Chief Richard Harry, Homalco First Nation in Campbell River, B.C., has spent more than a decade developing awareness about fish and seafood from the First Nation point of view through the AAA. ACES was developed to identify First Nation criteria, and Chief Harry says, "We have some assistance to develop ACES pilot programs on the west coast of Canada, including local First Nations and Mainstream Canada."
ACES begins with integration into existing programs and engages various industry and environmental players to create a sustainable fisheries and seafood economy. It includes everything from farm-based components to area-based components, to regional components. Certification under an emerging Aboriginal system would be supported by program monitoring, auditing, and other certification processes, and program compliance incentives are built-in to the ACES framework.
ACES was first introduced in 2006, "The concept we've got is what we're putting legs to." The program reaches all levels of coastal fisheries and covers a wide range that needs to fit with models of sustainable development. "Environmentally speaking the First Nations often have different concerns from place to place." Example: the Haida have large fishery in Dungeness Crabs that exists no other place.
Mainstream Canada (Cermaq) contributed funding to launch a pilot program on monitoring fish farm developments from the Aboriginal perspective, with the intention to make operations compliant with the wider area of interests operating in the coast. ACES will be developing out of these pilot efforts to operate sustainable development in the coastal economy.