Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for inviting me today. As a reminder, I have appeared before you previously. I'm the vice-president for salmon with the Pacific Salmon Foundation.

We thank this committee for your study on the state of Pacific salmon and the attention you're bringing to this matter.

I'll start with my three key points.

The first is that the new dollars announced in the federal budget are a great step in the right direction, but an ongoing commitment of both funding and effort to support wild salmon recovery will be required.

Second, wild salmon recovery needs an overarching plan to guide priorities and guide our investments.

Third, the current system and organizational infrastructure is not designed to manage and solve this problem. DFO needs support to reorganize and refocus, and federal, provincial and first nations co-operation is essential to success.

Now I will go into a little more detail on each of these points.

We are pleased to see in the federal budget the funding commitment for preserving wild Pacific salmon. It is imperative that we do everything within our power to support wild salmon recovery. We have the ability to make things better.

The current funding announced in the budget is for the next five years. Again, this is a great step in the right direction, but it will require ongoing sustained investment to help turn things around for our salmon.

We have not seen any detail so far as to how most of the $647 million announced in the budget will be used. We would welcome opportunity to advise and inform decisions around how these dollars will be applied and activated.

There is a need for immediate action, but there is also a need to develop an overarching and coordinated plan that should guide investments and priorities. Recovery of wild salmon is not something that can be fixed quickly, and the temptation to pursue quick fixes should be avoided. The plan should integrate all management functions, those being habitat, harvest and hatcheries, and be supported by appropriate science and assessment. We need to turn as many things as possible more in favour of salmon in order to support recovery and future sustainability.

There is no simple one-size-fits-all approach. Each watershed or region needs a plan for the conditions for that watershed and the salmon that live there. What is needed in the coastal rainforest is not the same as what's needed in the desert-like dry interior, and what's needed in the rural north is not the same as what's needed in urban areas to the south.

Climate change is driving things and it's not going away, so the plan needs to address present and future changes from a warming climate and should focus on forward-looking solutions. The State of Washington has an approach that can be looked to as an example. As B.C.'s neighbours to the south, they face many parallel circumstances.

I would submit that we need to reimagine the management system and equip the public service and other partners and collaborators to better manage for salmon in the present day and future conditions. The current system and infrastructure at DFO is not set up for the current circumstances facing salmon. Simply investing more in a management system that isn't achieving the desired result is unlikely to get a better outcome.

There is a great need and opportunity for increased coordination and collaboration. The federal government and B.C. lack a coordinating framework for salmon-related issues, and underpinning the role of these Crown entities are the rights of Canada's indigenous peoples. There is an opportunity to establish a governance and collaboration model whereby these entities can come together to share responsibility and coordinate for salmon.

We need to keep indigenous public and commercial fishing constituencies engaged and supported as we prioritize recovery. We have their support and engagement now, and we do not want to lose them. This is a major challenge, but it's also a critically important one and one that we can address if we make it a priority.

Independent advice should become integral to the management system. The current advisory processes tend to orient toward user groups and rights holders. These have an important place in the system and should continue, but our recommendation is that we also consider a new non-partisan independent advisory approach focused on salmon recovery and sustainability.

As a final point, I've raised a number of big things that will take some time and effort to address. There are also smaller, simpler things that can be done fairly immediately.

One example would be the salmon conservation stamp. The stamp is currently just over $6, and in recent years, has generated around $1.5 million annually that supports grants to community organizations. Increasing the stamp to just $10 would generate an additional $1 million or more a year that could allow communities to do more to help their salmon and would cost each angler less than a pack of hooks.

In closing, I thank you for the opportunity to appear again today. The Pacific Salmon Foundation's sole mission is to support the ongoing sustainability of our Pacific salmon. We believe that by doing so, we're supporting our communities, our ecosystems and future generations.

Thank you.

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