NL Fish Farms - Placentia Bay, Grief Seafood - The 'Jobs and Revenue' Spin - Wild Salmon and EcoTourism Revenue in BC = $3.92 Billion, Updated June 15, 2017

You will know that Grieg is wanting to enter pristine Placentia Bay, setting up 11 farms, and receiving a license subsidy of $9- to $12-M X 11 = $99- to $132- million (representing the in-ocean license cost from an auction, two years ago, when Norway refused to give out any more in-ocean licenses and is now giving out free licenses to set up on land, to get farms out of the water).

In addition, Grieg says it wants $45 Million from the province, or the project won't go ahead. In other words they want an overall subsidy of $144- to $177- million or they won't set up shop. I'd tell them to go back to Norway and set up on land there, rather than pollute the NL ocean to an extent that their own country, Norway, won't tolerate any more.

One of my Facebook group contacts is for Fishers Against Fish Farms. From it you will get that the Atlantic Canada people are fed up with fish farms in their ocean, and are wondering how much environmental damage they would cause.

One participant got in touch with the government in NL. Here is the quote:

I have raised these concerns in the HOA and stated that there should be a full environmental assessment of any of these proposals. Do you know what I get back? Oh, so you're  against jobs and economic development. You're ‎against the people of the Burning Peninsula. With that said, I'll continue to raise questions and concerns whenever I can.

I told them this: 

The first myth about fish farms is: we promise jobs and revenue. Politicians eat it up without checking the claims out

Well, what happens is that some jobs are created in the boom that replace existing jobs, so no net gain, then the revenue goes out of the country to the companies head office and then to shareholders around the world, then employment drops because they put in lights and feeding machines, then a bust happens, usually disease, and workers are fired, the company goes bankrupt and a bigger fish swallows it up at a bargain price – the industry is ever evolving as a cartel of the biggest.

For example, in BC, DFO and fish farms claim 6,000 jobs; however, the best stats from BC Stats puts the multiplier jobs at 1700, or only 28.3% of what is claimed – and this is all of aquaculture, not simply fish farms.  Over the same period, commercial fishing jobs declined 1700, so no net gain.

I then looked into the actual number of jobs on fish farms and found it is only 820 in BC, or 13.7% of what is claimed, or roughly one in ten of the jobs claimed. If you divide the fish farm/DFO/Government figure by 10 you will be closer to the real number than all the claims.

In the 2008 ISA crisis in Chile, 13,000 workers lost their jobs. Less than 10 years later in the algal bloom crisis of 2016, 5000 workers lost their jobs. In the last week (June 2017), Cermaq laid off 259 more workers to streamline their operations in Chile.

Gray Aqua [in NL] is a classic example of the boom/bust cycle that happens in fish farming all over the world. Placentia Bay is another boom with a price tag subsidy of $99 to $132 for licences + they want $45 mil more up front, or a $177m subsidy, just to start up.

In BC, in the 80s and 90s all the small, home grown farms started with great hopes and were wiped out, losing everything, usually by furunculosis or IHN. They were then bought up by the Norwegians, Marine Harvest, Cermaq, and Grieg Seafood, as in a Norwegian Cartel runs BC fish farming now

Fish farms are not about jobs and revenue. But Grief knows that politicians/bureaucrats are nitwits and don't look into the spin that Grief is telling them. Sad, but true.

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Here are some references: 

But first: I calculated the value of the fish resource in salt-and fresh-water in BC. The conservative figure is $2.52 Billion. The BC Stats figure for all of aquaculture is about $400 million. No contest.

Add to that that eco-tourism in BC is: $1.4 Billion + $2.52 Billion and you have: $3.92Billion.

Here is the original document of stats from the BC Stats report, as well as a link to  the document: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2013/02/sport-fishing-how-we-tack-up-feb-6-2013.html.

And here is my developing the entire revenue from the fish resource from salt- and fresh-water: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2015/05/salmonfishing-revenue-towers-over.html. I show how to do the calculation so you have the complete picture, and, of course, this is public info as it was published by the Pacific Salmon Foundation. I based all the figures on public published figures, with a CPI adjustment to some.

And remember that fish farm jobs don’t create jobs, they replace jobs that they eliminate, for example, commercial fishing.

Here is a reference for an eco-tourism revenue of $1.5 billion, higher than the conservative figure I have used above: http://www.wilderness-tourism.bc.ca/value.html. 

Note that the entire tourism industry is $13.8 Billion.