A landmark migration study on the West Coast that tracked thousands
of young salmon as they swam down rivers and then went out to sea has
upended one of the longest-held tenets of fisheries science.
Until
David Welch and his colleagues surgically implanted more than 3,500
young salmon with electronic tags, it had been believed the high
mortality afflicting salmon happened mostly in river estuaries as fish
made the transition from fresh to salt water.
But Dr. Welch,
president of Nanaimo-based Kintama Research Services Ltd., said an array
of listening posts strung for more than 1,500 kilometres along the
coast allowed researchers to follow the fish as they migrated out of
B.C. rivers and headed north, swimming an average of 20 kilometres a
day.
“The scientific body for a century has said the marine
survival problems are happening very early in the life history. Now we
are measuring that and saying, ‘Sorry, it doesn’t look like that.’ Most
of the mortality is happening more than a month after entering the
ocean,” said Dr. Welch, who published new research on the subject this
week after gathering data for several years.
The study made use of
a marine telemetry array called POST, for Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking,
which picks up signals from electronic tags surgically placed inside
the body cavities of young salmon, most of which are about 150
millimetres in length when released.
Once in the ocean, the main
body of fish headed up Georgia Strait, on the east coast of Vancouver
Island, while a smaller number went out Juan de Fuca Strait and up the
west coast of the island.
The fish – sockeye, steelhead, coho and
chinook – mostly survived the early stages of their migration and were
tracked for four to six weeks until they were lost after passing the
last POST array.
“Most of the mortality happened beyond the north
end of Vancouver Island. Now, whether they dropped dead from sea lice
one day past where we [last] measured them or some other disease
problem, or whether it was some place two years out in the ocean, we
can’t resolve that – it’s just that we know most of the mortality
happened beyond the Strait of Georgia, in the Queen Charlotte Sound
area,” Dr. Welch said.
The study estimates one-eighth of the
mortality occurred in Georgia Strait and seven-eighths occurred after
passing northern Vancouver Island.
There has been speculation that
fish farms, which are concentrated in ocean channels near the northern
end of Vancouver Island, might be exposing migrating wild fish to sea
lice and disease.
But Dr. Welch said his study doesn’t shed any light on that controversy.
“I
do want to emphasize that our results do not say the fish farms did
play a role, it’s just that the fish passed the salmon farms and at some
point after that, died,” he said.
Dr. Welch said he is currently
helping to design a study that will use the electronic-tag technology to
directly examine the issue of whether migrating salmon are impacted by
fish farms.
A small number of the tagged salmon carried extra
batteries, which were turned off after about a month and then turned on
again two years later. Among that group, two fish were picked up again
by the POST array when they returned as adults.
Dr. Welch said it
was an exciting development, because it revealed the remarkable
synchronicity of migrating salmon. Heading north, the two fish left
Georgia Strait one week apart – two years later they returned to
Vancouver Island only 12 hours apart, and within two hours of each other
re-entered the Fraser River.
Dr. Welch gave a partial preview of
his research to the Cohen Commission earlier this year, but the detailed
paper was published this week in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States.
Alexandra Morton has been making a lot of headlines recently, and hopefully also, some headway.
Her message is simple: protect wild salmon stocks in British Columbia that are under threat from many problems, including the scourge of
diseases and parasites that have accompanied salmon farming in coastal
B.C.
On Sunday, May 8, Morton and two high-profile friends
of common-sense environmental action, Rafe Mair and Damien Gillis, will
speak at Fulford Hall. The multi-media program called Salt Spring,
Salmon and Sanity begins at 7 p.m.
Morton has literally walked and paddled the
length of Vancouver Island to make politicians and citizens more aware
of our threatened wild salmon. She’s taken the provincial government to
court to challenge its management of salmon farming — and won. She’s
challenged every one of the current MP candidates in B.C. to get behind
land-based salmon farming that controls fish diseases, supports jobs for
both wild salmon fishers and land-based fish farmers, and is the only
sustainable approach to salmon farming. Candidates in all but one of the
four major parties are committed to her approach. You can probably
guess which party said “no.”
Mair is a well-known radio commentator, blogger,
political and environmental activist. A former Socred MLA in the 1980s,
Mair, who held several cabinet posts, including Minister of Environment,
is well-qualified to advocate for careful management of natural
resources in B.C. for the benefit of people, not big business. Mair has
spearheaded the challenge to private hydro development on public streams
and rivers.
Gillis is at the leading edge of communications
about B.C. environmental issues. Using video and the web, Gillis
provides valuable insights into multiple issues, including the Enron
Pipeline, which, by creating a coastal flow of giant oil tankers,
ultimately threatens the entire coast of B.C., including Salt Spring
Island.
Mair and Gillis have teamed up with their environmental reporting website, theCanadian.org.
This presentation by Morton, Mair and Gillis will
follow the federal election by only one week. No doubt the speakers
will provide us with a clearer view of the new currents we will face as
we swim upstream to protect wild salmon, our rivers, our coastal shores
and marine wildlife, and our democracy.
Tickets for the event are $15 at Salt Spring Books. Funds raised will support the work of Morton for wild salmon conservation.
The event is sponsored by the Salt Spring Island Conservancy.
Too many fishy secrets, buried in documents filed with the Cohen
Commission of Inquiry, are being kept under wraps even though they
could affect the health of wild salmon, according to the biologist and
anti-fish farm activist Alexandra Morton.
Morton, like other
participants in the inquiry looking into the decline of Fraser River
sockeye, has signed a legal undertaking not to disclose the contents of
395,000 documents filed with the commission until they become exhibits
and part of the public record.
The rules were expanded last
month and are being interpreted by the commission’s lawyers as
including all applications, correspondence and legal material filed by
participants.
That means no information about applications made
to a public inquiry can be made public — including a letter this week
asking that Morton be released from her secrecy undertaking to allow
her to report information to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency about
an infectious salmon virus. Information about the virus was gleaned
from the business records of salmon farms which are among stacks of
documents filed with the commission.
“The level of secrecy is
ramping up and, by not reporting things that are reportable by law, we
have a problem,” said Morton, who could not talk about her concerns
because of the secrecy undertaking.
“It’s a terrible situation. I am at my wits end.”
Greg McDade, Morton’s lawyer, said the commission’s work should be public.
“But,
currently, the rules preclude me from telling you what’s in the
letter, they preclude me from telling you what the issue is and they
preclude me from telling you what the ruling is,” McDade said. “Hence
our concern … All I can tell you is that I can’t comment.”
After
a meeting of lawyers Tuesday, some are hoping the secrecy dispute will
now go to B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen, who is heading the
inquiry.
Sources say that records indicate that infectious salmon
anemia may have been found in fish from a salmon farm tested in
provincial laboratories and there are also suggestions that symptoms
were seen in Pacific salmon, which could indicate a new virus, similar
to ISA, is spreading among wild salmon in the northeast Pacific.
ISA
is a disease that affects Atlantic and coho salmon and has wiped out
fish farm stock in Norway, Scotland and Chile. An outbreak in New
Brunswick in the late 1990s resulted in almost 10 million farmed salmon
having to be killed.
Although most Pacific salmon are believed
to be resistant to ISA, the virus can mutate and evolve. For years,
activists such as Morton have said it could threaten wild Pacific
salmon runs.
Carla Shore, spokeswoman for the Cohen Commission,
confirmed that Morton has written to Commission counsel asking to be
released from the secrecy undertaking.
“But I can’t share the
letter from Ms. Morton’s lawyer or the response because they are
covered by the undertaking of confidentiality,” she said.
“An
undertaking of confidentiality is very common in the legal process.
Participants have the opportunity to review all the documents and
participants can request that any documents be entered as an exhibit.”
Once
a document makes it through the process and is entered as an exhibit
it becomes public, but aquaculture will not be examined by the
commission for some time, meaning none of the filed documents relating
to salmon farms can yet be made public.
A federal public inquiry into the decline of sockeye salmon in the
Fraser River has been accused of suppressing information that an
infectious virus has been detected in British Columbia waters.
The
concern is raised in letters to the Cohen Commission of Inquiry by
Gregory McDade, a lawyer representing salmon researcher and anti-fish
farm activist Alexandra Morton.
Officially the commission is not engaged with the issue, but the
letters, obtained by The Globe and Mail, show that Ms. Morton’s
knowledge of the disease and a debate over the public’s right to know
about it has developed into a contentious issue behind the scenes.
The
commission suspended its hearings for the day on Tuesday for what
spokesperson Carla Shore described as a routine all-counsel meeting to
discuss legal housekeeping matters.
But sources say the issue up
for discussion is the one raised by Mr. McDade’s letters, in which he
argues Ms. Morton should be released from the commission’s undertaking
of confidentiality.
The undertaking prevents participants in the
hearings from making public any information they have obtained through
disclosure. And with 390,000 documents and more than 188,000 e-mails
disclosed so far, that means there is a mountain of material to keep
secret.
Mr. McDade wrote that in combing through that vast volume
of material, Ms. Morton came across “indications” a disease known as
infectious salmon anemia virus, or ISA, may have been detected in fish
samples tested by provincial government labs.
The suggestion is
the symptoms of the disease were detected, but not the disease itself,
which has never been reported on the West Coast. ISA can be lethal to
Atlantic salmon, but Pacific salmon have proved immune to it in tests.
The concern is that if the disease were present, it could change and
begin to kill Pacific stocks.
“Canada and Canadians are obliged to
report diseases of aquatic animals as a member of the World
Organization for Animal Health,” Mr. McDade wrote.
“There are
approximately 35 indications of the existence of ISA identified in these
records to date,” he wrote. “Of great biological concern is that some
of these diagnoses are in Pacific salmon, suggesting potential spread of
a novel and virulent virus into native populations may be underway into
the North Pacific.”
He asked that Ms. Morton be released from her
undertaking so she can report her ISA concerns to the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency.
“There is a very substantial public interest in
ensuring full reporting of ISA indications. An ISA epidemic could prove
devastating to wild salmon stocks. In our submission the public
interest in proper reporting must outweigh the interest in
confidentiality,” Mr. McDade wrote.
The request was refused by commission lawyers – but neither the ruling nor Mr. McDade’s application were released.
In
a second letter Mr. McDade objected to the secrecy around the
application and the ruling, saying it “is reminiscent of the criticisms
of the Star Chamber. It is not appropriate to a public inquiry.”
Mr.
McDade wrote that British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen,
who is heading the inquiry, should hear submissions on the matter “in an
open public setting.”
He concludes by stating that the second
letter, which was distributed to the more than 20 lawyers representing
participants at the hearings, should not be covered by the undertaking
because it does not contain any confidential documents.
Mr. McDade did not return calls on Tuesday. Ms. Morton said because of the undertaking she cannot discuss her concerns.
It was not, over all, a great night for environmentalists in BC with the very notable exception of the election of Elizabeth May as the first Green Party MP in our history. She will find that she has taken on the responsibility of being one of BC’s main spokespeople on environmental matters and The Common Sense Canadian looks forward to working with May and, of course, those other MPs who feel as we do about the environment and related issues. I make no apologies for not calling the election correctly – if I did that I would spend half my lifetime apologizing!
As the old saying has it, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. So it is with us who have taken environmental issues on as a lifetime issue. It’s not that we don’t see, understand and have passion for other issues – rather that we see the environment as being urgent. If we get it wrong over the next few years – and the BC government and the Harper government have got it wrong – then the damage is forever. You simply cannot restore wild salmon runs or erase the damage of a catastrophic oil spill. On the economic side of the environment issue, if you lose your public power to private interests as we seem determined to do, it’s gone forever.
It must be stressed that we are not opposed to change where it is demonstrated to be in the public interest. We’re not Luddites out to destroy the “cotton ‘gin’” although any study of that time makes one very understanding of those who saw their livelihoods vanish to an unmanned factory that used to employ them. But – and this must be stressed – the environmental destroyers with their fish farms and private river monstrosities are not destroying jobs that exist – they are pleading the employment they bring as justification for their schemes. After short term construction jobs are over, the only jobs are as caretakers.
It’s not as if these huge companies bring us something we can’t do for ourselves – quite the opposite. Our wild salmon have sustained communities for generations and, in the case of First Nations, for eons. These fish farm companies use our resources to make fortunes for foreign shareholders. Consider this: Fish farmers tell us that they can’t go to self contained methods because it’s too expensive.
Why is it too expensive?
Because they don’t have to pay for their farm now because we the people and the environment bear all the expense.
This is the same with private power companies – not only do they not make a sou for our province, not only do they not make power we can make ourselves for much cheaper, not only do they destroy our rivers, they do it at our expense. We pay their overhead!
This it is with bringing Tar Sands in pipelines across our province then down our coastline in tankers – we pay their overhead by taking all the risk!
The point I’m forcing is that it isn’t just a “green” issue but an economic one. We British Columbians pay all the overhead of fish farms, private power projects, pipelines and tanker traffic! And there’s nothing in it for us!
But don’t let me deceive you. If we were making bundles out of these deals I would oppose them with every effort I could summon. I would do so because it’s plain wrong. These fish, rivers, ecologies are like trust funds. They don’t belong to us.
Speaking for Damien and myself, The Common Sense Canadian, far from being set back by a Tory government, are challenged – and we love challenges. We see a number of MPs in a position to fight and well motivated for the battle ahead.
People vote in elections for many things. It is our challenge to see that when we have the next provincial election, saving our fish, our rivers, our public power, our wilderness and our coastline are front and centre issues.
SIDNEY, B.C. — Green Party leader Elizabeth May called Friday for an
end to open net-cage fish farms in order to protect wild salmon off the
British Columbia coast.
“After I am elected to Parliament
on Monday, the Green party will be positioned to push louder than ever
before for a rapid phase-out of open-ocean net-cage fish farms and to
ensure that this aquaculture industry does not continue to harm wild
salmon populations through sea lice, viruses and pollution,” May said at
a news conference in Sidney.
May said there are many
problems associated with open net-cage fish farming, including transfer
of diseases and parasites to wild salmon, the use of wild fish as feed
for farmed fish, the dispersal of tonnes of solid waste and nutrients
into the surrounding waters and the problematic use of antibiotics in
farmed fish.
New underwater video shot by researchers working with salmon biologist Alexandra Morton reveals in graphic detail the waste from a number of salmon farms covering the ocean floor beneath them.
According to a press release today from Morton’s group Salmon Are Sacred, “Jody Eriksson, who collected the waste samples and filmed under the farms, said: ‘It’s a wasteland down under the farms. We were shocked: piles of faeces, rotting feed, bacterial mats and bubbling gases’ a bottom smothered by waste. This is out of sight damage must be exposed!’
All video from Alexandra Morton’s Vimeo page.
Video# 1: In the Broughton Archipelago, under a Marine Harvest salmon
farm. The bubbles are methane. The waste is heaped in mounds devoid of
life other than bacteria. This was once a productive crab ground. The
Norwegian company just moved its livestock to another site and are
carrying on business as usual. The federal government gave this site a
licence to operate despite this obvious pollution, the province who is
supposed to be managing our seafloor has done nothing.
Video #2: Bacteria growing under a Marine Harvest farm in the Broughton Archipelago. The white is bacteria called Beggiatoa. It grows in the sulfur-loaded
environments associated with sewage, in this case tons of fish manure
under Marine Harvest’s feedlot. This was once rich crabbing grounds.
Marine Harvest just moved their livestock to another place in Broughton.
Apparently this is OK with the federal government because they just
issued a licence to continue dumping here.
Video #3: Healthy Glass Reef-Building Sponge, not affected by salmon farm waste. This is what these sponges should look like. Scroll down to next video to see dead sponges under a salmon farm.
Video #4: Dead Reef-Building Glass Sponges Under Salmon Farm. Reef-building sponges are extremely slow growing and remarkable fish
habitat in BC. The damage from this Cermaq/Mainstream salmon feedlot – owned largely by the
Norwegian government – will take hundreds of years to heal if ever.
Video #5: Approaching a mound of salmon farm waste.
New underwater video shot by researchers working with salmon biologist Alexandra Morton reveals in graphic detail the waste from a number of salmon farms covering the ocean floor beneath them.
According to a press release today from Morton’s group Salmon Are Sacred, “Jody Eriksson, who collected the waste samples and filmed under the farms, said: ‘It’s a wasteland down under the farms. We were shocked: piles of faeces, rotting feed, bacterial mats and bubbling gases’ a bottom smothered by waste. This is out of sight damage must be exposed!’
All video from Alexandra Morton’s Vimeo page.
Video# 1: In the Broughton Archipelago, under a Marine Harvest salmon
farm. The bubbles are methane. The waste is heaped in mounds devoid of
life other than bacteria. This was once a productive crab ground. The
Norwegian company just moved its livestock to another site and are
carrying on business as usual. The federal government gave this site a
licence to operate despite this obvious pollution, the province who is
supposed to be managing our seafloor has done nothing.
Video #2: Bacteria growing under a Marine Harvest farm in the Broughton Archipelago. The white is bacteria called Beggiatoa. It grows in the sulfur-loaded
environments associated with sewage, in this case tons of fish manure
under Marine Harvest’s feedlot. This was once rich crabbing grounds.
Marine Harvest just moved their livestock to another place in Broughton.
Apparently this is OK with the federal government because they just
issued a licence to continue dumping here.
Video #3: Healthy Glass Reef-Building Sponge, not affected by salmon farm waste. This is what these sponges should look like. Scroll down to next video to see dead sponges under a salmon farm.
Video #4: Dead Reef-Building Glass Sponges Under Salmon Farm. Reef-building sponges are extremely slow growing and remarkable fish
habitat in BC. The damage from this Cermaq/Mainstream salmon feedlot – owned largely by the
Norwegian government – will take hundreds of years to heal if ever.
Video #5: Approaching a mound of salmon farm waste.
First, Prime Minister Harper is making a big fuss about needing a majority government. So are the Central Canadian media. I ask, what’s the matter with a minority government?
Think what the Harper government did without a majority and ask yourself what’s so good about a majority 5 year dictatorship? Why don’t the media examine what is right about a minority government.
In fact there is one extremely good thing – the government is forced to consult with other leaders both on the budget and general legislation. On the budget, the Minister of Finance can’t walk into the Chamber and say “like it or lump it – after the usual fandango and ritual speeches we, the government, are going to cram it up your…surely I need go no further.” How is that bad?
It’s the same thing with legislation and policy – there must be consultation.
It’s said that a minority government must always kiss the backside of the opposition – that is palpable nonsense. In reality minority parties while able to vote down the government rarely do. They usually are out of serious money for campaigning and don’t want an election where the government can, as here, bleat that they couldn’t get their legislation through – legislation that would end the nation’s woes and bring happiness to all.
The media claims that all the House of Commons does is bicker. But surely to God that’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s a passionate place because there blood is spilled figuratively rather than literally.
In my opinion a minority government, while far from perfect, is the best of possible results – especially for British Columbia, which needs political clout.
Let’s look at what BC needs.
Of course we have the needs of the rest of the country – health, jobs, better social policy and so on – but every party wants this, with none of them likely any better than the other.
We have a province that has growing concerns about the environment and giveaways that are features of both Victoria and Ottawa.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) are in bed with the fish farmers as memoranda leaked to the Cohen Commission clearly show. The Tories clearly support foreign corporations slaughtering our salmon in the interests of shareholders in Norway.
The Harper government supports the debasing of our environment so that large companies can make power we don’t need, that BC Hydro cannot use but is committed by contract to take and lose money on – all to the profit once more of foreign shareholders. In fact the federal government has helped fund Plutonic Power, which is General Electric in drag.
The Harper government supports the Enbridge pipeline from the Tar Sands to Kitimat and also supports huge oil tankers taking this sludge down our coast – arguably the most treacherous coastline in the world.
What can we do about this? What can we do to ensure that if Harper forms another government we in BC will be able to rely upon a strongly built opposition to see that parliament hears our concerns?
The issue before us is a stark one: do we support the party of our usual choice and the toady they have as their candidate or do we vote strategically so as to ensure our province has clout in Ottawa?
Strategic voting means supporting the best opposition candidate and vote for him/her even though in better times you wouldn’t.
We British Columbians have three areas of concern which, if badly dealt with, will kill off our wild fisheries, bankrupt our public Hydro corporation and ensure that oil spills on land and sea will damage our province beyond repair.
The Conservative government would allow, indeed encourage these catastrophes. These environmental outrages are not the bleeding heart sort supported by flower children in days of yore – in fact they are at the very core of our way of life.
If we do not commit ourselves to fighting for the province, who will? I personally look at my nine grandchildren and my great granddaughter and conclude that this destruction can’t happen on my watch – at least not without me giving everything I have to the fight.
Let’s all join as British Columbians to send a message to Ottawa that will at least be heard in the House of Commons.
If we do that, we’re in with a chance.
If we don’t, thank God we won’t be still alive when future generations of British Columbians will look back at us with the scorn we so justly earned
I am a biologist and resident of a tiny coastal community on
the coast of British Columbia.When salmon farms arrived I believed the government promotion that it
would be good for my community.But now that the industry has surrounded us with 27 huge Norwegian
salmon feedlots, there are only 8 people left, the First Nations oppose the
industry, our school is closed, we have the sea lice epidemics, mounds of waste
only bacteria can grow on, toxic algae blooms and zero jobs in the industry. We
learned at the Cohen Inquiry that the federal government has offered to sell
this Norwegian industry to us, the people of Canada. My town was based on wild
salmon through fishing, tourism and the arts. As the wild salmon went so we
went. We did not accept the low paying jobs as reward for allowing this
industry to destroy our coast.
Video from recent Alexandra Morton event in Vancouver – story continues below
Salmon feedlots break the natural laws unleashing bacteria,
viruses and sea lice. My lawyer, Greg McDade, questioned Dr. Laura Richards,
Director General of Science Pacific Region about the 2009 sockeye crash at the
Cohen Inquiry. We learned a briefing note sent to the Minister of Fisheries
stated that a virus is one of the leading suspected causes of the 2009 sockeye
collapse.We also learned DFO
muzzled their own scientist who made this discovery, Dr. Kristi Miller. Salmon
Leukemia virus is a retro virus like HIV. DFO never told the public and left us
to blame fishermen. They also refused to test the farm salmon in an
effort to find out where this virus is coming from.
Salmon farming has harmed wild salmon everywhere they
operate (Ford and Myers, 2008). Canada has already destroyed one earth’s
greatest natural food supplies, the North Atlantic cod, by muzzling their
scientists. Fisheries and Ocean Canada blindly adhered to bad policy kicking the
cod and the east coast economy over the cliff. Immediately after, the Hibernia
oils wells went onto the Grand Banks. Canada traded food security for oil, the
future for short-term gain for the corporate world. No one in DFO was held
accountable and there is every indication that they are doing this again in BC.
I am unwilling to accept our fate as victim of another bad,
misguided policy favouring industry over our communities.As soon as oil prices rise too
far the Norwegian salmon feedlot industry will not be able to afford shipping
ground up fish from Chile to feed their Atlantic salmon here in the Pacific.
They will walk away and we will be sitting like fools with viral epidemics and
piles of manure smothering a once productive seafloor.
All too often people feel helpless. Democracy is slipping
away under the crush of the global economy.We need to wake up right now and step into the process of
how we form governments.Members
of Parliament are our agents, nothing more. Eighty-five percent of British Columbians consider
wild salmon an icon; they bring in over $2 billion a year in wilderness tourism
and fishing, they are an essential bloodstream carrying nutrients to our
forests, they are food security. We want them and our political agents have no
business hiding the truth about them from us.It is time to elect people who will stand by us and defend
our rights and resources.
For these reasons I left home April 13th to go door-to-door
to as many federal candidate campaign offices as possible to get them on record:Do you support wild salmon, would you
protect them by removing salmon feedlots from BC waters, would they protect the
aquaculture workers by supporting land-based aquaculture farming species that
are more sustainable, lower on the food chain than salmon?
I have been down Vancouver Island to Nanaimo, across the
ridings of Vancouver, through Chilliwack to Kamloops, Enderby, Salmon Arm,
Mission. I will be continuing through the lower mainland and southern Vancouver
Island.It has been a fascinating
exploration. I am a biologist with very little political experience and I am on
a steep learning curve.
Here is what I have found out:
The Greens have
some candidates that are very impressive such as, Adriane Carr (Vancouver
Central) and Elizabeth May (Saanich – Gulf Islands). Sue Moen, (Vancouver
Island North) really tells it like she sees it, but is not electable.Some Greens should get out of the way
as they are not serious about winning. Both Carr and May strongly support
wild salmon.They would transition
workers in the industry to land-based aquaculture. I think Carr and May
would go a long way to bring balance to any government.
The Liberals
seemed uncertain of their position, with many candidates remaining silent, but
on April 18 Micheal Ignatieff said, “if fish farms are harming wild salmon
we’ve got to stop it, put it on land or stop it all together.” This is a much
stronger statement than the one made by Mike Holland (Vancouver Island-North)
who said, “We need to get the
science done to understand just what the relationship and impact is, and we
need to be prepared to go where the science takes us. If that takes us to
closed-containment only I support that, but I want the science first. I’m not
prepared to mandate a timeline at this stage.”I think Liberal Renee Heatherington (Saanich-Gulf
Islands)may be pushing her party
to establish a policy on this.
The Conservatives
avoided me, until April 18 when MP Cathy MacLeod accepted our request to meet
in Kamloops.I was really looking
forward to hearing the Conservative position, but as we sat down she said she
could only listen and not give a position. Senator Nancy Greene joined us.I have met Nancy before and know she is
a strong wild salmon supporter.MacLeod’s attitude shifted during the meeting. I think she wanted to see
me as a nut, but as I outlined how the federal government has been hiding a
virus in the sockeye, I saw a change in her and she did say the Conservatives
are awaiting the Cohen decision. This is really not good enough.I have seen three major government
reviews on salmon farming entirely ignored by the provincial and federal
governments. The Cohen Inquiry is not a fish farm review, even if it finds
impact on the sockeye it is not mandated to do a thorough salmon farm
investigation.There is more than
enough evidence of harm to invoke the Precautionary Principle, which Canada
says it supports.
Conservative candidate John Duncan (Vancouver Island-North) told constituents in
Port McNeill that he supports continued salmon farming.At an All-Candidates meeting in Courtenay, Duncan’s seat was
empty – people call him “Mr. Invisible.” Many of the Conservative offices are
very hard to find, and many people have told me the Conservatives do not attend the
All-Candidate meetings. Paul Forseth’s (Burnaby–New Westminster) people didn’t want us to take pictures of their
office, saying it was private property. Colin Mayes’ campaign office address is
not on the internet – there is no website. His riding includes the Adams River,
one of earth’s biggest wild salmon runs. The people of Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon
are not pleased that Conservative MP Chuck Strahl just handed the candidacy to
his son Mark. The Conservatives get a thumbs down from me.
The NDP offices
are full of volunteers, people heading out the door with signs, tables of
coffee and snacks as no one has time to go home. Ronna-Rae Leonard (Vancouver
Island-North) is in full support of the people who make a living with wild
salmon, such as the wilderness tourism industry. But she says she is also
concerned with the people directly employed by the salmon farms. Thus she
supports building the infrastructure for a permanent land-based aquaculture
industry. Zeni Maartman (Nanaimo-Alberni) is a dynamo full of passion, energy
and deep commitment to both wild salmon and her riding.Don Davies, Vancouver-Kingsway met with
us and is a man of action, compassion and understanding, in strong support of
wild salmon.Fin Donnelly (New
Westminster-Coquitlam-Port Moody) joined me on the Paddle for Wild salmon
last fall, and is a hero to the wild salmon people province-wide. He tabled a
private member’s bill calling for removal of salmon farms onto land to protect
wild salmon and preserve jobs. Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster) has
been involved with protecting wild salmon for a longtime.Denise Savoie (Victoria), Nathan Cullen
(Skeena-Bulkley Valley), and Jean Crowder (Nanaimo-Cowichan) have also supported wild salmon very
strongly through their careers. Cullen helped protect the North Coast from the
expansion of salmon feedlots into the mouth of the Skeena River. I am hoping the
NDP will become stronger in their platform to remove salmon farms from BC
waters.
Please follow what the politicians are saying at VoteSalmon.ca
