110,000 Signatories Against Fish Farms in BC

Andrew Weaver, leader of the Green party in BC had this to say of the heavy bundle of names he was carrying:

"In May, 2015, I was afforded the honour of introducing a petition by 108,848 people who are asking the government to please not issue licences of occupation to salmon farms trying to expand in British Columbia. I also introduced a second petition signed by more than 100 business organizations across the province who supported the individuals who signed the larger petition. The business organizations argued that they are convinced by the published scientific evidence that open net salmon farms are a threat to B.C. wild pacific salmon."

He and Alex Morton, who has donated her life to wild BC salmon, look happy on this day, of for her, the struggle of her life. Let's hope she wins.

Here are some of the stats I have generated over the years as part of a query to a sport fishing magazine on the problems with fish farms:

"How bad are the numbers? Well, sewage is $10.4 B that we taxpayers pay. And our licence fees are so low that we subsidize in-ocean fish farms $1.17- to $1.56-B to use our ocean as a free, open sewer. Jobs: 1,700 multiplier number, 820 actual, while industry claims 6,000, revenue of $1.6B, when it is only $61.9M GDP effect. The lower numbers that I quote are DFOs own numbers that it refuses to use from the BC Stats report - they are too low to support their conflict of interest with fish farms. They include sport jobs at 8,400. And the numbers for the rest of the industry – commercial, processing and sport." 

This is the BC Stats Report table: