David Suzuki and Neil Young, who will team up in Vancouver for the “Blue Dot” tour (Photo: davidsuzuki.org)
The idea of a right to a healthy environment is getting traction at Canada’s highest political levels. Federal Opposition MP Linda Duncan recently introduced “An Act to Establish a Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights” in Parliament. If it’s passed, our federal government will have a legal duty to protect Canadians’ right to live in a healthy environment.
Blue Dot Tour gains momentum
I’m travelling across Canada with the David Suzuki Foundation’s Blue Dot Tour to encourage people to work for recognition of such a right — locally, regionally and nationally. At the local level, the idea of recognizing citizens’ right to live in a healthy environment is already taking hold. Richmond and Vancouver, B.C., The Pas, Manitoba, and the Montreal borough of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie all recently passed municipal declarations recognizing this basic right.
Our ultimate goal is to have the right to a healthy environment recognized in the Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and a federal environmental bill of rights is a logical precursor. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms itself was preceded by a federal statute, the Bill of Rights, enacted under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservative government in 1960.
Not about left or right…about right or wrong
This isn’t a partisan issue. It appeals to people across the political spectrum and has broad support among Canadians. An earlier attempt to pass a Canadian environmental bill of rights (also led by Linda Duncan) gained the support of MPs from various parties before its passage through Parliament was interrupted by the 2011 federal election.
In France, conservative leader Jacques Chirac championed the idea of environmental rights during his presidency. After more than 70,000 French citizens attended public hearings, the Charter for the Environment was enacted in 2005 with support from all political parties.
Canada has made big constitutional changes before
I’ve seen so many positive changes in our legal systems and social safety net in my 78 years — including adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. My family was incarcerated in the B.C. Interior during the Second World War, just for being of Japanese descent, even though we were born and raised in Canada. Like other people of colour, my parents didn’t have the right to vote until 1948.
First Nations people on reserves couldn’t vote until 1960. And women weren’t even considered “persons” under Canadian law until 1918, when they were given voting rights. Homosexuality was a crime punishable by prison until 1969! I’m convinced that legal recognition for environmental rights will be the next big change.
Progress is possible when enough people recognize its necessity and come together to make it happen. Protecting our country and planet, our health and the future of our children and grandchildren is absolutely necessary. We can’t live and be well without clean air and water, nutritious food and the numerous services that diverse and vibrant natural environments provide.
More than 1,000 drinking water advisories
Even in Canada, where our spectacular nature and abundant water are sources of pride, we can no longer take these necessities for granted. More than 1,000 drinking-water advisories are in effect in Canada at any time, many of them in First Nations communities. More than half of us live in areas where air quality reaches dangerous levels of toxicity.
It’s not about hindering industry; it’s about ensuring that companies operating in Canada, as well as our governments, maintain the highest standards and that human health and well-being are always the priority. Evidence shows strong environmental protection can benefit the economy by spurring innovation and competitiveness and reducing health-care costs. This is about giving all Canadians greater say in the democratic process and looking out for the long-term prosperity of Canada.
Time for Canada to join other nations
More than half the world’s nations already recognize environmental rights. It’s time for Canada to live up to its values and join this growing global movement.
There’s no date yet for a vote on Bill C-634, but its introduction has started a conversation among politicians in Ottawa. Let’s hope people from across the political spectrum will recognize the importance of ensuring that all Canadians have the right to a healthy environment.
Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.
Justin Trudeau argues for Keystone XL at a think tank in Washington, DC (Photo: Chip Somodevllla/Getty)
The Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) has a history of big talk on the environment, but, once in power, failing to deliver. Each climate change action plan has demonstrated this trend, accompanied by boastful press releases on how much money the LPC would be investing in sustainable development. Now, Justin Trudeau is showing every sign of repeating this pattern.
Liberal Party never serious about climate change
Stéphane Dion, as the former minister of the environment, introduced no comprehensive packages of legislation, fiscal measures, programs and policies to make much of a difference in addressing climate change.
As a former Government of Canada employee, I can attest, from a unique insider’s perspective, that various Dion/Liberal climate change action plans were all designed to fail, or lacking in substance to achieve stated GHG targets. Eddie Goldenberg, Chétien’s highest ranked government employee and key adviser, admitted as much in February 2007 when he revealed that the LPC had no idea how it would meet Kyoto objectives when it ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
The result was that carbon emissions spiked as much under Chrétien and Paul Martin’s governments as they have during the Harper regime. Michael Ignatieff got it right when he said to Dion, during one of the Liberal leadership debates, that Dion failed to get the job done.
Justin Trudeau represents a continuation of this LPC legacy, as I will demonstrate. What follows is an insider’s detailed view of LPC failures on climate change – leading up to Trudeau’s positions to-date and the choices Canadians face going into the 2015 election.
Subsidizing fossil fuels and paying the polluter
Prior to the Liberal defeat, Stéphane Dion, as environment minister, introduced yet another climate change action plan, this one with a $1B Climate Fund designed for the government to purchase emission reductions from Canada’s largest emitters, in particular the fossil fuel sectors. In other words, the more one emits, the more government support one could get under the Dion plan, a pay the polluter formula — rather than the polluter pays.
And no rewards were offered for the small and medium size private firms that had already contributed, or would like to contribute, significantly to emission reductions.
Price on carbon, maybe – but it would have to be cheap
Further along the lines of subsidizing the fossil fuel sector, Chrétien made a sweetheart deal with the oil industry to the effect that in the event of a price on carbon, it would be cheap/symbolic. My guess is that Trudeau’s “endorsement” of a price on carbon is the sequel to the Chrétien model.
Ambitious targets, ambitious cheating
In keeping with the LPC greenwash tradition, during the 1999 to 2000 period, a key element of the LPC plan to meet their ambitious GHG objectives was an attempt to get UN/international approval for crediting Canada for its forests – including reforestation efforts – which absorb CO2. The Liberals referred to their forest component of the climate change action plan of the time as “carbon sinks.”
In other words, the LPC wanted to get carbon credits for doing absolutely nothing, by creating a fairly tale to give the impression that they were making progress GHG targets. Fortunately, the UN rejected the carbon sink proposal.
Yet another facet of the LPC subsidizing of the fossil fuel sector was a heavy investment in the carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) experiment in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.
The problem with CCS is that this technology 1) is so prohibitively expensive that no one would adopt CCS in the absence of major government subsidies 2) is very energy intensive consuming up to one third of total energy produced from a given generator facility and 3) offers no assurance that the carbon sequestered in former and empty wells would in fact stay there.
It is worth noting here that, prior to the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) elimination of all sustainable development innovation funds, the CPC continued the LPC tradition with more than one CPC sustainable development fund supporting CCS.
One of the CCS initiatives supported by the Conservatives, is the current Boundary Dam CCS project pertaining to one of the five coal-fired generation stations in Estevan SK, a project which received a $240M CCS subsidy from the Harper administration. For the generating station equipped with the CCS technologies, one third of the 165 MW of energy produced, or 55 MW, is dedicated to powering the CCS system, while only capturing 20% of the generator’s GHGs, falling well short of the objective to capture 90% of GHGs.
Recently, TransAlta abandoned its CCS project in Pioneer, AB after having received $800M in federal funding.
Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE)
The LPC record on the auto sector also reflects its tradition of putting the emphasis on appearances rather than getting the job done.
On this, there is the matter of the auto sector corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) – a given manufacturer’s CAFE performance for a given year is weighted by the individual sales and fuel consumption of each model, aggregated over the total vehicle sales of the manufacturer in the year in question.
During the Pierre-Elliot Trudeau reign, CAFE was approved but wasn’t presented as a law before Parliament. In its place, the elder Trudeau’s Cabinet adopted a voluntary CAFE without a government verification system in place.
Justin continues Liberal Party’s record
Justin Trudeau has chosen to continue in the LPC tradition of appearing to be committed on action on climate change, with doses of window-dressing, while ceding to powerful interests.
To this end, Justin has: 1) defined Canada as a resource export economy; 2) claimed that cap and trade and opposition to Keystone are not based on science; 3) also used the line that opposition is not based on science with regard to the proposed largest volume pipeline, the 1.1M barrel/day TransCanada Energy East pipeline, with it’s Cacouna, Quebec port planned on the St-Lawrence River, precarious for tankers ; 4) blindly supported free trade agreements with China and Europe that would allow foreign enterprises, including state-owned ones, to sue Canada in the event our environmental laws or aboriginal rights impede the maximization of profits from their investments in Canada; and 5) praised former Alberta Premier Redford for boasting of Canada’s environmental record as a sales pitch to convince the US to approve Keystone.
Trudeau firmly in denial camp
Trudeau’s cavalier dismissal of opposition to tar sands exports as not being based on science puts him squarely in the same camp as Harper – the denial camp.
Furthermore, the facts on the ground are affirming that Trudeau’s characterization of Canada as a resource export economy is dated. The fossil fuel party is over. Specifically, it has become evident that non-conventional fossil fuel resources, such as the tar sands, cannot be supported by market prices. Already, Big Oil has pulled out of many non-conventional resource projects around the globe and it is now clear that long-term energy and energy-related investments favour clean energy and clean transportation, and more generally a green economy.
Of particular significance to Canada, the above-mentioned green economy initiatives of China will ultimately lead to greater energy independence, thus once again showing that Trudeau’s FIPA resource export opportunity paradigm is totally out of sync with emerging new realities. Moreover, the gap between Trudeau’s tunnel vision and China’s new paradigm will surely widen as China accelerates its migration to a green economy under their 5 year plan for the 2016-20 period.
Trudeau wrong to pan cap and trade
With respect to Trudeau’s comments against cap and trade, the empirical evidence from the longest standing existing international cap and trade scheme, the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), proves otherwise. That is, the ETS has proven to be critical component of the EU success in meeting Kyoto Protocol objectives. More importantly, the ETS has put nearly all EU nations on track for meeting their respective 2020 targets
Yet Justin referred to Australia’s abolition of a cap and trade system as proof that the cap and trade concept is not supported by science. This, despite the fact that Australia’s Prime Minister Abbott has views similar to those of Harper on environmental matters.
Corporate tax stance misguided
Lastly, though indirectly related to the green economy, another important Trudeau policy position that would have an adverse impact on Canada’s ability to go green is maintaining Canada’s corporate tax rate at 15%, the lowest in the G7. While $630B lies dormant in corporate liquidity, the low corporate tax will limit a Trudeau government’s ability to assure adequate investments of financial resources in Canada’s own migration to a green economy.
Suffice it to say that empirical evidence on the Liberals’ past, together with Justin Trudeau’s policy statements to date, clearly reveal that, for the LPC, environmental issues are primarily about political manipulation, rather than facing environmental challenges.
One cannot be serious about the environment and support the LPC.
As for subsidies for fossil fuels, at a cost of $110/tonne, they are one of the most significant barriers to our migration to a green economy. On this matter, the International Monetary Fund has estimated that in 2011 US dollars, Canadian subsidies associated with fossil fuels – including indirect costs pertaining to climate change and health – amount to $26.4B/year.
In contrast to the Trudeau Liberals, the NDP would raise the ridiculously low federal corporate tax rate of 15%.
To conclude, the only barriers stopping Canada from catching up with our competitors in the global migration to a green economy are Harper and Trudeau.
We should all keep that in mind heading into the election of 2015.
Stephen Harper addressing UN Security Council (Sean Kilpatrick/CP)
The environmental policy of Ottawa will now depend upon what the Tories desire for the next five years.
Why do I say that?
Because their position on Iraq is the correct one and will win them the 2015 election. Canadians simply cannot abandon 100,000 Christians who will be killed if they don’t convert to Islam. They cannot ignore the creation of a new state made up of wild-eyed religious nuts prepared to decapitate those who don’t agree with them.
Proposed intervention gets the usual knee-jerk reaction from the NDP, laced with an overdose of anti-Americanism. The Liberals, under an immature Trudeau, who like the Bourbons has learned nothing and forgotten nothing, vacillates more with the desire to get votes than to do the right thing.
To blame the United States exclusively for the present situation is nonsense. To assess blame, one has to go back to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the disgraceful Sykes-Picot secret agreement between Britain and France in 1916 where Turkish possessions were carved up. Iraq’s problems did not start yesterday.
What does this is mean for our precious environment?
It’s like Steven Leacock once said – the man that fell in love with the dimple made the mistake of marrying the entire girl. We are stuck with the entire Tory policy.
The Tory environment position is, predictably, simple-minded as propagated in my constituency by Tory MP John Weston who carps on about “process”. As long as there is a “scientific inquiry”, whatever the hell that might mean, with a limited ability of the public to speak, this is “process” – all that’s required.
Our publisher, Damien Gillis, and I have had many opportunities to watch “process” at work. It means one or two public hearings where the public can ask questions of the company about the environmental impact of a proposal without the ability to express opinions. It follows that the opinions they do possess mean absolutely nothing and are not taken into account ever.
Look at the National Energy Board – which is to say the government – stonewalling oral questions to Kinder Morgan by the public, to see what Tory “process” is all about. Imagine forbidding cross-examination in a courtroom! If that’s “process”, the Soviet “show trials” of the 1930s were paragons of litigious virtue.
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An obvious question: If we’re not to have real input into these environmental exercises, what are we, the caring public, to do for the next five years when faced with proposed environmental development we wish to question and have meaningful input into?
Google “safe fracking”
The Tory government’s medieval approach is not just confined to the blatherings of Weston, who no doubt reflects their policy accurately, but with nonsense like the recent pronouncement of the Minister of Finance, no less, Joe Oliver, who advised us to Google “safe fracking”, and we would see that there is indeed “safe fracking”! This is the extent of “scientific” examination, apparently, practiced by this government.
Console ourselves with the thought that some industry “scientists” have looked at the matter? Do we feel warm and fuzzy all over that the companies held public meetings to dispense their propaganda and take questions, not on whether or not the undertaking should go ahead, but to give them friendly suggestions?
The government is banking on us to be law-abiding citizens revolted at the thought of civil disobedience.
Tories living in the past
As usual, the Tories are living deep in the past. They have not been paying attention. People who normally wouldn’t cross the road to protest anything are taking to the streets in great numbers. There’s no longer the respect for either government or the legal “process” of which Tories seem so proud.
Once upon a time, people respected what governments said – when large corporations were taken to be honest, bent only on creating jobs and prosperity for the community.
Where is it written that we must, as with the Tar Sands, destroy our environment, bring disease and reduced employment to surrounding peoples and decimate wildlife so that we can sell oil to Asia? If one applied “real world” accounting principles to this undertaking, would it really make sense? Especially if we took into account the cost of environmental degradation and the diminution of the natural beauty of which we are so proud and from which we derive so much pleasure, not to mention tourists?
Don’t expect a straight answer
Because they’ve got away with murder all these years, industry and government, not required to, are unable to tell the truth. They have been fooling of the public for eons and see no reason to end a winning formula.
People are no longer prepared to put up with the tendentious nonsense spouted by Mr. Weston and his government and are demanding proper environmental hearings where their opinions are not only sought but taken into account in the decision-making process – in short, honest “process”.
For the next five years then we’ll likely have to endure a government that believes that “process” denying a real voice to you and me will carry on.
We have, then, a choice – either we sit back and take it or we protest. To protest means that we must consider and where appropriate, practice civil disobedience.
This rubs against the grain for many law-abiding Canadians, but history teaches us that this is the only way you ever get the attention of brain-dead governments and rapacious industry that deny fairness.
It’s not a pleasant choice but I fear it’s the choice we’re going to have to make and in the not-too-distant future.
Watch this video of the flawed public “process” surrounding the proposed Woodfibre LNG plant in Howe Sound:
It is easy to say “about time”, except that same criticism could be applied to several premiers, going back years. I believe this is the first time a BC premier could have made such a visit and that we all had to have a very big wake up call before such a commitment was possible.
Move significant for all British Columbians
There is no question that this signals quite a change in the attitude of the current government. It also, however, signals quite a change for the people of British Columbia.
I can only relate my own experience – which I have done – which was a long, slow epiphany from the attitude I started out with as a boy in British Columbia to what I have now.
They didn’t teach us this stuff in school
I grew up in a very traditional background in the 30s and 40s. I’m not going to relate now what our attitude towards “Indians” was because it would be insulting. Suffice it to say we had no understanding whatsoever of the aboriginal peoples of British Columbia.
This is not surprising when you consider that we learned absolutely nothing about aboriginals when we went to school. That’s not quite true, we learned all sorts about aboriginal peoples in Ontario – the Algonquins, Iroquois, Huron and so on. That’s because we all used Eastern textbooks. As to the Haida, the Shuswap, or Musqueam, we were totally ignorant.
My ignorance carried on until very recent times. My observations tell me, however, that I did very little other than reflect the views of other British Columbias who were, like me, moving – at a glacial pace, perhaps – towards a better understanding of what aboriginal peoples stood for and what they meant to our overall community.
Series of legal victories changed the game
Much of the learning process came with pails of cold water from the court system. Decision after decision taught us what the Constitution of Canada plainly said but we did not believe. Many of us did not like what we originally heard.
In my own case, I can say that the light went on and I realized that it didn’t much matter what any of us might have wished the Constitution said, we had to live with it as it was. As time went on it became pretty clear to me and I’m sure to many others that we ought to be respectful of the Constitution because it was in fact right, where we had been wrong.
We simply took the land
As I thought about it, it was not rocket science. The Europeans had come to British Columbia and simply taken the land that they found, created their own land registry system – and Bob’s your uncle. That this was not satisfactory ought to of occurred to us a long time ago but didn’t. It all seemed so right. We had conquered them, hadn’t we?
In fact we hadn’t, and even if we had, modern international law does not regard conquest as the end of the matter. In any event, the laws we as Europeans had made bound us to adjust our views and recognize native title.
We have reached this point where we must adjust and we must make accommodations. We have no choice but to accept the fact we cannot do as we please with native land or disputed land. And that, in my view, is as it should be. That premier Clark has recognized this and is making moves towards establishing lines of communication is a very good thing.
Mount Polley a game-changer too
There has been another companion change which I have seen in my lifetime and it’s been a very subtle one. Not long ago, Premier Clark, after the Mount Polley disaster, flew over the lake and made the idiotic statement that she would make it pretty again.
Perhaps that wasn’t so idiotic after all because she probably touched a nerve with all of us. Impossible though it may be to change the topography of the area, we all felt the loss of the beauty concurrent with the dam disaster. Perhaps we couldn’t do anything about it and maybe it was silly to pretend we could, but we very much wanted it cleaned up and we were angry about our loss.
People starting to care
For most of my life, industry has been able to move in and tote up the value of the area in terms of timber, minerals, and so on, and the value of the beauty of the area was not part of the equation. We never thought we could quantify a beautiful mountain, lovely lake, or a gorgeous ocean shore. Those things were there, they were ours, but they were not quantifiable in terms of monetary value. As a consequence we simply accepted the fact that they would be impaired or destroyed. We didn’t like it, but we had no choice.
Companies have never understood this nor have the governments that they run. If you were to speak to somebody like the big-mouth easterner, Joe Oliver, minister of finance, who is always flapping on about how BC must accept these desecrations, you would see an indifference to such things as the beautiful mountains, lovely oceans, lakes and so on. That simply does not compute in the minds of people like Oliver, nor the prime minister. These are just not factors to be considered.
Corporations will have to face change
It is much different with the people and changing every day. While Enbridge and Kinder Morgan are stunned at the attitude of people towards their trees and rivers, they and their client governments will have to change. They will have to change because people have changed and insist that those changes they recognized.
People change – perhaps “evolve” is a better word. British Columbians have altered their views on questions of aboriginal peoples and the quantifying of our beautiful surroundings which, just as timber and minerals, have a value. Those changes are new and permanent.
The governments and industry are going to have to adjust to that.
Lead lawyer in Tsilhqot’in Williams Case presents alternate history of BC (from 2008):
To many, the recent decision by the Harper Government to approve the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline – a project it has so emphatically been pushing – is not surprising at all. What was surprising was the relative lack of fanfare in which the announcement was released. As Jennifer Ditchburn noted, there was no MP, let alone the minister responsible, to make the announcement: just a simple press release four paragraphs long entitled “Government of Canada Accepts Recommendation to Impose 209 Conditions on Northern Gateway Proposal”.
In this release, the government highlighted the role of the (emphasized) independent panel in making the recommendation. It noted that this is another step in a long, thorough process. It urged Enbridge now to demonstrate how it will meet the 209 conditions the independent panel put forth, as well as the additional work Enbridge has to do to “fulfill the public commitment it has made to engage with Aboriginal groups and local communities along the route” (ignore for a moment the fact that the “duty to consult” is 1) the Crown’s responsibility, not Enbridge’s; or 2) one would assume extends to Coastal First Nations that are adamantly opposed to the pipeline due to spill potential, and isn’t restricted to First Nations living along the pipeline Right-of-Way). Finally, it stated:
[quote]It [Enbridge] will also have to apply for regulatory permits and authorizations from federal and provincial governments.[/quote]
Enbridge faces big hurdles with First Nations
All of this seems all well and good. Shortly thereafter, the First Nation groups stood up to voice their continued opposition and, to be clear, the “duty to consult” provision will likely be the most difficult hurdle for Enbridge to overcome – especially in light of the Supreme Court’s Tsilhqot’in decision, which closely followed the Enbridge announcement.
What was more intriguing for me was the response from BC Environment Minister Mary Polak. She noted that this was just the first of BC’s five previously stated conditions. She then went on to note that “the Federal government also highlights the fact that there are important permitting decisions that are properly the jurisdiction of the provinces.” Interesting.
Harper couldn’t reject Enbridge
What is interesting is that in no plausible scenario could Stephen Harper reject the Northern Gateway pipeline, given this government’s behaviour in backing the oil industry generally speaking, doing its best to discredit environmental opposition and going so far as to label such opposition “radicals” with an ideological agenda, and criticizing the Obama administration for delaying its decision on Keystone XL.
Once the Joint Review Panel gave its approval – subject to its conditions – the door was wide open. The problem is the political opposition, not only within the “radical” environmental circles, but broadly speaking in British Columbia is increasing. 300 scholars signed a letter arguing that the Joint Review Panel was fundamentally flawed, particularly because it included upstream oil sands development as a benefit, while excluding the environmental and climactic costs associated with such development.
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Numerous polls have come out showing increasing opposition to the project (to be fair, the polls do vary,depending on whether pro-pipeline or anti-pipeline framing is given to the questions – yet even the most pipeline-friendly polling questions show 50% opposition). If Harper rejects the project based on political calculations, it looks bad, particularly to his base in Alberta. If he approves the project, he potentially loses BC in the 2015 election, which doesn’t look bad, it is bad.
The question is whether the Northern Gateway project has become such a political landmine that Harper has essentially written it off (knowing the likely outcome of First Nation challenges in court) and is searching for a way to reject the project, without him rejecting the project.
Where does BC govt stand?
Enter British Columbia. It is at this point that the comments made by BC Environment Minister Polak seem much more significant. Opposition to Northern Gateway is significant. Christy Clark has issued five conditions which must be achieved in order for her to approve the project. One of them – “Ensuring British Columbia receives its fair share” – seems almost impossible, given the structure of federal equalization payments.
In either case, it is a way for Premier Clark to publicly look like she is saying “help me find a way to yes” when she knows, politically, that she’ll have to reject it anyway. If public opinion in BC is truly in opposition to the extent that it seems, and the Federal Government’s press release makes me think that it is, then rejecting the pipeline is a political win for Premier Clark.
In addition, it would take the Northern Gateway off Stephen Harper’s agenda and let him focus his attention on other, less politically volatile pipeline proposals. The emphasis of the provincial role in issuing permits by the federal government, and shortly thereafter re-emphasized by Minister Polak could very well be coincidental. Unless this is exactly what Stephen Harper wants.
Geoff Salomons is a University of Alberta Political Science PhD student studying environmental policy, democratic theory and long-term policy problems.
The statue ‘Ivstitia’ (Justice) guards the entrance of the Supreme Court of Canada (Sean Kilpatrick/CP)
The BC Liberal Government just couldn’t leave well enough alone. In choosing to appeal the Tsilhqot’in First Nation’s BC Supreme Court victory over land title and rights, the government set in motion a chain of events that could have profound consequences for its future resource development plans.
The Tsilhqot’in won a landmark legal victory affirming title and rights over 200,000 hectares of their traditional territory, west of Williams Lake, at the BC Supreme Court in 2007 (with limited rights to an even larger area). The 17-year case was the longest and arguably most important in the provincial court’s history. But at the lowest level of the courts, its ramifications remained unclear – especially as they applied to other territories.
Then, the BC government decided to challenge the ruling – initially winning a small victory in 2012 at the Court of Appeal, which undermined key aspects of the lower court’s decision. But the move would ultimately backfire.
BC government its own worst enemy
Like other seminal aboriginal rights cases such as Haida and Delgamuukw before it, in choosing to appeal the Tsilhqot’in case, the province ultimately made matters much worse for itself by entrenching the substance of the lower-court decision in the highest judicial precedent of the land, when the Supreme Court of Canada handed down its verdict this week. The SCC’s decision maintained the nation’s title and rights to 170,000 square hectares – essentially affirming the BC Supreme Court’s original ruling.
The choice of the Liberal government to roll the dice with the higher courts was likely motivated by two factors: 1) Its fixation on the proposed Prosperity Mine at Fish Lake, in Tsilhqot’in territory; and 2) Concerns over the broader implications for its resource development program throughout province if the BC court decision stood.
By proceeding with the challenge, the government failed spectacularly on both accounts.
The Fish Lake that got away
The province’s unrelenting support for Taseko Mines’ Prosperity project saw it clash with the Harper Government on several occasions. It rubber stamped the mine’s first iteration, only to watch federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice shoot it down after the panel reviewing it identified serious environmental and First Nations issues.
While all this legal wrangling over the mine was going on, the province was appealing the separate-but-related BC Supreme Court decision on the nation’s title and rights.
When the company submitted a new proposal for the mine in 2013, it too was rejected in February of this year. The company, still unwilling to take “no” for an answer, is now seeking a judicial review of the second rejection – but this week’s SCC decision surely must represent the final, final nail in the coffin for Taseko’s ill-fated mine.
What does ruling mean for Enbridge, other projects?
The SCC ruling’s impact on other contentious resource projects, like the proposed Enbridge and Kinder Morgan pipelines, remains to be seen. “Just because the Supreme Court of Canada has issued this claim doesn’t mean that the government is going to start giving all the land back to the aboriginal people,” says Garth Walbridge, a Métis lawyer.
[quote]But it could have a serious economic impact. The size of the boulder that Enbridge is rolling up the hill to get their pipeline built just got much bigger today, because the First Nations in that part of the country now have much much bigger say in whether or not Enbridge can go ahead.[/quote]
In pushing the case to the Supreme Court of Canada – and losing, big time – the BC Liberal government has ensured that these questions will be central to all resource development in the province going forward.
November 2011 injunction case over Prosperity Mine
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard is putting green jobs on the back burner (Photo: facebook)
One thing Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau, BC Premier Christy Clark and new Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard all share in common is the dated notion that economic and sustainable development are competing concepts that need to be reconciled, with great difficulty. And in hard times, the economy must take precedence.
New Quebec government disappoints with green jobs policy
Among its first public statements on the natural resource sectors and environment, the new Quebec Liberal government announced:
A one-year strategic environmental evaluation study (SEE) of the development of fossil fuels in Quebec to be completed in 2015
The continuation of the strategic environmental evaluation (SEE) of the shale oil potential of the pristine Anticosti Island
A new variant of the previous Charest goverment’s Plan nord, a key component of the Liberal an economic development plan calling for the development of mining potential in Quebec’s northern most regions
Approvals for small hydro facilities on rivers all over Quebec.
What has become clear with the above and other pronouncements by the Couillard government to date is that it is preparing the terrain with inadequate or smoke screen environmental analyses to facilitate full-tilt fossil fuel and natural resource development in the province.
China invests $70 billion a year in renewable energy
It will do so without assessing the economic costs and benefits – only paying lip service to the opportunities of the green economy. With regard to the latter point, China is now the world leader in clean energy technologies, having installed 28 GW of new wind and solar capacity in the single year of 2013 while also being a world leader in electric vehicles. Meanwhile, there are currently 3.5M jobs in the EU green sectors.
Accordingly, in a May 30, 2014 press release, the Liberal government stated that while it is favourable to the development of fossil fuels in Quebec, it wanted to assure the population that the environment would be protected and safety would be addressed.
As for the rationalization of its interest in the development of the fossil fuel sectors, the Couillard government argues that while awaiting the shift to a green economy, it’s best that Quebec produce its own fossil fuels, rather than importing them. A rather strange line of reasoning since the prime focus on fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources diverts funds that could otherwise be directed towards to the high-growth and high-job-creation green sectors.
Investing in the green economy would offer better returns on public funds and the logic of Couillard’s yesterday’s economy club could entrench new fossil fuel economic dependencies, thus further impeding the migration to a green economy.
Shale gas and oil moratorium in jeopardy
Quebec currently has a moratorium on shale gas development. But all the signals are that the new Quebec government wants to put an end to this moratorium, under the guise of an environmental report which said that with certain precautions and regulatory tweaking, all will be well. Nothing to worry about.
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Indeed, Couillard and company want us to think that a one-year strategic evaluation study (SEE) on the development of fossil fuels in the entire province will be more exhaustive than: 1) the two-and-a-half-year study on the development of the shale gas in the St-Lawrence River valley; and 2) the findings of the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) (the public consultation office on the environment), which is now reviewing shale gas issues a second time.
Some very substantive, scary, empirical evidence is coming to the fore, but, as with the case of the early reports on the impacts of smoking on human health, the private and government lobbies for shale gas development are implying that the absence of hard, one-to-one cause-effect data means the practice of fracking is safe.
Concerning shale oil, the Quebec Liberals said they will be an investment partner with the private sector to explore the shale oil potential on the of the pristine and huge Anticosti Island. The exploration will proceed this summer, long before the Strategic Environmental Evaluation on the matter is completed in 2015!
As for the much-touted economic benefits of the industry, we only have to look south of the border to see that the shale gas sector in the US is going through a boom to bust cycle, because after one has drilled to get to an easy to access sweet spot in a given well, it’s too expensive to go after the rest. US shale oil is on the same path and a decline in shale oil production may come as early as 2016.
Offshore oil development: Old Harry
The Old Harry potential offshore development area is on the Quebec-Newfoundland border, not very far from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Magdalen Islands), an area for which the economy is largely about fishing and tourism.
Couillard has already indicated he will sign an agreement with Harper for the development of fossil fuels in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. The 2014-15 Budget confirms this intention.
Proposed offshore oil development at Old Harry (Council of Canadians)
With the possibility of developing Old Harry on the horizon, a 3-year, 800-page strategic environmental evaluation report on the Gulf, published in 2013, highlighted the deficiencies of exploration and development technologies – and the biological and human impacts of spills in the region. These risks are particularly high, given the region is covered with ice for much of the year. The study concluded that Quebec does not havethe capabilities to deal with a tanker spill.
The fishing industry in the Gulf represents $1.5 billion/year and tourism $800 million, while the development of Old Harry site on the Quebec side of the border would only generate about $300 million
Included in the “package” of Coulliard’s gung-ho development of the fossil fuel sectors are favourable views on pipelines running through Quebec to ship tar sands oil for export as well as meet Quebec “needs”. Such is the case with respect to the TransCanada Energy East pipeline to bring Alberta bitumen to the Cacouna port, in the eastern section of the St-Lawrence River.
In this region, any spill would be devastating to both the fragile beluga population and a dozen important natural marine habitat zones. A spill during the winter would be especially destructive, since there aren’t any adequate means to clean up bitumen in the presence of ice. It would also be devastating to the tourism industry, with $80 million in annual revenues.
Under the Couillard government – not all that different than the position of BC’s Christy Clark government on pipelines – Quebec would take all the risks as a transportation region for the sake of something in the order of 200 jobs. The main beneficiaries would be the exporters of the bitumen to foreign markets via tankers from Cacouna, carrying 80,000 to 200,000 tons of bitumen.
Despite Quebec’s surplus electricity capacity, for which hydro power represent 94% of the supply, the new Quebec government favours building more dams – much like the BC Liberal government’s private “run-of-river” policy.
Carried over from the preceding PQ government without any changes proposed by the Liberals, on Hydro Quebec’s, site one finds a glowing synopsis from Hydro-Québec on the 1550 MW Rivière Romaine projects. The web site informs us that, in the name of sustainable development and clean energy supplies for future generations, the 3 new power stations make sense. No mention is made of Québec’s electricity surplus or that the Romaine is one of Québec’s last “damable” wild rivers.
Not content with having targeted all of Quebec’s great rivers with high hydro power potential, the new Couillard government has also announced approvals for small hydro facilities on rivers with modest hydro potential.
In this regard, this article – “10 Things You Should Know About Dams” – offers a global portrait on dams to the effect they are are far less environmentally friendly than their proponents care to admit.
Plan nord, Version 2.0
The Couillard government picks up where Jean Charest left off, with an enhanced version of the former Liberal premier’s Plan nord. What Couillard has not factored into his economic vision is the fact that natural resource prices – relative to the prices of finished products manufactured with these very resources – have been declining for the last half century.
Subsidizing cement factories, cutting electric car budget
Last but not least are the following two amazing decisions of the Couillard government.
First, there is the amazing approval under an Liberal austerity Budget 2014-15 of the Port-Daniel cement facility, in the easternmost part of Quebec – the Gaspésie area. The government allotted $450M to support the $1B project, despite the fact that existing cement factories in Quebec are operating at 60% of capacity.
Moreover, the intention is to use the petecoke residues from petroleum/tar sands bitumen refining as a fuel. Petcoke is cheaper than coal but has much higher emissions.
Second, to keep his promise to the preceding PQ government, Couillard has agreed to maintain the transport electricification initiative. However, unlike the PQ, which allocated $500M for this initiative, the Couillard government has de-funded it, with responsibility transferred to Hydro-Québec. Meanwhile, the Liberals are putting a similar amount of funding into the unnecessary and high-GHG emission Port-Daniel cement plant.
This while China’s BYD is manufacturing electric buses and cars and recently built an electric bus manufacturing plant in California. Meanwhile, two Quebec urban transit commissions – the STM serving the Montreal area and the STO serving the Gatineau area – have run pilots projects with BYD electric buses.
That said, battery manufacturing and electric motor stakeholders in Quebec all have to take a back seat to the top priority given to the mining industry under Plan nord. So does the Volvo-owned Nova Bus urban transit facility in Ste-Eustache, which is working on the development of an electric bus.
Also reflecting Couillard’s sense of priorities are the nomination of his economic Executive and Cabinet ministers, with the Minister of Finance Carlos Leitao, President of the Treasury Board, Martin Coiteux, and Jacques Daoust, Minister of l’Économie, de l’Innovation et des Exportations (Economy, Innovation and Exports). All of them have strong economic backgrounds.
By contrast, the Minister of Développement durable, de l’Environnement et de la Lutte aux changements climatiques (Sustainable Development the Environment and Climate Change), David Heurtel, has no background in environmental fields.
As for the Minister of Énergie et des Ressources naturelles (Energy and Natural Resources) Pierre Arcand, he was the Environment Minister in the previous Liberal Charest government, where he played the role of an eternal apologist for weaseling out of the responsibility for defending the environment.
It’s clear that the environment will not play a key role in Philippe Couillard’s government – despite the clear financial benefits of investing in the green economy.
Namgis First Nation-grown closed-containment salmon ready for market (Photo: Kuterra.com)
Part 2 of DC Reid’s appeal to Canadian Senator and Olympic hero Nancy Greene Raine, who recently came out in support of a massive increase to open net pen salmon farms on BC’s coast. Read part 1 here.
While Nancy Greene Raine has taken a stance to push in-ocean fish farms, there is a lot of science that she likely does not know. And I doubt she realizes she is taking a stand against wild BC salmon. The bullets from my earlier article are discussed further here, with links for readers to go and read the documents and come to their own conclusions.
Alternate solutions are real and available
Inside Kuterra plant (Kuterra.com)
Just yesterday, the Namgis First Nation announced it has just changed the entire game for fish farming in BC and around the world. What terrific timing – just as DFO was throwing open our pristine ocean for in-ocean fish farms and their huge environmental damage, land-based Atlantics are now on stream and selling for a premium as an environmentally safe product.
Our aboriginal friends are standing up for wild salmon and our environment. This is one fish farm system that I, Nancy Greene Raine and the citizens of BC can support. Well done Chief Bill Cranmer and the Namgis First Nation, Port McNeill, BC.
Cohen Commission highlighted DFO’s conflict of interest
It would be good for Raine and the other senators to get a more balanced look at the issues than what DFO and fish farms present. Nancy, please look at these issues more closely, and then stand on the side of wild BC salmon.
DFO is conflicted in supporting the industry over wild salmon. In his $26 million Judicial Inquiry, Justice Bruce Cohen told them in bold face recommendation 3 of his 1200 page report, Vol 3, Chapter 2 page 12, that DFO had to be stripped of supporting farmed fish and get on with the priority of protecting wild Pacific salmon:
[quote]The Government of Canada should remove from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ mandate the promotion of salmon farming as an industry and farmed salmon as a product.[/quote]
This is clear and unequivocal. Nancy Greene Raine and the other senators on the fish committee need to read what Cohen said. His 75 recommendations are in Volume 3, Chapters 2 and 3.
Governments, scientists and testing are in conflict
Staff and resources circulate from the companies to governments and monitoring systems deal with farms as clients rather than being adversarial like police. Fish farms fund lots of research, conflicting scientists. And Cohen evidence showed clearly that fish farms, governments, both provincial and federal, and scientists are in conflict of interest with one another.
For example, Clare Blackman worked for the provincial body that chose fish farm sites, and now works for Marine Harvest. Cohen evidence shows the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) does not want to find ISA and other diseases in farmed salmon. Their Moncton lab was shown not able to find ISA.
Fish farms aren’t about jobs and revenue
The Fish farm industry is fond of stating that it provides $800 million in revenue and 6,000 jobs in BC. This is not true. The only real report, from Stats BC – which ironically has DFO’s name on it though DFO does not say so – shows categorically that fish farms result in few jobs and very low revenue. The report says all BC aquaculture results in a measly $61.9 Million in BC GDP.
This compared with the other parts of the fishing sectors – sport, commercial, processing – contribute 600% more at $605.5 Million, a full 90% of the contribution to GDP.
When you consider that the commercial sector has dropped 1,400 jobs since fish farms set up shop, and wild salmon are down 50%, this strongly suggests that fish farms don’t result in increased employment at all. Wild salmon disappear and fish farms jobs replace those lost in other sectors.
Let me add that the real number of actual jobs in fish farms is far below the econometric analysis, with its multipliers, suggests. I was astonished to sleuth out there are only 795 actual jobs in BC fish farming. That’s all – nowhere near 6,000 – in fact there are only 13.35% of what they claim.
Almost double the employment has been lost from the commercial sector alone. This results in fewer processing jobs, and impacts sport jobs and revenues, too. Let’s assume a marginal 10%: this means 840 jobs from sport’s 8,400 multiplier jobs and 240 from processing’s 2,400, since 50% of the wild salmon died in the presence of fish farms.
And, once fish farms set up lighting and feed machines, employment drops, and herring and wild salmon have been lured into the nets at night, some eaten, and some in the presence of disease and the ever-present lice. These are the public’s fish, and they are the ones we care about. Lights out.
Fish farms a net job loser
The Stats BC report says all of aquaculture (including shellfish and other fin fish) provides only 1,700 jobs. Add the loss in the other sectors together, 840 + 240 + 1,400, and the total realistic loss is 2,480 jobs in the rest of the fishing sector. This strongly suggests that fish farm replace jobs they eliminate rather than adding anything to the province’s job numbers. And do remember this is not the actual number of jobs in fish farming – only 795, less than half. We would have more than 300% more jobs in the other parts of the fishing sector if fish farms were eliminated and DFO took substantial action on the Wild Salmon Policy as Cohen told them to.
Fish farms are not about jobs and revenue. They are a boom bust industry. Most importantly, it is the workers who suffer the job losses – the very people Raine seeks to employ. 13,000 to 26,000 workers lost their jobs in Chile circa 2008 from its ISA outbreak (63 workers were killed working at fish farms, too). And what do you do with a quarter billion dead fish? Here in BC, Marine Harvest let staff go just before Christmas a couple of years ago. The problem? A disease called Kudoa, which turns farmed salmon flesh to mush. Marine Harvest lost $12 million last year to Kudoa – in fact, BC has way more of this parasite than Norway.
Farms want expansion without using the space they already have
Fish farms want to expand by 19,140 metric tonnes (mt) right now but they don’t use what they already have, putting out a max of 83,000, even though they have 280,000 mt authorized. They have never used their current capacity, so why do they want more? This does not make sense, unless these will be sold off as quota on a spot market, as they are in Norway at 10 million crowns, or it improves share prices, sometime in the future.
The people of BC do not support selling off of free quota for big bucks. We want wild salmon. In Chile, it has been noted that fish farms want more sites because they need to move from diseased areas that they create.
On-land fish farms offer solution
A Kuterra employee shows off one of its land-raised fish (Kuterra.com)
The big fish farm companies say land-based closed-containment can’t be done because of the high cost of land, electricity, etc. This is not true – they just want to continue using the ocean as a free, open sewer. On-land recirculating systems use one tenth of the electricity by using a heat pump. They use less land because fish tanks can be stacked one on top of the other. And the fish are protected from all ocean diseases and their own diseases are isolated from other fish, a huge improvement.
With tank covers, the sewage methane can be collected, used to make electricity or heat, and the excess put back into the grid to make money. Water temperature can be set to maximum growth, unlike the ocean that varies all over the place, hardly ideal. Same with optimal photo-period. The sewage can grow hydroponic vegetables for cash. Or be composted and sold for cash.
Recirculating the water saves up to 98% of it. Putting in a current makes the fish line up and thus more fish can be put in the tank, making even more money. In fact, I have a list of 66 different on-land systems comprising more than 8,100 on-land fish farms around the world.
In-ocean fish farms are old-tech dinosaurs compared with on-land systems. See my list. The last major conference on closed containment was held in Shepherdstown, Virginia, in September, 2013. Tides Canada has the more than 50 presentations here. Even Norway, where the BC industry is from, is doing closed-containment studies, for Pete’s sake.
Fish farms dump sewage costs on public, environment
And the senators want to triple the size of the industry? Nobody wants to pay for the current sewage dumped into our ocean, let alone triple the tripled cost of fish farm sewage. I have looked at sewage treatment in North America and Europe, and it’s clear that no one wants to pay a bean for anyone else’s sewage. Why would we pay for fish?
Fish farms produce more sewage than the entire human populations of many countries, Scotland and Norway included. It’s pretty even in BC, too.
Fish farms kill seals, sea lions and other animals
My estimate for sea lions killed by the fish farm industry is 11,469 up to 2011 – at least the ones they count. Greene may not know that many of these sentient creatures drown and realize they are drowning when they are caught in the nets. The rest are humanely dispatched with a bullet through the head – if you think that’s humane.
I keep asking for the autopsy of that whale found dead in a fish farm net last year on Vancouver Island, but DFO keeps telling me it isn’t available. Hmm.
And in Skuna Bay, where Norwegian giant Grieg tries on the “we are sustainable, organic” spin, 65 sea lions were killed and they got a fine for so doing of $100,000. So a sea lion is worth $1,538 to DFO and fish farms. Many would say that should have been the day all fish farms came out of the water. And, get this, they don’t count otters, seagulls, eagles and so on. Watch this seagull die in a fish farm net.
DFO’s own report shows that harbour seals are basically extirpated where there are fish farms. As seals don’t migrate more than 10 km, when the kill stats go down, it means local extinction, not ‘nuisance’ seals moving on and fish farms not killing as many – you cannot kill what you have already killed.
The DFO report said the figures I used are conservative and that killing seals, sea lions, and other pinnipeds must stop. But the killing goes on, in BC and all over the world – Marine Harvest operates in 22 countries. And fish farms want to expand in the ocean in BC?
Fish farm diseases
There are several dozen fungal, microbial and viral diseases. Because the fish are packed together, which stresses them, cortisone is released, which is an immune system depressant. They then pick up any old infection and among the million fish, it gets reproduced so many times that it changes to a virulent strain and the fish die. Then taxpayers pay for them – $5.56 million for dead diseased fish in BC last year – $50 million across Canada, last year. Government paid $135 million of our tax money on the east coast since 1990. We don’t want to pay.
But we do care about wild fish. Here is an example: Dr. Kristi Miller, on the Cohen record, showed that 25% of farmed chinook in Clayoquot Sound had both HSMI and ISA (both are Norwegian diseases that should not be in the North Pacific – DFO let them in on eggs). That is roughly 125,000 per farm. There are 22 farms in Clayoquot Sound, and it is a UN biosphere reserve.
How many wild fish are there? DFO’s number is a pitiful 501 chinook in six streams in 2012 and the Kennedy Lake sockeye run was wiped out in the early nineties and has not come back. Little wonder why. Same outcome for those Owikeno sockeye in Rivers Inlet, where the first two ISA positives for wild sockeye fry came from.
In Chile, ISA resulted in Cermaq reportedly losing $323 million, while Marine Harvest lost 1.4 billion Euros. A quarter of a billion dead salmon. ISA is only one disease. There is also IHN IPN, kudoa, SLV PRV, HSMI. The list goes on.
Cohen on fish diseases
When the two Routledge Owikeno sockeye fry came back with a weak positive, and inconclusive from the Gagnon lab in Moncton; with a positive, with more work needed from Dr. Are Nylund in Norway; and, a positive on the same fry From Dr. Fred Kibenge in PEI, DFO and the CFIA were rocked.
Then, thankfully, someone leaked a DFO report – the Kibenge report – showing ISA in BC waters. DFO saddled Cohen with 500,000 documents but missed its own report on the worst fish farm disease – they considered all results for ISA were false positives – but should have sent the document to Cohen anyway. They did not.
DFO’s scientist Kristi Miller and her viral signature work, showed that ISA was in Fraser sockeye back to 1988 – and recently, some sockeye components died up to 90% on the spawning beds from PRV. Cohen reopened the already closed Commission, strictly on fish farm disease issues, and then out spilled all the evidence on fish farm diseases, particularly, ISA and HSMI, (soon followed by PRV) and then IHN in Clayoquot Sound last year, for which we the taxpayer paid multinational billion dollar corporations $5.56 million for their diseased fish.
Incidentally, Minister Ashfield, changed the Gagnon finding to negative – perhaps on the semantic issue of having a virus does not mean having a disease. In other words he mis-spoke, saying something he knew not to be true. He should have reported his own lab’s words, and DFO ignores, in public, the Miller evidence and the two world class labs of Nylund and Kibenge, finding the same thing.
BC is no place for fish farms
Here is the point: the North Pacific is the worst place in the world to have fish farms. That is because there are 10 species of wild salmonids from California, up through BC, Alaska and all the way down the west north Pacific shore to Korea, perhaps a billion fish. Fish farms should not have been let in the water here as now all those wild fish could be lost. More fish farms means Greene’s support could help result in the biggest manmade fish disaster in history.
In Chile, they use antibiotics by the tonne, literally. During the climax of the ISA crisis in 2007, the industry used 385.6 metric tonnes of antibiotics. In 2010 that fell to 143; and in 2012 it climbed again to 337.9.
To put such use in perspective, that is: 743,380 pounds of antibiotics. Disease follows fish farms. ISA has pretty much been constant in Norway since the industry fish changed a freshwater ISA virus to a virulent saltwater form in the 1980s. If you read global fish farm news, you find that Chile is on the edge of another ISA disaster which they don’t report on much – remember those strict laws, well, they tend not to mention those in the same breath as the reports of ISA come in – but the antibiotic use is the evidence of tonnes of disease.
Global public opposition
There comes a point everywhere in the world when the people realize fish farms kill wild fish, trash the ocean and the people want them out of the water. This has happened in BC, NS, NB, Scotland, Ireland, Norway itself, the Faroe Islands and will, shortly, in the USA, in Maine. In Denmark they have already moved 50% of fish farms onto land. I just received a request for my research from a newspaper in Tasmania, Australia.
We need – and our wild BC salmon and all the species that depend on them – need us to get fish farms out of the water. If they want to set up shop on land and control their problems, that’s fine; if they want to go home that would be better. The Norwegian coast, is like BC, with long fjords, and the genetic damage has ruined the wild Atlantic salmon in rivers. The sewage is so bad it is more than all the people in Norway. Just as it is in Scotland and pretty much in BC.
In fact, the public being against fish farms has become a global movement with citizens reaching out to find each other around the world and become better informed. This is how I found out that in Atlantic Canada taxpayers paid $135 Million to fish farms for their dead diseased fish – including BC, the past year’s payment was over $50 million. No one wants to pay a dime of our tax money on fish farms that kill their fish with disease caused by too high density. They need to be on land. And the bigger the farms, the bigger the problem,
In the first week in April, 2014 Marine Harvest in Norway announced that it was forgoing putting in smolts because it feared a full $4 billion loss with all the fish dying from sea lice. This article was pulled from the internet in less than a week (I know because I query other people who follow global fish farm news and they confirmed this); then CEO Aarskog announced that sea lice were the biggest problem in Norway, and for anybody with a solution to get in touch with him asap. This is right now in 2014, the CEO of Marine Harvest, the same Marine Harvest that operates in BC in 2014, right now.
In Norway, sea lice are resistant to lice chemicals and it lobbied the EU to accept an endosulfan limit in fish that is one hundred times higher than before. And the PCB, dioxin, and PCB-like cancer causing chemicals, level is also a factor of ten above all other meat type products in Europe. See the graph – it is not pretty.
Back in Canada, in Nova Scotia, Cooke Aquaculture was caught using the illegal lice chemical, cypermethrin, for two years. When the news hit – facing a $33 million fine and up to 99 years in jail – Cooke said it wanted to study the case evidence, and within a few months of silence, the NS government gave Cooke $25 million for aid.
After receiving the $25 million, Cooke ultimately paid a $500,000 fine from Kelly Cove farms for using illegal chemicals for two years. This kind of behavior, and money from government, is all too common in fish farming in Canada. Read on.
Cermaq sees big losses in Chile
But first, in Chile, Cermaq lost 15% of its Atlantic salmon crop to lice in 2012-13. And Chile is openly acknowledged as the dirtiest fish farm country in the world – increasingly moving south to operate largely within the pristine Patagonia UN biospheres. In main production areas to the north, the limiting factors are: disease, lice and fish farm pollution. When production hits 650,000 mt, no more fish can be grown because ‘nature’ kills them all.
At its peak level of 650,000 mt that means they lose more than the entire harvest, and largest output ever recorded in BC, to lice. That is how bad sea lice problems are. But the people of BC don’t really care about fish farm fish deaths – we care about wild salmonids, and there are 10 species that can be killed by lice – and other non-salmonids like herring.
Chemical restriction gutted for BC farms
So what is happening in BC? Here, DFO has announced that it will drop from the already environmentally gutted Fisheries Act, S 36 – for releasing deleterious substances into water – to give the fish farms the right to try any chemical they want.
The annual Norwegian cost to treat sea lice is $170 million and world wide over $300 million. Cypermethrin kills lobsters – and that was how it was determined that Cooke had been illegally using it in its Kelly Cove farms – as well as other crustaceans, for example, crab and shrimp. Krill, shrimp-like crustaceans, are the step above plankton in the wild salmon food chain in BC. We don’t want them killed.
Do note that the article shows that cypermethrin causes gene mutation, organ abnormalities and cancers in mammals. The chemical is suspected to be carcinogenic in humans.
The strictest laws in the world?
You will find that governments and fish farms around the world repeatedly use the phrase: ‘fish farms operate under the strictest (or among the strictest) environmental laws in the world’ in the country in question, (when anyone complains about their environmental damage). The claim is not true because, in the past year, fish farms have said this in Chile, Scotland, Norway and Canada. As the laws are different in each country, the claim cannot be true.
And, of course, Chile is acknowledged as the dirtiest fish farm country in the world, euphemistically referred to as having ‘sanitary problems’. Not to mention that it may have laws, but that is a different thing from enforcing the laws. For example, read fish farm news in Chile and you will find, that though its chemical use is high, Chile does not report most cases of ISA.
In Canada, the claim is even more untrue because the laws don’t apply all the way across the country. There are different jurisdictions operative on the west coast and on the east coast, both federal and provincial.
Furthermore, in Canada, the claim is more untrue because the Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act were both gutted a year ago in a federal omnibus bill (an egregious occurrence in itself). But it is even worse than this.
Minister Shea and the DFO ADMs state in the senate video noted in this article, that S 36 of the Fisheries Act, already gutted a year ago, will be further gutted so that fish farms will be able to use whatever deleterious substances they want – say, SLICE, cypermethrin, endosulfan, hydrogen peroxide – on lice and for other reasons.
Norway want laws to ‘deal with Aboriginals in Canada’
And there has been a call for an Aquaculture Act, presumably to eliminate the provincial laws, further weaken laws against the use of chemicals and permit fish farms to use the ocean as a free open sewer, as they do now around the world. Here’s another Canadian nuance: from time to time you will see the Norwegian CEOs saying in the press that there need to be rules to deal with aboriginals in Canada, meaning they don’t want to have to deal with each individual First Nation. They want them rounded up, I suppose.
Industry wants laws gutted even further
There is another issue: as soon as fish farms claim the laws are the strictest in the world, they then use that as an excuse to argue that the laws are too strict and to keep jobs and revenue in the country in a competitive world, the laws need to be relaxed. Or they will move on, which they do anyway because fish farms are a boom and bust industry. Marine Harvest operates in 22 countries, and disease takes one third to one half of all aquaculture animals, as noted above in the Kibenge presentation.
And as I have said, the enforcement staff in BC are swamped with duties and few in number. I may see one every five years or so in the field. And, of course, laying off scientists means that other duties with respect to fish farms also do not get done.
Advice for Senator Greene Raine
I suggest that someone who knows Nancy Greene Raine sit her down and tell her that it is wrong to stand against wild BC salmon. And her name is going to be badly tarnished by associating herself with fish farms.She should be on the side of these up to 90% of sockeye dying from PRV on some Fraser tributary spawning beds, too diseased to spawn. Ask DFO to stand by wild BC salmon, and eliminate fish farms from our pristine waters. They sure don’t stand by wild BC salmon right now in 2014.
As BC’s First Nations are showing with their on-land, closed-containment operation, there is a better way.
We want fish farms out of our pristine ocean and put on land, or they can go back to Norway. More than 100,000 British Columbians have signed a petition urging Premier Clark to refuse any expansion leases in BC.
I doubt Nancy Greene Raine knew this and probably needs time to gather independent information and think things over. As it is, she is out of step with the entire province. And I doubt she has considered how soiled her name will become if she gets on the fish farm side of this issue rather than standing with wild BC salmon.
Fish farms tied to wild salmon die-off
There are only 50% of wild salmon left in BC since fish farms set up shop here. Does she want to be the name associated with the loss of wild salmon? I wouldn’t think so. This is the science.
In all fairness, I think she, and the other senators on the committee are just innocents and believe what DFO and fish farms tell them about jobs and revenue, rather than looking at the science themselves. See Gail Shea talk to the senators, Feb 25, 2014.
Jobs over science, environment
In the senate video, the three DFO ADMs make the case that the only thing that stands in the way of expanding the fish farm industry, is that the regulations on sea lice drugs need to be rationalized. And the Senators agree there should be nothing in the way of new jobs and revenue.
It also came clear that Swerdfager/Beven/Gillis have little knowledge of BC salmon. They suggest salmon are milling about in the ocean in any old place and when it comes to spawning time, they go to any old river. Only someone in Ottawa could be so out of touch – too bad it is DFO. And they ignore the many problems with fish farms.
Thriving salmon run doesn’t pass by fish farms
For the record, salmon have set out-travel routes, grid like precision in the open ocean where they feed and set return-routes, and they not only come back to the same river, but spawn within 100 yards of where they hatched. And so on with succeeding generations.
That is why, for instance, that the Harrison component of the 100 subcomponent Fraser sockeye run is coming back in record numbers. Historically they returned at about 38,000, but now are nearing 400,000. This is because, unlike other Fraser sub-components, they migrate out to sea through Juan de Fuca Strait where there are no fish farms, rather than Johnstone where there are. They don’t get killed by fish farm diseases, or lice and ocean survival has been good.
I took the bait too…until I read the science
Now, back to Swerdfager et al. They suggest the only wrinkle is that lice chemical thing, and the senators agreed – it’s about jobs after all. But the ADMs didn’t let on that the Harper Government has already gutted the Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and let go 200 scientists, many in BC. And they didn’t say what a huge problem that sea lice really are. The most recent example of many is Norway where lice are so resistant to pesticides, SLICE etc., that chemical use has gone up 80-fold in a decade. That’s how bad lice can be.
To be fair to Nancy Greene, in the beginning, I thought saving wild salmon in the ocean and feeding a hungry world sounded good, too. But then I started finding holes in the arguments. Instead of saving wild salmon, the science shows that fish farms kill them. And fish farm salmon will never feed a hungry world. That is because they cost too much, and can only be sold to first world consumers. In fact, in Chile, the industry destroyed the small fish in the ocean such as anchovies and jack mackerel, to feed their fish.
Farmed salmon gobble up other fish species
The anchovy should have been the protein for the poor mouths of the world, say Chileans, but they were fed to fish farm fish. Today, fish farms say they are moving on to ‘improve’ their feed, but do not acknowledge their role as important contributors to the massive declines – in other words they have no choice but to move on from fish-based feed. Today, boats are scouring the Antarctica, and down the food chain to catch krill for fish feed, if you can believe it. And off Chile the Asian fish farms are still scooping up what wild fish remain and taking them to Asian fish farms, largely prawns – the only industry dirtier than Chile’s fish farms. Read global news on www.thefishsite.com, for a while.
A deceptive industry
I am a citizen of BC and make no money out of this, but I became aghast at the deceptiveness and intransigence of fish farms around the world. I realized how bad fish farm companies were when I read an article on how they neutralized an article by Albany, New York, scientists – Hites et al, in Science, January 9, 2004 – on the cancer causing chemicals in farmed salmon – PCBs, dioxins, POPs and so on.
The article reads like a Hollywood movie, and it came clear to me that every claim fish farms make has to be ground proofed. Read this Spinwatch article. It leaves you feeling you would not have believed corporate citizens could sink so low. See if they don’t remind you of tobacco CEOs.
Farmed salmon and chemicals
And just so that you know, the Hites group has gone on to publish many more articles on chemicals in farmed salmon in the decade since. It’s become world news. In fact, the biggest story out of Norway, where the BC industry is from, in the past year, is doctors and scientists repeatedly warning Norwegians not to eat farmed salmon, particularly women, pregnant women, and children, because of the chemicals in the fish. For a collection of these articles, see here. Cancer causing PCBs, for example, take more than 50 years to be washed from the body.
So farmed fish is full of many kinds of chemicals, the cancer causing ones from feed, then SLICE, endosulfan and a host of other pesticides and antibiotics. The cancer causing chemical problem is currently causing big problems for the Scotland industry – they tried to maintain the fiction they were sustainable and organic. If they said it long enough perhaps people would believe it.
Closed-containment is the answer
The solution to this and most other problems is and has always been taking the farms out of the water and growing the fish on land in closed containers, like the Namgis project on Vancouver Island. I don’t think Raine has much acquaintance with the real problems, so here is a list I will send to her. You might want to contact her too: nancy.raine@sen.parl.gc.ca.
DFO is conflicted with fish farms.
The Cohen Commission told the Harper government to remove the conflict and make DFO get on with saving wild salmon.
Fish farms are not about jobs and revenue. They are a net negative to the economy.
Fish feed has cancer causing, and other chemicals in it.
Diseases kill one third to one half of all aquaculture products around the globe.
Wild salmon decline more than 50% where fish farms are introduced around the world.
Fish farms already have triple the capacity than what they use in BC. They do not need expansions.
On land fish farms solve virtually all problems of in-ocean open-net fish farms.
Fish farm sewage costs are astronomical and no one wants to pay for them.
Fish farms kill seals, sea lions and other animals around the globe.
Cohen Commission reconvened over fish farm diseases, when ISA was demonstrated in wild salmon.
Aquatic animal disease is part and parcel of aquaculture.
Scientists and doctors tell Norwegians not to eat farmed salmon because of the chemicals in them.
Public opposition to in-ocean fish farms is growing around the world.
Sea lice chemical use grows dramatically.
Governments and fish farms like to claim they operate under the strictest laws in the world, which is not true, and then fish farms push for weakening the laws.
Tune in for my next article that discusses these negative impacts of fish farms.
The PQ’s Pauline Marois and Pierre Karl Péladeau (Photo: Graham Hughes/CP)
It is not unusual to hear and read about Québécois saying they don’t like any of the four options offered in this election. What is often referred to as mudslinging/insults – between Philippe Couillard of the Liberals (PLQ); Pauline Marois of the Parti Québécois (PQ); and François Legault of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) – has become the main focus on this election campaign. To her credit, Françoise David of Québec Solidaire (QS) has managed to stay away from the mud.
[quote]Sadly, in this election, there isn’t any party proposing a road map for a prosperous, inclusive and green Quebec.[/quote]
What happened to the issues people care about?
Two leaders’ debates failed to rise above the mudslinging and the all-important issue of health was treated as an organizational or structural challenge.
Worse, the environment is one of the forgotten issues for the 3 main parties.
Only 4% of Québécois consider the Charter of secular values a priority issue, but the Charter has been and continues to be central to the campaign of the PQ, and by ricochet, for the other parties as well.
In the midst of all this, Philippe Couillard is trying to distract attention from the PLQ’s record of corruption and their weak platform by saying that Pauline Marois, if elected, plans on holding a referendum – which two thirds of Québécois don’t want – during her next mandate. Pauline Marois’s reply is that there will be no referendum until such time as the Québécois are ready, thus providing herself with very elastic time lines.
Sadly, in this election, there isn’t any party proposing a road map for a prosperous, inclusive and green Quebec. Many Québecois, federalists and independentistes alike – and myself included – feel like orphans in this campaign. In effect, a recent poll gave low marks on “integrity” to all four leaders.
Environment takes back seat to resource economy
For his part, Philippe Couillard’s vision for the economy is a re-run of an old Jean Charest movie to the effect that Quebec will generate much of its new wealth from the mining and export of raw natural resources from northern Quebec – the old economy tunnel vision.
The environment doesn’t even rank as an important election issue for Couillard.
Indeed, Couillard omitted the environment from the moment he submitted his vision as a candidate for the leadership of the Liberals. For the 2014 election campaign, continuing along the same lines, other than rhetorical messages that resource development practices would respect the environment, the environment gets little to no attention from Couillard – not all that different from Stephen Harper in this regard.
In replaying Jean Charest’s “Plan nord” to pour government money into infrastructure for developing northern resources, Philippe Couillard has simply added a few bells and whistles for a “new and improved” plan.
For its part, the PQ is equally focussed on a resource economy – the economy of the past – and has its own version of a nebulous Plan nord which it pairs with lottery-like, high-risk government investments in shares of shale oil activities for Anticosti Island in the Gulf of the St-Laurent (St-Lawrence River).
The reality is that the UN Conference on Trade and Development has indicated that resource economies are formulae for trade deficits because the price of raw resource exports relative to high-tech manufactured goods has been falling for more than a century.
I am not sure what planet Couillard and Marois live on, but they seem to have not noticed that China, the EU, and even the US, are well-engaged in the emerging global green economy. In effect, the green sectors are now among the highest job creation sectors of our times. There are currently 3.5M jobs in the EU green sectors, 1.2M jobs in EU renewables and the German green sectors employ more people than the German auto sector.
To be fair, however, Marois, while favouring investing government money in shale oil exploration on Anticosti Island, also claims to be interested in promoting a green economy. Against the backdrop of Quebec’s emerging electric vehicle industrial base – which includes manufacturers and developers of batteries; electric motor wheels; urban and intercity electric buses; and charging stations – the PQ platform proposes $517M over 4 years for the electrification of transport. But in the final analysis, this is a small sum of money that won’t go very far in supporting the electric vehicle sector in Quebec when spread out for charging stations, vehicle rebates, subway and commuter extensions, leaving little for supporting innovation and the development of a local industry.
In any case, it’s hard to say where all the money for Marois’ many electoral promises will come from because Quebec is broke – the cupboard is bare.
Pierre Karl Péladeau and the Charter of Secular Values
Not to be outdone by the Liberal nonsense, the PQ, to make itself attractive to nationalist right wing voters, has offered us its anti-Muslim secular Charter; its draconian greed representative, Pierre Karl Péladeau; and, the icing on the cake, its hysterical, anti-anglo, paranoiac outburst on the invasion by Ontario anglos of Montreal voters’ lists (where there are 2 English, as well as two French, universities).
If one believes the PQ, a miniscule percentage of anglos and non-Christians wearing religious symbols are to blame for Québec’s incapacity to realize its “noble” identity.
The Charter’s purpose is supposedly to promote the equality of the sexes and the neutrality of state by eliminating the wearing of religious symbols by public sector employees – because these symbols are associated with the inferiorization of women and the undermining of government neutrality. Trouble is that the equality of the sexes exists in places like BC and California and the neutrality of their respective state institutions is not undermined by having a female doctor with a headscarf treat a patient.
The Charter is, in effect, political theatre for the purposes of cultivating a sense of fear, while exploiting ignorance of the other/unknown, in the regions of Quebec which have little to no multicultural presence.
On March 31st, in a seemingly desperate attempt to head off criticism regarding years of judicial battles that would follow the adoption of the Charter, Pauline Marois spoke of using the “notwithstanding clause” to permit exemptions from the Quebec and federal charters of rights and freedoms. In reality, in the event of the adoption of the Charter as proposed by the PQ, one should still expect legal battles that go on for years, plus generalized civil disobedience in the greater Montreal area – which represents half of the population of Quebec.
Does Marois plan on building lots of prisons for this battle?
CAQ and QS: The other parties
The CAQ is a Quebec version of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), with its plan to reduce the size of government and offer a $1000 reduction in personal taxes. This CAQ/CPC formula would not only result in a deterioration of government services, it would also lead to greater deficits and consequently further justification for cuts – a vicious circle.
Meanwhile, the QS is focussed on the re-distribution of the wealth and a green Quebec but doesn’t seem to have any interest in, or knowledge about, creating wealth and developing a green economy. QS doesn’t even appear to be aware of the relationship between the green economy and job creation.
Also, as amazing as it may seem, QS is so disconnected that it is unaware that a green economy is as diversified as a resource-based economy and includes nearly every economic sector. Consequently, when the QS says it will finance going green by redistributing the wealth to invest in public transportation for all parts of Quebec, it reflects how naive or inept is the QS.
By way of magic, the QS’ fluffy platform for a green and equitable Quebec suggests these goals require an independent Quebec. With only 9-10% of the vote in Quebec, it may be argued that the QS stands a better chance of realizing its re-distribution of wealth and green objectives by joining with progressives from the rest of Canada.
Moreover, addressing the green economy challenges is like addressing the challenges of poverty and as such does not lend itself to the short wish list of QS generalities. Rather, a holistic approach is required so that a wide range of measures can converge in a synergistic manner to produce transformative change. A combination of fiscal and legislative initiatives, policies, programs and projects, incentives/disincentives and other related measures are essential for a successful migration to a green economy.
Four bad choices
In the final analysis, for progressives with their feet on the ground, all four parties are unattractive.
As for which party is more corrupt or deficient in integrity – the PLQ or PQ – under the circumstances, it doesn’t really matter. Unless, of course, one feels the choice boils down to a corrupt federalist party versus a corrupt “independantiste” party.
Accordingly, whatever the results on April 7th, a word of caution about the pundits’ explanations of the results: don’t buy any of it. Too many will not have voted for something they want.
While Tom Mulcair has made some hints about the creation of a provincial NDP party in Quebec,for those wanting an option offering a path to a prosperous, inclusive and green economy, there isn’t anything available for April 7, 2014.
