I emailed DFO Minister, Dominic LeBlanc to ask why he had
to be sued to protect BC salmon from fish farms putting in PRV infected fish. He didn’t get it as it was diverted to BC staff who
drafted generic mush. I drafted 5,000 minister’s letters when I worked at
Finance in BC, so, I know mush.
Here are my responses:
BC DFO: Thank
you for your correspondence of July 6, 2017, addressed to the Honourable
Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and Canadian Coast Guard,
concerning aquaculture in British Columbia. I have been asked to respond on the
Minister’s behalf.
WRONG: I asked
for the Minister to respond, not someone on the west coast. I have no assurance
my email made it beyond the first admin person in line who referred it to BC.
See my note to LeBlanc: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/07/dfo-has-to-be-sued-to-prevent-prv.html.
I asked: why do you, Dominic LeBlanc, have to be sued to
prevent diseased fish farm fish being put in BC waters? PRV causes HSMI as your
scientist Dr. Kristi Miller confirmed in 2017.
Here is sad commentary on DFO science policy from Miller:
http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/01/key-document-dr-kristi-miller-diseases.html.
Here is Miller’s research that shows PRV is present in
farmed fish and causes HSMI: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0171471.
BC DFO: The
protection and conservation of wild salmon is a priority for Fisheries and
Oceans Canada (DFO), and we appreciate your concern for wild salmon. DFO is committed to ensuring that Canada’s
aquaculture regulations support the health of marine ecosystems and the aquatic
species they support.
WRONG: Your record on lack of laws/weakened laws has been chronicled for the
past decade by many commentators, including the Royal Society of Canada. See
this scandalously-long list on your weakest laws: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/04/the-strictest-laws-in-world-wrong.html.
Your Conservation
and Protection Branch is chronically under funded so you can’t enforce the weak
laws you do have. See Item 78 on firing staff in Port Hardy, in this post: https://skeenawild.org/news/government-is-cutting-33-of-all-dfo-habitat-staff-closing-closing-offices-i.
Your contribution
to freshwater habitat restoration, the real solution, is minimal: $1.8 Million
to the Pacific Salmon Foundation. You should give a minimum of $10 million per
year, matched by $10 million from the BC government.
You cancelled
parts of the Salmon Enhancement Program, including Salmonids in the Classroom,
until the uproar from BC forced you abandon your Ottawa plan to cancel
everything. See items 173 and 155 in the almost 2,000 global bad news stories I
have found on the in-ocean fish farm/seafood industry: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/05/bad-news-bites-fifth-post.html.
You can find fifty on your not doing freshwater habitat restoration in BC/CDN
press.
BC DFO: In
British Columbia, the aquaculture industry
operates under some of the strictest regulations in the world. DFO’s
Public
Reporting on Aquaculture website outlines DFO’s regulations, management
requirements, and monitoring activities, which are in place to ensure that the
industry operates in a sustainable manner. The Department is also working with
provincial partners, First Nations, industry, and communities on legislative
reforms, including developing a federal Aquaculture Act, as recommended
by the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
WRONG: The ‘strictest
laws’ comment is fish farm communications spin used globally. Shame on you for
stooping so low, or for not realizing you are using fish farm spin. Once again
here is the scandalously long post on your weakest laws: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/04/the-strictest-laws-in-world-wrong.html.
Once again, you
do not have adequate C&P staff to enforce the weakest laws. See the link
above.
Furthermore, fish
farm strategy includes claiming to be transparent, then refusing to release info.
A BC example is the fish farm industry arguing through their lawyers – a common
tactic – that Judge Cohen could not request the disease testing tables be
released to the Cohen Commission. When he required them anyway, they trumpeted
how transparent they were.
When Cohen
wanted individual tables, they again sent in their lawyers arguing he had no
scope to require them. Cohen required them anyway, and reopened the Commission,
for the third time, to focus solely on fish farm diseases.
Another example,
an FOI I made to the CFIA for the millions given to fish farms for diseased,
dead fish was held up for 10 months by a fish farm injunction against the information’s
release. The amount turned out to be $177 million. No taxpayer wants their
money given to multi-billion-dollar, multi-national corporations.
Aboriginals are not on side with DFO on fish farms.
They want fish farms out of their waters. The Musgamagw Dzawada'enuxw, has been against
farms for 30 years, and served eviction notices, but fish farms are still
there: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/72-hours-to-vacate-first-nation-gives-eviction-notice-to-salmon-farm-1.3728860.
The UBCIC Chief, Bob Chamberlin, says 150 First Nations are against fish farms
and want them out of the water. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/08/key-document-aboriginals-against-in.html.
The Standing Fisheries
committee you cite is fractured. Fin Donnelly issued a dissenting voice, and
judging from Nancy Greene’s involvement, the Senate committee was badly
informed, and failed to do any of its own research into fish farms: http://commonsensecanadian.ca/nancy-greene-raine-fish-farms-wild-bc-salmon/.
Watershed Watch
details the lack of resources in C&P: https://www.watershed-watch.org/2017/03/recap-of-2016-bc-salmon-fisheries/.
Your own C&P
director, Randy Nelson, criticized the scandalously low C&P budget and
staffing in his book, Poachers,
Polluters and Politics. See my review: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.ca/2014/10/poachers-polluters-and-politics-by.html.
BCDFO: Regarding your comments regarding heart and
skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI) and piscine reovirus (PRV), DFO’s website
has detailed and up-to-date information. I strongly encourage you to read this
material, which provides the scientific and historical context of this complex
issue.
WRONG: DFO and the CFIA’s lab were criticized in the
Cohen Commission by the experts, Nylund and Kibenge, as not being able to find
reportable diseases such as ISA. And remember that DFO, and the CFIA colluded,
fraudulently, not to find disease in BC farmed fish. They concocted a scheme to
use a lab that would not return a disease result, and BCMAL was chosen. This is
a scandal.
Here is
DFO, CFIA and BCMAL not being able to find ISA in BC, while private researchers
did, a very grave finding: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/01/isav-in-bc-but-dfo-cfia-and-bcmal-cant.html.
DFO, CFIA, and BCMAL went even further, to complain to Virology journal where
the ISA in BC article appeared. Virology dismissed your complaints.
Here is
DFO, CFIA colluding to fraudulently find no disease in BC, picking a lab that
would return a negative result, BCMAL: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/09/canadian-food-inspection-agency.html.
This is fraud, Dominic LeBlanc, and
I strongly urge you to do something: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/09/canadian-food-inspection-agency.html.
BCMAL has
said PRV is in 80% of all farmed salmon, but there is no HSMI: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/10/prv-present-in-80.html.
In addition,
your website link ignores that the PRV in BC is from a Norwegian source,
meaning, yet another disease, like ISA, that Norwegian fish farms have brought to
BC that DFO/CFIA/BCMAL claim is not here. Both cause big time death for salmon,
PRV the number 3 killer in Norway.
And, Miller’s
Viral Signature work shows presence in Fraser River sockeye components of up to
90% failure to spawn. And Miller’s 2017 work confirms that PRV causes HSMI.
Here are
some specific comments on the text on your site:
Under: Genomic
variability, PRV has been in BC since 1989 from imported
Atlantic salmon. Marty is the lab that DFO and CFIA contracted because he
wouldn’t find disease.
Under: Infectivity, Garver’s papers are with
Marty, the lab that DFO/CFIA contracted because he wouldn’t find disease.
Under: Infectivity, Miller’s Viral Signature
work noted as high as 90% pre-spawn mortality in sockeye components of the
Fraser River run, a PRV problem.
Under: HSMI, watch the video of Norwegian
scientists talking about PRV/HSMI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3scxcIDuEOo.
Are Nylund, at 9:20, says the PRV is
from Norway. He goes on to say, at 11:20, that it is virtually impossible to
find HSMI in wild salmon; they get eaten because they can’t swim. Dominic, you need
to wake up, before all Pacific salmon are dead.
Under: Association between PRV and HSMI, your
own scientist, Miller, showed that PRV is HSMI in BC.
Under: Association between PRV and HSMI,
Garver worked with Marty who DFO/CFIA contracted because he wouldn’t find
disease. Watch the video again on PRV causing HSMI.
BC DFO: I appreciate
your support for closed containment aquaculture. The Department has supported the
aquaculture industry in adopting and developing technologies and best practices
to enhance the environmental and economic sustainability of closed‑containment
aquaculture. I have attached an appendix,
which provides background on this important topic. Additional information on DFO’s
research into and support of these technologies is available on our Closed
Containment website.
WRONG: the
industry and DFO are almost ten years out of date on on-land closed containment
RAS systems. The new, on-land Atlantic Sapphire plant in Florida may well wipe
out the entire Canadian industry because consumers don’t want in-ocean farmed
fish and because AS is in the USA, it has production/transportation cost
savings that out-of-country producers can’t match.
I would add that last year, 2016, the Norwegian industry
beggared its own in-ocean operations in Canada – Marine Harvest, Cermaq, Grieg
Seafood – by harvesting early in Norway and dumping the fish into the USA where
they had just had a 26% tariff eliminated for… dumping fish. They did so to avoid
the high cost of lice treatments that plagued Norway and Scotland last year.
DFO is a decade out of touch with on-land tech. I have a list of 189 different, on-land RAS systems around the
world, comprising nearly 20,000 actual on-land farms: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html.
The post has dozens of studies on on-land tech.
Norway is so fed up with fish farm pollution that it stopped
selling in-ocean licences two years ago, that sold at auction for $9-
$12-million, and is giving out free licences to set up on land. Because you don’t
charge adequate licence fees, you are effectively giving a $9- to $12-million
subsidy to each fish farm that uses the ocean as a free open sewer – in total,
a $1.17- to $1.6- billion subsidy. Further, the in BC, sewage cost is $10.4
Billion. In-ocean fish farms make no environmental or economic sense. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/02/fish-farm-sewage-huge-cost-to-bc.html.
BC DFO: I appreciate the opportunity to respond to
your concerns.
Andrew
Thomson
Regional
Director
Fisheries
Management Branch
Pacific
Region
WRONG: Andrew Thompson is not Dominic LeBlanc. British Columbians know many
local DFO staff they respect. Not so with Ottawa DFO and its ‘any fish is a
good fish’ bias as former DFO staffer, Otto Langer, put it in A Stain Upon the Sea, about the
environmental damage caused by fish farms in BC. It won the BC Book Awards, Roderick
Haig-Brown Award it is that good. Carrying on his work, I won the national
Roderick Haig-Brown Award in 2016 for sustained environmental writing on the
problems with fish farms.
Finally, I receive nearly 30 global fish farm news letters
every week and am probably more up to date on global fish farm/seafood
industry problems than anyone in DFO. I have found nearly 2,000 bad news
stories in the past two years. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/05/bad-news-bites-fifth-post.html.
Here’s what I would like from you Dominic LeBlanc:
1.
Why do you have to be sued to protect BC salmon
from fish farm diseases?
2.
What are you going to do about the fraud in your
Department over testing for fish farm diseases in BC?
3.
Send me the disaggregated budget for C&P
enforcement and the actual FTEs attributed to enforcing laws on fish farms in
BC.
4.
And let’s
see an original, handwritten signature from you.
Thanks
DC Reid
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