Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue 4 - Evidence - Afternoon meeting
NANAIMO, Wednesday, March 26, 2014
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 1:39 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 afternoon everybody. I see that we have a quorum so we're going to call the meeting to order. We are waiting on one of our guests, maybe got held up in traffic, we're not sure. But in the essence of time we need to begin our proceedings for this afternoon.
My name is Fabian Manning. I'm a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador. I am the chair of the Fisheries and Oceans Committee for the Senate of Canada. Before I give the floor to our witnesses, I would like to invite the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator McInnis: Senator Tom McInnis from Nova Scotia.
Senator Hubley: Senator Elizabeth Hubley, Prince Edward Island.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Senator Lovelace from New Brunswick.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen, New Brunswick.
Senator Raine: Senator Nancy Greene Raine from B.C.
The Chair: I would like to welcome our guests and ask them to introduce themselves and you may have some opening remarks you would like to make and certainly as we continue our study into aquaculture across the country we are delighted to be here in British Columbia. We have had a very interesting morning to say the least with our panel discussions we look forward to the same this afternoon. So if you would like to introduce yourselves and then have your opening remarks we would appreciate it.
Walter Jakeway, Mayor, Town of Campbell River: Thank you. Good afternoon. I am Walter Jakeway, Mayor of Campbell River, a community of 35,000 people with four First Nation communities adjacent to our city. Campbell River has claimed the title of salmon capital of the world for decades. It is true, because a good friend of mine caught a 61.4 pound tyee salmon last summer.
Approximately 2,000 Campbell River area residents are employed through the regional finfish aquaculture industry, those actually on the sites, those supporting the farming functions as suppliers, vendors, manufacturers, processors and technical service providers. The B.C. Centre for Aquatic Health Sciences is located in downtown Campbell River. Campbell River supports the aquaculture industry and the aquaculture industry supports Campbell River.
Senators, I believe you recently visited several farm sites within the last few days. You noticed that they are sophisticated, scientific and clean - probably much more than you imagined.
Since 2008 the B.C. government has imposed a moratorium on new North Coast farm development sites. That was a knee jerk reaction to a tremendous amount of misguided, high profile public pressure. The B.C. government was wrong. It made a huge mistake. That moratorium must be removed as soon as possible. No farmer of trees, vegetation, animals or fish wants to grow diseased or infected product. The B.C. government succumbed to pressure and stalled the process. They instead should have investigated the concerns together with the producers and technical experts, while allowing the industry to move ahead.
All governments need to either lead, follow or get out of the way, but not block. The B.C. aquaculture industry employs a large number of First Nations young people. The employees are trained, educated and encouraged to progress up through the ranks of the farming organizations. To quote a West Coast First Nation chief at an awards dinner two years ago, ``Our people walk differently when they have a jingle in their pockets''. That fact applies to First Nations people as well as to the rest of the folks in our Canadian society. There are good jobs in B.C. aquaculture.
So far I have focused your thoughts on the finfish farming industry, well there is an enormous untapped potential in the shellfish sector of the B.C. coastal aquaculture industry. This is a generalization but most shellfish producers tend to be smaller sized operations and are often family owned and operated. Approximately 25 per cent of the sites are also First Nations run.
About two years ago three recently retired finfish senior management fellows came to meet the new Campbell River mayor and shared their beliefs. They believe that the B.C. shellfish harvest could be nearly as valuable as the finfish production. They know the waters are almost perfect for healthy shellfish production. They highlighted that the shellfish producers need some positive encouragement, some technical support and focus. We heard that this morning. The establishment of a shellfish research development and seed farm centre in the Campbell River region could be a significant boost to the Central and North Coast shellfish industry. They know that several universities would have a genuine interest in the centre and that could stimulate significant private investment in more commercial ventures.
At present many of the existing shellfish site licences are being sold to foreign investors who already see the potential, maybe more clearly than our resident investors.
Encouraging young technical scientists and researchers to work in the Campbell River area would have long-term positive benefits to our entire region.
In short, Campbell River is supportive of both the shellfish and finfish sectors of the coastal aquaculture industry and our community encourages all levels of government to regulate and provide timely approval of new initiatives but not restrict responsible development of these vast valuable resources.
On the reverse side of my business cards which are attached to my presentation copy it says, Campbell River - oceans of opportunity. And that is true.
I know you over-nighted in Campbell River in the rain but I invite you to return again in the finer weather and really visit the central Vancouver Island region which I call ``Metro Mid-Island.'' Please put that on your bucket list. You are always welcome. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and even though it was raining, it was a beautiful opportunity to visit your fine city.
The floor is yours, Mr. Hardy.
Richard Hardy, Member, K'omoks First Nation:
[Mr. Hardy spoke in his native language.]
It's good to see you. Before I start I would like to acknowledge the Nanaimo's peoples and the Coast Salish neighbours that we have here and I thank them for allowing us into their territory here today to be involved in this very important hearing.
My name is Richard Hardy. I'm a K'omoks First Nation band member. My K'omoks name is Namugwis, which translates to ``the only one on the beach``. I'm the general manager of the K'omoks First Nation's Pentlatch Seafoods. I'm also the vice president of the Comox Valley Economic Development Society. Since 2002, I have assisted the K'omoks First Nation and Pentlatch Seafoods in attaining some of the following, and in my statement and my brochure, you will see that we won the 2012 National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation Award for resource management and environmental stewardship. In 2012 we were also acknowledged by the province of British Columbia for their B.C. Business Achievement Foundation and we were provided with an award for aboriginal-owned business. In 2008 we were fortunate enough to win the Mid-Island Science Technology and Innovation Council Award for shellfish aquaculture based upon our environment stewardship program.
In 2007, we received an award from the BC Shellfish Growers Association, and in 2005 from the town of Comox in recognition and dedication of generous contributions to the town of Comox and its citizens.
KFM pursued the shellfish aquaculture industry for a number of reasons; the primary reason being that they wanted to further develop its capacity to manage the resources within their traditional territory. It is very important to do this because again we are in treaty negotiations right now. We are in the final stages of treaty and what we wanted to do is we wanted to start developing that capacity so when we did get to sign off on a treaty we weren't starting from scratch. We were already getting into it.
In the spring of 2012 as I suggested or just made mention of, K'omoks, Canada and B.C. signed off an agreement in principle. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to be involved with any of the treaty discussions. Prior to the signing of the agreement in principle in 2011 an aquaculture interim measures agreement was signed between B.C. and KFN. This was precedent setting. This was the first aquaculture interim measures agreement that was signed in the B.C. treaty commission process.
Today K'omoks has three marine-based aquaculture corporations. We have Pentlatch Seafoods, Salish Seafoods and Salish Sea Farms.
Pentlatch Seafoods is a for-profit corporation owned by K'omoks, and we currently have about 96 hectares under tenure, some deep water and some intertidal sites. PSL also implemented and maintained an environmental stewardship program which meets even today with the approval of hereditary chiefs and elders of the K'omoks First Nation.
During the first 10 years of operation Pentlatch Seafoods has spread nearly 97 million manila clam seed, 17 million oyster seed, disbursed over $3 million in wages and generated revenues in excess of $5.5 million. That doesn't include the $3 million we have generated from our processing facility that we just bought last year.
In September of 2008 PSL introduced their trademark Komo Gway manila clams, and as you can see from the brochure it is a beautiful, beautiful logo. In 2008 we started selling Komo Gway branded oysters and manila clams into local Canadian and international markets in some of the top restaurants in New York, Boston, Chicago, L.A., Las Vegas, San Diego, Toronto, Vancouver were all enjoying Komo Gway branded products.
In the summer of 2010, PSL introduced its Komo Gway products to Sobeys, Thrifty Foods retail grocery stores and I'm sure some of you have heard of Sobeys Canada, I think they have about 2,300 retail grocery stores across Canada and Thrifty's, of course, is a portion of their operations. So right now K'omoks or through Salish Seafoods and through Komo Gway products, we're involved with the three major food distributors here in Canada, so we're dealing with Gordon Food Service, Premium Brand and Sysco.
In 2013 the K'omoks First Nation purchased a federally certified seafood processing plant called Aquatec Seafoods and we renamed it Salish Seafoods. In their first year of operation, Salish Seafoods doubled the working staff from 12 to 25 and consequently doubled the annual sales from $1.2 million to $3.2 million in our first year.
Future expansion plans for the K'omoks First Nation in the aquaculture industry revolve around our third corporation, Salish Sea Farms LP and our geoduck aquaculture initiative.
So with regards to the opportunities that are available for K'omoks down the road, the province of British Columbia is in a position to allocate six shellfish aquaculture tenures to the K'omoks First Nation.
If DFO were to allocate its aquaculture licences to Salish Sea Farms the following would occur: The elevation of an annual $30 million shellfish aquaculture industry in the Comox Valley to an annual $80 million industry over the next 10 years. An influx of 150 direct and indirect employment opportunities would be created.
Based upon DFO's statistics from their 2012 aquaculture report, which states that for every $10 that's generated in the aquaculture industry there is 22 generated indirectly, with Salish Sea Farms fully operational and generating $50 million annually, the Comox Valley, the Province of British Columbia and Canada would be generating an additional $100 million annually.
The elevation would also enhance B.C.'s exporting opportunities to countries such as Japan, China, and Korea with four to five million pounds of geoduck clams annually being produced, processed and sold at about a value of $40 million to $50 million. The economic opportunity would allow K'omoks and the Comox Valley to participate in a roundabout way in the recently signed Canada-Korea free trade agreement.
The activities fall within the priorities of the Comox Valley Economic Development Society's five-year economic development strategy. They fall within the Department of Fisheries and Ocean's 2009 national aquaculture strategic plan and it falls within the 2013 economic action plan for developing jobs, growth and long-term prosperity.
Canada and B.C. would also benefit from a sustainable geoduck aquaculture initiative being led by a prominent First Nation in the aquaculture industry.
The challenge today, KFN has presented its business case to the Pacific regional director, Sue Farlinger, in July and August of 2013 and Minister Shea in September, 2013. During those meetings KFN put forward its concerns with regard to the previous integrated geoduck management framework and how B.C. and KFN's aquaculture interim measures agreement was falling through the cracks of this framework. The underlying issue for DFO was that the Salish Sea Farm tenure applications would provide an impact upon the wild geoduck fishery in its total allowable catch.
Based upon DFO's own assessment on its impacts to allocating shellfish aquaculture licences inside the core territory of the K'omoks First Nation — if you flip it over you will find this map here in your pamphlet — which right now excludes KFN from 3,300 acres of the most pristine shellfish sites in B.C., the K'omoks did not feel that our initiative was going to have an impact upon the Under Water Harvesters Association. However, that being said KFN did submit a written proposal to the minister whereby KFN through Salish Sea Farms would purchase a ``G licence'' from a willing seller and immediately retire the licence and return it back to DFO. So KFN put forward some mitigated measures to the department with regard to their framework.
It should be further noted right now that DFO provides 55 wild commercial geoduck licences to 33 individuals. These same individuals have harvesting rights to B.C. vacant crown lands equating to 21,250 hectares. As well, the same quantities of the above wild commercial geoduck licence holders have access to 320 hectares that they have under tenure right now. So in total we have 33 individuals with 55 licences that have exclusive use to B.C. crown lands on an average of about 390 hectares per licence. So those are some of the challenges.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Hardy. Certainly both of you have outlined much here and I'm sure we have some questions from our senators and I will go to Vice-chair Senator Hubley first.
Senator Hubley: Thank you for joining us today. Your presentations were certainly interesting and it was nice to see your perspective as a mayor in one of the communities and yours as well. We have spoken a great deal on our visit about an aquaculture act. I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on that, and in particular I would like to ask Mr. Hardy if he feels there should be any special provisions in that act for First Nations operations?
Mr. Hardy: I can't speak on behalf of the First Nations of British Columbia. I can only speak on behalf of my own nation. I think K'omoks would welcome an aquaculture act. Of course, there would be a need from the K'omoks perspective to be involved in the development of that act. If I can be blunt, if K'omoks were just handed an aquaculture act in which it had no input and then asked, ``Are you in agreement with this act,'' it probably wouldn't go down too well with KFN.
Senator Hubley: So the obligation to negotiate with you would be part of any agreement that you would be signing, any act. Thank you very much for that. As to the jobs that have been created for the First Nations and for the community, what kind of an impact does that have on your town and especially on those of aboriginal descent living within the community, if there are any.
Mr. Jakeway: That's tough to answer because I don't know who works on which farm or whatever. We have our First Nation communities around our town actually are very big into commercial development. They own our largest shopping centre. They own our big box stores. They have done very, very well at becoming business people in our town. In fact, they are the biggest taxpayers we have so as far as the individuals, I don't know who is on what farm but the chiefs are very focused. Chiefs and their band leadership are very focused in getting the young people trained. It's very obvious that they're almost not supplying the option. The children need to get skills; they need to get education because they see that as their future.
I wish we could do in the same in the non-aboriginal community to that level. We have a campus in town for North Island College. North Island College has multiple campuses from Nanaimo north, and at the Campbell River campus which is a huge modern facility they actually have a First Nations building, it is like a small longhouse and they have a resident elder each day the school is open that the kids are there, the young people are there. These aren't children. There is an elder from one of the bands who is watching to make sure they are doing their work, that they are showing up and giving them any help or encouragement they need, and it really shows up in the spirit and attitude of the young people because they know there is an elder that they respect who is making sure they do their stuff. It has got to be encouraging to know that your leadership of your community and your nation are focused on you. It's very admirable.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Thank you and welcome.
I asked this question earlier. Why is it that DFO will not give you a licence?
Mr. Hardy: Right now there is a framework in place with regard to geoduck aquaculture. That framework of course has a lot of restrictions with regard to the growth of the aquaculture industry, unfortunately, and that is one of the barriers that the K'omoks First Nation is trying to knock down right now.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: What are the trends of unemployment in recent years in your region?
Mr. Hardy: The trends of unemployment? I think a lot, just like the rest of Canada over the last five or six years, the trend with regard to unemployment has kind of veered off. I anticipate or am hopeful that we have hit the bottom of that cycle and we are now starting to sweep up.
With regard to the aquaculture activities in around the Baynes Sound, in the core territory the K'omoks First Nation, 50 per cent of their shellfish aquaculture industry takes place right in our backyard. So through the industry over the last five years there was some unemployment but over about the last six months to a year the shellfish aquaculture industry can't keep up with the supply and demand for oysters right now.
So a lot of guys in the industry right now are focusing on trying to grow or expand their operations and we are one of them. Like we are putting more rafts into play or into the water in the next two to three weeks. We have 5 million oyster seed coming to us from Chile and we have got another hatchery in the Comox Valley that is probably going to produce about another 5 million oyster seed for us so we are going to be busy. So the employment trend is on its way up.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: That's good to hear.
Senator McInnis: You state that in 2008 the B.C. government imposed a moratorium on the new North Coast farms on development. If you place a moratorium there has got to be a reason. Could you tell me what the reason might be?
Mr. Jakeway: Well, there was a lot of media attention on concerns about sea lice or lice on fish and it got whipped up into a real lather and the way to settle it down was they placed a moratorium on new development. But all that does is knock the confidence out of investors who would potentially put money into future farms, to know that the government would all of a sudden turn off the opportunities. That's why I say they should have just kept proceeding but figure out the problems in the meantime.
Meanwhile they have had other commissions looking into the problem. There were recommendations out of Cohen commission and others that the fish farm people are in agreement with. In fact I think they are 100 per cent agreement with the results and now they are waiting for the applications to be approved. So there has been a major delay and a long blockage in the business for future development.
Anytime an industry stalls or stops it starts to die. It needs to keep moving ahead and that's why I said the government made a mistake. They should have let the industry keep proceeding ahead while solving the problem.
Senator McInnis: But the moratorium is solely on North Coast farm site development.
Mr. Jakeway: Right. It is on new sites.
Senator McInnis: Are there any new sites elsewhere in British Columbia that have been approved?
Mr. Jakeway: Not right now. They are all waiting for approval.
Senator McInnis: Just a total moratorium right across the board?
Mr. Jakeway: The sites there continued and that was it.
Senator McInnis: All along the B.C. coast?
Mr. Jakeway: As far as I understand, yes.
Senator McInnis: Really? That wasn't pointed out in the visits we had. I am surprised at that. Because sea lice, we know they're there and they are prevalent and they are trying to treat them and so on. The drug company Pfizer is working hard to get a vaccine that will work.
Mr. Jakeway: Right, but in Vancouver particularly in the media, there was one of the radio announcers, that was his favorite of topic. He just kept hammering away at fish farms, fish farms and it worked. The politicians fell for it.
Senator McInnis: And the transfer under the jurisdiction of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the federal government, that made no difference, did you make contact and so on?
Mr. Jakeway: I wasn't involved with it at that stage but I don't know if it made any difference or not.
Senator McInnis: Has anyone been involved since 2008?
Mr. Jakeway: I don't know. I have only been involved as mayor for two years.
Senator McInnis: It's just a surprise that there would be a moratorium carte blanche across the board.
Mr. Jakeway: But you can see why the investors lose confidence when everything just stops. What I would ask if there is a new act, keep it simple, like don't let it get like the Fisheries Act where it is so complex you need to untangle it all the time.
Senator McInnis: Just like the politicians, keep the public servants out of it, is that what you mean?
Mr. Jakeway: Let the people that are involved in the operation, the day-to-day, let them be part of the authoring, keeping it practical and simple. I have to do the same thing in our city. A third of our bylaws we could eliminate, and it wouldn't make any difference, other than improve the town.
Senator McInnis: In the spring of 2012 KFN, Canada and B.C. signed an agreement in principle and now they are in the final negotiations, unfortunately, without DFO again. Were they invited?
Mr. Hardy: Yes, on numerous occasions. Our main table treaty negotiations, if we take a step back even from the signing of the agreement in principle in 2012 and even the aquaculture interim measures agreement, the province and K'omoks First Nation invited DFO to become involved in that process, and they chose not to because of the Cohen commission.
To get back and answer your question with regard to whether DFO was invited to the treaty table, they have been invited numerous times. There has been numerous letters that have gone from K'omoks to DFO saying it is time for you guys to come to the treaty table, especially when we're at stage six, the final negotiations.
Senator McInnis: But normally that's done by, what is the lead department in negotiating with this, Indian Affairs?
Mr. Hardy: It would be Indian Northern Affairs Canada.
Senator McInnis: They wouldn't invite necessarily others in, would they?
Mr. Hardy: Actually DFO, prior to I'd say 2008 used to be involved quite heavily with regard to treaty negotiations.
Senator Raine: In B.C.
Mr. Hardy: In B.C. here. Again going back to their invitations, I know our main table actually held meetings in Vancouver in the hotels across the street from headquarters in DFO in Vancouver to get DFO to the table and the federal treaty negotiator would sit there with his face red and visibly upset that he couldn't get DFO to the table on a given day.
Senator McInnis: Amazing. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hardy: Just to add a little bit more, I think even Sliammon First Nation who signed off on their final agreement still had difficulties with regard to getting DFO to the table.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator McInnis. Senator Raine?
Senator Raine: Yes, thank you. Could you, Mr. Hardy, could you expand a little bit on your plans for the geoduck aquaculture? Would it be done along the same lines as is done in Washington state where they use the plastic pipes, and are you concerned at all with the impact on the environment of any of that material?
Mr. Hardy: Nice question. There are two totally different practices and methodologies when we talk about geoduck being done in Washington state. In Washington state, a lot of their geoduck aquaculture revolves around intertidal sites so when the tide goes out, they go out, they do their activities. When the tide comes in they step off the beach. Our activities would be off-bottom culture so we're operating in about 20 to 40 feet of water below the surface of the water.
The environmental issues, Senator, I know with regard to what the Department of Fisheries has done with regard to research over the last 20 years on geoduck aquaculture, I think a lot of the environmental issues have been addressed.
With regard to diseases that might come into the seeding practices, again through your license conditions the seeds required to come from a certified facility here in B.C., preferably within that particular region. So if we're talking about Baynes Sound there is a hatchery in Baynes Sound that does produce seed and it is federally certified so it would address those issues.
There are some social components with regard to the activities that would be undertaken. Is there predator netting that is going to be used for the first couple years of the geoduck seed? In some instances there will but if we expand the geoduck aquaculture industry and start working on technologies and methodologies a lot of that stuff can be dealt with quite easily. For instance, planting a larger geoduck seed than what's normally practiced today. Different technologies with regard to the seeding practices would address some of those environmental issues with regard to using predator netting, and that type of stuff.
Senator Raine: So the predator netting would be laid on the ground 20 feet below the surface?
Mr. Hardy: Underneath the surface of the water.
Senator Raine: And it is pegged down?
Mr. Hardy: Yes. That is part of the practice that the Under Water Harvesters Association has utilized with regard to their enhancement activities and they have been doing enhancement in aquaculture for about 20 years now. We would be doing similar type practices to what the UHA does right now and they are licensed for.
Senator Raine: So that's regulated in a separate group of regulations?
Mr. Hardy: There would be conditions on your aquaculture licence that would say you could do this, this, this, and this but you can't do this, this, this, and this.
Senator Raine: And the sites that you have already applied for are well suited for geoduck aquaculture?
Mr. Hardy: Correct. So the sites that we have identified and made tenure applications to the province for are areas that have been utilized for a wild fishery for 30-plus years. The methodologies of harvesting the geoduck aren't any different than what they would be from the wild fishery. So it's pretty much the same type of fishery as in that particular area.
Senator Raine: So instead of nature doing it, it's a little bit more intensive because you are planting them in a garden rather than just allowing them to take root wherever?
Mr. Hardy: Correct. A lot of the geoduck beds in and around our area at one time or another, since the wild fisheries started about 30 years ago, had on average of about five to six animals per square metre that were being harvested. I think today those numbers are down quite substantially, like probably about two animals per square metre. So the natural recruitment that used to take place 30, 50, 100 years ago when you had 5 to 6 animals per square metre is no longer there.
Senator Raine: And geoduck don't mature for what, 10 years?
Mr. Hardy: Your growth period for a geoduck to get to a marketable size, one pound animal to 1.5, you are looking at about seven to 10 years depending on mother nature. Again they are just feeding off the nutrients that are in the water.
Senator Raine: And so the geoduck are stationary, they don't move around?
Mr. Hardy: Correct.
Senator Raine: They have their little nest or whatever and they stay there. So they can be defined on a certain patch of land, when you plant the seeds you harvest your geoduck.
Mr. Hardy: Correct.
Senator Raine: And the tenure that you need for that obviously has to be at least 10 years long, because they don't get harvested for 10 years.
Mr. Hardy: Correct. Again, when you start talking about aquaculture you are a farmer now, so you set up your crop rotations. You know you want to be able to establish your markets where you are harvesting X amount of pounds every year.
With regard to the size when we look at the size of the tenure applications that we've made, one of the other things you need to take into consideration is the K'omoks First Nation again is in final negotiations. We are going to be a government, like any other government we need to generate revenues. So some people would have the view that, you know, the size of the farm is quite extensive but again if we are looking at the marine resources within our traditional territory it is not that much.
Senator Raine: So this is all K'omoks First Nation territory here. Will those existing tenures change when you have your treaty?
Mr. Hardy: The answer to your question is no. Again, when you look at those tenures they have been allocated by the province of British Columbia. The aquaculture licences have been allocated by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. And again one of the reasons that we've gone to deep water is that there is not a whole heck of a lot available intertidal wise now. Pretty much all the sites in the Baynes Sound area have been tenured out. So some of the spots that you do see on the map that aren't tenured there is a reason for it. It is rock or it's mud or it's in a contaminated water area designated by Environment Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Senator Raine: Baynes Sound is very intensively farmed right now for shellfish.
Mr. Hardy: Fifty per cent of the shellfish aquaculture industry exists there. You can't really see it that clearly on that map but you will see that there are a lot of archeological sites in and around the Denman Island and Vancouver Island areas. Those archeological sites are shellfish mittens, so prior to European contact there was a massive amount of shellfish. And if we take a step back, the translation of K'omoks is land of plenty, rich plentiful, and it is because we had a huge shellfish resource there that everybody enjoyed. It wasn't just K'omoks who would come down and enjoy that resource.
Senator Raine: You are talking about the geoduck management framework that is in development right now; it is not fixed yet, is it?
Mr. Hardy: A draft was released about three and a half weeks ago and it is out for comment right now. I think the comments are to be completed April 19th. The K'omoks First Nation had issues with the initial draft framework that came out in July of 2013 because it didn't recognize the aquaculture interim measures agreement that had been with K'omoks and B.C. where we had identified with B.C. areas of interest for aquaculture. So we brought that to the attention of DFO. We were hopeful in this new draft framework that came out that those sites would be identified, that the framework would recognize the work that First Nations B.C. and Canada have done in the treaty process and, unfortunately, haven't been.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Besides an invitation, what would it take for DFO to come to the table do you think? I mean, you have invited them obviously but there has to be something else why they are not showing up.
Mr. Hardy: I couldn't answer that question for you. I have no idea why DFO at this stage of where we are in the treaty negotiations wouldn't be sitting at the table taking a pro-active role rather than just kind of sitting back and letting things happen. I have no idea.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Hardy: The invite is there. The door would be open tomorrow for them if they decided they were going to come in and sit down with K'omoks.
The Chair: Senator McInnis, you will have the last word here.
Senator McInnis: Very quick. The word ``gooey'' doesn't conjure up a pleasant thought. It's called geoduck. Why don't you pronounce it geoduck? It is spelled G-E-O-D-U-C-K. Where is the marketing in that?
Mr. Hardy: No disrespect, senator; you are from the East Coast, right?
Senator McInnis: Yes. We pronounce G-E-O geo.
Mr. Hardy: We have different ways of pronouncing tomato/tomato, warsh/wash.
Senator McInnis: I can take that.
Mr. Hardy: So with regard to geoducks, again, that is just how we pronounce it here on the West Coast.
Senator McInnis: I think I would change that one.
Mr. Hardy: There are a couple of different First Nation names for it as well. Don't ask me to pronounce them for you because it would probably take about 10 minutes.
The Chair: Thank you. On that note, coming from Newfoundland and Labrador I would have my own language on that too. I won't go there today.
Senator Raine: I have a supplemental.
The Chair: One quick supplemental. We're running out of time here now.
Senator Raine: Where is the biggest market for geoduck?
Mr. Hardy: Right now the largest market for geoduck would be probably China, Japan and Korea.
Senator Raine: How do they pronounce it?
Mr. Hardy: I don't know. I'd actually have to find out about that one and that would be the route that you would go about marketing it for sure.
The Chair: Thank you. Do you have something to say?
Mr. Jakeway: I have to say wild geoduck harvesting goes all along the Campbell River waterfront. We watch it from our dining room where I am a thousand feet from the beach and we can see it clearly. You know that in January, February there is going to be boats down there processing, divers going in the water vacuuming them up. I have been there since 1976 so it has been going on since 1976 so it is common. It is not just in the Comox area, it is all up and down the coast.
The Chair: Very interesting. Thank you very much for your presentations and certainly adds another perspective We look forward to hearing from you again.
I understand that the witnesses on our next panel all have some opening remarks to make. We would like to keep them as concise as possible so we can get to questions from our senators, who always engage in conversation. I would ask you to introduce yourselves and give your opening remarks.
Ms. Morton, you may take the floor.
Alexandra Morton, as an individual: I'm Alexandra Morton. I'm here as a private individual. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I have been following your work closely. I notice on February 25 you met with DFO and they use the phrase ``sustainable aquaculture'' 10 times in their presentation to you. I think it's important to look at aquaculture as a group of businesses with salmon farming, net-pen salmon farming in the ocean being just one of them. So most of my comments are directed toward that part of that aquaculture, not to deal with shellfish or land-based.
I don't see this Norwegian technology, the net-pen aquaculture as sustainable for a number of reasons. One, is to go farming, the first thing you do is go fishing. And it takes a great many fish which are made into pellets and then put into the ocean and they run through the fish once and then they go to the sea floor. I think that the net-pen salmon farmers might be the only farmers in Canada who never shovel their manure. They feed tonnes per day and so we can estimate that tonnes per day come out.
I have taken a look under the pens and around the pens and while it might disperse away from deep sites, it does settle somewhere. It will settle as soon as the currents slow down.
And I wanted to, in particular, give you my experience. I moved to a small coastal community called Echo Bay in 1984 to study killer whales and I raised two children there. When the salmon farming industry moved in I actually was very welcoming, I offered to talk to mothers, women that wanted to come into the industry. We were off the grid, we had one of the last one-room schools in Canada and it was a fantastic way of life.
Right off the bat in the early 1990s the province of B.C. took away the right for the members of my community to tie to the shoreline. We were denied licences of occupation. When I went to Victoria to get my licence of occupation for my floating home that's what they told me, it was for salmon farming, log storage and moorage for tourism. My community was about 100 years old at that point, grew up as a small floating logging community, and then the industry came and started to put the farms on top of our prime prawn, rock cod, and salmon fishing areas. Very quickly the province set up the coastal resource interest study, asked all of my neighbors, all my fisherman neighbors, where they did not want salmon farms, and then they put them there. And so that set a base for distrust and conflict.
Today there are 27 Norwegian salmon feed lot sites licensed for the area. It is called the Broughton Archipelago. There is eight people left in my town, the school is closed. When you look at the jobs, communities like Campbell River that have the head offices, and the processing plants are very different from the communities that actually have the farms.
The disease on salmon farms, the fundamental problem with them is that they amplify disease. They are a feed lot and we don't allow wild birds to fly into chicken farms now because pathogens get into these types of environments and they change. The rules change for the pathogens, they mutate. There are more of them, and when you place these sites right in the narrow passages of the wild salmon migration routes, that's where you have your problems. Justice Cohen came to the same opinion. It would be like walking your child through the hospital ward on their way to school. It just really doesn't make sense.
Concerning the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and, in particular, a virus called infectious salmon anaemia virus, the Conservative government has a scandal on their hands with this. Six labs have detected sequences of this virus. Most of these are government labs and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency told the World Health Organization for animals that they retested all the samples from British Columbia and that the lab was unreliable. So the lab was stripped of its international accreditation and now on December 5th, 2013, CFIA wrote me and said, in fact, they did not test my samples again.
You face some very stiff legislative issues with this industry. Number 1, under the Constitution of Canada no one is allowed to own a salmon in the ocean. In Morton v. Canada, Justice Hinkson ruled it is the same ocean inside the pen and outside the pen. Dave Bevan of DFO told you on February 25 that section 36 of the Fisheries Act is a very critical impediment to further operation of the aquaculture industry. This has got to be a red flag to you. An industry that needs to use chemicals that are dangerous to fish probably does not belong in the migration routes of wild fish, particularly of Fraser sockeye but there's also a lot more important salmon runs on this coast.
I'm in court currently with the Minister of Fisheries and Marine Harvest because the federal government in the aquaculture licence they are issuing to these companies takes the position that under the federal aquaculture licence, salmon farmers have the power to transfer young salmon from freshwater hatcheries into ocean net-pens that are infected with disease agents, and the final arguments will take place in June of this year.
Regarding food quality, I know this is a contentious issue, but a pediatrician in Norway has gone very public with her concerns about the levels of PCB's and dioxins and I hope that you will maybe perhaps interview her, Dr. Ann-Lise Monsen. There is Jerome Ruzzin, another scientist in Norway. There has been a flurry of Norwegian articles, an embarrassment of the Norwegian government. It really is something that needs to be looked into.
I have engaged in many government processes and they all say the same thing, separate the wild fish from the farm fish. And so very quickly here is my vision for what could be done. In Canada in the Pacific Biological Station just down the street is a lab in which you will find Dr. Kristi Miller, who is pioneering a fantastic technique called genomic profiling whereby she can actually read the immune system of fish. So if we were to look at our fish at 100 kilometre intervals all the way down the Fraser River, all the way up to Prince Rupert, you would know exactly where those fish run into a problem, and we could go in and try to fix that and then go and sample again the next year and see if it worked. I think we could turn on the wild salmon of this coast to extraordinary numbers.
And number 2, the industry has done two good things for British Columbia, one is we have a lot of trained aquaculturists now in British Columbia. Let's put them to work developing some innovative technology, where you take ocean protein and you use it and reuse it and you use it again until it is dust. There is hope that we are going to get 70 million Fraser sockeye back this year and that tells us three things; A, wild salmon can live with us. Those fish swim through the City of Vancouver twice in their lifetime; B, something keeps hitting these fish out of nowhere and nobody know what it is. Personally, I think it is aquaculture disease, these European viruses that I'm tracking. The correlations are high. The research still needs to be done but after $26 million many legal teams, hours and hours of testimony, half a million documents, Justice Bruce Cohen said, ``I therefore conclude that the potential harm posed to the Fraser River sockeye salmon from salmon farms is serious or irreversible.'' He recommends looking at the siting of salmon farms and getting them off the wild salmon migration routes.
The third thing we will know if we get these fish back, Canada is one of the luckiest countries on earth to actually have a fishery that is potentially thriving in this day and age. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Morton.
Dr. Hicks?
Brad Hicks, Executive Vice-President, Taplow Feeds: Thank you for inviting, me. My name is Brad Hicks. I have been involved in this industry for a very long time both in Ontario and New Brunswick, and in Maine, Chile, Florida to name a few places.
Today in my presentation I'm going to talk about the need for an aquaculture act, and if there are some questions about disease I would be happy to deal with those too.
So the title of my talk is ``Waiting for Godot.'' Without a proper governance framework the aquaculture industry in Canada cannot flourish. Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot.
The aquaculture industry in Canada has been waiting endlessly in vain for an aquaculture act which will give the sector a governance framework in which it can operate with a sense of security so it can expand and create wealth and jobs in coastal communities.
Like Alexandra, I too have been following your work and looked at the committee proceedings so far and there was quite a bit of interest and discussion in the February 25 meeting. I would just like to bring to your attention that back in the early 1980's the Department of Fisheries and Oceans realized there was a problem with applying the Fisheries Act to aquaculture. They engaged a Bruce Wildsmith, a law professor from the Dalhousie University and basically after review Mr. Wildsmith pleaded with DFO to begin the process of legislative reform suggesting that an aquaculture act would be appropriate, 30 years ago.
Senator Hubley asked, ``Can you clarify whether the government is going to develop a stand-alone aquaculture act?'' The government response: ``I think the first steps we are asked to take by industry was to resolve section 36,'' which Alexandra alluded to, ``and that is what we are currently doing.'' Mr. Wildsmith asked this to be done 30 years ago.
Senator Stewart Olsen, you asked, ``Do you have a target date for streaming the regulations?'' The government response: ``This is a continuous incremental process.'' Is Godot here yet? Senator Enverga: ``Considering the highly favourable conditions in Canada what are the challenges that we have to overcome?'' The government: ``The regulatory regime is not conducive to ease of use. . . it is fractured and needs to be brought together.'' Has anybody seen Godot? Senator McInnis: ``You are saying the status quo is pretty good.'' Government: ``There is a problem that has to be actively managed and it's not as efficient as it could be for government or industry, but we are doing our best to avoid unnecessary problems caused by the legal patchwork that we deal with.'' I guess Godot has no idea we are waiting for him.
And Senator Enverga again: ``Have we looked at natural agents or organisms to kill sea lice?'' Government: ``That is not our responsibility at least in DFO.'' And government again: ``From the point of view of the department we haven't devoted a lot of research energy into questions because our jobs are more about managing and regulating operations as opposed to helping industry develop its own technology.'' My comment: Contrast this with Agriculture and Agrifood Canada where scientists work to achieve maximum return on investment and the creation of wealth, and also principle 7 of the aquaculture policy framework, the key policy for guiding DFO's actions vis-à-vis aquaculture as the lead federal agency for aquaculture development, DFO will also make strategic investments in aquaculture R&D and technology-transfer innovative aimed at maximizing the economic potential of the aquaculture sector. I am now confused. The lead agency is to help the aquaculture sector prosper but the lead management does not see helping the aquaculture sector thrive as part of their responsibility. Perhaps it is because the Fisheries Act cannot support this policy.
I have three sheets in which I have summarized these thoughts. I have titled them ``a paradigm shift.'' I think you have heard already today that, with all due respect to Judge Hinkson, aquaculture certainly does not operate like a fishery.
So the paradigm shift is from a management of a common property resource where the primary goal is to conserve and protect a limited resource with minimal or no consideration of profitability requiring a lot of government, to shift to the management of a private property production system where the primary goal is profitability and the creation of wealth and expansion of the production system to meet market demand requiring less government.
And just as an example, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans without coast guard has approximately 5,000 employees. The value of fish in Canada is approximately $4 billion. Department of Agriculture has 4,000 employees. The value of agriculture in Canada is $100 billion. So for every employee in agriculture they are 25 times more effective, if you will.
So conclusion, for aquaculture to see in Canada we will need an aquaculture act that will give aquaculturists the same legislative legitimacy that is bestowed upon participants in the ocean fishery complex and property rights similar to those enjoyed by agriculturists. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Hicks. It was a very interesting way of getting your point across. We certainly appreciate that.
Dr. Milligan, please.
Barry Milligan, Director of Production, Veterinarian, Grieg Seafood British Columbia Ltd.: My name is Barry Milligan. I only know fish, no legislature stuff. I am a veterinarian and a director of Grieg Seafood B.C. where I have worked for the last 13 years. I also hold degrees in zoology, marine biology and a doctorate in veterinary medicine, and I also worked at Centre for Food and Animal Research in Ottawa and Ontario Vet College.
Our industry devotes a tremendous amount of effort towards keeping our fish healthy and it starts with vaccination. I'm not sure if you have seen that on your tour or not, but every single one of our fish is hand-vaccinated for diseases common to wild salmon.
The next step, all the eggs which we produce come from parents that are also screened for all the diseases common to wild salmon, so not only do we vaccinate our fish, we make sure they start out as eggs disease-free. In the hatchery where they tend to spend about a year of their life, we also continue to screen them for diseases common to wild salmon and before they go to sea, they actually do need to be screened and approved by the veterinarian, and we can get back to details about that if you have questions.
Once they go to sea — they're vaccinated, screened, the eggs are clean, the smolts are clean, they are assessed at least a daily, sometimes weekly for bacterial, viral and parasites. What that means for a company like ours is I submit over a thousand fish to independent labs for assessment, that's for virus, bacteria, parasites and that is in addition to anything we do in-house or any samples that are taken through Department of Fisheries and Oceans or Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Treatments are very uncommon so less than two per cent of the feed at any time will actually have any medication in it. That tends to be one treatment for bacterial problems in the first few months and one or two sea lice treatments. Keep in mind when you are thinking of our industry, they are really long-lived compared to the other animals we eat. They are about two and a half years from egg to plate. So to get our salmon it takes about two and a half years. You compare that to a chicken which is a about six weeks, and it kind of gives you perspective.
So all the activities I mention about treatments, screening, submissions, that has all been audited and shared with the government for the last 11 years and you won't find another agricultural sector in Canada that has that active ongoing disease surveillance and auditing. It just doesn't exist. So the question is why? I think the reason is that B.C. has a huge number of wild salmon. To me that's important for two reasons, one, wild salmon act as a disease so they actually produce the diseases that infect the fish I looked after and that requires a very active management. And, two, the wild stocks do deserve protection.
So from my point of view my job is to keep our stocks healthy so that they don't get infected in the first place from wild salmon, and if they do there is not a lot of reinfection to other stocks. And keep in mind throughout all this two years while they are at sea survival is typically about 90 per cent. So there is only 10 per cent of the fish over two years will die and disease is a very small component of that. So there is not a lot of disease going on at the sites.
So attention to health is extremely important but for our industry to grow and innovate we need to improve. And from my perspective our small size as an industry makes it difficult, first of all, to attract educated staff to live in our small communities and, two, the fewer companies and service providers in the industry make it hard to stimulate competition and drive innovation. So I have two examples.
The whole of the B.C. industry is actually too small to attract attention from international companies that produce eggs for a living. What that means is that as a country we actually lag behind other countries on selection for growth, carcass traits, disease resistance, a whole host of different variables that other companies and other agricultural sectors select for.
Another one is that the B.C. industry is actually so small it is hard to attract attention from pharmaceutical companies to develop tools that we need to manage health. You know, pharmaceutical companies aren't interested in a market that only sells 15 or 20 million vaccine doses in a year because it doesn't cover the costs of product development so it is really hard to get the tools for us to develop.
Besides growth what else can the government do? I have a few things in mind. One is communication. I think there is a lot of good science that goes on in the government and I have been personally involved in a number of projects here at DFO, research into parasites, sea lice, wild farm interactions, a lot of great stuff, and I think there is a disconnect often between the science that goes on and the policy and, in particular, the communication of that science to the layperson which is ultimately what influences decisions.
Another point is reducing our bureaucracy around development of new biologicals and new health products. So health challenges just like in the human sector or other animal sectors change and it requires a pro-active plan, so developing new vaccines as new challenges arise, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals. A good example of that is in B.C. I have had access to only one licensed product in 13 years for parasite management. If I were dealing with horses, chickens, cows, pigs, dogs, cats, it would be a dozen. Integrated past management for any of those agriculture animals requires a shift in tools from year class to year class to have successful pest management, and we don't have it and haven't had it for 13 years, so we need options to help us manage health and welfare of our stocks.
And the last one is just to continue some of the existing research into wild farm interactions because I think there is a big black box about that particular issue. There is a lot of, you know, ecosystem effects which need explaining if we are going to really look at the effects on wild fish, you know, global warming on acidification, what is happening with plankton populations on this coast which can be both a toxin to a lot of our shellfish and finfish in B.C. and they can also be a food source. And you are looking at major shifts in the percentage of oxygen saturation and environment over the last 15 years. There is a lot of global changes happening which can impact both farmed and wild stocks.
And then also just increased monitoring on sort of stock assessment and moving away from just numbers and species to also including a health component which I think would be really helpful. That's all I have to say. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Milligan.
Our first question will be from our deputy chair, Senator Hubley.
Senator Hubley: Welcome and thank you for joining us today. From your presentation, Dr. Hicks, the average wild salmon harvest before salmon farming was 2001 tonnes per year, the average wild salmon harvest after salmon farming begins is 435 tonnes per year. What was your reason for including that?
Dr. Hicks: That was something that I was going to originally going to present but it just got picked up. I was only given five minutes so I couldn't give everything.
Senator Hubley: I guess the inference that I would take from that and perhaps you might like to comment on it, Ms. Morton, as well is that there is no impact on the wild stock from the production of the farmed stock.
Dr. Hicks: First of all that's Norway.
Senator Hubley: Pardon?
Dr. Hicks: Those numbers are for Norway just so you know. It says so right at the top,
Senator Hubley: Sorry.
Dr. Hicks: Those are Norwegian statistics from the Norwegian government and those are river caught fish. I wouldn't for a minute suggest that salmon farming is responsible for that change. There are a lot of other things that are responsible but I think what it does illustrate is that salmon farming has not diminished Atlantic salmon in Norway. I think it clearly illustrates that.
Now there is a whole bunch of other, you will notice there is two little dips where the wars occurred and those sorts of things.
Senator Hubley: Thank you. So it really doesn't relate to our Canadian scene here?
Dr. Hicks: Except that in the Canadian scene an awful lot of the information you will have come across or certainly used previously is extrapolated from Norway, and Norway is — you heard today the coastlines are quite similar — producing one million tonnes of farmed salmon. We are producing 40,000 tonnes.
For me, one of the important things on this whole issue, a follow-up to Cohen, for example, is that, while people talk about science and sometimes people talk about it quite loosely, if we are going to have an explanation for Cohen, we must not only consider the 2009 crop but also the 2010 crop of sockeye for Fraser River, a year later, which was effectively a century high crop. I believe the 2002 Adams River run was also a century high run. And last year the pink salmon in the Fraser were close to a record run and this year the prediction, as Alexandra has already mentioned, is that the sockeye in the Fraser River will also potentially be very significant, like in the top 10 runs, maybe the best run ever since records.
Often in the rhetoric people will talk about the threat to wild salmon and from where I sit, I have a tough time seeing it because facts speak louder than words. There is a lot of salmon out there. They haven't gone away. The Columbia River this year, massive runs in the Columbia this year. It's way more complicated than salmon farms and no salmon farms. I guess from my perspective, we had a big El Nino here which had a big effect. We had 100,000 tonnes of sardines up on this coast eating the same food the salmon eat. We had mackerel eating juvenile salmon.
It is a very, very complex scene out there, and I think the focus on salmon farms is extremely myopic and, quite frankly, unfair other than we happen to be the new kids on the block so we are what I call ``pick-onable.''
Senator Hubley: With our experience here in the last few days, I have seen some very sophisticated production methods of animals in safe environments that are meeting a market need. They are certainly not being produced just for the fun of it. The product is a fresh product that is just a beautiful fish. Really it is. I think we would like to go away certainly having all of that information but also being aware of the wild salmon stock and having some sense that they can co-habitat and that wild stock will have a market as well as the farm market would have. I'm just wondering, since perhaps you are interested in the wild salmon stock, if you might comment on the co-existence of those two industries. They are both extremely important and I think there are huge opportunities for both of them, and those opportunities, because of different governance reasons, may be slipping and it would be nice to think that our recommendations might have some value in turning that around or bringing more attention to certain issues that we've discovered here on our visit.
Ms. Morton: I appreciate that you see the value in both. There was a paper done by Ford and Myers in 2008 where they examined the condition of wild salmon runs exposed and not exposed to salmon farms, and all the ones exposed to salmon farms were in exceptional decline, and the ones that were not, such as Alaska and Russia, were doing well. So that is one piece of science that was done. It's the only paper that's been done like that.
But let's consider the Fraser sockeye for just a minute. It is quite extraordinary. The decline of the Fraser sockeye that triggered the Cohen commission is 18 years old. It began in the early 1990s and at that time a virus, a disease was running through the salmon farms which DFO studied, and they named it salmon leukemia virus. Virtually all the farms were infected according to them and they were the Chinook farms that were infected.
Dr. Miller of the Pacific biological station, whom I mentioned earlier, who reads the immune systems of fish was tasked in 2005 to figure out why so many of the Fraser sockeye were getting all the way back to the river and then dying. And in her profiling, the immune system of these fish were fighting a virus with a lot of cancer overtones. The only virus that fit that description was the salmon leukemia virus. So she then wanted to, of course, get fish out of the farms, see if that virus was still on the farms but she was not allowed to do that.
In 2010 she tested those fish and none of them have that genomic profile. So I looked back at the stocking of those salmon farms when the 2010 sockeye went out to sea and the Chinook farms with the history of the salmon leukemia virus were absent for the first time since the early 1990's.
There is just one other component. One run of Fraser sockeye called the Harrison sockeye are never found in the Campbell River area. They are always found as juveniles off the west coast of Vancouver Island. So the theory is that they go past Victoria and don't pass the salmon farms. That run of sockeye has been increasing over the same 18-year period as the others were decreasing. These are huge signals, and Dr. Miller has been pulled off of this research, the genomic profiling looking into her mortality-related signature.
So these are very important things. When you look at Norway, it is a big open coast line, the fish come and go straight out into the Atlantic. But when you look at how Southern British Columbia is set up you have Eastern Vancouver Island and up to one-third of all of our wild salmon are passing through these narrow channels where there are salmon farms. Bruce Cohen identified that as a problem area, conflict between salmon farms and wild salmon. It is all about dilution. If you were a football field away from somebody with the flu, you are very unlikely to get it, but if you are in an elevator that is stalled with four people with the flu you probably will get it.
So I continue to track the European viruses but this scientific avenue of research is extremely difficult to pursue. It is one hell of a fight. The lab that I'm working with has suffered enormously. So there are not a lot of scientists picking it up, and I can only hope that Miller's work is continuing at some level.
Senator Hubley: It was something we were interested in and we asked questions and we asked for the scientific evidence of it and we didn't get that.
Ms. Morton: I'm very sorry to hear that because she is a remarkable person and I think this technology is the answer, well, it is the answer to Rob Saunders' problem if he is looking for a scallop that can handle the pH levels that are currently there. If you have a problem with your herring, if you have a problem with your lobster, it is an incredibly powerful technique. I think you are going to hear from Genome B.C. or Genome Canada later today. Really, it is an extraordinary tool that we should be picking up, and we could easily have aquaculture and wild fish. I completely agree with you but open net-pens in the narrowest confines of our wild salmon migration route, every process I have been part of has said don't do that and all of those processes get shelved.
Senator McInnis: Thank you for coming. I don't want to be provocative but I want to ask this question. You said, Alexandra, that fish farmers can transfer diseased fish from on land to the ocean, and I guess my question is how do you know this? Can you expand on it? Are you an individual or are you a group? How do you do that? You also said that the tracking that you're doing and you are doing it, I take it, on your own, and the virus and yet you are proceeding to litigation. You are doing this all on your own, are you?
Ms. Morton: Yes, I am. So to answer your first question, the way I know that they are allowed to transfer these diseased fish, it is right in the aquaculture licence. I, unfortunately, have forgotten the section of the licence but it is a court case that is underway with Ecojustice. If you just Google Ecojustice Morton you will see the whole case laid out there.
And tracking the viruses, it is not that hard to do. I go out into the rivers and take my samples and send them to a lab. I fell in love with this area between Kingcome and Knight Inlet and, like I said, when the industry moved in I thought it was a great idea, but then there were problems and I have just continued to stay on it. I think somewhere in my lineage I may have been crossed with a Jack Russell terrier. I just can't let it go and so I have devoted my whole life to it.
Senator McInnis: I appreciate that but then after you I heard Dr. Milligan who said that there's vaccination, the eggs are investigated for health and so on, at the hatchery they're screened, before they go to the sea they are screened. They are assessed daily at sea for viruses and parasites. I'm listening to this professional make that statement. You have to appreciate that as a standing committee we have to leave here with what we hope are the facts. That is my quandary. When I'm sick, I go to a doctor. Do you understand what I'm saying? So who is right; who is wrong?
Ms. Morton: Well, we're both right. The record will show that he said that the fish are checked for common wild salmon diseases but I'm dealing with the piscine reovirus, the salmon alphavirus, the infectious salmon anaemia virus. These are European viruses and he did not mention those. So we will determine who is right and wrong about ISA virus in British Columbia but I would ask Dr. Milligan if he is sure that Atlantic salmon are not going into the Pacific Ocean infected with the piscine reovirus.
Dr. Milligan: Well, there are a few questions there. To answer your specific question they are in the cell. I understand the regs anyway. For me to put fish to sea there are three conditions, one, they can't have more than 1per cent mortality on four consecutive days in their rearing period. They can't have active clinical disease requiring treatment and there cannot be any reportable or exotic disease present in that stock. So that's what has to be signed off by the company before they go to sea.
As far as researching novel diseases, we do virology screens, we do histology, we do everything that's available to me as a clinician in today's world. I don't necessarily have access to Kristi Miller's, I forget what it is called, but genomic profiling. So I can't really speak to that.
But I do know that we do test also with PCR techniques for ISA, in particular, and I can comment a bit on disease. I think after 13 years of consistently testing our stocks and this is just not me but DFO. They are out on the farms every quarter. They sample 30 farms. They are sampling just the moribund or dead fish and they are testing for virology, histology, all these different things.
When they get into what I call gene hunting or fishing I think you get to a level on which I don't consider myself qualified to comment. I think you would probably be best talking to someone like Kyle Garver or Gary Marty. I'm not sure if they are on your list but they are people who specialize in fish pathology and virology. I think in a lot of cases what I find about some of these new diseases coming on to the controversial field for me as a veterinarian and a doctor I need to see — for a disease to happen there needs to be a host, a pathogen and the environment that allows for clinical disease to show and I consistently do not see that.
The next step to show a clinical disease to me is to actually take that isolate from an animal showing clinical disease, reintroduce it into stocks and cause disease. To me, that is the true test whether or not there is disease in that population. To date that has not been shown.
Senator McInnis: So are you a veterinarian that, for example, that visits a number of farms. Is that what you do as well?
Dr. Milligan: Yes, and I am a real veterinarian by the way.
Senator McInnis: I believe it.
Dr. Milligan: It is a question I'm often asked; you work with fish, are you a real veterinarian? So I look after all the populations that Grieg Seafood owns and some of the contract populations as well.
Senator McInnis: Dr. Hicks, you are with the feed company, Taplow Feeds?
Dr. Hicks: That's correct, yes.
Senator McInnis: So they put a vaccine in the feed?
Dr. Hicks: Not very often. Most of the vaccines are injected.
Senator McInnis: No, no, not the vaccine.
Dr. Hicks: An antibiotic or SLICE.
Senator McInnis: How is SLICE put in?
Dr. Hicks: Actually we don't use SLICE.
Senator McInnis: Someone does.
Dr. Hicks: But we don't. All our farms are Chinook salmon farms and black cod farms and neither Chinook salmon nor black cod require SLICE. I can tell you in general terms but not as a feed manufacturer who does it.
Senator McInnis: When you tell me that would you explain how it is triggered? Does the company call you and say, ``We need some SLICE injected here,'' or whatever?
Dr. Hicks: Actually I will let Barry answer that because he knows those details. As I say, I know the mechanics of doing it but I think you are asking more of a question on what initiates it.
Senator McInnis: Yes.
Dr. Milligan: Every month throughout the year we have to sample three cages on site for sea lice and during the smolt out migration period that goes to twice a month. So the idea is you always have your oldest cage on site which is more likely to have a lice burden, that is your reference pen and then you randomly sample two other pens. When that lice level gets about three motile lice per fish, then we're mandated to manage that either through treatment or harvest, the only two options we have. In our case it depends on the size of the fish. If they are close to harvest, then we would harvest them. If they are not then we would treat them of course. As far as the putting it into the feed, I, as the veterinarian, call up the feed company. I order the product through the pharmaceutical company and they put it into my specifications, so it's put on top of a normal feed with fish oil.
Senator McInnis: It's a prescription.
Dr. Milligan: It's a prescription, yes.
The Chair: Dr. Hicks?
Dr. Hicks: Can I just add one thing. I was a salmon farmer here for a long time, mostly in the early days as it turns out, but for about 13 years. I raised Atlantic salmon and Chinook salmon primarily and in the 13 years I never ever treated for sea lice. Then kind of what happened, at least this is my understanding, is because sea lice became a political issue. Therefore, the triggers that Barry is speaking about are actually political triggers. They are not necessarily health or biological triggers.
My fish sometimes would have more than three lice on them but the fish could care less. Fish live with lice, wild fish live with lice. Pink salmon are sometimes referred to as hairballs when they are completely covered in lice. And that's in the wild.
It's important to understand that lice are normal. This morning there was a little discussion on lice to which I would just like to add one thing. Sea lice in the Pacific, while it's the same species, it is not the same lice as in the Atlantic and it's not nearly as pathogenic and it's virtually non-pathogenic to specific species as far as we know. By pathogenic, I mean it doesn't infest them but it doesn't kill them.
Now, if you have a fish that is sick to begin with, they will often become covered in lice. If you have a cattle beast that is sick to begin with, they will become covered in lice. If you have a child that is sick to begin with, they can be covered in lice. Lice, in biology and in biological activity, tend not to be a primary pathogen. So I think that's important to understand. It's not that they can't be but they tend not to be. Certainly my own experience on the West Coast is that they are non-pathogenic. I believe there is a fellow at the University of Victoria who did a bunch of work on the genomes, since we are talking about genomes here, of the Atlantic lice and the Pacific lice and they are significantly different. So I just sort of add that to the conversation.
The Chair: Ms. Morton?
Ms. Morton: Thank you so much. First of all, regarding the aquaculture licence, Dr. Milligan is correct, they are not supposed to be clinically diseased or have more than the loss of 1 per cent unless the company vet deems it low risk. There is another clause under all of that in which it falls back to the company.
Honestly, I can't believe we are talking sea lice. I have published over 15 scientific papers on sea lice. I've spent 10 years tracking juvenile salmon.
The basic biology works like this. Sea lice are a crustacean. They don't kill adult salmon because they are covered in armor of scales. The wild salmon come in, they infect the farmed salmon, I think we would agree on that. But then the wild salmon go in and sea lice die of freshwater as was mentioned earlier today. And so when the juveniles come out they don't experience lice until they run into adult salmon again that are carrying lice. Two of our pacific salmon take a real gamble as babies, the pink and the chum. They leave the rivers right after hatching, they're tiny and they have no scales and when they get to a farm they get a louse or more. They go to the next farm, they get more lice. Lice are extremely easy to study because they change their body shape every few days for the first 30 days.
I have done studies that have looked at over 3,000 juvenile fish. If they have a single louse that grows up on them before they have scales, they die. So I really don't want to spend more time on sea lice but Marine Harvest in Norway just asked Norway not to allow the industry to expand because none of the drugs work on sea lice. You should look that study up.
So fish farmers are in an escalating chemical warfare with this little crustacean and the farmers lose every time. And that is being played out here because we now have tanks of hydrogen peroxide going up our coast. So it is a very, very serious issue and it does kill juvenile wild salmon. So while their fish aren't affected, that's true, but the young wild salmon that are going by these farms are most definitely affected.
Senator Raine: Could you comment a little bit on the difference between the aquaculture industry in British Columbia and how the fish are raised in a very pristine environment versus what's happening in Alaska with their wild fish where they're using hatcheries and then the little salmon go out into the ocean, and I gather the mortality rate is very high.
Dr. Hicks: In the vernacular, we refer to that as ocean ranching where juveniles are placed into the ocean. That's also done here in Canada, especially on this coast — we put out 500 million juveniles a year from government hatcheries. It is government here. And those fish that the government plants are anywhere between a couple of grams, or less than a gram in the case of the pinks and the sockeye, up to several grams in the case of Chinook salmon, and the mortality is very high. I guess the mortality is so high that the community actually discusses the issue in terms of survival, which is somewhere between 3 and 6 per cent or less. So survival is very, very low or, of course, the corollary is that mortality very high.
To back up a little bit, historically in Canada governments took the attitude that, first of all, that would never be a private sector activity because, of course, I try to do it and they wouldn't let me. So they maintain that as a government activity and they've also basically maintained it as a cottage industry, very small hatcheries, lots of different communities.
Alaska, on the other hand, have a system called private non-profit. I have never understood that animal myself but it is private non-profit and they have massive hatcheries that are actually owned by the fishermen. They raise billions of smolts, not millions, billions of smolts and they release them. They found that if they put them in net-pens first and grew them up to what they call a super smolt, a bigger fish, they actually got better returns. Now that system accounts for approximately 25 per cent of Alaska's harvest, and the other 75 per cent is from natural reproduction.
The other countries that are very big in doing that are Russia and Japan. And there was an argument in the Cohen report — it was a subtle argument — that the Alaskans are putting so many fish on to the pasture of the North Pacific that they are taking all the food back to Alaska, and the Canadians put so few in — we have fewer cattle on the plains, right — and that's part of the reason why our fish are not doing so well. The Alaskans are out-competing us because of the huge numbers they put out on the pasture. That was a novel or I guess a paper by a guy named Hardin called, ``The Tragedy of the Commons'' which sort of explains that whole problem. I hope that answers your question.
Senator Raine: So the Canadian salmon are in the same pasture as the Alaskan, Russian and Japanese?
Dr. Hicks: That's correct. We don't have a picture here but just imagine a map of Canada that you saw when you were a kid in school, and if you look at the West Coast, it goes up and out when you get to the Alaska and then the Aleutian Islands. That huge mass of body of water out there is full of fish from all the way from California, all the way through all of Alaska. The Russian fish come in there and the Japanese fish come in there. You would have to talk to a guy like Dick Beamish I guess to understand it completely or better. I don't think that the North Pacific Ocean has been divided into what fish go where, but there is certainly a general understanding that they are all in the same general area and basically have the same food supply.
Senator McInnis: I didn't want to leave without having an understanding of this: Ms. Morton, you have produced a number of papers you say. This gentleman over here is a doctor, and I presume he got a degree and from university. What is your background? What are your credentials in putting together 15 papers? That's not to suggest that you have to have two or three university degrees but what are your credentials so that we will know that.
Ms. Morton: I have a Bachelor of Science. You have to understand the scientific process. I write a paper and it goes out for anonymous reviews, you submit it to a journal. They send it to people. You are not allowed to know who they are, and the journal picks people who they believe are going to argue the point because they don't want to be wrong. So I have published in top scientific journals around the world. Dr. Daniel Pauly, one of the our big fishery scientists at UBC, made the point very clear to me, there is not many scientists in my position who have done the science independently without the benefit of being part of the university or a large company, but if your science is published it is science. If the industry has a problem with the science the place to refute it is in the scientific journal. There is a mechanism for that and there have been attempts, and we have risen to the challenge. I'm often on papers with co- authors.
I published last July on the piscine reovirus, and what we found is that British Columbia has the 2007 Norwegian model of piscine reovirus. I noticed Dr. Milligan did not answer the question, are Atlantic salmon going into the Pacific ocean infected with piscine reovirus, and this does form the basis of my legal challenge. I know quite a bit of background on it.
These are serious issues, and I think that we have to recognize that salmon farming is a feedlot situation, fish are crowded, fed a different diet than natural fish, grown as fast as possible and they need quarantine and they need ownership. They need property rights. But I don't know that the wild migration route of the Pacific Ocean is the place for those things to happen, because at this table you do not have commercial fishermen or wilderness tourism operators. Wilderness tourism in British Columbia is a $1.6 billion industry and commercial fishing is low but that's due to the lack of fish that DFO was supposed to be managing and keeping in good shape. DFO managed the cod, as you know, into commercial extinction, while their scientists were telling them to stop fishing these because they were getting too small.
So back to my science, if they had an argument with the piscine reovirus paper somebody should have refuted it, somebody should have challenged me in the scientific literature, but they did not.
Senator McInnis: Here is the confusion I have. Yesterday we spent about two hours at the Vancouver Island University, and at the table I sat at was an imminently qualified individual in the shellfish industry, for example, and aquaculture in general. In fact, they have a farm, as I said earlier, right offshore there. I got an entirely opposite point of view. You see, so we are here on a fact-finding mission. So you see the confusion. It is a university that has better than 10,000 students. Am I to believe that they are being taught something that is untoward, that is wrong? They are talking fairly positive about the aquaculture industry and they are doing some in-depth research. So I leave here thinking, ``Who am I to believe?'' Do you understand?
Ms. Morton: Oh, I do understand.
Senator McInnis: It is a challenge.
Ms. Morton: Aquaculture is a great idea. Aquaculture has a place in this world. I mean, there is people that farm trout and with the waste of the trout they produce 18,000 heads of organic lettuce and that water goes back to that trout. There is enormous potential. British Columbia could be doing that and exporting the technology and the fish themselves. But when you find viral sequences, six labs find a viral sequence you cannot turn away from that.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency testified at the Cohen commission. Justice Cohen opened the whole commission based on my test results and there we found out that DFO had gotten ISA positive results in a hundred per cent of the Cultus Lake sockeye which are a member of the Fraser sockeye stock. I understand that those results are controversial and that they may not have wanted to accept them, but senior DFO scientist, Dr. Simon Jones, testified that he never went back and looked again. There has been the Cultus Lake recovery plan since 1995.
So when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was on the stand and asked about ISA virus, Dr. Kim Klotins said if infectious salmon anaemia virus is confirmed in Canada which we have not done, or confirmed in British Columbia which we have not done, it would end trade for B.C. farmed salmon because United States does not want ISA virus- contaminated product, but what if it is going over the border. I don't think all these labs they could be wrong.
So I'm continuing the research. I'm not just talking about this. I'm out there doing the research as hard as I can. I'm very lucky that I still have a lab that will work with me but I have also sent samples to Norway. They also get ISA virus positive tests.
But it is like a forensic scientist digs up some bones, he is going to be able to tell if that is a human or not. In Canada, the standard for detecting ISA virus, you can't just find a couple of bones. That human has to get up out of the grave and start walking around and be alive. You have to culture the virus to confirm, which is a clumsy, very slow process. But you do not want to ignore strings of infectious salmon anaemia virus, sequences of it floating around in fish that I'm getting out of supermarkets. You do not want to ignore that because eventually it is going to break out in this coast and it will be on the record that everybody ignored it and Canada's reputation as a trade partner is not going to look very good.
Senator McInnis: I don't dispute anything that you have said and I applaud you for what you do individually. Part of the problem here with the aquaculture industry as to why it has flattened out and the word ``fear'' has been used and I've seen it, not just in the aquaculture industry but in my past life as a public person where we have lost excellent opportunities. I can think of one: a national park was to take place in my own province and because of fear and untruths we lost it, hundreds and hundreds of jobs.
So what I want to be certain of as a senator representing my province and being part of this team is that somehow we uncover the truth and that untruths are not being told and preventing growth and economic development which we all need, and that's my difficulty and that's my challenge. Yes, anyone can write a paper and I applaud you for it and if it's been reviewed and you appeared to have reviewed it, it is one thing. But I'm afraid, from where I come from, I want to listen to the professionals in the system that we have. We have to trust in our system. Justice, the judiciary has to trust in the judiciary and we have to trust in the system we have. Whether it's the CFIA, whoever it is. Unfortunately, there are always rooms for critics but I can tell you sometimes it can be irresponsible, and, as I said, and you have all heard it, a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots tied up and there is a lot of truth in that.
So when I go to a university and I hear a professor and others saying things, I have a tendency to believe them and their work can be injuriously affected by, I'm not going to say negligent but comments that may not be exact or hold all the truth. I will just close with that.
Ms. Morton: My response would be: God help us.
Senator McInnis: Well, you can say that, but you know I have a lot of friends that share your view, a great number of them.
Ms. Morton: But it is not a view, it is biology.
Senator McInnis: Yes, I appreciate it. I know. Anyway, I thank you and God bless you as well.
Senator Raine: I would just like to ask Dr. Milligan and Dr. Hicks, has ISA virus been found in any samples that have been done? I mean, I understand that the sampling is being done all the time by Alaska, Washington and British Columbia and the fish farms. Has ISA virus been found conclusively?
Dr. Milligan: No. The system that I look towards as a veterinarian is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and they are the internationally accepted body that is responsible for reportable and exotic diseases, and I think there was reference to Kim Klotins, who would be involved in that and she is responsible for that. It is a body of veterinarians, they are used to epidemiology, food safety, all those different things and they, in the last couple years, also ramped up their sampling in B.C. They're sampling several thousand fish every year for ISA and several of these new exotic diseases and have come out and said they're definitely, it is free of ISA — I get confused, there are two types. The one type which is a non-clinical type, they need more sampling to definitively say absolutely no, but on the first type they have said that, yes. That's the professional group which I look to for our system.
Senator Raine: Do you have a comment, Dr. Hicks?
Dr. Hicks: I guess I agree. I think the problem always is that when we talk virus different people talk different pieces and viruses are not, people are using the same words but they mean completely different things. So that adds some confusion to the conversation.
When a virus is diagnosed there are some criteria that need to be met and there are other things that are called presumptive diagnoses so you get a signal that it may or may not be a virus, it may be this virus, may be that virus, we don't know, and that sparks further investigation. So this is the bones of the person getting out of the grave story which has some truth to it. But the reality is that when we see the bones we actually don't know what animal it belongs to. We don't know what virus it necessarily belongs to. It has similarities to one or another. So we require an additional investigation and this is an international standard. It is not Canada's standard. Canada doesn't have an isolated standard. It is an international convention, OIE, the Organization International Epizoology, I think is what it is called. But that is the international site, that's the standard that governs trade and a whole bunch of things.
So ISA has never been found and met the criteria for OIE, so de facto it has never been found and that's just the way it is. There are no shortcuts. I mean, we can find fragments of things around when we do what's called PCR testing which is kind of complicated space-age science stuff, because it happened after I went to school so that's what I call it. But the reality is that false positives and presumptive diagnosis are not uncommon and it does happen.
The Kibenge lab is the lab we're talking about in P.E.I. in case anybody is wondering who we are talking about. When he came up with that first preliminary result it could not be confirmed despite a tremendous amount of effort. Now Alexandra might talk about her specific samples but in addition to her samples — I can't remember, I may have them wrong, there's 12 or something initially — but the Governments of British Columbia and the United States I think looked at 13,000 — I might be wrong on that but looked at 13,000 samples — before they declared that it was not here. Those samples went back 12 years, 14 years; anyway they went back at least a decade. So it is a very, very extensive study. So I guess from an OIE perspective, an official perspective it certainly isn't here.
Now the other thing that is extremely important is we have no clinical disease here of ISA. We don't have any fish that are sick with ISA. In medicine that's another piece of the puzzle and it's the same with the piscine reovirus. The reality is there are lots of viruses around that actually don't make you sick; there are lots of bugs around that don't make you sick. Some are your friends, some aren't friendly. It's only the unfriendly ones we're concerned about. But there are lots of viruses and lots of bugs that we find that don't make you sick. And we are going to find the same thing in fish. And Kristi Miller who has been referred to with her new genome platform, she is going to look at an awful huge number of samples, and what she is looking for is she is looking for little pieces of DNA that match another little piece of DNA.
Ms. Morton: RNA.
Dr. Hicks: RNA, sorry, and all the world of molecular biology, we don't know yet who is going to cross with who. So it is very, very preliminary study. And then the other issue is going to be how many of the viruses that are identified are actually pathogenic because not all viruses are pathogenic, not all bacteria are pathogenic; in other words, they do not all cause disease. That is another thing we have to sort through.
But what we do know, and Barry referred to it, is if we, it's called Kochs postulates is actually the scenario we gave you, which is where you isolate — you have a sick animal. First of all, the animal has to be sick or else it is not diseased. The fact that you have a virus in you and if you are not sick you are not diseased, you only have a virus. So it has to cause disease. The agent has to be isolated. It has to be grown in pure culture so, in other words, you know it's specifically that that's causing the problem and not something else, not a carry-on, not a hitchhiker. Then that has to be reintroduced into a susceptible host and cause a disease and it has to be able to be re-isolated. Those are called Coke postulates. And that is the basis that we use to define whether or not an agent can cause disease, not the mere presence or absence of an agent.
Ms. Morton: Just for the record, it is enormously significant that he said pieces of the ISA virus may have been found. That is first admission from the industry ever so I just wanted to nail that. Thank you very much, Brad.
Senator Raine: Did you say that.
Dr. Hicks: No, that's not what I said.
Ms. Morton: Well, let's check the record.
Dr. Hicks: I said that Dr. Kibenge's lab has potentially identified. Now, as I say, that is very complicated because I also say you get false positives. A false positive is simply a false identification and in PCR's it is the number of cycling you run. It has to do with sensitivity. It is going to be a lecture guys. There is something called sensitivity and specificity. Okay. Sensitivity is the ability to find something. Specificity is the ability to say that what you found is actually what you think it is.
As you run PCR's longer and longer in the number of cycles, the sensitivity increases but the specificity decreases. In other words, your chance of finding a false positive increases. And these are log rhythmic numbers so they happen very quickly, okay. So the community that I am part of believes that the results from the Kibenge lab are false positives, okay. If they have anything to do with ISA at all and just, I guess for the record, I think everybody knows as part of the community that Kibenge lost his OIE. He was an OIE lab and he lost that certification or whatever it's called because, it is my understanding, it was found that his methodology wasn't up to snuff and that you could easily get cross- contamination in his laboratory.
So there is a lot to this story other than yes or no. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Hicks.
It has been another interesting panel discussion, and I certainly want to thank you for your coming forward today and sharing your expertise with us.
Our new panel has just arrived. We are absolutely delighted that you have taken the time to join us here this afternoon to share us your expertise and your knowledge of the aquaculture industry.
If you would be so kind as to introduce yourselves, then whoever would like to take the floor for some opening remarks can do so.
Stephen Cross, NSERC Industrial Research Chair for Colleges in Sustainable Aquaculture, North Island College: Dr. Steve Cross. I am from North Island College, University of Victoria in the sea vision group.
Anthony Brooks, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary, Genome British Columbia: Dr. Tony Brooks from Genome British Columbia.
Laura Richards, Regional Director Science, Fisheries and Oceans Canada: Hello, I'm Laura Richards. I am Regional Director of Science for Fisheries and Oceans and I'm based here in Nanaimo at the Pacific biological station.
Andrew Thomson, Area Director South Coast, Fisheries and Oceans Canada: Good afternoon. I'm Andrew Thomson. I'm the area director for Fisheries and Oceans Canada for south coast B.C., which includes Vancouver Island and Sunshine Coast.
The Chair: Thank you. Who wants to be first with their opening remarks?
Mr. Cross: Thank you, senators, for the invitation to appear three times. I'm glad that we rolled it up into one. You would have been listening to me for a whole day, I gather, but I think it comes to the fact that I'm affiliated with three different institutions here and a company as well.
My apologies for the late delivery of some speaking notes and slides that are in written form. I was on the north end of the Vancouver Island today at my farm so I wasn't in a tie. I look very much like that guy on the front page of your coloured brochure. That is me with some kelp in my hand.
I was asked to speak today about research but specifically our sustainable ecological aquaculture system. It is a new approach for growing species here in Canada. We have been researching this for about 10 years now and are transitioning into a commercial facility for growing seafood on the coast.
You can flip through these slides. I have put in a couple of pages on my experience. I have been around the aquaculture industry here on the coast for the past 28 years. I was fortunate, or maybe unfortunate, enough to be the first one to do the environmental impact assessment of salmon aquaculture in Canada in the early 1980's, and since I did the first one I ended up doing the second one and the third one and the fourth one. I have spent a good part of my career studying largely the organic and inorganic waste inputs from net cage aquaculture into the environment, so helping with the science that facilitated our regulatory framework here in Canada.
I have also applied that knowledge in Chile, Scotland, New Zealand, Thailand and Mozambique as well. We do a lot of work. I sit on the International Council for the exploration of the sea, their working group for sustainable aquaculture in the E.U. as well, which I will be attending this week, on Friday.
So lots of interesting things happening worldwide. I put in a few slides here. The one I want to start with nowadays is a picture that says Senate 2014 on the top right but it shows some of the farmers we have been working with in the Africa.
The point I make to my students, being an academic with one foot in the academic arena, here is that food production and a transition from wild fisheries to aquaculture is a global phenomenon now. We need to produce food to match our growing population globally. It is a very critical issue and it's more so in countries like Mozambique, one of the poorest ones in the world, where the production of food in the wake of declining wild fisheries is not so much for jobs, it is for food for eating.
So it's an eye opener to work in a country that wants aquaculture in the worst possible way. We were fortunate enough through a five year CIDA project through the University of Victoria to help develop a sustainable aquaculture master's degree program for one of their universities out of Maputo, and a field station in Kilimani and we are happy to say that by the end of that five-year commitment from Canada there were 16 graduates with master's degrees in sustainable aquaculture. A lot of them now are regulators and government officials trying to promote and educate their populous on aquaculture.
So that's sort of a segue into the fact that Canada is in the unique position in that we are probably the best country in the world, I would say, in terms of developing sustainable aquaculture. We have three wonderful coastlines and more freshwater than anybody else and there was a talk I heard in Ottawa awhile back from a member of the Macdonald Laurier Institute, one of your think tanks in Ottawa, and the gentleman said he wasn't sure why we were focusing economic development on oil and gas when the real critical issue in the future of the planet is going to be food security and we're poised given our aquatic resources and our land-base agriculture industry to become a world food superpower. I use that phrase a lot with students now.
You can tell I'm a passionate person about aquaculture. I think there's a lot to be gained here. There are a lot of criticisms, there are a lot of issues associated with aquaculture, and it's those issues that are not show stoppers but they are actually the basis of which we need a research platform to continually improve how we produce food. The weaknesses and threats, I would say, are the basis for research. The strengths and opportunities that are inherent in our ability to grow aquatic food, our coastlines, etcetera, really point to the fact that we need good training as well, both technical training for our rural coastal communities as well as higher level of education for management of aquatic systems, etcetera.
But the focus of my talk really very briefly is to introduce you to the ecological aquaculture or what we call the ``SEA food system.'' It's using a very old approach, polyculture that was developed in China some 4,000 years ago. Polyculture is just simply growing more than one thing in one body of water.
The scientists in Canada came up with a phrase, integrated multi-trophic aquaculture which really is a phrase that points to the design of an ecological food production system by looking at how animals interact in terms of waste transfer from one feeding level to another.
As a business person as well, I re-coin the phrase to a sustainable ecological aquaculture or SEA, so you can talk SEA farm, SEA food, SEA system. See what I mean. It's that sort of an approach. It is easier for marketing, it's easier for public recognition, and that seems to be one of the biggest issues I see in acceptance of aquaculture as a way we produce food is the social education is how we educate people to understand that food can be farmed in aquatic environments.
So our SEA system basically tries to address the three pillars sustainability, social, environmental, and economic; so we're trying to design ecological systems that meet some of the social challenges, in particular, the concerns and values of coastal First Nations here in British Columbia. We want to make sure that we use species in our ecological design that are traditionally used by coastal First Nations. There's no introduced species. We try to use native variety of shellfish and fish and what have you in the system design.
Economic, of course, we want to be able to ensure that our system design will still make sense in terms of a business model and environmentally, of course, the design of the system, the ecological design is intended to meet some of the environmental issues associated with feeding fish in a cage system.
So it's an ecological design. So our ecological system has three components to it to meet the ecological sustainability or environmental sustainability. It is the integrated multi-trophic aquaculture design, multi-species. We also include integrated energy alternatives so we're trying to reduce our reliance on diesel fuels and fuels in general in remote coastal areas because it's a stumbling block for businesses running in very remote areas and it's, of course, a major concern to the marketplace now with greenhouse gases, etcetera. And, of course, we apply our new Canadian certified organic standards as well which eliminates the use of any sort of chemicals in the system, no antibiotics, no chemical coatings on the net and that sort of thing. So we're trying to really address a number of the issues that people perceive as being a problem with just feeding fish.
We have our first SEA farm located on the northwest side of Vancouver Island where I was early this morning. We are fortunate to have in our possession the first multi-species licence of its kind in Canada. It's a commercial licence that has 11 different species on it and there's a multi-species licence or a listing on one of the pages here.
Sablefish is the fish that we use in our cage system. Sablefish is also known as Alaskan black cod or butter fish. It's a very high-valued fish but it is found locally in our waters. It is a very long-live fish. One of the oldest individual fish found in the Pacific was about 96 years old so you can intuitively suspect that a fishery of those types of fish will see a gradual decline in the population over time, so aquaculture is a nice way to maintain those wild stocks.
It's also an indigenous species and our First Nations neighbors are certainly appreciative of the fact that we are using a local species in our system but it's the only thing that we feed in our multi-species system. We then have a number of shellfish. We have mussels and oysters, native cockles and scallops located in the system as well, green urchins, sea cucumbers, very high value to the Chinese marketplace, and then we have kelps and seaweeds.
The system is really quite simple in principle. You align your cage systems in such a way that you have fish basically upstream, you feed the fish. Any sort of ``settleable'' or organic solids or waste from the fish go right through the fish, settle straight down to the sea floor, we then intercept those wastes with sea cucumbers because in nature sea cucumbers graze the bottom and eat organics naturally, so they serve the function of vacuuming the sea floor for us. They are also high value.
We then have fine particulates that may drift through the cage downstream. We have a series of shellfish, oysters, scallops, cockles, etcetera, that are filter feeders in nature, they filter the water and hopefully remove a lot of those particulates from the water itself.
We also include a couple little green urchins in each cage of shellfish. They keep the nets clean so we don't have to use any sort of anti-fallowing material so they naturally clean stuff for us. And then downstream of the whole system we have kelps and seaweed, just like in your yard they basically take the nitrogen from the fish that are released into the environment and treated as a fertilizer and take it out of the environment. So it really is an ecological environment or a design for a food production system.
We have come up with a number of new infrastructure designs for the cage system. We are working with engineering students at U. Vic. to come up with new cage design, integrated systems for growing multi-species, looking at the economics of the model, etcetera.
Alternative energies are very good as well. Another engineering student of mine did a bunch of studies for three years on the modeling, the use of solar-generated electricity for all winch systems, so rather than having a vessel like a skiff running for a 10-hour day to run hydraulic winches to lift cages up and down, we have now been able to show that we can set up solar panel arrays and run electric winches for 10 hours a day without any problem, with no noise, no use of fuel, etcetera, and we can save up to $100,000 in fuel costs alone per year per farm. So significant savings, significant carbon footprint reduction as well, and of course it is a green and better way of doing it.
So economically we've done the economics on this and I will let you peruse through that. There are a lot of benefits to the system. Product diversification, improved environmental performance, reduced operating risk with multiple species. We have even shown that we have been able to, not reduce the number of employees — there will more employment as a result of this — but the amount of labour needs per unit of production of seafood is reduced by sharing the labour pool across multi-species.
Great market potential for this now that we have organic standards in Canada, this is very much a type of system and a type of approach that will target that eco-ethical consumer if you will. We figure that there's about 2.6 per cent, I think, of North Americans that eat exclusively organic food and now that we have organic seafood on the market this type of approach will certainly be attractive to them.
On the second last page I have included a photograph of what our system looks like under water downstream. This is the shellfish, the scallops that are grown just downstream of our sablefish and that photograph was taken by National Geographic and will be featured in an article coming up in July for the system approach. It is one of six approaches that they're featuring across the world as the future of aquaculture, and they think it is a great line of research and a great effort by Canada. So thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Cross.
Dr. Brooks.
Mr. Brooks: First of all, I would like to thank the committee for inviting us to present here. I will talk a little bit more about research. Genome B.C. is a not-for-profit, independent research funding organization. We obtain most of our funding either from the federal government through Genome Canada or provincial funding directly. But we partner with several hundred different organizations on our projects.
We were founded in 2000 by Dr. Michael Smith. We see ourselves as a catalyst for the life sciences cluster here in B.C. and to date we have funded a cumulative portfolio of over $600 million in 180 different projects. Increasingly in the last five years we have been focusing on sectors of importance to B.C. and included as one of those sectors is fisheries and aquaculture. And as you'll see we've invested quite heavily in that area.
Just as a quick bit of background, we operate on a five-year strategic plan basis. We are currently in our third strategic plan. The first one was $108 million; the second one $300 million and the current one $340 million, and that is the total value of the research that gets done under each plan.
I'm sure you have heard a lot about the B.C. aquaculture sector so I'm not going to go through all of that, but it is very important to B.C. However, I would like to give you a bit of perspective on how aquaculture in B.C. fits into the B.C. economy. Farmed salmon is B.C.'s largest agricultural export, $500 million.
In terms of scientific research assets in B.C. there are six universities and colleges with relevant training programs in aquaculture fisheries and natural resource management, 10 major provincial, federal private research centres, and over 100 researchers in public institutions working across areas from fish habitat to fish health. And we have capability to provide high-through-put genomics sequencing and work on other genomics research and we have several international collaborations.
So we have a lot of capacity in B.C. to do research and to do genomics research in particular.
On the following two slides, slides 6 and 7, we list some of the projects that we have funded starting back in 2001. These range from looking initially at genomics tools for the Atlantic salmon which was followed on with another large project in 2006. And now we have an international collaboration with research funders in Norway and Chile looking at sequencing the Atlantic salmon. The Atlantic salmon genome is a very complicated genome, and as a result it is not something that you can just do in a few months with a few hundred thousand dollars. It costs millions of dollars and is very scientifically challenging. But as a result there will be, we hope fairly soon, a reference genome for all salmonids which will be Atlantic salmon genome, and that will provide the basis for a lot of research for both fisheries and for aquaculture.
I just want to highlight a couple of projects. I mentioned the salmon sequencing projects; we also have had a project which was Genomics Tools for Fisheries Management that we partnered with Fisheries and Oceans in trying to understand the stresses that wild salmon face when they enter the freshwater system and that project developed a genomic signature to understand how the salmon or the fish were being stressed.
We're also currently doing an inventory and assessment to the health risk of microbes in B.C. or, in short, the Salmon Health Initiative which again is looking at the microbes that exist in the wild populations of salmon in B.C. but also looking at some aquaculture salmon, and that hopefully will lead to a greater understanding of the interactions between both aquaculture species and wild salmon.
Just moving along, I want to emphasize the opportunities for genomics research and for research in aquaculture. In the areas of productivity, genomics research could lead to improved feed efficiency and look at alternative feeds for aquaculture species. There's marker assisted selection which is using genomics to understand which fish are providing the traits that are desirable.
There's disease, using genomics to look at disease and reducing the impact of disease in aquaculture. Traceability is another use of genomics where products produced by particular farms will be able to be traced back to farms and so on, and that will be very useful if there were food recalls or if it is a disease or a problem.
Also looking at the use of genomics to eliminate or reduce counterfeit, counterfeiting where you've got people producing high-end products and then there are other people trying to cheat, if you like. We are also looking at the environmental impact of aquaculture which as we have heard is also very important. You can use genomics to look at what the impact is of aquaculture.
So we are currently running several different programs to fund research in all of these areas, and we believe that aquaculture has a big future in B.C., has a big future for Canada and we also believe that research can help in those areas.
So just to sum up, global aquaculture is growing by about 6 per cent to meet a very much growing demand across the world. Sixty million tonnes is produced every year and Canada produces about 200,000 tonnes. We have the second largest coastline in the world, depending on how you measure it.
Aquaculture production in the last 12 years has been fairly stagnant from Canada but we have huge potential, and we believe that research and genomics research, in particular, can facilitate us realizing that potential. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Brooks.
Mr. Thomson: Good afternoon. Thanks very much for the opportunity for myself and my colleague, Dr. Richards, to present today an overview of some of the departmental programs around aquaculture in the region here. Going to slide 2, just in an overview presentation, I will be covering a context of aquaculture in B.C., some of the unique aquaculture management programs we currently have in British Columbia as a result of a court decision as well, and then I will turn it over to my colleague, Dr. Richards, for an overview of some of our science programs.
In terms of the context I'm sure you have heard over today and the last day about the economic value of aquaculture to British Columbia. I want to emphasize that it is approximately a half-billion dollar industry in terms of land value for British Columbia, and it is centered in a number of coastal communities which I'm sure you have heard about. It provides jobs in these rural communities that have been otherwise impacted by other downturns in the economy. It's really a very significant contributor to the jobs and the economy in some of these areas.
The difference is in December, 2010 the department as a result of a court case became the primary regulator through a licensing authority for aquaculture in British Columbia. This is unique — I know you have heard about this from other DFO officials — compared to other regions of Canada.
So in 2010 the department instituted the Pacific aquaculture regulations which replaced what was previously provincial regime, that includes both the licensing regime and regulatory framework for aquaculture. As part of that we also instituted a new program in the Pacific region called the B.C. Aquaculture Regulatory Program, and I was part of the team that developed that new program. We employ approximately 55 new staff in the department, in new positions up and down both Vancouver Island and Vancouver, to take on the regulatory responsibility of aquaculture away from the provincial government as a result of this.
My colleague, Diana Trager, the director of aquaculture would have preferred to have been here in my place but, unfortunately, she is out of the country. I was at the time of this turnover the director of aquaculture and so I have been asked to present today. So that staff that we have hired includes experts in consultation and resource management. They work with the industry as well as with our client groups in other sectors and First Nations to determine siting decisions for aquaculture sites. We have operational staff in terms of fish health, veterinarians, field technicians and such are going out and testing the fish on the farm stock and providing data into our regulatory system. We have environmental staff that go and test the benthic loading on a site, the footprint created by and what is potentially a good or poor siting decision for a farm site. And then we also have enforcement staff, so we have a dedicated unit of fisheries officers that are charged with ensuring compliance and enforcement to the regulations and licence conditions that we impose on the farm industry.
As a result of these regulations and programs it is my belief that British Columbia currently operates under one of the most stringent aquaculture regulation programs in the world. I'm very proud of the fact that I helped to introduce that program. One of the key points that we did when we took on the responsibility is we put an increased emphasis on enforcement but also on transparency. A great deal of data from the aquaculture industry is transmitted as a condition of licence to the department, things such as sea lice counts, number of marine mammals that have had to be controlled, the stocking density on the farm site, and a lot of that data is presented on our website. You can go on the DFO website as a member of the public and you can see exactly what has been reported by way of determining the environmental impact of the farms in British Columbia and to help sort of lift some of the fears, if you will, of the aquaculture industry by being transparent with the data systems.
Our staff, both our fisheries officers and the aquaculture environmental operation staff go out to these sites on a regular basis to audit the information the farm is reporting and ensure again that they are meeting their conditions of licence.
Recently the Government of Canada announced renewal of the sustainable aquaculture program which is a $54 million program over five years to support sustainable development of aquaculture. That includes $6.5 million per year into regulatory science which Dr. Richards about; $2.9 million for regulatory reform and governance. In terms of new regulations for aquaculture, we've got some changes going up to the national level which I know Trevor Swerdfager and David Bevan spoke of when they met with you.
As well, we've got money set aside for public reporting which I have already spoke about. We are hoping with this funding package going forward, we will continue to have an improved regulatory system in British Columbia and across Canada. I'm happy to answer questions the best I can on the regulatory system. Dr. Richards.
Ms. Richards: Thank you. So in terms of the science side, as was just mentioned, we do have and there was funding announced for a program for aquaculture regulatory research which is a major source of research funding for us, but in addition to that program we do have other ways that we conduct research. We also have another program, an aquaculture collaborative research and development program. As well, we conduct collaborative research with other partners, including Genome B.C., universities and we are involved as well in both of the programs you just heard about by the other witnesses here.
The work that we do in terms of the research is really focused on trying to help support management side. We get research questions from our management colleagues and that is how we focus the work.
The priorities that are identified for the next set of the most recently announced piece of the program is on your next slide, on slide 8, and we are interested in doing work on things such as interactions between wild and farmed fish, on cumulative effects of aquaculture, on the broader ecosystem impacts of aquaculture. In addition, we also do other work in support of other regulatory pieces for introductions and transfers, siting considerations as were just mentioned and looking for development of standards and protocols.
And one of the other pieces that will be forthcoming but really hasn't started too much yet is looking at risk assessments. This is going to be a big piece of the work that we do going forward over the next year and looking at the interactions between fish health and potential transfers of pathogens between farms and wild salmon and this has really following on from one of the Cohen recommendations. So I can't really tell you too much about that because that is work that will be conducted over the next year.
But in addition to that — and it is not on your slides but just to follow through — there are some other aspects of the science program as well which also include aquatic animal health and that does feed into and is very much connected with the aquaculture program. We will be happy to answer questions. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you to all of our witnesses. It's a great amount of information. I'm sure we have some questions. I'm going to begin with Senator Hubley, our deputy chair.
Senator Hubley: Thank you for joining us today. We have heard a lot about and from DFO and a couple of the things I would like you to comment on, and they are very positive by the way. The good work that the DFO does certainly on research, sometimes isn't getting the message out. I think the industry has to, because there's a situation within the industry now, but I think you have to be very strong in getting important scientific evidence out to the public, I'm not sure how you do that because we ourselves are in the public eye and we don't know a lot of these things that we're learning on this trip. They really wanted the DFO to be proactive in celebrating, I guess, the positive things they're finding in the research that is taking place in supporting the aquaculture industry. So that was on communications.
We as well heard proposals for an aquaculture act, and I don't know if you wish to comment on that today but you might have a better perspective than we do. Are we ready for an aquaculture act? We spoke with the department heads on this study but before we came on this trip. I think they recognize that the system can be cumbersome. As well, we heard a great deal of evidence to say that it's a great impediment to the viability of the industry going forward from an investor's perspective given the number of departments that had to be satisfied before certain things could be done. And there seemed to be desire for an act that would ``simplify'' which is a word that we have heard today as well, that it can't be something that is hugely complicated. Are we ready for that now?
Mr. Thomson: In terms of the second question on the aquaculture act, I think I can answer that within the department we are charged with continually trying to improve our regulatory regime. We instituted a regime in 2010 and we knew, and acknowledged right up front, that we were going to have to make changes as we learn and adapt as we got new information because we were given a very short time span in order to introduce it. So that is what we have been focusing on internally is trying to improve that regulatory regime.
As to whether or not an aquaculture act would help, I think that is really a decision on the Parliament of Canada. Should an aquaculture act be passed, we will obviously follow through with that. Whether or not it is passed, I think there's still improvements that can be made on the regime and that's what we're working on.
Senator Hubley: Certainly the overwhelming evidence that we have heard is that, yes, it is necessary. How does the industry then get that message to government except through a committee such as ours or perhaps through the information that you would also have from stakeholders.
Mr. Thomson: Well certainly we have heard that message from industry in the past and we have certainly briefed internally on that, but I think the industry is also quite able to avail themselves of committees such as this and also the contacts with MPs and other parliamentarians.
Senator Hubley: I'm not sure that we are going to make it on that. It is obvious the industry has a great future in Canada, and I don't want to belabour the act perspective but certainly all of the presenters that we have heard and talked to seem to say it is key to what they are looking at in regard to their continued success in the industry and its viability. Apparently because of the issues with regulations, it makes it very difficult to satisfy people who would like to invest in the industry we already have or who are waiting to invest, to hold on to that if the system is not sort of pro- aquaculture in how it delivers its program.
Ms. Richards: Perhaps I could come back to your first question. In terms of the communications, I think communications is something which challenges all of us. We have attempted to be fairly pro-active on our website. There is information on each of our research programs on our website, although, I have to admit it is a little bit buried. We also have quite a nice video on multi-trophic aquaculture that shows some of the work and our scientists working in collaboration on that project.
We do encourage our scientists to publish and we have quite, I think, an exceptional record in the primary publication literature. Of course that doesn't get to the public per se but it is there as supporting evidence for the work that we do.
We do also a lot of media interviews every year through different forums so we do try to be as active as we can, but I think we are always interested to be working with our communications folks to try to improve on that.
Senator Hubley: With regard to the new role, the DFO aquaculture management, the regulatory program itself, were you able to combine some of the department responsibilities for aquaculture under this heading?
Mr. Thomson: No, the regulatory role under the B.C. aquaculture regulatory program is confined to DFO or Fisheries and Oceans Canada, but we work collaboratively with Transport Canada, Canadian Food Inspection Agency on their aspects of it. Also, I skipped in my presentation the strong link we maintain with the Province of British Columbia. The Province of B.C. maintains the land tenuring authority or the decision over the seabed which has to be issued for an aquaculture site.
In the development of the new program we also developed a new memorandum of understanding between ourselves and the Province of British Columbia to lay out the terms and conditions of the new relationship as a result of the court case, so that has been refreshed as a result of the court case as well.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Welcome all of you. I have a couple of questions. My first one is going to seem really probably stupid for Dr. Cross, but I'm trying to figure out your system. I can see the first part of it but then it depends on a series of things and all the ducks being in a row. How do you make sure that each little part is in place, doesn't move anywhere? The ocean is a constantly changing, and I think it is fabulous in that it looks after a lot of the concerns that were raised by some people about pollution and et cetera. But how do you make sure that the kelp is where it is, and are you using other cages or what exactly?
Mr. Cross: Thank you. And that's not a stupid question in the slightest. I was trying to get an hour lecture into several minutes, but really all the animals and plants that we envision in the ecological food production system are actually secured on lines or within containment devices to the system so it's actually one system. It's still open, if you will. You are feeding the fish. It's a mesh cage system so the water flows through it. Downstream of that you have cages of scallops and oysters or whatever. The way they're grown in the other industry sector so the same way the oyster culture industry grows their oysters we are using the same types of cages.
Senator Stewart Olsen: So based on currents?
Mr. Cross: Yes. It is more critical in a multi-species system to ensure that you know where the flows are going and you can actually, as an oceanographer, find a number of sites that are almost unidirectional. The tide goes in and out, of course, in most locations and main channels but if you actually select a site that may be around the corner from a point of land, that point will actually generate a current gyre and then you align your systems such that the currents are just constantly flowing through your cages. The net movement of materials that you want to intercept and capture and convert into other animals are downstream. It is a bit more complex but once it is set in place.
Senator Stewart Olsen: What about storms and tidal surges?
Mr. Cross: No, everything is taken into account the same way a salmon farm would anchor its system. It's all engineered. So it's anchored in place so that you take into account the tidal flows, the extremes that you are anticipating for whatever location that you are anchoring in, so the same safeguards that are in place and regulations that are in place for other types of aquacultures do apply for this.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I have a couple of questions for DFO. I was going to ask about the act, but I will leave that for now. I do have a couple of specific questions that were raised by witnesses earlier and one is on licensing.
You grant licences for shellfish farmers on a yearly basis. Is there a possibility that could be extended because they were saying their growing times, you know you probably have heard all the arguments about the difficulties so is there any review underway to extend those licences?
Mr. Thomson: Yes. We recognize that the growing time for a number of the species that we license exceeds a year and so, you know, there is a logic to having an extended, a multi-year licence. There are some aspects to work out — what would you do in terms of if we had to make up a change, would you collect fees on a one-time basis or could you spread the fee collection out?
So we have been working on some of those factors in trying to come up with a solution that would meet our needs as well, of course, the needs of the industry. So the short answer is, yes, we are working on it.
Senator Stewart Olsen: But I would suggest that they would need that fairly expeditiously because the industry is in stasis right now and it needs some kind of guarantee so that they can move forward. That is just a comment.
There is one other thing that people did bring up and that I thought was maybe worthwhile. You do your inspections on a regular basis. Would it not be possible to issue a certificate of compliance? They felt that might be a help to them in their PR and the social contract that everyone is speaking of.
Mr. Thomson: I'm not an expert on compliance but I will try and answer that. There is a difficulty in that you can say a farm was inspected and found to be in compliance but that really is only valid for the seconds that you are on the farm, and maybe the next day or the next day it could be out of compliance. It would be like saying that because the police found you travelling under the speed limit you are a compliant motorist, but the next minute you could be driving faster than that. So it becomes a bit difficult and have to be careful not to put ourselves in a place which could compromise court actions in the future by saying you are compliant only to find you are not compliant even though you can bring forth a statement of compliance.
I recognize what the advantages would be, and I think that is where third party certification standards come in, in that the third party certification could be a more holistic approach as opposed to the nuts and bolts of regulation. They could use our regulatory tools and the fact that they are inspected or audited on a regular basis as a means of achieving that level of certification which would get them to the same level of consumer acceptance as perhaps a compliance certificate.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I can certainly understand, but perhaps you could work with them to work out some kind of system where you could achieve something to that effect because we can't just say, well, we inspected them and then we're not responsible. We are responsible. You know, we are responsible to inspect and so we should be responsible to issue certificates of compliance or work with them to give them some kind of credibility that shows they are inspected regularly.
Mr. Thomson: I don't want to take away from the point that it would be beneficial to them. Again, it is a bit about the nuance of how you go about this. I think the department by being open and transparent about the rigor of our regulatory program in British Columbia, how often we inspect, how thoroughly we inspect and how generally compliant the industry is, and advertising that fact through our reporting statistics on our website does help the industry, but we do work with industry on a regular basis. We have formal consultant bodies with the industry as we do with other fishing industries and we do work on these issues on a regular basis with them.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I would like to hear something back on that issue if you don't mind, if you would send something to the clerk. That is an important thing that the department should be looking at and it wouldn't be a difficult to phrase it in some way, rather than backing away from our responsibility.
Mr. Thomson: I will certainly note that and pass it on to my colleagues for follow-up.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Thank you.
Senator Raine: Dr. Cross, I would like to know a little bit more about your farm out on the West Coast, is it a pilot project or is it going to be able to stand on its own and earn revenue?
Mr. Cross: Oh, I wish. I'm what you call pre-commercial. I actually did my PhD at the Institute of Aquaculture in Stirling, Scotland, but I did it here on the salmon farms on the coast, and I looked at the seafood safety implications of growing these other species right next to farmed fish, the transfer of antibiotic grasses and all that kind of thing. After my dissertation I actually got regulations changed at the Canadian shellfish sanitation level to allow this integrated thing to happen so I thought, that's great. So I have a little tiny oyster farm on the Northwest Coast, and I applied through DFO and the province for a licence to study multi-species together. Of course there were no forms for that at the time but I made them up, submitted them to government and got this unique commercial licence, and I still hold that licence. We have studied that aspect with the assistance of NSERC and DFO funding.
We have actually spent the last five or six years looking at the design, the selection of species, engineering compliance and that sort of thing, and we are at a point now where we are looking actively for investors and, touch wood, I have a CEO and a CFO coming up with me tomorrow from a company in Vancouver that may be interested in moving this to commercial.
Senator Raine: So it does exist. I can see the pictures.
Mr. Cross: That's all the pictures.
Senator Raine: Have you harvested fish from it?
Mr. Cross: Yes. We have done market tests in Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Tokyo from our fish and the price went up every two weeks for18 months so it was a good sign that what we were doing and the story itself was well accepted.
Senator Raine: So you are harvesting not only the finfish but the mussels?
Mr. Cross: And the scallops.
Senator Raine: And the sea urchins take a little longer to grow, don't they?
Mr. Cross: Yes, and it's mostly research on the urchin side and the sea cucumber side. We have other collaborative projects with DFO Science on the ocean ranching of sea cucumbers because it would be the only component of the system that's not within a container, so it would be on the sea floor doing its thing and that brings up a number of concerns because there could be wild interactions and that sort of thing. So we have to do some science there. It is an evolution of the process but with luck we will see it come to fruition. At the very least, we are going to be using it as an ongoing training and research facility we hope through North Island College and the University of Victoria and VIU.
Senator Raine: I was also curious to know the residual tidal flow, because obviously the tides change so there would be a very limited number of sites where this would actually work?
Mr. Cross: Surprisingly you could pick quite a few sites. Unfortunately the old guy here studied most of the farm sites on the coast. I sited most of the salmon farms them myself so I know where all the flows go, which ones have uni- directional and what are the characteristics to look for and it's not that difficult actually.
The issue being is that we're looking at a design for alternate flow, it is just access to the fish that we need to consider. You need to get a boat on the upside, right, so you can't surround a cage with everything. You can't get at the middle so logistics and nature don't always work together.
Senator Raine: Well, good luck with that because that's absolutely fascinating. I had a couple of other questions about the regulatory aspects. We heard this morning from someone using as an analogy Waiting for Godot with regard to waiting for the aquaculture act. When you think of the Fisheries Act being so old and has been fiddled with so many times, it might be a lot better in a way to take this opportunity to streamline. Obviously a lot of the environmental concerns with regard to oceans in general would still strongly govern what is happening in aquaculture. But it seems to me there is logic for an aquaculture act. I'm a little concerned. I guess there's nobody in DFO that is really working on that.
Mr. Thomson: Well, certainly an aquaculture act has been a subject of discussion and consideration at national levels within aquaculture management policies, so to say it hasn't been worked on, I think would be inaccurate. But the reality is that acts are passed by parliament and we are there to enact the act once it's passed. So we certainly have put in some time and effort into considerations, but in the meantime what we have been doing is trying to improve our regulatory regime through the regulations we currently have.
Senator Raine: I understand that. But suffice it to say that if we were to recommend an aquaculture act you would help the minister take it to parliament.
Mr. Thomson: Officials in the department are always there to help the minister.
The Chair: Very good answer.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: How many employees in DFO are there in aquaculture management?
Mr. Thomson: In the Pacific region which encompasses the West Coast we have approximately 55 staff in aquaculture management. We are a very complex organization. That includes staff that are also in other branches like our conservation and protection branch but that work specifically on aquaculture.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: The reason why I ask is since the aquaculture is on aboriginal territories, do you have any aboriginal people working in your department?
Mr. Thomson: In our department, certainly we have staff members that identify themselves as being from aboriginal descent, yes.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: How hard is it to obtain a licence? What are the criteria?
Mr. Thomson: The criteria vary depending on whether it is finfish in marine environment, saltwater, shellfish or fresh water. We have varying criteria. We have siting criteria as well.
So for a finfish site it goes through a review on the federal side as to whether or not the site itself meets certain siting guidelines, is it so many metres away from a sensitive habitat, is it so many metres away from streams, is it a significant distance away from population bases, those types of things.
As well we institute, again for finfish, a modelling program that the fish farm companies run that models where the deposition from the farm site, the waste from the farm site is going to hit and that again helps us in terms of making our decision as to whether or not you can site a farm site or not.
So the process for a finfish farm site is quite extensive and we are working through a series of improvements in our regulatory process to try and reduce the amount of time for that, but we have to work with the provincial government as to whether or not the site will be leased and we, of course, have to consult with First Nations in whose territory these farms may reside. So there is a significant process to this.
Senator McInnis: Thank you for coming. This is a wonderful panel, just like ice cream.
Genome B.C. sounds absolutely superb in what you do. I have read about it and I thought this is wonderful. In coming from Atlantic Canada I'm jealous. So do we have this in Atlantic Canada, such an organization?
Mr. Brooks: Yes, there is Genome Atlantic.
Senator McInnis: Where is it based?
Mr. Brooks: It is based in Halifax.
Senator McInnis: At Dalhousie or Bedford Institute?
Mr. Brooks: No, it is independent. It has its own offices and so on and so forth so it is a completely separate organization. The original concept was that Genome Canada would be set up essentially to raise money through the federal government and then there would be regional agencies that have a contractual relationship with Genome Canada. So in B.C. it is Genome B.C. and in Atlantic it is Genome Atlantic.
One of the challenges I would say that Genome Atlantic faces, is that it is dealing with more than one province. We deal with one province and we go to the one province and essentially if we convince our province to provide us with funding then the model is working. They have to go to four and what tends to happen then is you get a situation where each province says I will jump in if the others jump in and so they end up not getting provincial, or I wouldn't say not getting any, but they get very, very limited provincial funding.
Senator McInnis: But federal?
Mr. Brooks: They get some federal, yes, but the way the system works is that you kind of match both sides. So if you go to the province say, give us some money, we will match it with money and the federal side will say, you know, we will give you some money if you can match it from the provincial side. So then you start getting in an escalating situation but if one of them doesn't play then it never takes off.
Senator McInnis: How are your projects initiated? I know you have vast experience and so on but how do you do it? Is it the industry that does it?
Mr. Brooks: Typically for our projects we design a program. If we say we want it to be a basic research program, then we will go to the academic institution and they will think of the project and then the project will be assessed by an international panel of researchers. If we design a program where we want to involve end users which is what we are doing more of now, in fact most of our projects involve an end user where we say they have to be either providing some funding or some expertise and they have to be saying that the outcome of this research is something that we would use, we as end users might use. Now that may be industry or it may be a regulatory body like DFO.
We have projects where they say yes, if we do this research we would use this tool that is being developed.
So we don't develop the projects, we design the program to try to encourage the development of projects in a particular area. It is, how shall I say it, it is either basic applied or what we call translational research where there is involvement with end users.
Senator McInnis: Would they in the Halifax group be involved in aquaculture to your knowledge?
Mr. Brooks: Yes. In the past, I believe, Cook Aquaculture has been involved in such a project, and I know that Genome Atlantic has been looking at looking at doing further projects with Cook Aquaculture as the end user who has said, ``Yes, this is research that we would use.'' And they believe that it is research that is worthwhile.
Senator McInnis: But are they doing things such as you alluded to earlier of training employees in rural areas, training for management degrees such as that?
Mr. Brooks: Probably not. We typically fund research projects rather than training programs or, although through our projects we will fund people.
Senator McInnis: That's what I mean.
Mr. Brooks: There may be some education going on and training of individuals within the project but the program isn't designed just to fund training programs.
Senator McInnis: You mentioned directly that the industry has pretty much flatlined and you're doing a great deal of work in various areas that have been controversial, and you rightly pointed out the potential here for the economy of Canada. Where do you see a critical path going? Where do you envisage in a decade and down the line that a number of the growing pains are out of the way, a number of the problems are out of the way and that we can actually grow this industry exponentially. Have you given any thought to that?
Mr. Brooks: Well, I can handle that and Stephen can chime in. As an outsider who is not involved in industry, I am not involved in the regulation, we are sort of outside but we're looking in. I think there is no question that the aquaculture act is important to the aquaculture industry. From the outside aquaculture in many ways is more akin to agriculture and not to fisheries. In fisheries you've got the common area in that you are dealing with fish and you are dealing with similar species or the same species but what you are actually doing in aquaculture is very different. It's much more similar to raising pigs or cows in many ways.
I think regulation is an area that we as a country need to look at. I think regulation has its place, absolutely, but we have to look at ways of making the regulation more efficient.
If you talk to people in the aquaculture industry certainly in the area of Atlantic salmon, they say per thousand employees in Norway they have three regulators. A thousand employees in B.C. they're involved with somewhere between 50 and 60 regulators. That is not sustainable if we want to play in the aquaculture arena.
There was a report put out by DFO on aquaculture in Canada a couple years ago, 2012, and I think within the first few pages it said that in order to get a new finfish site for a farm it involved 17 government departments. I presume that was both federal and provincial. That is again, not an acceptable situation if we want to have a growing, vibrant aquaculture industry. It may be that they are all necessary but we have to figure out a way of doing it much more efficiently, and I think if we can do that then we will grow.
Senator McInnis: And to add to that, of course, and I'm coming to DFO in a minute, you have different protocols in different provinces. You have a patchwork throughout the country, and if this is such an important industry which I believe it is, it strikes me that the only way that it will get the attention that it deserves is to have a standalone act that, in fact, will bring together many of the 70, I am told, departments and agencies that have to be touched to get approval, which brings me to the new act. Because of a decision of the British Columbia Supreme Court, this is now a fishery which is strange in itself, and, therefore, DFO comes into the picture. And here you are, new regulations and I forget $54 million for, I think it was three different things, renewal of regulatory system and so on and 50 new employees for regulation. So that is sole sourced, I take it, for British Columbia but were like dollars also put into the Maritime provinces, the Atlantic provinces and so on. Here is the point and I don't want to beat this to death. Others have done it more eloquently than I'm about to. But legislation, in my experience in public life, emanates for the most part out of the public service. Believe it or not there are times that a politician will get a feeling that this requires new legislation, new law, and as a consequence of that it may happen, but I tell you that will be less than 5 per cent, even less than 1 per cent of the time. It grows from the bureaucracy and thank God it does because that they are more qualified. So that's why we have to talk and speak to people like you because that's where growth comes. In Atlantic Canada I followed the protocol, and it was a bit of a joke. And as a consequence the government relented and now we have a whole new panel going around the province of Nova Scotia to come up with a new protocol and so on. And that of course that will be different than Newfoundland, that will be different than New Brunswick and different than P.E.I. So you see the urgency of having new legislation. I'm sorry to rant.
Mr. Thomson: Well, I will try to respond as best I can. I think in terms of some of the points you raised you asked directly was money put aside for the other regions in DFO for regulation. The short answer is no. The court's decision was limited to the B.C. legislation and so that's where the money was set aside. The program that was developed was for British Columbia and the regulations are specific to British Columbia.
In terms of whether it is impeding growth or not, I think that is best answered by industry. I would be curious to know from industry, and I know I am putting Stephen on the spot here or others that maybe testified earlier, whether they feel they have seen an improvement in the way that the industry is regulated by the provincial government. We were involved previously. It was not that the federal government was not previously involved in the regulation. We provide some approvals around habitat impacts, but by taking on a larger role in the province of British Columbia, I think we have improved the regulatory regime, not just for industry but I think generally for the Canadian public. So I think there has been improvement and perhaps there is other ways to making improvement but I will defer to that.
I will say one other point on the growth of the industry, there are still some limits put in place in British Columbia. We have currently a moratorium in place for new finfish aquaculture sites within Discovery Islands as a result of implementing recommendations from the Cohen decision. There is also a moratorium in place in Northern British Columbia as a result of a B.C. government land tenuring decision. So we have some physical constraints.
But as a result of a decision made by minister and announced this year, we have resumed accepting applications for new finfish sites in British Columbia. We have a number of applications, not just for new sites but for increasing harvest or production levels at existing sites, and those are being worked on currently by our staff in terms of determining whether we can put those forward. I think you will see an increasing productive base in British Columbia as well.
Ms. Richards: If I could just clarify, in terms of the regulatory science the funding is national, and we do look at priorities and try to determine what the science priorities are from a national basis. And in fact we will be working across the country. Our labs on the West Coast may be working in collaboration with our labs on the East Coast and also with universities everywhere in Canada to conduct the research and really ensure we have a balanced view on that.
We will do some processes that are managed nationally. For important issues that touch across the country, we will go through national peer preview processes; if it is regional-based those will be just regional. I do want to emphasize that the funding was for a national funding so we don't at this point know what our regional split will be.
Senator McInnis: We don't know who is involved down there. I will tell you what happens. The province who is charged with the responsibility of approval, if it is approved they blame you. Then they turn around and say, ``Okay, that is how I know you are involved.''
The Chair: Some things never change. Senator Raine, you will have the last word.
Senator Raine: To Ms. Richards, you have a research program for aquaculture regulatory research. Are you researching regulatory changes? Maybe what we need is for you to do some research on a new aquaculture act.
Ms. Richards: Well, we don't do work on the act, per se, but what we do is we hear from our fishery management colleagues and from them we find out what are the questions that they have and what are really the impediments that they have in terms of moving forward? Where do they need advice? Really the role of science within the department is to provide advice and so this is really geared to, you know, first finding out where they need advice and then trying to conduct the research that will answer those questions.
Senator Raine: So your research is done for the bureaucrats in DFO to help them make decisions?
Ms. Richards: Yes, to provide advice that will then help inform the regulatory environment.
Senator Raine: In doing your research do you get input from industry?
Ms. Richards: We will often do work in collaboration with industry. We certainly are often looking for partners and do a lot of networking partnership. The aquaculture research and development program is one where we have to have some input and some real collaboration from the industry before any of those projects will get funded through a national competitive funding envelope.
Senator Raine: You would get input then from other interest groups as well?
Ms. Richards: Certainly, for program we would be working with the industry. That's really what it is designed for, but in other context we will be working with other partners depending on what the question is and depending on what the opportunities are.
Senator Raine: Mr. Thomson, you collect a lot of data from industry. Is there any reason why that couldn't be put onto the website right away? We heard comments it was taking several months and they are interested in having transparency as well. Can you see a reason why it couldn't be immediately uploaded to the DFO websites?
Mr. Thomson: There are a few reasons for it. One is we have a three-month turnaround time for the data packages, if you will, that come in from industry, and this was, in part, due to it being a new program and we wanted to be able to ensure we could deliver on what we had promised, and part as a result of consultation with the industry at the time. This was a new requirement for the industry and one that various aspects of the industry were quite concerned about. They weren't quite sure how this was going to be used. So they were concerned that if we uploaded right away fish health data or other data, it might have an effect on their market and the marketing of their fish product. For example, if we said that farm X had a disease outbreak people might not want to buy fish from that farm X, that type of thing. So that was a concern at the time, but if there is further consultation that's going on with industry where they would like to see some service standards moved up in terms of reporting, I think that is something that could be explored through our consultative practice within the industry.
There is a lot of data that comes in from industry. It does require some level of review before we can simply put it on our website, but I think that's certainly a valid point and if the industry wants to raise it through our consultative processes we can work on it.
Senator Raine: Some of the industry that we heard from said that they would like, when they sent it in, to see it uploaded right away. They want to be as transparent as possible. Maybe that is something you should look at.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Raine.
Once again, I wish to thank our panelists. It has been a very informative session for sure and certainly we are delighted to have you here.
(The committee adjourned.)