Ottawa Fisheries Critic MPs - Mel Arnold, Elizabeth May, Fin Donnelly

Hi Mel, Elizabeth, Fin

Nice to meet you in Ottawa on the weekend.

[I met with them because I was the lucky recipient of the national, Roderick Haig-Brown Award for environmental writing, and my on-going work on analysis of fish farm problems. I was flown to Ottawa to receive it].

The four major problems with wild salmon are: DFO, habitat restoration, fish farms and climate change.

In BC, DFO – in Ottawa – is seen as perhaps the most important problem in dealing with BC wild salmon.

Here is a post on the Ottawa staff being the problem: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/06/dfo-is-problem-with-salmon-in-bc-dfo.html. You will note the unwillingness to do anything about Cohen, or make the legal changes. You might want to get on Watershed Watch’s email list, as well as West Coast Environmental Law.

Changing the laws back from what Harper did is the current issue. Here is a news article: http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/06/20/news/liberal-ministers-announce-steps-fix-harpers-environmental-overhaul?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=b2c93002e2-Salmon_News_June_24_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-b2c93002e2-214661381. You will note it says little about salmon – that’s a legitimate, major complaint.

Here is a post on the legal changes that are required: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2015/07/stephen-harper-government-eliminates.html. It gives a link to the Huffington Post’s list of 17. My list of 9 law changes that need rectifying is: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2014/12/summary-fish-farm-environmental-laws.html.

The most important thing is for DFO to be stripped of its conflict of interest of supporting fish farms as well as wild salmon. Cohen said it should only do the Wild Salmon Policy and wild salmon. Conflict goes back 40 years in Norway, as government and industry act together to make more fish farm money/business, but as I have said, Norway is so fed up with their sewage/pollution it is giving out free licences to set up on land, a $9- to $12-million subsidy representing the in-ocean, auction value of a licence. In BC, our licence cost is almost non-existent at $5,000.

In BC, the licence subsidy for Norwegian fish farms to use our ocean as a free open sewer is: $1.17- to $1.56-billion. And the sewage cost we bear is another $10.4-billion. The best stats, BC Stats, says that max revenue from fish farms is $469 million, and a small $61.9 Million contribution to GPP. I went out and found that actual employment is a very small 820 jobs. The multiplier figure for the rest of the fish sector is: 12,500 jobs. I also did major work to re-investigate the entire take from fish in fresh/salt. It is $2.52 Billion and the figure has already been published.

See the BC Stats table in a recent post: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/06/cohen-commission-bc-still-waiting-for_27.html.

In other words, it makes no economic or environmental sense to leave fish farms in our water. They need to be on land or go back to Norway and set up on land because their own government is fed up with them. They also need to change fish to a vegetarian, so they are not liquidating the ocean’s small fish that Third World mouths should be eating, in order to feed fish only First World mouths can afford.

Let me know what other subjects you may have an interest in, or simply look at the blog: www.fishfarmnews.blogspot.com. There is an index in 2015: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/01/key-document-index-2015.html. It gives a link to a previous index of posts before 2014.

Dennis 

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And check out the graphic on the chemicals in farmed salmon - only ten times the amounts found in other flesh-based food. I wouldn't eat one. And, yes, dioxins cause cancer.