SALMONID ENHANCEMENT 49 



Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the chairman of the 

 enhancement board. Staff and resources are provided 

 under a special Treasury Board allotment, described m 

 Chapter 19. 



This structure and its separation from the line opera- 

 tions of the Department's Pacific region reflects the spe- 

 cial character of the enhancement program: it expends 

 funds from two governments, and must report to both; it 

 is funded by special allocations, which are scrutinized 

 closely by both Treasury Boards; and the program is 

 intended to be cost recoverable. 



Designing the enhancement activities begins with indi- 

 vidual project proposals, which are then grouped into 

 alternative program plans, on the basis of their "enhan- 

 ceability," "manageability" and "desirability." To deter- 

 mine enhanceability, staff biologists and engineers inves- 

 tigate potential projects to establish the adequacy of 

 water supplies, land sites, brood stocks and other physi- 

 cal requirements to determine the project's feasiblity, 

 costs and potential production. 



Concurrently, to determine manageability, each 

 project is examined by one of the Geographic Working 

 Groups comprised of senior federal and provincial biolo- 

 gists, district supervisors and habitat protection officers. 

 These specialists assess proposals in terms of their poten- 

 tial adverse impacts on other stocks, and recommend 

 appropriate modifications. The desirability of projects is 

 assessed largely by evaluating their economic cost 

 effectiveness and their regional impacts. 



Enhancement Targets and Expected Achievements for 

 Phase I 



Consistent with the program's economic and social 

 objectives noted earlier, the following specific targets 

 were established for the first phase: 



i) To increase the average annual production of sal- 

 monids by 50 million pounds, with the composition 

 of this increase expected to be as shown in Table 5-1. 



ii) To achieve an overall ratio of benefits to costs of 

 1.5: 1, with a net contribution to the national income 

 of 325 million in 1980 dollars." 



iii) To provide benefits of 200 million in 1980 dollars in 

 the target area, which is British Columbia excluding 

 the lower mainland and southern Vancouver Island 

 region. 



iv) To provide the equivalent of 64 person-years of con- 

 tinuing employment for Indians. 



v) To generate 458 person-years of new employment in 

 the construction and operation of enhancement 

 facilities. 



These targets were based on the assumption that the 

 federal commitment to the program would be 150 million 

 in 1976 dollars over a five-year period. But in fact the 

 allocations to Phase I will be 150 million in current dol- 

 lars, spread over a seven->ear period. These funds are 

 expected to provide purchasing power equivalent to only 

 78 million in 1976 dollars, or about 52 percent of that 

 originally envisaged. The program's achievements must 

 be assessed in this light. 



By the end of the 1981/82 fiscal year, about $107 mil- 

 lion of the $150 million budgeted by the federal govern- 

 ment for Phase I has been expended (see Table 5-3), and 

 the remainder is expected to be spent over the following 

 two years. In addition, about $4.3 million of the $7.5 

 million in provincial funding was expended by the end of 

 the 1981/82 fiscal year. 



Fish pmduction capacity According to reports of the 

 Salmonid Enhancement Program, at the end of March 

 1982. projects with a capacity to produce 31.2 million 

 pounds of adult fish were already completed or operat- 

 ing. This new capacity is in the form of 15 major and 14 

 minor facilities, 14 community-development projects, 

 about 100 small projects, the varied efforts of some 7,000 

 volunteers, and fertilization of 12 lakes. 



The species composition of the expected production is 

 indicated in Table 5-1. About half the total increa.se is 

 expected to be in sockeye salmon, resulting largely from 

 lake fertilization; a substantial part of the remainder is in 

 chum salmon, reflecting successful adaption of Japanese- 

 style chum hatcheries. 



Table 5-1 Targets and expected production for Phase I 



Source: Unpublished data provided by the Department of Fisheries 

 and Oceans. 



By the end of Phase I, in 1984, the capacity to produce 

 43.4 million pounds of salmon annually is expected to be 

 in place. This is 87 percent of the target for the first 

 phase, and represents varying expectations for individual 

 species as shown in Table 5-1. Given the eroded purchas- 

 ing power of funds to a little more than half that on 



