Mowi's Fake Firing of its Staff

Here is the Fish Farming Expert's article on Mowi closing its packaging plant and laying off 80 people: https://www.fishfarmingexpert.com/article/80-jobs-go-as-bc-farm-closures-force-mowi-to-shut-processing-plant/?utm_source=netflex&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter__18_01_2022.

Here is my article published in the Times Colonist on Jan 22, 2022:

Re your article on Jan 18 about fish farming:

Mowi complains that moving fish farms from the Discovery Islands is devastating news for 80 staff at the processing plant it says it will close. There are a few things that should be said:

1. Mowi could open-up some on-land fish farms and thus have product for the processing plant and it would not have to fire staff. My list of on-land has 383 farms around the world. Putting fish farms on land is common, though Mowi doesn’t think of it.

2. What is required is retraining for its staff, who then could move into other areas of fish farming and not be fired. If Mowi won’t do it, and prefers to fire its staff, the government should start a retraining program. Simple and straightforward.

3. Mowi and the other mega companies view staff as replaceable. For example, Norway puts out ten times the salmon that are produced in Canada. They use 20% of the staff employed in Canada and have laid off the rest because of introduced efficiency measures. The scientific paper on this one was written by Inga Milewski and it is easy to find. Once the measures are brought to Canada, 80% of staff will be fired. So, no one needs to be blamed other than Mowi. After all, once it introduces the efficiency measures here, they could lay off 80% of BC staff and still have enough to produce salmon on par with Europe.

DC Reid

Times Colonist Newspaper Not interested in the Environment

A week has gone by since my sending the following note to the TC. They have not responded, so I guess they don't care about the aguatic environment in BC and wild salmon. Hmm. I'm surprised. I would not have thought they would pass up the opportunity to learn more about the movement to on-land that has been happening for the past five years. BC is really behind the global movement to farm salmon on land.

Read this note, and I think you will agree with me. I read the TC every day, and am very surprised they are not interested in the future for fish farming and wild salmon. Hmm:

HI TC

I read your article by Dennis Dugas on fish farming in the Islander yesterday.

Do you want me to write an article featuring the other side, meaning on-land fish farms?

See my website: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/.

I have been on the environmentally sound side on this issue for the past ten years, and have written more than 600 posts on the various subjects. I read 30 global fish farm/seafood industry newsletters every week.

Here are several things to consider:

1. Fish farm stats are hugely overstated. For example, while fish farms and DFO have been using the figure of 7,000 jobs for years, the reality is the BC Government’s own BC Stats Report shows only 1800 jobs, meaning fish farms overstate jobs by almost 400%. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/03/mar-21-2019-bc-stats-report-2016.html.

2. In-ocean fish farms are old tech, and the world is moving on to on-land fish farms. My list is now at 338 on-land fish farms around the globe. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html.

3. The growing US on-land industry is heading toward being five times the size of the BC industry, and is where 85% of BC product is sold. US on-land will likely wipe out the BC in-ocean industry, unless they move to on-land. Consumers don’t want damaging in-ocean product. See: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2020/11/on-land-fish-farms-in-usa.html.

Note that Whole Oceans, among those opening large plants in the US, has picked up a long-term lease for the on-land Kuterra plant on the Nimpkish River, BC. They only have to put one on-land farm in Port Hardy, and a new era of fish farming can begin. Dennis Dugas might become keen once he sees them operate in a highly environmentally-sound way.

I wrote an essay on how to calculate the sewage cost of in-ocean. It is conservatively estimated at $10.4B in BC. In Norway, the home of the BC fish farmers, the government gives out free licences to set up on land. In-ocean licences auction for $32- to $40-million because of the high environmental cost. We should do the same here. $5000 is too cheap.

One final thing, I wrote reports like the BC Stats Report when I worked for government in Finance, and thus have good number-crunching skills.

Would you like me to write you an op-ed on on-land fish farms?

DC (Dennis) Reid

Note: I was doubly surprised as I wrote the fishing column for the paper for a decade.

Time Colonist Story - Amy Smart, "Wild salmon still top priority, but fish farms stay: mnister'

I was going to walk you through the Aug 10, 2016 article in the Times Colonist newspaper, that I free-lanced for for a decade, pointing out the differences between reporting a story and analyzing a story. Reporting is about relating what others, on all sides of a controversy, have to say, along with some of their back up material.

This is fair, but tends to give the public a false story, that purports to be the true story. The title is: Wild salmon still top priority, but fish farms stay: minister.

Most informed commentators on DFO (Fisheries and Oceans Canada) would roll their eyeballs at the first part of the title: Wild salmon still top priority, because they know that the four major problems with wild BC salmon are: habitat restoration, DFO, fish farms and climate change.

So to start off with the minister, Dominic LeBlanc, saying the priority is wild salmon, when the habitat restoration budget is pretty much limited to the Salmon Stamp licence revenue, of, as I recall, $7.2 Million given to the Pacific Salmon Foundation, that leverages the money with BC volunteers up to seven times, is that the first assertion of the title is false. Any informed commentator will tell you that the restoration budget needed in total is probably $500 million. To give only one example, there are 70,000 culverts that need replacing in BC, that at the rate they are being changed will take more than 3000 years.

And last year, $200,000 was given to Van Isle projects, when the Clay Bank restoration on the Cowichan alone had been done in earlier years, at a cost of $1.5 Million when it was done, gives an idea of the vast distance between the 'priority' and the reality on the ground, er, river.

My suggestion is that DFO plus the Province should both give the same amount to the PSF and then, at over $21 million per year, leveraged 7 times starts to get to approaching the kind of money required to legitimately address the most pressing problem facing wild salmon - habitat restoration. DFO just simply does not have wild BC salmon as it's priority.

You can find all the references for all the figures I quote, or generate, by looking at one of the two indexes on this site. Here is one: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/01/key-document-index-2015.html. And look at the graphic that leads this 2016 index, showing that farmed salmon have 10 times the toxic PCB, POPs, cancer-causing and so on, chemicals of other 'farmed' animals. I would not eat one.

The second part of the title is: but fish farms stay, does not capture the real issue. That is, the only fish farm that should be in BC and around the world is an on-land one, that keeps all the problems caused by in-ocean fish farms out of the ocean. Fish farms say it can't be done (even though Marine Harvest is now doing this in Norway).

So, over the years, I have slowly put together a list of on-land farms I have found around the world. The list is now 152 on-land systems, comprising 20,000 actual on land farms: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html. Just go look. This is the most popular post on my site, most recently in Russia, who must be looking seriously at all on-land.

So the issue is: if fish farms are put on land, then they can stay, but it is deceptive to put in a title that glosses over the most important issue in the debate by not mentioning it. Now, I could go through the entire article and pick it apart, so that a reader gets a much better representation of the real issues and where they stand, but I will limit myself to only one, or this article would be intolerably long.

According to the article,LeBlanc says that 32 of 75 Cohen recommendations have been completed. I'm afraid not. The Auditor General's office got in touch with me to launch an environmental Petition under its mandate, and I did so in late 2013.

Most specifically, I asked then minister Gail Shea, what the specific disaggregated budget and actual FTEs used for each and every recommendation in the Cohen tome of 1200 pages. Disaggregated budget means the amount of dollars for a specific purpose, with each standard object (government speak for specific purpose). And FTEs means full time equivalents, or actual people.

I did not receive an answer to my question, instead, I received generic mush, with generic figures attached. This is something very different from what I asked. In other words, DFO refused to answer the question, and so chose to do it the way they wanted to answer it. I know this as I used to generate generic mush for the provincial government when I worked for the Ministry of Finance.


This is the link to my Petition on the Auditor General of Canada's site: http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/pet_353_e_39110.html.

This is the Question I asked then minister of DFO, Gail Shea, about Cohen. You will see how specific it is, then look at her response in the AG Petition site. Mush:


Petition questions and/or requests:

Dear DFO Minister Gail Shea:

1. It is one year since the $26.4 Million Cohen Commission on Decline of Fraser River Sockeye delivered its report to DFO. One year later, I would like to know: What concrete results, and detail them individually, with associated timelines and funding that DFO has committed or expensed to resolve each of the 75 environmental recommendations in the three volume Cohen Report on the Decline of Fraser River Sockeye: http://www.cohencommission.ca/en/FinalReport/. The recommendations are pages 105 – 115, of Volume 3. I am speaking of the boldfaced recommendations and the concrete results DFO has taken to achieve each of the 75 recommendations that can also be found in a Cohen PDF of Chapter 2, Volume Three.

Thank you
DC (Dennis) Reid
Victoria, BC 



(Please note that I am not criticizing Amy Smart. She is doing her job as a reporter).