Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue 17 - Evidence - January 27, 2015
OTTAWA, Tuesday, January 27, 2015
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 5:10 p.m. to study the regulation of aquaculture, current challenges and future prospects for the industry in Canada.
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back and a belated happy new year to everyone. I hope you all enjoyed your break. Welcome to the meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. My name is Fabian Manning. I'm a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador, and I chair this committee.
I'll ask members of the committee to introduce themselves, beginning with the member to the right.
Senator Meredith: Senator Meredith, Ontario. Welcome.
Senator Hubley: Senator Hubley from Prince Edward Island, that other beautiful place to live.
Mike Meeker, President, Northern Ontario Aquaculture Association: Almost as beautiful.
Senator Hubley: I knew you were going to say that.
Senator Munson: Jim Munson, Ontario senator, but I always say my heart's in New Brunswick.
Senator McInnis: Thomas McInnis, senator for Nova Scotia.
Senator Lang: Dan Lang, senator from Yukon.
Senator Raine: Nancy Raine, senator from B.C.
Senator Wells: David Wells, senator from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Poirier: Rose-May Poirier, senator from New Brunswick. Welcome.
The Chair: Thank you and welcome once again as we continue our study on the regulation of aquaculture, its current challenges and future prospects for our industry in Canada. I'm pleased this evening to welcome Mr. Mike Meeker, President of the Northern Ontario Aquaculture Association.
Are you any relation to Howie?
Mr. Meeker: I can't deny it.
The Chair: You can't deny it?
Mr. Meeker: He's my uncle, yes. My dad is the youngest son — youngest brother of five. Howie is the oldest. Actually, I was just talking to him two or three days ago.
The Chair: Wish him all the best for us.
Mr. Meeker: Thank you. He's 92 and still going strong. In fact, they kicked him out of the over-65 hockey league because he's too old.
The Chair: Maybe he should start one for the over-90 crowd.
Mr. Meeker: He's been a fitness nut all his life, and he's still going strong.
The Chair: Good for him. Once again, I'm sure, speaking on behalf of all the committee, we wish him all the best.
Mr. Meeker: I'll do that.
The Chair: Mr. Meeker, the floor is yours. I understand you have some remarks you would like to make and then we'll have questions from members of our committee.
Mr. Meeker: I have to admit that I appreciate all of you coming. I realize you've put in a full day's work already.
I've been doing aquaculture my whole adult life. I won't consider what I did before being an adult, but since 1984 I started at Manitoulin Island. I've been growing fish since 1984 in cage culture. Prior to that I spent two years running a hatchery on the Fraser River where we fought with grizzlies for our salmon eggs. The majority of our aquaculture experience was at the University of Wisconsin, then B.C. and the last 30 years in Manitoulin Island, growing rainbow trout in cage culture. But I also set up the first research system, closed containment system, and I understand that this committee has done an awful lot of work before this on aquaculture and is quite knowledgeable about it, so that's great.
Believe me, I'm not averse to being stopped if I'm saying something you guys have talked about a lot.
Anyway, I set up the first research system in Ontario, pretty well, to grow rainbow trout. My experience is in cage culture particularly, but also in research system, closed containment. So I've done both hatcheries and grow-out in closed containment.
Right now, I think something that will be of interest to you is that I'm looking at closed containment from the perspective of the really limiting factor of economics — the amount of money it costs to run these systems.
Working in conjunction with Vale — the mining company in Sudbury, for those who aren't aware — we're now growing fish 5,000 feet underground in an abandoned mine shaft. First of all, this is an attempt to find a way to overcome the cost problems in closed containment. In my experience, no matter what I've done, we cannot compare the cost of growing fish in a closed containment, no matter how efficient it is, with growing fish in caged culture. That's from my 30 years' experience in doing both.
All across Canada I've been working with different groups. I'm trying to wear the different group hats. I am in Ontario and that's my experience, but I am trying to wear the hat of freshwater and look at all aspects and possibilities in freshwater aquaculture. I've had groups from Manitoba. I'm very aware of the operation in Saskatchewan. I don't know if everybody is aware of what's out there in Canada — there's not very much in freshwater. There's a big operation in a man-made lake, Lake Diefenbaker, in Saskatchewan. As far as I know that's the only aquaculture of any import in Saskatchewan. They do about 2 million pounds a year. The operation is vertically integrated. I actually like it. It's a good operation. They have their own hatchery, their own grow-out and processing, all on the same site. There is not much going on in Manitoba. B.C. has one freshwater cage culture site. Is anybody from B.C. here? I forget.
Have you ever been to Lois Lake? It's near Powell River.
Senator Raine: No, but there's one also on Vancouver Island. I mean a fishery.
Mr. Meeker: A couple of closed containment, right? I've actually been there and talked to those people. The only freshwater cage culture is in Lois Lake. It's a man-made lake on the Sunshine Coast, up around Powell River.
So I'm working with them now. When I moved up to Manitoulin Island, there was no aquaculture and no cage culture. I was very lucky to have tolerant neighbours because what I was doing was pretty weird for them. Up on Manitoulin it was all beef farming, a little bit of dairy, hunting and fishing. It was all new. It was all different for them. I had great support from my neighbours, and so now really in freshwater aquaculture it's the centre of Canada.
Again, DFO has been enormously helpful for our operation, and I don't know if you're aware of the Experimental Lakes Area, but we've been doing some of the best research in the world at ELA with DFO. That's a thousand acres that was set aside by the federal government about 40 years ago. For me, the interesting and frustrating thing is the research we've been doing, despite being touted all over the world as cutting-edge stuff, is not being used in Canada anywhere near as much as it's being used all over the world. We did some research where we surgically implanted transponders in fish, released them and tracked their movements to simulate a loss. That information hasn't been used at all by the regulators in this country. But we've been asked to give tours or give talks and explain it in Sweden, Finland, Scotland, South America and South Africa.
One of the things I wrote in this little thing is that I think that the research we've done here in Canada, and particularly in Ontario, is cutting edge around the world. We decided as an association 10 or 15 years ago that to overcome some of the negative perceptions, we were going to take the high road and do science, and we've certainly followed through. I hope there will be some questions about the research we've done.
I said earlier that for those who know me, they know that I can talk for hours and hours. What I would really prefer, especially since you have all, as a group, done so much work already, is to try to answer as many questions as possible. With dialogue, one thing leads to another, so I'm going to cut this short, if that's okay. I can certainly add to it as we go along.
The Chair: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Meeker. I'm sure the dialogue will begin very quickly, and we'll go right to our deputy chair, Senator Hubley, for our first questions.
Senator Hubley: I don't want to alarm you in any way with this question, but I'm wondering if you might share with us some of the research you've been doing in northern Ontario.
Mr. Meeker: Oh, no, I'm far from alarmed.
Senator Hubley: No, I'm kidding you.
Mr. Meeker: Where I grow my fish, where I started in 1984, is called Lake Wolsey. It is, in actual fact, a bay. In Ontario you can't grow fish — you can't do what we do — in enclosed inland lakes. It's a bay, and I think, almost certainly, that it's probably the most studied freshwater lake in Canada.
We've done the research. When you look at the issues, and I know you have, especially freshwater, you find that the principal one is phosphorus. We've done an enormous amount of work on Lake Wolsey and modelling for assimilative capacity for overall modelling of whole bays on phosphorus loading. We've done an enormous amount of work with four or five universities, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and the Ministry of the Environment. Of course the short answer is any operation is going to have an impact. We've been measuring the water quality for 30 years. Under our licence, we have to do a detailed water-quality monitoring program that needs to be passed into the Ministry of Natural Resources, which looks after our licence. It's then reviewed by the Ministry of the Environment.
In the 30 years that we've been doing this, I have never been in non-compliance with any of the water-quality testing that we have to do. It's important to point out that the water-quality testing we do was designed by the Ministry of the Environment, which is mandated in Ontario to look after water quality. They set it up the way they want to monitor whether our operations are having a measurable impact; and that's pretty critical. We've done so much work. When I first started, the lab technique was to measure down to parts per thousand, and it was zero. Now they routinely measure down to parts per quadrillion; and still there's no issue of non-compliance.
As an interesting example in my situation in Lake Wolsey, it's the most enclosed bay of any of the operations. You would expect to see some kind of impact. The phosphorus levels since 1984, and my operation's been ongoing, have dropped. The overall open water averages have dropped. I didn't come today with a whole bunch of scientific literature to throw out, but as a group we can provide all of this data if you want.
At one time up at the Experimental Lakes Area, on your question regarding studies, we had 20 graduate students doing different projects. They looked at bottom sediment, benthic organisms, and water quality from every perspective you could imagine. They studied the wild fish that were in the lake and what impact, if any, our operation had on them. From the perspective of a freshwater ecosystem, we studied everything that we thought we possibly could have any impact on. With all those PhDs and their assistants, at any one time we had 30 to 40 projects going; and that's all available on the DFO website for anybody who is interested.
I'll tell you something quickly regarding that work. A former colleague from the University of Wisconsin, where I went to school, did some research on mitigation of lake trout habitat, which is a big part of the work in Ontario. He was really excited because after 30 years of research in Lake 375, the positive impacts on the lake trout population were staggering. He didn't want to retire because that was the most interesting work he'd done.
In addition to that, we looked at all the ecosystems, not just the top-level predators. We also looked at the minnow population and the benthic organisms that live on the bottom. We studied all of that in great detail; more detail than I could handle, as it was pages and pages. There was no negative impact at all. We set this up to look at assimilative capacity, which I'm sure you've heard a ton about from other people. When we're looking at a lake in a freshwater ecosystem, we're looking at assimilative capacity: How much nutrient can you put in that body of water and not have an impact or change the trophic states of that body of water, whether mesotrophic, oligotrophic or eutrophic? We're dumping nutrients into the water because we need to know how much we can put in there before we make a change.
Senator Wells: Welcome, Mr. Meeker. It's an interesting story you tell.
You must have had a lot of challenges early on, especially if you're working in an aquatic environment like a mine shaft. What challenges did you have with respect to environmental permitting, operational issues, and the biomarkers from raising fish in a mine? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Mr. Meeker: The mine, in effect, was easy because it's really just to grow fish for stocking. It's the perception of the mine as they're doing this for their social licence, in effect.
Interesting about the mine is that when I first suggested it, everybody thought it was a crazy idea. But when you look at the practical aspects of what you need to grow fish — especially in closed containment, which I know you're familiar with — you have to be able to filter the water and you need heat. In this cold environment in particular you need to be able to heat the water; but 5,000 feet underground, the ambient temperature is 22 degrees Celsius, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. The mines consider that a waste and have to run massive air circulation systems to draw the heat out.
I was looking at it from the perspective of needing heat, and being free is an important part. I'm looking at some other opportunities with them to utilize things that are waste. Right now, any mine has water in it, and to continue to use the mine, they have to pump the water out. Frood-Stobie mine up there pumps literally millions of gallons of water a day out of the mine to make sure that it stays operable for the miners. That water is generally about 21degrees Celsius. It's an incredible resource of free heat for use; so I'm looking at that.
Were you asking specifically about just the underground or the difficulties when I first started farming fish in cages in Lake Wolsey?
Senator Wells: We're pretty familiar with the difficulties that people run into when they start up, but we're happy to hear about yours. Part of our task is to find out.
Mr. Meeker: That's why I was smiling. I sometimes don't even like to think about that. When I started up there, there was no one to ask or to talk to. I went over to Sweden for two years to play hockey, but I spent most of my time in Norway trying to figure out the industry because it was what I wanted to do. They were quite advanced at the time. But when I started, there was no one to ask. There was no one to say how to do it. I made mistakes and tried to fix them.
It's an unforgiving environment. For example, last year in the lake where I grow fish, we had 42 inches of ice, more than we've had in a long time. We had to keep that ice from freezing over to harvest and feed. I dive under the ice all winter. It's a pretty difficult environment to work in, and some of the fall storms can be big when you have to worry about spray ice. A lot of problems specific to that area were difficult to overcome.
Because of spring ice movement and the potential for damage, I designed the first submersible cage that I know of in North America for sure. We're still using the cages; and that was 12 years ago. In the spring when the ice starts to break loose from the shores and move, we submerge the cages below water level so that the ice can do whatever it wants to do.
I looked at all kinds of other options and tried other options. I got in icebreakers and all kinds of things. Nothing worked. If the ice is moving, there's only one way to be safe and protect your investment — be under the water so that the ice can go where it wants. So that's what we have done routinely for 12 years.
It eliminated the biggest risk in my environment for catastrophic loss, which of course we want to avoid for business reasons and for fish reasons.
Senator Wells: How long do you grow the fish? Obviously they overwinter, and you don't feed them.
Mr. Meeker: It has changed enormously since I started. When I first started in 1984, everyone wanted small three- quarter-pound fish, single serving. That was six months' worth of growth. As the market changed, people wanted fillets, because the average city person doesn't want to see the head, eyes, tails. They want a boneless fillet to eat, which I understand. As the market changed for us in Ontario, we started growing bigger fish. If I put a 50-gram, four- to five-inch fish in the water in May, in my situation I have a two-and-a-half-pound-plus fish by November of that same year. Some people are growing bigger fish, four to six pounds. If you do that, you have to look at the economics. Does it make sense to hold on to these fish for a whole winter when they're not growing? It works for us, but it changes economics.
Senator Wells: Thank you.
Senator Poirier: Again, thank you for being here, and welcome.
In some areas, maybe not in all areas, one of the big concerns we hear about in the aquaculture industry is the social aspect of the industry.
A lot of people view it as negative around their environment. You have been involved in aquaculture regions for many years. I am wondering, if it's something you've dealt with, how you overcome it? Are we making progress on it? Is it getting better with your concerns? What can we still do to have this industry more accepted in certain areas?
Mr. Meeker: That's a good question and probably the most important question, because we've overcome the issues we need to grow the fish. Now we need the social licence. The potential that we have to grow fish is enormous, and we're not coming close to fulfilling it in freshwater.
In answer to your question, the way I decided to overcome this was to invite people to my farm. You can take pictures, do talks like this, and I can go around, but what really tells the tale is that every year we have probably 40 to 50 government people come and tour our farms. That makes all the difference in the world because they're standing on the cages, looking at the fish, looking at the area and seeing birds flying and swimming around. They are seeing the wild fish, happy and healthy, swimming around the cages, and they see that there are not issues.
My policy is — and not all farmers do this but I have done it for 30 years — to bring people on the farm, show them what we do and be open to answer questions. I think you did have one other witness, which made me nervous; you described me as a guest, which is better than a witness. You had one other group here that made negative allegations. I haven't been able to look at them because I've been dealing with them for 15 years, and I didn't want to hear the same stuff.
They claim to represent 500,000 people. In an average year at my farm I will have 500 people stop in for tours. We try to accommodate them all, and for the most part, we do. I also have government tours, school tours, all kinds of tours. The interesting thing is that a significant number of those people, of the 500 that drop in every year, are members of that association. I have them on the farm and I ask if they are aware that the executive of their group is speaking against aquaculture, and inevitably the answer is no, they didn't know that. These are people who have cottages around our areas, live on the lakes and come to see us.
The biggest answer to your question is that openness — our association has tried to do it — combined with taking the high road in science in the scientific research we've done. You asked that question, and I think it's so critical. If the decisions are made on science as opposed to emotion, we can answer all the questions. We can furnish all the data. It is not just my word. We've got the data. It is a two-part thing. First of all, it's the education and having the science, but second, we've done that for 10 years and it hasn't really been as effective as we thought it would be, to be honest. Now it's just that openness of working with the public.
You ask if I have had problems. No, not with anybody who lives on Manitoulin Island, my neighbours. Some are people who come in to go fishing or have cottages. Do I have any problems? Absolutely none. That's the truth.
The only problems we have are the perceived opinions of people who don't live anywhere near us and for the most part don't even know what a farm looks like, have never been on a farm. That's a difficult perception to change for us, and we're still struggling with how to do that effectively. I've been president of our association for so long that I can't remember when it started, probably far longer than anybody wanted me to be. I always missed the elections when they were going to elect a new president, so I've been stuck with it for a long time. Even back 12 years ago, we were asking the same question you just did, and at that time, we made that decision, take the high road with science, try to be open. We felt we've done it reasonably effectively, but have we changed things as much as we'd like? No.
Hopefully you have some suggestions of how we can do better. I don't know if I answered your question. It was a good one, by the way, because it kind of runs our lives. I spend the day feeding the fish and working, and then I go to bed, lay there grinding my teeth and think, how will we change this attitude? We're sitting on an incredible situation. I've gone to meetings for our association all over the world, and I've talked to people from literally everywhere — Finland, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, South America, South Africa, Poland, Ireland, Italy and central European countries. Did this committee go, for example, to Germany and Spain, Portugal, Turkey?
The Chair: We went to Norway and Scotland.
Mr. Meeker: I go to these meetings and people say to me, "You're from Canada, what's wrong you guys?" We look at the natural water resources they do, and look at what we have, and we're not even on the radar in production particularly if you look at freshwater. We have a thousand times the resources of a country like Italy, and they grow a thousand times more fish than we do in an economically and environmentally sustainable way. It's embarrassing to go to these meetings. Not that it matters to this group, but when they say what's wrong with you guys, I give the same answer I gave you. We're not really sure. We don't understand why we're not moving ahead.
Senator Munson: Is it regulation?
Mr. Meeker: Yes.
Senator Munson: Can you give us an idea of what we can do about that regulation? It leads into the point that you had in your speaking notes, the thousand times figure.
Mr. Meeker: Yes. I want to think of how to put this. I've been dealing with it for a long time and from various angles so to stand back and look at it dispassionately, it is regulation. Plain and simple. It seems like if the precautionary principle, as we understand it, was followed, we would have no problems, the way we feel that it has to happen in Ontario. I also want to make clear, and it adds to your question, that with all the travelling I've done around the world, in Ontario we have the most stringently regulated aquaculture industry in the world. No doubt about it. The testing that we do for our licence conditions is as stringent as anywhere in the world. We as a group have no problem with that. But as we understand the precautionary principle, and as we feel the government needs to follow through on it, allow us to grow.
We will monitor the way we are, and we'll use the principle of adaptive management. If we grow and we find that we are having an impact because we measure everything, then we'll use adaptive management, which is a precautionary principle to us. We'll figure out what's going on and do what we have to do to mitigate whatever the effect is that's perceived to be or is a negative.
Senator Munson: Who are you saying "allow us to grow" to?
Mr. Meeker: I will add to that, because there has been some positive movement in the last short period of time. I couldn't have told you this when I came last December, but our licence is with the MNR — the Ministry of Natural Resources in Ontario — which is provincial, and they work with the Ministry of the Environment on the water-quality issues.
The Ministry of Natural Resources never wanted — I have seen the last nine ministers personally and gone to their offices and talked to them. I can't remember all their names. I didn't know it was nine until Karen told me, but in each conversation they said that we support your industry as a legitimate user of the resource, and we want to see it grow, with the caveats that we use it in a sustainable and a non-environmentally damaging way, which is exactly what we want.
The regulatory agency, the MNR, didn't want to be the lead regulatory agency in aquaculture, because each and every minister told me that it's one of their many portfolios and probably the smallest one. We want it to be bigger. When you look at what the MNR does, it's wild fisheries management, forestry and mining. It is an enormous responsibility, and we're a small part.
From the perspective of what we do, the mandate of the Ministry of Natural Resources is only looking at wild fish populations. We have nothing to do with the wild fish populations. So it's difficult to get them to make decisions and move forward with this precautionary principle because, first of all, we're a small part of the decision-making process, and we just haven't been able to get that. For 10 years we've said it's the only thing we need to grow. We have the expertise. Right now we're importing millions and millions of pounds of rainbow trout into the province of Ontario that we could grow here, and we're importing millions of pounds from Chile, Argentina and Peru. It is crazy, looking at it from that perspective.
The only thing standing in our way is getting the regulatory set-up so that it can be followed by us and by the regulatory agencies. It sounds simple and should be, but we've been working on it for 10 years.
We started working on the sediment policy guidelines eight years ago. I've been on that committee for eight years. If fish poop falls down onto the lake, what's an acceptable level? You guys have probably heard all about this on the East and West Coasts, I'm sure. In freshwater it's not that different, but we have fewer benthic organisms that we impact. We've been studying in great detail the benthic effects that our operations have.
We tried to put together the policy that we need, starting eight years ago, and we're still not there. It's just political will.
Senator Munson: You referenced cutting-edge research in your opening remarks, and you talked about the information being used by other countries, and I think you used the words "to their benefit."
Mr. Meeker: Absolutely.
Senator Munson: What is that benefit, and why has it not been used here, and is this program still under way in the Experimental Lakes Area, or is that all over?
Mr. Meeker: Unfortunately, the Experimental Lakes Area, I don't know how many people know that history, but to stick to how it relates to us, we did a five-year study where we had fish in the water for five years. We looked at doing work before we put the cages in the water, and then we studied it after we took the fish out. That was part of the plan, to see the impact we would have on a known body of water. The people at the Experimental Lakes Area check this lake and have for 30 years; they know virtually every lake trout in the lake, almost by name. It's an ideal situation because they have done work, and they knew how much phosphorous you can add to a body of water this size and change it.
You asked where is it being used? Well, all over the world because the sediment work done there is enormously important, and it's being used in all the other countries, I've been told personally from representatives of these other countries, to deal with the regulatory issues they have in their own countries. It's partly social licence, but more important is the scientific questions that we've been working on and have done the research for, and it's being used there.
As I said, we looked at water quality. We looked at phosphorous in particular because that's the limiting agent for algal growth in freshwater. It's important. We also looked at how it changes conductivity in pH and virtually every aspect of water quality if you are analyzing an ecosystem, but we also looked at the fish populations.
That research is being used all over the world, but it doesn't seem to be helping us, and it's being printed. DFO puts it out. It's available to the public. We try to talk about it as an industry and association every chance we get, but we're failing to be the best PR we can be for our own industry.
Senator Meredith: Thank you, Mr. Meeker. I appreciate your presentation and the fact that you're from Ontario and you're working away and you're a businessman, and I hear all you're saying. With respect to if you had the perfect regulatory environment, how much fish would you be able to produce in Ontario? Can you quantify production?
You talked about the cost of operations and barriers to entry and the number of people that are in your association. If you quantify that, if we were to ensure we had the perfect regulatory environment, what would that production look like in terms of mitigating the imports coming in right now?
Mr. Meeker: That's a good question, and it leads into something I should have mentioned before.
Senator Meredith: Answer both of them.
Mr. Meeker: To combat the alarmist questions, the only other group we have to deal with that's negative about our industry in Ontario — and you have met representatives from that other group — we have said we'd like to grow 10 per cent per year, roughly, because it's controlled growth.
What potential do we have for growth? It's enormous. I don't know if you're aware of the paper that came out recently regarding the Great Lakes, and they finally acknowledged what the people who live on the water every day and fish it say, which is that there is an enormous deficit of nutrients. The scientists working on it describe the Great Lakes — and I see it and believe and know it, too — as biological deserts. This paper was written by the NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and various other regulatory agencies. I think it was labelled Feast and Famine in the Great Lakes, if you want to look it up, but there are very small areas of the Great Lakes where there's runoff and enough nutrients to support populations of phytoplankton and zooplankton, which is the principal source of food for all the fish. Anyway, most of the other Great Lakes are one great big biological desert, what they call "hyper-oligotrophic," a fancy term for lack of nutrients.
What we found in every single cage site, mine included, is that we're beneficial to the wild fish populations that are around, and even more so recently because that lack of nutrients has gotten worse, all over the Great Lakes. If you talk to most of the scientists, productivity on almost every fish species has dropped by 50 to 90 per cent. There is virtually no fishing left around the island any longer where I am, and that is what the whole island thrived on, fishermen coming up to fish.
What is our potential? I look at that from two aspects, number one being environmental, which is of course what we always look at first. Because of the lack of nutrients and what we have learned about how big an operation we should put in one particular place, we know now that the assimilative capacity of the bays where we are growing fish is enormous, but we still want to keep the farms relatively small, compared to the ocean operations you've seen. We're growing roughly 12 million pounds per year in cages in northern Ontario, and that's our whole provincial production. As I'm sure you've learned, there is maybe one cage site in ocean conditions. That's the whole province's production in the Great Lakes.
From an environmental perspective, if the sites were put in the right place, which we know a significant amount about now — of course, when I started 30 years ago, we didn't know what was a good site or the impact it would have. We know an awful lot now so that we can put these sites in and scatter them around, but we could be doing 10 times what we are doing now, and what we're talking about wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket.
Senator Meredith: How many sites could you actually put in right now without disturbing the environment in any way?
Mr. Meeker: If they were sited correctly, like I said, 20 by tomorrow.
The economic aspect is the second part. Our last market study showed we are probably still importing 4 million to 5 million pounds of rainbow trout. This is why I said your question is good, because it leads into alternative species, which I want to talk about as well.
Speaking only about rainbow trout, which is principally what we grow now, we could grow 10 times as many as we are doing now. Currently I'm the only organic rainbow trout grower in Canada, according to the Canadian standards. We're just finding out the enormous potential for organic rainbow trout. Organic is a niche market, but it's enormous. We sold out at a million-pound site. We could grow an awful lot more organic and a lot more of what we call our normal rainbow trout, which is as good as anybody's in the world, 10 times what we are doing now.
It was interesting. When I first started growing rainbow trout, our numbers were so small. We would reach a threshold and wonder what we would do with the rest of the fish because we were just selling to small restaurants and small fish markets, and they loved them. But what we realized is Loblaws and Sobeys will not even look at you until you can produce a threshold number of fish. So each and every time our industry, as it has grown, has reached that threshold, all it has done is catapult us up to the next threshold and allow us to get into markets we couldn't touch before — they were not interested — because we were nowhere near producing the volumes of fish they needed for them to even look at us, like Costco and Sysco. They want volume, and they need to have it all the time, such as on a yearly basis. We can do that; that's what we're good at.
If you look at alternative species, which I haven't even talked about yet —
Senator Meredith: Talk to us about the species and also if you are susceptible to diseases in any way. How does that impact on your production?
Mr. Meeker: I will deal with the disease issue right off the bat with rainbow trout. We have never had a disease issue, and that's in 30 years of my experience. The only things we deal with are the bacterial infections that are indigenous to the Great Lakes. When I first started, the worst so-called disease issue we had was called columnaris gram-negative bacteria. It's the largest killer of freshwater wild fish in the Great Lakes. It's out there and indigenous to the waters.
Initially, that was our biggest problem. We haven't had the kind of horror story issues with disease that you have seen in other places around the world. We're careful about what fish we bring in. We're limited by federal fisheries regulations. If we're going to bring in brute stock, fish, eggs or whatever from somewhere else, they have to go through a quarantine process, and we are nervous about bringing stuff in from somewhere else that might add something that's not indigenous to the waters where we grow the fish.
We've never had any disease problems. In my case, for the last eight years — and I feel this is the proof in the pudding — I have not used any antibiotics. Zero. That's indicative of not having a disease problem. Most of the other fish farmers in my area, because we've learned things about maximum densities of fish to grow, when to handle and not handle the fish — I'm sure you've heard many aspects of husbandry from other farmers, but speaking for myself, I haven't used antibiotics in eight years now. This was the eighth year. We're going to be careful about bringing in anything from anywhere else.
I'm sure you're all aware of why the huge changes in the Great Lakes have happened. It's because of invasive species, principally zebra mussels and quagga mussels. If you could take them back, anybody would because it has had a huge impact on the waters around where I live and the whole Great Lakes. I've seen it day after day.
I raised my two boys on my site. We lived where we were growing the fish. We swam, boated, scuba-dived and snorkeled. I saw the changes. In one year after the zebra mussels and quaggas invaded that body of water, the changes were apparent and unbelievable. You expect everything to happen slowly in an aquatic ecosystem; that didn't happen. They took over the whole bay.
From the disease perspective in rainbow trout, we haven't had an issue, and we hope not to. When BHS came in, bacterial hemorrhagic septicemia, there was a big panic. There were big fish-kills in Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. The Ministry of Natural Resources panicked, and rightly so. They kicked into high gear. We didn't bring this in, but we were afraid it could impact our fish, so we were very proactive. We worked with the University of Guelph's fish pathology department. We took that bacterial hemorrhagic septicemia and tried to see how it would potentially impact our fish if our fish made it up as far as where we were going. We found out that it had almost no effect on our fish. It was a lucky break, but we're making sure that we are not going to be the people who bring in something that will impact our fish. We can't control everything.
So from a disease perspective, we're lucky. When I talk to the ocean people — and I know them all over the world, the Chileans, the West and East Coasts of Canada — I know what they've gone through and it can be scary. For us, that's how we dealt with it.
Regarding alternative species, the commercial fishing industry in Ontario, when you look at the cultural acceptance of fish, Ontarians are used to eating perch because they used to catch 50 million to 60 million pounds per year or more in the Great Lakes. The same with pickerel and walleye. People in Ontario, Quebec and of course in the U.S., the states that border the Great Lakes, there is virtually no commercial fishing of those species any longer. They are virtually gone, from hundreds of millions of pounds.
What does that mean for us? When you're looking at alternative species, it means if you can't catch them, you have to grow them. That's another area of enormous potential for growing the species that the market is used to. There are a couple of tilapia farms in Ontario. Interesting. I think it's a good idea because we have the ethnic market in Toronto that is used to that species and expects it.
The potential is in growing perch and pickerel. Over the years, we have had people who have done the initial research and have tried to grow them. They did not have the support they needed to follow through.
Principally — Senator Munson's question — it is through the regulatory aspect. This is just my opinion, but the whitefish that the commercial fishermen in my area catch, through no fault of their own, have dropped off enormously. So what's the answer? If you can't catch them, then you've got to grow them. We know how to grow whitefish. Get out of the way and let us do it — not get out of the way completely, but just get out of the way and let us do it.
So that's a great question — now the disease part of that comes in. We know that if we don't bring in a disease that's not indigenous to the waters that we're growing the fish in, or that the fish have not developed a natural immunity to, that we're not going to have problems as long as we grow them right, we don't grow too many in a given area, and what we feed them is top quality so their nutrition is there, just like for a human being. If you're healthy, your immune system will fight off colds. That's how I look at what happens to our fish with the bacterial infections. If we don't handle them right, if they're not healthy or happy, they're going to get sick with something.
Senator Meredith: Thank you for that. Take away from that the TPP effect?
Mr. Meeker: TPP?
Senator Meredith: I'll let you think on that.
Mr. Meeker: Okay, I'll do that.
And by the way, who said that I wouldn't be able to understand him?
Senator Meredith: What was that?
Mr. Meeker: Oh, no, I didn't say that. I wasn't supposed to say that.
Senator Meredith: Tilapia, pickerel, perch.
Mr. Meeker: There's enormous potential in all of them. I didn't mention that down in the United States there's black crappie and all kinds of species that people are used to eating, if you target the market.
Senator McInnis: For a while I was wondering if I prepared for the wrong witness. You seem like a really nice fellow and are certainly knowledgeable.
Mr. Meeker: I've got you fooled. This is my colleague who is laughing because she's thinking, "He's got them fooled." She works with me all the time.
Senator McInnis: Possibly so. No, really, we had the Georgian Bay Association here in June, and I'm listening to you and I'm getting an entirely opposite story.
The Georgian Bay Association's membership includes aquaculture biologists, ecologists, water-quality analysts, research scientists, engineers and water purification specialists. All of them collectively share their expertise and experience, which amounts to more than 30 years of focus on studies.
When I see what they said, they go on about everything to the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, like escapes, and there's a quote in here about numerous reports to the Ontario Legislature and no compliance by your group. Net-pen fish farmers are given or waived from environmental standards in their water lodge, which gives them competitive and market advantage. No net-pen aquaculture operations exist in the Great Lake waters overseen by Quebec and a few of the United States. They are prohibited.
So when we do a report sometime later this year, presumably, we will read what they said and we will listen and read what you have said. But what do you say and have you read what they said? Because you've talked very positively, and I must admit, you've done a wonderful job. You're obviously very knowledgeable, but are these people full of air?
Mr. Meeker: Yes.
Senator McInnis: What is it?
Mr. Meeker: I'll suggest this: If you wanted to go through your notes and bring up every single issue that they brought up, we'd be happy to answer them at any time.
For example, the first one you said was that escapes are a problem. We've done all the research that I talked to you about. The Ministry of Natural Resources — the last two geneticists — have said with respect to escaped rainbow trout, if you put fish in the water and grow them anywhere, you're going to lose some. They are not a genetic issue and not an ecosystem issue. That's the regulators themselves. DFO, MNR, the regulators that have looked at this have said they are not an issue. They keep saying they are. It's like in B.C. I'm sure you heard they were concerned about growing Atlantic salmon on the Pacific coast. They were concerned that if they escaped they'd start reproducing naturally. It hasn't happened in 40 years, but they keep bringing it up.
So from our perspective — this is the other telling point which they don't say — the rainbow trout that we are growing in our cages are exactly the same rainbow trout that the Ministry of Natural Resources is stocking in every water basin in this province — exactly the same fish. Why are they an issue?
Senator McInnis: So it's false?
Mr. Meeker: Yes.
Senator McInnis: In 2005, 238,000 escaped; in 2006 there were no escapes; in 2007 there were 25,000; 33,000 in 2008; and in 2009, 29,000.
Mr. Meeker: Okay, those numbers, I'm not going to —
Senator McInnis: I'm not debating with you. I just want clarification.
Mr. Meeker: Have there been escapes? Yes, but that's the beautiful thing about this, because with the research where we surgically implanted, we've been able to see whether they're going to have an impact or not. That one you talked about was way back in the Dark Ages, in 2005; it must have been all over in Lake Ontario. I'm not sure. This is the guy who was allowed to put a bunch of homemade cages into a brutal spot. We and the ministry learned from that. It doesn't happen now. There are regulations. If we're going to put cages in the water, they have to be commercially made; they have to be structurally sound; they have to be engineered, okayed by engineers. The biggest thing is we've lost fish and it's made no difference to the environment whatsoever, with regards to two aspects. Are they going to impact long-term genetics? No, because they're stocking the same fish anyway. Rainbow trout are not native to the Great Lakes. They're a naturalized species. They're very fluid in their genetics. So have they made a difference? No. Have there been escapes? Absolutely.
The number of fishermen on a lake or in a given area is directly proportional to the fish that they can catch easily. So if you have a large escapement — and most MNR people will tell you that in every single circumstance where we've lost fish, within less than a year those extra fish have been caught, and as a whole they've had no negative impact on the ecosystem in that area.
Senator McInnis: The only government agency raising concerns regarding net-pen aquaculture is the Ontario Ministry of Environment.
In numerous reports to the Ontario Legislature, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO) has questioned the claim made by government promoters of the open net-cage systems as legitimate and responsible use of the public waters. Furthermore, the ECO is still calling for a freshwater aquaculture policy to be "prescribed" within the Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR) where it would be properly open for public consideration.
Mr. Meeker: Yes. In that case, the Environmental Commissioner agrees with us 100 per cent. He's asking for regulation. We've been asking for distinct and easy-to-understand regulation for 15 years. We agree with him completely.
That statement that he made doesn't necessarily say that there's a problem, and the Ministry of the Environment, I think in — I wish Karen was here, she would know the year, but we can look it up. The ministry, after the Environmental Commissioner asked them to or told them to, did a complete review of cage aquaculture in Ontario. The Ministry of the Environment, their results, which you can read in that study, I just don't know what year it was done, but I can find it and you can find it, said that as it stands right now, there is no problem with cage culture in Ontario. As it's being done now and on the scale that it's being done, there is not a problem.
This is my weakness as I don't remember the year that that was done and exactly what it was called, but if you're interested, or if anybody else on the committee is interested, that kind of thing we can find very quickly through our association.
Does he say there's a problem? No. Does he say that there are potential issues? Yes. We all know that. We're not saying that there aren't potential issues in what we do. As I said, we've been as proactive as we possibly can to try to foresee what those may be, and every year we do more research and follow it.
Senator McInnis: I wanted to give you the opportunity.
Mr. Meeker: I would love the opportunity to answer each and every specific question, because we've had those people at our environmental seminars, which are just about every year or two. We've said, "Listen, we'll have a debate. We'll answer your questions outright and directly. You ask the questions, and we'll answer the questions." It doesn't matter how many times we do it. The question just keeps coming up.
Senator McInnis: Okay. Well, it might be wise to respond to some of the other accusations in there. I won't have the time.
Mr. Meeker: I'd be more than happy to do that now or at some other time.
Senator McInnis: I don't think the chairman will let you. He can be difficult.
Mr. Meeker: I've never known a difficult Newfie.
Senator McInnis: Where might you be from? Isn't Meeker from Newfoundland?
Mr. Meeker: Howie lived there for years, and I spent all my summers there for a long time. I loved it. I was in heaven out there. We lived in St. Philip's outside St. John's. I spent all my time in tide pools chasing after fish and going out with the lobster fishermen. I loved it out there.
Senator McInnis: Can I ask you this question? How many operations, farms, are there?
Mr. Meeker: Cage culture, in the Great Lakes — oh, that's a good question. Can you remind me to mention Michigan?
There are three native operations in native waters in Wikwemikong at the east end of Manitoulin Island. Aqua-Cage Fisheries is another outside Parry Sound. That's four. Two other distinctly different cage culture operations are north of Manitoulin in Sucker Creek. There's mine, and Cold Water Fisheries has three sites. Is anyone doing the math?
Senator Poirier: Eleven.
Mr. Meeker: Good, because I wasn't doing the math. That's 11 sites. I've worked on them all at one time or another — just can't remember.
Senator McInnis: Thank you. What were you going to say about Michigan?
Mr. Meeker: Recently, for the last year and a half, I've been working with the Michigan Aquaculture Association and the consultants they hired to get cage culture going in Michigan. I think it's going to happen in the not-too-distant future. Has it not happened because there are distinct problems? No.
As I said, I know you're writing a report. Would there be an opportunity to get in the same room to answer questions more directly — not a debate, necessarily, because I know you're doing a fact-finding mission — when you get contradictory information?
The Chair: That's not the process we follow.
Mr. Meeker: Okay.
The Chair: If you read testimony from our other witnesses that you feel is not accurate, or if you would like to offer a different opinion, I would suggest that you feel free to forward anything to us.
Mr. Meeker: Okay.
The Chair: We'll share it with committee members. We're always open to that type of information.
Mr. Meeker: I'll send it to Maxwell Hollins, the clerk of the committee. Okay.
I would really like to do that. It's aggravating for us, for example, on the genetics issue you brought up about that first point. We thought we'd dealt with that. The MNR's head geneticists said there is not an issue with escape; and that was a public statement. That was a policy. We thought we'd dealt with it 10 years ago. But just by bringing it back up again, it becomes an issue. So, we dealt with it again with the next geneticist, and we thought it was done again. Just by bringing it up, it becomes an issue again.
The Chair: As I say, feel free to forward to us anything that you see as contradictory to something we have heard before.
Mr. Meeker: Okay.
Senator Raine: As I understand from listening to you, the freshwater cage fisheries in Ontario are regulated by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.
What interface do you have with DFO and Health Canada and others? What we're trying to get at in our report is that there are a lot of overlapping jurisdictions. We've been dealing mostly with ocean aquaculture. In terms of freshwater aquaculture, which is obviously inside a province, do DFO and Health Canada have an impact on regulations?
Mr. Meeker: Not as much as we wish they had. We've dealt with DFO, as I said, in the research aspect, and they've been tremendous. That's a really good question to bring me back to the purpose of this committee — regulation. We're hoping that under this new federal-provincial agreement with DFO working in conjunction with MNR, we'll be able to fine-tune and get this system done.
As I said earlier, the MNR never wanted this, and their mandate is wild animals and wild fish. It's not cows and farming. It's wild turkeys, not chickens; it's wild fish, not farm fish. They don't want it. DFO has the policies, and I really feel strongly, especially with our good experiences with DFO in the past, that if they can get this agreement done between the two of them, we'll be dealing with one set of regulations and not overlapping ones, as you said rightly before.
It's really important that they get this done. I'm an old fart now, and I have been at this for a long time, but it's really encouraging for me to see the initiative right now through the national agreement that's been struck between the federal fisheries and the provincial aquaculture regulator, which is the MNR.
Senator Raine: In your travels to other countries, have you seen anything about how they regulate freshwater aquaculture that we could learn from?
Mr. Meeker: Well, there are things in every province. Did this group get lucky enough to go to Turkey?
The Chair: No.
Mr. Meeker: I just got back from Italy and a couple of other places. Turkey is now the shining star example of aquaculture in the world — and this magic bullet I've talked to Turkish growers about. How did they make it happen? They were in the same situation we were in for 10 years: stagnation and no growth. The market is there, and there are fish in the Mediterranean. The culture wants fish, but they couldn't get fish. Somehow all of a sudden, industry and government got together and decided just to make it happen. The Turkish industry grew almost a thousand times. It's been enormous growth in a very short period of time and a huge success story. You can look it up. Different studies have been done; and I can give some of the references.
The important point is that I've talked to people I know who are involved in the Turkish industry. I asked them to tell me how they did it. Inevitably, they didn't really have this magic bullet. They said that somehow government got together and decided on a distinct set of regulations that worked, and they proceeded to tell us that if they work in conjunction with them, follow the precautionary principle, monitor and be environmentally responsible and keep a close eye on it, they'd grow. It happened and was a huge success story.
I just wish I could have gone up to one of them to say, "Tell me one thing you did — some magic thing you did." But they can't necessarily say. They just kept working at it like we do, doing research, and somehow the attitude changed and they were allowed to move forward.
Part of it was because they moved offshore a little bit, and this is the way I am personally thinking. I'm not speaking for the other cage guys. Even though we've proven that we're not having a negative impact environmentally, there's something to be said for moving offshore, which you might have heard about from the other groups. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
Senator Raine: Offshore in the lakes?
Mr. Meeker: In the lakes, and no matter where I went in the world. The Finns' definition of moving offshore is not being attached to shore, out of sight of the average person who is fishing close to shore, boating close to shore, or who has a cottage close to shore. They basically just moved out of sight. And in Israel, their definition of what offshore is was different than Finland, which was different than Sweden. For us, for our situation, we don't have to go very far offshore to be out of sight and out of mind, so to speak, and that was part of what happened in the Turkish experience. It's not the only part, but that's part of it.
Senator Raine: You're talking about freshwater aquaculture now?
Mr. Meeker: Yes. It's a great apples-to-apples way to compare.
Senator Raine: Okay. The other question I have is that obviously your farms create employment in the local areas. Can you give us a little indication of how important it is to the local economy, the number of people that are employed, the supplies you buy and things like that?
Mr. Meeker: That's a great question, and I was really remiss in not talking about that. I'm going to get kicked. Karen's going to kick me when I go back and she'll say, "That's the first thing you should have mentioned."
Five or six years ago we did the best economic impact study we could. We had a third-party consultancy group come in and do it, as is usual. I think the impact our small industry had was about $55 million for the local economy. That was years ago, and I know what the economic impact is because I've got 20 people working for me, and those 20 people have jobs so they can support their families — they have kids — where there are very few jobs.
You've probably heard this story all over the country, but what matters to me is my home, and because of the lack of fish, the tourist industries are dropping. Beef was in trouble, so we're creating full-time jobs that people can raise families on. Part of what that economic study was supposed to do is see what the threshold size was that we need to get for generating far more jobs, because then we can have net-building companies, which we don't. We can have feed companies manufacturing where we are. They all create a significant number of jobs. But we're not big enough to warrant that. We buy our nets from the East Coast. We buy our feed from the East Coast or the West Coast. Our industry just isn't big enough to generate those secondary and tertiary jobs, but it doesn't have to be too much bigger before we could. We've got a lot of native jobs. They're my neighbours. We all live there, so any jobs that we create are important jobs, and the potential to create a whole bunch more jobs is enormous.
Senator Raine: I have one last question, if you don't mind.
The Chair: Short question, short answer.
Senator Raine: In terms of supply chain, are there any negatives to being located where you are versus closer to Toronto, Buffalo or wherever?
Mr. Meeker: Did you hear what that mean fellow said over there? He said short answer, please. That's enormously difficult. Do you know how tough that is?
The Chair: Senator Raine said one question. She's on her fourth now, so I'm being very nice, believe it or not.
Senator Raine: You are.
Mr. Meeker: I was hoping for questions. The number one problem that we have is kind of interesting. It's transportation. When we look at our operations, which we do all the time, like any business does, what is our cost of growing the fish, what is our cost of getting them to market? The biggest thing we feel we can change, and what I would call a negative or a weakness where we are, is transporting our product to the market, which is, in effect, Toronto, Montreal, the large cities.
We grow 12 million pounds. People love rainbow trout up in northern Ontario, but we're not going to sell 12 million pounds up there. So the number one problem is not the technical aspects of growing fish, as I said earlier. It's definitely trucking, transportation. Bringing feed in costs you so much, taking the fish back out to market costs you quite a bit, and it's an evil. The only way we can deal with it is trying to be as efficient as we can, but it's always going to be there, and it's always going to be a big part of our cost of production. We're not asking for money. We're not asking to be subsidized, but if we did, that would probably be one place it would help a lot, some sort of trucking.
Senator Raine: Thank you.
Mr. Meeker: Was that short enough?
The Chair: It was pretty good.
Mr. Meeker: I had to work at that. That was a really good question.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Raine. I'm sorry, but we have to go in camera.
Senator Meredith: Are we going on round two, chair? No?
The Chair: Certainly this has been a great discussion. As I said earlier, if there's anything that you want to put forward a contrary argument to, feel free to do so with some other witnesses. If there's something that you think about after you leave here this evening that you wish you had said in an answer to one of the questions from the senators, please feel free to forward that too.
Mr. Meeker: I'm sure you all understand that feeling. There are going to be about a hundred things that I'm going to think about on the way home that I should have said, and I should have said better.
The Chair: It's been a great hour and a half, and certainly some great information was put forward here this evening. It's going to be something that we will use as we go forward with our study into this important industry. We thank you for your time here this evening, and as I said, feel free to add anything later.
I need to seek agreement around the table to proceed in camera.
Mr. Meeker, thank you again for your time, and certainly we look forward to hearing from you again.
Mr. Meeker: I want to thank you all. I meant it when I said I know you've already put in a hard day's work before you even got here. If anybody around the table wants to ask questions afterwards, feel free to get in touch with me. Is that allowed?
The Chair: I'm glad you said afterwards.
Mr. Meeker: That's what I meant, yes. Is that allowed? They're not going to get in trouble for that?
The Chair: No. No one gets in trouble.
(The committee continued in camera.)
(The committee continued in public.)
The Chair: Motion to adopt the budget? All in favour?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
(The committee adjourned.)