As a country whose government is currently promoting Canada’s oil reserves and important mineral deposits in the north, Canada is no stranger to the benefits of investing in its natural resources.
Yet Canada, with its vast stretches of productive coastline, is missing out on an industry where it could become a big player; aquaculture.
Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic animals and plants, and it has grown into an industry worth hundreds of millions in Canada, and many billions worldwide.
In Canada the industry is established in B.C. and the Maritime provinces, and to a smaller extent in Ontario and Quebec. These aquafarms cultivate salmon, trout, shellfish and seaweed, among other species. Many familiar with the industry say the potential for growth is huge.
Yet Canada’s aquaculture industry as a whole has stagnated for the last 13 years, with Canadian production hovering around 150,000 metric tonnes. Meanwhile, global aquaculture production has risen by more than 6 per cent each year from 2001 to 2010, says a report from the Agriculture and Food Organization of the United Nations.

Canada’s aquaculture production in tonnes: a 30-year review

Slipping in the global market

The Conference Board of Canada and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute have issued reports recently calling for a renewed drive to expand aquaculture in Canada, in light of rising world food demand.
“There’s such a huge world demand for seafood, for protein, and Canada’s missing an opportunity to participate in that production,” says Ruth Salmon, president of the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA). CAIA represents aquaculture operators, feed companies and suppliers, as well as provincial aquaculture associations.

Ruth Salmon, executive director of CAIA

Canada’s aquaculture industry has lost market share during its years of stagnation, Salmon says.
“There’s an opportunity to grow, to recapture a sizable portion of that global share,” Salmon says. “And we’re looking to try to work with government to try to allow the industry to grow responsibly again.”
There are several reasons for the prolonged failure of the industry to grow. Salmon believes the most important is inefficient government regulation, at the provincial and the federal level.
“[It’s] slow, it’s complex, it’s uncertain and it’s costly. There’s delayed decision making on access to new sites, delayed decision making on access to new fish health products and new feed ingredients. There’s so many things that put us at a disadvantage, because of our complex regulatory system,” Salmon says.
“We are governed by the Fisheries Act, which was an act that was created decades ago to guide a wild fishery. So it was never intended to guide an innovative food-producing industry like aquaculture.”
Salmon is quick to say that the industry intends to grow responsibly, and isn’t looking for deregulation – just legislation that is more efficient and appropriate to aquaculture.
“We don’t have our own legislation. We’re the only aquaculture producing country in the world without its own legislation.”
An example of possible reforms would be instituting multi-year licenses for farm sites instead of annual ones, Salmon says. Applications for new farm sites also take years to process, she says.
Under those conditions it’s hard to attract investment in the industry, Salmon says.
“Many of my companies, my members are investing in other countries and money is flowing outside of Canada into other countries because it’s easier to do business in other countries than it is in Canada.”

World aquaculture market and producers in tonnes (2011)

Finding the funds

Research is another important industry priority where Canada has fallen behind. Improving current industry techniques and diversifying the range of species currently being cultivated requires an immense amount of scientific research, says Bill Pennell, a professor at the Centre for Shellfish Research at Vancouver Island University.
Unlike salmon farming, which did have periods of growth in the 80’s and 90’s, the shellfish farming industry has remained small. Many shellfish farms are small operations, easily driven under by fluctuations in market value and rising overhead costs. The shellfish industry, and the wider aquaculture industry in Canada, is also lacking in research capacity.
“I’m talking about scientific and tactical research to make the industry more profitable,” Pennell says.
This could take the form of improved hatching and rearing methods for farmed species, increasing the number of fish or shellfish that survive to harvest size.
“The province doesn’t have anyone doing research,” Pennell says, speaking of B.C. “DFO has one scientist assigned to shellfish […] and then I think one or two technicians and that’s it.”
Vancouver Island University has just build new research facilities, Pennell says, but it’s a struggle to find the money to staff them properly.
“A lot of government funding has just dried up,” he says.

The need for social license

One of the key areas of aquaculture production in Canada is off the coastlines of British Columbia, in the Strait of Georgia and around Vancouver Island. British Columbia is by far the biggest producer of the seven provinces that are involved in aquaculture, producing more than half of Canada’s total aquaculture production in 2011, according to Statistics Canada.
Here some of the other obstacles to industry growth become clear. The great bulk of aquafarming in Canada is devoted to the raising of finfish – trout, salmon and cod. In B.C., most farmed salmon are reared to harvest-size inside open-ocean netpens. This has caused considerable concern that farmed salmon could spread disease or parasites among wild salmon populations.

Strong environmental movements have pushed back against industry expansion in B.C.
“They make it difficult for the politicians and the regulators to expand the industry,” Pennell says. “That’s another feature quite peculiar to British Columbia. The Maritimes don’t experience this quite so much.”
The collapse of the sockeye salmon fishery in 2009 exacerbated those concerns, and prompted a multi-year federal inquiry at the cost of $26 million. The final report, The uncertain future of the Fraser River sockeye, found no clear connection between salmon aquafarms and the long decline of the Sockeye fishery.
However, inquiry commissioner Bruce Cohen did state there was a clear risk of potential disease outbreak caused by salmon farms, which industry must take care to address.
Social license is another obstacle that industry has to tackle, Pennell says.
“Other users of the water and land, may not appreciate shellfish farming, for various reasons,” Pennell says. An example of this is Baynes Sound, on the coast of B.C. Its waters are “incredibly productive” and are very intensely farmed by the shellfish industry, Pennell says. It’s also a popular tourist attraction, and upland residents have been asking local government for several years to stop the industry from future expansion.
“People have come to retire there, people have built fancy homes. It’s a great mix of people, of communities. And some of them don’t like shellfish farming,” Pennell says.
“In the long run, if the shellfish industry is to expand and prosper, it’s going to have to have people on its side.”

The need for change in Canadian aquaculture

A challenging regulatory environment, a deficiency in research and a lack of social license have held the aquaculture industry back in Canada.
But for her part, Ruth Salmon thinks that positive legislative change could be on its way, now that third-party organizations like the Conference Board of Canada are stepping in to speak in favour of industry expansion.
“I think it’s only now that a bunch of factors are sort of coming into place. It’s been a long enough time now that we’ve not increased production that it’s now a serious trend, it’s not a blip. So the fact that it’s been over a decade has resonated with politicians.”
“We’ve been encouraged by the dialogue and the interest in moving forward.”