeting.

The Chair: I'll just point out, Mr. Corlett, that we do apologize for that. We had planned on this western tour in November, and due to how politics in Ottawa sometimes works it got blocked until last week. We managed to get it through and then we had hardly enough time to organize it properly. We apologize and we appreciate your efforts.

Mr. Robert Corlett: I would just ask that you keep that in mind.

I'd like to say good morning and I thank you for the invitation to appear before you. I come here as an individual expressing my concerns and opinions about the salmon aquaculture industry in British Columbia, both verbally and in written form.

I was born in Bella Bella, British Columbia, a coastal town situated between Port Hardy and Prince Rupert. My first year of commercial fishing was 1963. In 1980 I moved into the forest industry, and in 1986 my involvement with the fish-farming industry started. In 1999 I was displaced from the salmon aquaculture industry.

The need to be able to compete and survive, or variances of that, is the reason and the excuse I hear from within the salmon farming industry when discussions arise about questionable acts. Environmentalists play a necessary role. When a fish farmer resorts to ocean dumping of its morts at night and/or instructs employees to only dump morts off the farm system when there are no boats around, that indicates to me a willingness to operate in a manner that would not be acceptable by most.

Fish farmers, true to their word, when asked to assist in the cleanup of mortalities.... I ask that the farmers clean up and disinfect our equipment afterward. This was done in an efficient and timely fashion. Fish farmers are not so true to their word when asked to overcome a problem. I offered to build a specialized piece of equipment for a particular farmer's needs and I expressed my concern for the recovery of the capital outlay. I was told not to worry, to build it and it would be looked after. We used this equipment for fewer than 100 days. The most advantageous use of this equipment will be adding it to our tax loss column.

The B.C. Salmon Farmers Association's code of practice is well meaning and is a step forward. What it lacks, in my opinion, is meaningful deterrence. From my experiences within this industry, the baseline practices will never be adhered to by some unless they are faced with severe consequences for their intentional inappropriate acts, past and present.

A member of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, a company representative, appears to mislead the public as to the ownership of the Orca Shipping vessels brought over from Norway. See the Profit article “Fishy Business” in the May 16, 1999 issue. When pressed in a meeting at Campbell River between myself and members of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, the members admitted that these vessels were in fact owned by a Norwegian company, P.R. Rulestein A/S, and that the forming of the various Orca Shipping companies was primarily for tax avoidance purposes.

When the BCSFA is willing to take a tougher stance and separate itself from the senior elements and their practices in this industry and publicly state that fish farmers need to be held accountable for their actions, past and present, they will then have my support. Until then I feel that expansion and any thought of self-policing may come with too high a price for Canadians and the environment.

When asked if I feel bitter about my treatment from within a farm industry and if that would taint my response toward the fish farm industry, I struggle with an answer. I would agree that there is a degree of bitterness. I would also agree that there no longer is a threat of job loss, imaginary or real, and that would allow me a far greater freedom of expression.

• 1105

I remained relatively quiet until now. I have offered to assist the industry in achieving higher standards of operation and as a bridge to lessen the polarization around the industry. This is an industry in which the better players are being held back because of the actions of others. I believe the better players will be rewarded by both the public and governments by showing more honesty and less willingness to gloss over inappropriate acts.

Thank you. That's the end of my oral presentation.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Corlett, for your forthrightness.

We'll turn to Mr. Stoffer first.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you for your presentation.

Sir, in your brief you presented to us you indicate an incident where a fin fish farm had discharged blood water near the Zeballos River. I was wondering if you could just quickly go into what happened and what they did to correct the situation.

Mr. Robert Corlett: That was an ongoing occurrence. I operated a stun-and-bleed operation for four years in the Zeballos area, where we'd go the fish farm, stun fish in carbon dioxide aboard the vessel, bleed the fish, and put them in a tank aboard the boat. When we offloaded in Zeballos on each occasion the blood water was discharged into the ocean.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Was that standard practice?

Mr. Robert Corlett: That was standard practice.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: That's not legal, is it?

Mr. Robert Corlett: When it was brought to my attention that it may not be legal, I said that I didn't want to operate on that basis. I had thought that we were operating in a legal manner. When I refused to continue to operate, I was threatened with a lawsuit. I stood my ground. The fish farm then issued me a fax stating that they would take responsibility for the blood water for the balance of the 97G harvest.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Is this farm still in operation?

Mr. Robert Corlett: Yes, this farm is still in operation.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I have one last question. We heard about fin fish feeding on herring, juvenile fry, etc. Have you seen aquaculture fin fish that have had other species in their bellies?

Mr. Robert Corlett: It's a very rare occurrence. We're more likely to see leaf or wood debris and cases of extreme starvation. In one farm where the fish were quite emaciated, their intake of wild stock wasn't evident. I've seen both salmon fry and herring on numerous occasions swimming in fish pens, and even when those fish are being starved for harvest, there doesn't appear to be an intent on the part of the farm fish to eat those fish.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Not in your comments but in your paper, Robert, you talk about your experience in the industry moving away from small town employment. Do you want to expand on that a little? On the east coast there's no question that the coastal communities are having great difficulty, and the rural areas of Canada are having great difficulty. I think some feel that the aquaculture industry and the fin fish industry, however it might be designed, has the potential to create opportunities and jobs in those areas and assist them in terms of economic development. That's why I'm asking if you could expand on the problems in this area and why it's happening. Is it foreign ownership? What is it ?

Mr. Robert Corlett: From my experience in a small town like Zeballos, where I try to employ people from that town, basically that town now is used for not much more than parking spaces and a garbage dump by the fish farm industry.

• 1110

The bringing over of the Orca well boats from Norway has created a scenario where it's entirely possible that in the future these vessels will be used for the transport of fish grown in our waters for processing, particularly in Seattle. The economic viability of those vessels is not on short runs.

The industry trend is toward automation and the reduction of costs. I'm told constantly that is their basis of decision-making. In a meeting with salmon farmers in Campbell River I asked, “If there's a cost saving of 1¢, 2¢, or 3¢ a pound, would you continue to operate in your own processing plants rather than ship to the States?” I received no answer.

The Chair: Thank you for that comment.

Mr. Sekora.

Mr. Lou Sekora: This was certainly an interesting presentation from a guy who has lost his job but in fact is still being very fair and tends not to be one-sided.

Mr. Robert Corlett: I believe there is a future for that industry.

Mr. Lou Sekora: I think it's very nice to hear from someone like that.

Were there no boats available locally that they could have used instead of bringing them from Norway? What was the reason for that?

Mr. Robert Corlett: Economics. There were enough people and companies locally providing the service. There was not a lack of service on the part of British Columbia, and those of us here were quite prepared to expand our services.

Mr. Lou Sekora: You've been through it, so you know the fishing business. If the federal government said we're going to step out of the farm fish business and the wild fish business, and the provincial government stepped out, what would you do to accommodate both? What would you do as a person who knows quite a bit about it? What are you doing today that you would do differently?

Mr. Robert Corlett: If I understand your question correctly, you're asking if there's a way for farm fish and wild fish to co-habitate.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Exactly.

Mr. Robert Corlett: I'm not an expert on that, and I am concerned that there is a lack of caution in proceeding to that.

When I first started in the fish farm industry, there was a real gold mine mentality. I survived through all the bankruptcies. It's pretty much a lot of questionable acts. I believe there are people within the industry who should be listened to and who are trying to operate in an ethical manner. I also believe there are people in the industry who are not, and they're being protected.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Do you believe that if certain things were done, both could be a viable type of operation, the wild and the farm?

Mr. Robert Corlett: Yes. I think there is room for both.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Under certain conditions.

Mr. Robert Corlett: Yes.

Mr. Lou Sekora: Okay. Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Cummins.

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

Just as an aside, on these two live-haul vessels, what's different about them that wasn't available in British Columbia?

Mr. Robert Corlett: They're probably willing to operate for half the rate structure the Canadian vessels were willing to operate for.

My understanding is that the Canadian Coast Guard has exempted some of the regulations with regard to multiple holds in a vessel. These vessels are able to come and be more efficient because they have the ability to use only one large hold. The large vessel is able to transport 150,000 pounds live weight. The only way that has been feasible for them is to be able to put those fish back in the ocean in a different location from where the fish farm was.

For instance, for the farms I was involved with on Nootka Island, which is in the middle of the west coast of Vancouver Island, the fish were hauled from there to Port Hardy, put back in the ocean in a holding pen, and then processed as needed. I might add on that point that the plant raised concerns to the point where they wanted access to the health records of that stock. The concern there is that if there are particular diseases that may not be in the waters in Port Hardy, there may be an introduction of those diseases.

• 1115

Mr. John Cummins: Is that a standard practice?

Mr. Robert Corlett: It hasn't been in the past. It is now that the Orca Shipping vessels are here.

Mr. John Cummins: You say on page 4 of your presentation under “Scruples” that the bulk of the morts are ocean-dumped. Is there any hard evidence of that? Have you seen any?

Mr. Robert Corlett: I've seen some of the dumping. I've participated in some of it. I have other people who would be willing to come forward and make these statements. They have some concern.

Mr. John Cummins: How are these morts dealt with on the farm, then? Are they put in a separate pen or something and then simply loaded on a vessel and tossed overboard?

Mr. Robert Corlett: Primarily they're put in plastic totes that can hold approximately 1,000 pounds. On the farms we work for in the Nootka Island area, approximately once a year we do the mort run for them. A lot of those farm sites are on almost a daily basis, and I'm well aware that their mortality far exceeds that.

Mr. John Cummins: Exceeds which?

Mr. Robert Corlett: The morts that we dispose of through the normal channels.

Mr. John Cummins: How large a volume of that be over the course of the month, say?

Mr. Robert Corlett: I wouldn't want to make an estimate. It would vary. For instance, there was one generation where they had a lot of problems with kadoa. They attempted to hold over a substantial amount of stock to the following year, hoping that, as Atlantics do, they would spawn several times, that they would go from being a dark fish that's unmarketable back to a bright, at which time they could market that fish. In the process of doing that, especially in the summertime, those fish became very susceptible to the environment. At times, a fair amount of those fish died.

Mr. John Cummins: A fish plant has to be inspected, whether it's a plant that deals with farmers, like a processing plant—

Mr. Robert Corlett: Yes.

Mr. John Cummins: —or wild salmon stocks. It's inspected regularly by the government. In your closing remarks, you say that while you believe there's a place for fish farming in British Columbia, you don't believe that it should be self-policing.

Are the farms themselves, then, actually policed or inspected by government inspectors to ascertain what policies or what practices are in place to deal with morts or to dispose of any other garbage, if you will?

Mr. Robert Corlett: Well, I would assume so, but I haven't seen much evidence of that while working in the industry.

Again, if we're talking about plant inspections, I've dealt with different plants over the years and I have tremendous respect for the way some plants are run.

Mr. John Cummins: Yes.

Mr. Robert Corlett: Other plants I have no respect for. When totes are returned to us with blood and dirt and obviously not washed or disinfected, I have concerns.

As an example that I just happen to have here, here's a picture of one of the processing totes that was supplied by my company on a...[Technical Difficulty—Editor]...offal and waste. It's not in the documentation. This belongs to the company I manage, and that tote has been used for the transport of fish for human consumption.

The Chair: John, is that the end of your questioning?

Mr. John Cummins: Yes.

Just as a comment, Chairman, we had fisheries officers in yesterday, in fact, Mr. Kehl, I think, with the fisheries department at Port Alberni. Would they be the ones responsible for the area?

Mr. Robert Corlett: I'm not sure.

• 1120

Mr. John Cummins: The point I was making is that we did talk about staffing yesterday, and this is an additional responsibility that those fisheries officers would have. The point is, it would seem that there may not be regulations in place on these farms. Again, that's an issue we should be looking at. Are there regulations in place for dealing with waste? Who's ensuring that they are? Is the staffing available? I would suggest that probably the staffing is not available. Maybe the regulations aren't even in place for doing this stuff. I don't know.

The Chair: Before I go to you, John, I have a couple of questions.

On page 3 of your written presentation, Robert, at the fourth paragraph, you talk about two companies that have been taking over your work. In your comments, you left the impression with me that the Canadian Coast Guard circumvented their own regulations or changed the rules to accommodate these Orca Shipping boats. Is that your allegation?

Mr. Robert Corlett: Yes, that's what I've been given to understand.

The Chair: We'll ask the committee researcher to ask for that information from the Canadian Coast Guard.

Secondly, you talk about some companies that received substantial subsidies from the Norwegian government. They didn't receive subsidies from Canada?

Mr. Robert Corlett: No. From what I understand, in Norway the labour component of the whale boats was paid for by the Norwegian government. I believe 1999 may have seen the stoppage of that. Up until then, the labour costs on whale boats in Norway were paid for by the Norwegian government.

The Chair: Yes, but would that not be an unfair subsidy under trade rules?

Mr. Robert Corlett: That's beyond my scope.

The Chair: Anyway, we'll have to check that out, because the coast guard shouldn't be favouring foreign ships in here, whoever they are.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: Yes, I'd just like to say that in the late eighties, I guess, when a lot of the salmon-farming industry was relocating from the Sunshine Coast to points further north, the industry had a lot more mortality in those days than it does now—

Mr. Robert Corlett: Yes.

Mr. John Duncan: —so this was a very costly business.

Being a part of the forest industry then, I was approached in terms of whether there was some way we could possibly get into some kind of coordinated, joint project, whereby we could maybe take these morts and spread them in the forest. As a consequence of that exercise, I ended up dealing with the responsible people in government. I was in the private sector. At that time, certainly, it was clearly the provincial Ministry of Environment that dealt with the proper disposal of morts.

Now, I understand that there are recognized ways to get of them...?

Mr. Robert Corlett: Yes.

Mr. John Duncan: I believe, Mr. Chair, that there would be a very traceable audit trail in terms of who's delivering when. If somebody's not delivering to those recognized places, it would be a fairly simple exercise to find out. I'm not convinced that's our job. I think that's clearly a provincial area of jurisdiction.

But I do appreciate your concerns, because if there are bad practices going on, I think we ought to be concerned about it and at least point it out to provincial authorities.

I do know—or I think I know—that the industry, the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, is currently trying to develop an ethical code of practice.

Mr. Robert Corlett: Yes.

Mr. John Duncan: Are you familiar with that exercise?

• 1125

Mr. Robert Corlett: I'm very familiar with it. In fact, I have a draft copy of it here.

Mr. John Duncan: Is that in our...?

Mr. Robert Corlett: No. It was given to me with a degree of confidentiality.

Mr. John Duncan: Fine.

Mr. Robert Corlett: However, on the very last page of my brief there's a letter from the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association that refers to that code of practice. In my opinion, then, that negates the confidentiality.

Mr. John Duncan: Does that mean you're prepared to share your document with us?

Mr. Robert Corlett: Yes.

Mr. John Duncan: Okay. We'd appreciate that.

Do you have any comments on the draft as it stands?

Mr. Robert Corlett: I believe it's an excellent step in the right direction. In my opening remarks I refer to that. I believe there are members of the association who are ethical people, and I believe there are ethical companies within that association. I believe they are trying to do the right thing, socially and environmentally.

Mr. John Duncan: You've read it. Does it contemplate any form of accreditation? In other words, is there an audit function built in, and is there something that can be removed, if you fail the audit, in terms of your status?

Mr. Robert Corlett: From what I can understand, the only detriment or penalty under the code would be disbarment from the association.

Mr. John Duncan: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Corlett. If you could give a copy of that to the desk out there, they'll get it distributed to committee members, if that's fine with you.

Thank you very much for your forthrightness, as I said at the beginning.

Mr. Robert Corlett: Thank you.

The Chair: Is Dr. Eric Taylor in the room?

Welcome, sir, and thank you for your patience. We're running a half-hour late, I gather.

The procedure is that if we could have a five- or ten-minute opening, we could then get to questioning. The floor is yours.

Dr. Eric Taylor (Individual Presentation): Thanks very much.

First of all, thank you for accepting my invitation to appear. As you'll see, my presentation is extremely brief. I'm humbled by some of the very exhaustive presentations other people have made. It's brief for two reasons. One, I have a very simple point to make, and two, I want to maximize the amount of time you can ask me questions and pick my brains, if you think that would be a useful thing to do.

I think the outline is pretty straightforward, but I'll go through it quickly for members of the audience.

I'm an assistant professor in the zoology department at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. My areas of interest and expertise are in evolutionary genetics and ecology and conservation of native fish biodiversity.

I guess I became involved in the Atlantic salmon on the Pacific coast issue because I was the one who used the molecular techniques to positively identify juvenile Atlantic salmon in B.C. rivers and provide evidence of natural reproduction of escaped Atlantic salmon in B.C. rivers.

The most general issue I want to point out is the potential negative effects of exotic Atlantic salmon on native fish in British Columbia—Pacific in general, but in British Columbia specifically. You've obviously heard a lot about that from people who have very strong views on either side of that issue.

The point I really want to get at, though, is my fourth point, that there is a major problem in this debate. The major problem is the lack of critical, objective, scientific information to evaluate whether the point above it actually is an important issue. In other words, there is a lack of a comprehensive research program by DFO to objectively assess the potential ecological and genetic effects of escaped Atlantic salmon on native fish.

By “native fish” I mean a lot more than just Pacific salmon. British Columbia is blessed with highly diverse fish fauna. We hear a lot about the potential negative effects on Pacific salmon. However, lots of other fish that are part of B.C.'s native bio-heritage may be influenced negatively by badly practised Atlantic salmon aquaculture.

• 1130

I single out DFO because they're the ones, really, who have the mandate of conservation of biodiversity of Pacific salmon, in particular anadromous species. I think they're the ones who have to take the lead in this.

You heard some comments earlier about DFO acting as a cheerleader, really, for the aquaculture industry as opposed to being an objective arbiter of both sides of the debate. I feel that strongly. If you look at their website, it's dominated by issues of stock assessment, counting fish, and population dynamics. The aquaculture section is dominated by research activities looking at what I think can be fairly interpreted as promotion of the aquaculture industry. That's stated right on the aquaculture page, which I have some copies of, as a primary focus of their work. Although I know there is some objective work done to assess potential negative effects, it's really not highlighted in any type of literature that's open to the public at the aquaculture branch of DFO.

The consequences, as outlined in point four, are twofold. One is that decisions generally are made in the absence of information. The best example is the decision to allow Atlantic salmon net-pen culture in British Columbia in the first place. In my opinion, that was done without a rigorous, a priori environmental impact study.

Second, biological systems are highly uncertain. Anyone who tells you there's no threat to Atlantic salmon is ignorant of biological processes. Anyone who tells you, on the other side, that there will be a problem is also ignorant of biological processes. The point is, it's uncertain. If you don't do the studies beforehand to objectively assess that uncertainty, decisions are made in ignorance, which is never a good idea. The lack of information only increases this uncertainty.

What to do about it? Well, press DFO and agencies whose mandate includes the conservation of aquatic “resources”. I put quotation marks around that word because I mean resources in the broad sense. I mean resources for people who don't eat Pacific salmon. I mean resources for people who don't catch Pacific salmon. I mean resources to the extent of being part of our natural bio-heritage, where people just feel good that there are vibrant populations of all fish on the Pacific coast.

Those are resources in the broad sense, and I think DFO has lost its focus of what really should be their primary mandate. Part of that, of course, is promotion of aspects of fishing, and aquaculture is part of that. I think DFO should be pressed to commit to a proactive research program on invasion biology and potential impacts on native fish to objectively assess whether point three really is a problem before promoting aquacultural activity on the coast.

What do I mean by proactive? Well, they do have some activities related to Atlantic salmon. There's the pretty well publicized Atlantic Salmon Watch Program, but in my opinion that's really a reactive program. In other words, to put it a bit facetiously, it's two well-meaning people, competent biologists, sitting by a telephone, waiting for the public, in many cases, to phone in and say “Hey, we caught an Atlantic salmon, or we think we caught an Atlantic salmon”. The carcasses are typically frozen and sent to DFO for a post-hoc analysis. There's no proactive research program funded or run by the major agency charged with biodiversity conservation of native Pacific salmonids to address this issue.

I don't see why the public purse should always pay for this. I think the aquaculture industry should be pressed to commit funds to such research. Financial levies on escaped fish, for instance, and biological inventory studies of watersheds before site licences are issued are just two examples I've thought up quickly.

The general point, I think, is that there should be a stronger commitment by the aquaculture industry to actually fund research into an activity from which they're going to be the main benefactors and that potentially has negative consequences for other aspects of our fish resources.

I'd be happy to answer any questions on that or anything else.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Taylor.

• 1135

On the issue of research by DFO, at one of our previous hearings a paper was given to us on a scientific review committee that DFO had established to look at the 1988 revisions to the North American commission protocols for introduction and transfer of salmonids. Were you aware of that? We can give you a copy of that if you're not. There are some conclusions in it. We can make that available.

Dr. Eric Taylor: Yes, I know there have been all sorts of committees struck to look at the issue. But my point is that typically, what they're doing is reviewing research done by other people. They're not doing the research themselves.

The Chair: Okay. That's a valid point. Thank you.

Mr. Cummins first.

Mr. John Cummins: Thank you very much for your presentation, Dr. Taylor.

In a sense, your caution here reflects that of John Volpe, who addressed us in Victoria. He made the same observation you did: that we shouldn't prejudge on this matter, but there should be some adequate science done to determine the effect. I think we all should pay close attention to that, because that caution does come from two people who don't really have an active interest in the industry. I mean, you are independent—you're not pro-acquaculture; you're not anti-acquaculture. You're an interested scholarly observer. I guess that's the point I want to make.

Dr. Eric Taylor: Yes, that's right. I want to clarify that I got put into this whole debate somewhat unwillingly, in that Mr. Volpe needed a place to do the assays, and I had the expertise to do it. So I did it. That's a fair characterization of my interest.

I'm really interested in native fish biodiversity much more than just Pacific salmon species, and I also wanted to make that point. There are other things we should be thinking about. Although DFO may not have the primary responsibility for freshwater fish—they don't—that's something that should enter the debate as well. That speaks to a level of communication that needs to happen between the federal and provincial fish agencies.

Mr. John Cummins: I appreciate your concern about the impact that escaped Atlantics could have on native species on the west coast. But there's a related concern, I think. We've been told, for example, that on the east coast in the state of Maine, in some streams 85% of the spawning pairs are escaped farmed Atlantics, as opposed to the native stock.

That threat is perhaps not as great on this coast, because we're not using Pacific salmon as much in the farming industry. But there is that threat that escaped farmed Pacific salmon could establish themselves on local streams. Are you concerned about that issue as well?

Dr. Eric Taylor: Yes, certainly I am. That's a possibility, there's no question about it. Particularly as wild populations decline in numbers, there's a sort of opportunity for hatchery or farm-produced fish, which are produced in much larger numbers, to colonize those types of habitats.

Now, of course it all depends on how different the farm fish are from the native fish they may be displacing. That sort of extinction and recolonization happens all the time as a natural process. But it can become a more serious issue if you're dealing with farmed fish that are wildly divergent from native populations.

Mr. John Cummins: Generally speaking, though, the salmon return to the river they started life in. My understanding is that if we're operating a hatchery on a particular river, we don't use eggs that were taken from someplace else. We stick to the eggs that are produced in that system—unless, I guess, the fish have been eradicated in that particular system.

Is that the concern, then, that the wild stock may be from another system and they may be genetically different or different in some way from the native species? My understanding is that they may not be as resistant to disease in that system, and so on. Is that the concern?

• 1140

Dr. Eric Taylor: Yes. There's no question that's a valid concern. It is the perception, I think, that there's never any case of non-native fish being used in a hatchery program now. Whether that's actually strictly adhered to, that's the principle. I think that's the theoretical objective.

I certainly know of cases where it's strongly suspected that it's not true, where non-native fish will be used under certain circumstances, for example if native fish aren't around, or numbers are below a certain quota that they want to raise in a hatchery. I can't point to any specifics, so I probably shouldn't even raise it. But it wouldn't surprise me if that principle is not strictly adhered to.

Mr. John Cummins: I asked the minister a question that had to do with infectious salmon anemia some time back. I received a reply by letter on July 31, 1998, and again in September 1998, in response to an Order Paper question that I raised.

In his letter to me the minister said that it was first detected in Norway in 1984. He said that here in Canada, his department had tested more than 100 wild salmon and trout, and as in Norway, found no evidence of the disease. He makes that very clear in his statement that in New Brunswick, ISA has only been found in cultured Atlantics; it hasn't been found in wild stocks.

Has your experience been that some of these diseases have in fact been found in penned salmon or farm situations, but not found in the wild? That's what the minister told me here, and I found it surprising.

Dr. Eric Taylor: That's well outside my field of expertise. However, as a scientist, in general, I wouldn't want to place much confidence in a sample size of 100 when you're dealing with thousands of potential samples out there. I don't know the details of where those samples came from or anything, but I wouldn't consider that to be a terribly reliable estimate of the potential threat.

Mr. John Cummins: He says here, though, that it's not known to occur in wild fish, either in Canada or in Norway, where the disease was first detected. That's the minister in response to a question of mine: ISA is not known to occur in wild fish, either in Canada or in Norway, where the disease was first found. That strikes me as a pretty shocking statement, a pretty unambiguous statement, from the Minister of Fisheries.

Dr. Eric Taylor: I agree. In a sense, it's a factual statement—it hasn't been found. But then you have to ask how exhaustively it's been looked for. It doesn't seem to me that it's been terribly rigorously.... That possibility hasn't been exhaustively looked at, considering the potential magnitude of the negative consequence. So it's a statement that doesn't really say anything.

Mr. John Cummins: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, John.

Mr. Stoffer, and then Mr. Sekora.

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

Thank you for your presentation. You're right, there has to be a lot more money and resources and various research into this aspect of it, because we are operating in the blind, actually.

I had a paper handed to me from the New Scientist magazine, February 6, 2000. It says that Ray Peterson, a retired cattle geneticist at the University of British Columbia, wrote a paper for the department—that's DFO—claiming wild salmon would benefit from some new genes. That's what it says:

“Isolation of salmon stock should be avoided,” writes Peterson. He says they have lost their genetic diversity.

I was wondering if you could comment on that, please.

Dr. Eric Taylor: Well, I haven't seen the report, but—

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Is he out of touch—

Dr. Eric Taylor: I'll comment on the basis of what you just read.

It's completely untrue that wild salmon populations have lost their genetic diversity. As a matter of fact, most of the variability, if you look at any sort of genetic system, actually resides within salmon populations. Typically, there's lots of variability in native salmon populations. So that's completely untrue.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: That's exactly what Carl Walters said in the follow-up: it's utter nonsense.

Dr. Eric Taylor: It is completely utter nonsense. And this is a classic example, I think, of the main point I want to make.

• 1145

The statement that wild populations may benefit from infusion of genes from cultured populations is a classic syndrome of agricultural or aquacultural genetic practices. In other words, if someone for centuries or decades is selecting on growth rate in cattle, it often results in a lowering of genetic diversity within the selected stock. So you get a really big fat cow, but diversity is lost in either the size of that cow or the growth rate, and typically diversity is sometimes lost in other traits as well.

When you lose that kind of diversity, it can result in something called inbreeding depression, where you tend to mate relatives with one another. Inbreeding depression results in a rise in the frequency of genetic traits within a population that are often deleterious or bad. In other words, it often results in increased birth deformities, reduced survival, reduced viability—reduced gamete production.

Now, a classic strategy to deal with that in an agricultural or aquacultural situation is to bring in genes from another stock, or so-called outcross, for that inbred stock you have. This is classically done in corn genetics, rice genetics—everything.

Once the genetic variation gets exhausted in an agricultural or aquacultural stock, the way to remedy that is to bring in some genes from another strain or another population you have in another raising facility. That often results in an increase in variability and a restoration of what's known as hybrid vigour, of that depressed population.

That's not the situation in native or wild populations. There are tons and tons of genetic variabilities in natural salmon populations. They're an excellent system, recognized throughout the scientific community, for studying genetic variation in populations, simply because they have so much, and it's often structured river by river or system by system.

It's completely untrue to say there is no variability or very limited variability in natural populations, therefore they might benefit from this infusion of genes from aquacultural-based fish populations.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: The reality is that in Atlantic Canada it's not really salmon; it's more of a trout thing. Right? We heard evidence yesterday that the Atlantic salmon is not really salmon; it's more a member of the trout family.

Dr. Eric Taylor: That gets into the sort of messy business of taxonomy. It is a salmon because it's called Atlantic salmon, but it's in a different genus, if you will, than so-called true Pacific salmon Oncorhynchus. It's a Salmo, and Pacific salmon are Oncorhynchus, but they're closely related.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Have you had a chance to review the work Mr. Volpe's doing?

Dr. Eric Taylor: Yes, I have. I'm on his research committee.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I assume he'll be a doctor one day in his field. He is saying that he's the only one studying this in his field of work, which I find quite astonishing.

Dr. Eric Taylor: I find it quite astonishing, too. To be honest, I've reviewed parts of his work; I haven't reviewed the full body of it. I'm on his research committee, and that'll just have to wait until he puts it all together. But from what I've seen, he is doing good work and is really, as far as I can tell, the only one doing it.

I have a copy of DFO's publication of 1998 from the science branch, Pacific region, which is the most recent one; I just received it in the mail. It's broken into two sections. One is primary publications, which is the main quality control for people like me and people at DFO who publish in scientific literature. These are very good scientists who do lots of good science in other areas, but there's not a single publication on the possible negative ecological or genetic effects on Atlantic salmon, or Pacific salmon, cultured fish on native populations.

That's not to say there aren't people there who are interested in this issue. I note, as a stark contrast, a scientist, Glen Jamieson, who I don't know, has a paper from 1998 on the potential ecological implications of the introduction of the European green crab to the British Columbia coast of Canada and Washington, U.S.A.

• 1150

So clearly one aspect of the DFO sience organization views potential ecological implications of potentially invasive species as an important issue for groups of aquatic organisms of commercial interest, such as the crab fishery on the Pacific coast. And that's only one paper. It just makes me wonder why there isn't a companion level of effort to look at this issue in terms of Pacific salmon.

Also having to do with the transgenic issue, there are genetic experiments underway to deal with some of these issues—crossing Pacific salmon with Atlantic salmon and seeing how viable those offspring are. That work has been quoted variously by both sides in the debate, and that work is still in progress. It's being done by a very good person, but it's as yet unpublished. By this person's own admission, that work is more or less marginalized within the DFO structure. So the one person who is extremely competent, an excellent geneticist and scientist who is doing assessment work, by his own comments, is marginalized within the aquaculture division.

A voice: What's his name?

The Chair: Thank you.

Peter, last question.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: No, I'm done.

The Chair: Okay. Mr. Sekora.

Mr. Lou Sekora: I've already asked my question.

The Chair: Okay. John Cummins.

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

I had asked you a question about this ISA virus, and I appreciated your answer. I just want to note that in New Brunswick the disease was first noted in farmed fish. There have been outbreaks of it since 1996. It was only in 1999 that this ISA was actually discovered in wild stocks. But judging from your answer.... The letters I read to you from the minister were letters that I received in 1998, when there hadn't been a detection of the disease in wild stocks. But by the fall of 1999, October 1999, it was identified in wild stocks.

The question then is this. Surely over time, with the science that's been done on wild stocks.... The disease should have been identified at some point if it had originated in wild stocks in New Brunswick. Would you not suspect that at some point it would have at least been identified?

Dr. Eric Taylor: Assuming again, as I say, a rigorous monitoring program of wild populations, you'd think it would eventually turn up.

Mr. John Cummins: Would you have had to be looking for it to find it, do you know?

Dr. Eric Taylor: Oh, I don't know anything about what the disease looks like. I can't say. But I think you'd have to be looking at very specific types of things, yes, for sure.

Mr. John Cummins: The point I was trying to come to was whether or not the disease, as a phenomenon, existed in wild stocks prior to the introduction of fish farms.

Dr. Eric Taylor: Yes, that's a tough nut to crack. Depending on when the mortality occurs with that disease, it might be extremely difficult to detect in a wild population simply because the individuals never reach an age where the disease is manifested, where it becomes apparent. I think it's a bit easier to detect those types of things in a mass culture situation, where transmission is obviously much more of a problem and it just may be more abundant. I think a lot of that is a statistical issue in terms of the power one has to actually detect it under the different circumstances.

Mr. John Cummins: To your knowledge from a scientist's point of view, when you do have these cages in existence, is the transfer of a disease from farmed fish to wild stocks easy—for want of a better word—or is it...?

Dr. Eric Taylor: I'm sorry, I couldn't offer an opinion on that. I really know nothing about disease transmission. But certainly we know in general that depending on the transmission biology of a particular disease or virus, certainly aggregation of individuals.... Speaking more broadly than just of fish farms, it's often a case where transmission is.... If the vectors are all around one another, then it makes sense that the transmission is going to be much easier in those situations.

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The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Taylor.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: I'm okay.

The Chair: I slipped up and used the wrong order there. Go ahead, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. John Duncan: No, I'll pass.

The Chair: We have a little time, John, if you want to use it. We have four minutes.

Mr. John Duncan: We have another witness?

The Chair: Yes, we have another witness.

Mr. Stoffer, last point.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: I have a suggestion, and this idea comes from my colleague Mr. Bernier.

Has a suggestion ever been given to either the Ministry of Fisheries in B.C. or the DFO that the DFO, along with the provincial counterparts, purchase a farm somewhere and allow scientists such as you to do comprehensive research and studies on the effects that farm would have? Has that idea ever been presented? We've heard that the aquaculture industry is setting up a code of practices, but they could be setting up that code of practices without having the scientific research done prior to that. Is that correct?

Dr. Eric Taylor: As far as I know, that's correct. I don't know if that's correct.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: It may be happening that way.

Dr. Eric Taylor: It may be.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: They would probably be better to proceed if they had all of the available scientific information at hand. So wouldn't a good suggestion be for DFO and the Ministry of Fisheries to operate a farm just to see what happens with the long-terms effects of that farm? We're hearing a lot of conflicting information about what these cages do.

Dr. Eric Taylor: Right. I'm glad you brought that up, because that's the point I wanted to make in summary.

Again, that is the point, that there is all this conflicting information. Arguments on both sides tend to be based on economics or emotion. The reason both sides can say such extreme things is that there's no information in the middle to say, well, those ten points are completely wrong, because these independent scientists have done these experiments, and with reasonable certainty, we can eliminate those concerns; but these two are things that are still valid. We're going to have to somehow design the production facility or the industry in some way to minimize those risks, if indeed it wants to go on.

So, yes, that's my point, that there should be a commitment by both levels of government. But DFO really, in my opinion, is the bigger fish in this—excuse the pun. They're the ones that are, I think, promoting aquaculture activity much more strongly than perhaps the provincial government is. In fact the Pacific Biological Station does have a mariculture facility just off the biological station, a small farm where they do quantitative genetic experiments looking at the genetics of production traits in, I think, mostly Pacific salmon. But I think they do have captive populations of Atlantic salmon as well that they do some of these experiments on.

I guess my point is that those experiments tend to be biased towards looking at issues related to the production of Atlantic salmon. They're not directed towards dealing with the possible negative consequences of that production on native fish populations. There is a distortion in the amount of effort into whether to support the industry versus looking at the possible negative consequences of the industry.

All I'm suggesting is that the balance needs to be re-jigged. Sure, do the production experiments, help the aquaculture industry, but at the same time, have an objective, open mind and do the other critical experiments that still really need to be done to address the possible negative consequences of it. That's all. I think that's completely fair on both sides, and it will let the accumulation of knowledge try to decide the issue.

The final point I wanted to make is that you suggested scientists like me. I have no interest in doing this research. It's outside of my field. It's outside of my interest. My interest is in genetics of natural populations and conservation of native fish biodiversity, and there are lots of other issues I can work on that I'm really more interested in. But I see this lack of effort by people who are more competent than I am to deal with it as a serious issue.

There's no conservation biologist in DFO. There are people who do conservation biology, but there's no one there, as far as I can tell, who really is trained as a conservation biologist. DFO's idea of conservation is enforcement, stopping people from poaching, stopping people from overfishing. That's really their idea of conservation, in my view. I think they should have a much more academic interest in conservation for these resources that they're really the ones in charge of protecting. There needs to be more emphasis on that issue.

Mr. Peter Stoffer: Thank you.

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The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Taylor.

I have just one last question on the research, basically. You would see that as beyond finfish into shellfish, aquaculture, etc., basically everything that relates to the industry?

Dr. Eric Taylor: I think so. I think that's just the cost of doing business. I don't see why.... Clearly the Atlantic salmon issue—probably most people have never heard of the green crab, and I'm not sure if the green crab is a natural invasion or whether it's been...well, I think it's a natural invasion, but be that as it may, yes, I think it's clearly a more general issue.

The effect of escaped aquaculture- or mariculture-produced organisms on the genetics and ecology of native populations, that's a cost of doing business. It's no different from the cost of building a mine and how that's going to influence the migration routes of caribou, whatever. It's no different from the cost of doing the business of forestation. It's no different from any of those things. I don't see why the aquaculture industry is not held to the same level of scrutiny on those issues as those other major resource-based industries are. And starting out an industry is no excuse for it. If you can't do it from the start, then don't get involved in it.

The Chair: Thank you very much for a wide-ranging and good presentation, Dr. Taylor. I guess that's it. Thank you very much.

The next witness is Charles McKee. Mr. McKee, before you start, I'd like to know if the presentation the clerk has given me is the presentation you intend to go through.

Mr. Charles H. McKee (Individual Presentation): Yes, it is.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I'd like to ask that the presentation be shown to the gentleman so he can identify it.

The Chair: I'm sure this is the presentation.

Mr. Charles McKee: Yes, it is.

The Chair: Mr. McKee, the committee is hearing on aquaculture, the aboriginal fishing strategy, and the Oceans Act. In the letter you sent to Mr. Farrell, you said it would be on fish farm environmental impacts. The presentation that you intend to present before the committee is not on those issues. It is an attack on political parties and it's an attack on individuals, both political and non-political, and I'll not accept that presentation as evidence. If you want to present evidence on what the committee is hearing evidence on, then I will accept it.

Mr. Charles McKee: Mr. Chairman, Dr. Taylor finished his presentation with the comment that he could not understand what was going on, that he couldn't understand the incredible problem with this industry simply being ignored and in fact being promoted by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Well, I'd like to explain to Dr. Taylor exactly why. Every Liberal member of this committee knows exactly why DFO is—

The Chair: Mr. McKee, as I said, if you want to make a presentation on what the committee is hearing witnesses on, then we can go that route; otherwise, if it's an attack on a political party—and I would do the same if it was an attack on the Reform, the Bloc, or the NDP, and I think all committee members know that. We've operated as a non-partisan committee. You deal in the paper not only with political parties, but also with researchers and other individuals, and I will just not accept that evidence. It's as simple as that. If you can't move to the point of what the committee is holding hearings on, then I'll adjourn the meeting until 1:30.

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Mr. Charles McKee: Is the committee hearing reasons why the Department of Fisheries and Oceans appears not to do any research, and the research that is done on this particular topic is mis-presented to provincial government inquiries?

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Mr. Chair, on a point of order, it's obvious that this individual does not get the gist and the meaning of the comments you have made. We cannot hear this brief because of the reasons you gave. There's no way to extract from the brief the kind of evidence this committee came here to hear.

So we have no option here. We cannot hear this brief, and this individual should be advised, for his own benefit, to get some legal advice before he makes any of the statements that are contained in this brief to anyone.

Mr. Charles McKee: Mr. Chair—

The Chair: I'll hear Mr. McKee, and then I'll move to you on the point of order.

Mr. Charles McKee: As far as the legal advice is concerned, I graduated fifth in my class in law school. I am prepared to speak here, out on Granville Street, or anywhere on this topic and say exactly what is in here.

The Chair: I can tell you, Mr. McKee, if you want to present what's in that brief, you will not speak here. It's as simple as that.

The meeting is adjourned until 1:30.