Ottawa\u2019s fisheries minister Diane Lebouthillier punched the torpedos-away button with her announcement Wednesday that Canada will ban open net-pen salmon aquaculture in BC coastal waters by June 30, 2029.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She hailed it all as \u201ca responsible, realistic, and achievable transition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance ripped it as \u201cirresponsible, unrealistic, unreasonable and unachievable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it cited a report<\/a> that estimated the removal of current BC salmon farms could double the cost of retail salmon in Canada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The industry added in a news release<\/a>: \u201cInstead of embracing a balanced pathway towards economic opportunity, increasing healthy and affordable home-grown food, recognizing an exceptional level of Indigenous collaboration and economic reconciliation and incrementally greater environmental protection, it has embraced a position that reflects unaccountable and extreme activist voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe objective is irresponsible because it threatens 5,000 highly paid and skilled jobs in coastal British Columbia (the youngest agri-food workforce in Canada and 500 of these jobs held by Indigenous people) during a time of economic stagnation. These jobs were considered \u2018essential\u2019 to Canada only a few years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt also threatens the very investment and operations infrastructure built up over 45 years of production that will provide the foundation on which to successfully build and attract new aquaculture technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lebouthillier is renewing, for five years, 66 current salmon-aquaculture licences. But she also announced in Ottawa: \u201cAfter July 1, 2024, only marine or land-based closed-containment systems will be considered for salmon aquaculture licences in coastal British Columbia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lebouthillier said Ottawa \u201crecognizes that such systems are likely to come with increased investment costs.\u201d To support potential investors, she offered nine<\/em>-year licences to successful closed-containment production applicants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But a BC government report <\/a>in 2022 said regulatory uncertainty, high capital cost, and low returns on investment are primary restraints on alternative forms of salmon farming in BC<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody has proposed any plan to build a large-scale new system in BC and big land-based aquaculture systems in Nova Scotia and Florida have to date been big money losers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A Norwegian company that uses closed-containment aquaculture in the ocean proposed in 2023 to introduce the practice to BC, but nothing has been heard of that since. (Its system has solid barriers separating the fish from the surrounding ocean water. It circulates seawater through the closed containers and extracts any waste products.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our aquaculture industry said bluntly on Wednesday: \u201c<\/strong>The (federal) objective is unrealistic because transferring the sector to closed containment by 2029 is logistically impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anticipating Ottawa\u2019s decision, the BC Salmon Farmers Association had said: \u201cThe idea that 70,000 tonnes of BC salmon can be produced on land in five years is unrealistic and ignores the current capabilities of modern salmon farming technology, as it has not been done successfully to scale anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis plan will lead to further increased food prices, heightened food insecurity across North America, and it will be a disaster for rural British Columbia and the First Nations striving to build a future with salmon farms in their traditional territories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Columnist John Ivison of National Post <\/em>had this to say on X (formerly Twitter): \u201cDeath of another resource industry: the decision to force the West Coast salmon fishing industry to take its pens out of the water will kill it. The return on investment does not justify spending the billions needed to build on-land facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he also wrote: \u201cThe reality is that the decision . . . is a death sentence for an industry that employs thousands of people, sustains a number of impoverished First Nations communities and generates more than $1 billion in revenues as British Columbia\u2019s largest agricultural export earner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our own Stewart Muir noted: \u201cBC\u2019s largest agricultural export sector (salmon farming) has been cancelled.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ottawa had already shut down 19 salmon farms in BC waters, in the Discovery Islands and the Broughton Archipelago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lebouthillier did note Wednesday that \u201ca number of First Nations, coastal communities, and others in British Columbia rely on open net-pen salmon aquaculture for their livelihood and prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She then said Ottawa will release a draft aquaculture transition plan by the end of July, that would include measures to \u201csupport First Nations, workers, and communities in this transition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not all First Nations support ocean salmon aquaculture, but 17 nations in B.C have current agreements with salmon-farming companies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dallas Smith, spokesperson for the Coalition for First Nations for Finfish Stewardship in BC, said Wednesday the coalition will continue to fight for salmon aquaculture and the role of First Nations in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere’s 5,000 people who depend on employment from this sector right now,\u201d said Smith, acting chief for the Tlowitsis Nation. \u201cFive hundred of them are directly employed in remote First Nations communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Kitasoo Xai\u2019Xais Nation on the central BC coast \u2014 which began farming and processing salmon in the late 1980s, and sells smoked salmon across Canada \u2014 also protested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a political decision that is not based on science or fact,\u201d said Isaiah Robinson, deputy chief councillor and director of Kitasoo Xai\u2019Xais economic development. \u201cIt is based on the unscientific demands of white, privileged, urban activists who fearmonger with false data to build anti-fish farm narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the federal torpedo hit on Wednesday, observer Emily DeSousa<\/a> wrote of the Kitasoo Xai\u2019Xais aquaculture: \u201cBefore salmon farming, employment rates were dire, hovering at a mere five percent in the 1970s due to the collapse of the commercial salmon fishery in 1969. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe community struggled with social issues, like high suicide rates among young men, which they attributed to complex factors such as unemployment, assimilation, land theft and colonization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cToday, however, employment rates in the nation are 99 percent, something Isaiah Robinson, elected councillor in the Kitasoo Xai\u2019Xais Nation, credits to salmon farming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While renewing current aquaculture licences, Lebouthillier said these licences \u201cwill come with stricter conditions to ensure improved management of sea lice on farmed fish, robust reporting requirements for industry, and additional monitoring of marine mammal interactions. These conditions will strengthen protections for wild species and the marine environment, while ensuring aquaculture facilities can operate safely during this transition period.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Federal fisheries scientists have said that salmon farms actually pose \u201cminimal risk\u201d to wild salmon, but opponents have challenged that finding and insist that sea lice from fish in salmon farms do threaten wild salmon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Kitasoo Xai\u2019Xais are adamant that their farms present no environmental danger, and the nation has a long history of environmental protection. Among other things, it declared in 2022 a Marine Protected Area<\/a> in Kitasu Bay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Douglas Neasloss, Kitasoo Xai\u2019Xais chief councillor and stewardship director: \u201cWhatever we do, we want to make sure it\u2019s sustainable, that there\u2019s still something left for the next generation. That\u2019s really important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the Kitasoo Xai\u2019Xais have visited Scotland, another leader in ocean salmon-farming, and where a study <\/a>of Scottish salmon farms found that they have nothing to do with declining wild salmon stocks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n