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Update: Management Change
In September 2009, the provincial government relinquished control and management of marine fin-fish aquaculture to the federal government as a result of the BC Supreme Court’s Hinkson decision. The federal government has been ordered by the court to take over management of BC marine fin-fish aquaculture by December 2010, with the Province maintaining management until the transfer is complete.
The Province will, by law, retain control over tenures under the Land Act and will retain management of shellfish, land-based contained systems and freshwater aquaculture. All other elements -- including licensing, aquaculture management plans, waste management regulation and fish health -- will fall to the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
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The primary mandate of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (known as DFO) is the conservation, health and sustainable use of ocean resources and wild fish populations. It is DFO’s responsibility to ensure aquaculture does not negatively impact wild fish populations.
At the same time, the Department is also the leading federal advocate for the aquaculture industry, devoting significant taxpayer dollars to both the promotion of fish and shellfish farming, as well as science undertaken in the interests of the industry (e.g.: growth and feed conversion rates, treatment of disease and parasites on farmed fish).
While governments in Europe (with long experience in salmon farming) openly and frankly acknowledge that sea lice breed in open net-cage salmon farms and have negative impacts on wild fish, the government of Canada currently fights to deny, refute and debate the growing global weight of scientific evidence confirming the risks.
While questioning peer-reviewed and published studies by academics and independent scientists, DFO generally does not release their own studies or methodology to interested citizens and scientists, frequently opts not to subject them to external peer-review and seldom publishes, in reputable scientific journals, any information on the issue.
Those few studies that have been published by DFO researchers on the question of sea lice often conclude there are no impacts from the farms. The study design, however, is too often not relevant to the issue in question. For example, DFO studied lice on adult salmon when the acknowledged threat is to tiny juvenile wild salmon.
 Download CAAR's March 2010 Report: "Canadian Net-pen Aquaculture: Fundamentally Unsustainable"
Take Action!
Send a fax to the key decision makers at the federal level: Prime Minister Harper, Oceans & Fisheries Minister Gail Shea, and Oceans & Fisheries Deputy Minister Claire Dansereau – urging them to:
- acknowledge the scientific evidence that links net-cage salmon farms to the decline of wild fish stocks
- ensure DFO fulfills its primary mandate to protect oceans and fisheries
- place a moratorium on any new open net-cage salmon farms in British Columbia
- provide emergency protection for wild salmon through the removal of farms on wild salmon out-migration routes (beginning with the Wild Salmon Narrows in the Northern Georgia Strait) and a moratorium on increases in total production
- allocate significant funds to a Closed System Aquaculture Innovation and Development Fund immediately
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