Question Period Note: Area-Based Aquaculture Management

• Our government has heard concerns from British Columbia Indigenous communities and other Canadians regarding fish farms and their potential impacts on wild salmon and the environment.
• We are working with Indigenous, provincial, and industry partners in British Columbia to explore the feasibility of adopting a more collaborative and area-based approach to the planning, management, and monitoring of aquaculture activities.
• By adopting an area-based approach, we will ensure that fish farming occurs in a manner that is both environmentally sustainable and socially acceptable to the people living along Canada’s rich and sensitive coastlines.

• Area-based aquaculture management (ABAM) is a new approach to management that aims to ensure that the planning, monitoring, and ongoing management of aquaculture activities occur at geographic scales capable of taking into consideration environmental, social, and economic conditions in which they are either occurring or planned to take place.
• On October 11, 2018, during the launch of the International Year of the Salmon, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and Canadian Coast Guard announced a range of new initiatives to minimize the risks of aquaculture, including the adoption of an “area-based management approach” in collaboration with provincial and Indigenous partners. These initiatives are directed primarily at the British Columbia aquaculture sector, where DFO is the lead regulator, but do have some implications and spillover to the east coast of Canada where the provinces are the primary regulators.
• Key to advancing ABAM will be the establishment of new federal-provincial-Indigenous governance structures. While roles and responsibilities will vary across the country in accordance with existing legal frameworks, it is generally expected that these co-management bodies will serve as communal fora to: improve the collection and sharing of information, including traditional knowledge; identify key research gaps and priorities; identify opportunities and restrictions for industry activity and/or growth; identify monitoring and reporting requirements; increase awareness and communication with local communities; and, identify opportunities for enhanced Indigenous participation in these management activities.
• An ABAM technical working group was established as one of three technical working groups reporting to the Deputy Minister chaired Indigenous and Multi-stakeholder Advisory Body (IMAB) on aquaculture. Informal consultations are currently underway with the Province of British Columbia, Indigenous organizations, the aquaculture industry, and other key stakeholders to discuss and come to initial agreement on the scope and roles that could be played via the adoption of an area-based approach with formal recommendations expected by March 2020.

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